In which Royal news doesn't interrupt Dame Groan, mein Gott or the bromancer in full Dibbster flight ...

 

Naturally the news from afar too the reptile attention this day ...

But life had to go on, and there was a goodly chance for some rampant transphobia, a Captain Spud tax pivot and Benji crowing about the success of the genocide ...

Down below other reptiles were diligently at work ...

There was the bro with what is becoming a daily caterwauling; ancient Troy was worried about the tangerine tyrant, apparently unaware of the ways that Faux Noise were urging him on the world; a new pond favourite, mein Gott had an offering; "here no conflict of interest" simpleton Simon was urging action; and Dame Groan was to hand for her Tuesday rant ...

So many opportunities for the reptiles and so the pond to repeat ad nauseam what had been said many times before ... so why not start with an epic Groan about redistribution of wealth, because the rich must stay as rich as Croesus ...

The good thing about a groaning is that the pond is inclined to stand well clear and let correspondents do the analysis.

The pond likes to think of itself in this matter as a medium, something of a spiritualist, serving up economics ectoplasm ...

Dame Groan in a fever of speculations, conspiracies and "what ifs" is surely a fertile extrusion from the mouth or nasal cavity, and worthy of deep analysis ... though none have come to pass and none might, still the runes and chicken entrails must be inspected ...

The pond urges correspondents not to overlook the flashes of wit and humour. It would be entirely wrong to suggest that they're still looking for a decent insight from the Groaning ... you can't do a takedown by pandering to her astonishing wordplay...

At this point, the reptiles introduced a snap of a gesticulating comrade Bill, a faithful accomplice of Satan for many years ...

What it really meant was that Dame Groan's raging was into its final gobbet, and soon there'd be an end ...

Indeed, indeed, obvious speculation, and the speculative Groan is always best placed to indulge in said speculation, and of course the readership is up in arms at the preposterous notion of soaking the filthy rich ...

Strangely however the Groaner missed what is going to be a favourite reptile talking point,  and so the pond had to turn to the infallible Pope for help ...

Now he's the coyote? Too cruel, that Acme Roadrammer would be perfect for the streets of Newtown, and the pond wonders where it might purchase one ...

And so to the new pond favourite, and mein Gott, did mein Gott deliver a ripper this day, or what ...

There'll be plenty of snaps - the tattered remnants of the graphics department were so desperate or forgetful that they repeated the head image - but the real test here is to see if mein Gott can get through his rant about the BOM without once mentioning climate change, global warming, or similar reasons the weather might have been acting kinda funny lately ...

The pond has every confidence that mein Gott is up to the task ...

The pond did love the deployment of "overseas experts", though apparently at this point mein Gott couldn't remember their names.

It was also at this point that the reptiles repeated the lead snap, and so the pond must repeat it too ...

No doubt it helped fire up mein Gott ...

Still no names? Still just "my overseas weather friends"? Why the mystery, are they friends of Dorothy?

And still no mention of climate change as to one reason the weather might be acting kinda funny. 

By golly this mein Gott is a top climatologist ... so the reptiles rewarded him with another snap ...

The pond wondered if this was the gobbet when climate change might be mentioned and the mysterious  friends identified ...

Nope, no details of friends, no mention of climate science, just more contributions to the abundant set of conspiracy theories being cultivated by the reptiles about the BOM ... and so mein Gott was rewarded with another snap ...

At this point the pond had run out of hope, what with the final gobbet just a sprinkle in what had been an epic shower ...

So who are those friends? And why has the weather been acting kinda funny of late? The pond guesses it will never know ...

And so to the bromancer's latest rant. The pond was pleasantly surprised to see a few comments on the bro's late arvo special appearance on this site, and did think of holding the bro over for another special, but why not offer the chance to think deeply for at least a nanosecond about him during the day?

Indeed, indeed, all the bro can do is froth and foam, drawing attention to the bro's inability to bring on his war with China by Ēostre, while his Xmas deadline must also be in serious doubt.

As to the matter at hand, and the behaviour of dictator Xi, that's what cartoonists are for ...

Back to the bro, still frothing and foaming away ...

At this point the reptiles introduced a snap of the victim of the dictator, long after he'd served the bro's real purpose, an extended rant about defence, one of a zillion rants likely to turn up in the course of the year ...

Once the snap was out of the way, it was back to the ranting about other matters ...

Ah, the bromancer is doing a classic cardigan-wearer ploy. Sensing that his own ranting has become tired and a bit worn, he's brought in a consultant, outsourced his commentary to another ... egged on by a shot of all those civilian scrambled eggs ...

Before the Dibbster got going with his consultancy, the pond realised with regret that the bro wasn't going to provide a natural segue to another story that caught the pond eye, so wot the hell, Archy, toujours gai, the pond will run it anyway ...

It was in Haaretz, (paywall?) and never mind the ads ...

The details were interesting, because the pond hadn't seen this level of warfare since the great days in the 1930s when all sorts of people were demonised ... even ratbag Islamic fundamentalists must have admired the effort and wished they had the skill set ...

During the original investigation, sources told Haaretz that members of the unit, which is in charge of psychological warfare targeting the enemy and foreign audiences, created 72 Virgins – Uncensored on October 9, two days after the war began, without official approval and without being authorized to do so. Furthermore, the channel was directed at an Israeli audience.

After processing its findings, IDF officials contacted Haaretz to present their conclusions. In a written response, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said that after a thorough investigation, "it was found that the Telegram page was operated by the IDF without authorization and without authority. The incident has been dealt with."

The channel's administrators posted graphic content, such as images of the dead bodies of Hamas terrorists, captioned "Shatter the terrorists' fantasy," on a daily basis. On several occasions, they posted exclusive material from investigations or information that was only available to the defense establishment at the time, boasting that it was "exclusive from Gaza." They uploaded thousands of videos and still images of the killing of terrorists and destruction in the Strip, and encouraged the channel's followers to share the content so that "everyone can see we're screwing them."

The operators used coarse language in a bid to obscure the IDF's involvement in the channel. An October 11 post read: "Burning their mother… You won't believe the video we got! You can hear their bones crunch. We'll post it right away, get ready." Photos of Palestinian men captured by the IDF in the Strip and the bodies of terrorists were captioned: "Exterminating the roaches… exterminating the Hamas rats… Share this beauty." A video of a soldier allegedly dipping machine gun bullets in pork fat is captioned: "What a man!!!!! Greases bullets with lard. You won't get your virgins." Another caption was: "Garbage juice!!!! Another dead terrorist!! You have to watch it with the sound, you'll die laughing."

On October 14, alongside the caption "Exclusive video of a good night, don't forget to share and repost" was a video of an Israeli vehicle repeatedly driving over the body of a terrorist. "Very good, Gershon!!! Run him over run him over!!!! Screw the bastards! Flatten them," the accompanying text read.

The channel administrators didn't stop at images from Gaza. On October 11, hundreds of Israelis, including members of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team's violently racist fan club La Familia, rioted at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv, following a rumor that Hamas terrorists who had invaded Israel were being treated there. People roamed the hospital, cursing out and spitting on medical professionals. Within an hour, a video of the riot was posted to the 72 Virgins channel with the title, "My brothers, the heroesssss, La Familia fans, love you!!!!!!! What heroes, they came to screw the Arabs."

Sorry, more than enough already, now it's on with the outsourcing, with the bromancer's hiring of a consultant producing immediate fruit ...

Talk about remarkable. The Dibbster manages to sound exactly like the bromancer, a routine that the pond will admit it shamefully deployed itself during its consultancy days.

Give the client what the client wants and everyone is as happy as Larry, and as fair reward there was a huge snap of the Dibbster himself ...

By golly he looks like just the sort of armchair general we need. Was it wise for the bro to let him out of his chair? Could the bro's position be in trouble?

With the last gobbet looming, the pond thought it might feature another story, one that fits in with that Haaretz story ...

This one was by Ben Burgis in The Daily Beast, A New York Times’ Columnist’s Dehumanizing Warmongering, with the lede Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman is once again cheerleading for a bloody Middle East conflict by using tortured metaphors comparing Muslims to insects and parasites.

The pond has never had much time for Friedman or the NY Times, and confesses it had never heard of a "Friednman unit", all good reasons for interrupting the bro. There's a bonus related to the bro, because there's an unnerving similarity between the bro's carry on, and Friedman's ability to rabbit on, remembering that way back when, the bro was also a big cheerleader for the Iraq folly...

Thomas Friedman loves a good war. Or a bad one.

In the early 2000s, he was the New York Times’ most enthusiastic cheerleader for George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the American counterinsurgency in Iraq went south, Friedman became notorious for his constant pronouncements, year after year, that we needed “another six months” to turn around the war and achieve a “decent outcome.” Other commentators started calling “another six months” a “Friedman Unit.”

Given this record, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by his latest contribution to making American discourse about foreign policy even more bloodthirsty and simple-minded. But I was.

Here’s how the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world said he “prefer[s] to think” about the complexities of war and politics in the Middle East:

“According to Science Daily, the wasp ‘injects its eggs into live caterpillars, and the baby wasp larvae slowly eat the caterpillar from the inside out, bursting out once they have eaten their fill.’

“Is there a better description of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq today? They are the caterpillars. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the wasp. The Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and Kataib Hezbollah are the eggs that hatch inside the host—Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq—and eat it from the inside out.

“We have no counterstrategy that safely and efficiently kills the wasp without setting fire to the whole jungle.”

This is genuinely grotesque. Try to imagine the “paper of record” publishing an op-ed comparing Israeli soldiers and settlers to, say, termites, and saying—with regret, of course—that the difficulty faced by Iran and Hamas was that they’re trying to figure out how to “safely and efficiently” kill the termites without blowing up the whole house.

Would this be any worse than what Friedman actually wrote? If so, how?

And Friedman’s rhetoric becomes worse rather than better when we step away from this hypothetical case and think about the real-world context.

Israel’s war has already displaced 1.9 million of the 2.3 million residents of Gaza from their homes. Starvation is rampant, and senior members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet keep talking about how the endgame should be the “voluntary” mass relocation of Gaza Palestinians to somewhere other than Israel/Palestine.

The International Court of Justice issued a provisional ruling finding a “real and imminent” risk of “genocide” and ordering Israel to take several concrete measures to step back from the brink—like clamping down on genocidal incitement, scaling back the severity of its operations, and allowing in far more humanitarian aid. At the moment, it looks highly probable that Israel will disregard most or all of these orders and, with the U.S. ready to block any attempt at enforcement at the UN Security Council, the ruling will be a dead letter.

Meanwhile, the United States is being drawn into what looks a little bit more every day like a broader war on Israel’s behalf against various Iran-allied groups around the region. While I’m sure President Joe Biden would prefer to stop short of that outcome—and even more sure that the Iranians would prefer it—there’s a genuine risk that the current fighting will escalate into an all-out war between the two countries.

These are the circumstances under which Friedman is reaching back to the kind of dehumanizing metaphors that used to be used by European colonialists who thought they were bringing civilization to savages. The Middle East is a “jungle.” The various kinds of Scary Foreign Enemies to be found there are insects.

At a time when the international legal body tasked with holding nations to account for violating the UN Convention on Genocide has issued a preliminary ruling that Israel’s war crimes in Gaza have reached a point where Palestinians there are “plausibly” at risk of genocide, Friedman is comparing the U.S. and Israel to people facing a sad dilemma about how they can kill the “wasp” and its “eggs”—including the Hamas “egg” in Gaza—without incinerating the whole region.

Friedman, to be fair, isn’t a fan of Netanyahu, who he thinks is too extreme. He also gestures, here and in other columns, at the hope that there can be a two-state solution when this is all over. Meanwhile, though, he sure isn’t calling for Israel to agree to a long-term ceasefire—or even for the U.S. to decisively pull back from the brink of a wider regional war. In fact, in his last piece at The Times before his rumination about the Middle East as a jungle full of wasps, Friedman said that the problem with Netanyahu taking such a hard line against a future two-state settlement was that it made it harder for the U.S. to pull together “the NATO allies and the Arab and Muslim allies it needs to take on Iran in a more aggressive manner.”

Has he thought—at all—about what “tak[ing] on Iran in a more aggressive manner” would look like in human terms? He might hope that this “more aggressive” action wouldn’t spiral into an all-out war but every escalation makes that catastrophic outcome more likely.

And let’s not kid ourselves—the regime in Tehran is in a vastly stronger position than the Taliban or Saddam Hussein were when George W. Bush launched his wars in the early 2000s. This war would be far worse.

When Friedman was issuing his periodic calls for One More Friedman Unit in Iraq, he never seemed to worry about whether a majority of Iraqis wanted foreign troops occupying their country for another six months. Would he sign up to spend six months—or six hours—in a city occupied by traumatized and trigger-happy foreign soldiers who didn’t speak the language and were understandably terrified of being shot by insurgents or blown up by roadside bombs? Six months of bombing, fighting, roadside checkpoints, and house-to-house searches? Six months of worrying that someone with a grudge could accuse you of being an insurgent and get you sent to Abu Ghraib?

If the U.S. imposes its will in the Middle Eastern “jungle” and “take[s] on Iran in a more aggressive manner,” how many Friedman Units of similar horrors would be inflicted on ordinary people trying to live their lives in that “jungle?”

These are questions he might have to pause to consider if he let himself remember that the residents of countries where the U.S. and Israel wage war are people rather than caterpillars hosting the eggs of parasitic wasps. No wonder Friedman prefers to think in metaphors.

The pond's excuse for that extended detour? 

The world has many burdens. Burgis has his Friedman, the pond has its bromancer ...

Besides, you'll never find any of these stories in reptile la la land, just the Dibbster imported as a special consultant to parrot back to the bromancer what the bromancer believes ...

Meanwhile, the excuse for the rant had been entirely forgotten by the end, and it was left to a few cartoonists to remind the pond of that story, and the deeds of dictator Xi. Moral: never rely on an armchair general to provide help when needed...