The pond was deeply moved during the week to read of Benji's enormous personal suffering, detailed in the Graudian in Netanyahu stuns Israelis by describing ‘personal cost’ of Iran war – postponing son’s wedding (The sub-heading provided a clue to the fun - Israeli prime minister prompts furious backlash for remarks in front of missile-struck hospital at height of Iran conflict).
The pond was vastly amused by this week's Hydeing, delivered in The internet’s nastiest gossipmonger has been exposed and guess what – he wants his privacy. (Again the clue to the fun was in the sub-header, If you’re not familiar with Tattle Life, congratulations. It’s a site that subjects women to relentless scrutiny, and lo and behold it’s run by a spineless man).
The pond was browsing The New Yorker and came across this outing by Katy Waldman … James Frey’s New Cancelled-Guy Sex Novel Is as Bad as It Sounds, With a status-obsessed comeback book, the author of the fabricated memoir “A Million Little Pieces” attempts to rebrand. (*Archive link)
A cancelled guy sex novel? Why it sounded just like what the reptiles would be reading in an after-hours moment, and it turned out that Katy did to it what the pond would like to do with the hive mind ...
But, of course, Frey’s offense was less glamorous than that. In 2006, he got caught for having fabricated parts of his addiction memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” in the hopes of making his life seem more cinematic and intense. (In that respect, at least, the source of his infamy—a tendency to self-mythologize—can be found on his new author page.) Oprah Winfrey, who had chosen “A Million Little Pieces” for her book club, dressed Frey down on national television. He kept writing but largely withdrew from the public eye for a couple of decades, amassing a fortune as the founder of a book-packaging outfit, and then as the C.E.O. of a video-game company. Now Frey has rebranded himself as an early victim of cancel culture and seeks redemption in a media environment that he believes has finally caught up to him and his adventures on the post-truth frontier.
And so on, and what a relentless savaging it was:
I have wrestled with a Frey-like dread through the writing of this review—I’m afraid that I’ll describe his book and no one will believe me.
Waldman made the attempt to describe and what a description:
The whole book is like this. On the walls of Billy and Devon’s house are “paintings by Picasso, Warhol, Lichtenstein, De Kooning, Richter, Ellsworth Kelly, Basquiat, Cecily Brown, Mark Grotjahn.” Their house has “a movie theater. A home gym. A yoga studio . . . a game room filled with vintage video games and pinball machines . . . ” In her bathroom, replete with “black-veined Calacatta marble counters,” Devon applies “La Prairie and Orogold creams and beauty products, Azature nail polish, Jean Patou Joy perfume,” and her “pale-pink Chanel spaghetti-strap dress” hangs on “her taut body, skin soft and tan and glowing, sun-streaked hair falling over her shoulders, deep shining blue eyes offset by the dress and the skin and hair.” Frey named Bret Easton Ellis as one of his inspirations for “Next to Heaven,” and surely the collapse of foreground and background here is intentional. The woman, the countertops, the clothes, and the jewels are all one fetish object, one undifferentiated fantasy.
And so on, and while at The New Yorker, the pond was bemused by an attempt by an Australian to visit the now fully fascist country, as detailed in How My Reporting on the Columbia Protests Led to My Deportation, As an Australian who wrote about the demonstrations while on campus, I gave my phone a superficial clean before flying to the U.S. I underestimated what I was up against. (*Archive link)
But enough already with the Kafka komedy on the full to overfllowing intertubes, it's soporific meditative Sunday time, and who better to help with the desire for a prolonged stay in bed than prattling Polonius?
The header for the alleged four minute read: Paul Keating fires potshots in the battle of ideas, Paul Keating’s views on security are heard widely. But it’s only reasonable to expect he will be challenged on them.
The caption for vulgar youffs who can't remember the 1990s, Paul Keating at his Potts Point office in Sydney. Picture: John Feder
Polonius decided to take on the French clock lover, which is a bit like a gnat taking on a cut-throat razor, but he opened with a splendid thrust worthy of our Henry.
In his book On War, Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz wrote: “War is a mere continuation of policy by other means.” And, in a sense, debate over policy is the continuation of war by peaceful means.
The pond was disappointed that Polonius didn't reference Sun Tzu's Art of War, perhaps with a quote describing what he was attempting:
“When you surround an army of Keatings, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.”
With that out of the way, Polonius got down into the ruck and the maul:
The Marles address was a considered analysis of Australia’s strategic situation. He defended the Albanese government’s defence policy and made some criticisms of what Labor had inherited from its Coalition predecessor.
Now the pond noted Keating on Thursday providing conclusive proof that Marles was a dickhead - a notion that Victorian lefties confirmed to the pond, while also reminding the pond of Marles' deeply weird addiction to collecting snow domes ... like a wannabe extra in Citizen Kane.
Perhaps Polonius is also a collector of something ...
Marles made this point, which is a reflection of Australia’s foreign affairs and defence policy since Federation in 1901: “In terms of our own defence capability needs, our risk is not so much the invasion of the continent. We are fortunate that we are an island nation surrounded by oceans, but on the other hand we are deeply reliant on our sea lines of communication. The supply of the country – almost all of our liquid fuels are imported by sea, but also through export revenues. And so that is our strategic risk. It’s the disruption of those sea lines. It’s the coercion that could result because of the disruption of such sea routes, it is that, and the stability of the region in which we live.”
At this point the reptiles interrupted with a snap of the snow dome man fellow travelling with a hive mind reptile and some crow eater...Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Richard Marles, with The Australian’s Editor-in-Chief Michelle Gunn and Premier of South Australia Peter Malinauskasat the Defending Australia summit this week. Picture: NewsWire / David Beach
Then Polonius plunged into the past in a way that would have made our Henry proud.
Banality heaped upon banality:
In 1939 Robert Menzies, then United Australia Party prime minister, declared war on Germany and dispatched Australian forces to the northern hemisphere. Labor, led by John Curtin, was not in favour of forces being sent overseas to fight with the Allied forces. But Curtin supported the Allied cause.
When Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, which started the Pacific War, Curtin, who became PM earlier that year, worked hard to develop a military relationship with the US. It became a formal alliance under the Liberal Party government led by Menzies in 1951.
Australia joined the UN force, led by the US, in 1950 to protect South Korea from attack by communist North Korea. Australia’s commitment was motivated, in part at least, by a wish that US forces would remain active in the Pacific. This mission was broadly successful. A similar motivation underpinned the Menzies government’s decision in 1965 to send military forces to support the US in its defence of South Vietnam against communist North Vietnam. Menzies believed if Australia supported the US in Vietnam, the US would be more inclined to support Australia if there were hostilities between Australia and Indonesia, led by ultra-nationalist president Sukarno.
The decision of the Howard government to support the US in Afghanistan in 2001 and in the Second Gulf War in 2003 had a similar motivation. As to the First Gulf War in 1991, I remember Keating phoning me to advise he had supported in cabinet the Hawke Labor government’s decision to send a naval taskforce to the Persian Gulf. He added that he had opposed the dispatch of the army or air force.
What, no mention of Polonius's record as a 'Nam hawk of the first water?
Come to that, no mention of the Singapore triumph in the second world war?
Never mind, time for a reptile AV distraction, At the "Defending Australia 2025" conference in Canberra, defence leaders, strategists, and senior officials tackled the mounting security challenges facing the nation. With rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific and the possibility of a second Trump presidency reshaping global alliances, discussions centred on Australia’s preparedness, its role within AUKUS and Five Eyes, and the future of its alliance with the United States. Speakers included Dr Michael J. Green, Michael Pezzullo, Olivia Shen, the Hon Angus Taylor MP, Professor Peter J. Dean, Dennis Richardson AC, and Hon Joe Hockey. The event highlighted the urgent need for strategic clarity, technological capability and increased investment in national defence as Australia navigates a more volatile and unpredictable world.
Now note the fine dissembling distortion in Polonius's next gambit:
Of the military engagements mentioned above, Labor opposed only Australia’s commitment in Vietnam and the Second Gulf War.
And yet ...
Curtin supported the Allied cause
Perhaps Curtin had a better notion of where the action might be than Pig Iron Bob? Oops, that bloody Singapore affair again, with the guns pointed just the right way (for a thrashing).
Never mind, Polonius was busy lathering up the notion that there might well be a war with China, and before Xmas if the bromancer has his way ...
Yet South Australian Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas also spoke at the conference.
But there were other targets. Keating attacked former Labor PM Julia Gillard and defence minister Stephen Smith along with the Liberal Party’s Julie Bishop and Tony Abbott for agreeing to host US military forces in Australia.
After his speech, Marles responded to a question from Chris Uhlmann as to what would be Australia’s response “if China takes Taiwan by force”. Marles referred back to his speech, adding “our continent is more relevant to great power contest now than it’s ever been before”. He then referred to Australia building up “our defence capability”. That was all.
Keating responded to Marles’s remarks, stating: “Monday’s statement by Defence Minister Richard Marles that Australia’s geography and continent would be crucial to any United States prosecution of a war against China will go down as a dark moment in Australia’s history.” But Marles did not quite say this. Keating went on: “Labor and its grassroots will not support Australia being dragged into a war with and by the United States over Taiwan.” Yet no one in Labor or the Coalition is advocating a war between the US and its allies and China.
However, historically, both sides of mainstream politics have supported governments intent on ensuring that Australia’s sea lanes and now, flight paths, remain open.
Keating’s views on security are heard widely. But it’s only reasonable to expect he will be challenged in the battle of policy ideas.
Um, it ain't so much a battle of policy ideas, so much as whether we should be treating China as the main enemy when we have an authoritarian state as our notional ally (see treatment of Australian dissenters above) ...
The pond simply didn't have the heart to go full Australian Zionist News Daily with the dog botherer, though it was all there in ...
We could be a formidable diplomatic voice in the Middle East, but under Labor we are not.
The best the pond could do was offer up the closing passage:
This was already a strong and concerning undercurrent when I worked for Downer two decades ago, visiting the region regularly, including Tehran. Experiencing the sophistication of Iranian society along with the draconian social measures and palpable intimidation of the population, while meeting their dour, extremist leadership, was an extraordinary experience.
In those days Iran had been assigned by George W. Bush to the “axis of evil” along with Iraq and North Korea. We visited them all.
To see what North Korea could be with freedom you only have to look south across the 38th parallel; Iraq’s potential post-Saddam Hussein is obvious, held back by terrorism and the Sunni-Shia divide; while Iran’s Persian endowment and modern incarnation are still there, suppressed under a medieval theocratic dictatorship.
Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Arab Gulf states have long been almost as exercised about Iran as Israel has been.
If the regime in Tehran is incapacitated or toppled, it will not only be Israel that can embrace a less ominous future. Lebanon and Syria would be able to rebuild governing structures with less manipulation from the Iranian catspaw of Hezbollah. Gaza could be more easily resolved with funding, supplies and edicts from Iran to Hamas cut off; likewise with the Houthis in Yemen.
Barack Obama claimed to have solved the Iran nuclear problem a decade ago (just like he claimed to have cooled the planet) resulting in Iran gaining access to more than $US100bn in frozen assets. Tehran also took $US1.7bn in payments from the US in exchange for these undertakings and the return of US hostages.
And yet here we are, with conflict under way. Iran continued with its nuclear program regardless.
Yet Wong and Albanese still talk about dialogue, diplomacy and de-escalation. That Australia would not have strong views about the opportunity to eliminate this nuclear threat once and for all defies comprehension.
The moral dimension overlaps with the strategic. In just the past 20 months, Iran has funded and enabled the Hamas atrocities against Israel; funded and co-ordinated the Hezbollah attacks on Israel from the north; funded and directed the Houthi missile attacks on Israel from Yemen; and directly attacked Israel with missiles and drones.
Even in the current conflict Iran has responded to Israel’s highly targeted attacks on Iranian military and strategic targets with missile assaults on Israel’s urban centres to kill and maim civilians. This week it hit a hospital – yet there is less international outrage than Israel received when it was falsely accused of bombing a hospital in Gaza.
The Iranian regime uses “morality police” to arrest women for failing to wear veils, with 22-year-old Mahsa Amini infamously dying in police custody in 2022. Other young Iranians have been jailed for up to 10 years for daring to dance.
Human rights groups report that more than 340 Iranians have been executed in the first half of this year, many for drug offences but others for political crimes. Ethnic minorities are persecuted.
While all this has been going on, what have Albanese and Wong been doing? They have been demonising Israel.
For a politician who boasts about his love for “fighting Tories”, Albanese sure fails to take up the cudgels against murderous, intolerant and genocidal outfits and regimes. Maybe Albo would be more agitated if Hamas or Iran attacked collective bargaining.
Albanese, his cabinet members and his US ambassador, Kevin Rudd, have mocked and abused Trump through the years. And they have publicly scoffed at calls from his Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to increase their defence spending.
Yet for all this, a principled stand in the Middle East might have made them useful. Instead, they played to the anti-Israel protesters, Muslim voters in key electorates, the intolerant Greens and the anti-Israel, anti-US cohort at the UN.
The Albanese government has wantonly let down Israel and washed its hands of a defining moment in Middle East diplomacy. It also has let down the US just when we need to reinvest in that relationship. In doing so, it has let down Australia.
The AI hive mind of the lizard Oz will have us in some kind of war, come hook or by Murdochian crook, by Xmas, preferably in company with Zionists intent on ethnic cleansing or in company with a fascist state...
Similarly the pond failed to take up Dame Slap's super offering about super ...
If Labor lied about what it was saying publicly about new taxes in 2022, what is it planning behind closed doors in 2025 that it won’t tell us about?
Now there's a deeply paranoid mind at work, and the only relief came in the form of a snap, Sir Humphery Appleby, played by Nigel Hawthorne in the British sitcom Yes Minister. Picture: Supplied
Supplied?
It's a cheap arsed, soft focus thingie that looks like it was taken from a VHS copy of the show ... but to be fair, it did evoke the quality of what Dame Slap was offering ...
Swan has certainly been a big backer of Labor’s tax changes to super that will patently benefit industry super funds such as CBUS. Extra money will almost certainly flow to these funds from people closing down their self-managed super funds.
While industry funds and SMSFs hold illiquid assets, the size and diversity of industry funds mean their members can easily get liquidity to cover the new tax by selling units in the fund. The poor schmucks who put their hard-earned money into an SMSF, on the other hand, will more likely need to sell underlying assets – say a house or a farm – in the fund to get cash to pay the new tax.
Swan has been a wonderfully reliable ally to his protege Chalmers, attacking those “millionaire retirees” who, he says, use superannuation to avoid taxes.
Swan, of course, is a member of a parliamentary defined benefits pension scheme that has been estimated to give him an annual pension, indexed to inflation, of more than $300,000. Is Swan saying that superannuation of more than $3m is too much or is a tax rort? We ask this because the capital value of a pension that gives Swan a government-guaranteed (risk-free) amount of more than $300,000 a year, indexed to inflation, would be vastly more than $3m.
Labor will say that events from 2022 are of no interest now, given the May 2025 election. Surely that retrospectively cures Labor’s 2022 lie to voters.
That may be true. Even if the Liberals had been halfway competent at the last election and exposed Labor’s duplicity, it most likely would not have changed the election result. But it is the job of an alternative government to expose when the current mob is lying to voters.
It is a given that governments and those in opposition work on major changes over a period without necessarily announcing those changes. Policy changes should be done carefully. But Labor’s flagrant duplicity in 2022 raises the obvious question: if Labor lied about what it was saying publicly about new taxes in 2022, and what it was simultaneously planning in private, what then is it planning behind closed doors in 2025 that it won’t tell us about?
Leopards don’t change their spots. A party premised on a class war against the wealthy might be planning to tax the unrealised profits of your home. How much will Labor decide is too much for a home? One that’s worth five million? Ten million? Labor’s carefully planned super tax subterfuge may not be as clever as Chalmers thinks it is.
The pond is so over the AI-generated reptiles spewing the same repetitive super garbage every super day of the week.
For the sake of the long absent lord, give it a super-long rest.
What a relief it was to see that the Bjorn-again one had again returned to the fold, in a brave, bold, bigly bid to beat against the tariff tide ...
It was a humble three minute read, so the reptiles said, but they gave it the full presentation:
The header: Freer trade is still overwhelmingly good even for rich countries, When the world’s poorest countries are better off, the whole world is a stronger, more stable place. Reform, not protectionism is the path forward.
The caption: Freer trade is a win-win. Employees are pictured producing down coats at a factory in China's eastern Jiangsu province. Picture: AFP
The mystical injunction: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there
The pond always welcomes the climate science denialist, especially when things are hotting up around the world.
The poor old Poms have been under the gun - 30 degrees! - as noted in the Graudian ...
Inter alia ...
...This week, much of Britain enjoyed an unbroken run of 30C days and we were all yanked back to that distant country – the one in which we sat in hot classrooms clad head to toe in polyester, wilting to LP Hartley’s The Go-Between. “In the heat,” wrote Hartley, “the commonest objects changed their nature,” and no matter how many summers we’ve been through, this fact seems to surprise every time.
...The English dream is not of nice weather but of any weather that provides a pretext to talk about it. This week, on top of the thrill of the heatwave, the Met Office gave the nation more fuel for its pastime with a warning that in the current climate, the chances of Britain experiencing 45C heat in the next 12 years have risen to 50/50. (In 2022, temperatures hit 40C for the first time on record.)
Sadly the Bjorn-again one wasn't on his usual climate-science denying jag and seemed to have a problem with tariffs ...
Around the world, people are waking up to the benefits of freer trade.
Say what? When is someone going to break the news to King Donald and minions of the Navarro (* Archive link) and delusional Lutnick kind ...
They've been a hot mess of tariff announcements, and even better US Supreme Court declines to fast-track challenge to Trump tariffs, but do go on ...
The threat of a global tariff war has driven many to the conclusion that everyone is better off when countries specialise in what they’re best at. This rosy view is a stark contrast to the vision of trade as a zero-sum game that other countries have won.
Yet the downsides of free trade are real; images of the US Rust Belt have come to stand for the adverse effects of free trade, not only with American voters but also globally. Kilometres of once-mighty factories were silenced and once-proud communities devastated when corporations shifted their manufacturing offshore.
Both things can be true. The benefits and costs of free trade policies don’t fall equally. Wealthy countries benefit relatively less from freer trade, and parts of their workforce carry a disproportionate burden. But, despite this, peer-reviewed research by Copenhagen Consensus economists shows that freer trade is still overwhelmingly good even for rich countries.
It wouldn't be a Bjorn-again piece without a bit of self-promotion, so take it away ...
The pond regrets that it refuses to link to X, but it does have a 'toon handy, a reminder of the beasts going at it ...
Vibrant times, as the Bjorn-again one carries on ...
Ninety-two per cent of that cost occurs in developed countries. After all, this is where most import-exposed markets are. It is where wages are highest and workers are most at risk from cheaper or better products from poor countries entering rich countries. These losses are real;$US1 trillion is a vast sum to anyone.
But we also need to remember the substantial benefits of free trade. Indeed, the same shift in which factories left former industrial centres also drove incredible economies of scale and allowed consumers everywhere to buy cheap and often fairly well-made products from huge box-stores.
The measure of the Bjorn-again one's delusion? US President Donald Trump. Any government would be foolish to ignore the much larger benefits of free trade, despite their substantial costs - particularly to the wealthier nations. Picture: AFP
Foolish? That's the best the Bjorn-again one can summon up for the Cantaloupe Clown Carnival?
And there's a lot more fun to come ...
Why such sour words for a King who has taken up the climate science denialist challenge? Why listen to all this moaning and sobbing and keening and wailing, when he's just the right Bjorn-again man for the climate change challenge?
When we count the benefits of free trade in the rich OECD countries, these are much higher than the costs: $US6.7 trillion. In total, this means a $US7 return for each dollar of costs. Yes, governments should work harder to help the workers who would be most hurt by freer trade, but even after addressing the nearly $US1 trillion in costs, there are more than $US6 trillion in benefits to be enjoyed across the rich world. Any government would be foolish to ignore these much larger benefits, despite their substantial costs.
Perhaps even more important, the research shows that free trade is hugely beneficial for poorer countries.
And so to the final snap, A woman sits in front of an electronics store in Hanoi, Vietnam. Free trade is hugely beneficial for poorer countries. Picture: AFP
Build the wall, build the wall, protect the hermit kingdom ...
Then came a final plea, currently with about as much chance of winning as a snowball currently trying to carve out a life in Death Valley ...
The world’s low and lower-middle income countries that are home to four billion people will suffer some costs from freer trade, but these are relatively low at $US15bn. Yet their gains from freer trade would be a fantastic $US1.4 trillion in benefits. Because the poorer world’s economies are much smaller, this is a much bigger deal. And because their costs are much lower, each dollar in cost delivers $US95 in benefits. That’s an astonishing return on investment.
In a world grappling with inequality and economic uncertainty, freer trade remains one of the most powerful tools for shared global prosperity. While its costs – particularly in developed countries – are real and must be addressed with smarter, fairer policies, the benefits are too significant to ignore. With nearly $US7 in returns for every $US1 in cost for rich nations, and an extraordinary $US95 return for poorer countries, freer trade is a win-win. The path forward is not protectionism but reform to ensure the gains of trade are not only greater but are also better shared.
Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and author of Best Things First.
What a foolish, wretched fop he is, apparently unaware of how things work in the new Murdochian world ...
Is there any upside? Well the pond still has fond memories of that parade, the most enjoyable moment in a tiresome week ... (not to mention the ennui induced by Melbourne weather).
And so to a few 'toons to help the Bjorn-again one celebrate his new reality, beginning with an oldie but a goodie ...
For us (principled) cheapskates, who only see the electronic poster of Rupert's Flagship, there is an element of Zen about the changing content. Early this morning, there was mention by a Finance Writer of investment opportunities in Defence manufacturers here. Following Eisenhower's 'sponsoring' (?) of the military/industrial complex, which has done so much to raise the numbers for US GDP in the second half of last century. In passing - for all those great 'Popular Mechanics' kind of diagrams of the 'One Big Beautiful Bomb' yesterday, my search engine of choice, or even its AI sidekick, is not giving me estimates of the cost of each of those 'O BBBs'.
ReplyDeleteBut to the Zen, the putting the hand in a river (bear with me for the metaphor) - when I looked back at some of what our Esteemed Hostess has mentioned above, I could not find the investment opportunities in Defence industries. It had been carried in the Reptile River, and was no longer there. Did an AI editor decide that it was lacking in taste? Did it fail the patriot test? Was the space taken by Ms Ton-yee-nee telling us about her hair? Perhaps it just lacked a sponsor; memo to marketing department.
Yes indeed for the military complex, but also for 'science', particularly biology and astronautics. Who wants to manufacture automobiles when there's sicknesses and cancers to be cured and satellites to be invented, manufactured and launched.
ReplyDeleteWell, it may not be the long-awaited war with China, but this morning’s events will certainly bring out both the khaki brigade and the Zionist Boys Daily in force. No doubt the Bromancer, Jennings of the Fifth, the Dog Botherer and Ned are all currently scribbling away furiously, producing near-identical content. There may even be guest pieces from Angus, Hastie and / or even the Bromancer (that conservative -free zone the ABC have already tapped Morrison for his keen insights). The only real question is how many thousands of words, and pages of the dead tree edition, will the cheerleaders occupy in tomorrow’s Lizard Oz?
ReplyDelete