Without wanting to sound like Our Henry, the pond came across this William Hazlitt quote while reading Andrew O'Hagan's Stay Classy in the LRB.(*intermittent archive link, very intermittent this day)
O'Hagan was giving a right royal bollocking to randy Andy, the man formerly known as Prince, and wretched Fergie, but given that we're living in the time of King Donald and his court of corrupt minions, it seems equally applicable...
It's all the happier timing with the news that the two kings will still be meeting up to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the sundering of the two kingdoms ...
...The air of a court is not assuredly that which is most favourable to the practice of sefl-denial and strict morality. We increase the temptations of wealth, of power, ands pleasure a thousand-fold, while we can give no additional force to the antagonist principles of reason, disinterested integrity and goodness of heart. It is to be wondered that courts and palaces have produced so many monsters of avarice, cruelty, and lust? The adept in voluptuousness is not likely to be a proportionable proficient in humanity. To feed on plate or be clothed in purple, is not to feel for the hungry and the naked. He who has the greatest power put into his hands, will only become more impatient of any restraint in the use of it. To have the welfare and the lives of millions placed at our disposal, is a sort of warrant, a challenge to squander them without mercy. An arbitrary monarch set over the head so his fellows does not identify himself with them, or learn to comprehend their rights or sympathize with their interests, but looks down upon them as of a different species from himself, as insect crawling on the face of the earth, that he may trample on at his pleasure, or if he spares them, it is an act of royal grace; -- he is besotted with power. Blinded with prerogative, an alien to his nature, a traitor to his trust, and instead of being the organ of public feeling and public opinion, is an excrescence and an anomaly in the state, a bloated mass of morbid humours and proud flesh!
And so on ... a time of writing it could be found in modern font here (the internet archive version is a little harder on modern eyes but reeks of authenticity).
How did the United States start off so grandly and end up a corrupt kingdom (or a banana republic, pretty much the same thing).
There's a clue in those two lines...
Virtue is thought cribbed and morose, knowledge pedantic, while every sense is pampered, and every folly tolerated. Everything tends naturally to personal aggrandisement and unrestrained self-will.
Welcome to the world of the Emeritus Chairman, and the land of the lizard Oz, feeding climate science denialism to the hive mind (knowledge pedantic), and tolerating every form of folly, dressed up as swill.
First up the pond must abandon the sort of sick and sorry revelations coming together courtesy of the tabloid combo of the Daily Beast......
BARBIE WORLD
The Noems’ marriage is yet again under the spotlight after bombshell revelations. (sorry, the intermittent archive is playing up)
And the UK's Daily Snail ..
It's not that the pond doesn't appreciate any attempt to out-nero Nero, or crush Caligula with a clever modern variant, it's just that the pond is dedicated to the hive mind of the lizard Oz, and the bromancer was out yet again today, attempting to grapple with King Donald's folly ...
If you didn't blink, you'd find him just below a reptile panic, as they dragged out Mike Baird, dusted off the mothballs and the dead moths and produced a set of headlines for the ages ...
The header: Donald Trump’s chaotic Iran war gamble risks global energy crisis and US credibility; Trump’s contradictory Iran war statements have created global energy chaos, with the US President threatening to bomb civilian infrastructure while his own officials predict victory in weeks.
The caption for the meaningless snap: Commercial vessels off the coast of Dubai. Picture: AFP
At last it seems that the bromancer's loyalty to King Donald and his minions might be wearing a tad thing.
There might now be too many straws impacting this camel's back:
But an increasingly serious problem is Trump’s endless self-contradictory statements, declarations, deadlines, ultimatums and alternating suggestions he is finished with it all and will leave Iran in a minute, or that he plans to bomb Iranian society into terrible permanent humanitarian crisis and may well launch a partial ground invasion as well.
Trump remains an extreme risk taker and gambler. If, in alliance with Israel, he finally succeeds in dislodging the mullahs and destroying their nuclear program forever – and that is by no means impossible – then history may judge this a highly successful intervention.
But the chance that it ends in chaos, continued oil disruption, or even a wounded and in many ways diminished Iran with unprecedented control over the Strait of Hormuz and determined to rebuild for revenge, is equally possible.
No one can tell what Trump thinks will be an acceptable outcome because he contradicts himself several times a day.
Inevitably there came a snap of the king, US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One. Picture: AP
As usual, the pond felt the need to match it with a 'toon ...
The bromancer appeared to be trying to position himself as a voice in the wilderness, a voice outside the coterie of the King's loyalists ...
Trump’s administration can’t speak with consistency because Trump himself doesn’t speak with any consistency. At no point has Trump laid out to the American people a coherent rationale for what he’s doing. His approval ratings are at their lowest ever this term, and only a minority of Americans support the war at all. strong majority opposes it, while there is a huge consensus against using US ground troops.
You could write a thousand books tracing Trump’s contradictions on Iran. Consider just a couple of the most extreme. Trump posted on Truth Social that if he didn’t get a deal from the Iranians soon, which included fully opening the Strait of Hormuz as well as his other requirements of Iran abandoning uranium enrichment and limiting its missiles, the US would attack and demolish “all of their (Iran’s) Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells, and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinisation plants)”.
This is one of the most extraordinary statements ever made by an American president. To attack desalination plants as policy is a direct attack on life-giving, non-military, civilian infrastructure, designed to cause the death of civilians through the removal of drinking water. Washington has always rightly insisted it never intentionally attacks civilians. No one else in Trump’s administration talks like this.
But how does this square with other Trump administration statements this week? Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the war will be finished in “weeks not months”. Other White House spokespeople say the war is still on its original six- to eight-week timeline, which means a couple more weeks at the most.
Yet Trump has moved thousands of US marines and ground troops into the area. If the US took Kharg island, as Trump this week threatened, that would ensure a campaign of many more weeks. You can take Kharg Island, or you can leave in two weeks, you can’t do both.
Trump says he’s negotiating with new, more reasonable Iranians; Rubio says it’s opaque how decisions are made in Iran just now.
The exasperation seemed to be building, so the reptiles hastily flung in an AV distraction, Shahria Ahi, the former adviser to Reza Pahlavi, is one of the attendees at the Iran Freedom Congress, which aims to address a major problem for Iran that has now become a problem for the world.
The bromancer turned to the WSJ for guidance, though as that's a part of the empire that urged on King Donald to his Iranian folly, it might not help ...
More likely, Iran would favour ships from strategically friendly nations and charge a big tariff for others. It would terrify and blackmail the Gulf states.
That sort of exit not only flatly contradicts Trump’s Truth Social post, it could leave the Middle East, and global energy markets, in worse shape than when Trump went in. Whatever his war aims were, they surely didn’t include total Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz and permanent disruption to the global oil, gas and fertiliser markets, all of which are vital for economies, and indeed human life, around the world.
The credibility and reliability of the words of the American president have, since at least World War II, been a vital stabilising factor in global geo-strategic balances. It is not to suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome to observe that in needlessly sacrificing that, Trump is throwing away a precious asset for no benefit.
Nor is it sensible or sustainable for those around the world who strongly want the US and Israel to prevail in Iran to feel that they cannot criticise Trump. For the more politicians avoid reality, the more they too lose credibility.
Sorry, bromancer, this late turning and wheeling in the sky came far too late. You've never had any credibility, so worry not about any loss of it ...
In despair, the bromancer turned to berating locals, indirectly handing a sideswipe to the beefy performative boofhead ...
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said Australia should actively support US-led efforts to keep the Strait of Hormuz. However, he sensibly told The Australian: “The lack of investment in our naval fleet makes it much harder to offer any naval support.”
Andrew Hastie rightly observed on the ABC’s Insiders program that our ships can’t go to the Gulf because they don’t have the necessary self-protection capabilities. He’s the only senior politician I’ve heard make that fundamental point. Otherwise, all talk about supporting or not supporting activities in the Gulf is just performative blather, the kind of fantasy dialogue and avoidance of plain speaking which has helped destroy the credibility of mainstream politics.
There’s an unpredicted casualty of the Iran war for you.
Sheesh, grim days...
Over on the extreme far right, things got even grimmer, as Dame Slap carried on in a way that only someone on Planet Janet, situated above the Faraway Tree can do ...
In the ACT, the zealots are perfectly capable of taking not only an innocent defendant’s liberty, dignity and reputation, but his money too, leaving an innocent man shattered and on the edge of suicide.
Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist
Given the very intermittent behaviour of the archive - at time of writing it's consistently offering 504 Gateway Time-outs (a server side issue) - the pond thought it might just offer up the URL and anyone wanting to try later might have better luck.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Flady-justice-conned-again-by-believe-all-women-fad%2Fnews-story%2F530242d75b80e872076efe8450b90123?amp
Anyway, there was just one hoot line, which came right at the end.
When will the ideologues ever be satiated?
On her best days, Dame Slap can still produce tremendous one liners. Barking mad, but in her ideological battiness, occasional good fund.
Ditto for aforementioned Mike Baird ...
As we move towards the most important budget in decades, there must be an understanding that we’re running out of easy options.
By Mike Baird
Contributor
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Faustralias-debt-is-now-shaped-by-our-states%2Fnews-story%2F757845d67cfa5d0f2365dc6da8d2eb34?amp
Couldn't run a state, why do you expect him to write a decent column?
And finally there was Nick, trying to redeem himself by appearing centrist:
Trump’s global chaos has created an unexpected political lifeline for moderate leaders who stand up to him, with voters increasingly choosing stability over populist insurgency.
By Nick Dyrenfurth
Contributor
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Fthe-trump-bump-20-is-here-and-it-is-not-what-populists-were-expecting%2Fnews-story%2F32ffbe002942e4c666d576943cada367?amp
Meanwhile, on the domestic front, the poor old bouffant one was sounding just as gloomy, just as grim ...
Unfortunately the intermittent archive was being more intermittent than usual - this might work or it might not - but luckily the gist of the whine could be summed up in just a couple of gobbets.
The pond trimmed out an unnecessary AV distraction, and flung in a distracting 'toon to reassure the bouffant one ...
And then with a final short gobbet, it was done...
Excellent stuff ... is it time yet to bring the lettuce out of retirement and put up against prime Angus, already showing signs of what a beefy beefhead out in the Goulburn sun for too long starts to smell like?
At this point, the pond should note that the reptiles have studiously avoided that further turning of a fundamentalist theocracy into a fascist state ...
That came from the UK Terror of all places ...and there was some attempt at push back from full fascism ...
The bill appears to conflict with Israel’s Basic Laws, which prohibit arbitrary discrimination.
Shortly after it was passed, a leading human rights group announced that it had filed a petition with the Supreme Court demanding the legislation’s annulment.
“The law creates two parallel tracks, both designed to apply to Palestinians,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said in a statement.
“In military courts – which have jurisdiction over West Bank Palestinians – it establishes a near-mandatory death sentence,” the rights group said.
In civilian courts, the law’s stipulation that defendants must have acted “with the aim of negating the existence” of Israel “structurally excludes Jewish perpetrators”, the group added.
The association argued the law should be annulled on both jurisdictional and constitutional grounds.
During the debate in parliament, Ram Ben Barak, an opposition lawmaker and former deputy Mossad director, expressed outrage at the legislation.
“Do you understand what it means that there is one law for Arabs in Judea and Samaria, and a different law for the general public for which the State of Israel is responsible?” he asked fellow parliamentarians, using the Israeli name for the West Bank.
“It says that Hamas has defeated us. It has defeated us because we have lost all our values.”
Meanwhile, the push for a Greater Israel - to the river in Lebanon - and the ethnic cleansing continued apace, as Ukraine receded into the distance, and Gaza became an afterthought.
The reptiles at war theme continued in the lizard Oz with a truly wretched offering, apparently designed to make the local bromancer look good.
The header: You may already have won the Iran war; Someone will soon make a case that Operation Epic Fury is the greatest triumph of arms since Agincourt – or the most disastrous defeat since the Romans were out-generalled by Hannibal.
The caption for a gratifyingly amorphous and stunningly meaningless snap, a rich introduction to the word salad to follow: Israel is continuing to batter Tehran with air strikes. Picture: AFP.
Baker, this day of the WSJ, and therefore one of the employees of the Emeritus Chairman who encouraged the Iran War folly, tried his hand at a bit of both siderism worthy of the NY Times.
He played the role of a doubting Thomas, though his underlying faith shone through every verbal tic and conjunction:
The plaintive observation, ascribed to the early Victorian British prime minister Viscount Melbourne about the acerbically self-confident historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, remains the motto of the thoughtfully sceptical man through the ages. Some of us still harbour doubt about the consequences of actions in a complex world. But we live in an era when instantaneous certitude about everything, an iron conviction in subjective judgment in the face of objective uncertainty, is the only guarantee of a hearing.
This is in part a corollary of the hyperpartisanship that characterises our modern political conversation. If you believe your side represents the only route to virtue and the other side the sure path to perdition, you’ve already taken a position of metaphysical certainty.
Such assuredness is acceptable from politicians. No one wants to hear a leader publicly fret over the range of possible outcomes of a course he’s chosen. But since the line between partisan engagement and independent observation has been blurred, similar devotion to the veracity of one’s own judgment is obligatory in the commentator class too.
So it comes as no surprise that less than a month into the latest war, almost everyone seems certain not only about the outcome of the war, but about what it means for decades to come.
Last week the Economist, a publication with a long and spotty track record of declarative certitude in the face of unpredictability, announced the war was an American failure. “A month of bombing has achieved nothing,” its cover thundered.
The academy is on the same page. Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, insists the war is a “longtime disaster” and the “most catastrophic failure of air power we have ever seen”.
Quick, bring in a chickenhawk and honour his service: Former US national security adviser John Bolton has suggested America focus on clearing the Strait of Hormuz as soon as possible which “may require military force”. “But I also think this is clear evidence we’re making progress on destabilising the regime,” he told Sky News Australia. This comes after Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed there were “some fractures going on there internally” in Iran’s leadership circle.
Baker of the WSJ remained resolute in his uncertainty, and his abject lack of confidence in anything:
There is no less confidence on the other side. Torsten Slok, chief economist at private equity firm Apollo, dismissed the war’s alarming fallout in commodity, equity and bond markets, and said it would “ultimately result in 50 years of stability in oil markets, supply chains and geopolitics”.
Marc Thiessen, a speechwriter for president George W. Bush (whose administration isn’t especially noted for the accuracy of its observations) and now a columnist for The Washington Post, said on Fox News that Donald Trump’s war would go down as “possibly the greatest military campaign … since the American Revolution”. Move over, Dwight D. Eisenhower; step aside, Ulysses S. Grant.
Since rhetorical extremism in the pursuit of persuasion is all the rage, why stop there? Surely someone will soon make the case that Operation Epic Fury is the greatest triumph of arms since Henry V’s longbowmen routed the superior French numbers at Agincourt. Or, according to your taste, it already represents the most disastrous defeat for a major power since the Romans were out-generalled at Cannae by Hannibal.
What a tremendous fudger he is, as the reptiles tried to match his uncertainty in the caption, Rubio says Trump prefers diplomacy but vows strikes if Hormuz stays shut, while analysts warn over chokepoints & Iran vows to keep leverage.
Nothing is but what is not seems to be the best way forward, the way to evade and deflect:
It is evident that the US and Israel have enjoyed extraordinary military success in eliminating much of Iran’s leadership and military capabilities. But Iran’s regime has succeeded at a political and economic level – first by simply surviving the onslaught to date and second by exercising its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.
These are all limited and contingent successes. Again, their ultimate outcome is conditional on the extent to which the US is able to break that stranglehold and either force out the regime or at least cow it into submission. And that in turn is conditional on a host of at this stage unknowable developments: the deployment of ground forces; the contribution of neighbours and others to the shipping challenge.
Some of us who acknowledge our uncertainty may be simply reflecting a larger uncertainty about the wisdom of this war in the first place.
In the same way, to declare now that it is already won or lost is merely to affirm one’s prior and continuing political and ideological prejudices, delivered to an audience that wants to hear nothing else.
By golly, and there was the pond thinking that Donald Rumsfeld had gone on to bigger things. Who knew he'd reincarnate as a WSJ columnist explaining that there are conditional matters that are unknowable. So many unknown unknowns, so little time.
And so to wrap up proceedings with the lesser member of the Kelly gang, also brooding about the war.
The header: Hormuz handover: Trump risks handing Iran a strategic victory: Donald Trump could be forced down a rabbit hole he never intended to enter.
The caption for an image of a king ever more closely resembling a clown: The American operation is on track to achieve a major tactical victory. It will weaken Iran by degrading its missile and nuclear programs while up-ending its political and military chain of command. Picture: Getty Images
Joe could only lather up three minutes, and unlike Baker of the WSJ, he was full of righteous certainty, and full of "musts", with the first "must" opening fire at the get go ...
This would deliver a decisive blow to American power and global standing, exposing the limits of Donald Trump’s unilateralism and his vision of a US less bound by the constraints and responsibilities of a multilateral order under increasing strain.
Yet critics hoping for the administration to have its wings clipped in the fight against Iran as a check on Trump’s “American First” foreign policy revolution stand on the wrong side of history and for a regime that for 47 years has terrorised the world while oppressing and killing its own people.
The reptiles urgently rushed in a man apparently standing on Joe's right side of history ... US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth says if Iran were wise, “they will cut a deal” with US President Donald Trump. “Just one month in, only one month, we set the terms,” Mr Hegseth said. “The upcoming days will be decisive. Iran knows that, and there is almost nothing they can militarily do about it. “Yes, they will still shoot some missiles, but we will shoot them down. “They will go underground, but we will find them.”
Instead, it may achieve the opposite.
The American operation is on track to achieve a major tactical victory. It will weaken Iran by degrading its missile and nuclear programs while up-ending its political and military chain of command.
Yet, the war will be judged on how it changes the strategic calculus in the region.
If the regime survives the US onslaught with control over the Hormuz Strait – one of the world’s most vital choke-points through which one fifth of global oil supply passes – it will have saddled the globe with a dangerous new problem.
Tehran will emerge from the conflict with greater leverage over the global economy and a new revenue stream worth billions every month if it continues to charge $2m for safe passage through the strait.
This is not a tenable outcome.
Yet the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Trump may do exactly this and walk away from the war – leaving Iran in control over the strait.
This is the inverse of the famous warning from then Secretary of State Collin Powell to George W Bush over the 2003 invasion of Iraq: “You break it, you own it.”
Commentators are now characterising the US position as: “We break it, you fix it.”
The fear for Trump is that a mission to secure the Strait of Hormuz would drag out the conflict beyond his six week timeline.
Already the US President is telling the rest of the world the closure of the waterway is its problem rather than America’s.
Posting on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday local time, he said that US allies should “build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just take it.”
“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.”
Way to go King Donald ... and even petulant Peta seemed a tad worried, Sky News host Peta Credlin reacts to a story by The Wall Street Journal today. “The Wall Street Journal says today that reportedly Trump is open to ending the war without actually reopening the Strait of Hormuz,” Ms Credlin said. “How on earth would that work?”
The pond would usually slip in a 'toon at a King Donald sighting, but perhaps it's enough to recycle that Colbert joke about that sign behind the king looking awfully like the FU Institute ...(what's more it was a google bot safe joke).
And then it was just a doddle to finish off Joe, poised in mid-air, caught up by indecision, perhaps losing his timing somewhat early in his career ...
“It’s now a global crisis,” he said. “Fertiliser, helium, natural gas, oil and hydrocarbons are not getting through.”
“The winners right now are Putin and Netanyahu,” he said. ‘The Chinese are somewhere in between. The losers are the Gulf States and the civilians that are caught up in this.”
Already, the US troop footprint in the Middle East has surged to more than 50,000 but any ground operation in Iran would be fraught with risk and the near certainty of US casualties.
Trump could be forced down a rabbit hole he never intended to enter.Miller said it was possible for the US to seize the strait with enough combat power and boots on the ground, but pointed to the experience in Iraq and Afghanistan where America stayed for 20 years in the two longest wars in US history.
He also warned that an attempt to seize or destroy Kharg Island – Iran’s central oil exporting hub – would inflict further pain on the global economy while doing little to weaken the regime’s resolve.
“The picture right now doesn’t look very promising to me,” he said. “Things have been done that no-one ever anticipated. Oil may be over $100 a barrel till the end of the year. And if there’s more damage to oil infrastructure in Iran and the Gulf the price could be higher.”
The military campaign is poised at a delicate moment and Trump faces the most important decisions of his presidency.
If he walks away without clearing the Hormuz Strait he will hand Iran a strategic victory and harm America’s international reputation. But if he doubles down, the options for retaking the strait are fraught with risk and the prospect of a longer and more bloody military campaign.
And so on and on, with fundamentalist theocracies on the go, and white Xian nationalism destroying the world, and what better way to celebrate proceedings than with the immortal Rowe ...
