A housekeeping note: perforce the pond will be in the big smoke tomorrow and away from a computer and the reptiles, so there'll be a placeholder, but it's a Thursday in the hive mind, so no biggie ...
As for today, it seemed for a moment that the reptiles had given up on melongate, what with new lines of attack for the relentless jihadists.
This day seemed at first glance to be all about housing, with three fear mongering hit pieces at the top of the digital "news" world, ma...
Off to the intermittent archive with them ...
Housing price falls? PM is down with that
Anthony Albanese has backed falling house prices and labelled negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts ‘taxpayer-funded landlord welfare’ as the Coalition unveils rival housing policies.
By Geoff Chambers, Noah Yim and Elizabeth Pike
‘Perfect storm’ hits property market
Perth and Brisbane property prices tumble as housing market enters ‘perfect storm’
New data has revealed Perth and Brisbane’s once-resilient property markets are now among Australia’s fastest cooling, with declining locations nearly quadrupling in a single quarter.
By Mackenzie Scott and Ben Wilmot
Even the indefatigable Geoff, chambering yet another round in his barrel-hot shottie, had to go ...
Albanese wields sledgehammer on property for votes
The PM gives Labor MPs a green light to be honest about how the budget inflicted a sledgehammer – rather than a scalpel – on an already vulnerable property market.
Will we ever return to sob stories about vulgar youffs and younglings exiled from the housing market?
But the pond didn't have to brood for long about that, because down below all that came the bromancer and he was hot to trot on the melongate saga, because what red-blooded reptile could fail to keep this jihad alive?
It was time for the bro to go fully woke, and be incredibly polite...
The header: Anthony Albanese tries to be cool but gives us a high-class, refined stupidity; Anthony Albanese’s attempt at casual banter has backfired badly, reinforcing Japanese quiet doubts about Australian political maturity.
The caption for the sinisterly sneering PM: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese faces criticism over his podcast remarks regarding Japanese leadership. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
The bromancer started out in typical hard-hitting style ...
It takes a special kind of high-class, refined stupidity, not available to normal people, for an Australian prime minister to choose to make crude jokes about a female Japanese prime minister.
Ah memories ...
Don't get the pond wrong. The pond is incredibly pleased that the reptiles have at last gone fully woke.
Leave aside for a minute the grotesquely crude innuendos – which everyone except Albanese and his hypocritical defenders recognise (imagine if Scott Morrison or Tony Abbott had made these remarks) – of talking about the Japanese PM smuggling in “two melons, as you do”, while mimicking, in front of his chest, the hand gestures of his interviewer who was clearly referencing a woman’s anatomy.
For what reason on God’s green earth would any Australian PM with an IQ above room temperature answer a question about the worst gift he had ever received by referencing Japan’s leader?
The whole Japanese language is built around formal terms of address. You use a different term to address an aunt, as opposed to a cousin, a friend or a stranger. It is a profound achievement of contemporary society that it is so orderly, polite and law-abiding.
The reptiles tried to bolster the bromancer's rage - he's a gentleman and a scholar - with a few inserts ...
Way back when the pond had extensive dealings with Japanese wheeler dealers, and discovered that you could never win in the civility games, and that a lot of crude gaijin behaviour would be tolerated if there was a deal to be made.
It's safe to say that this epic failure caused more pain ... Japan building Australian submarines is a match made in heaven
Some genius in the Prime Minister’s office, perhaps in the social media team, must have advised him that this was a good way to “connect” to young people who don’t normally follow politics. The problem is you can’t narrowcast to one audience without all audiences seeing you. At no point has Albanese ever shown he understands the importance of the Japan relationship.
Japan is perhaps the US’s most important ally in the world, certainly its most important in Asia. It’s immensely important to us. Yet while the Albanese government is relentless in making special gestures of friendship towards China, it seems permanently tone deaf, if not downright reckless, in the way it treats Japan.
Was there an invitation to the Japanese leader to address our parliament during her recent visit? Why is it that Albanese couldn’t be bothered attending the 50th anniversary dinner of the NARA Treaty between Australia and Japan?
The PM and his defenders argue that only his political opponents are making a fuss of the melons. That’s not true. His crude and inexplicable remarks were the subject of a devastating opinion piece by a left-of-centre feminist in The Japan Times, which is read by much or most of the Tokyo leadership class. It was also subject to devastating criticism from former Japanese ambassador to Australia Shingo Yamagami. Albanese defenders dismiss Yamagami as a hawk who never liked the Albanese government. But the bottom line remains, he’s a senior Japanese diplomat and well plugged in to Takaichi and her conservative government.
Cue the final insert ...
And so to a final gobbet ...
After the catastrophe of World War II, Japan went about building a new and thoroughly good society, not perfect but very good. It emphasises hard work and social solidarity at home, and is generally exemplary internationally. It’s one of the great human success stories of the past 80 years.
The Japanese greatly appreciated the reconciliation and friendship they received from Australia, pioneered, inconveniently for Labor, by Robert Menzies, Black Jack McEwen and later Malcolm Fraser, who signed the NARA Treaty, and John Howard. They also recognise, unsentimentally, that Australia has three great assets – strategic geography, mineral wealth and alliance with the US. But they’ve long harboured doubts that Australia is not altogether a serious country, not led by serious people.
As long ago as the 1990s I unintentionally caused a diplomatic incident. At a small dinner a visiting Japanese economics minister was speaking off the cuff. He said that while Japan valued Australia, trade unions made us one of the most difficult countries in the world in which to run a business.
Thinking the remarks were on the record, I reported them. The minister thought his remarks off the record. It was an innocent misunderstanding. The minister was mortified that he might have unintentionally given offence to his Australian hosts.
There is a lurking, generally publicly unspoken, sense among many Japanese that Australian leaders are not to be taken altogether seriously. Albanese reinforced that a hundredfold and added to it the perception that we can’t even muster elementary good manners either.
Only the immortal Rowe could bring together the two lizard Oz strands for the day in his own inimitable way ...
The bromancer wasn't the only reptile to be mortified.
The pond only notes it by way of a screen cap, but the bouffant one was also on hand ...
And Dame Slap went fully woke as well ...
Labor’s most senior female ministers have spent years calling out sexism – until their own leader made a lewd remark about a female ally.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist
Dame Slap's opening thrust set her fully woke tone ...
Hard work. I’m glad it’s not me; I prefer a more honest day’s work.
Um, that'd be the honest work of telling womyn to stop being snowflakes, stop being teary-eyed pussies, and to harden the fcuk up, and so on and so forth ... and anyone wanting more of Dame Slap carrying that heavy flag of hypocrisy can head off to the intermittent archive.
What else?
Early in the morning the canny Cranston was out and about ...
Labor’s cheap population trick no answer for feeble productivity
The Reserve Bank is not happy about Jim Chalmers using increased population in an attempt to boost lacklustre economic growth.
By Matthew Cranston
Economics Correspondent
And William Wright delivered the sort of advice that proved astonishingly handy for the conservative German businessmen who were on hand to help Herr Adolf in his rise to fame and glory (and didn't that work out well)...
The lobbyists who built careers connecting business to Labor and the Coalition now face a problem: nobody knows who to call at One Nation.
By William Wright
It's not just Gina who should be pampering Pauline ...
What is not uncertain is that corporate Australia can no longer afford to view politics through a two-party lens.
William Wright is chief executive and co-founder of GovLens, an AI political intelligence platform for Australian and British businesses. He was previously UK managing director of GovConnex and is a regular political commentator.
Well played Bill ... showing off all the best that AI can offer.
And so to a bonus, and with so many reptiles fully woke and others sent off to the archive, the pond was left with just Clive ...
The header: Donald Trump learns there are no clear winners in Middle East war; US President promised American strength would deliver – instead he faces an Iran that survived and an Israel that won’t comply.
The caption for the snap of a man imitating a cane toad: President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Picture: AP
Clive could only manage a three minute piece, but be fair, he was standing in for the bromancer, what with the bromancer being far too busy dealing with being fully woke, the real issue this day ...
The pattern is less a novel Iranian psychological victory than a familiar feature of Middle Eastern politics. The US and Israel launched their campaign against Iran on February 28, targeting its nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities. Iran suffered severe military punishment but survived and responded with attacks of its own. The conflict then moved towards negotiation, particular after the impact on domestic oil prices became difficult for Trump to ignore.
Since then, Trump has combined military threats with somewhat erratic diplomacy. A June memorandum of understanding with Tehran declared an end to military operations, provided for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and committed the parties to negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. The nuclear issue was not resolved: enrichment and the disposition of enriched uranium were left for subsequent negotiations. The agreement has since frayed, while negotiations over Hormuz remain difficult, with Iran seeking a significant role in controlling maritime access.
Iran’s achievement is therefore not that it has defeated the US or Israel. It is that it has survived without losing the regime or all of its strategic leverage. Its nuclear infrastructure has been severely damaged, but military action cannot easily destroy the scientific knowledge needed to rebuild a nuclear capability.
Nor has the fate of all Iran’s nuclear material been conclusively established. This is consistent with Iran’s longstanding approach: absorb punishment, preserve the regime, negotiate when necessary, and exploit divisions or fatigue among its opponents.
Netanyahu faces a different calculation. For Israel, the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon and the survival of hostile armed groups on its borders are existential security questions. Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that Iran must not acquire a nuclear weapon, with or without an agreement. Israel’s willingness to act independently is consequently greater than Washington may find comfortable.
Clive won the pond's heart with that sublime understatement about "somewhat erratic diplomacy".
That's worthy of Sir Humphrey providing discreet advice to Minister Hacker - or is that Bernard, explaining eccentricity: "I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist".
The pond also appreciated the subtle nuance in mad king Donald not feeling "comfortable" about Benji telling him to fcuk off, he was going to keep the ethnic cleansing going ...(that's what the google bot forces the pond to do) ... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem in March. Picture: AFP
Clive continued to make the whole affair seem like a normal set of diplomatic tiffs, with the odd bit of biff ..
Israel is due to hold a national election on October 27, and Netanyahu is under pressure from right-wing coalition partners and voters concerned about the wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. His refusal to accept an American timetable can therefore be seen as both a security position and domestic political positioning.
Trump needs diplomatic successes, lower regional tensions, stable energy supplies and a foreign policy narrative demonstrating that American military power produces results.
Netanyahu must satisfy Israeli security concerns while managing a politically divided country and coalition pressures. What Washington sees as a necessary sequence towards ending the conflict may look in Jerusalem like an unacceptable gamble.
Iran benefits from every significant disagreement between Washington and Jerusalem. But this does not mean Tehran has somehow played Trump or Netanyahu; its advantage is structural. The longer a conflict continues, the more difficult it becomes for the US to reconcile military objectives with energy prices, military resources, regional stability and domestic politics.
Israel also benefits from continued American pressure on Iran: a weakened regime and degraded missile and nuclear capabilities reduce the threat to Israel, while the Gaza war keeps Hamas and other armed groups under pressure and diverts international attention away from settlement expansion in the West Bank.
Military success does not necessarily produce a political settlement. Iran’s nuclear knowledge cannot be bombed out of existence; Hamas cannot simply be wished away; and Gaza cannot be reconstructed without resolving who governs it and who provides security.
Again Clive won the pond's heart ... what a program ...
Trump needs diplomatic successes, lower regional tensions, stable energy supplies and a foreign policy narrative demonstrating that American military power produces results.
He does realise mad king Donald is barking mad, clearly on the downhill slide mentally and physically, surrounded by yes men who don't have the first clue? Right?
No matter, time to terrify the hive mind ... Members of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, in Rafah, Gaza, last year.
In the end, Clive sounded a little despairing ...maybe there might be a few hurdles facing that ambitious program he assigned to mad king Donald ...
One of the principal losers may therefore be American influence. Trump entered the conflict promising that American strength would produce decisive outcomes. Instead, he has found himself on the back foot negotiating with an Iranian regime that survived the initial assault while confronting an Israeli government that is unwilling to accept American proposals when they conflict with its own security calculations.
The US remains far more powerful than any individual regional actor. But power is not the same as control. Iran has demonstrated that it can endure American military pressure; Netanyahu has demonstrated that Israel will pursue its own interests even when Washington disagrees; and Trump is discovering that in the Middle East, even an American president cannot always dictate the end game.
The main beneficiaries of the conflict seem to be the American and Russian oil producers who are making up for the global shortfall in Middle East oil supplies.
Clive Williams is director of the Terrorism Research Centre and a former Australian Defence Intelligence officer clive.williams@terrint.org
Clive Williams: "Iran’s nuclear knowledge cannot be bombed out of existence...".
ReplyDeleteNo, but Iran's leading nuclear scientists can be assassinated out of existence, and Israel has already done some amount of that.