In which there's a lot of riff raffs, an elbows up man, a defensive Shanners, and an alternative Switzer ...

 

There's nothing like the moral clarity of murdering a hundred or so schoolgirls to produce a thrill, and so the federal government was in a strong position to deliver a lecture on moral clarity this day ...

He's supposed to be "senior"?

Uh huh ... then that outburst could count as a senior moment and a splendid distraction...

The pond must look under the radar sometime because the pond has survived in this troubled world for some time without hearing anything of this riff raff, busy rapping away.

For those who care ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘Moment for moral clarity’: Labor swipe at ABC and Greens
Raff Ciccone defends stand against ‘brutal’ Iran, blasts critics’ ‘hypocrisy’
A senior Labor MP has launched a blistering attack on government critics, warning that neutrality against Iran’s ‘brutal regime’ represents a dangerous abandonment of moral principles.
By Sarah Ison

As the intermittent archive is having an off day at time of writing - so many days down and out - the pond supposes it should provide the closing lines of the raff doing his riff, a nonentity at other times, but this day out into the world to defend the killing fields..

...“This is not principled restraint. It is ideological reflex – choosing slogans over solidarity, comfort over courage and moral vanity over moral clarity.”
Debate over the conflict has mounted in recent days, with Canadian President Mark Carney telling Australian reporters on Wednesday that the US and Israeli strikes on Iran appeared “inconsistent with international law”.
But while agreeing civilian lives must always be protected and escalation avoided, Senator Ciccone said none of these factors “alter the fundamental truth”.
“The greatest threat to the Iranian people is not external pressure – it is the regime that rules them,” he said.
“The US and Israel have made clear they are not choosing who governs Iran. That decision belongs to the Iranian people. They deserve the opportunity to determine their own future, free from brutality, fear and blackmail.”
Senator Ciccone said the government’s position that it would “unequivocally stand with the Iranian people” was vital.
“This is a moment for moral clarity,” he said.
“We stand against a brutal regime. We stand against nuclear proliferation. And we stand with the Iranian people and their right to determine their own future, free from oppression.”

Sure, sure, speak to the hand ...

This riff raff rap was buried in a host of news from the killing fields, amid proud boasts of annihilation from the likes of Hogsbreath ...

Luckily there were other annihilations going down and they distracted Jack the Insider...

Why I won’t be mourning the loss of the Kyle Sandilands and Jackie ‘O’ duo
Melburnians are from Mars and Sydney is Uranus with some lovely beaches and Roger Rogerson. Someone should’ve explained to Kyle and Jackie O how hard it would be to crack the Melbourne radio nut.
By Jack the Insider

Strangle the pond in the shallow waters before it gets too deep.

Having never heard a nanosecond of the show - the pond would rather permanently damage its ear drums with an ice pick - the pond supposes Jack might be right, but thought it better to let the matter rest in the intermittent archives.

Some days it's good that what heads to the intermittent archive cornfield stays buried.

But as usual, this whittling down left fewer and fewer contenders.

The bouffant one was over on the extreme far right of the lizard Oz with this weird offering...

Sheesh, that's a mighty fine impression of the ancient mariner stopping one of three ...

The bouffant one could be found in the intermittent archive  ... if it bothered to work ... and you had to click on it to see that he was blathering on about political debate, and that it was just a lengthy and tedious doubling down in a defence of his attack on the beefy boofhead.

The bouffant one led with the line that he was "old-school"...

Talk about the parish pump ...

Relax, Shanners, relax agitated bouffant one. Everybody knows that the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way isn't the widest comb in the shearing shed, and that he's a placeholder waiting for a showdown with a passing lettuce and the pastie Hastie (we love clap happys and liars from the Shire0.

The only astonishing and terrifying aspect to the yarn was that opening snap of Shanners caught in some sort of Australian gothic pose.

Shanners was indignant in his short outburst, concluding thusly ...

...Yet new One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce, who only got one question, asked about fuel supplies and the impact on regional Australia, mining and agriculture – not radical Islam.
“It was an obvious question because if this conflict goes on and we don’t get fuel, our iron ore, beef and wheat industries will stall and the Aussie dollar will fall through the floor,” he told The Australian.
“One Nation supporters are interested in the economy and the cost-of-living first,” he said and noted he got half a million responses to his Facebook report on his question.
When I wrote that not asking a question on any of the priority issues and concentrating on so-called ISIS sympathisers and radical Islam was a strategic mistake, one-time Liberal leadership contender and frontbencher Andrew Hastie complained on the ABC that it didn’t “make it wrong”.
In parliament, Albanese responded to Taylor’s first question on the economy in three sitting days by gloating that he knew he was going to get the question because “Dennis Shanahan said it was going to be ‘economy day’ ”.
Questions telegraphed are questions made redundant.
Labor’s freedom from any penetrating economic questions – despite a perilous increase in government spending in the national accounts – continued as the Coalition simply asked the same question on living standards with the same “smart alec”, self-defeating political kicker about “the buck stopping” with Albanese that allowed a broad brush, detail-free ­response.
As the opposition Treasury spokesman, Tim Wilson didn’t fare any better, tilling the same soil and was subjected to an even bigger attack than Taylor over buying “short shares” that made money when the Australian economy faltered.
It was a third day in a row that the Coalition failed on all the traditional parliamentary and political measures with only one day left in Taylor’s first week as leader.
Now, I’m happy to buy Albanese a beer and give a big thumbs up to Hastie if that helps improve the outcome for the Australian people in the national interest.

How to stifle a yawn in a polite way?

Talk about small beer in times of war. It was down there with news of Kyle...

And that, early in the morning, left the pond with just two contenders ... with the first from the land of maple syrup and moose:

The pond has a golden rule about only featuring politicians in their native habitat with great reluctance, all the more so because this outing - more speech than column - was a bigly seven minutes long.

But it was astonishing to see a Canuck in the lizard Oz.

The Canucks been in the ice hockey wars of late, and there is a war going down about the 51st state, and no matter that the GOP finds it hard to say the word "war",  with some liking to dress it up Vlad the Sociopath style as a "special military operation".

The pond is always inclined to send an "elbows up", especially as they find themselves on the border of a demented narcissistic king prone to fits of pique, but the pond only lasted as long as this gobbet ...

There was a little bit more on the topic ... pearls before fellow travelling lickspittle riff raff swine ...

We call for a rapid de-escalation of hostilities and prepared. Were prepared to assist in achieving that goal. Because resolution of this crisis will ultimately require a commitment to a broader political solution, an engagement to avoid a wider and deeper conflict.
Middle powers like Canada – and I would suggest Australia – should recognise that the rupture in the international system represents just that, a clear break from the past, and we need to act decisively to secure our shared future.
Civilians must be protected, and all parties must commit to finding enduring agreements to end both nuclear proliferation and terrorist extremism, and we’ll continue to pursue this approach with like minded countries and participants across the continent.
I’d now like to turn from that to what I originally intended to address more fulsomely. And don’t worry, I’ll try to keep to time to the broader challenge that exists to sovereignty and prosperity.
The good news is we have the capacity to build important elements of that new order, an order that encompasses our values, including respect for human rights, sustainability, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

And that was that, and then he went into listicle PowerPoint presentation mode ...

Let me highlight three principles that would help achieve this goal. 

Must we?

At that point the pond thought it enough to note that the speech in its entirety is easily available on YouTube here, and on the ABC channel here and at shorter length at the APT's channel here ...

That put local riff raff in their place and paid some attention to the hapless Canucks, still under threat from King Donald, but there's only so much the pond can bear, especially as the reptiles decided to do one of their "summaries" for what was already available ...

CALL TO ACTION
Canada’s PM urges Australia to join new power alliance
Middle powers must unite or be ‘on the menu’, Canada’s leader tells Australia
Mark Carney has delivered a stark warning to Australia about the ‘rupture’ in international relations, warning Anthony Albanese that middle powers must unite or be ‘on the menu’.
By Ben Packham and Sarah Ison

Truth to tell, the pond only went there so it could find a showcase for the infallible Pope of the day ...

Sorry Canucks, elbows up and all that and best of luck, but the pond had to fit in the swishing Switzer, on his endless rehabilitation tour, with this the latest stop in his campaign.

The header: An alternate history: What if Costello had replaced Howard in ’06? Counterfactuals cannot be proved. But it is at least arguable that, had Costello been given his chance, Australia might well be a stronger and better governed country today.

The caption for the wretched credited collage: Peter Costello and John Howard. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella.

Really Emilia? You want a credit for something taken from the slop bucket?

As for the rest, the pond has always suggested that the swishing Switzer is a prize maroon of the first water, and this is only useful in providing further evidence:

History is the study of what happened. But our understanding of the past also can be sharpened by considering what did not happen – what is called counterfactual history. We can never be certain what would have unfolded had events turned out differently, yet that uncertainty does not stop us from wondering.
What if, for example, the driver of Archduke Franz Ferdinand had not taken a wrong turn in Sarajevo in 1914? What if the July 1944 plotters had killed Adolf Hitler? What if Lee Harvey Oswald had missed in Dallas in 1963?
The 30th anniversary of the election of the Howard government invites a similar exercise in Australian politics: what if John Howard had stepped aside after a decade in power in 2006 and allowed his deputy, Peter Costello, to assume the prime ministership more than a year before the 2007 election?

This sort of counter history is really only useful for sci fi scribblers, TV and movie types in search of a fatuous storyline, and columnists too desperate for words, and sub-editors wanting to recycle ancient photos ... Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia as they leave Sarajevo City Hall to get into their car, minutes before their assassination on June 28, 1914. Picture: Historical Archives of Sarajevo, AFP

What on earth is the point of it, save to distract the hive mind from the killing fields?

There is little doubt that Costello would have succeeded Howard. The momentum behind him was overwhelming and he would have been enthroned without a party-room contest. Yet he waited. Much to the regret of supporters, he was not bold enough to attempt a coup – and too conscious of the stain of regicide to force the issue.
As we now know, Howard indulged in hubris and miscalculated the succession by pressing on to the 2007 election. He was defeated by Kevin Rudd, a politician whose global ambitions were often matched by his appetite for publicity. In the process, Howard lost his own seat, becoming only the second Australian prime minister to suffer that fate.
Had the leadership changed in 2006, the Coalition would have faced the electorate under a fresh prime minister – unburdened by questions of tenure and age, yet able to claim continuity with more than a decade of economic growth and political dominance.
It is a fair bet that Costello would have defeated Rudd – or Kim Beazley, had Labor’s leadership remained unsettled. At 50, the same age as Rudd and nearly two decades younger than Howard, Costello would have blunted Labor’s claim that the Coalition was tired and out of time.

Oh sing a song of "what if?" until the cows come home and "Ned" appears like some monstrous Jonathan Pryce vision, fresh from doing a Welsh accent in Under Salt Marsh (great landscapes), Paul Kelly joins Claire Harvey to discuss the 30th anniversary of John Howard's election

Please don't expect the pond to lift a little finger to comment ...

Had Costello been in the Lodge in 2008, the first great test would have been the global financial crisis. Labor later argued its stimulus measures saved Australia. Yet its capacity to spend amid collapsing credit markets and plummeting confidence rested heavily on the strong public finances Rudd had inherited from Costello. No Australian bank suffered a systemic failure and the major institutions retained top-tier credit ratings, suggesting that the regulatory system entering the storm was sound.
Costello – Australia’s longest-serving treasurer and arguably its most consequential – had delivered repeated budget surpluses well before the commodities boom of 2003-04. His instinct was for fiscal prudence, not expansion of the state. He still would have supported temporary stimulus, but likely designed it to unwind more quickly and return the budget to surplus once the danger had passed.
The longer-term consequences would have been significant. A more restrained fiscal response would have meant lower structural deficits in the early 2010s, a steadier debt trajectory and no dodgy schemes such as the school halls and home insulation programs that Rudd would carelessly implement. All the government programs whose share as a percentage of GDP have been skyrocketing since the Gillard era – the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Gonski school funding, the care economy – would have been rigorously subject to fiscal scrutiny.
The upshot here is that although Australia would not have escaped the crisis, its political aftershocks – and the culture of permanent budget alarm – would have been milder.

How pathetic does it get? John Howard looking at his watch in parliament, September, 2007.

He's looking at his watch like he's a Dr. Who Timelord?

Oh sweet absent mother of mercy, say it ain't so, say it hasn't come to this.

Luckily there was no credit for that wretched AI slop as the meandering prize maroon carried on ...

A Costello prime ministership would have softened some of the harder edges of the Howard era. Ratifying the Kyoto climate protocol, issuing a formal apology to the Stolen Generations and recalibrating the Work Choices industrial relations regime would have signalled generational change without ideological rupture. Such moves might have deprived the opposition of its most potent moral and political weapons.
The longer-term effect could have been a less polarised public-policy debate in the 2010s. If energy policy had been reset swiftly and pragmatically – rather than through the tortured sequence of emissions trading schemes, leadership spills and carbon taxes – Australia would have avoided the decade of policy whiplash that hurt investor confidence and deepened partisan mistrust.
At the same time, Costello would have retained credibility with conservative Australia. His Sydney Institute speech on multiculturalism in 2006, controversial in some quarters, articulated a principle that would grow only more salient in the decade ahead: liberal democratic norms are non-negotiable. “There are countries that apply religious or sharia law: Saudi Arabia and Iran come to mind. If a person wants to live under sharia law, these are countries where they might feel at ease. But not Australia.”
In the years that followed – marked by global jihadist violence and fraught debates about integration in Europe – such clarity would have helped frame Australia’s own discussion in firmer but less reactive terms.
On border protection, a Costello government almost certainly would have maintained the Howard-era architecture, including the Pacific Solution. Had that framework remained intact after 2007, the resurgence of people-smuggling networks would have been averted. The tens of thousands of unauthorised arrivals and hundreds of deaths at sea between 2008 and 2013 would never have happened, restoring a measure of policy continuity to one of the most combustible areas of public life.
Costello was also ahead of many contemporaries in recognising the structural implications of demographic decline. His 2004 exhortation to couples to “go home and do your patriotic duty tonight” and “have one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country” – delivered alongside the baby bonus payments to parents of between $3000 and $5000 per child – reflected a sound concern about ageing and fiscal sustainability. Even modestly higher fertility through the late 2010s could have eased long-term budgetary pressures and moderated Australia’s increasing reliance on high immigration to sustain growth.

He didn't have the ticker, so all the rest is a wank of the first water...and speaking of wanks, Labor Leader Kevin Rudd with wife Therese at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane as they celebrate victory in winning government in 2007 federal election.

At last there came this wimp of a needy closer ...

As with any government, setbacks would have been inevitable. Yet even here the counterfactual is suggestive. Costello possessed parliamentary skills of a high order, drawing comparisons with Robert Menzies and Gough Whitlam. He could be, as even Labor partisans recognised, hilariously funny – an immensely valuable quality when debate turns sour – but he also possessed a keen sense of theatre and, at his best, the ability to rally dispirited colleagues during a crisis.
A prime minister able to dominate the chamber and steady his partyroom during difficult weeks would have reduced the appetite for internal coups that came to define the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd cycle. (Though how any leader, however formidable, would have managed Malcolm Turnbull – Canberra’s most durable solo act – is a question best left to braver historians.)
Counterfactuals cannot be proved. But it is at least arguable that, had Costello been given his chance, Australia might well be a stronger and better governed country today.

What a waste of time and space. Is he pretending that all that gunk has something to do with history, as opposed to pap designed to fill a small hole in the hive mind?

And this sign off was deeply weird...

Tom Switzer was opinion editor of The Australian from 2001 to 2008 and deputy opinion editor of the Australian Financial Review from 1998 to 2001.

What was that? Some preening attempt at gravitas, and a career, and yet the reptiles had to go back to before 2008 to find it?

And no promo? This is how he usually signs off ...

Tom Switzer is presenter of Switzerland, a podcast about politics, modern history and international relations.

Forget it Jake.

This is his inescapable past, which no rehabilitation tour or alternative history crap can fix...

What if he hadn't acted like a prize gherkin? 

What if there were alternative histories to hand?

Nope, just ancient realities ...

Speaking of what if's, what if the pond just ended it all with a 'toon ... so that the riffing raff could do another rap with his yap ...

In which the bromancer and "Ned" go at it, while Cameron provides scenarios and Dame Groan shouts there'll be no more gruel...

 

It would almost be comical if it weren't so sad ...

Amidst all the agony, confusion, chaos, revisionism, and astonishing hypocrisy which has transformed the lizard Oz headlines into a war zone...

... Dame Slap decided that this was the moment for this...

The unbearable lightness of being Grace Tame
There is an unbearable intellectual lightness to being an intifada activist. Some intifadas are more fashionable than others.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Put it another way: the unbearable obsessive compulsive monomaniacal stupidity of a deeply weird woman. 

Grace Tame is her angle into the war? 

It turns out that Dame Slap is one of those useful idiots that think you can bomb your way to democracy ...

Our homegrown “Globalise the intifada” activists appear to be similarly half-educated or, worse, hamstrung by their hatred of Israel and the US. Tailor-made useful idiots for Iran’s IRGC, their silence – as these two countries are singularly responsible for helping ordinary Iranians take their first steps towards a life without fear and oppression – is the currency of intellectual bankrupts.

The trouble with this sort of inanity is that it will take years for the chaos to subside, and the notion that you can bomb a country into a life without fear and oppression could only manifest itself in planet Janet, way above the clouds, in one of the remotest lands above the faraway tree.

Off to the intermittent archive with her... and if she gets lost in the bad gateways and time outs, the pond doesn't give a toss.

Meanwhile, the big guns were out in force, with the returning bromancer leading the way, and luckily it isn't up to the pond to recount or resolve the many discordances - does King Donald have a plan? is the couch-molesting JD really an isolationist or a turncoat? 

The pond is simply studying the hive mind in all its infinite strangeness and who better than the bromancer to act as a guide... ...

The header: How Donald Trump rewrote the rules of war with his Iran campaign; Trump’s black-and-white approach to Iran has demolished the careful ambiguity that defined four decades of Middle Eastern conflict, rewriting the playbook for global powers.

The caption: A woman holds pictures of Reza Pahlavi and US President Donald Trump as members of the Iranian community celebrate in front of the Federal Building in the West LA neighbourhood of Los Angeles. (Photo by Apu GOMES / AFP)

The bromancer was in shocked and awed mode, while explaining how monochromacy is now the new normal ...

Donald Trump has changed the nature of modern war by his military campaign in Iran. Specifically, Trump has delivered a massive blow to “grey zone” warfare.
Trump doesn’t do grey. He does black and white.
Long before China and Russia got there, Iran had perfected grey-zone attacks. No one will be able to use grey-zone tactics with impunity against the US again.
The essence of grey-zone tactics is to attack America and its allies using proxies, terrorists or disguised military forces, creating a thin veneer of national deniability. The idea is that it’s impossible for a democracy to strike back against irregular or disguised forces. The usual suspects will claim any retaliation is a violation of international law. And it’s hard to convince a democratic public that military action is justified if there’s any doubt about the enemy’s true identity.
Iran has been attacking the US without let-up since the Iranian revolution in 1979. First, it took US diplomats hostage. Its proxies in Lebanon killed over 200 American troops in one act of terrorism in 1983. It has directed terrorism at US targets across the Middle East and fired on US Navy ships. It has sponsored terrorism in the US, in Europe and indeed in Australia, as well as all over the Middle East and parts of Latin America.
Iran’s core ideology is “death to America, death to Israel”.
Under international law, the US has the right to defend itself. Trump obviously couldn’t care less for these niceties anyway. If you attack America, Trump will attack you. Even China and Russia will now have to calibrate grey-zone tactics very carefully, but any nation less powerful than China or Russia will have the Iranian, and indeed Venezuelan, examples always in their minds.

Only the bromancer could wheel out "international law" in such a cavalier way, but that's the charm of the bromancer. 

He never lets reality get in the way of inordinate stupidity, as the reptiles beguiled him with the sort of kit that inevitably produces an orgasm (how long that takes for a reptile or the average Australian male is a matter for others): US sailors prepare to stage ordnance on the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) in support of Operation Epic Fury on February 28, 2026. (Photo by U.S. Navy via Getty Images)

Once kitted up, the bromancer was fully down:

At the same time, Iran’s scattergun reaction of attacking Gulf Arab nations and hitting oil facilities makes its own kind of sense. It follows a serious military logic. Iran is trying to demonstrate its own version of deterrence. The US and Israel have gravely weakened Iran’s military capabilities. Iran can no longer project credible deterrence against Israel, much less the US.
In the short term, attacking the Gulf states and their economic infrastructure is highly counter-productive for Iran. The Sunni Gulf states mostly fear and dislike Shia Iran. But they all have undercurrents of anti-US feeling as well, not to mention popular anti-Israel sentiment. By attacking the Gulf states, Iran ensures they will cling to the US for security, back US efforts to neuter Iran militarily and tend to bury their differences with Israel, at least for the moment.

The reptiles were so delighted at the return of the bromancer that they doubled down with an appearance on the still titled Sky Noise...The Australian’s Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan claims Iran is “massively weakened” by US President Donald Trump’s brutal strikes on the country. “I think Trump’s going to redefine, incidentally, grey zone conflict,” he told Sky News Australia. Mr Sheridan said Tehran has “solidified the very strong anti-Iranian sentiment” all through the Gulf following its retaliatory strikes in the Middle East.

A few saucy doubts and fears began to creep in, but unlike other pundits, the bromancer understood the true objectives...

However, Iran is operating on a longer-term horizon. There is still a good chance that the regime survives in Tehran. Remember, the lesson from the first great experiment in strategic bombing, back in World War II, is that, leaving aside nuclear bombs, to have a genuine strategic effect, bombing has to go on for a long, long time.
Hamas, in Gaza, never lost the ability to fire missiles against Israel even after years of warfare with Israel. Gaza is a tiny territory right next door to Israel. It’s difficult to imagine a bombing campaign alone could destroy completely Iran’s ability to launch short-range missiles and drones.
Assuming it survives, the regime in Iran wants to establish that if it’s attacked militarily, it will cause chaos in the Gulf and greatly disrupt international energy supplies.
Which brings us back to the true US objectives in Iran. One objective surely is to re-establish US deterrence, to punish Iran for more than 40 years of attacks on the US and its allies. When the US campaign began, Trump frankly emphasised regime change as its objective.

So it is regime change? And it's best accomplished by making the country completely leaderless and rudderless? 

The reptiles slipped in a snap of King Donald in majestic pose, apparently in full charge of his senses and his objectives, Donald Trump overseeing Operation Epic Fury from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. Picture: AFP

Inspired by the close presence of the mad King, the bromancer provided a coherent explanation of the kind that's been singularly missing from the mad King's minions, who've been coming out with contradictory suggestions on an hourly basis ...

That transformed into four different objectives: destroying Iran’s ballistic missile stocks and production capabilities; destroying its ability to reconstruct its nuclear program, especially in hardened facilities; destroying the Iranian navy, and; destroying Iran’s ability to sponsor international terrorism.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson said the US had to act because Israel was about to strike Iran and Washington had “exquisite intelligence” that Iran would launch massive assaults on US bases in the Middle East in response. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel observed Iran digging new, deep underground facilities to restart its nuclear program in locations that would be immune from future attack.
So that’s all as clear as mud. No one should underestimate the nuclear component of this decision. Iran with nuclear weapons would be a horrifying prospect. However, while it’s always sensible to allow for a good deal of chaos in Trump administration talking points and even decision-making, it may well be that there’s a bit of deliberate disinformation going on here.

Exquisite intelligence? 

Only the squeaker of the house could come up with that one, while preserving his chastity, as the reptiles decided to drop in an Explainer borrowed from The Times ...

This was all very well, but doesn't labelling something scenario one imply that there are other scenarios to follow?

The pond looked for additional scenarios in vain. (Relax, it will eventually get sorted)

Instead it had to turn to the bromancer offering "sensible support" for the latest bout of imperial madness ...

Regime change is the only objective that really makes sense. If the ayatollahs’ regime survives, they may not be able to rebuild a nuclear program, so long as Israel or the US retain the ability and will to bomb any such program that emerges. But they will certainly be able to rebuild missiles and missile stocks, and to build and buy drones. They will also be able to sponsor international terrorism.
Terrorism, the oldest grey-zone tactic of all, is relatively cheap. The ayatollahs are happy to see their people suffer while they ship billions of dollars to terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon. But regime change is probably more likely to happen if the Americans talk about it less, so that any alternative Iranian leadership that emerges is less obviously seen as Washington’s creation.
Every big conflict changes in some measure the nature of war. Ukraine has seen the emergence of drones as a central feature in modern warfare. The Australian Defence Force is among the only people on the planet not to have learned this lesson.
Trump has decisively changed the rules of grey-zone warfare and its costs, and is also making a huge effort to transform the geostrategic course of Shia Iran. Australia has enormous interests in his succeeding, which is why, presumably, the Albanese government is sensibly supporting Trump’s actions.

Sensible support?

And so to "Ned", who finally got around to considering it all with a dinkum natter ...

The header: No strategy, no deterrence: what is Trump’s endgame? Russia and China won’t like losing Iran, if that’s what eventuates. But they will understand the world Trump wants – and it’s exactly the world Russia and China want. Thanks, Donald.

The caption for the snap of King Donald which the pond could swear it had seen a nanosecond ago in the bromancer's piece, but hey, a hive mind thrives on repetition: Donald Trump overseeing Operation Epic Fury activity against Iran from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. Picture: Daniel Torok, The White House, AFP

"Ned" didn't sound overly impressed, wasn't quite so willing to offer "sensible support".

Donald Trump has a contempt for his presidential predecessors, seeing himself as a powerbroker for the ages. With his attack on Iran he now aspires to a new method of revolution – revolution by aerial bombing. There is no textbook for this, just Trump’s genius.
Trump is willing this revolution on Iran, a country about which he knows extremely little. But how serious is he? Despite his stunning initial success in killing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, there is no evidence that Trump has any plan or strategy for regime change.
It may happen, but securing a meaningful and improved regime in a 90 million strong country is a daunting task. There is no organised political opposition in Iran. Has Trump given his pledge serious attention? There is no evidence about this whatsoever.
On day three of the war, speaking to the Iranian people, Trump said: “I made a promise to you and I fulfilled that promise. The rest will be up to you.” Got it? The Iranian people can do the real job. Trump has “fulfilled” his promise. Let’s reflect on the remaining task: that unarmed civilians, almost certainly unorgan­ised, are expected to overthrow a regime loaded with guns and willing to shoot its own people.
Trump has started this latest crisis, but does he accept responsibility for its consequences and how it might end? Before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the US secretary of state, General Colin Powell, advised president George W. Bush: “You break it, you own it.” Trump wants to break the regime but he has yet to demonstrate any practical agenda to assist the Iranian people. Indeed, his attitude seems to be: “I break it and you own it.”

Um, the pond had always thought it ran "you break it, you buy it", what with that being the title of the wiki, which dared to end with Powell himself ...

It is said that I used the "Pottery Barn rule." I never did it; [Thomas] Friedman did it ... But what I did say ... [is that] once you break it, you are going to own it, and we're going to be responsible for 26 million people standing there looking at us. And it's going to suck up a good 40 to 50 percent of the Army for years. And it's going to take all the oxygen out of the political environment ..."

Okay, so now it's going to be c. 90 million people?

And they'll be standing there, looking at King Donald?

Talk about heartbreak hotel time.

Dn't expect imperial Benji or the mad King or the bromancer in his cave down under to care about those rules or your future ...Donald Trump shakes hands with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago in December. Picture: Alex Brandon/ AP

"Ned" was tempted by Niall's nonsensical word games...

Recent reports suggest a ruthless operative of mass murder, Ali Larijani, is now in charge, having recently called the rioters against the regime an “urban quasi-terrorist group”. How long he lasts or whether the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sticks with the ayatollahs defies prediction. Maybe the regime will fragment or even fall. The killing of Khamenei along with 50 other senior figures must significantly weaken the regime but not necessarily terminate it.
How does Trump determine victory? The regime cannot defeat Trump in this war. Its central goal is survival and if the regime does survive, then Trump must be careful. Does that mean he has failed? In that situation Trump must find other criteria for his inevitable declaration of success.
Some analysts, for example Niall Ferguson in The Free Press speculate that Trump’s real method is not regime change but a far more modest “regime alteration” – given that in Venezuela, while the US extracted its dictator, Nicolas Maduro, and brought him to New York for trial, Trump kept the regime in place and merely got a new leader more willing to bow to Trump’s own dictates.
This makes sense if Trump, as assumed, has no intention of committing major ground forces to Iran, just as he didn’t commit them to Venezuela.
Indeed, in Venezuela, unlike Iran, there was an organised political and democratic alternative to the regime, but Trump didn’t want a bar of it. He repudiated Venezuela’s path to democracy. Trump preferred a dictatorial regime that was his regime and enabled him to boast that he was in charge of Venezuela.

Just to emphasise the point the reptiles flung in a snap, Nicolas Maduro is seen in handcuffs after landing at a Manhattan helipad.

It might have been more to the point to remind the hive mind that there's a sucker born every minute ...

But then you'd have to remind the hive mind that there's a peace prize for every occasion ...

Those aged well.

Back to "Ned" ...proudly cynical about Faux Noise's favourite ...

If regime change is the goal in Iran, that demands truckloads of time, effort and money. But Trump says his military campaign is essentially based on a four to five-week timeline.
The idea that Trump will repeat the blunder of Bush in Iraq and sink into a protected, long-term, heavy casualty involvement won’t happen.
On the evidence so far Trump is no champion of democracy in Iran or Venezuela. In his more recent comments, he doesn’t even mention regime change. What, therefore are the tangible goals Trump can claim from what is a brutal war? Regime alteration is a gain, even if regime change is too hard. But that’s not remotely enough.
The US has being putting three issues on the table – no uranium enrichment, thereby eliminating Iran’s nuclear weapon option; dismantling Iran’s missile capability; and abandonment of its vast network of proxy terrorist organisations. These are highly ambitious military and political goals.
Trump was adamant in his opening statement announcing the war. He pledged “to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground” along with the annihilation of Iran’s navy; ensure the regime’s terrorist proxies “can no longer destabilise the region or the world and attack our forces”; and guarantee “they can never have a nuclear weapon”.
Trump must deliver on his justification for the war. This war will be deemed a failure if Iran is not broken in terms of its excessive Islamist mission and military capability. Trump always boasts about his achievements, but this is different. These are his declared goals in the most important war he has launched as President and the most vital war in the Middle East for decades. The surgical strike power of the US-Israeli war machine is awesome, but dismantling the ambitions and capacity of Iran’s Islamist security state seems close to a counter-revolution not likely to eventuate.
Trump will probably need to settle for much less: an Iran heavily damaged, more isolated, more discredited and less able to threaten its enemies.
He will surely choose a short war because that is his strategic character, because polls show about 75 per cent of Americans oppose the war or are neutral, and because of the strains and risks on the US military. America’s ability to absorb shock and pain is much reduced compared with a generation ago and Trump will not want to test its limits.
While Trump is the key initiator, Iran and its eliminated leader, Khamenei, have brought this catastrophe on themselves. The Hamas October 7, 2023, attack on Israel has delivered a devastating and rolling strategic reversal for Iran, its terrorist proxies and the Islamist campaign against the Jewish state. The Iranian regime was deluded by its own propaganda, continually misreading the retaliatory will and capacity of Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump.
Ever since the 1979 revolution the regime has waged a relentless campaign against Israel and America, exporting terrorism to the region and the world, killing Americans and Israelis via its proxies and engaging in the slaughter of its own people. Its success in escaping lethal punishment bred confidence that no US president would resort to a full-scale military retaliation – an illusion that Trump has shattered.

Was it so long ago that "Ned" has entirely forgotten the country that was behind 9/11? 

Look at them now. Sure the odd journalist has bitten the dust, but they're in the fold and ready to start erecting Trump hotels all around the world with the help of Jared.

Never mind, cue another snap ... More than a million supporters of an Islamic republic assembled around Shayad (Shah Memorial) monument in Tehran. Picture: AP Photo/Aristotle Saris

"Ned" tried to celebrate but the drink must have turned sour in the mouth ...

Trump’s elimination of the Iranian leadership is a plus for the Middle East and the world – a reality that constitutes a problem for critics of Trump’s campaign. Indeed, this reality is recognised by the Albanese government saying it supports the US-Israeli military action on the grounds that Iran must be denied a nuclear capability. The message: there is always an argument to be found against the Iranian regime.
The message, explicit in Trump’s war, is that we live in an age increasingly dominated by the exercise of brute force, whether by great powers or regional powers in their own domain. This is not the world that Australia wants or prefers, but it is the world in which we live. The rules-based order that Australia loved to invoke is largely shattered, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said recently.
The worst mistake is to think Trump is exercising strategic deterrence in launching this war. Let’s get clear: this is not deterrence. Such thinking is utter folly. Russia and China won’t like losing Iran, if that is what eventuates. But they will understand the world Trump wants – where great powers are entitled to use the force they possess for the goals they want. It’s exactly the world Russia and China want. Thanks, Donald.

But wasn't that always the way? Hasn't he been busy selling Ukraine down the river to Vlad the Sociopath? Does he really care if Xi takes over Taiwan? Won't a good bombing fix anything that ails ya?

And while some might think that's already more than enough, the pond simply had to include Cameron carrying on, if only because he too was on the extreme far right of the lizard Oz, and his column helped sort a mystery:

The header: Donald Trump warns Iran conflict will be longer and more destructive than expected; Donald Trump has warned the conflict with Iran will become longer and more destructive than expected, even floating the possibility of deploying US ground troops.

The caption: President Donald Trump arrives for a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House on Monday. Picture: AP

The pond had always thought the phrase was "buckle up", but buckle down for a new introduction:

Buckle in. The conflict with Iran will not become a forever war, but it will be longer, bigger and more destructive than expected.
This was the essence of Donald Trump’s warning to the world on day four of the US-Israeli assault on Iran, in the face of ongoing retaliatory attacks from Iran across the Middle East.
He was joined by a fiery warning from Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu that he and Trump see the danger of Iran more clearly than other “slumbering’ democracies” that did not understand the need for this war.
With many Gulf states shocked by Iran’s decision to target them as well as Israel and US forces, Trump has assumed the role of “scarer-in-chief” to warn Iran that the US was only just warming up and there was an apocalypse coming its way.

At this point the reptiles introduced that scenario that had featured in the bromancer's piece ...

At first the pond was mystified, but then vastly relieved.

It was Cameron's duty to provide some word salad, proving some interruptions while the real business of more scenarios could unfold.

So this short bit of blather ...

He said the “big wave” of American and Israeli attacks on the Iranian regime was yet to come and that the war could last more than a month. What’s more, the President even floated the possibility of sending in ground troops, saying “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground”.
Even the Iranians are unlikely to believe that. Polls in the US show Trump has little public support for this air war against Iran, much less for sending US soldiers into harm’s way and potentially getting bogged down in the sort of “forever war” he promised never to enter.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio quickly hosed down Trump’s comments, saying the US had no current plans to use ground troops.
But although American and Israeli forces continue to bomb Iran, degrading its forces, destroying its missiles and picking off its leaders, the broader costs of this military campaign are becoming sharper.

... was immediately interrupted by a second scenario ...

It began to make sense - if there's any sense to  the madness.

These scenarios included cosy terms such as "regime adjustment", which could be trotted out at dinner parties so that people could sound fully hive mind aware - and so the pond carried on ...

Iran has continued to spray missiles and drones at the Gulf states, hitting hotels, residences, ports and military bases housing US and, in one instance, Australian military personnel.
Those states have successfully shot down the vast majority of these missiles and drones, but will soon run short of the interceptors required to intercept these projectiles.
Iranian drones continue to occasionally breach key defences, most recently hitting the US embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and more buildings and people in Israel.
Iran’s decision to close the Strait of Hormuz, a passage of water where almost a quarter of the world’s oil transits through, has sent oil and gas prices soaring and rattled world markets. The attacks on the UAE and Qatar have closed their international airports – the main air travel hubs between Europe and Asia and Australia – causing chaos and dealing a major blow to the economies of those countries. Six US soldiers have so far died in the campaign.
None of this means the US and Israel are losing this fight – in fact, they are winning it easily – but it does place pressure on the US and Israel to try to achieve their aims sooner rather than later.

It hadn't been long, and yet already there was another scenario to hand ...

Cameron interrupted to observe it had been a bit of a muddle of mixed messaging, but without exploring the sublime stupidity of warrior Hogsbreath ...nor the way that King Donald continually forgets his origin story, or more to the point, keeps making up the same one over and over again ...

Just the sort of detail-laden king ready to do a regime makeover ... as Cameron pressed on ...

Trump, Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth have given muddled messages about what America’s aims are.
Trump said it was regime change but has since played this down, while Hegseth has denied this, saying this is “not a regime-change war”. An end to Iran’s nuclear program, the destruction of its missiles and navy, and an end to Iran’s funding of its terror proxies are variously given as the primary aims of the conflict.
Reading between the lines of these mixed messages we can safely say the following: the US and Israel will continue to hit Iran as hard as they can in the coming weeks, destroying its military and assassinating its surviving leaders whenever possible.
Where it ends, no one knows, and that includes the White House. In Trump’s perfect world there would be a complete collapse of the current regime and a people’s revolution to pave the way for a democratic leader.

And that brought the pond to the last scenario ...

Such a stunning insight.

Chaos is possible, if order breaks down.

The pond must add that to its collection of favourites, such as: world will continue if sun rises tomorrow, Dr Strangelove permitting.

Sure these stupendous insights were just borrowed plumage, plucked from the hive mind's UK kissing cousin The Times, in a land where there are no Churchills left, but the pond was pleased to have scored the complete set, as Cameron wrapped up his proceedings ...

A second-best solution would be a Venezuelan-style outcome where the most senior surviving Iranian from this current regime makes a deal with Trump and Israel, paving the way for a more compliant Iran that poses no threat to its neighbours.
But neither of these may come to pass. The new ruler of Iran may be yet another cleric, or a general from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who detests the West as much as did the late Ali Khamenei.
Nothing is certain, but the likelihood that this will be a short, sharp war looks less likely by the day. Buckle in.

Indeed, indeed, the pond will buckle up, because there's one final trip with the reptiles to be taken this hive mind morning...

The header: Get ready for Jim’s flood of ‘global uncertainty’ excuses; Call me cynical, but days of global economic uncertainty are positively heady for the treasurer of the day. Playing the hero with other people’s money is a very alluring phenomenon.

The caption for that smirking villain Jimbo: Treasurer Jim Chalmers during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

How could the pond ignore the old biddy?

The pond's in-tray had scored many disturbing messages, such as John Hanscombe getting hysterical about lettuces, even though the lettuce had temporarily retired after winning its bout with Susssan ...

The days of $10 lettuces might return this winter (sorry, newsletter, no link).

Talk about a panic merchant ...

Enjoy it while you can. Those fresh, crisp vegetables. The salad with your steak. The cheese plate after the main course. Almost every food that depends on fertiliser to make it to your plate.
If this war in the Middle East drags on - and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to shipping - it won't just be oil and petroleum products that surge in price. Australia is also dependent on fertiliser which passes through the strategic waterway.
Last financial year, Australia imported 95 per cent of its fertiliser, 64 per cent of which came from the Gulf states. Qatar, which supplies 11 per cent of the world's urea, shut down its liquefied natural gas production. LNG is crucial for the production of nitrogen based fertiliser.
Australia buys roughly 12 per cent of all urea exported from the Middle East, making us particularly vulnerable. And the timing of this supply disruption, with our farmers preparing for winter crop preparation, couldn't be worse. They'll be competing with northern hemisphere producers gearing up for summer for a product in forced short supply.
Almost immediately, prices for urea surged and Australian farmers won't be immune from this conflict-driven supply shock. Nor will you and I when we're shopping for food to put on our tables.
We saw this during last June's 12-day war, when urea prices surged by $118 a tonne over seven days. With President Trump forecasting the war could drag on for five weeks or longer, and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu conceding "it may take some time", that means more pain at the checkout as farmers pass on the cost of production to consumers.
It won't just be fresh veggies affected. One analysis published on Monday estimates wheat production costs per hectare will rise by between $45 and $60, canola by $35-$50, cotton by $120-$180 and dairy pasture management by $25 to $40.
Even the plastic packaging in which too much of our food is wrapped is set to rise in price because so much of the world's polypropylene comes from the Middle East. The Jebel Ali port in the United Arab Emirates handles 65 per cent of the Gulf region's polymer exports. Like oil and fertiliser, these exports need to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

The old biddy would have none of that sort of nonsense ...

We should expect to hear a lot about the impact of global economic uncertainty from Jim Chalmers in the coming weeks. The Treasurer will be referencing the events in the Middle East frequently when discussing the economy and the government’s responses to the emerging risks.
We will be asked to forget about the economic difficulties that had been apparent – inflation well above the target band, a budget in deficit for years to come, stagnant living standards – and concentrate on the economic consequences of global developments in the Middle East. The budget papers will need to be redrafted, and the economic forecasts will be reset to consider the possible scenarios now at play, particularly higher headline inflation (including higher petrol prices), but also slower economic growth.
Call me cynical, but days of global economic uncertainty are positively heady for the treasurer of the day. Playing the hero with other people’s money is a very alluring phenomenon. Having declined all those entreaties for higher spending and new programs, suddenly, it’s all systems go.
We saw this with Wayne Swan, Australia’s treasurer during the global financial crisis. We also saw it in action during the height of the Covid pandemic when Scott Morrison was prime minister and Josh Frydenberg the treasurer.
It’s worth going over these events to pinpoint some of the weaknesses in the government responses as well as highlight some longer-term effects.

Yes, the very best way to cope with current crises is simply to retreat back into the past, stick head in sand and blather about Swannie, and even show a snap of the lad to remind the forgetful of what he looked like way back when... Wayne Swan was Australia’s treasurer during the global financial crisis. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

There, everything sorted, and time now for some economic theory designed to stimulate correspondents ...

It’s very easy to go overboard, to bring on poorly designed programs, to offer handouts across the board. It’s more difficult to wind back spending, to restore a degree of balance to the budget and to deal with the fallout from bad programs.
One of the fundamental problems with the government’s response to the GFC was the misunderstanding of the source of the problem. It was never a GFC; it was more a North Atlantic financial crisis caused by massive mal­investment in the US real estate market coupled with faulty financial instruments to underpin the spending.
Of course, the impact of what happened in the US and Europe did spread to Australia, most notably in the form of a freezing in the corporate debt market and some liquidity problems in the banking system.
But it was never a classic Keynesian slump and so the advice of Ken Henry, the Treasury secretary at the time, to “go hard, go households, go early” was unwise given the more specific nature of the issues. Providing deposit guarantees to the banks was sensible, for instance. Ramping up government spending by nearly 13 per cent in real terms in 2008-09 was just foolish.
It’s worth looking at the figures. In 2007-08, government payments were 23 per cent of GDP, a figure that was mainly due to the prudent budget management of the Howard-Costello years. In 2008-09, the proportion was 25 per cent. We went from having a budget surplus of 1.7 per cent of GDP to a deficit of 2.8 per cent. In the following year, 2009-10, when global economic conditions were improving, the budget deficit was $55bn or 4.2 per cent of GDP. It’s much easier for a treasurer to hit the accelerator than to apply the brakes.

The reptiles did their best to remind the old chook that there was a war going on ... Iran has targeted energy facilities in Qatar and Saudi Arabia – a major escalation in the conflict which could threaten the global supply of oil and gas and drive up prices. An oil refinery in Saudi Arabia was damaged by debris from drones, which were intercepted but fell onto the facility. Meanwhile, Qatar had to shut down the world’s largest natural gas plant after it was hit by Iranian missiles.

But Dame Groan was having none of it, and was quite prepared to play the role of the Beadle in the hive mind's production of Oliver Twist, with "no more gruel for you" one of the stand out numbers ...

It’s not even clear whether most of the spending even worked. The cash handouts triggered a degree of caution among many of the recipients, with at least some of the money saved. (I recall my hairdresser telling me it must be bad if the government was sending him cheques, so he thought he would save it.)
New programs were rushed out, such as the home insulation scheme, with completely inadequate attention given to safety regulation and appropriately trained staff. Eventually the government had to fork out about $1bn to fix the mess created.
The National Rental Affordability Scheme rolled out in 2008 was another example of poor design and deficient execution.
Notwithstanding Swan’s seeming determination to return the budget to surplus after the worst was over, he never achieved this outcome. (Who can forget his 2012 budget speech and the four budget surpluses he announced?)
From inheriting the position of effectively zero government debt, by the time the Labor government was voted out in 2013 government debt had reached more than $300bn or 20 per cent of GDP. A lot of money had been spent in a very short time.
Interpreting the federal government’s responses to the Covid pandemic is slightly trickier, particularly because of the initial uncertainty about the virus and its transmission.
But let’s be clear, most of the spending and measures implemented were in response to government restrictions rather than to the virus itself.
A fundamental problem became apparent quite quickly: the disjunction between the state governments handing down health-related restrictions and the federal government picking up the tab for the consequences for households and businesses of these restrictions.

Where would this sort of exercise be without a reminder of the speaking in tongues liar from the shire and jolly Josh? Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg. Picture: Jason Edwards

Then came a last gobbet of Dame Groan wielding the lash ...

Do we really think the Victorian Labor government could have commanded one of the longest periods of lockdown in the world had it not been for the federal government spending as it did?
Again, the scale of the spending response was substantial. In 2018-19, federal government spending was 24.5 per cent of GDP. The following year it was 27.6 per cent; and the year after that it was 31.3 per cent.
The JobKeeper scheme – the largest federal government scheme ever – was quickly rolled out, providing wage supplements to those workers in businesses that had lost sales by dint of the restrictions.
Far too little attention was paid to the details, however. There needed to be greater transparency about qualifying for the support as well as the need for refunds in cases where sales had not dropped. Many casual workers found themselves better off lying under the doona. It is estimated that between $20bn and $25bn in JobKeeper spending was essentially wasted.
The lesson of these two tales is that treasurers are often very happy to crank up the spending faucet when confronted by “global economic uncertainty”.
But spending like there is no tomorrow has limits because tomorrow does arrive. We can only hope that Chalmers uses more restraint this time and refuses to blame clearly domestically generated economic problems on what is happening overseas.

Yes, dammit, we've quickly moved from we'll all be 'rooned by the end of the week to no more gruel for you, don't even think about getting any help.

And if you want to play the lettuce game with the beefy boofhead and the pastie Hastie, you must expect to pay full quid ...or triple quid, or tens of quids...

And now - as John Oliver has returned, and so has the infallible Pope, and not before time - this ...

Who wouldn't trust a cheque with that sort of art work? With those bombs attached, it's guaranteed not to bounce ...

And the T and C in the detail seems ever so fair ...