Today was the day the reptiles went all in ...
There's no way that the pond could carpet bomb that mob into submission.
Instead the pond had to chose its targets carefully, and so ended up withe usual suspects...
"Ned" led the charge ... aided by a frankly wretched collage...
The header: Donald Trump’s Iran gamble is flawed but necessary: The US President launched this war without a clear plan and continues to radiate both hyper-confidence and abject confusion. But he should be supported for this action.
The caption for the frankly tedious collage: With the neatness of his earlier operation in Venezuela in his rear vision, Donald Trump is learning that Iran is a far more complex challenge Artwork by Frank Ling.
"Ned" sounded all in, at least in the header, but as always with "Ned", the devil was in the mind-numbingly tedious both siderist detail.
Running at a bigly ten minutes, replete with graphs, the pond felt a need to surrender immediately, to run up the white flag, and decided to take it on the chin:
Trump is now sucked into the cult of the strongman, with all the shocks this carries. The US-Israeli war machine under Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu is dismantling much of the Iranian security state and its defence capability, starting with the stunning precision decapitation of its leadership. The consequences of this incredibly intense Trump-Netanyahu war will reverberate for decades. Iran’s strategic weight in the region is being devastated, yet where its political system finishes from this military battering defies prediction.
The regime of the ayatollahs, now hostage to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is fighting for its survival, and when authoritarian regimes confront a survival crisis they act from desperation. They have nothing to lose, hence Iran’s attack on the Persian Gulf states and beyond.
The depth of the regime’s resilience is being tested but its defiance is apparent, revealed in the intention to appoint as its successor the hardliner Mojtaba Khamenei, son of assassinated ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a reminder of Trump’s inability to command Iran’s political future.
With the neatness of his earlier operation in Venezuela in his rear vision, Trump is learning that Iran is a far more complex challenge. He can command the US military campaign but he cannot control the erupting impact of the forces he has unleashed – as Europe moves to defend its interests, Israel launches a fresh campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon and global energy prices are set to skyrocket with damaging domestic impacts.
Trump’s big mistake
Trump radiates hyper-confidence about the military results and abject confusion about the political future. At mid-week he said Iran “has no navy, it’s been knocked out, they have no air force, it’s been knocked out, they have no air detection, that’s been knocked out. Just about everything’s been knocked out.”
Yet at week’s end a frustrated Trump declared that Mojtaba Khamenei was an “unacceptable” choice as leader and that he wanted a role in that decision.
Trump has signalled – in an interview with The New York Times – that his preference for leadership change was replication of the Venezuelan model where US forces extracted its dictator, Nicolas Maduro, denied the nation’s democratic forces and relied on a regime replacement more acceptable to US pressure.
Make of that what you will, as the reptiles decided on a break with liddle Marco, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stands behind as President Donald Trump. All week official Washington has been riddled in chaos and contradictions from the President and his senior officials about the war aims. Picture: AP
Trump won’t commit US ground forces but reports that Iranian Kurds coming from Iraq might become the “boots on the ground” are deeply ominous, raising the risk of ethnic and sectarian conflicts in Iran as well posing a new danger to Tehran. Might Trump authorise the CIA to encourage resistance on the ground?
Israel’s objectives
The evidence is that Netanyahu has a much clearer sense of Israeli objectives in this war than does Trump of American objectives. Trump’s mistake in announcing the war was tying the campaign to the goal of regime change when he had no plan whatsoever to achieve that goal.
Indeed, his method was to tell the Iranian people to rise up and “take over your government” when they had no arms, no organisation and the regime was ready to shoot them.
Air power alone is a forlorn means to achieve regime change in a nation of 90 million people. Trump launched this war without seriously devising a plan to achieve his goal of regime change beyond the military elimination of the top 50 leaders.
All week official Washington has been riddled in chaos and contradictions from the President and his senior officials about the war aims. The efficiency of the military contrasted with the ineptitude of the political leaders, with no sign Trump made any proper assessment of how the regime might respond, the strategic impact of a wider conflict or the global economic consequences of a possible closure of the Strait of Hormuz, where tankers are already ablaze.
Trump and Netanyahu identified Iran’s weakness and went for the kill. This was ruthless opportunism. Despite claims to the contrary, every logic still points to a relatively short US war given Trump’s impatient character, the prospect that US opinion will be sceptical of the war, erupting energy prices and ongoing strains on the US military.
At this point, the reptiles began to wade into graphs as a kind of sea invasion:
"Ned" pressed on, in a kind of 'boots on the verbiage ground' invasion:
Despite the confusion and the blunders, criticism about an illegal war, scepticism from allies and lukewarm support at home, the US and Israel are justified in their strike to eliminate much of the danger to the region and the world from the post-1979 Iranian revolutionary regime.
This central conclusion can be expected to carry the day – that the time for reckoning finally has come for Iran’s fanatical and terrorist regime, given its sponsorship of terrorism, its obsession about destroying the Israeli state, its periodic military strikes against the US, Israel and the West, its repression and killing of its own people, and its quest for a nuclear weapons capacity to guarantee its immunity.
Albanese, Wong make an important decision
Given Trump’s decision to mount a decisive strike against the regime, strategic and moral assessments dictate support – despite the serious risks and downsides involved. This is the judgment made by the Albanese government, with Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong in the lead. It is one of their most important foreign policy decisions so far and hostility from the left will be fierce, as they know.
While putting the emphasis on the need to deny Iran a nuclear weapon and sidestepping regime change, Labor’s response was faster and firmer than many European nations, notably Britain and France. Australian support is bipartisan. Albanese said: “We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten international peace and security.”
There came another visual distraction: The strategic interest for Australia is obvious: we need a short war, a reconstructed Iran, a refocus as soon as possible by the US on the Indo-Pacific.
How simple it sounded, how easy peasy. A short war, reconstruct Iran, and then focus on the Indo-Pacific war with China by Xmas!
"Ned" sounded pleased that we'd decided to get on board with a narcissistic, demented king, always keen to distract from his domestic crimes (what with the puppy killer being replaced by an MMA clown as silly as a brain-afflicted sausage):
This war highlights Trump’s obsession about threatening or attacking weak targets, from Greenland to Venezuela to a diminished Iran. Now he crosses a threshold: herein is Trump as champion of great-power muscle flexing. Where his predecessor, Joe Biden, was defined by his sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan, Trump is defined by the use of force to smash Iran. He thrives on the notion.
It is a mistake to extrapolate from Trump’s military venture in Iran to think Russia and China will be intimidated by the strongman in action – Trump’s aggression against the weak does not equate to audacity against the strong, notably President Vladimir Putin and President Xi Jinping. Trump is a gambler. Iran proves that – but he gambles only with the battlefield loaded in his favour.
Destroying Iran’s proxies
Trump and Netanyahu have combined in an awesome display of their military and intelligence power that represents a dramatic reversal from Iran’s ascendancy at October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its massacre of Israelis. This event triggered one of the most important strategic sea changes in Israel’s history.
Netanyahu grasped that Israel’s position was being relentlessly eroded by Iranian tactics and proxies. He decided that such proxies – Hamas and Hezbollah – must be destroyed and that Israel must attack Iran as the source of endless regional conflict.
That strategy is being played out in Tehran in an unfolding military catastrophe for the Islamists.
At this point the reptiles flung in a whole series of graphs, just to ensure that this "Ned" Everest climb took on an interminable length:
As his presidency unfolds Trump succumbs more and more to the great man theory of history. Whether the Iran war inflates or burns this trait remains to be seen. But Trump is only in the second year of his four-year term and is engaged in a process of presidential rediscovery. The Iran war, for example, is not how he won the presidency. In this 2024 triumph, Trump said: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” In his inaugural address, presumably with Ukraine in mind, he said he wanted to be judged by “the wars we never get into”.
Trump, as usual, will have no trouble turning on a dime and saying that defeating what he calls a “very wicked radical dictatorship” is the path to peace in the Middle East. But presenting as a strongman comes with risks.
He told the regime’s military to “lay down your weapons” or “face certain death”. This was phony bravado. On day three of the war he announced he had “fulfilled” his promise to the Iranian people – yet the regime was still in place with its capacity to kill unarmed civilians. Again, it was just showmanship.
The next day Trump was all over the place. He said the worst-case scenario was putting in power somebody “who’s as bad as the previous person” – ironic given the prospective father-son transition.
After meeting Trump, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said: “The American government does not have a clearly formulated strategy for the future civilian leadership of the country.”
That’s a polite way of describing it. Meanwhile US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said getting people to overthrow the government was “not the objective”.
Two contradictory truths
There are two contradictory truths here: no other US president would have launched this war and no other US president would have been so cavalier about the process. Might Trump’s war actually fail? After one week, that’s hard to see but it cannot be dismissed.
The more relevant question is: how successful will it be? Regular repeats of this war, say each two years, cannot be the future. Trump needs a new political alignment in Iran. Unless the ayatollahs are deposed, it is difficult to imagine the nuclear agenda being shut down.
There came a last AV distraction: President Donald Trump has warned the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to surrender or face "guaranteed death" as US strikes devastate Tehran's military capabilities. Trump made the remarks at an event with the Inter Miami soccer team at the White House on Thursday, local time. Trump claimed Tehran was reaching out to the United States about making a deal amid US and Israeli strikes on Iran. "They're calling, they're saying 'how do we make a deal?' I said you're being a little bit late," he said.
A final saucy doubt crept into "Ned's" narrative:
Might the IRGC outlast Trump’s war? Who has the greater threshold to absorb pain? It is unlikely to be Trump. That’s why he needs military results and needs them quickly.
Even if the regime survives, Trump’s justification will become the removal of Iran’s missile capacity and industry and the substantial demolition of its nuclear agenda. Trump, at the minimum, must be able to deliver on these military justifications for the war.
This is a far more serious venture than anything Trump has done before. Hubris and posing won’t cut it. The exhortations from Hegseth are hardly reassuring given his mid-week rant that the Iranian regime “are toast and they know it, or at least soon enough, they will know it”.
In reality, the future lies on a spectrum of unpredictability that may range from Iran fracturing as a society, to a pro-Western government or the mullahs holding things together in an Iran locked into a cycle of despair. On the regional and global stage, the downside is how much this war reinforces the degeneration to a “might is right” world disorder that ultimately benefits the authoritarian powers such as China and Russia.
Israel is entrenched as a regional superpower, but looking beyond Iran, what does this mean for a Palestinian peace given Netanyahu opposes a two-state solution? The idea that Trump might restrain Israel on the West Bank is remote.
What this means for Australia
The strategic interest for Australia is obvious: we need a short war, a reconstructed Iran, a refocus as soon as possible by the US on the Indo-Pacific and a prioritising on competition and balancing Chinese power.
The critique that Trump is waging an illegal war will mobilise much of the progressive class. Indeed, they may have a narrow sense of the law on their side, but they don’t have common sense or a better world.
Consider the position: Iran for decades has waged wars by proxies killing Israelis, spreading terror across the region, funding terrorist organisations, being responsible for the deaths of thousands, killing and torturing thousands of its own people, and seeking to acquire a nuclear capacity so it becomes invulnerable.
The message implicit in the legal critique is that Iran cannot be touched because it poses no imminent threat to the US while it is apparent that neither persuasion nor diplomacy – only force – will change its declared missions. Such legalisms keep the door open for Iran to develop its nuclear capacity with devastating consequences – the spread of nuclear weapons across the region, a far more dangerous fate for Israel and a manifestly more dangerous world.
This argument fails on morality and practicality. You cannot expect leaders in a democracy to follow a legal prescription that assists a terrorist regime to expand its terrorism and the number of peoples and countries it can threaten.
The US President couldn’t care less about international law but the international legal case against him is one of the weakest arguments against his tactics.
Trump is giving Australia a big message. The old world is disappearing; the new world is about power realities. This must be dawning on the Albanese government, the question being: When will they do something about it?
When will they do something? What can they do?
Why they must become Crusaders, and sing along with Faux Noise ...
Speaking of Crusaders, the bromancer was also out and about on a war footing:
The header: American air power and weakened ruling elite not enough to guarantee Iran’s regime collapse; Democracy doesn’t seem the most plausible best outcome, given the circumstances of the Islamic Republic and the specific paths generally taken when authoritarian regimes fall.
The caption: The majority of people of Iran, repeatedly betrayed by broken promises and shattered dreams, want an end to the ayatollahs’ rule.
The good news was that while he was on a war footing, the bromancer only managed five minutes of regime change, surely enough time to fix everything ...
In Iran, the state is at war with the society. Iranian society embodies something of Persian cultural richness over 2½ millennia. (Fun fact from Persian history: more than 2000 years ago, Cyrus the Great freed the Jewish people from Babylonian slavery and enabled the building of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.)
Iranian society exhibits courage, idealism, poetry. It has the energy of youth and the wisdom of the ages. Iranian filmmakers, mostly dissidents, produce exquisite films, either non-political or slyly anti-the ayatollahs’ regime. The Iranian diaspora in the West, not least Australia, are hugely successful – doctors, therapists, technicians. In short, Iranian society has the culture.
The Iranian state, however, has the guns. In our brutal world, guns routinely beat culture, at least in the short term.
How Israel killed Khamenei with a missile from space
The US and Israel, and all civilised people, want regime change in Iran. But there’s still every chance of the ayatollahs’ regime surviving, though it’s unpredictable. The ayatollahs’ rule could indeed collapse. That’s possible too. The majority of Iranians want this. How could such regime unravelling come about?
In the Cold War, when the Americans wanted to effect regime change somewhere, they looked for regime enemies, whom they then funded, advised and equipped, a move they’re now trying with Iranian Kurds. They seldom undertook direct military intervention.
They never tried regime change just from the air. American air power is awesome. The lesson of all conflicts since World War II is that with US air power on your side, you cannot lose, provided you have some ground force. But without a ground force at all, it’s extremely difficult to destroy a regime.
Yet the Islamic Republic has never been weaker. If ever it’s going to fall apart, surely it’s now.
Dictatorships, authoritarian regimes generally, fall in a few specific ways. They start to liberalise and liberalisation gets out of control. That happened to the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev. Or the ruling elite, in response to domestic or international pressure, moves intentionally to some kind of democracy. This happened with the end of Suharto’s rule in Indonesia. The democratic elections that followed were held under the old authoritarian constitution. Similarly, the rulers of white, apartheid South Africa voluntarily ceded power to majority rule, meaning black rule. This went reasonably well, notwithstanding contemporary South Africa’s problems, because of the grace and magnanimity of Nelson Mandela.
Sssh, don't mention Israel's attempt to help out by selling nuclear weapons to South Africa, instead a ghoulish moment, A still from a video taken January 9-11 shows bodies and mourners outside a morgue in Iran, following a crackdown on protests in Tehran province Kahrizak. Picture: UGC/AP
The bromancer continued to dance around, as much in hope as certainty:
More commonly, a state’s security forces simply refuse to shoot civilians. This was crucial in the collapse of communism in Poland. So far, Iran’s security forces readily kill civilians in huge numbers. The regime is also yet to display any debilitating internal divisions, though the regular army resents the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, itself internally factionalised. Are there CIA clients in the IRGC?
What about Islamic models? Iran has been a Shia, theocratic, Islamist state since the 1979 revolution Ayatollah Khomeini led. But the emphasis has switched. It’s become a national security state, dominated by the IRGC. Pakistan has long balanced Islamism with the military, with the military predominating. That was the equation in Indonesia under Suharto.
The other way a dictatorship unravels is if there’s fatal conflict within the ruling elite.
The reptiles decided to fling in another AV distraction, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong reacts to reports of some Australian mosques mourning the recent death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “In relation to the mourning of the Ayatollah that’s been reported … I’m really disappointed that people would want to do that,” Ms Wong said. “This is a man who has led a regime which has caused death in many parts of the world. “It is a regime that engineered … attacks on Australian soil and a regime that killed its own citizens.”
The bromancer apparently wanted to feel an irrational surge of hope in his warrior, crusader loins, and yet:
Belief, even if irrational, is powerful. There’s still an Islamist-believing base in Iran. Secondly, the regime has become spectacularly corrupt. The IRGC, somewhat like the old Indonesian military but on a bigger scale, has become an economic colossus. A lot of people with a lot of money don’t want fundamental change.
On top of that, the Iranian state has not only murdered tens of thousands of its own people, it has spread the act of killing far through the society, not only by IRGC troops, but also the Basij militia. Many thousands of Iranians have been actively complicit in murder. These folks know if Iran ever became free, a democracy, the families of all those murdered could well demand accountability and justice.
Another interruption, Israel took the decision to kill Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in November and was planning to carry out the operation around six months later, Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday (March 5)
The bromancer began to sound as befuddled as the King himself:
If Iran manages to kill some more Americans, or injure the global economy in a way that registers as higher prices for American households, this will affect even Trump’s resolve, as congressional midterm elections approach.
The maximum time Trump has suggested is four or five weeks.
There’s another paradox. Although Iran has still a well-educated population and a sophisticated middle class, it doesn’t have much meaningful recent history of democracy. In the past hundred years it’s been ruled by four men – two shahs and two ayatollahs, all four dictators. Iran has been repeatedly betrayed by broken promises and shattered dreams. The first of those two shahs modernised Iran and produced rapid economic growth. His son ran a murderous security state, though they were amateurs compared with the viciousness of the ayatollahs’ regimes.
In case you missed that line in the bromancer's screed, The maximum time Trump has suggested for the campaign is four or five weeks. Picture: Mandel NGAN / AFP
Another problem is that, internationally, democracy doesn’t enjoy such great prestige these days. It’s no longer the obvious route to modernisation and peace. Even in Australia, fewer than half those aged 18-24 think democracy is always the best form of government.
Nonetheless, sustained US and Israeli strikes may so destroy the ability of the Iranian state to function that it succumbs to internal disorder, perhaps an element of ethnic break-up, especially centred on the Kurdish minority. The worst outcome is a North Korea-style Iran. You could get a wildly nationalist leader, an Iranian Vladimir Putin.
Trump surely thinks the most plausible good outcome is simply a more reasonable dictator, the so-called Venezuela solution. The ideal would be what political scientists call a “repressive-responsive” regime. This would eschew the nuclear program altogether, concentrate on economic development and, while maintaining strict political control, allow a wide degree of personal autonomy, while responding to people’s needs.
It’s a reasonable hope. But don’t bet your house on it.
And so much for the hapless, repressed people of Iran: "A more reasonable dictator"
Much like King Donald himself ...
Oh they do regime change in style at the lizard Oz.
And so, if you're a trinitarian, on to the Holy Ghost, which is to say the unreformed seminarian known as the Ughmann:
The header: War, energy security and the brutal lessons of power: Despots know the truth: cripple energy, and everything collapses. War choking the Middle East is showing us how the world really works and what fuels it runs on.
The caption: A fire blazes in the oil depots of Shahran, northwest of Tehran. Picture: Atta Kenare /AFP
Usually the pond would attempt some analysis, perhaps even offer the odd counterpoint, but the reptile strikes this day are so massive, the pond so intimidated, that all the pond could manage to was record the reptiles laying it out for the hive mind.
It turned out that the Ughmann was just your old-fashioned realpolitik dude, a man to gladden the heart of Bismarck and Mao:
First, as Chairman Mao Zedong put it, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
International law is a mirage that middle powers cite, evil powers exploit and superpowers honour in the breach. If you have the guns and are willing to shoot, you make the law. There is no international police force and no penalty for starting wars beyond the unimaginable consequences that flow from them and the high risk that you will shoot yourself in the foot.
Just to hammer home the unreformed seminarian's tastes, the reptiles flung in a reminder, Chairman Mao Zedong.
That reminded the pond that it was in the presence of another cult:
Sorry, the Ughmann is busy with listicles and it was rude to interrupt:
Europe has seen its natural gas prices surge by 70 per cent because it has decided it is best to import every molecule of the fuel that is essential to keep the lights on in its weather-dependent electricity system. To lose one gas supplier may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.
First, Europe bet on the goodwill of a gangster in sourcing gas from Russia, then on enduring stability in the Middle East as it switched sources to Qatar.
The reptiles next flung in a bigly AV distraction, MST Financial Senior Energy Analysis Saul Kavonic warns Iran’s attacks on key oil and energy infrastructure could be globally detrimental. “We’ve basically got Iran in an extensional threat situation, lashing out at everything, threatening passage through the Strait of Hormuz and directly targeting key oil and energy infrastructure in the gulf,” Mr Kavonic told Sky News host Steve Price. “Basically, entering the apocalypse scenario for energy security, which has been war-gamed by nations going back 50 years. “The market is severely underestimating the risk here. “We’re looking at the biggest energy price shock in generations.”
Sure, if the world's economy goes to hell in a handbasket - King Donald's tariff plan all along - electricity prices will rise as will the cost of everything else, but if you followed the reptiles down the renewables denialist road, and stayed true to gas and oil, you'd currently be in a pretty pickle:
In passing, let’s also add that Iran is specifically targeting energy infrastructure right across the Middle East as it lashes out in self-defence. Here it is following a playbook used by Russia in its war on Ukraine. This underlines the fact that despots understand what our government does not: energy is the economy. Cripple a nation’s power supply and everything else collapses. Note that no one is blowing up wind farms.
Finally, no one knows where this conflict will lead and there is every chance that 25 years from now we still will be kicking through the rubble, marvelling at what new horror has slithered out.
When God banished Satan from heaven in Paradise Lost, the Prince of Darkness simply set up shop in hell, determined for the rest of eternity: “To do aught good never will be our task, but ever to do ill our sole delight.” Humanity was collateral damage. Satan no doubt has welcomed Iran’s recently arrived supreme leader to Hades as a handy utility player on Team Damnation.
Working on a documentary marking the 30th anniversary of the election of the Howard government served as a timely reminder that wars bleed into each other.
There's a passage to remind correspondents of the true depths of the Ughmann's analysis, as the reptiles prodded him to relive ancient times, US marines take position near a portrait of late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. Picture: Christophe Simon /AFP
Sure enough, the Ughmann went there, and even worse, decided to drag in the King, the lying rodent and Lord Downer:
No less an authority than Donald Trump agrees. At the February 2016 Republican debate in South Carolina, he called the Iraq war “a disgrace and an embarrassment”.
“I said it loud and clear,” Trump said. “ ‘You’ll destabilise the Middle East.’ That’s exactly what happened.”
Time for a snap of the King in his early glory, Donald Trump during a rally in 2016. Picture: AP /Steve Helber
What a relief not to be reminded of his aspirin paws, his strange neck marking, and his bonespurs ...
And at that point, the Ughmann went there, still fighting a completely useless war, bringing out the antipodean equivalents of Tony Bleagh ...
“John always had this view, rightly or wrongly, that the British had insights into the Middle East because of historical connections that were separate and, in some respects, better than those of the United States,” Turnbull said. “So, he was comforted by the assurances he was getting from London more than he was comforted by the assurances he was getting from Washington.”
The Iraq war was a case of imperial overreach that did great damage to the US domestically and internationally, and the consequences echo to this day.
But it should be remembered that president George W. Bush followed a long and public road to it. Congress authorised the invasion, the UN gave Iraq a final warning to comply with weapons inspections or face “serious consequences” and secretary of state Colin Powell made the case before the UN Security Council.
Howard believes his decision to support the US was right.
“I think both as a foreign policy decision, but also as an expression of our closeness to the United States,” he told Sky News. “I mean, we expected them in a pinch to help us, and although they didn’t physically need us, they wanted … a coalition of the willing.”
That coalition grew to 49 countries that supported the operation, though only a handful contributed combat troops. It is timely to remember that one of those countries was Denmark, which deployed a combat battalion to Basra and lost seven soldiers during four years of fighting.
Former foreign minister Alexander Downer believes “it was a great thing to get rid of Saddam Hussein”.
“I think that the counterfactual is the world would have been more unstable and worse with Saddam Hussein remaining in power, even though I can see the Americans handled the post-invasion period very, very badly,” Downer said.
Thank you Lord Downer, as full of wisdom and insight as ever, as the reptiles flung in a last AV distraction, 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.
Then the Ughmann produced a rousing finale ...
We cannot foresee the future but we know this much: we live in a more uncertain world than the one we thought was enduring after World War II. In many ways it has returned to type: the powerful do as they will and the weak suffer as they must.
This world demands prudence and that is an enduring value that this era could learn from the Howard government.
It began with budget discipline. On day one of its tenure, treasurer Peter Costello discovered he had inherited an $11bn deficit, despite the Keating government insisting the books were in surplus. That shortfall was about 2 per cent of GDP. The government took out the razor, made tough choices and two budgets later delivered a surplus. With persistent surpluses, net debt was reduced from 18 per cent of GDP in 1996 to zero a decade later. For a few brief years the commonwealth was worth more than it owed.
Now the budget has a decade of deficits ahead of it and net debt stands at about $620bn, or roughly 21 per cent of GDP. We are in no fit state to deal with a crisis. Budget repair is a national security priority.
And the Howard government understood that defending a nation began with defending its borders. It took a hard line on illegal boat arrivals, insisting that control of Australia’s borders was not a matter of sentiment but sovereignty.
Those decisions were bitterly contested domestically at the time and deplored in the polite parlours of Europe and denounced in the UN. Now most nations understand that deciding who comes to a country and the circumstances in which they come is a bedrock function of the state.
Nations that cannot control their finances can’t afford to defend themselves. Nations that cannot defend their borders risk societal collapse. And energy-poor nations are just poor.
It's the Xian law of the jungle, primal tooth and claw, with the power-mad feasting on the wretched like a lion munching on a lamb.
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back —
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep.
The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown,
Remember the Wolf is a Hunter — go forth and get food of thine own.
Keep peace with the Lords of the Jungle — the Tiger, the Panther, and Bear.
And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the Boar in his lair.
When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail,
Lie down till the leaders have spoken — it may be fair words shall prevail. (The rest here)
Fair words? Prevail?
Not if they've been befouled by the Ughmann.
And so again the pond apologises for presenting reptile talking points without submitting them to the occasional lash, check or balance, but all up that was some twenty minutes of reptile tedium, and there seemed to be no reason to add to the burden.
There have to be gentler ways to begin a weekend.
In the end, it was more than enough to simply complete the climb, so that punters could say, "there, I read that, and now I'll need the weekend to recover."
And in any case, soon enough there'll be an announcement and all will be well, except if you happened to stray into the path of a bomb ...
