Sucker Punch

Further moral dilemmas have erupted in Australia, quite apart from the ongoing concerns about its legislators' ethnic purity. The head of the colony's overseas intelligence agency has been photographed mugging with the Philippine charmer Rodrigo Duterte. The spymaster imitated the hand gesture used by Duterte during the latter's trumpsteropathic presidential campaign last year, in which he pledged to adopt a no-nonsense, common-sense approach to the war on drugs. Since his election, the police have encountered a conspicuous absence of red tape, and for the past few months the army has been giving the shock-and-awe treatment to the city of Marawi. Since the pretext is that some local hooligans are operating under the Islamic State franchise, Duterte has put twenty million people under martial law and the USA and Australia have eagerly leapt in with offers of military support. It remains as yet unclear whether Australian concerns over the spymaster's clowning stem from fears of being sucked into another military fiasco, or apprehension at being associated with a man suspected of sharing values with Liam Fox.