Paul Colgan

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Paul Colgan

Paul Colgan

@Colgo

Rock music, economics, rugby. Views entirely my own.

Joined Nisan 2007
5.1K Following14.6K Followers
Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡
Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡@shanaka86·
Three Australian sailors were lying in their bunks when a torpedo killed 87 Iranians on the other side of the hull. USS Charlotte, a Los Angeles-class attack submarine, fired two Mark 48 torpedoes at Iranian frigate IRIS Dena on 4 March in international waters forty nautical miles south of Galle, Sri Lanka. One torpedo hit. The ship sank. Eighty-seven Iranian sailors died. Thirty-two were rescued by the Sri Lankan Navy. Sixty-one remain missing. Three Royal Australian Navy personnel were aboard Charlotte. They were embedded under the AUKUS Pillar 1 submarine training pathway, part of a rotation of over 130 Australian sailors learning to operate nuclear-powered submarines that Australia will own by the 2030s. When the order came to fire, the three Australians were ordered to their sleeping quarters. They stayed there for the duration of the attack. Prime Minister Albanese confirmed this on 6 March after a National Security Committee meeting: “Three Royal Australian Navy personnel were aboard. They were ordered to their sleeping quarters. No Australian personnel have participated in any offensive action against Iran.” This is not a story about cowardice or conspiracy. It is a story about the legal architecture of twenty-first-century warfare. Australia is not a belligerent in the US-Iran war. Australian law prohibits offensive military action without parliamentary authorisation. AUKUS protocols, formalised in the 2023 Optimal Pathway trilateral agreement, define all personnel exchanges as non-combat training. The three sailors were aboard to learn. Not to fight. When the submarine they were learning on became a weapon, the command physically separated them from the act of war by putting them in bed. The sleeping quarters order is the legal firewall between training and combat, between alliance and belligerency, between being on the submarine and being part of what the submarine does. It is a fifteen-metre walk from a bunk to a torpedo tube. That fifteen metres is the distance between peace and war for an entire nation. The absurdity is the point. Modern alliance warfare requires partners to be close enough to learn but far enough to deny. Present on the platform but absent from the event. Embedded in the crew but excluded from the mission. The AUKUS framework that will deliver Australia nuclear-powered submarines by the 2030s was stress-tested not in a tabletop exercise but in a live torpedo attack on an Iranian warship with Australian sailors asleep one compartment away. The Iranians who died did not know three Australians were aboard. The Australians who were aboard did not participate in their deaths. The submarine that killed 87 people carried three passengers whose government’s official position is that they were sleeping. The legal record will show that Australia was not involved. The physical record will show that Australia was fifteen metres away. This is how alliances work now. You train on the weapon. You sleep through its use. You wake up in a world where your partner sank a warship and your government says you were not there. Three sailors. One torpedo. Eighty-seven dead. And a legal fiction measured in the distance between a bunk and a firing console. Full analysis below. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ tweet media
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Ali
Ali@marshmarigold·
I’m watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the first time…… this is amazing
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Patrick Horan
Patrick Horan@patrickjhoran·
@Colgo Yelling at the clouds mate, craic is entirely gamified now 😁 Have an excellent one!
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Paul Colgan
Paul Colgan@Colgo·
Happy St Patrick's Day everyone! Also STOP SPLITTING THE G AND JUST DRINK YOUR PINTS Sláinte!
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Il Tricolore 🇮🇹
Il Tricolore 🇮🇹@rugbyitalia96·
So nervous. Never felt like this before a game against England. The team we never beat. Everything crossed
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Paul Colgan
Paul Colgan@Colgo·
@Federugby Congrats amiche!! Very happy for the Italian rugby family 👏
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Paul Colgan
Paul Colgan@Colgo·
It's that time again! Waratahs
GIF
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Paul Colgan
Paul Colgan@Colgo·
Today's Wordle will get a lot of people I think Difficulty level ratcheted up after the double word use controversy (Wordlegate?) of January 2026.
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Kevin → Plant Daddy
Kevin → Plant Daddy@KevinEspiritu·
McDonald's CEO is still clearing. I've now even come around on the OG viral video of his. We simply didn't understand his game... HE IS A CEO - it's a product to him. Apparently someone in the test kitchen asked what his favorite food was and he just said, "Fish, I eat a lot of fish." Didn't even think to answer with an item that the company he's the CEO of produces. This is a raw input:output organism we're dealing with Burger King CEO went for the obvious transparent burgermogging attempt by taking a bigger bite. So obviously a mog attempt that it actually puts him below McDonald's CEO because he "tried." Wendy's CEO attempt is a nothingburger. It lacks the autistic CEO authenticity of McDonald's and even the obvious marketing move of Burger King There's also the first mover advantage here. McDonald's CEO is gaining status with every subsequent CEO validating his format by recreating it We seriously underestimated this man
FearBuck@FearedBuck

Wendy’s U.S. president takes a few bites of a Wendy’s burger after the Burger King CEO went viral for taking a huge bite of his burger and the McDonald’s CEO went viral for barely taking a bite.

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Paul Colgan
Paul Colgan@Colgo·
Now THIS is monitoring the situation
Dr. Malcolm Davis 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦@Dr_M_Davis

It's interesting how 24 hour news media and modern social media have changed our ability to watch news events as they happen. Tonight, in Canberra, I'm watching the unfolding US and Israeli attacks on #Iran, and the on-going Iranian retaliation. I have @CNN and @SkyNewsAust both streaming live on my PC. I have multiple Twitter @X feeds updating with the latest news. I have other social media monitoring in the background. I have CNN, Sky and BBC news websites up. I'm monitoring air traffic on @flightradar24 and shipping on @MarineTraffic - all spread across two 49" Ultrawide displays. And tomorrow, I'll see how I can incorporate AI into this system. I think back 35 years, once again, in Canberra, to Operation Desert Storm and Desert Sabre - the invasion of Kuwait and attack on Saddam's Iraq in 1991. I remember sitting in my living room and the only news source I had was CNN which was then being aired on one of the Australian commercial TV channels. That's it... no social media, no real time info on websites... websites didn't really exist then. Back to monitoring this rapidly unfolding war in 2026.

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