In which the hole in the bucket man holds down his usual Friday slot ...

 

 

 

 

 

The pond couldn't help but notice the shameless lack of shame at the lizard Oz, what with the treekiller edition featuring yet another ad from that cockroach of political parties at the bottom of the page ...

Never mind the spreading of FUD, the reptile philosophy is simple ... take Clive's money and run.

At this point the pond would like to detour to an amusing piece in Crikey concerning the doxxing of the former furniture salesman ...

 

 

 

The pond is just a blog, free and wild in the wilderness, and its recycling of Crikey's trolling attracted not the slightest interest. 

But the pond isn't sure if that link will get punters past the paywall, so just in case, here's where it started to warm up ...

 

 

 

As a rootless cosmopolitan, the pond felt a rush, a glow, and an aspirational desire to be called a poltroon ... but instead had to return to normal reptile duties, and do a survey of the top of the reptile digital page ...

 

 

 

Talk about depressing ... there's the Swiss bank account man coaching SloMo, as he's wont to do, and the reptiles now transferring all the action to the private sector, when Cathy Wilcox had already come up with the perfect contractual solution ...

 

 

 

By golly that's better than any of the contracts the pond has seen drawn up by "sovereign" citizens ... but after signing the document, after all the attempted distractions, there was no way out ...

It was past time for the pond to report for reptile duty, and perhaps attempt to fix the hole in the bucket one more time with our dear old fuddy duddy Henry, in his usual distraught and paranoid condition, but strangely without reference to Peloponnesian War, which would have provided all the insights needed for the current crisis ...

The headline is a nonsense, it should go without saying, but it does neatly encapsulate our Henry's thesis ...

The problem of course is that all this blather about Russia is entirely beside the point when it comes to Vietnam and the domino theory.

After the Korean war and the stalemate that ensued, and the shock of primitively armed Chinese peasants dishing it out to US forces, the domino theory that took hold in the United States was much more concerned with the notion that the Chinese Communist party might do another Korea in Vietnam.

Like many American concerns, it was a delusion, with the Vietnamese Communists perfectly willing to take aid from all and sundry, but also with an interest in keeping the Chinese at arm's length ... (they even managed a border war in early 1979) ...

In the world of alternative history and wikis, it could all have been different ...

The surprise relations between the communist-backed Viet Minh and the OSS marked the beginning of US involvement in Vietnam. In those days, the United States, sympathizing with Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh, supported the group in order to overthrow Japanese rule in Indochina. Later, Ho Chi Minh asked to set up an alliance with the United States, which was approved by U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt with support from U. S. General Dwight Eisenhower. However, following a series of incidents in Vietnam including the killing of A. Peter Dewey, a pro-Vietnamese independence officer of the OSS by the Viet Minh, as well as the sudden death of Roosevelt, which brought Harry S. Truman to power, it was never established.

But back to the tone deaf Henry thinking that a few heavy tanks and other support made it all about Russia ...

 

Jimmy Carter a utopian hawk? Waiter, a large serve of what the hole in the bucket man is drinking ...

What he's most proud of, though, is that he didn't fire a single shot. Didn't kill a single person. Didn't lead his country into a war – legal or illegal. "We kept our country at peace. We never went to war. We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. But still we achieved our international goals. We brought peace to other people, including Egypt and Israel. We normalised relations with China, which had been non-existent for 30-something years. We brought peace between US and most of the countries in Latin America because of the Panama Canal Treaty. We formed a working relationship with the Soviet Union."
It's the simple fact of not going to war that, given what came next, should be recognised. "In the last 50 years now, more than that," he says, "that's almost a unique achievement." He was bitterly opposed to both Iraq wars. "Iraq was just a terrible mistake. I thought so in Iraq 1, and I was against it in Iraq 2." And it's not just George W Bush who has blood on his hands, he says, but Tony Blair too: "I don't know what went on in private meetings when Tony Blair agreed to it. But had Bush not gotten that tacit support from Blair, I don't know if the course of history might have been different."

Thank you Graudian, that's certainly an idiosyncratic brand of utopian hawkishness ... now please, do go on ...

 

So it was Mikhail Gorbachev's policy choices that did down the Soviet Union? So what does the Office of the Historian have to say about all that?

....By 1991, the Bush administration reconsidered policy options in light of the growing level of turmoil within the Soviet Union. Three basic options presented themselves. The administration could continue to support Gorbachev in hopes of preventing Soviet disintegration. Alternately, the United States could shift support to Yeltsin and the leaders of the Republics and provide support for a controlled restructuring or possible breakup of the Soviet Union. The final option consisted of lending conditional support to Gorbachev, leveraging aid and assistance in return for more rapid and radical political and economic reforms.
Unsure about how much political capital Gorbachev retained, Bush combined elements of the second and third options. The Soviet nuclear arsenal was vast, as were Soviet conventional forces, and further weakening of Gorbachev could derail further arms control negotiations. To balance U.S. interests in relation to events in the Soviet Union, and in order to demonstrate support for Gorbachev, Bush signed the START treaty at the Moscow Summit in July 1991. Bush administration officials also, however, increased contact with Yeltsin.
The unsuccessful August 1991 coup against Gorbachev sealed the fate of the Soviet Union. Planned by hard-line Communists, the coup diminished Gorbachev’s power and propelled Yeltsin and the democratic forces to the forefront of Soviet and Russian politics. Bush publicly condemned the coup as “extra-constitutional,” but Gorbachev’s weakened position became obvious to all. He resigned his leadership as head of the Communist party shortly thereafter—separating the power of the party from that of the presidency of the Soviet Union. The Central Committee was dissolved and Yeltsin banned party activities. A few days after the coup, Ukraine and Belarus declared their independence from the Soviet Union. The Baltic States, which had earlier declared their independence, sought international recognition.
Amidst quick, dramatic changes across the landscape of the Soviet Union, Bush administration officials prioritized the prevention of nuclear catastrophe, the curbing of ethnic violence, and the stable transition to new political orders. On September 4, 1991, Secretary of State James Baker articulated five basic principles that would guide U.S. policy toward the emerging republics: self-determination consistent with democratic principles, recognition of existing borders, support for democracy and rule of law, preservation of human rights and rights of national minorities, and respect for international law and obligations. The basic message was clear—if the new republics could follow these principles, they could expect cooperation and assistance from the United States. Baker met with Gorbachev and Yeltsin in an attempt to shore up the economic situation and develop some formula for economic cooperation between the republics and Russia, as well as to determine ways to allow political reforms to occur in a regulated and peaceful manner. In early December, Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus met in Brest to form the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), effectively declaring the demise of the Soviet Union.

Hmm, seems there were more fingers in that Soviet pie than just poor old Mikhail's ... but never mind, we're at the last short gobbet ... and the real reason for Henry's anxious scribbles becomes clear. 

Like the bloviating bromancer and the nervous nelly "Ned", he's got the fear ... and it's not about Russia or Vlad the impaler, it's just as it was back in the 1950s, with the Chinese hordes poised to take over the world ...

Yes, the reptiles have bunged on a war with China, and only know are they starting to realise that the isolationist streak in the United States runs deep and on both sides of the aisle ... and after four years of folly under their orange god, the tinpot mango Mussolini, the United States has retired to lick its wounds ...

And so to the survey of what's on offer at the bottom of the page ...

 

 

Ah the federal government has provided another moonlighting columnist, this time in the form of the new Flinty one, ahh me scurvy knaves, avast the SloMo main sail, serving up more of the usual neo-Flinty drivel about the ABC.

Naturally the pond turned to the lizard Oz editorialist for relief ...

 

 

 

 

Yes, the reptiles got pinged again, but here's the real joke, and it's not just the irony of having Flinty come out and rail at the ABC,  just as the reptiles blather about free speech and a press empowered to interrogate issues without fear or favour. Not in Flinty's world ...

 

 

 

 

But let's leave aside the whining, complaining Flinty one, the thing that really gets the pond going is the cause of the reptiles' complaint ...

 

 

 

There's a lot more, but the pond isn't even sure it can link to it, given the APC's half-arsed search function and way of listing complaints,  but here's the nub of the matter ...

Note the dates ... the first article complained about appeared on 9th August 2019 and the last one on 29th June 2020, and yet here we are in September talking about a reptiles publishing the 20th August 2021 adjudication on Friday.

Over a year has lapsed, and the question must be asked yet again: what earthly use or purpose does the APC serve?

Slower than Senate minority leader turtle and as useless as a Republican taste for underage sex, and in any case stating the bleeding obvious.

Everyone with half a clue knows that the reptiles and the Taliban are as one when it comes to TG folk, and that transphobia litters the rag like Covid droppings in a sewer ...

That's the reptile way ... and there are plenty of other minorities, and the other and the different that cop the reptile Taliban treatment ...

What can be said with some certainty is that a press council ruling delayed is a press council ruling denied any relevance, meaning or usefulness ... and so it makes easy pickings for the lizard Oz editorialist ...

 

Indeed, indeed. It goes without saying that the Taliban's views on the role of women, and their shock and horror at TG folk should be widely publicised, seeing as how it can be justified as being in the public interest, and if a few bleeding hearts take it personally, why it's the reptile and Taliban duty to cause offence, distress and prejudice in pursuit of truth, justice, and the lizard Oz and Taliban way ...

Why coming to a cinema near you we might soon have the whole abortion debate opened up again, so that the local lizard Oz Taliban can do that jig with the Texas Taliban ...

Never mind, on to the final gobbet of self-justification for reptile obsessions and fear mongering...

Oh fucketty fuck, not the old saw of cancel culture. Do they never get tired of that tiresome bullshit?

Meanwhile, what cheer to know that the reptiles will continue with their transphobia and hostility to TG folk, and dress it up as readers deserving the truth, in much the same way that reptile readers are served the "truth" about climate science, dear sweet coal, vexatious gays, furriners and such like ...

Luckily after all that agitation,  the infallible Pope could help the pond relax with a celebration of freedumb ... but first a message from our sponsor, or at least the Daily Beast ...

 

 

A horse deworming treatment as modern medicine! And war is peace, and freedumb is slavery and ignorance is strenth.

Why that's up there with reptile transphobia and coal as the solution to climate science ...

Take it away infallible Pope, celebrate our Freedumb and the joys of gold standard Glayds and everyone home by Xmas...