In which "Ned" and Cameron try to be "clear" in dealing with the results of the Faux Noise follies ...

 

Choices, choices ... deep in the deep south, and back in black,

Should the pond have opened by celebrating ...

Sheesh, the hanging premier who should have been hung - instead they hung his name on a bridge - and Albie together, and even the statues wear black ...

There was even a cartoon related to the experience ...

... or should the pond have opened with a traditional Nazi swine joke, currently doing the rounds?

Go Tesla sales ...

Whatever, the pond's herpetology studies are going to be intermittent and interrupted during its sojourn in the deep south.

This weekend the pond will be heading off into a world free of the lizard Oz ...and so a couple of placeholders will likely replace the regular daily observations.

Meanwhile, the pond will press on as best it can ... though looking at today's offerings, it's possible to wonder about the point of it all.

The pond has been following the reptiles for decades now, and the lizard Oz has been in a downward slide, a regressive arc, with the last few years the worst of the worst ...

Talk about this day's wraparound, placing the rag somewhere between New Idea and the Women's Weekly ...

That's the visual excitement for the day, what's over on the extreme far right?

Unfortunately the pond could take only so much civic lessons from the reptiles with a straight face ...

Sayeth Dame Slap at the end of her piece...

Our freedom, safety and prosperity as a nation depend on people uniting around a core set of non-negotiable values – freedom of speech, separation of church and state, representative government, the rule of law, equality of all people, regardless of race and gender.
Diversity enriches us only when migrants respect that unique binding social contract. There are many cultural practices that should never be tolerated.

Ah yes, good old hatred, intolerance, bigotry, fear and loathing ...but at least the pond has an excuse for refusing to tolerate the reptiles and their cultural practices ...

Please, just wrap up the hectoring and the lecturing ...

This poor excuse for a civics test relies on empty buzz words – protests, fairness, diversity.
Civics lessons should take students on what British historian Robert Tombs described as a rollicking ride about Western civilisation. “The West,” Tombs said, “ravaged continents, burnt heretics, invented the gas chamber and the atom bomb, and almost destroyed itself in two world wars.”
But Western civilisation, when seen as a grand narrative, is also how we learned to end slavery, to defeat totalitarianism, to be ashamed of war and genocide and persecution. It is a story of innovation, one of unsettling change and impassioned debate.
It is, Tombs said, “an action-packed adventure story, not a philosophical treatise”.
That is how civics should be taught at school.
And by the time students reach year 12 they should understand that, as Rufus Black, former master of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne writes in The Importance of a Liberal and Sciences Education: “The triumph of freedom and reason is not a law of physics, it is just an idea that has captured our minds for a tiny period of human history. There is no certainty it will continue to do so unless we choose to argue for its values and ensure that we pass it on as it was passed on to us, hard won from authoritarian rule of many forms.”
That safe room for Jewish students at Macquarie University is proof of our collective failure. Parents, teachers, curriculum writers, politicians, academics, vice-chancellors can all play a part in making sure this is the lowest point of our educational failures. Not just for the sake of Jewish students. For the sake of all of us. 

And yet for the sake of the USA, Dame Slap donned a MAGA cap and wore it with pride ... a

And then ...

There you go, the result of a civics lesson from Dame Slap ...the triumph of freedumb and reason ...

Moving along, the pond was disappointed by the absence of the bromancer ... s

Surely he was the man to silence Bill Kristol, moaning in The Bulwark ...At the U.N., the U.S. Joins the Jackals

Sorry Bill, didn't you mean, per Colbert, the Axis of Weevils, and what a splendid axis it was ...

Belarus. Burkina Faso. Burundi. The Central African Republic. Equatorial Guinea. Eritrea. Haiti. Hungary. Iran. Israel. Mali. The Marshall Islands. Nicaragua. Niger. North Korea. Russia. Sudan. And the United States of America.
This is the roll of dishonor in which the government of the United States took its place yesterday. These were the 18 nations that, on the third anniversary of Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, voted in the United Nations General Assembly against a resolution condemning Russia’s aggression and war crimes and calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops.

There was a great fuss and hullabaloo ...

Instead of the bromancer, the reptiles assigned "Ned" to deal with the matter ...

Donald Trump’s strategic blunders threaten US authority, Trump accused Zelensky of talking the US into a war that couldn’t be won. He blamed him for starting the war. These claims are not just untrue. That’s being polite. They are lies and big lies. Most are straight Kremlin propaganda.

Poor "Ned" and the reptiles insisted on showing Faux Noise's heroes at the get go, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, in one of those uncredited collages that these days assault the eyeballs ...

"Ned" did his best to cope ...

The world should not be surprised. Donald Trump is being faithful to his words.
He hasn’t ended the Ukraine war in 24 hours but his commitment to end the war is beyond dispute and in the process Trump has launched the greatest strategic revolution in Europe for more than 70 years.
If Trump’s plan were merely to shock Europe into accepting its national responsibilities, increasing its defence budgets and accept­ing more of its security needs vis-a-vis the US, then such goals would make sense and be fully justified, within and outside Europe.
But Trump’s statements mock any claims this is the limit of his ambitions. His signals are unmistakeable – Trump likes Vladimir Putin as a fellow strongman and transactional rival while he loathes Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, an elected democratic leader who stayed in Kyiv rather than abandon his country and heroically has led its defence.
Trump blames Zelensky and Ukraine for the war. Last week Trump said: “You should never have started it. You could have made a deal.” He branded Zelensky “a dictator without elections”. He warned Zelensky needed to move fast “or he is not going to have a country left”. He wants Ukraine to hold elections but says Zelensky won’t because his ratings are down to 4 per cent.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during a press conference.

But what of the dreams and delusions of the 'leet reptiles these past few years? Perhaps best left to a 'toon ...

"Ned" pressed on ... and luckily he could only manage a five minute Everest climb this day ...

Trump accused Zelensky of talking the US into “spending $350bn to go into a war that couldn’t be won”. Incredibly, he blamed Zelensky for involving the US in the conflict.
These claims are not just untrue and the numbers false. That’s being polite. They are lies and big lies. Most are straight Kremlin propaganda. But some of Trump’s claims are so fantastic not even the Kremlin has thought them up.
Trump’s purpose is obvious – to discredit Zelensky, to deny his legitimacy, to weaken Ukraine, to drive Zelensky to acquiesce before a deal negotiated by Trump and Putin.
The facts tell a different story – Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, his goal being the subjugation of Ukraine, the elimination of its national sovereignty and the quest to restore imperial Russian greatness.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, commenting on who advised Putin on war, reportedly said: “Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great.”
Trump brands Zelensky the dictator when Putin is the dictator of 25 years. Trump brands Ukraine the villain when it is the victim. By exaggerating the war dead – Trump claims millions have died – his purpose is not to condemn Putin but to ruin Zelensky. But Trump’s hostility towards Zelensky transcends the personal – his attitude towards Ukraine is the deep insight into Trump’s transforming world views as US President.
Trump has no sense of a democracy under attack – something US democratic allies might reflect upon. What future instance of a democracy under attack won’t he accept? Trump won’t even accept the truth of the war – an act of aggression by Russia – because his mind is geared to great power legitimacy and sphere of influence entitlement.
Indeed, there is little evidence Trump believes in collective security, the essence of the US alliance system since World War II.

Oh come on "Ned" ... get with the team, get with the agenda ...

Insight, vision, Hannity, on our way to a piece of this and a piece of that ...pay attention "Ned"!

Trump’s core message, recently conveyed by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, is that the US has no role as a security guarantor for Ukraine in any peace settlement and this would become the responsibility of European and non-European forces in a “non-NATO mission”.
Trump’s view, also conveyed by Hegseth, is that the US is shifting its global priorities away from Europe and NATO to the American continental homeland and the Indo-Pacific region.
Herein lies the ultimate meaning of the MAGA movement – reducing US global responsibility by prioritising its hi-tech, domestic tax cutting, economic reindustrial­isation and cultural revisionism.

Then came another snap, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are pictured before a meeting in Helsinki, July, 2018.

Would this low comedy cop a mention?

Oh it was sweet ...

France’s Macron Brutally Fact Checks Trump to His Face
French President Emmanuel Macron issued a fact check on President Donald Trump while sitting next to him in the Oval Office on Monday—a moment that appeared to leave the U.S. leader rolling his eyes.
Trump claimed Europe was “loaning” money to Ukraine and would force the country to pony up once a peace deal is reached with Russia, suggesting U.S. allies in Europe had less to lose because they would eventually “get their money back.”
Macron was having none of it. He touched Trump’s arm to quiet him and then set the record straight: money given to Ukraine to ward off a Russian invasion was theirs to keep. If any money is returned, he said, it would come from frozen Russian assets.
The French leader added that Europeans had footed the majority of Ukraine’s wartime economic support—not the U.S.
“No, in fact, to be frank, we paid,” Macron said to Trump. “We paid 60 percent of the total effort, and it was through, like the U.S., loans, guarantee, grants, and we provided real money, to be clear.”
Trump smirked as he was called out in real time and shook his hand to suggest the 60 percent figure was not precise. He then appeared to mouth “OK” and smirked as his French counterpart continued his fact-check.

.. but probably not "Ned's" thing, what with him wanting to end in a hope against hope ...

This US retreat is the conclusion being drawn by European leaders. But whether they possess the unity and the political willpower to revive their nations and implement the vast increases in defence and security resources now demanded of them is another question entirely.
Putin would welcome all these signals. His first goal is to take Ukraine via a settlement that leaves Ukraine permanently weakened with inadequate guarantees. His related goals are to drive a wedge between Europe and the US, fatally weaken NATO and boost Russia’s negotiating power vis-a-vis Europe.
Such goals look far more achievable today than a few months ago.
In his analysis of the outlook published last weekend in The Times, Max Hastings said Trump was driving “the post-1945 security architecture of the West to the brink of a precipice”. Therefore, it seems wise to assume “that Trump and his acolytes mean what they say: that he regards Ukraine as being rightfully a Russian vassal state” and “the defence of Europe is no longer an American priority”.
In his article Hastings quoted Australia’s greatest journalist, Chester Wilmot, from his 1952 classic The Struggle for Europe, an extended analysis of America’s naivety in misunderstanding the nature of Russian power at the conclusion of the war.
Trump calling Putin a “genius” summons up all the deluded history and highlights our current fear – let’s say what so many are thinking – that we have in Trump an American president who is strategically naive and historically ignorant but is also convinced that he is a genius.

So how does "Ned" cope with it all? 

Why he pulls a Henry and heads off into the past. The grim reality heralded by Faux Noise was too much for him ...

Go on "Ned", amble back into the dim, distant past, hug a warm blanket for comfort ...

When the US President lies about the biggest war in Europe since 1945 it is time to learn from the 1930s and 40s. Pull out your William Shirer and your Wilmot, the journalists who were there and understood that when leaders tell big lies they have a purpose – it is to fabricate the historical record to justify the historical departure on which they are embarking. Of course, the war needs to end. But why has Trump given Putin so much even before the negotiations? What deal is this the art of?

The reptiles slipped into the archive for an inexpensive snap to help soothe "Ned's" nerves ... Australian war correspondent Chester Wilmot

It was what "Ned" needed to give him hope. Somehow, in some way, that which News Corp and Faux Noise had wrought might yet be put back together, in classic Humpty Dumpty style ...

Many uncertainties lie ahead. Might Trump pull back? Will he grasp the danger of over-reacting? Will his apologists who promote the dictum “take him seriously but not literally” be proven right? Let’s hope for progress on each count.
But don’t be fooled. Trump’s core beliefs throw into question the notion he will pursue intensified strategic deterrence against China. Trump asks to be judged by the wars he ends and the wars he avoids. Obviously, he sees China and Xi Jinping as more formidable than Putin, but he comes with the same beliefs – that Xi is a strongman with whom he can deal and transact.
The problem is doing deals that end up favouring Putin and Xi. The only law they understand is the law of brute force. If Trump sells out Ukraine the take-out from Beijing is that he’ll be more likely to sell out Taiwan. What else would they think? The worse mistake Australia could make is to think Trump’s strategic retreat from Europe is the prelude to a strategic step-up in Asia. It isn’t.
On the contrary, the big lesson so far is Trump’s view that strategic guarantees and potential adventurism must be reduced or avoided because they hurt the American homeland. He penalises Europe on trade while demanding it do more on defence. He seeks to reduce America’s strategic commitments while demanding that its trade partners do more to assist the US trade deficit. In just a few weeks he has alienated many nations and given China with fresh opportunities.
Hastings concluded his article with a salutary warning: don’t give up on America: “For the here and now, Europe must strive to save Ukraine from Trump as much as from Putin. But for the future, the American genius – and I use the word advisedly – remains the best hope for the light and leading of the West through the balance of the century.” Trump is both a transforming but a flawed president – and US power will survive beyond him.

US power will survive? It's just a kind of Kafka transformation, and we'll soon learn to love cockroaches?

Good luck with that one "Ned" ...feel free to join the valiant opposition, striving at this very minute to defeat the Vandals and the Visigoths ...

And so to a bonus from Cameron Stewart, if only to prove that Cam is a second eleven player up against the bromancer ...

Is Vladimir Putin serious about Ukraine peace plan?, The outlines of a potential peace deal in Ukraine are fast taking shape, but is Vladimir Putin playing with Donald Trump?

D'oh, why must dunces always frame things as questions? What's the point of that stupid strategy? Why must the pond join in? Have years of reptile studies produced mental decline in the pond?

Never mind, it was only a three minute read, and it began with a snap of the usual suspect ... Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday. Picture: AFP

Cam stayed in questioning, puzzled mode ...

The outlines of a potential peace deal in Ukraine are fast taking shape, but the great mystery remains – is Vladimir Putin really interested in peace, or is he playing with Donald Trump?
Trump is scattering all precedents aside in his headlong rush to strike a deal with the Russian dictator to end the war, offending everyone from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to Europe and the UN.
The US President’s appeasement of Putin so far has unnerved the Western world, with the latest insult being the US decision to vote with Russia against a General Assembly resolution calling out Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
The US vote, on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, was a craven sellout to Putin, but that’s how Trump has chosen to play this game. Yet if Trump succeeds in flattering Putin to the negotiating table and striking a fair ceasefire deal, Trump will be forgiven for his wildly unconventional approach.
But the great mystery is what Putin is willing to concede in any potential deal. While everyone else has talked, Putin has remained silent.

Sky Noise offered a solution:

Sky News host Danica De Giorgio says US President Donald Trump “simply” wants the war to be over in Ukraine. “I do not think he has sold out Ukraine just yet, though I do not like his dialogue about it,” Ms De Giorgio said. “I think Donald Trump simply wants this war to be over.”

The pond had never heard of Danica - such is the burden and loss at not watching Sky Noise - but is always eager to learn ...

She's an MC, and therefore in a tremendous position to understand the inner thinking of the Cantaloupe Clown?

Does he want to hand Ukraine over to Vlad the sociopath? No, he wants the war to be over, he's the John Lennon of our times ...

Have faith ... she's a member of the Jury, which means she can grok a reality TV show man ...

Sorry, the pond didn't mean to wander off into the Sky Noise wilderness, back to Cam ...

Trump made the massive claim, in his press conference with French leader Emmanuel Macron in Washington, that Putin had told him he would agree with the stationing of European troops in Ukraine as part of a peace deal. If true, then this is a significant development given that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told US officials in Saudi Arabia last week that the Kremlin would not accept European troops stationed in Ukraine.
This is an essential plank in any ceasefire deal because Ukraine would never accept any deal in which European troops did not play a part in its future security.
France and Britain are reported to be developing plans for a 30,000-strong force of mostly European troops to be stationed in Ukraine but not along the actual frontline, which is likely to become a demilitarised zone.
But Trump speaking on behalf of Putin should not instil anyone with confidence that this is Moscow’s true position until we hear from the Russian leader himself.
The other big question hanging over this peace process is whether Trump is willing to give security guarantees to any European military force in Ukraine, short of deploying US troops.
Macron implored Trump at the White House that Europe needed “solidarity” from the US to provide security guarantees to Ukraine in any peace deal.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who will also visit Trump in Washington this week, has also said a “US backstop” to security guarantees is needed to remove any temptation by Putin to reinvade Ukraine in the future.

The reptiles then slipped in a "report" ... The United Nations Security Council on Monday adopted a U.S.-drafted resolution on the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine that takes a neutral position on the conflict as U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to broker an end to the war. Nyima Pratten reports.

Poor "Ned", there's lies, damned lies and then there's Sky Noise misrepresentations ...

Remember this one Mr Pratten?

Gone, disappeared down a Sky Noise black hole ...

Meanwhile, Cam stayed uncertain, in a kind of Scientology grey zone ... "unclear" ...

A Clear is defined by the Church of Scientology as a person who no longer has a "reactive mind", and is therefore free from negative effects purported to be produced by the "reactive mind". A Clear is said to be "at cause over" (that is, in control of) their "mental energy" (their thoughts), and able to think clearly even when faced with the very situations that in earlier times caused them difficulty. The next level of spiritual development is that of an Operating Thetan. A person who has not reached a state of Clear is called a preclear. (wiki)

The pond is always eager to help, and to get Cameron clear ...

What this means in reality is unclear. It could range from US military support for the European mission to a straight pledge to give military assistance if that force was attacked by Russia in years to come.
Trump has given no hint about how he feels on this issue. He does not want any deal that could suck America into a new war so it seems unlikely that he would provide any guarantee of automatic US military support for Kyiv.
These negotiations are now moving fast, with Trump claiming a deal might be made within weeks.

Oh yes, that's clear enough ...

And so to the wrap-up, with denialism and hope still inextricably mixed together in the reptile stew ...

 Zelensky is likely to visit Washington in the near future to try to patch over the tensions between the two leaders caused by Trump’s outburst last week that the Ukraine leader was a “dictator without elections”.
But the growing speculation about a peace deal will remain precisely that until the one key player – Putin – shows his hand.
“I really believe that he wants to make a deal,” Trump said of Putin. “I may be wrong, but I believe he wants to make a deal.”
We will soon see whether Trump is right, or whether Putin is leading Trump and the West into an embarrassing dead end.

Sure, Cameron soon it will all be perfectly "clear" ... though voting with Russia and North Korea seems clear enough and might even be a clue ...

Here, have an immortal Rowe to help you understand ...

Still unclear, Cameron? It's all in the detail ...or perhaps in the teddy bear ...