In which the pond is forced to do the unthinkable ...

 

Relax, take a deep breath, perhaps sob quietly into a hankie, or sit on a Melbourne park bench in deep contemplation, as a growing level of fear and concern courses through the body ...

Does Ainslie Meares's wise park bench words help? 

The bromancer continues missing, either AWOL or MIA.

It was way back on February 26th that he broke bread and insights with the hive mind with Australia, not Europe, is the big freeloader of US power, The real lesson for Australia to understand is that every tough bit of scolding Trump has applied to feckless Europeans applies to us only a hundred times more strongly.

What of the war with China? What of all that has happened while the bromancer has been as mute as a monastic? 

Records are being broken, little Marco is being humiliated, it's a MAGA game show, a pack of tumbling Alice cards ...

Silence, and even worse tomorrow is a travel day for the pond and so dear sweet Henry, that marvel of historical mendacity, will not appear, but instead the pond will be forced to deploy a placeholder ...

The pond guarantees that our Henry will turn up on the weekend, somewhere, somehow ... 

Two reptile losses of such staggering significance would be too much for a possum to bear ...it's like a cyclonic depression bearing down on the pond ...

In the meantime, the pond must make do with lightweights and reptile ne'er do wells of the basest kind ...

That cyclone seems to have distracted the reptiles, and over on the extreme far right, the pickings were slim ...

Dame Groan simply had to be the Friday placeholder - no one else could manage the job - perhaps with Jennings of the fifth form as back-up ...

That left the pond in a pickle, in a black hole. 

Dare the pond do it? Dare the pond go with petulant Peta, long banned from this forum?

Here's the logic. Any reptile, even petulant Peta, going through some form of FAFO, had to be given a guernsey ... to see her take a swim against the Faux Noise tide had to be fun ...

It’s hard to see America made great again if this is the message, There is much to support in the Trump agenda. But it’s almost unimaginable that any previous president would have made a media spectacle of a brave ally so that he could look strong.

The reptiles kicked off proceedings with a clever collage snap ... Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin have much to discuss.

Then the pond began to sup on the petulant one's FAFO tears. 

It turned out that she was no substitute for Henry, as she was stuck somewhere back with Thomas Carlyle ...

Unlike the Marxists and other determinists who think history is shaped by vast impersonal forces beyond anyone’s control, the obvious truth is that individuals make history.
Think of how the world would have been different had Lord Halifax and not Winston Churchill succeeded Neville Chamberlain as British prime minister in 1940: Britain would have sued for peace on the best terms it could get from Hitler.
Likewise, how different would history have been if anyone other than Margaret Thatcher had been British PM after the invasion of the Falkland Islands; or if Pope John Paul II had not been there to ­inspire the Christians of Eastern Europe against their godless communist overlords?
Imagine if John Monash had been killed by a sniper at Gallipoli, or if King Harold hadn’t looked skywards at the wrong moment at the Battle of Hastings.
Indeed, the more we’ve learned about the Nazi sympathies of Edward VIII, the more grateful I am that twice-­divorced Wallis Simpson caught his eye, and the world instead got his brother to lead us through those dark days of World War II and give us his daughter for a historic 70-year reign.

Excellent stuff, forget Herbert Spencer, Tolstoy, Providence and all that jazz.

Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace features criticism of great-man theories as a recurring theme in the philosophical digressions. According to Tolstoy, the significance of great individuals is imaginary; as a matter of fact they are only "history's slaves," realizing the decree of Providence.

Instead, valiant Maggie, Jeanne d'Arc for the ages, made an appearance ... Would the Falkland Islands still be in British hands had Margaret Thatcher not been prime minister? Picture: AFP

Carry on Petulant One ...

Who’s in charge, at critical moments, can determine the fate of nations and the wider world. Indeed, nothing is more significant than the human factor in history, given that it’s individuals’ responses to circumstances that determine their ultimate impact.

Individuals' responses?

Then it was time for the Petulant One to brave the Faux Noise hordes ...

Suppose Volodymyr Zelensky had accepted then-president Joe Biden’s offer of a chopper ride to safety on February 24, 2022, when Russia’s tanks first rolled across the border in what was expected to be the quickest of conquests.
No doubt some Ukrainian military units would have put up a sporadic resistance before being slaughtered, and a few hardy civilians would have been defiant before being butchered.
But organised resistance would inevitably have collapsed as soon as the nation’s leader had decided that discretion was the better part of valour.
And just like the earlier Biden-orchestrated scuttle from Kabul, that may have emboldened Vladimir Putin’s military adventurism, and the wider West would again have been humiliated at the hands of the Islamist, fascist and communist dictatorships seeking its destruction.
Instead, Zelensky stayed at his post, survived the numerous death squads sent to kill him, and the precision munitions targeting his various headquarters, to lead his nation in an against-the-odds struggle for three years.

The reptiles followed that up with a snap of the man recently humiliated by a lapdog knob and his king, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky is still fighting for security guarantees for his war-torn country. Picture: AFP

But Faux Noise was triumphant, jubilant, the longest, most boring speech in American history, full of knavish lies, had been a triumph and they danced in the streets with the polls ...

Everybody and his dog was flung into the fray to provide adoring coverage ...

The polls were alive with the sounds of Cantaloupe Caligula music ...

How could the Petulant One take a stand against the renewal of the American Dream?

And yes, his country has paid a heavy price: with millions of Ukrainians sheltering in neighbouring countries, many cities devastated under indiscriminate bombardment, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians killed or maimed because they decided that it was better to risk death than see their national freedom and independence once more crushed by an imperial bully.
Would it have been better for Zelensky to have told his people that resistance was futile, and they might as well resign themselves to once more living in an oppressed corner of the Russian empire?
Almost certainly, fewer people would have died, even in a brutal Russian occupation, but this raises the existential question that’s echoed through history of whether it’s better to live on your knees or die on your feet.
That’s the question more than 100,000 Australians have resolved in the course of our national existence, largely fighting for others’ freedom, and who earlier generations decided should be honoured at the Australian War Memorial.
In any event, the Ukrainian people, almost to a man and a woman, made the choice to fight, and who is any outsider to say they were wrong – even the President of the United States.

Oh come now, it's easy, just a quick change of script was needed ...

The Petulant One's tendency to FAFO heresies kept rolling out ...

After initially saying a “limited” incursion would be no great issue, Biden and America’s erstwhile European allies gave the Ukrainians enough weaponry not to lose but not enough to succeed in ejecting the Russians from their land. Now, Biden’s successor has decided that none of that should have been gifted to the Ukrainians as America’s contribution to the defeat of contemporary fascism in Europe, but that it must subsequently be paid for by the gifting of much of Ukraine’s latent mineral wealth.
After falsely claiming Zelensky was a “dictator” who’d “started the war”, and was only keeping it going to ride on an American “gravy train”, the leader of the free world unceremoniously expelled from the Oval Office the world’s greatest freedom fighter for the temerity of explaining the mineral deal should also be accompanied by security guarantees.

The reptiles hastily produced another snap ... The Oval Office confrontation between Zelensky and Trump has left the world order in unfamiliar territory. Picture: AFP

Petulant Peta tried to stay the course ...

Could Zelensky have handled it better and said what he said off camera? Absolutely. And of course, if an apology is what it takes to get a renewed American commitment to his country, Zelensky shouldn’t be too proud to make it.
But it’s almost unimaginable that any previous president would have made a media spectacle of a brave ally so that he could look strong. Some have likened Donald Trump’s seeming willingness to force the Ukrainians to make peace with the Russians to Chamberlain’s surrender of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis – but that’s not quite fair because at least Chamberlain, in anticipation of a coming war, massively ramped up aircraft production.

Eventually the Petulant One had to fold, and she dug deep to offer up a gigantic billy goat butt ...

To give the President his due, it should be conceded that – Ukraine and Israel aside – America’s allies have largely been free-riding on America and should have been doing much more for their own national security for at least a generation.
And his domestic agenda, such as securing borders, eliminating government waste, ending the gender confusion, and stopping the net-zero madness, will make America stronger.
There is much to support.
Even the tariffs make sense if applied against China, which has taken advantage of free trade but not practised it; or if applied in a highly selective way, to restore America’s industrial base rather than to punish friends like Canada.

Never mind billy goat butt, it was but a short butt with a brave maple syrup eater thrust into view  ... Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warns about Trump's threat to Canadian sovereignty by imposing 25 per cent tariffs on all Canadian goods. Picture: AFP

Brave moose, as the Petulant One wrapped up her FAFO moment ...

Still, it’s hard to see America made great again if the Trump administration’s message to the world is that the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.
If, as is claimed, the real objective is to force the Europeans to do more for their own defence, why humiliate Zelensky?
And if, as is further claimed, the objective is to pivot from Russia to the greater challenger, China, why signal disinterest in the fate of a country just because, in Ukraine’s case, it’s far away and perhaps not a perfect democracy?
If all that might commit America to defending another country is immediate self-interest, Taiwan must be deeply regretting starting semiconductor manufacturing in the US.
Likewise, the South Koreans and the Japanese must be wondering how their freedom can be made sufficiently important for this administration to think it worth a single American life.
And what about us, even more reliant on an American alliance for our ­security; what must we do to make a transactional president think we matter to him?
If it’s the human factor that makes history, it’s the human factor that shapes the present and the future too.
When al-Qa’ida terrorists flew planes into the twin towers, we all knew that life had changed in new and terrifying ways.
“America is great because America is good,” de Tocqueville is supposed to have said; and “if America ever stops being good, it will stop being great”.
Is this what’s ahead, or will last week’s Oval Office meeting see the rest of the West lift their efforts, as they surely should, and the US stay the course? We live in challenging and dangerous times.

There was an infallible Pope to go with that talk of the maple syrup lovers ...

Now please keep on relaxing, maintain that Meares moment.

Be assured, Roger of The Times will be here momentarily to Boyes up the pond, but the pond wanted to treasure yesterday's correspondence about knobs ...

Suggestions involving substitutes were made ...

The pond was almost persuaded. Way back in time, the pond's father had regularly turned up after work with the vaguely leftie tabloid The Daily Mirror (at least compared to The Sun and the Packer rag The Daily Terror) and the pond devoured the comics section and so "boofhead" became a favourite Tamworth form of endearment ...

But surely "knob" deserved its moment in the sun ... until there came shattering news ... as the man who'd played the Knob card renounced it ...

But everyone knows he's a prize knob, as celebrated on Colbert, with knobbish AI images doing the rounds ...

What a downer, what a bummer, a prize knob renouncing the use of knob when deployed against a mega MAGA knob ...

Don't apologise, you wretch ...stay true to the knobbish truth ...

The pond remains proudly, defiantly in favour of calling knobs compleat and utter knobs ...

And so to the bonus, from Roger of The Times ...

Kyiv is collateral in Trump’s showdown with Xi, US leader wants swift denouement in Ukraine so he can pivot to main business of his presidency.

Devotees of the bromancer will be hugely relieved ... the war with China was back on, as the reptiles offered up a splendid, albeit uncredited, collage ... President Trump’s team is itching to move on from the depressingly 20th-century war in eastern Europe and gear up for the big geopolitical challenge of the presidency: the face-off with China.

What a compelling tribute to graphic reptile artistry ... and then it was on with the war on China ...

The relentless US attempt to squeeze the breath from President Zelensky continues apace with the freezing of military aid to Ukraine. Even by the standards of Trumpian blitz politik, the speed of this attempted ousting of the Ukrainian leader is jaw-dropping. For three years, Zelensky was hailed as a war hero fighting to keep the Russians out of Europe’s backyard. Now, egged on by the new US administration, the hero seems to be heading for zero.
Why the rush to get him out of the back door? Why the jeering about his war effort? The main cause seems to be resentment at Zelensky’s claims of agency, his irritating assumption that he might have something useful to say in the otherwise promising talks between Russians and Americans.
The fact is, President Trump’s team is itching to move on from the depressingly 20th-century war in eastern Europe and gear up for the big geopolitical challenge of the presidency: the face-off with China. It is this that gives the administration its buzz, even if China barely figures in the public discourse apart from some word-fencing about tariffs. That’s about to change.
The Trump logic in ending the Ukraine war quickly is that it might help declutter the stage, enabling a strategic rapprochement with Russia. That in turn could help the US to weaken the supposedly unlimited friendship between Moscow and Beijing. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, has already held out the prospect of economic co-operation with a modernising Russia. There is talk of the US opening the way for Russia returning to the G8.

Yes, yes, Vlad the sociopathic dictator, and mad King Donald united against the dragon, US President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping shaking hands during a business leaders event at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, November 2017. Picture: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP

What could go wrong? Full speed ahead ...

The survival of an independent and prosperous Ukraine appears to be of secondary interest. Instead, the priority is preventing the Sino-Russian alliance developing permanent military structures. China has helped Russia’s military-industrial complex throughout the war, covertly transferring dual-use tech and drone production. Some 80 per cent of sanctioned western components arrive in Russia via Chinese private companies. China has become a high-tech hub for President Putin’s Russia.
A “normalised” relationship with the Kremlin, sought by some in the US administration, would mean the phased loosening of sanctions against Russia - and (Washington hopes) a Moscow pivot away from China. Many Russian nationalists have warned over the past three years about the suppressed rivalries with China, in the development of Siberia, in the opening of the melting Arctic sea routes, in Chinese tech saturating Russian markets. All these fears have been brushed aside by the status of Beijing as a discreet war ally. The Chinese, for their part, are uneasy about harnessing themselves to an only moderately successful war leader who regularly threatens the use of nuclear weapons, who had to fend off a mutiny and who deploys thousands of North Korean troops without Beijing’s explicit blessing.

The reptiles had assured the pond it was only a three minute read, but they kept padding it out with snaps, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, July 2018. Picture: Brendan Smialowski / AFP

Roger did his best as a bromancer substitute ...

There might then be some space for US strategic manoeuvre. One China hawk, Robert Atkinson, of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, has caught the eye of the tech mogul Maga converts. Atkinson compares China to Germany between the late 1880s and the Second World War. Germany weaponised trade, focused on importing goods needed for the war machine, sought control of maritime trade routes, kept its currency undervalued to increase competitiveness and used tariffs and export subsidies to boost steel, chemical and machinery industries. That set Germany on the war path.
Today, it’s China, using similar updated methods to snatch global leadership in electric vehicles and commercial nuclear power; to challenge the US on AI, quantum computing, robotics, semiconductors. That’s translating into military nimbleness, developing so-called wingman drones that are at the heart of the race between China and the US for air superiority. The tech competition will be central to the next war - for control and conquest of Taiwan, for example.
Ukraine has been a testing ground for an army using and adapting modern tech to even up the odds against a numerically superior Russian army. But although Zelensky’s Oval Office critics claim to be motivated by wanting to stop the killing - a necessary precondition for the Nobel peace prize shortlist - their main concern seems to be about the US winning in the next big global challenge.

The final snap featured Faux Noise, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to Fox News just hours after a combative meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office.

That raised yet again a pressing question.

When will the bromancer return to begin a triumphant tour of duty in the impending war with China?

The pond can't live on Roger of The Times alone ...

For starters, and closers, it was hard to work out whether Roger of The Times was ecstatic at his prophetic insight, or a bit glum about Ukraine being thrown under the bus.

The suspension of US arms deliveries will not necessarily end the war. Only 20 per cent of military hardware supplied to the Ukrainian military now comes from the US; 55 per cent is home-produced in Ukraine, while the remaining 25 per cent comes from Europe and the rest of the world. But it is a gesture: the US component includes some of the most lethal and advanced arms systems. Without those, the war will slow, Russia may gain momentum and the calculated humiliation of Zelensky will be stretched out.
It’s a cynical gamble that aims for a political result: the resignation perhaps of the Ukrainian leader, a peace conference that allows Putin to hold on to land he has snatched and held. Will that achieve the strategic aim of weakening the China-Russia axis? Probably not. But if it’s any consolation to Zelensky and his nation of warriors, they never stood a chance; they were always doomed to lose the endgame when the new US president started to yawn about a war that interfered in his plans for historic victories elsewhere. The Ukrainians simply became collateral in a geopolitical turn of the screw. Nothing personal, Trump’s men will say after a “peace” is declared. No hard feelings.
The Times

No hard feelings, just on with world war III ... and if that isn't a chance to segue to the immortal Rowe, the pond has lost the art of throwing up ...

It's all in the details ...

... and it's also all in the wide shot ...