In which the swishing Switzer perfects his Neville Chamberlain routine ...

 

For those wondering what happened to ye olde Melbourne, this can be found near the Treasury building in the park off Spring Street ...

Bizarre, but more on supplicant women down the page. 

For those interested in Billy Clarke, Bart, Toorak squatter supreme, he has a wiki here, and is at the ADB here ...

Enough of ancient Victorians (in every sense of the word), time to look at modern lickspittle, fellow- travelling reptile quislings ...

The reptiles are still in election campaign mode, but over on the extreme far right, the Cantaloupe Caligula was the centre of attention ...

The pond can safely ignore Magnay's musings. 

What would a woman know, why pay any attention to her? (See how thoroughly the pond has been infused with reptile values).

Poor old Maximus from The Times tried to hold off the quisling, Vichy horde, and to get past him quickly, the pond stripped him of snaps and AV distractions, and as one featured petulant Peta, the pond was pleased to do it ...

Trump will pay historic price for his treachery, The President’s treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky leaves the western alliance in its gravest crisis since 1945 — but we must pull through.

Hastings hastily did a quick Henry and wandered back in time ...

Amid turbulence greater than has rocked the Atlantic alliance since 1945, it does no good merely to pile the abuse mountain higher.
The West’s predicament is so serious that it would waste verbiage to reprise obvious truths about Donald Trump. We must instead reflect on precedents and explore future courses. Have we ever been here before? Think Poland.
Winston Churchill in 1945 was distraught that the nation for whose freedom Britain had gone to war with Adolf Hitler should fall into the bloody maw of Joseph Stalin. The prime minister stood accused of naivety in making a deal at Yalta for Polish free elections that the Russians had no intention of honouring. Yet Churchill saw no choice save to trust Stalin when the dying president Franklin Roosevelt refused to quarrel with the Kremlin. Moreover the Americans arguably displayed a realism from which the British recoiled, by acknowledging that the Russians occupied Poland. The Red Army had got there first. 
In May 1945 Churchill, despairing and frustrated at finding the Yalta deal betrayed, ordered Britain’s chiefs of staff to draw up a plan for the Western allies to expel the Russians from Poland by force. The outcome was Operation Unthinkable, a blueprint for an assault by 47 US and British divisions. In this amazing document the chiefs used the adjective “hazardous” eight times.
Their chairman, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, wrote in his diary: “The whole idea is of course fantastic and the chances of success quite impossible.” The planners observed that “even if our objective is no more than a square deal for Poland, the scope of such a conflict would not be ours to determine. If (the Russians) want total war, they are in a position to have it.” When the Unthinkable proposal was submitted to Washington, the new Truman administration unhesitatingly dismissed it. Poland was served on toast to the Kremlin.

Ukraine’s plight is different, but there seem four relevant points: the Russians have achieved military ascendancy there; justice plays scant part in international relations; Vladimir Putin is playing Stalin’s old Polish game; yet we cannot launch an Operation Unthinkable.
If the US continues to refuse air support for European military peacekeepers in Ukraine, there will be no such deployment. The likeliest consequence of the Trump administration’s withdrawal, if persisted with, is that Volodymyr Zelensky’s country will become, sooner or later, a Russian vassal state like Belarus, and probably Georgia, just as did Poland in 1945. 

Indeed, indeed ...

While Maximus trotted out a form of abject surrender, at least he was dismayed by his meekness and defeatism ...

With the Americans offering shameless support to Putin and shameless animosity to Zelensky, the Europeans lack the military power, and probably the will, themselves to protect Ukraine.
We should certainly not acquiesce in Zelensky’s martyrdom, a tragedy not only for Ukraine but for freedom everywhere. Our leaders must continue to strive to keep the Americans in the game by urging a peace plan on Washington. We should ship all such arms as we can muster for as long as the Ukrainians continue to fight, and it is welcome that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer confirmed the commitment to do this.
But we cannot rearm ourselves remotely fast enough to undo the consequences of Trump’s treachery – and his actions, if persisted with, indeed represent treachery to America’s historic allies.
Britain must strengthen its defences on a scale thus far unspoken of if it wishes to have any voice in an ugly new world in which might is right. I am doubtful whether Starmer is yet ready to embrace such radical action. We must think beyond the immediate threat to an epochal future requirement to protect ourselves without much America.
The British government should continue to address the Trump administration with superhuman restraint but concede no point of principle, and recognise that mere subservience will get us nothing. Trump respects only strength. Compassion is not in his lexicon. He seeks to divide and rule US allies; to break the economic power of the EU by promoting the political power of the extreme right and fracturing European unity. He appears willing, for today at least, to treat Britain with a certain regal condescension because he applauds our separation from the continent.

Nah, he's just a King who likes to mingle with his peers, you know, talking tampons of the King Chuck kind ...

Phew, you can rely on Rowson for a nightmare vision ... but he does catch King Chuck's resemblance to a lobster ...

Meanwhile, Maximus rolled on to a defeatist conclusion ...

His mood is liable to change tomorrow, however. Britain is a liberal democracy. He is in the business of destroying such polities. I have often urged recognition of the fact that, forgetting nonsense about the special relationship, a lot of Americans do not like us, and such Americans are now in charge. A mere state visit will not change that.
We can traffic with Trump only with extreme caution, while prioritising unity with our neighbours and the other old allies. It is problematic whether we can continue full intelligence-sharing with Washington, amid uncertainty about what Trump’s security appointees may tell Moscow.
Few students of global strategy expect this generational crisis – which Starmer’s words at the summit acknowledged as such – to end any time soon. It is unlikely that accord can be restored between Washington and Kyiv. Despite emotional protestations of the Europeans’ goodwill, their real strength of purpose seems doubtful, about rearming on a scale to compensate for American retreat.
Trump revels in high noons at which he casts himself in the principal role. He is sustaining a strike rate of almost one a day, exhausting hundreds of millions of horrified spectators around the world. We are being called on to hold our nerve, to sustain a sense of order, calm and commitment to reason, when none of these things is on offer from Washington.
Somehow we shall come through. But the people of the US may discover themselves paying a historic price for what is happening, through a collapse of respect for their country and of faith in its word. The betrayal of Ukraine, amid televised presidential conduct such as few mafia bosses would stoop to, can be forgiven only if Trump changes course.
There. I have failed. Despite an expression of good intentions in the first lines of this column, it has proved impossible to complete it without adding to the abuse heaped upon America’s most deplorable president.
The Times

Oh it's grim stuff, and the vibe isn't a good one ...

Time to move on then to one of the most deplorable and contemptible of lizard Oz columnists, the swishing Switzer ...

Trump’s goal to end Ukraine war makes moral sense, Many people find it unconscionable to negotiate with Putin and give up on Ukraine’s efforts to roll back Russia’s gains. But this is the cold, hard reality: Russia controls about 20 per cent of Ukraine, which is outmanned and outgunned on the battlefield.

Yes, we've left old Maximus behind, and we're deep into sell-out territory, with "quisling" utterly incapable of conjuring up the depths of betrayal. Perhaps Lord Haw-Haw would be more appropriate.

The reptiles began with a snap of that moment ...US President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky meet in the Oval Office.

It left out the real snarling, slapping cat in that exchange ...

So to the sell-out by the master of lapdog Vichy speak ...

Friday’s heated exchange in the White House was surely a regrettable moment in diplomatic history more akin to reality TV than serious statesmanship. But while US President Donald Trump is widely considered to have blundered in his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it is imperative for Washington to improve relations with Moscow and end the Ukraine war.
Many people find it unconscionable to negotiate with President Vladimir Putin and give up on Ukraine’s efforts to roll back Russia’s gains and restore its pre-war borders. But this is the cold, hard reality: Russia controls about 20 per cent of Ukraine, which is outmanned and outgunned on the battlefield, and threatens to take even more Ukrainian territory.
Moscow will not tolerate a Western bulwark on its borders, which means Ukraine joining NATO is impossible, and Washington won’t give Kyiv a security guarantee. US support for the Ukraine mission has plummeted with the coming of the Trump adminis­tration.
Understanding this brutal fact of life eludes Zelensky and European leaders, who have virtually no leverage with Washington.

Naturally the reptiles followed up with a snap of the man the swishing Switzer is keen to sell out to ... Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a summit in Astana.

The swishing Switzer managed a single line of performative tut-tutting and cluck-clucking, but the gormless Chamberlain fix was in ...

Trump’s proposal to end a war that Ukraine and the West cannot win is far from ideal: it would mean Russian annexation of at least four oblasts plus Crimea and no NATO membership for Ukraine.
But it’s in Kyiv’s best interests because it’s the least-bad solution to a problem of catastrophic proportions. The alternative is to prolong the war, which would cause only more deaths and destruction, and lead to Ukraine losing even more territory to Russia.
According to the hawks – from left to right, Canberra to Canada and London to Lithuania – Trump’s bilateral overtures to Putin amount to another Munich, the purported 1938 peace agreement that fuelled Nazi expansionism and led to World War II.

The pond never thought of itself as a hawk, but then the pond has never thought that a contemptible sell-out to the likes of Vlad the Sociopath, Stalin, or Mao, had been part of the reptile tradition.

Silly, foolish pond, that was yesterday, and the quislings are rushing to buy heaps of peace in our time snake oil from the mango Mussolini, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has met with US President Donald Trump at the White House in a bilateral meeting, discussing the mineral deal and potential peace talks with Russia.  The pair clashed over peace negotiations with Russia, as the US President accused his Ukrainian counterpart of being disrespectful.

The swishing Switzer turned back the clock to draw out a line of appeasers and fawning supplicants ...as a back-up to his own kissing of the ring and obeisance to unseemly power ...

Never mind that Republican presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan sought accommodation with a powerful Soviet Union a few years after it invaded Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979, respectively. Were these hard-nosed Cold Warriors appeasers?
Never mind, too, that today’s Russia lacks the economic and military capacity to conquer countries to its west and draw a new iron curtain across Europe.
Not so long ago, Western hawks declared that Moscow was losing the war and was on the verge of disintegration. Putin’s fall was only a matter of time. Yet the same people now warn of the Russian army galloping across Eastern and Central Europe. Both positions can’t be correct.
But one thing is clear: Russia, like any great power, will protect its near abroad and will mightily resist any encroachment on its borders that it sees as an existential threat. Of course, this is why Moscow is determined to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.

By golly, he'll be just the man to write a piece explaining how Xi is entitled to a piece of Taiwan, and perhaps a piece of anything else he likes ...

The reptiles interrupted to drop a snap of two arch appeasers ... Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan

Back to the swishing Switzer playing craven dove ...

There is another reason for Washington to settle this deadly conflict: the war – and the policy of NATO expansion that precipitated the West’s deteriorating relations with Moscow – has helped create a close strategic relationship between Russia and its old rival China, while making it difficult for the US to pivot fully to Asia to contain China, its principal geopolitical rival. Neither of these developments serve US or, for that matter, Australian interests.
Russia will play hardball to protect its vital interests on its borders, but it’s not the Soviet Union. China, on the other hand, is much more powerful and dangerous. It is bent on challenging US military power in the Asia-Pacific and dominating that region if it can. As a result, China will continue to intimidate and harass long-time US allies, such as Japan, Taiwan, The Philippines and Australia.
Western hawks still talk as if we live in the unipolar moment that existed after the Cold War, where the US could have a large military footprint in every region of the world. But the coming of multipolarity has changed all that and Washington must prioritise its commitments.
Many politicians and pundits don’t seem to understand that the global balance of power has changed profoundly in recent years and Washington must carefully relate ends and means in this new world.
After all, America is overstretched and there are limits to even US power, especially when Washington spends more servicing its debt than on defence.
The Pax Americana is gone, not only because of the re-emergence of old-style power politics in multipolarity but also because of the many foolish policies that the hawks themselves advocated during unipolarity. Think of the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, which violated the so-called rules-based international order, cost the US dearly in credibility, blood and treasure, and helped fuel Trump’s America First movement.

The reptiles interrupted again, this time with an AV distraction featuring a toad following the Switzer Chamberlain line ... Sky News contributor Gary Hardgrave says Donald Trump “exposed” Volodymyr Zelensky was “chasing the money” in their Oval Office meeting. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed he is ready to sign a minerals deal with the United States. This follows his heated exchange with US President Donald Trump at the White House, which unfolded in front of the media. “I think what Donald Trump did on the weekend actually exposed the fact that Zelensky was chasing the loot, chasing the money,” Mr Hardgrave told Sky News host Rita Panahi. “I don’t know whether he’s got much dignity left out of it.”

Actually, Zelensky was chasing military hardware, and was attempting to hold on to the concept of Ukraine as a sovereign state. 

For those wondering about Gazza, here's him chasing the loot, the money, in a consultant way, having been booted from his gig representing toads back in 2007 ...

Sky Noise down under routinely scapes the bottom of the barrel for its talking heads, but then it must be a dubious pleasure to be on screen with unlovely Rita, meter maid ...

And so to the final sell-out gobbet from our own Lord Haw-Haw ...

Today’s Republican Party is no longer the party of George W. Bush and the neo-con hawks but it is populated with China hawks who believe it’s imperative for the US to reorder its strategic priorities away from Europe and focus on containing the only great power capable of overturning the order in a geopolitically significant region. Remaining deeply engaged in the Ukraine war – even if US troops are not directly involved – only hinders US efforts to deter China.
All this is a reminder that the US and its allies should have supported the peace talks in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine in March-April 2022. They stood a significant chance of succeeding, which would have ended the war quickly and prevented the US from getting bogged down in Ukraine.
But Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Brussels undermined those negotiations, encouraging Kyiv to keep fighting because the West would support Ukraine “as long as it takes”. The West, as political scientist John Mearsheimer warned at the time, has led Ukraine down the primrose path.
Whether Washington is successful in reaching a meaningful peace deal in Ukraine remains to be seen. But Trump’s goal to end the war and stop the slaughter on the battlefield makes strategic and moral sense.
Tom Switzer is executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney.

Ah, a "meaningful peace deal", a piece of this territory, and a piece of that territory, all produced by faith, loyalty and trust in the marvels emanating from the mind of the mango Mussolini ...

The pond had the feeling that the world had been there before, with that fabulous Stalin-Adolf treaty, and that fabulous appeaser ...

Go on Nev, hand that scrap of paper to the swishing Switzer, he'll need it for his piece on Taiwan ...

Luckily there was an immortal Rowe to help celebrate that blather about a "meaningful peace deal", which for once didn't involve Vlad the Sociopath scoring a piece of this and a piece of that ...

As always, it was in the detail, especially the portrait of the faux Yale hillbilly ...

Me... oow indeed, and what a pity that they're not eating the cats and the dogs ...

And so to a final reptile folly.

Things are tough in the United States for minorities and DEI at the moment.

Parker Molloy noted one set of victims, given both siderist treatment by the contemptible New York Times. (Yes, the pond cancelled them a long time ago, and now WaPo has joined them)

Molloy gave the rag a good biffing in "Not Exactly Consequential": NYT Dismisses Trump's War on Trans Americans, After years of trans panic coverage, the paper now claims attacks on trans rights barely matter.

This was the opening that set the scene for the Molloy ravaging that followed ...

Over the weekend, The New York Times published what might be one of the most callous editorial exercises I've seen in a while. In a piece titled "10 Columnists and Writers Rate What Mattered in Trump’s First Full Month", the paper asked writers to rank Trump's first-month actions on a graph. The vertical axis measured importance (more or less important), while the horizontal axis measured impact (negative or positive).
The premise is simple enough: The Times acknowledges that Trump has been moving at breakneck speed, making it "hard for Americans to keep up with his actions" because "they are coming so fast and on so many fronts." Fair enough. But rather than doing what journalists are supposed to do — prioritize, analyze, explain — they've decided to turn human suffering into an exercise in charting.

It's the kind of both-sides framing that has come to define the Times' approach to covering politics. But there's something particularly grotesque about turning the dismantling of civil rights and democratic institutions into a graphics exercise that looks like it belongs in a corporate strategy meeting.

Fully grotesque and bizarre to boot, but that was just the entrée to another hapless lizard Oz columnist doing a bit of FAFO ...

Fair wages for all a hard sell as Trump declares war on woke, There are plenty of numbers in the report on the gender pay gap, but will the message get through the anti-DEI rhetoric?

The pond will let the reference to 'woke' pass, because the tinkling Helen Trinca is in a state of snowflake suffering ...together with Mary Wooldridge, chief executive of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Here's the thing, tinkling Trinca.

You seem to have a pathetically incomplete awareness of all that News Corp and Faux Noise have done to help kill off DEI, especially the bits about equity and inclusion that relate to women in the workforce.

Heck, the old goat himself decided he'd carve his daughters out of his empire. 

Admittedly that was an equal opportunity action in that he also included James, but all the same it says a lot about his empire's mindset ... (and don't get the empire started on minorities of all kinds and shades).

The release of data showing ­almost three-quarters of Australian companies pay their female employees less than their male colleagues is about “naming and shaming” the boss to do the right thing by women in the workplace.
What gets measured gets done, as they say, and some CEOs and HR chiefs will duck for cover on Tuesday as employees click online to check how big the gender pay gap is in their company – and how it compares to the ­national figure of 12.1 per cent.
But the report from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency covering the pay of 5.3 million workers is at risk of being ignored this year thanks to the Trump-led backlash against the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies that underpin this annual exercise.
The US President’s rubbishing of DEI has gained strong traction in the past few weeks and while he seems more worried about positive treatment of black and brown people, women have not escaped this campaign against corporate equity policies.

You know, the pond would usually line up to rage at the mango Mussolini and his treatment of minorities, but if you were a FAFO woman, and voted for him, only to find out belatedly that he was serious about Project 2025 and the creation of a white nationalist state, then more fool you ... and that goes double for foolish women of the tinkling Trinca kind, attempting to squawk about the suffering of women while working inside the Murdochian tent.

No amount of AV distractions will distract the pond from that central folly ...

Daschle Group President and COO Nathan Daschle has commented on how corporate America’s landscape has transformed since 2016 when Donald Trump first took office to his second term in the top job. Mr Daschle’s remarks come following reports that Google is dropping its diversity target, joining a growing list of corporate American companies that are ditching or scaling back their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. President Trump’s election win in 2024, alongside a 2023 US Supreme Court decision outlawing affirmative action in college admission, has led to many major companies ditching DEI initiatives in the states. “Corporations in the United States; there is a market difference between 2016 and 2024. In 2016, people didn’t know what to make of Donald Trump and corporations by and large ran in the other direction,” Mr Daschle told Sky News Australia. “But in 2024, they are racing to embrace him.”

Go on tinkling Trinca, do a swishing Switzer, rush to embrace the mango Mussolini, and the Murdochian empire ...

It's not as if there hadn't been early signs, like stacking the Supreme Court to produce a result that pleased the serial sex abuser and rampant misogynist ...

... and yet the tinkling Trinca seemed mystified by it all ...

Suddenly it dawns on her, suddenly it looms up out of the horizon ...

Suddenly it’s not necessarily a good idea to spruik your efforts to recruit more women or give them pay rises. Suddenly reports like this can be weaponised by critics as unwanted government intervention in the way a company runs its business.
Even before Trump, some critics have argued the WGEA report is of limited value given that for more than 50 years it’s been illegal to pay women less than men for equal work, happily ignoring that this report is more about composition of the workforce.
For others, the pay gap is real, but simply reflects the self-selection by women who don’t like maths or don’t want to work long hours in big jobs because they want to get home to their kids.
Maybe, but whatever way you cut the numbers – and the WGEA cuts and splices them to an often confusing degree – it’s undeniable that there’s an identifiable gap between the remuneration of Australian men and women at a time when there are no legal barriers against anyone doing any job.
Given that, on average, a woman takes home $28,425 a year less than a man, it’s worth looking beyond personal choices at the structural barriers or biases that underpin that difference. It’s worth having a crack at narrowing the gap and the WGEA exercise is just one lever that governments and advocates use to push for change.
The numbers tell a story and for some companies it’s not a good one – although overall they show an improvement, albeit incremental.
Whether this level of data is effective in getting companies to review their internal processes, and whether it’s worth the complex collection and analysis involved, are questions likely to be asked more openly as Trump tries to dewoke the world.
The data is useful for HR staff in companies that are keen to benchmark themselves against their rivals, but it’s not a silver bullet for action. One problem is which figures give a true picture of what’s going on.
As WGEA CEO Mary Wooldridge says: “You could imagine the hours of debate we’ve had about which numbers to use and what’s the best representation.”
It was always going to be hard to compare last year and this year because of the inclusion this year of remuneration of CEOs and other top executives.
This allows for an average figure (21.8 per cent) based on employees to sit alongside the median figures that were highlighted last year.
But there’s plenty of room for confusion in a report which also serves up another figure of 12.1 per cent as a way of expressing the gap. That’s the midpoint of average total remuneration using the pay gaps in individual companies as the reference point.
So take your pick when you’re making the argument for or against the need for action on pay.

Take your both siderist pick, or pick your march and your memories, this being the headline in the sell-out LA Times way back in 2017 ...Trump loathing unifies the diverse crowd at the massive L.A. women’s march.

There was a cartoon to go with that ...

Here, have another couple as a reminder of action on women's rights ...

Faux Noise doesn't care either, do U?

Suddenly the tinkling Trinca has discovered the threat? It must be a vast relief and a comfort to spend all your time in the reptile hive mind ...

There’s also the problem that the data, which is for the 12 months to March 2024, lags the public naming of individual companies, which only began in last year’s report.
We will have to wait for next year to see if the “naming and shaming” approach forces companies to lift their game. Wooldridge is well aware of the Trump effect but says feedback from ­employers is that they have ­embedded policies in their businesses and will continue to report.
“Perhaps there’s a bit of a message that (they) mightn’t be so vocal in (their) advocacy but that’s not necessarily going to change what (they) do within the workplace,” she says. “But I suspect there may be some softening in terms of the communications, or the external publicity.”
The question, as DEI is questioned, is not so much whether a future government would seek to change the rules – the Coalition backed the WGEA and welcomed the report on Monday – but that companies may stop reporting, given there’s no real punishment for not complying.
(The WGEA can publish names of ­errant companies and they may not be eligible to tender for government contracts or some government assistance.) There’s more uncertainty about new legislation, stuck in the Senate, which would require companies to set targets for reducing the gap – and about which the Coalition has ­expressed concern.
Tuesday’s report does not offer a simple picture of pay, but as we head to International Women’s Day on March 8, it’s also clear that while we’ve come a long way since equal pay was granted in 1969, there’s still work to be done if we want that truly gender-balanced workforce.

Ah, the old "much has been done, much remains to be done" routine.

It's a safe bet that much will remain to be done if you want any form of DEI... or any kind of fairness in the workforce ...

Currently the United States is a long way from doing much of anything, except endure another Texas Chainsaw Massacre ... as evoked by Tom Tomorrow ... just try to hold on to that copper wire if you can ...