In which the pond scores a trifecta of prattling Polonius, whining dog botherer and nattering "Ned" - enough to ruin any meditative Sunday ...

 

There's always at least one reptile who each day must get the chop, draw the short straw, swallow the raw prawn, and this day it's Stutch doing the "we'll all be rooned" routine...

Tip from a friend: our economy is in a slow race to ruin

Sometimes it takes outsiders to say the obvious but unwelcome things: high spending, low growth and red tape are hurting us. Why does Labor fail to see it?
By Michael Stutchbury
Contributor

The pond would have loved to slip in a line or three from Said Hanrahan but the pond has a lot of work to do this day, what with Polonius, the dog botherer and "Ned" all jostling for attention.

The pond decided to list them in order of word count and time spent suffering, with Polonius relatively brief at 4 minutes, thereby ensuring him first place, even if he was just going over the same ground the bromancer had ploughed for 11 minutes yesterday...

The header: Donald Trump’s Nobel obsession puts the world at risk in Putin’s case; Appeasing a dictator who murders his enemies and invades neighbouring nations is not how to negotiate the fate of a country whose continued existence is important to the free world.

The caption for the vassal red carpet King, a pawn to the Tsar: US President Donald Trump salutes as he walks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the tarmac after they arrived at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15. Picture: AFP

The image got poor Polonius agitated from the get go:

The most disturbing political photos of the year so far took place in Alaska on Friday, August 15 (local time). There was US President Donald J. Trump standing and clapping for Russian Vladimir Putin as he walked up the red carpet to meet his host on American soil. Thereafter the two leaders got into Trump’s presidential limousine and headed off for a private meeting. It was Putin’s re-entry into Western society – and it was entirely unwarranted.
As previously pointed out in this column, I do not suffer from Trump derangement syndrome and well understand why he has substantial support in the US, particularly among those who live outside the wealthy coastal cities.
Trump has a certain appeal to those who feel that they are looked down on by wealthy, fashionable left-wing elites – and they are. The US President himself is a wealthy educated man but he does not present as an elitist to everyday Americans.
Most political leaders in Western democracies have substantial egos. After all, few individuals have the confidence to present as someone who should be supported in a popular ballot. But Trump is among the vainest of the vain.
This would not matter all that much, except for the fact Trump seems obsessed with winning the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s not at all clear why. After all, it’s just another gong, albeit a high-profile one. It would seem that Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize obsession could endanger the security of the free world.

The reptiles decided the best way to present Polonius's prattle was to saturate it with images and AV distractions: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday (November 25) that an amended peace plan for Ukraine must reflect the "spirit and letter" of an understanding reached between President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump at their Alaska summit.

Amazingly, Polonius doubted King Donald's knowledge of history:

The survival of the democratic state of Israel within secure borders is important to the security of Western democracies. And so is the survival of Ukraine in at least some form of its previous self before Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 and its current attack.
Trump has an unhealthy attraction to foreign dictators, possibly because he believes he can prevail over them after the diplomatic equivalent of an ultimate fighting championship.
But it’s not the same. Trump is a democratically elected president – his second (and final) term will end towards the end of January 2029. Putin, who was elected president in theory, is in fact a dictator. There is no end-by date in Putin’s case. Trump is hoping to end a war and Putin is in no hurry to win a war. After all, Putin has time on his side and no political rivals to worry about, it would seem.
It is not clear to what extent Trump understands Europe – western and eastern. Certainly he has been correct in insisting that the nations of Western Europe should do more to ensure their own security, and he has had some success in this area.
Moreover, unlike some predictions made during Trump’s first term, the US remains in NATO under the Trump administration.
However, Trump appears to know little about what was Imperial Russia under the tsars, which became the Soviet Union under the Bolshevik dictatorship of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, and contemporary Russia under Putin.

Cue another interruption, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a very frank speech to the world where he put European leaders on notice, laughing at them for making claims about Russian military intentions.

The distractions became more closely spaced, as if in response to Polonius deciding to prattle on with a history lesson:

Putin has an aim to restore Russia along the lines of what it was during the time of Peter the Great. Including absorbing Ukraine into Russia along the lines that existed when the Soviet Union quashed the independent state of Ukraine, which came into existence towards the end of World War I.
Ukraine was re-formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ukrainians well remember the Holodomor of 1932-33. This was effectively a forced famine imposed on Ukraine by Stalin that led to the deaths of between three million and five million. It’s understandable why contemporary Ukrainians – under the leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky – want to maintain their state. But this is also of interest to the West.

Quick, another visual: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump meet in the Oval Office last February. Picture: AFP

Polonius decided to revive the domino theory, much loved in his 'Nam days ...

If Putin succeeds in Ukraine there will likely be other targets, notably the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), which were incorporated into the Soviet Union under the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August 1939. The West (including Australia) has reason to feel grateful for Ukraine. When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in 2022 intent on conquering Kyiv, few would have expected that the nation would survive. But it did – or, rather, it has so far. And, in the process, inflicting significant defeats on Russian forces.
Russia has more than three times the population of Ukraine and the latter cannot survive in its current state forever. Clearly a ceasefire, perhaps treaty, is called for. In the process it is important that the Trump administration does not make unnecessary concessions and continues to put pressure on Putin. The same can be said for the EU nations.
But there are immediate problems. The proposed 28-point peace plan is unduly harsh on Ukraine. It’s like asking Putin what he wants and then giving it to him. Of special concern is Putin’s demand that Ukraine should be denied military weapons along with any prospect of joining NATO. This requirement, if implemented, would leave Ukraine severely ill-equipped to resist further Russian aggression.

Quick, yet another distraction ...Russian President Vladimir Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev, left, and Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff at talks in St. Petersburg, Russia, in April 11. Picture: Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

And after just two sentences ...

If Trump fails to understand Putin, the former KGB operative, his hand-picked negotiator Steve Witkoff is significantly worse. The White House has not denied that Witkoff briefed Putin about how to handle Trump to get the best outcome for Russia in negotiations over Ukraine.

.. another visual distraction, with the reptiles still intent on reviving the fortunes of the disgraced Pezzullo, and if that meant interrupting the Polonial flow, so be it ...

Former home affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo claims if Russian President Putin is rewarded, it will be a "capitulation" to Russia. “It’ll be a capitulation on a par with the capitulation to Nazi Germany and fascist Italy in the 1930s,” Mr Pezzullo told Sky News Australia. “Were Putin to be rewarded, as you’ve just seen him say in that package you just played, he’s saying, ‘I will get what I want, by any means available’.”

Polonius could barely get out a few more sentences...

In fact, Trump has said this phone conversation is the way business negotiations take place. Well, perhaps on New York building sites four decades ago.
But sucking up to a dictator who murders his political enemies and invades neighbouring nations is not the way to negotiate the fate of a country whose continued existence is important to the free world.

... before the reptiles interrupted yet again with little Marco...

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio holds a press conference following a closed-door talks on the plan to end the war in Ukraine at the US Mission in Geneva, on November 23. Picture: AFP

Sad to say Ukraine has many problems at the moment, Zelensky's top aide quits after anti-corruption searches of his home - Vlad would just have found a convenient window - so desperate times called for desperate measures ...

It would make sense for Witkoff to be sent on, in business terminology, gardening leave. The best-equipped American to handle Putin would be Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
We probably would not be facing this situation now if president Bill Clinton had not convinced Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons in 1994 – an eventuality he now regrets. As to Australia, the message now – as ever – is that the nations that invest in their own security are likeliest to achieve security.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

How desperate? Ignore King Donald and blame it on the Clintons. 

Likely emails were involved.

And so to a refreshing distraction, courtesy the infallible Pope ...

Oh that's cruel ...

... almost as cruel as speculation mounted about another 'toon, with people wondering just what Pauline was doing to Barners under the burqa ...

He seemed to be enjoying himself, but surely the infallible Pope wouldn't be doing a pegging joke? Avert your eyes, vulgar youff ...

Enough already with the comedy, it's time for this day's edition of the Australian Daily Zionist News, brought to you by the dog botherer, rambling on for a full 7 minutes...

The header: A clarion call to stand up to the scourge of anti-Semitism; In public and in private, I have tried to offer a view about where I think the silent majority stand on anti-Semitism. And I have tried to explain their worrying silence.

The caption for the snap featuring the head reptile: Editor in Chief of The Australian Michelle Gunn and Steven Lowy during The Australian’s book launch of A Different Country at the Sydney Opera House on Wednesday. Picture: Nikki Short

It turned out that this edition of the Daily Zionist News was actually just an excuse to plug a book, so now's a good time to offer congratulations to the infallible Pope, with The Canberra Times sensibly putting the story outside the paywall ...

Oh dear, more visuals of mass starvation as a war strategy? Together with mass destruction and ethnic cleansing?

There'll be none of that here ...

One of the most difficult things I have done during the past couple of years is speak to Australian Jewish groups about the anti-Semitism that has erupted around them. How to explain, contextualise and combat a cancer we thought was consigned to distant history but was reanimated and metastasised in our own country?
Because I’m not Jewish, my empathy has felt inert; you cannot stand in someone else’s shoes and know their vulnerability. And there can be no downplaying the viciousness of the threats and attacks, or their consequences.
So in public and private discussions I have tried to offer a view about where I think the silent majority would stand on this issue. And I have tried to explain their worrying silence.
My aim has been to convince my Jewish compatriots the overwhelming majority of Australians stand with them and cannot abide this hatred. I guess I have been trying to convince myself, too, because even as we accept the difficulty of this sickening challenge, we need hope. The alternative is not only unthinkable for the Jewish community. It also would sound the death knell of this country and its compact of multiculturalism, tolerance and mateship.
Jews make up less than half of 1 per cent of the population
Axiomatically, members of Australia’s Jewish congregations fully understand the role, institutions and visibility of their communities. But for most Australians living outside the eastern suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney the Jewish community is almost non-existent. The 2021 census showed about 100,000 Jews live in those concentrated communities in our two largest cities while 15,000 more are spread across the other 99.9 per cent of the country. Jews make up less than half of 1 per cent of the population, so in the vast majority of towns and suburbs there is no synagogue, no Jewish school and no Jews.

Just to make the plugging of the book even clearer ...A Different Country is a landmark collection drawn from the journalism of The Australian, bringing together the masthead’s most significant reporting and commentary on the seismic impact of the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel.

Whenever the reptiles get this way, the pond likes to slip in a little Haaretz ...

Hush now, none of that talk here ...there's a book to flog ...

Growing up in Adelaide, the only synagogue I was aware of had been converted into a nightclub. The Jewish population of Adelaide is now just under 1200 and according to Google there is a new synagogue in the CBD.
I was almost 40 years old before I knowingly met and had regular contact with a Jew. That was when I joined the staff of then foreign minister Alexander Downer and became a work colleague and friend of Josh Frydenberg.
Raised a Catholic, I learned about the Jews and Israel from an early age but always through the lens of Jesus and the Bible. Israel was the Holy Land, Jesus was a Jew, and when priests and nuns spoke of their pilgrimages to Jerusalem it seemed about as distant and exotic as anything I could imagine, I never dreamed I would walk those streets.
At school we learned a little about the wartime horrors of the ghettoes and Auschwitz, but our awareness was deepened mainly by the television mini-series Holocaust in the late 1970s. These were the days before video players and, like Roots, Holocaust prompted compulsory family gatherings to watch each episode.
But that was it. We did not see Jews, meet Jews or see any evidence of their congregations, schools or communities.

Silent majority would be appalled
The reason I mention this is by way of consolation, I guess. The silent majority would be appalled at the rise of anti-Semitism, but few are moved to agitate over it because it is divorced from their daily reality. It is very real for me now; having lived in Sydney’s east for almost two decades I have many Jewish friends and am familiar with synagogues, Jewish schools and other neighbourhood institutions with their lively communities and constant security. After one anti-Semitic attack in the area, police knocked on our door checking for security camera evidence.
Apart from most Australians being distant and detached from this issue, there has been no obvious rallying point or mechanism for people to show their support. The silent majority do not march in the street or join social media campaigns, so beyond yellow ribbons for hostages there has been no clear way to show solidarity.

Cue a visual interruption from the book flogging ... At the Opera House this week, News Corp chair and Fox Corporation executive chair and CEO Lachlan Murdoch recounted the need to bear witness in Israel, and the confronting horror of doing so. Picture: Nikki Short

Speaking of bearing witness, perhaps another slice of Haaretz to provide some balance?

The dog botherer embarked on a lengthy rant, and the pond let him because there had to be room for more Haaretz ...

Jaundiced media has had a seriously damaging impact, too. The ABC and other green-left media portrayed the war as an act of aggression by Israel, even a “genocide” and “deliberate starvation” against civilians and children, running Hamas propaganda as fact and publishing false claims and misleading photos.
These blood libels had their desired effect, demonising Israel and Jews and framing the instigators of the war as the victims, thus helping to intimidate supporters into silence. It is worth noting that even now, when media can report out of Gaza, we see no reporting that corroborates their wild claims, so we presume the facts do not bear them out (we will not hold our breath waiting for the lies to be corrected).
Zero leadership from the government
Then, of course, there has been the appalling lack of political leadership from the Prime Minister. A one-time anti-Israel street marcher himself, Anthony Albanese has offered encouragement and policy succour to the anti-Israel mobs, and has said and done the bare minimum when it comes to condemning and combating anti-Semitism.
Many of his team have been even worse, and the premiers and their police commissioners have been far too slow and timid in their responses. I am confident mainstream Australians would have rallied around and supported strong action by governments and authorities, but we will never know because leadership went AWOL.
Instead, Australians who are Jewish have been left feeling vulnerable and abandoned. This year I have met and heard from many of them in their halls, synagogues and homes, and it has been harrowing to hear their frustration and disappointment, and see the sense of betrayal in their eyes.
Young mothers traumatised by the hard choice of whether to drop their children at Jewish pre-schools, guarded by armed security. Would they be safer somewhere else? A synagogue and a childcare centre have been fire-bombed.
Holocaust survivors who love Australia deeply for the productive and harmonious lives it has given them have now seen the hatred of 1930s Europe chase them into another century on the other side of the world.
As they relay their despair, these survivors convey a sense of disbelief because this grotesque animosity upends all they have come to believe about this country.
Some Australian Jews have told me they stopped wearing their kippahs or Star of David jewellery when shopping. Others have made a point of declaring they still do, defiantly adhering to their habits even when there is risk of abuse or harm.
These are our fellow Australians, subjected to threats, abuse and attacks. In their own country they feel alone and disregarded.
That we have allowed this to happen diminishes our nation.
The arms of the country should have been around them since October 8, 2023, with political leaders showing the way and bringing the people with them.
Instead, our leaders have tolerated resentment, much of which has been driven from within the much larger and more electorally significant Muslim population.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke this month rightly cancelled the visa of a neo-Nazi protester, but this raises the question of why no visa holder or hate preacher has been singled out from the viciously anti-Jewish protests on October 8, 2023, at Lakemba in Sydney and October 9, 2023, at the Sydney Opera House.
Back in August, after the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli mob marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge – complete with terrorist flags, keffiyeh, chants of “death, death, to the IDF” and a poster of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei – I asked my television audience to email their views so I could share them on air.

The entire point became even clearer with the next snap featuring a lounge of lizards, or perhaps a bask of crocodiles ...The Australian’s reporter Yoni Bashan, on stage with Cameron Stewart and Paul Kelly during a panel discussion. He remembered an innocent time – just over two years ago – when to reveal you were Jewish elicited nothing but references to Seinfeld.

That attempt at a Stephen Miller look surely earns another slice of Haaretz? (possible paywall). 

This time on how to slip a murder under the rug and take care of your own:

Eventually it was time to wrap up proceedings:

We were inundated with messages of support from non-Jews right around the country.
“Please continue your support of our Jewish community,” wrote Michael, “we need to let them know we stand with them, thank you.” Barbara wrote: “Please pass on my support for the Jewish community. I’m both dismayed and ashamed of the road that so many are taking.” Christine said: “I stand with our beautiful Jewish community and I am sorry our government does not give you the protection and respect you deserve.” Brad wrote: “We are the silent majority and fully support you in defence against Hamas, don’t let the gullible fools that protest in favour of this terrorist regime distract you from your cause.” Lexi said: “I would like to add my voice to the many in support of the Australian Jewish community, it breaks my heart to see this beautiful country consumed by hatred and lies.”
Time for non-Jews to speak up
Jews in Australia need to know this wellspring of fairness, friendship and respect exists, despite a recklessly negligent federal government. Non-Jews must speak up.
The launch of The Australian’s A Different Country at the Opera House this week reclaimed Bennelong Point for tolerance, plurality and mateship. The event was at once daunting and uplifting.
People as diverse in their impacts on the nation as businessman and philanthropist Steven Lowy and singer-songwriter Deborah Conway spoke about the distress of experiencing racial or religious bile in their own country, but how they clung to optimism. News Corp chair and Fox Corporation executive chair and CEO Lachlan Murdoch recounted the need to bear witness in Israel, and the confronting horror of doing so.
And, poignantly, journalist Yoni Bashan remembered an innocent time – just over two years ago – when to reveal you were Jewish elicited nothing but references to Seinfeld. Now, unthinkable as it may sound in what we like to think of as an egalitarian paradise, by revealing their faith Jews can invite ostracisation or open hostility.
We have a duty to ensure this scourge is defeated because the rampant anti-Semitism that sprang up after the Hamas atrocities more than two years ago is a direct challenge to the values not just of Australia but also of Western civilisation. The lessons of history are clear, and chilling.

And so to the point of it all, and no, the pond won't be providing a link:

Pre-order your copy of A Different Country here.

The pond will however do another link to Haaretz ...

Weird days indeed.

Epstein, Epstein, Epstein ...

And so to "Ned's" Everest.

The pond left this Sherpa challenge, this Herculean feat to last, on the basis that those who've already had more than enough can head off to do something useful with their lives...

The reptiles thought it was worthy of a big digital edition splash ...

The reptiles were infatuated by that image. 

Apparently they took it as a sure sign that Gen Z would start reading the rag, or that maybe even Gen Alpha would tune in. 

Here it is again, this time at the get go to get the "Ned" Everest climb going:

The header: Australia's under-16 social media ban is the 'biggest game changer we've seen', When it comes to protecting kids from Big Tech, author Jonathan Haidt calls Australia’s social media ban for under-16s ‘the biggest game changer we’ve seen, period’. And it’s mums who drove it.

The caption for the tragic artwork which should have been credited as AI slop, what with Grok routinely praising his master Elon in the sloppiest ways imaginable: Australia is the first country in the world to say to call time on social media for kids online, says Jonathan Haidt. Artwork: Emilia Tortorella

"Ned" delivered an 11 minute sermon, one sure way to erase Emilia's shame from the memory bank:

Australia’s most influential global initiative in decades faces growing political assault at home but the intellectual architect of the social media ban for children under 16, American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, says Australia’s law is what the world “desperately needs to do”.
On December 10, Australia’s new law comes into effect, guaranteed to affect millions of households and families – its core provision being that designated social media platforms and companies will not be permitted to let Australians under 16 create or possess an account.
This will have a profound impact on young people, parents, families and schools. It is a large-scale social and technological revolution where Australia is leading the way across the world.
Success or failure in Australia will influence not just our own country but also shape how other democracies counter and mitigate the damaging consequences of the smartphone on young people – what Haidt in his 2024 book The Anxious Generation called “the rewiring of childhood”.
In that book Haidt identified four “foundational” reforms to save childhood from the malaise engendered by Big Tech with the social media ban for under-16s being an enshrining initiative. In the process he has become a global advocate for governments to act on his research-based analysis and conclusions.
In an exclusive interview with Inquirer Haidt says: “The Australian bill to have an age minimum, and have the companies responsible for verifying it, is by far the most important single piece of legislation ever enacted on planet Earth to protect children in the internet age. In a sense it is the first real piece of legislation to be enacted since everything else is fiddling with details.
“We need a global recognition that many of the things happening to kids online should not be happening and that social media is an inherently adult activity.
“Australia is the first country in the world that said: ‘We’re calling time on it.’ Your Prime Minister said: ‘It may be a rough transition but we’re going to do it.’ The proof of how important this is, is the fact that so many countries are now planning on following. The Australian bill is the biggest game changer we’ve seen, period.
The mothers’ revolution
“We are absolutely seeing a revolution. I have been calling it a mothers’ revolution because that is what has been driving it all over the world. Fathers care a lot, too, but it is mothers in every country who are already desperate to do something, who already feel their kids being pulled away. Wherever I look it is mothers or female legislators or the wives of male legislators who are taking the lead on this.

The pond abhors mobile phones, but also abhors Haidt, a huckster out flogging a book designed to create fear, loathing, panic and moral hysteria ... Author Jonathan Haidt. Picture: Aaron Francis/The Australian

What a pity "Ned" didn't read the likes of Candice L. Odgers in Nature, The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness? The Evidence is equivocal on whether screen time is to blame for rising levels of teen depression and anxiety - and rising hysteria could distract us from tackling the real causes:

Well yes, and in conclusion:

Note that line about age-based restrictions and bans on mobile devices being ineffective in practice, or worse could backfire given what is known about adolescent behaviour.

It'll come in handy ...

Yes, we're talking about you, naughty Tamworth High School thugby league boys, passing around copies of Playboy under the library desks, as if no one had the first clue as to why you were chortling and sniggering while pointing at boobs ... long before mobile phones were a thing, making the pond blush and look away. 

Oh you filthy, dirty preverts, and without any chance for the pond to blame it all on the intertubes.

What could go wrong with the little sneaks?

Obscure social media apps not included in teen ban are skyrocketing in popularity in Australia (sorry, paywall) Videos have circulated online of teens suggesting that they migrate to platforms like Yope and Lemon8 ahead of the ban’s December 10 deadline.

Teens are propelling little-known social media platforms to the top of app store charts as they seek ways to get around Australia’s under-16s social media ban.
An obscure social media platform called Yope has suddenly become the top app in Australia’s Apple App Store, according to data from analytics platform Sensor Tower. The app was 316th in that chart just last week. 
Similarly, ByteDance’s Instagram competitor Lemon8 is currently second, after consistently being ranked around the 20s to 40s over the past month.
These apps did not simultaneously climb the American Apple App Store charts, suggesting an Australian-specific trend.
These rapid climbs up the charts — indicating a spike in downloads — have coincided with videos circulating that suggest these social media platforms could be refuges from Australia’s teen social media ban.

Luckily the keepers of the age-driven silos are on to it ...

All is well in the gulag.

Back to "Ned", blathering on at length ...

“Since the tech companies have profoundly alienated the mothers of the world, they have turned the mothers of the world into their enemies. That is arguably the most powerful political force in existence – mothers protecting their children. What I’ve seen from the beginning is that governors and heads of state are choosing to make this their issue. They are not being pressured into it. So many governors have reached out to me and my team in the first couple of months. It’s not pressure. They want to do this.”
Facing a constitutional challenge filed in the High Court and an inevitable degree of disruption and complaint when the December 10 threshold is triggered, Communications Minister Anika Wells told parliament this week: “Despite the fact that we are receiving threats and legal challenges from people with ulterior motives, the Albanese government remains steadfastly on the side of parents and not of platforms. We will not be intimidated by threats. We will not be intimidated by legal challenges. We will not be intimidated by Big Tech. On behalf of Australian parents, we stand firm.”
Building resistance
The selling point used by the Albanese government is that by lifting the age restriction from 13 to 16 this represents a delay, not a ban, to social media access, giving kids more time and maturity to build resistance; in effect, giving young people back their childhoods.
Haidt’s interview makes clear that Australia is the global focus of the campaign to turn back the corrosive impact of Big Tech that has seen Generation Z, born after 1995, become the collective test subjects for a remaking of childhood. He calls the worldwide acceptance of allowing kids to grow up on a smartphone “the biggest blunder we have ever made” in terms of child raising.
Asked about the criticism of his book and the critics of the Australian law, Haidt says: “We really don’t have a choice. The damage to children is so gargantuan. It’s not just mental health, the bigger damage is the loss of the ability to pay attention; we see test scores dropping, we see IQ dropping, so we don’t have a choice.
“But the wonderful thing is that the kids are actually not opposed. The adults seem to think the kids are going to riot, the kids are going to be furious about being separated from their phones. But what the kids are afraid of is not being separated from their phone, it’s being separated from the other kids.”
He says once everyone else is in the same situation, then acceptance comes much faster. Haidt says the pivotal aspect of the Australian law is making the tech companies responsible for validation. There are no penalties for under-16s or their parents who access an age-restricted account. The platforms face penalties of up to $49.5m if they refuse to take reasonable steps to implement the law.

The reptiles slipped in another snap, meaningless as most of them are, The European Parliament called on Wednesday (November 26) for the European Union to set minimum ages for children to access social media, to combat a rise in mental health problems among adolescents from excessive exposure. Rachel Faber reports.

We're meant to gaze at a snap of phones as the solution to gazing at phones?

The pond would rather turn, in the matter of Haidt, to Parker Molloy interviewing Siva Vaidhyanathan in relation to the matter. Inter alia ...

Nailed why Haidt appeals to "Ned".

"Ned" isn't a teacher, or a learner, he's a preacher, always has been. 

Here continueth the lesson ...

“I am confident about the way incentives and flexibility is built into the Australian bill,” Haidt says. “These companies can do just about anything, given that they already know everything about all of us anyway.”
The opponents constitute a bizarre coalition but could be formidable. They range from the libertarian right, with its obsessions about censorship; parts of the progressive left offended by a blunt use of state power; the Greens; a range of independents; human rights lawyers; a stack of academics; polarised media critics from both the left and right; some child safety advocates; the Big Tech companies; and activist young people saying the law won’t work and that its bad consequences will outweigh its good intentions.
The High Court challenge comes from the Digital Freedom Project led by NSW Libertarian politician John Ruddick, who told Chris Kenny on Sky News his action was designed to secure an injunction to stop the law from becoming operational on December 10. Ruddick said he opposed the law because “kids will get around it” and it constituted “censorship of the internet”. The hearing is likely to focus on the implied right of freedom in political communication.
In his recent New York visit – where Anthony Albanese also had a brief meeting with Haidt – the Prime Minister signalled the social media ban was one of the defining goals of his leadership, saying: “It’s the right thing to do by children and it is the right thing to do by parents. It isn’t foolproof but it is a crucial step in the right direction. We know from experience that schools banning phones in the classrooms has produced real and positive results – both academically and socially.”
Political perspectives
Albanese said he had been deeply affected by the stories of girls and boys “so overwhelmed by what got to them through their social media accounts, they saw no other way out”. He asked: “In what world should a 14-year-old be exposed to sexual extortion? It is a wilderness no child should know.” Referring to the December 10 trigger, Albanese said: “We know the world will be watching – and we are glad to have you with us.”

The pond realises that Albo doesn't have much of a clue about vulgar youff and thinks that government bans are the answer, but in reality he's pandering to the deep seated fears of the reptiles that in the end phones and social media will replace them entirely ... and given the demographic of their readership, perhaps that's right for once ... Tech giant Meta will begin removing the accounts of kids aged under 16 a week before the government's social media ban comes into effect. 

Any reptile that thinks that entirely meaningless swathe of yellow will drag in Gen Z are deep in the valley of delusion with "Ned" and the mutton Dutton ...

While the original idea came from Peter Dutton as opposition leader and then was taken up by the Albanese government, the Coalition looked wobbly this week. The political temptation to exploit the transition difficulties and inevitable protests will be too alluring for many. The role of the media will be pivotal – whether it gives a loud voice to the complaints, notably those coming from young people, or whether it recognises the transforming principle in play: that in a liberal democracy Big Tech should not be able to control, damage and exploit the consciousness of young people for its financial gain.
Speaking to Inquirer on Thursday, Sussan Ley clarified the Coalition’s position: “We do support the social media ban because this was a Coalition initiative in the last term of parliament. We are very determined that it work in the real world. So we are not going to step back from holding the government to account to make sure it does work. It’s not good enough to simply put the rules out there and say if anything goes wrong it’s the big tech companies.
“I want to see the government stand up to Big Tech in the interests of kids. We know the tech companies are able to institute the required protections on their platforms. We will be watching closely to make sure the government ensures that they do.”
This is a different position from the confusion opposition communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh caused on Sky News on Wednesday when she was more aligned with the critics, warning there was a “high risk” of failure, saying as shadow minister she questioned whether the policy “is going to work or not” and declaring: “I don’t support the rollout of it or what the government has done.”
On Thursday morning McIntosh issued a clarifying statement saying “the Coalition supports the social media ban” and wanted it to work but had “genuine concerns about Labor’s implementation”.

The reptiles introduced another AV distraction ... Sky News Senior Reporter Caroline Marcus discusses eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant being “summoned” to the US to testify before Congress over her “threat” to the free speech of Americans. “Inman Grant had been sent a letter calling her a ‘zealot for global takedowns’ and demanding she front up within a fortnight,” Ms Marcus said. “Republican and close Trump ally Jim Jordan is the congressman and chair of the judicial committee who penned the letter. “When I asked him on the US Report on Friday if he’d heard back yet from the eSafety Commissioner, he said she’s left him on read. “Inman Grant rejects her conduct has undermined anyone’s freedom of speech, including Americans.”

At this point the pond should offer a disclaimer.

The pond's partner has had a number of encounters with Grant, and considers her barking mad.

The pond tried to reduce the charge to misguided twit, but the pond's partner wasn't having it, predicting that there would be a great unravelling, beginning in December ...

The listed platforms subject to the law are Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Snapchat, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X and YouTube. The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, will oversee enforcement and has warned the tech companies they need to adhere to the law if they wish to operate in Australia. The law specifies that companies must take “reasonable steps” to ensure kids under 16 don’t have an account, suggesting a degree of flexibility. The unknown question remains: How seriously will the companies take this legal obligation?
Haidt tells Inquirer the biggest feature of the social revolution since the release of his book has been the realisation that people can have agency. He says: “A big part of this revolution – the biggest single change – is dropping the sense of inevitability and despair. When my book came out a lot of people said: ‘Oh, come on, you may be right but it’s too late, the train’s left the station, you can’t put toothpaste back in the tube, the technology’s here to stay, what are you going to do?’
“Now everybody knows that’s not true. We can put toothpaste back in the tube if our children’s lives depend upon it. I think we are now looking at the role of technology in our children’s lives in a very different way with the sense of possibility now that was largely absent two years ago.
“I was in Paris in April and someone connected me to President Macron’s office and he agreed to see me on the spur of the moment. We had a 20-minute meeting. He told me France will act, that he will try to work through the EU, and if he can’t get it through the EU then he will do it in France.
Leading the way
“I am extremely concerned about the known effects of Big Tech on the US congress. The US congress had never been able to do anything, not a single thing – ever – to protect children. We can’t sue Big Tech, no matter what they show to our kids. No other industry has this. No other industry has been granted freedom from responsibility for the harms they are committing. But thank god for Australia. You are going first, you volunteered to go first. I know your team sees this as a process – that even if it’s not right on the first day they will get it right in a relatively short order. I know the Scandinavian governments are also considering this. Leaders correctly perceive there is very broad popular support and they are acting.
“This is already happening in the United States where several states have raised the age. The problem is that Meta and the other tech companies, they fund all kinds of ‘citizens groups’ that file lawsuits, and bills are being held up in the courts. What I hope will happen is that as many countries follow Australia, especially if the EU follows Australia, then I think the companies will pretty much have to do it globally.”
Polls over 2024 and 2025 reveal overwhelming public support in Australia for tougher action on social media. A late 2024 YouGov survey showed 77 per cent of people backed the proposed social media ban with only 23 per cent opposed.

Could the pond end up agreeing with Uncle Elon? Elon Musk is a vocal opponent of the ban. Picture: AFP

Well he's an incredible, astonishing human bean, just ask Grok:

Hard to resist that lot, though it's also true broken cuckoo clock, twice a day and all that, because, and here's the nub of it, there's very little evidence that age-based restrictions and bans on mobile devices will be effective in practice, and worse, they could even backfire, given what is known about adolescent behaviour.

And when the rubber hits the road, as a result of the pedal hitting the metal in December, there's likely to be a freak-out and then a slow, Brexit-style elongated realisation that this sort of simple fix is surely simple, but not much of a fix...

And so to the final "Ned" gobbet ...

In 2024 a Guardian Essential poll found 69 per cent supported the ban with only 14 per cent in opposition. Support within Labor remains strong with South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas being the initial prime mover in the ALP for this action.
Elon Musk is an arch opponent, calling the proposed bans a “backdoor way to control access to the internet”. This prompts the question: will Donald Trump act on demands from Big Tech and retaliate against Australia because of the social media ban? Trump, obviously, is unpredictable, but Haidt is an optimist on this issue.
He says: “Donald Trump and JD Vance have shown that they are very focused on censorship, they are very upset about any government that tries to regulate content or that punishes people for tweets. So this is a major concern, except that on kids’ issues I haven’t seen any opposition. I have not seen any sign that the Trump administration is committed to keeping 11-year-olds on social media. I don’t see any sign the Trump administration is going to block efforts to protect children.”
Minister Wells has warned the implementation will be “really untidy” for months, a prudent precaution that probably understates the difficulties. There is apprehension within Labor about how some kids and parents will react. The message from Wells is the need for patient explanation to kids about the benefits inherent in the policy.
Scope for sabotage
The eSafety Commissioner has released advice for parents and kids. She makes the obvious point that because the policy won’t be 100 per cent effective that is no reason to oppose it. Young people often breach alcohol laws but that doesn’t mean such laws should be abandoned. But the scope for platforms to sabotage the policy shouldn’t be underestimated. For instance, platforms are expected to try to stop under-16s from using VPNs to pretend to be outside Australia. The eSafety Commissioner advice warns families that the restrictions may release a range of emotions among young people “including being upset, worried, frustrated, confused, sad or angry”.
The four reforms Haidt championed in his book are: no social media before 16, phone-free schools, no smartphones before high school, and more unsupervised play and childhood independence. He says the key to success is collective action: every parent who acts makes it easier for other parents to act. Haidt’s research has led him to reject the claim his solutions are radical, saying they would be widely welcomed by parents, kids and school principals.
He quotes Pew Research that a third of teens say they are on a social media site “almost constantly” – that’s about 16 hours a day – with 45 per cent saying it is “almost constantly”. This is a substantial period in which children are “not fully present” to what is happening around them. Surveys show high numbers of students being anxious “always” or “most of the time” with self-harm and suicide rates skyrocketing.
Asked about his critics, Haidt says some psychologists have been vocal claiming he confuses correlation with causation but the actual analytical work condemning him has been very limited: “What we are finding is that most people studying this actually do believe these things are hurting kids.”

Um, many people believe in an imaginary being that will give them a life of eternal bliss in the golf club of their choice ...

Simply believing something, even en masse, doesn't make it true ... even if it's believed by a flock of adults already in the grip of the phone cult, no matter how many times the pond tries to take the diabolical machine and hurl it into the abyss ...

That mass belief nonsense can be awkward ... as a recent movie suggested, it might get tricky deciding who to spend eternity with if you have more than one love of your life in your life and you meet up with all of them in your post-life nirvana ...

Now with "Ned" done, wonder how much of this is nostalgia about the way things were, and how promising the future seemed.

The pond drank of that kool-aid and wrote reports about the urgent need for everybody to be wired up. 

Share a wistful moment of nostalgia with James Gleick, reviewing assorted intertubes books for the NYRB under the header How the Web Was Lost, The Internet was not meant to suck (*archive link):

Optimists can follow the links in hopes of finding the answer to that question.

Just watch out vulgar youff, what with AI slop the lizard Oz graphic standard, and bots everywhere, New X Games: Legitimate Groyper or Bangladeshi Bot (sorry, paywall, but there's a video.

Only Albo can keep you safe, but only if you stop listening to the reptile bots.

And so to end with a 'toon, which the pond must stress has absolutely nothing to do with the stress of vulgar youth, whether contemplating Gaza or events in the disunited states:

And here's that video for those who can't get past the paywall to celebrate the bots ...

In which the contest of ideas sputters out thanks to the Ughmann and the bromancer ...

 

The venerable Meade's regular, reliable guide for herpetology students was mentioned in correspondent despatches yesterday, but the pond has a bone to pick.

The venerable Meade struck hard with a pithy comment:

We do know that The Australian surely knows its demographic, judging by the picture used to illustrate its story.

The picture?

Amen, but how did they get a snap of Dorothy? The pond tries to limit circulation of any portraits.

Unfortunately, in the process the pond hit on a link and ended up on YouTube watching a deeply silly lizard Oz promo (no the pond won't link; drink some more Meade if you must):

That's 15 seconds the pond will never get back, though gratifyingly, it had scored just 361views at time of writing, over 11 days, with zero comments.

Speaking of the risible notion that a hive mind is open to the contest of ideas, the pond wondered what had been happening with the war on Xmas?

Too soon?

Imagine the pond's anticipation and hope when spotting Annie Lowrey's piece for The Atlantic, Donald Trump’s War on Christmas (*archive link)

Imagine the pond's disappointment reading the sub-header: It’s a bad year for shoppers. It’s a terrible year for small-business owners.

It was all about tariffs and the economy and swanky bags stuck in India - not a word about how demonic Satan-worshipping secularists were determined to wipe Western Civilisation and the Judaeo-Xian tradition off the planet.

Come on reptiles, do better, be best.

And so to the tragic notion of the contest of ideas early on a Saturday morning.

Relax, in the hive mind that translates into never ending jihads.

The pond has more than 15 seconds to waste, the pond has precious minutes, but must exercise some discrimination ...and there had to be a culling:

Yes, the reptiles, spearheaded by Dame Slap, were at it again...

Beyond a sigh, more a deep groan ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘Too much to lose’: weak, wary Libs squib push for Higgins inquiry
The opposition’s proposal for a full inquiry into the Brittany Higgins scandal was dumped on fears it would renew scrutiny of the callous treatment of former Liberal staffer Fiona Brown.
By Janet Albrechtsen and Stephen Rice

INQUIRER
Greens and teals show mean girl colours as PM runs for cover
Forget Brittany Higgins – this scandal is way beyond that. The big story now is about how Labor used blatantly false claims about two Liberal women for political gain.
By Janet Albrechtsen

Inquirer? More like monomaniacal obsessiveness.

Way too much already. 

Even those busy competing with the lettuce aren't buying?

Forget it Jake, anyone wanting to follow that endless, beyond the valley of the tedious, crusade will have to head off to the intermittent archive.

Also consigned to the archive is a culture wars item ...

BURKE and WILLS REBUFF

‘Cancellation’ of Burke and Wills statues sparks furore
by John Ferguson
The decision to remove Melbourne’s historic Burke and Wills monument from the city square amid concerns over a First Nations and colonial clash has sparked outrage. As in 

The pond should care about about two colonial clowns who got lost in the desert, with neither the box office flop movie, nor the box office flop satirical movie joke about the pair - a 3 week run for a humbling $54k - worth anyone's dead heart time.

Relax, Fergo, only the pigeons will care ...

Sheesh, and a bloody history lesson too, dragging the pond back into the mire of Tamworth Public School days ..

The one amusing note? The clever way the reptiles changed the words, and introduced "cancellation" in place of the original "banished", what with the culture wars never dead in the reptile "contest of ideas" ...

The bouffant one was determined to keep the lettuce's competitive spirits up ...

There's more at the intermittent archive ... just follow the link:

Chaotic Coalition snuffs out faintest spark of revival
The opposition had a golden opportunity handed to it by Labor when Chris Bowen’s appointment as UN climate president finally embarrassed Anthony Albanese. Sussan Ley squibbed it.
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor

Thanks Shanners, but the lettuce is feeling its oats and doing fine.

The only upside the pond could see was that it was all a useful distraction from Tamworth's undying shame, celebrated by Moir ...

With all the preliminaries of the reptile dance done, it turned out that there were plenty of other reptile fishies to fry, with the Ughmann front and centre.

Early Saturday morning, he was top of the world ma, over on the extreme far right and also in the "news" section with an EXCLUSIVE ...

The "news" splash ...

The pond consigned the bulk of the EXCLUSIVE to the intermittent archive ...

EXCLUSIVE
Real instant calmer: electricity grid faces threat from energy transition
Australia’s renewable energy roadmap relies on flawed weather data that missed wind generation plummeting to just 4 per cent capacity during multiple week-long droughts last year.
By Chris Uhlmann

More than enough already with the cute animation used to produce a blackout... and so a little teaser to see the gag in action ...

The gag - if you can call it that - was that the image flashed between black and white and colour.

Ha hah.

Sensibly no one claimed credit, and the reptiles didn't bother to replicate the gag over in the extreme far right outing...  but they did feature terrifying whale-killing windmills as the opening visual flourish.

Turns out the reptiles are even more obsessed with windmills than King Donald or the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way ...

The header: Real world data blows a hole in renewable energy modelling, The irony is, from the moment humanity first burned wood, we have used fossil fuels to protect ourselves from the fury of the weather. Now, we are rebuilding our entire power system on the whims of wind and sunshine.

The caption for those terrifying whale-killers: Long-run wind and solar droughts are most likely to fall in winter. Picture: AFP

The Ughmann spent only four minutes, and tried to open with classical references, a reminder that this sort of guff is best left to Our Henry, at least when the fixer of holes in buckets is in peak form, unlike yesterday's outing.

As for arguing with the unreformed seminarian? The pond will leave that to correspondents capable of mustering the strength.

The pond is well over this "contest of ideas", aka endless crusading jihad, where once something is written, it must be repeated over and over again ad nauseam ...

There is a hint of divine comedy in it all. At the very moment Australia’s power system operator delivered its plan for stress-testing a renewables-heavy grid against an extreme wind drought, the real weather delivered a doldrum that blew past its worst-case scenario.
It was as if Zeus had decided to remind the planners how little command mortals have over the winds, and how foolish it is to mistake a model for reality.
Yet we seem fated to live in a real world governed by people who prefer a fantasy. From projections of what carbon emissions will do to the weather, to models that show more wind and solar will cut electricity bills, our politicians cling to the neat certainty of imaginary numbers rather than deal with the unruly and unpredictable world outside.
But every now and then the real world intrudes, and we owe a debt of gratitude to Queensland-based Global Power Energy for the latest reality check.
This specialist energy company did something that’s too often missing in the debate about the electricity transition: it didn’t model the weather, it measured it. And that scientific process proved, again, that observation trumps assumption.
The company showed that in the same month the Australian Energy Market Operator released its model for a worst-case future wind drought last year, real wind generation collapsed to barely half that level.
It exposed that, under those conditions, the operator’s plans for building resilience into a highly weather-dependent electricity system would fail, risking blackouts across the east coast.

The reptiles then produced a graph - so ABC Finance report - with fancy pop ups, but the pond is content to offer the basic form:

Gotcha moment done, it was back to the Ughmann in dire fear-monger mode ...

The company’s chief executive, Greg Elkins, was once manager of generator connections for AEMO, responsible for assessing, approving and integrating every new power plant into the eastern grid. His company strongly supports the energy transition, but he believes it has a moral obligation to point out what is a critical gap in the system planning.
“If in God we trust and everyone else brings data, then using AEMO’s own methodology for how that data should be used shows a national security-sized risk,” Elkins told this column.
“There needs to be a national discussion on how to manage renewable fuel shortages in our climate changed future.”
The problem is buried in an appendix of the market operator’s Integrated System Plan, which plots the road map for how the eastern national electricity market will work as coal-fuelled power is largely replaced with generators that run on wind and sunshine.
The operator’s latest plan was released in June 2024 and it explicitly addresses the risk of long-run wind and solar droughts that most likely will fall in winter.
“The national electricity market must be resilient in its capability to provide energy in all weather conditions, including when there is minimal or no sunshine or wind for prolonged periods,” it says.
It then modelled a worst-case scenario by isolating “a historical severe dark and still weather event observed in June 2019” – where only 14 per cent of available wind capacity was producing power – and projecting that across eight days. The operator’s plan for the backup generation needed under these extreme conditions was built around that assumption.

Could it truly be a climate science denialist Ughmann piece without the presence of climate science denialist Bolter? Of course not ... Sky News host Andrew Bolt highlights how the Australian landscape is being ruined by Labor’s green dream. “Again and again in this gorgeous part of Australia we saw them,” Mr Bolt said. “There they are, straight in front of you.”

Eek, more terrifying windmills!

And who'd have thought of the Bolter as lyrical Wordsworthian aesthetic and worshipper of rustic landscapes, but needs must, as the Ughmann carried on ...

But when the system plan was released on June 26, 2024, the weather in the real world was delivering a far deeper wind drought than its worst-case model assumed.
Global Power Energy mapped what happened to southern wind generation through autumn and winter last year. From mid-April the wind collapsed to about 6 to 11 per cent of generation capacity, with a run of seven consecutive days in that band. From May 12 to 16 , wind generation stayed deeply depressed, hovering around 10 per cent for five days straight. Between May 22 and 27, southern wind generation slumped into one of its deepest lulls, sitting between 4 and 8 per cent for six straight days.
From mid-June through mid-July, the wind repeatedly slumped below the market operator’s 14 per cent extreme line, with multiple dips under 10 per cent – including deep troughs around June 13, June 18 and June 21-22, along with days below 14 per cent, on July 1 and July 12-13 – before beginning to strengthen in the second half of the month.
The market operator’s modelling shows that during a multi-day wind drought the system drains its backup supplies in a predictable order.
Short-duration batteries run flat first because they can shift energy for only a few hours and can’t recharge once wind and solar collapse. After that, the grid leans on longer-duration storage such as pumped hydro and other multi-hour batteries, which begin to run down steadily over the first several days.
As those reserves fall, gas generators must run flat out, but winter gas demand means the pipeline system cannot always supply enough fuel – forcing stations to switch to diesel stored on site. AEMO assumes every new gas unit will carry 14 hours of diesel in tanks, and its modelling shows southern gas plants would burn the equivalent of 30,000 litres of diesel in a single extreme day to keep the lights on.

The reptiles decided to give the windmills a break, by gassing the country ... if only there was enough gas ...Australia’s gas pipeline is not big enough to cover the renewables shortfall.

Credit where credit is due.

Not once did the Ughmann suggest the need to nuke the country. 

That particular figleaf has fallen from the statue:

In short: even in the operator’s best-case scenario, a renewables-based grid survives long wind and solar droughts only by relying on gas and large volumes of diesel stored in tanks beside the generators. But the real-world data shows this plan is undercooked because the system it imagines could not withstand the weather we actually get. The stress test failed before it was even published.
Elkins says this exposes Australia to unacceptable risks. “The gas pipeline is not big enough to cover this shortfall,” he says. “Building three to four times more renewables to cover this gap does not seem logical, cost effective or practical. That’s just building more generation we won’t have any fuel for.” It also underlines the risks of building a weather-dependent grid when future weather cannot be modelled.
“AEMO, the entire energy sector, we all agree we need to design a future grid that is capable of managing renewable fuels short­ages,” Elkins says. “So what are we going to do? Hope we don’t have a fuel shortage worse than 2024 in a climate-changed 2040, 50 or 60? The science has been telling us for more than 25 years that we must plan for a changed climate.”
The irony is, from the moment humanity first burned wood, we have used fossil fuels to protect ourselves from the fury of the weather. Now, just as many warn the climate will become more extreme, we are rebuilding our entire power system on the whims of wind and sunshine.
It has the feel of an Icarus moment: a civilisation convinced it can defy gravity, only to discover the wax melts in real sunlight.

Icarus? That's the best he can do?

Despite his poor performance yesterday, Our Henry is safe from the unreformed seminarian's feeble to attempts to mangle science with mythology.

Bless his Xian socks, the bromancer was also out and about today, and having his usual anxiety attack:

The header: Trump’s art of the raw deal for Ukraine ... and Taiwan? Peace in Ukraine and calm relations with Beijing are welcome, but not at any price. Through bizarre negotiations led by an unqualified envoy, Trump appears ready to abandon allies for deals with China and Russia.

The caption: Donald Trump’s Ukraine deal sparks Taiwan security concerns.

The bromancer ranted for a goodly ten minutes, so the reptiles clocked him, which left no room for "Ned", or Polonius or the dog botherer, but there's always Sunday.

Meanwhile, please fill the void with a 'context of ideas', and take it away bromancer ...

Is this the moment Donald Trump betrays Ukraine, selling out its interests to the superior power of Russia, and if so, what does that mean for Trump’s, and Washington’s, commitment to Taiwan?
These questions hinge on the most important variable in contemporary geo-strategic conflict – the ultimate character of the American President.
Ukraine today is in agony. On the battlefield it’s slowly losing, suffering desertions and desperately short of weapons and ammunition. Every night, hundreds of Russian missiles and drones rain down on innocent Ukrainian civilians. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s credibility is torn by a shocking corruption scandal involving some of his close associates. At no point since Russia began its invasion nearly four years ago has Kyiv’s outlook been so bleak, internally and externally. Never has it more needed the support of friends and allies.
Negotiations involving Ukraine, the US and Russia are at a critical juncture. Vladimir Putin may be on the brink of a historic victory that will transform the geo-strategic situation vastly for the worse. It’s difficult to see peace any time soon. The bizarre nature of Trump’s peace negotiations, especially the influence of Trump’s unconventional envoy, Steve Witkoff, who appears committed to a pro-Moscow view, may well have weakened Ukraine at the worst possible moment. Trump may even abandon Ukraine altogether, as he has sometimes threatened.
Meanwhile, China is conducting a vendetta against Japan, whose new Prime Minister, the plucky Sanae Takaichi, infuriated Beijing by saying Tokyo would likely offer military assistance to Taiwan if China attacked.

Ah yes, Vlad the triumphant impaler, Russia's President addresses Donald Trump's Ukraine plan. Vladimir Putin says it can be a basis for future agreements.

The bromancer was gloomy about his looming war with China, surely not due by Xmas now:

This is the deepest expression of Japanese solidarity with Washington. Takaichi’s words represent the attitude Trump says he wants from allies, a willingness to share the security burden. But Trump hasn’t uttered a single word of public support for Japan, America’s closest and most important ally.
Chinese government newspapers demanded Trump rein in Japan. Trump secretly did as he was told. Leaked reports now reveal that in a phone conversation Trump told Takaichi to stop provoking Beijing, to turn down the volume, as though the root cause of the problem in north Asia is not Beijing’s aggression but Tokyo’s alliance solidarity.

The sequence is important and unsettling. Trump had a phone conversation with China’s President, Xi Jinping. Trump briefed out a list of positives from the conversation, including that Xi had invited him to visit China in April and Xi would subsequently make a state visit to the US. Trump mentioned nothing about Taiwan.
When Beijing briefed its version of the conversation, it didn’t mention the invitation to Trump but put Taiwan front and centre. The US must realise, Xi told Trump, that Taiwan coming under Beijing’s rule was a central part of the post World War II settlement. Trump must understand the centrality and importance of Taiwan to Beijing. According to Beijing, Trump said he understood.
Now, out of all this, it’s hard to work out where Trump’s going. Steady deterrence seems less the policy than is the characteristic Trump temptation to try for a grand bargain. Trump has only two registers with other great powers – double-plus love or double-plus hate. Both are pretty dangerous.
You can make a strong case for what Trump is trying to achieve – peace in Ukraine and a calm relationship with Beijing.
They’re good objectives, but not at any price. They’re not worth the US abandoning allies for. If peace in Ukraine is bought with major Russian strategic advances, and calmness with Beijing is bought by sacrificing Taiwan’s interests and weakening the US security system in Asia, that could be disastrous.
Trump doesn’t govern by any consistent philosophy or ideology. He rules by deals, bluster and intimidation. With leaders he can’t easily intimidate, such as Xi and Putin, it’s more often deals than threats. In these deals, Trump’s own interests and the interests of the US are often conflated. Nonetheless, sometimes he does good deals, such as the Abraham Accords from his first term that resulted in peace treaties between Israel and several Arab and Muslim neighbours.
Sometimes he does deals, as in Gaza, that improve a situation, even if finally they’re not implemented in anything like their announced form.

The reptiles interrupted with a uncredited collage, even more feeble than usual: Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea in October. Picture: AFP

Yet even in all this, the bromancer could find a kind word ...

Conservatives (like me) who like quite a lot about Trump 

He likes quite a lot about a sociopathic narcissist king, who by the bromancer's own words, routinely insists ... L'État, c'est moi?

Only in bromancer la la land.

Oh sure the bromancer introduces lots of idle billy goat butts, but that's the notion that stuck in the pond's craw ...

And sometimes he does catastrophic deals or is just strung along by powerful adversaries who flatter and cajole him, or who sometimes intimidate him, so that in the end he’s not taking any action at all.
The anatomy of the recent Ukraine peace negotiations is instructive and profoundly disturbing. Central to the dysfunction is Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy. Witkoff is a long-term Trump friend and fellow real estate developer. The Economist has pointed out that Witkoff’s son is in a cryptocurrency partnership with members of Trump’s immediate family and that a number of the nations Witkoff has done deals with in the Middle East have entered into business partnerships with Witkoff’s son’s firm while they’re negotiating with Witkoff.
Conservatives (like me) who like quite a lot about Trump would find such arrangements morally catastrophic if they took place in a Clinton or Biden presidency.
Famously, Witkoff has no background in international politics and has often, on Ukraine, made preposterous statements that are factually wrong. Weeks ago he gave an embarrassing, cringe-worthy interview to Tucker Carlson in which he couldn’t even recall the names of the provinces he wanted Ukraine to surrender to Russia.
He mostly travels in a plane without secure communications and rarely takes professional US foreign service or Pentagon staff with him.
This is a grossly dysfunctional way to conduct international policy and puts the US at a tremendous disadvantage, dealing with interlocutors who systematically study their American opponents.
Witkoff is an effective negotiator in only one way and for only one reason. His interlocutors know he gives almost perfect expression to Trump’s wishes, and Trump will generally back what Witkoff agrees to.
Trump had a summit with Putin in Alaska in August and announced immediately afterwards that peace was at hand in Ukraine. Nothing came from it. But it appears Trump agreed at that meeting that Ukraine would have to give up to Russia Ukrainian sovereign territory, which Kyiv still holds, in Donetsk, as part of a peace deal.
Subsequently Witkoff has been refining the deal with Putin and his senior advisers. Two of his conversations with Putin’s advisers were leaked and transcribed. There is already a wide industry in trying to work out who leaked the conversations – Russians, Americans, Chinese? In one, in October, Witkoff tells his Russian counterpart that Putin should begin his next conversation by flattering Trump, lauding him as “a man of peace”.
Telling the Russians to flatter Trump at every opportunity is hardly divulging state secrets. It was Witkoff’s obvious identification with his Russian friends that was worrying.
In another conversation Witkoff tells the Russians about a forthcoming meeting between Trump and Zelensky. At that meeting Trump was expected to agree to sell Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. The Ukrainians believe their only chance of a decent negotiated outcome is to raise the cost of war to Russia. They can do this only by striking Russian targets, especially military and energy targets. The Tomahawks, a venerable weapon, are the world’s premier strike cruise missiles. They would give Kyiv a genuine deterrent.

The reptiles introduced a snap of the negotiating team in action: US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, second left, and US Secretary of state Marco Rubio, right, at the beginning of talks with the Ukrainian delegation at the US Permanent Mission in Switzerland. Picture: Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP

Is the peace plan too hard for the bromancer to understand? It seems simple enough ...

The bromancer began to fret at length ...

Putin warned Trump not to supply Ukraine with Tomahawks. Trump complied, refusing Ukraine its expected Tomahawks.
This reprises the deadly pattern of the Ukraine war. The Russians have deterred the Western powers, chiefly the US, under both Joe Biden and Trump, from giving Ukraine a full range of weapons. The US, the West generally, has not deterred Moscow from the most aggressive, violent, murderous, sustained military action against Ukraine.
Witkoff devised a peace plan that Trump broadly endorsed. Washington presented it to the Ukrainians, who were horrified. It not only involved Ukraine surrendering territory it still controls, it also involved halving the size of the Ukrainian army, restricting it from having heavy weapons, banning it from ever joining NATO or ever hosting foreign military forces as part of a security guarantee. It also would restore the Russian Orthodox Church and grant special rights to Russian language. All sanctions against Moscow would be dropped. Putin would be invited back into the G7, which would become the G8.
Surely the Americans knew Zelensky could never accept this? Reportedly, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was aghast. Within the often chaotic Trump administration there’s something like a power struggle going on between Rubio and Vice-President JD Vance. Vance is much more a MAGA isolationist. Rubio is Ukraine’s best friend in Trump’s outfit and the only bona fide adult at the top of the Trump administration’s national security team.
Rubio denies any internal dissent but these are dangerous days for the Secretary of State. There typically comes a moment of truth when a good man serving Trump is asked to do something worse than dishonourable, as when Trump demanded that his then vice-president, Mike Pence, refuse to certify the results of the 2020 election. The path of honour is then the path of estrangement from Trump.
It’s absurd that Rubio has been so marginal in these negotiations. However, in the next phase Rubio was more involved. Rubio and a broad representation of European nations worked with Ukraine to turn the 28-point defeatist monstrosity into 19 points Kyiv could agree to.
This involved a much larger Ukrainian military but left the most sensitive issues, namely territorial concessions and the nature of any security guarantee from the US for Ukraine, to later talks involving Trump and Zelensky. The Russians, however, expressed no interest in the new version.
They want an agreement that gives them a massive advantage, which is what they believe Trump promised Putin in Alaska, or they will continue fighting, as they are slowly making territorial gains. Miracles are possible, Trump could conceivably get something that protects Ukrainian security, but it’s extremely unlikely.
The war has inflicted a shocking cost on both Russia and Ukraine. Russia has suffered more than a million casualties, killed or wounded. Ukraine has suffered at least half that number.
This is a terrible and grotesque toll of human misery. The war is not popular in Russia. The Russian economy is not doing well, especially since Trump imposed new sanctions on the two oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. But Putin is a secure dictator. This war has conformed to Russian history. Typically Russia has terrible logistics and a corrupt officer and logistics corps. It starts wars badly. But it has enormous territory that gives it great strategic depth, it has a large population (144 million to Ukraine 37 million) and Russia’s rulers seldom care how much their people suffer. Also, it’s intensely nationalist. It prevails eventually.

Despite the bromancer having scribbled at length about the complete uselessness of tanks in modern warfare, the graphics department decided to terrify him. with a snap of ancient tanks, Russian T-90M tanks drive through central Moscow. Picture: AFP

It turns out that that the T-90 entered service way back in 1992, with even the M upgrade already six years old, but it was enough to set the bromancer right off ...

If a ceasefire came now, Putin would control 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory, including large slabs in the east that he didn’t control before the war began. He could spin this as victory. But he thinks Ukraine is weakening and Western resolve faltering.
The prospect of Ukraine getting new types of weapons is remote. A bitter winter is approaching and Putin will savagely attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Russia itself is now an economy structured for war. Putin will accept Ukrainian surrender or he’ll keep going.
Already, Trump spends no money helping Ukraine. Washington sells weapons that the Europeans pay for. The failure of both the US and Europe to ramp up weapons manufacture and supply, even after four years of Russian war, and with everything that Beijing is doing, reinforces the view in Moscow and Beijing that the West has gone soft and will accept defeat.
Assuming Putin rejects or just endlessly delays the refined peace proposal, the way Trump reacts will be crucial. Trump will want someone to blame. If he blames Putin, it’s just barely possible he could increase support for Ukraine.
But remember, Trump promised to end this war on “day one” of his administration. He wants a peace announcement and support for his ridiculous bid for a Nobel Peace Prize. He seems to think his best chance is to pressure Zelensky into maximum concessions that will leave Ukraine vulnerable to an inevitable new Russian invasion a few years down the track, but would allow a “PEACE NOW” announcement. If Zelensky refuses, Trump could “walk away”.
Although Trump no longer gives direct aid to Ukraine, the US is critical to Kyiv in three ways.
First, it sells weapons to the Europeans for Ukraine to use. The Europeans, rich as they are, don’t manufacture the full range of weapons themselves. Second, the US provides satellite intelligence for Ukrainian weapons targeting. Without this, Ukrainian weapons are much less effective. And third, Washington imposes some limited sanction and political isolation on Moscow.

QED. Be nice to the bear, and help with the makeover:

The bromancer was still fretting about his war with China, which wasn't looking that good ...

With the support of China, North Korea and Iran, Russia has fashioned itself a functioning wartime economy. By still doing substantial trade with the global south, as well as its three de facto allies, Russia survives economically. It still pays a price. If Trump removes the final three struts of support for Ukraine, Kyiv will have to sue for peace sooner or later, probably on even more punishing terms. This would be tragedy and defeat for the West on an epic scale. 
All of this also has direct and indirect consequences for the Indo-Pacific, for China and Taiwan, and for the whole region, especially US allies such as Japan and Australia.The US alliance system has held together pretty well in Asia. New polling from the US Studies Centre shows that a plurality of Australians, Americans and Japanese support coming to Taiwan’s military aid if it’s attacked by China. Australian support for this is as strong as American support.Trump has said at least once that he probably wouldn’t use military force against China if it invaded Taiwan. 
He’d use sanctions instead. But it’s almost inconceivable the US could lead a sufficiently strong global sanctions regime that it would force Beijing to abandon military action.Beijing is much more formidable than Moscow. By threatening to cut off exports to the US of rare earths and critical minerals that are necessary for most hi-tech, Beijing demonstrated a superior trade weapon to Trump’s routine tariff threats. Nonetheless, Beijing must still be scared that the US might after all intervene to help Taiwan and could lead a coalition involving perhaps Japan, South Korea, The Philippines, Australia and potentially others.
Xi wants above all to secure Taiwan without the use of force. Trump’s power in the US is already starting to wane as his inability to discipline Republicans over their desire to have the Epstein files released demonstrates.Trump will never appear on a national ballot again. After next year’s congressional elections, which on present polling will go badly for the Republicans, he enters classic lame-duck territory. Trump wants big deals. Beijing spies opportunity.
Unlike Witkoff, Chinese policymakers study adversaries in great detail. Next year, with reciprocal Trump-Xi visits, involving all the pomp and pageantry Trump so loves, and with Ukraine’s prospects, and therefore European democracy’s prospects, as bleak as they’ve ever been, becomes the year of living dangerously for Taiwan. And for all of us.

And yet this mug punter, deep in his cult kool-aid cups, could still scribble this line ...

Conservatives (like me) who like quite a lot about Trump 

So much for the contest of ideas, because it's pretty much the same as when Toles produced this 'toon a good five years or so ago ...

Oh yes ...

And here's that dismal week in review, with the real estate dude making an appearance towards the end of the clip ...