When Kurt Hoe­fle, a cam­era­man with whom I worked, had an issue he thought required seri­ous atten­tion, he would announce it was time  for “clear­s­peak”, clear being the oper­a­tive part.

It was applied with­out fear or favour, regard­less of rank, per­ceived or otherwise.
Hav­ing been on the receiv­ing end, I can attest it was as often as not, dis­con­cert­ing­ly blunt. It also cleared the air, and ensured the prob­lem did not recur. Nor did it ever have an adverse effect on our work­ing rela­tion­ship or
decades-long friendship.
The val­ue of clear­s­peak over the dou­ble-speak, weasel-word way that life-threat­en­ing actions and sit­u­a­tions are too often addressed, has repeat­ed­ly been made clear in recent days.
In exchange for one wrong­ly impris­oned Amer­i­can, Spe­cial Envoy Steve Witkoff grov­elled  before Rus­sia Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin thus: “You talk so much about my pres­i­dent, Pres­i­dent Trump, being human­i­tar­i­an. You are a human­i­tar­i­an also, sir, and I salute that.”
It’s how Putin would like to be seen, and since it came with eas­ing sanc­tions imposed because he start­ed a war of aggres­sion that has led to uncount­ed death and suf­fer­ing for both sides, and put him on the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court’s war crim­i­nal ros­ter, it wasn’t a bad “deal” for him.
For all Witkoff’s pur­port­ed real estate mogul nego­ti­at­ing skills, how­ev­er, his months-old Ukraine peace mis­sion has still come to nought.
In the envoy’s defence, he wouldn’t have much suc­cess deliv­er­ing clear­s­peak to his own boss, either.
The only clear­s­peak Trump seems to find accept­able is his own sneer­ing insults, which in the main are so repet­i­tive and ado­les­cent, one has to won­der at his emo­tion­al devel­op­ment lev­el, let alone self-pro­claimed “sta­ble genius” IQ.
With­hold­ing defen­sive weapons to Ukraine and cozy­ing up to Putin by eas­ing sanc­tions and oil sales is more than mere­ly craven cow­er­ing before a  dic­ta­tor for dubi­ous to nonex­is­tent advan­tage. It’s a betray­al of brave allies for short term domes­tic polit­i­cal gain, the nego­ti­at­ing equiv­a­lent of opt­ing to play Russ­ian roulette with all six cham­bers loaded when it’s your turn to pull the trigger.
Does Trump real­ly think a Russ­ian takeover of Ukraine will result in one of his beloved  “deals” for access to the country’s vital min­er­als?  Or if one would be respect­ed by Moscow any more than his own side of deals is?Trump brazen­ly said of Putin’s relent­less war against Ukrain­ian civil­ians, includ­ing the deaths of chil­dren in play­grounds; “Rus­sia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine.
They haven’t been doing much,”
I guess that delu­sion sounds rea­son­able when your view of the world is often as not from a golf course.
It also seems to have rubbed off on the cab­i­net mem­ber some had hoped might turn out to be the adult in the room.
Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Rubio called the bru­tal. cow­ard­ly and video­taped attack on Wash­ing­ton Post pho­to jour­nal­ist Hei­di Levine by masked (and ille­gal) West Bank set­tlers “not a good look.”
As trite as that remark is, looked at from anoth­er way, it’s a good look INTO what Israel has become,
Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Binyamin Netanyahu’s ini­tial com­ment on the attack was: “Many times we’ve been told that cer­tain things hap­pened, and then it turns out that things weren’t exact­ly as they were presented,”
Some­one should give both those lumi­nar­ies a copy of “Don Quixoti”, with a phrase from the side­kick char­ac­ter San­cho Pan­za high­light­ed: “Tell me your com­pa­ny, and I will tell you what you are.”

               CLEAR THAT LOOKS HAZY

British Defence Sec­re­tary Wes Street­ing prob­a­bly thought he was pro­ject­ing the image politi­cians of all stripes seem to rel­ish, being both clear and forceful.,when he denounced a major Houthi rebel drone attack on Sau­di Ara­bia as “absolute­ly despi­ca­ble and dan­ger­ous for the region.”But he quick­ly turned poten­tial clear­s­peak cloudy by announc­ing the dis­patch of Roy­al Air Force fight­er jets to help defend Sau­di airspace.
Con­sid­er­ing that the Saud­is boast the most pow­er­ful mil­i­tary in the Gulf region, and rank fifth in the Mid­dle East (behind Turkey, Israel, Egypt and until the lat­est war, Iran), he didn’t even try to  make clear why they can’t do it them­selves, rather rely­ing on the belea­guered British taxpayer.
That’s espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant because the same news bul­letin that car­ried his com­ments, also report­ed that peo­ple, main­ly civil­ians includ­ing women ad chil­dren, had been killed in an attack on a mar­ket place in a dis­put­ed area of Sudan, by drones sup­plied by for­eign gov­ern­ments, includ­ing the Unit­ed Arab Emirates.
Nat­u­ral­ly, they all clear­ly deny doing so.
Clear enough?

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