Abandoned, desolate, despairing, our Cicero, our Herodotus, our Thucydides gone, and only the stagnant stink of geopolitics left behind ...

 

Devastating ... devastated ... the pond is inconsolable.

Eager correspondents were wondering, standing by, eager to do some larnin' with the hole in bucket man... 

"I'm wondering if our Henry is hunting through his books for some antique precedent that might show that Trump (a) is a noted scholar of early civilizations and (b) has come up with a stunningly brilliant idea with 'developing' Gaza."

Indeed, indeed, but the wondering must wait another week at least.

It was always too much to hope our Henry would emerge and address a topic best suited to the Bjorn-again one, Lloydie of the Amazon or the Riddster.

Copernicus: January 2025 was the warmest on record globally, despite an emerging La Niña

It had a really nice graph ...

... but it was a stretch too far. 

After all, the lizard Oz has banned all discussion of climate change, unless the ranting includes a hatred for renewables.

But the Gaza matter rumbles on, as in this early morning rant. 

There it was, waiting for our Henry to burst into action, a juicy topic, ripe for historical analogy and philosophical discourse..

A paradise to gladden the heart of the hole in the bucket man, sans caps, a vision greater than the transformation of Atlantic City ... perhaps as spectacular as Vegas ...

Alas and alack, yet again our Henry has gone MIA, AWOL...

The latest, according to his profile, was back on 10th January when he offered the world Donald Trump is set for a titanic Supreme Court clash, Entire swathes of his agenda were subject to legal challenge in Trump’s first term; that is certain to recur but in a legal context that places substantially greater obstacles in his path.

Since then silence. No chance to explore, refine or add to his two established laws.

The First Law of Our Henry: “There is no argument that cannot be bolstered by citing a long-deceased notable who had no direct knowledge or experience of the subject under debate.”

The Second Law of Our Henry: "When citing historical sources, always ensure you include sufficient persons and verbiage to camouflage your exclusion of any inconvenient facts that do not support your arguments.” The discoverer of the law suggests this might be a more polite way of saying “Flood the zone with shit”, but correctly concedes a scholarly gent like Henry would never stoop to such crudity.

Do they apply to other reptiles? 

The pond was too disheartened to know, care or explore. Hope flickered a little with this effort:

Forged by the experience of World War II, developments in military technology, and the writings of geopolitical theorists such as Alfred Thayer Mahan, Halford Mackinder and Niklaus Spykman, FDR and his successors believed America’s continental isolation no longer guaranteed US security and prosperity.

Geopolitical theorists? Here no Herodotus, here no Thucydides...

Besides, by now the the pond was heartily sick and tired of reading about and contemplating the court of King Donald I. 

The pond at least had to explore what else might be on offer ...

Oh dear, not another tedious lead on renewables at top of digital edition.

What about over on the extreme far right?

The usual election mode stuff, and what's Jack the Insider doing hanging around on a Thursday and blathering about Covid?

Apparently he caught yet another dose and after bleating about mandates, mournfully ended ...

...My first Covid infection in 2022 came within weeks of receiving the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine and I have to report the symptoms experienced on that occasion wouldn’t even have reached man flu levels.
For what it’s worth, my somewhat Covid-jangled memory tells me that I hadn’t been vaccinated for Covid for probably 18 months.
I have a vague memory of receiving a Pfizer booster some time in 2023 but nothing since.
I assume I am like most people and made choices driven by inertia and unwillingness to report to the doctor on a regular basis for a jab.
Pandemic behind us, what we have is Covid causing havoc in our communities and we seem to have forgotten or perhaps choose to forget about it.

What a goose. As if vaccines were anything but a path to autism.

Has he learned nothing working for the reptiles at the lizard Oz? Hearken unto RFK Jr.

A dose of Ivermectin will soon sort him out, and in the meantime, he must honour Killer and refuse to wear a mask.

Ah Killer, another reptile gone AWOL, MIA, IPA'd ... perhaps there'll be a weekend visitation.

There was nothing for it, the pond had to turn to Michael Wesley, a complete mystery to the pond, and endure what the reptiles said was a five minute read:

All change as President Trump rewrites the rules of geopolitics, Trump’s Fortress America vision, and its support in the US heartland, means it is now the clear alternative to the traditional liberal internationalist geopolitics of his predecessors.

As usual, the reptiles began with a snap ...US President Donald Trump is unlike any of his predecessors. Picture: AFP

Quelle horreur ... and not just the pitiful collage.

Everybody is worn out, fatigued, exhausted, even the 'toonists ...

The mad uncle was well out of the attic and running amok, and if not the King himself, then his mad minions, the pretties let loose and flying everywhere in a bid to ruin everything ...

Still, there was the promise of a lecture on geopolitics. Not exactly Rome or Athens or a medieval monastery, or a legal eagle from the 16th century, but it would have to do ...

Geopolitics – the interaction of strategy with geography and power – forms part of the mental architecture of every national leader. Most are only dimly aware of the geopolitical framework that shapes how they conduct their country’s foreign policy; many are socialised into longstanding geopolitical conceptions that their predecessors also held.
Not so Donald Trump. We now have enough evidence to see he holds a very different geopolitical perspective to those of his 13 presidential predecessors since FDR.
This will have serious implications for the US role in the world and will force uncomfortable choices on many countries, not least Australia.
Geopolitics is a framework for understanding and responding to a country’s advantages and vulnerabilities as determined by geography and national power.
American presidents since FDR have adopted broadly the same geopolitical understanding of US advantages and vulnerabilities, and the resulting imperatives of how the US should act in the world.
Forged by the experience of World War II, developments in military technology, and the writings of geopolitical theorists such as Alfred Thayer Mahan, Halford Mackinder and Niklaus Spykman, FDR and his successors believed America’s continental isolation no longer guaranteed US security and prosperity.
The rise of a powerful rival in Eurasia, they believed, would ultimately threaten the US. America, therefore, had to be active and engaged globally: providing security, access to technology and markets, building and maintaining international institutions and international law, to forestall the rise of a peer competitor.

And there were snaps ...A billboard on the facade of a Tel Aviv hotel welcomes the views of US President Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

Speaking of history ...

This Wesley chap was determined to be tedious as all get out ...

Trump’s geopolitical framing is radically different. It sees America’s isolation behind the world’s two largest oceans, with relatively weak neighbours to its north and south, as an overwhelming geopolitical advantage.
So too are America’s size, wealth, resources and technological creativity.
For Trump, his 13 predecessors have compromised and squandered geopolitical advantages by being too active in the world. America’s crusades abroad, as much as its openness to damaging, corrupting and weakening inflows of goods and people and outflows of industry and jobs, have weakened America’s geopolitical advantages. It is a geopolitical vision that harks back to Thomas Jefferson’ and the pre-World War II isolationists.
Part of Trump’s plan for securing Fortress America are the tariffs that will slow and end the weakening inflows of foreign-made goods and the outflows of American manufacturing jobs. He sees Greenland and the Panama Canal as potential breaches in the walls of Fortress America, so he wants to control those. US commitments need to be drastically scaled back. Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which commits all members to the defence of any member, is anathema to Trump. His proposals for Gaza’s reconstruction, for ending the war in Ukraine, for building ties between Israel and the Arab world, and in his first term for a deal with North Korea, should not be read as nascent internationalism.
They are troubleshooting; fixing problems prior to a withdrawal of US interest and commitment.
The rest of the world, in Trump’s geopolitical framing, needs to get on and manage its own stability and prosperity without any expectations of a US contribution.

There was an obligatory snap showing why there should be an ethnic cleansing, People walk among the ruins of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

Send in the 'dozers, let a new Riviera blossom ... you know, CDI Implodes Former Trump Plaza in Atlantic City...

Nope, here no hope of a big bang, no big bang here.

On and on this Wesley blathered ... raising saucy doubts and fears ...

Trump’s geopolitics will see the replacement of an extensive, extroverted American foreign policy that seeks to shape the world in America’s interest with an intensive, introspective foreign policy that seeks to defend and build America’s own strengths. Every commitment, every response to a provocation will be scrutinised for whether it strengthens or weakens Fortress America. The sudden demise of USAID speaks to a geopolitical vision that no longer cares about whether the rest of the world broadly reflects and supports US interests and visions of international order.
Indeed it is a geopolitics that questions even the notion of an international order. The consequences of Trump’s geopolitical framing for the rest of the world shouldn’t be underestimated. It immediately affects the emerging confrontation between the coalition of advanced internationalist democracies and its authoritarian opponents – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
It will potentially provide a much greater advantage to China in building support and leadership in the global “South”, allowing Beijing to speak on behalf of and create partnerships in the developing world.
Many governments in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and Latin America will see Trump’s ascendancy as signs of a collapse in the democratic West’s legitimacy, power and confidence, and conclude that China’s offerings are now the most compelling game in town.
Indeed, Beijing and Moscow may even begin to see opportunities to detach less committed members of the liberal democratic coalition, such as Hungary, to bring them into their own support base.
It will be a world much more conducive to Russia and Iran, both seriously weakened by the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, allowing them to rebuild their influence in the Middle East.
The space in which Iran can complete its march towards nuclear warheads could well open up.

There was another snap to interrupt the flow, Jordan's King Abdullah II receives Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in Amman after news of Donald Trump's proposal for the US to take over the Gaza Strip. Picture: Jordanian Royal Palace/AFP

What? Still no Uncle Leon? Geopolitical AfD master!

 And where's the entertainment?

Yes, that was a tidy summary of a WaPo story ...

In full at the archive 

And WIRED was still running hot, suddenly revitalised and fully wired.

There was DOGE Teen Owns 'Tesla.Sexy LLC'and Worked at Startup That Has Hired Convicted Hackers.

Sexy, though apparently Uncle Leon thinks all this talk is criminal.

Then there was This DOGE Engineer Has Access to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ...

A WIRED correspondent even made it on to MSNBC to talk about how Elon Musk's Takeover Is Causing Rifts in Donald Trump's Inner Circle (not to mention the plummeting Tesla sales figures).

And yet the pond was left contemplating this geopolitical dross?

North Korea, having flexed its authoritarian internationalism in Ukraine, may well be looking for other avenues to sow discord.
US allies, all of which have developed their own geopolitical framings around America’s, face some acute and consequential choices.
For decades most have taken it as a self-evident truth that the more extensive global adherence to liberal, democratic, free-market, rule-of-law norms, the more stable and prosperous the world will be, as will individual nations.
Now Europe, Japan, Britain, Canada, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand face a choice: do they continue to work collectively to advance this ideal without the US, or do they seek more narrow, geographically limited visions for their international contexts?
A post-American liberal democratic coalition would face formidable challenges.
It would have to confront the immediate question of whether such a far-flung coalition has the capability to push back against China’s pressure on norms in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America, and Russia’s and Iran’s designs in Eastern Europe, central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East.

The snaps were just as desolate, Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks converses with the Sultan of Brunei Haji Hassanal Bolkiah in Beijing on Thursday. Picture: AFP

Where's the fun? Sure, he's a Fox, but there are many foxes ...

Perhaps there'll be a little more excitement in the final gobbet?

Sorry, nada, nihil, nothing, no juice in this geopolitical lemon, just more saucy doubts and fears ...

Would they commit to the defence of Taiwan, Ukraine and the Baltic States in the absence of US leadership? The sheer geographic spread of Beijing’s, Moscow’s and Tehran’s interests would inevitably pull the liberal democratic coalition in different directions, perhaps even to contradiction and incoherence.
Another challenge would be that of co-ordination and consultation: can the Atlantic and Pacific allies effectively coalesce and prioritise in the absence of the superpower that is simultaneously Atlantic-facing and Pacific-facing?
Furthermore, is there a collective value proposition that they can offer governments in Asia, Africa, the Pacific and Latin America which are considering a very clear value proposition from Beijing?
How will liberal democracies match China’s offerings of aid, technology, market access, infrastructure investment, education and public order support?
These are all questions of vital interest to Australia, a country that has shaped its strategic policy around defending the “rules-based order” under both Coalition and Labor governments.
If the task of holding together a compelling post-American liberal democratic coalition turns out to be not viable, then Canberra faces even starker choices.
Australia’s geopolitical vision must inevitably shrink, adjusting to the realities of its power and its geography. It must think clearly about how it might realistically seek to shape its immediate neighbouring regions in maritime Southeast Asia and Oceania.
It will need to be much more rigorous in deciding what capabilities it needs to invest in to allow it to maximise its geographic advantages and minimise its disadvantages.
During the first Trump presidency the foreign policies of America’s allies were based on the assumption they were dealing with a temporary anomaly and traditional US foreign policy would resume in January 2021.
Trump’s second coming, and his determination to fully enact his geopolitical vision, means this assumption is no longer valid.
Trump’s Fortress America vision, and its support in the US heartland, means it is now the clear – if not compelling – alternative to the traditional liberal internationalist geopolitics of Trump’s predecessors.
This needs to be seen and accepted in Canberra and other capitals of US allies, and they should be considering what it means for their own geopolitical framings.

The pond demanded an explanation, and unfortunately got one ...

Michael Wesley is deputy vice -chancellor and professor of politics at the University of Melbourne.

Suddenly it all became tragically clear.

Our Henry somewhere on a field trip to dig up ancient ruins, nowhere to be found.

The Lynch mob had also gone MIA, AWOL from the lizard Oz, and the reptiles had done their best to dig up another way to defame Melbourne university, by running an abomination, an exercise in geopolitical tedium ...

No fun, no fun at all, and the pond was bereft. X was everywhere, and yet here no X...

Fancy having to turn to the lizard Oz editorialist to learn about Uncle Leon ...

Taking left lunacy out of USAID, Elon Musk may have a point when he claims USAID is ‘a viper’s nest of radical left Marxists who hate America’.

Ah heck, it was only a two minute read, and it started strong, until saucy doubts and fears again began to creep in ...

Elon Musk may have a point when he claims USAID, the vast international humanitarian and development arm of the US government founded by John F. Kennedy in 1961, is “a viper’s nest of radical left Marxists who hate America”.
Donald Trump obviously agrees.
With his usual restraint, he says: “I love the concept (of USAID) but they turned out to be radical left lunatics.”
Hence their determination, as South African-born Mr Musk put it about Washington’s key vehicle for the vital exercise of “soft power” diplomacy in 130 countries, to “basically get rid of the whole thing … it’s beyond repair … we’re shutting it down”.
In seeking to do so, however, Mr Musk and Mr Trump need to be careful.
USAID’s annual budget of $US46.66bn ($74.45bn), and the agency’s staff of more than 10,000 people across the world, may appear an easy potential target for Mr Musk’s razor gang.
USAID does vital work, from landmine clearance in war zones to emergency response work and natural disasters.
But stories about millions misspent on funding transgender clinics in India and millions more given to “organisations in Gaza controlled by Hamas” calling for “their lands to be ‘cleansed’ from the “impurity of Jews ”, provide clear evidence that the global US organisation is in need of oversight and rationalisation.
In doing so, it is imperative nothing is done that diminishes the effectiveness of US soft power facilitated by USAID and thereby opens the door further to China’s pernicious use of its notorious Belt and Road Initiative to step in and gain strategic advantage from budgetary cutbacks by Washington.
USAID was established by Kennedy specifically as a vehicle for “soft power” (the term was popularised by US political scientist Joseph Nye to describe the ability to influence others to deliver desired outcomes) to counter the influence of the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, and to run foreign assistance programs based on the idea that American security was tied to stability and economic advancement in other nations.
The importance of that goal to the US and its allies remains no less vital now.

Damn it, begone saucy doubts and fears, let's goose it up a little ... Elon Musk’s DOGE is feeding sensitive federal data into AI to target cuts, At the Department of Education, the tech billionaire’s team has turned to artificial intelligence to hunt for potential spending cuts --- part of a broader plan to deploy the technology across the federal government. (archive link)

What did they expect at WaPo? Democracy dies in the darkness of rags owned by billionaire oligarchs (though Uncle Leon should have some tidy reading to do regarding those rival business interests).

How about another effort by the lizard Oz editorialist, less than two minutes say the reptiles, explaining the lizard Oz fixation, Energy takeover only half answer, A shared bias towards renewables has created a mishmash of political aspirations and targets that are not translating into results.

Perhaps it would also explain this 'toon ...

Fat chance ... it was just more blather about renewables, an echo of what had led the digital edition. Here no overhot January, no overhot January here ...

Property developer Harry Triguboff has made an astute observation that while the commonwealth is getting the blame for a stalled energy transition it is state governments that are failing to deliver.
It is one of the perverse aspects of the decarbonisation process that the federal government is the state party to the UN climate process but the states are responsible for permitting electricity generation as well as gas and coal developments.
A shared bias towards renewables has created a mishmash of political aspirations and targets that are not translating into results.
Mr Triguboff is the latest business leader to call out the government failings and call for a review.
Woodside Energy chief executive Meg O’Neill made the obvious point on Thursday that it will be a major government policy failure if Australia cannot deliver cheap and reliable energy, while attacking environment activists for prioritising political agendas over the national interest.
On Monday, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar called on Labor to revisit its 82 per cent renewable energy target and prioritise exploration, extraction and generation of natural gas.
That followed a call by the peak food industry lobby, the Independent Food Distributors Australia, for the federal government to urgently address the impact of its climate policies on energy prices and the cost of living.
The IFDA told Labor to dump its 82 per cent renewables target and focus on gas to bring electricity prices down in the short term.
The fact that business leaders are now willing to speak publicly about the disconnect between the government’s plans and results is a welcome development.
Mr Triguboff says a federal takeover of the electricity sector represents the only chance the government has of hitting its 82 per cent renewables target, though he doubts this can be done to meet the 2030 deadline.
Mr Triguboff is right to call out the dysfunction of current arrangements, but he is expecting too much of the commonwealth and taxpayers unless there is a complete ideological reassessment of what we are trying to achieve with energy and why. 

That did it, the pond was done and dusted, the pond simply didn't have the stomach for the reptiles whining about the criminalising of 18C ...

Better to end on a lighter note, what with Colbert having produced this Freudian analysis ...

The Oedipus complex. What a feast our Henry could have made of that, what with Don Jnr out in the field... eyeing off the father figure he'd killed ...

The back story was provided by Forbes in Donald Trump Jr. Accused Of Killing Protected Duck In Italy

Will our Henry ever return? So much that runs parallel to ancient Rome in what the pond has been told must be called the Canteloupe Court of the New Caligula ...

At least he could return to remind us of how Don Jnr. is a new bird-killing incarnation of a Spartan warrior, as well as an ancient Greek Theban myth ...

It's a faint hope, but we must all live in hope, or else we might get some bloody lumbering vehicle in front of us, and be tempted to cross the double lines and see what eternity holds ...

As always, it's in the details ...

If anyone insists on getting their Machiavelli and Ebola fixes,  there's always The Bulwark's A Late-Night Call Between Trump and Bannon ...