In which the pond eventually gets around to our Henry for its Friday reptile follies ...

 

By golly, no wonder Americans are depressed. They have an authoritarian with monarchical/fascist tendencies in charge, and they have a limp doodle of a man with imaginary friends as leader of the opposition in the Senate.

It took a while for the pond to catch up with John Oliver’s takedown of Chuck and the Baileys, and what an evisceration it was …

In an alternative universe, Chuck would have immediately resigned, saying he was making way for someone younger with a bit more spine and sanity, especially given current evolutionary trends ...

On the other hand, the pond has its own reasons for depression. 

Today is our Henry day, always a reason for a rapid decline in mental health.

But first to survey the scene …

Okay, okay, productivity is all the go, and never mind the way that the Murdochians produce a listless desire to do nothing.

At the top of the page there was an EXCLUSIVE, aka stirring the pot ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘Cap it, tax it’: super-sized advice from mate to Chalmers
Former Queensland treasurer Andrew Fraser, who chairs Australia’s second biggest retirement fund and is one of Jim Chalmers’s oldest friends, has pitched an alternative to Labor’s super tax.
By GEOFF CHAMBERS and MATTHEW CRANSTON

The pond had not the slightest interest and called in the archive to help out ... (yes, the pond knows that the archive can be slow to load, and sometimes drops out from the stress of it all).

The link is there, bore yourself silly - the slow loading will help with the boring - just don't blame the pond ...

Ditto the follow up ...

Productivity roundtable
Business cries ‘get us out of this $110bn red-tape tangle’
Slashing just 1 per cent of red tape constraining Australian businesses could generate more than a billion dollars in economic growth, the Business Council of Australia says.
By Sarah Ison and Geoff Chambers

Here's the archive link, and the pond will say no more about it ...

Over on the extreme far right, productivity continued to contribute to the pond's deep desire to do nothing ...

Skip past our Henry, top of the world ma, and you arrived at ...

Self-interest will defeat the whole point of roundtable
Much of the debate surrounding the roundtable has thus far been particularly unproductive, with too few contributions have risen to the challenge to put aside self-interest.
By Andrew Fraser

Again the pond went the archive excuse ...

You could also find the latest instalment in the hive mind TG hysteria saga ...

Why amplifying suicide risk cynically inflames gender row
Why do suicide prevention experts remain silent when the ‘trans suicide narrative’ is irresponsibly used to promote experimental medical treatments and to silence dissent?
By Bernard Lane

The pond has too much respect for others to even go the archive excuse. There's something deeply contemptible about the reptiles taking up TG bashing and the pond will have no part of it.

Also on the extreme far right came a Bowen, blowing in the wind, and doing his best to help Chairman Rupert's business model ...

Climate sceptics deny potential for economic boom
Net zero isn’t for fun. In 2018 the world concluded that net zero by 2050 is what is required to give us the best chance of avoiding the most dangerous impacts of warming.
By Chris Bowen

What a stupid man he is, and of course all his blather was just an excuse for the reptiles to claim an EXCLUSIVE ...

EXCLUSIVE
China and India win Bowen’s green tick
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has lauded China and India, the world’s two biggest polluters, for their ‘astounding’ take-up of renewables while still building new coal power plants.
By Richard Ferguson and Sarah Ison

Again the pond will plead the archive fifth amendment ...

The point to the reptile EXCLUSIVE came at the very end: the chance to celebrate coal, suggest the real reason they'd scored a Bowen scoop (a desire to score a chat fest), while closing with a little mocking of UN alarmism ...

...However, Beijing has just experienced its biggest boom in the building of coal plants in a decade, and New Delhi announced early this year that it would have its highest annual increase in coal power in at least six years.
A study last year from the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air showed China had started construction on new coal-fired power generators that would add 95 gigawatts to its grid, the biggest construction boom since 2015.
The Indian Energy Ministry announced last February that it would add 13.9GW via new coal power plants, saying they had to be built to ensure energy security.
Despite the pairing of a renewables boom with a corresponding boost of coal, Mr Bowen writes that his critics in Australia would not “describe either India or China as woke warriors – and yet their uptake of renewables is astounding”. He adds: “Why? Because (renewables) are now the rational, most cost-effective choice. They outcompete coal on every metric when it comes to powering homes and businesses.”
Mr Bowen is competing with Turkey to host the world’s premier climate change conference next year and ahead of Labor announcing its 2035 emission reduction target. In the midst of the campaign to host COP, the Labor frontbencher has had to say that the Albanese government’s climate ambitions will be set on Australia’s interest after the UN’s top climate expert urged the government limit fossil fuel exports.
UN climate change executive secretary Simon Stiell said last month in Sydney that Australia settling for “what’s easy” would lead to the world overheating and fruit and vegetables becoming a “once-a-year treat”.

What a troll. 

In the hive mind, that joke about climate alarmist cults would be the last thing anyone remembered of Bowen, blowing in the Murdochian wind ...

Here, have a cartoon to relieve depression ...

Hmm, maybe not so much given the way that Oliver presented the current state of ICE in America ... deserving to be put down like a miscreant puppy in a quarry.

Okay, the pond has delayed, obfuscated, and deferred as long as possible. 

Time for this Friday's our Henry ...

The header: Promises on statehood? We’ve been here before, with dire consequences, The tragedy of the Balkans shows the folly of trading recognition for promises that neither can nor will be enforced.

The caption: A Croatian police officer wipes tears as the remains of the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman are being transferred from the Dubrava clinic to the presidential palace, in Zagreb, December 1999.

If the pond might do a preliminary spoiler, the intent here seems to be to keep the jackboot to the neck, to induce a deep sense of pointlessness and futility, so that the current genocide and ethnic cleansing can proceed smoothly and without any fuss ...

So our Henry does a deep dive into whataboutism ...

Some experiences are unforgettable. Few, however, were as searing as watching Yugoslavia’s descent into wars that ultimately cost 140,000 lives.
Now, as our government and others stampede to confer statehood on Palestine, in exchange for what are claimed to be credible commitments from Mahmoud Abbas, that tragedy’s lessons are being cavalierly ignored.
At their heart was the impact of international recognition – and the utter vanity of the promises that accompany it.
By 1990, when elections brought extremists to power in Yugoslavia’s component republics, it was clear that the country was on the brink of being torn apart.
Within a few months, serious ethnic clashes had broken out in Croatia, raising the spectre of all-out civil war.
Croatia’s goal was obvious and explicit: to be recognised as an independent state. That met with staunch opposition from the EU and from US secretary of state James Baker, who warned that “unilateral secession”, as well as being ‘‘illegal and illegitimate”, would trigger an uncontrollable spiral of violence. But the secessionists were encouraged by Germany, where chancellor Helmut Kohl, who personally despised the Serbs, was under intense pressure from Bavaria’s Christian Social Union and from a powerful lobby of 300,000 Croat “guest workers”.
Eventually, a compromise was brokered. The US, whose attention was focused on Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the crisis in the USSR, would leave the deteriorating situation in Yugoslavia to the EU, which would convene negotiations to settle boundaries and establish democratic constitutions.
At the same time, the EU would appoint a commission to determine stringent conditions Yugoslavia’s former component parts had to meet before obtaining international recognition. Taken as a package, those conditions would ensure Yugoslavia’s ethnic groups could live together in peace and security.

You see? What's the point? Might as well let Gaza be turned into a new Riviera.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with a snap, Slobodan Milosevic, Alija Izetbegovic, Franjo Tudjman and US Secretary of State Warren Christopher assess the initial 1995 peace accord.

Our Henry kept on with his whataboutisms, and the pond wondered whether a new Henry law might be discovered ...

Or did one of the previously revealed laws cover the strategy?

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. They would prefer the genteel and concise summary offered by a learned correspondent, “Deluge the sphere with ordure”.
The Third Law of Our Henry: “On any issue of sensitivity involving persons whom he considers unrepresentative of ‘Western Civilisation’, expect our Henry to respond with a corresponding lack of sensitivity and a complete absence of empathy”, aka "What an arsehole"...

The first law seemed most applicable, but perhaps needed amending for the circumstances ...

"There is no argument that cannot be bolstered by citing events in other countries which have no direct relevance to the current genocide in Gaza”

Perhaps that's too specific to be a general law, but it shows the need to be flexible when applying the laws ...

Both processes were speedily put in place. A peace conference, involving negotiations between the republics, got under way while the Badinter Commission – named after its French chairman, Robert Badinter – set out conditions for recognition that protected the territorial integrity of each republic and enshrined its citizens’ civil rights. Moreover, the Badinter Commission, as well as the EU, made it clear that irrevocably implementing those conditions was a prerequisite for recognition.
But Germany, now backed by Austria and the Netherlands, was determined to expedite Croatia’s recognition, regardless of whether it met the criteria international law sets down for statehood, much less the Badinter conditions: mere promises would do, even if entirely unenforceable. Moreover, to accelerate the process, Kohl made a deal with France’s Francois Mitterrand and Britain’s John Major whereby Germany withdrew some of the conditions it had imposed on the European Monetary Union in exchange for expedited recognition.
To make things worse, the Croatians had, in the meantime, discovered what the Brookings Institution’s Susan Woodward, in her classic study of the Yugoslav wars, described as an “infallible strategy”: that by far the “surest way to succeed was to instigate a war, win international sympathy and then recognition”.
Thus, beginning on May 1, 1991, Croatian forces repeatedly provoked both the Yugoslav national army and Serb militias into fierce gunfights in which civilians were killed or wounded. By casting their opponents as aggressors who were illegally on Croatia’s sovereign territory, the Croatians fuelled the calls for recognition – not as a reward to the Croatians but as a punishment for the Serbs.

At this point the reptiles introduced the dog botherer, who immediately went to the Hamas point ... Shadow Minister for Regional Development Anne Webster says the decision by Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong to recognise Palestine will not make “one iota of difference” to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has directly quoted a statement made by listed terrorist group Hamas in a bid to dismiss critical media coverage of him which he described as “propaganda”. “He has been very happy to present the views of Hamas and not question photos, not question the stories," Ms Webster told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “Now of course it’s in his favour to say, please don’t believe what you read from Hamas.”

Our Henry kept rabbiting on with his analogies, to which the pond paid not the slightest attention, because the pond knew the real point of this whataboutism ...

With international condemnation of the Serbs continuing to swell, the EU recognised Croatia on January 15, 1992, despite the Badinter Commission’s determination that it had not complied with the mandatory conditions. Like lemmings, a host of other countries, including Australia, soon followed.
The results were disastrous. When it became clear that the EU was moving towards immediate, effectively unconditional, recognition, Cyrus Vance, who was instrumental in the peace negotiations, angrily told Germany’s foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher that “recognition had to be held out as a reward for a peaceful settlement. To give up that weapon before such a settlement was reached would mean more war”. Lord Peter Carrington, the chair of the peace conference, echoed his words, all the more so as he feared that the precedent “might well be the spark that sets Bosnia-Herzegovina alight”.
And US deputy secretary of state Larry Eagleburger insistently warned the Europeans that premature recognition would not only end the peace efforts but would “almost inevitably lead to greater bloodshed”.
Those predictions proved grimly accurate. Having achieved its goal, Croatia simply refused to implement the Badinter requirements – knowing full well that the powerful movements that had secured its recognition would make it politically impossible to withdraw. With those commitments out of the way, Croatia proceeded, through a series of attacks riddled with war crimes, to ethnically cleanse the newly independent country, rapidly reducing the Serb population from 570,000 to less than 80,000.
By January 15, 1996, Croatian president Franjo Tudjman could assure the Croatian National Assembly that “a successful Operation Storm”, as the final assault on the country’s Serbian enclaves was called, had “resolved the principal internal problem of the Croatian state forever”. The result, said Cedric Thornberry, the then UN mission’s deputy head, was that Croatia, long home to a mix of ethnicities, had “become the most ‘ethnically pure’ state in the whole of the former Yugoslavia”.

The reptiles introduced a snap of Ronnie Raygun, US President Ronald Reagan with German leader Helmut Kohl at the White House.

Our Henry stayed true to his whataboutism to the bitter end ...

The consequences of premature recognition in Bosnia-Herzegovina were, if anything, even graver. Greatly aggravating them was the fact that the Europeans’ abject failure to enforce the Badinter conditions radicalised both sides. It encouraged the Bosnian Muslims to abandon the peace agreement they had signed only a week before, confident that violence would yield them greater territory; and every bit as importantly, it convinced the Bosnian Serbs, many of whom had been moderates, that they were utterly on their own, strengthening Slobodan Milosevic’s most intransigent supporters. Genscher had assured his European counterparts early recognition would help bring peace. In reality, said Lord David Owen, who coauthored the Vance-Owen peace agreement the parties rejected, by empowering the extremes that “gratuitous” gesture turned out to be a crucial step on the path to genocide.
Woodward, having observed Yugoslavia’s descent into that inferno, concluded that Western governments had not only failed, they had “revealed little capacity for learning”. “Their actions repeated over and over the same approach, same thinking and same mistakes”, taking mere promises for firm commitments, despite lacking either the means or the will to enforce them.
Nor was that an accident: “make believe” offered the easiest “solution to the dilemma of moral pressure without strategic intent” – that is, to the conflict between Western governments’ refusal to actually impose the conditions they believed were indispensable and “the growing pressure from domestic publics outraged by their countries’ apparent indifference to the immorality and injustice of the war”.
Yes, talk is cheap. Wishful thinking is even cheaper. But in Yugoslavia, as in Burundi and Rwanda, Armenia and Azerbaijan, it served as the gravedigger of peace, burying hundreds of thousands of men, women and children with it. Confusing one’s dreams for realities, Immanuel Kant wrote, is best left to “the fantasies of the feeble-minded”. Unfortunately, it is the feeble-minded who are currently in control.

What a relief this peddler of cant finally offered up a Kant, because truly his cant his been very short on ancient Greek and Roman thoughts of late ...

Meanwhile, in another place, this came as the end of a Haaretz story on Gush Katif ... (possible paywall, remember the archive option)

...Being force-fed manipulative propaganda at the service of a future complete occupation of Gaza, while Palestinian life there is being permanently destroyed and Israel is busily completing its West Bank annexation every day, including on this very day, does not elicit empathy. Over seven times as many Gazans have been killed as the number of Israelis who were even displaced in the disengagement – nearly 62,000 at the minimum death count. Most of the 2.1 million Gazans are displaced, in subhuman conditions.
Israel's evacuees were relocated by their elected government to their own state, where they enjoy full citizenship and privileged status as Jews, with a full package of support, poorly implemented as it was. The Foreign Ministry reported that the state was preparing to spend $1 billion just on relocation – that's nearly $118,000 per person.
However, collective trauma and inter-generational memory of forced displacement are very real, as is the longing to return. If Israeli evacuees or anyone else ever acknowledged the Palestinian collective, multi-generational longing for their homes, after 750,000 were expelled violently in 1948 with zero compensation, losing all property, many becoming stateless exiles, the empathy wouldn't be so hard to maintain.
No matter how many TV specials are aired, no Israeli can live in Gaza unless Palestinians there enjoy full freedom and self-determination in their state – that is, if any Palestinian in Gaza survives this war.

Well yes, but not for whatabout Henry, a man with a cruel, hard heart, a man who will round up almost any excuse he can find so that genocide and ethnic cleansing can proceed without anyone caring a whit or a jot.

What a relief to turn to an offering from the infallible Pope for a closer ...

Oh dear, not much relief there. Why with the elephants all gone, and Henry gone all modern, there's no one let to talk about Thucydides... or how wiping out Carthage was a jolly good idea, and only bleeding hearts would once have cared to note its passing ...