In which Our Henry nails the spirit of the season with the help of Thucydides, and sundry other reptiles struggle to match the master's insights...

 

Steady, steady. No pushing or shoving. Please form a line and keep the line moving.

There will be no distractions or deviations. The pond will put on hold celebrations of the big loan to Ukraine. The pond will defer consideration of the desire of the pasty Hastie to kiss the ring of mad King Donald.

The pond will avoid contemplating the journalist murdering, Christ statue bashing, settler killing fields and the ethnic cleansing of the current government of Israel.

Sure the pond would like to spend time with MAGA Navy Boss Spreads Unhinged Theories About Witches and Cannibalism, but the pond has long known that ever since Salem a secret cabal of witches has ruled America. Hillary! Teleporting Waffle Houses!

And the pond pond promises not provide any nuze you can uze on the strait of Hormuz, not even a list of the many goods that you will not be able to uze or which will face price abuze as the mad King holds the world's economy to ransom (Condoms! Plastic storage boxes!).

Instead the pond will plunge straight into the good oil, the drum, that will amuze, straight from the horse's mouth by way of the lizard Oz's best and brightest muze.

You see, it's the season, and Our Henry is right on it ...

The header: Do we, as Australians, merit the sacrifice of those first Anzacs? The Dawn Service’s ritual centre, with its ‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old’ speaks of the living’s relation to the dead.

The caption for the fiery snap: A Dawn Service at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance.

The pond realises some will be disappointed. After that build up, it's just Our Henry, ancient warrior war monger, performing the seasonal ritual and taking five minutes about it?

What about the actual realities of the war currently unfolding? What about some Italians wanting to act as scabs and score a place in the World Cup by subterfuge rather than winning on the field?

Pshaw, the pond says.

This is prime Henry. The pond guarantees there will be time spent in ancient Greece! There will be confirmed sightings of Thucydides!

There will be a full parade by the pompous pedant of a range of portentous references, as solemn as the French Foreign Legion doing a slow march in wobble mode, hands pointed down, beards jutting, axes draped over aprons.

Please, allow Our Henry to gush, and what a sweeting blessing, without a single reptile visual distraction: 

At dawn in the high summer of 413BC, when the Peloponnesian War was in its 18th year, two trophies faced each other across the narrow strait at the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf. The day before, a Corinthian fleet had met an Athenian squadron and for the first time had struck the Athenians more forcefully than they could strike back.
The Corinthians knew the Athenians’ larger fleet and masterly seamanship gave them a crushing advantage. To counter it, they modified their ships’ prows, making them shorter and stouter to withstand ramming. Having neutralised their adversaries’ superiority by departing from the conventional Greek ship design, they raised their victory trophy at Erineus on the Achaean shore.
But despite extensive damage, the Athenians held the water at the fighting’s end, recovered the wrecks and the dead and, according to traditional standards, were the victors. In the hours that followed, they rowed across the Gulf and planted a counter-trophy at Molycrian Rhion, on the Aetolian side.
By the early morning light the two trophies therefore came clearly into view only three kilometres apart. Longstanding rules, that awarded victory to one side or the other, had been breached; but it was something far deeper that lay broken at Erineus.

Are you not amuzed?

Did the pond not guarantee a fine old time? Can it get any better? Of course it can. Let there be Nazis, because they are not just the remit of Mark Felton or SBS. Our Henry likes to take them on his cruze:

German intellectual historian Hans Blumenberg – who had experienced the rise of Nazism – put it best. Human beings, he argued, are constitutionally incapable of living in unfiltered contact with reality, exposed to the overwhelming, undifferentiated threat of a world that offers no given orientation, no protection. We therefore connect ourselves to it through the mediating tissue of myth and ritual, metaphor and story.
These do not give us access to the world as it is; they render it intelligible by investing events with significance and placing them within a widely understood frame. And what makes a society viable is sufficient overlap between its members’ mental maps to allow them to manage their differences.

And now for what correspondents always lust after, are always panting for in eager anticipation. Thucydides!

When the common repertoire of memories, symbols and words breaks down, that connective tissue is not merely strained; it is torn apart. The result is what Thucydides called stasis: a condition in which conflict can no longer be contained by the civic order, driving society towards rupture.
The war, as Erineus revealed, had shredded the Greek world’s shared frame of significance – undermining ritual, dissolving trust and corroding alliances once deemed secure.
However, the process ran not only between poleis but within them. And nowhere was the descent into stasis more disastrous than in Thucydides’ beloved Athens.
Against stasis, Athens had, at the war’s outset, one extraordinary bulwark: the city as Pericles had taught his generation to see it. What distinguished the Athenians, Pericles said in the Funeral Oration, was that they loved life and lived it fully, yet were ready to die for their city, precisely because the city gave them so much.
But claiming love of, and loyalty to, the city was easy when both were without cost. Once the plague descended on Athens in 430BC, bringing sudden and unpredictable death, Athenians began to live for the moment, placing present appetite above future concerns.
Soon after, with Pericles dying while the plague raged, his demagogic successors devoted their specious rhetoric to inflaming division rather than fostering collective purpose.
It was, however, the war that consummated the rupture into opposing camps. “War,” Thucydides writes, “filches away the easy provision of the everyday.” The civic decencies proved dependent on peace and plenty; when citizens were forced to bear even the slightest hardship, the thinness of the civic compact was exposed.
By then, dialogue had collapsed and the factions were hermetically enclosed in their own myths, entrenching the hatreds between them. The war had come home. It was only a matter of time before external enemies administered the coup de grace to a body that had already lost its capacity to cohere. Thucydides’ formula is terse: the Athenians did not succumb to Sparta; they succumbed to one another.
Thucydides, with what Nietzsche praised as his “courage in the face of reality”, diagnosed the disease as its victim lay dying. But he did far more than that. His History is itself a compensatory act of significance-making in the face of significance’s dissolution.

Incroyable. Nietzsche as a bonus! 

And wait, yet more Thucydides, with a fine example of Our Henry speaking in ancient tongues:

By giving the war a shape, a language, a set of themes that still organise political thought, Thucydides produced a “ktêma es aiei”, a possession for all time. He wrote, he tells us, so that future men, when they see similar tragedies looming – and the nature of human affairs makes their recurrence inevitable – may recognise the risks and act accordingly.
Two and a half millennia later, his warning resonates. Once again, we are in a war marred not only by the clash of arms but by a cacophony of contradictory claims.
War, by its nature, shrouds gains and losses in secrecy, deception and misrepresentation. Worse still, assessments of its likely course are vitiated by the inherent unpredictability of action and reaction: what Thucydides called “to astathmëton” – the irreducible contingency of a world that can be acted upon but never fully mastered.
But despite those factors, which urge caution, there is an extraordinary rush to judgment, pronouncing outcomes, and anointing victors, before they are decided. And no less extraordinary is the vehemence with which opposing views are held, assigning all success (and tactical shrewdness) to one side and all failure (and strategic folly) to the other.

And so at last to the modern world, and a little both siderism worthy of the New York Times:

The barely disguised schadenfreude of Donald Trump’s haters, and the matching ire of his supporters, are, no doubt, part of the explanation. 

Oh no doubt, no doubt. 

Is the man not in perfect balance, is there not an appealing symmetry to this presentation?

And now let us draw together the threads, so that the entire meaning of the season is unveiled, in a way that was only hinted at in that service in the Yabba in Wake in Fright:

They are, however, symptoms rather than causes, visible manifestations of the stasis Thucydides acutely analysed: the withering, here as throughout the West, of the common repertoire of values and practices through which contending arguments can be advanced, differences addressed, tensions however imperfectly contained.
And yet the crowds at the Anzac Day dawn service – one of the few occasions on which Australians still gather the frayed threads of historical significance – show the longing for a shared framework of meaning persists.
Inaugurated in another time of bitter division, after the searing antagonisms of the conscription referendums, the dawn service’s ritual centre, with its “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old”, says nothing of the dead’s relation to eternity; it speaks instead of the living’s relation to the dead, conferring enduring meaning on events that unfolded more than a century ago in war’s all-enveloping fog.
The Last Post is sounded into the dark; the silence is kept; the Rouse follows as the sky begins to brighten. Between the two lies a held breath in which the nation briefly becomes, once more, a community.
That is a pause, not a cure. But if, in those few moments, we can resolve to remember not only the fallen but the achievements, now so often derided, of the nation for which they fought and died; to refuse the continued perversion of truth and the escalation of hatred; and to renew the capacity – when the reckoning comes, as it will – to stand-to at dawn beside those who stand with us, then this will be a country that has merited their sacrifice.

The pond does believe this is one of the finest of the hole in bucket repair man's outings in recent times, a vintage excursion in to the meaning of war.

The pond didn't think anyone could match JD explaining Catholicism to the Pope ...

... but Our Henry has surpassed him!

It's a tough act to follow. Some might want to venture into a reptile EXCLUSIVE.

The best the pond could do was to send it to the intermittent archive ...

EXCLUSIVE
Cell to cenotaph: Roberts-Smith vows to take part in Anzac Day commemorations
Australia’s most-decorated soldier backs accused war criminal and fellow Victoria Cross recipient’s right to march, insisting ‘what happens in war, stays in war’.
By Jamie Walker

What happens in war stays in war? 

What a tremendous variation on what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

If only the Nazis had that legal defence in the Nuremberg trials, they could have walked out of prison free and proud warriors, and Our Henry would have been stripped of a valuable reference. 

I say, old chaps, we might have done a few beastly things to the Jews, but the Jews are being beastly to the Palestinians, and remember the old adage, what happens in war stays in war. (And the reptiles at the lizard Oz will write it up for the delectation of the hive mind).

And for more in the same area, some might want to contemplate the meretricious Merritt, helping out with ...

Australia’s civil justice system is on the brink of an uncivil war
Soldiers’ cases expose critical weaknesses in Australian law
In return for passing up their right to silence, four soldiers were promised their evidence would not be used against them in the future.
By Chris Merritt
Legal Affairs Contributor

The pond personally supervised that listing in the intermittent archive and trusts that it holds good for at least this day ...

And then there was an old digger trying to compete on Our Henry's sacred turf ...

The Ode tells of true significance of Anzac Eve
We instinctively understand the power of the eve – the quiet moments before momentous days. Anzac Eve deserves such a place.
By Peter Cosgrove

But how could he possibly match the hole in bucket man? 

And besides, after that surfeit of Henry served in such spiffing style, the pond has had a surfeit of the spirit of the season for the moment ... so the pond carefully supervised its placement in the intermittent archive, pausing only for a celebratory 'toon.

And what about this shocking piece? 

The pond has heard many rogue opinions in its day, but a reptile suggesting that we need to follow China's lead in anything is absolutely outrageous, entirely beyond the pale ...

We need to follow China’s lead on regulation of AI - ChatGPT has huge responsiblities (sic, AI checked and approved) that it is choosing to ignore
By Toby Walsh

Chatbots in the US have been linked to self harm. In one case, it is claimed that ChatGPT even offered to write the suicide note.

The pond did wake this morning to rather old news regarding AI spreading the word on a fake disease, which was written up in Nature:

Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real

Bixonimania doesn’t exist except in a clutch of obviously bogus academic papers. So why did AI chatbots warn people about this fictional illness?

Got sore, itchy eyes? You’re probably one of the millions of people who spend too much time staring at screens, being bombarded with blue light. Rub your eyes too much and your eyelids might turn a slight, pinkish hue.
So far, so normal. But if, in the past 18 months, you typed those symptoms into a range of popular chatbots and asked what was wrong with you, you might have got an odd answer: bixonimania.
The condition doesn’t appear in the standard medical literature — because it doesn’t exist. It’s the invention of a team led by Almira Osmanovic Thunström, a medical researcher at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, who dreamt up the skin condition and then uploaded two fake studies about it to a preprint server in early 2024. Osmanovic Thunström carried out this unusual experiment to test whether large language models (LLMs) would swallow the misinformation and then spit it out as reputable health advice. “I wanted to see if I can create a medical condition that did not exist in the database,” she says.
The problem was that the experiment worked too well. Within weeks of her uploading information about the condition, attributed to a fictional author, major artificial-intelligence systems began repeating the invented condition as if it were real.
Even more troublingly, other researchers say, the fake papers were then cited in peer-reviewed literature. Osmanovic Thunström says this suggests that some researchers are relying on AI-generated references without reading the underlying papers ...

And so on, and in that spirit the pond made sure that Prof Walsh's piece was saved to the intermittent archive, and will offer a teaser trailer, even if it involves the reprehensible concept of following China's lead ...

But even though the pond shares the prof's fears about AI and has more than a fair amount of contempt for Sam, the pond believes that nothing can match the experience of that noble Our Henry reading.

After experiencing it, the pond almost felt a Macbethian moment come upon it...

I have lived long enough. My way of life
Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have, but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath
Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not.

Put it another way ...

Picking itself up from that trough of despond and confusion, the pond allowed itself one last outing. 

How could the pond avoid Mein Gott and his hearty renewables bashing ways?

He was sure to confuze the greenie foolz ...

Not for him a desire to return to the lying rodent and Petey boy days. 

Here was a reptile who can embrace the spirit of the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, here was a reptile who could deliver good nuze, despite whatever was happening in the strait of Hormuz ...

What a stunning opening, and what contrasting snaps.

There was the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way looking vigorous and angry, while Satan's little helper looked at best bemused, and at worst completely bewildered, lips pursed like a carnival clown making ready to receive a ping pong ball.

The world weary Mein Gott continued on, in a way he has done many times before ...

As I have written many times, our nation has tremendous potential to use the photosynthesis process to profitably absorb carbon emissions. Bowen also now understands that we are going to need a lot of gas and he opens the way to link gas development with housing timber and agricultural carbon storage. As I pointed out in 2022, saltbush and similar plants can slash global carbon emissions and become a major source of world protein to relieve world food shortages. Carbon is stored in the root systems.
In the process, Australia has the potential to be a Middle East in reverse.
Bowen also understands the need for Australia to make its own nitrogenous fertilisers and, as my readers are well aware, we have the technology to extract oil and carbon from Victorian brown coal and use the carbon to make nitrogenous fertilisers.
We could start almost immediately but the Victorian government leaves diesel and fertiliser to Albo. The government and opposition need to consider combining to declare Victoria a state of sovereign risk.
But Bowen has not yet come to grips with the fact that while our solar-wind generation and transmission operation made sense a decade ago, the incredible cost blow-out now will set our nation back many decades. The rapid changes looming in technology already make it look obsolete. Maybe one day Bowen will change his mind.
That’s what Angus Taylor has done.
In a wonderful industry address he said: “Building tens of thousands of kilometres of power lines to nowhere, frankly, right now, is not what we need. It is only going to make the energy system more expensive and is going to drag down the government budget.”
I can’t think of anything more truthful than those Taylor words, and it provides real hope for the nation that he is prepared to make a stand in the national interest.
But telling the truth in this situation is very dangerous for Angus Taylor.

We'll all be rooned. It's not just Dame Groan who knows how to recite that poem, as the reptiles interrupted with a happy snap ... A politician confessing a mistake is such a rare event in Australia that it will send the environmentally friendly media into a frenzy. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

How Mein Gott loves the positive role that Barners, Tamworth's ineradicable shame, plays in this conversation ...

When he was energy minister and Scott Morrison was prime minister, he undertook a memorandum of understanding with the NSW government which was designed to foster massive solar and wind generation plus transmission projects that he now says are “only going to make the energy system more expensive”.
Worse still, the regulator suggested that transmission towers near Riverina farmland should be limited to 330kV.
Taylor played a role in increasing capacity to 500kV, so increasing the height of the towers and their damage to Australian agriculture. This spread to other areas.
In hindsight he clearly made a fundamental mistake but to be fair, at that time, politicians on both sides were being told by cost estimators that the project would be economic because the cost was low.
We are now looking at the vicinity of $400bn capital outlay plus secret financing deals which will take the cost close to $1 trillion spread over 35 years.
That totally changes the game, particularly as all the signs are that we can reduce emissions at a fraction of the cost.
A politician confessing a mistake is such a rare event in Australia that it will send the environmentally friendly media into a frenzy but will highlight to the community the amount that will be needed to be raised via higher power prices to fund this disastrous project.
And on the wings is, of course, One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce.

Go Barners ... why, the reptiles will even give you an EXPLAINER AV distraction, The former political foes have joined force, Greg Brown reports.

And so to the wrap up ...

Barnaby would of course like to talk about the cost, but my guess is that he can smell a scandal in the secret funding. Many of the developers knew that the whole plan was uneconomic and were reluctant to proceed without guaranteed high rates of return. That is why it had to be kept secret. Barnaby will do his job and relentlessly work to uncover the finance scandal secrets.
And the discovery that Angus Taylor is now publicly contradicting his former stance as energy minister will send Barnaby into a frenzy of joy. My advice to Angus Taylor is to get in first.
As a nation Australia is being fundamentally changed by the Iran war which underlines our isolation and dependence on others. We have major projects in energy and defence that will require large sums of money and if we saddle these new enterprises with much higher power prices along with a $1 trillion community bill over 35 years our nation will be in a very dangerous situation.
We now have the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation who all understand the folly of what is taking place and there must be genuine politicians in the ALP who will bring the subject up with Anthony Albanese.
Already the Prime Minister has prevented two mistakes by the Treasurer – the tax on unrealised gains and the extra tax on gas which would have reduced our supplies of diesel, aviation fuel and petrol. Now he has to bring his energy minister into line with the national interest.

The world's energy issues solved in a trice, thanks to Mein Gott and Australia as the new middle east, with due credit to Barners and prime Angus.

And you thought you were over the nuze that would amuze.

At last have it pasty Hastie ...

The Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie says doubling down on the US relationship has eroded Australia’s sovereign capability, including its defence industry, as he warns the country must “get serious” about national security to rebalance the alliance.
In a speech to the Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne last night, the shadow minister for industry and sovereign capability said the reliance on the US meant “strategic trade-offs” that had hastened the deindustrialisation of Australia and “weakened our hard power”.
He said it had cost Australia “sovereign capabilities like a robust defence industry” and “strategic freedom of action” in ways that were now becoming clear amid the Middle East war.
Hastie said under Donald Trump the US “should not be expected to guarantee much except its own strategic interests”, which meant Australia must “get serious about our own national security” by rebuilding its industrial base and a defence force “with teeth”.
To put it bluntly, if Anzus is going to continue for another 75 years, we need to invest in our industrial base and our defence force.
The former soldier has been an outspoken critic of Trump and his war in Iran, striking a different tone to the opposition leader, Angus Taylor

What could possibly go wrong?

And so to an aside, with the transcript here ...Penn & Teller & the Supreme Court & BS