Bungonia Bee April 26, 2024 1:06 pm “But, there are concerns surrounding how the maggies will fair with projected rising temperatures.…
Open Thread – Mon 29 Nov 2021
- Open Thread – Anzac Day 2024
- Open Thread – Mon 22 April 2024
- Open Thread – Weekend 21 April 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 18 April 2024
- Open Thread – Mon 15 April 2024
Nope you’ve lost me.
Police located a suitcase at the front of the house that contained various items, including candles, incense sticks, books on…
Another reminded of ABC picture wireless news last night “Prince William attended representing the Royal Family” Er, no he didn’t,…
And he waited so, so long for a single lick of that big brass ring. You know how it goes.…
They need to be deplorable overseas at a moments notice. It’s part of there readiness requirements.
Exemptions wouldn’t apply to them. More accurately, it will be sold as an essential aspect of them being able to fulfill their role.
LOL!
Deplorable = Deployable
Concentration camps. Uh-huh.
Speaking of inappropriate comparisons, here’s the NT News:
I’m sure Mr Gosling meant to say ‘epitaph’. Anyway:
South Australians. Every time.
By people who said they were in Australia’s last holdout of common sense until that holdout turned out to be a very strong Number 2 in the race, and who were working two jobs while demanding the rest of the country throw their families and livelihoods in the fire.
17 to 47 months until the last Big Prediction comes to pass. Chinese guitars come to mind.
REPORT THIS AD.
Luke must be trying really hard to miss the point by that much. His marksmanship used to be much better.
It’s a slippery little quote which gives the impression that they are celebrating “swastikas, Hitler, and other far right symbols” rather than making comparisons to the current situation.
Lame, but predictable.
Jonathan Hemlock was the assassin in The Eiger Sanction and its follow-on novel.
The first was made into a film with Eastwood in the lead.
Do I have to explain every one of my obscure references?
A DARWIN veteran says he’s been trolled and abused for condemning the use of the Cenotaph in the anti-mandate protests. He’s been backed by Federal Member for Solomon and former defence veteran, Luke Gosling.
Veterans don’t have any sort of monopoly on being right or good.
REPORT THIS GUITAR
I suppose if they used SA apartheid comparisons, they’d be accused of racism.
The dumb and mendacious runs strong in this Gosling fellow.
A fair assessment from Sheridan, but notice what he doesn’t do?
We need real military grunt to deal with worsening security
GREG SHERIDAN
Two announcements illustrate, and exacerbate, the extreme contradiction at the heart of all Australian defence policy. The US will increase the troop numbers it rotates through northern Australia, as well as its air force, surface ship and submarine visits.
That’s very good. Washington is more committed to our security.
But, more quietly, we retired a huge chunk of our air force, the only bit that could carry long-range missiles. We got rid of the last squadron of Classic Hornet F-18 fast jets, the only planes in our air force capable of firing long-range strike missiles, the old version of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile.
So while our diplomacy with Washington is successful, as Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific co-ordinator, Kurt Campbell, demonstrated with typically generous comments, we are reducing, yes actually reducing, our already minuscule defence capability.
Consider this. Marcus Hellyer from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute points out the government plans to spend $575bn on defence this decade but will not add one missile, or even one vertical launch cell from which almost all maritime missiles are fired, to the Australian navy in that time. Not one!
With the retirement of the Classic Hornets our entire fast jet complement is 44 Joint Strike Fighter F-35s (with one more belonging to us but still in the US), 24 Super Hornets and 11 electronic warfare Growlers. That’s just 79 fast jets for the whole of Australia. (We plan on 27 more F-35s by the end of 2023, still a tiny force for our geography).
The only new weapons the government has announced, beyond those planned many years in advance, are three categories of missiles – Tomahawks for the air warfare destroyers and Collins-class subs; extended-range JASSMs for Super Hornets and F-35s; and Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles for Super Hornets. So far, we have not received one new missile. The new JASSM-ER will eventually be fitted to the Super Hornets and the F-35s. But it cannot go inside the wing of the F-35, which loses much stealth if it carries missiles outside.
The best “missile truck” is the Super Hornet, which has a longer range than the F-35. Some 18 months ago, Scott Morrison announced, with great fanfare, that we would get LRASMs. He waxed lyrical about our ability to keep aggressors further at bay.
But 18 months later, we don’t have even one LRASM of the pitiful quantity of “up to 200” we plan to buy. Worse, the only aircraft scheduled to carry LRASMs is the Super Hornet, and we have precisely 24 of those.
Some 200 missiles (potentially) delivered by 24 ageing aircraft is not a serious military capability. It’s not really very much more than symbolism. You could defeat an impoverished enemy that did not have First World equipment, many platforms or much determination.
Our surface combatant fleet consists of eight small, old Anzac frigates with very little firepower and three air warfare destroyers. Our submarine fleet consists of six Collins-class submarines commissioned by Bob Hawke.
The nuclear-powered subs are so far away that they represent a long-term aspiration. They do not yet represent capability, much less strategy for the next two decades.
Campbell reminded us on Wednesday, echoing similar sentiments by Peter Dutton: “No country in history has undertaken such a broad gauge, extraordinary military modernisation over the last 30 years as China.”
The brutal contradiction of our national policy is at one level unfathomable. As one of the richest nations in the world, we are doing almost nothing to provide a relevant, sizeable, meaningful, capable defence force over the next five and 10 years. We are wasting vast sums of money in defence instead of using our, perhaps temporary, riches to provide security.
Let’s take a step back and consider this from first principles. We have foolishly convinced ourselves that there is nothing significant we can do militarily in our own defence if opposed by a super power like China. Even a Defence Minister as good and robust as Dutton keeps repeating this crippling and actually inaccurate line, which is core doctrine in the defence organisation.
Therefore, the overwhelming priority of our defence effort is not actually military but diplomatic, to convince the Americans they must defend us. Here is a peculiar paradox of history. The Americans, as much as they complain about allies not pulling their weight, often actually encourage this mentality of learned national helplessness.
This mentality has led us to design our military with only one thing in mind: how to slot in as niche forces within US-led efforts. That worked fine in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we are now wrongly still structuring the Australian Defence Force on that wildly ill-advised basis.
The potential conflict now is between the US and China over Taiwan. Dutton is right that if China won such a confrontation, or took Taiwan without even facing effective opposition from the US, the region would be utterly transformed in a manner disastrous for Australia, with the effective collapse of the US alliance system.
History shows us that defence spending is far more effective when it’s directed at one strategic objective, such as China has designed its defence force to try gradually to make it just too costly and dangerous for the US to operate in the Western Pacific.
We should now be designing our defence force to deal with the acute maritime challenge to our security.
There are three reasons for this. We want to reinforce deterrence. We do that partly by our political statements – and in the field of statements we are lions – but much more with real capability.
Second, if there is a conflict, it will be of mortal significance to us and we actually want to affect the outcome, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan where we had no effect on the outcome and our contribution was political and symbolic.
And third, if the Americans do suffer a serious reverse we may find ourselves more alone than ever. Of course, even a retreating and isolationist US would still be a critical partner for us, providing intelligence, logistics, weapons systems and diplomatic support. And yes, we couldn’t defeat a superpower on our own. But we could provide a fierce deterrent capacity, the ability to bite an arm off any aggressor.
This is well within our capability if we want to do it. So far, the Morrison government has allowed the paralysing force of defence establishment inertia to prevent this. Nuclear-powered subs literally on the never-never are no substitute for action that will shape a meaningful force over the next five to 10 years.
Luke Gosling’s a flog, a Labor flog at that, and I have no idea what he did or didn’t do in the ADF. It’s also clear that he’s grandstanding for column inches in the paper, as MPs are wont to do.
The sentiment expressed by the veteran and cafe owner, in my view, is appropriate. There was a small section of the Darwin march the weekend before last that broke off from the march, gathered in front of the Cenotaph on the Esplanade…..
and then played the Last Post while cameras were clicking before walking off. They didn’t even rejoin the main body of the march, but they appeared to achieve whatever goal they had.
I’m not going to wax lyrical about Simpson at Anzac, or Kingsbury or Jacka or Payne not having mandatory vaccination and anonymous bloggers in mind when they did they things they did, although I suppose I could.
There are plenty of platforms from which to support this righteous cause. Commemoration of our war dead, in my opinion, is not one of them.
The shit could really hit the fan soon.
The longer it goes, Emperor’s new Vax exposed.
“Over the same period, more Queensland women have allegedly been killed in domestic settings than the state’s entire death toll from COVID-19.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-02/qld-coronavirus-covid-domestic-violence-coercive-control-report/100666744
From the Lancet :
“In Israel a nosocomial outbreak was reported involving 16 healthcare workers, 23 exposed patients and two family members. The source was a fully vaccinated COVID-19 patient. The vaccination rate was 96.2% among all exposed individuals (151 healthcare workers and 97 patients). Fourteen fully vaccinated patients became severely ill or died, the two unvaccinated patients developed mild disease”.
Some things are hard to predict. Especially the future.
Exactly, rickw. Any large group of people has a statistically significant proportion of dickheads. The ADF does, (it certainly did way back in my time), government does, mining companies do, football clubs – any largish sporting club, in fact -, corporate entities, and so on.
But entire generations of past, passed-on veterans are being painted as a homogenous, saintly, flawless host being. One to be unconditionally idolised and referred to as ‘they’ by people unnecessarily using them to reinforce already valid points.
‘They didn’t do X and Y and Z so that A and B could happen’. How the fuck do they know what they fought for? If you actually ask people who’ve done this – and I want to make it VERY clear I do not propose to speak for people here that have done the business in hot wars – they, in my experience have said they did it for their select group of colleagues in the immediate vicinity.
Not ‘for all Australians’. Not ‘so future generations will never get unnecessary injections sponsored by Big Pharma’. Not for kangaroos and koalas and paddocks stretching into the horizon. For the people around them at the time.
I hold those people in the same contempt I held Liability Bob. Cloaked in other people’s achievements, while achieving nothing themselves.
Depends on the chainmail but I wouldn’t say its easily penetrated at all. Good chainmail will withstand a dagger thrust quite well, as well as other stabbing weapons too. You’ll find it very hard to make a lethal blow through the mail.
Only fails against thrusting attacks where the weapon has enough energy to break a rings riveting. Arrows launched by long bows and crossbows and javelins.
Go do your freaking deliveries and stop obsessing about at 7 am. Go . Shoo.
We need real military grunt to deal with worsening security
The only real deterrent Australia could successfully deploy within the rapidly closing window is handing out AR-15’s to the population like candy.
He should have used prostitutes, like Albo
Anymore truculent proto fascist nonsense and mental liquor puris discharging from the defective, broken foreign blog whinger today?
No? We wouldn’t know, he can’t handle criticism anyway.
St. Ruth will not be pleased to learn that there’s a school of thought on DashCat that’s saying it’s not a coup d’etat involving Schwab, the WHO and WEF and the WWF at all.
It’s just the Masons popping up again.
Rhetorical question Scumbag, why would you get rid of your best defensive weapon before you the replacement or better up and running? Too many diversity workshops and training of arsewipes who will never see the pointy end but first in line for a gender reassignment or spending more time with their family. FFS. To all those that served thankyou. I was lucky missing out on Vietnam. Having been acquainted with 4 shiny bums close to the top, all were hard left, I’m not surprised what has happened and as for Defence Procurement, is there anything they bought that was fit for purpose except by accident?
I am a veteran also, and concluded over a year ago that this country is at war, with our own government on one side, and the people on the other (if you want an illustration of this, ask yourself whom the governments soldiers – police and military – are being used against?).
As such, I personally find it 100% appropriate to protest at the sites of remembrance of those who have also fought for Australia’s freedom.
I’m very confused too. If those working under the Commonwealth are exempt, then why not everyone else too, since Commonwealth law overrides state laws?
Fun fact, a decent cross bow will defeat all pistol grade armour (Level IIIa), and will only be stopped by full rifle grade plates. (told this by a friend)
that Israeli article, which was published quite a while ago in full
Entirely fair enough duk.
Back in the early days of WuPox, a lifetime ago now, the Sinc Cat discussed the ‘flatten the curve’ implications of high R0 numbers and Imperial College/Neil Ferguson’s modelling. With some some sciencey stuff thrown in about the trajectory of likely viral mutations.
Then, in September 2020 (?), when the Stage 3 results for the jabs pointed to 60% to 80% efficacy, numerically engaged Cats pointed out the mathematical difficulty/implausibility of ever achieving herd immunity against a disease with such a high transmissibility.
And here we are.
Discovering it in real life.
It is basic mathematics.
I didn’t think pointing this out was special. I am shocked millions of others are practically inummerate.
From the interwebs
Media control
Is an anagram of
Delta omicron
Not really shocking. Being innumerate (or at least not thinking in mathematics) is hardly a sin.
Unless you are surrounded by hordes of advisors and blithely steering the economy and an entire society into Shitter’s Ditch.
Then it’s a sin.
He might want to reflect on what soldiers fight for. Surely one of them is freedom of expression. It can’t be to impose cultural decisions on your own nation.
The diggers in the trenches of WW1 might have had second thoughts if they knew how Australia would change over the decades – it being far removed from the society they were familiar with.
But those who came back became part of that evolution. Equal to the rest of us.
Fighting, for example, for free speech is fighting for the right of people to say what they want, not their right to say what you want.
The latest BBC Hard Talk has Stephen Sackur doing his usual thing and attacking a conservative. It’s Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado in the gunsights, but Ken isn’t taking any crap, and treats Stephen like the lefty journalistic slime he is. Buck is an experienced speaker, having been a prosecutor for 25 years before going into politics. He doesn’t accept the tricks that Sackur routinely gets up to with those he doesn’t like – while giving non-conservatives his decidedly “soft talk” approach.
Link
Crossbows have very high draw weights and their bolts are heavy so I can see this happening at close range.
Right Rosie,
So before they started another round of boosters, jabbing kids and shutting borders.
Good job The science is settled.
PS: I’ll bet Dan now wishes he could end up like NSW.
Pixel and Print Priapism.
Is Dan, Is Bad.
Victoria. 1400+ and 10 dead.
basically we are pretty much unable to defend ourselves
They are pressing ahead developing a new strategic capability: battalions of QWERTYs.
It is one area where the Chinese are lagging far behind.
Imagine the terror at the sight of ranks up ranks of flamboyant privates, looking fabulous in their rainbow camos, tittering, skipping and pirouetting, throwing their heads back in exaggerated laughter.
The ADF has been quite clear that these are their recruitment and personnel priorities.
A wind up surely, Peter Doherty was the crackhead and junkie that played guitar for Babyshambles while dating Kate Moss.
Daily Mail. The good, the holy, the saintly Greens…
Funny thing is that there will be people out there who will see this as proof (or at least a strong indication) of a conspiracy. Because all people and organisations devoted to paving the way for The Lizard People are constrained to use anagrams and repeated patterns of numbers to advance their nefarious schemes.
And, but for an army of dogged sleuths living in the sickly glow of computer monitors in basement, or in apartments with stacks of newspapers and windows covered in alfoil, and walls covered in clippings linked in a latticework of thick red marker converging like a spiderweb on a much overwritten question mark, these fiends would be getting away with it too!
Um, here’s what KD never wants to acknowledga.
a) The Anzacs were fighting against tyrannical anti western government.
So, they were fighting against the Nazis to stop Socialism.
Whether they did it for that reason or not.
b)No one wanted to “use” the cenotaph and the memory of our diggers for their own personal aggrandisement.
The government started it by refusing to let us pay respects to our own war dead, while allowing us to fight over toilet rolls in the busineesses of large corporations.
What I therefore proposed was disobedience, to not comply, to ignore their communist anti western dictates.
Not a political protest about taxation or dental subsidies or the price of eggs and claiming the diggers would be all on one side of the political argument.
KD is just being cute.
He was wrong then and he is wrong now.
But being stubborn, when somebody else points out it was a legitimate thing to do above, he agrees.
Pathetic.
They fought Nazis and they didn’t die to have their future generations cave in without a fight.
You should never let them stop you from honouring your war dead in just the same way as you should never bow to any of these tyrannical, unconstitutional …yes..unconstitutional bullshit.
KD likes to frame it as a political protest for a particular gripe that all diggers would not have agreed with, so they shouldn’t be claimed as “ours”
Very dishonest and clutching at straws.
They died fighting tyrannical forces, and you don’t let tyrannical forces stop you from honouring them by gathering in their honour.
You do not consent and you do not comply.
Whether it is honouring our war dead…especially if it is honouring our war dead, or agreeing to flash your “good Nazi” pass to get a hair cut, you should not comply.
Back then if only we hadn’t complied, things might be a bit different now.
Ever thought of that?
an Italian changes his mind
Keep banging the drum, FFS.
what’s everyone got against Daisy? come one man, she’s a woman.
A gorgeous woman, with a flower behind her ear!
I had a go recently at describing the reality of medieval combat. As part of it references a great study on the effectiveness of arrows and so on against armour. Here’s a bit – without the footnotes, as the Cat blog can’t carry them unless manually inserted:
The effect of an arrow hitting a plate-clad soldier is not as effective as might be thought. If the arrow hit at the right angle it certainly could be devastating, as this example shows:
At the Siege of Abergavenny (1182) where Welsh arrows penetrated an oak door four inches thick. A knight of William de Braose was hit by one which went through the skirt of his hauberk, his mail hose, his thigh, and then through the leather and wood of his saddle into his horse; when he swerved round, another arrow pinned him in the same way as the other leg.
However, the arrow had to strike at the right angle. An extensive analysis at the end of Robert Hardy’s Longbow is instructive. Written by Peter Jones, it analyses armour strength and arrow strikes in considerable detail, and concludes:
It is important to realise that very few arrow strikes were likely to be ‘normal’, at 90 degrees to the armour. Arrows were likely to reach the target at an inclination determined by the trajectory which could be anything between 90 degrees and 0 degrees to the ground. Further, allowing for the curves in armour plate which delineate the shape of the body, and for deliberate angling of the armour, the number of normal strikes would represent a proportion only of the number of arrows discharged….Thus it can be seen that as the attack angle increases the amount of penetration decreases until the arrowhead actually fractures.
Jones does not venture into the unknown: that is, how many soldiers were indeed hit at not the best angle for arrow penetration. For how can that be known, for we are not present at the battle, and nor are there lists of such injuries? But in summary, if you were wearing plate armour you were protected by a number of factors from arrow fire, including distance from the bowman – which affected the speed of the arrow; the quality of your armour, and the angle at which the arrow struck. If you merely had a brigandine or a jack, and a sallet for protection, you were not so invulnerable. But in conclusion we can say that the arrow storm was not the end of the battle; nor was it of massive overwhelming consequence. What we can say was that it was dangerous; an annoyance, and not to be endured. The warriors of the time understood the arrow storm must be dealt with, and that was done by moving forward to engage at close quarters.
Link
we haven’t even gotten to the long term damage yet
Tom mentioned Sky’s efforts to fill the space vacated by Alan Jones.
Agree about Rita. She is a fire cracker and I think she has a bit of a following overseas, especially in the US – her monologues seem to feature on a lot of Fox programs like Tucker Carlson.
I know she can engage with people with similar views (as on Outsiders) but ho does she go with people with whom she disagrees. Combative interviews with misshapen freaks Labor and the Greens are.
Jones was an aged but still formidable dragon-slayer. That is the thing Sky is going to miss.
Doing part of the St Johns ambo training package.
Question 8
Consent is given voluntarily and is free from coercion or repercussions…
Yes/No.
I must select no since this organisation is one which have embraced mandates upon threat of losing your job??
Funny, the quiz tells me thats the wrong answer…
The gun went off.
Alec Baldwin has insisted that he never pulled the trigger of the gun in the fatal accident on his film set and had no idea how it came to be loaded with live ammunition. (The Oz)
I was just cleaning the longbow and it went off.
You must be familiar with Jorg Spraeve and Tods Workshop on Youtube?
I once, unwisely, did the SA Ambulance mandatory (there’s that word again!) training package on ‘Aboriginal Cultural Awareness’ (aka whitey bad training).
To my amazement, I scored ‘not yet competent’ with a 9% correct rating in the end of course quiz.
I then successfully fended of re-sitting the course for years on the grounds that ‘I found it offensive’
That is not an excuse. It is a summary of how irresponsible he was.
A little FD – there are others I also got into. For example, FACT Open House: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZWkDhh9Zsg&t=130s
Denninger this morning:
https://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=244380
Original article from The Lancet here:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(21)00258-1/fulltext?s=08#%20
Arky was right. The vaxxes do shit except have bad side effects.
BTW I don’t miss Frank at all.
I hope he doesn’t own an SUV.
Those things can go rogue when you least expect it.
Nah just pointing out for every, often tenuous, attempt to link individual illnesses or even deaths to the vaxx there are counterpoint stories.
It was Virginia Nicholls who started the fake story about the Sydney boy Tom Van Dijk, now we are supposed to hang off her every word.
Said before if Vaxxbad! is your primary battle cry you are not going engage the majority of Australian voters.
Why we won’t see another Victoria, NSW lockdown
ROBERT GOTTLIEBSEN
Let me go out on a limb on the basis of some remarkable research: I don’t think either Victoria or NSW will embrace another Covid lockdown in the foreseeable future unless the health situation becomes dire.
As I will discuss below, this is close to the best news for the Australian economy that is possible to deliver.
It’s true state premiers are unpredictable there must be a good chance that the premiers of Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania will follow. WA is now almost a country on its own and anything could happen.
What makes me confident in making such a prediction is the remarkable Morgan Research mobile phone analysis of exactly who attended the enormous recent protests in Melbourne during the weekend of November 20-21.
That analysis also throws into doubt the accuracy of many of the opinion polls in the current political environment — including the Morgan polls.
These days most protests are dominated by either hard left green/woke groups or the hard right. Both sides are dominated by professional protesters determined to do what ever is required to gain media attention. They certainly don’t gain my attention.
But Saturday and Sunday, November 20 and 21, were different. The professional protesters were missing and so media coverage was down. I now realise similar groups appeared in most states but it was in Melbourne where the largest numbers massed on the streets. I wrote about the event because I believed I was watching middle Australia go to the streets — something they rarely do. The largest protests were on the Sunday where in Melbourne almost certainly 200,000 walked through streets in an orderly fashion.
Morgan chose to research the Saturday crowd which was about 20,000. To determine who these people were, and where they came from, Morgan ‘geo-fenced’ the area in front of Victoria’s Parliament House from 11am to 2.30pm.
The mobile devices that were seen in this area during the protest time period were then profiled by Helix group to produce a ‘Heat Map’ showing where the protesters had come from.
Missing were the normal protest groups from inner-city areas. They were replaced by people who had come from the outer suburban areas that ring Melbourne. Some even came from regional centres like Ballarat, Geelong, Ocean Grove, Torquay, Wallan, Warragul, Hastings, Traralgon and Wonthaggi.
By examining the population compositions of the suburban and regional areas who dominated the protest Morgan determined that they were mainly two groups of Australians:
• The so called “contented Australians” who embrace conventional family life. They are perennial home improvers, they see their homes as an expression of their status and achievements.
• Those further down the socio-economic ladder who are struggling to make ends meet and looking for a better deal in life. They tend to be cynical and pessimistic about their situation and authority figures generally.
These two very different groups united. Both were hit by the lockdowns and are very unhappy with the Victorian premier. The anecdotal evidence indicates similar groups attended the Sydney protests albeit on a smaller scale.
Any state government that inflicts another lockdown on these two groups can forget about being elected at their next election.
In its voter base, the ALP has a large slice of the battlers, but both parties need votes from ‘contented’ Australians who normally do not protest unless they are greatly aroused. Another lockdown in NSW or Victoria will likely see voters surge to the opposition.
Around the world opinion polls on political issues are proving inaccurate. Australia’s opinion poll record is superior to most countries but given there is turmoil in outer suburban land, opinion polling can be wrong.
While the greatest turmoil is in Victoria, it is also evident in NSW and other states. It does not appear to show up in many opinion polls so we have to wonder whether the pollsters have maintained their accuracy.
Meanwhile the economic figures that came out of the lockdowns in Victoria and NSW were stark.
Australian household spending fell by 4.8 per cent in the September quarter.
Spending on discretionary or non-essential goods and services accounted for between 80 and 90 per cent of the fall in consumption for NSW and Victoria. Spending has now bounced back very strongly and we are set for a great Christmas.
But middle Australia has spoken and both the Victorian and NSW Premiers will have got the message, which is great news for business.
Oz link
Obviously not Sarah Hyphen-Sea Patrol whose leg management is both:
1. Notorious; and
2. A profitable side hustle.
Did guitar playing Peter Doherty win a Nobel Prize?
No shit Sherlock
The Anzacs were fighting nazis before there were even nazis.
I don’t know how people, especially not people who’s family never had skin in the game, can claim to know what motivated soldiers in either war.
Yep, noticed the same in Adelaide, it is ordinary voters who are protesting, and that should terrify any sitting government.
I am now *regularly* hearing ‘the people have to rise up and overthrow the government’ conversations from all sorts of disparate and previously law abiding citizens
It’s astounding really, the liars with the green ticks attached being considered an alternative government when their leader albo had photos of him exiting a brothel, tits still has a live rape allegation, plibbers has a convicted drug dealer hubbie and the vast bulk of reported sexual assaults and bullying have been against the liars.
Better get a lawyer, son
You better get a real good one
Or at least one with the stones to tell him to stop flapping his gums.
Do you think he would have foreseen the first ones?
Estimating the number of wrong and stupid things a government can do ought to be a whole branch of mathematics, and the grunting ogres who get into government seem to take to the element of bad ideas like a fish to water.
Arek balrin might be telling the truth about not pulling the trigger, if the pistol was set as a fast shooter it may have had a dodgy trigger.
Or he could have been a complete cock and been pointing a pistol at people for no other reason than he was a bored ‘star” and could.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWX8hFhNpdQ
Austria Plans Enormous Fines, Incarceration For Vaccine Refusers: Every day brings worse news.:
Gottliebsen says that protests are generally dominated by the hard left and the hard right?
I swear, honest question: Which protests are ‘hard right’?
There may be demonstrations by neo-Nazi white-power goons, although I have not heard about them.
Or are people opposed to abortion hard right?
Or is it just a habitual genuflection to the MSM creed that you cannot let the left look worse than the right, and every admonishment of the left must be met with an at least equal admonishment of the right?
Politicians may line up as left and right.
Voters not so much.
Ahaha hahahaaaaaa. Superlative!
Hiding in plain sight! Comment of the year.
You know who you are.
“Mother Lodesays:
December 2, 2021 at 11:32 am”
It’s just the usual MSM and elites gaslighting….it’s all designed to smear, ridicule and delegitimise the protests and particularly the protesters.
As I said last week, quoting Michael Kroger on Sky, ever since the Vietnam War the left like to think they own the streets, they don’t like it when others protest…hence the need to sneer, smear and scoff.
St. Ruth of the Holy Lectern:
I am many things. ‘Cute’ is not on of them.
No. I do not object to people holding the view that cenotaphs are appropriate places to demonstrate mandatory vaxxes, and I said so earlier.
What I DO object to is being subject to demands that I do just that by squealy walk-backing hypocrites from the other side of the country with no skin in the game – lest I be called a traitor, a coward and to have clots and death wished upon me. And mine.
Given half a chance you’d be the overlord you’re protesting against now, and you very well know it.
Ah, remember the good ‘ole days in 2020 when only 191 new cases caused Dan to shut down Melbourne; one quarantine worker tested positive in February and panic ensued; a cluster of 13 cases tied to a Holiday Inn led to Victoria’s third lockdown; 9 cases in May led to another tightening of restrictions; and 26 cases led to Victoria’s fourth lockdown.
There must be a market for a good conspiracy novel here.
Next you’ll be declaring it’s purely coincidental Fauci’s SSN
minus his office extension number, divided by Baron Rothschild’s birth weight
times the number of corgis Madge has owned, equals 666.
Is it a car park or garage business?
“Nah just pointing out for every, often tenuous, attempt to link individual illnesses or even deaths to the vaxx there are counterpoint stories”.
What you mean like fully vaxxed countries going into lockdown, boosters, vaccines for kids, fining the unvaxxed, mandatory jabs and closed borders?
Good job we have these vaccines to save us.
No skin in the game?!
I’ve walked back absolutely nothing.;
A traitor, a coward, and have death clots wished upon you !!
Try to keep one subject’s response to one subject.
What you prove here is as I said.
Yes it’s ok to go to your cenotaph in defiance of anti western communist dictate……as long as the sentiment didn’t come from me.
You actually agree to this with others, but you won’t hear it from me, because I picked you up on your response immediately.
You just didn’t think your response through at the time, because emotion and a desire to call white if I said black, fucked you up.
Grow up, KD.
“All be the same in a hundred years, I say.”
“Half his luck”
Really, projecting our ideas on the then soldiers doesn’t do them justice. They wrote what they wanted and you can read what they wrote.
30% jabbed in my area and anti government sentiment building quickly.
Just had another friend come around who I thought would have had the jab, declare he had not.
And he is not on the internet at all and watches the bloody ABC!
They haven’t won in QLD yet, that is for sure.
Many businesses are refusing to police the entry of the unjabbed and although relatively useless, many councils are refusing to support it and are writing letters.
Sunny Coast facebook page with thousands of members of businesses and individuals against all this just got shut down.
It will be Dan style tyranny required up here, which I’m sure will come, but the Queensland population is filled with the old white “colonialists” Those terrible people who understand what freedom is and how it is achieved…and they come from Victoria, NSW and all over the country to escape the flooding of their own states by those millions of immigrants who know nothing of how freedom is won and maintained.
So again, this is not a parochial thing, it is a demographic thing.
Will QLD be Australia’s Texas/Florida?
With compulsory voting Australian elections are generally won or lost in the centre.
2019, when Shorten managed to alienate some core Labour voters, was an interesting exception.
TheLastRefuge Retweeted
Michael P Senger @MichaelPSenger · 4h
https://twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/1466150597422321671
Not projecting.
The troops in every war cannot know what will result from the campaign they are engaged in as they are a snapshot of time, and what they do will change the world in ways that would likely surprise them. And we know that one side, fighting to win, doesn’t even get that.
Fighting does not give you ownership of the future. And I doubt they expected to. And afterward their tastes changed as they got older.
Only if you excised the SE corner from the state. Even then in many regional cities the state public service would be one of the largest employers.
6 wordwalls this morning and still not a single outright demand to repent, Graeme Struth.
Lift your game.
Then choo choo man, all butt hurt as usual, claims I was still working in vaccine mandated Queensland.
Funny that.
Queensland isn’t mandated until the middle of this month, whereupon I will not be working yet again.
This is regrettable, and all your abuses of every non-sycophant on this blog and your deepening madness aside, I sincerely hope you have or are able to find an alternative solution to keep the bills paid.
However, your attempts to recast yourself as a victim after some 3 or 4 months of preening about being employed (despite Queensland’s demands on its residents) while demanding others give up theirs, really only plays up the hypocrisy of your original ambit.
In fact, I fully expect that within just a few weeks, we will be facing wordwalls from you about how Socialism sat you on your arse again, and it is somehow it all our fault.
Furthermore, yesterday it was pointed out to you that preening about having never bought anything from China was a sweeping generalisation that was far too easily shot down. You really need to avoid those if you want to ‘destroy’ us Splitters, Wreckers and Enemies of The Resistance properly.
I find nothing to be butthurt about in any of these exchanges. But if your ego demands that I must somehow be emotionally damaged by your outbursts in the way you flinch and scream and rage when I reply, then have fun in your imaginings…
For some it may have been a big adventure, a chance to do something rather than stay on the farm or be stuck in the same boring job forever, the one opportunity to see the world, but they dressed up these hidden desires with nationalistic jingoism.
Back home. Nothing but praise for staff at Joondalup Hospital. Breathing much easier but feeling washed out and lethargic. Could be the cocktail of drugs they have me on — two different antibiotics plus steroids plus ventolin inhaler at 36 “puffs” four times a day! Talk about a headspin.
Thank you to everyone who wished me well. Oh, and I asked about a mask exemption and got a flat “No chance”. Might try my GP when I see him next.
I don’t know how people, especially not people who’s family never had skin in the game, can claim to know what motivated soldiers in either war.
I don’t think it is much of a stretch to assume that they were generally defending what they had.
We don’t have 1/10 left of what they had.
Yes … What happens in Europe in the next few months will determine our fate … Will their citizens fight, will their Politzei and military refuse?
They were subject to group think just like every other generation.
At the end of the day it was the elite who started it, and the peasants who did the dying.
Oh, and I asked about a mask exemption and got a flat “No chance”.
These people are fucking insane. Secret and hidden Nazi’s that are now having their moment in the sun.
All of this stuff about Austria is just a conspiracy theory, guys.
A few of the elite who started it were no longer elite by the end, there is that.
When do you think they will announce mandatory clot shots for school?
I’m thinking they will ban students returning without at least the first shot.
Ture, our masters don’t always get the outcome they wanted. Lets hope they don’t get what they want out of this covid hoax.
They were subject to group think just like every other generation.
At the end of the day it was the elite who started it, and the peasants who did the dying.
I don’t think the Japanese Imperial force’s really really gave a fuck about group think.
I had the opportunity to talk to my grandparents and an uncle who had served about what they thought about WWII. They only talked about Japan, and they only talked about defending and protecting what very little they had, freedom and the ability to make their own way as they saw fit.
Done.
I know award winners who are banned from attending the presentation night to collect them.
If Dan gets his bill, kids won’t be attending next year.
Sorry, I was talking about WW1. I had relatives killed by the Japanese in WW2, so was probably a bit different.
But still the same thing. It’s the power plays by the elites is what starts wars.
Im not too worried about presentation nights.
He could have easily mandated it earlier, he did for 80% of the work force. Why wait until his stazi legislation?
A knight of William de Braose was hit by one which went through the skirt of his hauberk, his mail hose, his thigh, and then through the leather and wood of his saddle into his horse; when he swerved round, another arrow pinned him in the same way as the other leg.
That is a bad day at work.
I agree with the sentiments but the real test is when feminist/antifa types use the same excuse. What then?
For me it’s a day for the veterans and why not just have that one small bit of time to pay respect without turning it into a circus.
It seems alien to us now but the idea that WW1 was a war for Australians would have had much appeal. It did not matter that Australia was not directly threatened – Britain still loomed large and vital to the nation.
Robert Graves (an officer granted, but also a war poet rather than someone steeped in a mythology or martial glory) noted that the average Tommy in the trenches fought for his mates, risked his life for his mates, and trusted in his mates. What the newspapers were saying back in England, which trickled through to them in mail, was like another world. When Graves himself went home to convalesce after injury he found it impossible to impress upon people what was happening and what it was like. For them it was all gallant (or plucky, depending on rank) soldiers in contests against treacherous and barbarous (all ranks) Germans. It was bright, colourful, dynamic, and splendid.
And England was always winning.
And they did not want to hear differently.
And the troops did not hate the Germans in the way the people back home did.
Quite so. However, we give them a lot of respect for what they did when it had to be done. Part of that respect is misappropriated when people puff themselves up and say things like ‘My uncle didn’t die with Custer at the Alamo to let you lot off vaccinating, off to the gulag with you’.
Listening to Virginia Trioli and a her guests, it seems Dan is just the ants pants but may have got his messaging wrong.
Be nicer Dan you cheeky rascal.
Fining someone twenty three grand for not wasting a mask was not discussed.
Just in case he can’t continue it.
Why waste the political capital with a potentially unpopular announcement, only to be forced to renege?
Don’t threaten if you can’t follow through. Don’t show your hand until you can play it. Words to live by.
We’ll just wish he’d hurry up. I need time to organise the travel exemption and get outta here.
My Grandfather told me he joined up because he was out of work, needed to feed his family and was pretty sure conscription was coming. Thought it would be better to join up voluntarily rather than be conscripted. He ended up fighting along side the conscripts in PNG and was forever dark on the RSL for they way they treated them after the war.
Maybe there is some correlation with what is going on now.
ADF swings into action against CCP troops:
https://9gag.com/gag/a5RxAPE
We’ll just wish he’d hurry up. I need time to organise the travel exemption and get outta here.
Dan’s like a cat with a mouse. Nothing will happen quickly, he wants to fuck us slowly.
Easy to pull kids out of school, so the jokes on him. But he would need to give a reasonable time for the kids to get the clot shot.
If ony Der Führer knew…
He’ll leave it to the last minute, and then except a single dose for the first couple of months.
He can make it up as he goes along…and often does.
Accept.
A little tit-bit from Quadrant article on lefy writers and their enablers..
I didnt know this.
What’s the most left mainstream newspaper in the country? The on-line Guardian, of course. How much has the Copyright Agency thrown to this Malcolm Turnbull-sponsored green icon? More than $100,000, in annual tranches of $20-30,000 a year.
.
flyingduk, I like you more and more with each passing day!
What caught my interest in that report though, was the casual mention of the way the phones were traced to their location of origin, and presumably also the owners of those phones – making them totally identifiable.
OK, we know they can do this, “but surely” nobody would misuse that data, would they? I mean, like deadly dan’s ninja turtles in black or the camo-clad super-response team blokes?????
You can bet those folks are now on the shit list – regardless of jab status. Nice country we’re living in, isn’t it.
Agreed about the respect, Chris. Even if for no other reason than I do not know I could have faced what they faced with the same fortitude.
While it is important to revere through monuments I think, to put it perhaps inelegantly, we must not elevate beyond the reach of ordinary people.
The sacrifice of the men was not an achievement of the government, not of the RSL, not of any organisation. If anyone is going to feel a connection with what was sacrificed it must be the people.
And there must be a point at which the people can claim that heritage. There must be a point when people say “This is the sort of thing they fought for.” Rather than hermetically sealing the tradition so no ordinary person can invoke it again for their being unworthy.
Obviously not having a simple hard and fast rule like “always” or “never” means we can quibble in the grey areas, but things like free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the individual to have veto rights over medical procedures they don’t trust, would seem to be valid.
Only question then becomes how did the people behave? Like yobbos? Or like citizens?
Rex Anger:
I bought a bottle of Limeburners Scotch.
It tasted like it had been filtered through a heavily used Aboriginal loincloth.
The remaining 90% of the bottle has sat for four years, undrunk, in the chemicals cupboard alongside the bleach, sulphuric acid and pickled dingo entrails.
I will drink the pickled dingo entrails before I drink the Limeburners.
I had an argument about marches recently and used the fact that google maps or other like widgets track choke points and traffic jams by the no of stationary phones in the road.
They KNOW to a couple of hundred how many were there (only the ones without phones will escape count) and – if not already sourced under various terrorism laws – they know exactly who was there. From there it’s easy to find addresses, bank accounts and dick sizes.
Of course – this isn’t enough and Stairman Dan wants more!
I like how Dan Parrothead was able to let two cats out of two bags at once.
His road map says that apartheid ends on 15th Dec or 95% double jabbed – which ever comes first.
If the 95% thing is what makes it safe then how could he dare make the change on the 15th if things are still under 95%?
If the trick is that (somehow) 15th December is the threshold of survival then how could he allow a change if we had reached 95% earlier?
There could be a case where the two conditions need be met because the outcome desired depends on both – like baking a nice cake will happen if you have a good batter and the right temperature in the over. But you cannot get away with just one.
But either 95% or December 15th?
There was no real science involved in this at all, was there?
A vote on the religious discrimination bill in the lower house has been delayed after the government agreed to allow dual parliamentary committees to review the legislation and report back by February.
The decision to put off the vote and avoid moderate Liberal MPs joining with Labor, the Greens and crossbenchers to stall the bill’s passage through the lower house was made on Thursday morning.
Senior government figures continued negotiations with Liberal moderates Warren Entsch and Trent Zimmerman, who have both expressed concerns about the bill, after other moderate MPs struck a deal with Scott Morrison to fast-track protections for gay students under amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act.
Entsch and Zimmerman are not moderate.
For those cyber veterans pontificating about our soldiers. When the you hear the crack of bullets flying overhead or shrieking around you you do not think about freedom or whether to vote alp or lib in the next election but of digging into the ground, firing back and supporting your mates.
NSW had its coldest November on record. The BOM had forecast above average temperatures:
https://electroverse.net/records-fall-in-europe-nsw-coldest-nov-pinatubo/
Never got moderated at Tim’s blog for grammatical errors. He did like to use it against those who thought they were so smart.
That leapt out at me too.
That is the Paywallian, huh?
They must sit in their meeting rooms brainstorming ways to pry readers from the Sydney Morning Herald.
cohenite says:
December 2, 2021 at 2:23 pm
NSW had its coldest November on record. The BOM had forecast above average temperatures:
A difficult feat considering the BOM cooled the past records to make every year a super heated extravaganza.
Indeed, it was a glorious November.
Holy hell.
This government is finished.
It will die as it lived: whimpering like losers.
Get the feeling that when all rats have fled it will be discovered that there was never a ship in the first place.
Certainly the party seemed to have no substance or character that could not be explained by the behaviour of rats.
Long lines of has-beens queuing up outside banks, hats in hand, begging for directorships.
if the supply chain breaks down any further you might have to
Heh. All the rats were holding hands to make the shape of a ship.
A bit like the outline on that dock in Belfast.
And, being rats, aren’t prepared to face the iceberg.
Larry Niven once wrote a short essay entitled “Why men fight and what you can do about it”
They like it and there is nothing you can do about it.
That was it.
If you want to see the most manic display of sheer cope, tune in to Paul Murray. Every night he addresses the camera for minutes on end about how Morrison’s got it all under control.
—————-
On another subject, an interesting cohort on the right these days consists of those I’ve previously dubbed Panda Cons. I’m really getting fed up with their bullshit. Here’s the customary pause in Marko Strinic’s piece at the Oz Spectator which is supposed be a cri de coeur against mandates…
It’s almost as though they’re vaccinating their columns.
Michael Smith News. Chris Bowen – remember him? – reminding us that 49 years ago, today, Gough Whitlam defeated a dysfunction and divided conservative Government. Bowen must be putting all his faith in the hope that no – one can remember the Whitlam Government lurching from catastrophe to crisis and back to disaster.
jellybacks. serious question, who did what abuse exactly?
Make of it what you will.
The trends in Denmark.
Not real convincing is it?
Morrison is going down because he didn’t believe in anything and no longer has a constituency.
People want their lives back: that’s it. He had one job.
So what did he do?
Ran around like an idiot talking about imaginary submarines and Net Zero.
Cheered all the way by News Corp and the Sky right.
“And let me be clear. Getting the vaccine is the right decision. Vaccines are safe, effective and the most logical way to stop the spread of COVID-19”.
Can somebody parachute this fuckwit into Europe?
Panda Cons, mmm
Babushka Cons: Relying on faded memory and fantasies about it being better back in the day, Babushka Cons.
That’s why you add a splash of water.
After all, Anastasia has so much in common with Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis.
no! coke.
Go and bang your head on the floor, until you are forgiven. It may take several days.
In other news, the Christmas tree is…up. Lights, camera…action!
Take That! filthy O’Micron!
“jellybacks. serious question, who did what abuse exactly?”
“Hell hath no fury like a scorned woman”.
Even here in the regions of Qld, more are lining up for their jab. More of my acquaintance and some clients are having it. Not all are doing so as reluctantly as others. A core group are remaining steadfast in their refusal. So far no clients have objected to having a cleanskin work for them, but a couple may yet do so, going by earlier behaviour. Well, I needed to trim my list anyway, trying to do too much instead of looking after myself.
It was instructional back when a major centre here had one (1!) person visit who supposedly had the dreaded lurgi, had traveled from the big smoke and stayed for the weekend. I hadn’t heard the news that morning on my way to the client, but arrived to find said client keeping a BIG distance from me and telling me about the “case”, then scuttling back into the fortress of their house to leave me to the job. That “case” turned out to be a false positive, but we had lots of anti-social distancing, masks etc for the fortnight or so. That level of paranoia was startling, given that I don’t even live in the town concerned.
At the same time the level of cynicism, “no I don’t like the look of their jab” and quiet “carry on as normal” has also been heartening. Peaceful but determined protests happening around the place every weekend that never make the news too.
Oh, and while you’re here Cassie…compliments of the season. Belated.
Five nights and it’s the Big Candle! 😀
I know a woman who used to work sometimes at Parliament House in Macquarie St. She told a tale of one time she was on elevator and Gough Whitlam got. At this point her voice grew softer and more solemn, talking about how she was in such awe. She did not dare speak to him, but she was in his presence – the presence of greatness.
Whitlam patronised constituencies, carving out sections of society and making them client demographics. The yartz did very well.
But eventually these demographics, now well funded and now feeling independent from ordinary people, moved toward the green misanthropy and away from Labor’s union/socialist/communist heart. They did not see themselves as relying on Labor, and Labor only noticed this when it was too late.
Labor used to champion what they claimed was the everyman – bloke, wife, kids, house in the burbs, deserving or more and more and more. But the yartz hated them. Hated their traditional values, hated their polluting jobs, hated their traditions and values, and hated their ignorance of the yartz latest obsession.
So it is now Labor that must abandon its pedigree and instead suck up to the greenish yartz.
Let me fix that for you:
As the vaccines don’t work the most logical way to stop covid-19 is to let it spread while protecting the elderly and the vulnerable.
You’re welcome. Get back to work now.
“C.L.says:
December 2, 2021 at 2:50 pm
Morrison is going down because he didn’t believe in anything and no longer has a constituency.
People want their lives back: that’s it. He had one job.
So what did he do?
Ran around like an idiot talking about imaginary submarines and Net Zero.
Cheered all the way by News Corp and the Sky right.”
All correct and because he chose to believe all the MSM and social media bulldust about bushfires, he got scared and he’s spent the last two years trashing the Liberal brand, Liberal MPs and Liberal voters whilst desperately trying to be liked by those who loathe him. He’s done nothing about their ABC…nothing. A sure recipe for success…..NOT.
Think of who Scumbag Morrison has trashed in the last two years….
Bettina Arndt, a woman who stands up for men
Craig Kelly
George Christensen
Christian Porter
and now Alan Tudge
All of this was brought upon Morrison by himself. All he’s done is empower his enemies…..meanwhile Bill Shorten sits in parliament laughing.
Worked well for Bill Shorten last time.
“callisays:
December 2, 2021 at 3:04 pm
Oh, and while you’re here Cassie…compliments of the season. Belated.”
Thank you Calli…much appreciated. Trying to avoid donuts and latkes…..being a good Ashkenazi girl I like my latkes.
He got what he paid for.
So what abuse is Tudge guilty of?
Probably telling her that he didn’t want to continue the relationship.
Spare me.
All of this has been enabled by Scumbag Morrison.
BOM for many years had a prominent link called Perth Daily Temperature and Rain Summaries, that could be searched historically, by month. It was a fast, efficient data site. We used to see at a glance by how many degrees the actual was above/below for each day of the month, averages over more than 20 years, etc. Same for all capital cities? I assumed so.
Suddenly this week that link (to Weatherzone) goes to current day information, graphs only, or they give you last five days wind direction/speed etc. Completely useless, as wind is the only thing BOM in WA ever get right on a daily basis. The graphs are colourful but useless to us. Deeply buried for normal people is where BOM concedes that Perth’s October was coldest (max and min) and wettest (on record). They also include a table of “Extremes” for October, with no historical comparisons except rainfall, where they have a disclaimer that there are gaps in the historical record at five out of seven sites. Useless.
Swines.
Apologies if this has already been raised.
“All of this was brought upon Morrison by himself. All he’s done is empower his enemies…..meanwhile Bill Shorten sits in parliament laughing”.
Morrison has no interest in the culture wars.
But the culture wars have an interest in him.
The “Chauvinist pig” line at this stage via Tudge with Grace and Brittany warming their tonsils in the wings.
Porter showed the way.
Sadly, the way was crying and running.
He had the change to destroy the ABC shrews such as Milligan and Crabbe and have a real crack at the whole stinking edifice.
Instead, Albo is playing Travis Bickle.
Well, inside the hallowed halls of Coward’s castle.
Serious tip for the Canberra ladies. Don’t drink so much you can’t remember your own name.
astrazeneca blood clot trigger found by scientists
So what abuse is Tudge guilty of?
Probably asked for a sammich for lunch.
The NSA VS Tucker Carlson
I can’t wait until we find out what working for ‘scomo’ was really like.
A shockingly bad leader.
Why can’t blokes wake up naked and hungover and blame someone else?
Bit like when the vaxxed catch Covid.
“Morrison has no interest in the culture wars.
But the culture wars have an interest in him.”
Nailed it.
Belated season’s compliments from me too, Cassie. 😉
This in neon.
How about ‘Treatment not tyranny’
A Eureka flag moment — but only if Peter FitzSimons approves
THE MOCKER
The Australian
Last Saturday, 20,000 Victorians marched in Melbourne’s CBD in the latest protest over the Andrews government’s pandemic measures. The protesters, The Age reported, were “colourful, vocal but peaceful”. Just as they were the weekend before when 100,000 of them lined the city’s streets.
Noting the media’s tendency to focus disproportionately on fringe elements, the newspaper’s veteran crime reporter and author John Silvester pointed out what many commentators had ignored. “This disguises the fact that many who have taken to the street are rational, law-abiding people, angry at lockdowns, concerned at the erosion of civil liberties and tired of feeling their views don’t matter,” he wrote last week.
But for Sydney Morning Herald columnist and chair of the Australian Republic Movement, Peter FitzSimons, it was plebeian vulgarity at its worst. Not only were the demonstrators “low-minded” and “driven by selfishness alone,” he tweeted on Saturday, but they also had the temerity to appropriate colours he considers his own. “As one who wrote a book on Eureka, I say the mighty Eureka flag does not belong in that collection of assorted nutters,” he indignantly proclaimed. “Eureka was about collective action of high-minded people for the greater good of all.”
As readers familiar with Fitz-prose know, the phrase “As one who” is a preface to his incessant reminders that he is a man of letters. A few examples from his column will suffice:
“As one who … has delved deeply into five battles of World War I” / “As one who releases a book on General Sir John Monash on Tuesday” / “As one who has written books about all three campaigns” / “As one who had written a book on the subject of the Diggers’ battle at Villers-Bretonneux” / “As one who recently released a book on that battle” / “As one who has written 10 books on Australia’s military actions” / “As one who has … done books covering the battles of Fromelles, Pozieres …” / “As one who penned a weighty tome six years ago, entitled Eureka, The Unfinished Revolution” / “As one who has been touring our nation’s capitals in the past week on book promotion duties”/ “As one who did an in-depth story on this as a guest reporter for the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent”.
But back to the flag. Unlike FitzSimons, I do not claim expert knowledge of the Eureka Rebellion. I know little more about its background other than what I was taught at school 40 years ago. Rudimentary as my understanding is, I know it is cited as an example of the working class rebelling against government oppression, notwithstanding that some historians question that interpretation.
What is not in issue is that days before the uprising culminated in mass slaughter, the Irish-born Peter Lalor delivered his famous Bakery Hill speech in which he urged the rebel miners to “fight to defend our rights and liberties.” Likewise, the “freedom protests” of late have demanded the same in the wake of what has been the biggest restriction of civil liberties in Victoria post-WWII.
Yet FitzSimons maintains there is no resemblance between the “high-minded” protests of 1854 and the “low-minded” ones of recent weeks. Presumably, he would also argue that if Lalor were alive today, he would say the same when he addressed the workers.
Lalor: Comrades, before I get to the pandemic bill, can I ask you to reflect on our good fortune in having the Andrews government watch over us during these last two years?
Workers: (Cheering)
Lalor: And is it not reassuring that only two-thirds of Covid deaths in Australia occurred in Victoria?
Workers: It is!
Lalor: And are we Melburnians bothered in the least that our government imposed the longest cumulative lockdown of any city in the world?
Workers: No!
Lalor: And do you support the perpetual mandating of vaccine passports, despite esteemed epidemiologists saying there is no basis for this once vaccination levels reach a certain percentage?
Workers: We do!
Lalor: Did you not thrill with delight and admiration when the leader of our state declared that the unvaccinated would be shunned from society, and I quote: “Whether it’s a bookshop, a shoe shop, a pub, cafe, a restaurant, the MCG, the list goes on and on”?
Workers: We did!
Lalor: What do you say of this pandemic bill that not only invests broad powers in public servants to detain people on public health grounds, but also provides no avenue for an independent agency to review the merits of that decision?
Workers: Yay!
Lalor: Answer me this: do we want less or more government regulation of our lives?
Workers: More!
Lalor: And is it not a benevolent and wise government that seeks to imprison people for up to two years for so-called” egregious and deliberate” breaches of public health orders?
Workers: It is!
Lalor: And does it bother you one iota to see police arrest and handcuff a pregnant mother in her own home and in the presence of her young family?
Workers: No!
Lalor: Do you trust this government with these unprecedented powers, even though it suffers collective amnesia when ministers are asked who made crucial decisions that led to the deaths of hundreds?
Workers: Absolutely!
Lalor: Will you swear by the Southern Cross to stand by Dan and to surrender to your rights and liberties to him?
Workers: We will!
In short, the right to display the Eureka flag as a symbol protest depends on whether the cause in question has FitzSimon’s approval. For example, in 2018 he fulminated at a federal code that prohibited the display of any union logos or slogans on building sites that implied membership of the organisation was necessary to work on government-funded projects. This included the Eureka flag, which for decades has been flown by the militant Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union.
“Friends, I ask you, does it get any more un-Australian than that – 163 years on from the most inspiring event in our history, of individuals rising against an unfair government, we have a modern government attempting to ban the individual’s right to display the very symbol of that struggle,” he wrote.
In 2019 FitzSimons reverently quoted the Ballarat Reform League’s resolution in the lead-up to the Eureka Rebellion. “For the central and sacred notion of the League is pushed in the motion they pass: ‘The people are the only legitimate source of all political power.’ Rah!” Except, he should have added, if they are opposed to a left-wing government, in which case they are motivated entirely by selfish interests and thus have no legitimacy.
But the most amusing and ironic of them all is FitzSimons’s favourably quoting one Thomas Kennedy who implored the Eureka rebels to stand firm. “The press has called us demagogues who must be put down,” said Kennedy. Much the same as a certain commentator today contemptuously referring to lawful demonstrators as “low-minded,” perhaps?
Despite his claims otherwise, FitzSimons is not the moral arbiter of who has the right to display the Eureka flag. As a Sydney Morning Herald contributor noted in 2013 in a review of ‘Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution’, FitzSimons has a “tendency to play fast and loose with the historical record”. As one who has long suffered his scribblings, I know that only too well.
THE MOCKER
The Mocker amuses himself by calling out poseurs, sneering social commentators, and po-faced officials. He is deeply suspicious of those who seek increased regulation of speech and behaviour.
Spike last winter when they weren’t vaccinated.
Bigger spike this winter when they were vaccinated…
Spikes starting almost same day of the year.
Seasonal sniffles strike Santa season!
Maybe the pollies should panic some more.
Scott Morrison has revealed Education Minister Alan Tudge will step aside following allegations from his former love Rachelle Miller that their affair was abusive.
jellybacks. serious question, who did what abuse exactly?
Exactly. By the looks of her she had the balls in that relationship.
But seriously from now on conservative pollies will have to take a vow of celibacy. Lefties will be able to continue rooting whoever and whatever and however they want.
Muzsays:
December 2, 2021 at 3:21 pm
This is about the best they’ve got now:
http://reg.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_009021.shtml
#VicPol: Hot tip on Instagram, apparently, is Rod Barton shall receive ALP preselection in return for not listening to those he represents.
Here’s the source. Not PRGuy17:
https://twitter.com/BackroomBazz/status/1465463576622034945
Rod trying to be certain the crocodile eats him last?
LOL – so the ALPBC now (finally) have the scalps of Porter and Tudge.
Thanks, Morristeen!
Leak Jr had an observation about that.
The Bill has passed 20-18. Victorians are well and truly effed.
Cohenite 3.59pm:
Four times in the past decade I’ve started a spreadsheet of BOM way out temp and rain forecasts, and after three weeks I get sick of it and delete. They can only do wind. Oh, in February, in Perth, they can guess max temp. Der.
The deleting of accessible data for normal people is a crime, and I’m surprised how pissed off I still am about that.
Probably need an early glass of wine. Swines.
It’s interesting how such an unpleasant, repellant waste of space as Fitzsimmons can prosper- Knox and Abbotsleigh work wonders. How does the Sydney Morning Vomit/Sun Vomit afford him?
Stock up on salt Rabz.
I guess I am on my own then. FMS
If you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
Thanks Bruce- it’s fascinating how leftism seems to be a perfect fit aristocrats and wanna be bunyip aristocrats. All the same north shore disdain for ‘the other half’ and ‘trades’. Aristocrat and nomenklatura are almost interchangable.
I think Fitzsimian must be the lynchpin of the anti-Republican movement’s strategy. He is probably quoted more in their literature than he is in his own team’s.
I will assume that low-mindedness is related to selfishness, and both of them a threat to the higher ideal – the collective. The collective for which Fitzsimian is spokespirate – and therefore not really part of the collective himself. He would find it equally incomprehensible for a person not to heed his instruction as he would for another person to expect the same of him.
Dan you all!
Where is the military coup when you need one?
Funny thing is, I always imagined Shore and Abbotsleigh to be bastions of patriotic conservatism. Not so. Look at Burgmann and Maher.
You have to really look hard at the BOM for meaningful stats. Nobbys is a good one:
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=36&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_stn_num=061055
Berkley has also got some good details of Australian sites:
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/152044
Military lawyers- McGowen, Kelly and McDade.
I bet McClown has a similar bill. But there will be zero dissent as there is no opposition. Thanks people.
Muz
On the old Cat (Version Sinclair) a couple of years back I noted a similar trend. Using the climate data I notices whole swathes of data disappearing especially from pesky inconvenient wetter years or suddenly being suffixed by statements discounting the accuracy. Not a new thing regrettably.
Good job the A.D.F. never imposed the death penalty.
LOL. Not a chance. Get your hand off it.
Excellent choice for the banner, Dover.
The Triumph of Judas Maccabeus, Rubens.
That’s bloody unfortunate.
The Bill has passed 20-18.
That’s bloody unfortunate.
Yes it sure is. So much for checks and balances- Governor, Courts, Upper House. More evidence that a complete clean out is needed. The establishment is tired, rotten and exhausted like the dirty old man in the White House.
Lol. Cynicism at its most pure.
Despite his claims otherwise, FitzSimons is not the moral arbiter of who has the right to display the Eureka flag. As a Sydney Morning Herald contributor noted in 2013 in a review of ‘Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution’, FitzSimons has a “tendency to play fast and loose with the historical record”. As one who has long suffered his scribblings, I know that only too well.
Fitzsimian (or perhaps his research team) is an average writer of historically based novels.
That’s bloody unfortunate.
It’s a fucking crime against humanity.
There are 20 names for the Nuremberg 2.0 list attached to that bill.