Open Thread – Weekend 5 Feb 2022
1,530 responses to “Open Thread – Weekend 5 Feb 2022”
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No, some Dem flunky didn’t carefully watch a thousand hours to pick the word out.
You forget: They are legion.
Rummaging further, a black supremacist builds a castle on a swamp.
For those who’ve ever wondered what happened to Little Green Footballs,
now you know. -
Dr Faustussays:
February 7, 2022 at 10:21 am
The ‘quality journalism’ an extra $3 billion gets you more of:I suspect that this is actually the next triennial funding amount. If so, it is a small (undeserved) increase, not an extra $3.3 billion on top of what they were going to get anyway (a $3.3 billion reduction would have been better).
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So will Peter Dutton, a la Rudd in 2013, save the furniture?
Probably not.
In 2019 Dutton managed to increase his hold on Dickson by 3% – taking the seat from Marginal to Still Marginal. He got there by hard work and solid preference flows from PHON, UAP, and one of the indies.
Dickson is a sprawling, outer-suburban, battlers electorate and Dutton is going to have to put in a bunch of personal effort to hold his seat. Labor’s Ali France (a local who has stood, fairly successfully, for the past two elections) and the Greens (some punchable no name, naturally an “environmental scientist” and disability advocate) are currently campaigning vigorously – and there is no certainty where the minor preferences will flow.
I suspect that taking over the leadership and campaigning nationally would finish him off.
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The MO I hinted at above might be clear in these guys. Health and mental acuity, authority, reputation, respect.
I agree with you about the MO of God. Otherwise known in some quarters as the ineffable law of Karma.
Whatever you call it, it undoubtedly works. Choosing a life dedicated to attaining power has consequences, rather horrible ones.
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As with everything here, the Canadian Convoy erupted out of the “whacko” “fringe” protests that have been going on over there for 12 months. You just didn’t hear about their equivalent of “Bosi” because their videos don’t make it here, but they definitely do over there.
The November protests “started” the same here. They were the protests that were going on every other week since this time last year, they got better and better at organising them, and in November when the moment was right, we all just turned up at their protests. The People’s Revolution, RDA, Reclaim the Line, etc were organising these protests for months beforehand, were there every other week already, and always were courting, and supporting the “fanatics” and “crazies”. Reclaim the Line brought a moderating effect to them which was good. The People’s Revolution are the mouthy ones who are in Canberra at the moment. I left one protest in August because of some cringe stuff, also in December. But I also knew, and they know full well too, that without those people there was no protest. You must have a fanatical core who turn up before other people will. It’s the “one customer in a cafe attracts others” gambit. The untold part of that trick is to make that lonely customer not feel like he’s being used by giving him free coffee, but also not let him know you’re relying on him to fill the place lest he get uppity.
Bosi has been at these things ranting and raving since last year, it’s really not that big of a deal optically because as demonstrated, it didn’t stop us all turning up in November when we did when the moment was right.
But it is more of a big deal politically, in that an ex-security forces guy, standing outside parliament, attempting get everyone all het up is starting to smell a lot like what people were saying went on in the US on Jan 6.
So under no circumstances enter parliament on the say so of an “ex” guy in a uniform! LOL.
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That won’t work out too well – LNP & ALP will vote together in the Senate for anything important to screwing us over.
They’ll do that anyway. Honestly, is an ALP govt with a tricky Senate going to be so much worse than this clown show? The coalition is no longer the lesser of two evils, don’t see why this isn’t crystal clear by now.
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Zachary Rolfe trial: police constable loses last-ditch attempt to strike off one charge
Amos Aikman
NORTHERN CORRESPONDENT
@amosaikman
14 minutes ago February 7, 2022Zachary Rolfe will finally get a chance to clear his name, and the family, friends and supporters of his alleged victim, Kumanjayi Walker, get a shot at justice when the young policeman’s much anticipated murder trial begins on Monday.
Constable Rolfe stands accused of shooting Walker three times after the latter stabbed him with scissors during a botched arrest attempt in the troubled Northern Territory outback community of Yuendumu in 2019.
Crown prosecutors say the first of those shots was justified, but the second and third, which began 2.6 seconds after the first, constitute murder. Constable Rolfe is also facing alternative charges of manslaughter and engaging in a violent act causing death.
Constable Rolfe arrived at court on Monday saying it was good the big day was “finally here” as he walked in surrounded by a dozen supporters. “It’s good that it’s finally here,” he said. “It has taken a while, around two years, so it’s good to finally get it started.”
Among Constable Rolfe’s supporters were his parents and the ex soldier turned aspiring politician Heston Russell.
The community of Yuendumu is represented by Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves and Lindsay Japangardi Williams, both of whom declined to comment.
Constable Rolfe’s lawyer David Edwardson QC said he was looking forward to getting on with the proceedings. The trial is expected to run at the NT Supreme Court for about three weeks.
Justice Anthony Burns heard legal argument before empaneling a jury. Constable Rolfe lost a last-ditch attempt by his legal team to have one of the three charges against him struck off the indictment.
The young policeman faces charges of murder, manslaughter and engaging in an act that causes death. His legal team wanted the last of those charges removed.
Justice Anthony Burns said the defence’s application argued legislators who enacted that provision did not envisage it would be used against a serving police officer exercising police powers in the course of their duties.
The provision was intended to deal with so-called “one punch” attacks and violence around licensed premises, the defence submission argued.
But Justice Burns said he was not entitled to take comments from the responsible minister’s second reading speech into account as the wording of the final legislation as enacted was not unclear.
He consequently refused the defence’s application. He did allow a separate application by Constable Rolfe’s lawyers to prevent text messages collected from his phone being used as evidence against him.
Constable Rolfe’s lawyers say their client’s life and his partner were in danger, and Constable Rolfe had followed his training. The second and third shots were fired at close range after Walker had been wrestled to the floor.
The case has been closely watched by supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement and by members of the police force. Some officers were angered when the policeman was charged within days of the 2019 incident and before a police investigation was complete.
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From Substack via Powerline. This is a superb analysis of Rogan and Spotify and the attempts to silence him…..they’re doing to Rogan what they did to Alex Jones. Just watch, he’ll be gone from Spotify soon…but maybe, maybe that’s not a bad thing. He needs his own streaming service or join up with Rumble.
“The Revolution has come for Joe Rogan
There is no forgiveness because they seek destruction, not restoration.
Techno FogThe Taliban took back Afghanistan in the late summer of 2021, shortly after the Americans withdrew, tired and weary and broke after nearly 20 years of fighting. They seized control of the country in the broad and particular sense: setting up command in the presidential palace in Kabul and targeting the individuals who criticized the new government. By December 2021, regular Afghans and the members of the Afghan press who had expressed critical views of their new rulers had “been subjected to months of intimidation and fear.”
The Biden Administration has adopted these same tactics, calling for their critics to be silenced by the Administration’s corporate and media allies. After 20 years of trying to export Western values to Afghanistan, they ended up importing Taliban-style repression to the United States. And it only cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.
Now, the Regime and its comrades target Joe Rogan, an inquisitive comedian with a podcast. He is accused of spreading “misinformation” by those that illegally spy on their citizens and lies without remorse. In reality, this isn’t about misinformation. It’s that Rogan’s crimes are those of words and thought. They prosecute on behalf of the god they have created, searching to eradicate those guilty of the sin of blasphemy. The Taliban would be proud.
We can be certain that the Regime is not concerned with the truth. Have you seen them struggle to explain the “evidence” that Russia was planning a false-flag in Ukraine to justify an invasion?
Or, consider how the COVID-19 misinformation originated from the U.S. government and its bureaucratic arms. In early 2020, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins were both presented with arguments that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered. Instead of investigating this issue, they saw to it that this theory was killed off. Despite – or perhaps because of – these lies, Fauci and Collins remain dear sons of the Regime. Reminders that “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.” (The Christians of the Left – such as David French – even go so far as to say that you have a “spiritual problem” if you don’t trust Fauci and Collins. Both the left and the right make their idols.)
They killed the truth before. Who is to say they’re not trying to do that with Rogan?
Those are the easy observations.
Then we get to the deeper and more consequential truths that are manipulated and deformed and remade for political purposes. Patterns emerge – and maybe they’re repeating. The institution of marriage, and the definition of marriage, is subjected to social – meaning political – evolution. Mothers are redefined as “birthing people.” Words are even disappeared by the U.S. government for threat that they are stigmatizing, dare someone have a negative opinion of an ex-convict or prisoner.
To put it more bluntly, the people who believe men can give birth are now in charge of what is true. The only authority they have is political power. Such power isn’t necessarily definitive, but it gives them the strength to set definitions and enforce the rules, to declare guilt and issue punishment. Conflicts of interest be damned. Power over language is power over the people: “the primary purpose of language – which is to describe reality – is replaced by the rival purpose of asserting power over it.”
In their eyes, this public lynching is justified because these are revolutionary times and removing Rogan is a revolutionary act. There is no forgiveness because they seek destruction, not restoration.
There is some limitation to their enforcement power, those means by which they achieve their ends, necessitating the Biden Administration in July 2021 to order social media companies to ban those who disagree with the official line of thinking. The U.S. government went so far as to flag the objectionable content itself, helping corporate America snuff out inconvenient voices. Supposedly devout Christian Francis Collins has been silent on the government’s campaign to punish dissent, having been part of the cover-up. As Collins uses his faith to promote COVID-19 vaccines, perhaps he needs a reminder that Christianity does not give the civil government jurisdiction over your thoughts or words. Or a refresher of the evils of abortion.
Anyway, the censorship encouraged by the Biden Administration was effective – to an extent.
Alex Berenson was banned from Twitter in August 2021 for correctly labeling the COVID-19 vaccines as “therapeutics.” Dr. Robert Malone, “who has been credited with inventing the mRNA technology used in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 immunizations,” was also been banned from Twitter. These suspensions came after Fauci and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and other members of the Biden Administration called for stronger measures to stop the spread of misinformation.
Yet Joe Rogan thrived, in large part because he provided an alternative platform to the voices that were being suppressed. The public yearned for this information and it was delivered through his podcast. It’s reported that Rogan has an estimated 11 million listeners per episode. It’s also estimated that his interviews with Dr. Malone and Dr. Peter McCullough brought in millions more.
In response, the Biden White House demanded Spotify do more to censor the discussions of Rogan and his guests. At the same time, the liberal mob – encouraged by their leadership – aimed at Rogan, hurling disgusting and false allegations of “racism.” CNN, eager to shift the focus off the network’s own problems, is asking Spotify to give Rogan the proverbial death sentence:
CNN’s @brianstelter & Jim @Acosta strongly suggest Spotify should remove Joe Rogan from their platform; also note his “profanity-laced apology”
“It seems untenable to have that kind of video surface, and that kind of compilation surface, and keep one’s job”
This is the same network that lied about Rogan’s use of Ivermectin, calling it “horse dewormer.” It is the same network that ran an altered video of Rogan, making him seem sicker with COVID-19 than he really was.
No surprise that it’s CNN’s Brian Stelter leading the way against Rogan. How do I describe Stelter? (For starters, I do so with pleasure.) He is a humorless fat man. A dedicated media believer pretending to be a media reporter. He is as dumb as he sounds and as arrogant as he looks. He oozes the sadism of a hall monitor and the false confidence of an impostor. He is Kim Jong-un without the hair or the country or the charisma.
Prior to Rogan, Stelter’s favorite targets were enemies of the Regime: Tucker Carlson and Fox News. For being a “media reporter,” he typically has a curious focus to target one journalist and one network. CNN tolerates this well enough, excusing Stelter’s poor ratings because he attacks the network’s adversaries and defends the network without question.
Put Stelter on the offense against critics and he’ll call a Jihad against “right wing” media from his CNN studio. He’s the zealot that will behead you for drawing a cartoon of the wrong left-wing figure (whether it’s Joe Biden or Don Lemon) – and then blame you for inciting violence on “Reliable Sources” the next day. He will demand the unvaccinated be treated as second-class citizens, relegated to the margins of society until they comply with his favored health policies, just as he continues on his own adventure of finding out what comes after “morbid obesity.”
And in the presence of his preferred State power, masochist Stelter emerges to flatter and grovel. When he had the chance to interview Biden’s press secretary, he lobbed the softball of his dreams: “What does the press get wrong when covering Biden’s agenda?”
But back to Rogan.
One could say that Rogan is under attack for speaking truth to power. But that’s not quite true. As Christopher Hitchens observed, that cliché is looking in the wrong direction because power already knows the truth. More importantly, Rogan – and his guests – speak truth to the powerless. That’s what they’re scared of. And that’s why we see these campaigns against Tucker and Rogan and anyone else who dare tell dangerous truths.
To put it another way, President Biden and his corporate allies, and their mob of supporters, seek to obliterate the relationship between the writer and the reader, the speaker and the listener.
Thus, this is about more than Joe Rogan. It is about you and it is about me. It is about gatekeeping and limiting what we can watch and read and hear. And they achieve that end through the destruction of Rogan the individual.2
One thing is for sure, we live in frightening times.
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Bruce of Newcastlesays:
February 7, 2022 at 11:33 am
Calli – Yes, I thought of Herod. Also of the lefty atheist Bishop of Durham whose cathedral was struck by lightning just after he was gonged in the post. I don’t think he ever repented though.It was better than that. York Minster was struck by lightning seven days before, but close to the planned time, of the ceremony.
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Calli, much the same everywhere else. I reckon the lockdowns, all the ridiculous arbitrary rules, the sit down money, the constant fear mongering etc have combined to instill a sense of malaise in much of the population.
The Social Contract has been broken, you fucking destroy my life and in return, if I work at all it will be very slowly.
Australian Governments just got themselves peak USSR levels of individual productivity. ie. as close to zero as possible.
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Knuckle Draggersays:
February 7, 2022 at 8:16 am
Also:
Tiny robots in the vaccines that lodge in your brain so you can be tracked by the inscrutable dry cleaners. Look at the patent. Hiding in plain sight.
Can’t believe I forgot that one.
Robots?
Or tiny metal particles in the vaccine.
A metal which manages to replicate in the body to levels where it is detectable by airport x-ray machines so they could detect the vaxxed and exclude the unvaxxed.
Yes.
Because if I invented a process by which metals could replicate and multiply, that is exactly what I would use it for. -
twostixsays:
February 7, 2022 at 11:48 amI also believe that people didn’t realise how many others thought the same as the protesters. All of a sudden it became clear that if you didn’t go along with the govt. you weren’t on your own, which enabled many the freedom to join the big protest marches. They just go bigger each time. Just look at how the Canadians are responding to the convey as it has moved along.
Which brings me to the question is Mater ok, or have I just been missing on seeing his posts?
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No surprise that it’s CNN’s Brian Stelter leading the way against Rogan. How do I describe Stelter? (For starters, I do so with pleasure.) He is a humorless fat man. A dedicated media believer pretending to be a media reporter. He is as dumb as he sounds and as arrogant as he looks. He oozes the sadism of a hall monitor and the false confidence of an impostor. He is Kim Jong-un without the hair or the country or the charisma.
Prior to Rogan, Stelter’s favorite targets were enemies of the Regime: Tucker Carlson and Fox News. For being a “media reporter,” he typically has a curious focus to target one journalist and one network. CNN tolerates this well enough, excusing Stelter’s poor ratings because he attacks the network’s adversaries and defends the network without question.
Put Stelter on the offense against critics and he’ll call a Jihad against “right wing” media from his CNN studio. He’s the zealot that will behead you for drawing a cartoon of the wrong left-wing figure (whether it’s Joe Biden or Don Lemon) – and then blame you for inciting violence on “Reliable Sources” the next day. He will demand the unvaccinated be treated as second-class citizens, relegated to the margins of society until they comply with his favored health policies, just as he continues on his own adventure of finding out what comes after “morbid obesity.”
And in the presence of his preferred State power, masochist Stelter emerges to flatter and grovel. When he had the chance to interview Biden’s press secretary, he lobbed the softball of his dreams: “What does the press get wrong when covering Biden’s agenda?”
Excellent summary which should be sent to Gutfeld.
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If that is the truth, then despite his performance, his position was untenable.
Very true Roger, but the key phrase is “If that is the truth”. I’d very much reserve my judgment on unattributed whiteanting of Langer when there are clear motives in some quarters for sliming him. Autobiographies of other players of his era tend to portray him as a very fine person, more so than the formalities of “great bloke, great mate” would require.
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