Sailboat at Le Petit-Gennevilliers, Claude Monet, 1874
I think Bolt needs another holiday. He is not coping well with the changed world.
Open Thread – Weekend 28 Jan 2023
- Open Thread – Thurs 14 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Remembrance Day 2024
- The Sweetest Victory
- Open Thread – Weekend 9 November 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 7 Nov 2024
Why am I left with the feeling that the parents of those demanding a “Free Palestine” were those chanting “One…
John Fund, a US columnist, being interviewed by Sharri is sporting a black eye. I wonder who socked him.
Fap, fap, fap. Cap’n, I canna give her anymore! If I do, she’ll BLOW!
WTF is going on with power in Qld? https://www.ergon.com.au/network/outages/outage-finder/outage-finder-map/ It looks like half the state is out. There’s 3 houses…
Chris says:
January 30, 2023 at 10:11 am
Daily Mail has a candid photo of Albo stuffing his gob with ice cream while watching the tennis. No leadership in Alice Springs, watching the tennis is far more important!
Magnum
Your causation is probably backwards on the second point.
Americans would rather die than let their kids live at home until they can save for a home deposit. Eastern cultures don’t countenance this fetishisation of pick up culture where living alone is viewed as a success in of itself.
Dunno ‘bout this one.
1. Divorced men in America get cleaned out.
2. Women want to get married older and have similar jobs to men.
3. There are so many more job opportunities for skilled labour now than in 1990, particularly in North America and Australia.
Gas has the same problem as coal fired electricity.
It is just too cheap for the end consumer. Even with government taxes, royalties and a massive retail markup.
Pfizer admits it ‘engineered’ new Covid mutations
An executive with the drug firm previously said that the company was creating more potent strains of the virus in a laboratory
US drugmaker Pfizer admitted on Friday that it “engineered” treatment-resistant variants of Covid-19 in order to test its antiviral medicine.\
The admission partially backs up earlier claims by an executive with the company who told an undercover reporter that Pfizer was deliberately “mutating” the virus to “preemptively develop new vaccines.”
In a statement posted on its website, Pfizer said that it “has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research,” referring to the practice of amplifying a virus’ ability to infect humans and the process of selecting ‘desirable’ traits of a virus to reproduce, respectively.
However, the pharma giant said that it combined the spike proteins of new coronavirus variants with the original strain in order to test its vaccines, and that it created mutations of the virus to test Paxlovid, its antiviral drug.
“In a limited number of cases…such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells,” the company said, adding that this work was carried out in a secure laboratory. The work also sought to create “resistant strains of the virus,” it added, describing a process commonly understood as being ‘gain of function’ research.
Pfizer’s statement came two days after Jordon Trishton Walker, an executive involved in the firm’s mRNA division, told an undercover reporter that the company was “exploring” ways to “mutate [Covid] ourselves so we could create, preemptively develop, new vaccines.” Walker said that scientists were considering infecting monkeys with the virus, who would then “keep infecting each other.”
“From what I’ve heard, they [Pfizer scientists] are optimizing it, but they’re going slow because everyone is very cautious,” he explained. “Obviously they don’t want to accelerate it too much. I think they are also just trying to do it as an exploratory thing because you obviously don’t want to advertise that you are figuring out future mutation
Kevin McCarthy as Speaker.
A Democrat controlled Senate.
How the hell is custard still holding onto these Q fantasies of Trump being President again without winning a general election?
Remarkable tenacity, to say the least.
Megan:
Going through Moe rather than to it.
I figure I can just throw the pig bonces out the window as I go through, like Santa pegging lollies at kids from the back of a fire truck at Christmas parties.
You expect Albo to give up scoffing ice cream at the tennis, and show some leadership?
Were non-indigenous Alice Springs residents represented at the meeting which came up with this ridiculous decision? Are they not entitled to a voice in the matter?
wasnt custard supposed to abandon Q if the prediction didnt happen by end of jan or something?
000 pissups are a thing.
The Tennant Creek ambos used to gas up in world-class fashion, then turn up the next day for work. Being inventive types, they put themselves on a bit of the old O2 first, and if necessary a saline drip.
Apparently it worked a treat.
According to the supplied link demand for elecreicity in NSW and QLD is 18GW, say 9GW each.
VIC – a miserable 5GW. So our second most populous state has a comparably low electricity demand.
Is this because there is not much industry left in VIC?
So your position is that the Israelis would strike Russian forces if they began to install a half decent air defence system in Iran?
And you call me silly.
Look, m0nts. The last 12 hours have not been kind to your excitable claims of some huge strike inside Iran. You need to come to grips with this.
The AFR View
Chalmers’ new manifesto ignores all the lessons of Hawke and Keating
In the 1980s and early ’90s, a reforming Labor government revived Australian prosperity. The enduring principles of incentive, enterprise, entrepreneurship and reward are lost in the Treasurer’s model of ‘values-based capitalism’.
Jim Chalmers’ 6000-word manifesto for a new form of “values-based capitalism” vows to jettison the “neoliberalism” supposedly responsible for a wasted decade of conservative government that left Australia ill-equipped for the post-pandemic world.
But the Treasurer’s basic purpose is to discredit the modern relevance of the previous Hawke-Keating Labor reform era that liberalised Australia’s protected and over-regulated economy and built today’s national prosperity.
It harks back to an essentially old model of more government intervention and higher taxes, camouflaged in the contemporary language of social inclusion, skills, aged care, women’s equality, climate action, social impact investing and corporatist co-investment between government, union-influenced big super funds and business in areas such as social housing.
Dr Chalmers’ manifesto in the latest edition of The Monthly hardly mentions the incentives, enterprise, entrepreneurship and rewards needed to drive the productivity rebound to pay for Labor’s big-spending programs, to pay down the pandemic-induced public debt and to allow a high-wage economy to compete in the global marketplace.
With its early reregulation of the job market and the protection of the law-breaking CFMEU, it is Labor that is running an old-fashioned conservative agenda. In opposition, Dr Chalmers put in a lot of work to appear non-threatening to corporate Australia. Now, he will seek to co-opt business into Labor’s new form of social capitalism – or risk the consequences, as Australia’s great gas export industry has found, even as its taxes and royalties help return Dr Chalmers’ budget deficit to balance.
His manifesto starts with the idea that times change and that each crisis is different and so demands a different response. Thanks to a decade of Coalition government, he says, conservative prejudices and vested interests have left Australia with a “negative form of supply-side economics” unsuited to the post-pandemic world.
Yet, despite Anthony Albanese’s promise to govern in the style of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, the Treasurer’s historical narrative hardly mentions how the Hawke-Keating government – and then the Howard-Costello Coalition – reversed Australia’s post-war decline towards becoming the poor, white trash of Asia (as Singapore’s prime minister Lee Kuan Yew famously warned) and set up three decades of uninterrupted economic growth unmatched in the developed world.
Dodging recessions
During this neoliberal nightmare, Australia dodged recessions during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, America’s early 2000s tech-wreck recession and the 2008-09 global financial crisis. Australia’s national income per capita rose in real terms by 73 per cent in the three decades between the previous recession in the early 1990s and the peak of its China resources boom in 2011. It slowed as commodity export prices fell, but has still increased currently to be 90 per cent higher than in 1991.
Dr Chalmers rightly points to the policy drift and retreats of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Coalition governments amid the divisiveness of Australia’s climate wars. But the problem here was the Coalition’s drift and retreat from a pro-market and incentive-based agenda – it was hardly neoliberal – and not that the agenda itself was flawed, needing to be replaced by bigger government.
While the Treasurer damns the conservative rule for supposedly setting up a race to the bottom on wages and public investment, Australia maintains one of the highest minimum wages in the world and is struggling to find the workers and materials to keep up with the massive public infrastructure pipeline financed partly by the privatised asset sales of the NSW Coalition government.
Meanwhile, NBN Co, Kevin Rudd’s government monopoly, has just written down its regulatory value by $31 billion, a loss that presumably will disappear into the public debt that Dr Chalmers pins on the previous Coalition government.
Tellingly, two key examples of modern Labor’s values-based governing can be seen first in the $320 billion directed to the Gonski schools program under the Rudd-Gillard government, which the Productivity Commission savaged last week as having failed to arrest the decline in Australian student learning, including for the disadvantaged students it was supposed to help the most.
The underlying problem going into the pandemic was the step-down in productivity growth due to the lack of enduring economic reform.
Second, the Rudd-Gillard government’s demand-driven National Disability Insurance Scheme is running out of control, now eating up more of the taxpayers’ money than Medicare, despite early claims that it would pay for itself by getting disabled people back to work. It is projected to cost $90 billion a year, perhaps more, by 2032.
Gonski and the NDIS rank as two of the most poorly designed and expensive social policy programs in Australian history. Together, these Labor spending monuments have helped ratchet up government spending from 24 per cent of GDP when Dr Rudd first became prime minister to a new plateau of 27 per cent.
Dr Chalmers’ straw man critique of neoliberalism explicitly builds on Dr Rudd’s February 2009 attack on the 30-year epoch of “free market capitalism, extreme capitalism and economic greed” blamed for causing the 2008 global financial crisis. Seeking election in 2007, Dr Rudd was happy to portray himself as an “economic conservative”, a sort of Hawke-Keating renaissance figure.
The debate on what caused the GFC includes the haphazard regulation of America’s banking system, the hidden risks built into newfangled financial instruments and political pressures to encourage lending to minority groups with questionable capacity to repay.
Contrary to efficient markets theory, global capital markets did seize up during the crisis. But Australia did not join the global recession, thanks to the supply-side reforms of the Hawke-Keating and Howard-Costello governments that made it harder for the unions to blow up the resources boom of the 2000s as they did in the late 1970s; the budget surpluses bequeathed by the previous Coalition government; the independent Reserve Bank’s new-found low inflation credibility; the well-supervised and mostly prudent banks; and the globalisation stimulus that Chinese demand provided to our miners.
Limited relevance to the debate
Australia’s so-called neoliberalism, microeconomic reform or economic rationalism was basically orthodox and practical supply-side economics. To flavour the cartoonish case against neoliberalism, Dr Chalmers throws the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank – thankfully not the World Trade Organisation – into the pot. But this is of limited relevance to the debate about Australia’s post-pandemic future. For instance, as treasurer, Peter Costello stood up to the Americans, including Democrat Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary, Larry Summers, over the IMF’s unnecessarily rough treatment of Indonesia during the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Yes, every crisis is different. In opposition, Dr Chalmers suggested the Morrison government would be judged on unemployment, not surprisingly expecting an enduring labour market shakeout from the COVID-19 shock. Then the supposedly neoliberal Coalition government embarked on Australia’s biggest-ever Keynesian package of fiscal support.
Rather than deficient demand, however, the economy’s sharp contraction in 2020 was caused by an enforced blockage of supply from local lockdowns and global supply chain disruption.
In opposition, Labor warned that ending the JobKeeper subsidies would push the economy off a cliff. Instead, the massive demand boost from the budget spending and the Reserve Bank’s unprecedented excess monetary easing hit the economy’s reduced supply limits and spilt over into Australia’s biggest inflation breakout for three decades, aggravated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Australia’s jobless rate fell to 3.4 per cent, the lowest since the early 1970s. Rather than Labor and the ACTU’s anti-neoliberal insecure work agenda, Australian workers have never had more job openings to choose from.
The GFC disrupted global politics, including through the rise of Donald Trump’s right-wing populism and the polarisation of culture wars around identity politics. The COVID-19 health crisis has encouraged governments to throw more money at social programs and, amid rising geopolitical risks, to revert to various forms of sovereign industry protectionism.
However, as a high-income commodity-exporting nation, Australia’s prosperity depends on how well it can compete in an open, global trading system. The underlying economic problem going into the pandemic was the step-down in productivity growth because of the lack of enduring productivity-enhancing economic reform since the Howard-Costello GST-based tax package of 2000.
The Hawke-Keating government provides a case study of how to boost productivity. Within its first year, it floated the Australian dollar. Mr Keating further defied Labor orthodoxy by letting in 16 foreign banks. The Treasurer brought in a capital gains tax, dividend imputation (to end the double-taxation of company profits) and lower marginal rates for personal and company tax to sharpen incentives. (Mr Keating favoured a top personal income tax rate no higher than 40 per cent.)
Labor dismantled the import tariff and quota wall that shielded Australian industry from foreign competition. It privatised government businesses, including Commonwealth Bank, Qantas and CSL. The national competition policy was extended to electricity, gas and water.
In macroeconomic policy, Mr Hawke and Mr Keating began with an income policy (the accord with the ACTU) that The Australian Financial Review supported in advance following the Fraser government’s failures to tame trade union power. The accord began by deliberately cutting real wages to restore corporate profits, bring down the joblessness of the early 1980s recession and fight inflation.
A decade later, Mr Keating sought to replace centralised wage-fixing with decentralised enterprise bargaining to drive productivity growth at the firm level: the agenda that the trade unions have sought to stall and reverse over the past 15 years. Particularly after the 1986 “banana republic” currency crisis, this was matched by fiscal discipline and sound public finances.
Budget repair demonised
Under finance minister Peter Walsh, Labor’s budget repair was repeated by the first Costello budget of 1996. But it successfully demonised the comparable budget repair attempted by Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey in 2014, which Dr Chalmers now damns as neoliberal austerity.
That is, the Hawke-Keating government was held up internationally – such as by the OECD – as a model of economic reform. It combined macro-discipline with an incentives-based and pro-competition agenda of supply-side reform that included a broader tax base to finance lower tax rates.
Although it might have looked neoliberal to the Labor-left opponents of the time, such as Mr Albanese, this was still a reputably Labor government. It restored the Whitlam government’s Medicare. It innovated with the income-contingent Higher Education Contribution Scheme to help pay for demand-driven university education while not pricing out students from disadvantaged backgrounds. It rewarded the unions with effective part-ownership of compulsory superannuation that has grown into a $3.3 trillion pool of worker savings. It generated productivity-based economic growth that gave millions of Australians the opportunities for well-paying jobs.
With climate change, Australia today confronts an economic transformation as big as the 1980s and ’90s liberalisation. Yet, while it contains clean-economy opportunities, decarbonising a fossil fuel-based economy inevitably will be costly, more so if re-regulation and higher taxes make the economy less flexible.
Labor has clarified Australia’s emissions goals and is in the process of adopting more price signals. But it also has reverted to heavy-handed interventions – such as the gas price controls – that will increase the risk premium on the massive investment required to deliver a lower carbon economy. And, for political reasons, it is accommodating the hardening constraints on the supply of gas, an essential fuel to keep the lights on during the transition.
Dr Chalmers’ nation-building and social purpose co-investment model between government, big super funds and business risks the individual retirement savings of ordinary Australians who will have no say in the matter. Skilling the workforce is important, but it should begin with reversing the alarming decline in Australian student learning. That surely should be a headline issue in Dr Chalmers’ “well-being budget”.
As it gets older, Australia will need to put more resources into aged care. But this must include more self-provision as part of a wider agenda of tax and welfare reform that would sharpen incentives and improve the focus on subsidies.
As the NDIS suggests, overall, the “equality” agenda is likely to be more about redistributing income and consumption opportunities rather than a production-boosting investment. Society may decide to do all this. But without the productivity and economic growth reforms that should be included in Dr Chalmers’ manifesto, particularly to the critical labour market and tax system, the money will have to come from somewhere else.
A popular Israeli source.
Al Jazeera rounding up US news sources all hinting very strongly that it was Israel.
If you can’t read those tea leaves (or refuse to), there’s not much that can be done to educate you.
Roger
Were non-indigenous Alice Springs residents represented at the meeting which came up with this ridiculous decision? Are they not entitled to a voice in the matter?
The whole idea of the Voice is to suppress the voices of the non-indigenous (except for leftards, of course).
I think oxygen and saline are what we call “the official version of events”.
Might be other stuff involved.
Albanese’s promise…evidently it was “non-core”.
Yep, I generally find Tennis batshit boring and almost never watch it, not even the big matches.
Last night, however, I did tune in to see Novax stick it up em.
And wasn’t it delicious? Just wish the terrible “Dan” had have been there personally to see Novax triumph. Our household was with him every step of the tournament.
Building on Dr Rudd’s intellectual framework? Ouch.
When did KRuddy become Dr Rudd? This isn’t one of those Phatty Adams doctorates is it?
I’m so old I can remember when the Left were automatically suspicious of Big Pharma.
The Alice Springs meeting is indeed an example of the one of the greatest follies of the Voice – the notion that what indigenous people might decide for themselves will have no negative impact on non-indigeous people.
Whether that is a feature or a bug, it is an insidious development in a democracy.
“Russian forces” LOL, do you think the Russians would deploy a brigade in tight formation to ship a fleet of automated vehicles, just ready to be blown up like Asterix punching a phalanx of legionnaires. What queer notions you have, OCO.
Iran already has air defence systems including four S-300s. That is how they were able to shoot down two of three missiles aimed at Isfahan (allegedly). That cat is already out of the bag.
Not forgetting Dr Gillard, whose earlier intellectual efforts saw her terminated with extreme prejudice from Slugs & Grubs before being thrown a lifeline by the late Mother Russia. Who still doesn’t have a tennis arena named after her.
Alomst…
Submitted a thesis on Xi to Oxford.
Seems course work & oral exams are only for little people.
Field Marshal mUntgomery changes battlefields. I didn’t hold out much hope for Middle East peace anyway.
These tongue baths as theses seem quite popular.
The AFR rarely does such a thorough political analysis.
Aside from establishing the fact that Chalmers is a political tool, the AFR piece sums up Australia’s new problem in its last sentence:
The Australian hollow logs are:
• Regulated superannuation savings;
• The residential property market.
Try not to be at the upper quartile of either – because ‘equity’ is coming for you.
“Amir Tsarfati @beholdisrael”
LOL, Tsarfati is an Israeli Evangelical Pentecostalist, he converted from Judaism to Christianity, known for his Bible prophecies and bible readings*.
Geez louise Monty, you go from Tsarfati to Al Jazeera (a media outlet not known for its pro-Israel or pro-Jewish reporting, always happy to paint Israel in a nasty light and known for very some nasty ant-Semitic libels). Perhaps you should use better and more reliable sources.
* oh and despite the fact that Tsarfati converted to Christianity, Israel (and Tsarfati’s family) don’t kill apostates, unlike its neighbours.
Monty now relies on bible prophesy!
Probably a good thing they didn’t test his proficiency in Mandarin.
Re the Project Veritas video.
Can soneone tell me what Walker’s position at Pfizer was?
I can’t figure it out.
He claims he wasn’t in a sciency role, but there are claims he was?
H B Bearsays:
January 30, 2023 at 11:00 am
Field Marshal mUntgomery changes battlefields. I didn’t hold out much hope for Middle East peace anyway.
He has loyally followed most of the old anti-war left into neocon warmongering against a nuclear power. CND, eat your hearts out, you have been superceded.
But when will m0nty=fa enlist for the Great War Against Wussian Imperialism that he has called for on several occasions? Will we have to wait for his kids to be old enough to enlist?
When even the AFR is worried things must be grim.
In the commercial diving world, and Navy diving – apparently – the bottle of Oxygen carried on board is not only for the various injuries that require pure oxy.
Works as a great cure for a hangover.
Not that I’d recommend it. Of course.
Wasnt he banned for a carrying a (CCP) flag or something? …. you know, to keep the rules consistent/
‘Fickle’ sentiment not sufficient to alter Constitution for voice
The No Case Committee on the referendum for constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices is called Recognise a Better Way. The No Case Committee will be the foundation committee around which the No case will be fought in the forthcoming referendum. Many other voices, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, will be in opposition to the government’s misplaced and unnecessary proposal.
The Albanese government’s proposed voice in the Constitution is the wrong way to recognise Aboriginal people, or help Aborigines in need. The voice is a second voice, a second bite at the cherry, for one group only.
The voice proposal smacks of the paternalism of an earlier time, without proof that it will help those in need. It is an insult to the fact that Aborigines are capable of being heard in the public arena. Aboriginal leaders are never out of the media.
What started with a trickle of Aboriginal voices, the election in 1971 of Neville Bonner from Queensland to the Senate on behalf of the Liberal Party, is now an avalanche with 11 members of the commonwealth parliament of Aboriginal heritage. Each of these members has a voice backed by voters in the proper democratic process. Any mechanism, other than the normal parliamentary processes available to all citizens, undermines parliament and the voters’ right to choose their representatives.
Referendums rarely succeed, and for good reason. The last successful referendum in Australia was in 1977, to ensure that Senate and House of Representatives elections were held at the same time; rules for Senate casual vacancies; to allow electors in the territories to vote in referendums, and; to set a retirement age for Federal Court judges. All housekeeping.
The voice proposal is not housekeeping; it seeks to upend the parliament, by adding a group with a constitutionally embedded second voice. Just as independent senators can hold out the prospect of their vote to a desperate government, so too will the voice hold up legislation in return for favours.
Independent senators can be removed by voters, and often are. The voice could not be removed. Imagine a future Labor-Greens opposition wishing to block Coalition legislation. It would run to the voice and have it hold up legislation on all sorts of pretexts – lack of consultation, insufficient resources – and, if spurned by the Coalition, run to the courts. Governments are under enough pressure to deliver for all Australians; the voice will cost Australians, forever.
In 1967, 90 per cent of the population and all states supported the proposal for the commonwealth to enact laws for Aborigines. Incidentally, at the same time, a proposition to increase the number of members of the House of Representatives failed, carrying only NSW and 40 per cent of the population of Australia. Proponents of the Yes case will be hoping for the same result as for Aborigines; we think the more likely result is that for increasing the number of members of the House of Representatives.
The voters believe there are enough voices; they want parliament to get on with its work, not be unduly held up by one group that may use the privilege to look after themselves at the expense of all citizens.
A more recent example is the failed 1999 referendum seeking to insert a preamble to the Constitution (and on the republic), which garnered only 40 per cent of the national vote and failed in all states. As some hopefuls commented at the time, “the preamble question … stands a good chance of being ratified if voters accept the sentiments expressed in the words, and believe it important to add these to the Constitution”. The sentiments were not enough and the importance of adding to the Constitution was unproved. So it will be with the voice. Sentiment is a dangerous commodity; it is fickle and should be nowhere near the Australian Constitution.
If we were to characterise the voice proposal, it is a great deal more than a housekeeping provision; it is a serious change to the way we govern. One group alone will get a second voice. The voice proposal is an attempt to change the rules to both recognise prior occupation of Aboriginal peoples, and get a “better” outcome for Aborigines. Voters will ask: “Better for whom?” While Australians want the best outcomes for Aboriginal people, where is the proof that changing the Constitution will help? As for recognition, there is a better way, although as the preamble referendum proved, it is no certainty.
Recognise a Better Way understands there is much to do in Aboriginal Australia. It has a three-point positive plan to recognise prior occupation and help those in need.
Recognise prior occupation of Aboriginal people in a preamble to the Constitution. Prior occupation is a sensible ask. Any more, such as descriptions of people’s culture, is not. We all have culture.
Establish an all-party parliamentary standing committee for native title holders. Legislation is unique to these citizens and there is no awkwardness about identifying who is entitled. These people need to find a way into the modern economy.
Support Aboriginal community-controlled organisations. There is a huge level of organisation in Aboriginal Australia. Politicians never stop consulting with those many voices.
Aboriginal Australians do not need more voices; a minority need a way into the wider society.
Written by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Nyunggai Warren Mundine and Gary Johns on behalf of Recognise A Better Way, the No Case Committee for the voice referendum recogniseabetterway.org.au
Oz
Did they really imagine they were getting Hawke-Keating redux?
Pepperidge Farms remembers!
“But the loathing for O’Keefe is also philosophical: his style of undercover muckraking is contrary to how most journalism is conducted these days, where a variety of named and unnamed sources provide journalists with statements and information.”
What journalism “these days“?
The truth is that O’Keefe would not be doing what he’s doing if the MSM, in the US and here in Oz, did its job but no, almost all of the MSM are now activists and they shill for their big daddies….big government, big corporations, big tech and big pharma. If they bother to do any investigatory work, it’s only to attack the left’s favourite pinatas, be it Trump or the Catholic Church or conservative and right of centre politicians. So “journalism” is left to a muckracker like O’Keefe.
Oh and by the way, further to those few journalists and commentators who do think outside the box and are willing to question/critique Ukraine/Covid/transgender gunk and so on, Spiked Online uploaded this earlier today..
The Covid lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 were an unprecedented assault on liberty – not only on our freedom to go about our daily lives, but also on our freedom of expression and our freedom to dissent. Just as we were ordered to ‘stay at home’ for months on end, we were also told to stop asking questions about the draconian restrictions.
Today, a report by Big Brother Watch has revealed the alarming lengths the UK government went to in order to hush up its critics. We now know that three government bodies, including a shady Ministry of Defence unit tasked with fighting ‘information warfare’, surveilled and monitored UK citizens, public figures and media outlets who criticised the lockdown – and spiked was caught up in that net.
This mini Ministry of Truth was composed of the Rapid Response Unit (RRU) in the Cabinet Office, the Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the army’s 77th Brigade. The 77th Brigade exists to monitor and counter so-called disinformation being spread by adversarial foreign powers. But, as a whistleblower from the unit told Big Brother Watch, ‘the banner of disinformation was a guise under which the British military was being deployed to monitor and flag our own concerned citizens’. The other bodies worked together to monitor ‘harmful narratives online’ and to push back on them, by promoting government lines in the press and by flagging posts to social-media companies in order to have them removed.
The public figures targeted by these shadowy units included Conservative MP David Davis, Lockdown Sceptics founder Toby Young, talkRADIO’s Julia Hartley-Brewer and Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens. All of whom had warned about the consequences of lockdown and had raised questions about the UK government’s alarmist modelling of the virus.
Documents obtained by Big Brother Watch, using subject-access requests, reveal that Peter Hitchens was flagged for, among other things, sharing a spiked article. A cross-Whitehall disinformation report from the RRU in June 2020 notes that, ‘The spiked article was shared on Twitter by Peter Hitchens, which led to renewed engagement on that specific platform’. The RRU also monitored the level of public agreement, noting that ‘some highly engaged comments’ agreed with the article, while others were critical.
It isn’t pretty, is it?
As C.L. writes on his blog, what values are we defending in Ukraine again? It surely can’t be for freedom and free speech. Can someone please tell me?
Another incredible thing about the Project Veritas video:-
A gay guy, on a first date with another gay guy says, “This is really top secret, so you can’t tell anyone, OK.”
That coat is looking pretty tattered by now.
Looking forward to Keating’s critique.
No!
Look at TOTAL government spending.
Gillard: 38% of GDP
COVID fascist unity national cabinet: 44% of GDP.
The NDIS is such a joke if it just gave people money they’d get 65k each tax free, excluding any DSP or other benefits.
The old chocolate honey pot. Worked for the Russians.
That’s triggering!
British universities putting ‘trigger warnings’ on Shakespeare, Greek tragedies for being too dark (26 Jan)
Well I suppose talking to a skull might be threatening to some people.
What the AFR article failed to point out is that Chalmers Manifesto is leftist revolution by stealth. There is no way that you could change our economic system from one primarily based on a market system of supply and demand, to one of a “value based” system without implementing significant government control over economic forces and political and individual freedoms. Just ask yourself, who determines “the values”? It won’t be you or I, it will be an inner sanctum of the leftist elite.
“Raiding” super to pay for surgical bills because public hospitals are stuffed – bad.
Using super to subsidise an economy based on basket weaving…what say ye, Paul?
Bons tickets for Hamilton is a step down from a piece of coal. Someone doesn’t like you.
I gave up on that organ after one too many Alberici-quality leftynomic prejudiced articles. And now years late, they write a defense against the crazed left on behalf of a no-longer-existent ‘sensible left’?
Television from 2024 will consist of an infinite number of repeats of Rabbit-Proof Fence.
And nothing else.
Govt to launch new National Cultural Policy for entertainment (Sky News, 30 Jan)
Albanese launches cultural arts policy for Aus entertainment (Sky News, 30 Jan)
Rather than bolster the Australian entertainment sector it’s going to kill it deader than Mungo Man. The streaming companies aren’t going to bother with the Australian content rules, they’ll just geoblock us. And Aussie voters will get VPNs and buy their movies direct from the US servers.
“Dr” Chalmers as a purveyor of well being remedies should be a rich vein for cartoonists.
Why, yes.
Yes they did.
‘Build back stronger’: Albanese promises to govern like Hawke
That was before the election, of course.
Then the doubts started to set in…
Are Albanese, Chalmers really the new Hawke and Keating?
And the answer is: Pig’s Arse.
Sancho
It is clear you have not actually bothered to look but it was third date and there is a huge amount of information verifying his Director position. I highly recommend Twitter as many have scraped internet before the clean up began.
Keating has always been conflicted on basket weaving. Da bruvvas not so much after they’ve taken their clip.
Dot that 44% of GDP is in fact a lot more as some forms of government spending are included in GDP.
Not sure how well this is going to fit with BritBox.
I guess they can dub Vera into Strine.
For those interested Jo Nova has a good thread two days ago on Pfizer guy.
Thank heavens for S.116 of the Constitution.
But for that he’d be requring us to acquire a totemic spirit before long.
er…..um……10% for the big guy?
No they won’t. That’s just paranoid bullshit as usual. They make take names down etc. but they will not stop conversion and in fact it could be unconstitutional through the fair compensation clause. But neither of us are lawyers so it would be good if the site constitutional lawyer chimes in. (Cronkite).
My mother had a bunch and 2 dollar notes socked away, which I found after she passed away, and the bank took them without a whisper.
Stick to toy planes, Hallward.
AFR Conclusion –
“the money will have to come from somewhere else”.
Cue for –
1. More Taxes
2. More Debt
3. Sell more of the ‘Family Silver’ (if there is any left that is).
Does Chalmers have Finance/Economic qualifications/work experience in the real world? Does ‘Albo’ have any experience in the real world? Does ‘Blackout’ Bowen have any understanding of electrical engineering and how an Electricity Grid Power System should work?
Vale Australia
Noice! .. ta getz one of those mornings when things just click into place .. swam in the local pool (just a walk) this morning cos “Hughie” visiting and a ride to Fairfield would have been extremely soggy, both wayz as well as in the pool ..
got into the mood and knocked over 2200 mts (44 laps) before cramping up ..
1st time over 1000mts this year .. not bad for 75 ……!
This is where you will find lot of background. Taken from Jo Nova thread.
Cardimona
January 28, 2023 at 12:40 pm · Reply
‘Private Intelligence and Security Consultant’ Brian O’Shea over on Substack – https://brianoshea.substack.com/p/who-is-jordon-trishton-walker – has done the deep dive on Walker.
Experienced what can only be bit of white privileged yesterday. Pouring rain, needed to catch a taxi, realised the notes I had were baht instead of rufyiaa.
When to my local coffee shop, asked if I could buy a coffee and then charge me 120 extra and give me the cash (cash out). Can’t do that, will just lend you the cash. Thanks!!! Paid back in the arvo.
How telling Putin to f right off as well as turning that so-called military superpower into a zero.
And yes, there are misgivings with Hiden.
Funny way of spelling “Whitlam and Cairns”.
Quotas, you say…
Aussie Pickers
Ozzy Pawn Stars
Keeping up with Michael Clarke
Eastenders “Down Under”
Escape to the Bush Block
Michael Portillo’s Outback Railway Journeys
A gay guy, on a first date with another gay guy says, “This is really top secret, so you can’t tell anyone, OK.”
When diversity hires go bad…
The bait must have been a real pro. Diversity guy asks multiple times if there’s a chance of the discussion being recorded. Three drinks later spills the beans.
flyingduk says:
January 30, 2023 at 9:37 am
Same her first time in many years, at a friend’s place.
Not an expert on tennis but he seemed to be a class above, even given 10 years more experience.
Third … first. Whatever.
First line of the Oz report …
I was looking on my phone which had some overlays which looked like they related to his credentials but were too small to read.
what values are we defending in Ukraine again
We’re defending the right of Ukes to have as many swastika tatts as they like without fear of judgement.
For what it’s worth, the Walker/Pfizer revelation looks fairly genuinish in a grotty, low rent way:
From the sting video, Walker (despite apparently owning a science and research job title) seems to have very little idea about science, or research – but he stupidly drops overheard tittle-tattle about gain of function research.
Research that Pfizer then obliquely confirmed.
Whether or not he ever was, I suspect that nobody rejoicing as Jordon Trishton Walker is currently employed by Pfizer.
Well done shatterzzz!
Phrasing?
ABC. Jerusalem ‘tensions’. Apparently there has also been ‘violence’.
Just as long as ex – Prime Ministers are barred from ever becoming President..
A young southern gentleman moved to New York City to find fame and fortune. There he met and proposed to a Yankee girl. His very prim and proper elderly mother came to New York for the wedding festivities.
She was invited to a luncheon for the wedding party, and found herself seated next to a woman to whom she had not been introduced. She very politely turned to the woman and said “Let me introduce myself, I’m the mother of the groom. And where are you from?”
The Yankee lady stuck her nose in the air, and in a condescending tone replied “Well, I’m from an area where we know better than to end our sentences with a preposition”.
The elderly southern lady sat quietly for a moment and then replied “How silly of me, you are so right. Let me rephrase that question: So, where are you from, bitch?”
The Russians have lots of swastika tatts too. It’s the vibe in that part of the world.
We should always remember that our Nazis are better than their Nazis though.
And don’t forget 10% for the Big Guy.
(As I recall both the Ukrainian and Russian chief rabbis have told their local Jewry that now is an excellent time to migrate to Israel. I think that’s an excellent idea.)
Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it.
– David Lee Roth
“You know the story… There was once a Baron…”
IIRC, the tale is actually Arabic in origin, the Baron is a King, man than is convicted of a capital crime, it is a horse that will be taught to sing, and the time period is a year. But otherwise, it ends the same “Who knows what might happen? The king may die, I may die, the horse may die. And who knows, the horse may learn to sing!”
Pandering!
We need Ted Mack!
Just wish the terrible “Dan” had have been there personally to see Novax triumph.
I have no doubt it was incredibly irritating for the hunchbacked imbecile. One reason why it’s so sweet!
Knocking together some book cases for extra storage in a spare room.
Made in Malaysia, not China, and the instructions couldn’t be clearer.
Thanks, Mr. Xi.
“People in the masses are very different to the individual and that’s one of the curses of the mob.”
More movie quotes (life imitates art?) From Men in Black:
“People are smart, they’ll understand.”
“No! A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky animals and you know it!”
“How telling Putin to f right off as well as turning that so-called military superpower into a zero.”
No, whilst I understand the hostility towards Putin, the last thing we need is “a zero Russia”.
Top Ender:
Far too often the ambulance service and the hospital are treated as just another joke by nursing staff in the smaller towns.
Patient – drunk – stands at front door at 0100 stating “I’m having a fit, Sistah.”
Patient just wants a bed and a feed for the night.
The girls encourage this behaviour by providing sandwiches and a bed.
Winston provides #14 gauge cannula, NBM & A&E bed along with neuro observations until 0500 when patient, fed up with being woken every 15 minutes, lights shone in eyes, goes home self discharged.
Locals work out fairly early “Old Grey Nurse doesn’t put up with shit” and ring up first to see who is on duty. Nurses also realise they’re being taken for a ride. Aboriginal Health carers start telling the locals the old grey nurse is on duty every night. The bullshit soon stops.*
Many many stories of this nature. Too often the locals see a mark and take it for what it’s worth.
* The major issue is that the medical humbugging doesn’t stop even if you’ve got an A&E full of critical patients “You provided an ambulance, sandwiches, an a comfy bed last payday and now you’re saying ‘no’ you racist effing white C.”
You need a bloody thick hide some days. 🙂
Dear oh dear! Unconstitutional ? Fair Compensation??
BTW, us paranoid conspiracy theorists prefer the term ‘ forecasters’ .
“Deception has real costs. It’s hard not to feel sorry for Walker, who now faces potentially crippling infamy for the rest of his life, so much so he’ll probably have to change his name to avoid death threats.”
True, but I also felt sorry for Amy Cooper, who was set up. She also received death threats, was sacked from her job and had to move.
Money can’t buy you happiness, but it does buy a superior grade of misery.
SHIT!!
You too? I am starting to feel like we have fallen prey to an elaborate marketing ploy by ‘Big Tennis’ ! #$%^*&^%$
Zipster says:
January 30, 2023 at 10:30 am
It’s sad to see, he is still clinging to that prediction.
Good man lost to crackpot ideas.
Roger:
Obviously not.
Next question?
Germans won the Hockey final last night in Bhubaneswar.
They’re staying at our hotel and we just beat them home before the fire works and beer hall singing commenced.
The hotel had a big celebration cake on a table in the foyer with ‘Congratulations Winners’ piped on the top.
My oldest daughter walked past as said “They didn’t get a cake like that in 1945.”
Classic!
There’s a certain sector among the locals, who take their revolting brats to A&E with the most trivial of ailments, and play the race card loud and long, if they aren’t attended to promptly.
Using Google translate from Swedish to Bahasa to English may not be optimum.
They have tried to get around that by using diagrams only, which is OK to a point, except that the cartoon figures doing the assembly are smiling at every stage.
Not for reals.
Why Lego Isn’t (Just) a Toy Company | WSJ 5 Mins 54 Secs
Doc Faustus:
Damn straight, maate.
There will be some exceptions via Family Trusts etc as well as inventive tax returns and writedowns for those with the right connections…
Dr F at 12:18.
There might … just maybe … a legitimate case for the type of research being talked about.
For example, research on anti-biotics to counter next generation super-bugs.
But it needs to be tightly controlled and regulated.
Of course, if Pfizer have spent $100m engineering viruses and vaccines, and the viruses cause illness but aren’t lethal, there is then a temptation …
It also spoke volumes to me that this was something you might brag about to impress someone.
You know, the irony of a gay man talking about deliberately mutating a virus for shits and giggles.
And the contra.
Imagine the political backdraft for opposing legislation brought to parliament, wrapped in a possum skin cloak, with the blessing of the Voice.
Mr Speaker, those Opposite are pandering to racism, racism Mr Speaker, to oppose the amendments to the Retirement Savings Account Providers Supervisory Levy Imposition Act 1998 – amendments which have been approved by the ancient wisdoms of the Voice, Mr Speaker…
mem says:
January 30, 2023 at 9:48 am
Gaborsays:
January 30, 2023 at 4:39 am
Tom, probably not practical, but is there a chance of giving a hint, a one line at least, what the ‘toon is about?
I hear what you are saying, that’s why I prefaced my comment with “probably not practical”.
I’m not demanding anything from Tom.
If “Cartoons speak for themselves” then they should be self explanatory for everyone everywhere.
That is just silly, they mostly refer to local events and personalities we may never heard of.
It’s all good but, no hassles on my part, take ’em as they come.
Anyone able to post OZ Article
Why polarised Indigenous debate rages
The problems are not confined to the NT. They are happening all over Australia and have been for at least 30 years.
By Chris Mitchell
Sancho,
Good pick up on Creighton saying first date but pretty sure it was third. However have read so many articles and listened to a few commentators about it can’t say where got it from.
The Oz were in a tough position as if did not report on it would only confirm even more that they are ignoring many significant Covid vax stories. Creighton is actually one of the good journalists in that regard.
Note no other Oz paper covered it so far.
The other big story is UK
dropping all boosters for under 50’s last week.
Or you could go with military intelligence monitoring people speaking out in UK. Daily Mail had article about it yesterday.
Sancho Panzer:
I pointed this out a day after the story broke and this is the first time that someone has pointed it out.
Gays just can’t keep their mouths shut – narcissists most of them. That’s why they were considered a security risk.
Bloody heck!
I posted a few days ago that Brahmapur in Odisha is a shit hole and never go there. Yesterday the state health minister was shot dead by a disgruntled police officer as he stepped out of his offical car in the centre of the city.
The local cows would have barely looked up and the street dogs would have quickly cleaned up the mess. Not joking.
There may indeed.
Sensible discussion about that has now disappeared in the fog of gotcha media sensation, allegations of Internet banning, and the cheap thrill of watching a flake trading secret gossip for the hope of a little gay action.
Just to clarify Creighton was very good on the damage lockdowns causing more harm than good.
Easily blackmailed in more “unenlightened” times.
My mother had a bunch and 2 dollar notes socked away, which I found after she passed away, and the bank took them without a whisper.
Should have gone with Ebay .. a fair/good condition/new $2 note upwards of $10 each .. same for $1 notes .. in demand .. sell very quickly ……!
Here you go, OO:
Why the polarised Indigenous debate rages onCHRIS MITCHELL
Underlying hesitancy about the proposed voice referendum among many conservative Australians and some Aboriginal leaders is a suspicion that metropolitan Aboriginal rights campaigners care little for the plight of displaced Indigenous people in remote Australia.
Events last week in Alice Springs go to the heart of the problem. The NT Labor Chief Minister Natasha Fyles, the former Morrison government and the Albanese government have been too willing to let go of the reforms of the Gillard government’s Stronger Futures program that restricted alcohol consumption in the NT.
Fyles, before Tuesday’s meeting in Alice with Anthony Albanese and his Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney, specifically said the NT was unwilling to support an alcohol ban that racially targeted Aboriginals. Federal Labor MP Marion Scrymgour was right when she said not restricting alcohol was effectively targeting Aboriginal women and children.
Remember when Sydney Aboriginal academic Larissa Behrendt, partner of former federal Labor Attorney-General Michael Lavarch, tweeted about former NT minister Bess Price who was appearing on Q&A in 2011? Behrendt said watching Price – mother of now federal CLP senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price – talking about disadvantage in the NT was more offensive than watching a man have sex with a horse, which was a reference to US TV series Deadwood.
It became a big news story only because it highlighted a real city-country divide that long predated that incident and former PM John Howard’s 2007 NT Intervention, hated by the metropolitan Aboriginal rights camp but loved by remote Aboriginal people. Senator Price, in this newspaper on Friday, and Warren Mundine, in The Australian Financial Review, wrote powerfully about a rights culture that ignores the need for Aboriginal communities and political leaders to take responsibility.
Yet the problems are not confined to the NT. They are happening all over Australia and have been for at least 30 years. Queensland’s Courier-Mail in the late 1990s ran a series of stories about violent abuse against women and children in remote mission stations and towns on Cape York and in the Gulf. This included the rise of foetal alcohol syndrome and sexually transmitted diseases in primary-school-age girls. At the time, Noel Pearson – who is a prominent advocate of the voice to parliament – was a fortnightly columnist for The Australian.
The Australian conducted a long investigation into the finances of prominent elected Aboriginal leader Sugar Ray Robinson, who was based in Charleville. Robinson resigned in 2003 as a commissioner for ATSIC, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. He had been national ATSIC deputy chair. He was finally convicted in September 2008.
The national chair, Victorian ATSIC commissioner Geoff Clark, had faced a series of historical rape allegations, was never convicted, lost a civil action brought by one of his victims, but has not paid her the court-awarded settlement.
ATSIC was finally abolished in May 2004 and the following year Clark won a verdict of unfair dismissal against then minister Amanda Vanstone. Some Aboriginal leaders have been working ever since for a way to replace ATSIC, but for many of the poorest Aboriginal communities its abolition was a godsend. They worry a voice may repeat ATSIC’s flaws.
Howard’s late 1990s minister for Aboriginal affairs, senator John Herron, was lobbied by Pearson about the introduction of income management plans in the Cape so pension payments would not be frittered away on alcohol and mothers would have enough cash to buy fresh food for their children.
The newspaper editorialised for Pearson’s plan and later received a delegation from ATSIC asking that I, as editor-in-chief of Queensland Newspapers at the time, stop publishing stories of abuse in Aboriginal communities and focus instead on stories of Aboriginal achievement, especially the positive achievements of young Aboriginal people in Queensland’s larger coastal cities.
While ATSIC went, Mabo and Wik brought a form of land rights and former Labor PM Kevin Rudd apologised to the Stolen Generations in 2008. But not much has improved in the remote Aboriginal world since the mid-1990s.
Yet there have been successes. The impressive school on the Tiwi Islands and a determined push to address problems that once included one of the highest suicide rates in the world have made the Bathurst and Melville islands much safer and happier places, well worth visiting.
Sky News Australia’s Andrew Bolt often cites conditions in Aurukun on Cape York to reflect adversely on Noel Pearson’s Good to Great Schools programs. I visited Pearson’s Hope Vale school and community in 2019 and found a thriving and largely happy student body and some of the nation’s most committed teachers.
Debate in Aboriginal affairs is more polarised and shouty than ever. Not every conservative commentator criticising the situation in Alice last week was doing so to undermine the voice. It’s possible to mistrust the voice campaign, to worry about potentially dividing the nation by race and to care genuinely about practical reconciliation.
Conversely, it’s possible to be a voice supporter and have spoken passionately in favour of Howard’s NT Intervention. On ABC AM the morning after Howard’s announcement of the Intervention, Pearson famously described the fear of a small Aboriginal child cowering before an alcohol-fuelled adult.
Speaking on Australia Day, Pearson told this column: “I have always thought … the behavioural and structural, symbolic and practical needed to be pursued in parallel, even as the crisis in communities needed to be confronted urgently. Even Howard understood the importance of recognition when he said in 2007 … ‘I believe we must find room in our national life to formally recognise the status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the first peoples of this nation.’”
Pearson added: “I am convinced that policy reform alone is not sustainable – even when it is right, which most of the time it is not. Because consistency, fidelity, and sticking to reform is not what governments do. They lose interest.”
This column outlined the history of the voice proposal last August and criticised many journalists for showing no sign of having read or even heard of the 272-page final report of the Indigenous Voice Co-design Process, written by Professor Marcia Langton and 2023 Senior Australian of the Year Tom Calma in 2021.
For sceptics who would like to know if and how a voice might help improve life for disadvantaged Aboriginal Australians, Pearson’s Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership in 2020 produced a much more concise study, titled First Nations Voice, Empowerment, Productivity and Closing the Gap.
The paper is scathing of top-down bureaucratically imposed reforms and does not support any centralised control for the national voice. It says the nation is spending about 1 per cent of GDP on Indigenous Australians, “resulting in limited social, economic and cultural progress … it is not the case that simply providing more funding will Close The Gap.”
Sounds like an approach many sceptics of the voice need to hear. As The Mocker wrote here last Thursday, Albanese is not helping his cause by refusing to discuss how the voice might be implemented in practical terms.
CHRIS MITCHELL COLUMNIST
Link
Still don’t know what exactly happened in Iran. It certainly appears some effort was made to use drones to attack Isfahan, and possibly elsewhere, but little footage or confirmation. Could be what it appears, a psyop, or something in between.
“Could be what it appears, a psyop, or something in between.”
Indeed – “This time it’s just a camera, but we have armed ones as well…”
Better than face value, but have still probably failed to maintain purchasing power due to inflation
Increase their dole payments so they can buy more cannabis ! A winning vote buying strategy if ever I saw one. As one radio caller said only the unemployed will be able to regularly consume it as most others can’t get caught driving having tested positive and many work places frown upon it. I think it has not gone well in Colorado.
“Plan to legalise cannabis in Australia and use it to pay for a massive increase to Centrelink dole payments”
Glad C.L. mentioned this over at his place:
Apparently, it wasn’t a shell, but a HIMARS strike which if correct implicates the US as well. Did anyone see this reported on the MSM?
4 Corners tonight.
Three or four Catholic primary schools have taken over the Liberal party.
I seem to remember them devoting an unprecedented two successive programs to the Pell case and only looking at the prosecution’s case.
Tonight we’ll hear a lot about disinformation. I guess they know all about that sort of thing.
Roger:
Where did ya git ’em, Wodger?
“Three or four Catholic primary schools have taken over the Liberal party.”
On the face of it, that sentence seems implausible. It won’t stop them.
Kneel:
No, I haven’t been to the movies since I saw “Saw Saving Privet Ryan.” Walked out thinking “Bugger that for a joke.”
Money can’t buy you happiness, but it does buy a superior grade of misery.
Anyone who has flipped from “happiest I have been in my life” to serious anxiety or depression caused by life’s catastrophes will know that much fantasy surrounds the connection between money & happiness.
Cassie:
China is already ‘leaking’ its citizens over into Russia to found towns in the Amur region.
Working on the principle of a hut becomes an outpost becomes a village becomes a Chinese town, any stealth invasion by a Chinese family or business should be treated as the land grab it is.
It’s why I get so damned steamed up about the 4 Chinese weather bases ON AUSTRALIAN SOIL/ICE in the Antarctic. A weather base is a military base.
Seems implausible. Catholic primary schools are genuine, effective and provide good value for money.
Gez
Bloody heck!
I posted a few days ago that Brahmapur in Odisha is a shit hole and never go there. Yesterday the state health minister was shot dead by a disgruntled police officer as he stepped out of his offical car in the centre of the city.
The local cows would have barely looked up and the street dogs would have quickly cleaned up the mess. Not joking.
Yes, but what are the personal ablution facilities like? Was the minister killed because because of deficient truck stop dunnies?
Perhaps Louise Milligan, when she has finished processing her childhood church trauma can turn her attention to the very pertinent problems of subcontinental drivers and night-soil exchange facilities.
Fascinating
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1518445113
Neolithic and Bronze Age migration to Ireland and establishment of the insular Atlantic genome
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59741723
Looks like Scottish Celtic was there first and replaced by Brythonic & Welsh Gaelic. Q Celtic v P Celtic.
I don’t read SMH so lifted this from Jo Nova
From SMH today:
” Government figures show 33.6 per cent of eligible people have had four doses and 35.9 per cent has had three doses. About 20 per cent have had two doses and the rest have had one or none.
Monash University associate professor James Trauer said there was a lack of urgency about vaccination when people should be thinking not so much about whether they had a fourth or fifth dose but how often they had a booster.
‘‘ We need to work on our health messaging to the older and more vulnerable groups,’’ he said. ”
And the headline:
” Push for new jab as virus rages on ”
I’d have thought the word “virus” would more aptly have been replaced with “vaxx”.
Cheers
Dave B
Despite a huge amount of information coming in pretty much daily our expert and political class are still saying boost boost boost.
Not one has been asked to comment about UK dropping boosters for all under 50’s.
dover0beachsays:
January 30, 2023 at 1:39 pm
Still don’t know what exactly happened in Iran. It certainly appears some effort was made to use drones to attack Isfahan, and possibly elsewhere, but little footage or confirmation. Could be what it appears, a psyop, or something in between.
From Armstrong Economics –
“We are getting reports that Israel has launched drone attacks on Iran in an attempt to prevent it from achieving nuclear weapons.”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/war/israel-attacks-iran/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=RSS
“Three or four Catholic primary schools have taken over the Liberal party.”
Gosh, that explains the very liberal NSW abortion laws and the push to legalise euthanasia.
Two camels, a father and son are grazing. The younger camel looks up to his father and says “Dad! Why do we have these giant humps on our backs?” The father camel looks down on the son and says. “Why, so we can travel for miles in the desert without stopping for water”.
The young camel looks astonished and says “Wow, I didn’t know that!”
A few minutes later, the younger camel pips up again “Dad! Why do we have really thick eyelids?” The older father, rather agitated by his son’s curiosity, answers quickly. “So that our eyes are not scratched by sand storms.
“Wow!” The young camel says.
Another minute later and the father camel hears his son again. “Dad!” “What now?” The father camel asks. The son then asks. “Why do we have huge feet?” “Well son”. The father camel starts. “We need to tread through the sand and our feet are big so we can travel much easier”…
A few minutes pass before the father hears his son again. The father camel, clearly agitated turns round. “What!?” “Dad…. what the f*ck are we doing in a Zoo then?”
China doesn’t need to leak into Russia.I read years ago that China was leasing millions of acres of unused land from Russia for farming.
I am sure both sides know that the land will not be returned.
Fascinating
Perhaps Q Celtic came from proto Celtic, in a way, the Irish are a Celts but their own branch of Celts.
https://youtu.be/xMqsBK8XeO0
The second day of a diet is always easier than the first. By the second day you’re off it.
– Jackie Gleason
A Russian rocket strikes a Kiev block of flats, kills 1, OUR ABC outraged! .. a Ukrainian missile strikes a Russian run hospital, 14 dead.. OUR ABC ‘crickets” .. fair & balanced reporting .. FFS!
Also OUR ABC very annoyed the Israelis are gonna demolish the home of last week’s killer of 7 israelis .. no interest in the victims tho …….!
will not be returned voluntarily
just what we need some shit local content to go with the existing shit streaming content
In regard to cotton buds , who flushes them down the toilet?Noone.
Secondly the ones in my cupboard have no plastic so are recyclable for what that is worth.
what a load ogf hooey.
Firstly, the left always eat their own.
Secondly, so much for the Teals being “Liberals”. Hiring Sally Rugg.
“Left wing activist Sally Rugg takes teal MP Monique Ryan to court
By RACHEL BAXENDALE
Left wing activist Sally Rugg is taking legal action against her boss Monique Ryan in the Federal Court, six months after being hired as the teal MP’s chief of staff.
The former Change.org executive director, Get Up! campaign director and co-chair, with Kevin Rudd, of Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission, is accusing Dr Ryan of a breach of general protections under the Fair Work Act, in a case filed late last week.
The Australian has been told Ms Rugg is still employed in Dr Ryan’s office, despite the legal action, in which the Commonwealth is also listed as a respondent.
Fair Work’s general protections laws are intended to protect employees from “harmful (adverse) action, coercion, undue influence or pressure, and/or misrepresentation, where they affect workplace rights”.
Neither Ms Rugg nor Dr Ryan has responded to a request for comment, although Ms Rugg’s departure from Dr Ryan’s was noted over the weekend in a Schwartz Media article by Julia Gillard biographer Chris Wallace, who wrote Rugg “proved not quite a comfortable fit with Kooyong and is not continuing as … chief of staff.”
Dr Ryan’s affluent inner eastern Melbourne seat of Kooyong was held by then-Treasurer Josh Frydenberg prior to Dr Ryan’s election last May, and had been considered blue ribbon Liberal territory.
When she hired Ms Rugg last July, Dr Ryan took to her website to spruik her new recruit as an “outstanding all-rounder with excellent leadership experience, a proven track record of effective policy advocacy, and high level strategic communications skills.”
“We are thrilled to welcome her to Team Mon,” Dr Ryan said.
Ms Rugg said it had been Dr Ryan’s policy outlook which had attracted her to the job.
“What drew me to Monique was obviously the policy priorities – climate change, gender equity, integrity and transparency in politics – but also her approach as a grassroots, community-connected independent,” she told Nine Newspapers.
Ms Rugg, who previously made regular TV appearances — particularly as a prominent campaigner for legalising same sex marriage — has kept a lower profile since becoming a political staffer.
However, she took to Twitter in her first week in the role to say how much she was enjoying it, tweeting, “Best first-week-of-a-new-job ever”, in response to Dr Ryan’s first speech late July, and “I love my new job so much omg” a few weeks later in August.
I love my new job so much omg
— Sally Rugg (@sallyrugg) August 12, 2022
Best first-week-of-a-new-job ever â˜ºï¸ https://t.co/AjreTrySaY
— Sally Rugg (@sallyrugg) July 28, 2022
Maurice Blackburn, the law firm representing Ms Rugg, declined to comment.
An interlocutory hearing of the case is scheduled for February 3, before Justice Debra Mortimer.
I’ve long had a feeling that Ms Ryan isn’t “Ms Nice”.
Memo to the voters of Kooyong, you own this vomit, you elected Ryan and in the process turfed out a decent man for shit.
Two brain dead loons working together? This was never going to end well.
Ryan took Josh Frydenberg’s old seat.
some of us on the cat have been warning of the escalating endgame since day 1
What do we pay these clowns for? Hun:
Two thirds of senators and almost half of federal MPs did not attend every parliamentary sitting day under the Albanese government last year.
The lower house had 31 sitting days, while the upper house had 28 sitting days between July and December.
Anthony Albanese attended 29 days due to overseas trips, while Opposition leader Peter Dutton attended all 31 days.
Former prime minister Scott Morrison only attended 26 days, after skipping the first week to speak at a conference of conservative leaders in Tokyo. (chortle)
Ten of the Prime Minister’s 23-member cabinet also recorded several absences amid other ministerial commitments.
Gippsland MP Darren Chester had the lowest attendance of the House at 10 days, followed by Dunkley MP Peta Murphy at 12 days.
This was because the pair were representing Australia at the UN General Assembly in New York.
Alarming parliamentary figures for the Upper House show only 32.8 per cent attended all 28 of its sitting days last year.
Outspoken One Nation leader Pauline Hanson had the highest number of days absent without leave at three, on top of a further two days absent with leave.
New Victorian Labor Senator Jana Stewart only attended seven days due to maternity leave.
Despite the low rate, political expert Dr Marija Taflaga said senators worked hard because they served on multiple committees.
The Australian National University lecturer said Australian politicians sat in parliament “considerably less” than say they do in the UK but that was because Australia’s landmass was larger so there were constraints on politicians.
But she said it was time to think about how parliament was run and whether there were other ways to participate.
“We’re better off sort of thinking about what we want out of parliament, and then how for how to achieve that,” Dr Taflaga said.
“Rather than, I suppose, holding everyone to a standard from the past era.
“We could afford to be a bit more innovative.”
Dr Taflaga said the pandemic showed that the federal parliament was “very conservative” around using other forms of other technologies.
But she said technology wasn’t the solution to all of its problems, adding she thinks parliament sits too infrequently which causes other issues.
Only seven of the sixteen crossbench MPs attended all 31 sitting days, with Greens leader Adam Bandt missing a few days after testing positive for Covid.
They include new Teal MPs Zoe Daniel, Monique Ryan, Allegra Spender, Kylea Tink and Sophie Scamps.
KEY ATTENDANCE RECORDS
Anthony Albanese – 21 days
Jim Chalmers – 31 days
Bill Shorten – 31 days
Peter Dutton – 31 days
Scott Morrison – 26 days
David Littleproud – 31 days
Bridget McKenzie – 28 days
Adam Bandt – 27 days
Zoe Daniel – 31 days
Monique Ryan – 31 days
just what we need some shit local content to go with the existing shit streaming content
Didn’t realise streamers were compulsory? ..
I do have, paid, PARAMOUNT for their soccer coverage but I download .. for free.. everything else I watch ..!
m0nty=fa
Elon Musk @elonmusk
Replying to @DavidSacks
The lesson of history is that countries do not heed the lesson of history
Any talking points from the DNC/MSM, on the latest instalment of the Twatter Files, showing that the supposed swarms of Wussian bots supporting Trump were generally not Wussian, swarms, or bots?
Surely they have managed to come up with some defence of the Wussia, Wussia, Wussia nothingburger by now?
“We are thrilled to welcome her to Team Mon,” Dr Ryan said.
pity the claim about the UK ‘banning’ boosters for under 50s is incorrect. Sounds like they are giving the same advice as being given in Australia to people at low risk from covid
Bah. Was meant to add Team Mon eh? Lot of me me me me (HT Danny Frawley) but not a great deal about serving Kooyong (possible phrasing). In any case, as was observed, you own it Kooyong
The Australian has been told Ms Rugg is still employed in Dr Ryan’s office, despite the legal action, in which the Commonwealth is also listed as a respondent.
How on earth can you. seriously, stay in a job, where you share office space, when you don’t get on with your employer?
Monique Ryan discovering that the Marxist lunatics who got her elected continue be lunatics in office.
Hide the ice picks comrade.
Maybe Ryan wasn’t far left progressive enough for Rugg.
m0ntysays:
January 30, 2023 at 2:49 pm
…
David Sacks @DavidSacks
History proves that wars have a tendency to escalate out of control. By the end, the costs exceed the participants’ wildest dreams at the beginning. People know this and yet they cheer on every escalation. Wild to watch this play out in real time.
Are you still cheering in the Great War Against Wussian Imperialism, m0nty=fa? Chickenhawk still?
“Maybe Ryan wasn’t far left progressive enough for Rugg.”
Maybe, but I also suspect it was a clash of monumental progressive egos.
Cheap at $1bn pa.
I mentioned that the Turtlehead threatened legal action against the old blog owner because I was a meanie (to him). Last evening, The Turtlehead accused me of lying, saying it happened 15 years ago.
Sinc notified me of The Turtlehead’s threat on October 16, 2020, at 8:53 p.m by text. Incidentally, I was mocking him ( Turtlehead) about his ridiculous comment that the Chinese could perform a takeover of Australia simply by flying commercial airliners into Melbourne Airport filled with military personnel.
This low-rent defaming imbecile can’t stop lying about me. It’s unreal. There is one possibility, and I wouldn’t totally discount this. Turtlehead may actually “think” October 2020 was 15 years ago.
Read Teh Worst at the cafe today (No filthy lucre to Little Kerry from me). P2 editorial on the demise of the WA Lieborals didn’t pull any punches. Well done.
Top Ender says:
January 30, 2023 at 1:34 pm
Here you go, OO:
Thanks Top Ender – much appreciated
Good day in the courts. Lachlan Murdoch v Crikey and Stuart McGill on the stand.
Where are the somewhere between 50k & 150k Chinese students turning up over the next month going to live?
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/chinese-students-told-to-return-overseas-immediately-20230129-p5cg8e
Time will tell how many fly in.
Foreign Affairs
This Time It’s Different
Neither we nor our allies are prepared to fight all-out war with Russia, regionally or globally.
Douglas Macgregor
Until it decided to confront Moscow with an existential military threat in Ukraine, Washington confined the use of American military power to conflicts that Americans could afford to lose, wars with weak opponents in the developing world from Saigon to Baghdad that did not present an existential threat to U.S. forces or American territory.
This time—a proxy war with Russia—is different.
Contrary to early Beltway hopes and expectations, Russia neither collapsed internally nor capitulated to the collective West’s demands for regime change in Moscow. Washington underestimated Russia’s societal cohesion, its latent military potential, and its relative immunity to Western economic sanctions.
As a result, Washington’s proxy war against Russia is failing. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was unusually candid about the situation in Ukraine when he told the allies in Germany at Ramstein Air Base on January 20, “We have a window of opportunity here, between now and the spring,” admitting, “That’s not a long time.”
Alexei Arestovich, President Zelensky’s recently fired advisor and unofficial “Spinmeister,” was more direct. He expressed his own doubts that Ukraine can win its war with Russia and he now questions whether Ukraine will even survive the war. Ukrainian losses—at least 150,000 dead including 35,000 missing in action and presumed dead—have fatally weakened Ukrainian forces resulting in a fragile Ukrainian defensive posture that will likely shatter under the crushing weight of attacking Russian forces in the next few weeks.
Ukraine’s materiel losses are equally severe. These include thousands of tanks and armored infantry fighting vehicles, artillery systems, air defense platforms, and weapons of all calibers. These totals include the equivalent of seven years of Javelin missile production. In a setting where Russian artillery systems can fire nearly 60,000 rounds of all types—rockets, missiles, drones, and hard-shell ammunition—a day, Ukrainian forces are hard-pressed to answer these Russian salvos with 6,000 rounds daily. New platform and ammunition packages for Ukraine may enrich the Washington community, but they cannot change these conditions.
Predictably, Washington’s frustration with the collective West’s failure to stem the tide of Ukrainian defeat is growing. In fact, the frustration is rapidly giving way to desperation.
Michael Rubin, a former Bush appointee and avid supporter of America’s permanent conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan, vented his frustration in a 1945 article asserting that, “if the world allows Russia to remain a unitary state, and if it allows Putinism to survive Putin, then, Ukraine should be allowed to maintain its own nuclear deterrence, whether it joins NATO or not.”
On its face, the suggestion is reckless, but the statement does accurately reflect the anxiety in Washington circles that Ukrainian defeat is inevitable.
NATO’s members were never strongly united behind Washington’s crusade to fatally weaken Russia. The governments of Hungary and Croatia are simply acknowledging the wider European public’s opposition to war with Russia and lack of support for Washington’s desire to postpone Ukraine’s foreseeable defeat.
Though sympathetic to the Ukrainian people, Berlin did not support all-out war with Russia on Ukraine’s behalf. Now, Germans are also uneasy with the catastrophic condition of the German armed forces.
Retired German Air Force General (four-star equivalent) Harald Kujat, former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, severely criticized Berlin for allowing Washington to railroad Germany into conflict with Russia, noting that several decades of German political leaders actively disarmed Germany and thus deprived Berlin of authority or credibility in Europe. Though actively suppressed by the German government and media, his comments are resonating strongly with the German electorate.
The blunt fact is that in its efforts to secure victory in its proxy war with Russia, Washington ignores historical reality. From the 13th century onward, Ukraine was a region dominated by larger, more powerful national powers, whether Lithuanian, Polish, Swedish, Austrian, or Russian.
In the aftermath of the First World War, abortive Polish designs for an independent Ukrainian State were conceived to weaken Bolshevik Russia.
Today, Russia is not communist, nor does Moscow seek the destruction of the Polish State as Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, and their followers did in 1920.
So where is Washington headed with its proxy war against Russia? The question deserves an answer.
On Sunday December 7, 1941, U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman was with Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill having dinner at Churchill’s home when the BBC broadcast the news that the Japanese had attacked the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. Harriman was visibly shocked. He simply repeated the words, “The Japanese have raided Pearl Harbor.”
Harriman need not have been surprised. The Roosevelt administration had practically done everything in its power to goad Tokyo into attacking U.S. forces in the Pacific with a series of hostile policy decisions culminating in Washington’s oil embargo during the summer of 1941.
In the Second World War, Washington was lucky with timing and allies. This time it’s different.
Washington and its NATO allies are advocating a full-blown war against Russia, the devastation and breakup of the Russian Federation, as well as the destruction of millions of lives in Russia and Ukraine.
Washington emotes. Washington does not think, and it is also overtly hostile to empiricism and truth.
Neither we nor our allies are prepared to fight all-out war with Russia, regionally or globally.
The point is, if war breaks out between Russia and the United States, Americans should not be surprised.
The Biden administration and its bipartisan supporters in Washington are doing all they possibly can to make it happen.
Buzz Aldrin looks good for 93.
they of course dont mean women who withdraw children from their fathers
How To Really Help Ukraine Beat Russia: Weapons Factories
By Michael Rubin – 19fortyfive.com – January 27, 2023
Don’t Just Give Ukraine Weapons, Build Them Factories – After concluding a $3.5 billion supplemental military aid package for Ukraine last month, military equipment is already flowing to Ukraine.
Soon, M1 Abrams tanks and German Leopards will also make their way into Ukrainian hands.
Still, despite its gains on the battlefield, Ukraine burns through artillery and ammunition faster than outsider powers can replace it. This factors into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculations as he pursues a World War II-style war of attrition in the belief that he can outlast Ukraine.
Weapons Factories for Ukraine Could Help
Rather than constantly requiring Ukraine to knock on doors in Washington and across Europe when its reserves grow low, the Biden administration and its European partners should help Ukraine stand up its own weapons factories to produce missiles and artillery. Such factories, especially if defended with anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems, would be no more vulnerable than the staging grounds and transports that bring new weapons shipments into and across Ukraine.
Ironically, this would mimic the strategy of Iran. Tehran not only provides its clients—Lebanese Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthis, and the Syrian and Russian regimes—with drones but also often provides allies with the ability to manufacture the drones themselves.
While Iranian strategists enable direct production in order to claim plausible deniability, an American effort to bolster Ukraine’s weapons factories would have several advantages for both Ukraine and the United States: It would shorten delivery times of needed weaponry to the front and enable the bilateral defense bureaucracy to focus more on higher-end platforms like tanks and F-16s. In addition, it would solidify Ukraine’s ability to defend itself once it wins the war.
I asked defense experts in both Kyiv and Washington about the efficacy of augmenting Ukraine’s own defense industry. Many in Ukraine are focused on the need for tanks and convincing the White House and Pentagon to authorize the start the F-16 training for which Congress has already authorized funds. In Washington, too many focus on whether a post-war Ukraine would join NATO and how it would integrate into the defense alliance’s broader needs. This puts the cart before the horse, however. Future U.S.-Ukraine defense cooperation need not depend on NATO membership, given how unreliable Germany is and Turkey’s penchant for blackmail.
A modern defense industry could also help Ukraine pay back its allies in a post-conflict future as its factories could help replenish prepositioned stocks across northwestern Europe. Putin might lose, but Putinism is deeply engrained in the Russian psyche and all Russian neighbors will continue to face the Russian threat for decades. Never again should Europe be as unprepared as it was in the run-up to Russia’s 2022 invasion.
When Ukraine defeats Russia, it will mark the end of a bloody chapter but not the end of the story. It will cost Ukraine billions of dollars to rebuild its infrastructure. Much of these funds will come from the donor community, while some certainly should come from Russian reparations. Still, Ukrainians will need to pay a great deal out-of-pocket, so any industrial foundation will be valuable.
Building and upgrading Ukraine’s own defense industry could be an important component not only against the backdrop of the current war, but also into a post-war future.
meanwhile the platforms like youtube run an endless stream of scam and dodgy ads
It’s the FO bit that needs work.
Rosie,
Thanks for the link but the way I read it (see below) may not be a ban but the healthy under 50’s won’t be able to get a jab unless they move into a high risk category.
What are your thoughts on Denmark apologising to the country several months ago for vaccinating the kids. You must have a fact check for that.
Please also fact check former AMA head Dr Karyn Phelps on her own and her partners Vax injuries. Or Dr David Adler ex AMA who was vaxxed but now speaks against it. Ever listened to cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra ?
Ever wonder why AHPRA silenced the Dr’s and nurses from speaking out in March 21. You really need to go on Club Grubbery and listen to a few of the nurse interviews. Jaana first from about 2 weeks ago.
However I admire your campaign in support of the outdated and ineffective vaccines. Even Bourla this time last year said first two Pfizer did not work against Omicron. His solution was to take another.
This time last week The Oz / WSJ had an article saying bivalent pretty much useless. I think that was the one tested on 8 mice.
The regulatory bodies are hopelessly compromised by their funding from big pharma and now have a major credibility problem.
From your link
CLAIM: The United Kingdom is banning anyone under the age of 50 from getting COVID-19 vaccines.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. While the country will stop widely providing the vaccine to those under 50 next month, anyone deemed to have a clinical need, such as those at risk of severe illness, as well as frontline healthcare workers and caregivers, will still be able to get the shot.
THE FACTS: Social media users are claiming the UK is prohibiting any and all people under the age of 50 from getting inoculated against COVID-19.
Many are sharing a story from a blog known for spreading COVID misinformation with a headline that reads: “U.K. Becomes Latest Country to Ban Covid Boosters for Under-50s.”
Several posts suggest the alleged ban is motivated by concerns about the vaccine’s safety and efficacy.
“When folks said ‘the science is settled’ I’m thinking it was not this particular science?! Someone help me here,” wrote an Instagram user who shared a screenshot of the false headline in a post that’s been liked more than 8,500 times as of Friday.
But the UK isn’t preventing anyone under the age of 50 from getting the shot if it’s medically necessary, stressed Shaun Whelan, a spokesperson for the UK Health Security Agency, which oversees public health and infectious disease response.
Nursing and care home staff, social workers, homecare givers and other frontline workers will also still be eligible for a COVID vaccine, as will anyone who lives with someone who is immunosuppressed, the agency said.
And the policy change isn’t a reflection of concerns about the safety of COVID vaccines, as some social media users claim, Whelan wrote in an email Thursday. It’s about using national healthcare resources effectively, as demand for vaccinations among those under the age of 50 is dropping off significantly.
“Definitely not being banned. That’s just nonsense,” Whelan wrote. “Completely misleading/inaccurate to say boosters are being banned.”
On Wednesday, UK Health Secretary Steve Barclay announced the country, on Feb. 12, will be ending a COVID vaccine booster campaign that launched last fall.
He said there will be another inoculation campaign in the fall — and one perhaps even sooner — but limited only to those deemed to have high risk of severe illness from COVID.
Health Minister Maria Caulfield, in a separate statement, encouraged anyone who hasn’t received a vaccination to do so before the February deadline.
“It will top up your immunity and keep you and your loved ones protected,” she said.
The more targeted approach means otherwise healthy young people and adults won’t be able to get COVID shots going forward, Whelan acknowledged. But if they move into a higher risk group — such as they develop cancer or diabetes or move into an older age bracket — they can qualify.
Hysteria continues, unabated.
Telling the Truth About Possible War Over Taiwan
Gen. Minihan shocks Washington by telling his troops to be ready to fight against China. – By The WSJ Editorial Board
Honesty is not the default policy in Washington these days, so the political and media classes were jolted this weekend by the leak of a private warning by a U.S. general telling his troops to prepare for a possible war with China over Taiwan in two years. Imagine: A warrior telling his troops to be ready for war.
In an internal memo leaked to NBC News, Gen. Michael Minihan told his troops: “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.” The general runs the Air Mobility Command, the Air Force’s tank-refueling operation, and he says in his memo that he wants his force to be “ready to fight and win in the first island chain” off the eastern coast of continental Asia. He called for taking more calculated risks in training.
The general’s document won’t be remembered for subtlety. One of his suggestions is that airmen with weapons qualifications start doing target practice with “unrepentant lethality.” Another tells airmen to get their affairs in order. This candor seems to have alarmed higher-ups at the Pentagon, and NBC quoted an unidentified Defense official as saying the general’s “comments are not representative of the department’s view on China.”
But while Gen. Minihan’s words may be blunt, his concern is broadly shared, or ought to be. U.S. Navy Adm. Phil Davidson told Congress in 2021 that he worried China was “accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States,” and could strike Taiwan before 2027. Gen. Minihan came to his post after a tour as deputy of Indo-Pacific Command. He like many others suggested that 2025 may be a ripe moment for Chinese President Xi Jinping to move. Taiwan and the U.S. both have presidential elections in 2024 that China may see as moments of weakness.
No less than Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last year that Beijing was “determined to pursue reunification” with Taiwan “on a much faster timeline” than it had previously contemplated. Are war-fighters supposed to ignore that message as they prepare for their risky missions?
Gen. Minihan is doing his troops a favor by speaking directly about a war they might have to fight. A recent war game conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies warned that, in a conflict over Taiwan, “the scale of casualties” would “stagger a U.S. military that has dominated battlefields for a generation.” Gen. Minihan’s boom operators are accustomed to working in skies the U.S. controls. Tankers would be essential in a fight for Taiwan given the vast distance over the Pacific—and would be vulnerable to heavy losses.
Former naval officer Seth Cropsey explained on these pages last week that America isn’t investing in the ships and weapons stockpiles that would be required to support a long war in the Western Pacific. Such yawning gaps in U.S. preparedness make a decision by Beijing to invade or blockade the democratic island more likely. Preventing a war for Taiwan requires showing Beijing that the U.S. has the means and the will to fight and repel an invasion.
Whatever his rhetorical flourishes, Gen. Minihan seems to understand this, and what Americans should really worry about is that some of his political and military superiors don’t.
Appeared in the January 30, 2023, print edition as ‘Telling the Truth About War Over Taiwan’.
Alas, results may vary, stupefyingly so, between dioceses.
Catholic primary schools used to be genuine, effective and provide good value for money.
Some may still do so.
Alas, in 21st century progressive education, the values of yesteryear need no longer apply.
Some years ago 2013? I was given a large quantity of coins, including pre euro French francs and German whatever.
Missed the cut to exchange the French ones for euros by a few months, but the German ones, as far as I know can still be exchanged at the central bank.
Someone I know was travelling to Europe and traded them in, no problem.
What’s particularly silly about the UK claims is that is currently only paper £20 £50 pound notes were withdrawn as legal tender, smaller denominations were switched a few years ago, and earlier series of paper £ notes have also ceased being legal tender without rampant conspiracy theories.
History of withdrawn notes in the UK
Rosie,
People under 50 n some Oz employment areas not related to health in are still being mandated to get or keep jobs so our situation not same as UK.
You are vaccinated I take it Bourne?
No need to write a book.
As I said the UK advice is consistent with Australia’s.
Proving once again if lying gets it done, driller sprints for that dark alley.
From the the climate will get colder because of global warming, but that doesn’t mean it won’t continue to warm catastrophically chronicles.
Yep, hysteria confirmed.
I don’t believe the Danish government apologised for vaccinating people either.
they of course dont mean women who withdraw children from their fathers
I know a chap who’s just had a DVO taken out against him.
Ex-wife said he verbally abused her when he picked up the kid.
He denied it.
The ex-wife’s new boyfriend said it didn’t happen (brave).
The kid said it didn’t happen.
But DVO stands & he can’t see his kid until it’s withdrawn by the cops (unlikely) or set aside by a court (which will take months).
What a kunt of a system.
No, what I was doing was ridiculing a foolish comment from someone who has no clue about Russia – “Russians are still bastards” or some such.
the ARM wants to succeed, it needs to attract and maintain conservative votes. The ideal ARM chair is likely to be a conservative woman of no great wealth who lives in the suburbs or regional areas.
Can’t see that happening. Being at the head of that type of group comes with kudos – inside and around it – so the ARM is not going to give up that position to, as they would see it, a non-entity.
Btw, for conservatives, it’s the position taken/the message being “sold” that is the point, not who’s at the forefront.
If the argument being put has questionable merit and could create real constitutional risks, no-one, be it a conservative woman of no great wealth who lives in the suburbs or regional areas or a “Liberal Party leader” (Turnbull & Morrison) will attract the necessary support.
Daily Mail:
ABC investigative reporter Louise Milligan blasts high school graduate’s ‘despicable threats’ after she started investigating his ex-college: ‘You cannot threaten women. Enough’
AAP:
Opus Dei schools to be investigated
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said “broad allegations” had been made about “teaching to the curriculum”.
Mr Perrottet says any allegations of impropriety would be investigated and the curriculum always needed to be followed but added “it’s not a crime to be Catholic”.
white is black and black is white
right – so if LM was a bloke, it’d be ok?
WTF does being a woman have to do with it ? She’s just using her gender as a shield – again.
Viktor Orban: West is ‘in a War With Russia’
Rod Dreher – The American Conservative
Notes from a candid session with the antiwar Hungarian prime minister, who warns this conflict could easily get much worse
It happened again. This evening was the third time I’ve been in a small group session with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
I told the visiting journalists and publishers that they were going to be blown away by this guy, because they’re not going to believe how different he is from the way he is portrayed in the Western media. He’s sharp, funny, brilliant, and completely confident. He’s not hovered over by press aides, and he doesn’t guard his words to the point where he says nothing but mush. He’s really interesting. As I told the folks I talked to before hand, at the conference, who were invited to meet later with the PM, “You’re not going to believe that a world leader is actually like this.”
As usual, after the event, they were stunned. Orban spent two hours with us, answering every question — even particularly tough ones from a Polish journalist — and was clearly loving it. I was never around Bill Clinton personally, but the things I read about how he was a natural politician — it’s at least as true of Viktor Orban.
Last year, I was talking to a Fidesz politician about the PM, and he said there’s not another politician in this country who can go from strategizing at the top level, to talking to country people at a farmer’s market, and be utterly genuine in both places. I believe it. If he were on TV more in the United States, the view people have of Hungary would be totally different.
Here’s what a natural politician he is. Towards the end of our two-hour session, he mentioned that today is Thursday, the day he always sets aside for personal reading. A journalist asked him what he’s reading now. He mentioned a couple of books, one of which is a Hungarian translation of a Joe Biden biography. He said he wanted to know something about the American president. He added that Biden is not his favorite political leader, but that he really admires the political tenacity of the man, especially the way Biden fought back after his first wife died in a car crash. It was clear that Orban really meant it. It was one old general signaling his admiration for one on the other side, simply because he found something admirable in the man’s character. Only somebody who has been on the inside of politics for a long time could make that kind of judgment.
The prime minister spent two hours with about fifteen of us. The Americans there included Sohrab Ahmari, Gladden Pappin, European Conservative editor Mario Fantini, and Spectator US editor Zack Christenson. Orban answered every question we asked him, and probably would have gone on longer had we not had to get to a conference dinner.
I’ve never seen a politician who so viscerally loves what he does. Orban was so candid that I asked an aide several times if this was really on the record. Only two or three times did he go off the record, and those were only to offer brief judgments on certain public figures.
The big questions were about the Russia-Ukraine war. Orban is a goat among the NATO sheep. He has from virtually the beginning pushed hard for a cease fire and a peaceful settlement — not out of any particular love for the Russians, but out of concern for the fate of Hungary, and Europe.
He has been falsely smeared as a Putin shill, but he genuinely doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass.
Orban said that the West needs to understand that Putin cannot afford to lose, and will not lose, because he’s up for re-election next year, and he cannot run as the president who lost a war. What’s more, he said, Russia cannot allow NATO to establish a presence in Ukraine. The time has long passed when Russia might have been able to conquer Ukraine, or install a friendly regime. Had Russia won a quick victory, that might have been possible, but it’s hopeless now. Therefore, said Orban, Russia’s goal is to make Ukraine an ungovernable wreck, so the West cannot claim it as a prize. At this, they have already succeeded. “It’s Afghanistan now,” he said. “The land of nobody.” (Meaning: No Man’s Land.)
The West doesn’t understand that time is on Russia’s side in Ukraine. Russia is a huge country, and can mobilize a vast army. Ukraine is already running out of troops. When that happens, then what?
“We are in big, big trouble,” he said, of the West. If Russia’s coming spring offensive proves successful, then the NATO countries are going to be faced with the question of do we send in soldiers to fight for Ukraine? This is not something Orban thinks the American people are considering, but it is front to mind among a growing number of Europeans, whose countries stand to be devastated if war spreads.
Really? NATO troops fighting Russians in Ukraine?
Yes, said Orban. It sounds crazy today, “but if you look at the tendency of how we got to this point today, it can’t be ruled out.”
The West is “in a war with Russia. That’s the reality,” he said. “Every day we are moving further in.”
The rest is a very long and interesting read
What’s particularly silly about the UK claims is that is currently only paper £20 £50 pound notes were withdrawn as legal tender
When I was in Geordie-land in 2016 you couldn’t get a retail business to accept 20pound notes for luv or money .. they reckoned there were so many forgeries folk stopped accepting them .. took mine to a bank and changed them into tens ……..
I’ve a feeling that if he had a body-worn video & audio camera, all same longa what coppers wear, it’d have made zero difference to the outcome.
The short sellers are really having a crack at Adani.
Visit the Alice!
A group of youths spat on pubgoers and attacked them with a tree branch in a night of chaos in Alice Springs – just days after the PM’s flying visit to the lawless Outback town.
Shocking video from the troubled remote Northern Territory town shows a pub on one of the main streets under siege by belligerent teenagers on Saturday night.
A guest at the pub who filmed the disturbing scenes described it as the ‘most terrifying night of my life’.
Daily Mail
“Daily Mail:
ABC investigative reporter Louise Milligan blasts high school graduate’s ‘despicable threats’ after she started investigating his ex-college: ‘You cannot threaten women. Enough’
Except, of course, if it’s conservative women who are being threatened and those who are making the threats are on Louse Nilligan’s ideological side. Funny isn’t it, when conservative women such as Nicolle Flint are threatened, you don’t and won’t hear a peep from the Louse.
Opus Dei schools to be investigated
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said “broad allegations” had been made about “teaching to the curriculum”.
Mitchell, perhaps the most inept and dumb arsed minister in an inept and spineless government. How Mitchell, what about investigating some of the Islamic schools out in the western suburbs?
Mr Perrottet says any allegations of impropriety would be investigated and the curriculum always needed to be followed but added “it’s not a crime to be Catholic”.”
Goodness, again another perfect example of a Liberal doing nothing and capitulating to the left’s agenda. Parrothead is about lose his job and the Liberals will be decimated in March. This is yet another reason why they don’t deserve to be in power. Good riddance.
One last thing Mr Perrottet, I agree, it isn’t a crime to be a Catholic…..yet.
Amazing what insights Chalmer’s little composition on Keating has brought him.
A film producer now.
ZK2A:
Had a “big man” present to Wilcannia Hospital for some routine bloods. When he was informed he wasn’t an emergency and had to wait his turn, he cracked the shits and ordered everyone in A&E to piss off home. Turns to me and says “Now I’m next.” Demands I take the bloods while he’s standing up in the waiting area. Refuses to sit down or use the special chair for the purpose. Calls out the boss and demands he forces me to take blood as he wants.
Boss comes out, I let the “Big Man” state his case.
Boss says just do it the way he wants.
I point out protocol for blood taking and relevant section on patient safety.
Boss sighs “Just do it Bob.” Bob puts down the equipment and starts to walk out.
“You do it then. I’m off for smoko.”
I don’t play power games with anyone. Especially with illegal orders.
Rewarding abos with Da Voice isn’t going to be high on any one’s list while indidge youth crime is being allowed to get out of control across nth Qld, NT and big parts of WA.
Sancho Panzer:
* That’s the part Fizzer is pushing and while there is a case to be made for the approach, it’s not a strong one, and needs to be done by trusted people – on the Moon – in a separate colony – with no right of return by anyone who enters the doors – with a 500Mt nuke buried underneath the site, controlled by us.
Just to be sure.
Who’re returning fire.
Adani Publishes 413-Page Report Saying Hindenburg’s Short Attack Is ‘Calculated’ Fraud (30 Jan)
Could get interesting since India is a very proud country and Adani is a source of great pride. A few Delhi-based court cases could throw the short-selling pigeons amongst the kukri-wielding cats.
Anyone know what Paul Sheehan is up to these days?
If you see the albino monk around today buy him a beer.
David Honey loses the corner office. Baby steps ….
Rosie,
Had 2 of Pfizer. That makes me unvaccinated since they changed the definition to mean vaccinated if took no 3 within 6 months.
Have had many other vaccines in my life due to travel etc.
For those paying attention there are just too many unfavorable signals regarding this one. Many said this was different due to the billions thrown at the research. However one Dr commented all that money could not buy time in relation to trial time usually needed for such trials.
Let’s not forget the very active campaign by Fauci etc to silence and discredit top experts. Or the unprecedented effort to stop alternative treatments that even if did not work could do no harm.
Etc etc. As regards books there are now many and can be seen in resources section of Oz web page Totality of Evidence.
Fantastic Furniture, Bob.
Quality is actually OK…perhaps because they moved production out of China?
OK looks for a spare room.
The indigenous youth “justice” crisis in QLD isn’t limited to the north.
And if the allegations turn out to be vexatious and malicious, is Mitchell going to make any effort to recover any of the public money spent on the investigation?
Good reason to change over to polymer notes Shatterzzz?
I know a chap who’s ex – wife tried taking out a DVO against him because he wouldn’t write her a blank cheque by way of a property settlement…