The White Horse, John Constable, 1819
The distinction I meant was that Christ wasn’t ‘an instance’ of truth ( that was the sense of example used),…
Open Thread – Weekend 18 Feb 2023
- Open Thread – Weekend 21 April 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 18 April 2024
- Open Thread – Mon 15 April 2024
- Projects impending
- Open Thread – Weekend 13 April 2024
Wankers. You know they have lost the plot when they even mention UFO’s… dickheads.
H B Bear April 20, 2024 2:54 pm Reply to Top Ender Played, as is the parlance of our times. Her…
Played, as is the parlance of our times. Her agent will be lucky to get a phone call returned, let…
Former Australian Test opener Joe Burns has been released from the Queensland squad, with the Bulls unveiling eight newly contracted…
A.F. Branco.
Al Goodwyn.
Tom Stiglich.
Lisa Benson.
A lot of the South Park Harry & Meghan episode is now on twitter & TikTok.
It’s pretty funny but I have to say that South Park have done this before but with different “celebrities” as the subject matter.
Can’t wait for Chalmers to release his super changes today.
If you are a great investor via your super fund, you will be penalised.
If you are a public servant who are/will receive a tax payer funded defined benefit pension, you will not be penalised.
Tax hoovers with zero skin in the game telling people with skin in the game they will be taking a haircut.
There was a time when even labor offered tax cuts
Superannuation as a hollow log was always too tempting for politicians.
When will we here from the King, Paul Keating? Time to kick the courtiers out the office and move among the peasants.
The troubling case of Australia’s ‘first Aboriginal attorney-general’, his mysterious initiation…and the evidence casting doubt on his black ancestry: Labor figure identifying as Indigenous is under fire from elders
Top Ender says:
February 20, 2023 at 5:56 am
I can understand grifters to claim aboriginality, but why him?
He is a minister, what is there in it for him, not to mention how easy it is these days to be found out.
Neville Bonner was a fair dinkum aboriginal, but I don’t recall him making a big song and dance about it.
SMSFs are usually targeted ahead of industry funds, but with this mob anything’s possible. Even Mal the rich man of East Sydney decided to screw the superannuants who had nothing like his socked away treasure. The imposition of rather arbitrary and low limits on what we could put into our funds was unforgiveable.
According to the British government’s anti-terrorist programme, Prevent, funded by the UK taxpayer, the real risk of radicalisation to the UK public doesn’t come reading the Koran, nope, it comes from sitting down and watching an episode of Michael Portillo’s Railway Journeys.
That story has the same whiff of activism to it as the 10yr old Ohio child abuse one from July last year.
“Looks like the Mean Girls are in Teh Paywallian’s sights. Will it get any wider traction? Gallagher and the Dept of Finance would seem to be the weakest link. kd wrong could potentially survive as the last Mean Girl standing.”
Here’s my prediction, Gallagher will fall.
Dot 19/2 11.03pm
Ah thorium. – what effect would greening the interior have on its climate?
What is your thinking on building a mountain range in north wa, closer to NT border.
Plan b increase temp in southern ocean – but is that possible with minimal effect on glaciers in Antartica.
Is the reason I posted the article.
Gallagher will fall. We can only hope. Micheal Portillo suits are enough to radicalize anyone.
They’ll be coming for Thomas the Tank Engine next.
Here’s hoping Gonzalez wins.
Big Tech must be brought under control.
Pro:
Pies small forward Jack Ginnivan has lost the dyed Billy Idol hair.
Con:
He has utterly failed to learn from the Nadia Bartel philosophy of ‘if you’re going to get on the nose beers, don’t have it filmed’.
No word yet as to whether there was a K Mart plate involved.
This the tranny who stated he wanted to “slit JK Rowling’s throat”.
Tranny version of Mr Creosote. I’m surprised it stops long enough between trough feeding to actually write threats.
Gallagher is like a modern version of ros Kelly, the plastic piranha
Politics attracts this type
Now, if I were a curious journalist I’d be looking into when he first identifed as indigenous and whether there was a benefit attached.
What half decent AFL player hasn’t snorted some marching powder in the bog of the local pub?
It’s only if it’s fillumed then there’s a problem.
Meanwhile former caaarrton player Jimmy Buckley has ‘fessed to being an alcoholic. Like many players of his era he liked a drink along with those little blokes that jump on horses, G Hall included. But Jimmy played harder than most.
Good bloke Jimmy even if he did play for the filth.
Pat Cummins said this
“Disappointed, we were ahead of the game but we slipped,” he said.
“Everyone controls their own game, some balls just have your name,” he added. “But I think there will be a review. Shot choice, did we go about it the right way?”
“I thought they bowled really well, it’s not easy out there, but perhaps some guys went away from their methods,” Cummins told reporters.
“Each batter has their own way to go about it. I don’t think there’s any one size fits all rule. Unfortunately, quite a few of us got out with kind of cross-batted shots, which might not be our preferred method.”
Six batters got out trying the sweep, including you Captain Climate. Just chaos.
It’s always “the last chance” to get shit right. Hun:
Australia’s entire education system is in need of massive reform, with the federal government warning the nation is in a teaching “crisis” and launching the biggest overhaul of the sector in a decade.
Education Minister Jason Clare is waging a triple attack on systemic problems in tertiary and secondary education as well as a revolutionary drive to focus on early learning, saying now is Australia’s “last chance” to get it right.
The Minister told News Corp Australia the number of teachers deserting the job was “scary” and has tasked Sydney University chief and education supremo Mark Scott with supercharging the way teaching is taught to attract more people into the profession.
Over the past 10 years teaching enrolments have plummeted by 16 per cent and up to half desert the profession in the first five years on the job yet demand for teachers is at record highs and shortages abound.
A study by Monash University which surveyed almost 5,500 teachers found a staggering 70 per cent believed that the public did not respect them.
The Minister also said Australia’s messy education system — in which states and territories oversee primary and secondary schools with different rules and then feed kids into a national tertiary system — needed “serious reform”.
The national agreement that is supposed to harmonise the system was effectively useless, he said.
In the decade between 2009 and 2018 overall funding for government schools rose from $26.4 billion to $39.2 billion and yet over the same period performance dropped by 22 per cent in both mathematical and scientific literacy, according to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), while reading performance was unchanged.
Mr Clare also declared he would deliver more access to preschool, which would revolutionise the lives of disadvantaged and Indigenous kids.
“The first five years are everything,” he said.
In a frank interview with News Corp Australia, Mr Clare said he was stunned when he learned the burnout rate of teachers.
“One of the things that’s blown my mind is that 30 to 50 per cent of teachers quit in the first five years,” he said.
“Now some teachers are telling their kids don’t become a teacher when we need them more than ever.
“That’s scary. That tells you we’ve got a crisis and we’ve got to turn it around.”
Mr Clare also said the current arrangements between states and territories and the commonwealth was a mess, with a national agreement that essentially does nothing.
“That agreement doesn’t have any targets for what we should be trying to achieve or any practical framework to get there,” he said.
The Minister said a critical focus would be ensuring kids from poor and working-class backgrounds, kids from the bush and indigenous kids all had the same access to education that those from wealthier families did.
“If you’re a child from a poor background you’re less likely to go to preschool, your less likely to finish high school and you’re less likely to go to uni,” he said.
“That’s the awful truth.”
Mr Clare said of his three-pronged overhaul: “All three together constitute the biggest review and reform of education in more than a decade…
“This is our last best chance to get this right. If we don’t act now it will be too late.”
Pogria:
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to get these people to verbalise their thoughts and emotions. It must be Hell to be that screwed up in the head.
I imagine it would be just a melange of hate and self loathing, a mixture of self absorption and rejection.
One of the problems BB, and only one of them, is they’re all batters, not batsmen. How many identity as something else. Pleased to see the soap dodgers give the kiwis a flogging too. Bet Baz had a big smile on his dial and a beer or two afterwards.
Surely it’s easier to irrigate with desalinated water by nuclear powered energy than to build an orographic structure to induce rainfall?
I’d assume slightly higher rainfall and lower temps elsewhere.
Bolt has 2 articles. Number 1:
This should shock the anti-Catholic ABC.
A government body two weeks ago hired a Catholic priest to perform a three-hour cleansing of their entire headquarters.
Can you imagine this priest wandering through the offices, halls and tea rooms with his holy smoke?
What foolish unreason. The ABC’s Four Corners will surely send chief witch hunter Louise Milligan to exterminate such taxpayer-funded Christian superstition.
Except it won’t. I changed one detail that makes all the difference: the ceremony was performed not by a Catholic priest but an Aboriginal “Loreman”, Leslie McLeod.
It was McLeod who was hired by SBS, the federal government’s multicultural broadcaster, to roam through its Artarmon headquarters with burning leaves, not incense, to drive away the badness of the past few years.
This ceremony was announced in an email to all staff, as if of course it would chase away the ghosts or whatever mystic evil the SBS bosses thought was putting staff off their game.
As the email explained: “On Thursday from 7am to 10am, we’re delighted to welcome Yuin, Dharawal and Ngario Custodian and Loreman Leslie McLeod who will conduct a Smoking of the entire SBS Artarmon site to help cleanse away the past few years and bring us together to make space for a successful 2023.”
The smoking was followed by a presentation by SBS chief James Taylor, but not until the “ceremonial embers” were relit and a Welcome to Country performed, as if every non-Aboriginal Australian staffer was a stranger in their own country.
Of course, SBS wouldn’t dream of hiring a Catholic priest for such a ceremony. It would be mocked on the ABC. Pilloried by the Greens.
Yet I’d bet more Australians would rather trust a priest than a smoking ceremony to fight evil, and many more again would think the SBS bosses – who’ve even hired an “Elder-in-Residence’ – should stop dabbling in mysticism and get back to work.
So what’s going on? Why is SBS promoting some recently revived Aboriginal tradition when even most Aborigines are actually Christian? In fact, just 2 per cent claim they follow traditional Aboriginal religions.
It’s clear, isn’t it? SBS is pandering to the modern self-hatred of the elites, treating a pagan faith as more admirable than the Christian one that’s founded this western society.
The SBS is not paying respect to Aborigines with this cleansing. It’s disrespecting the faith of most of them, while – not incidentally – dissolving our country’s real foundations.
Shorter Clare:
We’re aiming for total control of the sausage machine.
Black Ball says:
February 20, 2023 at 8:01 am
Pat Cummins said this
“Disappointed, we were ahead of the game but we slipped,” he said.
Not much of a cricket aficionado, but if there is no appropriate way of addressing, different deliveries, then what’s the use of a coach and teaching young and upcoming batsmen how to handle them?
I know it’s not an exact science, don’t stone me.
Don’t know what to make of this: “Feminist pick up artist” finds woman who wants patriarchy unattractive, but instinctively dislikes “shit tests”.
Also, pics or it didn’t happen.
https://medium.com/illumination/i-dated-the-perfect-woman-it-was-awful-42602653fad9
I’d bait you people but there’s a few too many plot twists.
Another of our problems is how did Trevor Hohns ever get anywhere near being a selector. Played 7 tests. Qualified to clean the toilets on match day.
Number 2 on La Higgins:
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese once campaigned against secret deals by politicians. “We need to have transparency,” he insisted.
So could he finally come clean on why his government paid Brittany Higgins up to $3m?
Oh, look! There’s the grateful Higgins sharing photos on Instagram of herself and fiance David Sharaz on their holiday last month at some resort in the Maldives.
And there’s Sharaz publicly thanking her for “the best Christmas present ever”. How kind to let taxpayers know how Higgins is faring after her handout, which was for – among other things – loss of future earnings.
But some taxpayers must surely wonder why Higgins was given so much of their cash, especially now that former Liberal defence minister Linda Reynolds has broken her silence.
Higgins became a multi-millionaire last year after claiming she’d been raped by a former Liberal staffer, Bruce Lehrmann, in Reynolds’ Parliament House office after a drunken night out.
From the start, it astonished me that the Albanese government paid so much (the exact amount is secret) and so quickly.
After all, Higgins’ rape claim is fiercely denied by Lehrmann and has never been proved.
Higgins didn’t even lodge a complaint with police for two years, and gave them such poor and inconsistent evidence that they advised the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions to drop the case.
When the DPP, Shane Drumgold, still took it to court, Higgins had some of her story proved false. The first trial was then aborted by jury misconduct, and Drumgold scrapped the retrial, claiming Higgins could die if she gave evidence again.
Be clear: I’m not saying Higgins wasn’t raped. Nobody but Higgins and Lehrmann could know.
But why has the government made taxpayers – not Lehrmann – pay compensation over an alleged rape that isn’t proven, and which Higgins now won’t help prove, either?
Here’s a possible clue. Higgins got her payout after claiming the former Morrison government was mean to her. Or as she put it in her claim, she was the victim of sexual harassment, sex discrimination, disability discrimination, negligence and victimisation.
That’s what made Higgins gold for Albanese and Labor before the last election.
For years, they’d smeared the Liberals as sexist and anti-women, and here now was Higgins – a perfect symbol of the Morrison government’s misogyny.
How fantastic to have Higgins accuse her Liberal bosses – ministers Reynolds and Michaelia Cash – of being unsympathetic and making her feel she might lose her job if she went to police.
Never mind that both women denied it. Labor smelled blood, and Higgins helped them get it.
The trial heard a recording of Sharaz, Higgins’ boyfriend, saying the two of them wanted the rape allegation made public at the start of a parliamentary sitting week because a Labor “friend” would “probe and continue it”.
That “friend” turned out to be Katy Gallagher, now Albanese’s Finance Minister, who savaged Reynolds until the stressed defence minister had to check into hospital.
So you might conclude the Albanese government now has good reason to suppress how it co-operated with Higgins. It certainly has no interest in anyone questioning Higgins’ story of being raped and then betrayed by nasty Liberals.
What a coincidence! The government last year agreed after just one mediation session to hand Higgins a reported $3m. It even barred Reynolds from giving evidence, warning it would stop covering her legal fees and costs if she did.
But now we learn some of the things Reynolds might have said at that mediation that could have blown up that deal.
For one, she’s now told The Australian, Higgins had actually praised her as a great boss and given her flowers when Higgins left after the alleged rape to work for Cash instead.
What’s more, six days after the alleged rape, Reynolds’ chief of staff was praised by the Finance Department, responsible for parliamentary staff welfare, for her handling of Higgins.
Lauren Barons, the department’s assistant secretary, said “the steps you have taken are appropriate”, adding: “I understand you have discussed with her on several occasions that if she does choose to pursue a complaint … she would have the full and ongoing support of yourself and the minister.”
Reynolds said she’d also met Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins, who “was unable to advise me what more I could have done”.
So why did the Albanese government still hand Higgins up to $3m for an unproven rape and unproven cruelty from the Morrison government?
Can we have transparency, Prime Minister?
Teachers – my SIL is principal at the local high school, rural NE Vic, beautiful country, small school around 180 kids all up, fairly well off area, a few ferals but there’s always some.
Anyway she always struggles for teachers, the problem here is that all full time teachers can take (I think) 12 months leave for children, and maybe other reasons. Any fill in teachers she gets are only employed for the period that the full time teacher is on leave. She isn’t permitted to offer more money or better conditions etc as being a state school all these things are strictly on the award. Even at here relatively small school she always has a few teachers on these long leaves.
The result is that there’s lots of qualified teachers who can’t get permanent positions and are always on short term contracts in different places, they can’t settle down and don’t get the money that say a contract nurse does. So many places that require the teacher to relocate for the life of the contract just don’t get applicants.
As we all know, transparency in government is a virtue from the Opposition benches.
*THEY*ARE*GOING*TO*STEAL*YOUR*SUPER*
It’s a fair point, Gabor (one that seems lost on our captain).
There are some exceptional players who can break the rules and get away with it.
But by definition, most batsmen are not exceptional and they should stick to perfecting their technique in the orthodox manner.
Sometimes I wonder about folk and their expectations .. but who the hell would buy at Marsden Park when they work at Mascot Airport? .. unless your on the same wages as an irish gnome ..!
Shirley, and I realise it comes down to what you can afford, the daily commute and tolls would be a put off ..!
Why on earth wouldn’t you be looking South towards Wollongong ..?
Don’t know much about the housing costs Wollongong area -wize but they’d have to be comparable to Marsden Park .. and you’ve got beaches, even high schools …….!
Still, as someone who has always thought (courtesy of the media) Bangla Desh was impoverished and only has poor folk it’s nice to read that is, obviously, BS! .. I mean even the family can afford to pop over to OZ for a bit of baby-sitting .. LOL!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-20/why-nsw-election-could-hinge-on-sydneys-outer-electorates/101970560
Of course the Commonwealth should take over pre-school, primary and secondary education.
After all, look at the brilliant success they have had with university education.
(That’s sarcasm, Richard Cranium and m0nty=fa.)
Not yet, but I am on track for retirement at 55 with cash, a new home etc. (Probably not in Eden anymore, LOL).
Chalmers, the dumbest Treasurer in Australian history, won’t allow this and the retirement age will be at least 75 by the time I get there.
“Dignified retirement”!
Yes, I can keel over after a year of not working, being unable to enjoy retirement and a new bastard estate tax will take the rest.
Arseholes.
Err, Captain Climate, I realise Cricket Australia is as woke as you are, but batter is something you put on flake.
Only fascists want to change a century of tradition because some bumbling CA bureaucrat thinks it will force change in the way sports fans think about the game they love.
The clownshow that Captain Climate oversaw yesterday was by Australia’s smartarse batsmen, who know as much about playing in India as Captain Climate knows about the weather.
What these teachers do not understand is that respect is a two way street. The teachers do not respect the parents and their right to raise their children according to their culture and religion. Instead they are inculcating the children with harmful environmentalist panic and deviant sexual garbage. Once you have insulted the parents you will no longer have them on your side and it’s downhill from there particularly regarding classroom discipline.
This mornings Bob Moran is amusing, topical and brain-bleach material.
Closer to home, Leak nails it.
The trannies are always going to be overweight if they are taking oestrogen. I used to work with one who was overweight, suffered hot flushes and always looked sweaty. In the end I heard she died from cancer before reaching fifty.
Katy Gallagher.
ICAC now !
yeh – they don’t mention where hubby works. Maybe he’s just down the road?
.. and Marsden park is right next to both Riverstone rail station and Tallawong Metro station.
1hr to Central on the train.
couple of interesting thoughts from that author… but mostly fairly obvious fluff.
Aboriginality is the new state religion and it’s smoking ceremonies are particularly attractive to the ritual hungry pagans running the country.
Jesus who lived and taught his philosophy is unacceptable exactly because he insisted on personal responsibility but a magic serpent is fine because it says it’s not your fault whatever savagery you commit.
Gallagher will fall.
This would be a terrific outcome but I don’t think it will happen. The liars and their media mates will protect her and the other mean girls to the maximum extent possible. They will impede any investigation or exposure. I’m sure pressure is being brought to bear on the Oz as we type.
Why?
Because to allow Gallagher to be sacrificed will be an admission that the whole dirty deal existed and will be a crack in the liars edifice that could lay open the whole corrupt and manipulative nature of their organisation. And of course, the SFLs as always will be too stupid and pusillanimous to take advantage of this gift.
I want to be the guy at SBS lodging
a) safe-work issue regarding fire in the building
b) OHS report on inhaled smoke.
.. and Marsden park is right next to both Riverstone rail station and Tallawong Metro station.
1hr to Central on the train.
She does mention catching the train but, apparently, securing a parking space at the station means leaving home lots earlier than driving .. sooooooo!
I also am appalled at the tactics of the developer(s) LURING folk with false hope .. very unusual for Oz builder operations .. LOL!
FlyingDuk
Let me make a bet – there will be a demand to buy some kind of government scrip probably under the guise of reconstruction/infrastructure bond.
The bet is as usual for the standard $1.00 Australian.
The standard bet is 10k AUD of sterling silver ram’s head Australian shillings.
I want to be the guy at SBS lodging
a) safe-work issue regarding fire in the building
b) OHS report on inhaled smoke.
Must have a politically correct fire alarm system as well .. can differenciate between possible threat and religious ceremony ……. LOL!
This sounds like tampering with a witness to me.
Isn’t there a Commission Against Corruption lurking around somewhere?
Oh, silly me, no, of course not. Doesn’t apply here.
Below it my predicted strategy:
1) Wait for the next shock horror financial crisis (shouldn’t be long) with rapid loss of altitude of stock market and ‘the economy’ – with resultant dives in Super fund ‘values’
2) Announce, ‘in response to overwhelming public desire for safety’ – the ‘rolling of all super funds into one single, ‘safe’, ‘government guaranteed’ central fund.
3) (‘Temporarily’) halt lump sum withdrawals from said fund (to ‘prevent super investors making panicked decisions against their long term interests’)
4) Embezzle all said funds into ‘general revenue’ or ‘invest’ into non investments like Snowy III, IV, V etc.
5) Pay an ever evaporating ‘pension’ using printed money to said ‘super investors’ instead – Soviet style.
It probably won’t be a huge defence task either.
The Parliamentary Liberal Party has been muted (to say the least) in supporting Reynolds and criticising the payola. Reynolds has been left paddling her own canoe, and it’s the Oz/Albrechtsen that has picked up the story – which seems likely to be too ‘beltway’ to run for long.
The chances of a blistering political attack by Team Dutton on Gallagher and Wong are presumably in the hands of the focus groups.
Crossie:
My last conversation with a teacher involved a quiet word about her confiscating a slice of cake from my child and throwing it in a bin with the words “This is not good for you.” I was quiet but got my message across that I as the Dad decided my kids diet not her.
My next discussion about the matter was with a copper who fronted my door with “a complaint has been made about your behaviour at the school and witnesses say…”
That was in about 1987 IMMSMC.
And that’s why I keep a journal with recordings.
Tell me more. I hate when people abuse their power or try to use the police, AVOs etc as a means to settle personal scores.
Embezzle all said funds into ‘general revenue’ or ‘invest’ into non investments like Snowy III, IV, V etc.
This one is a 97.3% chance.
Labor has flagged this since Opposition– and the superannuation industry (Large Funds division) has leapt at the chance for subsidised/supported, high-return-low-risk opportunities – just like those enjoyed by the vampire squids in the renewables sector.
Robert Sewell, re your piece that cottage-style housing in Yuendemu was introduced even though not asked for by the incoming tribal clans. That may be what was eventually introduced, but in Jan 1969 when I visited there in the company of a Patrol Officer and my very new husband the place was fairly recently established and the housing I saw there was of the open-sided simple roof style that was seen to be suitable for those not used to normal housing. So that was trialled and probably came first. Admittedly I didn’t see all over the place, where there may have been other types (which seemed to be mainly admin blocks) but I do recall the Patrol Officer saying as we drew up, uh huh, here’s trouble as he noticed two naked men with spears circling each other on the football pitch. The people were still highly tribal.
It reminded me of 1965 when as a student I had gone on exchange to the remote Western Highlands of New Guinea, where Patrol Officers (with whom I was billeted) ruled with an iron rod in a manner that took notice of native customs although introducing European law, at the same time as the Australian Government was tinkering with ideas of Parliamentary government in Port Moresby. I did not think what I saw was yet ready for that. The Patrol Officer and the one local teacher and a missionary couple I met out there on the very edge of First Contact were doing an excellent job.
I didn’t think remote aboriginal Australia was ready for such ideas either. I wasn’t wrong.
The sixties have a lot to answer for.
Missions used cottage style housing and created employment for residents; they also had hostels for the children if the mission concentrated on schooling for the next generation. Obviously there was (and still is) no one clear and suitable way to change people from a hunter-gathering lifestyle to one incorporating modern ways of life. This is apparent when such situations are examined worldwide – from the Lapland Sami to the Amerindians to the Japanese Ainu to the Canadian ‘Eskimo’ Inuit. Australia did what was considered best practice at the time and it was by no means all bad. The loss of a supervisory role for white administrators came far too early in some cases and disintegration was the result.
Thoughts on our ruling class monoculture
And on what to do about it. Plus a request for further ideas.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Our modern ruling class is peculiar. One of its many peculiarities is its penchant for fads, and what can only be called mass hysteria. Repeatedly, we see waves in which something that nobody much cared about suddenly comes to dominate ruling class discourse. Almost in synchrony, a wide range of institutions begin to talk about it, and to be preoccupied by it, even as every leading figure virtue-signals regarding this subject which, only a month or two previously, hardly any of them even knew about, much less cared about.
There are several factors behind this, but one of the most important, I think, is that our ruling class is a monoculture.
In agriculture, a monoculture exists when just a single variety dominates a crop. “Monoculture has its benefits. The entire system is standard, so there are rarely new production and maintenance processes, and everything is compatible and familiar to users. On the other hand, as banana farmers learned, in a monoculture, all instances are prone to the same set of attacks. If someone or something figures out how to affect just one, the entire system is put at risk.”
In a monoculture, if one plant is vulnerable to a disease or an insect, they all are. Thus diseases or pests can rip through it like nobody’s business.
This is also why nature fosters genetic diversity.
But what I (mostly) missed when writing that piece many years ago, is that electoral turnover only affects one small piece of society. While elections change out elected officials sometimes, the rest of our society – the bureaucracy, academia, media, corporate leadership, what is generally known as the “gentry” or “ruling class” – remains the same.
And our ruling class today is very much a monoculture. As Angelo Codevilla wrote in a seminal essay on America’s ruling class:
Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter.
Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.
Codevilla wrote the essay over a decade ago, and it has only grown more true in the interim. Despite its constant invocation of “diversity,” in many important ways our ruling class is much less diverse than it has ever been. And, as a monoculture, it is vulnerable to viruses of a sort. Including what amount to viruses of the mind.
Our ruling class is particularly vulnerable to mind viruses for several reasons.
First, it is a monoculture, so that what is persuasive to one member is likely to be persuasive to many.
Second, it suffers from deep and widespread status anxiety – not least because most of its members have status, but few real accomplishments to rely on – and thus requires constant reassurance in the form of peer acceptance, reassurance that is generally achieved by repeating whatever the popular people are saying already. And third, it has few real deeply held values, which might otherwise provide guard rails of a sort against believing crazy things.
Third, people should have to do their jobs. CEOs, professors, and politicians who pursue fashionable social goals are usually doing this in preference to their actual jobs. CEOs’ jobs involve making money for shareholders, and stricter readings of fiduciary duties should hold them to that job. Keeping their mind occupied with profits and losses will leave less space for fashionably kooky ideas. Likewise professors and politicians.
Also, just an awareness of what’s going on may help. When Elon Musk talked about the “woke mind virus,” he wasn’t just reacting to a dangerous meme, he was spreading the protective notion that infectious bad ideas circulate among our ruling class. Mass hysteria and social posturing should be called out as such.
But calling out these things can get you mobbed.
I also favor making it easier to sue people for mobbing. It’s yet another subject for another essay, but along with stronger libel laws, which are to be desired, many existing business torts and civil rights actions are potentially deployable against social media mobbers. J.K. Rowling is illustrating how effective that can be right now.
Rowling is fabulously rich, of course, which makes her threats more credible. But I’ve successfully threatened libel action to make people withdraw false and malicious statements on Twitter.
These are just a few thoughts, and this rambling essay has gotten long enough already. But there’s more to talk about. Please add your thoughts in the comments.
Mark Scott – failing upwards for how many years? You can excuse the ALPBC – that would defeat Hercules even if he joined the Public Service.
Roger @ 8:57……
Closer to home, Leak nails it.
Yes. And I love Bowen beautifully displayed as the dumbarse propellor head.
Dr Faustussays:
February 20, 2023 at 8:31 am
Can we have transparency, Prime Minister?
As we all know, transparency in government is a virtue from the Opposition benches.
Transparency in Guv’ment is now spelt translucent these days with the emphasis on the ‘trans’ part especially with ‘LayBore’.
Leak has a real gift with caricatures.
There was a similar situation in Western Australia way back when. The tribal elders, and women were asked for their opinion on what they wanted in the way of housing. They wanted open sided houses, almost like a long house, more suited for communal living, with barbecue type cooking facilities, and hand operated washing machines, suitable for washing blankets and bedding.
The whole plan was condemned as “supplying second class housing for Aborigines” and the cottage style houses supplied were wrecked in short order.
Re an Options possibility for the Voice that simply moved consultation into the Preamble (i.e not constitutionally binding).
I’m not wedded to it as I want a solid NO vote. However, I think it may be Realpolitik for the Libs to move to what Howard mooted long ago – some mention in the Preamble. It could provide a response to all of the urgent hangwringing about needing to ‘do something’ re the Statement from the Heart. It could also give an ‘out’ to many people who would like to ‘do something’ signifying goodwill but who have serious doubts about The Voice as anything useful but see a No vote as hurtful. It would also make the Libs seem proactive. I think you might end up with 20% Voice, 50% Preamble, and 30% No Change. That’s if a Preamble was properly constructed and voters were informed by a how-to-vote
leaflet. That would then mean 80% against the Voice. It could foil a Voice by a guilt default.
Do you allow trusted shooters onto your land during lambing times?
Robert – just caught up on last night’s posts. We don’t have sheep – can’t think of anything worse on the land than sheep farming. As for shooters – we have one trustest shooter in the valley – a local farm hand who is a great shot with thermal rifle sights on his weapons. Dead first shot and no wounded animals. We haven’t used him – but if the feral pigs get any worse, we’ll get him in.
Been drenching this morning, as we have heard that Bovine Ephemeral Fever is appearing in the Central West. Damn cows are too fat to get comfortably through the race, so we were using the “pour-on” Ausmectin in a cup on the end of a length of wood to pour over their backs in the yards. Dangerous and exhausting. Most of our herd are special breed “keepers” and are used to being handled, but you wouldn’t know it from the performance they often put on. The calmest is generally the big Angus bullock that we kept from the commercial herd of Angus (that we once had) because of his personality. His name is “Mary” which says it all – and he would weigh in at well over 900kg. He must be 2m high at his hindquarters and is all muscle, but has the sweetest temperament. Loves to hang around men who are working – picks up any small tools in his mouth.
His rendering of the bum bandit is reminiscent of his ol’ man’s moozley lunatics.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare says:
February 20, 2023 at 9:47 am
It reminded me of 1965 when as a student I had gone on exchange to the remote Western Highlands of New Guinea, where Patrol Officers (with whom I was billeted) ruled with an iron rod in a manner that took notice of native customs although introducing European law, at the same time as the Australian Government was tinkering with ideas of Parliamentary government in Port Moresby. I did not think what I saw was yet ready for that. The Patrol Officer and the one local teacher and a missionary couple I met out there on the very edge of First Contact were doing an excellent job.
Lizzie,
Interesting my Sister was teaching in Madang/Mount Hagen around that time & the same, thinks KIAPS maintained excellent discipline and control – she moved on after that to teach the Eskimos in the Canadian Artic Circle.
Did you attend The Australian School of Pacific Administration (ASOPA) at Middle Head?
Re KIAPS, my room mate at St John’s College in 1962 was Papua New Guinean on a Scholarship doing Agricultural Economics at Sydney Uni – I met him again early 80s in Port Morsbey, and he said the KIAPS were best rule they had in New Guinea, and he was at that stage looking to move to Cairns
Did a sterling job at the ABC cutting state based programs and regional services and centralising the organisation in plush new inner city buildings where groupthink prevails.
Runs on the board.
Little wonder Clare has turned to him.
Big bulls are amazing. I was with the old man when he picked up a couple of Brahmans from a stud just north of Perth one year. About 8 big wet noses stuck against the truck window as they investigated what was going on. They are so curious. Anything unusual left in a paddock was inevitably crushed overnight.
Gabor.
Regarding cricket strokes.
It is a bit like the bloke who played timpani in the symphony orchestra and was asked the disparaging question, “What do you need to know to hit a drum?”
“Not much” he replied. “Just when.”
Same with crickit shots.
It is often not a case of technical execution of the bat swing, it is selecting the time to play which shot. Or even not play any shot at all.
Captain Climate and the Carbonettes played shots which were almost guaranteed to lead to disaster on a turning wicket against quality spin bowling.
Example. The reverse sweep (which is effectively “switch hitting” and playing to your less dominant side).
An acceptable risk in T20 where you have to take calculated risks to score quickly. But a shot which needs to be shelved in a low scoring Test on the second or third day, where quick scoring is irrelevant.
I’m not wedded to it as I want a solid NO vote. However, I think it may be Realpolitik for the Libs to move to what Howard mooted long ago – some mention in the Preamble.
I’m heartbroken by the whole charade. I’m pretty sure it will mean that we will have to destroy the markers we have for the Aboriginal sites – such as the Bora Ring – on our property. This is the advice that we are getting. I would never destroy the artefacts as many have done – but I think it is unwise to have any actual signs and explanations, as we have now, on the property.
The differentiation of one group of “Australians” in our Constitution will not end well, as much as it theoretically could have been a mark of respect. Those days are over. The example of such special recognition in other nations should be a warning – but, in fact, it is an inspiration for the idiots who don’t have the wisdom to see the potential ramifications.
And Snaggletooth with his teeth pointing hither and yon, and droplets of spittle flying around.
Plenty for the CA sports psychologists to be working with this morning. If they can find anyone who hasn’t headed off for golf.
Vicki says:
February 20, 2023 at 10:03 am
Do you allow trusted shooters onto your land during lambing times?
Robert – just caught up on last night’s posts. We don’t have sheep – can’t think of anything worse on the land than sheep farming.
Why Clarkson And Cooper Hate Sheep – 3 mins 01 secs
As a kid I can remember several farmers banning all shooters because “trusted shooters” either turned out to be not worthy of that trust or, even if they were OK, they brought others with them who were not.
You know the type.
They bring a box of ammo and are determined to empty it, come what may.
At best they would allow duck shooters with shotties, but no rifles.
Re KIAPS, my room mate at St John’s College in 1962 was Papua New Guinean on a Scholarship doing Agricultural Economics at Sydney Uni
My grandson has a mate who boarded with him at Sydney’s Scots College and was from the highlands of Papua. He is small but really tough looking. When he first visited my daughter’s house he scared the hell out of my granddaughter by telling her , “I am going to eat your dog”!!!!
We laugh about it now. That kid was the best “twirler” of the batons you have seen.
ZK2A:
One of the major advantages with the communal living was everyone could keep an eye on the kids – no closed doors to allow unwanted attention.
Bob Moran’s detail is always skilled.
Unfortunately, just further confirmation of what we already know.
NHS Doctor confirms Staff were ordered to let Patients Die or “Euthanise” them to falsely increase the COVID Death Count while Hospitals were EMPTY & Nurses had TikTok Dance-Offs
Just look at that beautiful church.
Steve Keeley
@KeeleyFox29
Breaking: “18 inch pipe bomb” discovered behind St. Dominic’s Catholic Church on Frankford Ave near Conrail railroad tracks in Philadelphia’s Holmesburg section.
@PhillyPolice sources tell FOX29 News . PPD bomb squad just safely took it away. Made with PVC pipe.
Vicki says:
February 20, 2023 at 10:21 am
Re KIAPS, my room mate at St John’s College in 1962 was Papua New Guinean on a Scholarship doing Agricultural Economics at Sydney Uni
My grandson has a mate who boarded with him at Sydney’s Scots College and was from the highlands of Papua. He is small but really tough looking.
Joe was small & wiry as well, very shy, but a really nice guy.
There we goez! .. just back from giving the back “park’ it’s weekly, summer, haircut .. that, bloody, hour or so, non-stop, takes more out of my 75 years old framework than swimming a km or riding 50kms ……
Roll on winter .. LOL!
It’s Time for American Jews to Say Goodbye to the Democratic Party | Opinion
Leaked ATF Documents Reveal The Biden Regime’s Scheme To Close Gun Stores Across The Country
Netanyahu: Israel approaching ‘quantum leap’ with Saudi Arabia
They got to get past Snowy 2.0 first. Which is looking sad.
Six years of bungled billions; time to cut losses on Snowy 2.0 (Paywallian, today)
Paging a Mr Malcolm Turnbull!
The study is linked
New World Odor™
@hugh_mankind
CONTAMINATED BLOOD
1st study to detect Pfizer & Moderna vaccine mRNA sequences in blood after vaccination
“We surprisingly found fragments of COVID-19 vaccine mRNA up to 28?days post-vaccination in blood from patients from both Pfizer & Moderna.”
Test
We’ve known this for years.
Pelham
@Resist_05
World Economic Forum plans to use smart devices on air conditioning, TVs, Electric Vehicles… so the state can take aggressive action and shut them down when the grid is overloaded.
Meanwhile, in the formerly great, Britain, opposing the bonkers
fifteen minute cities scheme is another one of those far right wing
behaviours which threaten the very foundations of OuR fREedOmS.
So dangerous are these climate catastrophe denying fascists, even the
peaceful antifa counter-protestors required police protection.
The list of Waffleworth successes is fairly short: Spycatcher.
Which got him and Kennedy of the insiders list for Ozemail as mates of Kerry. The rest, as they say, is history.
Australia could get call-up for Europe’s scramble to restock military
Hans van Leeuwen – Europe correspondent
Munich | Australia could be drafted deeper into Europe’s scramble to restock its armies as the Russia-Ukraine war saps the Continent of arms and ammunition, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy says.
While in Germany for the Munich Security Conference (MSC), Mr Conroy met European defence procurement ministers and also the major German arms maker Rheinmetall, whose Queensland-based operations could even play a role.
“Global supply chains are very stressed at the moment, so there could be opportunities for Australia in helping repair those,” he told The Australian Financial Review on the sidelines of the conference.
“One of the conversations we’ve had a lot over the last 24 hours is how do we further support the Ukrainian war effort – and also, quite frankly, how do all the countries who have contributed firstly restore their munitions levels, and secondly shift to holding greater stocks?”
European leaders used the MSC to warn that the Continent will have to ramp up its defence industries at rapid pace and a huge scale.
Many big manufacturers are struggling to replenish European armies’ depleted stockpiles or restart old production lines, as they try to feed Ukraine’s huge appetite for ammunition and armour in an ever-lengthening war.
Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Rheinmetall will go back to producing ammunition for the Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns that Berlin is giving Ukraine.
Australian opportunities
Rheinmetall has two Queensland plants: one is a joint venture with Australian producer NIOA to churn out 155 millimetre artillery shells for export; the other will make Boxer combat reconnaissance vehicles for the Australian Defence Force (ADF).
“Their ability to produce further Boxers beyond what Australia needs, that is something that people are interested in,” Mr Conroy said.
Defence Minister Richard Marles last month announced a deal with France to produce 155mm shells for Ukraine, with Australia supplying the gunpowder and France the casing.
Mr Conroy said that plan would likely centre on French tech and defence giant Thales.
“Thales is the main provider of munitions and propellants and powder for Australia. So while we’re still working through the details, I think Thales in Australia and in France will be the key driver of that agreement to provide 155 millimetre ammunition,” he said.
Mr Conroy said one of the Ukrainian military’s unheralded achievements was being able to cope with the wide variety of equipment, much of it unfamiliar, arriving in Ukraine.
“The Ukrainians have done a brilliant job managing an incredibly fragmented defence material base,” he said.
“They’ve got their Soviet-era weapon systems, the Soviet tanks and artillery pieces, and then they’re just getting this influx of various European and Western military equipment. They’ve managed spectacularly to maintain and use them in the field.”
Even the Leopard tanks being shipped to Ukraine were of several very different kinds, let alone the Challengers from Britain and the Abrams tanks from the US.
The ADF operates US-made Abrams tanks, some of which could theoretically be diverted to Ukraine instead of being repatriated to the US under a coming replacement program. Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia in January urged Canberra to send tanks.
Mr Conroy said he had met Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Volodymyr Havrylov, the previous day, who had expressed gratitude for what Australia had already supplied rather than asking for tanks.
“He has been more interested in getting access to more spare parts and documentation for weapon systems around the world,” Mr Conroy said.
“He made the point that we’re the only country that, when we handed over the Bushmasters, we provided lots of spare parts and also the manuals to maintain them.”
An Australian-made Bushmaster armoured vehicle being loaded onto a RAAF cargo plane heading to Ukraine. Getty
Australia is providing 90 Bushmaster armoured vehicles to Ukraine, as part of a package of military support worth about $475 million.
Pre-AUKUS scouting trip
Mr Conroy on Monday headed onwards to Britain, where he will visit the BAE Systems shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness that makes Britain’s Astute-class nuclear submarines.
The visit comes shortly ahead of an anticipated announcement by the three leaders of AUKUS – Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and US President Joe Biden – on how Australia will acquire a nuclear submarine capability.
But Mr Conroy said no inference should be drawn from his visit about what kind of submarine Australia is acquiring, or from whom.
“Some people at the start of the AUKUS arrangement speculated that we’d be running some sort of competitive process between the Americans and the United Kingdom to supply the submarines. As has been indicated, the solution will be genuinely trilateral,” he said.
The purpose of the trip was to learn lessons on how to scale up the skills and manpower to build submarines, particularly as Britain’s own workforce at Barrow fell to 2000 from 10,000, then rose again to 17,000.
“To build nuclear-powered submarines in Australia, in Adelaide specifically, is the most significant industrial effort that we’ve ever undertaken. This is nation-building of monumental proportions,” Mr Conroy said.
“It will help modernise manufacturing, but we will need tens of thousands of workers. So I’m mainly going to Barrow to understand how the UK has built up and maintained their ability to construct nuclear-powered submarines.
“It doesn’t mean that we’re going to transplant that approach directly into Australia, we have different systems. But I think it would be foolish of us not to learn from lessons others have gone through.”
He inherited his old man’s artistic talent and co-incidentally Ruperdink Mudrock’s 1964 baby The Australian is the country’s last published daily broadsheet still standing with a long history of iconic cartoonists.
For that alone, I give thanks to Ruperdink.
Link – Australia could get call-up for Europe’s scramble to restock military</strong>
The only failure to implement Duks prediction of the Liars super theft is them not reading a conservative blog. That said, a SFL who fancies themselves as a conservative, as in not being as bad as the Liars will. Open season on politicians is going to be the only way out.
Agree, Vicki, that’s why I suggest some damage control by not putting any Voice in the Constitution but putting a form of recognition and intent of consultation in the Preamble, which doesn’t form part of how we govern ourselves. It is just there as info, as I understand it.
In the Preamble it could show respect and good intentions but not provide a means for procedural appeals to the High Court.
If I am wrong, someone tell me.
Zulu
There was a similar situation in Western Australia way back when. The tribal elders, and women were asked for their opinion on what they wanted in the way of housing. They wanted open sided houses, almost like a long house, more suited for communal living, with barbecue type cooking facilities, and hand operated washing machines, suitable for washing blankets and bedding.
Call it “culturally appropriate housing, and try again. Decry cottage style housing as “cultural arrogance “.
Also Leak Jnr has a lot more stupidity to work with. The hardest part being which stupid is the most important to him. I actually like Jnr moreso.
The most important news out of Israel today is that Netanyahu is putting the first of the judicial reform bills to the Knesset.
Protesters prepare as Knesset readies to bring judicial reform to vote (19 Feb)
The judiciary, AG’s office and especially the High Court have been politicized by the Left, and have been trying their hardest to get rid of Netanyahu on ridiculous charges. Caroline Glick has written several detailed articles on this effort. It’s the same modus operandi as the Dems trying to get Trump.
The proposed process for appointing justices is cross-party and fair, which is exactly what the Left doesn’t want. Hence the screeching protesters and howlings that democracy is in peril. In reality the Left has already endangered democracy in Israel by capturing the deep state almost as completely as in the US.
Silly phone keyboard. Format fail, but you get my drift.
Has arming Ukraine depleted America’s capacity in Asia?
Although the scourge of the Ukraine war lies in the loss of innocent life, the burden it places on the weapons manufacturing systems of Europe and America is heavy.
James Curran – Historian
As the first anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine looms, the tragedy of war remains all too visible.
With the likelihood of a massive Russian surge in coming weeks, and prospects for a negotiated settlement buried beneath both sides’ refusal to countenance anything other than absolute victory, the problem of how Western countries, especially the United States, restock the Ukrainian resistance becomes more pressing.
So urgent, indeed, that historian Niall Ferguson concludes that if war broke out with China, “America’s once-vaunted defence industrial base will be exposed as a comatose geriatric, not a sleeping giant”.
Australia has an enormous dependency on America in the Pacific, manifest primarily in the joint intelligence facilities and increasing defence co-operation. But uncomfortable questions are being raised over the extent of US capacity in this part of the world.
It is most certainly on the minds of some intelligence officials in Canberra, who privately concede the projected delay in replenishing US weapons stocks will be being noted in Beijing.
A recent CSIS report judged that a concurrent war with China over Taiwan would strain Pentagon stockpiles.
It challenges the consensus among so many analysts that Western resolve over Ukraine sends a stiff message to Beijing about any designs it might have to take Taiwan in the short term.
We are not yet at the state where policymakers need wake in a cold sweat, worrying about a United States distracted from Asia by domestic travails and Ukraine, but uncertainties abound.
And it begs the question as to what underpins the hot talk in Washington about a coming war with China within two years.
For Michelle Flournoy, a former senior defence official in the Obama administration, China represents a “pacing threat, economically, technologically, diplomatically and militarily”.
That language reflects growing concern in the American capital about the size, and especially increasing speed, of its China challenge.
Yet congressional testimony is clear that planned US defence spending in East Asia and the Pacific is far less than fear of imminent war would provoke.
Allies are now asking: does this constitute a failing US commitment, complacency about American power or budgetary hard choices? The likelihood is the latter.
The Pentagon has launched a review of its weapons stockpiles, but the high consumption of conventional weapons in the Ukraine war clearly has the top US military brass concerned.
Preference for negotiation
The chairman of the US joint chiefs, General Mark Milley, has been one of the more vocal advocates for a negotiated settlement.
As the Financial Times pointed out, Milley makes no direct correlation between a diminishing weapons cache and the need for peace talks, but he is nevertheless adamant that neither the Russians nor Ukrainians can achieve their aims.
But his preference for negotiation is surely reflected in the White House.
A recent Pew Research report also shows that 40 per cent of Republicans and Republican leaning independents say that the US is providing too much support to Ukraine. A quarter of all Americans now say the same thing, rising from 7 per cent when the war began.
Although the scourge of the Ukraine war lies in the loss of innocent life, the mounting military casualties and fatalities on both sides, along with scorched Ukrainian cityscapes and countryside, the burden it places on the weapons manufacturing systems of Europe and America is heavy.
The ambitious talk this time last year about a “single, global theatre of operations”, in which a united West could simultaneously handle military contingencies in Europe and East Asia, is revealed as empty words, not real capacity.
Nevertheless, for the US, the benefits of this proxy war with Russia over Ukraine are obvious: no American soldier’s life has been lost.
And Washington’s role in leading Western unity and resolve is a world away from the alarming pictures that saturated the news coverage of its exit from Afghanistan. Indeed, the Ukraine war has given Biden’s framing of the world struggle between autocracies and democracies a time and a place.
For some, it appears to offer redemption from the Western democracies’ failure at the September 1938 Munich conference, when Hitler was waved through to Czechoslovakia.
It has given the United States a taste of leadership again, especially after the Trump shocks.
Russia’s military capabilities, though prodigious, are being run down, and Xi Jinping, though he will not abandon Putin, is probably in two minds about Russian reliability.
Xi must surely know, too, that Biden is the best he can hope for in terms of an American leader he can deal with.
The Chinese president would surely recognise too that if House Speaker Kevin McCarthy makes good on his promise to visit Taipei, and if a Republican president is elected in 2024, especially one – such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – which advocates for the US to recognise an independent Taiwan, then Beijing may be forced to act.
Australia too invests much in Biden and the Democrats. But the calls – most recently from opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie, for some of kind of “institutional experimentation” to “enable the smooth operation of AUKUS beyond the respective governments of the day” – reveal more than a hint of nervousness that nothing should be taken for granted: either here, or Britain, or in the US.
We are not yet at the state where policymakers need wake in a cold sweat, worrying about a United States distracted from Asia by domestic travails and Ukraine, but uncertainties abound.
Whether Prime Minister Anthony Albanese or Foreign Minister Penny Wong are ready for a Republican presidency is moot. It should be a conversation they are having between themselves right now, even if sotto voce.
Why Elites Don’t Give a Damn About Ohio
ABC news:
“Sydney world pride attendees encouraged to get first dose of Mpox vaccine”
Also:
“Exercise helps heart and body function for people with long Covid “
Both to be filed in the “No shit, Sherlock” box.
But it was in a good cause, so I’m sure it’s O.K.
Kavanuagh Rape Accuser Confesses She Lied, Was Never Raped, Never Even Met The Man
In the Preamble it could show respect and good intentions but not provide a means for procedural appeals to the High Court.
If I am wrong, someone tell me.
There needs to be nothing special. We are Australian, covered by the Constitution.
The end.
‘We’ve Lost Key Battles’: Big Tech Companies Quietly Reduce Censorship Teams Following Legal Battles, Layoffs
The American Amish 13% Stike again – They Really Are a Race Apart
HORROR: Young Mom Shot and Killed in Front of Her Children After Dispute in Kroger Parking Lot
A young mother was murdered in front of her two children after a dispute in a Kroger parking lot on Valentine’s Day.
26-year-old Alexandria Borys was in the parking lot of a South Carolina Kroger putting her groceries away when she got into an argument with a stranger.
The stranger, identified as 23-year-old Christina Harrison, ended up shooting Alexandria Borys after a dispute.
Borys’s two children, a 2-year-old and an infant were in the car at the time of the murder.
WISTV reported:
It was in the Kroger parking lot off of Saint Andrews Road in Irmo where 26-year-old Alexandria Cress Borys took her last breath.
She was shot and killed on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, approximately six days after her brother died from a gunshot wound.
WIS spoke with Borys’ husband, Tyler, who respectfully declined an interview but agreed to speak on what happened.
According to her husband, Borys was shopping at Kroger with her sister-in-law, niece, and nephew.
After packing groceries into the car shortly before 4 p.m., Tyler said an argument broke out in the parking lot between his wife and a stranger, later identified as 23-year-old Christina Harrison.
“From what I have pieced together, they had either concluded the argument or Alex was walking away. It’s indicating she was shot with her back turned,” said Tyler on Thursday.
Harrison surrendered to the Irmo Police Department (IPD) before Borys was pronounced deceased at the scene around 5:30 p.m. IPD has since charged her with murder, unlawful carrying of a pistol, and possession of a firearm during a violent crime.
It’s also the dumbest idea the Labor Party has ever come up with, by far, exceeding all their previous howlers put together. The bastardized Frog subs were bad enough, but inventing a nuclear propulsion industry out of thin air, in Adelaide of all places, really takes the cake for imbecility.
Well we ain’t going have nuclear subs, ever, that’s now certain. Anyone up for a Mandarin course?
Local Farmer Sounds the Alarm: Why Did East Palestine Launch ‘MyID’ Emergency Service to Surveil Biometrics 1 Week Before Ohio Train Derailment?
Lost by six wickets.
What can you say.
Why Fox News Lied to Its Viewers
The calmest is generally the big Angus bullock that we kept from the commercial herd of Angus (that we once had) because of his personality. His name is “Mary” which says it all – and he would weigh in at well over 900kg. He must be 2m high at his hindquarters and is all muscle, but has the sweetest temperament. Loves to hang around men who are working – picks up any small tools in his mouth.
Vicki, we had a bullock like that. Phil, short for filet steak. Angus Galloway cross. My son used to drive a radio controlled car around the paddock and Phil would chase it bellowing that weird and funny gargling bellow cattle make when they are excited. Like a big dog. OMG he tasted good! Dressed out to 300 kilos of the most tender meat I had ever eaten until then.
His “Spycatcher success” was derived more from village theatre group level theatrics than any actual legal brilliance.
But, yes, Ozemail, with it’s code and features looking remarkably similar to earlier e-mail applications from the US, was sold as “cutting edge Aussie technology” and the technical ignorant maaaates in the public and private sector bought into it bigtime.
We are not yet at the state where policymakers need wake in a cold sweat, worrying about a United States distracted from Asia by domestic travails and Ukraine, but uncertainties abound.
Thank you for that article Ozzie – you are a gem.
This week we have been given some solid warnings – via ABC’s Foreign Correspondent (on Japan’s preparations for any assault by China) & Sky’s special report on the likelihood of a war with China.
For anyone who has spent any time at all in assessing the current preoccupation of Europe and the USA on the war in Ukraine, together with China’s frantic military buildup and undisguised gestures of their intentions in the Pacific, the prospect is not good for the western alliance.
Even so, our social circle is preoccupied with planning for their next OS trip. We just shake our heads. But then, we have been doing that for the last 3 Covid years, for the same sort of reason – the blindness of our contemporaries.
Like a big dog. OMG he tasted good! Dressed out to 300 kilos of the most tender meat I had ever eaten until then.
OMG Pogria! One of the builders working on our place last year used to “needle” me by asking, “When are we going to eat Mary?”!
Couldn’t do it!
Classic projection by a lefty activist using his own special “facts”.
“I surrender. I claim the protection of the Geneva Convention as a prisoner of war.”
Cattle as domesticated animals.
You do see personality traits emerge (good and bad) in dairy cows with twice daily contact with humans.
We had Hereford bull when I was kid which we would scratch on the forehead or along the back with a stick. The trouble was, his “gentle” nudge of the head to indicate “more please” would knock you off your feet.
A poll hereford, thank Christ.
(I was reminded of it watching Clarkson’s Farm where they had an automatic cow back-scratcher installed).
Whatever it takes. I suspect the colonials giving Mother England the bird may have played a part too. Ancient history now also. Interesting Waffleworth then had one of his routine callings out, although Packer had more than a few too. Always a tell.
*fallings out
OO, we were students just going into second year uni. 60 of us were chosen and they distributed us through to various parts of PNG after an initial week of orientation in Moresby, where we went to the new parliamentary building and sat in on some administrators giving lectures to chosen PNG parliamentary aspirants about Westminster processes. Most had a very limited comprehension of this.
We heard a lot about the Admin College in Sydney but never went there.
They didn’t really know what to do with us, we were supposed to learn about NG by living there and bring whatever skills we had. I went first to Lai, where we met local dignitaries and then to Madang, where we helped to make sago fronds into roofing for the new technical college where we stayed. We went across daily to the village to help weave the sago fronds, and they taught us a lot of useful things, while we had little we could teach them in return. I did some childminding for them, have a pic of me with a beautiful little one in my arms, for they were far quicker than I was with the frond weaving and minding little ones came easily to me. On one return journey our lakatoi was overloaded, it was dark, and it nearly sank in that wide shark filled Madang river just before we reached the home shore. The village gave us a farewell feast, stressing reciprocity was now required from wealthy Australia. They are, as Jarred Diamond noted, a very pragmatic people.
After that my boyfriend I was travelling with and I flew to Wabag, an outpost at that time, and then we went further into New Territories to the last patrol area just established; an eyeopener. Very tribal, newly contacted people, all in traditional headwigs and trouser-tree coverings, living in palisaded huts with their pigs and still chopping each other up with stone adzes, which were rapidly being tossed for machetes. I traded a few trinkets I had for a ceremonial stone axe, which I later sold to keep myself at uni. I sat in on the Patrol Officer’s Court, in an open sago-roofed compound, as with his interpreter and his local ‘pigeon’ he dispensed his wisdom and punishments amidst a large crowd.
We were three hours by army covered jeep over an unmade track some thirty km from basic civilisation at Wabag. I travelled into Wabag with two very sick pregnant women in obstructed labour and one woman with half her breast chopped off, and stayed overnight with the District Administrator there, sharing a room with a completely Westernised young Papuan woman who was hoping to advance herself in Moresby after schooling in Australia. Like me, she was on a look-see tour of this area and we had a lot of good talks in English about that as well as usual girl stuff, which was a delight to me, aged 22, after so long in almost entirely male company when speaking English.
OldOzziesays:
February 20, 2023 at 11:03 am
The American Amish 13% Stike again – They Really Are a Race Apart
HORROR: Young Mom Shot and Killed in Front of Her Children After Dispute in Kroger Parking Lot
American Amish 13% = Black.
Had me intrigued there for a while.
It’s worth pointing out the scale of fail of Miserable Ghost’s love child:
None of this will be even the mildest surprise to Cat readers. This was all canvassed in some detail at the time Trumble launched his $2 billion brainfart.
A bigger concern than Trumble-stupidity is the ease with which this public sector farcup passed from back-of-knapkin to actual ocean-going waste of money:
In industry, everyone knew differently.
Sadly for Australia, public sector howlers like this are the rule, and very, very far from the exception.
Top men.
No, really.
My sister used to come up to the station during school holidays for a while. One year the old man knocked off the house pig (which is another story) which later appeared as roast pork one night. “I can’t eat that. That’s Banjo.”
You do see personality traits emerge (good and bad) in dairy cows with twice daily contact with humans.
Sancho – I reckon the personality traits are there in all cattle – it’s just that, through the immediate contact, you notice them more in dairy cattle.
Our remaining herd is relatively small. My husband tells people (with exasperation) that “they all have names”. I reply that, of course they do, they are a registered breed & all have “papers”. But, in truth, they have “paddock names” as well. But there really are distinctive personalities – the kind, motherly ones, the spiteful jealous ones, the mischievous heifers and steers, the anxious ones, the others that are just addicted to their food and miss anything else that is going on……..and so on.
It is a good thing that most cattle owners (at least the ones I know) don’t notice any of this – just generalised observations that “they are inquisitive creatures”….otherwise they wouldn’t be in the business that involves a lot of inadvertent cruelty.
Do not shoot.
My gun is empty.
I am friend.
The bastardized Frog subs were bad enough, but inventing a nuclear propulsion industry out of thin air, in Adelaide of all places, really takes the cake for imbecility.
Oh my…..
I should add I had no medical training at all, but I had picked up quite a few nursing strategies and techniques while working for local doctors in the St. Mary’s area of Sydney’s west between the ages of 15 and 17 (17 and 19 they thought). In that rapidly changing area of new migrants people would often rush into the surgery with major issues, which I could triage or assist with, sometimes alone, while waiting for an ambulance. The doctors would also get me to hold hands with females during intimate examinations, and clean up wounds before they stitched them up. I did learn to keep a calm demeanour and assess basic life signs, to turn people into the recovery position, raising their chin and checking for mouth obstructions to breathing. I guess this was one reason why I was sent on this trip to Wabag, although I could do little to help these retching carsick ill women, but offer smiling comfort.
Much later, I did a formal first aid course.
(I was reminded of it watching Clarkson’s Farm where they had an automatic cow back-scratcher installed).
In-laws in the UK run a large dairy farm, where they have these automated back scratchers installed.
They are so popular that fights break out amongst the ladies, with the older girls pushing the youngsters out from under.
Well we ain’t going have nuclear subs, ever,
BoN, no cause for regret, apart from the billions wasted to achieve nothing.
We get nuke subs and our boats are going to be numerically minor elements in a US fleet, so we can assume they’ll be taking part in fleet actions from home. Factor in robot subs and mines — the future — and the subs’ vulnerabilities will be laid bare very quickly when push comes to shove.
What would do us better are small, cheaper subs for non-fleet actions, and here Israel is the model. Subs capable of quietly landing small parties in places where they may well be needed: Timor, for example, the Solomons etc.
Tony Abbott got it right in selecting the Japanese subs. Then came Turnbull, whose lasting monument should be a nuclear sub constructed to operate in the upper pond of Snowy 2.0. That, at least, would quarantine two examples of the Miserable Ghost’s profligate incompetence in a single location.
I remember the Turnbull cheer squad used to love promoting him as a ‘businessman’. This was because of Ozemail.
It was as if he’d invented it and taking a big risk getting it off the ground like a real entrepreneur.
Truth is he had no business background.
My dad’s herd of about fifteen cows and a bull, agisted on acreage next door to our rural idyll (not) in Old Mt Druitt, after we left Housing Commission, were Ayrshires. Big horned piebald cattle with a tendency to go crazy at full moon, especially one called Moona Pearl, who’d injure her udders trying to fence jump (Ayrshires have huge udders and thinnish milk). The little calves were friendly as I fed them in a bucket letting them sip the milk sucking on two of my fingers as a teat, though the mothers were not, being nervous animals. Old Lady, the Jersey cow I used to milk for the family’s supply of rich creamy milk, was a dear old thing though. She’d walk into the single bail after waiting patiently for me to arrive, and she was always glad to see me and made appreciative low moo’s with nuzzles.
Sharaz certainly seems to have been the go to reporter for Katy for quite some time.
Vicki,
we lived on 13 acres. Enough to keep animals to eat, nowhere near enough to keep cattle as pets. Horses, that’s different. Would feed my horses through drought and any other malady that would befall. Although I raised turkeys, chickens duck and geese to eat, I still had pets amongst them that would live to old age. My first stud turkey Tom is almost 17 now. Blind in one eye, as lame as I am, but he will die of old age unless of course he is suffering and I have to put him down.
He will be buried deep enough the foxes can’t get to him. Any birds that died of illness or disease, or like my favourite gander, by Wedge-tailed Eagle, were always buried in the huge compost heap. They were completely reclaimed by the compost in less than two weeks.
The real story of Waffleworth as a businessman was Goldman Sachs – FAI – HIH. Never really got much publicity. Strangely.
Dr Eric Berg
Dr Giles Yeo
Dr Jason Fung
Dr Brad Stanfield
These guys are heroes. Gary Taubes deserves some credit too. Whether it be public awareness, talking to the public, high level peer reviewed research, crowdfunding important research they will lead; they are cleaning away society’s misconceptions about health and nutrition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy_vcL1cpP8
The Weight Loss Scientist: You’ve Been LIED To About Calories, Dieting & Losing Weight: Giles Yeo
The Diary Of A CEO
1.37M subscribers
1,620,820 views Feb 2, 2023
Dr Giles Yeo is a Professor at the University of Cambridge, his research focuses on the genetics of obesity. He is the author of two books, “Gene Eating: The Story of Human Appetite” and “Why Calories Don’t Count: How We Got the Science of Weight Loss Wrong”.
FAI was never far from controversy its whole useless existence.
Did somebody mention a Cow Scratcher? Enjoy, the cows certainly are!
Lathe of the week! Old Atlas in Adelaide:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/155417624819?hash=item242f9cc0f3:g:XGsAAOSw3qJj8p1b&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAkLj956JIcxVQasWuz7dBHCAV4fz%2FsYmSvkQ83KrfGMkcU0kTcLla8Y2cXRzomkkwprtqFghSlOcuwUdmMUpbcTgvlFp3C6GVaGI%2BPy5GEPSow17Dc5N%2B3nP0XmOOnw9YyC5K4WDthy%2Fx04cJgol2%2B6FgLt0amvi4L6bHepV7KRmE0SHW69lWDE0cXWNWQMPlMA%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR7iYkMXNYQ
These are near must reads.
Front Pharmacol. 2021; 12: 719750.
Published online 2021 Sep 30. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2021.719750
PMCID: PMC8517704
PMID: 34658858
Intermittent Fasting Inhibits High-Fat Diet–Induced Atherosclerosis by Ameliorating Hypercholesterolemia and Reducing Monocyte Chemoattraction
“Taken together, our study indicates that IF reduces atherosclerosis in LDLR-/- mice by reducing monocyte chemoattraction/adhesion and ameliorating hypercholesterolemia and suggests its potential application for atherosclerosis treatment.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8517704/
SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Nutr., 12 July 2021
Sec. Eating Behavior
Volume 8 – 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2021.709683
Effect of Intermittent Fasting on Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
“Intermittent fasting is beneficial for weight management and liver enzyme improvement”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.709683/full
I only have one life, Vicki, and not so much of that left, so I intend to travel with Hairy despite whatever might befall internationally. We’ve travelled in some fairly perilous times before, so why stop now? Anyway, I joke to him, we are actually on the front line here at the entrance to the South Head on Sydney Harbour. Ideal spot for a missile or two to land from afar or from some Chinese sub. You couldn’t give property away here during the Second World War. lol.
That said, we are both rather exhausted from more months away than at home recently, so we will hold off decisions for further travel till winter. We do have a tour of Sri Lanka (revisiting some places where I used to live) booked and paid for since 2020. We are wondering if we could pick that up soon if the troubles there have settled down enough yet. It wasn’t exactly calm when I lived there with my first newborn either, so I have some tips on getting by to fall back on.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and taxless regs of assets
Stand in the tax depart.[d] Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered promise lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless regs,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymongdius, Treasurer of Treasurers:
Look on my works, ye Taxpayers, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Australia’s superannuation system must be “equitable and sustainable”, the federal government has declared, in a move that will fuel speculation about a future budget crackdown on tax concessions at the top end.
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, will say in a speech in Sydney on Monday that he wants to “end the super wars once and for all* and make sure that future changes to the system are compatible with its very objective”.**
The treasurer will propose to enshrine in law a new definition that states “the objective of super is to preserve savings to deliver income for a dignified retirement, alongside government support, in an equitable and sustainable way”.***
Chalmers will argue recent “disastrous policy proposals” – such as allowing billions of dollars to be withdrawn from superannuation balances during the pandemic – came about “because our predecessors were navigating the super landscape without a compass”.****
“It moved us further away from where we need to be: better living standards in retirement for as many Australians as possible,” he will say.
The inclusion of the phrase “in an equitable and sustainable way” will only add to speculation about the government’s future plans for super.
It follows recent analysis from the Australia Institute, a progressive thinktank, that tax breaks for superannuation will cost the federal budget $52.5bn this financial year, almost as much as the aged pension.*****
In early February, when asked about super tax concessions, Chalmers said it was important “to make sure that all of the various concessions are sustainable in this area but in other areas as well”.
The assistant treasurer, Stephen Jones, has previously suggested that a legislated definition for super might pave the way to capped balances or other restrictions on tax concessions.******
“If the objective of super is to provide a tax-preferred means for estate planning, you could say it is doing its job,” Jones said in November.
In Monday’s speech to the financial services industry, Chalmers will say the proposed definition will guide future policy decisions and be “a true north, a shared goal that we can work towards together”.
“To my mind, defining super’s task as delivering income for retirement isn’t to narrow super’s role in our economy – it’s to elevate it, and broaden it,” he will say, according to speech extracts distributed by his office in advance.
“A sharper focus on delivering for members requires that funds always invest in a way that secures the right risk-return profile, but it doesn’t preclude you from doing so in a way that befits a stronger economy.*******
“Those opportunities to achieve a double dividend – good results for super funds and members and good results for our nation – can only enhance the ability of super to meet its core objective.”
The proposed objective will be set out in a consultation paper to be released on Monday to coincide with Chalmers’ speech. The government will seek feedback from the community about the benefits, phrasing and implementation of the objective.********
*Bayonet the wounded?
** All your munni belong to us!
*** You will receive enough back for your can of “pensioners meatloaf” once a week, regardless of how much you tipped in.
**** They allowed the plebs to get some of their munni back..
***** Ponds institute catamites for big government are in favor of bug government getting more munni…
****** All your munni belong to us!
******* This is fine. Im ok with this. The Top men are going to plan this.
******** Submission: Its my money, sod off swampies.
I only have one life, Vicki, and not so much of that left, so I intend to travel with Hairy despite whatever might befall internationally.
Well dun, Lizzie, good luck with it! .. me. I’m not a traveller .. OS, since arriving in Oz, twice in 56 years .. enjoyed both but living out of a suitcase and that one horror I never factored in, the accomodation isn’t part of the airport set-up finished me off ..!
All those travel shows and plane one minute, sight seeing the next really conned me …..LOL!
Lizzie:
No Lizzie.
No to the Voice – not by stealth or by gradual steps.
Stop trying to meet the Left half way. It can’t be done.
Whatever result happens with the Voice, the Left refuse to see it as the end of the matter – they see it as the start of the next series of demands.
Your way will deliver exactly what they want, it will just take longer. Instead start dismantling the entire Aboriginal Industry.
$100,000,000/day is way too much for Australia to assuage your guilty conscience.
Musk’s order of escalation.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1627380454067142658/photo/1
Sounds like a special military operation.
Total defeat for the SMSF kulaks eh Jim?
Robert S
I think that might be around $9 billion a day, but it is still too much, particularly as the Voice will only add to the total.
Wife sitting beside old guy on plane. He travels the world visiting war torn countries. Stays at great hotels grateful of the business. At the time he had just been in Beirut 2 blocks from the fighting. Safe as houses he reckoned. The cost of flights was cheap normally compared to hotels but not when explosions are nearby. So off to the next place. Liverpool Western Sydney I think.
Vicki:
Good man. He’s probably a better shot than me.
Wasn’t it you that was saying you got a black and a white lamb last night?
I was pretty tired after missing my afternoon nap so I must have read it wrong.
Oops, lost a zero, $90 billion a day, near enough for government work.
Wasn’t it you that was saying you got a black and a white lamb last night?
I was pretty tired after missing my afternoon nap so I must have read it wrong.
Not me, Robert. No sheep on my place!
Submission: Its my money, sod off swampies.
They’re disgusting f’cking communists.
One disadvantage of travel (except on cruises) is there are no dance classes to attend to keep fit and trim. A friend of mine in Britain when I said this put me onto Mr. Motivator, who emerged as a phenomenon during lockdown.
Brief sessions anywhere, even tiny hotel rooms, with Mr. Motivator helped to keep me airport ready! He’s fun, and the moves are simple, so Cats who don’t exercise much might find his enthusiasm helpful as well as the moves easy.
Mr Albanese will be the first sitting Australian prime minister to march in the World Pride festival on February 25, he will be joined by foreign minister Penny Wong.
What a f’cking country.
Old Ozzie:
Now that was funny.
FACT-CHECK: FALSE.
Unless we are going to ‘spin off’ the nucular* tech into power production, there is nothing ‘nation building’ about producing weapons. The great myth that ‘WW2 got us out of the depression’ ignores the fact that the war ended the depression because the resultant factories and workers were put to productive use AFTER the war, not destructive use during it.
*Pro-tip: *never* trust anyone who mispronounces Nuclear as ‘nucular’ and vulnerable as ‘vun-rabble’.
The compost heap is a great leveller. A year or two (or less) and everything is dirt again.
We’ve travelled in some fairly perilous times before, so why stop now? Anyway, I joke to him, we are actually on the front line here at the entrance to the South Head on Sydney Harbour. Ideal spot for a missile or two to land from afar or from some Chinese sub. You couldn’t give property away here during the Second World War. lol.
We, too, have travelled near (or over) war zones – but we were young and silly then! But you are right – China gave us good warning when they fired that missile right over Sydney on 27/8 September 2021. We intend to be at the farm if hostilities break out & not on Sydney Harbour!
But, in truth Lizzie, we have travelled (as you and Hairy have) pretty much everywhere on this beautiful planet – or, at least, everywhere we have wanted to go. Africa, the Middle East, almost all of Europe, the Far East including China, the USA and many island nations. Much has eluded us of course – South America, Antarctica, and sadly, India ( but we have been to Sri Lanka) – which I would liked to have seen, but husband refused. So there it is. Our last trip (to wedding of husband’s godson in the South of France) included the Singapore Grand Prix on the way home – & I wouldn’t put out the possibility of another Grand Prix… who knows?
But, but the Chinese announced a big boost to the numbers at the Adelaide consulate just after we told them about our sub building program. What are they going to do ? Get on the Barossa reds ?
SO…we’re going to build nuke subs…?
But we can’t have nuclear power or a nuclear resource industry?
My god the Federal Government are corrupt mongs.
Heres a new drumbeat against superannuation…
All for the cause comrades?
Who seriously thinks Hairy palms or “sisterfondler 1980” actually consider their super options before comiting their crimes??
The parliamentary joint committee on law enforcement is today examining the law’s capabilities when it comes to child exploitation, with the Greens senator David Shoebridge questioning the Attorney General’s Department, Home Affairs and the Office of the eSafety Commissioner.
The Office of the eSafety Commissioner’s Toby Dagg has spoken about the growing awareness of the importance of local jurisdiction responses in this space.
Dagg confirmed that Twitter has no Australian staff the regulator can contact regarding child exploitation materials, while Microsoft takes an average of two days to respond to a complaint about child exploitation material such as livestreaming on Skype.
Convicted paedophiles are hiding their wealth & assets in Superannuation so abuse survivors can’t access compensation. Madeleine West gave powerful evidence this morning & joined the calls for change. The Federal govt must fix the law so abuse survivors can access compensation.
— David Shoebridge (@DavidShoebridge) February 20, 2023
This is nothing more than using a vile crime everyone hates to expand the ability of the government to access your super to pay fines they levy against you.
Heh, I see what you did there, lel.
ignores the fact that the war ended the depression because the resultant factories and workers were put to productive use AFTER the war, not destructive use during it.
In the case of the UK the depression was pretty much over before the war started. Interesting to contrast the US’s handling of the Depression versus the UK’s. The UK’s was much more “capitalist” than the US’s, they reduced tax, reduced red tape and reduced Government spending. In fact it put them in quite good shape for the war, manufacturing was in a strong rebound and was investing heavily in factory space and machinery.
The people running this country are absolutely third rate imbeciles. They have no idea about anything. This is self evident given the end to end major government f’ck ups of the last 50 years.
Not my guilty conscience. I’m voting NO. Made that clear.
The Preamble gambit is one that might convince many others to steer away from The Voice, the ninety million dollar horror. There is no doubt that many will simply tick it unless persuaded otherwise.
The Preamble requires nothing at all. And can’t be enforced, as it’s simply a statement of goodwill.
Best not made at all, but given where we are, a useful foil to The Voice.
One possibility might be to go for broke with NO on The Voice during a Referendum, but for the Libs to put forward a Preamble statement that they will introduce via legislation once in power. They could make hay about the difference between something legislated and something there for all time in the Constitution. There is no doubt that many voters want ‘something’ done re aboriginal remote communities and a straight No on The Voice, unless some alternative is offered, will not go down well.
Dismantling the silly rituals and flag waving etc is for later down the track, to be replaced by renewal/ removal policies for remote communities and removal of funding for urban fauxboriginal boondoggles. Now is not the time for refusal to acknowledge a problem in remote area. Albo will see to that. The Libs MUST present their own program for aboriginal advancement.
And after a few billion years, stardust.
A renewable system, methinks.
Pedophiles, terrorism, bigotry and disease.
“Sure buddy, take all of my rights away”
It’s really terrible that we sign up to the collectivist nonsense after some emotional nonsense.
Sure, someone gets sued after abusing a child.
They should be sued for the quantum of damages.
It isn’t a free for the government to pick over the bones of everyone else’s superannuation.
WE don’t get a choice if we want super or not!
I think they’re overplaying the extent of this evil child abusing mastermind cabal hiding assets, the legislation has been changed once before has it not? I find it hard to believe that ALL assets could have been pooled into it or that courts were ENTIRELY limited in making equitable orders, especially where trusts are constructed on grounds to defeat valid legal and equitable claims.
So I’m starting to think Dee Toadfish is a useful ALP idiot or grifter, after all she does a podcast with unpunished career criminal Gary Jubelin.
I’m sure there are people out there who have been abused, as children, or victims of crime otherwise, who don’t want their savings stolen in a State Bank of Victoria – Adelaide Nuclear Subsurface Canoe Subsidiary Corp financial collapse fiasco.
“free for all for the government….”
:frown:
Someone was talking the other day of the failings of economic models.
I was going to nitpick and make the point that the model may be perfectly valid (i.e. all the relationships within it are sound) but the inputs are off the charts silly.
For example, it would be hard to fudge the basic physics that hydro power generated is derived from the head height of water, volumes, apertures of inputs and size of generators etc.
However, the two key inputs which were no doubt fudged to make it add up were;
(a) the “too cheap to meter” price of renewball inputs to pump the water up the hill; and
(b) the spot prices for power output when you open the sluices.
It is the assumptions around (b) and what that would imply for broader power prices and reliability which interest me.
That is, if you are experiencing price spikes regularly enough and big enough to make Snowy 2.0 work financially, then it follows that the rest of the generation network has become horrendously expensive and/or unreliable.
But, as you say … top men.
I’ve been pondering the interactions between Malcom Roberts and The Bureaucracy during senate enquiries.
It is pretty clear from these interactions that The Bureaucracy, these fat cats with big titles and big pay packets, have absolutely no idea who they work for.
The hostility, the deceptive responses, the arrogance. When effectively the representative of their employer turns up to ask them questions.
I note in the CASA questioning that the dumb f’cks couldn’t organise to have the requested persons present. And that without hint of embarrassment, could talk about like a “rat up a drain pipe” over some medications, whilst “not my responsibility” over vaccines.
If Australian’s ever wake up….
3 years, no COVID.
Resources should be spent on testing all of us with no COVID to see:
1) did we have it & not know it?
2) is there something a lot of us have in common?
In an inquisitive society, questions like this would be asked.
I like Trump and I want him to win to punish the election cheats, but Rand Paul is the best choice.
Hopefully he runs in 2024 when Trump will likely be too old or just won’t be taken seriously.
Paul consistently supported Trump, he’s had a Democrat lunatic attack him, he’s simply the best choice for libertarians and conservatives.
What’s going to happen is Hawley (Republican Kamala) and Newsom will be put up by the machines.
Newsom will win.
Paul can win in 2028.
Will they be wearing matching mankinis?
(COUGH COUGH bern)
https://www.ldp.org.au/nsw_freedom
COVID Justice
We do not want the most bizarre, inhumane and pointless example of government over-reach in NSW history swept under the carpet. The risk of any “amnesty” is that we fail to learn the lessons when the next state-sponsored fear campaign comes along.
Using police and military, our leaders locked us down for months. They said they’d kindly release us when 80% were vaccinated. That morphed into 90% and then 95%. Almost everyone got vaccinated and most still caught COVID.
For months NSW Health has shown that hospital admissions, ICU and death rates for the unvaccinated, are very similar (if not lower) than those who’ve had COVID shots. There is still no explanation, and no inquiry, into the 19% increase in “all cause mortality.”
The NSW Liberal Democrats support a Parliamentary Inquiry into everything to do with the COVID response, including the extent of vaccine injuries.
At some point we’ll need a more powerful Royal Commission, but currently the major parties would only appoint their mates and set terms of reference to skew findings to say our COVID response was brilliant. Once the COVID fog has lifted we support a Royal Commission chaired by a commissioner who early on called out the hysteria (such as Dr Gigi Foster).
Good get!
The Libs MUST present their own program for aboriginal advancement.
The last two words should never appear together .. nearly 250 years and upteen billions of dollars to get no further forward …
the grifters who get on the soap boxes aren’t after “advancement” they are after more MONEY! .. FFS!
For those interested, there are lots of Mr. Motivator sessions, and they are available free on Youtube.
Exercise can save your life. Even a little bit can improve your health a lot.
Not everyone likes dance moves, but if you do, a little each day helps.
If you can stand, you can dance. And you are never too old.
You can f*k right of, Jim.
Note the careful insertion of “equitable and sustainable ” – removing the sole-benefit rules currently there – to maximise return. The ALP wants their hands on your super.
Time to open an SMSF if this goes any further.
Sinclair (PBUH) posted this on his blog for me over 10 years ago:
————————————————————
The following is very topical given the corruption of the union movement re: HSU and the prevalence of union-controlled “Industry Super funds”
John Leard, Australia, the Worst is Yet to Come, Ch 7, pp. 66-77.
“Superannuation or a Financial Power Play? The Unions are Taking Over Australia!” – 28th Jan, 1986
pp. 74-75 ‘The ACTU’s Real Motives’
———————————–
“There is grave doubt whether the whole thrust of the ACTU’s Superannuation deal is really in the interests of the members whose funds they will be administering.
It is interesting to quote from a paper delivered to the 1981 ALP Special National Conference. The following was a statement made in regard to Superannuation:
There you have it.
The real objective of these funds is not the welfare of the Australian people, nor the maximisation of returns for those who have entrusted their funds (albeit compulsorily) to union-controlled schemes, but to further the cause of Socialism in Australia and to give the unions and the Government increased political leverage.
If the average Australian will buy this, he has rocks in his head!”
————————
Now if we look at section 32C(6) of the amended. Superannuation Guarantee Administration Act 1992 (Cth):
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sga1992430/s32c.html
A contribution to a fund by an employer for the benefit of an employee is also made in compliance with the choice of fund requirements if the contribution, or a part of the contribution, is made under, or in accordance with:
(a) a pre-reform certified agreement; or
(b) an AWA; or
(c) a pre-reform AWA; or
(d) a collective agreement; or
(e) an old IR agreement; or
(f) an ITEA; or
(g) a workplace determination; or
(h) an enterprise agreement.
We all know that in a collective bargaining agreement, negotiations will be dominated by the employer and the union. The union will not give up their position in terms of bargaining power, nor will they allow individual agreements – or choice varying from their objectives. Unions nearly explicitly exist to disadvantage non members – let alone pricing marginal workers out of jobs and robbing their own rank and file blind.
Essentially what we have observed is that the unions helped to create superannuation – whether we are union members or not or want to invest in superannuation- but to advance socialism in Australia and not to “run funds only for the benefit of their members”.
This was predicted by John Leard over 26 years ago and stated as a goal of the ALP over 31 years ago.
132andBush:
And their children and dogs? What do they get?
New editions of Roald Dahl books, including Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, criticised by writers
Because it’s common for an ordinary women to be a top scientist – not just a scientist, a top scientist – this doesn’t sound clunky at all. They are also usually heads of state, multiple patent holders and superheroes, too. I think this should be added to give a complete picture of the upper range of what an ordinary woman could possibly be.
Riin Tamm is much smarter and useful to humanity than Sanna Marin.
Different countries anyway.
I like Trump and I want him to win to punish the election cheats, but Rand Paul is the best choice.
Good man but has the electoral appeal of the invisible man.
‘Why is it always the C-suite?’ (JP)
No advocating for ‘top woman plumber’, ‘top woman truck driver’ or ‘top woman builder’ ?
I think you’re right cohenite, part of it is the media (“progressive” “cathedral” media) know to ignore their greatest threats.
They couldn’t ignore Trump so they had to try to mock and slander him.
Top female fatberg clearance technician.
Lizzie:
Lizzie, apparently there’s a European brand of cow that is smallish, doesn’t require a huge paddock and give lots of milk that was common years ago for farms that didn’t run cows.
Do you know of it? For some reason or other the Dutch Islands Texel, and the Friesian islands come to mind even though the brand isn’t the Friesian cow.
:sideways eye emoji:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CfZBDpkonBT/?hl=en
aubreymarcus
Verified
Every year @fitforservice is in Sedona, @stefanossifandos and @christinehassler guide us through a process where the men bow at the feet of the women present. We bow for the thousands of years of disrespect and oppression of the feminine. We bow for our own unconscious participation in a system which has advantaged men. We bow for our own lapses and failures to acknowledge the divine feminine, within and without.
After a few minutes with our heads at their feet, the women start to weep. And then the tears flood into our own eyes, as we realize how deep the wounds run. Burning at the stake deep. No right to vote deep.
For the world to return to balance, the feminine wing of humanity needs to be restored to its full divine potentiation. I have said it many times before, to @bluofearth on stage, to my wife @Vylana, to every Goddess I meet like @emilystellafletcher @thelaylamartin @kellybroganmd @thepoetqueen @azryabequer —I will fight for them and support them with full heart, until my last breath. It’s the only thing that truly motivates me.
I made a post last week which some people interpreted as conflicting this ethos. It was painful to be misconstrued, but I also understand where I could have been more clear with my intention. First by acknowledging the context of a history of oppression we are all looking to correct. And also to encourage fighting FOR what you believe, while highlighting that with an issue of any degree of complexity this doesn’t mean fighting AGAINST those who believe differently. If the feminine wing and the masculine wing are busy fighting against each other, or the colored feathers are fighting against each other, the bird of humanity will fall from the sky and perish. That’s why I felt compelled to say something, not as a ‘centrist’ but as a human beseeching all humanity to elevate to the octave where we respect each polarity.
If we stay divided, we are all susceptible to both tyranny and cataclysm. When we come together, not by agreeing with each other, but by respecting the passion and fury of each other’s unique opinions, we are unstoppable. ?????
#divinefeminine
Edited · 33w
Top female fatberg clearance technician
Van Fatham, come on down!!!
“We want you to clear this fridges sized fatberg blocking the sewage pipe”
“Whats for second breakfast“…
The trainer wheels treasurer Chalmers, as great as Shane Wand has got a compass to know where to go with our Super. He doesn’t know while looking at the compass the needle points North whether you are going forwards, sideways or backwards. When your head is up Paul Keatings arse all you know is its dark.
NUP, the converse is true. If you are not sick, you do not have a disease – falsely diagnosing ‘COVID’ with overclocked PCRs was a key to the whole scam in the first place.
Refer to the above – *EVERYONE* got exposed to this, multiple times, the result ranged from ‘stopped at the gates’ to ‘asymptomatic infection’ to ‘ mild infection’ to serious/lethal infection’ … those of us who had no symptoms already had enough immune competence to defeat it easily – BUT – and this is KEY – we got an ‘antivirus update’ by having that contact. Eventually, we meet a variant that is sufficiently different to our library of immune defences, and get an infection (ranging from mild to lethal) – rinse and repeat.
We now know that you cant avoid a respiratory virus by avoiding it – you avoid it by having a competent, well exercised immune system which defeats it. The inputs to said competent immune system are also well known: healthy weight, avoid carbs, adequate sun exposure/vitamin D, avoidance of immunosuppressive meds (which are often given to ‘manage’ dietary and lifestyle illnesses.
On the Dahlbook revisionism..
Augustus Gloop is no longer fat. He’s enormous. And that’s sweet with me
Am I the only one whos mind went immediately to this?
(I memed)