Purgatory Canto 33, Gustave Dore, mid-1800s
Steve…. I’m sure that Cash dawg is lovely… but all he does is stand around, panting. Let me know if…
Open Thread – Tues 21 Feb 2023
- Open Thread – Mon 25 Nov 2024
- The more you gets the less you eats
- Open Thread – Weekend 23 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 21 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Mon 18 Nov 2024
Cash! Cash 2.0 Great Dane on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills 70
At 12, Jaiswal moved from rural Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai for cricket. He slept in tents and sold pani puri to earn…
It’s not commonly known, but Teslas use Righteous Electrickery (RE), so all is balanced with Gaia. Namaste.
I see scrolling down at his Cricinfo [age that Joe Burns made 108 not out for Italy vs. Romania. Forza…
Not to mention of dubious legality unless aspects of the treaty are legislated for.
Treaties are instruments of national states and/or international legal entities.
It’s self-evidently nonsensical.
Because it’s nothing about Aboriginal advancement- it’s to undermine Australia’s legitimacy as a nation state on behalf of the UN and other foreign interests.
Please.
No more cute owls. Enough.
That was not a cute owl. That was head prefect’s Pilates instructor.
Best derg in the world.
And a real pain in the neck. I miss my two horrors.
Aboriginal Tribes had their own languages and had adapted to their own particular environmental conditions.
For instance, the Aborigines from around Dalby don’t resemble the ones from around Maleny who don’t resemble the ones from around Cooktown etc.
So, yeah, they did have their own Nations with their own languages and their own distinctive physical appearance.
There was no Pan Aboriginality.
Just the same, the people sqwarking racism and focusing on Race are missing the forest for the trees and helping the Yes Case.
Remote areas of rural Tasmania in the C19th saw a lot of cohabitation between Irish settlers and local aboriginal people. Historians have pointed out how the material conditions of existence weren’t all that different, with Irish men learning hunting and the women learning about native foods, and aboriginal people learning settlement and rudimentary farming. Neither had much in the way of Western technology beyond the Irish having iron tools that were hard to come by, including a cooking pot.
Much of what I saw in the 1970’s in rural Australia while visiting some ‘aboriginal’ towns such as Dubbo, Wellington, Brewarrina, was a working class culture of itinerant labourers, black and white and brindle as they would say, which became the ‘aboriginal’ culture of ‘mobs’ that we see today. It was essentially what anthropologists describe finding world-wide as ‘a culture of poverty’ with its own signifiers, symbols, language elements and reliance on an extended kinship system of ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’. Nothing particularly aboriginal about it, as the white population also expressed it in exactly the same way. It may be that earlier ‘classificatory’ systems of aboriginal kinship survived as cultural remnants, which ensured these terms remained in popular usage for the utility that they had during itinerant labour as an ‘insurance’ against hard times when kin could be leaned on to be ‘helpful’. It’s a pretty degraded system of parasitism now though, keeping aspirational savings from growing due to the demands of those claiming ‘traditional’ rights.
Most working class families of my generation can recall numerous classificatory Aunties and Uncles, who were often local neighbours. It was one of these ‘Uncles’ who got me and Big Sis our garage to live in for two pounds a week. He knew we couldn’t go back home. I had three ‘aunties’ in our Housing Commission street, for example, when I was under ten. Then, as a single parent living in the 70’s living in the old working-class area of Leichhardt, the elderly lady next door (always in her greasy apron, bless her) who offered to ‘keep an eye on’ my kids after school was automatically ‘Auntie’. Go into Auntie Merle’s if I’m not home, I’d say. They walked home from primary school alone, as kids did back then. No car pick ups or ‘walking trains’.
Those kids of yours that had to stay with strangers because you were out working and the house was locked up:
Did they ever express any anger at your never being at home, Lizzie?
Smart move. Support is dwindling, but go too early and he risks a backlash. Wait until it’s closer and question the detail to further escalate the doubts. It has to be on detail, not principle, which has wider support, albeit undeservedly.
Colonel Crispin Berka says:
February 22, 2023 at 6:21 pm
OldOzzie penned:
Someone wanted the full transcript of Putin’s speech yesterday?
Yep, me.
Can be read in full here:
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/70565
Yep I already linked to that. It was not a full transcript when I read that yesterday.
Right now it *still* says “To be continued” as the last line, so they still haven’t finished translating the whole speech.
Worth a read without MSM propaganda
True.
Colonel & DrBeauGan,
Try – https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2023/02/putins-presidential-address-to-russias-federation-assembly-in-full.html
It has to be on detail, not principle, which has wider support, albeit undeservedly.
There’s no Principle involved.
The intent of the writers of our Constitution was that there be no Kings in Australia, elected or otherwise.
Changing the Constitution to allow a Political Party to create a 3rd House of Parliament with the Powers of a King is no different to appointing a King with all the Powers that a King has.
Bruce’s response to his situation is quite surprising. A young bloke having been publicly excoriated, denigrated, labelled a rapist, and with his infamy used to prosecute a second campaign against the Libs, you would expect him to be a broken man retreating into anonymity but instead he seems to be going on the offensive.
Has he been taken under the wing of some people giving him encouragement and guidance?
“Bruce’s response to his situation is quite surprising. A young bloke having been publicly excoriated, denigrated, labelled a rapist, and with his infamy used to prosecute a second campaign against the Libs, you would expect him to be a broken man retreating into anonymity but instead he seems to be going on the offensive.”
From what I know, he is broken, but he remains determined.
Has he been taken under the wing of some people giving him encouragement and guidance?
Yes.
That must have been some line of gluten groogs snorted up…,
The Moon, Venus and ?Mars against the setting sun looks spectacular tonight.
Has he been taken under the wing of some people giving him encouragement and guidance?
Yeah, sort of.
CBS execs are gonna fold at the Mediation prior to his Defamation Hearing.
Bingo!
Instant Multimillionaire.
Higgins only got $576,000 for her ordeal.
Because it’s nothing about Aboriginal advancement- it’s to undermine Australia’s legitimacy as a nation state on behalf of the UN and other foreign interests.
Aboriginals should be asking themselves how long they would last in the UN special interest meat grinder, once they’ve served their purpose.
Just remember that these are the same people pushing for radical population reduction. I don’t believe they think they will achieve that without “breaking some eggs”.
Very good surfing in Durban.
The Durban local said they now are pumping untreated effluent straight into the ocean because the infrastructure hasn’t been maintained.
Epic levels of sharkiness to ensue.
Avoid the harbour prawns then.
Old news
https://www.news24.com/News24/Sewage-blamed-for-shark-attack-20090127
(2009)
The full Corn Pop story.
https://twitter.com/dom_lucre/status/1628168595548020736?s=20
Keep getting extreme heat warnings from the BOM via the weather application. It hit 20C today.
Not so old.
He said the stink was so bad last week he booked his tickets to Oz.
Pete Smith makes excellent points.
The vast majority of people who identify as aboriginal are indistinguishable from the general Anglo celtic population in culture and appearance.
It’s too late for a treaty.
Same reason Catallaxy is so sharky.
THis ROBODEBT scandal just keeps getting worse .. apparently, Stuart Roberts, when minister, advised that ROBODEBT was, very likely, illegal used words to the effect, “Not too worry it only affects a minority of people so keep it going” ..
In a just world .. Roberts, ‘turgid”, Porter & BRADBURY would all be on remand awaiting trial .. people died .. FFS! .. all pensions/salaries stripped but being Oz they’ll sleep soundly knowing it’ll all blow over and their jobs/directorships will be unaffected .. maybe, just maybe, a coupla public serpents might end up in the naughty corner ….. but that’ll be it .. several million dollars wasted on a ‘feel good” enquiry .. FMD!
This Guy writes an excllent blog
In The Spirit Of Russian ‘Total War’
An exploration of how Russia’s warfighting doctrine differs from the West.
Simplicius The Thinker
There’s an inherent misconception about the conceptual differences between Soviet/Russian military systems (read: weapons) and those of NATO/Western equivalents. Endless debate has been made not only about which side’s weapons are ‘better’, but the doctrinal purpose behind their respective philosophies.
The most inane of these debates revolve around the reductive arguments that Russian weapons are made ‘to be mass-produced’ and ‘cheap’, like some chintzy dollar-store toy, while Western weapons are made to be high-value, advanced, but prohibitively expensive, complexes. This is often supported with the usual assortment of examples, like mass-produced Russian tanks in WW2 getting killed in 10:1 ratios against the much more advanced but fewer in number German tanks. And a generous handful of mis-attributed quotes is then sprinkled in to justify this view. Like Stalin’s purported “quantity has a quality of its own”, etc., not to mention the tired references to Soviet ‘human wave’ tactics.
One of the problems with this framing is that it indirectly, and erroneously, aims to suggest that Russian doctrine has always treated soldiers as ‘cannon fodder’, and lives were never important to Russian commanders; so believing that weapons systems were manufactured around that faulty premise is a natural extension of this fallacy. To wit, the belief that Russian weapons are designed with the barbarically callous philosophy that soldiers’ lives are expendable.
There is a very basic and often eye-opening way of reframing this miscomprehension:
Russian weapons are made with the doctrinal purpose and philosophy known as: Total War. Whereas, Western weapons are made for ‘limited’ war.
Surprisingly (or not), this is a concept quite alien to the standard Western nous; their countries were never involved in a civilizational, existential war of extinction. That’s not to denigrate the acknowledged valor of their own heroes, but simply to aver that, by and large, America’s involvement in major conflicts has never been of an ‘existential’ nature, but rather one of opportunity or—if you choose to parse it that way—support for some allied cause. But America itself was never in danger of total annihilation, its people never faced with complete genocide or enslavement.
In Western thinking, large exclusively professional armies of contract troops can afford the luxury of more ‘complex’ systems, which take longer to learn, longer to set up and use, etc., mostly because those systems are destined for scenarios where various luxuries afford their usage within the prescribed boundaries of a limited conflict. But in the paradigm of ‘Total War’, a system must be one that can be picked up and learned quickly by new conscripts in a scenario where a lot of the more experienced ‘professional’ force might have already perished in a protracted peer conflict.
This, as explained earlier, is not an admission that soldiers’ lives are ‘expendable’—it’s the principled understanding of the reality of how existential conflicts play out. We are seeing the ramifications of this unfold presently on the world stage: the West, which has no such concept, seethes in bewilderment that all their munitions have already run dry. Mentioned in our previous report, even during the brief Libya flare-up, NATO had begun to scrape the barrel’s bottom of critical munitions; and now, all of Europe combined, cannot scrounge enough monthly shells to satisfy the infernal hungers of a single day of, what is for Ukraine, an existential style clash.
In this proposed concept of ‘Total War’, only weapons which privilege absolute practicality of use, and can be produced for long term sustainment, are fit for procurement and mass-production.
Case in point, in Ukraine we’ve now been audience to a year’s worth of stories about how utterly impractical, un-ergonomic, and often useless—in real battle conditions—the American FGM-148 Javelin has been. Too heavy to tote around in the light-mobile and maneuvering style fighting often favored, too finicky in its complex electronics and systems of batteries and startup initiations, which often fail. Too sophisticated in the targeting and engagement procedure, which the U.S. Army itself acknowledged was the chief culprit of the vast majority of Javelin failures in real combat, for their own troops (U.S. Army found Iraq, Afghanistan).
For instance, take this official Fort Benning army report, where they found that in their studied engagements between the BGM-71 TOW, FGM-148 Javelin, and AT-4, the effective percentage of engagement was a whopping 19%.
Case in point, in Ukraine we’ve now been audience to a year’s worth of stories about how utterly impractical, un-ergonomic, and often useless—in real battle conditions—the American FGM-148 Javelin has been. Too heavy to tote around in the light-mobile and maneuvering style fighting often favored, too finicky in its complex electronics and systems of batteries and startup initiations, which often fail. Too sophisticated in the targeting and engagement procedure, which the U.S. Army itself acknowledged was the chief culprit of the vast majority of Javelin failures in real combat, for their own troops (U.S. Army found Iraq, Afghanistan).
For instance, take this official Fort Benning army report, where they found that in their studied engagements between the BGM-71 TOW, FGM-148 Javelin, and AT-4, the effective percentage of engagement was a whopping 19%.
This captured UA POW shares a risibly revealing tale, in which one Javelin—fragile, over-designed queen that it is—broke just getting it out of the car; and the second was unceremoniously dumped after they couldn’t figure out how to use it.
For instance, a much smaller, lighter, and versatile Russian RPG series weapon (RPG-28/32, etc.) can be fired almost instantly, without long preparation time and worrying about ‘internal batteries booting up’ properly. Can be used against both troops or armor, giving it versatility. A large, heavy Javelin, tediously lugged around can only be used against armor, and even that in a limited fashion, as the byzantine set of engagement protocols give it a much narrower set of realistic engagement allowances—which was the culprit behind the 19% success rates quoted earlier.
It’s not an all or nothing debate—the point is, the Javelin is a high-tech and impressive piece of kit, and can be a fantastic tool from time to time, when the narrow set of circumstances it works in present themselves; but there’s a reason that troops from both sides of the current conflict were said to often dump their Javelins in exchange for Russian variants instead, for the sake of ease of use and versatility in combat; the Javelin proved clunky and unwieldy in real ‘run-and-gun’ situations.
Take the example of Russian light and heavy armor. Reflections of its design philosophy are seen in the autoloader, which allows a crew of 3, versus the cumbersome 4-crewed monstrosities of the Western MBT variety. The increase in utility and coordination allows faster adoption and mastery by new recruits. And while it may seem the autoloader is antithetical to the above stated philosophy, the simplistic, bare industrial design of the Soviet autoloaders ensures their fluid continuity of operation.
Not all autoloaders are made equal; for instance, compare a German PhZ-2000 system to that of comparable Russian ones—much more complex and prone to break-down.
Ultimately, it’s hard to imagine how, with a straight face, some Westerners can accuse Russia of being incapable of proper supply/logistics operations, yet in the same breath bemoan that it expends more shells per day than the entire Western military bloc is able to produce in a month.
Do you know what level of sheer organizational prowess lies behind the ability to efficiently resupply 60,000+ shells per day, day in and day out? The operation is incalculably massive; and since we still hear the daily screechings from the West about Russia’s shell overmatch, it can only mean they’re competently fulfilling all logistical demands, with or without the fancy Heavy-High-Mobility-Advanced-Mine-Resistant-Palletized-Auto-Crane-2000 Lockheed money-sink boondoggle robotic jib arm.
In fact, few are aware that Russian, for instance, has launched more cruise missiles in the first year of the Ukraine conflict than U.S. has launched of its famed ‘Tomahawks’ in the entirety of the Tomahawk’s four decades’ lifespan.
Back in August, Zelensky admitted Russia has launched over 3,500 missiles thus far, and since then Russia has only upped the intensity, which means by this point the count is likely over 5,000.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has launched a total of 802 Tomahawks during the entirety of the 2003+ Iraq War, and around 2,300 total since the Tomahawk’s inception in the early 80’s.
The point made is one of sustainment, production, and manufacturing power. The Western powers like to scoff and balk, or jeer at ‘the gas station masquerading as a country’, but in actuality Russia’s commitment to the ‘Total War’ principle has enabled it to eclipse Western manufacturing potential in many key areas, which is exemplified by the munitions spent.
I hear they give ALP Life Memberships for Effluent Pumping into clean environments.
If you’re minted, I have no idea why you’d stay in SA.
MiltonF, I can’t stand canbra either but family takes precedence.
From the Oz – Rachel Perkins will be devastated if the voice fails at referendum, and doesn’t know how she will ever recover from the rejection….
Seppuku would work.
A couple of weeks back I posted about a fellow I know who had a DVO taken out against him based on a pack of lies his ex said (even her new partner said nothing happened).
Anyway, this week he was arrested because his ex said he breached the DVO by turning up at her house.
He didn’t & when the plod turned up to his home he offered to show them his data that would show he was no where near the ex-wifes home.
They said it didn’t matter & took him in.
He was held overnight before his lawyer could get him out by showing a magistrate the data & a social media post while he was meant to be harassing the ex.
All things the plod could have checked before arresting him.
What a totally screwed up system.
Ed Casesays:
February 22, 2023 at 7:11 pm
Bruce Lehrmann to write a tell-all BOOK about his experience on trial for allegedly raping Brittany Higgins – as he reveals his next career move
Bruce Lehrmann set to write tell-all book about his life
The former staffer has met with journalist Andrew Urban
Isn’t this the Obama scenario?
Pocket a 7 figure cheque for a book written by someone else that no one bought?
Get a little closer to home, Richard Cranium.
This is the Mizzz Knickerless scenario.
Fair enough Ranga
Amazing how Biden’s art dealer tells a House committee to jam it & nothing happens.
A bit different to when people told a certain House committee last year to jam it. The Capitol police couldn’t wait to arrest people back then.
Wonder what changed.
Richard Cranium
Higgins only got $576,000 for her ordeal.
Please provide a reference for this figure *(not one of your own comments).
And don’t forget to tell us the “real” reason that Tudge’s ex-staffer got $576,000.
PS, don’t forget to add i Mizzzz Knickerless’s book deal.
“All things the plod could have checked before arresting him.
What a totally screwed up system.”
They gotta “believe all women”.
Toxic femininity.
bern at 8.56:
Excellent get.
I think I know who the ‘bad dude’ was, and it wasn’t Corn Pop.
I know a bloke what knows a bloke, whose wife was trying to fit him up, with allegations of domestic violence, designed to soften him up, while she did a property settlement. On the date of one incident, which she remembered so clearly – it was her birthday – unit records showed he was on the other side of Australia at the time…..
Didn’t the court allow her to “review her memory” & realise she had been mistaken re the date?
That’s how I’ve seen it handled when she makes what you’d think was a first-class “birthday” blooper.
They all have their own personalities. One of ours just mooches around and is as clumsy as all get out, but is the one who cuts loose at zoomie time. The other is extremely agile and prances like a Spanish Riding School stallion when out for a walk. But before we get out the door he is not so dignified. When I get the leads out and call, he bolts into the entrance hall, lays flat on his tummy, back legs stretched out behind, tail helicoptering, front paws drumming alternately on the floor and the head doing a passable impression of Animal, the drummer from the muppets.
I have no idea what it all means either.
The 13 year 3 months with my Weimaraner were the best years of my life.
I don’t understand people who don’t love dogs.
I think I know who the ‘bad dude’ was, and it wasn’t Corn Pop.
Biden has some real issues.
I wonder what happened to him as a kid.
He has a real nasty streak.
Even that old lesbian Paul Kelly wrote a very good piece in the Oz today demonstrating the stupidity of the Albanese voice plan.
And then you’ve got the learner treasurer wanting to raid super – always a dream of the left with the union dominated industry funds. Smarter labor people knew to steer clear of that folly.
But the best of all is the insane Bowen – the climate crusader. Leak has nailed him with the propellor head. Just needs to portray him with the Thunberg plaits hanging off those labor ears.
Tennis Albo can swan around in the skinny pants with his plywood spitting teeth but the punters are gradually waking up to the bullshit
Update on Chris Smith ex 2GB from Daily Telegraph. TNT radio has a lot of interviews with the Dr’s speaking against mandates and vax etc. Some of the hosts are in Oz but others are in Ireland and USA. It is 24/7. Can listen via Spotify etc.
Broadcaster Chris Smith has found new work as a presenter with online talkback station TNT Radio two months after he lost his gigs with Sky News Australia and 2GB in the wake of allegations of inappropriate behaviour.
Smith made the announcement on social media Wednesday afternoon, saying, “a new job, a new start, a whole new opportunity.”
He will host the 3pm to 5pm shift from Monday to Friday, starting next week.
“It is not just a new job,” Smith told The Daily Telegraph.
“I have delved deeper than ever before on why I self sabotage with the help of rehab, psychiatrists and psychologists, plus I have given up the grog completely.
Wow, Daily Tele has 7 “sports” stories under heading Insight Sport. These are their titles :
Cricket – A**holes say I’m a lesbian ‘because all cricketers are gay’
Rugby – Torture behind rugby star’s love: A family torn apart (lesbians)
Soccer – Why Matilda waited 10 years to come out
Soccer – ‘Pride’ is more than just colours on a jersey
Volleyball – Sydney Olympic champ reveals fears of being a gay athlete
Basketball – Opals legend: Hiding sexuality cost me a World Cup spot
Summary above – Eradicating homophobia in sport ‘unrealistic’
I guess it must be pride month.
For those on Twitter check out Daily Telegraph for the Sydney large street mural featuring guy in bondage gear with teddy bear mask. Twitter not impressed.
The V-anons on the vk-chans tell me V has dropped another krumb!
The mysterious ‘V’ now addresses his “colleagues” in “business”. [3/4 way down page]
;-D
Totally suss.
As Cassie says, if a dog is out of control, look to the owner.
Thanks old ozzie.
Hunter Asks Dad To Pick Up His Paycheck As Long As He’s In Kyiv
KYIV — President Biden paid a visit to Ukraine to reaffirm America’s unwavering commitment to the country’s democracy, sovereignty, and military-industrial complex while also picking up a few things Hunter asked about, including his paycheck.
The Babylon Bee has acquired a recording of the exchange between Biden and his adolescent son, Hunter, just before the trip:
HUNTER: Yo, Pops, how’s it hangin’?
BIG GUY: Eh? What now? Which kid are you?
HUNTER: Hilarious, Dad. Hey, can you pick up my paycheck while you’re in Kyiv? I’m swamped this week. *SNORT* Big art show coming up. *SNORT*
BIG GUY: Sure thing, Herman.
HUNTER: Thanks, Dad, you’re the best. Also, I have a package waiting for me there. Could you pick that up too?
BIG GUY: Squirrel wizard.
HUNTER: K, cool. Brown paper package. Guy named Borysko the Blade has it.
BIG GUY: Baboonsky the Bard. Got it.
HUNTER: Just go to the address written in your notebook —
BIG GUY: Yum
HUNTER: Stop eating it; you need that address.
BIG GUY: Papa hungry. NURSE!
HUNTER: One more thing I need you to pick up. A busload of, um, ladies of the night.
BIG GUY: Janitorial staff?
HUNTER: No, bawdy tarts.
BIG GUY: Fruit snacks?
HUNTER: Forbidden women. Brazen hussies.
BIG GUY: Oh, town girls? Gotcha. Atta boy, son. Smartest guy I know.
At publishing time, Air Force One’s return flight had been delayed while President Biden waited for Zelensky to sign his son’s paycheck.
The Morning Briefing: Unease Over Biden’s Proxy Quagmire in Ukraine Is Growing
Joe Biden’s pathetic and expensive photo-op trip to Ukraine has really opened the floodgates for opinions on whatever it is we are doing there.
I mentioned a couple of times last year that I wasn’t writing about the Ukraine situation because foreign affairs and policy aren’t areas of expertise for me. I’m a domestic politics kind of guy. Still, I read about the situation and, from the beginning, felt weird about the seemingly bipartisan cheerleading that was going on for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The pop idol treatment during wartime was off-putting. My misgivings about the situation weren’t helped by the fact that Zelenskyy was lapping it up.
The lack of clarity on exactly what America’s priorities are there has bothered me all along as well. Yeah, we want to help. But how much and for how long? After all, this country has had some rough history when it comes to getting involved in wars when our intentions are vague.
I’ve had more than one conservative friend tell me that we should be doing everything we can to support Ukraine. I remained uncomfortable.
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that I am not alone.
Athena wrote something about all of this yesterday, and her opening paragraph got a long-distance high five from me:
I know we’re not supposed to say this in polite company, but not all of us are on board with the blind, headlong race to empty U.S. coffers and armories into a Northern European country that is not particularly important to our interests abroad. Many Americans are more than a little tired of borrowing billion of dollars from China to send to Big Global’s latest infatuation, Ukraine, with no oversight and no end in sight.
And while Leftists are swooning over Bumbling Biden’s appearance in Kyiv to casually announce he’s tossing in another half bil, plenty of people are actually more angry than impressed.
How much more are we supposed to pay for this, we wonder, and why isn’t Biden visiting the actual Americans in East Palestine, Ohio, who are in a crisis of their own?
It’s always dangerous to ask, “How much?” when the Democrats are throwing around taxpayer dollars. They reject limitations when it comes to other people’s money.
Athena then chronicles a recent rant by Blaze Media’s Steve Deace, which featured this gem of a line: “…this is a Habsburg Dynasty pissing contest over a strip of land most people can’t find, don’t care about, has no strategic value to anybody within the sound of my voice unless they’re involved in investing money with Hunter Biden.”
And the United States of America is remaining close enough to the contest to get the mess blown all over us.
Many in politics and the media were fond of calling the United States military presences in Iraq and Afghanistan “quagmires,” because they were reminiscent of our flailing in Vietnam. We may not yet have troops in Ukraine, but Biden’s open-ended financial commitment to keeping his bromance with Zelenskyy going has a quagmire vibe to it.
Athena mentioned that Biden has yet to visit East Palestine, Ohio amid its disaster. Kira writes over at RedState that the town’s mayor felt that was a “slap in the face.”
Hey, why visit suffering Americans in an area with a lot of Republicans when he can pretend to be Douglas MacArthur while meeting with a world leader who dresses like he gets nothing but Gap gift cards for Christmas every year?
This country is barely beginning to snap out of its pandemic malaise. It would be super nice to not have to deal with World War III anytime soon.
Appalling Mole’s vile indiscretion earlier today seems to have triggered the world of vile.
I’ve been sent (by someone who obviously hates me) a link to a news.com.au piece that is presumably trying to normalise a thing called “iglooing”.
In fine Dirty Digger style, after the lede, Newscorpse leaves it for the puzzled to Goggle the detail of this charming – and apparently traditionally Alphabetty – practice.
The Poot seems to have a point: the West appears to have fallen.
February 22, 2023
Social Security is Broke, but American Taxpayers Just Gave Ukrainian Pensioners a Double-Digit Raise
As American taxpayers paying into Social Security today stare down the barrel toward substantial cuts to their own benefits, estimated to take place in 2034, they can at least take solace in knowing that all categories of Ukrainian pensioners will get a 20% raise in March 2023. “As early as this March,” says Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, “the government will index pensions by 20%” for about 10 million Ukrainians.
Indexing the payments “is not mandatory according to the Law of Ukraine on the State Budget for 2023,” but benevolent President Zelensky has instructed them to reprice the benefits upwards anyway.
And why wouldn’t he? His government is swimming in American cash.
Americans have spent more than $100 billion on aid to Ukraine. And, as the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian government is undoubtedly well aware, money is fungible.
This is an example of a common shell game that politicians love to play with the rubes when it comes to government spending. The Ukrainian government could have certainly diverted government spending from its pension outlays toward its own national defense in a time of war while calling for foreign aid to support its pension program, and the fiscal effect might have largely been the same.
It’s just more politically defensible for Ukraine to continue paying uninterrupted pensions while demanding that massive amounts of foreign aid are needed to finance its national defense.
And now, because Ukraine’s government no longer has to spend its own money on its own national defense, it has plenty of money to give generous raises to Ukrainian pensioners.
But we all know that few Americans would have signed on to billions in foreign aid if the impetus was to preserve Ukraine’s pension infrastructure. What’s truly amazing, though, is that Joe Biden and the media are just coming right out and saying exactly that — the government is using your money to pay Ukraine’s obligations to ten million of its pensioners. American aid to Ukraine, Biden says, is “going to allow pensions and social support to be paid to the Ukrainian people.”
One might think that senile Joe is just saying the quiet part out loud by directly telling us that our dollars are being sent overseas to pay for a corrupt government pension system and to support its vast welfare system. That’s possible, but not likely.
What is incredibly disheartening is that it’s far more likely that he and his handlers meant for him to say exactly what he said, because they simply don’t have any fear of the electorate’s response anymore.
They know we won’t like it, but in the eyes of the ruling class in Washington, we Americans are just too sedated, ignorant, and powerless to do anything about it.
How would the average American feel about paying billions of dollars to support Ukrainian pensioners, after all?
America Errs In Viewing Ukraine As A Template For Taiwan
A few days ago, on several internet news sites, a bone-chilling claim appeared: The U.S. is looking to the Ukraine war to shape its planning for the coming conflict with China over Taiwan.
This is completely wrong because there is no connection between events in Ukraine and a possible Chinese assault on Taiwan.
The comparison between current events in Ukraine and possible future events in Taiwan has been common practically since the Ukraine conflict began.
Less than a year later, News published an article entitled, “How Ukraine war has shaped US planning for a China conflict“: “As the war rages on in Ukraine, the United States is doing more than supporting an ally. It’s learning lessons — with an eye toward a possible future clash with China.”
Reading these articles, one must ask whether our military “experts” have a realistic grasp of the coming battle of Taiwan? I doubt it.
Apparently, “US officials” imagine that Chairman Xi is channeling Gen. Robert E. Lee and intends to reenact Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg by charging across the Taiwan Strait, in the same way that Russian President Vladimir Putin reenacted it with his infantry and armor against Kiev.
Given the comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan, many are asking what Biden would do if China did attack Taiwan. (See, e.g., this Newsmax article.) People who ask this question don’t understand the tempo of the coming Chinese attack. By the time Biden learns about the attack, Taiwan will have surrendered.
The scenario for the Chinese attack is clear. In war, as in love, timing is everything.
First, it’s true that, if an attack occurs, the Chinese will choose Biden’s administration to do it, and that’s true whether because they perceive Biden as pitifully weak or because they’re making good on their investment in Hunter Biden. The attack must seize the island quickly and with minimum damage to the people or infrastructure. It will occur at high noon on a bright summer day.
The attack will proceed in five stages:
(1) A massive cyber assault creates chaos in Taiwan’s computer systems.
(2) The cyber assault clears the road for a missile carrying the low-yield nuclear device that will detonate in the sky above Taiwan. In the bright sunlight at high noon, most people won’t notice the EMP attack. They will only notice that their phones are dead. Every computer chip on the island that has not been armored against an EMP strike will be fried. Taiwan will have no tanks, no trucks, no airplanes, no ground-to-air missiles, no communications. Surrender will be the only option.
(3) A white Chicom helicopter flying dozens of white flags lands on Taiwan, and China presents its offer to accept a bloodless surrender.
(4) The surrender is executed.
(5) Chicom forces land on the beach and drive into Taipei.
A war that begins in the wee hours of Eastern Standard Time will be a fait accompli long before Biden wakes up enough to understand what happened. There will likely be no Chinese boots on Taiwan soil until the Taiwan surrender, which will be mere hours after hostilities begin.
Bullshit. It will be a bloodbath.
“Home by Christmas”
“It’s no use in fighting Putin”
“It’s no use in fighting XI”
What’s next?
“It’s no use in fighting Kim”
You’re not a real conservative until you hate your own country, become a full blown tankie and support the CPC, Juche and KGB Colonel, right?
Cracks In Italy’s Right-Wing Coalition Grow After Berlusconi Blasts Meloni For Meeting With Zelensky
The three leaders of Italy’s coalition partners hold vastly differing views on how best to tackle the war in Ukraine. Do these views complement each other, or are cracks in the right-wing alliance starting to show?
Silvio Berlusconi may belong to Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing governing coalition, but on the issue of Ukraine, the two are gravely at odds, with their differing views on Ukraine’s leader and how involved Italy should be in the conflict spilling out into sharply critical public statements.
Sympathetic to Russia long before the conflict in Ukraine erupted last February, outspoken former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi recently publicly criticized the Italian prime minister’s decision to side with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“If I had been premier, I would never have gone to speak to Zelensky,” the leader of Meloni’s coalition partner Forza Italia told Italian media after voting in the regional elections won by the right-wing coalition. Instead of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he blamed the Ukrainian president for the continuing conflict across the country.
“It would have been enough if he had stopped attacking the two autonomous republics of Donbas, but this never would have happened, so I judge the behavior of this gentleman very, very, very negatively,” Berlusconi added.
The issue of Ukraine has long been a sticking point within the coalition, with political analysts stating that it was one of the most divisive issues facing the government when it first formed.
“You know you can count on our loyal support for the cause of freedom,” newly elected Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shortly after her electoral success in September last year.
Five months on, she repeated this pledge during a visit to the Polish capital of Warsaw on Monday ahead of her trip to Kyiv, insisting Italy’s humanitarian, financial, and military support for the country fighting back against Russian aggression for close to a year now will continue.
Meloni leads the Brothers of Italy (FdI) which is the largest party in the Italian coalition government. While she continues to toe the line expected of “mainstream” European leaders and pledges unwavering support for Zelensky, primarily in a bid to be accepted by Western counterparts initially dubious about her electoral victory, her coalition partners have shown considerably less enthusiasm for the Ukrainian question, as recent public remarks demonstrate.
When asked by a journalist off camera whether he supported his prime minister’s view that an appropriate peace agreement can only be reached in Ukraine if both sides are equally equipped militarily, Berlusconi replied, “No,” and called for U.S. President Joe Biden to create a Marshall Plan to rebuild Ukraine on the condition of an immediate cease-fire. The original Marshall Plan saw the U.S. provide European nations with long-term loans to rebuild their infrastructure and stimulate their economies in the aftermath of World War II.
“The American President should take Zelensky aside and say, ‘I am willing at the end of the war to create a Marshall Plan to rebuild Ukraine. A Marshall plan of 6, 7, 8, 9 billion dollars on one condition, that you order a cease-fire tomorrow, because as of tomorrow we will not give you any more dollars and we won’t give you any more arms.’ Only something like that will convince this gentleman to agree to a cease-fire,” Berlusconi added.
It is worth noting that Berlusconi is a long-time acquaintance of the Russian president. In October, the Forza Italia leader revealed the pair had exchanged “lovely letters” despite the ongoing war in Ukraine, and Putin had sent him 20 bottles of vodka for his birthday. He was reportedly told by Putin in one such letter that he was the Russian leader’s “number one among his five best friends.”
Where does Salvini stand?
While Meloni and Berlusconi appear to be, publicly at least, at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to Ukraine, the third major player in the right-wing coalition is somewhere in the middle. Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League party whose core voter support fled to Giorgia Meloni in the last election after an underwhelming stint in government, has frequently criticized the Western response to the war in Ukraine, and while the right-wing firebrand reportedly has ties to Russia, he has refrained from making any public statements as bold as Berlusconi’s.
Salvini’s position could be considered to be in alignment with European leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has long been a public opponent of anti-Russian sanctions that impact negatively on the lives of Europeans.
“At first I thought we just shot ourselves in the foot, but now it seems that the European economy shot itself in the lung, and that’s why it is now gasping for air,” Orbán said of the Western approach to Russian sanctions in July last year, and he has not changed his viewpoint.
An Unexpected Insight (for the Élite): The U.S. May Be the Biggest Loser in the War on Russia
Alastair Crooke
Where does Europe go in the wake of the Nord Stream allegations? It is hard to see a Germany-dominated Europe diverging far from Washington.
“NATO has never been stronger; Russia is a global Pariah; and the world remains inspired by Ukrainian bravery and resilience; in short, Russia has lost, Russia has lost strategically, operationally and tactically – and they are paying an enormous price on the battlefield”.
He, (General Mark Milley, U.S. Chief of Defence Staff) doesn’t believe a word of that. We know that he doesn’t believe it because, two months ago, he said the exact opposite – until he was chastised by the White House for straying off the Joe Biden message. Now he is back, playing on ‘Team’.
Zelensky likely also doesn’t believe the word of the recent European promise of tanks and aircraft – and he knows it to be mostly a chimera. But he plays on Team. A few extra tanks will make no difference on the ground, and his fifth mobilisation is being resisted at home. The European militaries are waiting-out this episode, their armouries running on ‘reserve tank’.
Zelensky repeatedly says he must have tanks and planes by August to sandbag his haemorrhaging defences. But contradictorily Zelensky is warned, It’s critical; “make significant gains on the battlefield” now – as it is the Administration’s “very strong view” that it will be harder thereafter, to obtain Congressional support (i.e. August is past time; it will be too late).
Clearly the U.S. is preparing the ground for a Spring ‘Victory Announcement’ – as Milley’s delusional comments foreshadow – and a pivot – just a whisker ahead of the U.S. Presidential Election calendar kick-off.
The ‘narrative’ in the MSM has already begun to transition to that of a coming crushing Russian offensive – and of heroic Ukrainian resistance overwhelmed by crushing force.
But then Seymour Hersh finally says out loud, an unspoken harsh reality – one with hugely complicated political consequences (taken from Hersh’s subsequent interview with Berliner Zeitung, (Google translation)). No, not the Nord Stream sabotage (we knew that), but that of reckless misjudgement and rising anger in Washington – and contempt for Biden and his close team of neocons’ immature political judgements.
It’s not just that the Biden Team ‘blew up the pipelines’; they’re proud of that! It’s not just that Biden was prepared to eviscerate the competitive ability and employment prospects of Europe for the next decade (some will applaud).
The explosive part of the narrative was that “At some point after the Russians invaded, and the sabotage was done… (these are people who work in top positions in the intelligence services, and are well trained): They turned against the project. They thought it crazy”.
“There was a lot of anger among those involved” noted Hersh. Initially, Biden’s Nord Stream narrative – ‘it will not happen’ – was understood by the Intel ‘pros’ as simple leverage (linked to a then prospective Russian invasion) – an invasion which Washington knew was coming, because the U.S. was prepping Ukrainians furiously – precisely in order to trigger the Russian invasion.
Yet the Nord Stream sabotage was postponed – from June until September 2022 – months after the invasion had happened.
So, what then was the point of crippling the European industrial base through imposing sky-high energy costs on it? What was the rationale?
And there was more anger at Biden’s Team members ‘shooting their mouths’ about Nord Stream, effectively boasting ‘damn right, yes, we ordered it’.
Hersh comments that although the CIA answers to ‘power’ in the broad meaning, rather than to Congress, “even this community is horrified by the fact that Biden decided to attack Europe in its economic underbelly – in order to support a war that he will not win”. Hersh opines that in a White House obsessed with re-election, the Nord Stream sabotage was seen as a ‘win’.
Hersh said in his Berliner Zeitung interview:
“What I know is that there is no way this war is going to end the way we [the U.S.] wants it to end … It scares me that the president was ready for such a thing. And the people who carried out this mission believed that the president was well aware of what he was doing to the people of Germany. And in the long run, [they believe] this will not only damage his reputation as president, but also be very harmful politically. It will be a stigma for the U.S.”.
The concern is more than that – it is that Biden’s obsessive zeal is turning the Ukraine from a proxy war into an existential issue for the U.S. (existential in the sense of the humiliation and reputational damage if the war was lost). It is already a Russian existential issue. And two nuclear powers in an existential confrontation is bad news.
Let us be very clear: This was not the first time that Biden did something – regarded by the U.S. intelligence professionals – as wholly reckless:
Robert Gates, the former Defense Secretary said on Sunday that Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign and security issue over four decades.
In February 2022, he seized Russia’s foreign exchange assets; he expelled its banks from SWIFT (the interbank clearing system) and imposed on her a tsunami of sanctions. The Federal Reserve and the ECB said afterwards they were never consulted, and if they had been – would never have consented to the measures.
Biden claimed his action would ‘reduce the rouble to rouble’; he was grievously mistaken. Rather, Russia’s resilience has brought the U.S. closer to a financial precipice (as dollar demand dries up, and the world shifts eastwards).
From the perspective of significant financial actors in New York, Biden and the Fed now must hurry to rescue a systemically fragile U.S.
Simply said, the import of Hersh’s Berliner Zeitung interview (and his other pieces) is that factions within the U.S. Deep State are furious at the circle of neo-cons (Sullivan, Blinken and Nuland). Trust is ‘done’. They are coming for them; and will keep on coming… Hersh’s piece is but a first taste.
For the moment, the neo-cons’ Ukraine project remains ‘current’, with Team Biden demanding all western allies remain tightly on message, ahead of the 24 February first anniversary of Russia’s Special Operation.
It would appear the critical window for Ukraine somehow to ‘magically win’ however, is being cut from months to a few weeks. ‘Winning’, of course, remains undefined. Yet the reality is that it will be Russia, rather than Ukraine, that will be mounting the Spring offensive – and possibly along the entire length of the Contact Line.
The ‘writing is on the wall’ for Ukraine (albeit with Kamala Harris dispatched to the Munich Security Conference) to plug the Team ‘line’ of an ‘enduring commitment to Ukraine’ by the collective West for the long haul.
Paradoxically, behind the curtain, this ongoing ‘civil war’ in the U.S. Establishment threatens to become ‘the writing on the wall’ for Biden too – as he approaches that 2024 Candidature decision moment.
Can Biden be trusted not to be reckless, the U.S. Intelligence Community must be asking itself, as Ukraine grinds into entropy under a Russian surge across all fronts? Will Biden again become desperate?
Can we imagine that the U.S. might just throw-up its hands and concede Russian victory? No – NATO might disintegrate in the face of such spectacular failure. So the political instinct will be a gamble; to double-down: A NATO deployment into western Ukraine as ‘a buffer force’, to ‘protect it from Russian advances’ is under consideration.
It is not hard to see why factions within the Deep State are “appalled”: America’s defence industry products are being consumed in Ukraine faster than they can be manufactured. It is adversely changing the U.S. calculus on China, as the U.S. military inventory burns away in Ukraine. And the Ukraine war easily can spill across eastern Europe …
The bottom line is the unexpected insight (for the élite) that the U.S. itself may be the biggest loser in the war on Russia. (Moscow understood this from the outset
Avo/dvo s are a shocker, and the lazy sloppy basis on which they are issued is disgraceful.
People going off pop about how easy things are for people in prison might consider how many younger men might be serving sentences for trivial breaches of DVOs.
Police don’t bother checking the basis of claims, and many people don’t have the resources to fight them.
You really are a little bitch, aren’t you, Headcase? Part of the pile-on crew, dead cert.
My choice was go on benefits and lose my mortgaged home or go to work. No making men pay up for their kids back in that day. So my ex mostly didn’t, too busy sorting himself out with some adoring feminists. Luckily, I was mostly home in time for my kids coming back from school, because I’d wrangled an academic job and worked at lot at night at home. Merle would hear them come in (they knew where the back door key was) and she would call out is mum home? Mostly she knew when I was or wasn’t and would call out to them to come on over (she was next door) as she heard them going down the passageway between her place and mine. A lovely person, long widowed. When Hairy and I sold up both of our inner city places ‘for more room’ for Hairy’s second child I was carrying she became a bit sniffy, saying two bedrooms was plenty for only four kids, she’d managed in her place with six with a sleep out. If you hadn’t extended the kitchen into the balcony you’d still have a sleep out, she said, not incorrectly either. Before Hairy, I used to change her lightbulbs for her because at nearly eighty she wobbled and couldn’t reach; I had to stand on her wonky stepladder to reach myself, but women in that street stuck together. That was the way, back then.
Dickhead, you know nothing about the circumstances of others but are very ready with the knife, especially when it comes to me. I wouldn’t bother answering you, indeed I often wonder about wasting my time here, except I am glad to write out my fondest memories of that particular ‘Auntie’ in my life, who was no ‘stranger’ to my kids, who loved it if she asked permission for them to stay on a bit longer, for even if late I was usually home with an hour; she loved their company too.
The cat and mouse games continue. This time running down the pedestrian entrance to the carpark under Plaza Mayor as cops on tricycles approach.
The facial expression of the ‘look out’ was comical.
It’s a wonder there hasn’t been an accommodation after all these years.
Meanwhile irritating women trying to press sprigs of rosemary in your hand roam free.
The popular cheap lunch off the Plaza is bocadillo calamares, €4 and join the queue.
Cordoba tomorrow, new to me, then Seville, been before but I like it so why not.
Tossing up between Huelva and Cadiz after that, Cadiz requires a back track if I want to travel by train, or a bus to Huelva, I can do it but prefer train travel.
Then Tavira in Portugal, definitely bus, Lisbon then Paris and home.
Had other plans but stayed too long in Sicily.
Always next time.
I’d be happier with this theory if other investigative journalists were picking up the same message – or at least scraps and hints. Hard to imagine everyone letting the story run cold against a background of furious factions.
Now there’s a parade, a band, banners, men in black top hats and capes, what’s it about?
time to bury the sardine.
We’ve seen a lot of Putin over the last couple of days. He seems in perfectly good health. I wonder who is sourcing these ridiculous cancer/ knocking on death’s door stories to the press? And yet we pass over the lying as if it’s to be expected.
Not everyone ending up for under a year in prison is a thug or a grifter.
If you’ve ever visited you will know the dread feeling as doors clang and you’re locked into a series of airlocks that lead to an open room with circular tables and benches all bolted to the floor. Prisoners are in white coveralls ziplocked at the neck so unremovable. It is hideous.
I don’t wish to deny prisoners the right to earn a few dollars worth of comfort at the shop.
There’s precious little other comfort to be had there. Imprisonment is the real penalty.
(1) A massive cyber assault creates chaos in Taiwan’s computer systems.
Why wouldn’t they just unplug themselves as a defence? Temporarily run as a WAN? It might disrupt some services depending on where the servers are, presumably all the really critical stuff is local.
Russian weapons are made ‘to be mass-produced’ and ‘cheap’, like some chintzy dollar-store toy, while Western weapons are made to be high-value, advanced, but prohibitively expensive, complexes.
The early AK-47’s were massively expensive to produce because they had a milled receiver. Once they got them working properly they then started to work on manufacturing efficiency. Eventually they perfected the sheet metal receiver with the front and rear trunnions riveted in. The Russian weapon ethos seems to be to start with something that works, and then continuously improve it (effectiveness, cost, speed of manufacture etc.) until it really works.
Sick and Depraved Australia:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j0eRte_1a1k
Thankfully I have avoided having to contemplate any of this shit courtesy of living in a Muslim country.
M1917, most accurate rifle I’ve ever owned:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnWC4BBjFhI
John Spooner.
David Rowe.
Bob Moran.
Christian Adams.
Peter Brookes.
Dave Brown.
Patrick Blower.
Michael Ramirez.
A.F. Branco.
Matt Margolis.
Chip Bok.
Tom Stiglich.
Henry Payne.
Ahhh…that’s good Paul Keating in the Oz today.
seems like taxpayer funded Aboriginal organisations are just there to be gutted.
Same organisation, story from August 2021
CAAMA bosses “dismiss” grave concerns about finance
Eat the damned bugs proles!
Use Cigarette-Style Graphic Labels to Shame People into Not Eating Meat, Scientists Say (22 Feb)
Haha, I don’t think it will work woke scientist people. You’ve screeched about the sky falling for so long now that people are rolling their eyes and ignoring you. Your medical nazi colleagues haven’t helped in that regard either.
Patrick Blower seems to be as “pro Biden”, as Michael Ramirez is “anti Trump”.
The idea that the end of the Chinese Civil War could end this year with a nuclear strike and a bloodless surrender of the Republican forces to the Maoists is truly bizarre.
I never expected disenfranchised paleo conservatives to have the most drug addled point of view, but there you go.
What utter tripe.
rickw
I was very, very enamoured with Morocco once.
The King went full Karen when COVID was a thing.
China adhering to the Biden directive to not get further involved with Russia.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202302/1286059.shtml
The idea that the end of the Chinese Civil War could end this year with a nuclear strike and a bloodless surrender of the Republican forces to the Maoists is truly bizarre.
I’ll wait to see what that Armstrong chap says before I develop any views on the matter.
seems like taxpayer funded Aboriginal organisations are just there to be gutted.
All Aboriginal Welfare is designed to fail and the Administrators are hand picked to make sure it fails.
The UK may be circling the drain but thankfully, they still haven’t been able to polish this turd.
Ahhh….it’s good to own water.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-22/federal-government-water-buybacks-murray-darling-basin-plan-730/102007496
h/t Stewie Griffin
“I never expected disenfranchised paleo conservatives to have the most drug addled point of view, but there you go.”
Well, we’ve been led into this mess because of drug addled neocons and libertarians.
Mighty mild out today.
Mighty mild out yesterday.
Libertarians won the culture wars and fought for Mao?
LOL
We can’t even convince them that the government is wasteful and doesn’t have their best interests at heart.
The left won. No more “stab in the back” myths please.
“Bio labs in Taiwan”
“Nixon promised not to expand SEATO”
“Taiwan has a decadent culture, Xi cares about families”
“Taiwan could get their own nuclear weapons”
“The Formosans never voted for this”
“The Taiwanese shelled Formosans”
“America doesn’t even have a formal alliance with Taiwan!”
“We have agreed to a One China policy for over 50 years, anything else is neocon warmongering”
“Broadcaster Chris Smith has found new work as a presenter with online talkback station TNT Radio two months after he lost his gigs with Sky News Australia and 2GB in the wake of allegations of inappropriate behaviour.
Smith made the announcement on social media Wednesday afternoon, saying, “a new job, a new start, a whole new opportunity.”
He will host the 3pm to 5pm shift from Monday to Friday, starting next week.
“It is not just a new job,” Smith told The Daily Telegraph.
“I have delved deeper than ever before on why I self sabotage with the help of rehab, psychiatrists and psychologists, plus I have given up the grog completely.”
Sure Chris, until the next time.
Dover – your Avatar this Blog of Pugutory by Canto – did he actually come out here to paint on the banks of Athena The Darling river in February @ Wentworth?
The Mail Online is worried about the knife! .. I’m more concerned about the footwear! ..
thongs with sox .. how far have our edukashun standards slipped .. LOL!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11780109/Student-pulls-knife-boy-bag-lollies-Church-Grammar-School-Brisbane.html
Bolt:
You’ve been deliberately misled about Labor’s planned Voice, and this week that con was finally and undeniably exposed.
No, not by me or other critics of this racist plan for a kind of Aboriginal-only Parliament.
True, we’ve warned for months that this Voice will stop our elected Parliament from acting, but were dismissed as carping conservatives, even racists.
But this week, our warnings were finally confirmed between people actually designing the Voice for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, including co-architect Marcia Langton. This is dynamite.
From the start, I said there was a trick to this Voice. Why did Labor want to put it in our constitution after a referendum this year?
But also from the start, your prime minister told you not to worry. The Voice would be harmless.
“It would simply be an advisory group that will not be above parliament,” Albanese kept insisting. “The advice doesn’t have to be taken.”
But I was puzzled. Don’t we already have hundreds of Aboriginal groups already advising governments? There’s the Council of Peaks, representing some 70 big community-controlled Aboriginal organisations, plus more than 30 land councils, 2700 Aboriginal corporations and 11 federal MPs in our federal parliament.
So what’s the catch? Why now put this new Voice, and up to 35 local Voices as well, into our constitution?
The answer seemed obvious – to give this Voice legal power over our elected government.
You see, to have the constitution say the Voice should advise our government implies that the government in return has a legal duty to listen before it acts. In fact, activist judges will almost certainly insist on that.
That means this Voice could stop governments doing anything affecting Aborigines, from tax policy to changing what’s taught in schools, until it took its sweet time to say what it thought.
Here’s an example. A cyclone hits the Northern Territory. The government wants to rush in aid. But the Voice says no, not before you consult us. This affects Aborigines, too.
The High Court judge then says, yes, the government can’t do anything until the Voice has spoken and government has shown it has listened.
Result: the aid is stalled. This race-based parliament will have an effective veto on your elected government.
How could we be even thinking of doing something so racist, impractical and undemocratic?
But last year, one of the eight constitutional law experts advising the referendum working group designing Albanese’s Voice said lawyers making this argument were just “Chicken Littles”.
“This legal fright-fest is bizarre,” scoffed Professor Greg Craven.
But Craven now seems to have had a shock. His eyes have been opened by what he calls the “all or nothing” fanatics he’s dealing with on Albanese’s referendum group, and he’s done a backflip.
Yes, he this week admitted in The Australian, there was indeed a problem with Albanese’s plan to have the Voice “make representations to the executive government”.
“What if government decides to act even before a representation could be made? Could someone go to court to stop any action until a representation had been considered?”
And, yes, in my example of sending aid to the Northern Territory, Craven now admits: “Government is paralysed.” We were right: the Voice could stop it acting.
What’s more, Craven suggested people in the “inner circle” of the Voice actually wanted it to have this power.
In fact, it took only a few hours for Marcia Langton to confirm that.
Langton is crucial. She’s a key architect of the Voice – one of the two authors of the Indigenous Voice co-design report which the Albanese Government points to as its model.
On Monday, on ABC radio, she attacked Craven but confirmed exactly what’d he’d warned.
Host Ali Moore put Craven’s objection to her: “If a government decision is made without listening to the Voice it could be challenged in the High Court and potentially stopped from being implemented until the Voice had been heard.”
Langton’s response was clear: “That’s a possibility and why wouldn’t we want that to be the case?”
Otherwise, the Voice would be “completely gutted” and a “toothless tiger”, because “then the government can ignore all the Voice’s decisions with impunity”.
So two key people designing the Voice for Labor finally admit what the prime minister still won’t.
This race-based Voice – representing just 3.2 per cent of the population – will almost certainly have the power to block the government representing 100 per cent of us.
How can this attack on our democracy be tolerated for an instant?
How the British Invented George Soros
Puppetmaster or Puppet? Strongman or Frontman? Inside the Soros Psyop
Here’s an example. A cyclone hits the Northern Territory. The government wants to rush in aid. But the Voice says no, not before you consult us. This affects Aborigines, too.
Before you consult us is code for pay me bitch.
I.e. We cannot actually pose a cogent argument, so let’s try hammering people with shouty slogans.
Remember when scientists were venerable figures?
Now there are so many activist scientists you respond with scepticism to everything they say.
Terry McCrann:
Sorry treasurer, your weasel words don’t cut it. You are embarked on a major and punishing broken promise every bit as clear-cut and utterly undeniable as Julia Gillard’s “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”.
Before the election, both you and the prime minister said repeatedly, to the effect: there will be no changes to superannuation under a government I, Albo, lead and in which I, Jimbo, play fiscal fiend.
There was no asterisk, no qualification to the promise; no, well, that is, apart from “tidying up some things”. The promise was absolute and delivered repeatedly: there will be no changes.
The reason for the absolutism was blindingly obvious: you were both terrified of a replay of 2019, when then leader Bill Shorten was running with – and losing with – abolition of negative gearing and winding back dividend imputation.
Back then there was an arrogant assumption the election was unlosable – all a bit like those over-confident players on Channel 10’s Survivor who get ambushed and booted with an immunity idol in their pocket.
Is that an election immunity idol I see in your pocket Bill? No, it’s a losing election promise.
This week there have been two lines of denial.
From the PM: how can anyone say we’ve broken a promise, when we haven’t done anything. Yet.
From the treasurer: well, we don’t plan on making any major changes; or, that they won’t much impact most people.
Both false; and changes that will start to come as soon as the budget in May.
It was telling, very telling, that the treasurer, speaking to Neil Mitchell on Melbourne’s 3AW, refused to rule out changes in the budget. Indeed, Chalmers has explicitly said that the “cost of tax concessions” was “in his sights” ahead of the budget; his offsider Stephen Jones has said we are “clearly” thinking about caps on them.
These changes – bluntly, increased taxes on super – are clearly going to pivot around the seeming anodyne motherhood statement that super should provide for a “dignified retirement in an equitable and sustainable way”.
There’s massive tax-hiking benefit-slashing wriggle room in those words “dignified”, “equitable” and “sustainable”.
Just exactly what Labor is aiming at is actually hiding in plain sight, even if Albo and Jimbo don’t or won’t see it and certainly won’t admit it. Both Chalmers and Jones have been talking all week about the costs of tax concessions for super being too high. That by 2050 they’d actually be costing the budget more than the age pension.
Duh: don’t they understand that’s exactly the purpose of super.
The more people you get off the pension and into their own self-funded retirement, the smaller will be the pension bill.
In an ideal future, you’d hope to get the pension bill down to zero or as near as possible.
The second critical point about the supposed high bill for super is that if you want to cut it, you have to cut concessions to the great mass of people.
You ain’t getting big hunks of the supposed $50bn-a-year cost just from the fat cats.
You could close all the $100m super funds and you’d save less than a billion.
As for that term ‘tax concession’; they are every bit a ‘tax concession’ as the tax-free threshold is a ‘concession’ because it’s not charging the 19c of the next tier.
Just as those on the 32.5c tax tier are getting a ’concession’ because they are not paying the top rate of 45c.
Indeed, just as everyone is getting the huge ‘concession’ of not paying 100 per cent on every dollar of income.
That tax ‘concession’ is costing the budget hundreds of billions of dollars a year! Better start aiming for that, Jimbo.
Plibberserk:
What utter crap.
Obviously hasn’t seen an inland irrigated farming area in summer.
The deliberate throttling of flood type irrigated grain growing in favour of permanent plantations of walnut, almonds, olives etc (very much the flavour of the season for some reason, must be good for super investment) will see a decline if anything of inland bird numbers.
I learnt on the weekend that a few of the huge plantations in the MIA are finding their water use is way over forecast as trees mature and this is after three of the mildest/wettest years on record.
Sure Chris, until the next time.
Giving up the booze is easy, I’ve done it many times.
When will Chris Kenny do the Craven-like backflip on The Voice?
Not recommended before (or after) breakfast and keep that coffee cup away from the keyboard ..
Once seen it will be imprinted on the memory …… FOREVER & a day …..!
https://postimg.cc/Q9yfb9FP
Firing a 30-06 with only a T shirt as a recoil pad – well done that lady!
It OK for you – some of us are trying to survive our second day of a mid 30s heat emergency!
It’s unreal isn’t it.
The gaslighting this year has been incredible.
The Mail Online is worried about the knife! .. I’m more concerned about the footwear! ..
thongs with sox .. how far have our edukashun standards slipped .. LOL!
Shatterzzz,
that was my reaction also.
“Mighty mild out today…. Mighty mild out yesterday.
It OK for you – some of us are trying to survive our second day of a mid 30s heat emergency!”
I had to light the fire last night after a freezing cold day here in the Southern Tablelands.
That’s the whole idea. The urban aboriginal demographic who will inevitably make up this new peak body are overwhelmingly Labor supporters.
So it is the perfect way for Labor to cement itself in control of an effective one party state. If a Coalition government ever wins an election everything it tries to do will be blocked, and since it’s embedded in the Constitution they will have zero recourse.
This lady has become a bit red-pilled:
The View From The Top (22 Feb)
“Again and again I’d hear how we—the global meritocracy—would’ve solved poverty and inequality and climate change long before if not for evil saboteurs. We were enlightened administrators of the rational future, civilizing braying savages for their own good. Feelings in our collective gut amounted to the sum of human wisdom.
Amongst an increasingly international crowd, Americans tended to be intensely jealous of peers from the European Union and especially China, where elite experts had more latitude to dispense with troublemakers. Due to stupid separation of powers in our obsolete constitution we in the U.S. were prevented from fixing things by neo-Nazis out in flyover country.”
You can feel the admiration for fascist China and their ability to get things done that the elites yearn for. Albo, Chalmers, Wong and especially Bowen are exactly this sort of people. Creating a one party state to do everything they want irrespective of what voters want is exactly what such a Voice would enable.
“Giving up the booze is easy, I’ve done it many times.”
It’s not the booze that’s his problem
How did Bowen ever get a gig I do not know. The bar is so low in the Liars he still manages to be worse than any other. Guarantee he has vecro do up shoes coz he couldn’t tie his own shoelaces. This guy is so stupid he can’t tell the difference between an idea and a fart. In his case they both stink.
dover0beachsays:
February 23, 2023 at 12:25 am
We’ve seen a lot of Putin over the last couple of days. He seems in perfectly good health. I wonder who is sourcing these ridiculous cancer/ knocking on death’s door stories to the press? And yet we pass over the lying as if it’s to be expected.
They’re leftards. Lying isn’t just expected, it’s compulsory.
What on earth is “environmental water”?
Is it a different sort of water?
rickw says:
February 23, 2023 at 2:42 am
M1917, most accurate rifle I’ve ever owned:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnWC4BBjFhI
Rember shooting with .303 Lee Enfield on the Long Range at ANZAC Rifle Range Malabar, and also watching the experts using the .303,compete in the annual NSW Queen’s prize competition at same location
I also did range qualification shoot on long range ANZAC Mmalabar when in Army with SLR & M60 – better with M60 than SLR
The life of an animal in the wild is hard. Were it not for their instincts to live I suspect they would not do it. They are forever caught between opposing urges – stay in their nest or den for safety but hungry, go foraging or looking for mates and risk predators or accidents. ‘Nature red in tooth and claw with ravine’ as the verse goes.
And, as I have observed before, their deaths are surely as bad – torn apart by predators after a violent death which they live through to the last moment. Or a lingering death from injury or illness for which they receive no treatment or pain relief but faithfully attended by starvation. Or, should they successfully navigate all the snares nature has laid out for them then eventually they age makes them slower, their senses dull ever so slightly, but enough to make them unable to compete, so a longer starvation because the odd meagre minor success draws it out.
Livestock lead a bucolic existence their wild cousins could never dream of. The intervention of humans keeps them fed, sheltered, and healthy. They live in a sort of bliss spared the torment of demanding nature which exacts a penalty of death for the slightest lapse.
In the end it is a bolt through the brain case or a decapitation, an instantaneous death without suffering.
As for the claim that eating beef kills the Amazon rainforest – well apart from that only applying to opening new areas for beef in the Amazon (the established spaces kill nothing), it also only applies to Amazon beef. Eating Australian beef does no such thing. But there is an interest in not allowing land to degrade where people rely on animals they rely on the land.
It has to be a bad sign that the pronouncements of scientists can be dismantled with such ease.
Re Bowen I was thinking of this article from yesterday:
Aussie Climate Minister Rejects Claims the Grid will Fail when the Generators are Decommissioned (21 Feb)
Even the likes of AEMO and AEC warn of this happening, but Bowen is full steam ahead.
‘Urgent’: AEMO warns of more energy shortfalls (21 Feb)
Ongoing investment is ‘needed’ due to energy market transition – AEC (21 Feb)
Albo’s a Trot. Endless revolution.
Did we expect anything different?
I suspect land clearing for biofuels is more degrading than meat production. But that’s a dirty little secret, like child labour for gadget power.
flyingduk says:
February 23, 2023 at 8:06 am
I thought she was well ‘padded’.
How did Bowen ever get a gig I do not know.
Turtlehead was the Labor bagman for Fairfield/Liverpool during the 1990s .. he was promised the McMahon gig once Janice Crosio retired and he’s never looked back since .. I’m guessin’ he kept lotza notes! ..
Great mate of Phuong Ngo and you’d have expected that friendship alone to finish his political aspirations but …..!
While wiling (sic) away the time yesterday, I divided the supposed number of galaxies in the current cosmological model of the Universe, ie 1 x 10^12, into its volume (6.37 x 10^39 cubic Light-Years LY), just to get a sense of how big this contraption really is, and how much truly, truly huge empty space really is..
Doing some simple maths and conversion, it turns out that if one shrunk the Andromeda Galaxy, bigger than the Milky Way at ~220,000 LY dia, to a 1 mm dia speck, the space available to it, under a uniform galaxy distribution assumption, would measure ~8.5 metres cubed ie. just over 614 cubic metres.
This is only the observable Universe, but then so adjusted are the galaxy numbers..
Of course, galaxies have formed into clusters and super-clusters, so space between them is much smaller, but then the voids that fill the rest of the Universe volume are something to behold.. for another day.
Graphic labelling telling the general public that “Animals suffer when you eat meat”
Don’t know about the folks who wrote the report but I prefer the meat to be dead before I eat it ..!
Testing – One, Two, Three
All you need to know about the three-day 2023 Formula One pre-season test in Bahrain.
Haven’t heard back from Foxtel re if Sky Sports are showing F1 Bahrain Testing why aren’t they
In the meantime have resubscribed to F1TV for $34.99 Annual
Problem I have had is being unable to Cast/Mirror from iMac or Samsung Note 8 from F1TV app on samsung or F1TV website on iMac to either of 2 LG OLED TVs
LG share is particularly useless
Final approach was order Chromecast with Google TV (4K) on Amazon Prime Australia Tuesday night and it arrived next day
So spent yesterday afternoon seeting up Chromecast – Heaven help the non-technical – if was not an easy task
Finally in the end was able to cast F1TV App to LG OLED W7 65″ Wall TV – so set up for 7pm tonight to start watching 1 F1 2023 Test
If that had failed – was watching on iMac 5k 27″ Retina screen with Sony Bluetooth Headphones, but that is in front room with Wife’s Curved 55″ LG OLED and she would not have been happy.
PS – Finally watched last Epsiode 16 of Netflix Attorney Woo – A Great Series
Extraordinary Attorney Woo is a 2022 South Korean television series starring Park Eun-bin in the title role, along with Kang Tae-oh and Kang Ki-young. It follows Woo Young-woo, a female rookie attorney with autism, who is hired by a major law firm in Seoul.
And have started watching another Netflix Korean Series
Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha
2021 – Maturity rating:MA 15+ – 1 season – TV Comedies
A big-city dentist opens up a practice in a close-knit seaside village, home to a charming jack-of-all-trades who is her polar opposite in every way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hometown_Cha-Cha-Cha
I would expect that the deliberations of the Voice will also be confidential do they will never have to reveal what their real agenda is, being free to make only vague press releases about continuing deliberations instead.
For decades there has been a political clique using the plight of Aborigines to advance their own agenda – while Aborigines continue to suffer.
This will get worse as, when the voice gives them more clout than before then the demands can be ramped up and it will become all the more imperative to leave actual Aborigines living hellish lives.
Oops Link – Testing – One, Two, Three
All you need to know about the three-day 2023 Formula One pre-season test in Bahrain.
At first I struggled to understand why career politicians like Uncle Luigi would be keen on introducing obvious grit into the wheels of government.
Then I realised that Luigi imagines he can control the outcome. That the Aboriginal Industry shares his politics and ambitions – and that The Voice will all be mates rates while Labor is in power – and toxic to a Coalition Government.
A smart cultural capture of the process of Gubbermint.
Increasingly clear that the little turd is deluded and very far from entrenching a Labor ally. Indigenous preference will put Union preference to shame in terms of its scope and social cost.
Old Ozzie – I’m sure you’ll just love the latest delightful offering then! *
Nolte: Coming Soon — ‘Starsky & Hutch’ All-Girl Reboot (21 Feb)
Dead cert that by about halfway through the series they’ll find themselves in bed together.
(* /s, of course.)
In December a few years ago I had to take my brother from Orange to Bowral for some surgery on his eye.
He stayed in the hospital, I get myself a place overnight.
When I left Orange, even though it was only about 8:00 am it was already shaping up to be a hot day – and in general Orange is cooler than other places around about. When we got to Sutton Forest it was notably cooler than Orange had been when we left. But by the time my brother had fallen asleep for the night and I went to my accommodation the weather was magnificent. It was cool with a breeze, and a canopy of thick grey cloud into which the top of Mt Gibraltar disappeared.
If only I had thought to get accommodation with a fireplace in December. I think I can be forgiven for not thinking of that.
rickw says:
February 23, 2023 at 2:14 am
Russian weapons are made ‘to be mass-produced’ and ‘cheap’, like some chintzy dollar-store toy, while Western weapons are made to be high-value, advanced, but prohibitively expensive, complexes.
The early AK-47’s were massively expensive to produce because they had a milled receiver. Once they got them working properly they then started to work on manufacturing efficiency. Eventually they perfected the sheet metal receiver with the front and rear trunnions riveted in. The Russian weapon ethos seems to be to start with something that works, and then continuously improve it (effectiveness, cost, speed of manufacture etc.) until it really works.
I think the premise laid out by Simplicius The Thinker supports what you say about the Ak-47’s
The Russian weapon ethos seems to be to start with something that works, and then continuously improve it (effectiveness, cost, speed of manufacture etc.) until it really works.
Same approach adopted by the Japanes after WWII
His similar analogies apply on Javelins, Tanks, HIMARS, Light Vehicles, Ammo Handling etc
the example of
Just watch this illuminating Dr. Philip Karber presentation to the U.S. Army West Point cadets, particularly from about the 26 minute point onward:
He mentions many of the points of how the U.S. army’s reliance on certain key luxuries would redound heavily against them in a confrontation with a real power like Russia.
Few clips better highlight the disparities in economy and utility of design mindsets than this one comparing Russian 2S1 Gvozdika Self-Propelled Artillery crews to those of the American M109 Paladin. Can you begin to envision the problems the second crew would have in a high-intensity Total War scenario? Just take a look at the sheer labyrinthine maze of protocol initiations and hand-offs that emblemize the West’s reliance on systems antithetical to the Total War creed. Imagine these same crewmen under high pressure, no sleep, having fought for months without rotation, famished and exhausted, with the pounding cannonades of a peer-level adversary’s artillery rumbling off around them, having to pucker through this firing pageant?
Another example is the loading of a Russian Bm-21 Grad vs. American HIMARS.
And His final Summation on It’s Time to Recognise Sustainment as Startegic Imperative is highlighted by
It seems the U.S. is only just now waking up to the concept of sustainment, as if it never even knew it existed. Headlines like the one from this article are sounding the clarion call, and demonstrating how decades of U.S.’s ‘limited war’ luxuries have resulted in the total amnesia of how real wars are fought.
Payback for the Intervention.
IT’S TIME TO RECOGNIZE SUSTAINMENT AS A STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE
ANTULIO J. ECHEVARRIA FEBRUARY 15, 2023
Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a two-part series on the contemporary challenges to offensive maneuver based on observations from the war in Ukraine, and the implications for the U.S. Army.
In a previous article, “Ukraine and the Future of Offensive Maneuver,” Stephen Biddle rejected recent claims that an era of defensive dominance had dawned. As he noted, offensive maneuver has long been difficult against prepared defenses arrayed in depth. That is still the case.
Moreover, Ukraine’s successful counter-offensives in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions — though not without their missteps and heavy costs, especially as regards the latter — should demolish the argument that offensive maneuver is dead. It can still succeed with proper preparations and force employment, though it might proceed incrementally and painfully against a competent foe. To advocate a significant redesign of U.S. ground forces at this stage, therefore, would be premature. Things can change, of course. But thus far, events in Ukraine suggest the U.S. Army’s Six Modernization Priorities are largely on track (though Army leaders should consider giving more attention to logistical capabilities). Modern militaries, like their predecessors, are best served by maintaining a flexible balance between offensive and defensive capabilities rather than going all in on one or the other.
That said, there are several issues the U.S. Army should address regarding the sustainment of large-scale combat operations, whether offensive or defensive.
To do this, sustainment should be elevated to a principle of war to underscore the strategic importance of logistics and to provide an imperative for the better integration of America’s defense industrial base into U.S. deterrence and defense strategies.
Some of these issues the Army can address with modifications to its new operations manual, Field Manual 3-0 (2022), and its logistics manual, Field Manual 4-0 (2019). Specifically, Field Manual 3-0 should afford at least as much importance to contested logistics as it does to contested deployments and offer operational planners some hypothetical scenarios or historical examples of planning under a range of logistical constraints. Field Manual 4-0 should explicitly elevate sustainment to a principle of war and thereby require Field Manual 3-0 to follow suit.
The Ammunition Crisis
Getting Serious about Sustainment
First, the Army should revise the tone of its new operations manual, Field Manual 3-0, which reorients Army thinking toward major wars after decades of fighting smaller conflicts. That was an important shift. But Field Manual 3-0 also assumes the logistical support the Army needs to fight large-scale combat operations will be there. As the budding ammunition crisis has shown, this is not a safe assumption. This conflict has not tested U.S. capacity to transport material across the Atlantic Ocean and through Central and Eastern Europe under fire, though the Russians have the capability to interdict logistical flow throughout the length of these supply lines. Another adversary, such as the People’s Republic of China, might choose to attack U.S. supply lines. As research from the U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute shows, China and Russia have already penetrated U.S. supply chains with disruptive cyberattacks. Hence, we cannot assume the deployment of war material from the United States to the European or Pacific theaters will be uncontested in a future conflict.
Conclusion
The brewing sustainment crisis reveals a serious weakness, even a credibility gap, in the U.S. Defense Department’s concept of integrated deterrence. Simply put, America’s defense industrial base has not been fully integrated into Washington’s defense and deterrence strategies — which has in turn led to a production gap. The gap has occurred despite more than two decades of theorizing about and wargaming various branches and sequels of great-power competition in the European and Pacific theaters.
The West may develop as many theories of defense and deterrence as it likes, but as history has shown, production capacity coupled with the capability to deliver war material wherever it is needed (strategic + operational sustainment) can go a long way toward winning wars. The ability to win wars, moreover, aids in deterring them. Achieving integrated deterrence, in other words, will require an integrated defense.
According to new provisional data from the Scottish government, there were 7,314 deaths registered in January 2023, an increase of 17.7% compared to the average of 6,212. For the second week of January, there were more deaths in Scotland than ever before, including during the peak of the pandemic. Concurrently, there were 4,159 births registered in January 2023, a decrease of 6.8% compared to the average of 4,463. In other words, between a dearth of births and a plethora of deaths, there were roughly 1,400 fewer souls, the equivalent of roughly 86,000 in the United States. This is long after COVID. Why is there zero concern?
What on earth will it take to pull these death shots from the market?
Die Welt, a paper based in the home country of Pfizer partner BioNTech, revealed last week in a long expose what many of us have long known. All those sudden deaths, heart attacks, and strokes we’ve been witnessing over the past two years were indeed observed during the Pfizer clinical trial that supposedly showed the shots to be 100% safe and effective. The company simply covered up the severe adverse events by kicking those participants out of the trial and/or suggesting without evidence that the deaths had nothing to do with the experiment.
https://www.conservativereview.com/horowitz-major-german-paper-reveals-pfizer-fabricated-clinical-trials-to-cover-up-deaths-2659449051.html?utm_source=cr-weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CR%20Weekly%202023-02-22&utm_term=ACTIVE%20-%20Weekly%20Daily%20Combined
All suicides tie themselves to a tree, shoot themselves dead then dispose of the weapon. Happens all the time!
Arkansas cops rule suicide in death of Clinton aide linked to Jeffrey Epstein – who was found shot and tied to a tree with an electrical cord around his neck – despite no sign of weapon (22 Feb)
From Gateway Pundit. Seems he was the guy who used to sign Epstein into the White House to meet Bill.
Arkansas Police Rule Suicide in Death of Clinton Aide Found Hanging From Tree with Shotgun Blast to Chest – Despite No Sign of Gun!
Rebuilding U.S. Inventories: Six Critical Systems
As the United States transfers massive amounts of weapons, munitions, and supplies to Ukraine, questions arise about the health of U.S. inventories. Are inventories getting too low? How long will it take to rebuild those inventories? An earlier CSIS commentary identified those inventories that are at risk as a result of transfers to Ukraine. This commentary continues that analysis by examining inventory replacement times. Most inventories, though not all, will take many years to replace. For most items, there are workarounds, but there may be a crisis brewing over artillery ammunition.
Summary
The table below lays out weapons and munitions where concerns have arisen about inventories.
Note:
The table is built from DOD sources plus estimates based on administration statements, news reports, interviews with officials, and the author’s experience in the military as an artillery officer and with acquisition in the Pentagon. The number transferred to Ukraine comes from periodic DOD fact sheets. Production rates come from DOD budget documents, particularly the Army’s procurement justification books for missiles and ammunition. “Recent” production reflects levels funded in the last few years. “Surge” reflects higher rates where DOD has said it would increase production. This higher rate is either the “1-8-5” or “MAX” level depending on where current production is. It takes one to two years to get to this higher level. For munitions, the production applied to rebuilding inventories is reduced to account for U.S. peacetime training and stockpile testing. “Manufacturing lead time” is the period between when a contract is signed and when the first item arrives. This interval is typically about 24 months but varies by system. “Production time” is how long it would take to produce all the required inventory. “Total time to rebuild” includes both manufacturing lead time and production time. The color code indicates the difficulty of the rebuilding effort.
System Details
– 155 mm ammunition.
– 155 mm precision (Excalibur).
– Javelin.
– High Mobility Artillery Rockets System (HIMARS).
– Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS).
– Stinger.
Causes for Optimism and Pessimism
Optimism – Most inventories are okay. These six systems do not represent the full spectrum of U.S. inventories. Most items provided to Ukraine have been in small numbers, or from areas that have large inventories or production capacities. For example, the United States has provided 108 million rounds of small arms ammunition, but U.S. production is about 8.6 billion rounds per year, so this transfer is easy to accommodate. The United States provided 300 M113 armored personnel carriers but has thousands available because the Army is moving to a different system. The United States has provided 276 tactical vehicles to tow weapons but has tens of thousands in inventory. For most categories of weapons and munitions, the United States can provide support indefinitely.
Pessimism – Not enough data to assess. Replacement times for several important systems cannot be calculated because not enough data is publicly available. For example, DOD cites sending Ukraine over 46,000 “other anti-armor systems” (not Javelin but types not specified), over 50 counter-artillery radars (various kinds), laser-guided rocket systems, unmanned aerial systems, and unmanned coastal defense vessels. It might be that some of these systems have inventory challenges, but the data are insufficient to make a judgment.
What Does the Future Hold?
As the September commentary noted, low inventories do not mean the end of equipment transfers. They do mean that the United States will need to pursue other mechanisms. DOD has, indeed, been pursuing all these but will need to intensify its work as the flow of aid becomes a multi-year operation.
Aid to Ukraine and rebuilding depleted inventories is one area when DOD cannot complain about congressional interference or sluggishness. Congress has provided ample funding in four supplementals, totaling $113 billion. Further, it has provided whatever authorities are needed, as seen in the recent National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
‘Poisoned in the womb’
As inconceivable as this may be to the Department of Hand-Pattery, there are quite a number of people born with FASD or any one of its derivatives who are productive members of the community.
This reliance in some quarters on ascribing some sort of goodness benchmark across the board to every human being in the country, and attributing some unforeseeable circumstance or condition as a reason why some of them aren’t optimal people is, in the term used by our betters, misguided.
If people wish to better themselves – regardless of upbringing or circumstance – the first step is always a real desire on their part to do that, followed by taking active steps in that direction. If they don’t proactively don’t that, they don’t want it enough and therefore don’t deserve my money or the effort it pays for.
The simple fact is that some people are shit people. A proportion of those are so shit they need to be removed from normal people so those normal people do not have their lives degraded or ended by them.
Finding excuses for, and throwing cash at them has never been the answer.
aka ‘amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics’
*don’t proactively do that*
Goddamned autowreck.
A man goes to a shrink and says “Doctor, my wife is unfaithful to me. Every evening, she goes to Larry’s bar and picks up men. In fact, she sleeps with anybody who asks her! I’m going crazy. What do you think I should do?” “Relax” says the Doctor “take a deep breath and calm down. Now, tell me, exactly where is Larry’s bar?”
—
A pregnant woman with her first child, paid a visit to her obstetrician’s office. After the exam, she shyly said “My husband wants me to ask you…” to which the doctor replies “I know… I know…” placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I get asked that all the time. Sex is fine until late in the pregnancy”. “No, that’s not it” the woman confessed. “He wants to know if I can still mow the lawn”.
Albo’s a Trot.
If they had a messaging app just for them it could be called Trotter.
Of course the thing with revolutionaries is that they always imagine that after the revolution they will be part of the elite in large offices surrounded by the finest things – as much a necessity for them in their jobs as the spanner is for the mechanic or the pitchfork of the farmer. They never see themselves as proles on a production line (that is reserved for lesser people), or see themselves being led to a small white tiled room in the basement, tiles immaculately clean but areas where the grout is discoloured, and the lone drain in the middle of the room has a strange rind that looks black under the buzzing, flickering, cold light.
Yup, they see themselves has having not just their snouts in the trough, but their front trotters too.
No coincidence that in Animal Farm Orwell chose pigs to represent the new post-revolutionary elite. But, Mr Elbow, I would also point out what Napoleon did to Snowball. If you can find a tranny at the Mardi Gras to read the book to you.
An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.
– Confucius
Can’t remember where I saw it but yesterday saw mention of Craig Kelly running as an Independent in NSW election. Guessing upper house.
UAP must not be running candidates.
Daytime Sky turns for an opinion on Superannuation to —
Allegra Spender!
He doesn’t have the nerve to go against the elites to whom he aspires. On the other hand he could be stupidly stubborn and won’t admit he may have been wrong. Therefore, I do not think he will recant.
Rita Panahi
@RitaPanahi
Arkancide got real creative this time.
Can the Governor @SarahHuckabee order a review?
https://www.conservapedia.com/Arkancide
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/arkancide-list-of-clinton-associates-who-died-mysteriously-or-committed-suicide/
The clown reading the news on the Melbourne racing station says temperatures are “soaring”.
According to the Bureau of Mythology, it’s currently 22.9C in Melbourne.
Most journalists are so dumb they think the public will fall for this hysterical gaslighting.
Motherlode, they will not allow the conditions in Aboriginal communities to improve. The Voice elites will need the chaos to hold over the rest of Australia and allow them to rule.
Tom says:
February 23, 2023 at 10:08 am
The clown reading the news on the Melbourne racing station says temperatures are “soaring”.
According to the Bureau of Mythology, it’s currently 22.9C in Melbourne.
Sydney Now 19.2C – we are sweltering under the Heatwave!
The AFR View
Labor’s migration fix must push for a bigger Australia
The solution should include a bigger and more ambitious overall immigration program to fulfil the nation’s potential, which would test the union movement’s traditional preference for a smaller Australia.
Labor Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil rightly credits the Howard government’s doubling of the skilled share of the migration intake between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s for helping produce Australia’s “economic miracle” of 30 years of continuous economic growth that was only broken by the global pandemic.
Similarly, former secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Martin Parkinson, who is leading Labor’s review of the migration system, told The Australian Financial Review Workforce Summit that in the early 2000s Australia’s skills-based migration system was seen as the global gold standard.
But ad hoc policy responses since then, he said, have created costly complexity and delays in a system that is now clogged with outdated and ineffective rules, archaic technology, and a visa processing system that is hand-triaged and a “paper-based nightmare”.
The Priority Migration Skilled Occupation List for visa applications, which was devised in 2006 and based on the economic structure of 2001, doesn’t match the real and future-facing world of work 20 years later.
The consensus among the human resources professionals at the Summit was that a migration system that is slow, bureaucratic, expensive, and unwelcoming for both migrants and employers means Australia is missing the boat in the global war for talent amid widespread critical skills shortages.
Amid the tightest labour market for close to 50 years, Australia’s failure to flexibly tap global labour pools is being exposed.
Policy drift
Ms O’Neil’s impressive presentation to the Summit put the problems down to policy drift under the Coalition that led to the “spaghetti diagram” of a system that business must navigate to bring in much-needed workers.
A genuinely streamlined system would set a reasonably high wage threshold to guard against worker exploitation and act as the single touchpoint for approving employee-sponsored skilled visas.
There are steps the government could immediately take to remove some of the hurdles and bureaucracy.
Private hospital operator Ramsay Health Care’s CEO Carmel Monaghan said it is “just ludicrous” to have to spend months advertising a job in the bush to meet tick-a-box labour market testing rules before being able to bring in nurses from overseas on skilled visas.
Ms O’Neil also claimed that the doubling in the number of migrants entering Australia on temporary visas since 2007 is a “source of huge problems”, because that has moved the system away from seeking to attract the best and brightest from around the world to settle here as permanent citizens.
That seems a fair point. Yet the solution should include a bigger and more ambitious overall immigration program to fulfil the nation’s potential, which would test the union movement’s traditional preference for a smaller Australia.
Attracting and retaining migrants permanently is clearly important. But it’s an open question what is the optimal mix between permanent and temporary – and lower-skilled and higher-skill – workers. Especially when unskilled temporary migrants are doing the fruit-picking, caring and service industry jobs that Australians refuse to.
IR ‘reform’ warning
Also at the Summit, two of the country’s largest employers fired warning shots over Workplace Minister Tony Burke’s plans for a second tranche of industrial relations “reform”, including the so-called same job, same pay policy that threatens Qantas (with its different workplace arrangements to Jetstar) and BHP (with it internalised labour hire workplace model).
BHP’s chief people officer Jad Vodopija warned this could disrupt its use of internal units of some 4000 permanent employees who are flexibly deployed at mining sites across the country.
Retail giant Wesfarmers’ chief human resources officer Jenny Bryant said her major concern is Labor’s plan to define the meaning of casual work in the Fair Work Act and overturn the High Court ruling that casual employers working regular hours are not in “reality” permanent employees and should not be entitled to permanent conditions like annual leave.
Ms Bryant warned that prescriptive legislation would prevent reaching the mutually beneficial agreements that are needed to work for customers, employers, and for employees seeking flexible working arrangements.
Mr Burke should genuinely consult and engage with business about their concerns rather than just try to ram through more industrial relations reregulation, like the pattern bargaining stitch up at last year’s jobs summit.
There ain’t no 99.8s in journo land.
Indeed, 75s would be scarce.
Wah wah wah.
JPG
Trump today:
It’s hard not to like this guy.
Thorpe: “we want real power”
They want it alright; but she’ll find herself excluded.
High Court to keep Voice ‘within limits of power’
Tom McIlroy and Luca Ittimani
A leading advocate of the Indigenous Voice to parliament has conceded the proposed body will likely be subject to High Court challenges, but warned against “hollowing out” its powers by removing references to executive government in draft constitutional changes.
Megan Davis, one of the architects of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and an author of the draft referendum question championed by Anthony Albanese, said the justiciability of the Voice (the likelihood of legal review) would be a straightforward part of Australia’s system of law.
“The constitutional expert group found that it is extremely unlikely that the bill, as it’s currently drafted, with the government of the day included in that draft, will lead to excessive high court litigation,” (Pink Pigs Flying Acroos the SKY)Professor Davis told an Universities Australia conference on Wednesday.
“Australian society and government depends on the rule of law. The law and the courts mark the limits of public power. Courts can and should keep public bodies within the limits of their power.
“We cannot and must not fear the courts doing this because this is a defining characteristic of our democracy.”
Professor Davis, a constitutional lawyer at the University of NSW, said individuals may decide to litigate particular matters related to the Voice in the High Court, “but you cannot prevent Australians from that access to review of decision-making”.
She said the Voice must be able to speak to both the parliament and the executive. Some critics of the draft constitutional amendment have hit out at the words “executive government”, saying its inclusion risks weakening the power of the Voice. Former High Court chief justice Robert French has argued there is little or no scope for constitutional litigation from the draft amendment.
“We do not want a hollowing out of the voice,” Professor Davis said. “The executive and in particular the bureaucracy make the bulk of decisions about First Nations peoples. The bulk of decisions are made through delegated legislation.”
She defended Mr Albanese’s approach to the Voice and pushed back on critics including Opposition Leader Peter Dutton demanding detail about the model.
“He’s not withholding detail, we are working on the detail. And we will release this detail in the next month or so when the referendum bill is stood up, and it goes to committee. That detail is forthcoming.“
Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney is set to address the board of ANZ on Thursday, calling the referendum an opportunity for the business community to advance reconciliation.
Role for business
“There is a role for businesses to both inform their workforce about the referendum, but also to play a leadership role in bringing the country together,” she will say.
“Companies like ANZ have embraced the Uluru Statement from the Heart, you understand this historic opportunity, and the responsibility you have to the broader community when it comes to reconciliation.”
Mr Albanese said on Wednesday no decision had been made on the possible removal of the words “executive government”.
He told the National Press Club he wants legislation creating the Voice to parliament passed before the next election, if the referendum wins public support.
The national vote is expected sometime between October and December this year.
Asked about reports in The Australian Financial Review on Labor’s plans to begin preparatory work on a Makarrata Commission for truth telling and a treaty with Indigenous groups within weeks, Mr Albanese said he was focused on the Voice vote.
Ms Burney is set to begin preparatory work on a commission, charged with negotiating a treaty and assessing past traumas and mistreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within weeks.
Any treaty would not be completed until after the Voice to parliament question has been resolved.
Labor went to the May 2022 federal election promising to implement the Uluru Statement in full, including a Makarrata Commission.
“How long, O Lord,…”
And “intergenerational trauma” means it’s all down to white settlement.
This blame game will be played in perpetuity unless the majority say no more.
Come to think of it, she would have more at stake than most of us. I would imagine she has oodles invested in a super account just so she can avoid taxes. Or even several super accounts so they don’t trip a tax limit.
When there’s munni in the air, ‘Top Men’ takes on a whole new meaning.
Labor Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil rightly credits the Howard government’s doubling of the skilled share of the migration intake between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s for helping produce Australia’s “economic miracle” of 30 years of continuous economic growth that was only broken by the global pandemic.
Maybe my memory is faulty but wasn’t Oz by the 90s running out of home made producers? .. everyone and their forklift had started the shift OS cos lower cost manufacturing & no tariffs meant it was cheaper to import your stuff than make it in Oz .. all that mass immigration seemed to do was highlight the lack of infrastructure needed to accomodate a sudden growth in population .. something that has been, generally, ignored ever since …….!
Re, Luigi the Trot and continuing revolution. Does this include him up against the wall. Pay to see that.
Can’t remember where I saw it but yesterday saw mention of Craig Kelly running as an Independent in NSW election. Guessing upper house.
UAP must not be running candidates.
yep, I got an email from UAP this morning explaining Craig is running on an Independent grouping tix for the Upper House as UAP isn’t fielding any candidates …
Chanticleer
The core problem with Australia’s migration system
The dysfunctional structure is a spaghetti of complex interconnected programs with no overarching strategic purpose and is in need of urgent reform.
Clare O’Neil’s ambitious reform agenda for the complex and dysfunctional migration system is another example of the Albanese government’s willingness to remove the entrenched barriers to higher productivity growth.
It says a lot about the timeliness and importance of O’Neil’s proposed reforms that they were immediately welcomed by human resources leaders from BHP, Wesfarmers, Stockland and the technology sector, who appeared at The Australian Financial Review Workforce Summit.
The business leaders make it clear that Australia is losing the war for talent against countries such as Canada and Singapore, which have streamlined their migration programs.
As well as being faster in the processing of visa applications, other countries are taking a far more strategic approach to attract skilled migrants. For example, Canada not only processes visas four times faster than Australia but also wants to attract 1.5 million skilled migrants by 2025.
Wesley Walden, McKinsey & Co’s managing partner, Australia and New Zealand, puts the war for talent in context when appearing on a panel with Martin Parkinson, who is leading the government’s migration review, chief scientist Cathy Foley and Public Service Commissioner Peter Woolcott.
He notes that productivity growth in Australia was reasonably good until about 2010, but has slowed over the past decade. O’Neil says Australia is stuck in a productivity rut, with real wages now lower than they were a decade ago.
The core problem with the migration system is that the capped permanent visa program has become overwhelmed by the uncapped temporary visa program, which has become the feeder for 65 per cent of those applying for permanent visas.
This has been allowed to happen because of years of ad hoc additions to each of the programs that have added to its complexity and inefficiency.
One of O’Neil’s most compelling arguments for reforming the migration system is the lack of vertical integration between the temporary visa program and the university sector.
She says Australia is training international students “in our world-class education system, but after their studies are finished, many are required to leave”.
Parkinson, who will deliver an interim report next week, says one of the most distressing statistics to come out of the first three months of the review of Australia’s migration system is that more than half the international students who come out of Australian universities are not working in jobs consistent with their skill levels.
He says this is partly because the migration program often doesn’t give them post-study work rights sufficiently long enough to allow them to gain the post-graduation qualifications they need.
For example, an analysis undertaken by the migration review has found that students who graduate with a degree qualifying them to work as electrical technicians cannot apply for their post-study work until they have been granted a fresh visa.
Missed opportunities
But the average time it takes for graduate foreign students to get a visa is about eight months, which means they will have missed the opportunity to join the corporate recruitment phase. This makes companies increasingly reluctant to employ foreign graduates.
Instead of nurturing a symbiotic relationship between the country’s universities and foreign students on temporary visas, the migration program works against utilising the captive talent. That is doubly worrying because foreign students fund the fundamental tech research done at universities.
O’Neil highlights an equally bizarre outcome from allowing the temporary visa program to blow out from 1 million visa holders in 2007 to 1.9 million in 2021.
She says many of those 1.9 million temporary migrants “live in a state of permanent temporariness, unable to invest in their education, get a loan to start a business, or feel emotionally that they can set down roots”.
“Instead, many are trapped in a Kafkaesque limbo, perpetually filling in forms and cycling through different kinds of temporary visas. Not good for them, not good for the country.
“Many temporary visas require employer sponsorship and engagement. And in some contexts, this is a recipe for the kind of endemic worker exploitation we all know is occurring: in agriculture, in hospitality, in retail.”
Parkinson says the migration approval system is running on a technology platform built for the demand and conditions of the 1980s and needs to be upgraded, but the priority is to work out the objective the government wants to reach.
One of the strongest themes to come through the panel discussions is the shortage of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) skills and the need for Australia to fill that gap through migration and retraining.
Walden says the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the uptake of e-commerce, digitisation, deployment of digital technology and fundamentally shifted the way that public and private sector institutions think about talent.
“When we look across the ASX 50 alone, more than 80 per cent of them have sighted some form of reinvention of their operating model, or ways of working through leveraging technology and digital to really think about doing things differently,” he says.
Richard White, chief executive of WiseTech Global, says migration should be used strategically to lift the skills at the very high end of the broad spectrum of technology jobs.
‘It is not a body shop problem’
He says Australia needs to increase the number of people with STEM skills coming through the education system while improving the quality of graduates. Migration, he says, should be used to “bring in talented people that add significantly to the national economy and that give knowledge and capabilities to others around them”.
“It is not a body shop problem, and it should never be,” he says. “That doesn’t mean you can’t have these temporary skills models because we clearly don’t have the throughput in the education system we want.”
White says the education system needs to change to meet the demand for tech skills. For example, Australia had the same number of bachelor IT degree students in 2022 as in 2002 whereas the tech sector has expanded probably 30 times what it was 20 years ago.
WiseTech had 40 staff in 2002 and now has 3000, half of whom work in Australia, a growth rate that White says has most likely been repeated across the tech sector more broadly.
Walden from McKinsey says upgraded tech skills are increasingly important for companies trying to reinvent themselves because of the implementation of automation, analytics and cloud computing.
He says the idea of someone having a vocation for a working life is well and truly gone. “If you look at the people who have transitioned out of roles over the past two years, 50 per cent of them have gone to different industry sectors,” he says.
One aspect of the war for talent that got an airing during the summit is the failure of the federal public service to keep up with the competition from the private sector for university graduates.
Woolcott says the public service has been slow to match the employment strategies of large public companies that are attracting graduates early in their studies and offering them part-time on-the-job training.
Also, public companies have been more willing to embrace flexible and hybrid working options than the public service, which has often demanded that employees work and live in Canberra.
Woolcott says the review will examine the cost of consultants and the models employed for their engagement.
Parkinson, who is a former secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, says the use of consultants by the public service is a “classic example of perverse consequences”.
He says the consultants end up being former public servants forced out by the annual “efficiency dividend” coming back into government to deliver the services they formerly worked on as full-time employees.
Chief scientist Foley describes the worker of the future and how the children at school today would probably have to work alongside robots and have the ability to use computer languages such as Python.
“The idea of being able to be critical in the way you look at information is going to be absolutely a fundamental requirement because if we’re going to have automated, prepared documents, we will need every single person to say: ‘Is this crap? Is this misinformation? Is this something I can trust? Where was it originated from?’” she says.
Trump yesterday:
All indicators point in the other direction. Except for the Pell case the High Court has a poor record of actually upholding the constitution. What’s more, with retirements and new appointments it will become more and more erratic.
Let us rejoice in our taxes being put so usefully at work:
Congratulations to the fourteen participants who have been selected for Front & Centre 2023 – a career coaching and professional development program for women and non-binary people with disability working in the arts, creative and cultural sectors across NSW, the ACT, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.
This 10-month program aims to increase the representation of women and non-binary people with disability in leadership positions such as artistic directors, board members and senior positions in programming and management. Front and Centre is produced by NSW’s leading arts and disability organisation, Accessible Arts, with support from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s Office for Women and with Victorian participants supported by Arts Access Victoria. The program is led by accredited specialist arts and creative leadership coach, Judith Bowtell of Albany Lane Consulting.
We’re really excited for the fourteen successful applicants of this valuable program and the role their experiences will play in helping shift the balance of representation in leadership roles in creative industries.
https://aarts.net.au/news/2023-front-and-centre/
that students who graduate with a degree qualifying them to work as electrical technicians
From above Que? – is this true? A Degree to become an Electrician?
It’s more expensive (for taxpayers) for a start. When you see Macquarie Bank on the other side of a market you know you are getting screwed.
Never mind Velcro, how does Bowen get them on the right feet. Who in Cabinet is helping him?
Raw Video – Love and Cheers as President Donald Trump Raises Spirits During Visit to East Palestine, Ohio
February 22, 2023 – Sundance
President Trump traveled to East Palestine, Ohio today, telling the community they will not be abandoned nor forgotten as they cope with the fallout of a devastating train derailment and toxic chemical spill.
Raw video of President Trump talking to local residents’ surfaces, showing how much respect and appreciation the people of the region have for him showing up to show his support. This area of Ohio is deep MAGA Trump country. The crowd shouts “we love you” as President Trump provides his thanks, encouragement and support.
President Trump was joined by various local officials as well as Ohio Senator JD Vance. WATCH:
You are disregarding extreme recoil – enough to fling the weapon for miles, opening the door to a Clinton associates house, travelling further up the stairs, and onto the top shelf of the closet in the bedroom.
Failing that, I am thinking of swallows and the way they can carry coconuts.
Megan Davis
But, but, but:
PM stands by the Voice to ‘close the gap’, backs the lack of detail
Option 1: Albanese is out of the loop and hasn’t been told what’s going on by the activists running the show;
Option 2: Albanese knows what’s going on and is frantically giving Australia the Mushroom Treatment;
Option 3: An ocean-going farcup.
Feelthebern:
The only issue with Biden is that he was born a nasty little bastard and just got better at it.
He doesn’t need any excuses for his behaviour.
She says Australia is training international students “in our world-class education system, but after their studies are finished, many are required to leave”.
Possibly, the fact that they are here to study NOT work might have something to do with them having to leave? ..
Will feed observations of NZ as they come to mind. NZ is stuffed. Anybody thinking of going to live, don’t unless self sufficient financially. Then only in Otago or Southland. The influence of maori is omnipresent as the organs of state in Soviet times. Anyone can identify as maori and noone can complain. No tests or anything. Back from Aldi this morning for a similar shop. $48 compared to $78 there from coles. $45 kg for gurnard fish looking sad. $19 at Nowra Fresh a week before I left. On the plus side a piece of blue cod at the chip shop was $13 for a slab that here would be sliced in half. I don’t think we have an equivalent here. It is their top fish. Buying in a supermarket price varies $65-75 kg. The chippie must have a good supplier.
NATO and the Invasion, One Year On
Next year will mark 75 years since NATO was founded in 1949. The Atlantic alliance has faced many challenges over seven decades, but Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine might be its biggest test yet.
One year on from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, NATO has played two important roles: enabling Ukraine to defend itself and containing the conflict through strengthening its own deterrence. The war in Ukraine is tragic enough; a wider conflict with Russia would be truly catastrophic.
NATO’s two roles are also interdependent. The emerging specter of equipment or munitions shortages among allies suggests NATO may need to choose in future between strengthening Ukraine’s deterrence or its own.
Stronger deterrence also supports Ukraine by enabling allies to transfer arms to Ukraine without fear of reprisal. Yet one year on from the invasion and eight months after its summit in Madrid, progress in implementing the commitments to strengthen NATO’s defense and deterrence has been mixed.
To support Ukraine’s self-defense NATO allies have provided around $150 billion in military and financial assistance and levied massive sanctions on the Russian economy. Most of the military assistance has been organized bilaterally rather than through NATO to avoid fueling any “Russia versus NATO” narrative. The main forum is the U.S.-led Ukraine Defence Contact Group of over 50 nations that met last week for the ninth time since the war began and has committed nearly $50 billion—or “more than eight combat brigades” worth—in military aid to Ukraine, including air defense systems, heavy artillery, modern main battle tanks, and now training for Ukrainian fighter jet pilots.
However, after a year of assistance at least two problems with this model are becoming apparent.
The first
is that matériel is not getting there fast enough. To make the support count, equipment must get there before Russia’s spring offensive gains momentum. According to NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, “It is clear that we are in a race of logistics. Key capabilities like ammunition, fuel, and spare parts must reach Ukraine before Russia can seize the initiative on the battlefield. Speed will save lives.”
The second problem
Is the impact of weapons transfers on NATO’s own stockpiles of equipment and ammunition. This is compounded by allies’ limited industrial capacity to quickly produce more. According to Secretary General Stoltenberg, Ukraine is using up ammunition much faster than its allies can produce it. NATO defense ministers took stock of the problem at their meeting last week. While they agreed to work with defense industry and reviewed NATO capability targets for munition stockpiles, no solution to the production gap was offered. This looked even starker against the announcement that eight nations joined the Multinational Ammunition Warehousing Initiative to store the very munition stockpiles that are fast disappearing.
Never mind Velcro, how does Bowen get them on the right feet. Who in Cabinet is helping him?
And then the real reason why ministers have umpteen well-paid ‘advisors” became clear! ….
Given the abuses of superannuation are largely being conducted by the ultra wealthy as wealth management and estate planning devices on the advice of their accountants that is remarkably prescient.
Given this government’s already well demonstrated propensity for lying to the public* I think we can safely go with Option 2.
* And that’s taking into account the fact that they’re politicians.
Banning gay conversion therapy will not affect religious freedoms: Perrottet
23 February 2023
Speaking to a crowd of mixed-faith leaders and voters in Parramatta last night, Mr Perrottet vowed to take a “balanced approach” and protect religious freedoms as the Government cracks down on harmful practices.
A snap for Crossie I see.
To think Albo is capable of giving anyone the mushroom treatment is deeply offensive. To mushrooms.
“We do not want a hollowing out of the voice,” Professor Davis said. “The executive and in particular the bureaucracy make the bulk of decisions about First Nations peoples. The bulk of decisions are made through delegated legislation.”
It isn’t just the indigenous who would like a greater voice in delegated legislation, aka regulations.
What’s the Future for Aid to Ukraine?
Ukrainian resistance requires continuous aid from outside supporters, particularly the United States. So far that it has been forthcoming.
However, as aid opponents increasingly call for negotiations, a political battle will be generated when currently appropriated aid runs out in the summer.
Although supporters will likely prevail, there could be some shifts in policy, and the long term is uncertain. In any case, Ukrainian demands and exhaustion of inventories will prompt some shifts in composition.
Aid is critical for Ukraine’s survival.
It is worth starting with the basics. Why is this aid needed? The answer is threefold. First, armies in conflict require a continuous flow of weapons and ammunition. For example, Ukraine reportedly fires 3,000 artillery rounds per day, or 90,000 per month. That is equal to the entire U.S. annual production in 2021. Ukraine’s peacetime stocks probably lasted only a few weeks. Second, there is the need to replace lost equipment.
According to unclassified sources, Ukraine has lost 457 of the 858 tanks it began the war with, 478 of 1,184 infantry fighting vehicles, and 247 of 1,800 pieces of artillery.
Finally, Ukraine has likely doubled the size of its armed forces, and all these new units need equipment and training. Aid from the United States, NATO, and other global partners has allowed Ukraine to meet all these wartime demands. Without a continuing and high level of support, Ukraine’s resistance would soon falter and collapse.
U.S. aid has totaled $113 billion so far.
This has come in four packages appropriated by Congress: March ($13 billion), May ($40 billion), September ($14 billion), and December ($45 billion).
The aid has gone for a variety of uses. What is of most interest here is the military aid provided to Ukraine. That totals $50 billion and covers equipment transferred from U.S. stocks, new equipment procured, and training. An earlier CSIS commentary, Aid to Ukraine Explained in Six Charts, explains these categories in more detail.
Future aid packages might contain jets.
Every two weeks or so the administration announces a new aid package. These packages specify how it proposes to spend the money that Congress has provided. Public attention has focused on new capabilities—Patriot in early January, then tanks in early February, and, most recently, long-range strike missiles. The political dynamics have become familiar: President Zelensky asks for a new capability, which the United States and its allies are reluctant to provide. Zelensky insists, pressure builds, and the United States relents. Russia complains about “escalation” but keeps doing what it is doing. Sometimes there is less to the announcement than meets the eye, but the political point is made.
The next major debate will be over jet aircraft. It would make more sense to upgrade Ukrainian aircraft by adapting them to use NATO subsystems and munitions and to provide additional Soviet-era aircraft from the global markets. The Ukrainian Air Force could easily assimilate these modified aircraft. However, the allure of “NATO fighters” as a “game changer” is strong. Zelensky has made the pitch repeatedly. The United Kingdom has already opened the door, agreeing to train pilots. President Biden has stated that the United States would not provide F-16s, and other officials have sensibly suggested that rebuilding the Ukrainian Air Force would be a post-conflict effort. Nevertheless, as with tanks, the pressure may become so strong that the United States feels obligated to do something. This might entail training some pilots and moving towards standing up a squadron at some undefined point in the future, much as the United Kingdom has done. This will meet the near-term political need even if it has no immediate battlefield impact.
Meanwhile, the flow of ammunition, armored vehicles, trucks, engineering supplies, and medical equipment will continue. These will have a battlefield impact.
Some inventories are running low, so expect substitutions, purchases from foreign governments, and new production.
Current funding will run out by midsummer.
In December, Congress appropriated $45 billion for aid to Ukraine, which means that the administration will not need to ask Congress for more money for some time. But when?
Surging aid might provide a decisive edge, but at great risk.
Many voices are recommending that the United States surge aid to strengthen Ukraine for the expected spring offensive. The additional equipment might break the Russian forces and force their retreat.
However, there is great risk. First, Ukrainian forces may not be fully trained on the equipment they receive. This would lead to higher losses and wasted material. Second, aid funding would run out sooner, accelerating the date at which the administration must go to Congress for more money. Finally, if the battlefield result is not decisive, voices calling for negotiation would become stronger. If a surge does not produce victory, the argument will become, what’s the point of continuing to spend tens of billions of dollars?
Appropriating additional aid will spark a political battle.
Battlefield success and honest government are key determinants for support.
Both Russia and Ukraine are preparing offensives. The Russians have incorporated their mobilized personnel and increased attacks in the Donetsk area. The Ukrainians are assimilating new equipment and having troops trained in Europe. These dueling offensives will soon launch. If Ukraine can show progress on the ground, supporters will be more inclined to provide aid. In addition to the satisfaction of success, there will be the prospect of the war ending.
Fears about a “forever war” undermine support for aid by making it appear that the commitment will go on indefinitely
Nevertheless, before the war, the Corruption Perception Index ranked Ukraine at 122 out of 180 countries. If photos appear showing equipment discarded because of a lack of maintenance or articles describe how oligarchs diverted funds intended for the government, the bipartisan consensus will fray.
Increased oversight and an emphasis on military aid might be a potential compromise.
In an extreme case, future aid appropriations might move away from economic aid to the Ukrainian government and focus on military aid. Economic aid, though desperately needed by the Ukrainian government, is vulnerable to the charge that U.S. domestic communities need help more. Other countries, many of which are more comfortable providing “soft” rather than lethal support, might pick up the economic aid. Conversely, military aid would directly affect the outcome of the war making it more acceptable to Congress and the U.S. public.
Omar Bradley?
Perrottet confirming there is no difference between the two major parties/alignments.
18 months too late: natural immunity is *almost* as good as vaccination (except when it’s better)
By Jo Nova
In the great Covid backpedalling of 2023, even the Australian ABC has finally admitted that natural immunity from Covid “lasts as long as vaccination” which is still false and misleading (because it lasts longer and is higher) but must have caused angst at the office. They go on to say their holy rosary incantation: “but experts have cautioned that vaccines are still the safer option”. Safer than what now, though? The new meta-review in the Lancet says nothing at all about side effects of vaccines or new variants, but people who-believe-experts and people who think they are “good journalists” need to say their medical Hail-Mary’s, otherwise they have to admit to themselves that they were wrong and sometimes obnoxiously, insufferably, stupidly so.
The new Lancet metastudy looked at 65 studies from 19 countries. They found the reinfection rate of people who caught Covid was lower than people who were given Pfizer or Moderna. About a year after catching Covid, people with natural immunity still had about 37% protection against getting Omicron BA.1, about four times higher than people who had two Moderna doses. Yet the people with the better protection were locked out, punished, and sometimes even banned from treatment like organ transplants.
For some reason that no one can explain, despite millions of people using Pfizer vaccines, there were apparently no useful studies lasting beyond 30 weeks against reinfection.
But there is no apology, and no admission that they should have been collecting and publishing the data on natural immunity all along. There’s no admission that vaccines were never the right tool to use in a coronavirus pandemic, especially when results were so uncertain and there were so many safe alternatives.
But he considered it.