Open Thread – Tues 2 May 2023
1,797 responses to “Open Thread – Tues 2 May 2023”
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I remember once being told that Australians of Irish descent harbour bitter resentment against the English and spend many hours recriminating about the Irish famine.
This came as a surprise to me, as the only time it was ever mentioned in my family was after I read The Great Hunger, no-one in my family feels the slightest bit Irish, or English or Channel Islander.
Perhaps, like some American IRA supporters, there are such families carefully keeping the bitter flames alight, as I know some Greek descendants of survivors of the Greek genocide continue despise the Turks, though that’s more recent.
It’s pretty obvious for some people completely caught up in their borrowed victimhood too much will never be enough. -
Check out the Romotow T8 caravan valued at over $375K NZD
Living well doesn’t necessarily have to mean living large. At least, this rings true for the New Zealand-based architecture firm that built the Romotow T8 rotating caravan where they proved size doesn’t matter and functionality and design are everything.
After a decade of waiting since its first announcement, the Romotow T8 has since been plucked out of our sci-fi dreams and dropped into reality.
However, it does come with a hefty price tag. It’s currently on the market for an eye-watering starting price of $375,000 NZD (approx. $268,000 AUD at current exchange rates).
What is all the hype around the Romotow T8 about?
Designed by W2, the Romotow T8 pushes the boundaries of travel trailer design, marrying art, opulence, convenience and innovation.
It’s hard to believe you’d need to be convinced by its greatness, but just in case, we’ve rounded up some of its outstanding features to get you on board.
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‘Fake Aboriginal identity’ film is banned
EXCLUSIVE
By MATTHEW DENHOLM
TASMANIA CORRESPONDENTAn Indigenous-made film about a white person who identifies as Aboriginal has been banned by the bodies that funded and commissioned it, over fears it could spark litigation and is “harmful”.
The short film, My Journey, by Tasmanian Indigenous newcomer filmmakers Nathan Maynard and Adam Thompson, was to be screened as part of a GRIT film festival in Hobart last weekend. Their “mockumentary” was pulled because of concerns held by the funding body, the Tasmanian Community Fund, and the commissioning body, Wide Angle Tasmania, that it could be defamatory and may cause community “harm”.
“I absolutely see it as political censorship,” Thompson told The Australian. “It is shocking …. essentially, they have censored it.
“It’s a contentious issue, but as Aboriginal people we have a right to tell stories and talk about things that are important to us as a community and that are affecting us as a community.
“And the issue is probably the most important issue that we have going on at the moment in Tasmania.”
Thompson would not reveal the plot, because he and Maynard are now planning to run their own screening of My Journey. However, he did not deny it was about a white person discovering their Aboriginality.
The number of Tasmanians identifying as Indigenous has grown from 36 in 1966 to 23,572 in 2016 and 30,186 currently. The state government has adopted policies designed to remove barriers to recognition as Aboriginal.
Thompson said the film was fictional and he did not accept concerns over possible defamation. However, Wide Angle chairman David Gurney said such concerns were based on legal advice.
Mr Gurney said the film focused on Smithton, in northwest Tasmania, and there were real concerns it could defame particular people. “The TCF was concerned that the film is potentially litigious and … harmful to a very specific community,” Mr Gurney said. “TCF asked them (the film-makers) to make some changes to the film, which they refused to do.
“So then the TCF instructed Wide Angle not to screen the film as part of the GRIT screenings.
“When that happened, we sought legal advice from one of Australia’s leading media law firms and we also received the advice that the film could lead to a defamation.”
The TCF, an independent body that distributes funds from the sale of a state-owned bank, had a policy of not funding anything that could cause harm.
“No one is disputing the broader issue that is being discussed in the film – it is an important issue – but … this so-called fictitious story is set in a very real, very small town,” Mr Gurney said. “The names in the film are very closely resembling people in that town. There are issues in that film that are very specific to that town. And we are talking a town of a few hundred people.”
The TCF confirmed it had raised concerns about the film. “These issues are for Wide Angle Tasmania to resolve with the film makers,” a spokesman said.
Maynard is no stranger to controversy, having recently called for expressions of interest from people of British descent willing to donate their corpse for an artwork.
Thompson said the film-makers had received approval for the concept and script from a GRIT steering committee. However, Mr Gurney said this was before TCF had alerted Wide Angle to potential defamation risk.
* From the Oz – which strangely has comments open
** Jackie Jacqui was contacted for comment
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Tasmania is a good example.
Look at the accusations being made in the Lia Pootah link about control and access to legal funding.
People are pretending that the Voice is the end of a line, no it’s just a way point on a continuum.
more here -
Dot says:
May 3, 2023 at 9:19 amAs for housing prices and taxation.
The average tax rate on building a new home in Sydney is 78.6%, and this is able to be paid out on an amortised loan, which can be paid off with your income which already has had income tax knocked off it.
Dot,
driving the 4WD around our neighbourhood yesterday (2 weekly run to circulate fluids and use brakes etc), yet again reinforcing view from 144 bus a couple a weeks ago the ridiculous number of utes with cones, barriers, towing electronic signs and lollipop signs –
Our area is nonstop additions/new builds after knockdowns and again yesterday non stop lollipop people around every building site – Concrete truck delivery – need Signs, Utes, Lollipop people
The additional cost is B’Ridiculous – Was this included in your 78.6%?
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They are a genetic dead end that would not have survived in a competitive environment with the rest of the world during the last 10,000 years.
Genetic?
Cultural I would agree with, and the impediment that kept them from developing further was the continent – which kept them nomadic and thus unable to accumulate the fruits of their labour and the leisure that would make possible to try doing things differently. It necessitated a rigid hierarchy within the group which would also prevent changing things up much because it would mean changing the roles, and also taking a gamble when the margins for error were very narrow. The sparseness of the population would have limited the cross pollenisation of ideas as well. I would expect that there might have been a few new ideas – a tweaking in the design of a boomerang, more effective shelter or clothing – that were then lost. We would never know. Some of the ideas may have been discovered multiple times.
Lasting innovation seems a product of settled and even town life. Australian conditions, despite Pascoe’s fevered imagination, thwarted that.
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Snowy 2.0 faces further cost increases, delays
Angela Macdonald-Smith – Senior resources writer
The latest delay looks set to intensify worries about the ability of the National Electricity Market to continue supplying reliable power as coal power stations accelerate their closure plans
The federal government-owned company said it is working to “reset” the timetable and budget for the project with key contractor Future Generation Joint Venture, controlled by Italy’s Webuild.
The reset “will ensure the critically important clean energy infrastructure project is placed on a robust and sustainable footing for FGJV to progress the schedule in a realistic and productive manner,” Snowy Hydro said in a statement on Wednesday.
It cited a number of factors driving the delays and cost increases, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on resourcing, supply chain disruptions and difficult geological conditions which have slowed tunnelling work at the site.
Snowy said it now expects “first power” from the project at the earliest between June and December 2027, but potentially as late as June to December 2028.
The full operation of all units will occur at the earliest in December 2028 but potentially as late as December 2029.
More to come.
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Would it be a bummer if their outer body falls off, a la Men In Black, and you are holding an insect?
What if its a hot nekkid Scarlett Johansen??
(I like this movie, once you get past the “oh no an art film” its very good.)
This scene was a ball tearer.
An unrelated tragedy unfolding is made worse just by her being there -
Indolentsays:
May 3, 2023 at 9:00 am
Some of the articles you quote Indolent are quite reckless.
I’m not a medical expert. There have been many recent warnings regarding vegetable oils. You need to judge for yourself whether this one is valid. I’m simply bringing it to attention
i post heaps of shit
when challenged i do the michael jackson moonwalk away from it
then i post more batshit crazy stuff
mong
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Burned alive: How the 2014 Odessa massacre became a turning point for Ukraine
Clashes between opposing activists turned into mass murder. The perpetrators have never been punished
A long, but worthwhile read to understand why Russi has invaded Ukraine
From the Comments – Sums up the Hand of one of the Wicked Witches of the West from America
– SHOW over and over this tragic savage images over and over to NULAND and the whole US gang of other US politicians involved in this tragic events , that brought in power this cruel NAZI REGIME in Ukraine in 2014 ! The sad TRUTH !
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Scars of rejection will run deep if the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum fails, says historian Henry Reynolds
Henry Reynolds12:00AM May 3, 2023
216 CommentsBoth sides of the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum launched television campaigns recently and the results of several relevant opinion polls were released.
The Yes campaign continues to hold a handy lead in all states. But there is still a significant block of voters who have not made up their mind. The historical record of referendum campaigns should caution anyone against assuming the result is a foregone conclusion.
But much of the commentary concentrates on the consequences that will unfold in the event of a Yes victory. Little thought seems to be given to how Australia would be affected by a rejection of the voice to parliament. The No campaigners appear to assume that they are proponents of continuity, of the status quo. But that will certainly not be the case.
Defeat will have wide and serious ramifications. If the referendum goes down it will be one of the most consequential events in the fraught history of relations between the First Nations and the wider community. To understand why, it is necessary to go back to the events that preceded the launch of the Uluru Statement from the Heart in May 2017.
The best place to start is a meeting at Kirribilli House in July 2015. Tony Abbott called together a meeting of 40 Indigenous leaders to discuss means by which the First Nations could be recognised in the Constitution. As a result a 16-member referendum council was established five months later to carry the project forward. It had the support of new prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and opposition leader Bill Shorten.
What followed was one of the most intense campaigns to test the opinion of the First Nations communities ever undertaken in our history. Between December 2016 and May 2017, 12 dialogues were conducted in every part of the country. In all, more than 1200 participants were consulted and their reactions recorded and put up online. Sixty per cent of participants were selected from traditional communities, 20 per cent represented relevant organisations and 20 per cent were prominent individuals. Twelve major traditional languages were employed along with translators.
The Statement from the Heart was the distillation of this intense process. It was the result of the deliberations of the 250 delegates at Uluru “coming from all parts of the southern sky”. It was the most representative gathering of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders that had ever been brought together in our history. And it all happened with the blessing of, and with funding provided by, the government and seconded by the opposition. The First Nations had responded to the request of our political leadership to go to all parts of the continent and return with guidance as to ways that the Constitution could be amended.
As it turned out, the Indigenous voice to parliament was “the most endorsed singular option for constitutional alteration”. It was seen to provide “reassurance and recognition”. This background helps to explain the profound disappointment that followed Turnbull’s peremptory dismissal of the proposal for the voice in 2017 and followed now by the decision of the federal Coalition to campaign against it. It is a proposal that still has more than 80 per cent support in the Indigenous community.
The scars left from this contemptuous rejection will take a long time to heal. But for the Indigenous leaders of this generation who have sought reconciliation, defeat would be profoundly dispiriting. Having pursued the voice because it would provide their communities “with an active and participatory role in the democratic life of the state”, where would they turn?
Rachel Perkins said recently that defeat in the referendum “would be a blow because it would be seen as a vote against Indigenous people … we’ve endured so much and not to have the country stand with us would be a very significant blow for us, I think.”
If the referendum is lost, a new, younger generation may return to the streets with campaigns of direct action. Others could well conclude that their campaign for self-determination and treaties will gather strength by taking the struggle offshore to Geneva and New York, where they would find that Australia had few friends in the erstwhile colonial world.
Perhaps more to the point is that in recent years international law has greatly strengthened the position of the world’s indigenous minorities. If that is the case Australia will find itself in the situation it experienced in the middle years of the 20th century when our diplomats had to struggle continually to rebut attacks about the White Australia policy and the treatment of Indigenous people.
Our promotion of human rights and our signature to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which we officially endorsed in April 2009, will be used against us. Self-evident hypocrisy will cruel our pitch all over the world.
“Return to the streets with campaigns of direct action?” More riots in Alice Springs?
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Murdochs Spoke With Zelenskyy Weeks Before Firing Anti-War Host Tucker Carlson
BY TYLER DURDEN
Both Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shortly before firing Fox News’ anti-war host Tucker Carlson,
who has repeatedly asked why the United States is sending vast resources to one of the most historically corrupt nations on the planet while neglecting its own citizens.
“Fox News Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch held a previously unreported call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this spring in which the two discussed the war and the anniversary of the deaths of Fox News journalists last March,” according to Semafor, adding “The Ukrainian president had a similar conversation with Lachlan Murdoch on March 15, which Zelenskyy noted in a little-noticed aside during a national broadcast last month.”
As Semafor further notes; “The conversations came weeks before the Murdochs fired their biggest star and most outspoken critic of American support for Ukraine, Tucker Carlson. Senior Ukrainian officials had made their objections to Carlson’s coverage known to Fox executives, but Zelenskyy did not raise it on the calls with the Murdochs, according to one person familiar with the details of the calls.”
Weeks later, Lachlan Murdoch was credited with the decision to let Carlson go, according to the NY Times.
The decision to let Mr. Carlson go was made on Friday night by Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox Corporation, and Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media, according to a person briefed on the move. Mr. Carlson was informed on Monday morning by Ms. Scott, another person briefed on the move said.
Carlson, according to the report, has previously described Zelenskyy as a “dictator.”
Interestingly, on March 11 – right around the time of the Lachlan Murdoch call, Carlson suggested to Redacted host Clayton Morris that he could be fired over his anti-war stance.
“I’m saying what I really think and I think it really really matters and if I get fired for it, I don’t know what to say, I’m not going to change,” he said, adding that one of the top people he worked for at the network texted him to say “For the record, I really disagree with you on Ukraine!”
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Rachel Perkins said recently that defeat in the referendum “would be a blow because it would be seen as a vote against Indigenous people … we’ve endured so much and not to have the country stand with us would be a very significant blow for us, I think.”
Stop thinking like a collectivist then.
Aboriginal communities are reisilient & diverse…Marcia Langton said so!
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Dotsays:
May 2, 2023 at 11:23 pm
Gammage tries to imply in The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia that pre 1788 Australia had roads, cleared pathways and informal parkland style forest and grassland gardens.There’s a long thread at Jennifer Marohasy’s blog on Gammage:
https://jennifermarohasy.com/2011/11/how-aborigines-made-australia-bill-gammage/
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I think the real problem is to suggest it represented anything more than basic grassland management (a common problem with the noble savage). We used to burn the old spinifex paddocks to make room for the younger plants and make mustering easier. It was organised but I’m not sure it was imbued with spiritual or scientific thinking (at least when I was doing it).
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Sorry, spelling. Marohasy.
Everyone has their blind spot. She seems to think that Australia was better “managed” by the Aborigines than the colonists. Everyone “manages” species into extinction. No environment remains static, even without human intervention.
We have a choice – we live in an environmental museum and starve, or we develop what we have and thrive and that comes at an environmental cost depending on the type of development and the degree of “thriving”. I really can’t see a third option. Perhaps that’s my blind spot.
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Prophetic 1992 Interview with Putin Mentor Anatoly Sobchak Predicts Existential Clash
SIMPLICIUS THE THINKER
2 MAY 2023St. Petersburg’s first mayor and Putin mentor Anatoly Sobchak gives a sobering and darkly prophetic interview where he correctly outlines not only the injustice of Ukraine filching the land given to it by Russia after splitting from the USSR, but how Ukraine will now become a ‘time bomb’ as it arms itself for a future clash that would endanger mankind itself.
This is particularly interesting to me because I’ve mentioned several times before how people close to the geopolitical situation in the 90s and 2000s all predicted today’s events. Others who had only begun following the situation in recent years erroneously believed that the Ukraine situation had only begun to inflame after the various revolutions of the 2000s. For instance, the Orange Revolution of 2004-2005, and even the Georgian Rose Revolution of 2003, which was linked in a general way.
But in actuality, the tensions and hostilities between Ukraine and Russia can be traced back to right after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Of course, most of us know that the tensions can really be traced back even much further: to the CIA Project Aerodynamic, for instance, which first began to establish radical nationalist enclave movements in western Ukraine, akin to the GLADIO network. (Here’s the paperwork on it from their own site)
Another Long and Thoughtful substack by Simplicius
https://strategic-culture.org/news/2016/01/08/cia-undermining-and-nazifying-ukraine-since-1953/
The recent declassification of over 3800 documents by the Central Intelligence Agency provides detailed proof that since 1953 the CIA operated two major programs intent on not only destabilizing Ukraine but Nazifying it with followers of the World War II Ukrainian Nazi leader Stepan Bandera.
The CIA programs spanned some four decades.
Starting as a paramilitary operation that provided funding and equipment for such anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance groups as the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR); its affiliates, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), all Nazi Banderists. The CIA also provided support to a relatively anti-Bandera faction of the UHVR, the ZP-UHVR, a foreign-based virtual branch of the CIA and British MI-6 intelligence services.
The early CIA operation to destabilize Ukraine, using exile Ukrainian agents in the West who were infiltrated into Soviet Ukraine, was codenamed Project AERODYNAMIC.
A formerly TOP SECRET CIA document dated July 13, 1953, provides a description of AERODYNAMIC:
«The purpose of Project AERODYNAMIC is to provide for the exploitation and expansion of the anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance for cold war and hot war purposes. Such groups as the Ukrainian Supreme Council of Liberation (UHVR) and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN), the Foreign Representation of the Ukrainian Supreme Council of Liberation (ZPUHVR) in Western Europe and the United States, and other organizations such as the OUN/B will be utilized».
The CIA admitted in a 1970 formerly SECRET document that it had been in contact with the ZPUHVR since 1950.
The OUN-B was the Bandera faction of the OUN and its neo-Nazi sympathizers are today found embedded in the Ukrainian national government in Kiev and in regional and municipal governments throughout the country.
AERODYNAMIC placed field agents inside Soviet Ukraine who, in turn, established contact with Ukrainian Resistance Movement, particularly SB (intelligence service) agents of the OUN who were already operating inside Ukraine. The CIA arranged for airdrops of communications equipment and other supplies, presumably including arms and ammunition, to the «secret» CIA army in Ukraine.
Most of the CIA’s Ukrainian agents received training in West Germany from the US Army’s Foreign Intelligence Political and Psychological (FI-PP) branch. Communications between the CIA agents in Ukraine and their Western handlers were conducted by two-way walkie-talkie (WT), shortwave via international postal channels, and clandestine airborne and overland couriers.
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From Rosie’s link to a piece in The Conversation:
Archaeological data and historical documents indicate Aboriginal people on the Gulf Country lived as foragers until the mid-1800s, when their lands were occupied by Europeans and stocked with cattle. The cattle depleted resources that were critical for a foraging lifestyle, and conflict ensued.
As a result of the violence and loss of resources, many Aboriginal people on the Gulf Country became refugees in their own land. They had little choice but to move into camps on the fringes of towns such as Normanton. These camps were overcrowded and unhygienic, and many occupants died from infectious diseases as a result.
This is a tale of culture contact, but the interpretations put upon it are not necessarily those as decided above. If we look at the settler accounts, we find that aboriginal people, often living with an uncertain food source in pre-contact times, especially when non-coastal, were very drawn to the much easier food sources provided by the cattle stations and missions. This was a very strong pull factor into unhealthy town camps, probably as much as any deterioration in their wide foraging ranges due to cattle ranging. This drift still happens today. Conflict as seen by the settlers rather than archaeologists, seems mostly to have occurred over aboriginal taking of cattle, which they saw as a boon to their own harder food source hunting. That they gathered around any station during cattle kills for station food indicates how prized the offcuts given to these people were. Young aboriginal women and men often went in a voluntary fashion to the employment offered on stations and also on missions; there was a pull factor in this, not in all cases a ‘seizing’ of young people, as the current (not earlier) aboriginal side now depict. The closing of missions and the ending of station employment (where whole families were cared for), derided by historians of the left, was a backward step in a slow acculturation process.
Now compare:
My paternal ancestors were Protestant Huguenot people from the low countries and northern France, who were driven by severe religious persecution and pogroms to Britain in the late sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth centuries. We are even now thankful to Britain for this refuge. Many had trades and some were agriculturalists, like my direct ancestors, who then suffered dreadful persecutions from British peasantry in the North around Axeholme as they accepted work for uncaring aristocrats and the King, draining fenlands in return for small-holdings of land. They were then driven from these earned lands by a peasantry displaced from these wider traditional fowling and fishing lands by the land grabbing activities of these aristocrats and the King. My immigrant ancestor’s small wooden homes were burned in 1642 by this angry peasantry, with people locked inside their houses, screaming to get out as they died, finding the keyholes to their locked houses plugged by with thick clay by the murderous burners. Those escaping the razing of their village found their wives and children were physically attacked and more of the men were killed. Thus my ancestors fled to refuges in Thornton Abbey, lower down the eastern coast of England, where they finally managed to settle. Some did well, some did not, and some ended up in Australia. This is my truth telling, my voice, but it seeks no compensation.
Many Australians, of convict origin especially, but other more recent immigrants as well as the Irish in Australia, have a tale to tell. This is history. It happened, and the same stories told from various sides may differ. The urban peasants who killed some of my ancestors also had their view. Tell it from all sides, but then let it be. That goes for aboriginal people in Australia too. They are doing fairly well in the southern half of Australia now, given government largesse; it is in the North where recent well meaning policies have failed, due to their unintended consequences. The Voice though is a southern urban construction; it will not help where help is needed.
Vote No. -
Senator Mitch McConnell Reminds White House of the Republican #1 Priority
May 2, 2023 – Sundance
The professional republican party is totally and completely disconnected from the average MAGA voter within it. Cue the visual demonstration from today:
Leader McConnell
@LeaderMcConnell@SpeakerMcCarthyreminded everyone yesterday of his ongoing support for aid to Ukraine. Equipping Ukraine to defend itself is a direct investment in American jobs and our own national security. But at every turn, the Biden Admin has dragged its heels. @POTUS must get serious.
This disconnect between the republican establishment and the base voter has always been frustrating and annoying; but now they are taking it to entirely new levels of ridiculousness.
There must be multiple syphons and financial laundry operations from this Ukraine policy. Nothing else makes sense.
Seriously. Go ahead and tell me how the professional republican party is worth saving. I’ll be over here, supporting President Trump.
Also, there’s a Twit video of Mitch McConnell below (from today) that everyone must see. You tell me what’s going on. Something weird.
After spending several weeks recovering from a brain injury, this is Mitch McConnell today:
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Indolentsays:
May 3, 2023 at 9:00 am
Some of the articles you quote Indolent are quite reckless.
I’m not a medical expert.
but i am an enthusiastic amateur coroner
which is why i sit on a branch like a ghoulish vulture waiting to gleefully jump on the death of anyone under 60 as evidence of whatever it is i am pushing
mong
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@ Dot:
“COVID era law and regulation was an extreme move away from traditionalism in our English common law heritage back to 1215 and we were worse for it. ”
The ENTIRE caper was all about institutionally implementing something akin to the Napoleonic Code; i.e, presumption of guilt from the start.
This, as one would expect, leads to all manner of “interesting” legalist adventures, specifically intended to hugely expand the power of non-elected, unaccountable bureaucracies.
As Lavrenti Beria, one of Stalin’s most disgusting henchmen (see also Yagoda), said: “Show me the man and I will show you the crime”.
For those who think all those “emergency laws and regulations” are going to be discarded, you may also be interested in a couple of bridges.
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Patrick Bet-David Offers Tucker Carlson a $100 Million Contract (over 5 years).
That’s the same as what Fox was paying him.
Streaming technology has changed everything. For a talent like Carlson in a huge media market like America, offers need to start at $US500m p.a. to avoid being laughed out the door.
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Conservative crossbench parties look set to benefit from Mark Latham and One Nation becoming increasingly marginalised in the New South Wales upper house due to his comments about homosexuality, political experts say.
The Minns government, the Greens and the Animal Justice party have vowed to not work with One Nation’s state leader following a graphic tweet Latham posted and deleted on 30 March that Greenwich described as “defamatory and homophobic”.
On Monday, Greenwich announced he would launch defamation proceedings against Latham unless he retracted his comments and promised not to make similar comments in the future.
Lets have a look at the “experts” named.
Dr Stewart Jackson
Dr Stewart Jackson is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations, with a specialisation in Australian politics, at the University of Sydney. His broad interests cover the breadth of Green politics in Australia and the Asia Pacific, with a special interest in party development. These interests also extend to green political theory, particularly environmental feminism, and the intersection of social movements and parliamentary politics.
…
Ben Raue
Ben Raue is an electoral analyst? and blogger who writes about elections in Australia at http://www.tallyroom.com.au He works as a data analyst at GetUp!
…Latham dishes some back..
Latham later tweeted: “I’m very sorry for saying I hate the idea of [homosexual sex]. Has it become compulsory?” -
Quadrant has an article on the appalling perspectives on European settlement in Australia that are being taken currently by the taypayer funded Australian Museum in College Street, in Sydney. It includes removal of all statues of Cook, Macquarie and other key leaders of our past. A narrative of virtual genocide and certainly of anti-Colonial vitriol is being constructed for our children to learn and thus despise the country they were born in. A very one-sided approach.
Australia itself is under attack. -
Give your kids Meccano instead.
Lego goes gender neutral: See what’s changing (Daily Terror, 3 May, paywalled)
Lego is introducing a new line of toys that for the first time are not designed specifically for one gender. See the pictures for what Aussie kids will be playing with.
ESG Much? LEGO To Launch Carbon Neutral Factory In Red-Leaning Virginia (21 Apr)
LEGO announced its sustainable energy plans for the Virginia factory last year, highlighted by enough on-site solar power to help achieve carbon neutral status for the entire campus.
And give them a train set too, with steam trains not electric ones.
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Cultural I would agree with, and the impediment that kept them from developing further was the continent – which kept them nomadic and thus unable to accumulate the fruits of their labour and the leisure that would make possible to try doing things differently. It necessitated a rigid hierarchy within the group which would also prevent changing things up much because it would mean changing the roles, and also taking a gamble when the margins for error were very narrow. The sparseness of the population would have limited the cross pollenisation of ideas as well.
The rigidity of the culture meant that things were never going to get better, irrespective of outside influences. For example, many different tribes traded with TSIs and Indonesians, who were much more advanced in terms of technology and agriculture and animal husbandry, but there is no evidence that they ever adopted anything from the traders. This is unusual, as trade is usually a significant vector for economic improvement throughout history. They just weren’t having it.
Whatever the reason, this culture wasn’t going to survive intact once other countries discovered Australia. Cultural virginity was a dead duck by the end of the C18th.
I do wish some in the Aboriginal Nomenklatura had the honesty to admit it.
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Henry Reynolds again being either deliberately deceptive or completely ignorant of the issues:
As it turned out, the Indigenous voice to parliament was “the most endorsed singular option for constitutional alteration”.
Henry quietly ignores the expansion from a voice to Parliament to a voice to Parliament AND the Executive, subject to the vagaries of the High Court.
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Indolentsays:
May 3, 2023 at 9:00 am
Some of the articles you quote Indolent are quite reckless.
….
I’m not a medical expert.but i am an enthusiastic amateur coroner
which is why i sit on a branch like a ghoulish vulture waiting to gleefully jump on the death of anyone under 60 as evidence of whatever it is i am pushing
mong
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Comment in reply to above article;
Peachy Keenan
@KeenanPeachy
First all-female mission to Mars followed immediately by first all-male rescue mission to Mars 😀 -
William Wheelwright
@ploughmansfolly
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2h
Totally fake country, the ongoing continuance of whose falsity is only ever underwritten by the eternal threat of black violence
Quote TweetGrindFace TV (Entertainment)
@grindfacetv
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May 2
She should press charges ?? TJMax in Eastvale
#grindfacetv @ justinfernand3sJust incredible that in 2023 we think its just normal for people to steal from stores unmolested and that if a citizen intervenes they should be charged.
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Daily Insight:
The US is about to end its Covid vaccine air travel requirements (finally). International air travellers will soon no longer have to show proof of Covid vaccination when arriving in the US, the White House says. The US will lift the requirement on 11 May, coinciding with the end of the coronavirus public health emergency in the country. Vaccine rules will also be lifted for federal employees and contractors. The US has one of the few remaining pandemic travel restrictions still in place. The lifted restriction will also apply to non-US travellers entering via land ports of entry and ferries. In a statement on Monday the White House said “we are now in a different phase of our response when these measures are no longer necessary”. This change will allow Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic, 35, to play at the US Open this year.
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TheirABC has an article up about the engineering works for the Coffs bypass. A couple of international companies are doing the engineering, which involves tunnelling under escarpments and so on.
Imagine my surprise to find that it was illustrated with a photo of a woman wearing a headscarf (from Malaysia). Then, an interview with another female engineer – honestly, if I were a female engineer working on this project I would be offended by being treated like some sort of anomalous circus freak.
No interest at all in the backgrounds of the male engineers. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that at least some of them had interesting stories to tell. In fact, it is very likely. But no, The Narrative Rools, OK?
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Malcolm 2.0 pumped hydro project hit with new delays, cost blowouts
If you want to be afraid – realize the AEMO is counting on the Snowy hydro expansion as a key plank in firming energy supply.
However, the $5.9 billion project is already running behind schedule and mounting delays have contributed to the Australian Energy Market Operator’s worries about the east coast electricity grid’s ability to cope with the impending closures of several of Australia’s large coal-fired power stations in coming years.
Up to five-coal fired power stations, including the Yallourn generator in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, NSW’s Liddell, Eraring and Vales Point power plants, and Queensland’s Callide B, are expected to shut down this decade, removing 13 per cent of the east-coast grid’s generating capacity.
The new delays add to growing concerns across the industry about the risk of electricity supply gaps widening in the coming years. According to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), gas in the market begin to emerge from 2025 – first in NSW due to Origin Energy’s possible closure of Eraring, then in Victoria from 2026 because of the closure of two gas-fired power stations in South Australia.
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Stew Peters Show:
Out of 458 pregnant women more than half reported a serious adverse event.
Dr. Naomi Wolf is here to talk about Pfizer’s foreknowledge of baby genocide directly connected to the Covid-19 vaccine.
Pfizer fought the release of internal documents and asked the court to keep them hidden for 75 years.
The documents show they knew their shots were deadly to infants and made breast milk poisonous.
19% of the babies exposed to their mom’s vaccinated breast milk were recorded as suffering from 48 different categories of adverse events.
The documents also show Pfizer knew vaccine shedding was a danger to unvaxxed pregnant women through sperm from men who were vaccinated.
These documents are a smoking gun and show deaths and terrible side effects from the vaxx was not an accident.
They intentionally released a “vaccine” they knew would maim and destroy the world population.
Pfizer designed the shots to kill babies.FDA & Pfizer Are Baby KILLERS: Pfizer KNEW Shots Caused FETAL DEATHS & SPONTANEOUS ABORTIONS
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The closing of missions and the ending of station employment (where whole families were cared for), derided by historians of the left, was a backward step in a slow acculturation process.
Sorry for a poor sentence construction here. To clarify, it was the existence of the missions and station employment that was derided by historians of a later age, who instituted pressure for their closing and for the introduction of new employment laws re the station employment. Station managers found that newer payment agreements meant that providing for the families, which had been part of the old agreement, was no longer financially possible, so the families drifted off; and so did the aboriginal workers who under the new system were not able to get leave for ceremonial purposes. Closing the largely benevolent missions, remembered fondly to me by old people in Broome just a few years ago, destroyed small and stable communities. These changes to the mission and station system were not a good thing for acculturation.
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Nick Cave is going to the Coronation.
Naturally, this leads to meltdowns and “Nick Cave defends decision…” headline at the ABC.
Not a fan but I’m impressed by the quality of his F.U.
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Well at least they have the addicts they can tax into oblivion..
Tobacco tax increase to raise $3.3b, more health spending in budget
..
Want an idea of the scale of vaping – and why its been banned??
The extra revenue will help cover a growing hole in expected tobacco taxes. In 2019, then-treasurer Josh Frydenberg forecast the government would collect $16.5 billion of tobacco excise in 2021-22. Instead, it raised $12.6 billion.
In the current financial year, the government is facing a $4.5 billion shortfall in excise compared to early budget forecasts.
How dare the peasants switch to untaxed vaping and rob us of $4.5 billion of their munni!!!
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Disappointed to learn Kohinoor diamond will be removed from Camilla’s crown.
That rock has been stolen, re-stolen, looted, gifted and re-looted for several centuries.
It belongs to the King. End of story.Gutless way to start an era.
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Expanded anti-vilification laws that would protect disabled and LGBTIQ+ Victorians
Would be worthwhile litigating pro-aborts that promote abortion as a eugenic measure against children in utero with some sort of disability, i.e. Downs syndrome. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that doctors pressure parents whose children are identified as potentially having some disability to abort the child. Nothing indicates contempt as plainly as thinking and acting that this or that disabled child is better off dead.
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Lefties a fun, and lefty Poms who think they’re experts on Oz are even funnier.
King Charles’ environmental advocacy may resonate with Australians: Kathy Lette (3 May)
Author and friend of King Charles, Kathy Lette, says the King’s environmental advocacy could resonate with both baby boomers and younger generations if he visited Australia.
“He’s been a passionate advocate for our planet long before it was fashionable,” Ms Lette told Sky News Australia.
Resonates, yep. You’re right about that Kathy, but not in the way you think. Resonates a lot with the word “idiot”. He’s a perfect gift to Fitzsimian’s bunch.
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I don’t know who this dude is, but it makes sense to me:
The Federal Reserve is not done tightening the screws on credit conditions,” Kudlow said. “They’re going to raise rates again this week. People are saying it’s one and done. I’m not sure. I mean, in fact, I don’t believe it’s one and done. I don’t think they’re going to increase their balance sheet. I think they’re going to shrink their balance sheet.”
Carney agreed and noted that the risk of more collapses remain.
“I’m sorry, Kevin. You’re going to have to eat more of this,” Carney quipped. “This is not going away at all. We’re going to have more. Yes, First Republic had problems. But it is not the only bank that is running into problems. All of the banks that expanded their balance sheets extremely large during our zero percent era are now running into big problems.”
Carney noted that First Republic Bank and Silicon Valley Bank both ran into trouble due to the Federal Reserve’s rapid pace of interest rate hikes, and other financial institutions are sure to face this same problem.
“Their funding costs are above what they’re able to raise in their interest rates,” he said. “So, they’re going to be destroyed. And it won’t end here. It’s going to be, yes, Silicon Valley Bank, now First Republic, [and] it’s going to be another one as well.”
The question is whether this will just enable small banks to be swallowed up by bigger ones seeking market share, even if it costs them in the short term.
As we know in Australia, lack of competition between banks keeps our deposits relatively safe from catastrophic events, but customer service a very low priority. And that includes some scammer getting into you account.
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C.L.says:
May 3, 2023 at 11:59 amYou will be unsurprised to hear the gruinaid has a piece on how the 3 replacement gems are all “problematic”.
Anyway, Im sure it will be easy to return the gem to the Mhugal empires rulers…
Another piece on the history – not too bad till the last 1/3rd which just turns into the usual bash the whities crapola.
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Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare says:
May 3, 2023 at 11:12 amAustralia itself is under attack.
Too right!
Yuin & Japanese museum curator, visual sociologist, historian.
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, so the families drifted off
I wouldn’t romanticise station arrangements either.
People living on the land they had inhabited for centuries now taken over as cattle stations may have taken a different view of their ’employment’ status.
Maybe they were more interesting in maintaining their established lifestyles and didn’t see fit to prioritise their new landlords wishes regarding work.
A outfit or two, flour, sugar, tea and a bit of meat may not have been the generous recompense some imagine, and many were driven off when full pay became the law by managers on behalf of their absentee landlords.There is nothing wrong with admitting there was injustice done.
That these paternalistic arrangements with no opportunity for education and betterment could not have continued on indefinitely.
No-one in power thought through the consequences, they just assumed the owners would switch to full pays but the market decided instead. -
The latest Baris and Barnes is interesting on the Trump/ DeSantis issue. They talk about RFK Jr, why Trump should always be saying positive things about RFK, etc. Key takeways: Trump/DeSantis contest has the potential of doing to the Republicans what Bush Sr/ Buchanan contest did in 1992 and that is split R vote for at least a decade (over 10% of those polled would not bother voting if Trump wasn’t on the ticket); DeSantis’s position in FL has less to do with DeSantis than long-term populist trends in FL; and that support for Trump is strengthening in key demos as well as key states like NV.
Highly recommended.
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Latham dishes some back..
Latham later tweeted: “I’m very sorry for saying I hate the idea of [homosexual sex]. Has it become compulsory?”I remember Rex Mossop saying something similar along the lines of – “I don’t care what they (homosexuals) do as long as they don’t make it compulsory for the rest of us”. LOL.
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A question for anyone here with knowledge about cars. I have a flat battery. I unwrapped my new, you beaut battery charger to rectify the problem. I have used battery chargers before, know to place red on red etc. Read the instructions, they state that you have to place red on positive, fine, BUT, I have to clamp the black on an unpainted bit of metal on the body of the car. Having a Subaru, everything that is metal is painted and everything that looks unpainted is plastic.
Have been trying to get info online but no luck. When did this happen? I have always placed positive on positive and neg on neg. I am tempted to go the usual way but don’t want to damage the car of course.
Any and all information will be greatly appreciated. -
Good Lord, News Corp’s leaking against Tucker Carlson couldn’t get any lower (but probably will). NYT has the latest leak — a message sent to his producer during the BLM/antifa riots in DC that includes the sentence “That’s not how white men fight”. Apparently that’s a manifestion of Carlson’s irredeemable racism. Yet the entire message (below) is rather noble in its sentiments:
A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?
Clogs to clogs in three generations. Watch as Lachlan makes it happen.
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After the pogrom against their village in 1642, my ancestors went from Sandtoft in the Isle of Axeholme to Thorney Abbey in Cambridgeshire, once on Thorney Island, where due to their skills Oliver Cromwell gave them a form of citizen status:
Refugees were invited to settle in Thorney, in the fenlands, because of their expertise in maintaining drained land, for cultivation and farming. Moving to Thorney offered advantages. Oliver Cromwell declared that if they newcomers bought or farmed lands they were accounted “free denizens of the Commonwealth”. In a proclamation, the settlers were given extra rights, including some tax relief and exemptions from military service overseas for forty years. They worshiped in the ruins of Thorney Abbey, where there is a marble memorial tablet inscribed to Ezekiel Danois of Compiegne, France, the first minister of the Huguenot colony which fled to Thorney to avoid persecution. He was at Thorney Abbey for 21 years, and buried there, aged 54, in 1674. Huguenot pastors continued to minister at Thorney until 1715.
I have ancestors from my patriline buried in Thorney Abbey (above I said Thornton), whose descendants later moved to lands and a manor house with its own little church further down towards the Thames Estuary, where familial ties are still maintained (my great uncle is buried there amongst our ancestors, and my father’s brother was married there in the 1980’s). Burial sites cared for, and I am contributing financially to that as well as hoping to save the Church from closure by the Diocese, with some success so far. Huguenot names are often quite distinct which makes familial genealogical tracing at least back to the 1630’s and 1640’s in Britain relatively easy via Parish baptismal and death records.
I am sympathetic to aboriginal desires to maintain links to their own heritage, and to be heard in their own narrative story, but just as I have to accept that lands have been lost and people have moved, or fled, in my heritage as the course of history has washed over the past, so do they. I’m also aware that a singular patrilineage is only one part of my heritage. The Welsh, the Irish, the ‘Saxon’, the Norse, the Ancient Briton, is in me genetically too. I like it that Jacinta Price sees this very clearly too, that she has European genes as well as aboriginal genes, as do most aboriginal identifying people today.
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A outfit or two, flour, sugar, tea and a bit of meat may not have been the generous recompense some imagine,
In Western Australia, at least, the station managers provided rations for the whole extended families. The station my mob were managing, employed twelve Aboriginal stockmen and provided such basics for eighty four of the extended families.
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…just as I have to accept that lands have been lost and people have moved, or fled, in my heritage as the course of history has washed over the past, so do they.
Lizzie, you may not be aware that c.57% of the Australian mainland is under native title (both exclusive and non-exclusive title) or held by indigenous people freehold. Coastal and land waters are next.
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“… I have to clamp the black on an unpainted bit of metal on the body of the car.”
The idea here is that if there is a spark when you connect the last “end”, it will be well away from the battery and hence any out-gassed hydrogen, thus reducing the risk of fire and/or explosion.
If you are connecting a charger, you can leave the thing turned off, connect it direct to the battery (no chance of any sparks), then turn the charger on – no sparks, no fires, no explosions, everyone safe and happy. Oh, and turn the charger off before disconnecting it, of course.
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Yes sure. Nothing happened in 2008 to 2014 with Russian special forces. Just out of nowhere in March 2014, the Ukrainians started shelling separatists who instantly formed their own governments.
You would have had to eaten a rather large chunk of lead to believe this fairy tale.
It was known for much of the 2010s that eastern Ukraine was effectively lawless before any conflict formally started, as an effort to destabilise the legitimate government. Special forces worked with organised crime to achieve this.
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This isn’t going away. Haha.
“And people have by now figured out that Anheuser-Busch also owns the third-best-selling beer in the country, Michelob Ultra:
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What’s worse for the brewer is that the negative trend appears to be spilling into other AB InBev brands: Michelob Ultra dropped 8% for the week ending April 22, while Busch Light fell by 8% and Budweiser dropped by 13%, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights.As Anhueser-Busch faces the possibility of Bud Light (the country’s number one beer brand) and Michelob Ultra (number three) falling out of the top five, gay and trans blackmail organizations demand they double-down and put more of their money and futures at risk to Affirm and Validate the Aggressively Mentally Ill.
A-B is, as one industry magazine puts it, in “serious trouble.”“
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Malcom Roberts:
We are winning. The truth always wins in the long run.
My address to a community event last week at Mudjimba on the Sunshine Coast.
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