And following the Erin Molan article, Leak absolutely nails it.
Open Thread – Tues 8 May 2023
Tina Norton.
Gary Varvel.
Tom Stiglich.
Henry Payne.
And following the Erin Molan article, Leak absolutely nails it.
Tina Norton.
Gary Varvel.
Tom Stiglich.
Henry Payne.
If you want to see the dismal state modern Britain is in, watch the Paddington Station show which is on every weekday morning on SBS. It’s on right now.
Inadvertently, they demonstrate over and over again how the system is burdened by jobsworths and bureaucracy. Delays and cancellations are invariably attributed to ‘circumstances beyond our control.’ Except, they are not.
Thousands of rules and regulations, sloppy maintenance, touchy-feely priorities, and union imposed restrictions abound.
It also highlights that, unlike roads, railways have umpteen points of failure, and any one of them can shut a whole line down. And there are many potential points of failure.
With a road, either it is blocked (by accident, flood, landslide, whatever) or it is not. The variables are relatively few.
Look, I like trains. As a passenger, they are far more civilised and comfortable than planes. And, for monotonous and reliable duty, freight trains are excellent.
But when it comes to urban mass transit with lots of dispersed lines all coming into somewhere like Paddington, you need a very expensive and ongoing investment in infrastructure and software to keep it functioning.
Janet A’s piece today (and the video of Drumgold squirming in the witness box) is a must-read/see.
A brilliantly written piece on complex subject-matter.
I knew Drumgold was headed for trouble from the start. An anti-Liberal fanatic and an intellectual lightweight. Turns out he tried to hide AFP documents (the so-called Moller reports) from the defence that explicitly warned his office that Higgins was “evasive, uncooperative and manipulative.” His career as DPP is over.
Geneticists last week discovered blue eyed people all have a common ancestor. Blue eyed people only have one gene common to them. Can’t link, allaboutvision.com. Apparently 6-10k yrs ago.
Why INCELS are a THREAT to WORLD PEACE
Black Pigeon Speaks
I am glad you corrected that, Calli.
I thought about it, but didn’t have the heart for it.
Can you guess mine?
Did they recently feature an episode in which someone dropped a hat (or something) on the line and the trains had to be stopped for half an hour or so until the properly certified staff member could be found to retrieve it?
Joyce Appleby the Marxist…”Capitalism is a cultural system rooted in economic practices that rotate around the imperative of private investors to turn a profit. Profit seeking usually promotes production efficiencies like the division of labor, economies of size, specialisation, the expansion of the market for one’s goods, and above all, innovation. Because capitalism is a cultural system and not simply an economic one, it cannot be explained by material factors alone.”
“I have been most influenced by Weber because of his emphasis on contingency and unintended consequences in the formation of capitalism.”
I smell a rat the size of a woolly mammoth
Have just finished the Paywallian’s three reports on yesterday’s session.
Golly gosh but Drumgold’s in trouble — more the blue whale kind than a garden variety mammoth.
(and yes, Sad Case, no need to note that mammoths don’t really lurk in modern gardens)
Reversing the erosion of Australia’s human capital base ought to be a compelling theme of Labor’s 2023 budget.
Now you know why they want to import more and more people here. Too lazy to help the people who are already here. A holes.
The Angelic Doctor?
His great failing will be that he is caught.
On the left they do not care how much a person undermines institutions to win political points, in fact they see it as kind of heroic. They will countenance secret deals, breaking rules, improper communications, illicit leaking of truths and lies, suppressing information, and outright lying.
And here is the bummer for him: Even if Drumgold is not alone in his malfeasance, everyone else will lie to make sure to re-apportion their misdeeds to Drumgold. Undone by deception just as he was prepared to do to others.
Karma is a bitch.
Geneticists last week discovered blue eyed people all have a common ancestor. Blue eyed people only have one gene common to them.
It’s a genetic mutation. The “switch” that produces melanin in the iris is turned off.
The mutation can also occur in African people.
How California Destroyed its Middle Class (A Cautionary Tale) | Victor Davis Hanson
Rogersays:
May 9, 2023 at 10:41 am
If you want to see the dismal state modern Britain is in, watch the Paddington Station show which is on every weekday morning on SBS. It’s on right now.
Did they recently feature an episode in which someone dropped a hat (or something) on the line and the trains had to be stopped for half an hour or so until the properly certified staff member could be found to retrieve it?
Yes and Paddington Bear could do it better.
Nearly as good as the clowns in NSW at Central Station. All fat and overweight and had NFI how to treat the travelling Public. Why are passengers called Customers? The travellers are Passengers. Not Customers. FFS.
Re the Brittany inquiry:
One thing I have never understood is the notion that prosecutors can decide not to pursue a criminal investigation because of their assessment of the ‘mental health’ of the complainant, and the likely consequences.
Since they are not mental health experts, do they base these decisions on input from psychiatrists, or what?
Is a crime not a crime because the complainant is a nutter?
What are they saying here?
Angels in iconography are often depicted as young and with hints of androgynous elements. Note above the the nipples are prominent and the facial features are softened, but the arms and legs and body are all powerfully young. The Devil is always male, hairy and older. I don’t see anything wrong with any of that. St. Michael is the way forward, the Devil is the sinful experience known to us all. The imagery of spirituality, good and justice is accurately represented with the instruments of fight that were known in previous ages, as we saw too in the coronation regalia, where the power of the sword was the very visible metaphor for spiritual things.
Tinta, your prayer this morning to St. Michael was very beautiful.
On the what 1st century inhabitants of Roman Palestinie might have looked like, I would think using its contemporary inhabitants is misleading. Arabs had not yet entered the territory. And there would have been a mix of Berber, Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, Phoenicians, Romans, and possible Celts/ Galicians among others.
Dover, St Francis de Sales?
That’s clearly a cuirass from classical antiquity. Stick to the fantasy football.
Awesome, now nanny will take your blood to see if you have slept enough.
Watch for this to be imposed on mines workers first before being rolled out for normal traffic.
Because insurers will say ” you dont HAVE to do it, but we will up your premiums 300% if you dont”…
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/08/blood-test-for-sleepy-drivers-could-pave-way-for-prosecutions
A blood test to measure whether a driver who has caused an accident was impaired by lack of sleep could be available within two years, making it easier to legislate against drowsy drivers or their employers.
The research, funded by the Australian Government Office of Road Safety, comes as fresh evidence suggests that driving on less than five hours’ sleep is as dangerous as being over the legal drink-drive limit in many countries.
It could also provide a “line in the sand” that could enable people to be prosecuted for driving while fatigued, which many sleep experts are calling for.
“There has to be a system to check whether someone has had enough sleep, because they could be putting other people’s lives at risk,” said Prof Steven Lockley, a sleep expert at Harvard medical school, who advises Nasa on sleep safety.
…
Anderson believes that a forensic blood test for sleep deprivation, which could be conducted alongside existing drug and alcohol tests if somebody is taken to hospital after a vehicle crash, could be ready in as little as two years.
Portable roadside tests will take longer, because sensors and devices to detect the biomarkers still need to be developed. However, Prof Shantha Rajaratnam, also at Monash University, said that “with the right investment to be able to scale this, I reckon that within five years we will be able to implement these biomarker-based tests – at least in safety-critical industries such as trucking, commercial aviation and mining”. Rajaratnam leads an Australian government-funded research and development consortium called the Alertness CRC, which Anderson’s research forms part of.
I agree. This seems to run counter to all ideas of justice seen to be done entailed in our system of law.
No, but that would have been an honour too. Hint: One of the disciples.
Ed’s a special case.
Says I’m wrong that Irish farmers didn’t inherit land, that they were tenants, and then posts a document that stated they’re mostly tenants.
I’ve been to Ireland and sat in the Four Courts archives room reading the land title documents for the barony that the forebears sprang from.
I didn’t consult Wiki for my knowledge of land tenure in Ireland. The farmers were pitched off their tenancy as soon as they could no longer pay the rent to the agent of the owner, usually a titled family.
That’s why they got boats and headed for countries where they could own land outright. My great grandfather told the story of how his Irish father bought any land he could get his hands on because he said he could never own land in Ireland.
The potato famine and starvation that followed had complex causes. The potato crop failure pushed a rotten system over the edge into total disaster.
Lord Palmerston was the first to have his agents clear out the tenant families and boat them off to Canada. One boat arrived with the passengers in such a state of starvation, dressed in rags, that the Canadian authorities wrote a letter of complaint and compared the system of clearance to the slave trade.
What did they inherit again Ed?
This guy?
Cold Climate Adaptation: Neanderthal Genetics Shape Our Facial Features (8 May, via Instapundit)
Blue eyes being a feature associated with northern Europeans. Even those blue eyed people in North Africa and Kashmir may well owe their eye colour to the Vandals and Scythians.
Nooooo…could it be Saint Vitruvius*? 😀
I’m also thinking someone from the other end of the alphabet. Please help me out.
* only Lego nerds will get this
The potato crop failure pushed a rotten system over the edge into total disaster.
Probably the best one line take on the thing.
System was crap.
Only took one “black swan” to tip it over into catastrophie.
One thing you can bet on:
They won’t be calling Bruce Lehrmann to give Evidence.
Agree with the comments on trains. I’m sure I did a rant a few months ago when my train from Sydney to Canberra broke down – apparently due to poor maintenance/age – just 30 minutes into the trip.
The resultant transfer to bus and completion of the journey took eight hours all up as opposed to the four originally planned.
The Plod – Nilligan – Witness J – Plod loop would have been an intriguing one to explore.
Yes.
And, in another episode, there was a guy behaving weirdly, obviously off his face on something, on one of the platforms. It took numerous phone calls while the next level of the hierarchy decided that they couldn’t deal with it – above their pay grade. In the end, there were about six people down there not knowing what to do. Including the police.
Still, it is better than the New York subway system, where weirdos are the norm, and nobody except passengers do anything about it.
Steve Earle and Del McCoury tell of an Irishman straight off a death boat, straight into the Union army and straight off down to Dixie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKEToHVW4_0
You argue a lot Dover. Is your Mum a bit bossy and wants the best job for you? If so, James or John.
Or…you ask a lot of questions and don’t take things on hearsay. That would make you Thomas. You appear to be steadfast in your opinions, so it could be Peter. If you’re drawn to accountancy and economics, Matthew maybe?
Not as brusque as Bartholomew, or as outspoken as Philip and definitely no Judas. That leaves a few others.
There are discretions built into every step of the judicial process- from the fuzz to the High Court. This is why duties and conventions matter.
Allow me to translate.
Plod wasn’t saying she was a nutter.
They were saying she was a liar and simultaneously a manipulator and being manipulated.
The mental health angle was really saying that her lies would be found out and cross examination and she would fall in a heap.
Of course we can’t ever know … oh, wait … that’s exactly what happened.
Dover?
St George Pell?
Anders, I had to look up the word cuirass.
Thank you for using it here and inviting curiosity. From me, anyway, given the lone uptick I put there.
Haha, John Kerry has found his medals!
Viewers Noticed Something Strange About John Kerry at King Charles’ Coronation (8 May)
“I’m sure it was a relief for Kerry to have miraculously ‘found’ his medals more than half a century after he chucked them in an act of political protest, but what changed?
But he’s lost all his documents.
Climate Envoy John Kerry’s Jet-Set Spending Is Getting Plenty Of Cloud Cover (9 May)
While Kerry trumpets his meetings and appearances around the world, the State Department wraps the rest of his efforts in a cloak of secrecy usually reserved for CIA black box operations. It has refused to specify lists of people he is meeting with and who is advising him as he circles the globe. His office has stonewalled requests for budget and staffing information from legislators and government watchdog groups. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed last year by RealClearInvestigations for a breakdown on how the climate envoy’s roughly $16.5 million 2022 budget was spent, the State Department said it could not comply with the request until April 2025, months after both the 2024 election and the expiration of President Biden’s current term.
The secrecy surrounding Kerry’s work is reaching a boiling point with the threat of a congressional subpoena.
Frustrated that Kerry’s office ignored two previous requests for detailed information about its budget when his party was in the minority, Republican Rep. James Comer, who now heads the House Oversight Committee, sent what he labeled a final courtesy letter on April 25 and added that a subpoena would accompany the next request if Kerry’s “powerful, unchecked position” continued to hide the information.
“The State Department has not provided any meaningful updates to Committee staff inquiries on the status of producing these documents,” Comer wrote.
Hobknobbing with the great and (not) good seems to be Lurch’s favourite thing in all the world, which he flies around frenetically all over, belching CO2.
Janet A has done great reporting on the Higgins saga.
No no no no no.
Your ancestor was a colonial oppressor and a privileged white supremacist. He was privileged because of the colour of his freckled skin.
Get with the narrative!
PS – sorry about the mistake re blue eyes. I read somewhere years ago that it was a dominant gene and it stuck. Whoops!
3rd party assessments of Miss Higgins could have been expected to have had some impact on her credibility as a witness. I’m sure some of this material would have made its way into the jury room.
On who was in Jerusalem in the first century, you can look at the description of Pentecost.
The list of the nations was in 9-11
Very cosmopolitan.
Calli is very close.
Indeed, case in point
000ps i’ll try again , it’s the Shady Sheik
Smart move by Fox.
Dr John Campbell on Youtube again, giving thanks for the ‘overwhelming support’ he has received.
Janet A also exposed the lunatic ramblings behind the Porter allegations.
I wish, Calli, but thank you.
On writing, I was interested (but not really surprised) to read in a Humphries obit (by somebody) that two of the famous Ex-Pats who didn’t get along were Barry and Robert Hughes.
I read Hughes’s The Art of Australia (written in his 20s) when I was a student and loved his ‘bravura definitive’ (as I thought of it); it was the opposite of what lecturers wanted in the 1990s. Very influential.
Re Coronas, I’m not a collector (unlike Tom Hanks) but I do want to own a famous No.3 in good condition. This was the travelling laptop of its time and a beautiful thing.
Earlier comments about Rita Panahi’s defence of Moira Deeming against Kroger were appreciated. I hadn’t seen Rita last night. There have also been comments regarding the excellent reporting on the Higgins-Lerhmann case by Janet Albrechston. Now, if I recall correctly, isn’t Janet A, Krogers’ squeeze?
If so, why the hell isn’t he sitting in front of Rita with two black eyes, a broken nose and a suitably sorrowful demeanour? Or doesn’t Janet like Moira?
Now, if I recall correctly, isn’t Janet A, Krogers’ squeeze?
I might be wrong but I think that liaison is over.
It was nice to see Kroger squirm last night with Rita. He didn’t like it.
Rosie:
Without getting into the whole public feeding caper, both my children were fed if they required it in public, but with a towel over the child. No problems there – the towel or nappy kept out the bright lights and preserved my wife’s modesty. That was it as far as we were concerned.
On the other hand, the Sword lady during the Coronation, her dress needed a v shape cut into the neckline – just enough to show a minor cleavage. The Lady of the Lake was decidedly feminine and that role allowed a feminine image. The flat neckline did nothing for her.
Absolute bloodbath.
Imagine that! Vandals sneaking up to you and spraying blue paint in your eyes, before they go an break your clay mug and snap your spear. They should birched in public, if you ask me!
A Cat was wondering about Bob Moran’s toon of a few days ago. This story is a good explanation of part of it.
King Charles’s swollen fingers trend on coronation day: What do we know about his health? (6 May, via Instapundit)
That’s a very good question, which suggests he won’t match his mum’s 96 or his granny’s ton.
Vandals and Scythians weren’t northern European.
Sancho Panzer:
It’s surprising to some people who think they are too big or powerful or rich to fail, that when it comes to crunch time, they are just as disposable as the people they look down on.
“Cassie of Sydneysays:
May 9, 2023 at 11:36 am
Now, if I recall correctly, isn’t Janet A, Krogers’ squeeze?
I might be wrong but I think that liaison is over.
It was nice to see Kroger squirm last night with Rita. He didn’t like it.”
I had been wondering how he had been getting away with being so “anti Liberal Women” lately.
I like to think Janet would have sorted him on that subject.
Awesome, areff. Steve Earle is a magnificent artist with an unsurprisingly messy private life. He wrote a book of short stories called ‘Doghouse Roses’ about, inter alia, his vain attempts to appease angry women with wilting roses from the local service station.
I mentioned him on Rabz’ C&W thread.
Here
is one of his best – Ben McCullough. It is about a young Southern boy who, as is not unusual, joined up for the war looking for adventure and inspired by a charismatic
recruiter.
‘Well the poster said we’d get seven bucks a week
The best rations in the army
And a rifle we could keep’
After a series of disasters:
‘I don’t even know what I’m fightin’ for
I ain’t never owned a slave.’
Sharp and perceptive, despite decades of assaults on his brain matter by all sorts of legal and illegal substances.
Oh, and this one in a duet with the divine Emmylou Harris is superb.
The opinions of artists on politics are worthless. They are worth as much as the opinions of politicians about art. The briefest examination of ‘public art’ will confirm it.
It’s pretty obvious now that Joe Biden will not in fact be running for President.
He is cerebral toast now, let alone in 12 to 18 months.
I think if Kennedy sounded mellifluous, he would be hard to beat. A few American commentators say the voice is a turn-off to voters. Adam Creighton, whose judgement is sound, says he’s now polling at 20% – quite a chunk of support at this early stage.
Dover:
St Luke FTW.
C.L. says:
May 9, 2023 at 11:59 am
He is cerebral toast now, let alone in 12 to 18 months.
And yet the Age has a headline today: “Can we all be as ‘healthy and vigorous’ at 80 as Joe Biden?”
Let’s hope not!
A pet rock is more presidential than Biden.
Close, C.L.
Is Justice Still Blind in Canada?
Equality under the law is the cornerstone of liberal democracy. But judges across the country are now factoring race into sentencing.
By Rupa Subramanya
Edward Smith didn’t think the color of his skin had anything to do with it.
He was 23, and he’d come to Canada in 2005 from West Africa. Now, he lived with his mother and sister in Edmonton, the capital of the western province of Alberta.
Racism—overt or systemic—didn’t make him take part in an armed robbery of an Airbnb in July 2019, he said. He’d decided on his own to help his cousin, who had told Smith that the people staying at the Airbnb had robbed him and that he was trying to get his money back. Smith agreed to help, but he didn’t want any guns involved. So they compromised: they’d bring a gun, but it would be unloaded.
Things didn’t go as planned, and Smith was arrested. At his trial, Smith pleaded guilty to the two charges—theft and robbery with a firearm—filed against him.
Since Smith is black, he also submitted an Impact of Race and Culture Assessment, or IRCA—a presentencing report in which “Black and racialized Canadians” can demonstrate how systemic racism led them to commit their crime.
The logic behind Smith’s IRCA was clear: as a black man, it was assumed that he had been subjected to a great deal of hate, and that that hate had limited his job opportunities, housing opportunities, opportunities to build a meaningful and law-abiding life.
Dunia Nur, the activist who wrote Smith’s IRCA, told me the report was meant to help the judge appreciate the convict’s “background” and “history.”
I obtained Smith’s IRCA from Smith himself. Oddly, the four-page report cites no concrete instances of racism—no violence, no untoward remarks, no employers or schools that turned Smith down because of his skin color. Not even any microaggressions.
It also fails to mention that, in a separate incident in January 2018, Smith was arrested and charged with theft, robbery, and kidnapping.
Long & DepressingArticle – Canada, America and the West aiming for the Drain
I would regard Poland and Finland as “northern European”. Admittedly the term ‘Scythian’ was a bit of a grab bag that the Romans used – and mainly for people north of the Black Sea. But DNA testing has shown quite a lot of these people came from the Baltic Sea areas.
Good if this line of enquiry includes Labor pollies and their advisers. And maybe result in a prima facie case of corruption to be reported to NACC when the $millions payout to Ms Higgins was approved by same labor folks.
Ex-prosecutor approached DOJ in 2018 with witness who claimed Joe Biden involved in ‘bribery’
Feds didn’t take former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins up on his offer, but later scoured his phone records seeking his sources.
By John Solomon
Notice How Ukraine Pops Up
A respected former federal prosecutor approached the U.S. Justice Department in fall 2018 on behalf of a foreign witness who claimed to have evidence that Joe Biden had “exercised influence to protect” his son’s employer in Ukraine in return for money to his family, according to interviews and documents obtained by Just the News.
The agency didn’t take up the ex-prosecutor on his offer but instead secretly obtained his phone records a year later in an apparent effort to identify his contacts.
Retired Little Rock, Ark., U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins wrote then-New York U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman on Oct. 4, 2018 that then-Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko was willing to travel to the United States to present evidence about the Bidens and Burisma Holdings.
Lutsenko believes “VP Biden (and Sec State Kerry) exercised influence to protect Burisma Holdings in exchange for payments to Hunter Biden, (business partner) Devon Archer, and Joe Biden,” Cummins emailed Berman.
Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer were both hired to the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas firm, in spring 2014 while Joe Biden was vice president and in charge of U.S.-Ukraine policy.
The hiring raised eyebrows since the gas company was considered corrupt by the U.S. State Department and State officials have testified they believed the hiring of the VP’s son created the appearance of a conflict of interest.
In a series of emails, Cummins said Lutsenko could produce two “John Doe” witnesses who could corroborate the claims, including that some of the money Burisma paid to Hunter Biden as a board member for Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky’s firm benefited Joe Biden.
“There is a claim they have proof of a wire of significant funds from Zlochevsky to Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC which they claim directly went to the benefit of Joe Biden,” Cummins wrote. “I have never understood why they think they know it went to him. I think the entity was associated with Hunter Biden and Archer.
“All I have been told is that the person who made the transfers was told that ‘one goes to Joe Biden.’ A little thin,” Cummins wrote in one of several emails trying to prod Berman to set up a meeting.
In an interview with Just the News and The New York Post, Cummins said he was surprised DOJ didn’t engage and try to determine if what Ukrainian officials were alleging was true,
“I can’t really imagine a legitimate reason for the DOJ not to follow up on an offer like that,” he said. “I felt like it was stonewalled.”
Cummins, who served as chief federal prosecutor for the Arkansas federal district under George W. Bush, said he was even more stunned late last year when he got a belated notice from Apple that federal prosecutors obtained data in 2019 from his iPhone with a grand jury subpoena.
You can read the Apple notice here:
Cummins said the secret search of his phone felt like “retaliation.”
“It doesn’t make much sense to investigate the guy who brings you the allegation rather than the allegation,” he said.
Having an artist squeeze is educational here.
Public works have a mandatory vigorish for public art. As its the last thing done, and the head contractor wants to get their final payments ASAP after all the over-runs, the public art component is tendered at the last minute. The tenderers write a proposal in the four available days (between hearing of the RFT and tenders closing), whack it in, and the winners get bare weeks to execute.
Public art is done not by great artists, but by good tenderers.
One of the best breaks with this wasteful pattern is Sculptures By the Sea in Cottesloe. Some really good works from the exhibition have been bought and installed in public places by local councils and developers over the years.
News and opinion brought to you by people that think a man can self-identify as a woman and that pointing out the ridiculousness of this position is ‘hate’ and ‘division’.
Two reasons you are wrong CL.
1. Jill Biden
2. The dirt files accumulated over 50 years
3. The Dem machine wants a puppet not a free willed person
4. Dems can only count to two.
The files must be truly epic. I suspect a bit of Epstein material will be amongst them.
The Impending Thermidor Reaction in Jacobin America
At peak woke, our reign of terror is beginning to lose momentum because its continuation would destroy all the work of 247 years of American progress and sacrifice.
By Victor Davis Hanson
The decade-long French Revolution that broke out in 1789 soon devolved into far more than removing the monarchy, as it became antithetical to the earlier American precedent. American notions of liberty and freedom were seen as far too narrow, given the state, if only all-powerful and all-wise, could mandate “equality” and force “fraternity” among its subjects.
Each cycle of French revolutionary fervor soon became more radicalized and cannibalistic—until it reached its logical ends of violent absurdity.
Originally, the idea of curbing the power of a Bourbon king through a parliamentary republic became lethally counter-revolutionary.
Soon even attacks on the Catholic Church and the abolition of the monarchy entirely were deemed insufficient. The king himself and his consorts had to be beheaded. Monasteries and churches were to be ransacked, and priests exiled or lynched.
The sometimes moderate Girondins, who favored constitutional government, were mostly executed by their former friends among the Montagnards. In turn, the latter were soon deemed too conservative for the emerging crazy Jacobins. So they, too, had to be decapitated. The ensuing year-long reign of terror guillotined thousands of innocents, deemed guilty of being guilty of something.
By 1793, the revolution had turned nihilist and suicidal. The foundational date of France was recalibrated (not as 1619 but) as 1789—or “year one.”
Jacobins sought to wipe out religion, both materially and spiritually. They replaced God, first, with the atheistic “Cult of Reason” and then a stranger still “Cult of the Supreme Being”—a dreamed-up, living, humanistic god that only the murderous Robespierre could fully envision, but eerily similar to our own Green New Deal deity.
The months of the year themselves were renamed, the days of the week renumbered and relabeled. Statues were toppled, first at night, later in shameless daylight. Place names were erased and renamed. The original revolutionary heroes were not to be mentioned; their uncouth successors deified. Money was printed to “spread the wealth”—until it was worthless.
Murderous cancel culture ran unchecked. Yesterday’s French revolutionary became today’s counterrevolutionary—and tomorrow’s decapitated.
Almost everyone who originally had opposed the absolute monarchy, and, like the Americans, wished for a constitutional replacement, was eventually executed by revolutionaries who were then executed by more radical revolutionaries. The longer and more radical the revolution ran, the meaner, dumber, and more deadly the revolutionaries who emerged from the woodwork.
Finally, what could not go on, did not go on, as French society unraveled. Then the so-called Thermidors put an end to the madness of the Robespierre brothers and their sidekick, the 26-year-old Saint-Just, and did to them what they had done to thousands.
The final revolutionary correction saw a Directory, then a Consulate, and finally the dictator Napoleon—the self-described emperor who claimed he was the final absolutist manifestation of the “Revolution.”
A Revolution of the Disingenuous
We are swept up in similarly scary revolutionary times, after the perfect storm of the 2020 rioting, the COVID destructive lockdowns, and a radical socialist takeover of the old Democratic Party.
Decades of successful and legitimate efforts to ensure equality of opportunity, a safety net for the poor, and increased civil liberties have transmogrified into an “equity” agenda, or state-mandated equality of result—or else!
“Diversity” is now an Orwellian word for racial essentialism to the one-drop degree. Jim Crow racism was not eliminated permanently. It now has resurfaced as woke or “good” segregation. Racially separate facilities and events are apparent “reparatory justice.” Black activists are calling for $800 billion in reparations from San Francisco, a city that is melting down as we speak.
The old precivilizational tribalism and monotony of thought are now deemed “diverse.” “Inclusion” means replacing one racial hierarchy of the 1950s with a newer one of the 2020s. Woke leftists prove “inclusive” by excluding as “haters” and “denialists” any who disagree and cannot be easily refuted.
Opportunists Abound
The Nike admen Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James ended up with millions of dollars in endorsements ultimately derived from Communist Chinese exploiters of servile labor—a fact that all their pseudo-revolutionary performance art cannot mask.
Like the rich and elite Montagnards and Jacobins, well-off, degreed suburban grifters suddenly became “woke” arbiters of the “correct.” Thousands of diversity, equity, and inclusion czars bloated administrations, broke university budgets, and terrified faculty and employees with their panopticon surveillance. And yet did any of them result in a single better student reader, or at least one more accomplished university math major? Have K-12 scores soared with DEI monitors on hand?
We have not descended to the guillotine yet, but we are getting there with online cancel culture, doxxing, deplatforming, boycotts, mandatory diversity statements, indoctrination training, ostracism for an incorrect word, and violence redefined as activism.
Black Lives Matter ended when its supposedly Marxist architects all vanished into comfortable bourgeoise estates and cushy retirements—along with the millions of dollars they shook down from guilt-ridden corporations.
#MeToo sputtered out once the mantra of “believe women” turned its attention to candidate Joe Biden and Tara Reade. It turned out that she most certainly must not be believed when she swore the Delaware Democrat had sexually assaulted her.
Supposed transgendered heroes vie for profitable TV endorsement commercials that are as lucrative to them as they are ruinous to their employers.
In our revolutionary times, mediocre biological male athletes “transition” into female sports and suddenly become rich and famous. Women who transition to males, for some reason, find no such profits from male competitions.
A black transient with 42 arrests and three assault convictions is accidentally killed by a would-be Samaritan bystander who takes action to stop his threats on the subway. The tragedy becomes a rallying cry for “activist” leaders, eager for continuous notoriety and profits, while 10,000 black people murdered per year, mostly by other black people, do not earn a snore from these same “civil rights” leaders.
The World Upside Down
A Counterrevolution Is Coming
Joe Biden, the thin veneer of the woke revolution, polls below 40 percent. Even that favorability is propped up by the consensus that he has no idea where he is or what he is saying—and thus at least is deserving of 40 percent support for not being responsible for what he has empowered.
A counterrevolution is building, not just because people are angry at what has become of their country, but because they now are learning that if they do nothing, they will have no country—and soon.
St Luke was an apostle, not strictly a disciple (one of the twelve).
I missed Thaddeus, Andrew and Simon the Zealot in the list earlier. And there was another James (Jude). Some scholars say Mark was the poor young man who lost his cloak during the skirmish at Gethsamane, so he was possibly an eye witness of all that happened that night.
Feeling sorry for Harry? Or not? Angela Levin on GB News in an analysis with depth.
The American media, when it turns cruel, can be quite savage. ‘Wall Mart Wallis’ is being panned.
And Markle turns coronation day into a total dress-down on a hike.
One wonders how long this marriage is going to last. If it parallels the scenes depicted in ‘Succession’ last night it will be a complete train wreck. One fears for the children, if so.
I’ll also remind that the Dems were weirdly unconcerned about poll numbers or Biden’s rallies of six (6) people in the run up to the 2020 election. Which was something I commented about at the time.
They are likewise seemingly unconcerned about the polls now. I’m not detecting any panic whatsoever.
Plus the primary polls between Biden, RFK and Williamson have Biden so far out in front it’s hilarious.
Thaddeus was the name of the little boy snatched from the Surry Hills street in Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South, the one whose face and loss haunted his Irish ‘mumma’ all of her days. You never hear it these days.
Bruce O’Nuke:
The price of keeping the political class egos warm and dry is the impoverishment of the peasants. And the politicians and bureaucrats are happy to pay the price.
Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Southern Poland isn’t northern European, and Finnish roots in Siberia pretty much confirms that the Scythians were still from the central Asian steppe.
Brutal.
It’d be great to see version of last nights Succession fight between Tom and Shiv with Harry & Meghan as the actors. And its more truth uttered by a Roy family member in 10 mins than all the previous seasons.
Speaking of potato famines, I believe the Thirst Nations cotton crop failure of 1723 set the national economy back a decade or more. Unsurprisingly, it was due to the exhorbitant British colonial export taxes, and intentional sabotage of the extensive irrigation systems by settler militia.
Haha, Dover. Poland not northern European? Snort. I have a Twister set to sell you.
The migrations were a response to the end of the Roman Warm Period, as the climate cooled and agriculture was no longer possible in the area between the north Urals and the Baltic. So a successive wave of migrants pushed west and south. They had no choice. The Vandals were most fun by taking North Africa, but the Normans conquering Sicily is up there too. Vikings in Sicily! No wonder there’re blue-eyed people in those areas.
Hopefully the Higgins case does look into any politicians links.
From things read that might impact Katy Gallagher in particular who knew her boyfriend.
‘Over Our Dead Bodies’: Backlash Builds Against $3 Trillion Clean-Energy Push
Ballooning size of wind and solar projects draws local ire as they march closer to populated areas
LAWRENCE, Kan.—The federal government has ignited a green-energy investment spree that’s expected to reach as high as $3 trillion over the next decade. The road to spending that money, though, is increasingly hitting speed bumps from the likes of Gerry Coffman.
About an hour southwest of Kansas City, she turned down a wind lease last year on a farm that has been in her family since 1866.
Someone knocked on her door a few months later, paperwork in hand, and offered $6,000 to hang a wind-power transmission line across her land. If she agreed to store construction equipment, she stood to make an additional $4,000. Ms. Coffman said no.
Ms. Coffman rotates corn and soybeans and has cattle pasture on her part of the family farm, which includes a wooded ribbon of water called Eight Mile Creek. Ms. Coffman doesn’t want to see native forest or prairie disturbed and thinks the industrial nature of towering wind turbines would change the community for the worse if a proposed project were built.
“A year ago we were a nice, quiet neighborhood,” said Ms. Coffman, who has attended a series of contentious public meetings over several months as the county considers revising regulations for wind-energy development.
County-by-county battles are raging as wind and solar projects balloon in size, edge closer to cities and encounter mounting pushback in communities from Niagara Falls to the Great Plains and beyond. Projects have slowed. Even in states with a long history of building renewables, developers don’t know if they can get local permits or how long it might take.
In Kansas, wind power grew rapidly for two decades and supplies around 45% of the electricity generated in-state, ranking it third in the nation.
But at least five counties in more-populous eastern Kansas have recently placed moratoriums or bans on new wind or solar projects, joining 18 others that already restricted wind development to preserve the tallgrass prairie ecosystem.
Kansas lagged behind nearly every state in large project construction and new clean power capacity last year, according to the American Clean Power Association, an industry group for wind, solar and battery storage.
President Biden’s signature legislative accomplishment, the Inflation Reduction Act, aims to make the nation’s electric grid and fuel industries cleaner. Companies have already announced plans for $150 billion in investment in renewables and battery storage in the eight months following the law’s passage, according to the American Clean Power Association.
Shatterzzz:
Every other person in our family is a redhead. Our claim to fame.
People are so unkind.
It was the same with Britain after the Romans pulled out – the Saxons and Jutes couldn’t farm so well anymore in Saxony and Jutland so they went to England, which is warmed by the Gulf Stream. Maybe it wasn’t an invasion as such, but northern Europeans had to go somewhere. Agriculture doesn’t like cold.
Crossie:
It’s not up to you to question the Anointed One, Crossie.
Be quiet, Peasant!
And yet the Age has a headline today: “Can we all be as ‘healthy and vigorous’ at 80 as Joe Biden?”
Let’s hope not!
There’s not much evidence of Australian Aborigines having the red hair gene before the Irish and the Scots arrived. Nowadays, along with the names, it’s everywhere.
Red hair has often been associated with volatility and instability of temperament. I have no idea whether that is true.
Anne of Green Gables (a very red redhead) was descended from Scottish migrants. Her quick temper and impulsive nature reflected the opinions of the times.
Apologies. Blockquote fail. My attention was elsewhere. lol. Not due to age.
Today is Hairy’s seventy-first birthday and we are busy planning celebrations.
Where is my hanky as I can’t hold back the years. Fran Kelly’s show cancelled. 8 shows in 7 months sounds like really hard work.
From Courier Mail
ABC prime time chat show Frankly has been axed after just one season.
Just seven months after its October premiere, it was announced the show – which ran for eight episodes – would not be commissioned for a second season.
“Frankly will not be returning this year,” an ABC spokesperson confirmed to TV Tonight, with production sources telling the outlet the show had been axed.
How much money per show?
Nice to see a guy with cojones.
Nationals MP Matt Canvan hits back at Albanese government’s anticipated budget surplus, demanding gratitude for miners (Sky News, 9 May)
Pity that the Nat and Lib hierarchy are so soppingly green. I can’t see Matt lasting much longer before they get rid of him.
Make that tears.
To be more specific, Lizzie – that kind of ancient cuirass is called a muscle cuirass.
Climate change is noted by some as a source of the migratory movements of horse-riders down from the Steppes, as push factor for other movements off settled lands which were also less productive. The issue of climatic drivers during this period has largely been under-researched, alluded to more than shown.
Anders, the presence of the obvious nipple and umbilicus seems somewhat anomalous in a breastplate though. Was this usual in this type? I haven’t seen it elsewhere so took it as an artist’s input.
Just clicked your link, Anders, and obviously the breastplate is of a type, as you suggest.
Very interesting. Thank you.
No one thinks of the Poles as northern Europeans, Bruce, let alone the southern areas like Krakow. Twister set or no twister set.
Lizzie – Yes. Grass needs warmth too. And the nomadic guys from the Huns and the Mongols would pursue good grazing for their herds. I recall seeing many mentions that the tribes like the Goths, Franks and Vandals were driven to migrate by pressure even more warlike peoples from the east.
Bruce O’Nuke:
They’re doing everything except the one thing they need to do – which is sack the board, sack the advertising geniuses, and apologise.
This is breathtaking – the complete inability to see their mistake and correct it.
The rest of the world is looking on, watching our ‘Best and Brightest’ make elementary mistakes that a ten year old could fix.
‘Really weak option’: Wall Street sours on DeSantis as Trump challenger
Ron DeSantis’ gubernatorial reelection campaign is still loaded with cash, giving him big advantages over possible competitors. But many now say he no longer seems so formidable — at least on Wall Street.
Wall Street is firmly in the Never Trump camp. Finding a Republican who can make “never” happen is another question.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had been seen as the top pick to lock down the support of financial titans who have already pumped millions into his state campaigns.
But as he stumbles through gaffes over everything from his personal demeanor and stance on Ukraine to his snacking habits, Wall Street donors are keeping the door open to his competitors, according to more than a dozen bankers, attorneys and political consultants interviewed for this story.
“People will change horses,” said Dave Carney, a veteran Republican strategist for both former Bush presidents. “You may get really excited about somebody and then all of a sudden realize, ‘Eh, not really my cup of tea.’”
Where Wall Street puts its money matters because financial industry executives are among the biggest donors in presidential elections. And while bankers and asset managers generally favor lower taxes and lighter-touch regulation, they also value stability and experience — and they spread their money around to candidates of both parties, meaning they’re very much in play in each cycle.
On paper, that should give DeSantis an advantage. People close to Wall Street donors said his national profile and powerhouse fundraising operation that has included support from hedge fund titans like Ken Griffin and Jeff Yass had positioned him as most able to survive a primary with former President Donald Trump.
DeSantis’ gubernatorial reelection campaign is still loaded with cash, giving him big advantages over possible competitors. But many now say he no longer seems so formidable — at least on Wall Street.
With Trump surging in the polls following his indictment on criminal charges stemming from alleged hush money payments, one executive at a New York bank said confidence in DeSantis’s ability to win is flagging.
“DeSantis is certainly a better option than Trump at this point,” the executive said. “But he’s a really weak option.”
The executive said many are growing resigned to the possibility of a general election rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden.
“What we probably wind up with is a choice between a guy who is very old and wants to raise our taxes and reregulate everything, and a guy who could be running from prison,” the executive said.
What did they inherit again Ed?
Head Case and a Suitable Case for Treatment thinks that ………………..
Hang on a mo’. He doesn’t fink’ very much at all.
TPL001:
Correct. And what you’ll find is that politics is what created the conditions whereby a minor problem became a catastrophe.
My second son at 9yrs of age chose Luke. His teacher asked him if it was Luke of the Gospels. His reply was no, it was after Luke Skywalker.
Hang on a mo’. He doesn’t fink’ very much at all.
And he can’t tell us the name of the major national highway that runs north – south through Toowoomba.
Kremlin Drone Attack Is One More Reason To Stop The Russia-Ukraine War
BY: JONATHAN S. TOBIN
Instead of denying involvement and encouraging escalation, Biden needs to recognize that a missile strike on the capitol of a nuclear power is an invitation to World War III.
For Washington, it was just another day in the war that has become the primary focus of American foreign and defense policy. But May 3 brought another reminder of the potentially catastrophic nature of the open-ended U.S. commitment to Ukraine.
As The New York Times was forced to admit, the drone strike on the Kremlin, the historic building that is the center of power in Russia and where its authoritarian President Vladimir Putin works, was “real.”
Many people witnessed the two explosions over the famous fortified complex that dates back to the 14th century and whose iconic walls and bell tower are more than 500 years old. But, according to the Times, “the rest is hazy.”
Like much of the corporate media, the Times was eager to buttress Biden administration denials of involvement in the incident, despite the angry Russian claims that the United States had “dictated” strikes inside their country.
And if the allegation is that the White House or Pentagon is directly responsible for shooting missiles at the capitol of a nuclear power, that’s probably right. Surely, not even President Joe Biden would do something so patently insane as that.
But as the documents leaked from the Pentagon last month confirmed, U.S. intelligence is neck deep in Ukraine’s war effort.
Indeed, a year ago, the Times was already reporting that the American military was providing “real time battlefield intelligence” to the Ukrainians, including in efforts to help them kill Russian generals.
And since we also already know that Ukraine is willing to operate inside Russia to assassinate figures associated with the Putin regime, it’s not really that much of a reach for Moscow to link Washington to the strike on the Kremlin.
Nevertheless, outlets like the Times were seeking to muddy the waters about the incident by claiming that perhaps it was a false flag operation conducted by the Russians or the work of rogue operatives who could have been working for either side in the war.
That is possible. But, like the claims that were endlessly repeated by the administration and their media cheerleaders last year about the Russians blowing up their own gas pipeline in the Baltic, which were eventually quietly debunked, it’s not terribly likely.
As much as Putin’s flacks are doing everything to demonize the Ukrainians and impart a sense of alarm to the Russian people, the idea that he would go along with such a display of weakness is to betray complete ignorance about the mentality of his regime.
The most reasonable explanation was that the Ukrainians were seeking to embarrass Putin on the eve of Moscow’s annual military parade celebrating their victory in World War II.
If so, mission accomplished.
Another Wake-Up Call
West Must Move to End Fighting
Pretty damn cold though Dover. Which is my point. They’ve got lots of blue eyed Caucasians because it is necessary for people that far north not to be so pigmented. Or they died of vitamin D deficiency.
Blue eyes shown in map of Europe (2013)
Drumgold admits to Sofronoff inquiry that he hid documents from Lehrmann defence.
Tries to save himsef by saying they weren’t disclosable.
Mr Sofronoff calls bullshit on that and educates him accordingly.
Exquisite!
They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon.
– Edward Lear
Defense Attorneys Allege Massive Misconduct In Georgia’s Crumbling Get-Trump Crusade
BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND
Contrary to misleading headlines, none of the eight electors granted immunity in Fulton County’s anti-Trump war ‘said anything … incriminating to themselves or anyone else.’
At Least Eight Trump Electors Have Accepted Immunity in Georgia Investigation,” headlines uniformly blared on Friday. The legacy outlets echoing that narrative, however, buried the lede, which is that Fulton County’s get-Trump district attorney can’t even find incriminating evidence against the former president when she grants immunity to targets of her criminal investigation.
A strong secondary story, also ignored or downplayed by the left-wing media, reveals multiple incidents of alleged misconduct by the D.A.’s office.
The attorney representing eight Republicans targeted by the Fulton County D.A. filed a scathing response on Friday to the D.A. office’s motion to disqualify her from continued representation of her clients.
Kimberly Debrow’s 28-page response detailed several previously unknown instances of questionable conduct by prosecutors targeting Donald Trump, his lawyers, and several high-profile Georgia Republicans.
And contrary to the misleading headlines of the last several days, Debrow revealed that none of the eight individuals granted immunity “said anything in any of their interviews that was incriminating to themselves or anyone else.”
– How We Got Here
– Immunity Talk
– Manipulation and Intimidation
Ignoring the Real Story
The corporate media were likewise content to ignore the allegations of serious misconduct.
Those included Willis’ misrepresentation to the court about whether the electors’ attorney had informed them of the prior immunity discussion and Wade’s alleged attempt to mislead and intimidate one of the witnesses by threatening to indict him.
Wade’s involvement here is particularly ironic given that a Fulton County judge held the special prosecution team could no longer investigate one of the electors, then-state Sen. Burt Jones, because Willis had hosted and headlined a fundraiser for Charlie Bailey — a Democrat seeking to challenge Jones in the general election for lieutenant governor. Wade, like Willis, had donated to Bailey’s campaign.
Noteworthy too is Wade’s work with Willis, as Wade was a private attorney whom Willis specifically hired to work on 2020 election investigation.
Willis bringing on a pit bull to further her get-Trump efforts smells disgustingly similar to Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s use of outside “special assistant district attorneys,” including three from a high-powered, Democrat-connected law firm, to help find a way to indict Trump.
Also appalling is the attempt by Willis’ office to force Debrow off the case — a tactic sadly seen sometimes when a prosecutor proves unable to manipulate a witness into saying what the government wants.
Defense Attorneys Allege Massive Misconduct In Georgia’s Crumbling Get-Trump Crusade
Happy Birthday Hairy!
The Norwegian shipping company, Havila Kystruten, has banned electric, hybrid, and hydrogen cars from its ferries. After a risk analysis, it was concluded that the risk to the safety of the shipping fleet was too significant. If a vehicle catches fire, the fire can no longer be extinguished.
The risks for ships from the transport of Electric cars (EV) have been discussed since the “Felicity Ace” sank off the Azores, Portugal, last February. E-vehicles on board had caught fire. The fire could not be extinguished. Finally, the colossal ship sank with thousands of electric cars, including Porsche and Bentley “green” vehicles.
Capt. Rahul Khanna, global head of marine consulting at Allianz (AGCS), a marine insurance specialist, explains that the problem with EVs is that lithium-ion batteries in the cars can actually propagate the fire, igniting more vigorously as compared to conventional cars. A single vehicle fire could prove catastrophic.
E-cars are a danger for ship passengers
According to a report by the TradeWinds shipping news service, Havila’s Chief executive Bent Martini said the risk analysis showed that the fire in an electric car required a particularly complex rescue operation. The crew on board could not afford this. Passengers would also be at risk. This is different for vehicles with combustion engines. A possible fire is usually easy to fight by the ship’s crew.
After the sinking of the “Felicity Ace,” Greenpeace also warned against e-cars on ships: “In general, electronic components and especially electric vehicles pose a risk for every transport.”
OldOzziesays:
May 9, 2023 at 1:08 pm
Kremlin Drone Attack Is One More Reason To Stop The Russia-Ukraine War
BY: JONATHAN S. TOBIN
Instead of denying involvement and encouraging escalation, Biden needs to recognize that a missile strike on the capitol of a nuclear power is an invitation to World War III.
Exactly. And what would dopey Biden do if there was a drone attack on the White House? Not much as all the drones are inside the building……………………..lol
Biden’s Corruption Is Everything Corporate Media Hoped To Get Out Of Trump, So They Won’t Cover It
Corporate media refuse to recognize President Joe Biden’s corruption even when it stares them in the face during a one-on-one interview.
Every day, investigators uncover potential evidence that President Joe Biden sold out the country for personal gain, yet even when on full display, the corporate media refuse to call out the Democrat’s corruption, deliberately choosing to ignore the scandal.
“Sir, there is something personal that’s affecting you. Your son, while there’s no ties to you, could be charged by your Department of Justice. How will that impact your presidency?” MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle twice asked the president on Friday during one of his rare sitdown interviews.
“First of all, my son has done nothing wrong. I trust him. I have faith in him. It impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him,” Biden replied
Biden’s nonchalant dismissal of Hunter’s long history of hedonism and criminality is problematic for several reasons. But far more shocking than his redundant affirmation of his not-so-prodigal son was the question that led the president to that answer.
Just this week, Republicans Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. James Comer subpoenaed the FBI over a document they say alleges a criminal scheme between now-President Joe Biden and a “foreign national” during his years in the Obama White House.
The allegation that Biden appears to be implicated in an international bribery scheme is merely the latest piece of evidence uncovered by GOP legislators investigating whether Biden sold out the American people to the nation’s foreign enemies to line his own pockets. So far, Republicans have warned it “doesn’t look good for POTUS.”
The latest news was so big even corporate media outlets that chose not to cover the Hunter laptop scandal until well beyond the 2020 election highlighted it.
Yet, instead of covering bombshell stories like that Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys in California and D.C. recently blocked their offices from filing criminal tax charges against Hunter, Ruhle willfully turned a blind eye to them. Ruhle is so unbothered by the ongoing Biden corruption scandal she even tried to discredit it with “no ties to you” caveats about the president’s connection to Hunter’s potential wrongdoings.
That strategy is scandalous yet unsurprising given the corporate media’s track record of covering for their preferred candidates.
Trump The Traitor, Biden The Benevolent
Trump isn’t the only victim of the media and the Democrat media complex’s double standard.
Under Biden, liberty and justice are for all unless you’re a pro-life Christian, concerned parent, “MAGA Republican,” or victim of Democrats’ deadly covid policies.
For years, members of the corporate media scrounged for dirt on their political enemies, like Trump and his voters. Yet when an actual scandal sits down for a one-on-one interview with them, they gloss over it. Do not mistake the press’s lack of attention to the flailing president’s loving father facade as blissful ignorance to the extent of Biden’s corruption.
Ruhle’s dishonest line of questioning proves that the corporate media’s motivations when it comes to bombshells about the Bidens remain pure deception.
Interesting how the Sami don’t share that trait while the peoples of the northern Adriatic do.
Judi Dench | The Owl and the Pussy-cat
Lizzie 12.24pm:
There are no children.
sfw:
3.3 here at Barcaldine this morning 0600. (Have to take our hourly temperature readings from the Longreach site at BoM)
People just do not believe when we get to below zero here in winter.
I love the “runcible” spoon. Lear, like Carroll, loved his nonsense words.
I always picture it as a Splayd.
Old news, my emphasis:
Safe spaces for conservatives. Oh how quickly the tables have turned.
Don’t think a conservative would describe themselves as wanting a safe space. If they did want one (e.g. this blog) they would never admit to it. This may be a tell that his heart isn’t in it, but is simply looking to capitalise on the difference.
A reminder: If the service is free, you are the product (or an unwitting worker training someone else’s AI asset).
Why Humans Gawk At The Idea Of A King
BY: BISHOP ROBERT BARRON
There’s a spiritual reason why we are simultaneously both fearful of and enamored by the idea of an earthly king.
I imagine that most of the English-speaking world watched at least sections of the coronation ceremony of King Charles III last weekend at Westminster Abbey. I took in the delayed broadcast on YouTube and found it fascinating for a number of reasons.
Perhaps this shouldn’t have surprised me — but it did — just how extraordinarily religious, indeed explicitly Christian, an observance it was.
It was presided over, of course, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Anglican hierarchs and clergy were thick on the ground at the abbey. The name of Jesus was invoked numerous times, readings from the Bible occurred, a communion service unfolded, and the new king and queen partook in the sacrament.
Though it happened demurely behind screens, Charles was anointed in the manner of a priest or bishop at his ordination, and afterward, he was clothed in what looked, for all the world, like priestly robes.
In point of fact, the conflation of the sacerdotal and kingly roles was remarkably redolent of Old Testament figures such as Saul, David, and Solomon.
There were two sacred moments in particular that caught my attention. First, at the very outset of the ceremony, King Charles declared, “In imitation of the King of Kings, I have come, not to be served, but to serve.”
And secondly, just after the anointing and just before the coronation, the archbishop of Canterbury presented Charles with an orb, topped by the cross of Jesus, and commented that it symbolized how the new king’s rangy authority was under a higher divine authority.
Now, there is no question that we human beings are beguiled by power and those who exercise it. Most of us want power in some form and so look with a combination of longing and envy on the people who have it.
This goes a long way to explaining why we look with dazzled eyes at a ceremony such as the coronation of a king. But the religious element, so obviously on display in Westminster Abbey last week, speaks to something else—namely, how legitimately afraid we are of power.
Long and dreadful experience has convinced us that the concentration of power, unrestrained by moral duty and consideration, is one of the most dangerous forces on earth.
Kings, emperors, warlords, princes, and dictators, permitted to exercise their authority in an arbitrary way, have wreaked havoc on untold millions and have been responsible for the piling up of mountains of corpses.
This terror of power was, of course, uppermost in the minds of the founders of our country, which explains why they adopted a network of checks and balances in our government, assuring that no individual or representative body could capriciously impose its will on the collective.
But such internal, institutional constraints will never definitively solve the problem of the abuse of power — which brings us back to the coronation.
The only finally satisfactory answer to our difficulty is the placing of power within a hierarchy of moral values, culminating in the supreme good who is God.
This means that we understand that power serves the basic goods of life: knowledge, friendship, art, play, etc. It is meant to foster those ends and is, accordingly, legitimate only when it moves outside the ambit of the ego-needs of the one who exercises it. And those moral goods, in turn, are grounded in the nature of God, the ultimate good.
If we do not acknowledge this transcendent point of reference, those basic moral values lose their integrity and come to be seen, soon enough, as private whims or the fruit of changeable cultural consensus.
This is precisely why all of the language during the coronation ceremony regarding the king being under the authority of God is not mere pious decoration or simply a vague nod to the now-fading religiosity of the British people. Properly understood, it is deadly serious, born of a very real fear, and expressive of some of the best spiritual instincts that we human beings possess. Power is under God or it is tyranny. It’s as simple as that.
When Abraham Lincoln was preparing the final version of the “Gettysburg Address” for publication, he added two words to the famous closing sentence, which now reads, “that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Though we Americans have thrown off our allegiance to the British monarch, we remain stubbornly fascinated with him and his family. It might be a salutary exercise, as we watch all of the colorful pageantry, to remark that this new English king, by his own admission, serves under the authority of the King of Kings.
About to have a nana nap with a collection of Jeremy Clarkson’s essays about various countries, $2 at Salvos. These date from the 1990s. Iconoclastic, great stuff.
Readers, ignore your bookstore and go to the local ‘charity’ outlets. Value and variety!
rosie:
Appalling that people become so desperate that previously law abiding families have to do such things – and worse. And I shudder to think of what was worse.
India to remain reliant on coal – report
The fossil fuel will dominate power generation due to surging energy demand, a government agency has said
India will remain heavily dependent on coal as the largest source of power generation for the next decade, even with its efforts to ramp up renewable energy projects, according to a government report published on Thursday.
The Central Electric Authority (CEA) said additional plants will need to be built as coal-fired power generation will still account for about 54% of India’s total electricity output in 2030. Fossil fuel currently accounts for almost three-quarters of the country’s power generation.
India is reportedly the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide. It is looking for ways to meet surging electricity demands, while at the same time setting ambitious goals to decarbonize its power sector.
“Availability of affordable and reliable electricity is a key factor in sustainable growth of the country,” Ghanshyam Prasad, chairperson of the CEA, said in the report.
India plans to phase out about 2 gigawatts of coal-burning plants and install solar, wind, hydro, biomass, and nuclear plants with a total capacity of more than 500 gigawatts by 2030.
Meanwhile, new coal plants designed to deliver about 27 gigawatts are already under construction and an additional 19.1 gigawatts may have to be built to cover India’s energy needs, according to the CEA.
Emissions from India’s power sector are expected to surge by about 11% on current levels by the end of the decade, the authority said, and will reach 1,114 million tons of carbon dioxide.
Robert, I spent a lot of time in Western Qld, NT and SA in the 70’s, I often woke up to frost all over my sleeping bag in winter, it does get quite cold at night there.
Someone said I must live at Cabramurra, nope, there’s lots of places that get very cold in those early winter frosts. Our place is at 300m above sea level but our house is on the valley floor, all the cold air off the surrounding mountains pools here. People who live on the sides of the hills around 50-100m higher than us are usually 2-4 degrees warmer in cold weather and 2-4 cooler in summer. Don’t live on a valley floor I guess.
Speaking to a senior manager in a major road transport company this morning, he said all the indicators are for a recession and they are preparing for it.
a runcible spoon is a thing and can be bought even now, in case anyone needs one.
Winston, anything worse than minor theft would have you at the end of a rope. A fine line had to be trod. My other ancestor over in England was caught poaching – the ringleaders were hanged and the tailenders (mostly very young men) transported. Again all documented in the assizes of the day.
It was a brutal time. People in the countryside were hungry and desperate and just over the hedge were herds of deer munching away. No wonder they took the risk.
If Cats haven’t seen there’s a great story out on Christ’s life called “Chosen” – the first series on Netflix but the rest are available on an app called “Angel” – it is free but you can donate.
It is consistent to the bible and there’s none of that typically stupid made -up guff about JC marrying Mary of Magdela…
It does, however, take creative license in telling the back stories of the disciples (particularly Matthew as a hated man, Simon’s fishing expeditions with this brother, Thomas’ business and pragmatism but most interestingly – Nicodemus).
Worth a look.
I still have my set of wedding present Splayds in their original blue box. We used them last Friday for birthday cake.
No owls or pussycats present though. Just some old tabbies.
“Many Irish Australians resorted to committing minor thefts for the sole purpose of getting shipped out, their prospects at home were so poor.”
None of my Irish ancestors came out as convicts, all free settlers most came out to Portland with the Henty’s.
Most of my English and Scottish ancestors did come here as convicts and not for minor crimes, there were four of them and three had been sentenced to death for robberies and had their sentences commuted, a fourth woman was party to a bad assault and theft of 10 pounds from an old man. Not good stuff.
Calli:
That ‘kilt’ looks suspiciously like a long skirt, Calli.
You sure he’s not the father – um – mother – eerrr. Progenitor! of the trans movement?
Are we going to have a blue eyed survey on the cat in case some dodgy southern Poles and Eastern Slovaks have infiltrated our pure line?
We need Tony Abbott back. He’ll solve everything.
(Scampers off before the crowd starts throwing furniture).
US politician suggests blowing up Taiwan’s semi-conductor manufacturer ‘if China invades’
US politicians have once again sparked debate by suggesting bombing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in the event of cross-strait conflict.
During a recent Milken Institute forum discussion on China-US strategic competition, Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton stated, “China needs to know that if you invade Taiwan, we’ll blow up TSMC”.
While participating in the same panel discussion, US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul revealed that President Tsai Ing-wen had asked him about the status of her country’s weaponry during his visit to Taiwan in April.
This is not the first time that US politicians have suggested bombing TSMC. In 2019, former Vice President Joe Biden had mentioned that the US would have to come up with new ways to counter China’s cyber attacks and intellectual property theft, including striking at Chinese companies like TSMC.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton also touched on the topic earlier in May this year when he stated that America’s military response should include targeting Chinese critical infrastructure such as TSMC and Huawei.
Moulton later clarified his stance, saying that it is not the best strategy but only an example.
Comment: Imagine the hysterical responses from US politicians if China spoke of such provocations in such a carefree manner.
Nevertheless, his comment could bring Taiwan’s technology industry, particularly TSMC, into focus in the escalating tensions between the US and China over the issue of Taiwan. TSMC, a crucial supplier to US firms such as Apple and Qualcomm, has seen its stock fall repeatedly this week following his comment.
Experts have pointed out that bombing TSMC would not only anger China but also cause significant harm to Taiwan’s economy.
Comment: Such lack of foresight is the hallmark of belligerent American foreign policy; it’s little wonder that (sovereign) nations across the globe are pivoting East.
And Taiwan’s population can’t too enamoured with saviours such as these.
Well… I’ve got green eyes and thanks to the chatter on the catter today I never actually realised only about 2% have these… I’d better look after them 😉
They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon.
– Edward Lear
You know what a Pederast is, Rotten?
HEAR HEAR MUDDY!!!
When the state ideology begins to appear everywhere even in places that previously were not political, it is a sign of totalitarianism, possibly fascism but then you wouldn’t base such a claim on just one sports club going woke – it’s the whole zeitgeist.
NRL formally backs Albanese’s Indigenous Voice to Parliament
1930s: Hugo Boss.
2020s: Face paint.
Yeah, nah.
This talks about a police assessment of the (ahem) “veracity and reliability” of Britnah’s evidence.
At the outset when Lehrmann was using legal aid, the schedule of documents had this squarely in the disclosable column.
When Lehrmann moved to private representation it mysteriously migrated to the privileged column (not disclosable). Drumgold claimed this was because it was in the nature of private legal advice, something which the AFP author denies.
It appears Drumgold For The Prosecution is sailing very close to the wind in what he is saying under oath.
Farmer Gez teased:
The blog hasn’t purged the PuReBlOoD nonsense yet, we shouldn’t compound the nonsense problem by instigating “pure eyes” elitism too.
It is good to see Sofronoff playing a straight bat.
It would seem the coppers were also onto Higgins from the outset. This is the report Drumgold buried.
Most legal eagles detest two things with a passion:-
.1 public displays of gross stupidity and ignorance of the law by one of their number; and
.2 a colleague playing fast and loose with the rules and conventions of the law in court proceedings.
Therefore, Drumgold’s career is effectively over. Sure, he will pick up scraps of public sector advice briefs but his stellar criminal law career (such as it is) is done.
Olive green for me Lysander.
One of my sisters has quite striking green eyes.
We should form a club.
sancho. you don’t seem to have noticed what happened to the Victorian judiciary.
he appears to be prosecuting a pretty good case against himself.
A Good article by my favorite boiler suit wearing bra burner.
Worth a RTWT.
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/may-2023/beware-the-false-victim/
“Paedophiles cynically exploited the gay rights banner and those who suspected this were branded as reactionary,” Fairweather wrote. “We were all branded right-wing homophobes.” A social worker who rang alarm bells about a children’s home worker she suspected of abusing a young boy was investigated for being “anti-equal opportunities”. The boy later said he had been raped by the children’s home worker. Presenting her findings at a feminist conference, Fairweather was heckled for “abusing” children by women who had been taken in by a claim (repeated by Hodge on LBC radio and widely reported) that the Standard had bribed children to make the allegations.
Panzer presumed:
He was working for someone on the Bru’n’Bri case. Surely his woke paymasters would throw some more work his way?
Difficult to say exactly what I mean without straying into C.L.-style “actionable” territory.
Back then theft of bread could be catastrophic to the baker so it’s only miner in a contemporary sense.
Thanks Farmer Gez, I often get told I’ve “got amazing green eyes” and I’m not sure if its a fact or a pickup line lol….
I glad Dover that you now understand how the Vandals in North Africa and the Normans in Sicily are likely influences of blue eyed rangas in those places. Possibly not the only cause given human genetics, but since they came from the blue eyed Baltic boys of Europe it would appear likely.
As for the Kashmiris, it’s certain that the Scythians featured blue eyes and red hair, at least at the time, since that’s how they were described. There’s of course a lot of Greek and Persian influence in Kashmir too.
This is what greenfilth invincible idiocy and trusting of “da science” gets you – a one way ticket to the ocean floor – at someone else’s expense, of course.
So what?
It was 2 months out from the 2019 Election, the Morrison Government was miles behind in the Polls, so yeah, but there was nothing helpful for the Government happening in Reynolds Office the morning of 23/3/ 2019.
As a matter of fact, if the coverup have been uncovered at the time, Morrison woulda been destroyed.
Clearly that was a point of view for Australia’s most trusted news source.
I have green eyes too. We should start a green eyed monster club. Send me the exorbitant subs by the end of the week and you’re in.
He was working for someone on the Bru’n’Bri case. Surely his woke paymasters would throw some more work his way?
Let’s say that’s right.
It still doesn’t mean Lehrmann shouldn’t have been prosecuted.
It just means he wasn’t going to be prosecuted.
Lysander talking to yourself doesn’t count as a pickup line. Remember to send your subs.
Well perhaps green eyes are more common amongt the most intelligent ones. 😛
(yes, note the purposeful error)
What about letting good looking blue eyed blondes in as well to tick the diversity box.
You might have something there Lysander.
In Kadina, SA, and now Monta for midday. They have a Cornish festival coming up, so Cornwall’s flag, is seen quite a bit. It is the flag of St Piran, a plain white cross on a black field.
Nice. Had an excellent pastie for lunch.
Andy Ngô
@MrAndyNgo
The brown face of white supremacy? A leftist Bellingcat writer has posted screenshots from the purported obscure Odnoklassniki social media profile of the #Allen, Texas mass shooter, Mauricio Garcia. He’s trying to link the shooter to TimCast & LibsofTikTok. The account has photos of random Latino people wearing or posing in front of neo-Nazi symbols. Bellingcat is a government-funded site that has sourcing from intelligence agencies. It employs radical leftist writers.
Moonta not Monta. Blasted spell-correction.
My bride worked for Sofronoff when he was Qld SG. She claims that he could not bat other than straight.
Quote for genset wiring install is just shy of $7k.
Plus Ergon charges $800 – $1500.
Cheap at twice the price.
I’m not sure Humpy would regard him as sound.
Way upthread someone (Oldozzie ?) posted a link about the sentencing of the Proud Boys and how pre trial detention was used.
It suggested that is what is coming for Trump.
If it does turn out that way my feeling is that there will be no uprising.
Millions of homeless and illegals, a compliant media, a corrupt judiciary, a woke military, the use of ‘racists’, ‘transphobe’, ‘conspiracy theorist’ to dismiss opposition all mean that detaining Trump will not ripple the pool.
‘I Wouldn’t Encourage Anyone To Join’: As Pentagon Goes Woke, Veterans Refuse To Help Military Recruitment Efforts
My eyes are green too. An old aboriginal woman told they were beautiful once while she was trying to bot some cash off me. Had red hair as a child as well, master race. Mercifully it went into remission.
Mother Load:
Ego? Yes, you mentioned it but not enough to make a difference.
NRL formally backs Albanese’s Indigenous Voice to Parliament
To be expected .. V’landys’ the neanderthal version of “twiggy” when it comes to slurpin’ after OPM .. by licking gummint toes …..
America’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Moment Has Already Arrived, New IRS Data Show
I am not saying Ms Judd of the DPP or the two Court of Appeal dummies are in any danger of losing their Dan regime jobs.
What I am talking about is the regard among their peers for their legal acumen (or lack thereof).
Why it will cost $320b to ditch coal (in three maps and a chart)
The transition away from energy generated by coal on our electricity grid is inevitable, but it will take decades to achieve and could cost $320 billion.
Ingrid Fuary-Wagner and Les Hewitt
The end of coal-fired power in Australia is inevitable. But the transition away from fossil fuels in our electricity grid, which will take several decades, requires careful planning now to maintain energy security, avoid rocketing electricity prices and ensure workers remain employed, while Australia also meets its emissions targets.
And it won’t be cheap. It is estimated it will cost about $320 billion to develop, operate and maintain the generation, storage and infrastructure investments of the main electricity system to 2050.
Here are five diagrams that explain how we currently use electricity, what the transition to net zero emissions by 2050 could look like, the investment required, and the big hurdles Australia is facing to get there.
1. How many coal-fired power stations are there in Australia?
Despite a surge in investment in renewable energy projects that use wind and solar power, burning coal remains the key way electricity is generated in Australia. It is also the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
(The electricity sector was responsible for 172 million tonnes of emissions in 2020 – about a third of Australia’s total emissions.)
Many of the country’s power plants are more than 30 years old and are working well beyond their ideal lifespan, which makes them increasingly unreliable and more costly to run.
That means that irrespective of climate change concerns, the existing electricity system will not last forever and will need to be rebuilt, says Frank Jotzo, professor of climate change economics at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy.
“A large share of the existing coal-fired power fleet is simply not available when it is absolutely needed, which is a good deal of what’s behind the current energy crisis,” Jotzo says.
About one-third of Australia’s coal-fired power stations closed between 2012 and 2017, and the remaining 19 are due to close over the coming decades.
The largest in operation is Eraring, on the shores of Lake Macquarie, which accounts for about one quarter of NSW’s power requirements.
Although the government has agreed to reach net zero emissions by 2050, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) says coal-fired power plants are likely to shut much earlier than expected, which means the main electricity grid could become coal-free by 2040.
A speedy transition would be better for the environment, but Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood warns that “if you go too fast on reducing emissions you will stuff up on the reliability and affordability [of electricity], and you need to get the balance right”.
A big concern for the government is that producers of coal will, in fact, exit the market even sooner than expected, and with little warning, which could leave the market without enough electricity and push prices up significantly, while the transition is still under way.
One proposal is for the government to introduce a “capacity mechanism”, where electricity providers would essentially be paid extra money to “keep the lights on” if there is an emergency, even if they aren’t producing energy.
2. Where do we get our power from now? And what will that look like by 2050?
Most of our electricity comes from fossil fuels. Last year, 59.1 per cent of the electricity generated came from coal, and 7.7 per cent from gas.
Wind and solar farms are the most affordable way to get renewable energy in Australia and will be the dominant source of electricity in the future (the map above shows the surge in investment in large-scale renewables over the past two decades).
“It is hard for any energy source to compete with wind and solar in Australia because sunshine is relatively strong in most parts of the country, wind speeds are relatively high and land is so cheap, so other technologies [such as nuclear] are really more for other parts of the world where these pre-conditions aren’t so good,” Jotzo explains.
3. What if the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing?
Beyond solar and wind energy, working out the remaining 10 per cent of the electricity requirements is something we really haven’t got the perfect answer for yet, Wood says.
The government is anxious to avoid a worst-case scenario in the electricity market, which would be a shortfall in supply that leads to blackouts.
While blackouts have been rare to date (and it’s more about the infrastructure of the grid than a lack of energy), Australia will need to not only increase wind and solar power generation but also triple its “dispatchable or firming capacity” – that is, top-up power from other sources.
The technology exists, but opinions differ as to where the top-up power should come from because of the different costs involved, how efficient they are, and environmental concerns.
“Storage technology, in the form of giant batteries and pumped hydro, will augment our wind and solar capabilities, while a tiny bit of gas will likely be in the mix as well [despite being a fossil fuel], particularly for peak demand periods,” Jotzo says.
Batteries are fast to dispatch and therefore ideal for short-term responses (just a couple of hours) to a power outage. However, they tend to hold only a small amount of energy before they need to be recharged.
“It would be uneconomical to build a battery that could run on full tilt for several days, so the batteries are more for short-term fluctuations,” says Jotzo.
On the other hand, pumped hydro, such as the $5.1 billion Snowy Hydro 2.0 project, is better for longer-term fluctuations in weather.
Water gets pumped up a hill, during a period when renewable energy is available (over days or weeks at a time), then during the same period the water runs back down through a turbine, releasing the energy. However, pumped hydro is expensive to build and comes at a cost to the environment.
The other option for “dispatchable energy” is gas, but how much of a role it will play on the grid comes down to the balance of costs between building pumped hydro storage and running gas-fired generators.
“We don’t know what the future gas price will be, what the future emissions penalty will be on gas-fired generators – those things will make a big difference,” Jotzo says.
“There is plenty of analysis done that shows the grid can run without any gas at all, so that’s technically possible. However, we may always want to have some gas in the background to cater for peak demand periods when we are running short of other energy.”
According to the AEMO road map, gas will remain part of the electricity generation mix through to 2050, but emissions would need to be offset elsewhere in the economy.
While some people suggest nuclear energy has a role in Australia’s future energy mix, Jotzo says it is not a viable option for several reasons: Australia does not have the infrastructure, the engineering basis nor the social licence – which is the biggest barrier.
“Nuclear is an expensive technology that you use in some parts of the world where it is difficult to come up with the alternatives. The high latitudes, high population density, that’s where nuclear comes into its own,” he says.
3. The current energy grid needs an overhaul
The biggest challenge in the transition away from coal-fired power to renewable energy is actually getting that energy onto the electricity grid and to consumers.
Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) is one of the world’s longest interconnected power systems with about 40,000 kilometres of transmission lines and cables.
It connects six states and territories: Queensland, NSW, ACT, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia (Western Australia and the Northern Territory have separate grids). It is responsible for more than 80 per cent of the country’s electricity emissions.
The current NEM grid was designed to transport power from (mostly) coal-fired power plants in one direction to homes and businesses.
Now significant investment is needed to reconfigure the grid by replacing old infrastructure such as coal-fired power stations and installing 10,000 kilometres of new transmission lines to connect renewable energy sources such as wind and solar farms that are often geographically dispersed.
The grid must also be modernised to support a two-way energy flow to account for the growing number of households with rooftop photovoltaic panels (PVs) that are connected to the grid and distributing and selling their energy back on the NEM.
What will the transition cost and where to from here?
According to the AEMO, about $320 billion will be needed to develop, operate and maintain the generation, storage and future network investments of the NEM to 2050.
“That’s the single largest challenge – mobilising all of that capital to completely revamp the infrastructure,” says Jotzo.
While it’s a huge amount of money, the Grattan Institute’s Tony Wood says it is important to keep in mind that even if we replace old coal-fired power stations with new ones, we would have to spend about one-third of that to keep the existing system up to date.
The cost of renewable energy is lower than energy produced by fossil fuels, but prices are expected to rise to cover the cost of a new transmission and storage system in the medium term before becoming more affordable in the long term.
A new wind or solar park in Australia produces energy at about $50 per megawatt hour, whereas recent wholesale prices have been around the $200 to $300 mark, Jotzo says.
“The way we need to look at this is that it is a sort of decade-long massive investment project that will yield productivity benefits in the 2030s, 2040s and 2050s,” he says.
Wood says what is clear is that the government needs an integrated energy and climate change policy that is also connected to the rest of the economy, which will in turn give investors confidence in the market transition.
“Our political leaders need to be clear with the Australian people that this is something we need to do, it’s worth doing, and we’re doing it for the right reasons.
But it’s not going to be simple, it’s not going to be cheap. But it’s not going to kill us all either, it’s going to be doable,” he says.
But renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, is catching up.
In 2001, renewable energy accounted for just 11 per cent of Australia’s total electricity generation. Twenty years later, it accounted for 32.5 per cent.
In its Step Change (most likely) scenario, AEMO says renewable energy as a share of the total energy generated on the grid will rise to 83 per cent by 2030-31, to 96 per cent by 2040, and to 98 per cent by 2050.
So far he strikes me as a chap who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, in an age where suffering fools gladly is almost mandatory.
Starbucks sacks trans worker who accused female customer of being transphobic then knocked phone out of person’s hands in ‘confrontation over being misgendered’
Picks up Kids Rocking Horse we no longer need, and throws it at Muddy!
DeSantis Owners Not Happy, Wall Street Worried That Too Much Woke Stuff Lessens the Value of Their Candidate to Defeat Trump and Retain Affluence
‘I’m resigning if he’s found guilty’: Detective said Lehrmann was innocent, lawyer say
A senior ACT detective allegedly told the former Coalition staffer Bruce Lehrmann’s defence barrister his client was innocent during a secret conversation between the pair while the high-profile rape trial was under way.
Steven Whybrow SC, who defended Lehrmann against an allegation he sexually assaulted his colleague Brittany Higgins in March 2019, alleged in a statement tendered to an inquiry into the abandoned case that investigating officer Detective Inspector Marcus Boorman told him in a Canberra backstreet he would resign if the jury returned a guilty verdict.
Whybrow said in a statement submitted to the ACT government’s inquiry into the authorities’ handling of the case, that while the jury was deliberating its verdict on October 25 last year, Boorman asked to meet with him out of sight of the prosecutors’ office so the pair couldn’t be seen speaking together.
“DI Boorman indicated to me that he was quite distressed about this prosecution and considered that Mr Lehrmann was innocent,” Whybrow said in his statement. “He made several other comments along these lines and I recall words to the effect ‘if the jury comes back with a guilty verdict, I’m resigning’.
“I had never before had a conversation with a police officer who had indicated that they were going to resign because they had been ordered to prosecute someone they considered was innocent.”
Whybrow also said he was concerned Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold SC had lost his objectivity, and revealed the territory’s top prosecutor described the police investigating the case as “boofheads” whose evidence wasn’t admissible in court.
Yes he is, it’s just a question of which state.
I remember reading a profile of Sofronoff after the inquiry was announced. He seemed a strange choice given the events that led up to it and the jurisdiction holding it. Suspect there is a backstory to that as well.
And you wonder why Federal & State Public Servants never pick Australian Suppliers?
NSW bureaucrats to take fourth trip to Spain to fix troubled train project
Senior NSW transport bureaucrats will fly to Spain twice over the next two months to check on the state’s troubled fleet of new passenger trains as a dispute over the botched rail project is set to enter its third year.
With the project entering a critical phase, internal government documents show two Transport for NSW officials are due to spend about two weeks with the Spanish manufacturer responsible for building the trains this month, and are scheduled to fly back to Europe in June for several weeks.
The trips to CAF’s production plants in northern Spain by the two officials will cost more than $76,000, according to the internal documents obtained by the Herald under freedom of information laws.
The latest European trips come after senior bureaucrats flew to Spain twice last year in a bid to limit the fallout from the protracted dispute between Transport for NSW and the CAF-led consortium over modifications to the trains.
The consortium is claiming more than $730 million from the government for the cost of design changes, as well as a 1205-day extension to the delivery schedule for the new fleet.
The dispute has centred on the space between passenger seats, toilets, rubbish bins, crew seats, the audio entertainment system and the location of bicycle racks, as well as protective grilles on the front of trains.
Transport for NSW argued in the internal documents that the trips to Spain were “critical for the testing and due diligence” on the first train, and to ensure the new fleet was safe under national rail laws.
The trains have been purchased for interstate lines from Sydney to Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra, as well as routes within NSW.
The agency preferred that officials fly to Spain – instead of staying in NSW and using teleconferencing – to ensure that the “testing and commissioning activities are undertaken correctly, and any issues are resolved quickly”.
“In-person witnessing is essential for the detection of issues, defects and inadvertent misadventure by the supplier,” the documents say. “Any delay in verification activities may have consequential delays to the overall project program with the potential of claims [by the consortium].”
A Transport for NSW spokesperson declined to answer specific questions about the dispute, citing commercial confidentiality, but said the agency was working with the consortium to witness factory and on-track testing, and inspect the progress of the carriages in production.
“The need for further travel to Spain for ongoing assurance testing and inspections with CAF will occur as required by the assurance process,” the spokesperson said. “It is good practice for Transport and subject-matter experts to visit manufacturing and testing facilities.”
The government’s infrastructure adviser warned late last year that the project is likely to blow out by more than $1 billion – doubling the bill – and be 35 months late. Infrastructure NSW has been scathing of Transport for NSW for inadequate planning, weak oversight and failing to heed warnings which have led to the project suffering a “significant cost and schedule blowout”.
Senior Transport for NSW officials took two other trips to CAF’s plants in Spain late last year to inspect trams for the inner west and Parramatta light rail lines.
Hungary’s Orban Sees Trump as Key to West’s Comeback
Why Did They Kill the Things They Love?
Oh wow, I didn’t know that until today. I would have never guessed that East Europeans migrating through central, western Europe, and finally southern Europe into North Africa could have introduced the above. It’s not like I didn’t mention the Celts in my earlier comment re Roman Palestine.
Question: What would Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn have said about the suggestion of a separate Aboriginal Voice to Parliament in Australia ?
GipprAI:
Leave it to the Gippr! It got the right answer.
DeSantis is done. He won’t enter the primary. Today’s hot take.
New World Odor™
@hugh_mankind
The 4 P’s of Healthcare:
Pharma – Pandemics – Propaganda – Profits
Don’t worry, Top Ender. There are two or three people outside SA who knew that, including those (like me) who used to live there.
The old copper mining town of Moonta attracted pastie-eating migrants from Cornwall in the 19th century and is a stone’s thrown from South Australia’s mass murder capital, Snowtown.
Just one small link in the great climate change fraud. In the Atlantic, of all places.
THE BILLION-DOLLAR PONZI SCHEME THAT HOOKED WARREN BUFFETT AND THE U.S. TREASURY
The grid must also be modernised to support a two-way energy flow to account for the growing number of households with rooftop photovoltaic panels (PVs) that are connected to the grid and distributing and selling their energy back on the NEM.
The big transmission build by AEMO has no intention of picking up rooftop solar.
They plan to build large scale wind and solar along the proposed transmission line path. There’s no return for the big players by hooking in existing private solar. It’s about money and don’t let the window dressing by AEMO fool you.
Dover> a choice between Biden & Trump is hardly inspiring. Sometimes its possible to understand the reasons why countries that consider USA democracy as a bad model for the rest of the planet.
Read the stunning new sex claims police made about Brittany Higgins in an explosive 64-page dossier – as prosecutor admits error in not handing over documents he feared would ‘crush her’
. Police file reveals sex allegations against Brittany Higgins
. Alleged to have had an affair with un-named engaged staffer
. Details were never passed on Buce Lehrmann’s defence team
. Prosecutor admitted he’d ‘clearly erred’ in withholding files
A secret police file claimed Brittany Higgins had sex ‘multiple times’ in her boss’ Parliamentary office where she later alleged she was raped by fellow staffer Bruce Lehrmann.
It also alleged Ms Higgins had been ‘counselled multiple times for lying’.
The 64-page document compiled by Australian Federal Police questioned her credibility and was withheld from Mr Lehrmann’s defence by ACT’s top prosecutor Shane Drumgold.
But details have now been revealed after it was tendered to the inquiry into Mr Lehrmann’s prosecution.
The unverified police claims reveal another Liberal staffer had alleged Ms Higgins and another man had sex on ‘multiple occasions’ in then-Defence Industry Minister Linda Reynolds’ office.
The un-named man is alleged to have been having an affair with Ms Higgins and was engaged to someone else at the time.
The US isn’t a democracy.
C.L.:
2) banning booing at AFL matches was wonderful to see.
We’ll see how well that piece of arrogance lasts. It almost looks like a dare.
The (redacted) staffer denied the claims and said he’d never been interviewed by police. Why would they?
It looks like the old trick of bringing up a woman’s past to diminish her credibility. The more pertinent stuff is contained in the phone messages about the sex scandal. That has an aroma of collusion and entrapment.
Blue eyes here and they are amazing.
Amazing they still function after all the dust, metal flecks, petrol, diesel, welding flashes, various chemicals, sun and mileage they’ve been subjected to.
Wodger:
Re the Irish potato farmers, iirc they couldn’t get poor relief while they retained their plot of land. They really were in a terrible bind.
I’m surprised they didn’t effectively rebel. There’s only so far a starving and subjugated people can be pushed before they crack even if the odds are terrible – e.g. the Warsaw ghetto.