I had a yuuuge win when we bought the last sporty Beemer.
Three free coffees, two bottles of Evian and I pocketed some stray chocolate royals.
Suckers.

lol. I do that too during service periods. Hairy looks the other way in embarrassment if I pocket stuff. You can wrap little cakes up in serviettes and put them in your handbag. He always eats them though at arvo tea at home later.

Audi in Sydney have the best facilities and goodies; I miss that. BMW are ok, but no cakes.

Actually, with the Yellow Fever vaxx, I took it more to avoid border problems than avoid the disease, as the risk in Africa is still very limited.

Stolen from a Powerline commenter (Peaches, whom I presume stole it from someone else; recycling is good):

At my funeral, I’d like there to be a pinata so that people can be happy. But filled with bees so they’re not too happy.

The Covid Vaxxes had extremely high risks of mortality and morbidity

Note I said the vaxxes here, not the disease itself, which was fairly specific to the elderly and infirm in its serious effects, although medical personnel with high viral exposure did also get ill and some died.

Even with Smallpox, I wouldn’t favour mandatory vaxxing. Certainly I was against it with Covid and unvaxxed friends were always welcome at our place.

Enough now. I don’t want to start yet another round of vaxxing discussions. I won’t join any more.
Just saw the link to the Smallpox vaxx heart issues, and wanted to say Smallpox is a different case.

You can legitimately target those facilities while civilian workers are there, what you can’t legitimately do is target those workers while at home with their families.

Industrial war is a whole of society *system*, not just a job for the military.

It involves the warfighters themselves, their equipment, those that produce and repair their equipment, and those that feed all of them.

A warship, for example, is not a weapon in itself, its part of a system which includes the crew, the ammunition, the fuel etc etc etc.

If we are to target ‘civilians’ only in the factories, should we also target warships only at sea or aircraft only in the air? Why would we quarantine U Boat crews in their barracks from attack, or pilots in their ready rooms, and wait instead until they took off or went to sea?

I have always thought it curious that we regard it as unsporting to machinegun pilots in their parachutes or sailors on their rafts, given the above.

I have also thought the geneva convention protections for medical staff to be quaint, given they are very much ‘force multipliers’ for the home team (by keeping your soldiers combat fit through prevention and repair). Why woukd I, as medical staff, get a pass? (PS … in Iraq and Afghanistan, we didnt, we got rockets and mortars lobbed at us daily)

O.K., my last ‘other peoples’ wisdom’ for this morning (heh heh):
James Woods on Twatter:

If seven million potential Republican voters were strolling across our southern border, there would be tanks parked on the Rio Grande and helicopter gunships in the air.

Not to mention orgasming Mesozoic Media ’embedded’ in the military units and publicly encouraging the creation of paramilitary organisations to fight the ‘barbarians.’

It’s lucky our conservative saviours are still considering an appropriate response.

Given that, what do you do if a 10 year old starts walking up to your position with a remotely operated suicide belt? … ignore it because hes a non combattant?

You shoot them.

They are already dead with the suicide belt.
It’s just whether or not they take any of your guys with them.

Remember those 1980s self-serve ‘coffee machines’ that were ubiquitous in service waiting rooms and staff rooms across the country? Big beige plastic things with brown knobs – each knob, when twisted, would dump a serve of desiccated substance (International Roast, powdered milk, Milo, sugar etc) into your disposable cup, then you’d go to the urn and fill it up with boiling water. You still see them about occasionally.

Vicki, with Yellow Fever, I took the vaxx mainly to travel but also didn’t want to be the unlucky one to come down with a stray Yellow Fever. The vaxx death risk was one in a million. Bad odds for a lottery but good odds for a vaxx that had double utility.

I am absolutely stunned that the conventions , all lofty and principled, did exactly ZERO to stem of ameliorate subsequent conflicts.

Like most government programs, they are at best useless, but more likely negative due to unin tended consequences.

The 1899 Haigh Convention, for example, required all military bullets to be jacketed to avoid ‘un-necessary cruelty'(supposedly by stopping them fragmenting).

The bullet designers didn’t mind a bit because they were already moving in that direction because higher velocity bullets needed a metal jacket to stop the soft lead core breaking up during firing.

Incidentally …. its pretty easy to design a ‘full metal jacket’ bullet which fragments in the target anyway.

Alternately… conventions which are effective can be ignored… what protections did the Nuremberg code provide us over the last 3 years?

And now for something completely different – The Voice.

This weekend’s Australian has Noel Pearson doing one of his sprays for the yes vote. Howard and Abbott get given the push as PM’s and articles against the voice in the Oz are seen as a CIS and IPA plot. The editor-in-chief has been forced to come out with ‘A Note’ in defense of the ‘professionalism and integrity of our writers’ and also to defend the readership of the Oz, whom Pearson characterises as ‘borderline casual racists’.

Keep digging Noel.

They also stopped the ongoing slaughter in China, .

That is why I have stated several times, IJ had been on a slaughterfest across Asia for more than a decade.

And dover, you cannot deny that the express purpose of the bombs was to bring about the immediate surrender of IJ and save millions of civilian and combatant lives. Which proved successful on both counts. Semantics is not a real argument.

Give it up dover.

Keep it up Dover (& everyone else here, including the deliberate trolls)… what better way to test ones ideas and beliefs than by putting them into the arena against others?

Persistent trolls and abuse can of of course be scrolled past.

Oh come on says:
May 21, 2023 at 12:06 pm

BOOM!
Love it.
Spot on.

I’ve expressed this previously: The major obstacle to conservatives becoming more tactically effective and delivering measurable political and social outcomes, is not related to a lack of capacity (such as intelligence, resources), but an overabundance of … I’m not sure whether to label it pride, ego, hubris…?

I hope you don’t mind, Lizzie, but I felt the urge to tinker with your comment:

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare says:
May 21, 2023 at 12:26 pm
… This weekend’s Australian has the controversial segregationist Noel Pearson doing one of his sprays for the yes vote. … the readership of the Oz, whom the provocative Pearson characterises as ‘borderline casual racists’.

‘Eye in the Sky’, 2015, starring Helen Mirren, was a similar movie to the one you mention Vicki, ‘The Hurt Locker’ which we may view now you’ve alerted me to it and I’ve just viewed the trailere. In ‘Eye’ Mirren plays a Colonel in charge of a mission to take out an enemy by drone, but a small child settles down nearby at the crucial time. This story then develops into a moral tale of rights and wrongs and higher purposes being served etc. I watched it on a plane and it was quite involving.

The major obstacle to conservatives becoming more tactically effective …

The left enjoys an asymmetrical advantage. Consider how the ratbag radicals stop traffic, howl down speakers, harass conservative gatherings. After they have established the far port-side extent of the Left’s agenda and objectives, the “moderate” Left then moves in to colonise the claimed territory.

Thus do we see the nuttiest SSM, trans, enviro positions become mainstream — with the help of sympathetic, wrist-slap magistrates providing de facto endorsements of their tactics.

On the right we have no skirmishes to advance before the main force of conservative argument. Anyone want to endorse the neo-nazis’ dislike of transgenderism? No, didn’t think so. By contrast, the Extinction Rebellion ninnies et al just have to wait for the bolshie rest to catch up.

I fear things will need to get much worse before the right grows so concerned and disgusted that it reacts en masse.

In Australia, where human skid marks like Pesutto profess to be conservatives, we must await our own and overdue BudLite moment. It will come, but things will infinitely more nasty before it does.

Don’t mind your journalistic intervention at all, Muddy. We should do this regularly to counter the sort of ABC reporting that hits all of us with the ‘far right’ stick and anyone not left as ‘controversial’.

You can’t fix a problem between the ears with surgery between the legs.

That’s a keeper, Muddy. It cuts straight to the chase. The problem at the base. Thanks.

areff:

I fear things will need to get much worse before the right grows so concerned and disgusted that it reacts en masse.

Yes, it would be safer to wait for the framework of the house to burn completely before we hold the marshmallows over the ashes.

(Sarcasm not intended personally, areff).

I’d like to add as well, regarding the topic of war.

There is no such thing as a ‘non-combatant’

If you are at war with a country, everything is a ‘legitimate target’.

If Australia were besieged by a hostile force intent on occupation, does that mean that unarmed transport ships carrying fuel, medicine and food are not ‘legitimate targets’?
After all, that food and fuel might be civilians or military use.
It doesn’t matter to your enemy

In war, everyone is part of the machine as far as your enemy is concerned.

They also stopped the ongoing slaughter in China, .
Gimme a break?
What was the Death Toll from the Americans giving the surrendered Japanese weapons to Mao Tse Tung’s Communists [who’d played no part in the War with Japan]?
Some say between 1945 and 1972 the Communists murdered 100 million Chinese.

I have always thought it curious that we regard it as unsporting to machinegun pilots in their parachutes or sailors on their rafts, given the above.

Civilians at home may think that, but aircrew – once substantial combat is joined – generally don’t agree. They machinegun parachuting enemy readily.

I will find some examples.

I’m not sure conservatives are looking to make common cause with gays and feminists against trans. Enjoying the slowly dawning looks of realisation passing across the faces of Rowling and Naomi Wolfe doesn’t mean they’re on the Christmas card list.

It’s more a case of the left eating its own and gobbling up dumb fakes like Pesutto as appetisers.

WWII examples of aircrew under parachutes being targeted…

Major Gilbert O’Brien, a WWII fighter pilot, while escorting bombers, recalled:

The aviator was recovered by the ship, still alive, but he died a little later.

I have similar accounts from WWI, but parachutes were not often used. But aircraft which were helpless – eg: out of ammunition or damaged – were fair game for both sides.

Dunno about others here but if I was a soldier in WW2 and had for years been fighting the japs through the Pacific to Japan………..

And thats the point ….. if you weren’t there, at the time, you don’t get to have an opinion about what those who were, did. This is why veterans are reticent to talk about their service with civilians – theres no point, if you weren’t there, you cant understand it.

I feel the exact same way about todays retrospective examination of the SAS in Afghanistan.

Ed Casesays:
May 21, 2023 at 1:05 pm
They also stopped the ongoing slaughter in China, .
Gimme a break?
What was the Death Toll from the Americans giving the surrendered Japanese weapons to Mao Tse Tung’s Communists [who’d played no part in the War with Japan]?
Some say between 1945 and 1972 the Communists murdered 100 million Chinese.

Grandpa Cletus

Communists do what communists do, which is to murder class enemies. The Cambodian communists used hoes, and without weapons the Chinese communists would have done the same. Mao and his mob had already been fighting and killing for decades, and would have continued to do so, regardless of the availability of Japanese weapons, which were available in quantity from the Japanese armies in China, without any US assistance.

A high proportion of the 100 million died of starvation, the result of stupid communist (BIRM) policies.

And while you are here, where is the link to the 1943 Japanese terms for surrender? Or are they something else that you just made up?

Robert S

What about those white children who were removed from their parent(s) under the same conditions?

What about them? Are you some kind of racist? That was their own fault. //sarc//

Ed Casesays:
May 21, 2023 at 1:30 pm
The Company Line was that the Atom Bombings ended the War in The Pacific, that was accepted until the Internet arrived.

Basically, it was Weapons Testing on live targets.
Since it’s now inarguable that the U.S. coulda called the War off anytime after Midway, new excuses hafta be found.
One of the latest is that the American Public expected a return on investment after all the money that had been spent on the Manhattan Project.
That ignores the fact that the Manhattan Project was Top Secret at the time.

Ever the inbred, semi-literate, slack-jawed yokel, eh Grandpa Cletus?

How about those Japanese 1943 surrender terms, while you seem semi-coherent.

The fairytale about the Emperor overruling the War Cabinet and calling the War off ignores the [little remarked on] fact that Hirohito was a Soldier by profession, the mass murder of Christians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima meant about as much to him as the incineration of 135,000 Tokyo civilians in the 1945 Doolittle Raid, which is to say, not much.

The IJA was never in favour of the attack on Pearl Harbour, Hirohito was an IJA man from his youth, so the idea that he had any real power is hard to sustain.

One of the latest is that the American Public expected a return on investment after all the money that had been spent on the Manhattan Project.

Which the abovementioned American public knew nothing about.

That ignores the fact that the Manhattan Project was Top Secret at the time.

Yes it does.

Starts with nothing, goes off on a tangent to nothing, then circles back* to….. nothing.

*Deliberate.

Is the boy in this 400-year-old painting wearing a pair of Nike trainers? Art lovers believe they have spotted proof that time travel must exist

Fresh and poppin’, those kicks.

This is in the same bucket as the recent ‘article’ posted here whose author – and the bloke who posted the link – was convinced Indian warriors 1500 years ago had rifles.

Just for historical accuracy as opposed to Ed’s whacky facts.
Communist forces did conduct campaigns against the Japanese in WWII. They even offered a truce to the Nationalists in order to combine their forces.

Looks like I’m on speed dial again. *waves*

Well, a return on investment is sorta Libertarian limited hangout, since we now know that Japan wanted to surrender in 1943, they’d approached the Soviet Union [with whom they weren’t at War] to broach the subject with their American Allies.
So, what we can glean from history is that had the Americans accepted a Japanese Surrender in 1944, hundreds of thousands of troops coulda been deployed in the European Theater, shortening the War there, Korea wouldna been partitioned, the Communists wouldna taken China and the S.U. wouldna taken Sakhalin.

So, what we can glean from history is

Is that you are a Custer at the Alamo guy.

So the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities are war-crimes but the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not even though they arguably involved the same crime, only because the latter was successful in drawing out a good end by evil means.

I haven’t said the firebombings were war crimes. Only agreed that they hadn’t brought about a surrender, whereas the A-bombs had.

My position on the fire bombings is that considering the horrors and atrocities IJ had cold bloodlessly perpetrated across Asia and the Pacific for over a decade, including on our Allied POW’s and millions of non-combatant civilians, the Japanese brought about their own destruction. War crimes in that respect are Japan’s IMO. They ruthlessly sacrificed their own population rather than lose face (surrender) in their utterly hopeless no win situation.

I haven’t said the firebombings were war crimes. Only agreed that they hadn’t brought about a surrender, whereas the A-bombs had.

My position on the fire bombings is that considering the horrors and atrocities IJ had cold bloodlessly perpetrated across Asia and the Pacific for over a decade, including on our Allied POW’s and millions of non-combatant civilians, the Japanese brought about their own destruction. War crimes in that respect are Japan’s IMO. They ruthlessly sacrificed their own population rather than lose face (surrender) in their utterly hopeless no win situation.

I’d like to point out that the only real ‘crime’ in war is losing…

The concept of a war crime really only came about in the 20th century.

The only thing that matters in war is winning at all costs.
Once you are victorious, you simply tell the public that all actions were justified.
Then write the history books to suit.

If the Japanese had succeeded at Unit 731, the West Coast of the US may have been the target of bubonic plague or anthrax.

The Americans took all their research and the entire Unit 731 with them, many were resettled in America.
The upshot was that Bubonic Plague and Anthrax aren’t effective as biological Weapons because of the lack of a workable mass delivery system.
Some of the Jap ideas were pretty good.
They sent incendiary devices to California by balloon and caused Forest Fires there.
I’ve often wondered why Government haven’t used that more.
The Ainu [think Aborigines] population on Hokkaido decreased from 250,000 to 10,000 between 1942 and 1943. Not sure what happened there

If the Japanese had succeeded at Unit 731, the West Coast of the US may have been the target of bubonic plague or anthrax.

The fun thing about that is both are bacteria…and the US had just commenced mass production of penicillin. So it wouldn’t’ve worked.

Ed Casesays:
May 21, 2023 at 2:31 pm
Well, a return on investment is sorta Libertarian limited hangout, since we now know that Japan wanted to surrender in 1943, they’d approached the Soviet Union [with whom they weren’t at War] to broach the subject with their American Allies.
So, what we can glean from history is that had the Americans accepted a Japanese Surrender in 1944, hundreds of thousands of troops coulda been deployed in the European Theater, shortening the War there, Korea wouldna been partitioned, the Communists wouldna taken China and the S.U. wouldna taken Sakhalin.

More incoherent semi-literate drivel from Grandpa Cletus, the inbred, semi-literate, slack-jawed yokel, but no actual detail on the actual terms of surrender supposedly offered by the Japanese in 1943, when they controlled much of China, all of southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and much of New Guinea and the Solomons.

He seems oddly unaware that the Japanese request for Soviet intermediation was in 1945, not 1943. Unless he can produce records of an earlier request, and the terms offered, he is talking through his hat.

The contract confirms that the Tasmanian government will be solely responsible for all stadium cost overruns, must pay the club an additional $4.5 million if the build won’t be over 50 per cent complete by October 2027, and another $4.5 million if it cannot host matches in 2028.

So we’re up to $828 million in subsidies for a stadium with a projected cost of $715 million; cost overruns are paid by Tasmanians?

Good lord sport is a scam in Australia.

FlyingDuk, love most of your posts, guess I thought you were kind of a free speech man, the sort that most of us here are. Yet you wish to censor me, I’m not permitted to express any thoughts I have about a particular place and time?

That sort of thing is the road to the end of the open society. I prefer to let people say what they want, if you think what they’re saying is wrong, feel free to rebut it. Stopping me from saying it is what has lead society to where we are now, where you can be cancelled for saying what you think.

Never thought I’d hear it from you.

We made regular use of one playing pool at 6PR in the 70s

6PR? What?

How dare you!

Makka:

Unless we take up arms supporting the US against China over a Taiwan conflict, I can’t see China attacking us. In fact, I doubt that the US wants to risk escalation to nuclear conflict with China over an island they don’t even recognize as a country/nation.

Define the Australian words “Taking up arms”.
Now ask the Chinese what their definition is. I’d bet it is simply ‘defying the will of the Middle Kingdom.”

Cafe Bars – Xerox Corporation 1980s.

Define the Australian words “Taking up arms”.

If The US engages in a shooting war with China over Taiwan, and as a US ally we enter the conflict militarily ie deploying weapons attacking Chinese assets.

That’s the current expectation of the US and as I understand it Australia’s current Defence Policy.

Now ask the Chinese what their definition is. I’d bet it is simply ‘defying the will of the Middle Kingdom.”

We have been in that predicament for years. Do you really think the billions in resources and ag products we sold them last week would take place if we were engaged in a military conflict opposing China? No.

shatterzzzsays:
May 21, 2023 at 4:03 pm
he Doolittle raid isn’t only the wrong year, it involved a handful of B-25 fighter bombers with a tiny payload each that had to continue flying west because they didn’t have the range to return home. Thinking this was anything like the strategic bombing being conducted in ’45 is stunning.

wasn’t the point of the Doolittle raid more a one-off exercise to boost the still, Pearl harbour shocked American poulace and for Japanese folk to understand they were vulnerable ……..

The IJN was so shocked by the raid that it decided to extend the Pacific perimeter further west, to include a tiny atoll named Midway, leading to a massive defeat nearby.

Hmmmm

TRIGGERnometry Bank Account Cancelled

Konstantin Kisin goes on Mark Dolan Tonight, GB News 19/05/2023, to discuss TRIGGERnometry’s Account with Tide being shut down by the bank.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xuhBpagFa4

The Bombs took out a lotta POWs too, but, hey, you wanna Omlettes …?

I’m thinkin’, why not drop the Atom Bomb down the chimney of Mt Fuji just to see what happened?
Anyway, as Air Force General
[and later George Wallace’s VP pick] Curtis B LeMay said:

Just as well we won the War, otherwise we woulda been hanged as War Criminals.