Open Thread – Mon 10 July 2023


The Colosseum in Rome, Fyodor Matveyev ,1816

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

1.3K Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
johanna
johanna
July 12, 2023 1:01 pm

hat the most important thing he can do to bring down inflation is to reign in those spending ambitions,”

Aaargh (as they used to say in Peanuts).

Please make it stop.

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 1:03 pm

… claiming that Mossad organised Entebbe.

Shin Bet, not the Mossad.
It was a Diplomatic briefing, released 30 years later, so, unless the diplomat was intentionally deceiving nhis own employer, it’s legit.

Delta A
Delta A
July 12, 2023 1:03 pm

I could go on.

I wish you would, Cassie. Perhaps you could do a dedicated post on the IDF rescue at Entebbe.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
July 12, 2023 1:03 pm

BJ.

If Turd Case thinks that everything ever written in any classified diplomatic communication is true, he has led a very sheltered life. Or he is an idiot. Or both, probably both.

Exhibit A : Alexander Downer.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 1:07 pm

I used to have a book on the Entebbe raid.

I read one account of that raid, where, after the Jewish passengers were separated, a very frightened and worried Jewish mother was explaining to her children that “we might not go home, these people hate us, they might kill us all.”

One of the children was soothing. “It’s all right, Mummy, the soldiers will come and take us home.”

Some hours later, the I.D.F. showed up and the shooting started…

johanna
johanna
July 12, 2023 1:08 pm

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tore into NATO leaders including President Biden Tuesday for not extending NATO membership to his war-torn country — introducing fresh diplomatic drama into the annual gathering of the military alliance’s leaders.

Someone upthread linked a pic on Twitter of the coke-fuelled, bullying despot as Billy-no-mates at the NATO meeting.

Clearly, he is being supported for ‘strategic’ reasons, but nobody can stand him.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
July 12, 2023 1:11 pm

In any case, terrorist attacks overseas and hijackings seemed to go out of fashion like flares and platform shoes after Entebbe and a series of square-offs for Munich.
It was almost as if the bwave martyrs for the cause weren’t so keen on the idea of looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.

Leon L.
Leon L.
July 12, 2023 1:15 pm

We can’t look the other way when our military fails, writes Senator Linda Reynolds

OK…let’s start with the Generals.

Once upon a time, there was a quaint notion of ministerial responsibility.
Reynolds, and the politicians, sent the soldiers to Afghanistan.
They are responsible for the decision and all of its consequences.

hzhousewife
hzhousewife
July 12, 2023 1:17 pm

Perhaps Zelensky and Putin could duke it out in a cage like Zuckerberg and Musk are supposedly going to do. Honestly, the world is bonkers. Bloke at the gas bottle exchange place at Bunnings told hubby this morning that there’ll be no gas in two years time, it will all be hydrogen. I’m off out to the garden in bright sunshine.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 1:18 pm

It was almost as if the bwave martyrs for the cause weren’t so keen on the idea of looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.

After “Operation Wrath of God” there weren’t so many bwave martyrs to the cause..

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 1:20 pm

Here’s a link to the Haaretz article, with comments.

Sample comment:

Geronimo Hondo
03:35 03.01.2018

I’ve always wondered,to say the least, why the hijackers chose Entebbe airport,which had designed and built by the Israelis,and of which they had detailed plans.

johanna
johanna
July 12, 2023 1:21 pm

Tik Tok’s Australian executives should be well paid for this grilling and humiliation by a Senate Committee:

A senior TikTok executive has been rebuked by a parliamentary inquiry for saying she does not know the location of the tech giant’s headquarters.
Key points:

The senate committee is identifying risks posed by foreign interference through social media
TikTok executives said they don’t know how many Australians have had their user data accessed by Chinese employees
They confirmed ‘rogue employees’ in China had accessed journalists’ data

Today, Senator James Paterson, who is chairing a committee into foreign interference through social media, tried to establish whether TikTok or its parent company ByteDance are based in China.

TikTok’s Australian director of public policy Ella Woods-Joyce said she knew there were offices in China but didn’t know where the “formal headquarters” were.

“I’m very happy to provide that very specific piece of information and I’ll do it as soon as I can, my apologies,” she said.

Senator Paterson expressed his frustration with Ms Woods-Joyce and accused her of obfuscating.

“Are you seriously not able to say how your parent company, which ultimately owns and controls you, is operated?” he said.

“Your reluctance to acknowledge basic facts about the parent company with whom you are ultimately employed is not a promising start to your willingness to honestly answer these questions, it appears like obfuscation to me.”

and

The select committee is tasked with identifying risks posed to Australia’s democracy by foreign interference through social media.

To this end, TikTok executives were asked whether Australian user data could be accessed by employees in China.

Will Farrell from TikTok’s US Data Security arm said employees only get the minimum amount of access required to do their job and multiple approvals are required before they get any access.

When asked how often Australians have had their data accessed by employees in China, Mr Farrell said he didn’t have “specific numbers in front of me”.

“I’d be happy to take that on notice.”

Oh, dear.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
July 12, 2023 1:23 pm

Haha, some academics looked at antisemitism and found exactly opposite to the zeitgeist.

Study reveals people most likely to hold antisemitic views (Phys.org, 10 Jul)

Dr. Daniel Allington, Reader in Social Analytics at King’s has led the most comprehensive study to date examining the opinions of people with antisemitic views. The study is published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.

Researchers also found antisemitic views to be more prevalent among people who consider it justifiable to take extreme authoritarian action against political opponents, and people who want to overthrow social order.

Oooh, I wonder who they might be?

The findings suggest that antisemitism may be less closely linked to political beliefs than has previously been implied, and more closely linked to opinions and views on other topics such as religion, ethnic nationalism, and conspiracy theories.

The graph is especially fun. Note the standout demographic, which is cutely labeled “Ethn. other than white”.

The major finding of both studies is that antisemitism is predicted by a conspiratorial understanding of the world as it is, by openness to totalitarian rule, and, above all, by a desire for revolution.

Do tell. I love it when academics have to do linguistic gymnastics to explain an inconvenient finding like this one.

shatterzzz
July 12, 2023 1:25 pm

The part about Vincents and Bex was not too bad – although claiming that the advertising was directed at women is misleading. In 1971, I had a job in retail where my male boss was hooked on them, taking one every couple of hours.

!st job in the PS (1967) bloke I worked with got thru a pocket pack of BEX a day ..
took ’em dry .. upended the twirled paper and ..! never a sip of water …..

Johnny Rotten
July 12, 2023 1:27 pm

We must come to the point where we realize the concept of race is a false one. There is only one race, the human race.

– Dan Aykroyd

Boambee John
Boambee John
July 12, 2023 1:27 pm

Ed Case
Jul 12, 2023 1:03 PM
… claiming that Mossad organised Entebbe.

Shin Bet, not the Mossad.
It was a Diplomatic briefing, released 30 years later, so, unless the diplomat was intentionally deceiving nhis own employer, it’s legit.

Consider two possibilities.

First, diplomats are actual human beings, prone to the normal frailties of human beiges, in particular error and wish fulfilment.

Second, the diplomat’s source might have been planting some disinformation, to suit his/her own preferences or prejudices.

One other possibility is that you are an ignorant idiot.

Boambee John
Boambee John
July 12, 2023 1:29 pm

johanna
Jul 12, 2023 1:08 PM
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tore into NATO leaders including President Biden Tuesday for not extending NATO membership to his war-torn country — introducing fresh diplomatic drama into the annual gathering of the military alliance’s leaders.

Someone upthread linked a pic on Twitter of the coke-fuelled, bullying despot as Billy-no-mates at the NATO meeting.

Clearly, he is being supported for ‘strategic’ reasons, but nobody can stand him.

He also appears to be a real short-arse. Little man syndrome?

Boambee John
Boambee John
July 12, 2023 1:32 pm

Ed Case
Jul 12, 2023 1:20 PM
Here’s a link to the Haaretz article, with comments.

Sample comment:

Geronimo Hondo
03:35 03.01.2018

I’ve always wondered,to say the least, why the hijackers chose Entebbe airport,which had designed and built by the Israelis,and of which they had detailed plans.

Turd Case

Haaretz! LOL.

Hijackers, like you, are not the sharpest tools in the shed.

Boambee John
Boambee John
July 12, 2023 1:34 pm

Human beings, although diplomats tend to be a bit beige.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
July 12, 2023 1:35 pm

Perhaps Zelensky and Putin could duke it out in a cage like Zuckerberg and Musk are supposedly going to do.

With a tape measure? Zelensky would win that one, given his remarkable piano playing ability.

Elon Musk Goes Full 8th Grade Bully by Challenging Rival Mark Zuckerberg to a ‘Literal Dick Measuring Contest’ (10 Jul)

Elon has 9 kids and Mark has 3, so they’ve both been doing OK in this sphere of endeavour.

dopey
dopey
July 12, 2023 1:35 pm

“90 Minutes at Entebbe” read it many years ago, a good account from memory. Regarding Munich, there were suggestions of assistance from the East Germans, who were housed near the the Israelis.

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 1:36 pm

Here’s another comment from Haaretz:

Kula
03:35 03.01.2018

This is reminiscent of the “Lavon Affair” – Israel had bombed the US embassy in Egypt and tried to blame it on the Arabs. But it did not work out, and they were busted.

But, yeah, AntiSemitism.
Honk Honk!

Kneel
Kneel
July 12, 2023 1:38 pm

“…until Dover can get the performance issues sorted once and for all…”

@Dover: if it’s database performance hitting the site, get the database guy to add indexes for every field of the table used by the offending query.

For example, if grabbing comments takes time, index the thread number field and the comment number field, plus whatever field is sorted on – at the least.

And make sure the web page is getting the database to do the work – it’s much quicker to get the database engine to filter and sort things than trying to do it in any site scripting language, because database engines are designed and optimised to do just this sort of thing. That includes using a “limit” statement in the SQL for pagination, which can have both a start and size parameter.

Ditto with cross table info – get the database to do it, it’s way faster than the script going through each entry of one query and running another query to get more data, even if you have to run a sub-query as part of the “top” query – you can group results too, which often helps in these situations.

If you do all of the above, you may see as much as one or two orders of magnitude better performance – yes, from 30 seconds down to 1 second or less. I’ve seen it several times, and the more rows you have, the more important it is to have appropriate indexes and filtering/sorting in the database side.

For example, I have one table with over 30 million entries, and I can query an indexed field with a comparison in the filtering, and get an answer back in under a second:

Query:
select count(*) from radacct;

result: 32928537

Query:
select acctsessionid,framedipaddress from radacct where acctstoptime > “2023-05-01 00:00:00”;

result shows: 76688 rows in set (0.16 sec)

field “acctstoptime” is indexed.

Note it finds and returns 76688 of the near 33M total records in just 0.16 seconds!

It may also be worthwhile to”rebuild” the database (copy the structure and the data to a new database, then swap to the new one), which makes the indexes work faster as well because they can be rebuilt with the complete data set (makes binary tree indexes more balanced and therefore much faster).

By all means email me if you want info or advise on this, more than happy to help. I’m hardly a database “master”, but I’ve used them enough to know most of the performance tricks.

Of course, it may just be wordpress – if so, you’re on your own, I hate that thing!

Vicki
Vicki
July 12, 2023 1:39 pm

Someone upthread linked a pic on Twitter of the coke-fuelled, bullying despot as Billy-no-mates at the NATO meeting.

You couldn’t make Zelenskiy up. Oh wait…….he did…. he played a fictional Ukrainian president in the TV series, “Servant for Life”…………

Truth stranger then fiction?…..Oh yes!!!

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 1:40 pm

Years ago, I remember reading that all the Israeli athletes killed at Munich died from West German police bullets, and the Black September terorists may not have been who they claimed to be.
I’ll see if I can dig that reference up.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 1:44 pm

I’ll see if I can dig that reference up.

I won’t hold my breath – I”m still waiting for your reference over Japanese plans to surrender in 1943.

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 1:46 pm

@Dover: if it’s database performance hitting the site, get the database guy to add indexes for every field of the table used by the offending query.

Ed [not a tech guy] Case says:
Limit commenters to 4 comments per 2 hours on any particular thread [That’s what Unz does, his is a WordPress site] and take out the link button for a while.

Boambee John
Boambee John
July 12, 2023 1:48 pm

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Jul 12, 2023 1:44 PM
I’ll see if I can dig that reference up.

I won’t hold my breath – I”m still waiting for your reference over Japanese plans to surrender in 1943.

And Curtin’s plan to surrender Australia to the Japanese.

Salvatore, Iron Publican
July 12, 2023 1:49 pm

dopey Jul 12, 2023 1:35 PM
“90 Minutes at Entebbe” read it many years ago, a good account from memory. Regarding Munich, there were suggestions of assistance from the East Germans, who were housed near the the Israelisproviding material & other support to the kidnappers

FIFY

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 1:52 pm

I won’t hold my breath – I”m still waiting for your reference over Japanese plans to surrender in 1943.

They were negotiating a Surrender thru the Swiss embassy, starting in 1943.
Common knowledge.
It made sense too, since their Navy had been mostly destroyed at the Battle of Midway, they had Armies fightingna losing War in China, and the Kwantung Army was sitting on their hands hoping the Soviet Union wouldn’t renew hostilities.

Mark from Melbourne
Mark from Melbourne
July 12, 2023 1:56 pm

Kneel
Jul 12, 2023 1:38 PM

Kneel, whilst I don’t wish to speak for Dover, I will make an exception here, simply because I am relatively “johnny on the spot”, as it were.

Yes, it’s a database problem (mySQL), and Dover is working with his hosting provider on the capacity front, the indexing front and the query/Stored Proc optimisation front.

And yes, it is “just WordPress”, and most people with remaining brain cells who’ve dealt with it do indeed hate it.

I know things are taking some time – it takes time to assemble decent test data, especially when you have to view the whole structure as a “black box” – but festina lente has nearly always served me well when it comes to database load and capacity.

Translation from the technical… there is a hamster-productivity issue. Hamsters are being progressively exterminated both to find the culprit an to encourage les autres. The plan is to continue the beatings until morale improves.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 1:58 pm

They were negotiating a Surrender thru the Swiss embassy, starting in 1943.
Common knowledge.

Bullzhit. “Common knowledge” my hairy aunt.

Mark from Melbourne
Mark from Melbourne
July 12, 2023 1:59 pm

Ed [not a tech guy] Case says:
Limit commenters to 4 comments per 2 hours on any particular thread [That’s what Unz does, his is a WordPress site] and take out the link button for a while.

It really is quite remarkable how you manage, even whilst admitting you have no domain knowledge, to hone in on the single least-useful possible suggestion.

m0nty-esque.

shatterzzz
July 12, 2023 2:02 pm

Kneel
Jul 12, 2023 1:38 PM
“…until Dover can get the performance issues sorted once and for all…”

My son, exceptionally well paid geek, talks like this .. I can never understand 98% of what he sez but my entire house would fit in his front room ……. soooooooooo! ..

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 2:06 pm

Daily Mail”

Gleeful China gloats over Paul Keating’s latest fiery spray with Communist propagandist writing a glowing essay calling him a ‘visionary’

Beijing has praised Paul Keating’s criticism of NATO
Mr Keating called the alliance’s chief a ‘supreme fool’
His criticism is over NATO’s plan to expand into Asia

shatterzzz
July 12, 2023 2:07 pm

They were negotiating a Surrender thru the Swiss embassy, starting in 1943.
Common knowledge.

Given the number of high ranking Nazi already in the queue it would have been late 1945 before the Jap contingent reached the counter .. LOL!

Dot
Dot
July 12, 2023 2:14 pm

Perhaps Zelensky and Putin could duke it out in a cage like Zuckerberg and Musk are supposedly going to do. Honestly, the world is bonkers. Bloke at the gas bottle exchange place at Bunnings told hubby this morning that there’ll be no gas in two years time, it will all be hydrogen. I’m off out to the garden in bright sunshine.

LOL

Backyard hydrogen fires. That will be great. (Sips coffee).

Dot
Dot
July 12, 2023 2:20 pm

Two Commando had built a replica of the Lindt Cafe, and worked out how to storm it, but the senior police officer in charge thought handing over to the Army would damage their career, and, besides, there were all these Mooslime voters in Western Sydney…..

I don’t believe they have the capacity to see beyond the career enhancing matter.

Who needs voters when you’ve got rustedons?

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
July 12, 2023 2:31 pm

IT bloke that brought our house overlooking the bay, paid for it with some of the $16 million he stole. He was ably assisted by his lawyer BiL who somehow managed to avoid being prosecuted. Generally I’ve never found IT people all that smart. They seem to think just because they know about computing it gives them an extraordinary insight into everything you use computers for.

The Beer whisperer
The Beer whisperer
July 12, 2023 2:33 pm

English is almost a second language to them even if it’s the only one they know.

I often joke that many foreigners are bilingual, yet many Aussies can’t even speak one properly.

Except it’s not a joke.

H B Bear
H B Bear
July 12, 2023 2:35 pm

It was a Diplomatic briefing, released 30 years later, so, unless the diplomat was intentionally deceiving nhis own employer, it’s legit.

Trust your local spook.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
July 12, 2023 2:35 pm

I don’t believe they have the capacity to see beyond the career enhancing matter.

They had already started to worry about “backlash” while a dozen people were still held hostage, so …
They weren’t worried about votes, per se, but they were worried about career ending ‘slamophobia allegations.
Had they taken him out, the ABC would have had a conga line of “wouldn’t happen if he was white” experts.
The point was, despite Monis’ criminal record, and the charges he and his new bride were facing, Plod command basically bought into “white robe = religion of pieces = honourable but mostly peaceful protest = negotiated settlement next day”.
How do I know this?
Well, the Commish called a presser to give “an update” at 6:30 a.m. She was clearly of the opinion that this was going to roll on without incident through the night.
Now, which cultural expert told her that?
That is why it is great that the Clare Nowland case is going to court. All communications and ducking and weaving will be exposed, and they can’t redact material because “secret anti-terrorist tactics” this time.

The Beer whisperer
The Beer whisperer
July 12, 2023 2:36 pm

Two Commando had built a replica of the Lindt Cafe, and worked out how to storm it, but the senior police officer in charge thought handing over to the Army would damage their career, and, besides, there were all these Mooslime voters in Western Sydney…..

I don’t believe they have the capacity to see beyond the career enhancing matter.

Dot, you can take it from me as fact that the person in charge was preoccupied with personal interests over those stuck inside.

rosie
rosie
July 12, 2023 2:44 pm

Maybe Entebbe was chosen because Idi Amin was amenable.
I went away and read about Dora Bloch after Cassie mentioned her.
Left behind in a Ugandan hospital she was murdered on Amin’s orders.

rosie
rosie
July 12, 2023 2:46 pm

Next up, ed case declares Mossad snuck into his house and stole one of his shoes.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 2:57 pm

Maybe Entebbe was chosen because Idi Amin was amenable.

That was my understanding – Amin personally welcomed the hijackers.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 3:00 pm

Mark McGowan to avoid voice campaign
Paul Garvey
Paul Garvey

A close confidante of Mark McGowan has confirmed the former West Australian premier will not be throwing his political clout behind the Yes campaign.

WA Treasurer Rita Saffioti on Wednesday told reporters that Mr McGowan – who played an outsized role in delivering Labor record-breaking wins in the most recent state and federal elections – would not be lending his weight to the Yes camp.

Since his shock resignation in late May, Mr McGowan’s only public appearances have been limited to attending a number of campaign events for Magenta Marshall, the woman selected to replace him in his long-held seat of Rockingham.

Asked whether Mr McGowan would play any role in the Yes campaign, Ms Saffioti said he would not be wading into the debate.

“He retired from public life and I think he’s wanting to not be involved in public discourse, but will support Rockingham and support Magenta because he feels so strongly about this area,” she said.

“And so he’ll come out again and support Magenta in this seat, but we also have to respect his wishes that he actually retired from public life.”

McGowan is probably afraid that the mob will howl and throw things after his role in the Aboriginal Heritage legislation.

Salvatore, Iron Publican
July 12, 2023 3:05 pm

… we also have to respect his wishes that he actually retired from public life …

Anyone know of this opt-out option being allowed for any conservative politician?

Cassie of Sydney
July 12, 2023 3:07 pm

In July 1968, El Al Flight 426, on route from Rome to Tel Aviv was hijacked. It was the one and only time an El Al plane has ever been hijacked. Want to know why? Because since then, on all El Al flights, the cockpit is locked before take off and unlocked when they reach the destination. Further, El Al has armed security at all El Al offices and desks in various airports across the world, this is why it has never flown to and from Oz, because the Australian government has repeatedly declined to allow El Al to have armed security. So you fly to HK and catch an El Al flight from there. I’ve flown El Al, it’s a good airline.

shatterzzz
July 12, 2023 3:09 pm

Translation from the technical… there is a hamster-productivity issue. Hamsters are being progressively exterminated both to find the culprit an to encourage les autres. The plan is to continue the beatings until morale improves.

Way back in the 1990s I spent some time with the Bureau of Statistics in Sydney and one of the Census intakes (can’t remember the exact year) .. anywayz, early in the returns processing stage the main frame program in Canberra collapsed several times .. turned out it was a glitch in the software .. everytime anyone, anywhere in Oz typed a specific street name in Bankstown, NSW the system shut down and hundreds of data processing staff got to sit around and chat away their shift(s) ….
took 5 dayz to work it out and fix ……. LOL!

Lee
Lee
July 12, 2023 3:10 pm

won’t hold my breath – I”m still waiting for your reference over Japanese plans to surrender in 1943.

They were negotiating a Surrender thru the Swiss embassy, starting in 1943.
Common knowledge.

Bollocks.

Barking Toad
Barking Toad
July 12, 2023 3:10 pm

Uncle Dennis was probably on the disability pension in any case – from their ABC

The Federal Court has rejected an Aboriginal elder’s bid to access the age pension early
Indigenous Australians have shorter life expectancies and encounter “unacceptable differences in health”, the Federal Court says, but that does not entitle them to receive the age pension earlier than others.

Today, five judges of the court dismissed a legal bid by Wakka Wakka man Dennis James Fisher to access his pension at the age of 64, instead of at 67.

Uncle Dennis’s legal team argued the current laws discriminated against Indigenous people, because they had less time to enjoy their pension due to the gap in average life expectancy compared with other Australians.</em

Another blow to the voice as grifters get revealed.

Black Ball
Black Ball
July 12, 2023 3:11 pm

Rita Panahi:

There are a multitude of good reasons to reject the race-based referendum. Just in the past week we’ve seen more reasons to vote No to the racial division and privilege the Yes camp wants enshrined in the Constitution. Here are just five:

1. Listen to Teela Reid, a member of the Prime Minister’s Referendum Engagement Group on the Voice, who has said the Voice should be “the first step in redistributing power”.

She has also called Australia “a nation without a soul” and one that is synonymous with racism.

Reid also wants “reparations” aka more of your money going to unaccountable Indigenous groups.

I applaud her for saying the quiet bits out loud.

Keep talking, Teela.

2. Standing with the race activists are Australia’s biggest corporates, including Coles.

You cannot even shop for overpriced groceries without being confronted with signs declaring the supermarket giant supports the Voice.

Of course, the explanation is bereft of substance, ending with “no matter how you identify, who you love or where you’re from, you are always welcome at our table”.

Unless, presumably, you are one of the majority of Australians who intend to vote No.

3. It’s little wonder that support for the Voice is weakest in Western Australia, where only

39 per cent intend to vote Yes, according to the latest Newspoll.

They are already getting a taste of what this agenda entails with the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act, creating a new and costly bureaucracy for landholders, with blocks as small as 1100sq?m affected.

One residential block owner was quoted $20,000 for an Aboriginal heritage survey and fears the acre he bought just two years ago in Exmouth might now be “worthless”.

4. Also in WA was the farcical situation whereby the opening of a $232m freeway was delayed due to a fight between two Traditional Owners about who had the right to conduct the smoking ceremony, with one saying to the other: “I don’t need permission from you or anybody else; this is my country, too.”

Amen, brother, amen. That’s precisely how I feel.

5. Expect to see more ugly identity politics in schools if the Yes camp prevails, though there’s plenty of that already including Cheltenham Secondary College making students who opt for a puffer jacket to advertise the political symbology of the rainbow and Aboriginal flags.

Just say No.

Jorge
Jorge
July 12, 2023 3:11 pm

A.N. Wilson’s ‘Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises’ is a fund of anecdotes. This of Peter Quennell: ‘He was sent down from Oxford for the, in those days, relatively unusual crime of active heterosexuality, which had been discovered by the proctors.’

Boambee John
Boambee John
July 12, 2023 3:11 pm

Ed Case
Jul 12, 2023 1:52 PM
I won’t hold my breath – I”m still waiting for your reference over Japanese plans to surrender in 1943.

They were negotiating a Surrender thru the Swiss embassy, starting in 1943.
Common knowledge.
It made sense too, since their Navy had been mostly destroyed at the Battle of Midway, they had Armies fightingna losing War in China, and the Kwantung Army was sitting on their hands hoping the Soviet Union wouldn’t renew hostilities.

Turd Case

“Common knowledge” is not a reference. Try again.

Japan lost four carriers and a couple of heavy cruisers at Midway. They still had a large enough Navy to be fighting hard at sea in 1944, when the last of the Pearl Harbor attack carriers were sunk.

Japan could have easily (but with loss of face) have withdrawn from China and Kwantung, none of the allies were in a position to stop them, particularly the Soviets, who were locked in intense land battle.

Try again, this time looking at reality, not the product of what passes for your perverse, twisted, brain.

Barking Toad
Barking Toad
July 12, 2023 3:11 pm

Another blow to the voice as grifters get revealed.

Closing italics fail!

Cassie of Sydney
July 12, 2023 3:12 pm

“That is why it is great that the Clare Nowland case is going to court. All communications and ducking and weaving will be exposed, and they can’t redact material because “secret anti-terrorist tactics” this time.”

Yep, the weasels, starting at the top with NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb and NSW Minister for Police, Yasmin Catley, two mediocre females promoted well beyond their capabilities, should both be accountable.

Kneel
Kneel
July 12, 2023 3:12 pm

“Yes, it’s a database problem (mySQL), and Dover is working with his hosting provider on the capacity front, the indexing front and the query/Stored Proc optimisation front.”

Hi Mark,

Aside from capacity issues, which you will have to sort with the hosting provider, you can both view the structure of the database and add indexes if the command line MySQL client is installed and you have shell access.
If you can, turn off “binlog”s or ask the hosting provider to increase the frequency they are purged at – these consume fairly large amounts of disk space with standard MySQL settings, and can slow down queries significantly – I’ve now got my RADIUS server consuming the same amount of disk space (give or take) regardless of how many records I create and delete on it (typically, about 60k/day are created, and about the same number are copied to a backup server and then deleted from the main server), and it’s stable and fast. There are other MySQL variables that can also help, if you can find someone who knows or is willing to spend time googling about.
Often you can also do this sort of thing with the host management tools – it’s been a while since I tried it that way and I don’t recall exactly what you can do with “standard” hosting user tools.
And of course, the hosting provider may be hosting the database on a separate server, meaning while you can certainly add indexes and so on, you may be “stuck” with bad performance from a highly loaded “central” MySQL server that services many hosts/sites, and they may not care to add replication and load sharing for it before many customers complain and some leave.
MySQL stored procedures should be fairly well optimised – that is their entire purpose, to reduce load on the server, and they certainly do when it’s done right. Queries in MySQL should be also optimised by the server before they are executed, if I remember the MySQL docs correctly.
Finally, if they have “stuck” you with a Windows/IIS server – erk, there’s probably not much you can do about it unless you can find a guru for that. Not my “cup of tea”, and I always avoided Windows and IIS servers as much as I could – they normally work fine, but the documentation is woefully inadequate if you ask me. If it’s LAMP, I can advise, but if it’s WIMP, find someone else. 🙂

johanna
johanna
July 12, 2023 3:14 pm

Time for another longread, this time about the US classic, Melting Pot.

But “the point about the melting pot,” Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote 60 years ago, “is that it did not happen.” It was 1963, the year that the pair released their pathbreaking book Beyond the Melting Pot. The authors were then little-known academics, working in the Kennedy administration—Glazer for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Moynihan for the Department of Labor. Yet Beyond the Melting Pot would become one of the best-selling sociology books of all time, sparking renewed debate just a few years before America began its second great experiment with mass immigration. The book’s thesis was simple: the groups that had arrived here since the nation’s inception had not assimilated, in the sense of losing their old identity. Rather, they had taken on a divided status—half Old World, half New—that Glazer and Moynihan labeled “ethnicity.”

The rest of the article is long and complicated. One thing they never mention is that after a massive influx, US immgration was slowed to a tap drip from about 1921to 1948. Next thing you know, the Jews were getting into the entertainment biz (to pay for the kid’s college fees to become a doctor) and Christians were getting into business to do the same. Of course, there was crossover.

Whatever, business boomed, and so did creativity.

‘Academics’ making money out of this bullshit give me a severe case of the irritants.

Johnny Rotten
July 12, 2023 3:16 pm

It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.

– Dolly Parton

shatterzzz
July 12, 2023 3:18 pm

… we also have to respect his wishes that he actually retired from public life …

he hasn’t finished counting all his “retirement” funding before undertaking any consultancy “work” ……

Vicki
Vicki
July 12, 2023 3:22 pm

I’ve flown El Al, it’s a good airline.

Me, too, Cassie. They were incredibly thorough when I travelled El Al from Tel Aviv to Athens shortly after the attack on Rome airport in 1985 (I think). I had to unpack my bag in front of an official – didn’t mind a bit, in fact I was relieved that they were so thorough. And all the while their officials were unfailingly polite, even when international travellers got stroppy.

In fact, while travelling through Israel and frequently encountering Palestinian hostility (I think it may have been shortly before the first Intifada) our guides were always firm, but determined with those who attempted to stop tourists. Impressive people, the Israelis.

shatterzzz
July 12, 2023 3:23 pm

Uncle Dennis was probably on the disability pension in any case – from their ABC

Guessin’ he’s on the “dole” cos the “rorters’ payz the same as the OAP …..

Gabor
Gabor
July 12, 2023 3:27 pm

Ed Case
Jul 12, 2023 1:20 PM

Here’s a link to the Haaretz article, with comments.

Sample comment:

Geronimo Hondo
03:35 03.01.2018

I’ve always wondered,to say the least, why the hijackers chose Entebbe airport,which had designed and built by the Israelis,and of which they had detailed plans.

I have the detailed plans of the Doha airport on my screen, and I have never been there, nor likely to be.
And to add, I had nothing to do with its design either.

Your colossal ignorance is, well, colossal.

Gabor
Gabor
July 12, 2023 3:28 pm

Ed Case
Jul 12, 2023 1:20 PM

PS, would you kindly PO?
Good boy.

Black Ball
Black Ball
July 12, 2023 3:31 pm

The public er, ‘servants’ are, well, not interested in actual work. Nathan Schmidt brings this ditty from the Hun:

Tens of thousands of workers will soon have unfettered access to work-from-home arrangements following a “groundbreaking” deal.

The Community and Public Sector Union revealed on Tuesday that it had reached an agreement with the Australian Public Service Commission over flexible working arrangements.

Under the deal, all public service employees will have the right to request flexible working arrangements, including working from home, which will no longer be capped under the deal.

Surely an employer can insist on turning up?

Employees will now be able to work as many days per week at home as they wish, with WFH requests only to be refused after “genuinely trying to reach agreement” with the staff member.

CPSU national secretary Melissa Donnelly said the “traditional approach” to APS work had hindered its attraction and retention and praised the government employer for agreeing to the deal.

So you just pick and choose when you want to show up kiddies! It’s in our agreement!

“These improved and enforceable work rights will open doors for individuals who were previously unable to consider APS employment or had to leave because of a change in circumstances,” she said.

“Flexibility in how, when, and where public sector work is done will see the APS become increasingly diverse, adaptable and accessible.”

And I guess major projects become more expensive and later to build/develop.

“This is good news for public servants, public services, public policy and the public.“

Everyone is a winner. But what of black fellas?

The deal will also require employers to consider connection to country in granting flexible work arrangements, with strengthened protections against terminations “without genuine negotiation”.

I see.

At 120,000 members, the CPSU is one of Australia’s largest unions.

The deal will impact staff across the country, including in federal, ACT and NT APS roles.

Telecommunications, call centres, employment services, commercial broadcasting, aviation, and science and research employees will also come under the deal, according to the CPSU.

Gawd almighty.

The deal comes amid increased scrutiny on work-from-home arrangements across the country, more than two years after flexible working arrangements became prominent during Covid.

Internal messages at Commonwealth Bank were leaked this week following plans to force 49,000 employees to return to the office for at least 50 per cent of the week, with some reportedly threatening to quit.

On Tuesday, former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett added his voice to calls to reduce flexible working arrangements, stating that those who work from home should have their salaries cut.

Australia, Rex Hunt said it best.

Mak Siccar
Mak Siccar
July 12, 2023 3:34 pm

I suggest that we Cats and Kittehs commence our own RAOTY ( Real Australian Of The Year) and nominations are now open.

Humbly, may I begin with my nomination: Rita Panahi

but there are many others …

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
July 12, 2023 3:38 pm

I tend to agree with Rosie.
Entebbe wasn’t chosen because they had detailed drawings of the buildings and services.
It was entirely because, not only would they meet no resistance, they could confidently rely on The Fat Bastard Idi Amin to run interference for them.

rosie
rosie
July 12, 2023 3:40 pm

Anything happening in France this week?
No French Generals starting civil wars?
socialists might enlist them in their call for a ‘mass mobilization’

Black Ball
Black Ball
July 12, 2023 3:43 pm

One more before I leave for pursuits unknown as yet…maybe pub. Terry McCrann is rather stroppy with AUSTRAC:

Step forward Austrac, unchallenged winner of the regulator of the year – heck, regulator of the decade, if not the century already – award.

It’s been well and truly earned for skilfully turning utter incompetence and breathtaking failure into a multi-billion dollar penalty franchise.

Austrac fails to stop or even notice – or, seemingly even expect – money laundering to take place in casinos and through banks.

Heck, you can almost visualise successive collections – or should that be, collectives – of ‘brains trusts’ inside Austrac, preparing task forces to blanket the laundries of Australia.

Why? Because to borrow from Willie, as in Sutton, that surely must be where the money is, well, laundered.

For they sure as hell, didn’t think that money laundering took place in casinos and through banks.

Why would you? That’s only places where billions of dollars flow through daily.

Aha, Austrac would probably respond: yeah, but there are no washing machines in banks.

Yet suddenly in the last few years Austrac has been imposing huge penalties on banks and our two big casino groups, Star and Crown, for money laundering failures.

It got $700m out of the CBA – and $1.3bn from Westpac, the biggest fine in any context in Australia.

It agreed to Crown paying $450m, although a Federal Court judge seems to be unhappy with that, accusing Austrac of giving Crown a discount.

A headline Tuesday had the judge giving Crown a lesson in the time value of money. Because Crown was paying the $450m over an extended period interest free, it was actually more like $406m.

But the lesson was actually directed at Austrac. The guys, non-gender specific, at Crown and its new owner Blackstone, fully appreciate that reality; it is exactly why they agreed to $450m as the nominal sum.

It is the – arithmetically challenged, non-gender specific – guys at Austrac who have difficulty with numbers.

Meanwhile, the team at competitor Star are quivering collectively in their boots; knowing they are going to get a similar penalty but don’t know the figure yet.

Yet, not one of these fines has emerged from anything Austrac itself actually did. You know, like Eliot Ness and his ‘Untouchable’ raiding prohibition-era distilleries.

The casino fines – more specifically, the bad behaviour on which they were based – all emerged from various and extended Royal Commissions around the country.

There’s been not the slightest evidence of – and Austrac has never claimed – any effective regulatory action on its part. Or indeed any evidence of any regulatory action at all, even if, obviously, ineffective.

The two big casino groups have been operating since the mid-1990s.

Over that time, quite literally trillions of dollars have flowed into them, across their tables and through their machines, and then out back to high rollers and ordinary punters.

But there’s not the slightest evidence of Austrac doing anything, ever – like, you know, active regulation. In over a quarter century.

If it now claims to have done so, why didn’t it catch anything?

Now if one was really Machiavellian, one could suggest it was a deliberate ploy by Austrac.

If it had been an effective regulator, and cut off the bad behaviour early and permanently, it wouldn’t now be reaping the big fines.

Hmm. I doubt they were quite that clever.

So, here’s a thought to the other regulators, turning green with envy at the way Austrac is pocketing all these completely unearned billons.

ASIC’s action against Star was all based on the pretty obvious allegation that “Star’s board and executives failed to give sufficient focus to the risk of money laundering and criminal associations, which are inherent in the operation of a large casino with an international customer base”

So why doesn’t ASIC also sue Austrac for exactly the same failure, spread continually over a quarter century?

And thereby share some of the penalty cream?

DrBeauGan
DrBeauGan
July 12, 2023 3:45 pm

. I’ve flown El Al, it’s a good airline.

I’ve flown El Al too. The staff were very thorough, opened my suitcase without asking and generally checked everything. Since I didn’t want to be blown up, I approved of that.
The plane was an old rattle trap, and rather third world. Like much of the backstreets in Tel Aviv. I liked the Israelis, but I don’t rate El Al as a good airline.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
July 12, 2023 3:47 pm

Mak isn’t Rita a US citizen. I’m not a citizen either, can I be RAOTY. Then again my contribution to Australia has been a lot more than most of the AOTY recipients of late.

Johnny Rotten
July 12, 2023 3:49 pm

“These improved and enforceable work rights will open doors for individuals who were previously unable to consider APS employment or had to leave because of a change in circumstances,” she said.

“Flexibility in how, when, and where public sector work is done will see the APS become increasingly diverse, adaptable and accessible.”

Is working from the Pub or the Public Bar on the agenda? After all, with the Public Service, the word ‘Pub’ is in the the word ‘Public’……………….

Vicki
Vicki
July 12, 2023 3:49 pm

An interesting article in the Speccie today by Stuart Jeffries on “Traditionalists” – which many on this blog may identify with:

Last August a bomb tore through a Toyota Land Cruiser outside Moscow killing its 29-year-old driver. Darya Dugina, a pro-war TV pundit, had been returning from a conservative literary festival where her father, an ultra-nationalist ideologue, had been giving a talk on tradition and history. Quite possibly he was the intended target. Alexander Dugin was called ‘Putin’s Brain’ by Foreign Affairs magazine and ‘Putin’s Rasputin’ by Breitbart. He had advocated conflict with the West and told Russians they should ‘kill, kill, kill’ Ukrainians. Ukraine denied responsibility for the attack.

One way of thinking about the conflict in Ukraine is that it is a proxy war between the forces of modernity and tradition, and that Putin’s invasion is realising ideas set out in Dugin’s 2009 bestseller The Foundations of Geopolitics. For Dugin, the fundamental geopolitical conflict is the West against the rest, with Eurasia leading the rest. In this he is following an old perspective called ‘Eurasianism’, which emphasises the differences between the Slav peoples and the West, the former being orthodox Christians, the latter conceived of as colonialists forcing consumerist barbarism on a world that deserves better.

In this book Mark Sedgwick explains how Dugin’s thinking draws on the little known philosophy called ‘Traditionalism’. It’s a body of ideas that has inspired Steve Bannon, Jordan Peterson, more or less racist groups such as Germany’s AfD party, tree-hugging environmentalists such as E.F. Schumacher, some of the barmier far- right corners of the dark web and John Tavener’s music. Most improbably of all, Sedgwick cites it as underpinning King Charles III’s thoughts about how the modern world has gone so terribly wrong, particularly with architects who refuse to build according to the sacred geometry found in nature and instead ‘seem deliberately to summon up chaos rather than conjure up harmony’.

Traditionalism asserts that there is a sacred, primordial tradition that western modernity destroys, leaving us godless, rootless and lost. While everyone in the West, from Hegel to Brian Cox, believes things can only get better as humanity progresses towards greater self-knowledge and material comfort, Traditionalism claims – and not just because of our current cost of living crisis – that things are getting worse. John Ruskin argued that the division of labour destroyed the human spirit, making us ‘small fragments and crumbs of life’. Søren Kierkegaard – writing long before Elon Musk bought Twitter – argued that communication is becoming more meaningless as it grows speedier. The word of God, he contended, cannot be heard through ‘empty communication that is designed merely to jolt the senses and stir up the masses’. Traditionalism agrees with these jeremiads and goes further.

Until his death in 1998, one of its leading theorists, the Swiss thinker Frithjof Schuon, lived in unspoiled woodland outside Bloomington, Indiana in the primordial simplicity he appropriated from Native Americans, eschewing jeans and modern vulgarities in ways of speaking, to focus on the spiritual and the beautiful. His retreat was an antidote to the rubbish of modern life, like King Charles’s Highgrove or Roger Scruton’s Scrutopia, with a dash of Thoreau’s Walden.

Another leading Traditionalist thinker, the Italian philosopher Julius Evola, was an avowed fascist supporter whose ideas proved popular with Bannon when he worked to make Donald Trump president. Evola’s book Riding the Tiger argued that Traditionalism could not change politics, but that didn’t mean political action was pointless. As long as it was clear that ‘all that matters is the action and the impersonal perfection in acting for its own sake’, it was justified. Between 1969 and 1980, Sedgwick tells us, a neo-fascist group called Ordine Nuovo killed hundreds of Italians with terrorist bombs, inspired by Evola’s philosophy.

If you haven’t heard of Traditionalism, that’s not surprising. It’s an esoteric philosophy hardly devised to be generally understood. Its founding father, the Frenchman René Gueron, suggested that beneath all forms of religion, from Catholicism to Buddhism, there was a single, timeless tradition. Just as Socrates argued in Plato’s Republic that a noble lie is propagated by an elite to ensure social stability (an idea since borrowed by the neo-conservative thinker Leo Strauss), so for Gueron the superficial nature of religion, its exoteric public role, conceals its esoteric nature, only decipherable by the few.

How does Jordan Peterson come into this? The Canadian psychologist and bestselling author of the unremittingly butch 12 Rules for Life applies Traditionalism to politics, but with a twist. Gueron thought that the proper source of authority was spiritual. Peterson locates it in competence. Hierarchies, from lobster to human societies, are predicated on competence, which may well be produced by biology and tradition but have come to be seen by Marxists and their allies as only oppressively based on power and self-interest. The rejection of such political correctness leads Peterson to some interesting positions, to put it mildly. He argues that there is no such thing as white privilege, that it is folly for men to be less aggressive, since ‘aggression underlies the drive to be outstanding’, and that patriarchy is a system enabling men and women to co-operate mutually beneficially. We need tradition to thrive, he suggests.

Sedgwick’s book works as an elegant primer to what, depending on your perspective, is either a dangerous idea or a truth that us mimsy, consumerist decadents would do well to attend to. But he ends with a disquieting thought. He cites Alain de Benoist, the journalistic colleague of Alexander Dugin, neo-pagan brains behind the French New Right, defender of white minority rule in Rhodesia and the sort of traditionalist who believes that Europe should be exclusively for white Europeans: ‘Modernity has given birth to the emptiest civilisation humanity has ever known and is coming to end.’

What could the end look like? The horrors of Ukraine would be negligible by comparison. Sedgwick writes: ‘What might happen if, with the help of Identitarianism, real inter-ethnic conflict between Europe’s Muslim and non-Muslim populations developed doesn’t bear imagining.’

Lee
Lee
July 12, 2023 3:51 pm

I have a DVD of Raid on Entebbe (with Peter Finch and Charles Bronson) lying around here somewhere.

Has anyone else seen the film?

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 4:10 pm

“The operation was designed to torpedo the PLO’s standing in France and to prevent what they see as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans,” the BBC report said British diplomat D.H. Colvin wrote in the document, citing his source.

“My contact said the PFLP had attracted all sorts of wild elements, some of whom had been planted by the Israelis,” Colvin reportedly wrote. “According to his information, the hijack was the work of the PFLP, with help from the Israeli Secret Service, the Shin Beit.”

The document was written on June 30, 1976, three days after the hijacking and prior to the rescue operation.

Link to Haaretz article

Salvatore, Iron Publican
July 12, 2023 4:14 pm

Lee Jul 12, 2023 3:51 PM
I have a DVD of Raid on Entebbe (with Peter Finch and Charles Bronson) lying around here somewhere.
Has anyone else seen the film?

It’s on Youtube, in full length.
Of the several movies made it is possibly the most inspiring & engaging, though apparently the least accurate in details.
(“We’re not making a documentary“)

James Woods (whose anti-woke views have likely cost him a lot over his career) plays a small but excellent & memorable role.

Kneel
Kneel
July 12, 2023 4:14 pm

“…the work of the PFLP…”

SPLITTERS!

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 4:16 pm

Hello, what’s this?
Gee
03:35 03.01.2018

In just over 2 weeks it will be their 39th [sic] Anniversary (17 June 1968) of the US attack of the Royal Australian Navy Frigate Hobart, and the murder of several sailors Attacked while operating with the US Navy off the coast of Vietnam.

The USAF also attacked five US warships, even sunk one of them. Why did the United States attack an Australian warship? How many Aussies did they murder? Why did the US Air Force declare war on the US Navy and Coast Guard? Why was there a coverup of the facts?

HMAS Hobart, eh?
Zulu, Top ender, Carpe?
Any comments?

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
July 12, 2023 4:18 pm

Ed me thinks he’s one of your flamers instead of a spook.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
July 12, 2023 4:20 pm

IS AMERICA GOING QUEER?

What is the younger generation coming to? is a question probably as old as time. But at least, until now, members of the younger generation have been able to figure out whether they are boys or girls. Today’s mania for gender confusion is unprecedented.

This story from Brown is getting a lot of attention:

The number of Brown University students identifying as LGBTQ+ has doubled since 2010, according to a new poll from the university’s student paper.

About 38% of students at the Ivy League school identified as either homosexual, bisexual, queer, asexual, pansexual, questioning, or other — more than five times the national rate for adults not identifying as straight.

Historically, something like two to three percent of people have been homosexual. If you believe in evolution, there are obvious reasons why this percentage has not been higher. Most of the other categories did not, until very recently, exist in any numbers.

This chart shows the trend:

Lee
Lee
July 12, 2023 4:25 pm

It’s on Youtube, in full length.
Of the several movies made it is possibly the most inspiring & engaging, though apparently the least accurate in details.
(“We’re not making a documentary“)

So it is, as I see now.

As is Victory at Entebbe (with the all-star cast), which I have not seen for many, many years.

I might get the popcorn out and watch it tonight.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
July 12, 2023 4:25 pm

SLOW JOE’S COUNTDOWN CLOCK

The drip-drip-drip of the water torture media campaign to force Joe Biden to step aside picked up steam in the last few days.

First,

Maureen Dowd, the weather wane of respectable centrist feminist opinion at the New York Times, delivers a well-deserved scolding for Joe Biden’s directive to make his son Hunter’s love child with a stripper into a non-person: “The president’s cold shoulder — and heart — is counter to every message he has sent for decades, and it’s out of sync with the America he wants to continue to lead.”

Joining the pile-on is Eliot Cohen in The Atlantic, with a feature “Step Aside Joe Biden.” Cohen doesn’t mince words:

Then there’s the Alex Thompson story in Axios about Biden’s temper and erratic behavior:

The “old man yells at clouds” caricature turns out to be accurate.

Then The Hill chimes in:

When is the optimal time for Biden to drop out of the race?

I still say Biden won’t be the Democratic nominee next year. And I think there’s a 50/50 chance that if Biden doesn’t drop out of his own volition, Gavin Newsom will decide some time this fall to jump in the race, with a “more in sorrow than anger” announcement that praises Biden for his good deeds, but that it’s time for a generational shift. Don’t think Newsom and his advisers aren’t weighing this possibility.

P.S.

Here’s a fanciful scenario: maybe Biden resigns from office some time late this year or early next year—he’s only one tumble down the steps of Air Force One from being forced to step down—he could dangle the prospect of Kamala being the first woman president (by succession) for a few months provided she agrees to give way to a Democrat who might actually win.

Cassie of Sydney
July 12, 2023 4:25 pm

“I tend to agree with Rosie.
Entebbe wasn’t chosen because they had detailed drawings of the buildings and services.
It was entirely because, not only would they meet no resistance, they could confidently rely on The Fat Bastard Idi Amin to run interference for them.”

You and Rosie are both correct. The Pallie scum and the two German cockroaches thought they’d be safe in Uganda, because Fat Bastard Amin was open to far-left terrorism, he personally welcomed them when the Air France plane arrived in Uganda. The terrorists thought Uganda would be a safe haven for them to go on a killing spree of Jews. But they didn’t know that back in the mid 1960s, before 1968 and the unleashing of post-modernist Marxism which erupted across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Israel had very good relations with numerous African countries, and provided assistance and aid. One of those countries was Uganda, and the Israelis engineers and architects had helped build the airport in Kampala. This was before the megalomaniac Idi Amin came to power, which I think was in 1970. As an aside, remember that fat bastard Amin, upon seizing power, then expelled all sub-continent Indians from the country, thus helping to devastate the economy. Almost all of those expelled migrated to the UK. Back to 1976, this is why Israel had some knowledge of the buildings around the airport which helped them plan the rescue mission.

If my memory serves me correctly, and I remember my jubilant father describing it to us children in the days after the rescue, the IDF rescue mission received permission to fly over Kenyan airspace, one of the few remaining countries on the continent to have diplomatic ties with Israel in 1976. Given the hostility towards Israel, they were not able to fly over other airspaces, so they flew down the Red Sea to Kenya and then into Uganda.

“Taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh, the task force flew along the international flight path over the Red Sea, mostly flying at a height of no more than 30 m (100 ft) to avoid radar detection by Egyptian, Sudanese, and Saudi Arabian forces. Near the south outlet of the Red Sea the C-130s turned south and crossed into Ethiopian territory, passing west of Djibouti. From there, they went to a point northeast of Nairobi, Kenya. They turned west, passing through the African Rift Valley and over Lake Victoria.”

Back in the 1990s, when I was with my Israel boyfriend, who’d been one of the commandos, I did try and ask him at times about his recollections of what happened. He didn’t like to gloat about his military days, he was very circumspect but he would simply say that Israel did what had to be done because the rest of the world were not going to lift a finger to save those Jews at Entebbe. This was the lesson learned from Munich, which is why Golda Meir authorised Mossad to hunt down every single person, assassins and planners, of the slaughter in Munich in 1972 and kill them.

As an aside, my elderly mother’s favourite Netflix programme over the last two years has been Fauda. She liked to watch it lying on the couch with her Cat sitting next to her, munching pretzels, then afterwards complaining about putting on too much weight! She said to me last year that the main main character, Doron, reminds her of my Israeli boyfriend from the 1990s. She’s right, he wasn’t classically handsome but he was very, very sexy.

Wikipedia has a good summary of what ensued at Entebbe however they refer to it as a “raid”. It was not a raid, it was a rescue.

Salvatore, Iron Publican
July 12, 2023 4:31 pm

For perspective, the distance flown by the Israeli rescue mission, from Israel to Entebbe (& then return) is (give or take a few miles) the same distance as from Hobart to the Torres Strait (& return)

It wasn’t a short hop in a Herc & a few 707’s.

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 4:34 pm

Here’s another comment from the Haaretz link [to the Entebbe revelations]:

97 Jake
03:35 03.01.2018

Blackadder, a BBC comedy inspired by real events, tells the story of how the rogue nobleman Blackadder killed Richard III and usurped the throne of Henry Tudor. The conspiracy failed and ended up being covered up.

Interestingly, in the first episode, ‘the Foretelling’, 3 witches accidentally foretell that Blackadder would be king, which is the source of the whole problem. One witch says “I thought Henry Tudor would be better looking.”, to which the second witch replies , “Yes– not so Jewish.”

Here’s the thing:
These comments [and there’s about 50] are published in Israel’s mass circulation daily, under a story that casts serious doubt on the official Entebbe narrative.
Try to imagine an Australian daily newspaper running that story, let alone okaying those comments?

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
July 12, 2023 4:34 pm

The Bidens’ existential threats to the American rule of law

July 11, 2023

If you wonder why IRS agents are being armed, wonder no more.

Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover Institution Fellow, historian and iconic essayist, launches a condemnation of the Biden Administration’s abuse of power and weaponization of federal agencies to create a two-tier legal system in this American Greatness essay.

President Joe Biden, the Biden grifting conglomerate, the Department of Justice, and the FBI under its fourth consecutive weaponized director, are in danger of subverting the American system of law.

They are in various ways undermining the tradition of self-reported income tax computation and voluntary compliance.

Ironically, Hanson describes the IRS and the Tax code as a disinterested system of enforcements, apparently willing to ignore previous weaponization of the IRS and tax code during the Obama administration. Of course the abuses of the IRS under Lois Lerner were just exaggerations of previous IRS misconduct. Like the DOJ and the FBI, the IRS has been a partisan political tool for the Federal Hegemon, picking targets and activities and persecuting those entities.

Dr. Hanson says that a nonpartisan IRS is essential to reliable public compliance with the sometimes arbitrary and always onerous IRS tax code, and he avers:

Our tax institutions, of course, are based on the real deterrence of a disinterested, uncompromised Internal Revenue Service. Without it, the income revenues of the United States are existentially threatened.

So, as Hanson asserts,

the IRS has become another tool of the deep state, focusing on enforcement of the tax code harshly against citizens in opposition to the Democrat regime while allowing a lax standard on elites, specifically elites that are Democrats. An unfair tax system is a threat to the entire American system of revenue collection because voluntary compliance is essential. Americans might become resisters, even with an extraordinary increase in IRS agents and weaponizing IRS enforcement officers.

So the Bidens, along with Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FBI, are treading on dangerous ground in imperiling a hallowed American tradition — one vital to the very governance and operation of the United States, a voluntarily compliant citizenry.

As a thumb in the eye of those citizens, it appears that the criminal enterprise of the Biden family includes tax fraud in amounts of millions of unreported taxable foreign income by means of money laundering and deceitful shifts of money, paywalls, firewalls, and phony “loans” to ensure auditors would take years to unravel his illegal schemes — until well after the expiration of the statute of limitations.

Then the IRS and the DOJ refuse to exercise their option to pursue enforcement beyond the 6 year Statute of tax fraud Limitations, even though the tax fraud was intentional and criminal. It is so convenient that much of this money laundering and tax avoidance is now supposedly subject to the 6-year limit, but in fact the IRS and DOJ can extend enforcement and prosecution for intentional tax fraud. The tax fraud goes untouched because the feds have picked sides with the president’s son.

Joe Biden has serially lied that he did not know anything of his son’s business dealings in spite of evidence galore to the contrary that he was always the “big guy” who was a player and a beneficiary when he was vice president and even when he was president.

Finally, Hanson takes a swipe at the fully compliant and biased press that knew of the criminality and possible treasonous activities of Biden, which were unprecedented violations of his role as chief executive of the United States.

Boambee John
Boambee John
July 12, 2023 4:35 pm

Ed Case
Jul 12, 2023 4:10 PM
“The operation was designed to torpedo the PLO’s standing in France and to prevent what they see as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans,” the BBC report said British diplomat D.H. Colvin wrote in the document, citing his source.

“My contact said the PFLP had attracted all sorts of wild elements, some of whom had been planted by the Israelis,” Colvin reportedly wrote. “According to his information, the hijack was the work of the PFLP, with help from the Israeli Secret Service, the Shin Beit.”

If Turd Case believes that this bit of diplomatic gossip confirms his hysterical claims, he is more deluded than even I thought.

It is, at best, a straw in the wind that could indicate a path to more research.

Salvatore, Iron Publican
July 12, 2023 4:35 pm

or, for those who think wide rather than long, the Israeli rescue mission flew south further than Australia is wide at the widest point (& then return)

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
July 12, 2023 4:39 pm

China readying for total war, America laser-focused on pronouns and wood-fired pizza ovens

The Chinese military is training kindergarteners in the ways of war.

According to scores of social media accounts reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is teaching the kiddies how to handle firearms and fight like soldiers in boot camps all across China this summer. The boot camps reportedly feature training for both boys and girls…involving a wide variety of “toy” weapons, including knives, grenades, rifles, and shoulder-fired missiles. Moreover, the children are required to adopt military behavior — such as saluting — according to the schools’ social media posts.

Government documents note that the militarization of even extremely young Chinese is occurring subsequent to a 2019 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee decision to push for increased “National Defense Education,” which includes a mandate that schools hold National Defense Education activities starting in 2022.

Brandon Weichert, a U.S. Air Force consultant, told the DCNF, “There’s sort of a ‘get ’em while they’re young’ mentality that has always been part of the communist ethos.” Weichert added, “Xi Jinping is trying to inculcate not just a patriotic fervor among the next generation, but I think he’s trying to also create actual next soldiers for the inevitable campaigns that he plans on waging militarily.”

And we in America — and the West in general — are hell-bent on fighting climate change and transphobia while also aggressively prosecuting a war against those who “misgender” or “deadname” someone. (And there’s also the Russia-Ukraine War, a conflict we helped bring about, which would not have occurred if the Clinton administration hadn’t cajoled Ukraine into handing its nuclear weapons over to Russia and/or if Trump were still in office.)

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 4:46 pm

One of those countries was Uganda, and the Israelis engineers and architects had helped build the airport in Kampala. This was before the megalomaniac Idi Amin came to power, which I think was in 1970.

Sure, the Israelis built the entire Entebbe Airport for Milton Obote, Amin’s predecessor, and a real butcher.
As an aside, remember that fat bastard Amin, upon seizing power, then expelled all sub-continent Indians from the country, thus helping to devastate the economy.
Yeah, because they were troublemakers and corrupters.
… the IDF rescue mission received permission to fly over Kenyan airspace, one of the few remaining countries on the continent to have diplomatic ties with Israel in 1976.
[White] Kenyan Minister Bruce Mackenzie lobbied frantically for this permission.
He was assassinated shortly afterwards.

Top Ender
Top Ender
July 12, 2023 4:58 pm

We have had a nice two days at the Cliffs of Moher near Doolin on the western Irish coast.

Some sunny weather, temperatures up to 18, but every now and again a few drops fall! The view from the windows at our breakfast area at the Airbnb was worth the price. Peaceful, cows, stone fences, fields, views of the other cottages and she had some lovely plants including flowering begonia. Our host Marcella was a real chatterbox (Mrs TE could only understand every 3rd word). They serve edam cheese and salami as well as cereal and toast – sometimes Irish soda bread.

On the west coast, in a coastal area now known as Wild Atlantic Way, the Cliffs of Moher are the No.2 attraction of Ireland – the number 1 is the Guinness factory in Dublin. Very impressive. We did a cruise as well as a walk along the top. The cave everyone photographed is the “Harry Potter” one which featured in the second last film made.

This is the first area Mrs TE says she has seen clothes on the line. The farm areas feature stone fences and narrow laneways – the Irish scene you always imagine. We visited a few more pubs and listed to more Irish music. So far not overly impressed with pub food – think we do it better (and cheaper) – fish, chips, mushy peas & tartare was E20.

One of the villages we visited – Liscannor – was the birthplace of John Holland, who’s pretty much credited as the inventor of the submarine. Strangely, he was originally a Christian Brother and a teacher. He emigrated to the USA and pursued his submarines design ideas there, with the first launched by the US Navy in 1900. His company went on to found Electric Boat.

We walked up to the Moher cliffs and a Martello Tower. Scores of these were built along Britain and Ireland’s coasts in the Napoleonic Wars. They each contained a small garrison – maybe 10-25 soldiers and one officer depending on size.

The idea was to light a fire atop the tower if an enemy invasion force was sighted. The next tower along – each was in eyesight of two others – would then light its fire, in a chain reaction. This was to give warning in time to land forces to get ready for attack.

On now to the Ring of Kerry.

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 5:00 pm

My comment at 4:34 pm is likely Bow Wow.
Apols to anyone else who took it seriously.

Razey
Razey
July 12, 2023 5:01 pm

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano gives the world a warning!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXUFX2uId14

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
July 12, 2023 5:09 pm

Can anyone give me the link to the petition re the ACMA proposals?

I saw on my phone someone here today saying they needed 50 more and had to have them by midnight tonight; I have been flat out last couple of days but did promise Sophie York at the IPA function for Peter Dutton last week that I would make one. Hairy wants to make one too. I’ve persuaded on of my sons to make one but didn’t give him any link.

That’s 3 more if we can get the link. And any other Cats who still haven’t done it.

rosie
rosie
July 12, 2023 5:12 pm

Enjoying the Irish reports TE.
I’m planning to be there mid 2024.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
July 12, 2023 5:14 pm

Moher Cliffs and Ring of Kerry, both amazing places in Ireland. We did that whole coast last time we were there, before lockdowns. Lucky you, Top Ender, and the airbnb sounds nice too. It’s often pot luck with them.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
July 12, 2023 5:17 pm

Near the south outlet of the Red Sea the C-130s turned south and crossed into Ethiopian territory, passing west of Djibouti.

Sadly Ethiopia now seems to be yet another place to avoid.

Israeli citizen kidnapped in Ethiopia (11 Jul)

“A report was received about an Israeli citizen who was kidnapped during his visit to Ethiopia in the Gondar region,” the ministry said.

It’s a worry since Gondar is mainly Christian, although there are some muzzos and Sudan is not far to the west. I haven’t looked at the news from Sudan for a week or two but it has been a messy semi civil war, and would not be surprising if it is spilling over borders.

Kev
Kev
July 12, 2023 5:24 pm

Hey Ed..
the murder of several sailors. Wrong. One sailor was killed and two wounded No one was murdered . Bad day, bad mistake but bad things like that happen in war.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
July 12, 2023 5:24 pm

Big walk up that Moher cliff hillside to the top, and we had to be careful of the electric fences on the left hand side. They were turned on, but very few warnings on them. I said to Hairy if this was anywhere but Ireland there would be signs everywhere and probably you wouldn’t be allow up near them.

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 5:30 pm

‘Yoni Netanyahu’s Mistake Nearly Led to Disaster’: U.K. Historian …
27 Mar 2018 … “Netanyahu’s key mistake — firing at a Ugandan soldier — nearly led to disaster.” David says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother, who …

The PM’s slain brother was not a central figure in the operation, Saul David, on whose book the film ‘7 Days in Entebbe’ was based, tells Haaretz

Here’s the Link, you’ll need a subsription to read further.
Basically, the real story is that the Ugandan soldiers at the Airport had been told to stand down, no surprise, since Israel had installed Idi Amin back in 1970.

Yoni Netanyahu decided to take potshots at the blacks anyway, and was killed by friendly fire, probably intentional.
The New York Times uncovered that fact in the 1990s, subscription needed to access.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
July 12, 2023 5:32 pm

If you wonder why IRS agents are being armed, wonder no more.

Obama’s Department of Agriculture were sprung buying submachine guns in 2014. With night sights. Maybe giant mutant carnivorous carrots are nocturnal. Alphabet agencies do rather like their fascist paraphenalia these days.

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 5:33 pm

Okay.
What’s the full story, Kev?
The USAF sank a USN ship too.
Was that Murder?

Carpe Jugulum
Carpe Jugulum
July 12, 2023 5:38 pm

Ed Case Avatar
Ed Case
Jul 12, 2023 5:30 PM

Ed, just get off the piss and have a nap FFS.

You are making Chris Bowen sound like a coherent human being with functioning synapses.

Top Ender
Top Ender
July 12, 2023 5:45 pm

Hi from Ireland Ed.

The last time you talked about the 1943 surrender efforts of the Japanese didn’t I suggest you and I do a book on it? Such a publication would rewrite history. I have the publishers…

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 5:47 pm

Such a publication would rewrite history. I have the publishers…

Put me down for a signed copy!

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 5:49 pm

You wouldn’t like my signature, Zulu.

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 5:51 pm

Hi, Top Ender.

Are you doing a book on RAN Frigate Hobart, attacked by the USAF during the Vietnam War, with Australian deaths and casualties?
Have you ever heard of it?

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
July 12, 2023 5:53 pm

Petition to Acma – link?

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
July 12, 2023 6:05 pm

Amicide is a regrettable thing Ed.
Lots of ships were shot up by friendlies in WW2.
I suspect it was because that was the first war when night ops were really common.

Friendly Fire Incidents During World War II Naval Operations (PDF)

cohenite
July 12, 2023 6:07 pm

RFK jr has admitted to be on Testosterone replacement. He has some bulk and cut. The only problem with test is it cancerfies the old prostate. So I hope the gnarly voiced brickhead is getting his doc’s finger up his quoit regularly.

By comparison biden stripped down on the beach the other day. He looked like a pasty, shelless snail.

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 6:07 pm

Bruce – In other words, you don’t know anything about the subject, but you’re gonna talk about it as if you did.

Top Ender
Top Ender
July 12, 2023 6:13 pm

Kindly Uncle Joe – not:

For all his grandfatherly image Joe Biden has allegedly become a “grumpy old man” in the White House, according to a new report that has emerged at the same time as some of the Democratic party’s biggest boosters have begun to demand the 80 year old step aside.

In a sign the Democrat elite have begun to worry about the wisdom or likelihood of a second Biden term amid uninspiring polling for the veteran Democrat leader, negative reports about the president have started to spring up in news outlets that have been typically supportive.

“Behind closed doors, Biden has such a quick-trigger temper that some aides try to avoid meeting alone with him. Some take a colleague, almost as a shield against a solo blast,” reported news organisation Axios on Monday (Tuesday AEST) in a story that raised eyebrows among political strategists.

The president’s favourite exhortations included “God dammit, how the f**k don‘t you know this?!,” “Don’t f**king bullsh*t me!” and ”Get the f**k out of here!” according to Axios, which said it spoke to numerous current and former White House staffers on condition of anonymity.

Oz

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 6:14 pm

In other words, you don’t know anything about the subject, but you’re gonna talk about it as if you did.

Never stopped you before, Grogarly.

John H.
John H.
July 12, 2023 6:15 pm

Bruce of Newcastle
Jul 12, 2023 6:05 PM
Amicide is a regrettable thing Ed.
Lots of ships were shot up by friendlies in WW2.
I suspect it was because that was the first war when night ops were really common.

Friendly Fire Incidents During World War II Naval Operations (PDF)

Russia has shot down more of its aircraft than Ukraine.

cohenite
July 12, 2023 6:15 pm

Warren and Anthony voting no but some female member of the family called karen voting yes. She’s an ugly number.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
July 12, 2023 6:16 pm

Top Ender
Jul 12, 2023 4:58 PM

On now to the Ring of Kerry.

Was dirt road when we drove it in 1970 – as a Ex Rally Driver – enjoyed – not sure Wife and Company Travel Companion were as enthusiastic

Stayed in Galley Head Lighthouse with UK Ex Irish Chairman in 2017 as a base and enjoyed seeing Old memories –

especially – Dursey Island Cable Car which is used to transport Cows

Top Ender
Top Ender
July 12, 2023 6:17 pm

Hi, Top Ender.

Are you doing a book on RAN Frigate Hobart, attacked by the USAF during the Vietnam War, with Australian deaths and casualties?
Have you ever heard of it?

Nope. Looking forward to your book. (I know a bloke who was there is you want him as a source)

Johnny Rotten
July 12, 2023 6:18 pm

I was the first woman to burn my bra – it took the fire department four days to put it out.

– Dolly Parton

Alamak!
July 12, 2023 6:20 pm

“…until Dover can get the performance issues sorted once and for all…”

@Dover: if it’s database performance hitting the site, get the database guy to add indexes for every field of the table used by the offending query.

Careful with that axe, Eugene!

😉

Suggest adding indexes one by by one on columns used in queries and stored procs, while evaluating the performance of key queries and procs each time. Reason being that indexing everything will slow down the DB writes and complex index setup is not something MySQL handles very well. The indexing & testing cycle can be done on a replica of the production DB using any provider like AWS/Azure/etc that has same MySQL version (5.x, 8.x) and similar memory/cpu/ssd setup.

A second suggestion, if not in place already, is to defrag the tables and indexes on frequent basis e.g. daily. This can be done by executing a script that calls “OPTIMIZE” command on each table that is seeing a lot of action for reads/writes.

Third suggestion: Clustering

MySQL is a very good DB for simple queries and scales pretty well if you’re using a cluster. This allows writes to be executed on master node and reads to be shared across 1-N read nodes. In a recent project it was possible to support around 40k active users out of 2.8M total using AWS cluster of 5 nodes with DB request count between 2.5 to 3.5m per day.

See here for steps in using WP on MySQL cluster

Lastly, the issue may not be MySQL just a lack of caching for frequently requested data. WP offers some info here, since I don’t use WP as a tech option (actually, we remove it asap from any company using it) I won’t say anything on caching except that its a good idea assuming you know what can safely be cached.

All the best.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
July 12, 2023 6:21 pm

TE at 4:58.
Long time since we visited, but Cliffs of Moher are speccy.

Beertruk
July 12, 2023 6:23 pm

Top Ender
Jul 12, 2023 4:40 AM

Mercury but paywalled

Meanwhile in Hobart:

Tasmania approval to remove William Crowther statue
If the Hobart council gives the go ahead to remove the contentious William Crowther statue in Franklin Square, it will still require one final tick of approval.

@JudyAugustine
6 min read
July 12, 2023 – 10:54AM

If the Hobart City planning committee upholds the vote to remove the statue of William Crowther, the council will still need to navigate one final hurdle before it can proceed: approval from the Tasmanian Heritage Council.

Last August the Hobart City Council voted to remove the bronze part of the statue, leaving the plinth behind.

The statue is controversial because Crowther decapitated the corpse of Tasmanian Aboriginal man William Lanne and stole his skull, subsequently being suspended from his role as an honorary medical officer at the Hobart General Hospital.

This week, the planning application for the removal of the statue was publicly advertised by the council.

After further assessment by council officers following the advertising period, the planning committee will vote on the application, but that won’t be the final step in the process.

The full Heritage Council will consider the application at a meeting on August 18, which will mark more than a year since the Hobart City Council voted to remove the statue.

“The Crowther Statue is located within the bounds of Franklin Square, which is a place entered in the Tasmanian Heritage Register,” a Heritage Tasmania spokesperson said.

“Once the Heritage Council makes its decision, this is forwarded to the relevant local government office which will incorporate the decision and associated conditions into its own development application permit.”

Hobart City Council deputy mayor Helen Burnet said the planning committee would be required to accept the heritage council’s decision.

“If the Heritage Council forms the view that the application should be refused, then the Hobart City Council, as planning authority, has a statutory obligation to refuse it,” she said.

“If the Heritage Council supports the application then it will likely state conditions that will be required to be included on a planning permit, if it is approved by the Hobart City Council.”

Heritage Minister Madeleine Ogilvie will have no say in the matter, but she does have the power to appoint members of the Heritage Council.

If the council is not satisfied with the outcome, it could appeal the decision with the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative tribunal.

Members of the public have until July 24 to lodge representations with council.

New sign proposed to explain why Crowther statue is being removed

July 11

A temporary 2m sign, which reads “WHY THE EMPTY PLINTH” could be placed in Franklin Square at the current site of the statue of disgraced deceased former premier, William Crowther.

The Hobart City Council plans to remove the bronze part of the statue of Crowther, leaving the plinth behind, after a vote last August.

The statue is considered controversial because of evidence Crowther decapitated the corpse of Tasmanian Aboriginal man William Lanne and stole his skull, subsequently being suspended from his role as an honorary medical officer at the Hobart General Hospital.

On Monday the application to remove the statue and install signage was publicly advertised.

The application shows plans to install a sign to explain how the council arrived at the decision to remove the statue.

“The temporary signage will have a minor adverse impact to the heritage values of the place owing to its bulk, scale, and prominent location,” the planning application said.

“However, it is of an obviously temporary style, and interprets the removal of the Crowther statue, and the reasons for its removal, mitigating some of the impact to the heritage values of the place.”

The sign would be more than one and a half metres tall and would be attached to a steel fencing panel with black zip ties.

In the long term, the sign will be replaced by a permanent display, which has not yet been decided on.

The planning report said the removal of the statue would reinforce the area as a welcoming place.

“The removal of the Crowther statue will have no impact on the civic function or urban design of the park, and in light of the changed contemporary understanding of the contribution of the monument including its adverse impact on some members of the community, its removal would be seen as a positive contribution to the civic function of the space,” it said.

The plan is open for comment for two weeks.

Council cements steps to remove controversial statue

July 5

Almost a year after the Hobart City Council voted for the controversial statue of William Crowther to be removed, a planning application has finally been lodged for it to be taken down.

In August, the council voted for the bronze part of the statue to removed, leaving the plinth behind, amid calls to do so from Hobart’s Aboriginal community.

The statue is considered controversial because of the misdeeds of the former Premier the monument is dedicated to.

Crowther was suspended from his role as an honorary medical officer at the Hobart General Hospital after he decapitated the corpse of Tasmanian Aboriginal man William Lanne and stole his skull.

The statue was erected in 1889, four years after Crowther died.

The statue of William Crowther was vandalised on January 26.

On Wednesday the development application for the removal of the statue was finally lodged.

Once reviewed by council staff, it will be publicly advertised for two weeks, during which time, members of the public will be able to make representations.

After it’s publicly advertised, the application will go before the Hobart City Council planning committee for a final decision.

If elected members vote in favour of removing the statue, it will go into the City of Hobart valuables collection.

The decision to remove the statue will make Tasmania the first Australian state to remove a monument to a former Premier.

Do you think the William Crowther statue should be taken down?
Yes
22 %
No
78 %
560 votes

Statue supporters’ last ditch bid to keep Crowther standing

Those opposed to the removal of the statue of disgraced and deceased former premier William Crowther should accept a council decision to take it down, Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre’s Nala Mansell says.

A petition has been launched with Tasmania’s parliament to call on the Hobart City Council to keep the controversial statue standing
Hobart City Councillor Louise Elliot. Picture: Chris Kidd

“Crowther has not been given a fair trial by the council,” Ms Elliot said.

“Everyone has things that they don’t like but that’s part of living in a diverse community where people have different views. We can’t go deleting everything that some people are offended by.”

The petition also calls for the state government to develop a policy restricting what councils can do with monuments, such as the Crowther statue.

“The pressure to remove more of our history won’t stop with Crowther’s statue. A hit list is already being formed of things some people are offended by,” Ms Elliot said.

Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre campaign co-ordinator Nala Mansell said the vote, last August, needed to be upheld.

“The Hobart City Council already made the right decision, it’s disappointing to see people aren’t willing to accept the decision made that was supported by the majority,” Ms Mansell said.
Tasmanian Aboriginal activist and campaign manager for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre Nala Mansell. photo – Peter Mathew

“I’d urge those people, especially those elected to show leadership to move on to something more relevant and of benefit to the community.”

Ms Mansell said the delay was disappointing.

“The right decision was made, it’s unfortunate the statue still hasn’t been removed but we’re looking forward to celebrating its removal,” Ms Mansell said.

“We hope it will be actioned as soon as possible.”

City of Hobart city life director Karen Abey said there was a delay because of the
complexity of the work required.

“Should the development application be approved by the planning committee, a planning permit will be issued, and subject to no planning appeals being upheld, allowing the bronze component of the statue to be removed legally, under the relevant legislation,” Ms Abey said.

“The bronze component will be placed in the City of Hobart valuables collection if it is approved for removal.”

Acting mayor Helen Burnet said there had been extensive community consultation on the matter and members of the public would be able to make representations when the plans were advertised.

She also said the council was working on its own monuments policy.

“The aim of this policy which was approved unanimously by the sitting council of the time, is to inform future additions or removals to the city’s collection,” Ms Burnet said.

“The draft is likely to be put before council for consideration in the next 3-4 months.”

The world we bloody live in…

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
July 12, 2023 6:24 pm

Bruce – In other words, you don’t know anything about the subject, but you’re gonna talk about it as if you did.

Ed – why don’t you just read the NHRC report. It is interesting history.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 6:29 pm

Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt ducks questions on Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act
Josh Zimmerman
The West Australian
Wed, 12 July 2023 4:00PM
Josh Zimmerman

Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt has become the latest Albanese Government Cabinet Minister to distance himself from WA’s contentious Aboriginal heritage laws.

In Perth for a meeting of State and Territory agriculture ministers, Mr Watt called time on his press conference on Wednesday amid a flurry of questions about the refreshed Act.

The new regime has caused particular angst and confusion among growers and primary producers who in some cases are now required to consult more closely with local knowledge holders prior to making major changes to or additions to their properties.

Mr Watt said he had “followed this debate to a degree” but that it was a State Government issue and he did not “want to pretend that I’m an expert on it”.

“But I spoke about it with (WA Agriculture Minister) Jackie Jarvis again yesterday, just to get her perspective on it,” Mr Watt said.

Boambee John
Boambee John
July 12, 2023 6:36 pm

Ed Case
Jul 12, 2023 5:30 PM
‘Yoni Netanyahu’s Mistake Nearly Led to Disaster’: U.K. Historian …
27 Mar 2018 … “Netanyahu’s key mistake — firing at a Ugandan soldier — nearly led to disaster.” David says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother, who …

The PM’s slain brother was not a central figure in the operation, Saul David, on whose book the film ‘7 Days in Entebbe’ was based, tells Haaretz

Here’s the Link, you’ll need a subsription to read further.
Basically, the real story is that the Ugandan soldiers at the Airport had been told to stand down, no surprise, since Israel had installed Idi Amin back in 1970.

Yoni Netanyahu decided to take potshots at the blacks anyway, and was killed by friendly fire, probably intentional.
The New York Times uncovered that fact in the 1990s, subscription needed to access.

LOL. First Turd Case quotes Haaretz, then the NYT. With sources like that ….

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
July 12, 2023 6:37 pm

Dolly Parton

I had to check that one out, she really said it. What a babe!

Dolly Parton Bashes ‘Greedy Politicians’ Who ‘Wouldn’t Know the Truth if It Bit Them’ (3 Jul)

Country star Dolly Parton says we live in a world with “greedy politicians” who “wouldn’t know the truth if it bit them.” After being asked if she would ever consider running for office, the singer said, “No, I’m running from office.”

Not just a pretty, um, face. 😀

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
July 12, 2023 6:45 pm

Regarding the HMAS Hobart incident in 1968.
Don’t stress Googlery.
Australia retaliated almost a year later by authorising HMAS Melbourne to run down USS Evans whilst on joint exercises in the South China Sea.
Exercises involving white sub detection, actually.
Anyway, square-off executed and honour satisfied.
The ramming of USS Evans was authorised by Harold Holt.
Who was a spook.

duncanm
duncanm
July 12, 2023 6:52 pm

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Jul 12, 2023 5:09 PM
Can anyone give me the link to the petition re the ACMA proposals?

this? https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/have-your-say/new-acma-powers-combat-misinformation-and-disinformation

closes 6 Aug

Black Ball
Black Ball
July 12, 2023 6:55 pm

The new regime has caused particular angst and confusion among growers and primary producers who in some cases are now required to consult more closely with local knowledge holders prior to making major changes to or additions to their properties.

Phucking ‘knowledge holders’? Spare me. The knowledge of what herbicide to use on farm? To annex a room onto an existing farmhouse? Irrigation systems and methods? FMD

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
July 12, 2023 6:56 pm

By comparison biden stripped down on the beach the other day. He looked like a pasty, shelless snail.

Like something a dodgy health inspector from Dandenong council might find on the floor of a commercial kitchen?

Jorge
Jorge
July 12, 2023 6:59 pm

SBS News reports on huge protests in Israel. The Netanyahu govt described as ‘hard right wing’ by the reporter. How long before she uses the word ‘regime’ ? A CIA coup happening in front of us so that Iran gets its nuclear wishes and the media pretending it’s all spontaneous.

rosie
rosie
July 12, 2023 6:59 pm

Who ran off with a mermaid.

Black Ball
Black Ball
July 12, 2023 7:01 pm

Seen it around the district and discussed here.
Project gets set up, say it’s a planting of native seeds that apparently needs less water and gets a greater yield per whatever area you choose.
Well meaning cockie gives a bit of land, only a small paddock but sez “you blokes are doing the work. I will assist with machinery but you plant, you spray the weeds, you reap.” Needless to say the idea never made it off the butchers paper.

miltonf
miltonf
July 12, 2023 7:04 pm

BB you should know our effete elites hold practical skill in complete contempt. That’s what happens when BAs and LLBs and BA LLBs are put in charge. As Trumble filth said- the laws of Australia are more important than the laws of maths. Garbage people. Toxic trash.

miltonf
miltonf
July 12, 2023 7:06 pm

Speaking of Biden- always was a PoS. Now an old incontinent PoS.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
July 12, 2023 7:07 pm

Can’t find the Amca petition by a simple Google search, tried going back to where I saw it this morning on my phone but no luck, plus scrolling back is a hideous task with the site so slow, and have other things to do. Hope they make the 50 without me and Hairy signing up. Maybe Hairy is a better searcher than me, I’ll go find out now.

I’m pretty tired but I did promise I’d do it. Tinta, you rang and I did ring back, but can’t talk now, too enervated, but the following can fill you in.

I picked up defacto daughter-in-law from hospital day surgery Monday morning and she was obviously quite ill, in pain, and in no fit condition to cope with my autistic son and their autistic son, so I whisked her in comfort back to our place and nursed her overnight in our guest room (bad luck, Attapuss, you’re in with us for the night) then we took her out to lunch before delivering her back home yesterday. This morning before dance class I received another meltdown call from autistic son, he’s gone back to his place but freaking out badly about relationship problems and Centrelink requirements in equal measure – I expect she told him to go home for a while because she wasn’t up to coping with him, I told her to stay at ours and we’d bring the child here too, but she said she’d prefer to go home as the child hates change. On the phone this morning my sad son gets beyond reason, yelling, threatening to ‘leave it all’, they’ll cut him off, he won’t be able to pay his rent, so he’ll ‘go and live on the streets’ (again), and a litany of confused emotions and suicidal ideation swells out, and I’m saying calm down, let’s talk rationally, just stop shouting etc etc.

Then I went and filled myself with endorphins dancing, adding a caffeine hit with my friends (who keep me sane) and rang him again as I said I would and went to see him, gave him $50 for some immediate needs, and tried to talk sense. The worst thing is that he’s now gone off the idea of being ‘tested’ for autism. The usual paranoid rant about he’s ok, they’re the problem, all the people who want to make money off his situation, and the stupid doctor he saw gave him the wrong referral, and his sometime-partner had said you should have taken your mother with you to the appointment, which set him off too. Understandable, of course. He is not much good with docs, he tells them what he thinks they want to hear, his explanations are all over the place, and he doesn’t comprehend forms. On a ridiculously useless questonnaire this doc ticked a box marked ‘never’ on a 5 point scale question: Do you ever get angry? Where the hell did she get that idea from? (Pardon me, an angry mother comment). He says now that she didn’t ask him that question, just ticked it. I suspect she asked it and it didn’t sink in. She’s given a cursory summary of his history which has a lot in it about giving up cigarettes! Probably for some research study. They have copious notes on that. No mention of possible autism, serious depressions and suicidal ideation, only possible ADD. You’d think by the time he was fifty this perennially unemployed and unemployable but superficially personable man would have raised a few alarm bells, but he keeps falling between the cracks. Getting an adequate paper trail for this son has always been a huge barrier to getting him help other than from me. Which of course leave me wide open to the ‘interfering mother’ stigmas that can still operate in this field.

I am seriously thinking of going more public than here and publishing somewhere a detailed case history from the parental side on all of the failures in assistance and diagnosis that my son has encountered from childhood on. Throughout his life we have have tried to encourage independence, to let him go his own way, he’s moved interstate several times over the years, he’s moved around the country looking for work, he’s injured both of his feet and has serious mobility issues now (in hospital three months), he’s cared for the two children he produced with unevenly coping mothers (one floridly schizophrenic), he’s had total educational failures since childhood in spite of all opportunities and efforts we’ve made (and totally unlike his three siblings), and still we are left holding the can. Over-involved? If only we could not be involved, but he’d be dead now if we, me especially, were not there to pick up the pieces time and again. And I have three other children and six grandchildren who also have a right to a share of me. Let alone my right to enjoy my last years with a loving husband without this constant barrage going on. Everyone in our ambit of educated professionals who knows my son knows there is a problem with his ability to cope as others do. His language is odd, he misinterprets much of what others say, his actions are jerky, he stares ahead a lot, he has a history of much physical self-neglect. He’s on the eternal dole, not the DSP, and his ‘disability’ employment providers only recognise his mobility issues as needing help.

He reminds me quite a lot of Neil, in the 7-Up TV series, as he shrugs down into himself. He’s intelligent and sensitive and what is happening to him is a waste of human capability. He has presented well enough to struggle through life with messed-up relationships and fathering two children.

Sorry for the rant, but sometimes it helps to write it down. Scroll if necessary.

Crossie
Crossie
July 12, 2023 7:11 pm

The screaming of the Central Coast surfing and environmental “community” about the off-shore wind farms is music to my ears. They thought being green meant the ugly and dangerous renewable elements will be stuck in the poor people’s backyard. Now they want studies and investigations but farmers must just take it. Cry me a river.

P
P
July 12, 2023 7:13 pm

Who ran off with a mermaid.

This was the fault of Menzies who should have groomed someone to be his successor.

My only memories of Holt from watching the TV news each night that he was mostly asleep during parliamentary sittings.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
July 12, 2023 7:18 pm

And the good news is that in spite of my being distracted by the above stuff, Quadrant have expressed interest in publishing the article I have been working on recently: ‘Re-dating Gildas and the Siege of Badon Hill’. It’s rather long for them, though, and I have said to Keith I will look at cutting it back a little. Will set aside some time next week for that.

I am fascinated by this man’s work. He wrote as a Christian at a time of civilizational collapse. Sound familiar?

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 7:20 pm

ABC drops defence in ex-commando’s defamation suit to avoid naming source
Michaela Whitbourn
By Michaela Whitbourn
July 12, 2023 — 4.40pm

The ABC has sensationally dropped its defence in former Australian special forces soldier Heston Russell’s defamation case against the broadcaster rather than comply with a court order that it hand over documents to his lawyers revealing the identity of a journalist’s source.

In an urgent court hearing on Wednesday evening, the ABC’s barrister, Lyndelle Barnett, said withdrawing the defence was “not a course that’s been taken lightly”, but the national broadcaster’s reporters “do take their promises to sources very seriously”.

The ABC is seeking to have the order forcing it to hand over documents identifying the source revoked, a course of action opposed by Russell’s lawyers.

Barnett said the ABC accepted Russell was now entitled to judgment in his favour and the sole remaining issue was an assessment of damages.

Russell launched defamation action against the ABC in September last year over a television broadcast and online article on November 19, 2021, and the same article paired with a linked article from October 2020.

Justice Michael Lee had ruled the broadcast and articles conveyed a total of six defamatory meanings, including that “Russell, as commander of November Platoon, was involved in shooting and killing an Afghan prisoner during an operation in Helmand province in mid-2012” and that he “behaved so immorally when deployed in Afghanistan that American forces refused to work with him”.

The broadcaster had initially sought to rely on a defence of truth but dropped that part of its case in May, leaving a new public interest defence intact. That defence was withdrawn on Wednesday evening. The trial was slated to start on July 28.

In a preliminary decision in February, Lee noted the ABC reported a US marine had made allegations that Australian commandos shot and killed an Afghan prisoner. He was “given the pseudonym ‘Josh’, but strangely enough is pictured, notwithstanding both the [online articles] … record he does not want to be identified because he ‘fears retribution’,” Lee said.

Wally Dalí
Wally Dalí
July 12, 2023 7:20 pm

Thankyou Lizzie. It’s a boon to us all that we can read a heartfelt but sensible interpretation of your life with your son.
My wife and I often joke that our youngest daughter is “on the spectrum”. She probably is, but we’re resolved to never let a diagnosis get anywhere near her. What we have to do- that is, what I have to do- is get over my dissappointment and resentment, and find a way to love her as she is, because she’ll only have one dad, and in a few short years she could be out the door.

Tom
Tom
July 12, 2023 7:29 pm

Blot is such an arrogant piece of sh*t. He just drowned out Judith Sloan, an actual economist, because she wasn’t stridently anti-Labour enough.

Arrogant pieces of sh*t like Blot are the worst possible people to be journalists because they have tin ears and are incapable of learning.

Like the rest of the journalistic establishment, they just want to replace politicians with zombies they approve of. Like the rest of them, Blot is a kingmaker.

Boambee John
Boambee John
July 12, 2023 7:33 pm

Ed Case
Jul 12, 2023 5:51 PM
Hi, Top Ender.

Are you doing a book on RAN Frigate Hobart,

HMAS Hobart was a Guided Missile Destroyer, NOT a frigate.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
July 12, 2023 7:35 pm

The ABC has sensationally dropped its defence in former Australian special forces soldier Heston Russell’s defamation case against the broadcaster rather than comply with a court order that it hand over documents to his lawyers

Barnett said the ABC accepted Russell was now entitled to judgment in his favour and the sole remaining issue was an assessment of damages.

A number with at least six noughts after it seems appropriate for this evil ABC hit job. In the US a jury would award punitive damages that might actually rival the ABC’s annual budget. It’s a pity we don’t have that system here.

Roger
Roger
July 12, 2023 7:37 pm

The new regime has caused particular angst and confusion among growers and primary producers who in some cases are now required to consult more closely with local knowledge holders prior to making major changes to or additions to their properties.

For a fee of c. $160 per hour, if what is being reported is correct.

That’s more than surgeons charge for saving lives.

And nearly 3 times what a qualified archaeologist charges for the same sort of work.

rosie
rosie
July 12, 2023 7:38 pm

The ABC published on the basis of allegations of a single person.
They should be paying up billy.

Black Ball
Black Ball
July 12, 2023 7:40 pm

Warren Mundine:

Another member of the Yes Campaign has been called out promoting a radical, divisive agenda. In a series of tweets, Referendum Working Group member Teela Reid has condemned Australia, saying that racism and Australia are “synonymous” and Australia is a “nation without a soul”.

And she has outlined her hopes for the Voice as the “first step in redistributing power” and for abolishing Australia Day and reparations.

Reid doesn’t just want to change the date of Australia Day but abolish the day altogether, tweeting: “It is truly disingenuous to be claiming mob won’t be demanding to #AbolishAustralia day”

Back in January she tweeted: “How very Aussie is this; let’s ignore history, find a new meaningless date to celebrate, and forget that the Blaks ever declared 26 Jan a Day of Mourning.” But it’s Reid who is ignoring history.

The Day of Mourning and Protest was held in Sydney on January 26 1938 to coincide with a gathering of State Premiers marking 150 years since the First Fleet’s landing. It was organised by the Australian Aborigines League and the Aborigines Progressive Association whose leaders included Jack Patten, Bill Ferguson and William Cooper, incredible advocates for Aboriginal people and great Australians.

The demands of the Day of Mourning organisers were set out in more detail in a manifesto entitled Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights!, published by Patten and Ferguson that same year.

The protest and manifesto had three key themes.

First, to protest the callous treatment of Aboriginal people in the prior 150 years and ongoing mistreatment.

Second, to demand the end the state and territory government “protection” regimes that segregated Aboriginal people on missions and reserves and controlled every aspect of their lives. Among other things, these laws regulated where Aboriginal people could work and live, garnished wages and prevented children from attending public schools.

Third, to demand Aboriginal people have full citizenship and equal participation as Australian citizens and “to be our own masters” including equal education, opportunity, wages, rights to possess property. Self-determination.

The overwhelming demand of this movement was for Aboriginal people to be equals, fully participating in Australian life and not separate and specially protected.

The manifesto said: “We do not wish to be regarded with sentimental sympathy, or to be “preserved,” like the koala bears, as exhibits; but we do ask for your real sympathy and understanding of our plight. We do not wish to be ‘studied’ as scientific or anthropological curiosities. All such efforts on our behalf are wasted. We have no desire to go back to primitive conditions of the Stone Age. We ask you to teach our people to live in the Modern Age, as modern citizens. Give us the same chances as yourselves, and we will prove ourselves to be just as good, if not better, Australians. Thank you.”

The core demands of the Day of Mourning were achieved with the 1967 Referendum which removed the exclusions of Aboriginal people in the constitution, gave us the same rights as every other Australian citizen and saw the end to the state and territory protection regimes.

Five days after the Day of Mourning, Patten and Cooper led a delegation to meet Prime Minister Joseph Lyons where they presented a 10-point Plan for Citizens Rights.

It included the removal of state and territory protection regimes and steps to elevate Aboriginal people to citizenship and equality and address socio-economic disadvantage. Specifically, they wanted Aboriginal people to have the right to education, wages and entitlements as other Australians, be able to own land and property, have personal bank accounts, be paid their own wages and bequeath their assets in a will.

The Plan proposed a land settlement policy similar to those then available to immigrants and solder settlers, where Aboriginal people could be assisted to acquire land and become self-supporting.

All the demands in the 10-point plan have ultimately been delivered.

In fact, Aboriginal people have secured far more than the delegation could ever have imagined, including land rights, native title and compensation funds for dispossession via land rights and native title legislation, something the activists demanding reparations conveniently ignore. There are also a multitude of policies and programs to help Aboriginal people still living in disadvantage and poverty.

Despite this, many Aboriginal people are still experiencing deep disadvantage. But this isn’t because of racism or history.

It’s because, despite Aboriginal people now being able to go to school, earn wages in a job and own their own home as the Day of Mourning protesters dreamed of, many do not.

This won’t be solved by a Voice. It will only be solved by economic participation. Patten, Ferguson and Cooper knew this in 1938. But the activist class today don’t get it at all.

Patten, Ferguson and Cooper thought special government oversight of Aboriginal lives was the problem. Today the activist class think government oversight is the solution.

The Day of Mourning wasn’t about abolishing Australia Day. And it wasn’t about resentment or damnation of Australia. The opposite.

Organisers wanted Aboriginal people to be fully included in Australian life with all the opportunities Australia offers and independent of government oversight. They didn’t hate Australia. They wanted to be fully part of it. And in 1967 when we were, we celebrated.

The Voice will reverse the 1967 Referendum. Racial segregation will be back in the constitution and the proposed design of the Voice will see it preside over an enormous new bureaucracy interfacing at every level of government.

A constitutionally embedded protection board overseeing a vast array of new mission managers. This is nothing like what the organisers of the Day of Mourning wanted.

John H.
John H.
July 12, 2023 7:41 pm

Lizzie,
Unless a psychologist has specific training in ASD I wouldn’t bother. For complex behavioral issues a neuropsychologist might be a better option.

Autism Clinic, University of Sydney

This site might help
https://thespectrum.org.au/

https://psychology.org.au/psychology/about-psychology/types-of-psychologists/clinical-neuropsychologists

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 7:42 pm

Qld police officer who shot criminal’s scrotum sues state for $1.4m for PTSD

A police constable who shot a criminal in the scrotum during a bungled routine arrest is suing the state government for $1.4m

Crossie
Crossie
July 12, 2023 7:42 pm

Boris Johnson and his greenie wife just welcomed another child into their family, the eighth for him and the third for her. I think that is beautiful, babies are always a good idea but I thought greenies didn’t approve of population growth. Or is it that it’s OK for them but not for anyone else?

Cassie of Sydney
July 12, 2023 7:44 pm

Blot is such an arrogant piece of sh*t.

I think it’s time Blot was put out to pasture. As to who would replace him, I like Caleb Bond.

Alamak!
July 12, 2023 7:44 pm

punitive damages that might actually rival the ABC’s annual budget. It’s a pity we don’t have that system here.

perhaps we do … Britnees payout was based on ambit claim for lost wages over the next 30(?) years. How about the same for this defamed soldier? Plus 20M for psych “distress”

Indolent
Indolent
July 12, 2023 7:44 pm

How funny. This item from Dr. Suneel Dhand fits right in with Andrew Tate’s world view.

How STOICISM can help you become UNDEFEATABLE

Just by the way, Andrew Tate reminds me of Gonzalo Lira who also tried to encourage and advise young men.

Rockdoctor
Rockdoctor
July 12, 2023 7:45 pm

For a fee of c. $160 per hour, if what is being reported is correct.

That’s more than surgeons charge for saving lives.

And nearly 3 times what a qualified archaeologist charges for the same sort of work.

Its extortion pure and simple. Wonder if the law would survive the HC challenge on freehold land given the Mabo Precedent. Give Cook a headache considering what fat bastards Singaporean partners have coming WA’s way…

Crossie
Crossie
July 12, 2023 7:48 pm

Barnett said the ABC accepted Russell was now entitled to judgment in his favour and the sole remaining issue was an assessment of damages.

A number with at least six noughts after it seems appropriate for this evil ABC hit job. In the US a jury would award punitive damages that might actually rival the ABC’s annual budget. It’s a pity we don’t have that system here.

Bruce, that money should be taken out of the current ABC budget and not having the government give them more of our taxes. Until it hurts their pockets they will not stop behaving in this way.

C.L.
C.L.
July 12, 2023 7:49 pm

Video: See it before it’s disappeared…

Roseanne Barr Goes Off on Piers Morgan: Ukraine is filled with NAZIS!

“They marched my entire family out into the forest and buried them alive!”

https://twitter.com/catturd2/status/1679062587864907777

Boambee John
Boambee John
July 12, 2023 7:50 pm

Alamak!
Jul 12, 2023 7:44 PM
punitive damages that might actually rival the ABC’s annual budget. It’s a pity we don’t have that system here.

perhaps we do … Britnees payout was based on ambit claim for lost wages over the next 30(?) years. How about the same for this defamed soldier? Plus 20M for psych “distress”

After years of harassment by the “official” government broadcaster, PTSD would seem to be the least of his issues. Their ABC should have to fund ful private medical and dental care for Russell for the rest of his life, plus pay damages.

C.L.
C.L.
July 12, 2023 7:52 pm

That Roseanne explosion is really something.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
July 12, 2023 7:53 pm

Thanks for the link, Duncanm.

I have put in this short submission. Too tired for anything longer. They say it closes in August, not July. But now it’s off my plate. Hairy can do something longer.

“The rapid spread of false, misleading and deceptive information online has resulted in a multitude of harms from disrupted public health responses to foreign interference in elections and the undermining of democratic institutions.”
This is a highly-charged political statement, offered without a substantial evidential basis for its acceptance. Who determines what information is harmful and to be censored is open to tremendous anti-democratic usage, allowing no rebuttal. Such censorship of free speech has no place within a democracy and has a chill sound rather akin to Soviet or Chinese Communistic preference for public control. Good laws already exist for defamation, for fraudulent usage of logos or digitally altered photographs from commercial enterprises where no permission has been granted, and for criminal activities carried out on a carriage medium. Providers are already aware of their responsibilities re these matters, including electoral matters. Current laws should suffice to protect the population at large from criminal frauds and personal defamation. The rest can be argued in the context of a free people, speaking freely.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
July 12, 2023 7:55 pm

Ain’t nobody here but us chickens.

‘Treating poultry humanely’: Govt to bring forth no caged chicken deadline to 2036 (Sky News 12 Jul)

The Australian government’s plan to bring forth its deadline of no caged chickens to 2036 provides enough time, with the support of the government, for the industry to adapt, says Agriculture Minister Murray Watt. … “What we’re talking about is treating poultry humanely, they can remain in cages but in a much more humane way.”

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt downplays price hike concerns over plans to phase out cage-free eggs in Australia (Sky News, 12 Jul)

Murray Watt has shrugged off fears from within the agricultural industry that egg prices could soar up to $15 a carton if a plan to phase out caged eggs is pushed forward.

Which came first, the chicken or the gold bar? I think if reincarnated I’d like to come back as a chook, since they’ll be better treated by the ALP than mere humans.

Tom
Tom
July 12, 2023 7:57 pm

I think it’s time Blot was put out to pasture. As to who would replace him, I like Caleb Bond.

In my opinion, Caleb Bond is a lightweight nobody in a bowtie who should be reading the weather on SA TV. If you want him, you want more of Blot.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
July 12, 2023 8:03 pm

ABC drops defence in ex-commando’s defamation suit to avoid naming source

Un-fkn-believable!
So they accuse someone of murder, allow the civil case to run forever, and glibly pull the pin on the steps of the court.
Since when does “journalistic sources” carry any weight in the legal system?
Truth is, their “source” is either “I know a bloke, who knows a bloke who reckons he was there”, or they have decided he is so flakey he won’t last two minutes in the box.

Rockdoctor
Rockdoctor
July 12, 2023 8:06 pm

Bruce

Supermarkets are chomping at the bit to implement. Why? Kerchiiing.

ACCC is an impotent useless appendage like our appendixes. They should have been over Colesworths the minute plastic bags went started hiking in price but na too hard.

Eggs will indeed spike, apparently happened already NZ is an example.

Watt is even more clueless than Ludwig, if that were possible…

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
July 12, 2023 8:07 pm

A police constable who shot a criminal in the scrotum during a bungled routine arrest is suing the state government for $1.4m

Her pain and suffering was worse than his pain and suffering?

hzhousewife
hzhousewife
July 12, 2023 8:08 pm

Lizzie you may have become confused with the call for objections to the Goulburn River Solar Panel farm on Monday, which was put up as “Urgent Call for Objections”
So rest easy, you did done good.

Razey
Razey
July 12, 2023 8:08 pm

For a fee of c. $160 per hour, if what is being reported is correct.

That’s more than surgeons charge for saving lives.

And nearly 3 times what a qualified archaeologist charges for the same sort of work.

Principle Engineers get charged out at $250/h. Of course they don’t get ‘paid’ that (they would get around 1/3 of that). But that’s the cost of keeping consultant lights on these days. Blame the overlord fees and taxes for that.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 8:10 pm

I brought my Heston Russell “Not My A.B.C.” badge and bumper sticker – the bumper sticker goes well with my “Don’t Welcome Me To My Own Country” sticker.

miltonf
miltonf
July 12, 2023 8:12 pm

It’s pathetic in a way that these marxist agitators than spelling black ‘blak’ somehow changes the origin of the word.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
July 12, 2023 8:16 pm

Thanks John H. I’ve already booked a proper neuropsychologist to do three comprehensive tests and offer an opinion in view of my son’s whole history not a five minute occasional GP consult with a revolving door clinic or ordinary psychologist.

Unfortunately the neuropsychologist wanted a GP referral (it’s private payment of $3150, not Medicare so I wonder why), and this GP was useless for purpose. She has only managed to turn my son off his acceptance (at last!) of testing. My son said re the GP ‘she implied I was just lazy, mum, bugger them all, I hate them all, I’m not going to any other one now, they are all frauds, they don’t know what I go through, they should come here and live among the dealers and druggies and think I do this because I like it, eff them and their judgements, I’ve tried all my life to work and they are no help at all getting me work’. He’s not lazy but he does have a sense he has missed out on the life his siblings have and is resentful. He’s just beginning to see the problems lie with him more than them (although they admittedly are useless) and that he needs real help to normalise his thinking. He misinterprets so much, I’m amazed that no-one in various agencies has picked it up. I suspect they really just don’t care. His view is that the employment people just want to ‘farm me out’ to get money. There probably is an element of that going on. Thanks, Therese Rudd.

C.L.
C.L.
July 12, 2023 8:18 pm

Blot is such an arrogant piece of sh*t. He just drowned out Judith Sloan, an actual economist, because she wasn’t stridently anti-Labour enough.

Rowan Dean interrupts Rita whenever she starts hammering Dutton for being asleep at the wheel or not taking the fight up to Labor.

Sloan is the best economics columnist in the country and the best interpreter of what’s really going on. I am always deeply impressed by the research and fact-checking she does for her pieces in The Australian.

You do not interrupt her. Try listening.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
July 12, 2023 8:19 pm

Re employment, he was offered 25 hours weekly in a basement cubicle with headphones on doing charity telemarketing; he says he simply can’t do it. If he has to try and maybe I should let him, they would see what a real meltdown looks like!

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
July 12, 2023 8:20 pm

rosie

Jul 12, 2023 7:38 PM

The ABC published on the basis of allegations of a single person.
They should be paying up billy.

They don’t care.
Not their money.
They’ll pay up.
Then next week run a story about “problematic legal impediments to use of investigative journalistic sources”, with a thinly veiled implication that “he really is a murderer and our witness fears he will be next”.

Barking Toad
Barking Toad
July 12, 2023 8:24 pm

Blot is a kingmaker.

More like a wannabe kingmaker Tom. I used to be a fan.

Gave up on him when his arrogance rose when having guests on his show, ask them a question then talk over them to answer it for them. Then: “thank you for your time”.

Then tried to be everyone’s friend. A fence sitter pretending to be balanced. Like Morrison,

cohenite
July 12, 2023 8:25 pm

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Jul 12, 2023 7:20 PM
ABC drops defence in ex-commando’s defamation suit to avoid naming source

And the source has already been identified. Was this josh POS part of the BRS crap as well?

I hope Heston gets $10 million bucks.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
July 12, 2023 8:28 pm

Ukraine is filled with NAZIS!

Yes, that’s true. The Ukies attacking south in the Bakhmut zone a few weeks ago were fighting Rusich PMC guys. Some Ukie wag said they were denazifying Ukraine. That was fun in a black comedic way since Rusich PMC has quite an, um, back story.

On the other hand Ukraine has even more Nazis now since Erdogan just sent back some detained Azov commanders a few days ago. Not altogether surprising seeing the Turks were fairly friendly with Adolf’s bunch.

cohenite
July 12, 2023 8:28 pm

Then tried to be everyone’s friend. A fence sitter pretending to be balanced. Like Morrison,

And he hates Trump.

Barking Toad
Barking Toad
July 12, 2023 8:29 pm

ABC drops defence in ex-commando’s defamation suit to avoid naming source

So another fark up by their ABC to be paid by the us.

Crossie
Crossie
July 12, 2023 8:29 pm

Tom
Jul 12, 2023 7:57 PM
I think it’s time Blot was put out to pasture. As to who would replace him, I like Caleb Bond.

In my opinion, Caleb Bond is a lightweight nobody in a bowtie who should be reading the weather on SA TV. If you want him, you want more of Blot.

James Macpheson who is on the Late Debate with Caleb Bond would be a worthy replacement for Bolt. He is usually measured and well reasoned while Caleb and Liz Storer carry on like two turkeys.

Barking Toad
Barking Toad
July 12, 2023 8:33 pm

Here’s a thought: how about every defamation payout/costs awarded against their ABC and it’s employees comes off their budget for the next year.

Or, better still, cut their funding by the same amount in the current year.

Cassie of Sydney
July 12, 2023 8:34 pm

“In my opinion, Caleb Bond is a lightweight nobody in a bowtie who should be reading the weather on SA TV. If you want him, you want more of Blot.”

Fair enough!

Barking Toad
Barking Toad
July 12, 2023 8:36 pm

SFL’s need to wake up soon….

An entire Liberal Party branch has shut down to protest Tasmania’s Liberal government “losing its way”, in a major blow for Premier Jeremy Rockliff, already rocked by defections and a staff exodus.

The party’s Northeast Branch of up to 40 members has ceased to function, after the branch president quit and a core of fellow members vowed to follow, claiming the nation’s last Liberal government had “lost its way” and become “elitist”.

Their extraordinary actions leave the party without a functioning branch across a swath of the state – the farming, forestry and tourism-dominated Dorset municipality, including Scottsdale, Bridport and Ringarooma – in the key battleground seat of Bass.

Razey
Razey
July 12, 2023 8:39 pm

Most famines in history have been due to human influence rather than climate. Are we witnessing the beginnings of the largest engineered famine in world history? Netherland framers being shut down, war in Ukraine, live animal exports banned, egg shortages through government edict, fires in US meat processing plants, the list goes on and on.

JC
JC
July 12, 2023 8:40 pm

I read somewhere that international golf competition is imploding. Does anyone understand why?

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
July 12, 2023 8:45 pm

with them (although they admittedly are useless)

In case it’s unclear, I am talking about the various agencies here, not his siblings.

Hairy watching the State of Origin. He came in to tell me that people were asked to stand for the Welcome to Country. I guess they did because it was followed by the national anthem, but that is what you stand for not the aboriginal invention.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
July 12, 2023 8:48 pm

James MacPherson is very good. He’s intellectual, brings that to his Christianity and has a great sense of humour, missing most of the time in Caleb.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
July 12, 2023 8:50 pm

I enjoy Liz Storer if she has a worthy opponent or assistant or interviewer.

She is full of fire and fun.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 8:52 pm

I guess they did because it was followed by the national anthem, but that is what you stand for not the aboriginal invention.

I was at a Department of Veterans Affairs meeting, where they began with an “Acknowledgement of the Elders.” I wasn’t the only ex – serviceman looking askance at the speaker.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
July 12, 2023 8:54 pm

Razey-san:-

Principle Engineers get charged out at $250/h. 

How much for a Principal Engineer?

Salvatore, Iron Publican
July 12, 2023 8:54 pm

Does surrendering on the courthouse steps mean there is no case & thus no costs to be awarded?
That Heston Russell has to just suck it up for any legal costs he “chose to incur” when there was no requirement to incur any, as there is no court case?

Boambee John
Boambee John
July 12, 2023 8:59 pm

Salvatore, Iron Publican
Jul 12, 2023 8:54 PM
Does surrendering on the courthouse steps mean there is no case & thus no costs to be awarded?
That Heston Russell has to just suck it up for any legal costs he “chose to incur” when there was no requirement to incur any, as there is no court case?

They will still have to go to court, for the judge to set the level of damages.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 12, 2023 8:59 pm

Does surrendering on the courthouse steps mean there is no case & thus no costs to be awarded?

Fair comment, Sal. Any of the bush lawyers on this blog help out?

Razey
Razey
July 12, 2023 9:00 pm

China‘s Economy Is Finished, Returning Forests to Farming, Preparing for War and Famine?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbYUHrY5Ka8

JC
JC
July 12, 2023 9:01 pm

Ace is reporting on this

Good morning, kids. In case you missed it, there was an horrific mass stabbing at a Chinese kindergarten the other day that left six dead, three of whom were children.

Obviously, with everything else going on both here and abroad something like this, as terrible as it is, becomes only so much background noise before disappearing altogether as the news cycles spin and move on to something else. It’s worth noting, not only as a juxtaposition to the gun control stories over here but also because this is not a one-off crime. There have been a spate of mass stabbings at Chi-Com schools and a few other places going back at least 15 years if not longer. It’s a story that if it can’t be embargoed altogether by Chi-Com propagandists and their western “comrades” gets excused as a one-off mental health issue, or swept under the rug if at all possible – which is the exact opposite of what happens here when it involves a gun, a white heterosexual male, and a non-leftist. Preferably all of the above, but I digress.

No, there is something going on in China that the media do not want revealed. Again, horrific in the extreme as to the nature and victims of these attacks, there is an underlying cause beyond “mental health issues” not being reported: rage at the Chinese Communist Party.

I distinctly remember a few years ago featuring a link (and damned if I can’t locate it) to a China expert who made a strong case that a mass stabbing incident at that time, and the majority of all the others to that point were individuals striking out at the regime. Many of these schools where the attacks occurred cater to the children of party members, be they local, regional or even national. Anger at the one child policy, economic reform dislocations, repression of Uighur or other minorities, etc. etc. Whatever reason, the perps seem to blame one target. But with no access to firearms, and no real avenues of protest or resistance since that lands you in a gulag or dead, desperate and barbaric as these attacks are, the children of the regime are shockingly vulnerable, even in a totalitarian police state, and so they wind up in the crosshairs.

Ed Case
Ed Case
July 12, 2023 9:06 pm

Why should Russell get any damages?
Enough people on this blog have opined that killing civilians is just part of the job, since they could be terrorists in their spare time too.

Salvatore, Iron Publican
July 12, 2023 9:08 pm

They will still have to go to court, for the judge to set the level of damages.

I hope the damages are astronomic.
Considering what Their ABC does with our money, it’ll be in far better hands if Heston Russell has as much of it as possible.

We do not need even one more woke miserable TV series about migrant trannies & their non-binary friends living on stolen land that’s being degraded by vile anglo-saxon farmers.

I’d much rather a former Commando be living it up at the Cross with fine cigars, expensive women & even better scotch.

Cassie of Sydney
July 12, 2023 9:10 pm

“James Macpheson “

I like James, however, after some contemplation, I reckon the best person to replace Blot is……………..Rita Panahi!

Delta A
Delta A
July 12, 2023 9:10 pm

Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages
bush lawyer
nounINFORMAL•AUSTRALIAN
a person claiming legal or other knowledge who is unqualified to do so.

Surely a tad disrespectful to apply that term to our Cat lawyers?

  1. Miltonf December 7, 2024 6:39 pm It is shameful but I think they’ve outsmarted themselves and are now between a rock…

  2. Currently in Udine, North-West Italy. A very different experience to Sydney, to say the least, and not just because of…

  3. Boland started running off the field as soon as his stumps were rattled. If they can get Jaiswal cheap again,…

1.3K
0
Oh, you think that, do you? Care to put it on record?x
()
x