Open Thread – Weekend 12 Aug 2023


In the Grove, Ivan Shishkin, 1869

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Gabor
Gabor
August 12, 2023 12:44 am

Morning all, another day, another buck to make.

Alamak!
August 12, 2023 1:09 am

picking up pennies in front of the emh bulldozer

Top Ender
Top Ender
August 12, 2023 1:45 am

I’m dragging Volume 2 of Ian Kershaw’s biography of Hitler around the world with me. Excellent book. Read Vol 1 years back – it goes up to 1936 – so re-read it before leaving Oz and brought V2 (pun there!) along.

One of the crazier schemes for doing away with the Jews was to ship them all to Madagascar, the French not being in a condition to object in 1940, and leave them there. All 15 million of them.

Didn’t happen, as we all know, but a strange snippet of history.

Tom
Tom
August 12, 2023 4:01 am
Tom
Tom
August 12, 2023 4:03 am
Tom
Tom
August 12, 2023 4:04 am
Tom
Tom
August 12, 2023 4:05 am
Tom
Tom
August 12, 2023 4:06 am
Tom
Tom
August 12, 2023 4:07 am
Tom
Tom
August 12, 2023 4:08 am
Tom
Tom
August 12, 2023 4:08 am
Tom
Tom
August 12, 2023 4:09 am
Tom
Tom
August 12, 2023 4:12 am
Tom
Tom
August 12, 2023 4:13 am
Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 6:24 am

picking up pennies in front of the emh bulldozer

You mean, vacuuming up pennies off the EMH ocean floor in your downside risk optimised carbon fibre submarine…piloted by John Merewether.

Jorge
Jorge
August 12, 2023 6:38 am

Give Mrs Setka credit.

She could have gone with the mushrooms but would that rate as well as a hired hit a when the miniseries screens on 9 ?

And she’s got the lipstick and visited the hairdressers. Future decisions on casting will have to take them both into consideration.

Jorge
Jorge
August 12, 2023 6:50 am

And she’s gone retro with the wardrobe. Hints of Lauren Bacall.

Brittany: watch and learn.

Rosie
Rosie
August 12, 2023 6:59 am
calli
calli
August 12, 2023 7:13 am

dover0beach
Aug 12, 2023 12:53 AM
New OT up boys. I mixed up my AMs and PMs. Sorry.

I identify, for this thread only, as Transitioning.

Bruce in WA, which Cunard are you on? Is it for a sector of Queen Anne’s maiden voyage?

Razey
Razey
August 12, 2023 7:35 am

FDA now approves ivermectin for covid. The media and gov are complicit in denying this treatment, fukn pricks.

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 7:44 am

FDA now approves ivermectin for covid.

It was all a sham to screw over Trump.

duncanm
duncanm
August 12, 2023 7:53 am

The ABC has completed its majority-exit from twitter/X.

No doubt they’ve run off with their toys until the ACMA overlords are empowered to force X to only publish the ‘truth’ which the ABC prints.

Rosie
Rosie
August 12, 2023 7:58 am

In the same way the TGA ‘approved’ off label’ ivermectin prescriptions.
Removal of prescribing restrictions on ivermectin

Rosie
Rosie
August 12, 2023 8:00 am

It’s fantastic that the ABC is pursuing its goal of net zero (audience).
They might beat 2030.

Razey
Razey
August 12, 2023 8:03 am

The corrupt media and gov dismissed all treatments except for big pharmas poisonous clot shot. What a disgrace.

Crossie
Crossie
August 12, 2023 8:06 am

Razey
Aug 12, 2023 7:35 AM
FDA now approves ivermectin for covid. The media and gov are complicit in denying this treatment, fukn pricks.

This is a major reason why I smelled a rat with the official response to covid. I expected the health authorities to welcome any ideas to treat a disease that they supposedly believed was so deadly. It just doesn’t make sense to rule out anything, particularly drugs that are known to be safe when administered for other conditions.

What horrified me even more is that so many, even a majority, of people didn’t see the illogic of it all.

Vicki
Vicki
August 12, 2023 8:08 am

Peter van Onselen in todays Oz is reporting on comments of John Howard during the week that Dutton should ignore calls of conservative Libs to move to the Right.

I missed this advice of Howard but will look it up. Whilst “the old man” still commands a lot of respect, I think he is wrong to encourage the tendency of todays Libs to abandon the essential beliefs of western liberal philosophy.

H B Bear
H B Bear
August 12, 2023 8:12 am

Vicki it was a Mavis column promoting his new book. A change from fellating Keating but still no happy ending for readers as usual. Howard oblivious to the damage he has done to the Lieborals.

Vicki
Vicki
August 12, 2023 8:18 am

In spite of the belated dispensation re the prescription of Ivermectin off label, it is extremely doubtful that many GPS would prescribe it for Covid. They were terrified by the AMA that they would lose their right to practice if they prescribed it during the pandemic & that experience has left an abiding fear.

Mind you, the recent statement of the TGA still recommends against prescribing IVM for Covid.

Rosie
Rosie
August 12, 2023 8:23 am

Hydroxychloroquine was also touted as a miracle cure for covid, got provisional approval that was withdrawn as there was no evidence it did anything but there was evidence in clinical trials of severe side effects.

I believe ivermectin was, in part , restricted in Australia as it was in short supply, due to a covid related rush, and needed in certain communities to combat scabies, which is one of a raft of illnesses that plaques babies as young as two months due to communal sleeping in rarely washed bedding.
People should be able to take ‘off label’ whatever they like and are prepared to pay for.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 8:23 am

Trudeau’s split from wife reveals some shocking truths

If the opposition and its supporters can’t figure out a way to compete on a level beyond rumors, personal attacks, and wardrobe critiques, then they’re in big trouble.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced recently that he and his wife of 18-years, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, were amicably separating, leaving some Canadians jealous that they couldn’t do the same. Immediately, the rumor mill went into overdrive.

Some on social media suggested that the split involved an affair between Trudeau and very much married Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly — to the point that her name trended for days on Twitter — all because the two had been photographed looking close, and some observers apparently fail to grasp the nature of touchy-feely French-Canadian culture.

Others suggested, even more outlandishly, that he was involved with his left-wing coalition partner, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh — again, married and a new father — or even French President Emmanuel Macron.

Still more gossip-mongers seemed convinced that Trudeau deliberately timed the announcement to lay the groundwork for an eventual coming out.

None of these are in any way substantiated, of course, but that’s the kind of gutter-level interest that the announcement sparked.

What flew much more under the radar is the fact that Trudeau asked for privacy in the announcement of his split. While Trudeau himself generally (and admirably) avoids ad hominem attacks on his political opponents, he nonetheless made intrusion into private lives official policy with the Covid jab mandates, which should have remained a private choice made between every citizen and their own doctor. Forcing Canadians to inject themselves with a dodgy substance of even more dodgy effectiveness just to go to the gym or grab a burger isn’t exactly keeping your nose out of people’s private business. Neither is blocking people’s bank accounts just because they chose to support the Freedom Convoy movement when they stood up against these mandates and Trudeau overreach into the personal sphere.

The fact that rampant speculation about affairs overshadowed the actual policy hypocrisy doesn’t bode well for the state of Canadian politics.

Will the split harm Trudeau politically? Hardly. It’s not like back in the 1980s

Trudeau himself has gone a long way in actively promoting this kind of “open mindedness.”

He travels around to Pride Parades like groupies follow rock bands, but that doesn’t mean that he personally knows the LGBTQ alphabet. “I will never apologize for standing up for LGDP…LGT…LBG…LGBTQ+ kids’ rights to not have to undergo conversion therapy,” Trudeau said back in 2021.

So when just days after his separation, Trudeau posted a photo on social media from a movie theater while dressed in a pink hoodie that read, “Love you more,” alongside his teenage son, also dressed in pink, with the Barbie movie poster looming in the background and the caption, “We’re team Barbie” — it wasn’t getting limbered up for his coming out. Come on, now — has he even bothered to tell us what his pronouns are?

He was just trolling — and pandering. In other words, playing the simple-minded like a fiddle.

Pinning hopes of ousting Trudeau in the next Canadian federal election, set for October 2025, on precarious personal attacks is a losing strategy.

Anyone who has to play in that register in order to beat Trudeau is totally incompetent.

Trudeau has messed up enough when it comes to substantial policy issues that you really don’t need to look any further. Those who criticize or attempt to counter Trudeau primarily on shallow matters completely unrelated to his ability to run the country only play into the same brand of dumbing down that keeps Trudeau in power.

Trudeau has successfully played shallow-minded and easily led morons like a fiddle by hitting all the woke or politically correct notes that make them feel good about electing him.

Wally Dalí
Wally Dalí
August 12, 2023 8:25 am

“Lived experience” shows that GPs- our best and brightest brains, student swots and custodians of the sacred doctor-patient relationship- toe the line and act in a bloc.
The Drs McCullochs, Coatesworths were fortunate enough to not really need registration to go about their work- the gutsy Dr Robert Hobart was very lonely out on no-mans-land.

H B Bear
H B Bear
August 12, 2023 8:26 am

Trudeau has successfully played shallow-minded and easily led morons like a fiddle by hitting all the woke or politically correct notes that make them feel good about electing him.

A Strad perhaps?

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 8:28 am

Zelensky launches sweeping military purge

All of the regional conscription officials have been fired and will be replaced by combat veterans, the Ukrainian president has said

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has sacked all of the regional military officials responsible for the country’s conscription campaign following a string of corruption scandals. Those who were not involved in any quid pro quo schemes can keep their military rank only if they head to the frontline.

The Ukrainian leader announced the purge on Friday, after holding a ‘special’ meeting of the National Security and Defense Council, which focused on the results of an inspection of the country’s military recruitment offices.

“Our decisions are the following: We are dismissing all regional ‘military commissars’. This system should be run by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery in times of war constitute treason,” Zelensky said.

Offering a peak at the scale of the problem, Zelensky revealed that Ukrainian authorities had opened 112 criminal cases against officials working in territorial recruitment centers, with a total of 33 suspects. He noted that the suspects included commissars, medical commissions employees, and other officials across six regions.

The announcement comes after Kiev’s authorities exposed a massive conspiracy scheme, which allegedly allowed Ukrainian recruits to purchase fraudulent medical certificates to avoid conscription. Another scandal involved Evgeny Borisov, a former senior conscription officer in Odessa Region, who was arrested by Ukrainian law enforcement after being accused of illicit enrichment.

Ukrainian media outlets have also reported that after Kiev announced a general mobilization in February 2022, members of Borisov’s family bought a villa in Spain and other luxury items to the tune of several million dollars.

Rosie
Rosie
August 12, 2023 8:32 am

Or maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t work, either as a preventative or a cure.
And don’t bombard me with anecdotes of how x took it and recovered from covid in three days, without a clone of x getting exactly the same dose of covid we can never know if they would have recovered as quickly doing nothing.
One relative of mine, still valiantly fighting stage 4 cancer, and belatedly vaxxed, took two Panadol for covid and was right as rain the next day.
But I fully respect your right to take whatever you want.
I’ve never had Covid, that I know of anyhow.

Black Ball
Black Ball
August 12, 2023 8:32 am

Vikki Campion:

They came with tiny babies and small children, in Akubras and flannels and dusty boots, with clumsy chants, handwritten signs and mistakes at the microphone. For most, it was the first protest they had attended in their sun-weathered lives.

“We aren’t very good, are we?” one laughed. “We are not professional protesters.”

They came from hours away, up early or driving the night before, to meet Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the Bush Summit in Tamworth, united in one cause — that when they told billionaire and foreign-owned wind and solar factory and transmission line consultants their concerns, they were ignored.

It’s the same story from one community to the next.

These companies come in without publicity, only dealing with hosts, who are kept isolated with nondisclosure agreements.

They promise easy money. When they think they have enough hosts, they have a community meeting, but rarely is it in a place the community go. It’s to events dominated by visitors from Western Sydney.

They are digital masters, designing pretty websites and community newsletters — out of sight of those working a rural paddock with no Wi-Fi.

There’s no serious attempt to talk to the neighbours. Instead, the companies create “community consultative committees” that end up representing stakeholders who stand to gain from the project financially.

They hold “community information sessions” where people are split into couples and pushed to different corners of the room.

Answers are obfuscated. They provide maps without scale, so you can’t work out how close you are to a turbine or a solar panel or a transmission line.

They refuse at any stage to admit there are any adverse impacts.

Dare to bring up microclimates, vibrations, noise or the effects of electromagnetic fields and you are a conspiracy theorist.

Each proposal requires a social impact statement, with the proponent bringing in pro-renewables consultants based in Collins St in Melbourne to “help” rural communities.

They tell families three turbines will be near them in the early days and, 18 months later, those families find out there will be 22.

Some hint that, if you don’t agree, your land will be taken by force.

Farmers struggle to get adequate legal advice in towns where the local solicitor is better at conveyancing than being the star of The Castle.

In some towns, there is a shop front for the renewables company, where one, Walcha Energy, keeps the door locked when opponents are around and diverts their concerns to Gold Coast-based consultants.

Elsewhere, people are disdainfully ignored if they ask for meetings with proponents.

In Muswellbrook, Nigel Wood’s wife was treated so aggressively by consultants for one company that she collapsed. He put in a formal complaint and never heard back.

Everywhere, it’s the same story, from another town Albo’s never seen.

North West: “My wife asked a question, the guy turned his back on her.”

Central West: “They told us if the houses were too close, they’d knock them down.”

South West: “They told us if we didn’t agree to the road, they would take our place by compulsory acquisition.”

These foreign billionaire bullies destroy our lands and throw a few crumbs to communities.

The Albanese government abandoned eight years of work for a nuclear facility in Kimba to “stop the distress” of the Barngarla people.

Yet he ignores the distress of the Anaiwan people to be surrounded by industrialised wind factories.

Armidale’s Anaiwan fundraised and bought a bush block for the revival of their language, culture, ceremonies and traditional land management, and now fight a proposal by Twiggy Forest’s Squadron Energy for a 20km by 8km wind farm featuring 107 turbines, one of which will be just 500m away.

Their neighbours are the Kindly Animal Sanctuary Armidale, where Naomi Hooper says the Booralong Wind project will also destroy critical koala habitat.

In Canberra, Labor and the pretend independents fuss over these subsidy-suckers as if they are a cuddly teddy bear, who refuse to acknowledge their business plan is not just selling energy to the grid but also carbon credits to foreign companies and countries.

In return, we get power we cannot afford, a landscape which we cannot farm, and forests destroyed and littered with industrial towers, panels and transmission lines.

In Labor’s attack on nuclear, they say: Do you want one in your backyard?

They never asked us if we wanted 300m-tall wind towers, thousands of acres of solar or cobwebs of transmission lines in our backyard, but we are getting them.

Albo parrots Chris Bowen’s claims that nuclear is too expensive, maybe refusing to acknowledge or disbelieving entirely the NetZero Australia report, which forecasts his plan to cost $7 to $9 trillion by 2060 if he wants to keep the lights on.

He thinks they are green.

Hundreds of kilometres will be cleared with promises to spend millions of dollars to protect land somewhere else as an “offset”.

Respect for the environment, biodiversity or Indigenous culture only matters when it is being used as a convenience and it aligns with the policies of your party factions.

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 8:35 am

Hydroxychloroquine was also touted as a miracle cure for covid, got provisional approval that was withdrawn as there was no evidence it did anything but there was evidence in clinical trials of severe side effects.

No and no.

Severe side effects can happen from sensitivity, contraindication or dosage. So why is it considered an “essential medicine” (like Abamectins) otherwise?

I believe ivermectin was, in part , restricted in Australia as it was in short supply, due to a covid related rush, and needed in certain communities to combat scabies, which is one of a raft of illnesses that plaques babies as young as two months due to communal sleeping in rarely washed bedding.

It was banned for three years because of this?

People should be able to take ‘off label’ whatever they like and are prepared to pay for.

Then the “reasons” are irrelevant.

It was a massive scam to enable compliance (agree with MSM or else) and mail in fraud. That’s all it was.

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 8:36 am

And don’t bombard me with anecdotes of how x took it and recovered from covid in three days

I will bombard you with literature.

Rosie
Rosie
August 12, 2023 8:37 am

Watching two lots of subsidy gladiators (foreign renewable companies and ‘traditional owners’) duking it out would be amusing if it wasn’t our money and rights to cheap reliable energy they were battling over.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
August 12, 2023 8:37 am

I’m dragging Volume 2 of Ian Kershaw’s biography of Hitler around the world with me.

Sounds like a struggle. Your struggle.

Perhaps you should write a book!

Rosie
Rosie
August 12, 2023 8:40 am

I doubt it dot, the clinical trials were a wash.
here, have another one.

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 8:40 am

Literally the first result in Bing for “hydroxychloroquine success COVID nbci”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7534595/

New Microbes New Infect. 2020 Nov; 38: 100776. Published online 2020 Oct 5. doi: 10.1016/j.nmni.2020.100776
PMCID: PMC7534595PMID: 33042552

Hydroxychloroquine is effective, and consistently so when provided early, for COVID-19: a systematic review

C. Prodromos1,? and T. Rumschlag2

Abstract

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has shown efficacy against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in some but not all studies. We hypothesized that a systematic review would show HCQ to be effective against COVID-19, more effective when provided earlier, not associated with worsening disease and safe. We searched PubMed, Cochrane, Embase, Google Scholar and Google for all reports on HCQ as a treatment for COVID-19 patients. This included preprints and preliminary reports on larger COVID-19 studies. We examined the studies for efficacy, time of administration and safety. HCQ was found to be consistently effective against COVID-19 when provided early in the outpatient setting. It was also found to be overall effective in inpatient studies. No unbiased study found worse outcomes with HCQ use. No mortality or serious safety adverse events were found. HCQ is consistently effective against COVID-19 when provided early in the outpatient setting, it is overall effective against COVID-19, it has not produced worsening of disease and it is safe.

duncanm
duncanm
August 12, 2023 8:41 am

I’ve never had Covid, that I know of anyhow.

wow – I’m exiting my second bout at the moment.

For me – same symptoms as before – starts with a scratchy throat, dry cough, then migrates into the respiratory tract with lots of phlegm and coughing. At some point it makes it up into the sinuses.

Almost the exact opposite of flu, which tends to go top down for me.

calli
calli
August 12, 2023 8:43 am

It’s hard for me to separate Vikki’s well written and truthful column from a simple fact…Barnaby supported the idiotic “Net Zero”.

Wind meet whirlwind.

Rosie
Rosie
August 12, 2023 8:48 am

Hydroxychloroquine was provisionally approved in March 2020, the FDA revoked that approval in June 2020 because clinical trials produced no ‘mortality benefit’ and potentially severe adverse affects including cardiac arrhythmia.
You can’t blame the vaccines for the withdrawal. Not in June 2020.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 8:50 am

House GOP blasts appointment of Hunter Biden special counsel

Top House Republicans are accusing the Biden administration of attempting to stymie their investigation into Hunter Biden following the Department of Justice’s appointment of a special counsel.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) raised doubts about whether special counsel David Weiss could be trusted and pledged in a statement that House Republicans would continue their investigations into the president’s family.

“This action by Biden’s DOJ cannot be used to obstruct congressional investigations or whitewash the Biden family corruption,” McCarthy said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “If Weiss negotiated the sweetheart deal that couldn’t get approved, how can he be trusted as a Special Counsel? House Republicans will continue to pursue the facts for the American people.”

Russell Dye, a spokesperson for House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), also questioned whether they could trust Weiss and said the appointment of the special counsel “is just a new way to whitewash the Biden family’s corruption.”
“Weiss has already signed off on a sweetheart plea deal that was so awful and unfair that a federal judge rejected it. We will continue to pursue facts brought to light by brave whistleblowers as well as Weiss’s inconsistent statements to Congress,” Dye continued.

Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) called the move “part of the Justice Department’s efforts to attempt a Biden family coverup.”

“Let’s be clear what today’s move is really about,” Comer said in a statement. “The Biden Justice Department is trying to stonewall congressional oversight as we have presented evidence to the American people about the Biden family’s corruption.”

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 8:51 am

If you wait a week for obese people to be treated and exclude healthy AND asymptomatic patients then give them double the recommended dose of Ivermectin, yes, you could expect deaths and side effects higher than a control group of placeboed fatties (along with the excluded asymptomatic and no comorbidity sub groups).

These research papers are so dishonest and pointless alongside intentionally damaging to their patients they are almost too unethical to be conducted – as well as intentionally muddying the waters.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 8:52 am

Here We Go – Garland and Weiss Throw Bag Over Hunter Biden Investigation with Declaration of Special Counsel Status

August 11, 2023 – Sundance

Oh, there will be voices who will proclaim this is the beginning of the end for Joe and Hunter, but that’s nonsense. We don’t do pretending on these pages.

What happened today was an agreement between USAO David Weiss and US Attorney General Merrick Garland to fortify a silo of protection around the Biden family.

The shift in David Weiss from an investigative US Attorney to an officially appointed Special Counsel [SEE pdf HERE], is nothing more than loading the new color spray paint into the cannister. Pesky House Oversight Committee inquiry now hits the block of an “ongoing investigation,” a purposeful deployment of a DC replay we have seen repeatedly in the last several years.

The cancer of corruption is institutionally metastatic.

Razey
Razey
August 12, 2023 8:53 am

Rosie
Aug 12, 2023 8:48 AM
Hydroxychloroquine was provisionally approved in March 2020, the FDA revoked that approval in June 2020 because clinical trials produced no ‘mortality benefit’ and potentially severe adverse affects including cardiac arrhythmia.
You can’t blame the vaccines for the withdrawal. Not in June 2020.

You are an ignorant Sheep, aren’t you. Stupid as well.

Roger
Roger
August 12, 2023 8:54 am

It’s hard for me to separate Vikki’s well written and truthful column from a simple fact…Barnaby supported the idiotic “Net Zero”.

Something Thomas Sowell said about understanding politicians comes to mind.

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 8:54 am

Hydroxychloroquine was provisionally approved in March 2020, the FDA revoked that approval in June 2020 because clinical trials produced no ‘mortality benefit’ and potentially severe adverse affects including cardiac arrhythmia.

This was clearly wrong, as later systematic review shows.

You can’t blame the vaccines for the withdrawal. Not in June 2020.

No, but in May of 2020 there was a disinformation campaign against Donald Trump for spruiking HCQ.

I blame “the establishment” entirely for making science politicised.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 8:55 am

Sam Bankman-Fried Heading to Prison After Intimidating Key Witness Using Leaks to New York Times

August 11, 2023 – Sundance

Let’s see… We will trade you one SBF incarceration in exchange for one DJT incarceration and call it fair.

After a US judge in New York tells Sam Bankman-Fried he does not have unlimited first amendment rights, Judge Lewis Kaplan revoked bail and sent SBF to jail for using leaks to the media to intimidate a key federal witness against him – his former girlfriend.

Setting the stage for…

A US judge in DC telling President Donald John Trump he does not have unlimited first amendment rights;

establishing the groundwork for sending DJT to jail for using his political platform to intimate Mike Pence, a key federal witness against him – his former Vice President.

Dr Faustus
Dr Faustus
August 12, 2023 8:56 am

Albo parrots Chris Bowen’s claims that nuclear is too expensive, maybe refusing to acknowledge or disbelieving entirely the NetZero Australia report, which forecasts his plan to cost $7 to $9 trillion by 2060 if he wants to keep the lights on.

Missing in this discussion.

A large part of the $7-$9 trillion will need to be spent again, and again, every 8 to 20 years in perpetuity, as the windmills, batteries, and solar arrays have to be replaced.

This is the ever-filled trough for the renewables rentiers.

Razey
Razey
August 12, 2023 8:59 am

Mass formation psychoses.

Some here still possessed it seems. There were still Nazis even after they lost. Can’t expect everyone to wise up can we I suppose….

Roger
Roger
August 12, 2023 9:01 am

The ABC’s Laura Tingle is excited that “wall to wall Labor” is meeting in National Cabinet next week (the Tasmanian premier is an “on-side” reliable type apparently) to address the housing crisis.

An “important shift” could be coming, she opines, without any further specificity (sic!).

Seems she’s in the loop but we’re not.

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 9:02 am

Albo parrots Chris Bowen’s claims that nuclear is too expensive

Whoever comes up with this nonsense is intentionally dishonest.

All that matters at the end of the day is scale.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
August 12, 2023 9:04 am

Lang Hancock’s last-days epiphany laid bare in battle for billions
Jesinta Burton
By Jesinta Burton
August 11, 2023 — 3.47pm

Faced with the prospect of leaving a bankrupt estate, Hancock Prospecting’s lawyers claim founder Lang Hancock spent his final days trying to reverse moves he made siphoning money out of the empire to fund mansions, luxury cars and a private jet for wife Rose Porteous.

Lang’s epiphany came in 1992 amid pointed questions from BHP about the shifting of lucrative mining tenements between his entities, which threatened to derail a quick asset fire-sale for much-needed cash.

Unable to prove he did so lawfully, Hancock Prospecting’s lawyer Noel Hutley, SC, told the court Lang embarked on an eleventh-hour bid to reverse them.

For years, Hutley said, Lang had engaged in a “textbook” breach of fiduciary duty, transferring assets, including the Hope Downs mine now at the centre of a multibillion-dollar Supreme Court row, out of Hancock Prospecting to entities in his family trust.

The court was told he did so to get cash for his own benefit and that of Porteous after they wed in 1985, and in a way that kept shareholders, including his concerned daughter Gina Rinehart, in the dark.

And it had the added benefit of allowing him to avoid tax obligations, an issue Hutley said Lang had grown increasingly “obsessed with”.

Rinehart grilled her father over the ever-shifting assets and frivolous spending, prompting him to threaten to confiscate her shareholding or hand her $5 million to walk.

Eventually, the persistent questions led to the demise of Lang and Rinehart’s relationship, Hutley said, which culminated in her being stripped of directorship roles to safeguard him from further scrutiny of his accounts.

The court was told he had also made a series of changes in the company structure and to his will that saw Porteous, despite not being a shareholder, crowned beneficiary of his resource-rich mining tenements.

But the lawyer said Hancock’s companies were soon haemorrhaging money, courtesy of a Romanian bargaining deal and the tens of millions of dollars he had taken from Hancock Prospecting to bankroll Porteous’ mansions, jewellery, luxury cars and a private jet.

With the BHP deal now in jeopardy, the court was told Lang wrote to his lawyer Martin Bennett to overhaul his will and reverse his convoluted scheme.

He ordered the mining assets and their proceeds be returned to Hancock Prospecting, not Porteous, who was instead allocated $1.2 million.

Hutley said Bennett, who was also representing Porteous, wrote to Lang to express his reservations.

“The inevitable, and I stress inevitable, consequence of this direction is that you personally will have no money with which to repay [the bank] the debt you have personally guaranteed, nor for Hancock Resources or the Hancock Family Memorial Foundation,” Bennett wrote.

“In these circumstances, in the event of your death, it is likely your estate will be bankrupt, and I have no desire to be the trustee and executor of a bankrupt estate of a person of your prominence and importance.”

Lang reaffirmed his wishes, but he would not live to see his proposed reversal executed.

And as he had been warned, the estate he left behind was declared bankrupt.

Hutley told the court the exchange was evidence of Lang’s desire to right his wrongs and his concession that Hope Downs was taken from Hancock Prospecting without shareholder consent, representing a breach of his fiduciary duty to the company he built from the ground up.

“Whatever the justification for engaging in these subterfuges, they are both sad and, we say, reflective of the position of hopeless conflict he got himself into and his inability to comply with the most basic duties he had to Hancock Prospecting,” he said.

Lang’s final wishes were aired on the final day of Hancock Prospecting’s submissions as it attempts to fend off a multibillion-dollar claim by the descendants of Lang’s former business partner Peter Wright.

Wright Prospecting claims it is entitled to a stake in Hope Downs – now home to four operational mines deemed the country’s most successful – because it never relinquished its interest in the asset under a 1980s partnership deal.

Hutley said while it pained his client to admit the duty breaches, they made it clear Lang had obtained and shifted the Hope Downs asset for his own benefit, and was not acting in the interests of his former business partner’s company.

Gina Rinehart’s other legal opponents – her eldest children, John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart – are expected to begin arguments for their case that Hope Downs was a trust asset left to them by their grandfather on Monday.

The case continues.

Cassie of Sydney
August 12, 2023 9:05 am

“Barnaby supported the idiotic “Net Zero”.”

Yes, and he did so for some dodgy pork barrelling that was terminated by the new Labor government last year.

Oh and in today’s Oz, Mavis Bramston has a piece where he talks with Scumbag. Scumbag says that the Liberals “must connect with mainstream to regain teal seats to return to power“.

Barnaby, Scumbag, the whole effing lot of them, should STFU.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
August 12, 2023 9:06 am

Here in Toytown it was illegal to access Ivermectin for oneself but not illegal to take your illegal drugs to a government supported testing lab for them to check it so you could get shiitefaced without killing yourself.

Roger
Roger
August 12, 2023 9:06 am

Peter van Onselen in todays Oz is reporting on comments of John Howard during the week that Dutton should ignore calls of conservative Libs to move to the Right.

I missed this advice of Howard but will look it up.

Let me save you the trouble:

“Broad church! Broad Church!”

Cassie of Sydney
August 12, 2023 9:08 am

Beetroot loves a bit of pork barrelling, and he comes cheap, very cheap.

Tom
Tom
August 12, 2023 9:08 am

It’s hard for me to separate Vikki’s well written and truthful column from a simple fact…Barnaby supported the idiotic “Net Zero”.

Yep. It’s time Bananaby’s new missus wrote a “We were wrong about renewables” column.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 9:09 am

We’ve got wall-to-wall Labor governments. They need to fix housing

Behind-the-scenes policy work on housing has to start paying off at Wednesday’s national cabinet meeting.

Laura Tingle – Columnist

A staple of debates about housing affordability in Australia over (at least) the last four decades has been lack of housing supply.

What that meant in the political debate for a really large slab of that time was an ongoing focus on the supply of new land for subdivision on the outskirts of our major cities, and who was to blame for there never being enough of it.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was talking about land supply again in federal parliament this week. But the issue is no longer about facilitating that urban sprawl. In fact, it is about the exact opposite.

National cabinet will meet on Wednesday to discuss what many people consider a housing crisis. It will examine both the rental market and housing supply in the broad, amid continuing pressure from the Greens, who have been trying to leverage their refusal to support the government’s housing fund to gain federal interventions in the housing rental market.

The Greens will not enjoy any particular victory on the issue of rental controls, which the PM is leaving firmly to the states – which, in turn, might talk about renters’ rights, but will not be offering up a rental freeze.

The more interesting – and challenging – issue really is housing supply. And that’s because of how it encapsulates so many of the issues confronting us and our governments right now.

These range from climate change to skills shortages, to the lasting impacts of COVID-19, and migration.

The demand for housing, including rental properties, is surging, yet the rate of building approvals and commencements is slumping.

Housing Minister Julie Collins released an issues paper on the development of a new national housing and homelessness plan earlier this week (National Homelessness Week) which documented some of these challenges.

In general, there is some really weird stuff going on in the housing market.

The demand for housing, including rental properties, is surging, yet the rate of building approvals and commencements is slumping.

The Urban Development Institute of Australia noted earlier in the year that the greenfield development sector experienced an unprecedented 49 per cent reduction in sales activity in 2022.

All capital city greenfield markets saw a cliff-fall in annual land sales, ranging from 70 per cent in the ACT to 54 per cent in Melbourne and 30 per cent in Perth.

The national median lot price rose 20 per cent to $391,546.

Those lots largely represent the urban sprawl that used to be the major frustration of housing supply debates.

But the UDIA also says the national new build of apartments experienced the lowest volume of sales in more than 12 years, levels not seen since the global financial crisis.

It’s not just about migration

Last week, Bureau of Statistics data on building approvals showed the largest quarterly drop in over a decade, down 18 per cent for all dwellings and 21.4 per cent for apartments. What’s more, the average price of constructing a new dwelling has risen 50 per cent since before the pandemic.

Inflation, the surge in interest rates and a slowing economy have all played a part in these numbers. But they highlight that the housing supply issue isn’t in any way just about surging migration, as some would have it at the moment.

There has been an almost relentless string of construction company collapses, many caught out by being squeezed by rising prices when they had written fixed-price contracts.

There’s a shortage of tradies which is slowing down construction. But there are also less-immediately-obvious skills shortages that are affecting the development process: town planners, surveyors and building certifiers, to name a few.

The surge in natural disasters is also slowing things down. Local government in particular has to now deal with a range of emergency services to get a tick on whether houses, or even developments, are resilient to fire and flood.

And that’s before you even get to the thorny issue of what happens to all those houses that have been approved and built on floodplains. Many households around Australia experienced the bitter cost of those decisions during the recent catastrophic flooding.

But it feels like a silence has fallen over earlier commitments by all levels of government to address what to do about moving people, after some earnest discussion in the immediate aftermath of all those floods.

The development delays are not necessarily the fault of local councils. Many councils in Sydney have actually been stripped of their planning powers, but it is not clear that handing them to independent authorities has speeded up the approvals process.

Climate change is also making housing more expensive: higher insurance premiums and energy costs.

Then there are the positive and negative impacts of COVID-19 on housing supply. COVID-19 made a lot of us rethink the way we live and work.

It’s left many office buildings in our central business districts empty, and thus offered the potential for a vast new supply of housing accommodation in refitted buildings.

Greater density in cities

That could help the whole push towards greater population density – which, if managed properly with good infrastructure and neighbourhood planning, is now seen as the preferred goal for our cities.

The pandemic also stopped migration for a while – which in housing supply terms might look like a plus. But with international students returning to start three-year courses, without a pipeline of students who have finished their courses leaving, there is additional pressure on the housing market.

So, federal and state leaders meet on Wednesday at a time when lots of short-term and long-term pressures for changing the way we house ourselves are coming to a head.

The clear picture is for much more densely-populated inner cities, requiring a lot more urban and social infrastructure. And different planning rules. (And fascinating changes in our political geography down the track.)

The story in the regions is a very different one, and very much influenced by things like the pressures being raised by climate change and natural disasters.

There is an optimism that the fact that all the leaders meeting on Wednesday will be Labor (except for Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff, who is seen as on-side for much-needed change).

And there is also an underlying view that all of those state leaders have an interest in making “wall-to-wall Labor” deliver some positive outcomes – given the last time it happened, it was not perceived to have ended well.

Much of the debate on housing in the lead-up to this meeting has been about the stand-off with the Greens on the federal government’s housing fund and the Greens’ politically successful prosecution of the rental crisis – even if there really isn’t much the federal government can do directly about addressing rents.

But there has been a lot of policy work going on behind the scenes in both federal and state governments, and the meeting could potentially mark a significant shift in the way governments think about housing.

Whether that delivers any immediate political dividend is unclear. But the housing crisis is real. And Wednesday’s meeting needs to do some substantive work to address it – and not just in the short term.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 9:13 am

The AFR View

Labor must end the nation’s house of pain

The national cabinet meeting on Wednesday can start tearing down Australia’s regulatory barriers to better housing supply. That would make a lot of difference to a lot of people.

The national cabinet meeting on Wednesday – now a forum of Labor leaders bar Tasmania’s Premier Jeremy Rockliff – has to deliver a sea change in housing policy.

Population growth has rebounded after the pandemic, but land sales and new home approvals are tanking. Housing supply growth began tightening as far back as 2016-2017, and for those trapped in rental stress or locked out of a mortgage it’s taking the shine off Australia’s post-virus employment miracle.

That makes it a house of pain for governments too. But it’s one with an obvious fix: breaking the planning bottlenecks in the hands of local councils more concerned with keeping voters happy than accommodating the national population.

At the very least, federal and state governments need to push through more medium-density housing at the transport hubs of big cities.

This is a frontier society with space and opportunity

It helps that there is base political advantage for Labor in this, allowing it to stack suburban Liberal seats with Labor voters. Mr Albanese and the premiers will also feel obliged to boost the rights of those who rent, if only to rebuff the Greens who have been getting under Labor’s skin as the party of alienated young urban renters.

But that must not include the populist shortcut of slapping rent controls on landlords as the Greens demand and Victoria’s Andrews government has been toying with. That’s as ineffective in creating housing supply as trying to subsidise first-time buyers into new homes, which simply gets built into the price.

The only solution, said Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe in his final appearance before the House of Representatives economics committee yesterday, is to increase housing supply. But Dr Lowe lamented that this vast continent has, through urban design, planning and zoning regulations, chosen to make its building land some of the most expensive in the world.

It’s the embedded cost of land, not construction costs, that is driving up the price of housing “and that is debilitating from many economic, social and personal perspectives”, he said.

Land supply bottlenecks

Removing that regulatory stranglehold on land supply would be a lot more effective than schemes to throw more money directly at houses, which Labor is prone to do.

As well as $2 billion on social housing which the national cabinet will divvy up next week, there is the Housing Australia Future Fund which will spend $500 million of its earnings a year on housing. But so far, it’s just been a vehicle for the Senate Greens to wedge Labor from the left as they push for rent controls as the price of passing it.

The worst political consequence of failed housing policy is if migration, the secret ingredient in Australia’s decades of prosperity, takes the blame for it. With 400,000 expected arrivals, this year will bring the biggest single total ever. That has added to the perceived pressure on housing costs, both on rentals and those cashed up and ready to buy.

But this is only catching up on the pandemic years of no growth or net outflow. Even a bigger Australia will not be as big as it was, with the population 375,000 smaller than forecast – and still 225,000 smaller than pre-pandemic forecasts at the end of the decade.

Other quirks of the pandemic have helped tighten housing supply, and helped prices to absorb four percentage points of cash rate increase.

The size of households shrank during the pandemic, spreading the population across more dwellings and quietly offsetting the drop in immigration. Tight supply chains have slowed construction, sending builders on fixed price contracts bust even as demand and prices have been soaring.

Wednesday’s national cabinet is a chance to declare open slather on land supply bottlenecks, which need not involve destroying Australia’s suburban landscapes. But that must only be the start.

This is a frontier society with both space and opportunity. That kind of economic gravity will keep drawing aspirational people here.

Rising population needs rising capital investment to keep up with it and avoid blockages like the housing supply.

But too much government spending is still aimed at well-meaning income redistribution and consumption, not national development.

A better avenue might be investing in high-speed commuter rail to satellite cities that might transform the housing markets of Sydney and Melbourne too.

Indolent
Indolent
August 12, 2023 9:14 am

Catturd ™
@catturd2

LMAO – AP covering for the jab

Just read the reader context fact check.

Roger
Roger
August 12, 2023 9:17 am

The national cabinet meeting on Wednesday can start tearing down Australia’s regulatory barriers to better housing supply.

It’d also be a miracle; will Elbow deliver to get himself out of the hole that is the Voice?

cohenite
August 12, 2023 9:17 am

Black Ball
Aug 12, 2023 8:32 AM
Vikki Campion:

Good article not withstanding BJ was not opposed to the stupid bullshit. Here’s the beginning of Vicki and BJ; no wind or solar here; it’s all fossils:

Johnny Rotten
August 12, 2023 9:18 am

There is no such thing as Net Zero. It is either zero, zero or zero. Or even a zero.

And there is no such thing as negative growth. That is a decline or a reduction or a devaluation. Growth is growth.

Bourne1879
Bourne1879
August 12, 2023 9:18 am

The Ivermectin shortage excuse was BS. Whilst usage did go up there was a huge supply of cheap IVM that could be obtained from India.

When AHPRA put out a letter to all Dr’s about not prescribing IVM one of their other reasons revealed the true game. The reason was that if people knew they could access IVM they might not take the vaccine. The letter was covered on a good video by Dr John Campbell.

It should be noted that whilst HCQ and IVM were banned Remdesivir was approved mid 2020 in US and Australia. That was a failed Ebola drug with no prior usage history. It has far worse side effects and as of two months ago I heard was still being administered in a Qld hospital.

H B Bear
H B Bear
August 12, 2023 9:21 am

“Broad church! Broad Church!”

Howard is the pet shop parrot of the modern Lieboral.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
August 12, 2023 9:25 am

Scumbag says that the Liberals “must connect with mainstream to regain teal seats to return to power“.

Why listen to SloMo? Losing is not that hard.

Look at the victory Abbott won – it was not done by being soft left.

On the other hand look at the dreadful reversal of fortune under Trimble – the coalition retaining power only thanks to the Nats picking up a seat – I doubt that was on renewables and other climate crap that Trimble peddled.

Roger
Roger
August 12, 2023 9:28 am

@BretWeinstein

The Ivermectin story completes a picture of the racket our system has become.

If this isn’t the last nail in the coffin of popular trust in governments and their experts, I don’t know what else will do it.

Cassie of Sydney
August 12, 2023 9:33 am

Re. “broad church”. John Howard is right, the party has always been, to some extent, a “broad church” philosophically however firstly, the party is at its best, ideologically and electorally, when the conservative dries are in the ascendency, not the other around, which has been the problem with the Liberal Party since September 2015 when the wets grabbed control, and it’s been a disaster ever since. Secondly, traditionally both dries and wets adhered, in one way or another, to Menzies basic principles as outlined in his Forgotten People speech. The party doesn’t perform well when it spits on middle aspirational Australia, which is basically what the party has done since 2015, despite the unexpected win in 2019 which, funnily enough, Scumbag won by appealing to middle Australia, however once he’d won that election, he then went on to spit on middle Australia. The “broad church” is like a stack of cards, it can work, it does work, but the foundations have be solidly respected by all broad church adherents, something the likes of Rent Zimmerboy, Karma Sharma, Foolinsky, Katie “I love Obama” Allan and others had absolute contempt for, and they were happy to parrot their contempt.

flyingduk
flyingduk
August 12, 2023 9:39 am

Regarding Ivermectin:

1) We knew it was effective against viruses in vitro well before COVID – all newly approved drugs are immediately screened for extra uses (to increase sales). This is how VIAGRA and Minoxidil came to be used for their now better known applications.
2) Ivermectin was proven effective early in against COVID as well – they had to then ban it because it would have negated the emergency use approvals for the COVID injections – emergency use is ONLY legal where no existing remedy exists.
3) Ivermectin was already known to be safe – it was approved by the WHO for prolonged use, unsupervised, in the 3rd world for decades – it was given to me by the ADF when in East Timor – it is virtually impossible to OD on – even massive overdoses cause only mild transient symptoms, like double vision. Panadol and Aspirin are far less safe than Ivermectin.
4) (Now that the COVID shots are no longer on emergency permits) The TGA has re-allowed GPs to prescribe Ivermectin – why did they do this if its not safe?
5) Ivermectin is not a (dirty, unsafe) horse drug just because it has veterinary uses – if cross species use was a reason to not use a drug in humans, you can kiss goodbye your antibiotics, painkillers, anti inflammatories, fungus creams, diabetic pills, blood pressure pills, IV fluids ,anaesthetics etc etc etc
6) Ivermectin was not banned to save it for other uses (eg worm treatment) – and if it was, it was unethical – we had an ’emergency need’ for it to treat COVID. Ivermectin was, btw, available by the ton because of its widespread use as a veterinary product. Similarly, they didnt ban HCQ to ‘keep it for arthritis patients’ – there was no shortage – Clive Palmer sourced and donated more than a ton of it to the government so as to make it available for all Australians – our wise rulers destroyed it to stop it negating the ’emergency use’ waiver for the COVID shots.

BASTARDS BASTARDS BASTARDS BASTARDS BASTARDS!

Roger
Roger
August 12, 2023 9:44 am

The “broad church” is like a stack of cards, it can work, it does work, but the foundations have be solidly respected by all broad church adherents…

The chief problem with broad churches – both political and eccesial – is that core beliefs will, over time, inevitably be watered down to the least common denominator, resulting in the most committed members being sidelined or exiting the organisation. The organisation then drifts with the mainstream, which in Western countries since the 1970s has been leftwards.

To paraphrase Robert Conquest, any organisation that is not explicity conservative will over time become left-wing.

Jorge
Jorge
August 12, 2023 9:45 am

In the very early stage wasn’t a suitable nasal spray suggested followed by ivermectin. The spray alone seemed to be effective in my case. No need for the follow up.

calli
calli
August 12, 2023 9:46 am

A church has a core of beliefs that are non-negotiable. Differences at the periphery, but the centre remains the same.

The LNP simply rejected the church and became broads.

Boambee John
Boambee John
August 12, 2023 9:47 am

cohenite
Aug 12, 2023 9:17 AM
Black Ball
Aug 12, 2023 8:32 AM
Vikki Campion:

Good article not withstanding BJ was not opposed to the stupid bullshit. Here’s the beginning of Vicki and BJ; no wind or solar here; it’s all fossils:

Please do not cause confusion between Bad BJ (aka Bananaby) and Good BJ (aka Boambee John).

calli
calli
August 12, 2023 9:48 am

Heh…Roger.

I was “composing” while you were posting.

Rabz
August 12, 2023 9:53 am

We’ve got wall-to-wall Labore governments. They need to fix housing

These labore governments have obviously not been listening to a particular union, whose ads on Sky of an evening have been squawking that corporate super profits tax is the solution to the housing crisis.

Whereas Albansleazey’s solution to the housing crisis is very simple. Import millions more third world immigrants, as quickly as possible.

Roger
Roger
August 12, 2023 9:53 am

Heh…Roger.

I was “composing” while you were posting.

Great minds! 😀

And the decline and disintegration of the worldwide Anglican Communion was very much at the forefront of mine as I typed.

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
August 12, 2023 9:55 am

How many ticks would you like duk? I’ve been saving mine. Going to a worthy cause. And no, I’m not being flippant. I can only hope I get the opportunity to hurt the bestards with the full knowledge they know it is payback.

H B Bear
H B Bear
August 12, 2023 9:56 am

After the last election, SloMo’s thoughts on winning elections aren’t worth committing to paper before binning them. Installed by Team Waffleworth as a placeholder and that’s what it felt like.

Roger
Roger
August 12, 2023 9:59 am

…resulting in the most committed members being sidelined or exiting the organisation.

The other thing that happens to some of these people is that they compromise their beliefs to retain their position in the organisation.

Take Frydenberg as an example; his maiden speech was all about the virtues of small government (among other things).

He ended up Australia’s biggest spending Treasurer!

Farmer Gez
Farmer Gez
August 12, 2023 10:10 am

The biggest scandal of the renewable roll out is the existence of faux government bodies like AEMO, who do the dirty work away from the checks and balances of departments and ministers.
The states and Feds have gifted extraordinary planning and coercive powers to unelected ex-energy company executives, who wield that power with arrogance and disdain for proper process.
We have heard through channels that one of the queens of AEMO dislikes our language and it’s best for us to stop criticism as it’s “getting their backs up” against farmers.
This energy lobby front needs shutting down.
Cats could help by emailing AEMO and letting them know they do not have your support as a power consumer. AEMO claims they are working on your behalf.

Rabz
August 12, 2023 10:14 am

Frydchickenberger‘s maiden speech was all about the virtues of small government (among other things).

Australia’s biggest Squandermonkey.

What an achievement – outsquandermonkeying Goose Swansteen.

H B Bear
H B Bear
August 12, 2023 10:15 am

Take Frydenberg as an example; his maiden speech was all about the virtues of small government (among other things).
He ended up Australia’s biggest spending Treasurer!

The Lieborals have always talked a good game, particularly in London for some reason. Actions? Not so much.

Dr Faustus
Dr Faustus
August 12, 2023 10:21 am

The reports of clinical Ivermectin use suggest that it might offer some benefit in the treatment of Covid – although it doesn’t appear to be a silver bullet.

What is certain is that, in Australia, the prescription of Ivermectin for Covid treatment was prohibited by the TGA to support the roll out of vaccines.

In its final decision published today, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has removed the restriction through its scheduling in the Poisons Standard because there is sufficient evidence that the safety risks to individuals and public health is low when prescribed by a general practitioner in the current health climate.

This considers the evidence and awareness of medical practitioners about the risks and benefits of ivermectin, and the low potential for any shortages of ivermectin for its approved uses. Also, given the high rates of vaccination and hybrid immunity against COVID-19 in Australia, use of ivermectin by some individuals is unlikely to now compromise public health.

Whether Ivermectin is an effective and appropriate treatment for Covid is well outside my pay grade.

But it is quite clear that:

• There was no particular shortage;
• There was no particular risk in prescription;
• The TGA had no definitive evidence of its effectiveness (or otherwise); and
• The off-label use by professionals was banned to bolster the Public Health campaign to achieve high levels of vaccine immunity as a government policy.

I’m sure Top Men would have considered the difference between prophylaxis and treatment – and would also have had complete faith in the prescribing medical profession.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
August 12, 2023 10:23 am

For agricultural Cats.

Live export ban blamed for WA sheep price plunge
By charlie peel
Rural reporter
@charliepeeled ?
9:51PM August 11, 2023
49 Comments

Sheep prices in Western Australia have dropped so low that some farmers say they can’t afford to sell or keep their flocks.

The poor prices have been partly attributed to a massive decline in industry confidence brought on by the Albanese government’s moves to scrap the live sheep export trade, which mostly operates out of Western Australia.

Reduced confidence has coincided with dry conditions and fewer export options, causing a glut in the market that has seen prices plummet.
Read Next

Sheep producer Charles Wass averaged $20 a head for a flock of ewes he sold recently.

Factoring in transport, levies and sale commission, he will receive about $10 a head, a massive decrease on the usual $80 to $120 a head that sustains the business.

As an ex-accountant, Mr Wass knows the numbers aren’t viable.

“You’re going backwards at a fairly rapid rate,” he said.

Mr Wass runs about 2000 ewes on his property near Coorow in WA’s midwest, about 260km north of Perth.

Before winter, his Dohne Merino ewes are scanned to determine if they are pregnant. Those that aren’t are usually sold.

“It’s about being efficient,” Mr Wass said.

“Rather than carrying a ewe for the whole year without a lamb, we will sell them on, because it’s not enough just to shear them and get the value of the wool.

“The ones that weren’t quite fat enough we held on to and fed them up.”

But the price for the 70 sheep he sold at auction a fortnight ago is something Mr Wass has not seen in his time on the land and has him concerned about what’s to come.

“If you’re getting $20 for sheep it doesn’t take long to get to a point of not being able to sell them but not being able to keep them,” he said.

He puts the blame at the feet of the federal government’s plan to end the live sheep export industry.

“It’s the destruction of confidence in the sheep industry,” he said.

“A lot of farmers are looking at it and thinking that without live exports there’s going to be a whole lot of sheep without a market.

“When you destroy confidence and there’s an alternative like cropping, people will think, ‘stuff this’.”

Sentiment surveys have shown nearly half of all WA sheep producers intend to reduce their ewe flock within the next year.

Rabobank’s latest quarterly rural confidence survey found that changes to the live export sector were listed as a factor by 32 per cent of WA farmers who anticipated worsening economic conditions.

H B Bear
H B Bear
August 12, 2023 10:26 am

What an achievement – outsquandermonkeying Goose Swansteen.

Surely as good a reason for a walk down memory lane,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i8hZ0wxSUV0

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
August 12, 2023 10:36 am

I’m amused that The Paywallian has now removed their “Most Popular” story list at the bottom of the main page.

How dare vast numbers neanderthal righty readers choose unwoke stories to read? We must hide them to protect people from wrongthink!

Dr Faustus
Dr Faustus
August 12, 2023 10:37 am

The LNP simply rejected the church and became broads.

Jolly good.
In another world that would have been an uptick.

Perth Trader
Perth Trader
August 12, 2023 10:39 am

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Aug 12, 2023 10:23 AM
For agricultural Cats.

Live export ban blamed for WA sheep price plunge…
A BLIND man could see this comming. Also , check out how Bowen has signed us up to the Biden ‘METHANE REDUCTION ACT” and how that will effect aussie farmers.

Delta A
Delta A
August 12, 2023 10:40 am

Cats could help by emailing AEMO and letting them know they do not have your support as a power consumer. AEMO claims they are working on your behalf.

Done.

Roger
Roger
August 12, 2023 10:43 am

The off-label use by professionals was banned to bolster the Public Health campaign to achieve high levels of vaccine immunity as a government policy.

In short, it was one of many instances of governmental authoritarianism.

Brought to us by a party that professes to believe in “the inalienable rights and freedoms of all peoples; and…a lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives; and maximises individual and private sector initiative.”

Indolent
Indolent
August 12, 2023 10:48 am
Perth Trader
Perth Trader
August 12, 2023 10:51 am

The NFF , national farmers federation , are gung ho on how they will help farmers and graziers to implement the ‘methane act’ but will very quickly learn that they are part of the problem. The methane act mandates all farms to decrease there methane by 30percent from 2020 levels, by 2030.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 10:52 am

Hunter’s new special counsel also needs investigating

As US attorney, David Weiss slow-walked the Biden case for years

August 11, 2023 | 2:26 pm

Important as this new appointment is, it also raises some very troubling issues.

One

that it gives the Department of Justice an additional tool to block investigations by House Republicans, who are conducting several serious inquiries into Biden family corruption.

Whenever the House committees ask for information, the DoJ can simply reply, “We’ve handed our investigation over to the special counsel and cannot turn over documents during an ongoing investigation by his office.”

That will put additional pressure on the House to begin a formal impeachment inquiry, since the courts have ruled that such inquiries have special rights to documents from the Executive Branch.

The second issue is even more troubling:

Weiss’s own office needs investigating.

It has slow-walked the criminal investigation for years, allowed the statute of limitations to expire on key charges, let Hunter Biden escape from taxes he owed on foreign income, proposed to give him an unprecedented sweetheart deal and told IRS investigators they would not pursue any leads, however credible, that might lead to “the Big Guy” Joe Biden.

True to their word, they have not pursued those leads.

Weiss’s own office inexplicably allowed the statute of limitations to expire on millions of dollars in foreign income allegedly received by Hunter, on which taxes were never paid. The US attorney has never explained why. Nor did his office pursue the obvious charges that Hunter should have registered as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The public still doesn’t have any explanation of what business activities, if any, Hunter and his associates performed to warrant the payment of millions and millions of dollars from foreign nationals.

(Here’s a hint: they opened doors and effectively communicated to everyone that a connection to Hunter Biden meant you had powerful connections to the Obama administration. If that connection needed proof, Joe Biden provided it by phoning Hunter’s business associates to say “hi,” whenever his son asked.)

Again: none of this has led to charges after five years of investigation by Weiss and his team.

Just one sweetheart deal, which tried to hide any traces of Hunter’s protection from future charges. It was destroyed by a simple question from the judge, who asked what was actually covered by the deal.

That’s our new special prosecutor. Physician, heal thyself.

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 10:55 am

The methane act mandates all farms to decrease there methane by 30percent from 2020 levels, by 2030.

Completely nuts, like the EU/Dutch nitrogen mandate.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 11:01 am

POLITICS

How the West plays up to Putin’s caricature

We are putting on a collective spectacle of self-destruction, degeneracy and spiritual vapidity

In an outstanding article in the New York Times, Roger Cohen recounted his experience of traveling across Russia for a full month, and hats off to the veteran journalist for risking a shared cell with the Wall Street Journal “spy” Evan Gershkovich.

Cohen explains that Vladimir Putin is successfully flogging his war in Ukraine to the Russian people as a battle against the whole spiritually depraved West, no longer the home of ruthless capitalism but of “sex changes, the rampages of drag queens, barbaric gender debates and an LGBTQ takeover.”

In a tirade last November, Putin lambasted the US and “other unfriendly foreign states” for “selfishness, permissiveness, immorality, the denial of the ideals of patriotism” and “destruction of the traditional family through the promotion of nontraditional sexual relations.”

You must admit, he’s got a point.

Of course, most folks on our side of the re-erected Iron Curtain roundly deplore Russia’s criminal prosecution of homosexuals, but we went way beyond merely legalizing same-sex relations long ago — so much farther that garden-variety gays and lesbians are passé.

There’s a big difference, too, between simply allowing a practice and celebrating it or even, yes, promoting it, and in the past decade the West’s cultural obsession with the sexual Crayola 64 has gone manically overboard.

We’ve kept adding so many letters to that “LGB” formulation that in Scrabble you’d earn fifty bonus points with a fraction of the erstwhile shorthand.

One out of five Gen Zers say they’re not straight. A full 38 percent of students at America’s Brown University claim they’re not straight, a proportion that’s doubled in ten years. Aberration is the new conformity.

“Pride” has expanded from one day to a whole month, during which garish rainbows adorn everything from corporate logos to crosswalks, in a showy embrace of every sexual proclivity under the sun other than the sort that reproduces the species.

This dementedly neutral anything-goes morality is extending well beyond sex.

There’s nothing wrong with obesity; we endorse “body positivity.” There’s nothing wrong with being a drug addict or an alcoholic, who only have “substance use disorder,” as if a less judgmental label helps the 100,000 Americans dying annually from fentanyl overdoses. There’s nothing wrong with being mentally ill; we extol “neuro-diversity.”

There’s nothing wrong with shoplifting, because if there were we’d press charges for thieving and looting, which has got so out of control in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco that franchises are closing their California retail outlets.

Who are our real villains? The police.

Don’t you imagine that Putin eats this stuff up?

We are myopically obsessed with race. We are myopically obsessed with the words for things, so that, rather than worry about Fitch Ratings’ downgrading of US debt last week, financiers are scrupulously boycotting the expression “black market.”

We choose politicians, judges, police commissioners, military leaders, board members and CEOs not in accordance with their qualifications for the job but because they are black or Latino or Asian or trans or female, thanks to which the person next in line for becoming president of the United States, should anything untoward happen to the incumbent, is a rank incompetent.

Americans are so consumed with “equity” that our answer to plummeting educational attainment in public schools is to make sure no children can read, write or do math, and we address these incidental shortcomings of perfectly equal students by no longer administering standardized tests: problem solved.

Everything Putin needs to warn the Russian people about the horrors of Western decadence is obligingly spelled out in every issue of our national newspapers.

Perth Trader
Perth Trader
August 12, 2023 11:02 am

Dot
Aug 12, 2023 10:55 Completely nuts, like the EU/Dutch nitrogen mandate.
Yes Dot…the Act is in NZ too where it cost a extra $15/25 k per farm to implement. It affects Rural Aust, the LNG industry and the Waste industry. It will affect the cost of household rubbish collection.

lotocoti
lotocoti
August 12, 2023 11:13 am

Out Drownded Chinaman Crick way, where the Powerlink GTFO signs keep mysteriously disappearing, the latest biggest and bestest solar farm enterprise’s
[Our] ecology team has provided biodiversity assessments to support the development of [Our] Solar Farm isn’t meant for the local yokels,
who don’t matter, but the teal-curious Ladies Who Lunch
in the leafy suburbs, who do.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 11:13 am

How political activism in medicine is failing patients

The special doctor-patient relationship is under threat

Trust in the public healthcare system declined among Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic.

It’s no wonder: public health bureaucrats pushed for various insane policies that ran counter to common sense, admitted to deceiving the American people and worked to shutter debate surrounding the national and global coronavirus response.

But instead of doing everything they can to restore trust in the system (and prove that they’re still deserving of it), government officials and medical associations have continued to politicize the healthcare field, sowing discord between patients and their doctors.

A consistent theme throughout the pandemic was that while Americans were less likely to trust the medical establishment, they mostly liked their personal doctors.

But some new policies proposed and enacted by left-wing activists and politicians threaten the doctor-patient relationship.

Lawmakers in California passed legislation in 2019 that requires all continuing medical education courses to include implicit bias training.

Doctors in California need to complete fifty hours of continuing medical education every two years.

AB 241, signed in October 2019 by Governor Gavin Newsom, says that these courses must include “examples of how implicit bias affects perceptions and treatment decisions of physicians and surgeons, leading to disparities in health outcomes,” or “strategies to address how unintended biases in decision making may contribute to healthcare disparities by shaping behavior and producing differences in medical treatment along lines of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, socioeconomic status or other characteristics,” or a combination of both.

Patients who are repeatedly told they have to watch out for implicit bias are already entering the doctor-patient relationship with suspicion that their doctors might be intentionally or unintentionally harming them.

To that end, a group of doctors represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit seeking a permanent injunction against AB 241. Dr. Marilyn Singleton, a visiting fellow of the Do No Harm organization and anesthesiologist, and Dr. Azedah Khatibi, an ophthalmologist, who both teach continuing medical education courses in California, are challenging the legislation alongside Do No Harm, a national association of medical professionals based in Virginia.

“The implicit bias requirement promotes the inaccurate belief that white individuals are naturally racist,” said Dr. Singleton.

“This message can be detrimental to medical professionals and their patients as it creates an atmosphere of suspicion and animosity, which goes against the fundamental principle of doing no harm.”

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 11:17 am

‘Sham’ Hunter special counsel pick will ‘block info from Congress’: Scalise

‘Dumber-than-dirt political move’: Senator rips Hunter special counsel appointment

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 11:19 am
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
August 12, 2023 11:19 am

Daily Mail

California judge, 72, CONFESSED to shooting his wife dead in $1.4M home after drunken argument in text to his court clerk where he said: ‘I just shot my wife. I won’t be in tomorrow’

An Orange County Judge told his court clerk that he couldn’t make it into work because he had shot his wife while drunk, authorities say
Judge Jeffrey Ferguson, 72, was arrested by cops last week after his wife Sheryl was found dead in their Anaheim Hills mansion
Prosecutors say they recovered 47 weapons from the $1.4 million Southern California home and more than 26,000 rounds of ammunition

Black Ball
Black Ball
August 12, 2023 11:22 am

Steve Price:

On Melbourne Cup Day this year if you are staggeringly drunk in public, Victoria Police will not be able to touch you.

Cup Day is of course the first Tuesday in November — this year November 7. Two or three days earlier you could be arrested, thrown in a paddy wagon and put in a police cell for a few hours to sober up.

Public policy on drugs, including alcohol, in Victoria is a dangerous joke.

Heroin addicts can stick needles in their arms or between their toes in a Richmond gutter or choose the drug centre next to a Richmond Primary school to do it undercover.

Plans have been floated to use mobile drug using vans cruising the CBD in case your urge for an ice pipe strikes you in Bourke St.

Now it’s been revealed, with public drunkenness considered a “health issue” not a crime, that the same Victorian government simply cannot learn from its mistakes.

A former aged care centre in Cambridge St, Collingwood, will be renovated at your expense and turned into a “drunk tank” – a sobering-up centre. Work on it has already started.

Cambridge St is a narrow inner suburban residential road and guess what? It’s home to a school – the Collingwood English Language School.

How do these fools not learn from past mistakes – like Richmond’s so-called safe injecting facility? Or are they so blinded by ideology they can’t see that ferrying so-called compliant drunks to this crazy experiment won’t result in more community anger and outrage.

So pathetically stupid is this idea that the new drunk tank has a total of 20 beds, or drunk pods or some other spin term.

When the law changes in November this centre will service all of metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria.

Typically, local homeowners found out that the old aged care centre on their street was to become a drunk tank when a producer from 3AW knocked on their door early this week and told them.

No consultation, zero debate, just the mandatory and typically arrogant Andrews government decision-making that even the local Green/Left Council didn’t know about.

Construction teams are already on site to convert the building into Melbourne’s first nanny-state drunk minding centre.

Victoria Police are still in the dark as to how this whole process of picking up drunks and ferrying them to this sobering centre will in practice work. There are reports that Victorian taxpayers will fund the purchase of 20 vans manned by two person crews to act as drunk taxis.

The idea would be that, say, outside the Revolver Nightclub in Chapel St, Windsor, on a Saturday morning about 5am when it starts to empty, police might come across a drug-addled drunk.

The drunk is so intoxicated they decide to relieve themselves on a nearby shopfront and use an excuse that no one could see them. Police accept the excuse and Victoria’s axing of public drunkenness as a crime means you can ask to be taken to the sobering up centre.

We’ll get more of an idea in November, but it seems the police patrol will then need to wait with the drunk until the little van arrives to act as a taxi to Collingwood.

Surely even the most progressive of law makers in Victoria can see the craziness of this process. As a serving police officer, how would you feel about being forced to be a babysitter for some nightclubbing drunk.

Those same police would today throw you into a police van and make the five-minute trip to the Prahran police station where a sobering up cell is waiting for a couple of hours.

Job done.

Typical of the Andrews government when it comes to these progressive law changes is the reasons behind them.

In 2017 an Indigenous woman by the name of Tanya Day was on a train travelling between Bendigo and Melbourne. She was intoxicated and fell asleep before the train reached Castlemaine. A V-line conductor alerted police who boarded the train and took Tanya Day to the Castlemaine police station and put her in a cell to sober up.

CCTV footage shown to a coronial inquiry showed the woman hitting her head five times against the cell wall. She was taken to the local hospital and tragically died.

Her death resulted in a campaign highlighting the issue of indigenous deaths in custody and her family claimed there were racial undertones to her removal from the train.

It’s a horrible story and you can’t blame the family for their anger, but should the Tanya Day death really result in a blanket removal of the crime of being drunk in public?

It goes beyond that though as it always does with this state government. The new laws require a “dedicated Aboriginal service response.”

A discussion paper leading up to the drunk laws being dumped said the changes would need to “focus on Indigenous drunks and be mindful of the LGBTQI+ community, refugees, asylum seekers, the disabled and the neurodiverse community (look it up).

Key words used during the law changes debate were they should be “consent-based” and focus on “harm reduction.”

I’ll tell you what will happen come Cup Tuesday in November.

Victoria Police will simply ignore streets full of drunks causing danger to themselves and innocent bystanders and drive straight past them.

You and I will have to put up with the vomit, urine and abuse while someone in Spring St pats themselves on the back about yet another politically correct driven reform.

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 11:25 am
calli
calli
August 12, 2023 11:26 am

The methane act mandates all farms to decrease there methane by 30percent from 2020 levels, by 2030.

Completely nuts, like the EU/Dutch nitrogen mandate.

Hunga-Tonga…

***burrrrrp***

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 11:26 am

We had drunk tanks in the past, it worked better than making people go to court and get a fine over taking a legal intoxicant.

Victoria Police will simply ignore streets full of drunks causing danger to themselves and innocent bystanders and drive straight past them.

That’s not what drunk tanks are meant to be like…you get put in there until you are not longer a danger to yourself or others.

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
August 12, 2023 11:31 am

Fleccas Talks:

THIS WEEK IN CULTURE #160

shatterzzz
August 12, 2023 11:31 am

For the past fotnight I’ve watched a lot of the Womens World Cup matches but starting to get fed up with the atrocious refereeing and the wonder of VAR technology ..
soooo many wrong calls over penalties for & against, blatant off-sides being ignored and “yellow” card fouls being waved on .. starting to think it is being tailored for a specific outcome final ……
And being “toon” born & bred I duz understand this stuff cos we Geordies is born wiv a copy of the fitba rule book in the hand .. and instead of crying when 1st slapped we yells out .. “Howay the lads” ……. LOL!

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 11:32 am

Dickhead Dan and the tenth rate Melbourne city council have def succeeded in making the CBD a place to avoid which is a shame because it used to be a lot of fun Yum Cha in Little Bourke St, shopping and movie at Melb Central, Max Brenner at QV etc etc

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 11:33 am

Notice too how it’s copying the American left. Is that where they get their orders from?

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 11:36 am

shatterzzz

The idea of “free-flowing play” in ball sports being favoured over penalising bad tackles, fouls etc is a bad idea. It just makes it a low-skill (even at the international level), an error-riddled game that actually doesn’t flow freely.

Likewise, the idea of “clamping down” with “early penalties” ruins natural play, attacking possession and dedicated defence. No one wants to see a heap of penalty goals early on and weak scoring in the rest of the match.

Tom
Tom
August 12, 2023 11:36 am

To paraphrase Robert Conquest, any organisation that is not explicity conservative will over time become left-wing.

21st century leftism is a locust swarm that devours everything in its way.

Since half of the Stupid Frigging Liberals either believe in nothing or in whatever makes them popular at dinner parties, the SFLs were a pushover for the leftist locust swarm.

The SFLs have only two possible futures: a) as an unelectable leftist cheerleader for fashionable pop culture in the space already successfully occupied by the Greenfilth and the Liars b) as a popular defender of civilisation, the family, human freedom and its institutions, such as the free market.

WA”s Zak Kirkup and Victoria’s John Prosciutteo have blazed the SFL trail towards extinction with spectacular election-losing self-annihilations.

It’s up to the SFL’s true believers to rescue the party from self-annihilation.

PS: Moira Deeming would make a wonderful Victorian premier to pick up the pieces after the Andrews fiasco.

Crossie
Crossie
August 12, 2023 11:37 am

Rosie
Aug 12, 2023 8:23 AM
Hydroxychloroquine was also touted as a miracle cure for covid, got provisional approval that was withdrawn as there was no evidence it did anything but there was evidence in clinical trials of severe side effects.

Isn’t this not being able to see the illogic of what we were being told? Hydroxychloroquine was used as an anti-malarial for over fifty years without any problems and suddenly there are severe side effects reported. Why?

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 11:37 am

The ‘rats in California are making life impossible for normal people- even basic hygiene isn’t observed now. Shoplifting is considered ok. Their aim is obviously social and economic collapse. What else could it be?

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 11:40 am

August 11, 2023

Clearing the Fog of ‘Unprovoked’ War

By Edward Lozansky

These days, saying Russia’s war in Ukraine is “unprovoked” is a must. There are some notable exceptions from a few American “dissidents,” who say Russia was provoked, but their opinions are dismissed at best or submerged in name-calling at worst. I’d leave it up to those who will read this article to the end to decide who is right.

This subject is important for someone who was born in Ukraine, studied in Russia, and worked in America; who has relatives and friends in all three countries; and who for almost three dozen years has been doing his best to make them all friends and even allies.

Instead, all three are now at war, even if some call the U.S. war only a war “by proxy.”

This looks like a total failure of my efforts, but I hope this short summary clears a bit the fog of war, which might help in the search to avoid a worst-case scenario.

At the same time, the U.S. did not leave Russia and Ukraine alone. Yankees didn’t go home. Billions of American tax dollars were poured in Ukraine — not to boost its economy, but to reformat public opinion that was predominantly in favor of neutral status and against joining NATO. This led to the Washington-inspired and supported first 2004 “Orange” color revolution, and then in 2013, a second one called “Maidan” that led to the installation of pro-NATO government.

All the media attention in Victoria Nuland’s leaked phone call with the U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, discussing the details of the coup two weeks before it actually happened on February 22, 2014, was concentrated on her expletive language towards the E.U.

However, almost totally ignored is that a few seconds later, she also mentioned her constant briefings with Sullivan and added, “Biden willing.”

One should note the disgraceful position of the U.S. mainstream media. Ashley Rindsberg in The Spectator called the anti-Russian hysteria there the “media’s Vietnam.”

Actually, I think that what is happening now in Ukraine is worse than the American wars in Vietnam and the Middle East, starting with Iraq. At that time, one at least could use a fight with communism or terror as a pretext.

Here, we see a policy of provoking, funding, and prolonging a war between two Christian nations that lived together for over three centuries and are bound together by close historical, religious, economic, cultural, and family ties.

One phone call from Biden to Putin prior to February 24, 2022, with a pledge to guarantee Ukraine’s neutral status, would have ensured that there would be no war.

Russia’s other security concerns could then be negotiated in a calm working atmosphere.

It is obvious, and no one is hiding the fact, that the collective West under current U.S. leadership wants to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia without going to war directly, but rather by using Ukrainians as cannon fodder.

All of the above might be viewed as “voice in the bewilderment,” but I hope it will at least help to clear a bit the smog of this war and make policy-makers think about how to avoid a looming disaster.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
August 12, 2023 11:43 am

You can be as pissed as you like in public, as long as you don’t draw adverse attention to yourself by wandering on roads, starting fights in the streets, pissing on parked cars, spewing on passing nuns and so on.

The only people that ever got locked up by the jacks for being shitfaced were those that were aggro, and/or posing a danger to themselves or others. Unfortunately, shit tins of them get a few hours in the tank every day, wherever you are.

In the NT there are things called sober-up shelters. They are run by Mission Australia and used as an alternative to punters (usually indig countrymen) going straight to the tank.

Their caveat is that as soon as there’s a hint of noncompliance by the pisswrecks brought in there, let alone being aggro in any way they’re refused, handed back to the jacks and end up in the tank anyway. Which is fine, but a massive waste of time because almost every drunk is aggro – because, and perhaps fair enough too, they do not want to go to either place.

In what may be the greatest Captain Obvious moment of the year so far – this will be a failure of monumental proportions, after which the Andrews regime will blame everyone else for their feelgood handpattery which wasn’t required in the first place.

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 11:47 am

WA”s Zak Kirkup and Victoria’s John Prosciutteo have blazed the SFL trail towards extinction with spectacular election-losing self-annihilations.

add to that the miserable excuse of a government in NSW. More left than Carr-Egan.

shatterzzz
August 12, 2023 11:48 am

The demand for housing, including rental properties, is surging, yet the rate of building approvals and commencements is slumping.

Regardless of how the gummint(s) tackle the problem the time between approval, building & actual occupancy is still months (at least) so there is no short term solutions available just a lot of empty promises soon to be forgotten when the news cycle moves on ..
I have noticed out where I am, across the main road from the “houso” enclave there are 2 houses currently under construction .. one is into its 2nd year and the other around 18 months .. very little work seems to be dun, basically, both come down to between 2 & 5 dayz per month where their appears to be activity .. the rest of the time they are just fenced up .. both have building company signage on the fencing so aren’t owner builder weekend jobs …
Obviously, whoever is expecting to live in either isn’t too concerned with “when” ..
No idea if this is sign-of-the-times for construction these dayz or unique to these properties ………

Rosie
Rosie
August 12, 2023 11:50 am

Hydroxychloroquine was used as an anti-malarial for over fifty years without any problems and suddenly there are severe side effects reported. Why?

Because the people taking it were sick with covid, had other comorbities?
It’s not a risk for people in the linked categories
Risk of Arrhythmia Among New Users of Hydroxychloroquine in Rheumatoid Arthritis and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

JC
JC
August 12, 2023 11:53 am

miltonf
Aug 12, 2023 11:32 AM

Dickhead Dan and the tenth rate Melbourne city council have def succeeded in making the CBD a place to avoid which is a shame because it used to be a lot of fun Yum Cha in Little Bourke St, shopping and movie at Melb Central, Max Brenner at QV etc etc

These nasty morons used COVID as an opportunity to cut out 30% from street parking in the CBD by adding useless bike lanes turning most of the streets single lane. The one good thing about the Melbourne CBD was that the streets were reasonably wide and there was a decent chance you could find a park on street, but no more. They’ve turned, St Kilda Road, one of the most beautiful, expansive boulevards in the world (I reckon) into a single lane jungle. Disgusting human beings.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 11:53 am

Crossie
Aug 12, 2023 11:37 AM

Rosie
Aug 12, 2023 8:23 AM
Hydroxychloroquine was also touted as a miracle cure for covid, got provisional approval that was withdrawn as there was no evidence it did anything but there was evidence in clinical trials of severe side effects.

Isn’t this not being able to see the illogic of what we were being told? Hydroxychloroquine was used as an anti-malarial for over fifty years without any problems and suddenly there are severe side effects reported. Why?

Crossie,

The Bleeding Obvious igored by some

As still Covid Unvaxxed, and only Unvaxxed one in Family of 17 – still only one who did not catch/suffer Covid, as well as over 90 Times at RNSH over 2 years of Covid –

I was taking ANti-Virals well before Covid, and as I read about Covid decided against mRNA vaccines – had considered Novavax, but when US CDC changed the definition of Vaccine, stuck with Anti-Virals

I had HCQ in 70s for New Guinera with no side effects, and as was unable to get Ivermectin as back up – was able to get and still have HCQ if ever needed

Gave the Seniors Flu Vaccine a miss this year and in live-in Family of 7 – with rest of Family this year having had colds, stomach bugs and school bugs with me standing fine, will stick with Anti-Virals

Again, I did not have the sword of being unable to work hanging over my head, only restriction on travel and was banned for 3 days from one Chemotherapy Session, when they relented and put me in isolation room for that round only

P
P
August 12, 2023 11:54 am

Incredible video shows Lahaina church miraculously untouched by devastating Maui wildfires

The Maria Lanakila Catholic Church in downtown Lahaina is seen still standing amidst the rubble

The church, which has stood since 1846, maintained its stain glass and tower structure even as the ground around it smolders

Lahaina’s 150-year-old banyan tree also appears to have survived the fires albeit severely scorched from the flames

Pastor of the nearby parish of St. Anthony’s told The Pillar ‘all of Lahaina Town has been consumed by fire. It’s all gone. The church, Maria Lanakila [Our Lady of Victory], is still standing, as is the rectory

eric hinton
eric hinton
August 12, 2023 11:55 am
JC
JC
August 12, 2023 11:58 am

miltonf
Aug 12, 2023 11:37 AM

The ‘rats in California are making life impossible for normal people- even basic hygiene isn’t observed now. Shoplifting is considered ok. Their aim is obviously social and economic collapse. What else could it be?

Nihilism. Cali was the go to place to want to begin a new life and it’s been mostly destroyed now. Admittedly the crime and the filth is basically localized in LA, but that’s because neighborhoods like Beverly Hills are employing private policing.

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 11:59 am

(Eyes sideways emoji…)

From Quora

Why is Justin Trudeau seemingly falling out of favor with Canadians?

Trudeau…
• Publicly admonished a woman in Edmonton for saying the word “mankind” instead of “peoplekind.”
• Veterans asking for too much.
• The budget will balance itself. The 2016-17 budget deficit was $17.8
• Ummm ummmm ummmm ummm.
• Canada has no core identity.
• Obsession with Indian wedding clothes. Bollywood dancing.
• Invites Jaspal Atwal, a Sikh extremist who served five years in a Canadian jail for his role in the attempted murder of a visiting Indian cabinet minister, Malkiat Singh Sidhu
• Can’t get a trade deal done…with anyone.
• Can’t get a pipeline done…in any direction.
• Says that a proposed pipeline must consider “the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors” (what does that even mean???)
• Creepy sock fetish.
• More selfies than a class of teenage girls.
• Replaces Canada’s old F-18s with Australia’s old F-18s.
• Waves to an empty tarmac when boarding the government plane.
• Thinks we should thank Muslim refugees for moving to Canada.
• His love of all things Castro and all things Red China.
• Says he speaks for all Canadians about the remembrance of a Cuban Dictator
• Imposes tough regulations and taxes on oil from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland but not oil from Saudi Arabia.
• Every new project has to undergo strict environmental assessments…except cement plants in Quebec.
• Millions in aid to bombardier in Quebec
• Thinks old stock Canadians should be replaced.
• Chases foreign companies (and their investment capital) out of the country like they have the plague.
• Chases our WW1 soldiers out of our national anthem… lest we forget.
• Brings in 10s of thousands of unemployable “refugees”.
• Tweets out a welcome to 10s of thousands more fake refugees from the US (even gets the RCMP to be their bellhops).
• All his fake refugees get better healthcare than Canadians do, while they put a strain on all our public services and contribute little.
• Continuously uses identity politics…then complains about identity politics.
• Pays $10.5 million to a convicted terrorist who murdered an unarmed army medic.
• Pays another 31 million to 3 more Muslims from Syria.
• Forgot Alberta was a province.
• Called small business owners “tax cheats” while he sucks at the teat of a family trust fund.
• Taxes cow farts.
• Only intolerant racists would ask questions about money spent on illegal immigrants.
• We have an equalization program but he gives half of it to one province.
• Says “diversity is our greatest strength” but his divisiveness tears us apart.
• Screws up our trade relations with our most important trade partner because he failed to stop Chinese steel from flowing through to the states and he won’t give up supply management which hurts Canadian consumers.
• $8 million for a skating rink.
• $4.5 billion for a 65-year-old pipeline (and KM uses that money to build a pipeline in Texas)
• Billions added to the nþational debt.
• The Kokanee groper.
• Illegal migrants are just “irregular border crossers”.
• Gets India to invest $250 million in Canada but we have to invest $750 million in India first.
• Compared returning ISIS terrorists to Italian immigrants and says they will be an extraordinarily powerful voice for Canada.
• Terrorists deserve to keep their Canadian citizenship.
• Thinks Canada is 100 years old instead of 150.
• Generally making life less affordable for the average Canadian.
• Gave Canadian taxpayer’s money to the Clinton Foundation.
• Gave Canadian taxpayer’s money to Hamas.
• Still gives foreign aid to China?

• Confuses China for Japan and forgets about Canada fighting a war against them.
• Increasing the number of personal pronouns to 50.
• The only PM convicted of ethics violations.
• Outrage over fake racist attacks, says nothing about real terrorist attacks.
• Hijab hoax
• Takes a personal day for every pair of socks he owns.
• Sits like he has no balls…which is true…..
• ‘broken promise’ on electoral reform
• Screwed up a new Holocaust memorial in Ottawa — it turns out they forgot to mention the Jews. On a plaque about the Holocaust.

shatterzzz
August 12, 2023 12:00 pm

The better version .. The Night They Rode Old Dixie Down ”
Joan Baez ……

https://youtu.be/28cg3iCEtWM

Dr Faustus
Dr Faustus
August 12, 2023 12:03 pm

Voice referendum a ‘simple and clear proposition’ to recognise First Nations people: PM

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the Voice referendum is a “simple and clear proposition” to recognise First Nations peoples in Australia’s constitution. “And then to do it in the form that Indigenous people have asked for, which is through a Voice,” he said during The Daily Telegraph Bush Summit. “That’s simply an advisory body to enable us to listen to Indigenous Australians about matters that affect them in order to get better results.

First Australians have made abundantly clear that

1) Recognition is a secondary issue of little importance; and

2) The Voice is not conceived as an advisory body but rather a means to deliver a Treaty which gives self-determination/government and compensation.

Instructive that Albanese is publicly watering down ‘implementing the Ulu?u statement in full’ – and nobody from the First Nations is calling him out on it.

Somebody is humbuggering someone here.

JC
JC
August 12, 2023 12:05 pm

Takes a personal day for every pair of socks he owns.

What does that mean?

Colonel Crispin Berka
Colonel Crispin Berka
August 12, 2023 12:08 pm

The Great Mushroom Debate…

What many of the mushroom poisonings have in common is the element of mistaken identity and a nationwide knowledge gap about mushroom varieties.
Supporters of foraging like Ms Button believe there is significant fear, or mycophobia, which holds people back from foraging and learning more about mushrooms.

How’s that, eh? If you think eating any old shroom plucked from the dirt is risky you must be some kind of dirty MYCOPHOBE. It’s (current year), there’s no excuse for mycophobia. Myco rights are human rights.
To close this knowledge gap, clearly what we need is Mycologist Story Time sessions in our schools and public libraries…

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
August 12, 2023 12:09 pm

I was just reading about the Palaeolithic in Wiki – as you do. I am content to read Wikipedia on this topic because it is not a controversial one.

It states that humans first reached Australia around 50,000 to 40,000 years ago.

This is at odds with the 60,000 years fondly cited and recited of late by those who style themselves as our betters.

When I started at Sydney Uni in the early 80’s there was a mural across from the entrance to Redfern station proclaiming “40,000 years is a long long time. 40,000 years still on my mind.” However stirring that mural might have seemed when you read it, that feeling was quickly snuffed out when you passed it and saw the crumbling wasteland that was Eveleigh street.

So…where did the 60,000 number come from?

Top Ender
Top Ender
August 12, 2023 12:11 pm

‘Paradise’ lost to a woke-city future on brazen display in Canberra

ANGELA SHANAHAN
The Australian

What is going wrong with the nation’s capital? Why is it that the government of the federal territory cannot appoint a prosecutor unable to divest himself of his own prejudices in his zeal for a conviction in a high-profile political case? Why indeed? It seems strange to me, having lived in the nation’s capital for 30 years and written about its gradual change from sophisticated country town to dark green Truman bubble, that people have only just woken up to Canberra’s wokery under the Barr Labor-Greens coalition government.

As I wrote during the previous fiasco of its forcible acquisition of a Catholic public hospital, this government has been in power for 22 years, and consequently believes it has carte blanche to do whatever it wants. The Barr administration is more Green than Labor. It is much more Green than even the Stanhope government was. What is more, the ACT government now has the backing of the federal government. Hence Katy Gallagher could crow about getting the territory rights bill passed, the sole purpose of which was to introduce voluntary assisted dying the ACT Human Rights Minister, who is setting up the “framework”, says could be extended to 14-year-olds.

The Drumgold affair might have far-reaching implications outside Canberra as the apostles of woke, safe under the umbrella of state and territory human rights apparatus, are not confined to the federal capital. However, shonky wokery has long infected Canberra’s governance, from various victimhoods to fanatical gas-hating Greens. A lot of this has only just begun to permeate wider Australian society. So, if you want to see the future, come to Canberra where we are steeped in this stuff.

Under Barr, the ACT has enacted some of the most bizarre laws in Australia, covering all the woke preoccupations. VAD for 14-year-olds is quite possible in a place where, under the guise of banning “conversion therapy”, the government has passed a law forbidding anyone, even a parent, taking a child out of the ACT for any gender dysphoria therapy except affirmative therapy. Although this is claimed as a “health measure”, the government has legalised hard drugs and forcibly acquired Calvary Hospital even though it can barely run the one it operates at Woden, which has had some of its teaching accreditation removed.

On fossil fuels, the government has decided to ban household gas by 2035. The new suburbs do not even have gas pipes, and the rest of Canberra, which mainly uses gas for heating and was encouraged to do so, will be forced to find some other way to heat our houses. On transport, it has built a tram that (to the amusement of the population) cannot cross Lake Burley Griffin, so in the government’s own words it will have to “go back to the drawing board” to work that out.

Despite the trenchant criticism of former DPP Shane Drumgold’s ineptitude by the press both within and outside Canberra, it is really these local problems and ideological force-feeding that gets under the skin of Canberrans. So, while many people are shocked by the fallout of Brittany Higgins mark two, many more people are frankly worried about the state of emergency at the hospital and the looming gas ban.

So why do people in the ACT put up with all this? Here are some reasons. First, the Liberal opposition is frankly hopeless. Under the leadership of Zed Seselja there was some impetus, but he bailed. The only hope for a shift in government is to take a leaf out of the Greens’ playbook and have some decent independent candidates. Under Canberra’s complicated electoral system, it is easier to vote independent candidates into power. Another reason is the changing demographic of the ACT, which now has a population the size of Tasmania. It has always been a young, well-educated population, but mainly families. Now under the Barr government there has been a huge upsurge in apartment developments aimed at the influx of single young people working for the federal and local governments – and overseas students. There are more renters in the ACT than ever before, and despite opposition to untrammelled development from long-term residents, Barr simply said he didn’t want to talk to anybody over 45. Hence the upsurge in the Greens vote – and they hold the balance of power.

Another reason many of us put up with the crazy stuff in the ACT and don’t decamp permanently to the south coast is because, like Truman, we are captives in a suburban paradise of sorts. After only experiencing life in big cities and one of the world’s great metropolises with two small children in an apartment the size of my Canberra kitchen, Canberra 30 years ago was almost Nirvana for a family.

It still retains many elements of the ideal city its founders envisaged. It has a very high standard of housing and amenities. It is beautiful. Its much-maligned paradoxical sobriquet, the “bush capital”, means everyone has access to a bush reserve. It has a cultural life that is a mixture of sophisticated and popular. It has the youngest population in Australia, and the schools were some of the best in Australia and, unlike most other states and territories, Canberra has real free preschools within the education system. The woke takeover is sad, yet I still like living in Canberra. But for how long before “paradise” is lost?

-o-o-O-o-o-

Angela Shanahan is a Canberra-based freelance journalist and mother of nine children. She has written regularly for The Australian for over 20 years,

Oz

Boambee John
Boambee John
August 12, 2023 12:12 pm

It goes beyond that though as it always does with this state government. The new laws require a “dedicated Aboriginal service response.”

Shirley this is borderline waaycisssst? The suggestion that a “dedicated Aboriginal service response” is necessary implies that aboriginals are highly likely to be found drunk in public.

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 12:13 pm

•Gave Canadian taxpayer’s money to the Clinton Foundation.

Dolly Downer was doing that to us too iirc

JC
JC
August 12, 2023 12:15 pm

Barron’s piece.
China Is Slipping Into Deflation. Beijing Has Lost the Private Sector.

COMMENTARY
By Eswar Prasad
Aug. 9, 2023 11:35 am ET

China is now too large an economy to export its way out of a downturn, Eswar Prasad writes.

About the author: Eswar Prasad is a professor at Cornell University, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and author of The Future of Money.

With China’s growth stalling and the economy slipping into deflation, Beijing is under pressure to stem the rot. Measures to stimulate the economy could help. But to lift growth durably and not simply create more risks will require much bigger changes. The longer the government waits to act, the harder its task will become.

China’s economy has been hit hard. The property developer Country Garden missed bond payments this week, The Wall Street Journal reported, amid a broader unraveling of the property sector. Demand for China’s exports fell 14.5% in July compared with a year earlier. And, most of all, households and private businesses seem to have lost confidence in the direction of central government policies and the government’s ability to guide the economy amid mounting domestic and external challenges.

Much as Beijing talks about supporting private enterprises, its actions have cast a chill on the part of the economy that is essential for attaining its stated economic ambitions. Private-sector investment has collapsed and growth in household consumption has weakened. Unemployment rates, particularly for younger workers, have risen sharply and threaten social stability.

China’s longstanding problems are coming home to roost. Many are a consequence of the government’s own policies. Take the property sector, a mainstay of the economy that has long been counted on to boost growth and which now directly or indirectly accounts for nearly a quarter of annual gross domestic product. Housing constitutes a substantial fraction of household wealth, and land sales are a key source of revenue for local governments. This has led to massive oversupply in some cities, with a lot of housing held for speculative reasons. Now that the government is trying to rein in speculative activity in this sector, some developers and banks that lent to them are in financial distress, household wealth has taken a hit, and local governments are having to tighten their belts.

These problems are being compounded by unfavorable demographics, with fertility rates falling and the population aging rapidly; a creaking financial system; and dismal productivity growth. China is far from realizing its ambitions of becoming technologically self-reliant and capable of generating significant innovations domestically.

The stark reality is that the private sector, especially small and midsize enterprises, will be crucial for China to generate productivity and employment growth. The government’s desire to generate more domestic innovation and switch to higher-technology, higher-value-added industries cannot rely on the doddering state enterprise sector. So, Beijing’s attempts to talk up its support for the private sector while cutting down to size highflying private enterprises, particularly in the technology sector, sends wrong signals at the wrong time.

On a recent trip to China, I sensed a profound disconnect between the views of government officials and the private sector. Officials in Beijing seemed relatively sanguine about the economy’s prospects and talked favorably about the private sector. By contrast, entrepreneurs and businessmen I encountered spoke about the government’s wayward policy-making. The public takedowns of some highly successful entrepreneurs have cast a chill. President Xi Jinping advanced a “common prosperity” initiative in 2021 aimed at reducing inequality. In practice, it is seen as a new means to restrain the private sector.

China is now too large an economy to export its way out of a downturn, particularly when the world economy is sputtering. Macroeconomic stimulus is part of the solution to the current growth malaise. But it has to be complemented by longer-term structural measures to revive productivity, particularly by taking credible measures to encourage rather than restrain private enterprises.

Monetary stimulus, including lower interest rates, could create financial risks. In any case, it might get little traction if households and businesses lack confidence to spend rather than save. Well-targeted fiscal stimulus could help to boost household consumption in the short run as well to rebalance growth in the longer term. Income-tax cuts, higher expenditures on social programs, and some direct transfers to low-income households could support growth in the short run and help increase the role of consumption rather than (often wasteful) investment in driving growth.

These measures need to be supplemented with financial sector and state enterprise reforms, lifting of restrictions on labor mobility, and a clear commitment to a vibrant private sector. Improvements in corporate governance and risk management at state-owned banks could help direct more resources to private enterprises.

The biggest challenge the government faces, though, is dispelling concerns about a turn toward a state-dominated economy, with even the private sector under increasingly tight control of the party apparatus.

Xi might view the state sector more favorably than the private sector, but it will not deliver the economic results he wants. Local governments in some of the country’s most dynamic provinces have absorbed this lesson. The results are clear, with those provinces’ embrace of private enterprises through supportive policies paying off in high growth.

Beijing now needs to convince entrepreneurs that it will not just pay them lip service but will support them and not deem successful entrepreneurs to be enemies of the state. Unless it faces up squarely to this challenge, all the other measures will accomplish little.

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
August 12, 2023 12:15 pm

Stew Peters Show:

Elon Musk wants Twitter to become “the everything app”.
CEO of Ruby Media Group and creator of the Ruby Files, Kristen Ruby, is here to talk about A.I. censorship, social media, freedom of speech, and what’s next.
If Musk succeeds in transforming Twitter into “X”, will the powers that be allow freedom of speech to continue?
If censorship returns to Twitter it will most likely be run by dangerous artificial intelligence entities.
Increase your testosterone and embrace masculinity with IGF1 at http://GetIGF1.com
Dr. Bruce Fong, medical director at Nutronics Labs and the Sierra Integrative Medical Center, is here to talk about the amazing benefits of IGF1.

LIVE: Elon Musk’s Twitter Is A PSYOP! Special Guest Kristen Ruby On DANGERS Of AI & Machine Learning

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
August 12, 2023 12:16 pm

From wikipedia

The English Breakfast.
It is believed the English Breakfast was invented in 1961 by a migrant from Scotland to the British Isles, Mr Bilal McDuff. Mr McDuff was short order cook at Kippers and Faggots roadside cafe in Luton. After a series of customer complaints (as the English are wont to do) about his sausage and egg breakfasts, McDuff came up with a novel innovation. Realising that his customers actually enjoyed complaining, he decided to really give them something to complain about. Instead of improving the standard of the sausage and egg breakfast, he set about adding more and more ingredients cooked to an equally shoddy standard. In addition to eggs the consistency of silicone and a greasy sausage made from pig’s gristle cooked in rancid dripping, there was a dollop of lukewarm baked beans with an impenetrable congealed skin, slices of cremated bacon, mushrooms which could be mistaken for segments of a squash ball and half of a three week old soggy tomato rescued from the bottom of the fridge.
And so the English breakfast was born, which has given generations of Britons something they truly craved … six things on the same plate to complain about.

JC
JC
August 12, 2023 12:17 pm

Kippers and Faggots roadside cafe in Luton.

Really?

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 12:19 pm

The other thing about Troodough is that this loathsome creep is part of a political dynasty. Finishing off wrecking the place for Pierre. The mother is also from a political family. Democracy is a bit of a joke.

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 12:19 pm

Paleolithic archeology is a politicised mess.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/19/dig-finds-evidence-of-aboriginal-habitation-up-to-80000-years-ago

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2011/09/dna-confirms-aboriginal-culture-one-of-earths-oldest/

“The first Aboriginal genome sequence confirms Australia’s native people left Africa 75,000 years ago.”

https://theconversation.com/factcheck-might-there-have-been-people-in-australia-prior-to-aboriginal-people-43911

https://theconversation.com/factcheck-might-there-have-been-people-in-australia-prior-to-aboriginal-people-43911

In one sense, Leyonhjelm is correct. There have been a handful of anthropologists who have argued that Aboriginal people were not the first Australians, but the way science proceeds is that ideas are constantly questioned, tested and replaced.

Some researchers once argued that there may have been three separate population migrations into Australia. Later, other researchers argued there were two. More recently, researchers have assessed the earlier work and argued there was only one source population of all known skeletal remains in Australia.

Okay

Senator Leyonhjelm’s spokesman said 42,000 year-old skeletal remains found at Lake Mungo (“Mungo Man”), and an analysis of DNA from one of those skeletons, suggest another argument for a pre-Aboriginal population.

These claims, from a 2001 study, are not widely accepted in the anthropological community, and not even really debated any more. The 2001 DNA study was a very early attempt to extract DNA from an ancient skeleton in conditions that could be expected to be very bad for the survival of ancient DNA. Subsequent studies demonstrated that the DNA signature was most likely contamination from the scientists that handled the fossil remains.

So the evidence that suits the narrative is gold, anything that is inconvenient is contaminated.

—–

Left Africa 75,000 years ago?
No other DNA other than through India and a land bridge?
Only one migration?
Despite three identifiable ethnic/language groups?
No interactions with the Chinese, Maoris or Indonesians?
Where did the dingoes come from and how & when?

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 12:20 pm

a migrant from Scotland to the British Isles

Hahahaha!

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 12:21 pm

That was a great thing about the Melbourne CBD that you could bring your car in while trying to do it in Sydney could lead to nervous breakdown.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
August 12, 2023 12:21 pm

You just knew this was going to happen.

Indigenous voices need to lead Australia’s response to the climate crisis (Phys.org, 11 Aug)

Associate Professor Veronica Matthews, from the University of Sydney, leading UCRH researcher and Co-Lead Investigator for the CRE-STRIDE Network said the paper highlighted the need to undo historical legacies of colonization for the benefit of a healthier future. … “What health and climate researchers are exploring now is how the same principle applies to climate change.

Yes Cats, the Voice will fix climate change…

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
August 12, 2023 12:24 pm

It is believed the English Breakfast was invented in 1961 by a migrant from Scotland

Marvellous.

The English Breakfast is their version of Welcome to Country.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
August 12, 2023 12:25 pm

mushrooms which could be mistaken for segments of a squash ball

Dehydrated, no doubt.

Crossie
Crossie
August 12, 2023 12:27 pm

I was buying pate the other day and it occurred to me that I have not seen for some time now a particular school sandwich filler from the 70s. Has anyone seen lately devon in Colesworth or anywhere else?

Black Ball
Black Ball
August 12, 2023 12:29 pm

Haha Bruce, that has made my day.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
August 12, 2023 12:33 pm

Oh, and my question about the 60,000 number is not about The Voice – with regards to all the arguments for and against, 40,000 or 60,000 make no difference.

Black Ball
Black Ball
August 12, 2023 12:36 pm

Generation Snowflake news, Hun:

Today’s parents have invested more in their kids than ever before. As a result, they’ve never had so many opportunities afforded to them, or been more connected thanks to social media. But meet Generation Angst.

A shocking six in 10 say their lives are blighted by anxiety and half are fearful for the future. So, what did we do wrong? Julie Cross investigates.

Hannah Marek is only 18, but she has the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Like many from Generation Z – those born in the mid to late 1990s to the early 2010s – she suffers from anxiety, much of it related to fears around her future.

She estimates by the time she finishes university – where she plans to study journalism and law – she could have more than $100,000 of debt.

She worries about the narrative bandied about that Gen Z are “unemployable”, as well as the rise of robotics and AI. She also wonders whether there will even be a job for her when she graduates.

She said the cost of living crisis, inflation and sky high property prices, make the Australian dream of owning her own home increasingly unobtainable.

Overarching all of her concerns is a feeling of “impending doom” which is amplified on social media.

“It feels like everything’s falling apart,” The University of Queensland student said.

“Much of it I can do little about. The polar bears are in trouble and there’s piles of fast fashion. It’s like you’re not allowed to enjoy anything without guilt.”

Hannah’s concerns are typical of her age group.

An exclusive national survey of 1000 18 to 24-year-olds found more than 60 per cent have anxiety and more than half said they worried about the future.

The 2023 Gen Z Wellbeing Index conducted by Year13, a post-school advisory service, and Scape, which provides student accommodation, found 78 per cent of young Australians said the cost-of-living issue was their biggest concern, followed by housing/rental affordability (67 per cent), climate change (60 per cent) and mental health (57 per cent).

It also found two thirds have problems getting a good night’s sleep, with nearly half reporting they wake up tired and lethargic.

Sadly, despite being more ‘connected’ than any other generation, four in 10 struggle to make friends and more than a third suffer from loneliness.

Only one in three said they “had purpose”, are physically active enough, eat enough healthy food and spend enough time outdoors.

So, where did it all go wrong for Gen Z?

Child psychologist Dr Kimberley O’Brien from Quirky Kid believes screen use is to blame for this generation’s high anxiety levels.

She noticed anxiety became the number one reason for referral to her clinic around 10 years ago.

Dr O’Brien said it coincided with kids being allowed smartphones from a younger age, sometimes as young as eight or nine, due to their parents’ anxiety around wanting to keep in touch with them.

She said children have become less sociable, less active and have worsening sleep issues.

Author of Hello Gen Z Claire Madden said parents have allowed boundaryless access to the internet and kids are being exposed to a lot from a younger age. They believe it is up to them to sort out global issues such as climate change.

“They’ve missed out on their carefree childhood,” Ms Madden said.

“Their innocence has been stolen and it’s weighed heavily upon them.

“Because of these social media platforms they believe they have a voice and should be making change but lack context on how to do it, despite how many times they press the crying emoji.

“They carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.”

Year13 Co-Founder Saxon Phipps said one 17-year-old replying to the survey summed it up when she said, “A kid growing up without unbridled access to the internet might have been spared from the stress of ‘knowing it all’.

“Knowing about the consequences of climate change, politics, racism, classism and other problematic views is a blessing and a curse because it has bred a generation of severely depressed and anxious people who are in turn severely determined to change the world.”

Ms Madden said “Gen Z have been our guinea pigs”.

“I think one day we’ll look back on this like we do on the generation that used to smoke in the home,” Ms Madden said.

“We will look at how giving toddlers devices changed the wiring of their brains, creating addictive personalities.”

It has also created a generation that finds it difficult to make friends, despite being well connected online.

“I’m hearing from people about how lonely they are,” Ms Madden said.

“One told me how he’s losing the ability to have a conversation face-to-face.”

Helping young people to make friends is something that organisations have recognised is needed.

Scape Australia, which provides purpose built student accommodation (PBSA) to uni students, also participated in the survey and found that 71 per cent of its students found making friends came easily to them, compared to 41 per cent on average across Australia who struggled to make friends.

“One of the key factors we invest in is social interaction, so we are pleased to see the survey data shows that Scape residents are significantly less likely to suffer from loneliness and are in better mental health,” Scape Australia co-founder Craig Carracher said.

Ms Madden said a crucial part of building relationships is getting off screens and meeting face-to-face.

She said there is a move within this generation to stop and reflect on their phone use, with some cutting social media out altogether because they don’t want to “scroll their lives away”.

Hannah, who lives at home, tries to restrict her screen time because she realises it makes her feel more empty than full, but she still finds herself scrolling.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” she said. “When you’re tired you just want to lie down with your phone and get a dopamine hit.”

FMD. May I suggest maybe put the phone down and get outside and experience life rather than wet your underwear about perceived world ills?

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 12:37 pm

These Marxist dons and germalists would ship modern Kulaks off to be gassed in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. They are not normal people. Remember Jilly Singer in the HUN actually suggested gassing.

bons
bons
August 12, 2023 12:39 pm

I have finally gained an understanding of ‘progressive’.
As in: Labor has progressed to the era of Arthur Calwell.
Easy really.

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 12:41 pm

plans to study journalism and law

more germalists and lawyers just what the country needs NOT.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
August 12, 2023 12:43 pm

A kipper is a whole herring, a small, oily fish, that has been split in a butterfly fashion from tail to head along the dorsal ridge, gutted, salted or pickled, and cold-smoked over smouldering wood chips.

And …

Faggots are meatballs made from minced off-cuts and offal mixed with herbs and sometimes bread crumbs. It is a traditional dish in the United Kingdom, especially South and Mid Wales and the English Midlands. 

What a disgusting race of people.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
August 12, 2023 12:46 pm

Has anyone seen lately devon in Colesworth or anywhere else?

Our vet uses it as a distraction for dogs he is treating.
I’ve reported him to the RSPCA.

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 12:46 pm

She estimates by the time she finishes university – where she plans to study journalism and law – she could have more than $100,000 of debt.

She worries about the narrative bandied about that Gen Z are “unemployable”, as well as the rise of robotics and AI. She also wonders whether there will even be a job for her when she graduates.

Consider this:

Pull out of the degree RIGHT NOW and do another double degree:

B Eng (Mech) / B Info Tech

Thank me later – your debt will be much lower and you will finish in the same timeframe, give or take a year, about half as much per year.

The entrance marks required for LLB/BA Journo are actually much higher than the B Eng/ B IT…

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
August 12, 2023 12:51 pm

What a disgusting race of people.

No wonder they’re all pasty, with sunken eyes and teeth that look like a knocked-over jar of toothpicks.

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 12:51 pm

Why the eff is it LLB and not BL?

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 12:51 pm

Pretentious shite.

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 12:56 pm

Latin, old chum.

Like a Medicinae Baccalaureus, Baccalaureus Chirurgiae (MB B Ch).

calli
calli
August 12, 2023 12:57 pm

Dot, also Geotech. High demand now and into the future. Could also couple it with an Assoc degree in Surveying.

Also, do what my youngest did – PAYG. She worked a couple of jobs, studied and left Uni virtually debt free.

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 12:58 pm

Also

Legus Baccalaureus, not Lex Baccalaureus, so:

–> LLB, not LB.

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 12:59 pm

So why is a BA not an AB or why is MB BS not BM BS? I know it’s to demonstrate membership of the cognoscenti.

miltonf
miltonf
August 12, 2023 1:00 pm

ok I get the LL bit

Top Ender
Top Ender
August 12, 2023 1:02 pm

“They carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.”

Sigh.

She could have been one of those fighting in WWI. Or II.

It’s so hard being the young modern work saviour of the world today.

calli
calli
August 12, 2023 1:02 pm

On the Full English Breakfast – you forgot the devilled kidneys in the chafing dish.

Also…”An Englishman is never served at breakfast”.

I learned that from Gosford Park.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
August 12, 2023 1:10 pm

Thanks, Dot.

Certainly Australian anthropology in Australia will be politicised in Australia.

The objective trend also seems to be to always push time lines further back as further finds are made or teased out of old finds with newer technology.

But I am suspicious about the 60,000 year number because it spills so readily and like sewage from a broken pipe from the mouths of politicians, j’ismists, and activists.

But again, 60,000 or 40,000 (or even 80,000 – which was a number touted for a while – I wonder why it was scaled back?) makes no real difference.

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 1:11 pm

So why is a BA not an AB

Actually, in some places it is!

https://gsas.harvard.edu/program/harvard-abam-and-absm

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
August 12, 2023 1:11 pm

She could have been one of those fighting in WWI. Or II.

Thirty pairs of brothers, buried in the American cemetery, behind Omaha Beach…

Dot
Dot
August 12, 2023 1:12 pm

No worries ML

I have some questions though!

Left Africa 75,000 years ago?
No other DNA other than through India and a land bridge?
Only one migration?
Despite three identifiable ethnic/language groups?
No interactions with the Chinese, Maoris or Indonesians?
Where did the dingoes come from and how & when?

Also – got here 80,000 years ago.

None. Of. This. Makes. Sense.

Top Ender
Top Ender
August 12, 2023 1:14 pm

Meanwhile in the Territory:

Two Territory primary schoolers were injured by shattered glass after an “out of control man” attacked their bus with poles and rocks, a driver has alleged.

The North East Arnhem Land bus service GoLbuy Transport was allegedly attacked by a man while on the morning school route at Yirrkala on Friday.

The company’s sole director and driver at the time, Mareva Pearse alleged an “out of control man” armed with two metal poles repeatedly attacked the school bus by throwing rocks.

“The front windscreen was smashed and a back window,” Ms Pearse said.

“Two small primary school children inside the bus were injured and had to be taken to Gove District Hospital by their parents.”

NT Police confirmed a teenager was arrested over the alleged disturbance, with the two children treated for minor injuries.

The 18-year-old man was charged with going armed in public, three counts of endangering the occupants of a vehicle and three counts of property damage.

He was bailed to appear in local court in September.

The Voice will stop this sort of thing…

Dr Faustus
Dr Faustus
August 12, 2023 1:21 pm

What a disgusting race of people.

What a pitiful, whiny complaint.

You lot wouldn’t be where you are today without a homeland founded on kippers, bloaters, lights, brawn, whelks and winkles, boiled beef, braised shoe liver, pickled trotters, tripe and onions, ways with mashed swede, suet puddings, and Ahh Bisto gravy done with giblets and boiled cabbage water.

Spoiled brat.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
August 12, 2023 1:23 pm

You lot wouldn’t be where you are today without a homeland founded on kippers, bloaters, lights, brawn, whelks and winkles, boiled beef, braised shoe liver, pickled trotters, tripe and onions, ways with mashed swede, suet puddings, and Ahh Bisto gravy done with giblets and boiled cabbage water.

I don’t think the “For” case will regard this as helpful.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
August 12, 2023 1:26 pm

I see Wodney Woddenhead declared that the 500 sovereigns he spent getting to Straya was “money well spent”.
I am sure those left behind in Blighty would agree.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
August 12, 2023 1:36 pm

But again, 60,000 or 40,000 (or even 80,000 – which was a number touted for a while – I wonder why it was scaled back?) makes no real difference.

It’s all just to remind “Whitefella” how insignificant his occupation of this country has been. The fact that, in 60,000 or 80,000 years, no – one discovered the wheel, or how to boil water, is overlooked.

C.L.
C.L.
August 12, 2023 1:37 pm

“Broad church” is now code for the right giving left-wing extremists their head.

In Menzies’ day, the man more progressive (or small “l” Liberal) believed in putting an end to sectarianism or getting rid of the old dictation test.

The man more progressive (or small “l” Liberal) in today’s Liberal Party believes sexual perverts should be allowed in to women’s toilets and that women who disagree should be expelled from membership.

I also find it amusing that John Howard – formerly known as ‘John HoWARd’ – is now being lionised by autograph hunter Troy Bramston as the Good Liberal. The latest Liberal leader is always Hitler.

shatterzzz
August 12, 2023 1:38 pm

Breakfast .. cooking .. LOL!
https://ibb.co/pWSzz4v

Vicki
Vicki
August 12, 2023 1:38 pm

Generation Snowflake news, Hun:

Today’s parents have invested more in their kids than ever before. As a result, they’ve never had so many opportunities afforded to them, or been more connected thanks to social media. But meet Generation Angst.

An interesting article. It is very tempting, as some have done here, to satirise the description of the angst of Gen Z. But I think there is something quite serious emerging historically here.

A few years ago my husband and I attended a talk by a psychologist in a local library in Sydney on the overuse of iPhones by children. It was quite disturbing as he described the studies (even then) which showed significant cognitive aberrations in children allowed unrestricted access to these devices. He was very much concerned, but said he had encountered nil interest in educational authorities and parent groups.

Like all generational developments, it is well nigh impossible to persuade parents of such dangers to their offspring. The phones have been too useful as baby sitters, educational “assistants” etc etc. It is also incredibly difficult to deny offspring the “lollies”, be they fast food or mobile phones. The rest is history.

Vicki
Vicki
August 12, 2023 1:44 pm

I also find it amusing that John Howard – formerly known as ‘John HoWARd’ – is now being lionised by autograph hunter Troy Bramston as the Good Liberal. The latest Liberal leader is always Hitler.

Well said, C.L.

I was initially bemused at Bramston’s “concessions”, but scanning the article saw that there was “method” in his madness. The Left have been delighted at the emergence of the Teals……and are now scared of a backlash at the next election when Lib voters have buyer’s remorse. Thus – the praise of the “middle path”….

calli
calli
August 12, 2023 1:45 pm

As a result, they’ve never had so many opportunities afforded to them, or been more connected thanks to social media. But meet Generation Angst.

There’s a very simple solution to all that. I wonder if anyone has thought of it?

My grandchildren’s social media time is strictly timed and monitored. Like all addictions, a time away will break the spell. Especially if content becomes increasingly toxic.

calli
calli
August 12, 2023 1:46 pm

By the way, the clue was given thrice. Just like a spell. 😀

Crossie
Crossie
August 12, 2023 1:50 pm

Subsequent studies demonstrated that the DNA signature was most likely contamination from the scientists that handled the fossil remains.

So the evidence that suits the narrative is gold, anything that is inconvenient is contaminated.

Amazing how it only works in one direction, like vote counting in the US.

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
August 12, 2023 2:04 pm

Classics!

I’m still pissing myself laughing. True!

CANNONBALL RUN I and II Bloopers & Outtakes – Full Screen

Vicki
Vicki
August 12, 2023 2:13 pm

It may have already been flagged on the blog, but in case it has not – everyone should read the excellent article in the Australian Spectator on the aim of co-sovereignty amongst the Voice protagonists:

If you cant get past the paywall – I’m sure the editor would not mind a copy on this vital subject:

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/co-sovereignty-the-conversation-we-havent-had/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FLAT%20%2020230811%20%20SG&utm_content=FLAT%20%2020230811%20%20SG+CID_d4fa25b0ed573aa5a0c6153140d7ac1a&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Australia&utm_term=Co-Sovereignty%20the%20conversation%20we%20havent%20had

P
P
August 12, 2023 2:33 pm

Vicki
Aug 12, 2023 2:13 PM

Thank you.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
August 12, 2023 2:50 pm
Johnny Rotten
August 12, 2023 2:59 pm

OldOzzie
Aug 12, 2023 2:50 PM
Great speech – Andrew Hastie MP delivers first Jim Molan Oration. Lest We Forget.

Thanks OldOzzie. Tennis Elbow, Blackout Bowen and Dim Chalmers should take note of this speech and ACT. FFS. Otherwise, this country is stuffed.

Johnny Rotten
August 12, 2023 3:07 pm

Sancho Panzer
Aug 12, 2023 1:26 PM

I see that Mrs Stencho Pantyhose has just woken up and trawled the Blog to make another pathetic comment. And she still has that lisp. ‘Sirry Iriot’.

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  1. Note the use of the word “victim” as a synonym for “complainant”.Par for the course I’m afraid. Both prejudicial and…

  2. Lawgi Dawes-Hall November 18, 2024 8:02 pm Steve trickler November 18, 2024 7:18 pmFilmed up North In West Oz. I…

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