Please do not introduce facts to the fantasists.
Open Thread – Tues 22 Aug 2023
- Open Thread – Weekend 27 July 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 25 July 2024
- Open Thread – Mon 22 July 2024
- All the drivel fit to print
- Open Thread – Weekend 20 July 2024
Australia’s post Stone Age era.
Cont… Lastly. Google tells me from a number of different sources jet fuel burn was estimated at between 1000-1100 deg…
Digger FYI. BoN please correct if I err, likely as my metallurgy never went past 2nd year first semester and…
“1788 immigrants” is a hilarious phrase.
Good morning
No it isn’t.
I hope this has already been posted here a couple of hundred times:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro&pp=ygUOQW50aG9ueSBvbGl2ZXI%3D
Good shots!
Lethal Weapon: Riggs takes out Bad guy at a School in Los Angeles in the 90’s.
Many thanks Rosie and Sancho and KD and anyone I’ve missed for your suggestions re the NSW Police contingent into the aftermath of Cyclone Tracy….
John Spooner.
Christian Adams.
Michael Ramirez TDS (again).
A.F. Branco.
Matt Margolis.
Tom Stiglich.
Ben Garrison.
Is it amazing how many mass murderers work for the NHS?
Harry Smith, the commander whose battalion fought off repeated attacks from Viet Cong during the Battle of Long Tan, has died.
The esteemed military leader died on the Sunshine Coast on Sunday, aged 90.
On August 18, 1966, Lt Colonel Smith’s 108-man Delta Company fought off a three-sided attack of some 2500 Viet Cong soldiers – ending with 18 Australian soldiers dead and 24 wounded.
His courage under fire was in 2008 recognised with a Star of Gallantry, Australia’s second-highest military honour.
In Hervey Bay, where Lt Colonel Smith spent many of his post-war years, RSL sub-branch president Brian Tidyman described his death as a “great loss”.
“I’ll remember him as a great bloke fighting for his boys,” he said.
“He was one of those rare officers who actually cared about his men.”
Lt Colonel Smith’s courage and heroism during the Vietnam War was immortalised on the big screen in the 2019 film Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan.
However, Mr Tidyman noted Lt Colonel Smith died without realising a lifelong ambition for his men to be awarded the same Star of Gallantry medal, second only to a Victoria Cross, as he.
More – Courier Mail
That’s how you get plebs out of the sky.
Virgin Australia delivers grim airfare warning to travellers as airlines battle to cut emissions
A louder Voice will fix it.
Police officers injured in post-grand final brawl in East Kimberley Football League match
Did not know only men have lungs.
Women more likely to face health costs under Medicare, experts say, raising concerns about ‘gender bias’
No crap, women live longer!
I am starting to sense the Nestle Baby Milk thing is more suspect than Freemasons dethroning Gough.
The story presumes the black doctors in Africa were just as uneducated and illiterate as their patients.
This dumb shit is the holy grail to leftists but I bet none of them have read the report or investigated the claims.
I blame a hippy woman in Byron Bay who is a breast milk Nazi.
She’d be a “cooker” except she voted for the “correct” party.
6:01 Virgin delivers grim warning.
Airline has to reduce CO2 emissions 4.9%, per annum, at huge cost. But boss says he agrees with the legislated imposition. I detect a problem with Australian businesses leaders.
Received a quote for a modest sized airseeder.
$750,000
Assistance (and translation) required.
To assist the God Oracle, I first need to know what this means. From the OOT:
Difficult, I know. When he turns up later I’ll be sure to ask him.
It could just be that he was tired and confused after an evening God Oracle-ing the apprentices on site and then somewhere else.
The only way he can do that is fly 4.9% less each year. And carry 4.9% fewer passengers. And earn 4.9% less money. By net zero Virgin will have vanished.
I suppose there are sillier ways to commit corporate suicide, but I can’t think of any right now.
Yet another thing the Voice will fix (the NT News):
A brutal victory for Dillon Danis courtesy of Paul Joseph Watson.
BODYCOUNT
We’re running our shearing shed off grid without solar & battery storage.
It’s amazing what a 60kv diesel generator can do.
Stalker.
Get lost.
Have to race off soon and get Attapuss to his dental operation. Poor little kitty.
He’s hungry and moaning for food, but not allowed any, and anyway, once I give him some, on the performance of the last few days, he will refuse it due to his sore mouth.
Given the “wage gap” that women bang on about, he has probably also paid more in.
Once again shearing has brought on rain at our place. It’s uncanny.
Oh, and btw, the above two-word instruction is all that the stalker will get from me now in any further episodes of stalking.
What a performance the stalker puts on, and has put on for years, about someone the stalker doesn’t know and has never met. I come here to read what others have to say and to share my experiences where they are applicable and if they don’t suit the stalker, well, the stalker should scroll instead of attempting to incite. Inflammatory behaviour like this does nothing to enhance the blog, and serves only to pull it down while showing the stalker in true stalking colours. And that is all I wish to say about it.
From a report in The Australian this morning.
And what ‘structural changes’ would these be, eh? Acres of industrial wind and solar on prime agricultural land and transmission lines across it too, all at eye-watering cost for no baseload purpose? And because of the lack of baseload, companies failing everywhere and investment fleeing our shores.
They’ve made a mess, they are continuing to make a mess, and let’s face it, there is no health in them. Double dissolution now. We’ve gotta get out of this place.
Dot, I’m perplexed. Can you explain this a little more.
rickw
Further to “Rich Men North of Richmond” by Oliver Anthony, the Babylon Bee commented the best:
Country Music Industry Confused By Man Actually From Country Making Actual Music
Sorbent are off to Indonesia.
Apparently net zero really means offshoring and importing.
Makes sense.
old news but did explain the Chinese gentleman cleaning out the copy paper at kmart a while back.
JC
Yesterday, you mentioned the coming demographic problems for China.
Currently, the younger age groups are declining n numbers, however, apparently the Chinese ceased reporting youth unemployment numbers after they passed 20%.
Two questions:
1. if the younger demographic is declining in numbers, but the economy is supposedly growing, how is youth unemployment so high?
2. What is the likely impact on the Chinese economy of these trends?
From the Oz today
These guys have no idea.
I don’t know dot, doctors only rarely prescribe formula, mostly it is a parental choice and very poor people tend not to consult doctors anyhow.
Every Parent Should Know The Scandalous History Of Infant Formula
It’s a Trotskyist sham.
Never forget, academics devised eugenics used by the Nazis to justify killing.
Formula feeding newborns requires scrupulous cleaning of bottles, clean boiled water, would it be so outrageous that that might be difficult to achieve in some places?
la times article from 1991
Via Dim Chalmers
He wrote “tax bracket creep” incorrectly.
In todays Oz:
Thing is, you already do, along with the rest of your life, they are party to your data, your finances, a cut of your income, your health, your health records, your online activity etc etc etc
I really despise academics.
University is a great place to hide from the real world while damaging it.
Another outstanding Renewable project, again in the Oz today.
Not a lot of love in the comments either.
$60m for 300 customers? LOL.
do I sense a nod at brave Sir Robin here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZwuTo7zKM8
There’ll be none of Galahad’s castle anthrax for Bowen.
Smart people, after a couple of decades, they have finally noticed an energy problem developing!
I read today that Lucy Letby, before her sentencing yesterday, refused to “return to the court to listen to parents, and how she destroyed their lives“. So, even at the end of her trial, having been found guilty, Letby awarded enough power to sneer and display her contempt for those babies she murdered, for the parents of those babies, for the UK justice system and for UK population as a whole. Once again, just as she did in Chester Hospital, she was showing her middle finger to the world. I bet she’s laughing,.
“But she was not in the dock for the final verdicts and refused to come up from the cells for her sentencing on Monday.”
Letby will now spend decades in prison, in some comfort, with access to television, books, perhaps even Netflix, No doubt Letby will do a degree or two, all paid for by the long suffering UK taxpayer. In fifteen years time (perhaps even before then), Letby will apply for parole, and you watch, a conga line of progressive idiotic scum will rally to her cause, media personalities, ex-politicians, clerics whose congregations are empty so in desperation they grasp any feel good progressive “cause” so a to provide them with something to do and give them a mantle of relevancy. The assorted scum will holler in support of Letby, speaking on television, in the newspapers, on social media, that Letby is “reformed”…””a changed woman”, or worse, that Letby herself, like Moira Hindley, is the “victim” here. And the parole shenanigans will continue for years, causing untold grief to the families. Because ladies and gentlemen, that’s the society we now live in, a society where we now deny victims of evil, of despicable men and women like Letby, of being the victims. We now live in a society where the real victims are forgotten. The West, minus some states in the USA (where they actually do understand the concept of crime and punishment), have completely annihilated the concept of “crime and punishment”. Retribution has always been a core part of the justice system, but such a notion has been completely dissolved in the West.
In a more perfect world, on being told that the judge is about to pass sentencing, and the mothers and fathers of those children she murdered would be in the court to face her, Letby, having told her gaolers that she refuses to stand before the judge and parents in the courtroom, would be grabbed by her hair, and dragged kicking and screaming by her hair to the courtroom, forced to stand to face the judge and the parents of those babies, and after the judge passes sentencing, dragged out by her hair to a chopping block where an executioner waits with an axe.
My beef is the same sort of people will hold a grudge against Nestle for 50 years because “ethics” then drive away in a BMW or Mercedes with no pangs of guilt; my body my choice, but bully the hell out of non breastfeeding women.
BJ, the Chinese economy is shrinking simply because western clients are seeking out alternative suppliers in India and elsewhere in Asia. This has started with Trump’s tariffs and accelerated over their COVID behaviour. This will only get worse as most countries realise how dangerous it is to rely on the CCP for products that are essential to national security. Pharmaceuticals are at the top of the list but then so are other products we no longer make but which are essential to our functioning.
The one thing we are still in control of is food production and even if parts of it are foreign owned we can assume control in short order as these have not been and cannot be offshored.
As for Chinese youth unemployment, I believe some are simply not wanting to work since they don’t see any benefit to themselves in the current political and social climate. The other effect would be that in a contracting economy youth employment is the first to go.
I know we’re meant to be impressed by the Dr bit- dr Chalmers and Dr Jill but I feel nothing but contempt. I have been acquainted with some of these ‘doctors’ and I know my contempt is justified.
When your claim for exclusive native title fails:
The Wanglamadla “mob” of western QLD has submitted an application to the Palaszczuk government for 233 000ha to be declared a special wildlife reserve, meaning all mining permits will be cancelled.
The area is believed to be rich in rare earth minerals and petroleum, oil and gas.
“When country is not healthy by cutting it open … then we become sick as people as well”, said Wanglamadla woman Avelina Tarrago (who is actually a lawyer living in Brisbane.)
And yet, certain senior officers, who never went anywhere near the battlefield until the shooting had finished, were decorated for the leadership they showed. Words fail me, they honestly do.
He’s a Doctor of Paul Keating.
Funny how the press never mention that.
Might dim the aura somewhat.
Once upon a time, the Tories formed a coalition government with
the LibDems.
Battalion commanding officers, as a matter of routine, received a DSO after their time in Vietnam ended.
It is rumoured that one was considered not to have performed satisfactorily, so his DSO was held up for a year, then awarded.
Oh, the pain!
Oh yes they do. Lifelong parasites and grifters. And it’s working a charm, for them. And our Marxist education system has spawned sufficient brainwashed zealots to keep them there.
How the hell do you get a PhD for writing a groupie story?
I see you’re not that familiar with the halls of academe, JC.
Like the theatre, the action is at the front,
but the best seats are at the back.
And after the last 3 years, you can add the medical ‘doctors’ to your list!
I’m not sure. I think it’s quite complex as there’s possibly still movement from the bush into the cities. That’s possibly also slowed down because I think you require an internal passport to move.
The likely impact. I think they’re rooted.
This was briefly mentioned on the OOT, but deserves further airing. This is what happens when ‘health professionals’ work out where the real grunt is, and get into management (the Daily Mail):
And:
And:
AND:
AND:
AND:
In the seven years since Letby left, there was just one death in the same neo-natal unit.
Politician-level insulation and protectionism.
Three portly retiree Yes campaigners hassling commuters at the train station this morning. Happy to report most seemed to ignore them.
No matter how the CCP has restricted the internet Chinese youth still get an idea about the conditions for their age cohort in the west which they contrast with their own conditions. As a result a lot of young people have simply checked out of everything, they are not protesting loudly but have withdrawn their participation. It’s a form of nihilism in reaction to their powerlessness.
Further digging reveals that Ms. Tarrago is also a board member of Bush Heritage Australia, a conservation organisation founded by Bob Brown.
Conservation of our natural heritage is important, but anyone who dogmatically asserts that it prohibits other uses of the land and its resources is pushing an anti-humanist agenda.
Research also reveals that the Wanglamadla language is extinct, along with its ritual culture, I suspect. An inquiring mind would also like to know just how many people make up this mob?
Truth is revolutionary particularly in this age of lies. Jacinta is being true to both her sides of ancestry yet the majority of multi-race professional aboriginals negate at least half of their background. What is far worse is that they are telling part-aboriginal children and non-aboriginal children that what they do will never be as important as who they are. That is gross abuse of children.
Even when nothing hostile is said about the Australian European culture the current over-veneration of everything indigenous tells the children what is best.
Pat Farmer, a marathon runner and a failed Liberal politician, is arriving in Sydney as part of his run around Australia to support the Yes vote. He finally found a way to get the media to fawn over him.
Meaningless drivel, framed to evoke deep spiritualism. Ahhhh…they’re wounding our land! Gasp!
I bet the creature wears garments secured by metal fasteners, drives a car, uses plastics, enjoys all the benefits of mining while crying crocodile tears.
I despise these loathsome urban fauxborigines, pretending they have some mystical connection to places they’ve never been to, let alone prepared to live in.
The media will now accuse Senator Jacinta Price of plagiarising Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
BREAKING: Judge rules against Antifa defendants in default, awards Andy Ngo $300,000 in damages over Portland attack
Indolent
Aug 21, 2023 7:50 PM
Kaganism: The People Steering Us Into Another World War
The Wicked Witch of the West Victoria Nuland supported by Robert Kagan, the husband Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland
Most of the Kagan clan is dedicated to providing Washington’s ideological framework, but its most prominent member, Robert Kagan’s wife Victoria Nuland, has been instrumental in implementing it around the world.
Though previously not as well known, Nuland is no stranger to disastrous foreign policy decisions.
Prior to serving under Obama, she was an important national security advisor making calls on Iraq for Dick Cheney during the first Bush government.
While her husband was busy calling Europeans pussies for refusing to join the “coalition of the willing” against Saddam Hussein, Nuland was busy roping Europe into the Afghanistan quagmire in order to maintain the occupation while easing American logistical challenges in Iraq.
Nuland’s most famous moment came in 2014, after a phone call from to the US embassy was publicized exposing her as one of the shadowy figures behind the coup that overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian government and put the country on track for the bloody war it is currently engulfed in.
Nuland has admitted that this coup cost American taxpayers $5 billion dollars.
For Nuland, the lives of “allies” and innocent people are disposable pawns on a chess board. Much like Jewish liberal interventionist Madeline Albright’s famously ghoulish appraisal of trading half a million Iraqi children’s lives just to weaken Iraq’s economy, the Kagans believe the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian casualties and irreparable harm done to the Ukrainian nation is a worthy exchange if it means potentially blemishing Russia and China’s prestige on the world stage or extending Washington’s universal hegemony by a few years.
As the war drags on, polls now show that the majority of Americans oppose giving Ukraine any more aid. Encouraging news for the Ukrainian side has become ever more scant and the famed “counter-offensive” appears to have amounted to nothing, yet Frederick Kagan — the warped mind behind the disastrous 2007 Iraq troop surge and advocate of a second surge — continues to publish articles with titles like “How The Ukraine Counter-Offensive Can Still Succeed.”
Ukraine is by no means the last we have seen of Kaganism.
While the world has reacted in a far more nuanced manner to the conflict than expected and the US has struggled to win most of the world over to the anti-Russian campaign, the neoconservative doctrine is once again ascendent.
Last July, Nuland assumed a new and more powerful role as undersecretary at the State Department. In her previous role as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs,
Nuland was publicly identified by the now imprisoned Pakistani leader Imran Khan as the principle architect behind the US orchestrated coup against him, which was executed in retaliation for Khan’s policy of neutrality regarding the Ukraine war.
In Niger, where 1,000 US troops are stationed and refuse to leave, Nuland met with the country’s new government to threaten them with violence if they do not restore the deposed puppet government — a threat the Washington-Paris proxy African alliance of ECOWAS has been openly telegraphing as well.
Though Nuland has been lighting fires on every continent on the planet, the most trademark Kaganist escalation has been in the deployment of thousands of US Marines to the Persian Gulf in order to advance Israeli strategic interests.
Shortly after Nuland took her new office, the US State Department announced that continuing the Trump-era project of forging an anti-Iran and anti-Palestinian alliance between Saudi Arabia and Israel is now its top Middle East priority.
Yet burning the same land and everything on it to get at a few barbecued animals is apparently healthy and spiritual.
Indolent
Aug 21, 2023 7:51 PM
Hersh: Antony Blinken “Figured Out US Will Not Win War” After CIA Told Him “Ukraine Offense Not Going to Work”
The CIA had warned SecState Blinken that the Spring counter-offensive “was going to be a big lose,” Hersh writes. “Blinken found himself way over his skis. But he does not want to go down as the court jester.”
When war hawk Blinken was “suddenly having doubts,” CIA director Bill Burns “made his move to join the sinking ship,” Hersh writes. Burns may have been jockeying to replace “a disillusioned Blinken,” according to Hersh, but only got “a token promotion: an appointment to Biden’s cabinet.”
At the same time, “ultra-hawkish” Victoria Nuland was promoted by Biden from Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs to Acting Deputy Secretary of State ”over the heated objections of many in the State Department,”
Hersh writes. “She has not been formally nominated as the deputy for fear that her nomination would lead to a hellish fight in the Senate. “
Like those maniac cars that run down people at Christmas festivals, these taxes are determined to creep up on us.
There is simply no way of controlling them.
Mumble, mumble, mumble , mutter, mutter!
There has been much discussion about this in the UK, with considerable input from people whose only contact with the sharp end of the court system is from reading about the Lucy Letby case.
Synopsis of counterpoints from those who deal with defendants (this is not the same as sympathetic to defendants):
a) Her sentence is delivered regardless – just that she misses a (rare from now on) chance to get out of her cell.
b) Defendants who have nothing more to lose are not beyond bunging on utter bedlam, including but not limited to an almost endless howl, yapping, screeching & other thrashings, throwing themselves at walls, etc that are more in line with what is expected from severe mental patients – this would almost certainly prove to be thoroughly distressing to the parents of the babies & likely counter-productive if the aim is to score moral points to the system & belittle the defendant.
c) When an unwilling sentencing defendant really bungs it on, the hard part falls to the court staff, who aren’t always able to handle an aggravated defendant who seemingly has a death wish. They’re put through considerable stress & physical risk without there being any measurable upside, the defendant is already guilty, the case is over, she’s going to prison for one helluva long time.
My only source here is [can’t think of his name] journalist/writer who served Twenty years in HM prisons for murder. He writes well about prison life & his output was somewhat prolific after his release.
One of his points in his writings is that further education, skills, degrees, etc are available in prison only to those who will ultimately be released.
No educational or vocational resources are allowed or available to those without any hope of release. (She has Seven x “whole of life” sentences)
He states this makes life listless, boring & pointless for “lifers” – with a consequent deleterious effect on the smooth operation of the prison. In effect it peppers the prison with people who’ve a lifetime of spare time, nothing to do & nowhere to go.
What could possibly go wrong?
Lastly, I’ll leave you with this post published from an interview in a pro-Ukrainian paper in Italy, “Il Messaggero”, with a “former chief analyst at SISDE (Italian MI5), now university professor in Rome.”
It synthesizes a lot of the disparate, and sometimes contradictory, elements of the recent information sphere while articulating what everyone “behind the scenes” of the global geopolitical theater has already known and begun acknowledging:
A bath in reality and a change of strategy, which pass through the “tips” of 007 to the media.
Messages directed on the one hand to the White House, on the other to Western public opinion. Thus Alfredo Mantici, former head of analysts at SISDE and now professor of Intelligence at the Unit in Rome, interprets the latest releases in the American press regarding the war scenarios in Ukraine, from the distrust of the US secret services in the effectiveness of the Kiev counteroffensive to exorbitant number (half a million) of Russian and Ukrainian dead and wounded, passing through the proposal made by the NATO chief of staff to grant Ukraine entry into the Alliance in exchange for a ceasefire and the start of negotiations with Moscow.
“The problem – says Mantici – is that we live in a condition of information warfare.”
And what does this mean?
“That on the one hand information is functional in supporting the cause of the good guys against the bad guys, on the other hand it is functional in supporting the politics of those who support the good guys against the bad guys. However, every day the intelligence and military structures, and then also the media, are also confronted with reality.
For over a year and a half we were told that the Russian army was weak and that Putin was crazy and finished, as if Ukraine had now achieved victory.
I have already won a dinner with an illustrious historian who telephoned me on the day of Wagner and Prigozhin’s march on Moscow to say that Putin was at the end of the line.”
And instead?
“Instead, the time has come to confront reality, the one that Intelligence knows well, and test the reactions of public opinion to a truth that is not the one told by propaganda.
The chief of staff of the NATO secretary general a few days ago said what he said about the start of negotiations.
The reaction with official denial was immediate, the poor fellow was cornered and forced into an embarrassing retreat for a technician of that level.”
What is reality?
“The Ukrainians will never win the war, they will never regain all the lost territories, and this feeling is starting to make its way not only on a technical level, but also on a political level.
Then you call your journalist friend who lends himself to divulging the so-called “plausible deniability”, or plausible denial.
Through anonymous sources, Western public opinion is starting to digest the idea that this war will not end with the fall of Putin or with the triumphal march of the Ukrainian army in Red Square.”
And how will it end?
“With a Korean scenario, a war frozen along a ceasefire streak, maybe for 70-80 years.
In my opinion, Putin did not want to invade all of Ukraine, he would not have employed 160,000 men if for the city of Berlin alone Stalin deployed 200,000 and for Czechoslovakia, in 1968, they were 800,000.
Putin wanted Donbass and Mariupol, land connection with Crimea.
It’s time to be realistic.
Ukraine does not have enough men to regain what it has lost. Resisting to the last man makes no sense, just as attacking Bakhmut did not, as US intelligence has underlined.
To attack, the proportion must not be equal but, as everyone knows, at least 3 against one.
The reality of a war is like pregnancy, beyond a certain limit it cannot be hidden.”
She wears Erkos.
Excellent ! I now identify as a proud Wanglamadia and Szekler man.
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Speaking of which, Palaszczuk has threatened to cancel BHP’s mining leases if they cease investing in the state, which they have flagged in response to the recent royalties hike.
Not only would the legal fallout from such a rash action be a disaster, it would raise the spectre of sovereign political risk.
All this “Proud” stuff that we’re being deluged with. Strutting, preening, demanding.
Whatever the referendum result, this toxic stuff won’t stop. Entitlement and anger will simply grow like a boil.
It’s antithesis, of course, is humility.
The West’s attempt to create a Ukrainian scenario in Niger is faltering
African leaders are not suicidal, unlike their counterparts in Kiev, and are thus less willing to do NATO’s bidding
The development of the situation surrounding the possible invasion of Niger by the troops of certain countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is remarkably reminiscent of the discussions that took place on the eve of this summer’s Ukrainian “counter-offensive.”
The West’s African states are in no hurry to embark on a risky adventure. Meanwhile, the US and its Western European allies are urging them to do so. Just as they have been pushing the Ukrainian military to attack fortified Russian positions throughout the spring of 2023.
But there is a significant difference. In the case of Ukraine, we are dealing with a regime that is pursuing a murderous policy towards the territory under its control. African leaders, on the other hand, are not at all willing to take risks for the interests of France and the United States. Therefore, what was a tragedy in Ukraine may turn out to be a farce in West Africa, with the end result being an amicable agreement between all parties concerned.
In both cases, however, the main reason is the same: the West’s desire not to get directly involved in military adventures and to use others to achieve its goals. And if, in the case of Ukraine, the motive for such behavior is fear of retaliation from Russia, in Africa it is a lack of opportunity and desire. All the more so as France and the US are convinced that the ECOWAS political regimes close to them are themselves interested in overthrowing the military authorities in Niger.
There are reasons for this. The coup in Niger on July 26 was the fourth in the region in less than two years (after Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea).
It clearly enjoys the support of a section of the population in one of the world’s poorest countries.
In other ECOWAS countries, the situation is far from festive and the civilian authorities have every reason to fear a domino effect on themselves.
There is reason to believe that the combined forces of Nigeria and several other countries in the community will be sufficient to bring the arrested President Bazoum back to power.
The only thing lacking is adventurism: So far, African leaders have preferred to adopt a wait-and-see attitude, albeit with a show of determination.
Paris and Washington, for their part, are acting in an easily recognizable manner:
They are paying lip service to a peaceful solution, while in practice they are demanding that ECOWAS countries use force against the generals in Niger.
It cannot be ruled out that military support has also been promised, as there are still significant French and American contingents in the country. But direct Western intervention is unlikely.
First, it would involve a certain amount of risk and the need to take responsibility for the consequences.
And, secondly, a direct attack on a sitting government by Western forces would be extremely bad in terms of the battle for the hearts and minds of the developing world.
In essence, the days when the US and its Western Europeans friends could attack any sovereign state on a whim are long gone.
In practice, however, the willingness of Ukrainians, Poles, or Baltics to sacrifice themselves does not mean anything good for the US and Western Europe.
Firstly, it shows that the circle of the truly suicidal in the world community is rather narrow and that there are no fools on other continents.
The lack of shining victories on the international stage and, above all, the growing unwillingness to pay generously to partners is leading to a thinning of the West’s power in world affairs.
If the anti Big Milk were Real Marxists, they would have actively encouraged women to stop breastfeeding, to get them into the workforce, destroying traditional family dynamics and undermining the patriarchy.
KD, there’s one extra salacious step in that progression.
At a meeting with the 4 doctors, NHS managers said they (the managers) preferred babies to keep dying than the spotlight of an investigation be shone onto the hospital.
The panel meeting resulting in police being sooled on, happened only after persons unknown leaked to a journo on the local rag that babies were dying mysteriously on the neo-natal ward in that hospital.
Upon being contacted for comment that they knew would be published, the NHS managers reversed their position.
Spiritual land
Spiritually bleeding.
Making it up as she goes along.
Hopefully the need for more mining royalties trumps bumpkin.
Milton @ 8:06
That’s a liberty quote.
I love the art for this thread. All around me, I see Spring unfurling.
A little water hen has decided to make her nest in the clump of Dietes bicolour at the rear fence. I see the leaves moving and swaying as she weaves them into a solid pad ready for her eggs.
Meanwhile the king proteas are in full bloom, as are the paintbrush lilies. The cumquats in tubs are laden with fruit, ready for me to pick for marmalade and jelly. Unlike our Dutch gardeners in the painting, they didn’t need to overwinter in the glasshouse.
The AFR View – A bit behind Cats postings on this topic
If nuclear power stacks up overseas, why wouldn’t it in Australia?
Canada, the US, UK and Japan are incorporating small modular reactors into net zero energy transitions, so that nuclear power can back up intermittent renewables.
The point of The Australian Financial Review’s Nuclear Option series is not to insist that Australia should belatedly embrace nuclear power as part of the net zero energy transition. Nor is it to claim that nuclear energy in Australia will stack up economically.
The point is to report how other countries such as Canada, the US, Britain and Japan are incorporating small modular reactors (SMR) into net zero energy transitions, so that nuclear power can back up intermittent renewables, as part of the enormous challenge of decarbonising the global economy and minimising climate change while while keeping the lights on.
Factory-built SMRs are not like vast and expensive first-generation nuclear power plants, the stuff of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima “China syndrome” meltdowns.
In the Canadian province of Ontario, less than an hour’s drive from progressive Toronto, a state-owned corporation is building an SMR to supply 1.2 million homes with carbon-free energy.
Canada has much more hydropower than Australia. However, left-wing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau supports “doing much more nuclear” to generate baseload power.
In the United States, Democrat President Joe Biden’s $500 billion Inflation Reduction Act includes production credits for zero-emissions nuclear energy.
In the UK, $38 billion of government subsidies are targeting the rapid uptake of SMRs and aiming to lift the nuclear share of Britain’s power supply from 15 per cent to 25 per cent by early next decade.
The consensus is that Australia’s energy transition is in trouble and not running to timetable.
And despite Japan’s fraught history from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagaski to end World War II to the Fukushima disaster 12 years ago, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is pushing for new-generation nuclear plants to meet the country’s energy needs and its climate commitments.
Back in 1972, turning on nuclear power was part of Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam’s modernising agenda for Australia after 23 years of Coalition rule.
Notwithstanding Australia’s rich deposits of uranium, Australia didn’t follow other countries into the atomic age because of its even more abundant and cheaper supplies of coal to burn to produce electricity.
Now, Australia’s ageing fleet of remaining coal-fired power plants is scheduled to close over the next two decades to help reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The consensus is that Australia’s energy transition is in trouble and not running to timetable.
All options on the table
The Albanese government’s ambitious target of 82 per cent renewable energy by 2030 has collided with the global energy transition supply chain crunch.
The building of thousands of kilometres of new transmission lines to connect wind and solar projects is tangled in environmental approvals and negotiations with landowners.
State Labor governments have rejected gas-fired firming power to help the transition. The Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro scheme is mired in delays and blowouts.
And now the Victorian Labor government has struck a deal to pay AGL to keep its Loy Yang A coal-fired power station running until 2035, to keep the lights on.
As the Business Council of Australia says, the size of the energy transition warrants all technology options, including nuclear, being on the table, rather than being ruled out to placate Labor’s ageing anti-nuke Midnight Oil brigade.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen dismisses Peter Dutton’s support for Australia going nuclear as a political stunt. But that’s just a detour into Australia’s climate wars.
Late last year, South Australian Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas dared to say that much opposition to nuclear power was ideological.
After all, Mr Malinauskas will play host to building nuclear-powered submarines in Adelaide under the AUKUS deal, now written into Labor’s Party platform at the urging of left-wing Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Mr Bowen points to CSIRO research showing nuclear is the most expensive form of replacement energy compared with wind and solar, even when the large cost of transmission lines is included.
Yet other nations are building SMRs on decommissioned coal plant sites to plug into the existing mains.
US industrial giant Dow has used shareholders’ money to replace a gas plant in sunburnt Texas with a zero-emissions SMR.
If the nuclear option stacks up overseas, why wouldn’t it also work in fossil fuel-intensive Australia? The question deserves a serious answer.
For extra points & gain, it may be a better idea to identify as a proud Wanglamadia and Szekler woman.
Just a thought.
They don’t realise how alienating it is to the average person.
I’m still hopeful of a political reset if No prevails.
Calli, they’re the new arch-deacons of the state religion of Gaia, founded on the junk science of climate change, whose primary beliefs (like those of the Aztecs) centre on a) adoration of plants and animals; b) child sacrifice (a.k.a. abortion).
The new belief system requires that the gullible adore all the passing shamans like blackfellah witchdoctors as belief holders of all that is now sacred — for example, renewable energy (designed by dope-smoking hippies with associate diplomas in creative arts).
Meanwhile, most Australian children are apparently experiencing emotional trauma over climate variability, which has been repackaged and sold to them as climate doom.
No-one is allowed to publicly express heresies (like belief in a Christian god) because the social media monopolies are controlled by pagan radical enforcers — the tech shamans of the new religion.
And the war cry of the new religion is NO DISSENT!
FWIW, the referendum has drawn attention to some of the professional Aborigines that blight their cause. Noel Pearson, for example, who lives in Noosa, and Keith Windschuttles expose of the “Big Man” of Arnhem land, with four wives, all in new houses and a helicopter, with pilot to visit whichever lady he fancies.
Test
I’m not taking the word of the New Internationalist at face value.
Here is the ridiculous report which a 50-year boycott has been founded upon.
There’s no real proof or data of anything, just unrelated examples and opinion.
http://archive.babymilkaction.org/pdfs/babykiller.pdf
Dumb people give a poor summary and even dumber people go full morlock.
It’s just ridiculous. Don’t blame the mothers, aid agencies or doctors.
Just rant on about a random product you don’t use and ethics for a 50-year boycott and drive away in your WWII war crime sports car.
Miami Herald
Editorial: Gov. DeSantis starts changing his tune on Disney. Trump made him do it
Apparently when a building permit for restumping is issued it is mandatory for the inspection to include the smoke alarms inside the house.
An additional cost and invasion of privacy because the government cares.
My smoke alarms are hard-wired with nice new back up batteries and perfectly fine thanks Dan.
If you never get a building permit you never get an alarm inspection, I’m surprised an annual inspection for ticket clippers hasn’t been mandated.
I’ve seen a ‘detector inspector’ van driving around so guessing it’s mandatory in commercial buildings.
Woodside dividend $1.25 a share…
Whilst clear felling vast amounts of woodland for wind and solar precincts, massacring billions of birds and bats, and actually killing whales with offshore windmills. The latter is especially ironic since the Green movement cut its teeth on Save the Whales.
Editorial: Biden again follows in footsteps of Jimmy Carter
Love the Cartoon at the bottom!
My son is not a public figure’: Albanese
Gus McCubbing – Reporter
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his son Nathan is “not a public figure” after being questioned about the 23-year-old’s membership to the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge and a two-week unpaid internship with PwC.
The Australian Financial Review’s Rear Window column on Monday revealed Nathan Albanese completed an internship with PwC’s economics and policy unit in Sydney in June 2021 after Mr Albanese discussed it with a PwC partner and previously reported the prime minister never disclosed his son’s Chairman’s Lounge membership in his statement of registrable interests with the parliament.
National Party leader David Littleproud has urged the media not to get into “personal attacks of family members”.
When asked in Melbourne about Nathan’s PwC internship and membership to the invite-only Chairman’s Lounge, the prime minister said: “I completely comply with all the requirements of the register”.
“My son is not a public figure,” Mr Albanese said.
“He’s a young person trying to make his way in the world, and it’s up to you to ask whatever questions you like, but I refer you to David Littleproud’s comments that were entirely appropriate.”
Mr Littleproud earlier told Sky News that he knew Nathan Albanese personally and that “he’ll make a great contribution to wherever he goes”.
“I don’t think we need to get into the personal attacks of family members, from my perspective anyway,” Mr Littleproud said.
Separately, Mr Albanese was also asked whether the Victorian government’s $380 million compensation bill for cancelling the Commonwealth Games was a waste of taxpayers’ money.
“Well, when changes occur, there often is a cost to that. That was a decision for the Victorian government,” Mr Albanese said.
Premier Daniel Andrews announced on July 18 that Victoria had cancelled the Games, which the government had pitched as a boon for towns and cities outside Melbourne. He said the $2.6 billion budgeted for the games threatened to blow out to up to $7 billion.
National Party leader David Littleproud has urged the media not to get into “personal attacks of family members”.
So David Littleproud where were Labor Leader’s defending the attacks on Tony Abbott’s Daughter?
What fifty year boycott?
Bottle feeding was very fashionable when I had my first baby.
So much the hospital had a milk room with a full time nurse.
By the last, no milk room, no milk monitor.
Oops added
National Party leader David Littleproud has urged the media not to get into “personal attacks of family members”.
So David Littleproud where were Labor Leader’s defending the attacks on Tony Abbott’s Daughter?
Ask a lefty and they’ll tell you how proud of their misguided boycott they are. There has been an organised boycott for at least 46 years.
Soon they’ll also be checking your bookshelves for politically suspect material.
(tongue only partly in cheek)
Wanglamadla woman Avelina Tarrago (who is actually a lawyer living in Brisbane)
I find it helpful if pics are posted. I almost, accidentally, linked to this
The Guardian and GetItUp! blames John Howard.
Why is the no vote leading in most states? Larissa Baldwin-Roberts, CEO of progressive activist organisation GetUp, says that Howard-era conservative messaging about First Nations people is ingrained in the Australian psyche and the yes campaign isn’t quite cutting through
Roger, the only reset I see on the horizon is the ALP primary vote falling off a cliff after the punters vote No.
Australians have voted conservative for most election cycles since World War II — mainly because the only alternative is a socialist trade union party, which, in its current radical phase, is hellbelt on making domestic and industrial electricity bills unaffordable for ideological reasons.
The Stupid Frigging Liberals just have to be half-competent to get elected — especially now that Luigi’s loony left has control of federal government policy, including defence and foreign affairs.
Oh, poor Attapuss. They won’t operate this morning because his initial blood tests show he has very high blood sugar even though he’s fasting and they have to do more tests and control any diabetes before they can operate on his teeth.
Just like humans, except no Medicare! The vet assures me that he can still live a long and happy life as a diabetic cat if it is treated. I will go along with it of course. When you love them you want to give them all chances at a good life. So he’ll have the tests, the results will take two days, and then we can address his teeth. I might see if they can give me some painkillers for him in the meantime.
Pets can get like kids, you worry about them so much and feel so responsible. We haven’t overfed him but he’s had a way of getting more to eat than is advisable and is a little bit overweight. We’ll probably have to monitor that more closely now. I suspect neutering a male cat can produce this tendency to grow in girth.
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Aug 21, 2023 10:01 PM
On this site, the last ancestry would see you, your children, and your children’s children, damned to Hell, ZK2A.
The ‘logic’ of this report eludes me, but apparently it’s Zachary Rolfe’s fault that a First Nations man in Alice Springs murdered his wife:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-22/nt-coroner-opens-dv-inquest-into-rubuntja-death-alice-springs/102754686
Jesus Christ that Rolfe thing is a stitch-up.
He related to DV victims as real people and killed a would-be murderer and rapist in self-defence.
Give him a medal, sack the coroner and his police superiors who threw him under the bus.
“So David Littleproud where were Labor Leader’s defending the attacks on Tony Abbott’s Daughter?”
Indeed, and I fail to recall Sleazy condemning that criminal act against Frances Abbott back in 2014, and I have a very, very good memory. Nor do I recall Sleazy, only two years ago, condemning the vicious personal attacks on Jenny Morrison, attacks that implied that she was a white supremacist. More recently, I also fail to recall, Sleazy condemning the vicious attacks on Jacinta Price, in fact I recall Sleazy’s roaring silence only last week, when one of his Voice comrades, a very white man by the name of Marcus Stewart, smeared Jacinta Price as “far-right”.
Actually, I do think there’s a smell behind the Nathan Albanese’s (or whatever surname he uses) internship at PwC, just as I think there’s a stench behind Qantas awarding Albanese Jnr access to the Qantas lounge.
Tis jolly decent that David Littleproud is defending Sleazy Junior. My only comment to David Littleproud is that I can guarantee you that such decency would not be reciprocated. I too, once upon a time, would have decried dragging family members into grubby politics, but that was a different time, a different world, a different country.
Oh and I found Sleazy’s wailing yesterday about his young son being a “private citizen” rather quaint. You see, there’s a young man who was also a private citizen, until Labor weaponised a rape allegation against him to undermine and destroy a Coalition government. That young man never asked for any attention, but he, thanks to Labor, has seen his life destroyed.
I’m tired of being jolly nice and decent. There’s a war going on and when the left throw shit at you, you pick up that shit and and you throw it back.
Don’t they lose a lot?
I would’ve thought that it is indeed cutting through, and the punters aren’t liking the message they’ve being force-fed.
Always a problem when you read the fine detail on a contract from a used-nation salesman.
I like your new gravatar Winston!
(Cats have to have WordPress-fu to be able to see it in its full splendor.)
https://ifunny.co/picture/suzanne-bell-diy-on-abudget-official-35-mins-my-front-lITtsm619
Littleproud could always go for “no comment” about the rank nepotism shown to the fruit of Luigi’s loins.
Perhaps he’s hoping for something for his own kids.
They all stink as only the nomenklatura can stink.
Indolent
Aug 21, 2023 10:34 PM
The Ruling Class Sits atop a Boiling Pot
The bloke has a very good point – our rulers seem utterly unaware of the pressures building beneath their feet – or more’s the case, their well clad, largely dimensioned, arses.
Funny how names work.
It should be Little-pride. Or Littletobeproudof.
Welp
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFZ84K7T
The Boniface Option: A Strategy For Christian Counteroffensive in a Post-Christian Nation Paperback – August 19, 2023
he nationally bestselling co-author of the widely popular book Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide For Taking Dominion And Discipling Nations brings you The Boniface Option: A Strategy For Christian Counteroffensive in a Post-Christian Nation.
You live in a dystopia. Every part of historical human existence in our world has been turned on its head. The world we live in is an inversion of what God created you to live in. All that is good is treated as though it were repugnant. All that is beautiful is treated as though it were repulsive. And the truth is forbidden while the most outrageous lies are exalted. This world did not become like this by accident or by inexorable forces of history. This world was engineered to be this way. It was designed to take the life your ancestors had and tear it apart to prevent you from attaining a normal, human way of life.
Like the Rainbow Serpent, this is a belief which she is quite welcome to hold, but not to inflict on others. Native Title should be repealed and the associated Land Councils disbanded. I sincerely hope that it is repealed by some future government and High Court (with a changed group of judges). It was, and still is, a well-meaning mistake and legal invention of a reality that never existed on mainland Australia. It allows various constraints on land usage on the basis of religion and ethnicity over a wide area of Australia to a very small group of people, which is unjust to the rest of us. Native Title should be replaced by individual Torrens Title to land in regional township areas, land which is allocated with other assistances such as housing loans, all given on the basis of strictly defined need to individuals claiming aboriginality. A government lien on mining royalties could form the financial basis for this largesse. Many people claiming aboriginality would not qualify for land grants on this basis.
Ancient sacred sites that are strongly associated with artifacts and occupation and that have significant material culture elements should be protected only from damage, not from visitation by walkers and climbers, on a sliding scale of significance that ensures the numbers of protected sites are limited.
Aborigines today are in no way ‘custodians’ of land that they no longer roam for hunting and gathering. That myth needs to go. If aboriginal lawyers want to believe in the land as a weeping wound, that’s up to them, and shouldn’t bother us.
Littleproud could always go for “no comment” about the rank nepotism shown to the fruit of Luigi’s loins.
And that’s exactly what it is….”rank nepotism”. And imagine if this was one of Dutton’s sons? Nine Newspapers, The Malchurian Guardian, their ABC, The Project, social media sewers, and so on would be apoplectic with rage at the nepotism shown.
Arky
Aug 21, 2023 11:05 PM
Many, Many upticks. A Galaxy of upticks. I remember watching with rage, Communists destroying priceless artifacts in museums because ‘Bourgeois’.
Bingo!
So, I’m guessing the wedding is off. 😀
Ten points for originality.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-12393843/Italian-high-society-shock-millionaire-banker-throws-ultra-exclusive-engagement-party-Turin-villa-make-accusations-against-fianc-e-speech.html
Not at all. You are probably inferring that any statement about how Russia might be going is pumping Putin’s tyres.
It isn’t, and you’re still uninterested in finding out whether Ukraine had a numerically superior force. But leave that to one side, why would they invade with a numerically inferior force you ask? As I’ve stated previously, because they weren’t interested in capturing the territory of Ukraine. They wanted to force them to the negotiating table. They got them there but the promises of the US/ NATO were, in the end, too much to resist so whatever peace was brokered in Turkey fell through. Once that occurred they had to reorganize their force for a military operation that gave Ukraine no option at all.
They weren’t surprised the Ukrainians had superior numbers against the initial 190K sent in Feb ’22 since they’d been watching what was going on since 2014. As for the stalemate, I’m not sure if that’s true just yet.
Yeah, the stories of his secretly amassed fortune are I think just more of the Russia porn some people have come to love.
Oh yeah, he wears Kiton and Brioni suits and outfits his close Krem buddies when the personal tailer shows up at the Krem for the first of many fittings. They’re around US$75,000 each.
His official salary is equivalent to $140,000 (before the drop in the Rubble).
He must have made a ton reading crypto.
They killed singers, artists, king fu experts and little shih tzus for the perfect society where slobs wouldn’t have to work or face the indignity of envy.
Complete and utter psychopaths.
Trading
Trader Vlad
He told us to HODL!
Why kung fu’ers?
Because their reported population in 2023 is 1.41B and their population is only declining at 0.06%, and it was still growing before 2022. Moreover, half the population is not going to die in the next 27 years. Further, the median age of the population of China was 37 years of age. For the population to half, you would be forecasting that everyone older than 37 in 2020 would be dead in 2050. It’s a ridiculous claim.
They wanted to destroy tradition and “unscientific” belief systems which were rivals to a smiling Uncle Chairman.
The pooches were a sign of decadence.
Dot , Personally I’d go with Brioni. Kiton is far too showy.
You’re coping, dot. If you have air and artillery superiority, and you have as many troops in the field as your enemy, and you’re losing to ‘human wave attacks’ you’re doing something wrong.
moreover, everyone one of your replies has proved over and over again my initial point: If the US could be fought to a stalemate in Korea, the idea that it could overwhelm a near-peer/ peer enemy in Ukraine in a week is reckless fantasy.
Thank you for your service.
Vicki,
From memory when I posted about Kids Saturday Morning Sport at North Curl Curl,
you mentioned that your Daughter lived in North Curl Curl
I,
after a year, have just had completed an Switchboard upgrade at a block of Flats in Cremorne
We always try to use Northern Beaches Trades and the Electricians I used are from North Balgowlah, and besides showing amazing patience in dealing with 3 tenants in trying to arrange upgrade of the switchboard to modern standards, their work was excellent as has been the Eletrcial Jobs they have done at my house in Seaforth
Hope the following may be of use to your Daughter at some future Stage
Simon, Gezz,
as always, yet another job well done by Halo Electrical – appreciate your patience & diligence during the upgrading of the switchboard of the 3 flats to new modern state – co-ordinating 3 Tenants was not easy.
As per work you have done previously at my house in Seaforth, always a pleasure to work with Halo – https://haloelectrical.com.au/
Halo Electrical
6 Bangaroo Street North Balgowlah NSW 2093
We always try to use Northern Beaches Trades, and Halo are our go to for Electrical.
For Plumbing might I recommend
Luke Cordony
T 1300 790 930
M 0415 376 944
W 4elementsplumbing.com.au
F facebook.com/4elementsplumbing
4 Elements Plumbing
Griffiths Street, Balgowlah
NSW, Australia 2093
1300 790 930
[email protected]
Like you, Luke is a Northern Beaches Local and a pleasure to work with.
Regards & Thanks for a Job Well Done
I got a quote for two 2 metre built in wardrobes. Nothing special like gold plated doorknobs or diamond encrusted trim – $14,000 for both.
It was the best laugh I had all day.
Lizzie:
You need to remember that Communists must first destroy their countries economy. It’s what they do, and they do it every bloody time idiots vote them into a position they can do it.
PS they had previously replaced the Switchboard at my house – also 3 Phase
Halo – https://haloelectrical.com.au/
Halo Electrical
6 Bangaroo Street North Balgowlah NSW 2093
Sydney’s CBD is going to be a ghost town. No more new restaurants, for a start.
City of Sydney to ban gas in new homes, businesses (22 Aug)
Well that last one is a lie so enormous it would tower over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but I suppose Greens believe such rot. I wonder if she has a gas stove in her house?
And the dry cleaners.
Don’t forget the dry cleaners.
Crossie
Thanks for your response at 0813.
With customers heading out the door, a reducing number of young workers, and many of those not interested in working, I would avoid investing in China right now!
C.S.M. Jack Kirby should have been awarded a Victoria Cross, for his deeds at Long Tan..
Boambee John
One thing that stands out is that the 20% youth unemployment easily translates into a pool of young men who could be put to good use doing – Oh, I don’t know, but how about having Glorious Adventures somewhere delivering the Incalculable Benefits Of Communism With Chinese Characteristics?
Which would mean Ukraine is equal to the United States and Putin’s invasion was incredibly stupid.
The deplorable Entsch is regrettably, my local member.
I have, on several occasions, advised him to keep up his booster shots.
It would appear, unfortunately, to no avail.
Whatever happened about the grift, he and his wife concocted?
It is only taxpayers money, ….., I guess.
LOL, sure, but why ruin the modest claim that he can’t square that with his civil service salary with the outrageous Russia porn that he has squirrelled away $200B or more, secret mansions, fleets of yachts, etc., etc.
Well said, LizzieB
JC
The Chinese seem to have moved beyond rooted, onto screwed?
Cassie:
Too quick.
The Organ Banks need filling.*
*H/t to Larry Niven.
Non sequitor of the week.
Is electricity getting cheaper, BTW?
If gas cooking was completely banned in Chinatown, the entire precinct would shut down. They won’t do that, of course, even though out of the other side of their mouths they claim that stir-fry cooks are in dire danger.
The new breed of graduates infesting the modern media wouldn’t know logic if it tossed them over high heat with garlic and ginger.
Clive Palmer’s coal mine would be as bad as 1.7 million Hiroshima bombs.
What harm could one coal mine do? 1.7 million Hiroshima bombs of heat for starters, says physicist (Phys.org, 21 Aug)
Maybe, son, because climate impacts aren’t, like, actually intensifying. Nothing much is happening, except in computer models. Here’s who this idiot is:
Sigh. We’re can really grow ’em in this country.
Zeihan claims the peak was around 2010 and therefore China has been on a population descent since. So can a population collapse by 1/2 in 40 years?I think I worked out that would be a rate of decay of around 1.25% which is a bit high. He’s likely to be wrong but the drop of 8.5% in the birth rate per annnum over the past 5 odd years is eye catching. Also, Zeihan claims the peak was 1.3 billion as the provinces were lying in order to glom more funding from Beijing.
But here’s the thing. You called it dumb without anything backing it up until you were asked.
I’ll tell you what’s really dumb. Linking to Martie Armstrong who claims he possessed sentient AI in the 80’s and the thing was alive a well even during the 11 years he spent in Leavenworth.
I’ve never seen you comment about that.
You reckon that claim was pretty dumb? 🙂
The Ecomomist
Europe – Frustrated expectations
Ukraine’s sluggish counter-offensive is souring the public mood
The government is worried
The disappointing pace of Ukraine’s counter-offensive has been the focus of international headlines for weeks.
For Anastasia Zamula the consequences have been more tangible. Ms Zamula is a co-founder of Cvit (Blossom), an all-women volunteer organisation that supports Ukrainian units on the front line.
Her crowdfunding appeals have struggled as hopes of a quick breakthrough have dwindled.
Now she says her attention is devoted to counselling exhausted troops whenever she sees them. “The idea of a counter-offensive is bliss when you talk about it from an armchair,” she says. “It’s much harder when you understand that it means darkness, death and despair.”
The public mood is sombre.
Criticism of Volodymyr Zelensky, the president, has increased, and the reasons for the dissatisfaction are clear.
Having once promised a march to Crimea, occupied and annexed by Russia since 2014, the political leadership in Kyiv now emphasises more realistic expectations.
“We have no right to criticise the military sitting here in Kyiv,” says Serhiy Leshchenko, a spokesman in the presidential office. He likened frustration with the speed of the counter-offensive to impatient customers waiting for their iced lattes in the capital’s many hipster cafes.
“This isn’t a horse you can whip to go faster. Every metre forward has its price in blood.”
Ukraine’s leadership is particularly frustrated that Western equipment has not yet arrived in its promised numbers.
It is “upsetting…and demotivating,” Mr Leshchenko says. Equivocation among allies about the supply of newer weapons, and the prospect of America re-electing Donald Trump next year, have added to Ukrainian anxieties.
A source in the general staff says that Ukraine has received just 60 Leopard tanks, despite the promise of hundreds. Demining vehicles are particularly scarce. “We simply don’t have the resources to do the frontal attacks that the West is imploring us to do,” says the source.
Lack of air cover is another difficulty. The source adds that Ukraine’s army was never blind to the challenges of breaching Russian minefields and defence lines without air superiority. (On August 20th the Dutch and Danish prime ministers said they would donate up to 61 of the jets, starting in the new year.)
For that reason the military leadership delayed the counter-offensive as long as it could.
After a disastrous start in early June, when two Western-trained brigades lost an uncomfortable number of men and equipment in minefields, the initial plans were adjusted.
Ukraine has since prioritised preserving its army. “We no longer plan operations that presuppose large losses,” says the source. “The emphasis is now on degrading the enemy: artillery, drones, electronic warfare and so on.”
In recent days Ukraine’s armed forces have made important advances in the crucial southern theatre, and may have breached enough minefields to reach the first of three lines of Russian fortifications in several locations. They have also degraded Russia’s operational reserve and logistics. Still, two-and-a-half months in, Ukraine remains a long way off its strategic goal of nearing the Azov sea—and thus cutting Russia’s seized land corridor to Crimea—before the rains of late October, when mud will make for much harder going.
The grim mood is spilling over into Ukraine’s politics, which have been on hold for much of the war.
Rumours have circulated all summer that Mr Zelensky’s office may call early parliamentary and presidential elections.
The logic is that it is better for him to seek re-election while still a national hero, rather than after being forced into peace talks that might require an unpopular ceasefire or major territorial concessions.
“Any election, if it happens, would be a referendum on Zelensky,” says Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst. “Apart from [commander-in-chief Valery] Zaluzhny, who is busy running the war, he currently has no obvious competitor. Zelensky’s team understands that could change.”
Conducting an election during a war, with up to 6m Ukrainian citizens living outside the country and hundreds of thousands fighting away from home, would be complex.
And martial law precludes elections, meaning parliament would have to approve a change in electoral rules.
The talk was initially of holding both elections this autumn, but it is now almost certainly too late for that—indeed, sources close to the presidential office insist the idea has been ruled out.
In any case, polling suggests that Mr Zelensky’s team would have trouble persuading citizens of the need for an early vote. “There just isn’t a demand for it,” says Lubomyr Mysyv of Rating, a Kyiv-based sociological group. “The population is confused by the very idea.”
In the absence of a military breakthrough, peace negotiations with Russia would be an even harder sell.
True, there have been some signs of a shift in mood, in unexpected quarters. In early August a Ukrainian sniper fighting north-west of Bakhmut made waves by dismissing the prospect of Ukraine ever regaining its full territory.
He suggested that many soldiers would now welcome a ceasefire—a notion that would once have been unthinkable. But for now, few would agree. Too much blood has been spilt. “Any peace now is delayed war,” says the general-staff source. “Why hand the problem to the next generation?”
Many of Ukraine’s young are, of course, already bearing the burden of a war that has no end in sight. For young men, in constant danger of being served conscription papers and sent to the front, the pressure is particularly intense.
Those keen to fight volunteered long ago; Ukraine is now recruiting mostly among the unwilling.
“It makes the air so thick that you can actually feel it,” says Ms Zamula. Everyone knows that the cost of regained territory is dead soldiers. “Even hoping for success in the counter-offensive has become an act of self-destruction.”
Europe – The booming baguette
French bakeries are thriving in unlikely places
Boulangeries are spreading out of town—and onto roundabouts
On a soulless roundabout at a motorway junction, next door to a Burger King and opposite McDonald’s, stands a newcomer to the world of fast-food in France: a boulangerie, or French bakery. With ample parking, the Boulangerie de l’Ovalie, just off the A7 north of Avignon, offers its car-borne customers the staple croissants and baguettes, as well as quiche and snacks. The boulangerie is traditionally a feature of the village square or high street, part of the civic density which urbanists laud in France. Yet now, it is flourishing as an out-of-town drive-in or drive-to experience.
It is an unexpected time for the baguette to boom, let alone on the country’s urban fringes. Rising energy and flour prices have pushed the price of the humble stick over the symbolic one euro in some places. Older folk still recall the time in the 1970s when it went for one French franc. Yet in 2022 more new boulangeries opened their doors in France than closed, according to Altares, a research group. Across the country 2,538 new bakeries set up shop last year. In the Paris region, the fastest growth has taken place not in the capital’s built-up walkable centre, but its low-density outer suburbs—catering to the motorist.
Marie Blachère, a chain of boulangeries installed on roundabouts and other car-accessible edge-of-town sites, now has over 700 outlets across France; 70 opened last year alone. It provides industrial-scale kitchens for artisan baguettes, made from dough prepared, kneaded and baked on the premises, a condition in France for use of the label boulangerie. With turnover of over €550m, it ranks as one of the top ten fast-food chains in France. In the city of Chartres, Cyril Avert boulangerie serves baguettes to motorists at the wheel, as a pure drive-through service. So does Jules & John, in over 20 towns in France.
The drive-in or drive-to fad is not welcome news for the boulangeries on narrow town-centre streets, many of which are struggling with rising costs. But it does reflect a stubborn fact about France, which those who govern from its city centres neglect at their peril. In 2021 82% of French households owned at least one vehicle, and many in outer suburbs and semi-rural parts depend on it for work. The French remain as attached to their daily, or even twice-daily, baguette as they do to their use of the car.
EU state names k?y condition for F-16 donation to Ukraine
Denmark say Kiev must use Western fighter jets only on its own territory
F-16 fighter jets set to be donated to Kiev by Denmark and the Netherlands must only be used on Ukrainian territory, Danish Defense Minister Jakob Ellemann-Jensen said on Monday.
As reported by Reuters, the minister stressed that the two EU states will “donate the weapons under the condition that they are used to drive the enemy out of the territory of Ukraine. And no further than that.”
“Those are the conditions, whether it’s tanks, fighter planes or something else,” Ellemann-Jensen added.
Danish Conservative Party Chairman Soren Pape Poulsen has also insisted that the US-designed planes must not operate beyond Ukrainian territory under any circumstances.
“It is important that they will be used for self-defense in Ukraine. The idea is that the planes are not to be used to enter and attack Russia,” Poulsen said, stressing that “we must remember that there is a dividing line there.”
On Sunday, both Denmark and the Netherlands announced that they would provide Kiev with long-demanded F-16s, as Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky paid a visit to an airbase in Eindhoven to meet with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
During a joint press conference, the Dutch leader said that while his country was in possession of 42 F-16 jets, it was as yet unclear how many it would actually donate to Kiev. Zelensky, however, later suggested in a Telegram post that the Netherlands would hand over its entire fleet.
Simultaneously, Denmark released a statement announcing that it would provide Kiev with F-16s, but likewise did not specify how many jets it would send, noting only that certain “conditions” would have to be met for the transfer to be fulfilled.
Although it is currently unclear when exactly the jets will be delivered, the decision by the Netherlands and Denmark has been met with condemnation from opposition parties in both countries.
Rutte in particular has been criticized for announcing the delivery without obtaining approval from the Dutch parliament, and just as he is about to leave government.
“Madness. Dutch F-16s to Ukraine to attack Russian targets. Even now that Rutte is outgoing, he drags the Netherlands even further into war,” wrote the right-wing Forum for Democracy party on X (formerly Twitter). Instead, the party called for neutrality, an end to arms deliveries to Ukraine, and a move towards peace negotiations.
Moscow has also repeatedly urged the collective West to stop delivering increasingly advanced weaponry to Kiev, arguing it would only prolong the hostilities rather than change their ultimate outcome.
I’ll even round it off for you. A dude earning 140K a year doesn’t buy tailer made suits costing 75m apiece a dozen times over. And yes, if you’re spending that kind of green on swanky Italian suits, the mansions, boats etc are parked somewhere. I’ll leave the plane out of it as I’m sure the Krem officially supplies that.
I could be wrong though, perhaps he has an official clothing allowance which may not attract fringe benefit taxes. 🙂
Do you know if there’s FBT in Russia?
Thanks for your excellent memory, Cassie, that is able to help us keep tabs on all of the times when the left have hoed into family members and other innocent folk on the centre-right side of politics just because it suited them to do so.
Gloves off. That’s the way. Give it back to them now.
he can still live a long and happy life as a diabetic cat
one of my moggies is diabetic .. easy way to tell & save on vet’s bills to spend on food .. LOL! .. main symptom of cat diabetes .. EATING ..! never, bloody, ending eating unless you put ’em on a strict diet .. ie: keep food out of reach except at meal-time(s) .. LOL! ..
The long and the short of it is that the us imposed a puppet regime in the Ukraine with a view to goading and harrassing Russia. The us wanted this war. The Washington war machine is a total abomination. Funny how those degenerate parasites in DC seek to destroy the us economy and society while simultaneously want to bully the world.
No, at most, it would also mean that the idea that Russia planned to militarily defeat Ukraine in 3 days was propaganda. But at least you’ve stopped with the ‘human wave’ palaver.
They are the Little Emperors, only sons, sometimes the only sons of only sons. Losing large numbers of them in even a successful invasion of Taiwan, much less an unsuccessful attempt, would, to put it tactfully, not be good for internal stability in China. Chinese culture has not yet been separated from the familial culture of the past.
To paraphrase Sir Humphrey, “A courageous decision, Chairman Xi”.
I’m not going into the ins and outs of it, but the people of Ukraine deserve our sympathy and respect. It must be terrible. Thanks for that update Old Ozzie.
I really want Trump to get in and fix it before it gets worse. I think he could do it.
This isn’t a tutorial room, JC. People are perfectly free to say X without showing their work until asked.
They may be simply because I think Armstrong really isn’t worth addressing and most people here are of the same mind.
Bon, General Sir John Monash would be embarrassed the drivel that comes from a university bearing his name.
Good riddance!
The FBT is part of the FSB. Before it was the KGB and before that the NVKD. You may think I’m joking but they’re the ones collecting the FBT.
Diabetes is never just one thing, one disease, it is a complex set of intermingling and co-determining, and cascading hormones and physiological responses… tho’ I know more about it in humans than in cats. Vet says no real evidence that castrated male cats are more prone to it, but I suspect underdiagnosis and sampling errors there. Hard to say.
You could get 250 cats for that anywhere in the country.
We heard that on the border areas of North Korea there is a lot of trade in young Korean girls to become wives of the men demographically denied a wife in China.
Or perhaps these suits, watches, etc. are just organized for him in order to curry good favour. Who knows?
calli
Aug 22, 2023 9:09 AM
I bet Avelina had her children in a hospital (staffed with nurses who didn’t kill their patients) and if needed, flown or transported in ambulances to ICUs. Not delivered under a gum tree with wallabies and snakes in attendance, and an elderly grandmother who had survived long enough to do the job in their perfect, natural, free of whitey, paradise.
Indolent:
403 Forbidden.
Nope. All cats cost money to obtain and keep responsibly. Attapuss was a refuge welfare kitten from a South Coast veterinary practice. He cost $150 six years ago plus a donation towards neutering and injections. And that’s just the start of it. Cats cost a lot to feed properly, and they have to have essential yearly feline enteritis and other shots (a combo into one), worm and flea treatments, and a general yearly checkup.
You can have bad luck. We offered a home to a distressed uncared for young adult cat we called Lulu, who came from a struggling young family on the south coast who could no longer afford to keep her. We had to immediately get her spayed, at a cost of over $300 seven years ago, and then a month later she did a runner on us. Disappeared one morning. Never found again, in spite of my energetic advertising and searching. Then we got Attapuss.
You can pay up to $5000 for a special or rare breed of cat.
Moggies like Attapuss, with his beautiful white bib, sox and tail tip are just as lovely.
He’s like a special little tiger, and highly amusing to have around at times.
And we have not yet reached peak media stupid.
Lizzie, it’s not that hard. There will be some ceding of territory and, to prevent future need for war, population exchanges. If Russian populations feel unsafe in Ukrainian territories then they will need to move to Russian held regions and the same for Ukrainian populations in Russian held lands.
“‘custodians’ of land”
I don’t see the custodians taking responsibility for the bushfires.
I know just the candidate – Lisa Wilkinson.
It’s very likely that they will choose someone even worse than her.
Roger
Aug 22, 2023 9:34 AM
Roger, that spectre has already been raised in Australia with the COVID farce.
Their OWN propaganda.
Unless they planned to have lost all of those tanks.
But it wasn’t a feint…it was deNazification!
Cope cope cope
This may be well-presented and respectable propaganda, but can someone confirm if they are lying about what the Russian officials said?
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-invasion-ukraine-intelligence-putin/31748594.html
calli
Humility from people who screech their superiority every chance they get?
And that superiority being paid for by the very people they denigrate?
That attitude is one of the things that get Australians backs up, and rightfully so.
Brittany Higgins?
French bakeries are thriving in unlikely places
Passed by a bakery in the back-streets of Munich. People queuing out the door.I joined the queue for food. The bread / small baguettes were fantastic. Better than in Oz. Worth the wait.
I also wanted to prepare myself for Albo and Chalmers new capitalism, and thought it prudent to get some of that waiting in long lines for food lived experience under the belt.
From Flat White at the Spectator Albonocchio: Albanese struggles with truth-telling
Mark Powell
Original artwork by Ben Davis
22 August 2023 4:30 AM
Anthony Albanese seems to be struggling with the concept of truth-telling, at least when it comes to the topic of The Voice…
The Prime Minister firstly spoke from what Rowan Dean referred to as ‘both sides of his mouth’, saying to Indigenous Australians that we shouldn’t ‘be content with modest change’ but then to everyone else he insisted The Voice was only a ‘modest request’. It cannot be both.
Second, Mr Albanese said to Ben Fordham that The Voice had nothing to do with a Treaty, when the Explanatory Memorandum for The Voice clearly demonstrates that it does.
Third, he said that the Uluru Statement from the Heart was only one-page when Peta Credlin had shown that it was part of a 26-page document (which can be viewed here).
And then finally, Albanese admitted to Neil Mitchell that he hasn’t ‘even read’ the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full, despite repeatedly promising to implement it in full.
Oh dear… If this is a indicative of the ‘truth-telling’ which is supposed to come after the referendum – we are in more trouble as a nation than myself and many others fear. John Anderson, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, has also warned that The Voice is founded upon at least four myths, or you could even say, untruths.
I was recently speaking at a religious debate on The Voice with John Anderson where he powerfully argued how undemocratic the whole process around The Voice had become. Anderson said:
‘You’ve had this antidemocratic approach of not trying not trying to take everyone with you. It’s the vibe, not engaging the mind, not trying to explain how it could work. You’ve had obvious obfuscation on the fact that adopting the Uluru Statement in full does mean much more than just recognition and a voice. It means we try to go through a series of treaty making arrangements. Now, whatever you think of that it’s deceptive to try and deny it. It’s deceptive. You shouldn’t be in that game. We’ve broken trust enough in the political process without exacerbating it.’
Anderson then went on to say:
‘My point here more than anything else is that this should be a process of transparency. You’re absolutely free in this country, if your Prime Minister yourself to say, “I believe in The Voice. I believe in treaties. I believe in reparations. I believe in Makarrata. I believe in truth-telling. But it hasn’t been transparent. He’s had to backtrack and deny…and the disingenuousness of going around for years saying the Uluru Statement is 26 pages long and then suddenly it’s only one-page long? It’s breaking trust.’
John Anderson is right. Anthony Albanese has broken trust with the Australian people on The Voice. The Prime Minister has failed to be fully transparent and has consistently obfuscated as to what The Voice will actually entail.
Truth-telling is paramount. Not only with our nation’s history, but also with our country’s political leadership. As Anderson said at the end of the debate:
‘I am fed up, as a sixth or seventh generation Australian with people saying it’s all in the historical past. Our children will rightly judge us for our blindness and our smugness and to the fact that a great deal of the problems – not just in terms of Indigenous disadvantage – are because we have said, anything goes.
‘And maybe, instead of repenting on behalf of our forebears, we might begin with a bit of repentance ourselves of the way that we consistently ignore simple things, like insisting on decency and the law of the land for people who can’t speak up for themselves.’
I was thinking Britneigh H. Unfortunately she will never work again. So the gig should be perfect for her.
Albonochio …that term is a keeper.
Faark! Check out that DEW strike at 5:04!
WEF Admits Maui Wildfires Orchestrated To Transform Hawaii Into 15 Minute Cities
Hmmm …… diabetic and bad teeth, 2 things that would be unknown in the wild. Is said puss getting a ‘species appropriate diet’, or the same carb filled crap that humans are now suffering from? My mothers fat fox terrier was put on a special diet of vet supplied expensive ‘kibble’ and remains stubbornly overweight and perenially hungry. The ingredients list included all sort of grains, carbs and ‘numbered ingredients’ which would again be unknown in neighbour. My suggestion that she should try feeding him raw meet for a month was of course a bridge too far – she wants to keep on the special diet the vet is prescribing – without success so far.
Honestly, the same disastrous big food/big pharma/big health business model is being run in both the human and the animal worlds.
Parents should be not only suing the hospital but the ‘bosses’ personally — that will shorten the bullshit up quick smart — accountability
Can someone explain to me why you need a doctor’s referral for Medicare reimbursement? This procedure is minimally invasive (no pants down).
I asked a doctor about a physio question and they laughed and told me to ask a physio.
It is all such a racket.
To stop everybody engaging in it, JC.
Roger
Went into two shops this AM, wearing a “Vote no and find out what happened to Your $39 Billion last financial year” T shirt. Two stops and whispered ‘Good on ya” + 3 thumbs up.
I’ll be in Longreach tomorrow, not sure which one to wear.