Open Thread – Wed 27 Sept 2023
1,437 responses to “Open Thread – Wed 27 Sept 2023”
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In The Russia House Le Carre spends a lot of time through his characters discussing the idea of the Russian soul. It’s fascinating.
Le Carre has copped some criticism for the way he finds a moral equivalence between the two sides in the Cold War.
Were he still alive he’d certainly be an anti Trumper. Pity. He never wrote about Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt because he’d be much too sympathetic.
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Reuters:
MOSCOW/NEW DELHI, Sept 28 (Reuters) – Russia is selling oil to India at nearly $80 per barrel, some $20 above the Western price cap, traders said and Reuters calculations showed, as tight global oil markets help Moscow generate strong appetite for its exports.
Russia’s main export grade Urals has been trading above the $60 per barrel Western price cap since mid-July amid output cuts by OPEC+ producers, including Saudi Arabia and Russia.
So much for sanctions.
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Russians have a soul steeped in melancholy.
I went to a concert with Junior Baby Bird earlier this year in which Shostakovich was performed. Being more familiar with Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, he found it hard to connect with the music.
Until the very end when the disparate parts draw together into something human and ineffably profound.
I am not sure we in the cossetted West understand the fatalism of the Slavs. Or their love of artistic beauty. I remember having tears in my eyes the first time I watched the Marinsky Ballet perform Swan Lake in Perth. When that curtain lifted, I was not prepared for the sheer visual spectacle that was before me.
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Forgot to mention that Oetsi also had a large framed backpack to carry a lot of his stuff. It looked remarkably modern.
Another Luigi, and a better one than ours, is found here in Fiera di Primuero. This morning we explored this small town and found an interesting little reserve dedicated, to the memory of Luigi Negrelli (1788-1855), born in this town, who became a famous engineer and administrator in both Austria and Italy. Apparently he was a ‘railroad pioneer in the 1850’s and protagonist of the late 1800’s European Kingdoms’, but his main claim to a fame which has gone largely unrecognised is that he was the originator of the design for the Suez Canal. Those honours were taken by de Lesseps, although Alois Negrelli’s name does come up re the 1846 efforts.
Sixty steps in a zig zag set of landings after each fifteen are said to represent, as you look down on the way they form a pattern, the original path of the Suez Canal as envisioned by Negrelli. They lead up to a fifteenth century small church and a sixteenth century Basilica, both extremely beautiful with original external frescos on the smaller one. On the larger basilica, we found near the altar a familial fresco from 1550 memorialising a son lost in some battle, depicted in his full knight’s armour. About the last of the Medieval armoured knights, for gunpowder took off to change warfare in the next century. The 1600’s brought more wealth to the town and worthies paid for beautiful elaborate altars on each side of the entrance then. The large basilica is placed on the site of some very early Christian fonts and altars, possibly seventh century, shown in archaeological excavations done within the basilica.
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Feinstein dead; now the rest of the demorat pustules and about 70% of the spineless GOP need to follow suit.
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No shit Serge, that’s a lot of curry you’ll be eating for a couple of hundred years.
India has Russia over an oil barrel
Russia is selling hundreds of millions of barrels of crude oil to India — but instead of the dollars and euros the Kremlin needs to plug holes in its budget, it’s earning mountains of rupees that are proving hard to spend.
So far this year, India has already bought more than half a billion barrels of crude, an almost tenfold increase since 2021, the year before the war, according to statistics collected by analytics firm Kpler. As a result, an estimated $1 billion worth of rupees is landing in Moscow’s coffers each month.
Over the weekend, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov acknowledged the dilemma. “We’ve accumulated many billions of rupees that we haven’t yet found a use for,” he said during a press conference following the G20 summit in New Delhi.
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Love those Rupees. So much better than the buck.
You gotta laugh and the bullshit people believe. Like getting thrown of SWIFT is no biggie.
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Mother Lobe 29/9 @ 7:48
Gillard in her days in the cesspit of the idiotic student union foisted this idiot notion of year of the lesbian. This garbage put out that lesbian love is the highest love while women who married were the lowest form of slut lower than prostitutes.
So now she has a boyfriend goes to afl finals etc. now lives in Brighton in Adelaide – Aussie beach suburb – surfers and full of glorious blondes – suburban homes with standard land size from the 50s – pricey . Drives her jaguar – full of shit.
Tell you to live in sludge and she opts for luxury. -
Luzu, seeing Coppelia done by Saddler’s Wells in the Shakespeare Theatre on the banks of the Avon in Stratford on a school trip as a child of eleven introduced me to ballet. I’ve never lost the love of it. I read everything there was to read about Pavlova;s life in Russian ballet schools and Diaghilev’s wonderful Ballet Russe. A local librarian in Sydney’s (then) bleak and cultureless outer-western suburbs sourced me many books full of exotic pictures that I could loose myself in when I did my simple ballet class in a local church hall.
Still dancing, at eighty-one, and will as long as I can muster the strength for it. Or even hints of it.
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Warren Mundine’s article in the Oz at the moment is an excellent summary of the way forward for aboriginal advancement, and a far cry from the nonsense of the Voice.
I hope it gets widely listened to and voted upon, for it is sterling work. He and Jacinta make such a great team; as an Australian I am so proud of them both. By no means on my onesome there either, I know, but a long way from home it is good to feel the warmth and good feelings they generate for Aussie’s everywhere.
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dover0beach
Sep 29, 2023 10:49 PMNavalny’s audience is largely overseas. He’s like the protesters you see during a colour revolution holdings signs in English.
wow.
So there really would be no point in holding fair elections, eh? Nobody in Russia was interested in what Navalny was selling? -
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Lizzie, I love dance too! I especially love Argentine Tango, but my beloved wants us to learn Swing again…
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Argentine tango… oh, Noelia Hurtado y Carlitos Espinoza..
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Give what up, you bigoted doofus. You’ve worked in every shithole in the world and now trying to prove you’re some sort of genius. You don’t fool anyone with these try hard attempts you’re some genius and when shown to be an idiot with a keyboard, you accuse others of lying. Stop talking to me and stop the shadowing you laughable clown.
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dover0beach
Sep 30, 2023 12:01 AMNavalny has about 10% support in Russia. He’s a threat only in the sense of being a frontman for an NED-style colour revolution.
Was that a Rasmussen poll? Obviously then, he wasn’t a threat, so why attempt to poison him and when that didn’t work, put up trumped up charges and jail him for life? What’s wrong with allowing people to decide or is that too big a stretch?
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This is one of the funniest times I’ve experienced here. The sanctions haven’t worked; I’m/we’re constantly reminded by the international finance experts here.
Oh, Oh Reuters is saying Russia is selling oil at no discount to India, and we find that India is paying with rupees that Russia has no use for and can’t convert the “valuable” rupee hoard because the currency isn’t readily convertible without Indian government approval, which is not being given (like China). Meanwhile, the rubble has collapsed 50% over the year, and we’re told this has zero impact on the Russian economy. This is like a parallel universe where nothing matters except personal beliefs and bias.
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Rosie
Sep 30, 2023 9:33 AM
Couldn’t help noticing in Japan how cheap many household items were compared to here, quality seemed okay too.
Australians seem to pay through the nose for everything.Middle Australia is afloat on a raft of imported shit that used to be made here.
I have recently banned Sunbeam products now made in China but with a “Designed in Australia” logo prominently displayed on the box.
What has happened, I suspect, is the company closed down the factory lines, kept all the office wukkas and put their production people on the street.
Much cheaper than upgrading the production lines and putting the hard word on Canberra to loosen the reins of union dominance. -
miltonf
Sep 30, 2023 10:37 AM
Dogs are wonderful friends- mine is sitting under my desk now.I’m looking for a new dog right now.
Medium to older female, medium size, short hair.
Personality – one that matches mine. Happy to sleep all day, refuses exercise, eats anything that fits in its mouth, etc. Is retired and bloody well means it. Will, on special occasions, walk after a thrown ball and sniff it then walk back. Hates snakes.
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