Open Thread – Mon 9 Oct 2023


The Fishmarket, Dieppe 2, Camille Pissarro, 1902

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

2K Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Robert Sewell
October 11, 2023 3:13 pm

Can I go to a protest and shout “Gas Hamas!”
No I certainly cannot.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 3:14 pm

Roman frescoes in perfect condition discovered in Naples

Waterworks in Giugliano, a suburb of Campania (Naples), have uncovered an untouched chamber tomb full of frescoes ceilings, and walls in pristine condition.

The tomb was found on farmland during an archaeological survey in advance of updates to the city water supply system.

The room has the ceiling and walls frescoed with mythological scenes, Ichthyocentaurs (a pair of sea gods with the upper bodies of men) holding a clypeus on the front wall, festoons that go all around the funerary chamber, and figurative representations among which a three-headed dog stands out, hence the name of the mausoleum as the Tomb of Cerberus.

The striking painting that has given the tomb its monicker depicts the 12th and most dangerous of the Labors of Hercules: when he descended to Hades guided by Mercury to capture the three-headed monster dog Cerberus.

The frescoes are perfectly intact and still maintain their brilliant color. Preliminary estimates date the tomb to around 2,000 years ago.

A test excavation uncovered numerous ancient burials, inhumations, and cremations dating back at least 400 years, from the Republican to the Imperial eras.

At the edge of the necropolis, archaeologists found an opus incertum (masonry style using different shapes and sizes of uncut stone) wall. It proved to be the front wall of a chamber tomb and like the interior, it too was in outstanding condition, still sealed with a heavy tufa slab over the square entrance.

Three painted klìnai, an altar with vessels for libations, the inhumed still placed on the funeral beds with rich objects, complete the picture of a discovery which, in this area, is unprecedented.

P
P
October 11, 2023 3:14 pm

Today is the Feast of Saint John XXIII, Pope.

CNA – 2014

“John XXIII should serve as an example for all men of the need to bring together peoples of different races, faiths and beliefs,” former immigration and absorption minister Yair Tzeven voiced during the May 13 event, according to the Jerusalem Post.

The paper reports in a May 13 article that during the encounter members of the parliament, known as the Knesset, gave special attention to the saint’s efforts in saving Jews during the holocaust while serving as Apostolic Nuncio to Turkey.

“John XXIII made tremendous efforts to save Jews, and because of him thousands of Jews were indeed saved.”

Observing how “this special person served just five years as pope,” Herzog recounted how “He took up the post at age 77 and initiated a massive revolution;” one which “established that Judaism was the older brother to Christianity.”

calli
calli
October 11, 2023 3:14 pm

This morning, someone I thought I knew a bit better spoke very dismissively and cruelly about what happened in Israel this week. Still trying to process the type of mind that thinks like that and the type of mouth that gives voice to it. It’s a recalibration of tolerance and respect, and it’s rather painful.

I thought I’d heard everything, but I was wrong.

flyingduk
flyingduk
October 11, 2023 3:16 pm

Oct 11, 2023 1:42 PM
The horror in Israel has put the failure of Western multiculturalism on shocking display

Correct: multi-racial populations are fine – provided they share a common culture. Culture is the agreed upon set of rules and beliefs that a society operates on. Multi-culturalism *always* means multiple sets of rules and beliefs, which can never work. Like having 2 (or more) sets of traffic rules – it can only lead to misunderstandings and crashes.

Robert Sewell
October 11, 2023 3:18 pm

Top Ender:

“We don’t have the powers to stop (thousands of) people from convening at Town Hall.”

NSW government dog whistle to the terrorists to over run the police.

flyingduk
flyingduk
October 11, 2023 3:21 pm

The issue here isn’t with free speech so much as it is – does this sound familiar? – authorities deciding what constitutes acceptable speech.

My point exactly ….. 2 years ago my ability to ‘shout fire’ at the Covid response was censored …. problem is, I was right, there was a fire…

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 3:23 pm

‘Purely racist’: Inside New Zealand’s growing right-wing movement against Maori ‘co-governance’

As Australia prepares to vote on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, one of our neighbours is grappling rising tensions over a vote they “weren’t given”.

Julian Batchelor may be the most hated man in New Zealand right now.

The evangelical author and former school principal leads a growing movement opposed to the country’s Maori “co-governance” model, attracting thousands of people to a series of packed events since the start of the year where the 65-year-old rails against what he calls “apartheid” and a “coup by stealth”.

Leading No campaigners including former Prime Minister Tony Abbott have tried to compare the Voice to Parliament to New Zealand’s co-governance – a suggestion rejected by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – and Mr Batchelor says he has been watching the debate “very closely”.

“Because it’s a mirror image of what’s happening over here, except we’re more advanced than you,” he said.

“Whatever you do, don’t vote Yes. It’s led to a disaster in New Zealand. We weren’t given a referendum, it’s been forced upon us. It’s led to widespread corruption – corruption of the media, corruption of the Treaty of Waitangi, our founding document, the passing of legislation by stealth, the birth of apartheid and racism and racial division. New Zealand at the moment is a country on its knees and it’s all because of the co-governance agenda pushed by our government for the last six years.”

In January, Mr Albanese stressed that the Voice was nothing like New Zealand’s co-governance model. “The fact is this is not a co-governance model at all,” he said. “It’s subservient to the parliament.”

An opinion poll last month suggested nearly half – 48 per cent – of New Zealand voters believe there should be a referendum on Maori co-governance, and 45 per cent do not want more of it.

The Post/Freshwater Strategy poll of 1511 voters also found a similar pushback on Maori language – 49 per cent said government departments should be known by their English name, and 45 per cent opposed a currently stalled proposal for road signage to be written in Maori as well as English.

“New Zealanders don’t like being divided by race, no one asked them if it was OK and they want it to stop,” ACT leader David Seymour told The Post in response to the poll.

“Most people I meet want to cherish the Maori language and culture, but they also want to be able to navigate the government they pay for in a language they understand. Forcing the Maori language on people causes them to resent it, which is a massive own goal. There is clear support for ACT’s proposal to have a referendum on Treaty principles, and a say on co-government. Dividing people by race has never worked and it has no place in a modern multiethnic liberal democracy.”

NZ First leader Winston Peters, who is half Maori, has vehemently opposed co-governance.

“There is a secret agenda,” Mr Peters told Australian broadcaster Alan Jones last September.

“Without any mandate, without any vote, without any pre-election campaigning by the Labour Party, out of left field straight after the 2020 election … they have been pushing a separatist agenda where there will be this very innocent word called co-governance. But what it really means is two governments.”

Mr Peters has also grabbed headlines with racially charged statements, such as telling supporters in Nelson last month that Maori “are not Indigenous”.

“Every tribe will have in its ancestry where it came from, and it’s not New Zealand,” he told the NZ Herald after the meeting. “Why are we lying to each other? We should be believing in truths and not myths.”

According to Mr Mikaere, the big issue in New Zealand, just as in Australia, is cost of living.

Mr Batchelor claims things “started to go really wrong” in 1975 with the passing of the Treaty of Waitangi Act, which established the Waitangi Tribunal. “It was quickly hijacked by activists,” he said.

In his 31-page booklet outlining his case – which drew threats of fines from New Zealand’s Electoral Commission –

Mr Batchelor claims that the tribunal “became a scam, a place where any Maori anywhere could bring a grievance” and be awarded cash and assets, and where “oral testimonies were accepted as fact”.

His own activism was sparked by a cultural heritage dispute over his property in Bay of Islands in the Far North District of the North Island, about three hours from Auckland.

In 2008 he purchased Oke Bay Lodge, a run-down two-storey villa and wedding venue located on a narrow piece of land between Hauai Bay and Oke Bay. Construction of a 3m retaining wall sparked a long-running stoush with council, and in 2020 a local tribe applied to Heritage New Zealand to have part of his property designated wahi tapu, or a sacred site, due to its history as a burial place.

Mr Batchelor says he did not see the notifications from the agency until he received a letter saying the application was approved in March 2022.

“Heritage New Zealand sent me a letter saying your land has been reclassified as what they call wahi tapu – that meant that Maori had control of my land but I still pay the rates,” he said.

“It basically halved the value of my land. They came up with some story that some body had been dragged across the land in 1700 or something and therefore the land was scared to them.

They do not need proof because they say Maori operate with oral history and it cannot be challenged.”

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
October 11, 2023 3:34 pm

Procession of Saint Januarius during an eruption of Vesuvius in 1822.

Roman frescoes in perfect condition discovered in Naples

Might need to move them soon. The people also.

Italy plans for mass evacuation as quakes continue around supervolcano (5 Oct)

The caldera is dotted with 24 craters and is a much bigger volcano than the nearby Vesuvius, which destroyed the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in AD79.

It has been jolted by more than 1,100 earthquakes in the past month alone, including a 4.0 magnitude quake on Monday and a 4.2 last week – the strongest in the area for four decades.

That would be Campi Flegrei, which Naples is built on top of. Got to hand it to Italians for picking exactly the wrong place to build a city.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 3:35 pm

Labor Blackout Bowen at Work

‘Get your candles’: energy experts are ‘terrified’ about this summer

Angela Macdonald-Smith – Senior resources writer

A summer of blackouts has emerged as a real risk of Australia’s creaking power system, increasing the likelihood of extra government intervention in a desperate bid to close the gap between the reality of the faltering energy transition and the ambition of 2030 climate targets.

The return to El Nino summer conditions, a power supply system strained by reduced and increasingly unreliable coal power generation, an overstretched transmission system and a slow build-out of renewable energy and the firming generation to support it prompted experts to warn it was time for householders to “get your candles”.

“You don’t just need your candles, you also need your air purifier for when the electricity is on and stuff is burning,” said Zoe Whitton, managing director and head of impact at climate change advisory firm Pollination.

Ms Whitton reported discussing the upcoming summer with her climate scientist colleague who looked “terrified viscerally”. And if the warnings of blackouts come true, or not, she told The Australian Financial Review Energy & Climate Summit that “more prescriptive, more interventionist policy” was on the way, given impatience with the stuttering transition and concerns the Australia’s emissions reduction targets will not be met.

Former Snowy Hydro CEO Paul Broad said, “the lights are going to go out” in a return to normal conditions after three mild summers and said politicians were not listening to the warnings about the risks around supply, while the industry was not speaking up enough.

“That’s our problem,” he said. “We’re not having the honest conversations and us in the industry we’re not speaking up.”

The comments come as federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen was forced to defend the government’s 82 per cent target for renewable energy by 2030, which was described as “lunacy” by Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien on day one of the Summit.

Mr Bowen acknowledged that meeting the 2030 targets, including a 43 per cent reduction in carbon emissions from 2005 levels, would be a challenge but said there was no point setting a target that was too easy.

“That doesn’t send the signals about what the government was interested in and what we’re trying to achieve,” he said, adding that walking away from it would put Australia in danger of breaching its obligations under the Paris Accord.

But Matthew Warren, principal of energy advisory service Boardroom Energy, said that going all-out for the 2030 target was “crazy” and that it was more important to keep power reliable and affordable through the transition, to maintain public support.

“This rhetoric that’s breaking out that whatever it costs, whatever the reliability consequences is crazy,” he said.

“If we have rolling blackouts this summer or next summer because we don’t have a grid that can cope with a heatwave – and there’s a real risk that’s just going to happen – then we lose the local domestic political contract.”

Mr Broad, who abruptly exited Snowy Hydro last year after a run-in with Mr Bowen, accused Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio of speaking “complete and utter horseshit” in her refusal to recognise the need for peaking gas power plants in Victoria as coal power exits the system.

He listed Ms D’Ambrosio among energy sector figures who would no longer take his calls as he tried to get the message through, including former Australian Energy Market Operator Audrey Zibelman.

Grid in ‘fragile state’

Mr Warren agreed the grid is in “a pretty fragile state”, and there was no “Plan B” as coal power generators deteriorate and a refusal in states such as Victoria to contemplate gas peaking plants despite those plants seeming “absolutely essential”.

“So you have these really serious fault lines in the political narrative which have to break at some point,” Mr Warren said, pointing to Victoria’s inadequate financial ability to support its plans for offshore wind.

“So it’s kind of a pretty fragile state we’re in and we’re rolling into … we haven’t had a proper El Nino heatwave for five years, and we have a lot less generation and older generation going into this one.”

The comments come after AEMO warned in late August that Victoria and South Australia faced an increased risk this summer of rolling blackouts due to a likely return to hot summer conditions, combined with ageing coal plants and slow construction of replacement cleaner supply and the transmission to support it.

A ‘bit of luck’ needed

Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood was more optimistic on the chances of reaching 2030 targets for renewable energy but still said “a little bit of luck” would be needed for the national electricity market to get through the coming summer unscathed, setting the scene for a potential reduction in tariffs next year.

“I think the government will have in place [in 12 months’ time] a change of policy in relation to achieving these targets particularly around renewables,” Mr Wood said, voicing optimism that things were coming together to address the challenges around the build-out of transmission.

But Mr Broad reiterated his view that there was “zero chance” of reaching the 2030 targets, while Mr Warren said it was “physically not possible” to build the infrastructure required in time.

Ms Whitton called for “muscular policy” to unlock the pent-up capital waiting to invest in Australia’s energy transition among pension funds and overseas investors in Japan, Europe and elsewhere.

“You need revenue opportunities, and you often need muscular industry policy to create the demand that creates those revenue opportunities,” she said, noting that policy as it stands means investors aren’t able to meet their mandates for investment.

“You are going to need some sort of muscular policy that someone is going to be on the downside of, and you need the political will and the bravery to do that,” Ms Whitton said.

shatterzzz
October 11, 2023 3:37 pm

The “chap” has pencilled a visit to Gaza into her future calendar after one of her staff informed her, “There will be no tall buildings in Gaza after this weekend” ………….

local oaf
October 11, 2023 3:37 pm

“Noel Pearson has warned there is “no Plan B” if the referendum fails on Saturday and says there will be no other path for reconciliation.”

All this ‘no plan B’ stuff, no more WTC and no more reconciliation – they’re just veiled threats aren’t they?

No more Mr nice guy seems to be the message, violence and terrorism might be coming next.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 3:41 pm

Hamas Consigns the Pax Americana to History Books

By Hal Brands – Bloomberg Opinion

Hamas’ surprise assault against Israel is tragic in its own right: The Israeli death toll, relative to population, is several times worse than 9/11 was for the US. Things could still get much nastier if Hezbollah — Iran’s Lebanese proxy — fully enters the fray, confronting Israel with a multifront fight and regionalizing the conflict.

Yet the war in the Levant is also part of a broader, intensifying crisis of global security.

Consider the Eurasian panorama. Europe is experiencing its worst insecurity in decades, thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s barbaric war in Ukraine. The threat of war is also growing in the Balkans, where Serbian troop movements recently forced the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to bulk up its forces in Kosovo. In the Caucasus, Azerbaijan has exploited Russian distraction to seize control of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia, resulting in the flight of some 100,000 civilians. Along this arc of instability from Eastern Europe to Southwest Asia, conquest and ethnic cleansing are alive and well.

The Western Pacific is less violent but not less dangerous. The Taiwan Strait is a perpetual flashpoint, as China tries to coerce that island and force the US and its regional allies to prepare for a showdown. Tensions are rising in the South China Sea, as the Philippines — sick of years of Beijing’s bullying — begins asserting its rights with greater verve. On the Korean Peninsula, Pyongyang is steadily improving its nuclear weapons and missile programs, while also fueling Putin’s war by providing artillery ammunition and other resources.

Then there is the Middle East. Just weeks ago, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan declared that the region “is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” He might wish to revise that comment.

Iran continues to creep toward a nuclear capability as part of its drive for Middle Eastern hegemony. It supports a vast network of proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah, which are now demonstrating their ability to plunge the region into chaos. Just last week, the US shot down a Turkish drone over Syria, showing how tense the situation remains in that country, as well. With the Middle East igniting once more, all three of Eurasia’s vital regions are in upheaval.

Meanwhile in Africa, coups have become contagious in the Sahel; Sudan has descended into civil war; jihadist violence is metastasizing across the continent. In Latin America, democracy is eroding and criminal gangs are terrorizing helpless populations. The destabilizing effects of climate change and refugee flows are hitting countries on multiple continents.

It is hard to find a major region untouched by the current disorder, which reveals four realities of the contemporary world.

– First, the Pax Americana of the post-Cold War period is over
– Second, connections between revisionist actors are stronger than at any time in decades
– Third, different types of crises — geopolitical and transnational, traditional and non-traditional — are increasingly blending together.
– Fourth, we’re getting a real-time education in the fragility of progress

The international order is under more stress, in more places, than at any time since the chaotic aftermath of World War II. The work of preventing its collapse will be multilateral, and it is just beginning.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
October 11, 2023 3:45 pm

Roger

Oct 11, 2023 1:18 PM

You’re not wrong. Weird hipster doofus hops too.

With “notes of orange peel, clove and pine”.

To me they smell and taste like potpourri.

Mrs P bought a sample glass of something like that in the Omicho fish market in Kanazawa.
Revolting.
Tasted like cheap perfume.
I had to get a chunk of smoked eel from the next stall to get rid of the taste.

shatterzzz
October 11, 2023 3:47 pm

This man who would spend only two hours in crisis torn Alice can spend days being stroked at Ayres Rock.

The VOICE(s) of the outback reckon Ayres Rock rub ‘n tugs are not only half the price of Alice Springs outlets ( blaming city rental costs) but twice as good ..

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 3:49 pm

The Specter Of Barack Obama’s Deeply Held Anti-Israel Ideology Hovers Over Israeli Attacks

BY: MARK HEMINGWAY

Obama embraced antisemites, steeped himself in anti-American ideas, and cozied up to Iran — and now he leaves a violent legacy.

And it’s probably time to admit that, while attempting to bury their aims under layers of academic sophistication, Obama and his acolytes used his presidency to destabilize the Middle East in the service of a left-wing ideology that excuses antisemitism and justifies terrorist violence.

In August, Tablet magazine published a much-discussed, comprehensive interview between David Samuels and Obama biographer David Garrow. The biggest headlines that emerged from that interview had to do with Garrow uncovering letters where Obama wrote in detail about his gay sex fantasies.

But buried beneath that revelation was a substantial discussion of Obama’s anti-Israel politics. Or as Tablet’s David Samuels put it, “Obama’s hostility to American exceptionalism also seemed linked to his hostility to Israel, or more specifically to America’s identification with Israel.”

As Samuels went on to note, the inexplicable fixation Obama had with making Iran — the world’s leading state sponsor of terror attacks, and the same country behind Hamas’ atrocities in Israel over the weekend — a regional hegemon in spite of Israeli (and Saudi) objections is ample proof of that.

But historically, it’s worth noting his animus is deeply personal, and not some misguided policy objective. In his biography, Dreams of My Father, he told a very self-serving version of how he came to break up with an early girlfriend, Sheila Miyoshi Jager — essentially, she rejected Obama’s “incipient embrace of Black racial consciousness” in favor of her own “white-identified liberal universalism.” However, Garrow tracked down Jager, who’s now a respected professor at Oberlin, and she told a very different version of events.

At the time they were dating, a Chicago mayoral aide named Steve Cokely, in conjunction with notorious Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan, had “accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting Black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans,” and she broke up with Obama after he pointedly refused to condemn Cokely’s obvious antisemitism. (Obama would later meet up with the execrable Farrakhan when he was a senator and take a smiling photo with him; the photo was taken in 2005 and mysteriously was never released until 2018.)

Finally, there was Obama’s embrace of Robert Malley. In December of 2007, the Obama campaign put out a press release listing Malley as a campaign adviser. Malley had previously worked on Middle East issues for the Clinton administration, though he was not well-liked by the Jewish community because his father, journalist Simon Malley, was a friend and sympathizer of Yasser Arafat, the head of the PLO terror group.

Robert Malley himself had also written a series of essays for the New York Review of Books on Middle East issues that led prominent Jewish commentator and the former owner of The New Republic, Marty Peretz, to call him “a rabid hater of Israel. No question about it.”

I confess I hadn’t thought much about Malley in the last 15 years, other than to assume he was up to no good.

This summer I learned he was the Biden administration’s special envoy to Iran and that he had been fired once again, and this time it was serious enough that he lost his security clearance and was being accused of mishandling classified info.

Only in the past few weeks have the real facts come into sharper relief: “Robert Malley helped to fund, support, and direct an Iranian intelligence operation designed to influence the United States and allied governments, according to a trove of purloined Iranian government emails.”

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 3:52 pm

Oversight Committee
@GOPoversight

Presidential Candidate Joe Biden promised there would be an “absolute wall” between his work as an elected official and his family’s “business.”

That doesn’t match his track record.

New info from the National Archives shows that Biden’s VP Office emailed with his son Hunter, his brother Jim, and both of their “businesses” OVER 29,000 TIMES.

Robert Sewell
October 11, 2023 3:53 pm

Australian Travel Advisory:
“Reconsider your need for travel.”
Yeah. Right.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 3:59 pm

Book Review: Climate Uncertainty and Risk, By Judith Curry

By Rupert Darwall

Just over three decades ago, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed by President George H. W. Bush in Rio de Janeiro.

The first assumption is that climate change is caused exclusively by human emissions of greenhouse gases, principally from the combustion of fossil fuels. The second asserts that all the climate impacts from burning fossil fuels are unambiguously bad for people and planet. The third is that the solution is the progressive—and preferably rapid—elimination of fossil fuels, requiring mankind to do without its main source of energy.

Five presidents and a generation later, this paradigm has been elevated into an overriding planetary imperative.

A minority of climate scientists have consistently rejected the three axioms of government-approved climate science, a notable exponent being MIT’s Richard Lindzen.

Rarer still, and possibly unique, is the climate scientist who once subscribed to the three propositions but subsequently changed her mind.

Such is Judith Curry. That alone makes her new book, Climate Uncertainty and Risk, exceptional. Subtitled Rethinking Our Response, the book not only challenges the third UN climate proposition on policy responses but rethinks the first and second.

In her book, Curry questions, rethinks, and rejects the three propositions of the UN climate-change paradigm, and she replaces the paradigm with a new one.

Proposition #1: Rehabilitate natural variability
Proposition #2: Restore balance to assessing climate-change impacts
Proposition #3: Prioritize adaptation to a changing climate

An alternative to the UN climate-change paradigm

Curry rejects the UN climate-policy paradigm and what she calls the “politics of climate scarcity” and the associated politics of energy and material scarcity, and she advises abandonment of arbitrary temperature targets. Instead, the focus should be on appraising specific regional risks and vulnerabilities and proactively developing responses to them that have greater benefits than costs, noting the importance of prosperity, as people are less exposed to weather and climate shocks if they are not poor.

The need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is much less pressing than the IPCC and the UN contend because of the implausibility of extreme emissions scenarios such as RCP 8.5 and of high values for the climate sensitivity of carbon dioxide (the warming caused by a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere). Natural variability is likely to slow down the rate of warming over the next few decades, and further time can be bought by targeting greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide, which account for up to 45% of human-caused warming.

Climate Uncertainty and Risk is more than a book.

Curry has produced a single-author counter to the IPCC that offers a radical alternative to the UN paradigm of climate change that could well serve as a manual for a future Republican administration.

billie
billie
October 11, 2023 4:00 pm

Why he has blundered his way through each and every classical textbook error in the Referendum process – in favour of fighting Torries in Parliament;

That’s all Albo has done his entire career, plotted and planned how to beat the tories, how to wedge and backstab his way to a position, like Julia Gillard, he is completely unsuitable for.

Supporting the Voice was a way he thought he could institute Labor in perpetual government control. With the additional co-government partner the whatever they call themselves Voice controllers, oh the greasy palms

He seems to be astonished it is not going his way. He has used the same badgering, bullying tactics and strategies that Labor uses in all their factional battles and wars, his experience with the greater world is non-existent.

Look at the deals he did with Alan Joyce, typical Labor union bro deals. No wins there for the Australian voting taxpayer public, he did whatever it took to look after himself and his perceived place in the Labor firmament, a place in history .. and got his son a nepotistic tidbit as well. (how nice!)

This would have one-upped Kevin Rudd’s apology even!

He could have been .. a god!

I bet he is pissy with the ungrateful voters next week, Turnbulesque. Though, I reckon we have a few more “deals” to witness as he tries to pull a rabbit out of his arch, oh sorry, hat, before the week is out.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
October 11, 2023 4:02 pm

I have only been occasionally dropping in on the Cat the last few days.

Anyway, one thing that really must be addressed regarding matters between Israel and the Palis is this constant and recurrent claim of ‘occupied’ lands – even beyond the term occupied being used to describe what was lost in war.

A woman I work with sent me a link on LinkedIn to some graphic showing ‘Palestine’ as a sea of green with a few white dots representing Jewish settlements. Then over the next few panels the white spreads and green retreats until you get to the current star of affairs.

That graphic represents many people’s understanding – that there was a lush fairyland one time called Palestine, a veritable Eden, where Palestinians lived peaceably: the men talking beneath boughs, weighed down by the thick dark foliage, of grand trees; women chattering by wells in the town; and children at play, tolling down the grass-carpeted hills, playing at chasing, or chopping the heads off the Infi-dolls.

Until ‘The Jew’ turned up to wage relentless war, to drive the hapless Palestinians (strangers to ways of violence) falling back into ever-shrinking spaces for which ‘The Jews’ had not yet developed an avaricious appetite. Yet.

By this reckoning, certainly the Palestinian reckoning, all of Israel is ‘occupied’ land.

If a network such as Sky (would you trust any others) gave a history lesson it would be therapeutic. As is the savages have crafted a sympathetic fiction unchallenged.

Chris
Chris
October 11, 2023 4:04 pm

This would have one-upped Kevin Rudd’s apology even!

He could have been .. a god!

F*** him – and the horse he rode in on.
Labor must go.
If only there were some sort of… conservative, rational alternative party.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
October 11, 2023 4:09 pm

If a network such as Sky (would you trust any others) gave a history lesson it would be therapeutic.

The Left by and large are not Christians. Nor did they get any classical history education in school other than contrived rubbish from BLM and Bruce Pascoe. They would never have gotten the deep historical context that we did.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 4:10 pm

WH Denounces Dems Equating Hamas Attack With Israel’s Response

By Philip Wegmann – RCP Staff

President Biden meant it when he said, “This is not about party or politics.”

On Tuesday, the White House condemned “repugnant” and “disgraceful” comments from members of Congress equating the terrorist attack by Hamas with previous actions taken by Israel. Notably, this rebuttal applies to Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Cori Bush of Missouri.

“I’ve seen some of those statements this weekend,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told RealClearPolitics, “and we are going to continue to be very clear: We believe they are wrong.”

“Our condemnation belongs squarely with terrorists who have brutally murdered, raped, and kidnapped hundreds of Israelis. There can be no equivocation about that. There are not two sides here,” Jean-Pierre continued.

This was a continuation of a message the president stressed directly moments earlier in the East Room of the White House. Flanked by Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Biden said forcefully, “Like every nation in the world, Israel has the right to respond, indeed has a duty to respond, to these vicious attacks.”

While the White House censure was rare, it also came after initial confusion

Hugh
Hugh
October 11, 2023 4:10 pm

That would be Campi Flegrei, which Naples is built on top of. Got to hand it to Italians for picking exactly the wrong place to build a city.

Naples (Neapolis) was built by Greeks, not Italians.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
October 11, 2023 4:13 pm

Donate: Friends of the IDF

Tipped in a few quid.

H B Bear
H B Bear
October 11, 2023 4:14 pm

Simple solution I have achieved is to ask for Cooper’s Green.
Job done.

Yep. I quite like some of the wheat beers in summer but going off piste is a real lottery. As you say too many “Look at me” being made now.

Vicki
Vicki
October 11, 2023 4:14 pm

Re Mother Lode @ 4.02pm:

I find that very few people have bothered to establish the historical facts about the history of Israel & the ancient history of Judaea. The continuation of Jewish presence in Palestine till modern times and the purchase of land by Jewish trusts early in the 20th century is easily established. But few want to know the facts. Similarly even today many houses on the West Bank have been sold to Jewish purchasers by Arab owners over the years. But again this is not a popular narrative in todays society of the Victim.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 4:16 pm

Americans Can’t Trust The D.C. Establishment To Identify True Chaos — Only To Create It

BY: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY

I could go on and on about the chaos that’s been visited upon Americans by a corrupt D.C. establishment, but the ousting of a House speaker doesn’t rank on the list.

The surprising ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as speaker of the House deeply alarmed the Washington, D.C., establishment. While many Republican congressional leaders have lost their positions, it was the first time such a removal occurred via a motion to vacate the chair.

The outrage was directed less at the 208 Democrats who voted to remove McCarthy and more at the eight Republicans who did.

The media and other permanent Beltway inhabitants asserted that American life itself was thrown into chaos by the vote.

It all reminds me of this absurd scene in the 1980s film sequel “Airplane II,” when a space plane shuttling a cabin of passengers to the moon short circuits and gets knocked a “tad” off course, sending it hurtling toward the sun. A flight attendant alerts the passengers of this misfortune, plus news of asteroids ramming into the ship and the fact that the defunct navigational system means they can’t change course, to which they quietly fret to their seatmates. It’s only when she reveals the shuttle is also “out of coffee,” that full-on panic ensues.

So it goes with the Washington establishment’s blasé response to the chaos inflicted on Americans every day — as opposed to a passing shakeup on Capitol Hill.

The Real Commander-in-Chaos

When The New York Times endorsed Joe Biden for president, it effusively praised him in ways that were lies at the time they were written, but look even worse after a historically awful presidency.

“In the midst of unrelenting chaos, Mr. Biden is offering an anxious, exhausted nation something beyond policy or ideology.

His campaign is rooted in steadiness, experience, compassion and decency,” the Times asserted.

The Times said Biden “has an unusually rich grasp of and experience in foreign policy” that would help with “the task of repairing the enormous damage inflicted on America’s global reputation.”

The endorsement bragged that “he has the backing of a who’s who of the foreign policy community and national security officials from both parties.”

Americans cannot trust the permanent D.C. political and media classes to identify true crises, only to create them with their made-up reporting and hysteria.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
October 11, 2023 4:18 pm

The “Words Fail Me, They Honestly Do” award for the week goes to my local Labor member – he’s got a big poster in his office window, depicting all the languages, spoken by the “First Nations.”

When I asked how a collection of hunter gatherers, without even a written language, could be thought of as a “Nation”, “First or otherwise, I got a very blank look.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 4:19 pm

Not Your Father’s Shoplifters

Criminals get bolder as American cities abandon broken-windows policing.

A man is caught on video sauntering out of a New York Trader Joe’s with his arms full of stolen steaks. An Apple store in Philadelphia is cleaned out by a flash mob that also ravaged a nearby Lululemon and Foot Locker. In San Francisco, Whole Foods, Walgreens, Nordstrom, Target and now Starbucks are all closing stores.

In U.S. cities from Los Angeles to Chicago, shoplifting has become an epidemic. The question is what’s worse: the brazenness of theft today or how what was once unthinkable is now considered unstoppable.

There was a day when a kid trying to filch a pair of sneakers would have looked up and down before stuffing the shoes into his jacket when no one was looking.

But thieves no longer need to hide their behavior. Today the shops themselves forbid staff to try to stop shoplifters.

At the same time, shoplifting has grown sophisticated. Smash-and-grab mobs overwhelm store employees and leave with garbage bags full of merchandise. Organized criminal enterprises recruit drug addicts to do the actual stealing and then sell the stolen goods on platforms such as eBay.

It’s all a product of a growing social dysfunction born of the abandonment of broken-windows policing. Broken windows originated in a 1982 article for the Atlantic magazine by James Q. Wilson of Harvard and George L. Kelling of Rutgers. They argued that if you sweat the small stuff that really makes city residents feel unsafe (aggressive panhandling, public urination, petty crime), you’ll catch problems before they metastasize. Their metaphor was the broken window.

“If a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired,” they wrote, “all the rest of the windows will soon be broken.” Broken windows are “a signal that no one cares”—an emboldening message for those who would commit serious crimes.

Though broken windows revolutionized policing and transformed New York into America’s safest big city, it has since come under attack.

H B Bear
H B Bear
October 11, 2023 4:20 pm

Bar Beach Swimmer at 1:58

Luigi at Ayres Rock with tears and justification. “I’m a conviction politician;

Not for much longer.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
October 11, 2023 4:22 pm

Naples (Neapolis) was built by Greeks, not Italians.

Oops, Hugh, true. People colonised areas like the Neapolitan Plain because the volcanic ash was an excellent fertilizer. Many farmers in places like the Philippines and Mexico still farm the slopes of volcanoes because of how spectacularly fertile the soil is.

After a while you get a village, then a town and then a city. Indeed Athens is built not far from the Methana volcano, for example.

Sometimes the volcanoes erupt…

Vicki
Vicki
October 11, 2023 4:24 pm

In this awful week I recall my own visit to Israel in Christmas of the year of the terrorist attack on Rome’s international airport. I had travelled to Israel without my family on a sort of religious pilgrimage. I had to fly back to Athens before getting on a flight there back to Sydney. I was absolutely terrified as there was a belief that there would be more airport attacks – & indeed it was later discovered that an attack on Athens airport had been planned.

The Israelis were totally calm & measured in Tel Aviv airport. I had to unpack my bag & repack but they were professional & gracious. Athens was a different story. That trip to Israel established my complete admiration for Israelis. Tough, extremely bright, hard working, & brave.

Kneel
Kneel
October 11, 2023 4:26 pm

“Robert Sewell
Oct 11, 2023 1:14 PM

MatrixTransform

Oct 11, 2023 8:15 AM
If ground penetrating radar can show up all the underground aquifers in the river Nile, why can’t it detect tunnels?If ground penetrating radar can show up all the underground aquifers in the river Nile, why can’t it detect tunnels?

the question was about infrared, not radar
some things are transparent to infrared
the ground certainly isn’t one of them

The question was also about detecting tunnels, MT.”

It’s a question of resolution vs penetration – lower frequencies of radar will penetrate further, but have lower resolution.

“Standard” aircraft style radar (20+GHz) would not penetrate more than a few cm, if that.

Also, the “discontinuity” between air and dirt is significant, and would reflect at least 99% of the transmitter power (“return loss” would approach 0dB), so doing it from the air is difficult – just getting the power from 20,000 ft to the surface would consume more than 90% of the power in itself, and the same amount of the reflected power to get back up, so you would be lucky to see a -100dBm (less than one tenth of 1 billionth of a watt) reflection from underground with a +50dBm (100W) transmitter would be my guess. Put a building on top and you could easily lose another 30dB (1000 times) – pulling a signal from -140dBm is barely doable. And upping the power is a “law of diminishing returns” thing – 100kW output likely consumes 200kW of electrical power from the planes systems, and that is problematic in itself, I would expect.

You can likely penetrate to a half-wavelength or so, but this then means the resolution is on a similar scale, so a 2m wide tunnel 2m deep would be difficult to “pull from the noise”, even when you have a good signal.

In terms of the river caverns etc, these are typically done with ground based units, and they are looking for significantly larger features than a tunnel. Even so, the image is “blocky” if you look at the raw data rather than an algorithmic reconstruction.

In short, it ain’t easy!

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
October 11, 2023 4:27 pm

Andrew Barr says don’t take sides as it is revealed babies were beheaded by Hamas

By jess malcolm
Reporter
@jessmalcolm1
3:02PM October 11, 2023
163 Comments

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr says Australians should not take a side in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, hours after it emerged Hamas had beheaded Jewish babies and children.

Mr Barr on Wednesday also refused to condemn his coalition government partner, the Greens, for backing a pro-Palestine rally in Canberra on Friday.

Israeli officials overnight outlined the full extent of the terrorist massacre unleashed on the kibbutz of Kfar Aza which included the slaughter of as many as 40 babies and children.
Read Next

Hamas terrorists appeared to target and mutilate pregnant women and young babies when they stormed the kibbutz close to the Gaza border four days ago.

Speaking to the ABC, Mr Barr said that it was unwise to take a side in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, declaring “no one should be bombing anyone”.

“That’s a matter for the Greens political party, I don’t think this is an issue in which people should be taking sides, no one should be bombing anyone,” Mr Barr told ABC Radio Canberra. “Simple as that.”

ACT Labor is a shared government with the ACT Greens, with members of the ACT Greens holding significant cabinet positions.

For example, the head of the ACT Greens Shane Rattenbury also serves as the Attorney-General and is in charge of the justice system in the jurisdiction.

Mr Barr’s refusal to condemn the ACT Green’s pro-Palestinian stance comes after two of the most senior federal ministers from western Sydney – Tony Burke and Chris Bowen – came under pressure for failing to full-throatedly condemn local anti-­Israel preachers and activists who led the two NSW rallies celebrating Hamas’s attacks.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
October 11, 2023 4:27 pm

Sitting in the pub (because standing on table with my pockets turned out and wedding tackle liberated, doing ‘the elephant’, is frowned on) I am sitting across from a large framed chart of ‘Australian Rugby Captains’.

Looking at the first few rows I realise that those men probably knew Latin, knew the nations of the world and what they produced, could do complex arithmetic in using just their heads and paper – ‘And e’en the story ran that (they) could gauge’ as Goldsmith would have it- and so on.

Their meatheads were smarter than our academics!

Alamak!
October 11, 2023 4:27 pm

Criminals get bolder as American cities abandon broken-windows policing.

I recall first visit to Rio in Brasil years ago being shocked at the well-armed security guards at the (locked) front door of every shops with goods …

Even a small kids toy shop had not one. After 7 attempts at being mugged in 12 days I understood why.

Cassie of Sydney
October 11, 2023 4:29 pm

“Mark from Melbourne
Oct 11, 2023 3:00 PM”

Perfectly said Mark, thank you.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
October 11, 2023 4:30 pm

F*** him – and the horse he rode in on.
Labor must go.

The horse should be led though the streets to be excoriated with handfuls of shit and rotten filth.

Krudd should be sent to a glue factory.

Dr Faustus
Dr Faustus
October 11, 2023 4:30 pm

Climate Uncertainty and Risk is more than a book.

It will be ‘more than a book’ if it does nothing other than explain the difference between risk and uncertainty.

The whole climate catastrophe has been built around models of massively uncertain systems – layer upon layer of them – being deliberately and dishonestly presented as quantifiable risk.

The resulting product of cynicism and ignorance is astounding – Exhibit A: Net Zero by 20-whatever.

Actually numerate people all know this.

Yet here we are.

Razey
Razey
October 11, 2023 4:30 pm

H B Bear
Oct 11, 2023 4:20 PM
Bar Beach Swimmer at 1:58

Luigi at Ayres Rock with tears and justification. “I’m a conviction politician;

Not for much longer.

God I hope you are right.

Cassie of Sydney
October 11, 2023 4:32 pm

Dutton should come out and say that a government he leads would sack the ACT town council.

Robert Sewell
October 11, 2023 4:34 pm

calli

Oct 11, 2023 3:14 PM
This morning, someone I thought I knew a bit better spoke very dismissively and cruelly about what happened in Israel this week. Still trying to process the type of mind that thinks like that and the type of mouth that gives voice to it. It’s a recalibration of tolerance and respect, and it’s rather painful.
I thought I’d heard everything, but I was wrong.

Sometimes the written word doesn’t convey meaning very well – I know I’ve occasionally written something down, gone back later and realised what I’ve said could be taken differently – especially using the personal ‘you’ instead of the impersonal ‘they’.
A hint perhaps, on what the person wrote?

JC
JC
October 11, 2023 4:36 pm

Putin Concerned Over ‘Catastrophic Increase’ In Israel-Gaza Casualties: Kremlin

Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tuesday voiced concern at the “catastrophic increase” in the number of civilian victims in Israel and the Gaza Strip, after four days of fighting.

During a telephone call with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “emphasis was placed on the sharply worsening situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zone”, the Kremlin said in a statement.

“Deep concern was expressed about the continuing escalation of violence and the catastrophic increase in the number of civilian casualties,” it added.

There’s obviously no irony meter at the Kremlin.

JMH
JMH
October 11, 2023 4:37 pm

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr says Australians should not take a side in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, hours after it emerged Hamas had beheaded Jewish babies and children.

Mr Barr on Wednesday also refused to condemn his coalition government partner, the Greens, for backing a pro-Palestine rally in Canberra on Friday.

This Barr has stepped too far. What a retard he is! Hear me clearly, you f/ing moron. I stand with Israel, as do most of my friends. I want to see Gaza reduced to dust and as somebody earlier said, returned to farmland – which would take quite a time. ACT deserves imbeciles like this thing.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
October 11, 2023 4:38 pm

“Noel Pearson has warned there is “no Plan B” if the referendum fails on Saturday and says there will be no other path for reconciliation.”

In most fields of endeavour (business, military, air-conditioning maintenance) people who declare they “have no Plan B” are dismissed as close-minded and sidelined from leadership roles.
This is the equivalent of a nine year old girl threatening to hold her breath until she turns blue, or a supermarket tantrum in the Kinder Surprise/Chupa Chups aisle.
Noel has declared he will fall silent if No gets up.
Who wants to bet on when Noosa Noel “breaks his silence”? I bags 3:00 pm Sunday.

Iron Cove
Iron Cove
October 11, 2023 4:41 pm

Just a harmless voice advising the government?
Thomas Mayo in his book “The Voice to Parliament” says the Voice “ will be integral to the treaty processes in the states and territories because it will provide the means for ATSI peoples to collectively discuss the federal government’s responsibilities to the treaties made at state and territory level”.
To pretend that a yes vote won’t have potentially huge legal consequences is to lie.
The book, co-written by red Kezza is dotted with the terms sovereignty, self determination and treaty, usually lower case as if to suggest that these are nice, fuzzy goals and not legal terms.
Mayo and O’brien seem to suggest that the state and territory treaties will have the same power as other Treaties and international agreements have and the Federal Government will have to tailor legislation to fit.
So much for the argument that the Voice is just a warm and fuzzy advisory voice.
Just vote NO!

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
October 11, 2023 4:43 pm

Luigi at Ayres Rock with tears and justification. “I’m a conviction politician;

He has an interesting talent of being wrong about everything. Even on Israel he managed to visit Lakemba mosque just as Hamas was attacking Israel…and the guy he met there was in the forefront of the “gas the Jews” demo only two days later.

Then there’s energy policy, climate rubbish, industrial relations, the Voice and defence policy. Batting absolute zero. It’s fascinating to watch, although living during it all isn’t that great.

Robert Sewell
October 11, 2023 4:43 pm

Robert Sewell

Oct 11, 2023 3:31 PM
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/lindsey-graham-says-only-way-keep-hamas-israel-escalating-attack-irans-oil
Everyone filled their fuel tanks yet?

I note the two downticks – sure, don’t fill your tanks now – it’s your choice. You can pay $5/litre in a months time if the shit hits the fan. Or $10/litre if it hits the fan at high speed.

Tom
Tom
October 11, 2023 4:45 pm

The handwringing of our elites how Australians voting No to a racist referendum proposal will blacken our name in the world didn’t pan out as they predicted. It’s their protected terrorists chanting “Gas the Jews” that have horrified the world.

I think the Australian public has figured out that many of the knowalls trying to cajole us into voting on Saturday for racial segregation in the Australian Constitution also sympathise with Hamas terrorists and their barbarism against Jews in Israel.

IMO, Uncle Luigi will be gone as Australian prime minister within a year because he miscalculated so disastrously on the referendum (and because, ultimately, he’s just another lefty activist who supports fashionable causes that threaten the safety of the the Australian public like Hamas’s pogrom against the Jews).

feelthebern
feelthebern
October 11, 2023 4:47 pm

As VP, Joe Biden Emailed His Brother And Son About Foreign Business More Than 29,000 Times

https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/10/as-vp-biden-emailed-with-his-brother-son-and-their-firms-about-foreign-business-more-than-29000-times/

Jeebers.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
October 11, 2023 4:49 pm

H B Bear
Oct 11, 2023 4:20 PM
Bar Beach Swimmer at 1:58

Luigi at Ayres Rock with tears and justification. “I’m a conviction politician;

Not for much longer.

This isn’t about the referendum anymore.
This is Luigi’s “Save My Job” plea to the faithful.

Mark from Melbourne
Mark from Melbourne
October 11, 2023 4:50 pm

That’s all Albo has done his entire career, plotted and planned how to beat the tories, how to wedge and backstab his way to a position, like Julia Gillard, he is completely unsuitable for.

I hesitate to say to say this – nay, I am downright ashamed to do so -but here we are.

In the event that Albo gets rolled, I’d actually be on Bill Shorten.

That says not much good about me and absolutely nothing good about the ALP.

JMH
JMH
October 11, 2023 4:50 pm

IMO, Uncle Luigi will be gone as Australian prime minister within a year because he miscalculated so disastrously on the referendum (and because, ultimately, he’s just another lefty activist who supports fashionable causes that threaten the safety of the the Australian public like Hamas’s pogrom against the Jews).

Uptick, Tom. Spot on. However, I hope the slug is gone in the New Year.

Chris
Chris
October 11, 2023 4:53 pm

This isn’t about the referendum anymore.

Indeed. YES is just one of the lies that our ruling class impose on us.

Alamak!
October 11, 2023 4:55 pm

In the event that Albo gets rolled, I’d actually be on Bill Shorten.

That says not much good about me and absolutely nothing good about the ALP

Its a ladies pick for the next one becos justice for midwit ladies. Plibbers most likely although few seem to like her inside/outside of her Labor “mates”.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 4:57 pm

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry get frosty reception in NYC as locals ‘don’t care’

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle drew no crowds as they returned to New York City to speak at an event on World Mental Health Day.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex represented the Archewell Foundation at the Project Healthy Minds event in Hudson Yards on Tuesday, where they spoke in a panel about mental wellness in a digital age.

But New Yorkers did not seem to rejoice at the royal couple’s return.

There was no crowd in the Hudson Yards area as the pair arrived and departed, and when asked about their thoughts on Harry and Meghan being in New York, many locals said they “did not care”.

Robert Sewell
October 11, 2023 4:57 pm

Old Ozzie:
When I get to paragraphs like this:

The return to El Nino summer conditions, a power supply system strained by reduced and increasingly unreliable coal power generation, an overstretched transmission system and a slow build-out of renewable energy and the firming generation to support it prompted experts to warn it was time for householders to “get your candles”.

…I stop reading.
Nothing wrong with our coal powered systems. But there’s a humungous problem with the idiots forcing the operators to not maintain them.

Zatara
Zatara
October 11, 2023 4:58 pm

There are almost 1,100 Palestinian Christians living in the Gaza Strip

After giving this a bit more thought and recognizing they are stuck with reality I’d give some advice to those Christians stuck in Gaza.

Pack up the family with a blanket each, a change of undies, any prescription meds, and every bit of food and water you can carry. Head for your church and plan to live there for the foreseeable future. Invite your fellow parishioners to do the same.

The Israelis will likely take great pains to prevent collateral damage to the churches, particularly if you call and tell them where you are, and the greatest threat to you will continue to be Hamas until they are no more.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
October 11, 2023 4:59 pm

I keep saying this.
If I was a “No” operative who infiltrated the “Yes” camp to nobble their campaign, I doubt I could have done a better job than what they have done to themselves.
Noosa Noel oscillating between badgering and pleading in the same sentence.
The toxic leprechaun painting “Yes” all over his planes whilst sitting on a mountain of lost baggage and unpaid refunds.
Marcia Plankton threatening “No more Welcome to Country for you!”
Sugar Ray Martin calling us all dickheads and dinosaurs.
All topped off with Luigi campaigning with the towel-heads.
Nup.
Could not have done better.

JMH
JMH
October 11, 2023 5:01 pm

Its a ladies pick for the next one becos justice for midwit ladies. Plibbers most likely although few seem to like her inside/outside of her Labor “mates”.

Plibbers will be the sacrificial skirt should she be stupid enough to take the baton. I want to read that Albo falls on his sword (due to internal pressure applied) i.e. family reasons or health matters. That’s the only way the ALP can, under the Rudd rules, discard the Trot.

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 5:02 pm

Two MPs have been killed by lunatics, today Sir Keir could’ve been a third – Carole Malone

So, seconds before Keir Starmer was about to start what should have been the speech of his life in Liverpool, the one that was to be his smooth-tongued pitch to be the next Prime Minister some stringy, ranting eco lunatic who describes himself as “ a bit of a weird one” stormed the stage screaming “our whole future is in crisis. We demand a People’s House”.

None of it made any sense but then eco-protestors rarely do.

They all sound like deranged sixth formers who’ve swallowed a book of cliches and then OD’d on magic mushrooms.

This particular protestor, Yaz Ashmawi, 28, ran onto the conference stage in Liverpool threw two pots of black glitter all over Starmer, who looked terrified, and then grabbed both his shoulders while he continued to rant.

First off. That glitter could have been acid. Second, if Ashmawi had had a knife Starmer could have been stabbed multiple times before those dopey security guards managed to drag their backsides onto the stage to help him.

I mean what the Hell? What’s the point of security for the leader of a political party if it’s so slow that a lone man can outfox and outrun them.

Thankfully this idiot protestor was just that – an idiot. But he might not have been. He might have been a terrorist who’d been meticulously planning the attack for months in which case Starmer would have been dead now.

And while it’s not THE most important thing here the two security guards dragging that screaming loon off the stage were both women.

Where were the big burly blokes???

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 5:05 pm

20mph roads, £1600-a-month for illegals, no cash for nurses, welcome to Starmer’s Britain

This week the Welsh Parliament returned from its summer recess, ready to tackle the biggest issues affecting the people of Wales.

Keir Starmer has now made it clear that what a Welsh Labour Government does is a blueprint for what he would do as Prime Minister.

Now you might think that Starmer and First Minister Mark Drakeford might focus on ending the inhumane two-year waits in the Welsh NHS, scrapping the ridiculous 20mph blanket speed limit costing the economy up to £9bn, reducing the drop in the number of young people taking GCSEs in ICT and Maths or doing away with the £1,600 payments for illegal immigrants.

You would also be forgiven for thinking that the Labour Government will get around to sorting their housing crisis which sees barely half the number of houses being built a year compared to the actual number needed… causing a massive impact on rents and pricing people out of the market.

Drakeford might have spent time outside of his Corbyn-loving bubble and realised that the road building freeze was a mistake and that we really do need that M4 relief road to be the shot in the arm the Welsh economy needs.

Or instead of paying illegal immigrants £1,600 a month, he could have grasped the basic concept that his Welsh Labour Government should be spending every single penny they get from the UK Government investing in the Welsh NHS and Welsh schools.

If you haven’t heard me say it – for every £1 spent on the NHS and schools in England, the Labour Government gets £1.20 and yet the independent Auditor General for Wales found they only spend £1.05. And people wonder why there’s a funding crisis in our Welsh public services.

And be in no doubt, if Starmer becomes Prime Minister – he will unleash all of the above on the whole of Britain.

Starmer’s man in Wales is focused on one thing this month – forcing a bill through the Welsh Parliament to increase the number of politicians in the Welsh Parliament from 60 to 96.

And when they’ve spent time, energy and your money debating it, these 36 new politicians will cost the taxpayer an extra £100 million.

Zatara
Zatara
October 11, 2023 5:06 pm

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry get frosty reception in NYC as locals ‘don’t care’

Their 7 car motorcade to travel a few blocks in a very crowded NYC didn’t impress too many people either. They (she) really need to get a grip on their lack of relevancy.

H B Bear
H B Bear
October 11, 2023 5:07 pm

He has an interesting talent of being wrong about everything.

Luigi got the punter’s nod when KRuddy 2.0 hit the rotors but da bruvvas said “Nope”. Never held a serious Ministerial position. Scraped into government on 32% primary vote. Just the last man standing who happened not to be SloMo. Will barely rate a footnote in history.

Big_Nambas
Big_Nambas
October 11, 2023 5:08 pm

Sancho Panzer
Oct 11, 2023 4:59 PM

In the immortal words of Kojak, “love you babe”

OldOzzie
OldOzzie
October 11, 2023 5:08 pm

Keir Starmer glitter protester unmasked as eco-warrior with passion for long-haul holidays

Yaz Ashmawi is an Extinction Rebellion climate zealot who seems unable to stop clocking up air miles.

The protester arrested on suspicion of assaulting Sir Keir Starmer during his speech at the Labour Party Conference is a senior member of Extinction Rebellion (XR) with a taste for long-haul flights to exotic destinations and an obsession with Lego.

Despite being a vocal climate zealot, Ashmawi appears to be a well-travelled amatuer photographer who has enjoyed trips to a litany of far flung destinations, including Vietnam, Cuba and the UAE.

The climate crusader’s posts on social media show he has visited at least 13 countries, from Norway to India, on four separate continents over the last 10 years.

During a video posted on Instagram, Ashmawi, sat crossed-legged in the Egyptian desert, called for 100,000 people to march on Westminster and set up “citizens’ assemblies” to “bring an end to the fossil fuel era”.

When he’s not posting arty shots of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, Moroccan beaches or Cambodian temples, the activist appears to regularly take pictures of children’s Lego toys with a climate change theme.

Tom
Tom
October 11, 2023 5:13 pm

Even Barack Obama’s puppet president Joe Biden rang Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to offer his condolences.

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese did not.

Top Ender
Top Ender
October 11, 2023 5:15 pm

Dodson lets it all slip in a talk at the National Press Club:

Senator Dodson acknowledged the Albanese government had committed to implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full, which asks for voice, treaty and truth-telling, and would have to consider how to fulfil the second and third requests.

Oz

Bruce
Bruce
October 11, 2023 5:21 pm

China’s tap-dancing with Hamas is just a part of their actions to secure resources and to play Hell with the USA and others.

Almost ALL of China’s oil comes from the “middle-east”, with Iran being a big supplier.The tankers must run through the Gulf of Hormuz to get to serious ocean water.

Then they must transit some interesting choke-points after they pass Sri Lanka, which now has a Chinese naval presence in Tricomalee, mainly because, like Darwin, the port is owned by China; the PLAN to be specific.The real choke zone is from Singapore to the Sprattleys / Philippines, / Viet-Nam. They would be well aware of the tonnage of Japanese freighters and warships sunk in this region by the US Navy in WW2. On of the prime objectives of that campaign was to choke off the flow of oil from the huge Borneo fields that were a key driver of the whole “Co-Prosperity” caper.

Our rice-propelled “celestial” cousins have been stock-piling serious quantities of MANY raw materials for some time. Crude oil is one of these..

Beijing has been playing footsies with the Persian Mullahs since before the Shah was toppled.Vaguely akin to the proverbial “Frog and Scorpion” but wo id going to sting whom? Does anyone remember the flurry of “Silkworm” missiles fired at US and other ships in the region, by the Iranians some years back? Basically “product testing” on live targets. Also a good way to gather electronic Int in countermeasures.

They were also a BIG player in the Kovid Kaper with a couple of very interesting “establishments” out in the Persian boondocks. There was a set of satellite photos showing a significant increase in the size of a regional cemetery in those “interesting” times. A sister “lab-leak? Or another “field test”, probably on the Zoroastrian population.

Boambee John
Boambee John
October 11, 2023 5:28 pm

The (incorrect) references to Israel being “occupied Palestinian territory” leads me to wonder at what point our aboriginal crown princes and princesses will start referring to non-aboriginal Australians as “settlers, occupying aboriginal land”? Given the developing links between aboriginal “royalty” and the Muslims, it can’t be long.

Pogria
Pogria
October 11, 2023 5:29 pm

In the immortal words of Kojak, “love you babe”

Big Nambas,
Kojak said “who loves ya baby!”

Pedant, I know. 😀

Zatara
Zatara
October 11, 2023 5:31 pm

As VP, Joe Biden Emailed His Brother And Son About Foreign Business More Than 29,000 Times

Holy moley. That’s 20 emails per day, assuming he took no breaks for weekends or holidays. 28 per day if he stuck to workdays.

Image the damage he might have done if he had more time to do his day job.

Boambee John
Boambee John
October 11, 2023 5:34 pm

Bruce
Oct 11, 2023 5:21 PM
China’s tap-dancing with Hamas is just a part of their actions to secure resources and to play Hell with the USA and others.

Almost ALL of China’s oil comes from the “middle-east”, with Iran being a big supplier.The tankers must run through the Gulf of Hormuz to get to serious ocean water.

There has been a bit of chatter about the Belt and Road initiative building a pipeline across the Himalayas to supply oil to China.

My understanding is the Himalaya region is tectonically active, but setting that minor problem aside, what size and number of pipelines would be needed to move any significant quantity of oil by that route? And how hard would it be to “do a Nordstream” on them?

caveman
caveman
October 11, 2023 5:34 pm

Just listening to Annalise Nielssen on Sky, I think she’s trying to put on an merican accent. I had trouble understanding her.

Gabor
Gabor
October 11, 2023 5:37 pm

feelthebern
Oct 11, 2023 4:47 PM

As VP, Joe Biden Emailed His Brother And Son About Foreign Business More Than 29,000 Times

And getting away with it. How and why?
That’s the puzzle.

calli
calli
October 11, 2023 5:41 pm

Hey, Andrew Barr, you mouth-breathing nonentity and excuse for a human being.

I will take sides, regardless of what you “instruct” me to do. And believe me, when the time comes, I will not be on your side.

Take that to the bank, creep.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
October 11, 2023 5:42 pm

“I’m a conviction politician;

Not yet.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
October 11, 2023 5:42 pm

Does anyone remember the flurry of “Silkworm” missiles fired at US and other ships in the region, by the Iranians some years back? Basically “product testing” on live targets.

Yeah, USS Mason. A ship with thirty year old technology made the Chinese look like a bunch of medieval bowmen fighting a tank. It was funny.

They’ve decided that their only feasible approach is massive naval forces. Quantity has its own quality, as a certain guy said.

Chinese shipbuilding capacity over 200 times greater than US, Navy intelligence says (14 Sep)

calli
calli
October 11, 2023 5:44 pm

A hint perhaps, on what the person wrote?

Robert…it wasn’t written. I always cut some slack when there is a possibility of misunderstanding.

It was said with a shrug.

Alamak!
October 11, 2023 5:45 pm

I want to read that Albo falls on his sword (due to internal pressure applied) i.e. family reasons or health matters. That’s the only way the ALP can, under the Rudd rules, discard the Trot.

Insanity might be good enough reason. I’m sure within the Labor/Green/Tealz quagmire they know exactly what Elbow did for the Referendum and what he will do for the next election.

Any bets on next Labor “leader” apart from Plibbers?

calli
calli
October 11, 2023 5:45 pm

One can only hope, Lode.

Rosie
Rosie
October 11, 2023 5:50 pm

Seems it is Hamas that is preventing Gazians from crossing the border into Egypt.
Apparently they have always made it difficult for people to leave.
But blame Israel if you can’t get out.

Arky
October 11, 2023 5:50 pm

Putin backs Palestine

-Hindustan Times.
..

Putin concerned with catastrophic numbers of civilians killed”.

..
“Immediate ceasefire”.
– Al Jazeera.
..

“Deep concern was expressed about the continuing escalation of violence and the catastrophic increase in the number of civilian casualties,” the Kremlin said.

The two leaders reiterated the need for “an immediate ceasefire” and for “the resumption of the negotiation process“, the Kremlin added, saying that Erdogan noted it was “regrettable to target civilian installations and that Turkey doesn’t welcome such acts”.

calli
calli
October 11, 2023 5:51 pm

Oh, I see. The downdicker loves the idea of murdered children and objects to expressions of disgust.

You are covering yourself with glory, moron. And earning something else.

calli
calli
October 11, 2023 5:52 pm

Rosie, isn’t that the sign of a cult? You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.

Often on pain of death.

Tom
Tom
October 11, 2023 5:54 pm

Liars backbencher Andrew Charlton on Sharri Markson’s Sky News show is even more of a slimey creep than wannabe prime minister Richard Marles.

The Liars talent cupboard is bare.

Chris
Chris
October 11, 2023 5:56 pm

Any bets on next Labor “leader” apart from Plibbers?

I predict an animatronic Gough Whitlam, with a rubber Bob Hawke face.
Based on US precedent.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
October 11, 2023 5:59 pm

There has been a bit of chatter about the Belt and Road initiative building a pipeline across the Himalayas to supply oil to China.

The engineering would be very interesting. I’ve looked at BHP’s water pipeline from the coast of Chile up to their copper mine on the top of the Andes, which is a 4000 m head. Three ginormous pumping stations to get it up there. It’s a desert so there’s no local water.

That one goes a few hundred miles, but quite an engineering feat. Pumping oil over the Himalayas would be something else again, since the head is similar but the viscosity of the oil is far higher than water. And the pipeline would require thousands of miles not hundreds.

Stick to ships, I think.

Robert Sewell
October 11, 2023 6:00 pm

Kneel:

In short, it ain’t easy!

Yes. I realise that if it was possible they would already be doing it. I just didn’t know the mechanism.

Robert Sewell
October 11, 2023 6:02 pm

ZK2A;

Mr Barr’s refusal to condemn the ACT Green’s pro-Palestinian stance comes after two of the most senior federal ministers from western Sydney – Tony Burke and Chris Bowen – came under pressure for failing to full-throatedly condemn local anti-­Israel preachers and activists who led the two NSW rallies celebrating Hamas’s attacks.

Mr Barr can go root his boot.
At least we know what side he’s on now.

Alamak!
October 11, 2023 6:06 pm

I predict an animatronic Gough Whitlam, with a rubber Bob Hawke face.
Based on US precedent

A terrible image to conceive of.

Perhaps, instead, a Keating comeback on the cards? Biden showed that being compos mentis is not really required … Plus Keating is in fine form and quite ready (and mad enough) to take on the Labor left. Popcorn definitely on order for that scenario.

Pogria
Pogria
October 11, 2023 6:07 pm

Peta Credlin showing Rishi Sunak’s speech at the London Synagogue. Showing some real leadership and statesmanship.
Where’s Elbow?

Robert Sewell
October 11, 2023 6:10 pm

Dover Beach:

The abiding image of the Tet Offensive is of the Saigon Police Chief summarily executing a VC prisoner, accused of executing a South Vietnamese Lt Col and his family, in the street.

The man being executed was NOT VC. He was a Lieutenant in the North Vietnamese Army, and subject to execution for being in civilian clothing. He was also caught leaving the Police compound after troops under his command slaughtered the families of multiple Police Officers.
The bastard got everything he deserved – I would have cut his throat and left him to choke and bleed out in the gutter.
But that’s just me – I’m all in favour of justice.

Tom
Tom
October 11, 2023 6:11 pm

Where’s Elbow?

Ask the ghost of Leon Trotsky.

PeterM
PeterM
October 11, 2023 6:11 pm

Gas Hamas

His a nice ring to it – would make a great chant

Bar Beach Swimmer
October 11, 2023 6:12 pm

ML:

That graphic represents many people’s understanding – that there was a lush fairyland one time called Palestine, a veritable Eden, where Palestinians lived peaceably: the men talking beneath boughs, weighed down by the thick dark foliage, of grand trees; women chattering by wells in the town; and children at play

That depiction is the same one we hear about pre-settlement in this country.

Take note of Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi’s pro-Palestinian tweet: ‘one colonial government supporting another. What a disgrace’.

feelthebern
feelthebern
October 11, 2023 6:12 pm

Rishi has grown a set of balls.
A week or so ago, he’s drawing a line on this trans circus.
Now, calling out these Hamas animals.

Boambee John
Boambee John
October 11, 2023 6:13 pm

Rosie
Oct 11, 2023 5:50 PM
Seems it is Hamas that is preventing Gazians from crossing the border into Egypt.
Apparently they have always made it difficult for people to leave.
But blame Israel if you can’t get out.

It’s about as logical as blaming Israel for blockading Gaza, when it has a sea frontier, and a land frontier with “fellow” Muslim nation Egypt.

But the anti-Israel mob never has any need to worry about logic, their MSM maaates will not raise any hard questions, or make difficult comments.

Bear Necessities
Bear Necessities
October 11, 2023 6:13 pm

I wonder how Zelenskyy is feeling now he is not the ‘Brand New Thing’? All it takes is for China to start organising some Taiwan takeover and he becomes officially ‘Chopped Liver’.

Luzu
Luzu
October 11, 2023 6:13 pm

Watched the Nick Freitas podcast linked and admired the historical thoroughness. In a time that is draining and infuriating simultaneously, something he mentioned prompted a very happy memory.

Our sons were brought up as Christian believers and often listened to Bible stories made more alive for kids. Junior Baby Bird (when he was very junior) struggled with some of the Old Testament names.

Who knew there were Australians present in the Old Testament? I kid you not.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abedingo.

Abednego wasn’t a name he was familiar with. But he did his best.

Rosie
Rosie
October 11, 2023 6:14 pm

Cult, control, power and income for hamas depends on keeping compliant captives.
Rather than slaves of allah, they are slaves of hamas.

Big_Nambas
Big_Nambas
October 11, 2023 6:15 pm

Pogria
Oct 11, 2023 5:29 PM

“In the immortal words of Kojak, “love you babe””

Big Nambas,
Kojak said “who loves ya baby!”

Pedant, I know. ?

I’m only 74 so missed most of Kojak and my memory is getting weaker, sorry.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
October 11, 2023 6:16 pm

Have we had the equating of the Russia-Ukraine thing against the the Israel-Hamas thing, where people are shouting that you cannot oppose Ukraine’s resistance against Russia while cheering on Israel’s fighting against Hamas – both being resistance to provocation.

A false equivalence – I would be much more vehement in supporting Ukraine if the weren’t a corrupt shithole needling regarded nationalists in Russia to divvy out military aid for plutocrats’ profit.

feelthebern
feelthebern
October 11, 2023 6:18 pm

Beryl from the Bowling Club doesn’t act like much of a police commissioner in NSW.
Always sends out the lackeys.
It was up to one of those today who confirmed NSW plod escorted the Pali protest from Town Hall to the Opera House.

Tom
Tom
October 11, 2023 6:18 pm

Rishi has grown a set of balls.

Amazing how popular revulsion against terrorism focuses the mind of politicians about to lose office.

Rosie
Rosie
October 11, 2023 6:18 pm
Frank
Frank
October 11, 2023 6:19 pm

Gas Hamas

The tunnels at least.

Boambee John
Boambee John
October 11, 2023 6:19 pm

Robert Sewell
Oct 11, 2023 6:02 PM

At least we know what side he’s on now.

When we left Canberra, Barr was one of the saner Liars MLAs. Probably still is, as there is at least one family dynasty developing there, former MLA Wayne Berry and now his daughter.

calli
calli
October 11, 2023 6:20 pm

There’s a vigil on in Sydney tonight.

The Jews had to keep the location secret and employ private security.

That should tell you everything you need to know about our country. Shame on us. Shame on Australia.

Rosie
Rosie
October 11, 2023 6:20 pm

As for leaving Gaza by sea, both Israel and Egypt have maintained a sea blockade since 2007.

Cassie of Sydney
October 11, 2023 6:20 pm

Am at HUGE pro Israel rally at Dover Heights.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Muddy
Muddy
October 11, 2023 6:21 pm

Muddy, it’s a 4th order issue.
While these sociopaths are murdering babies, we just call them by whatever brand of Islamic Lunacy they call themselves.

Here at Clowder D’Over we have no lack of derogatory names for domestic politicians and public figures we don’t respect – Elbow/AnAl, Lying Slapper, Pirate Pete, etc. Yet when it comes to the new(ish) Homo Palestinas strain of subhuman … we can’t be arsed to find an alternative. Instead, we use their preferred name, which, according to some sources, means zeal, strength, or bravery.

Just let that sink in for a moment.
If you need longer than a moment, you’re an oxygen thief.

[NOT directed at you personally, Robert].

Cassie of Sydney
October 11, 2023 6:22 pm

Am here calli

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
October 11, 2023 6:23 pm

Dodson lets it all slip in a talk at the National Press Club:

Dodson? Oh, someone we should care about.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
October 11, 2023 6:24 pm

Luigi now re-framing da Voice as “Albo’s brave battle against the odds”.
Well, it is against the odds now, but it wasn’t when he started out. Initial polling had it at 60 pussent support, and it was a perfect vehicle for fighting Torries and cementing Luigi’s place among the Panfeon of Labor Greats.
He would be spoken of in the same breaf as Chifley, Whitlam and, arrrrggh, Bob.
So, not vewwy bwave at all, Luigi.

Rosie
Rosie
October 11, 2023 6:24 pm

Hamas, I would prefer they were hummus, but that would be an insult to chickpeas.
I wonder how many isis are now hamas.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
October 11, 2023 6:24 pm
Arky
October 11, 2023 6:24 pm

Have we had the equating of the Russia-Ukraine thing against the the Israel-Hamas thing,

..
It’s not “equating”.
It’s noting that the same little Teheran- Moscow- Beijing axis is behind all sorts of shite from Syria to Gaza, the Taiwan Strait to the Ukraine, Libya to the Sudan, From Georgia to Xianjiang. None of it’s good mate.

calli
calli
October 11, 2023 6:24 pm

Bless you, Cassie.

Robert Sewell
October 11, 2023 6:24 pm

regarding the “Dickheads and Dinosaurs” comment.
Figurines available here.

Arky
October 11, 2023 6:25 pm

Block quote stuff up

Robert Sewell
October 11, 2023 6:25 pm

Bugger – NSFW above!

JC
JC
October 11, 2023 6:25 pm

Cassie of Sydney
Oct 11, 2023 6:20 PM
Am at HUGE pro Israel rally at Dover Heights.

Am Yisrael Chai.

You go girl.

Nice suburb choice too. -:)

P
P
October 11, 2023 6:26 pm

Shadrach, Meshach and Abedingo

SHADRACH MESHACH & ABEDNEGO Song

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
October 11, 2023 6:26 pm
Gilas
Gilas
October 11, 2023 6:27 pm

Interesting day at the pre-polling booth today.. lower numbers than all other days, confirmed by others who preceded me.
An increased number of Anglos, with a commensurate increase in sneering and the YES vote, however, healthy numbers of immigrants kept the NO vote respectable.

For the third time throughout this process, I was “attacked” by a YESser, this time a 30-something f@ckwit of, I later found out, Iranian origin.
This ignorant, clearly Marxist baboon was well versed in the language of racism and colonialism, giving everyone a good sample of his imbecility while in the queue.
As we are correctly advised to always remain polite and positive, I refrained from further discussion.

Later, he began harassing one of our volunteers, an enthusiastic lady of Persian (Not Iranian!) origin who had also been present at the demonstration outside St Mary’s Cathedral last February.
A politically-savvy woman who loves Australia and mourned the fall of the Shah, correctly blaming US interference under Jimmy Carter for it.
Although upset by the Iranian coward, my suitably adjective-embellished description of him made her laugh. She then recounted how she held back a young Maronite from decking an agitator on the steps of St Mary’s, then seeing two plain-clothes pigs hiding nearby, waiting for just such a reaction to the provocations of the anti-Pell simians.
Well versed in leftard persuasion techniques, she is indeed.

Following the most recent polling, our organizer’s opinion is that the YESsers are panicking, accosting and sometimes arguing with voters inappropriately.
He believes that that is a positive sign, arguing for a more relaxed, less hurried approach from us NOers, an approach that wouldn’t risk turning them off our message.

Given how the Leftards’ techniques have been so successful, for so long, I would not be so nonchalant..
Three more days to go.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
October 11, 2023 6:27 pm

The ABC and the academic class are going to be throwing toys out of the pram with outrage in every direction.

Aussies’ opinion on ‘colonisation’ revealed in exclusive polling following comments made by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (Sky News , 11 Oct)

Polling by Resolve obtained by Sky News put recent controversial comments by No campaigner and Indigenous Affairs spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price that colonisation had been a good thing for indigenous people.

Asked “On the whole, do you think the impact of colonization since 1788 has been a positive or a negative for indigenous people?”

It found 38 per cent of people found it had been positive.

Twenty-three per cent found it negative with 38 per cent unsure or mixed.

Wow, they are going to be furious. How dare ordinary Aussies say colonization was good!

Zatara
Zatara
October 11, 2023 6:30 pm

Chinese shipbuilding capacity over 200 times greater than US, Navy intelligence says

If you can’t build as many ships, make more torpedoes – ancient Chinese proverb

feelthebern
feelthebern
October 11, 2023 6:30 pm

Keep in mind, VicPlod & NSWPlod haven’t had any issues smashing car windows & dragging these sovereign citizen retards out of their cars for not co-operating at a traffic stop.
Yet have a protest, chant gas the jews, and the plod gives you a f*cking escort.

JC
JC
October 11, 2023 6:32 pm

Bullshit. I have no time for Putin as everyone knows. CCP are Satan’s representatives on earth, but to suggest a direct link with evil Hamas is some serious crazy shit.

Putin is obviously preoccupied and the thing China doesn’t want want is potential instability around Homuz.

Just delusional dickhead stuff.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
October 11, 2023 6:34 pm

Hamas, I would prefer they were hummus

Humus would be better.
You can grow stuff in humus.
First kill them, then compost them: humus!

Indolent
Indolent
October 11, 2023 6:36 pm

Forced medical “treatment”? Haven’t we been there before?

New California Law Aims To Force People With Mental Illness Or Addiction To Get Help

Wally Dali
Wally Dali
October 11, 2023 6:36 pm

AEC running ads on spotify saying all Oz over eighteen must vote in the ref.
A serious lie of omission- are they enabling the poll staff to discard the electoral roll?
Seriously think that there will be a steal.

Indolent
Indolent
October 11, 2023 6:38 pm
JC
JC
October 11, 2023 6:39 pm

I don’t understand how you make that link, Wali.

They are out of line for posting ads, as their job is to just ensure the vote count and process are fair and accurate. What is the lie of omission that you’re suggesting?

Rosie
Rosie
October 11, 2023 6:40 pm

The AEC have been pretty diligent about voters writing either Yes or No.
If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t be voting.

Roger
Roger
October 11, 2023 6:40 pm

Current and former Australians of the Year lecturing Australians on how shameful a No result would be.

Eventually this bully pulpit will collapse under the weight of its irrelevance.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
October 11, 2023 6:41 pm

Weasel words.

Police say second Sydney pro-Palestine rally unlikely to be approved but urge public to avoid attending protest if conducted (Sky News, 11 Oct)

NSW Police say it is unlikely a second pro-Palestine rally planned for this Sunday will be approved as they “encourage people not to attend” the event after violent scenes erupted outside the Opera House.

We all know what is going to happen, and we all know what NSW Plod isn’t going to do. Cowards.

cohenite
October 11, 2023 6:43 pm

I still think Gaza has to be obliterated. I’m thinking a low yield Neutron bomb. Lebanon and Iran on the other hand just high yield nukes.

The talk about IDF going from building to building chasing already dead hostages (??????? ???? ????) is exactly what the hamas and iranian dogs want. It would also enable Hezbollah scum to come down from the North and they are already sending rockets in. I would also nuke Syria. Fuk em all.

Here I wish some press investigation would identify the palli protestors; the wallopers and security won’t. I bet a lot are not citizens or have dual citizenry. They should be sent to gaza. Not going to happen of course. The West is being betrayed by its leaders.

feelthebern
feelthebern
October 11, 2023 6:43 pm

I was going to go to an art fair in town this weekend but will probably give it a miss if this Hamas party will be going on.

Rosie
Rosie
October 11, 2023 6:44 pm

Some people have been under the illusion referendum voting is optional, AEC can remind them they have to.
As you have to get marked off the role before you can vote, no-one who hasn’t bothered to enrol is going to get a guernsey.
I don’t know whether the data base being used to check you exist on the role is also being used to mark you off as having voted.

cohenite
October 11, 2023 6:44 pm

(??????? ???? ????)

That was meant to be God Bless Them in Hebrew.

Indolent
Indolent
October 11, 2023 6:47 pm
Rufus T Firefly
Rufus T Firefly
October 11, 2023 6:48 pm

“Don’t the New South Wales coppers have teargas and truncheons?”

They are reserved for the really violent grandmothers, that may be holding vigil for “Human Rights”, or the even more sinister, “Defending the right for you to take control of what medical interventions you take”.
Bastards!

Fourteenth century neanderthals, threatening society is perfectly fine.
“Evening all, …….., nothing to see here, ………, on ya bike!”

“Hey, …….., you with the blue and white flag, standing quietly, ……., come with us!”

JC
JC
October 11, 2023 6:49 pm

Indolent
Oct 11, 2023 6:46 PM

Hamas atrocities expose peril of liberals’ long embrace of Palestinians and Iran

A decent part of the left is embracing them now. What peril?

Dot
Dot
October 11, 2023 6:50 pm

Chinese shipbuilding capacity over 200 times greater than US, Navy intelligence says

So is their ability to run their subs aground with their own undersea version of WWII suspended cables and get spied on by the Brits with an AAPL watch.

A flight of Super Hornets armed only with two Tomahawk cruise missiles each, in total, can have an effective range over 2000 km, hit stealthily and hit with 8 1000 HE warheads.

That can take out two aircraft carriers, two cruisers/destroyers and two frigates.

China has three carriers.

Robert Sewell
October 11, 2023 6:50 pm

feelthebern

Oct 11, 2023 6:12 PM
Rishi has grown a set of balls.
A week or so ago, he’s drawing a line on this trans circus.
Now, calling out these Hamas animals.

I’m regarding his sudden conversion with a bloody great big fat dose of scepticism. I bet the prick knows there’s an election coming up somewhere and he’s positioning himself for a conservative run.
And as soon as he’s in, it will be back to the restrictions and jobs for mates.
Just look at his record when he wasn’t under threat. That’s what he’ll push when/if he gets back in.

Indolent
Indolent
October 11, 2023 6:51 pm

I think they’re confusing “disinformation” with “truth”.

EU warns Musk’s X spreading ‘illegal’ disinformation after Hamas attack

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
October 12, 2023 3:04 am

From Scott Hargreaves of the IPA. They don’t do everything right (didn’t support Bettina Arndt) but they do most things right and deserve support. It doesn’t cost much to subscribe and the information the produce is virtal. Also, opportunities to meet with like-minded others at interesting talks are good.

Over the weekend it occurred to me that this email to IPA members would be my last opportunity to offer some remarks before the close of the polls for the Voice to Parliament referendum being held this coming Saturday, October 14th, 2023.

But now, as I sit down to write, my attention is inevitably drawn to the terrible events in Israel, as that brave and remarkable country faces a terrorist horror that has left all decent people in shock. It is difficult to imagine what it must be like for Jews in Australia and around the world who witness not just the current horror, but who are reminded of the pernicious persistence of anti-Semitism and the capacity for violence of those who have no interest in peace and co-existence.

They have to know that we have them in our hearts, that we offer them our deepest condolences, and that we reaffirm our support for the Israeli people as their country faces so many terrible choices in order to defend itself in the weeks and months ahead.

When I was at university in the 1980s – at a time when many of the Left now in positions of authority were writing or marching on behalf of the Palestinian cause – I was confronted by the bizarre moral equivalence in the phrase “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”.

It was used as a screen to absolve all of the brutal Maoist and sundry communist atrocities that marked the bleeding-edge of the Cold War in the developing world. And, somehow, the Palestinian cause was shoe-horned by the emergent cultural Left into the Cold War dichotomy, with Israel lumped in with America and the global capitalist/colonialist ‘class’, while the Palestinians were assumed to be part of the exploited global proletariat. And for many of those useful idiots of the Left marching under the Palestinian flag, there it remains.

But I don’t recall the freedom fighters of the American Revolution murdering women and children in their beds. I don’t recall Peter Lalor or other leaders of the Eureka rebellion kidnapping civilians as hostages in their struggles against Governor Hotham. At a stretch, I could even accept that Che Guevara and other Leftist ‘freedom fighters’ generally confined their summary executions to the ‘ruling class’, and eschewed murdering children for sport.

In the 1970s the new wave of Leftist academics struggled for a short time to place Australia within their Cold War dichotomy. It was tempting to position Australia in the global south, subject to the manipulations of Americans, with all Australians somehow victims of neo-colonialism (hence the fevered narrative around The Dismissal). This also had a particular appeal for some Irish-Australian academics, as it sat very comfortably with their ancestral views of the damage done to the Emerald Isle by the British over many centuries.

But then, in due course, it was settled. European settlers were definitely the perpetrators of colonialism, and the entire Australian nation-state to this day is irredeemably a colonialist endeavour; and fundamentally each and every part of the ‘gap’ in living standards between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians is attributable to that original sin.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart, and the mantra of Voice, Treaty, Truth fulsomely endorsed (to everyone’s surprise) on election night, reflect this view that nothing less than a remaking of the foundations of Australia can erase that colonialist legacy. Some, like Senator Lidia Thorpe and Michael Mansell, reject the Voice only because it does not explicitly claim the sovereignty they desire. Others are more patient.

There is not the space in this email to summarise all the work the IPA has done over the past 18 months to research the Voice to Parliament, and to communicate those findings to the public. Or to point out the many times the fruits of that research have been quoted by others, inside and outside Parliament. But you should be assured that with your support we have been able to make an impact.

It was with your support the IPA was able to plant a flag in the ground many years ago – prior to the Uluru statement – with its “Race Has No Place” (in the Constitution) research. Only the IPA – which neither seeks nor receives Government funding – could be so unequivocal in rejecting measures to divide Australians by race. This independence is enabled by you, and more than 8,800 other IPA members.

If you do want to consider our research in order to inform your decision on the referendum, we did summarise our extensive research program in a one-page document entitled ‘5 Things You Need To Know About The Voice’:

The Voice would divide Australians by race.
The Voice would permanently change the Constitution.
The Voice would undermine civic equality.
The Voice would undermine your say in our future.
The Voice is risky and would mean decades of legal challenges [Read here].
That page also links each point back to the original research papers and commentary.

The despicable attack by Hamas was, if nothing else, an endorsement of the then Morrison Government’s decision in March 2022 to declare Hamas a terrorist organisation. Lest there be any doubts about that decision (upheld by the current government), Hamas by its action has removed them.

It is also a reminder that we live in an increasingly unsettled and dangerous world. The period of relative calm seen after the end of the Cold War has long since disappeared into the rear-view mirror. It is worth noting that Russia and China appear uninterested in condemning Hamas.

While Australia does not stand alone, none but ourselves are ultimately responsible for ensuring the decisions we take are consistent with being a free, prosperous, liberal democratic nation-state offering opportunities to all its citizens and defending its borders and interests.

Sadly, most of the objectives pursued by the elites who dominate public debate – and who occupy the commanding heights of the State apparatus – undermine rather than enhance our relative strengths. Net zero and the supposed elimination of reliance on fossil fuels is one. Hence the IPA’s determination to remind Australians that energy security is national security.

Every Australian must vote according to their conscience in this referendum (and should be proud to live in a country where the people are actually able to approve or reject change to the Constitution). But they should know a Voice to Parliament would divide us by race, just at a time when the global context means more than ever we should be working together to make our great country strong and united. A country which remembers its friends, like Israel, and has the capacity to protect itself. And one which, going forward, can deliver on the promise of happiness and prosperity for all Australians, including (but not only) those of Aboriginal descent.

Thank you again for your support.

bons
bons
October 12, 2023 6:38 am

I spent the afternoon at the booth. I thought the vibe was OK – not great.
One of the aboriginal girls said that we would loose the booth because “there are too many rich pricks here”.
Certainly the Yesers seemed more willing to openly thumbs up their team than the No voters who seemed almost shy.
One obvious difference was in the teams equipment. Our stuff, pergolas, tables etc was brought in by the volunterrs. Their stuff was all commercial hire. The anger at the iniquity was visceral.
I had never before really encountered urban aboriginals who, while they acknowledged their ‘mob’, wanted nothing to do with the big men or the Canberra ‘mob’. Smart folks but you had a feeling that they may be shadow dwellers despite their confident breezy personalities.
I innocently initiated a dispute when talking to a Yes volunteer. I had forgotten what sneering arrogant bitches lefty women can be. I went back to waving my placard at the passing traffic.
Three more days. I am a little concerned. Hopefully I have been standing in the sun for too long.

bons
bons
October 12, 2023 6:52 am

Oh, and PS. About every three or four hours a ‘thank you’ Whatsap arrived from Jacinta. That woman is extraordinary.

Tintarella di Luna
Tintarella di Luna
October 12, 2023 7:43 am

Beryl from the Bowling Club doesn’t act like much of a police commissioner in NSW.
Always sends out the lackeys.
It was up to one of those today who confirmed NSW plod escorted the Pali protest from Town Hall to the Opera House.

I saw that clip last night – that poor bloke is a very dear friend of our family whose distaste was wrought inevery expression – the women in charge have made all the difference in terrorist situations – get me s bucket

1 8 9 10
  1. It’s almost as if Extinction Rebellion is an elitist project.All the kiddies participating in “climate change” protests are children of…

  2. In Ukraine, the Biden-Harris administration stumbled into war through weakness. President Trump would introduce peace through strength. Here’s what a successful…

2K
0
Oh, you think that, do you? Care to put it on record?x
()
x