Open Thread – Wed 18 Oct 2023


Office Prince Clemens von Metternich, Anon, 1829

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cohenite
October 19, 2023 9:42 pm

My work here is done. Happy dick free dreams pansies.

JC
JC
October 19, 2023 9:49 pm

My work here is done. Happy dick free dreams pansies.

But seriously, how did you go from classic old time actresses of the silver screen to these monsters? What was the path you traveled to get from there to “cute owls”?

thefrollickingmole
thefrollickingmole
October 19, 2023 9:50 pm

Oldish Russian war movie, ok, but the final monologue of Hitler talking to a shadowy figure is more ominous now than it was back then.

https://youtu.be/4RDSrUHQW4Y?si=23bKZzPyJctHo9I4

Everyone knew that, about which they
were afraid to tell even their wives,

we had declared clearly and openly,
as befits a powerful and united nation.

They had always disliked Jews.

They always feared that dark
and gloomy country in the east.

That centaur who is savage
and foreign for Europe, Russia.

I said, “Let’s simply
solve these two problems.”

Solve them once and for all.

Did we invent something new? No.

We simply brought
clarity to all the matters

for which Europe wanted
clarity and that is all.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
October 19, 2023 9:53 pm

Israel at war: Inside the ghost town of Kfar Aza, where Hamas slaughtered civilians

By yoni bashan
Margin Call Editor
@yoni_bashan
8:48PM October 19, 2023
1 Comment

It’s been two weeks since Hamas terrorists rampaged through southern Israel on a campaign of mass slaughter of civilians. Two weeks, yet inside the village of Kfar Aza, the nauseating smell of incinerated tyres, of singed clothing and melted plastic, of smouldering wreckage — it still hits you like a blaze when the wind decides to stir.

Two weeks, but it could be an hour. Untouched houses are preserved in time, school bags and shoes left by the door as though everyone’s just stepped out for a minute. Like it’s still early on Saturday, October 7, and gunmen haven’t crept into the village yet; preserved as though in amber.

But turn a corner and reality rises with the breeze to puncture the senses, a stench of decay, of dead dogs, of food left rotting in abandoned refrigerators.

Gone are the corpses but everything else is here in situ; the terrorists’ pathway traceable from a busted security gate to cars shot up with Kalashnikov rifles, to crumpled paragliders that flew them in, and homes scorched using thermobaric weapons, driving up the heat inside to 3000C.

Not the entire home; mostly just the concrete safe rooms where residents sheltered. To witness these charred, broken husks again and again is to understand the terrorists’ always planned for maximum civilian carnage – that this was never going to be an engagement between territorial armies. Whether it was Kfar Aza or Nirim or Nahal Oz or Be’eri, civilians were always the bounty.

These were attacks that arrived in waves, ending with hostages captured and Gaza residents flooding in to loot homes with impunity. It’s why women’s clothing was left strewn in the middle of the streets in Kfar Aza, and why electrical appliances and furniture are missing. Vehicles are gone, of course. Even cows were taken across the border.

Reclaiming the village involved a painstaking military operation. Hence the letter “C” sprayed on to so many doorways to confirm the building was “cleared”, and that this took place on “11/10” or “14/10”, dates that speak to the pace of the operation. They were still being secured one week after the attacks had begun.

It’s one gigantic crime scene, and it will remain a crime scene, but for how long? Until the houses are razed? Until residents move back? Until Hamas is routed and can no longer lord over its subjugated population?

Residents have come back to Kfar Aza to collect their belongings, if only briefly, but however one contemplates the future of this place, a return to its previous life is difficult to fathom.

Even when glimmers of that existence are still here. They’re in the swaying palms and communal art welcoming visitors at the entrance to the village, the painted bicycles, the towering eucalyptus tree, one of hundreds transplanted from Australia decades ago to drain the swampy marshlands of the Israeli south.

They’re a palimpsest of Kfar Aza’s former self as an agricultural farming community, an ideal quickly pierced as one takes a few steps inside the village. The wreckage is everywhere.

When a journalist gets close to a demolished vehicle, an official tells her it was used by the terrorists. “There are still explosives inside,” he warns.

Some 800 residents were living here on October 7 and an untold number remain, the body count unclear. A seasoned Israeli army commander described horrific scenes, where victims had been decapitated and babies murdered in front of their mothers.

A family of five from Kfar Aza were buried this week, having died in each other’s arms. This is the place where soldiers entered a blood-smeared home to find another family gone, the only survivor the family labrador, waiting quietly on the bed of a dead child.

Maybe it’s too soon to even think about rebuilding, but some residents are courageous enough to try.

“The people who died – we don’t want them to die in vain,” said Maor Moravia, who survived the attacks with his family. “We don’t want their graves to be over there (in Kfar Aza) alone and nobody will be in the kibbutz. We want to go back and rebuild the community.

“As long as Hamas is able to do this again, it’s very hard to see myself going back there, but it’s about resilience. I believe we can do it, but the Israeli government will have to finish what they’re doing right now.”

However, that will take more than just time, and some undoubtedly will never come back. On Wednesday a man returned for his belongings, loading up a pet rabbit in the boot of his car. He told reporters he was collecting it for a friend.

Jorge
Jorge
October 19, 2023 9:54 pm

Goodness. Dot is right.

No doubt he’ll be very gracious about it.

Iron Cove
Iron Cove
October 19, 2023 9:55 pm

It seems like Halls Gap was the only booth in Mallee that voted Yes.
Gunna need to tweak the narrative.

thefrollickingmole
thefrollickingmole
October 19, 2023 9:56 pm

Bern. Just saw ghost dog coming up, a comfy film.

duncanm
duncanm
October 19, 2023 10:02 pm

Bone tomahawk on world movies… Awwwww yeahhhh.

I’m never sure what to make of it – it has great moments, but I have to be in the mood, as its violence is a little too realistic.

A bizarre combo horror, comedy western.

Bar Beach Swimmer
October 19, 2023 10:11 pm

Ftb:

Bone Tomahawk.

I thought this film would be worth watching. How wrong I was.

Old School Conservative
Old School Conservative
October 19, 2023 10:15 pm

The ABC has become the greatest enemy I have ever had to face, and it has been here at home.
Heston Russell, Major, Special Forces, (retired)

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
October 19, 2023 10:19 pm

X: We can build that today!

Hahaaa, BS you can!

—-

My Lunch Break:

Ancient Budapest?

Dot
Dot
October 19, 2023 10:21 pm

Imagine being hilariously, embarrassingly wrong and complaining about it by whinging about an imagined lack of grace on the behalf of others.

But enough about PM Albanese, Marcia Langton or Thomas Mayo.

Dot
Dot
October 19, 2023 10:22 pm

We can build that today!

Yes, we can.

Bar Beach Swimmer
October 19, 2023 10:23 pm

What was the path you traveled to get from there to “cute owls”?

Please don’t encourage Cohenite, JC. We’ll end up knowing more than we want to.

Dot
Dot
October 19, 2023 10:27 pm

These Tartaria fantasies are wrong for three reasons.

1. If your civilisation can be ended by a mudslide…oh come on man.
2. Yeah they had electricity. So what? That’s pre WWI technology.
3. They were unable to leave a written legacy with books but also purpose specific artefacts, as we have.

hzhousewife
hzhousewife
October 19, 2023 10:33 pm

Well done, Grey Ranga. Nice to have a great day!

JC
JC
October 19, 2023 10:33 pm

He’s such a poser. In fact worse than Cannon-Brookes in some ways.

Forrests donate $10m for Gaza humanitarian aid
The Fortescue chairman says the people of Gaza are suffering, and the funding – which matches the federal government’s pledge – will help avert the rapid acceleration of a tragedy.

Why the need to make it public?

Colonel Crispin Berka
Colonel Crispin Berka
October 19, 2023 10:33 pm

A small titillating announcement.
Some time between midday and 2pm today, Queensland’s No vote percentage hit 69.

Teehee.

Noice noice.

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
October 19, 2023 10:37 pm

Dot
Oct 19, 2023 10:22 PM
We can build that today!

Yes, we can.

BS!

Notre-Dame repairs have people scratching their heads and going f*ck! How did they do it back then.

That fire was deliberate.

duncanm
duncanm
October 19, 2023 10:39 pm

I thought this film would be worth watching. How wrong I was.

didn’t even enjoy the line about the ‘smartest man here’ ?

Black Ball
Black Ball
October 19, 2023 10:40 pm

Rita Panahi:

Footy fans are owed an apology.

It’s the least the AFL and its clubs can do after needlessly involving the game in a divisive political debate.

What a colossal cock-up it was for the league, and its clubs, to back the Yes side in the contentious race-based referendum.

These clubs tried to persuade football supporters to back a deeply flawed, racist proposal, one solidly rejected by the Australian public.

In the footy states of SA and WA, two out of three voters backed No.

The AFL is making a habit of treating its biggest stakeholder, the fans, with pure contempt.

There were plenty of other sporting codes who also foolishly backed the highly divisive Voice with little regard of what their members, wider fan base and employees wanted.

But the AFL’s referendum folly was not an isolated incident.

There has barely been a Leftist cause the AFL hasn’t enthusiastically backed to the dismay of around half their fan base, often considerably more.

From taking a knee for the neo-Marxist race-baiters of BLM to their incoherent and comically hypocritical LGBTQIAA+ advocacy; you can rely on the social engineers at the AFL to lecture the masses about what to think.

Just don’t expect the AFL and its clubs to live up to the standards it demands of everybody else.

Take the annual Pride Game involving the Swans, whose official airline partner is Qatar Airways – that’s the state-owned airline of a country in which members of the LGBTQIAA+ community face genuine oppression including beatings, jail and, in some cases, death.

Most sports fans, whatever their political persuasion, would prefer the game to be left alone.

The moral posturing of the league, particularly on the referendum, is a sign of extreme arrogance.

Most organisations wouldn’t be so cavalier about how they treat those who ultimately pay the bills.

But the country’s leading football code has the enormous advantage of knowing no matter how badly they mishandle matters, no matter how much they alienate and annoy fans, the overwhelming majority will continue to watch the game and barrack for their clubs.

Their love of the sport is greater than whatever disdain they may feel for the league and its incessant politicking.

This week the AFL has learnt that constantly taking a position on issues outside of football comes with certain obligations.

Many have wondered why the AFL has failed to express support for Israel and the Jewish community after Hamas terrorists launched a barbaric attack that saw more than a thousand civilians slaughtered.

Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission is among those who must be wondering why the AFL has failed to issue a statement in solidarity with the people of Israel.

“History will harshly judge those organisations that when Jewish babies were decapitated, when entire families were executed in cold blood, when women were raped, and when children were kidnapped, chose to remain indifferent and mute in the face of such butcheries,” he said.

There are issues that are contentious and up for legitimate debate like the referendum and then there is the beheading of babies.

When a recognised terror group rapes women, stabs infants and burns entire families alive then one would expect universal condemnation but, even as members of the Jewish community came under attack in Australia, the AFL maintained a deathly silence.

You see the Left’s anti-Semitism and Marxist worldview casts Israelis as oppressors and Palestinians as the oppressed.

That makes any support of Israel a controversial move; one that will come with a backlash from the hard Left who increasingly think they own the game.

The same activists who call everyone “Nazis” cannot bring themselves to unequivocally condemn the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust.

Meanwhile, football’s self-appointed moral arbiter, former Collingwood player Héritier Lumumba, was busy condemning Australia for standing with Israel.

“Australia’s stance is emblematic of its own inability/lack of desire to comprehend its ongoing genocide of First Nations People, by denying justice for the well documented history of massacres & poisonings, kidnappings of children, and mass-incarceration of Aboriginal people,” he wrote.

The diatribe didn’t end there but I’ll spare you the rest of it.

When it should speak, the AFL is mute and too gutless to take a stand, and when it should stay silent the league and its clubs want to lecture.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
October 19, 2023 10:41 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7fWOt1yxpc

Another interview with Heston Russell.

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
October 19, 2023 10:41 pm

Dot
Oct 19, 2023 10:27 PM
These Tartaria fantasies are wrong for three reasons.

fantasies

STFU you mainstream consuming whore.

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
October 19, 2023 10:50 pm
Dot
Dot
October 19, 2023 10:53 pm

What does anyone have gain by covering up Tartaria?

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
October 19, 2023 10:55 pm

Instant Justice Compilation (10/19)

Who was it, who defined the mark of a real loser, as bringing a knife to a gunfight?

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
October 19, 2023 11:03 pm

Dot
Oct 19, 2023 10:53 PM
What does anyone have gain by covering up Tartaria?

Until I brought it up, you were clueless on the subject. Admit it. So much evidence from around the world of a mud flood.

Indolent
Indolent
October 19, 2023 11:04 pm
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
October 19, 2023 11:12 pm

Israeli air strike kills senior Hamas leader and family members

Jehad Mheisen, the head of the Hamas-led national security forces, has been killed in an Israeli air strike, according to a Hamas-aligned news agency.

His family members were also killed during the strike that destroyed their home in Gaza today.

Sorry ’bout that. Real sorry.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
October 19, 2023 11:14 pm

What does anyone have gain by covering up Tartaria?

Perhaps there’s a shadowy cabal of wealthy military-industrialist billionaires living in tunnels, and who stole- wait for it – the patents to Gothic cathedral architecture from the Tartarians, after the mudslide apparently big enough to end a civilisation with no remnants:

And who built Notre Dame and Cologne cathedrals, and the Sydney GPO, and who are right this very minute earning undisclosed cash (possibly from birth certificates) and royalty payments from the dead Tartarians. Even though they’re dead.

There’s only one answer to this – the Knights Templar.

Don’t you see? God you MSM sheepwhores! Do I have to spell it out?

Again?

Dot
Dot
October 19, 2023 11:16 pm

Until I brought it up, you were clueless on the subject. Admit it. So much evidence from around the world of a mud flood.

No.

What’s more the evidence is imaginary.

Let’s take some of a comparable or rival theory. So if it happened it was small scale.

Now let’s work that back to re Tartaria.

There is no written evidence, no form of documentation in the buildings and the proof of a “mud flood” is disbelief of imagined historical events “convicts didn’t build THAT!” (no, they sure didn’t).

The theory of earlier colonisation on America seems plausible until there are no written accounts of that happening.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
October 19, 2023 11:17 pm

Meanwhile, football’s self-appointed moral arbiter, former Collingwood player Héritier Lumumba, was busy condemning Australia for standing with Israel.

Harry. Harry O’Brien is your name.

Harry, get off the pipe. There’s no cash in it any more. Not for you, anyway.

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
October 19, 2023 11:17 pm

Knuckle Dragger
Oct 19, 2023 11:14 PM
What does anyone have gain by covering up Tartaria?

You are clueless on the subject.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
October 19, 2023 11:20 pm

Stevie T:

Knuckle Dragger
Oct 19, 2023 11:14 PM
What does anyone have gain by covering up Tartaria?

That wasn’t actually me that said that.

I know you’re not really a details man, but just thought I’d point it out.

caveman
caveman
October 19, 2023 11:33 pm

Rishi Sunak set to ban gay and transgender conversion therapy, ITV News understands

means parts will no longer be available.

Wally Dalí
Wally Dalí
October 19, 2023 11:38 pm

Rita was unwise to get side-tracked by has-been Haram Harrumpher’s… tweet.
She’s got a good head on her shoulders, and should have held the AFL down for the count for a clean win without being seduced by The Current Thing.

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
October 19, 2023 11:52 pm

I wonder if Sky News would ever have Tony Heller on their show?

It would have to be a 30 minute segment at minimum. Tony would say, F off unless they do.

They won’t of course.

Heller would raise eyebrows.

——-

Tony Heller:

“New Scientist” is reporting old news which has nothing to do with science and everything to do with propaganda.

Grave News About Journalism

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
October 20, 2023 4:31 am

Great to be back in Italy and have a tour guide who said, as only Italians can, welcoma toa whata we goinga doa todaya. Being a ‘panoramic’ tour in the mountain ranges that ring Messina we did yet another hour-long bus trip up precipitous hairpin bends that once again seemed endless, but nothing like as freaky as the terrifying Montenegro goat track. We ended up at a very large and very new (built 1972) but anciently themed cathedral on the hill top of Tindari, a magnificent effort of modern Catholicism, with its mosaic Life of Mary and Christ writ very large on its interior walls, all of it overlooking the Tyrrhean sea from a great height. It houses the seventh century wooden carving of the Black Madonna and the Christ Child, both deliberately carved in black and displayed held up by statuesque angels in flight. The myth is that fishermen found this statue on a beach. Another myth is that it represents the Virgin in a splendid moment of forgiveness of a negroid woman who was offensive to her. It’s style is of the early Byzantine period, and I note that the icons we saw at the monastery yesterday in Crete had a similar colouring. I have a theory about it all but here is not the place to detail it. Genetically of course the population of Sicily is very mixed indeed racially so the black coloration might come from recognising that, but my theory doesn’t go down that track at all.

The assoicated archaeological site on the top of this mountain dates back to Greek occupation by Carthaginian troops, mercenaries and their families, loyal to Sparta around 350bc. A very well preserved Greek theatre from that period was one of the treats of the tour. When the Romans had a presence here in the 2nd century BC till the 4th century AD they took out much of the chorus area in front of the audience seats and built a small wall with arched entry points, making it less of a theatre overlooking the sea through still-extant arches and more of an arena for gladatorial and wild animal fights. A lot of the seat is still in situ, although the site as a whole was mined by villagers in later ages for its dressed stone on the town’s defensive walls. Also only half destroyed and still impressive is a massive Roman forum and basilica a Roman bath house with some very fine mosaics still in situ on the flooring. One in particular I’ve never seen before was a centaur male with horse hoofs and a sort of dragon-fish tale – a rare marine centaur. A three-legged triskele (three legs walking a circle), the emblem of the Isle of Man in the UK, was also in these 2nd century AD mosaics, so not brought by the later Norse rulers as is often said. It’s also appeared recently in Syria at an even earlier date, says out guide. Part of the Indo-European cultural base, I’d hazard a guess. Deep blue views of this storied sea and all the above besides. Worthwhile making the effort in what was a sirocco-wind hot day.

We’ve had only sunny blue days for our whole trip; unusual for October. No complaints and no suggestion that this is something unique. The Med is variable.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
October 20, 2023 4:36 am

Forgot to mention that around the back of the brand new cathedral, a necessary build because there is so much adulation of the Black Madonna they need to accommodate crowds, lies a smaller and darker and in some ways more impressive 15th and 16th century medieval church, which also houses the replica of the Madonna which is carried around at times of festival and blessings of the fishing fleet, when she goes out to sea.

Oh my aching feet and legs we were all saying about these boot camp tours, where there are tough tracks to walk up and plenty of stairs too. Good for us though.

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  2. Flying into Malaysia for the first time, there was a warning that trafficking drugs carried the death penalty, on the…

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