Everything about the Skripals/ Sturgess case smells to high heaven. It’s worth following the Dawn Sturgess inquiry currently. Overnight, the…
Open Thread – Wed 29 Nov 2023
- The more you gets the less you eats
- Open Thread – Weekend 23 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 21 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Mon 18 Nov 2024
- From darkness to the promise of light
Jordan Peterson – Why Trump Won the 2024 Election
As it is silly to demand evidence for repeated claims that still haven’t been produced in over a month any…
Good move.
Everything about the Skripals/ Sturgess case smells to high heaven. It’s worth following the Dawn Sturgess inquiry currently. Overnight, the…
These 32 public servants earn more than $1m
Michael Read and Tom McIlroy
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher has warned the boards of government-owned businesses they must show restraint on pay and bonuses, after it was revealed at least 32 top public servants made more than $1 million last year.
NBN Co chief executive Stephen Rue easily maintained his title as Australia’s best paid public servant last year, netting a $3 million package, as large bonuses led seven Future Fund employees to earn more than $1 million.
The top earners list is dominated by employees from government business enterprises including NBN, Snowy Hydro, and Australia Post, where top employees often receive large bonuses on top of generous base salaries.
Australia Post chief executive Paul Graham was the second highest paid public servant, taking home $2.39 million in 2022-23.
Australia Post revealed in its annual report that the number of employees eligible for bonuses will be slashed to 100 from 2500 in 2023-24.
Responding to analysis of public sector annual reports by The Australian Financial Review, a spokeswoman for Senator Gallagher said it was up to the board of Australia Post to make decisions about executive pay, but moderation was necessary for government-owned businesses.
“Boards and executives of public companies cannot be indifferent to reasonable community expectations and should exercise restraint the Australian community would expect of a publicly owned entity.”
Australia Post employees no longer eligible for short-term incentives will receive a one-off increase in their base salary equivalent to 70 per cent of their target bonus.
Last financial year, the $200 million loss-making Australia Post paid $34.2 million in bonuses overall, down from $70 million in the year prior.
The board of the government-owned business considered scrapping bonuses but decided they were needed to “incentivise” senior staff, internal documents revealed.
Mr Graham was followed by Western Sydney Airport boss Simon Hickey, who was paid $1.61 million, and Future Fund chief executive Raphael Arndt, whose pay packet increased 39 per cent to $1.56 million as he also acted as chief investment officer.
NBN Co and other government corporations benchmark pay to be competitive with private sector competitors.
Many top-tier government salaries are set by the independent Remuneration Tribunal.
Overall, seven employees at the Future Fund earned more than $1 million, as strong investment returns led to a sharp increase in bonus payments, which are partly determined by the sovereign wealth fund’s average return over the past three years.
Former Snowy Hydro boss Paul Broad, who suddenly quit as chief executive in August last year amid escalating tension with Energy Minister Chris Bowen, received an $890,000 termination payment, taking his total package to $1.22 million for the 2022-23 financial year.
The Snowy Hydro 2.0 project is badly delayed and expected to cost $12 billion, three times the original estimate.
Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation chief investment officer Alison Tarditi took home $1.33 million. Former Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe was paid $1.15 million.
ABC managing editor David Anderson took home $1.15 million last financial year, out earning the chief of the defence force, General Angus Campbell, who was paid $1.06 million.
CSIRO boss Larry Marshall fell short of the $1 million threshold by just $371, taking home a total package of $999,629.
The salaries are well above what Australia’s political leaders earn. After a 4 per cent pay rise delivered in August, PM Anthony Albanese’s salary is $586,930. while Opposition Leader Peter Dutton receives $417,623.
In 2021, the former Morrison government instructed departments and public-owned businesses to move away from performance bonus schemes.
Across the public service in 2022, 765 bureaucrats were paid performance bonuses, down from 1100 a year earlier.
The median amount paid was $1286, down from $1674 in 2021.
Highest-paid public sector employees
Agency Name Role Total*
1 NBN Stephen Rue CEO $3,037,016
2 Australia Post Paul Graham CEO $2,385,610
3 Western Sydney Airport Simon Hickey CEO $1,610,978
4 Future Fund Raphael Arndt CEO $1,563,561
5 NBN Kathrine Dyer COO $1,519,571
6 Snowy Hydro Roger Whitby COO $1,475,610
7 Future Fund Ben Samild Deputy CIO $1,373,300
8 Snowy Hydro Iain Graham CEO, Red Energy $1,339,285
9 Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation Alison Tarditi CIO $1,325,553
10 Snowy Hydro Gordon Wymer Chief commercial officer $1,318,978
11 Australia Post Rod Barnes EGM network operations $1,283,008
12 Future Fund Alicia Gregory Deputy CIO $1,279,967
13 NBN Will Irving Chief strategy and transformation officer $1,275,094
14 Future Fund Not disclosed Not disclosed $1,248,036
15 Snowy Hydro Paul Broad Former CEO $1,220,412
16 NBN Philip Knox CFO $1,218,992
17 Australia Post Rodney Boys CFO $1,198,563
18 Australia Post Gary Starr EGM parcel, post and eCommerce $1,196,625
19 Future Fund Not disclosed Not disclosed $1,194,397
20 Australia Post Catriona Noble EGM Retail, brand and marketing $1,189,097
21 ABC David Anderson CEO and managing editor $1,156,969
22 Reserve Bank of Australia Philip Lowe Governor $1,147,465
23 Australia Post Susan Davies EGM people and culture $1,143,204
24 Australia Post Not disclosed Not disclosed $1,109,190
25 Federal Circuit and Family Court William Alstergren Chief justice $1,097,339
26 Future Fund Not disclosed Not disclosed $1,071,472
27 Defence General Angus Campbell Chief of the defence force $1,062,702
28 NBN John Parkin Chief engineering officer $1,052,988
29 Commonwealth Super Corporation Damian Hill CEO $1,038,474
30 Snowy Hydro Gabrielle Curtin Group executive $1,035,649
31 Future Fund Cameron Price General counsel & chief risk officer $1,011,614
32 Defence Greg Moriarty Secetary $1,006,474
*Total compensation for 2022-23; includes base salary, superannuation, bonuses, long-service leave, termination benefits and other allowances
Hawks complaining about mice not getting enough barley.
Which in my opinion is why she took it off and neatly folded it over the back of a chair before going to sleep on the leather couch. As any woman would know it would crush and stain from the leather, especially if you had nothing underneath to prevent perspiration being absorbed.
Brittany Higgins is asked WHY she wore the white dress she was allegedly raped in again as she opens up about sending selfies to her ex-boyfriend while wearing it
Chicken wire makes for a fine place for flies to perch too.
Masks Caused Increase In COVID Infections: Study (25 Nov)
According to the paper wearing a face mask caused a 30-40% increase in Covid infections compared to people who didn’t wear them. They don’t say why, but I’d hazard to say the masks were a good place for virus particles to sit on, especially if they were in the form of microdroplets which then dried out. So the person wearing the mask would get a bigger load of virus particles than if they’d only briefly been in range of the exhaling infected person.
Funnily enough this study isn’t being reported by the MSM. But if you follow the link to the paper itself that’s what it says.
But unlike Dutton, he made no call for the police to intervene and charge these scum.
Liz Storer was exceptional re this on The Late Debate. She’s a treasure.
Earlier, Hairy and I were going spare at Bolt for decrying the act but not requiring action re it, and also for giving Albo a free pass on this too, praising him for speaking out. Wot?? At times he’s unwatchable.
The Late Debate is the best show on Sky, imho. They say it as it is.
A very belated commiseration to Calli and family from me as well.
Dear Calli,
I am so sorry to hear of your Dad’s passing which we all know came sooner because beastly covid vaccinations, poor darling. I am glad you were able to give him the gift of witnessing his passing. When Mum died (killed by nursing home) just over a year ago, we were able to do that too, and we sang her home. We had three days of feasting to celebrate her life. She was a great cook. I miss her so much, I try to focus on the good times, the happy times when we laughed and supported each other, and I talk to her every day. I also weep, for all the things I wished to do with her that remain undone, and selfishly for me, for not having the luxury of asking about this or that or what was the recipience again?
You are not an orphan yet, because your Mum is still with you, that hit is particularly hard, until then you are child still, when it happens you become next in line and the fragility of life is laid bare.
I kept some of Mums ashes, mixed with Dads, and took them with me everywhere, but it seems I have mistakenly left her behind in FN QLD, look after the joint ’til we get back, Mum.
I guess I have learned, for me, that everyone grieves differently and not to get hung up on your particular journey. Take each day as it comes, be there for your mum and be there for yourself.
I say your Mum, because Mums are very good at hiding things,
as my Mum hid her grief, but wrote about it in her diary and it was poignant reading when we were packing up her house. I wish I had been more aware than I was. Good luck, and much love, Calli, in your treading of this path forever trod.
Gallagher entirely missing the main show, of course. And possibly (possibly?) intentionally so.
The issue with public servant wages is not the 7 figures paid to very few people engaged in managing large business or sums of money, but rather about the hundreds of public servants paid massive 6-figure wages with no risk or work requirements beyond 9 to 5 .
Sure, the bonus structures of the high flyers needs a look – clearly bonuses should only be paid where there is commensurate success and that clear has not been happening.
But this seems a distraction squirrel from Gallagher to me.
Looking down that list I expect every one of them could walk into a similar private sector job paying the same or more. The ones that get up my nose are ALPBC staff on $200k+ who would be unemployable outside the workers cooperative and $100k+ makework jobs in the APS.
Hamarse moneygoraound. Sources.
Source: The Economist.
Think we’ll call that a snap John.
But you said it much better than I did, Bear 🙂
Also it was skin tight and would have been uncomfortable and very hot to snooze off in. Taking it off would have been necessary for resting drunk, as well as being protective of the dress if she was worried about throwing up again. She had no knickers, but what about her bra? The security woman said she was ‘naked’. Was she not wearing a bra either? The dress was revealing, so maybe she just had a few of those sticky ‘pull up’ strips that are quite popular these days in place of a bra.
I’ve always thought that if the bruise on her thigh was done on the night in question then it was ideally placed to have been the result of a stumble into the corner of an office desk. I’ve done it myself, lol, not drunk but just clumsy.
Blinken saying Israel must provide safe passage for civilians when it resumes military actions in Gaza.
Yet he doesn’t ask Hamas to do the same.
The entire existence of the Future Fund should be up for debate. And any other equivalent hollow log on the government (our) balance sheet.
Sancho:
It seems to me that within the political classes, there is a culture of lying and disregard of truth in favour of short term advantage for the individual.
It probably explains the disgust the average Australian hold for them.
Once created, I’m not sure there’s much you can do with the future fund. It should have been 100% invested in an ASX tracker, though. As it is, it’s just a giant gift to big government types to play “pick a winner” (BIRM).
The American Thinker article above adds to this quote from The Economist. It suggests that it is the EU and the US and other Western sympathisers who heavily fund the Gaza strip, noting that apart from growing a few vegetables there is no productive output at all from the millions living there. It is a thoroughly welfare-dependent economy on which the West could pull the plug, but won’t. Obviously, shady dealings with funds from across the Middle East, led by Iran and Qatar, are also part of keeping Gaza and the West Bank Arabs intent on creating ‘Palestine’.
Brittany’s manner and the language she uses can only be described as ‘brittle’. She has mental health issues and she’s trying to bear up but it’s a brutal place in a courtroom and her distress should be ignored. It might even create suspicion.
When she speaks the language is very public service with bits of humanities tutorial paper. There was one bit yesterday when she caught herself about to say ‘rape’ but quickly changed it to ‘the assault’ which she then continued to use. ‘Rape’ was a bit too confronting, too direct. Keep rough and nasty things at a distance. Hint. That’s what a well bred gel with a university education does.
Should think any such dress/outfit would be consigned to the flames?
Been out, so in case no-one has already answered, C. Northcote Parkinson.
ADF total strength has dropped from 62 429 t0 41 079 since 1983
According to the younger vets I have known will drop further despite the big push on to recruit more. Apparently the officer corps is open at the moment that sometime in the next 10 years they are expecting China to invade Taiwan and it will be on. Personally seeing how we operated in Afghan/Iraq I wouldn’t least be surprised if Australia took a very much back seat/supporting role on retaking Taiwan if the time comes.
3rd hand on gripes of the troops through ex-ADF acquaintances but lack of opportunities to even train overseas with allies, insane tempo and all this woke BS being pushed down their throats at all turns. Boys will apparently train hard if there’s an incentive like an exchange trip to Indonesia or Philippines in the offing, at the moment apparently they are sending more and more shiny bums on these things that were once reserved for combat troops.
In my day a well bred gel wouldn’t have found herself sozzled and naked in her employer’s office at the end of a night out.
What progress we’ve made since.
Whybrow again catching Knickerless out with discrepancies in evidence given yesterday and evidence given today when quizzed about a meeting with Reynolds and Brown.
The hole is getting deeper.
All back in court at 12:30pm.
The Future Fund was created when Australia had zero Net Debt (with a few bonds on issue for price discovery). Arguably it shouldn’t exist today.
China is stumbling into the Graveyard of Empires. Its troops are utterly out of their depth
Britain, Russia and America came to grief on the Afghan frontier. Beijing is following in their footsteps
MATTHEW HENDERSON
The powers that choose to play the Great Game on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan have never prospered.
Despite the courage of generals and the brains of political agents, their best-laid plans – whether British in the 19th century, Russian in the 20th, or American in the 21st – have generally ended in disaster and retreat.
Now it seems that China – which has long treated Pakistan as its client and proxy in a push for a defining regional role, most recently through the Belt and Road Initiative – faces the same fate.
How has this come to pass?
China’s ambitions to contain and dominate South Asia date back decades. Its rivalry with India made building dependencies in Pakistan an attractive option, while confident Chinese regimes have tightened their grip on Xinjiang and looked further west to spread their power and influence.
With the global expansion of China’s economic strength came a compelling wish for military influence, not only in competition with India but the West as a whole.
If China could establish a naval and economic foothold at a Pakistani port near the Hormuz Strait, it would open up important opportunities on both fronts.
Gwadar Port was meant to become this foothold, the jewel in the crown of the Asian belt and road, and a China-controlled funnel for trade not only from its own economic powerhouse but also its allies in Central Asia.
The voyage from China via the Malacca Strait to the Gulf is around 10,000 kilometres; steaming from Gwadar knocks 7,500 kilometres off the journey, and a great deal of geo-strategic risk as well.
But what of the 2,500 kilometres land route from Xinjiang to the sea, through Balochistan, skirting the lawless frontier of Afghanistan?
Overlooking Beijing’s oppression of Islamic minorities in Xinjiang may have been rationalised in Pakistan’s dysfunctional and debt-captured political system.
There is, however, no lack of fighters in the renascent Pakistani Taliban willing to take up arms in support of their Uyghur brothers.
Together with Pakistan’s inept management of ethnic resistance in Balochistan, and the distinctly neocolonial nature of relations between Beijing and Islamabad, has drawn this economic corridor into the literal firing line.
Lethal attacks on Chinese infrastructure engineers have followed, despite Pakistani soldiers being stood up to protect them.
Savage counter-terrorism actions in Balochistan have failed to protect the Chinese from intense resentment among local groups, who see their presence as appropriating local homelands. Beijing’s own security details are entirely out of their depth.
Now things may be further deteriorating.
Last week, a Pakistani Taliban commander announced that unless it was paid a 5 per cent “tax” on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the massive infrastructure project linking Xinjiang with the sea, it would be “destroyed” – along with Chinese workers and equipment.
History confirms the need for caution.
In 1841, William Macnaghten, the British political agent in Kabul, decided to cut back the “subsidies” (bribes) paid to local militants.
Soon afterwards he was beheaded, chaos ensued and the first British withdrawal from Afghanistan began.
It seems that the much-vaunted “China Dream” is turning into a familiar nightmare – one that may also end in an inglorious Imperialist graveyard.
Taking photos in the bathroom because ‘I was awkward’?
David, mate, buddy – I realise $3 million is a pretty decent boat anchor.
But, really, honestly, you need to think forward to when Brinny’s explaining to the police why she dressed your corpse up in her underwear after she stabbed you to death while you were asleep.
The tacit support of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, makes doing business easier. And the Turkish economy’s enthusiasm for big infrastructure projects suits Hamas’s need to obscure investments.
Friends who have been on group tours of Turkey love the country. We travelled solo in a car, making our own arrangements. Quite frankly, I didn’t find them particularly friendly, especially in country areas. On the other hand, as a woman, I was treated with respect, probably because I was with my husband & was wearing a long coat, not unlike that worn by Turkish ladies.
We were surprised how the opium fields lacked any security at all. In that area we visited a big town (it may have been Iznik) where a 4WD was blown up just down the street from out hotel.
Just don’t like modern Turkey very much.
one of knight’s best, imho.
Times move and we move with the times. Probably better than a Datsun 180B at the end of the day.
He been all over the shop today. The focus groups mustn’t be giving the results Biden’s staffers want.
Some headlines from Arutz Sheva:
Try making sense of that lot! And his boss is undermining Israel as hard as possible.
Surrender: Biden Stabs Israel in the Back – Report: Blinken Scolds Israel It Lacks ‘Credit’ to Defeat Hamas (Breitbart mainpage top headline, 30 Nov)
One wonders whether the two aircraft carriers off the coast of Israel are friend or foe.
Virtue is not a movable feast.
Seems like the NSW gubbmint and taxpayers got conned again:
Going from 7 lanes into four into 10 lanes into four is now an improvement. Costing billions of taxpayer dollars. Because nobody in charge could read the plans, or had the common sense to hire someone who could.
NSW used to have a Department of Public Works, which was abolished when managerialism became fashionable.
They were slow and stodgy, but the things built on their watch worked, and are still standing.
The assaults from dodgy developers were everyday bushflies. AFAIK, they were rarely corrupted.
They knew the real cost of building anything (to standard) down to the last dollar, and anyone who underquoted was filed away as a shonk.
I know that it can’t be re-created, but my point is that idealism in public service was real in the past – like all those Worker Education organisations, and we should be thinking about how we can revatalise that spirit.
Good Lord.
The things a young chap can learn.
Zippster
People do forget that China doesn’t scrap its older aircraft. A MiG21 can still be outfitted with modern missiles and thrown at Taiwans air defences, or even just dumb bombs. Taiwan has to treat a wave of obsolete fighter/bombers as if they were a threat. And if the Chinese treat both the aircraft and the pilot as expendable, the Taiwan defences will be worn out very quickly.
It will be a low grade technological Verdun, but without the ability to reinforce the defences.
Same for Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. Why does the world want to establish an IslamoFascist state with no ability to generate revenue enough to feed its inhabitants. During the 75 years of this “project” has no-one conducted a cost benefit analysis of its potential viability?
An economist’s guess is liable to be as good as anybody else’s.
– Will Rogers
The Future Fund was created when Australia had zero Net Debt (with a few bonds on issue for price discovery). Arguably it shouldn’t exist today.
IIRC the Future Fund was set up to pay for the exorbitant unfunded public service super payouts. Previously they had a type of ponzi scheme running whereby the PS employee count will always grow. That is a red flag right there.
The f fund was supposed to be continually added to so that the PS super was 100% funded. I understand it is now stuck around 60% with successive govmints walking away from further funding. But hey, kick that can further down the road.
Second attempt to share this publicly available info
According to the ad’s. You get all the flexy time and education from inside a tank.
Israel and Hamas are both using the pause to plan strategy. Why does no-one demand those peace loving citizens use the pause to plan for their own safety. Blinken doesn’t demand Hamas must provide for the safety of Israeli citizens.
John B
Can’t speak for other women, but I certainly wouldn’t be wearing it to another event because it was my favourite dress after I’d been raped in it.
If that is true, it tells us quite a bit about her.
The Ecomomist
Putin seems to be winning the war in Ukraine—for now
His biggest asset is Europe’s lack of strategic vision
For the first time since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24th 2022, he looks as if he could win.
Russia’s president has put his country on a war footing and strengthened his grip on power. He has procured military supplies abroad and is helping turn the global south against America.
Crucially, he is undermining the conviction in the West that Ukraine can—and must—emerge from the war as a thriving European democracy.
The West could do a lot more to frustrate Mr Putin. If it chose, it could deploy industrial and financial resources that dwarf Russia’s.
However, fatalism, complacency and a shocking lack of strategic vision are getting in the way, especially in Europe. For its own sake as well as Ukraine’s, the West urgently needs to shake off its lethargy.
The reason a Putin victory is possible is that winning is about endurance rather than capturing territory.
Neither army is in a position to drive out the other from the land they currently control. Ukraine’s counter-offensive has stalled. Russia is losing over 900 men a day in the battle to take Avdiivka, a city in the Donbas region. This is a defenders’ war, and it could last many years.
However, the battlefield shapes politics.
Momentum affects morale.
If Ukraine retreats, dissent in Kyiv will grow louder. So will voices in the West saying that sending Ukraine money and weapons is a waste. In 2024 at least, Russia will be in a stronger position to fight, because it will have more drones and artillery shells, because its army has developed successful electronic-warfare tactics against some Ukrainian weapons and because Mr Putin will tolerate horrific casualties among his own men.
Increasing foreign support partly explains Russia’s edge on the battlefield. Mr Putin has obtained drones from Iran and shells from North Korea. He has worked to convince much of the global south that it has no great stake in what happens to Ukraine. Turkey and Kazakhstan have become channels for goods that feed the Russian war machine.
A Western scheme to limit Russian oil revenues by capping the price for its crude at $60 a barrel has failed because a parallel trading structure has emerged beyond the reach of the West. The price of Urals crude from Russia is $64, up nearly 10% since the start of 2023.
Mr Putin is also winning because he has strengthened his position at home. He now tells Russians, absurdly, that they are locked in a struggle for survival against the West. Ordinary Russians may not like the war, but they have become used to it. The elite have tightened their grip on the economy and are making plenty of money. Mr Putin can afford to pay a lifetime’s wages to the families of those who fight and die.
Faced with all this, no wonder the mood in Kyiv is darker.
Politics has returned, as people jostle for influence.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, and Valery Zaluzhny, its most senior general, have fallen out.
Internal polling suggests that corruption scandals and worries about Ukraine’s future have dented Mr Zelensky’s standing with voters.
Western governments insist they are as committed to Ukraine as ever.
But polls around the world suggest that many doubt it.
In America the Biden administration is struggling to make Congress release funding worth over $60bn.
Next year’s election campaign will soon get in the way. If Donald Trump is elected president, having promised peace in short order, America could suddenly stop supplying weapons altogether.
Europe should be preparing for that dire possibility—and for American help to slow, whoever is in the White House.
Instead, European leaders are carrying on as if munificent Joe Biden will always be in charge.
The European Union has promised Ukraine €50bn ($56bn), but the money is being held up by Hungary and, possibly, a budgetary mess in Germany.
In December the eu should signal that it is ready to start talks for Ukraine’s membership.
But many believe that the process will be intentionally strung out because enlargement is hard and threatens vested interests.
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, was recorded (during a prank call) saying that Europe is weary. You would think a Trump presidency would galvanise support for Ukraine, as Europe took responsibility for its own defence. One leader privately predicts that support will in fact fragment.
That would be a disaster. By 2025 the strain of running a war may start to catch up with Mr Putin. Russians may increasingly resent the forced mobilisations, inflation and diversion of social spending to the army.
Yet simply hoping that his regime collapses makes no sense.
He could remain in power for years and if he does, he will threaten war because that is his excuse for domestic repression and his own people’s suffering. He has blighted his country’s prospects by isolating it from Europe and driving its most enterprising people into exile. Without war, the hollowness of his rule would be on full display.
Europe must, therefore, plan for Mr Putin as the main long-term threat to its security. Russia will rearm. It will have combat experience. Planning for Europe’s defence should be designed to prevent Mr Putin from sensing weakness on its flank—especially if he doubts a President Trump’s willingness to fight should a nato country be attacked.
The best way to deter Mr Putin would be for Europe to demonstrate its resolve by showing right now that it is fully committed to a thriving, democratic, westward-looking Ukraine. Weapons matter, especially air defences and long-range missiles to strike at Russian supply lines, which is why it is crucial for America to approve the latest tranche of aid.
Because arsenals are already depleted, more work needs to go into increasing the capacity of Western arms-makers. Sanctions could be targeted more effectively to split the regime from the elite.
Political action in Europe is essential, too (see Charlemagne). Mr Putin will attack Ukraine’s cities and subvert its society to sabotage the country’s transformation into a Western democracy. In response Europe should be redoubling its efforts to ensure that Ukraine progresses, with the promise of money and eu accession.
European leaders have not acknowledged the size of the task—indeed, too many seem to shrink from it.
That is folly.
They should heed Leon Trotsky: they may not be interested in war, but war is interested in them.
Digger:
You have no argument with me over Amazon, Digger.
Several years ago, due to eyesight issues, I made the decision to move to Kindle. It wan’t until I bought a new reader and had multiple problems with redownloading my library (Now at > 1100 books) that I realised Amazon is too big for customer issues and doesn’t really care about them, only in the aggregate.
Kindle still owns the books in a sense – they control the download function and that means if the want to they can just wipe your library and essentially steal them all back.
But what to do? When you’ve outlayed about $10k and it can be taken from you on the basis of a subsection subclause #21(b) on the updated Terms of Sale, there’s not a lot you can do about it.
A cynic might aver it’s to make life difficult for the Israelis.
Still hard to see how taxpayer are down up to $3m on this farce which wouldn’t have got past the front desk of the local cop shop if it happened in Northbridge, Kings Cross or Fortitude Valley. No wonder Gallagher has reached for a distraction squirrel.
You and me both.
According to the ad’s. You get all the flexy time and education from inside a tank.
LOL army training areas are like the remote sites I work on outside the envelope let alone hearing my dad talk and every ex army dude I have come across about the tempo on exercise.
Good luck with that one, pity the government can’t be sued for false advertising…
Bruce of N
Israel has previously struck a US intelligence collection ship off its Mediterranean coast.
There are gas and oil reserves just off the Gaza coast.
The business model of most big companies now.
As if locating call centres overseas wasn’t a sufficient display of contempt for local customers, some are now employing AI to answer phone calls and online inquiries.
I will say the RC generally did wonders for the financial sector’s customer relations, though.
And yet Egypt doesn’t want Gaza.
This was then:
In this moment of tragedy, I want to say to them and to the world and to terrorists everywhere that the United States stands with Israel. We will not ever fail to have their back. (POTUS, White House 07 October)
Except when we do, that is.
Emperor Xi smiles: the collapse of US hegemony is happening much faster than the decay of the Middle Kingdom.
U.S. Strengthening Deterrence in Taiwan Strait. A sure sign that Taiwan, Korea, and Japan might be smart to pull together their ‘bombs in the basement’.
This is typical of the current generation. Never criticised as children they have the coping abilities of a glass straw. A lot of expectations meeting reality around the place.
It’s a package deal.
Calli/Armadillo:
The war generation was damn hard on a lot of Australians. A lot didn’t come home, many came home with wounds both visible and invisible. A lot came home to marry girls who also carried their emotional scars.
Dad did a runner, unable to cope with a family of five kids.
Mum fell into a depressive state after her career as a violinist was given up to join the AAWAS packing supplies for the lads in New Guinea and going through the Cowra breakout.
Stepdad Jack was an alcoholic after the Lae campaign where he was wounded and stuck in a ‘bomb happy’ ward. Jack didn’t ‘replace’ Dad, he augmented him.
They made the best of what they had and when the pressure got too much, they broke. They were human and paid the price for their humanity.
Nevertheless, a vast respect for them and their generation, and what they built with what they had.
“They will be remembered” and they are.
I suspect that Egypt would happily take Gaza, but does not want the Gazans who come with it.
$34M bonus pool on $200M loss. Cut the executive costs until it makes an agreed loss providing defined services instead of quasi-commercial thingy that loses big.
Likewise, Future Fund can be funded by those who benefit from it.
I know, this sounds crazy.
Really amazing how high you can pile up a pile of BS before it falls over.
I suspect that Egypt would happily take Gaza, but does not want the Gazans who come with it.
They have said so in the past.
Winston
The official acronym, on Service records, was NYD (N), Not yet Diagnosed (Nervous). AKA PTSD.
‘America risks being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.’
– Bernard Lewis on the occasion of another failure in US foreign policy.
Putin positively grins.
Now this is an EV I would buy – Friend overseas has 2 for teenage kids under driving age (legal France) & uses himself for city trips as easy to park
My Ami Pop is Citroen’s New Urban Electric Marvel
November 7, 2023 by Ryo
The My Ami, a compact electric car from the French automaker Citroen, has been a hit since its debut in 2020.
More than 43,000 units have been sold, and 80% of them were customized by the buyers.
Now, Citroen has introduced a new model to the lineup: the My Ami Pop.
The new My Ami Pop is hard to distinguish from the other models in the series, except for the My Ami Buggy, which has a distinctive and fascinating design. Citroen anticipated this, so it added unique graphics to the exterior of the new My Ami Pop, as seen on the side skirts and the lower parts of the doors, for example.
It has a cute, likeable design and is a tiny electric car for the urban jungle. The new My Ami Pop offers some new features, such as the headlamp surrounds and the black chevron strip under the front windscreen. The little EV adopts a new black bumper, and Citroen also adds the Infrared color to the palette.
Citroen didn’t share any images of the interior, which is unusual for a new model announcement, as that’s where some changes usually are.
However, the company says there’s a yellow hook for bags that makes the passenger compartment look visually dynamic. The brand also mentions the orange finish on the three storage bins, the special stitching on the floor mats, and the straps for opening the doors.
The door nets and central net are also inside the car. The driver’s smartphone becomes a real infotainment system with the Dat@mi connectivity box. They can see the mileage, range, and other stats. They can also use the Switch button on the steering wheel to do various things, such as navigate, call, or play an audio file, without touching the smartphone’s display.
The new My Ami Pop is on sale now in the UK, Citroen says.
The price starts from £8,495 ($10,440) on the road, and customers will receive their cars in Q1 2024.
Citroen has recently expanded the Ami to new markets, such as Switzerland, Reunion Island, Guadeloupe, and Martinique.
The Ami will also soon be available in Denmark, Bulgaria, and Slovenia.
https://www.citroen.com.au/about-citroen/concept-cars/ami-one-concept.html
Regarding Bulk Brittany’s dress, if there had been the absolute slightest chance the dress had some of Lerhman’s DNA on it, Bulko would have gone all Monica Lewinsky with it and kept it securely packed, in acid-free tissue, for future use.
The fact that she had it cleaned and wore it again proves that dumb Bruce never touched her.
So much for (Irish) indigenous rights huh?
Why aren’t the usual suspects jumping up and down yelling about this? Where are the protest marches? Calls for treaties? Acknowledgement of ‘first nation’ rights? Welcome to country scams?
apparently the frontier wars took 20 million aboriginal lives.
Fair Shake
The Future Fund was intended to cover the Defined Benefit schemes for Commonwealth employees.
However, most current staff are on accumulation funds (for around the past 20 years). I am puzzled about the shortfall. Part of it will come from people living longer post -retirement (exacerbated by the higher proportion of women, with statistically longer life expectancy), but there seems to be some other factor causing the shortfall. The untouchable judicial schemes might be part of it, but even they should not cause a 40% shortfall.
Very strange. Are the books being cooked, to make a case for “Moar OPM”?
When I worked for the NSW DPP I was the instructing solicitor in quite a few sexual assault trials. Frequently the clothes the complainant wore were in the exhibits bundle (but rarely actually introduced into the courtroom evidence).
As per the rules, after the trial and thr general follow up with the complainant I was required to ask of the complainant as to whether they wanted the clothing returned.
Each and every time the answer would be a very firm “Nyet”.
I read a biography of Ataturk (who the current regime are trying to downgrade) and it is only because of him that they are not a completely impoverished country of letterboxes and terrorists.
Ataturk recognised that militant Islam would destroy the country. He reminds me of that fellow who realised the same around Bosnia, that Yugo bloke.
Meanwhile, TheirABC and their fellow eejits in the MSM continue to spout lies.
“Do You Support Outlawing Fried Foods?” – Senator John Kennedy TORCHES Anti-Gun Yale Doctor During Hearing and Causes the Leftist Media to Flip Out
Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy is an absolute hoot. The most intelligent drawling southern boy around. It’s worth watching Senate hearings just to hear him question witnesses.
Worse than Hitler is so old hat. Today lefties are now saying Trump is worse than Jefferson Davis and the Antichrist.
Top ups to Defined Benefit Fund accounts were always a sensitive topic when I got back from meetings with actuaries each year. No wonder you couldn’t prise them off at any price.
I am sure that OPM is the solution.
Suggest a levy on those being paid by the FF to cover the gap, spread over 5 years. Retrospective/Unfair/etc but surely the looting of the treasury needs to stop sometime, somehow.
Labor wll never support this, ofc.
I concur!
😀
Many clips available on You Tube for those not yet initiated into his fan club.
‘Want to send us to the knackery?’ Boomers inflate cost of living debate
As if we didn’t already have enough social division in Australia. This week, Boomers were asked give up their houses and stop spending to help Gen Zs and Millennials through the cost-of-living crisis.
Fair request or does help lie elsewhere?
Many readers told us what they think about this great generational divide.
Can Boomers support younger generations?
Hundreds of letter writers and online commenters responded to senior writer Caitlin Fitzsimmons’ report that Baby Boomers are hanging on to bigger family homes at a time when retirees and empty-nesters should be encouraged to downsize to provide more housing for younger generations.
Kat We have two spare bedrooms which have come in handy for the kids moving in and out of home as their circumstances changed over the years. I know a few grandparents who offer accommodation to their adult grandkids. Boomers do a lot in the way of support for the younger generations.
Can a fair tax system spread equity across the country?
“Dear Boomers, please, do the country a favour and stop spending,” wrote economics reporter Rachel Clun on behalf of younger generations. “If you could hold off any major purchases for the next few months, we younger folk might be able to thank you for helping avoid further rate rises,” she explained.
Northsider The Apple store in our shopping centre was packed on Saturday. I doubt anyone would have been over 40. I can only assume all those frugal little Gen Zs just dropped in for a chat.
Time to lay off the whingeing and be grateful?
Judging by the relentless tide of Baby Boomer bashing, it’s become a crime to be born in the 20 years after World War II, wrote Clive Hamilton and Myra Hamilton.
Denis Suttling, Newport Beach Enough, please. In retirement, you may be rewarded for hard work, sensible spending, having two or more jobs to pay off your mortgage, having taken advantage of any government incentives and helped your kids if possible. So you whingers lay off the criticism and be thankful for what you have and may have been given.
Hubby’s fave pasttime !
Market Talk – November 30, 2023
ASIA:
The major Asian stock markets had a green day today:
NIKKEI 225 increased 165.67 points or 0.50% to 33,486.89
Shanghai increased 7.99 points or 0.26% to 3,029.67
Hang Seng increased 49.44 points or 0.29% to 17,042.88
ASX 200 increased 52.00 points or 0.74% to 7,087.30
Kospi increased 15.48 points or 0.61% to 2,535.29
SENSEX increased 86.53 points or 0.13% to 66,988.44
Nifty50 increased 36.55 points or 0.18% to 20,133.15
The major Asian currency markets had a mixed day today:
AUDUSD decreased 0.00134 or -0.20% to 0.66036
NZDUSD decreased 0.00016 or -0.03% to 0.61524
USDJPY increased 0.723 or 0.49% to 147.963
USDCNY increased 0.00352 or 0.05% to 7.14552
The above data was collected around 12:20 EST.
Precious Metals:
Gold decreased 4.24 USD/t oz. or -0.21% to 2,040.35
Silver increased 0.219 USD/t. oz or 0.88% to 25.229
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/market-talk/market-talk-november-30-2023/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=RSS
Please Note that none of this is Investment Advice. Quite obvious really but this needs to be stated for the uninitiated.
Listening to Bruce does not fill me with confidence that he didn’t touch her at all.
Both are poor witnesses and the likelihood to me is that shagging did occur.
Whether or not it was consensual is a different question and one to which I do not pretend to know the answer.
‘It’s a forever problem’: Experts say Rozelle hell is here to stay
Motorists are enduring hour-long trips over a stretch of Victoria Road through inner-city Sydney suburbs during the morning peak amid warnings there is no simple fix to gridlock caused by the opening of the Rozelle interchange.
Drivers face the prospect of more delayed journeys on arterial routes and local roads over the next two weeks because they are typically the busiest time of the year on Sydney’s road network.
Hounsell, who has been critical of WestConnex, warned there were no easy solutions to fixing the congestion, although improving signage and instituting a toll-free period might help.
“They need to keep the buses running well otherwise people will start shifting to cars, which will make the problem worse,” he said.
Despite improvements on the City West Link, Transport for NSW co-ordinator general Howard Collins said motorists were still enduring up to an hour-long delay when travelling through Drummoyne, Balmain and Rozelle on Victoria Road from 8am to 9am.
The hour-long crawl along Victoria Road from Drummoyne to the Anzac Bridge during the morning peak makes the arterial route the worst affected by the spaghetti junction’s opening.
The NSW transport agency’s figures show a trip along the City West Link from Haberfield to Anzac Bridge averaged 29 minutes on Thursday morning, from 44 minutes a day earlier.
Sydney transport expert Mathew Hounsell said the congestion over the last four days demonstrated that the Rozelle interchange, which links to the Anzac Bridge, was “fundamentally a design flaw”.
“It is a forever problem because the system is funnelling too many people into a road that is too small. They assumed the Anzac Bridge could support more cars than was physically possible,” he said.
“Trying to shovel a motorway into the middle of a city was never going to work. The previous government and the roads department stuffed it up. They didn’t want to listen to anyone who would tell them it was not going to work.”
Before the Rozelle interchange opened, seven lanes merged into four on the Anzac Bridge. Now, 10 lanes are merged into four with the extra lanes from the spaghetti junction.
If we must have an inter generational war the best way to get rid of a Boomer is to crash into them on an e-scooter.
Beertruk:
I’d believe that, Beertruk.
It has the Ring of Truth.
It passes the snif test.
It also passes the Pub test.
The Bungonia Bee
Bing frigging Bong indeed, BB!
Dragnet
A short while ago, you mentioned Wodney was your friend for 11 years. You just mentioned, above, you worked as a lawyer with the DPP. What are your thoughts that Wodney keeps plastering the site with slabs of spam by Marty, an unrepentant fraudster, who stole money from investors and received 11 years in Leavenworth?
There’s more about the scammer here:
https://armstrongecmscam.blogspot.com/p/where-and-how-to-complain.html
Are you proud of your friend and still continue to maintain he isn’t a lowlife limey crook?
Spam!
Both are liars and this has been established multiple times.
Odd how the dress had been taken off, folded and hung over a chair … who did that?
Still can’t believe there was no CC camera footage taken in/around the ministers office.
More Marty testimonials.
User garycohn, Re: Martin Armstrong Discussion July 14, 2021
More here:
https://armstrongecmscam.blogspot.com/p/socrates-subscriber.html
calli
I’m pretty bloody useless at deciphering the political cartoons, Calli. Can you give us an idea of what the hyena represents?
Biden Airdrops Humanitarian Resupply Of Hostages Into Gaza
You can connect your Kindle to your PC and take a copy of your library and use it with other book readers.
Anti-Israel protests have a higher purpose — a complete teardown of the West
By Bob McManus
Please don’t mistake Wednesday’s Rockefeller Center Christmas tree demonstration for just another unimaginative lashing-out by dyspeptic attention-mongering misfits.
It was much more than that.
Oh, the usual suspects were there — cossetted Columbia University types; unmoored sociopaths who hate America but who can’t bring themselves to leave; perverse excitement-seekers and the inevitable anti-Semites and associated haters.
But that fellow waving a Palestinian flag while atop a pillar in front of 1211 Sixth Avenue — this newspaper’s headquarters — was something else entirely.
His was an atavistic celebration of mass murder — this time not at home by hijacked airliner, but rather in a land far away conducted one bloody-handed execution at a time, and 1,400-plus overall.
It was an enthusiastic endorsement of rape, torture, mutilation and kidnapping — a brutal forecast of what the Palestinian war cry “from the river to the sea” really means: extermination in detail.
The audacity is staggering.
What happened in Midtown Wednesday night, and during the Macy’s parade Thanksgiving day and at transportation hubs, river crossings and public parks citywide for weeks now, are not protests per se.
They are efforts to seduce New York into standing behind the man on the pillar — if not endorsing the October 7 slaughter explicitly, then by acquiescing in it.
Indeed, what else are the pro-Palestinian demonstrators seeking if not legitimacy?
Theirs is a dark ideology wrapped inside a murderous interpretation of the world’s second largest religion.
This isn’t about a right to demonstrate, by the way. It gets boring the third or fourth time the Brooklyn Bridge is blocked, but nobody is calling for water cannons.
Yet it is very much about the purpose of the demonstrations: unambiguous demands for New York, and New Yorkers, to withdraw support for Israel’s right to exist as a free and independent state.
And more than that, too.
It has correctly been noted that Israel stands today in the same space it occupied millennia ago — with its language, customs and culture fundamentally intact.
If that’s not authenticity — if that’s not legitimacy — then nothing is.
Moreover, Israel endures as the wells-spring of Western civilization itself — for all its warts and wrinkles, the Judeo-Christian ethic has produced the freest, most enviable culture in human history.
That’s what is at issue when the Palestinian flags came out Wednesday.
They represented an assault by advocates of a dark, theocratic worldview on a particular American institution, sure — but also on Western values generally.
They want to tear down our democracy, our economy, our very way of life.
It is no surprise that so many on the hard left — the AOCs, the Ilhan Omars, the democratic socialists — also are to be found in the Palestinian camp.
By and large, they’re no great fans of the West either.
But it is disappointing that more mainstream civic leaders — many of whom eloquently condemned Oct. 7 at the time — now fail publicly to make the obvious connection between that massacre and the current demonstrations.
So let’s be clear:
“Never forget” was the watchword after Sept. 11.
Now the details differ but the principles persist — and memories are slipping.
This is an error, and it courts tragic consequences.
Only as far as the office door.
SHOCKING: How Many European Women Will Be Raped Before Their Leaders Do Something About Those ‘Refugees?’
The globalists’ plan to take over the West by importing the third world has been both wildly successful and shockingly brutal, especially to European women.
The World Economic Forum, (WEF) run by Klaus Schwab, made its evil plans known in 2018 with this video:
By the time this video was released, most of Europe had been inundated with “cultural enrichers” from Muslim and/or Arabic nations, many of whom come from a nation where non-Muslim women are nothing more than dogs worthy of rape, which they believe to be a holy act.
As the globalists gavaged “asylum seekers” from toilet countries into Germany, France, Sweden, Ireland, England, and elsewhere, they were also sure to threaten the mostly white citizenry that complaining about the rape crisis would make them “racist.”
From an OAN interview with PJ Media’s own Robert Spencer, one of the world’s preeminent Islam scholars:
The Quran says you can take infidel women and make them what are called ‘captives of the right hand’ and it’s very clear in the Quran that these are essentially sex slaves who are non-Muslim women captured, who are captured and used in this way.
This is allowed in the Islamic holy book and not only that but many of the people who are participating in the Muslim rape gangs actually said this to their victims and explained it in terms of the Quran.
And many — one of them even said, raping you can [be] my prayer to Allah. Because obviously, if Allah allows this, then in a certain sense it’s a holy act, as twisted as it sounds to non-Muslim sensibilities.
So Muslim men poured into Christian nations, believing raping women is a “holy act,” and if the women complain they are considered bigots. What could go wrong?
FACT-O-RAMA! Some leftist politicians — and police — in Europe are so cowardly and fearful of being called “racist,” they frequently did not report the nationality of suspected rapists. Many sexual assaults aren’t reported at all. Also, some European countries have changed their definition of rape/sexual assault. In short, what you’re about to read, though terrifying, might be the “tip of the iceberg” regarding sexual assaults/attempted sexual assaults committed by members of the “religion of peace.”
Sweden, home to Malmo, the “rape capital” of Europe
Between 2000 and 2015, after years of immigration from the Middle East and Africa, Sweden convicted 3,039 people of rape, 99.7% of whom were men. Of those, a staggering 47.7% were born outside of Sweden.
Fast, Infuriating Facts:
51.9% of convicted rapists were welfare recipients.
There were roughly 8,000 reported rapes in 2022 — 21.9 per day — with only 5% resulting in convictions.
One out of three Swedish women will experience sexual assault in her life.
England
The UK experienced an appalling rape catastrophe in a number of towns that lasted three decades. Sadly, the local police stood by and did nothing for fear of being called a — you know — “racist.”
One victim claims she was raped by roughly 500 men, starting when she was only 11 years old. She claims the attackers told her they’d burn her family’s house down, a common threat by rapists, and rape her mom if she went to the police. When she did go to the cops, they called her a prostitute.
Another rapist carried through on his threat and burned his 16-year-old victim as well as her mom and sister to death.
DECEPTION-O-RAMA! England’s notoriously left-leaning news media bootlickers described the suspects as “Asian grooming gangs” rather than “Pakistani Muslim rapists.”
Some outlets denied that 84% of the suspects were Pakistani Muslims at all.
Fourteen hundred kids — not counting adults — were sexually “exploited” in Rotherham alone.
In one detestable incident, the cops also went so far as to tell one concerned parent that her 15-year-old rape victim daughter would be “taught a lesson” by the horrendous crime.
SHAME-O-RAMA! Operation Linden, which was a total of 91 investigations into the police who stood by as children were being sexually assaulted, proved local cops were woefully lacking in their duties, yet none were fired.
In the town of Newcastle, police found more than 700 girls and women had been raped, including a 21-year-old with a learning disability who was sexually abused over a “considerable period of time.”
Germany
The only thing more horrific than Germany’s rape calamity is the pressure from police and politicians not to report it.
“There are strict instructions from the top not to report offenses committed by refugees,” a high-ranking police officer told Bild newspaper.”It is extraordinary that certain offenders are deliberately not being reported about and the information is being classified as confidential.”
The sexual assaults have been going on for years:
What Have We Learned?
We’ve learned that leftist indoctrination in Europe is so strong that police have, historically, scoffed at allegations of sexual assaults committed by those darling “cultural enrichers” from Africa and the Middle East. One woman actually lied to protect the three men who raped her.
Many rapes are not reported and there are few convictions for the assaults that are.
The globalist plan of flooding the West has resulted in a rape fiasco throughout Europe, a crisis most people won’t speak of for fear of being called a “racist.”
NEW YORK TIMES.
not the whole article. Probably paywalled.
Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago
A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings.
Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.
The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.
The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.
Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.
The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.
“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.
Then, in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.
But a colonel in the Gaza division brushed off her concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The Times.
“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched “the content of Jericho Wall.”
This is BS. I am sure that the building has multiple cameras and any footage could have cut this parade of BS & lies short years ago.
Brit is a puzzle.
Organised enough to produce book drafts and timelines and media campaigns shared with Cambra gallery … but not capable of taking any action which might generate anything beyond hearsay on the alleged event.
Danger Dan Reviews:
Idiot in a t-shirt : Anthony Albanese
Gina Rinehart features in a PHON cartoon with Pauline Hanson. Interesting. PHON has a new backer?
Gina actually has some gravitas cf. Twiggy.
JC, I have no interest in the Armstrong oeuvre or issue.
All I know is that Johnny may be a naughty boy, but he is not a crook.
Ive been lurking on this blog for nigh on 20 years, if I had any interest in stoushing I’d have done so by now.
Just catching up and saw the sad news, Calli.
Would that I could offer more than condolences.
For what it is worth – my father passed away a few years ago. Owing to having a registered nurse in the family who had worked in palliative care we were able to set him up in his own home. At the end he too was surrounded and he slipped away to the sound of the rosary. It may be a fanciful notion but if there is any unconscious connection between people be it spiritual or something else then being surrounded by those he loved praying the prayers which were so special to him – I do not think I can imagine a better passing than that.
After leaving home all my siblings went their separate ways with some staying perhaps a bit closer than others, but in the aftermath of Dad’s death their orbits closed in a little closer around my Mum and each was a little more affected by the passings of the other.
Early last year my mother also passed, and in similar fashion as my father – at home, family, and rosary.
Since then my siblings have had an ongoing group text on our phones called ‘Family Chat’ where all my family (including nephews and nieces) share everything they feel worth mentioning – and the threshold of ‘worth mentioning’ is way lower than it ever was before even at Christmas parties.
All those years of Mum and Dad casting their eyes to the heavens and saying ‘Why can’t you kids get along’, and we are all now constantly popping up on each others’ phones. Not a day passes when I have not engaged with a few of them, and a week with all of them. Not a mean word but a shed load of humour and affection.
Mum and Dad finally won out in the end.
I am not surprised. Surveillance is for the plebs not the pollies.
Last week a friend of mine went to view the school protest for Jew haters and Jew hatred in Sydney’s CBD. This friend is the child of survivors, his mother survived Auschwitz. Disturbed by what he saw and heard, as in the chants of genocide “from the river to the sea”, and the fact that such words were emanating from the mouths of young teenagers, he went up to a police officer on duty and told them that the chant was a call for violence, and asked if they were going to do anything about it.
The response from the NSWaffen officer was…..
‘we are monitoring the situation’.
Hmm…I find the word “monitoring” very curious? I’ve been thinking a lot about this word “monitoring”, a monitoring which began just two days after the slaughter on 7 October 2023, when NSW police not only monitored the Jew hating screeches, screams and shouts at Sydney Town Hall, a scene I accidentally stumbled upon, but they later provided a personal escort for the screeching Jew haters all the way down to the Sydney Opera House, where they then feverishly screamed “kill the Jews” and “gas the Jews”…..all the time the NSW stood by, stood back and ‘monitored’ the exhortations to kill Jews. However, in marked contrast, the NSW Police were not so circumspect about ‘monitoring’ the lone Jew who turned up draped in an Israeli flag, he was quickly dragged away. This again happened last week, when another person turned up with an Israeli flag and was summarily and very physically dragged away by the NSWaffen.
To be fair to the NSWaffen, they are not the only police force using the same genteel monitoring tactics, it seems to be the current shtick across Anglosphere policing, it’s happening in London, in Sydney and in Melbourne, where police just stand idly back whilst people carry offensive placards and screech genocide against us Jews.
Here in Oz, I’ve watched footage of Jew hating rallies, week after week, I’ve seen footage of Jews being assaulted, I’ve watched in dismay how Muslim scum and their leftist enablers deliberately and provocatively went into Jewish suburbs in Melbourne and here in Sydney with the specific aim to intimidate us Jews, and the police’s response? They are monitoring the situation. There are few arrests, nothing. And then I saw the footage of what ensued in that Melbourne hotel two nights ago, and I’m speechless, once again the police were timid. Here’s an absolute fact, violence towards Jews always stems from violent rhetoric, it builds up to a crescendo, it bubbles and percolates like a pressure cooker, and when the pressure gets too much, it explodes like Vesuvius.
I know my Jewish history, and it tells me that when people start exhorting violence against us, physical violence will ensue. People need to believe the rhetoric, those who mouth it mean it. I suspect there will be violence against us, it’s now inevitable. And when we Jews are attacked, will the NSWaffen police, the London Plod, the Victorian Police, stand back and insist that they are “monitoring the situation”?
Attention:
Can we limit the number of links, bold, etc. in each comment as they are likely to lengthen the loading time for the page. Each time they are added is increasing the number of operations that need to be performed.
Unlikely as a man. Preservation age, 67; life expectancy: 81.4 years.
My old man retired at 61 (when he found out he was sick) and prostate cancer killed him off when he was 64.
[Government incentives? (Laser eyes intensify). What is this heresy? The only incentive the government can ever offer is to enrich someone at someone else’s expense].
A little background on why Gaza Marine remains undeveloped;
Technical Note: You will see gas ‘reserves’ of 1 TCF bandied around and valuations in the US$ billions. These are resource numbers, not reserve numbers – and not in any way large enough to realistically support an economic LNG export project. So, development would likely be for a Gazan (and possibly Egyptian) domestic market.
With Hamas running the show, you could take that to the bank…
The ever-rising preservation age is something that older boomers and the silent generation never experienced themselves; let me just say, it is risible, red mist-inducing BS; it is one of the actual arguments about intergenerational inequity (and perhaps iniquity).
I have no problem with billionaires per se. I only have a problem with them when they get to thinking they can save the world*. That’s when they become a danger to humanity. And you know when they are at that point because they can’t shut up about it.
That’s a very big and important difference between Gina and Twiggy.
*which, I figure, would be an impulse you would have to constantly be alert to and ready to slap down when you have acquired enough money to buy entire countries, and most people would not be alert to such an impulse, because why would you? There is no obvious reason why you would acquire such an alertness in the process of making your billions, either.
Sure, the bonus structures of the high flyers needs a look
There should be NO bonus system for any public serpent .. If the “bosses” need incentive let them go private ……..! .. the original idea was you choose the PS to “serve the people”.. unfortunately, the lure of the “trough” seems to be what attracts far too many .. from politicians down … !
I thought truancy was an offence that attracted a c. $250 fine & a possible visit to the parents from children’s services.
H B Bear
Dec 1, 2023 12:22 PM
If we must have an inter generational war the best way to get rid of a Boomer is to crash into them on an e-scooter.
H B Bear,
Phftt – Around here on Northern Beaches it’s 3 schoolkids riding on a very heavy Lountain E-Bike on the Footpath
Scroll Down to 3rd Photo
Three young girls on an e-bike in Manly, carrying, but not wearing, helmets.
Council’s Transport Network team recently worked with Northern Beaches Police Area Command to audit electric bike, electric scooter, electric rollerblades, electric skateboards and other bike usage, on Northern Beaches shared paths, bike paths, and footpaths.
This included a survey of the community to determine levels of awareness of road rules and e-bike safety.
Issues identified in the audit included:
. the prevalence of e-scooters and other non-compliant devices and the inaccurate assumption by survey respondents that such devices were legal
. the type of e-bikes available and issues around determining their legality and compliance
. concerns about younger e-bike riders too young to hold a driver’s licence or learner permit
. concerns about pillion passengers, sitting on the handlebars or behind the rider, without helmets and travelling at speed
. younger riders having little exposure to or knowledge of NSW Road Rules.
State government urged to change laws after e-bikes hit 42km/h on northern beaches’ shared pedestrian paths
Changes to state government laws have been urged after e-bikes were found to be illegally speeding at up to 42km/h on shared pedestrian paths in Sydney.
Like this one Roger.
John Kennedy Issues Blunt Warning To Biden On Israel, Rails Against Hamas & Antisemitism
Keeping things in perspective.
Green policies are attacking our power grid.
Israel is subduing terrorists after the worst attack in a generation.
The barely-in-control Five Eyes are making the Stasi look like kindy playtime.
The Gates-Pharma-WHO complex is attempting a takeover of all of society via the pandemic response health regulations and our parliament numpties seem to be complicit or asleep on the hill.
However on the news…
Two days ago we were warned the east coast was in “danger” – from some unusually strong storms.
Today the fear du jour is:
Wet weather and undeclared milk.
That’s the “danger” to pay attention to, apparently.
And this is What Labor PM AlboSleezy & Labor Foreign Minister Penny Wong are Importing into Australia with their 840 (So Far) Visas for Palestinian Gazan Hamas Terrorists?
This is What Palestinians teach their Kids
Learning about the Religion of Peace
How Old is the Kid, 7/8 Years Old?
In his native Welsh, pronounced as Brnm’g’r’th Sswessthr(cough)ywynn.
Yeah, the Israeli deep state needs to be arrested for treason. Also the chief intel lady in the CIA who is an antisemitic Hamas lover.
CIA Official in Charge of Approving Intel Posted ‘Palestinian Flag’ After Hamas Attack (29 Nov)
Aharon Haliva has got to go. Now. (30 Nov, Caroline Glick)
Nooses please. The ex heads of Mossad and Shin Bet have been organizing anti-Netanyahu uprisings, and the Israeli AG is persecuting him in the courts on ludicrous charges. Just like the deep state in the US has been doing to Trump. The more I read this stuff the more plausible it seems that they tacitly allowed the Hamas attack as a way to get at Netanyahu.
Nice dodge, the only problem is that you bought into this recently by offering advice.
What’s your view on Marty?
Nooses please.
I don’t think so.
If you have ever had the misfortune of suffering from cryptosporidiosis, this is no goddamned joke.
Source: Trust me and the less I explain it the better the standard of discussion remains here on this family-orientated blog.
I just went to buy stamps – mailing out membership cards for renewal season of my club.
I opened them up after buying … HAPPY BIRTHDAY in big stupid letters. This appeared stupid to put on a gun club renewal receipt, so I went back and said these stamps are not suitable for a condolence or business…
‘Oh no’ said the lady, ‘lets see what we have. ‘
‘Poppies OK? Don’t mind if one is red?’
Sure, I prefer that actually.
The red one was just the ticket. We have a good few veterans and the stamp had a red poppy-like splotch that on close inspection is made of service persons’ profiles with the motto ‘For service and sacrifice’.
I start putting on the grey ones.
The grey poppy-like splotch is civilian profiles; kid, woman, beard, possible indigenous… and the motto is ‘For peace and all war victims’. For Poppy Day.
After 7 October that motto feels like propaganda of the Leftist cabal, and I got a little cranky.
Then I told myself to grow up. The design would have been nailed down by some bloody committee months ago, and only someone like me would see it as evil.
It’s complicated.
Today in History.
Eighty-one years ago, the corvette HMAS Armidale was sunk off the south coast of East (then Portuguese) Timor.
Top Ender can tell us more about this, as he has written at least one book about Teddy Sheean, V.C.
My maternal grandmother went to school with a young man named Edward ‘Ted’ Piesse, who was thought to have been one of the survivors perched on a small raft which was spotted once a few days after the sinking, but never sighted again.
Treason, Cassie, in time of war. You have been seeing what the Israeli mini-me deep state has been doing. The offices of intelligence and justice are captured by the Left, like the AG’s office and the Supreme Court. There has been an active conspiracy to overturn the Likud government. It’s evil, and is seriously endangering Israel.
On this day in 1942 Teddy Sheean made his last stand, in action against an overwhelming number of Japanese aircraft, as the corvette HMAS Armidale sank beneath him. It took 78 years for him to be granted his Victoria Cross.
Rest In Peace.
“I’ve been contacted by so many people, particularly on social media, as well as in person about addressing this issue,” Cr Walton told Manly Observer.
“If a young child or an elderly person is knocked over by one of these fast-moving, large electric bikes, it could result in serious injury or death.”
“It’s really become a case of dodge the bikes. I mean as soon as school comes out,”
lamented Manly ward councillor Candy Bingham.
“We have kids.. now two kids on one of these bikes, and they’re almost appearing in packs. As they leave school, they take over the footpath, and everybody sort of scurries out of their way.
It’s extremely dangerous and I think like most councillors, I’m receiving emails daily now from concerned residents and pedestrians.”
Speed and a lack of helmet wearing are among two of the issues, as well as the trend to ride on regular footpaths. Only children under 16 are permitted to use their bicycles on footpaths.
Cr Walton told Council last night he had personally experienced quite a few “near misses”.
While acknowledging this as a state responsibility and a policing matter, Cr Walton said he want Council to get the ball rolling with some proactive measures.
Are riders using their heads?
Manly Observer, during several surveillance walks around Manly, Curl Curl and Freshwater, observed a wholesale disregard for safety by many e-bike riders, particularly with regard to helmets despite speeds appearing to be above 25km/h.
Bicycle NSW, the advocacy group for cyclists across the state, remind riders of the current regulations:
“Under the Australian Vehicle Standards, e-bikes can be ridden on the road if the motor does not provide more than 250 watts of maximum continuous power. In addition, e-bikes must not be able to travel more than 25 km/h under this assistance.”
One young rider confided in this reporter that the e-bikes, although set to a default limit of 25km/h when new, can quite easily be reprogrammed to enable them to travel 35km/h or faster.
Manly Observer Editor Kim Smee highlighted the issue on socials recently, and asked her teen-aged readers on Instagram to explain why so few were wearing helmets.
The response was clear – because it’s become the norm NOT to wear one and you’re faced with ridicule if you do.
. “They are uncomfortable, they look like crap and no one else wears them so why should I”? wrote one reader
. “Because no one else wears one so I feel like I will get judged,” says another
. “I feel like it really doesn’t doing anything I crashed so many times without a helmet and I am fine”
. “Head impacts riding to the beach are absurdly unlikely”
. “No one wears them so it’s not cool”
. “They are ugly and no one wears them”
– were among scores of similar responses.
Let’s hope Penny Wong isn’t in the loop.
It’s not amazing but it’s there, given that most of the revenue would likely flow to hamas to fund terror who would develop it?
Shell relinquished it’s interest in the field in 2018.
Israel isn’t interested in buying Palestinian gas to fund rockets.
Reserves of natural gas were found offshore the Gaza Strip in the year 2000, within the framework of licensing to British Gas by the Palestinian National Authority.[1] The discovered gas field Gaza Marine, though mediocre in size, had been considered at the time as one of the possible drives to boost Palestinian economy and promote regional cooperation.
dragnet
Dec 1, 2023 1:04 PM
Yes and that Junior Cretin is a nawty boy too. Reading those Penthouse Forum letters. Oh dear. Now I know why I also nicknamed Junior as ‘Jer Cough’.
Still, the Self Appointed Blog Milk Monitor can continue to get paranoid over every Poster and posts that does/do not meet up with the Milk Monitor’s liking. And those Up Thumb/Down Thumb bum bums that seem to send Junior’s blood pressure way over the top. Paranoia or what.
That was from The Telegraph (UK), btw.
Dot.
Calm yo’ self.
Cryptosporidiosis is a diarrhoeal disease caused by the parasite, Cryptosporidium, which infects the intestine.
Milk is cow’s milk.
The allergen in this case is the normal everyday homogenised pasteurised cows milk, which a small percentage of the population cannot tolerate in their gut.
Perhaps milk intolerance is no joke, but I still find the contrast between danger levels of headliner articles to be slightly amusing.
Not necessarily bullshit. Ministerial offices, particularly Defence Portfolio ministers, would daily have highly classified documents on their desks, and being moved around by staff. CCTV could pick up details of the contents in some circumstances.
Ergo, no CCTV inside the office door.
What “advice” did I offer, JC ?
Ok then.
So it’ll be tear gas, pepper spray, pellet guns and horses the next time that shit gets tried again?
State government urged to change laws after e-bikes hit 42km/h on northern beaches’ shared pedestrian paths
Since the advent of e-scooters & e-bikes on the roads (& even footpaths) my husband has been railing against their unlicensed use on public thoroughfares with speeds comparable to motor vehicles.
Clearly, it is because they are considered “energy appropriate”, that they are allowed this licence.
Wouldn’t that just cause that particular network of cameras to be classified with access appropriately restricted?
Brittany Higgins is hit with brutal question about leaked recording of her five-hour meeting with Lisa Wilkinson – and how they reacted as it was aired in court:
‘Oh, certainly Albo … he’s a bit of a dead duck’
Drawing a long bow.
It’s like saying no-one cared about what happened to kibbutzim because they were peaceniks.
Or the young soldiers and cadets guarding the border.
It’s pretty obvious that all Israel cares.
The vast majority do their military service, three years, best years of their lives, for minimal pay.
Look at how young most of the soldiers killed on 7 October were, 19 and 20 year olds and so many young women too.
The idea that some *how many* in the know were prepared to sacrifice a couple, a few, dozens, hundreds or even a thousand Israeli lives to get at Netanyahu is very uncharitable and built on a pile of tissues.
Cassie
IIRC, you had a knee operation a year or so ago. Clearly, you will have a continuing need for walking assistance. I suggest a strong walking stick. There are good looking sticks available, some with a decorative brass handle. Have it with you always, to protect your knee. And anything else that needs protection.
You’re posting fraudulent links to a convicted crook, Wodney. Moreover, you are dense, but by now even a slowpoke dipshit like you would know Marty is an unrepentant criminal. Post as much Marty as you like, but every single time, it will have a reply that shows he’s a crook and you’re a little limey crook for posting that bilge. You’re one of the most discredited commenters here. Just a lowlife disgusting arewipe with zero ethics. Dragnet should be ashamed to claim he knows you in addition to ever referring to you as a friend.
Lisa Wilkinson and Brittany Higgins war-gamed how to propel rape allegation in parliament
Brittany Higgins and Lisa Wilkinson war-gamed how to propel the rape allegation in Parliament in a five-hour recording describing Anthony Albanese as a “dead duck”.
Samantha Maiden
Brittany Higgins and Lisa Wilkinson war-gamed which prominent politicians and media figures could propel the rape allegation in Parliament in a five-hour recording describing Anthony Albanese as a “dead duck”.
In an extract of a five-hour recording that was played to the Federal Court on Friday, several politicians were named including Mr Albanese, now Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Tanya Plibersek.
The pre-interview was recorded by producer Angus Llewellyn on January 27, 2021 prior to the taped interview that was recorded later and broadcast on February 15.
In that interview, Ms Higgins alleged she was raped in Parliament House by Bruce Lehrmann. Mr Lehrmann has denied the allegation and is suing Channel Ten and Lisa Wilkinson for defamation.
In an extract of audio played to the Federal Court during Ms Wilkinson’s cross examination on Friday, Mr Sharaz can be heard discussing why he wanted the story to break during a sitting week in Parliament when questions could be asked about how the government supported Ms Higgins.
Ms Wilkinson suggested Mr Albanese could be helpful, but then suggested he was “a bit of a dead duck at the moment”.
“Well, he’s in a car crash, leave him alone,” Mr Sharaz responded. “He got a lot of coverage out of that.”
Ms Wilkinson then suggested “Tanya Plibersek, definitely”, to which Mr Sharaz said: “Yeah”.
Mr Sharaz had proposed breaking the story in a parliamentary sitting week so that “they have to answer questions at question time, it’s a mess for them”.
Ms Higgins said it would mean “they’re all stuck in Parliament House with it”.
Mr Sharaz told the group: “I’ve got a friend in Labor, Katy Gallagher on the Labor side, who will probe and continue it going.”
Bruce Lehrmann’s barrister Steven Whybrow SC asked Ms Higgins: “Are you seriously contending to His Honour that one of your motivations for this story was not to cause political damage to the Liberal party?”
Ms Higgins insisted it was “not about the Liberal party.”
In the recording, Ms Higgins also said she had “no idea” who had tipped off a journalist from The Canberra Times in 2019 about an alleged rape.
At the time there were concerns the issue might be raised in Senate estimates.
That tip off led to Senator Linda Reynolds’ office tipping off Senator Michaelia Cash’s office and her chief of staff Daniel Try.
However, both Mr Try and Senator Cash insisted at the criminal trial they were never told it was an alleged rape. Ms Higgins disputes this.
Ms Higgins said she “adored” Senator Cash and found her very supportive. But she insisted she did know about the alleged rape in 2019.
“Michaelia Cash has testified that they had no knowledge of a sexual assault,’’ she told the Federal Court on Friday.
“So now with the benefit of hindsight, I look back and consider those calls potentially checking in, as opposed to actually looking after my welfare,’’ Ms Higgins said.
“At the time I perceived it to be support, and I adored Michaelia Cash, but with the benefit of hindsight yes, now I look back at it in a different light now that she denies ever knowing.”
Mr Whybrow again put it to Ms Higgins it was “not true” she told Senator Cash about a rape.
Ms Higgins denied this.
“I went to them about my panic attacks,’’ she said.
“I went to them when I was concerned about Bruce (Lehrmann) having a staff pass and in 2020 I spoke to Michaelia Cash about it extensively. She was a really good support for me and when I worked for her. I was really close to her and she was wonderful. She was really supportive about this.”
Higgins denies regarding bosses as ‘villains’
ADF total strength has dropped from 62 429 t0 41 079 since 1983
I’d say that is likely wrong. Probably Army full-time.
Last time I looked Navy was around 14,000 and the RAAF 20,000 or so.
Probably the only truthy and perceptive statement in the whole dismal saga.
Arrived dead.
Had the plastic removed.
Placed on a tray.
Still dead.
There was a bonus system for senior non-SES public servants in the early 1990s, ayt least in Defence.
It was unpopular, and was voted out of existence in the next Enterprise Agreement. The strong opinion of recipients was that separating the performance of the section heads and deputy heads from that of their staff was impossible.
I watched an interview with an Israeli woman, posted by a hamas apologist, detailing how two terrorists had come into her home and sat with her and her two children for around two hours, asking permission to eat bananas etc before finally leaving, as though that proved no ill intent by hamas.
No, it just proved that those two particular hamas members could not bring themselves to carry out the attack, or to risk their lives, so they sat it out.
Is it possible Brittany and Bruce collaborated to get a big pay day each, by playing on the venal nature of politicians, media and the judiciary?
During the government of Naftali Bennet & Yair Lapid, when terrorism from Judea and Samaria increased.
I wrote the same on this or another forum about a week after October 7th. Judicial reform protests began in the first week of January 2023, a week after Netanyahu’s term began at the very end of December 2022.
a plucked one
totally plucked.
You highlighted how your pal is a great guy and we both should ignore each other or words to that effect. Incredibly, when I and others highlighted the Marty factor you stayed silent. But, if you’re in the advice business, you can’t leave the “oeuvre” in the middle of the china shop. Help us out with the Marty oeuvre.
That would ordinarily make a lot of sense given the behaviour of both of them except that it would have made his defence astonishingly high risk. If she had kept any evidence of them shagging (ie an uncleaned dress or a doctor visit) then he was done for.
The Red Cross has turned its back on Israel
The organisation failed to make the hostages a priority
JAKE WALLIS SIMONS
The UN we know about. Many of its member states are autocratic, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that they would side against the only democracy in the Middle East. Our expectations of the self-regarding EU are also not high.
But the International Committee of the Red Cross?
Not only does it have a humanitarian mandate but it was set up by the Geneva conventions and is based in neutral Switzerland.
Even-handed, surely.
Sadly, as with other supranational institutions and NGOs, the Red Cross appears to have something of an Israelophobia problem.
This week, 84-year-old hostage Elma Avraham was released by Hamas. She was found with a fever and a dangerously low heart rate. In a scathing interview, her daughter, Tal, said the Red Cross had refused to take medicine for her mother even when it was brought to a meeting with them.
This wasn’t an isolated case.
Weeks after the hostages had been seized, the Red Cross had failed to contact them.
Of course, the Red Cross can only operate with the agreement of both sides.
This is harder to achieve when one of the belligerents is – to put it politely – a non-state actor that cannot be punished with sanctions for non-compliance.
Nonetheless, Israeli ministers have made clear that the organisation has failed to make the hostages a priority.
In despair, its furious foreign minister, Eli Cohen, said: “The Red Cross has no right to exist if it does not succeed in visiting the hostages being held captive by the Hamas terror group.”
Time and again, the organisation has pointed fingers at Israel while shrugging off the gross mistreatment of its citizens.
Last month, it wrote a high-handed letter expressing potential concerns over the conditions in Israeli jails.
Across the border, meanwhile, hundreds of innocent babies, women, disabled people and Holocaust survivors were being held in terrible conditions by captors who did not even bother with the pretence of upholding international law.
It felt like a symbolic moment.
People began to ask questions about why the Red Cross, which had sent missions to the al-Shifa Hospital, was not doing more to confront Hamas.
Added to this was the window into its soul provided by its social media accounts.
Over the weekend, the Jerusalem Institute of Justice (JIJ) released a damning study. In a letter to the Red Cross president Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, the group wrote: “A noticeable emphasis on the Gaza Strip is evident in the content shared by the Red Cross on its social media platforms.
“This is evident in depictions of scenes from Gaza, casualty statistics, and information about victims within Gaza.
However, a significant absence exists concerning content depicting the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 and the impact on communities in Israel near the Gaza Strip.”
The JIJ did not demand that material about Palestinian suffering be removed, only that it would be “enhanced with a more comprehensive portrayal of the situation”.
There is a history here.
Although the Israeli Magen David Adom (MDA), or Red Star of David, has been operational since 1930, it was refused admission to the International Committee of the Red Cross for more than 70 years.
Israel was finally allowed to join in 2006, after persistent lobbying by the wonderful president of the Jordanian National Red Crescent Society, Dr Mohammed al-Hadid.
After the last few weeks, some MDA officials are talking informally about withdrawing in protest.
In 2015, the Red Cross’s president admitted that the organisation had turned a blind eye to Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust. “It failed as a humanitarian organisation,”
Peter Maurer said in a speech. “It had failed to understand the uniqueness of the inhumanity by responding to the outrageous with standard procedures; it had looked on helplessly and silently, not really trying – certainly not hard enough – to live up to the principle of humanity.”
The Red Cross, he concluded, had “lost its moral compass”.
His words ring loudly today.
There are enough problems securing classified material already, without putting it on DVD.
Snap, Muddy!
I might post a few paras from the book about his early life…
Deepest sorrow and sincerest condolences calli. A childhood anchor slips away. I know your family will give you and each other comfort, love and support.
As I read it, it seems that the military seniors relied far too much on the ‘scope’ of the leaked Hamas plans, where ‘cities’ and their military facilities were said to be the target. They placed their own ‘strategic’ vision of what a take-over would entail against the lesser plans and ambitions of guerilla terrorists.
No-one (except perhaps the woman drawing attention to recent activities on the border, though even she had the ‘Jericho Wall’ idea in mind) had the sense to see that the Kibbutzim were obvious targets, isolated, and with only rudimentary protections locally, and with the border patrolled by novice IDF females. Add a rock concert full of prey in the form of young revellers and the IDF intelligence was certainly looking entirely in the wrong direction.
Intelligence likely thought the end result would be like previous “storm the border” protest riots – lots of burning tyres, half a dozen Arabs with bullet wounds in their legs. But mainly an excuse to accuse Netanyahu, Mr Security, of letting down the country during High Holidays.
As discussed:
Chapter 3: a Fighting Family
This most distinguished member of Armidale’s ship’s company, Edward “Teddy” Sheean (no middle name), was born in Barrington, in northern Tasmania, on 28 December 1923.
He was the fourteenth child in a very large family of 16 children. His father, James Sheean, was a labourer, and his wife Mary Jane looked after the young ones. Teddy’s great-niece recalls what family life was like in those days:
The children closest in age to Teddy were Thomas Michael (known as Mick), who was just over a year older than Teddy, Nellie, who was born in 1921, and Frederick, who had just turned six when Teddy was born.
In August 1926, there was a new baby, Harold John. Over the next few years Teddy’s mother gave birth to three more children, none of whom survived infancy. These must have been difficult times for the family.
The older children, Albert, Florence, Jim, Amy and Ivy, were married and having families of their own by 1930 so young Teddy probably spent much of his childhood with big brothers Janie, Bert, Bill, Fred and Mick.
The Sheen family having by now moved from Barrington to Latrobe, Teddy began his education along with his siblings at the local Catholic School, St Patrick’s, on 28 January 1930. He received his First Holy Communion on 21 May 1931.
The children were taught by the Sisters of Mercy in circumstances which today would be regarded with horror by teachers and families alike. In 1931 the weatherboard school, located outside the Convent fence, was a small room for the infants and Grade 1 children; a larger room for Grades 2, 3 and 4 combined, and a hall, complete with stage, for grades 5, 6 and 7.
The buildings, as depicted in photographs of the time, were rough, unfinished, and probably extremely cold in winter. The playground was the surrounding yard, without play equipment, or the safe planned ground cover of today. It is a world removed from the modern buildings which by now have replaced those of the 1930s.
The family lived in rough conditions, in a very basic house, with most of the boys finding employment on local farms, as did Teddy, when his education at a local Catholic school was over, according to the family, at the age of 13, on 8 March 1937. It was unusual to leave school that early. Teddy’s naval mate Jack Bird, who also grew up in the area, thinks that this was because the schools were closed down for a period, due to the 1937-38 outbreak of poliomyelitis in Tasmania, when the state suffered the largest per capita outbreak of the disease in the western world.
The work Teddy found was hard manual labour of a sort which would raise eyebrows in modern times. Teddy rode a pushbike around the country; working as an offsider to his father in fencing, carrying out basic carpentry, and cutting railways sleepers. If you worked you got money. If you didn’t, there was none. The term “social security” was then un-invented, and governments provided little services for Australians beyond defence, basic law and order, some utilitarian infrastructure such as roads and a simple electricity supply, and limited pensions and child endowment.
Most houses in rural Tasmania used a septic tank drain system, and running cold water into houses was usually supplied from a rainwater tank. Of course, entertainment at home was non-existent beyond a few library books, family conversation, and the radio, although sets were not cheap. But for all that, in a large family such as the Sheeans there was comfort in the security that relatives supplied.
His nephew Max remembered years later being impressed by his older uncle, firstly because Teddy owned: “…a pet ferret. It would run around under the house; he’d whistle for it, it would run up his arm and off they’d go.” But he recognized Teddy’s strength of character, too.
I remember he went crook at me for swearing one day. He had a reputation. He wouldn’t take crap from anybody. He fought a bloke, I know, who kicked his football away. I spoke to one of the [Armidale] survivors once, Rex Pullen, who said: “You always liked to have Teddy with you on shore; you’d be safe with him.”
Aggression was part of the Sheean tradition. The boys organised boxing matches every Sunday in the backyard. Teddy, with an average height at five foot eight inches (174 cm), is said to have done well.
When the war broke out the family followed its progress closely, with five of the boys enlisting in the Army, and one in the Navy before Teddy, the youngest brother, joined them in the Forces on 21 April 1941.
Data from US Medicare and the New Zealand Ministry of Health shows, beyond any doubt, that the COVID vaccines have killed millions
Sound advice, Cassie.
Apologies Dover just saw this on scrolling back
dover0beach
Dec 1, 2023 1:06 PM
Attention:
Can we limit the number of links, bold, etc. in each comment as they are likely to lengthen the loading time for the page. Each time they are added is increasing the number of operations that need to be performed.
“So now with the benefit of hindsight, I look back and consider those calls potentially checking in, as opposed to actually looking after my welfare,’’ Ms Higgins said.
“At the time I perceived it to be support, and I adored Michaelia Cash, but with the benefit of hindsight yes, now I look back at it in a different light now that she denies ever knowing.”
Mr Whybrow again put it to Ms Higgins it was “not true” she told Senator Cash about a rape.
Ms Higgins denied this.
“I went to them about my panic attacks,’’ she said.
No wonder ScoMo supported her. She could possibly be the only person in history more likely to backstab a friend than him.
Right here in Australia, where we have a government whose loyalties lie elsewhere.
DIGITAL ID BILL PASSES FIRST OF THREE STAGES
Malcolm Roberts
THE WHO’S PANDEMIC TREATY POWER GRAB UPDATE
RBA economists to get 11.2pc pay rise
Michael Read – Economics correspondent
Reserve Bank economists will receive an 11.2 per cent pay rise over the next three years and a one-off payment of $1000, after governor Michele Bullock’s second attempt to strike a new enterprise bargaining agreement succeeded.
RBA staff accepted the central bank’s proposed three-year enterprise bargaining agreement in a ballot that closed on Wednesday, with 64 per cent of employees voting “yes”.
The outcome comes one day after members of the Community and Public Sector Union voted in favour of the Albanese government’s revised 11.2 per cent pay offer, despite the union’s efforts to secure 20 per cent salary increases.
The vote marks an end to the heated negotiations between the RBA and the Finance Sector Union, which attracted the scrutiny of federal Labor MPs after the RBA warned staff they may not receive back pay if they pushed for a better offer.
Under the agreement, junior and mid-level RBA staff will receive a 4 per cent pay rise this year, followed by a 3.7 per cent salary increase in 2024 and a 3.5 per cent lift in 2025.
Employees covered by the agreement will also receive a one-off payment of $1000 by the end of the year.
A mid-level economist at the RBA earns between $81,000 and $128,800. The deal means an employee at the top of the band will receive a $14,970 pay rise over three years.
The outcome is a blow to the FSU, whose demands were mostly ignored by the RBA.
The central bank walked away from negotiations last month after rejecting the FSU’s calls for a larger pay rise, enshrining the RBA’s existing work from home provisions in the EBA, and increasing superannuation contributions to 17.5 per cent from 15.4 per cent.
The FSU had argued the 11.2 per cent pay offer was less than recent agreements struck across the financial services sector, including at National Australia Bank and ANZ.
The deal was Ms Bullock’s second attempt at striking an agreement, after staff in August unexpectedly rejected the RBA’s initial offer of a 10.5 per cent pay rise over three years.
“We are pleased that so many of our people saw the value in the proposed new agreement and that we can progress with providing them the agreed salary increase and one-off payment before the end of the year,” an RBA spokeswoman said.
Challenging optics
But FSU national secretary Julia Angrisano said the outcome “was by no means a strong endorsement of the RBA’s proposal, and in many ways reflects a broader cultural issue across the bank where staff don’t feel valued and where their feedback is dismissed”.
“If the bank wants to retain its high-quality talent and address the high turnover of staff, then it needs to start listening to its workforce and show that it values their skills, knowledge and experience,” she said.
The RBA is not bound by public service pay arrangements, but in recent years it has kept to the federal government standards.
The optics of offering a more generous pay deal were challenging for Ms Bullock, given the RBA has been vocal about the need to contain wage growth to avoid fuelling inflation.
Both former governor Philip Lowe and Ms Bullock have said productivity must increase for current rates of wages growth to be consistent with the RBA’s 2 to 3 per cent inflation target.
Beyond the optics, a more generous pay deal was also challenging for Ms Bullock given cost pressures at the RBA.
The RBA’s balance sheet fell deeper into negative equity last financial year after the central bank recorded a $6 billion accounting loss. It came after the RBA posted a $36.7 billion loss in 2021-22 when sharp interest rate rises smashed its financial portfolio.
It is also dealing with a blowout in its head office renovation project, which was originally meant to cost $260 million but is on track to be one of the Commonwealth’s most expensive public works projects at almost $500 million.
United Airlines just overtook Qantas in flights to the US
Ayesha de Kretser – Senior reporter
United Airlines is adding more services from Los Angeles and swapping to larger planes as it surpasses Qantas as the most frequent flier between Australia and the United States.
The airline, one of the largest in the US, will now fly three times a week to Brisbane from Los Angeles. It says this – and flights to Sydney and Melbourne added earlier this year – is the biggest expansion for a US carrier in Australia. United will operate 66 weekly flights, up 50 per cent on 2022.
It has also begun flying larger planes into Melbourne in response to demand.
“When we thought about building up our capacity and our international plans in Australia and other parts of the world over the last few years, you just had a very big shift in some of the industry dynamics because you’ve had different changes in how capacity looked pre-pandemic versus how it looks today,” Matt Stevens, United’s vice president of global network planning, told AFR Weekend.
The increase in United flights into Sydney and Melbourne, under an open skies agreement between the US and Australia, represents a big challenge to Qantas.
Qantas’ rival into Europe, Qatar Airways, was blocked by the federal government from adding 28 flights a week into the four biggest airports because the Australian carrier said it would “distort” the market.
Record international earnings
Australia is an attractive destination for foreign airlines. International earnings are at record levels for Singapore Airlines, which flies five flights a day into each of Melbourne and Sydney, and United, which again posted record earnings from its international division in the third quarter.
“Pre-COVID, [our] international margins lagged [United States] domestic margins by a few points, and we’ve seen that completely flipped over the year,” Mr Stevens said.
“International is doing incredibly well and we at United feel that we’re best positioned to continue to take advantage of that change.”
Unlike the Australian domestic market, where Qantas holds 65 per cent and Virgin Australia 33 per cent, the four largest US carriers – United, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and American Airlines – account for about 75 per cent, evenly split, of their local market.
Mr Stevens said the Australian market was no longer seen as a counter-cyclical play, where airlines would add services after the busy northern hemisphere summer.
“There have been two things that have really changed over the last few years. The first is that industry capacity has changed quite a bit from a 2019 base, with overall industry capacity coming down,” he said.
“That has influenced and allowed us to take a look at it and say we feel even more confident adding more capacity into Australia.”
An expanded strategic partnership between United and Virgin had also helped to bring more US tourists to Australia, he said, and travellers were able to easily connect to Cairns and Townsville.
“It’s allowed us to unlock not just Sydney and Melbourne but being able to launch a new service to Brisbane and then fully cover all of Australia with that great partnership with Virgin allows us to add … more capacity in the northern summer period too,” he said.
Business travel is roughly flat on pre-pandemic levels, but Mr Stevens said United was capitalising on traveller discontent.
“I won’t speak for the other US carriers, but I think that they’re choosing United where they may have picked an Australian carrier in the past,” he said.
“If we can give them a great experience on that first trip, I think we feel very confident they’re going to stay. They’re going to continue to choose United in the future.”
It’s amazing how many fewer problems one has securing classified information when those who handle it know they are being monitored. For one thing, it’s a bit harder to sneak in/out and employ a thumb drive ala Manning, Snowden, etc.. It also makes a record of who was where, doing what, when.
I’ve worked in more than one classified area monitored via CCTV.
Beautifully evoked, Tinta. With parents, it is an anchor indeed to all of those years of knowing and loving them and, as an adult, trying to understand them.
Even with others, such as a spouse, a sibling or, horribly, a child, one feels set adrift from something in life that mean so much, that grounded your own life in some way.
Hairy says to me how sad he was when he first wife died last year, suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack. She was only 71, which seems young now. I’ve lost the sense that someone else in the world shares some of my memories, certain memories which are now only recallable by me, he said. They were no longer close and shared little in the present day, but still, another anchor lost, and she lives on only in memory.
Absolutely NOT IMHO.
Good luck with that, sonny.
Ah, the gut whisperer. Where were you when I needed you? What have you done for me lately?
They’ve been trying this shit on since 2015, haven’t they?
Who voted for this?
Legislation by online voting of the electorate has a strong case.
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2022/May/Digital_Identity_system
The Digital ID system was initiated by the Coalition Government in 2015 as a ‘safe, secure and convenient way to prove who you are every time you access government online services … entirely voluntary and controlled by you’.
And that Einstein guy! What has *he* done lately? Still paying his bills with GR royalties.
I am chuffed that 5 fellow Cats have purchased my book. Thank you, you know who you are and if not too inconvenient I would appreciate an honest appraisal when you finish reading it. I will never know the merit in writing it if I am not told.
Thanks again Cats…
Albo’s … resting while pining for the fjords.
The photo of the bruise could not be pinpointed to a date as the metadata on the image had been removed.
A good question for Bri is who she allowed access to her phone(s) after the alleged event and what software, if any, was installed & removed before phone was shared to Police. Also, whether the phone was jail-broken in that time.
“The issue with public servant wages is not the 7 figures paid to very few people engaged in managing large business or sums of money, but rather about the hundreds of public servants paid massive 6-figure wages with no risk or work requirements beyond 9 to 5 .
Sure, the bonus structures of the high flyers needs a look – clearly bonuses should only be paid where there is commensurate success and that clear has not been happening.”
We might, maybe, get better service and care from those mobs if ALL base salaries were dropped and were “topped up” on performance bonuses instead.
I say “maybe” because the “Performance Planning and Evaluation” procedure at CSIRO was a joke, with many people writing their “plan” for the “next” year at the end of that year instead – it’s very easy to meet your “targets” when your are “planning” after the event. Still, it could hardly be worse than the current system, and there is at least some chance it would be better.
And if we pushed that idea to the polliemuppets, we might even get “performance bonus” for politicians based on election promises kept – a novel concept I admit, but might help stop the “promise the world and hand you an atlas” we get now.
Removing the metadata is evidence tampering. Could it have been deemed non-allowable evidence because obviously it has been altered?
Much more likely Katz.
Incidentally it wasn’t just young females doing border security, though there were lots of those too.
On the same level as planting DNA.
This is criminal stuff.
I opened them up after buying … HAPPY BIRTHDAY in big stupid letters.
You should have tried Oz Post personalised standard mail stamps .. you upload the pix (no copyright ones tho) you want and they do ’em in sheets of 20 .. takes about a week and on special at the moment for $16 a sheet .. normally $32 .. free post for orders over $30 …
being a stamp collector I’ve had all the grandees .. stamped .. they come up perfect ..!
https://auspost.com.au/sending/stamps/personalised-stamps
Indolent
Dec 1, 2023 2:01 PM
Data from US Medicare and the New Zealand Ministry of Health shows, beyond any doubt, that the COVID vaccines have killed millions
I understand that the data indicates a death rate of 1 to 1,000 vaccinations. This is WAY beyond what was considered average for other vaccines.
I recommend Digger’s book whole-heartedly. It’s a lengthy and thorough insight into a world few get to see or understand – but by reading Bubbles, Booze, Bombs and Bastards, A Clearance Divers Story you can get some understanding of the fearsome tasks these blokes undertake.
I was a divemaster for a long time, and worked in the tourist trade, and then researching shipwrecks, but that sort of diving is a world away from what naval Clearance Divers do. Not only are they skilled with explosives, but they undertake all sorts of other tasks, including salvage, often in appalling conditions. They are also commandoes from the sea. Their work needs the highest standards of skill, toughness, and bravery all wrapped up into one.
Digger’s book not only explains all that, but tells many tales of his tasking over the years. He was kind to send me an advance copy when I’d learnt he worked in the Cyclone Tracy operations, on which I’m writing a book, Cyclone Warriors – the Armed Forces in Cyclone Tracy, which will come out for the 50th anniversary next year. He was part of the team that recovered HMAS Arrow, which sunk with the loss of two lives in the storm.
Get a read of Digger’s book if you can!
Anyway, who does that sort of stuff. I wouldn’t have a clue on how to remove metadata from my digital images. Sure, the enhancing/cropping stuff, but not dates and locations.
And this was presented as evidence of a very serious crime.
“Anything you can do we can do better” including stupidity.
That’s a very big and important difference between Gina and Twiggy.
And there was me thinkin’ the “big” difference was Twiggy isn’t involved in anything that doesn’t include, a majority, OPM (mug taxpayers) injection these dayz …… LOL!
Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
– Ronald Reagan
I’d like to take a moment, to appreciate the small things.
Such as thank goodness Briteknee wasn’t wearing her reg grundies the night she was supposedly assaulted.
“I used to wear it all the time. and I guess I was trying to reclaim it,” she said. “I’ve done that … a lot.”
Be like a summer’s day fish market dumpster by now if she kept them on.
Memories Lizzy. Recently interviewed by several reported types and senior officers, Some intrusive. Confusing now at well past 100 years. God knows what I said to them. Oh embarrassment!
Changes to state government laws have been urged after e-bikes were found to be illegally speeding at up to 42km/h on shared pedestrian paths in Sydney.
Not much point in changing the law if there is no one to enforce it! .. you never , ever see plod anywhere near shared paths .. they can’t get their cars on them …… the dayz of plod on bikes is sooooo 2019-ish and if you live out in the western suburbs (Fairfield, Mt Druitt ect ..) plod on foot has almost disappeared ( unless they’re buying lunch) .. LOL!
CCTV could pick up details of the contents in some circumstances.
Must be me but I seriously doubt their are, suspicious looking, folk hovering around the Parliament CCTV operations centre in the hope of catching a glimpse of “secret” files .. be a lor simpler to just bribe a staffer with access ……….. and from some of the tit-tat in media stories this can’t be a too uncommon occurence ………..
For all the talk yesterday of hamasisis returning three bodies it hasn’t happened.
Word is Israel has refused, and why wouldn’t they?
It would encourage hamas to kill hostages, and who thinks for one minute they might not have the Bibas family alive and would kill them to order thinking to destroy Israeli morale?
Only around 45 minutes before the ceasefire is supposed to end, nothing in the msm about whether there will be an extension.
We have just watched the Primary debate between Ron DeSantis and Governor Newsom, on Fox. Hairy was very lukewarm about doing so, but I thought it might be good to see them both in action. If anything happened to Trump then DeSantis might be back in the running. I certainly prefer him to Nikki Haley, whom I don’t trust at all.
DeSantis is still good value, and was debating strongly, although too strident and interruptive at times. Newcom is a slimeball, a Noddy milksop, a fake smiler with fake teeth, running the usual Democratic lines, although flailing badly on his management of California. If he runs against Trump, he will lose. Worth seeing.
ie they didn’t buy into her bullshit
RTWT.
So many of you old troopers are still trooping on, Macbeth.
Over100 and not out.
Keep well, come in here whenever you can and don’t let anyone annoy you!
You are not forgotten here.
ADF total strength has dropped from 62 429 t0 41 079 since 1983
I’d say that is likely wrong. Probably Army full-time.
Last time I looked Navy was around 14,000 and the RAAF 20,000 or so.
From an ABC story this morning …….
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-01/statistics-reveal-australian-military-top-heavy/103173718
The photo of the bruise could not be pinpointed to a date as the metadata on the image had been removed.
The removal of metadata would leave digital fingerprints.
BL’s lawyer would have known about this a million years ago & should have pursued this.