‘A fifteen-minute stroll north from the European Commission HQ in Brussels, where you can safely smoke indoors in one of…
Open Thread – New Year’s Day 2024
- Open Thread – Weekend 18 Jan 2025
- Guest Post: Mem – The Ratchet Effect of Power-Price Increases
- Will the wind warriors become social outcasts?
- Open Thread – Thurs 16 Jan 2025
- Open Thread – Mon 13 Jan 2025
Coffee time up here in God’s own country. Liebor is truly evil. Labor is trying to pull a huge con…
Yes. The Victorian Govt will just be grateful they weren’t singled out.
Who knew the DNC reps would do this?
Bongino on the obvious: Biden Is Destroying The Country On His Way Out (Ep. 2402) – 01/16/2025 And here is…
Didn’t Pilger discover that the British SAS were training the Khmer Rouge in the early 80s?
Pilger was an all-round flog. Ran across him a few times around the place when we were still in news careers. Spouse had a few words with him about Vietnam, having served there in 1966-7 while the idiot was poncing about as a foreign agent.
Not mourned by us.
I seem to recall in a class/ rail induction that you actually stop a train when it hits you.
Depending on the weight/ speed/ relative squishiness of your body the times involved may actually be too small to capture, whole seconds do not get a look in.
I go into the physics of car smashes a bit doing emergency training, it’s good when you see people start to grasp just how much force is involved in high speed smashes.
Georgina was an incipient sappho – that much was obvious. There’s some woke fodder to start with. Oh, wait, she hated being referred to as Miss Georgina.
Anyway, here they are, before Timmy was “recast” as a border collie …
Again …
Yes, Tickler, I know Dutchsinse has let his membership of various online platforms lapse, but the question is … Did he predict the Japanese earthquake?
Yay or nay?
Sancho Panzer
Jan 2, 2024 12:32 AM
Yes, Tickler, I know Dutchsinse has let his membership of various online platforms lapse, but the question is … Did he predict the Japanese earthquake?
Yay or nay?
He has not been online.
Good stuff!
This is Shannon Rogers’ arrangement for Ferny Grove Percussion Ensemble of three tunes from Thomas Newman’s highly percussive film score for American Beauty – American Beauty, Angela Undress and Still Dead.
American Beauty
I see Peter Singer is in the news.
Re Pilgerise, Pilgerism etc (Bruce, 10.41 p.m.)
I believe that these terms were created by the late (and much lamented) Auberon Waugh.
I know someone else whose name has become a verb.
John Spooner.
Mark Knight.
Mark Knight #2.
Peter Broelman.
Brett Lethbridge.
Brett Lethbridge #2.
Thank you Tom
Right.
So he missed it then.
Sancho Panzer
Jan 2, 2024 5:15 AM
He has had enough. He has exposed the USGS as retards.
Sancho Panzer
Jan 2, 2024 5:15 AM
I posted upthread. .GOV are blocking him.
Now piss off!
Has anyone been watching the usual MSM suspects lately? Have they given due coverage to the amazing cold temperatures in China? Worst in 40 years?
I haven’t bothered with them for a long time.
The Israel supreme court struck down the proposed law to limit their power. Well sprinkle me in sugar and call me cupcake. Who would have thought.
Petros
Jan 2, 2024 6:57 AM
I was reading Haaretz last night, (yes, yes I know) but even if half of their postulations are correct, I see no good outcome from this Israeli-Hamas conflict, for Israel in particular.
One can only hope they are wrong.
After all, they are supposed to use the same facts as all the other commentators.
Or are they?
“I know someone else whose name has become a verb.”
Dr BeauGan,
you’re talking about that great correspondent of the Middle East, Fisk, aren’t you?
hahahahahaha Fisk was one of the earliest additions to Urban Dictionary. Thank God he’s no longer with us either.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/382899
The retiring judge thinks it’s reasonable to sow division during the war as an example of the “reasonableness” of the court.
Bibi gets Trumped. What do they think will happen? That the Gazans will suddenly want to just get along? Fantasy land. Presumably the next election in Israel will be marred by civil chaos ala BLM etc.
when Palestinians find out they are Egyptians.
another innocent civilian
You shouldn’t laff but the headline to this story really shows the kiddies are in charge of reporting .. “Bikers attack” .. read on and it comes down to teenagers riding mini bikes .. FFS!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12916805/The-shock-moment-Ian-Ziering-ATTACKED-bikers-traffic-altercation-90210-star-punched-group-Hollywood-Boulevard-fleeing-safety-LAPD-continue-probe-violent-incident.html
On This Day:
It would be over 500 years before Spain saw another kebab shop.
Dave Chappelle has put together another show guaranteed to launch a huge backlash from the chattering classes. There’s a two minute clip in which he gives his view of trannies. Worth watching, very sweary, with a zinger of a punchline.
The GayBC and the Marxist pervert gender police are coming for your babies:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-02/gender-reveals-parenting-mothers-fathers-families-baby-showers/103250418
While I think a “gender reveal” party is ridiculous but harmless, the ABC’s reaction (thinly hidden behind the opinion of “experts” and fringe groups) proves something we’ve known for ages.
They despise anyone having fun.
Navajo Nation president asks NASA to delay Moon launch
Somehow I suspect Nygren didn’t contact the Chinese, Russian, or Indian leaders demanding a review of what they have done or deposited on his “sacred” moon.
This is what comes of forgetting how to say “No, you freaking loon” to freaking loons instead of placating them.
Worth watching, very sweary, with a zinger of a punchline.
Thanks Pogs, Chappelle perfectly and succinctly nails the transpervert gaslighting and lies. It’s the ‘zing of zingers’!
The transpervert howlers and the transpervert supporters will screech, scream and howl about Chappelle but to no avail because as with J K Rowling and Ricky Gervais, Chappelle is too big to be silenced or cancelled.
Sweet, a good start to the day
Meanwhile, here in NSW, this Jew has been described as a descendant of pigs and apes by a Muslim cleric. You might ask, will this ‘cleric’ in question be charged with anything, after all we have numerous existing hate speech laws in place, laws that have been used against people in the past? After all, this same cleric has actually called for Jews to be murdered. My answer to that question is……no. You see, no doubt the NSWaffen Police are continuing to monitor the situation, and that grubby smirking mediocrity called Mike Burgess, head of ASIO or whatever, assures us that the cleric and his followers are just letting off steam but I just can’t help feeling that if this had been a Christian, Jewish or Hindu cleric describing Muslims as ‘descendants of pigs and apes’ then that Christian, Jewish or Hindu cleric would already be behind bars, charged with some kind of ‘hate speech’.
Selective policing. Two-tier policing. Multicultural policing. Dhimmi policing.
For what it’s worth, every human on the planet is a descendant of apes, including the noxious Jew hating, foreskin obsessed cleric in question. I’m pretty sure pigs and apes, noble creatures they are, would in no way want to be to be associated with cockroach dregs like the Muslim cleric. I don’t either, and I don’t want to share a country with such Islamist dregs.
By the way, I know enough of Jewish history to know that the increasing incitement against us Jews will ensure there will be a physical attack. When that happens will that mean the ‘monitoring’ by NSW police stops? And will Mike Burgess continue to benignly describe that as ‘letting off steam’
How’s that social cohesion going, Sleazy?
But that’s enough of a rant today, I’m mindful some here don’t like my rants.
The practice originated in the United States during the late 2000s.
It figures.
I never understood the need for or the meaning of it, dull as I am.
Oh look, the down ticker is having a merry old time.
Every Tinder date you go on is a potential gender reveal party.
Mmmyes they hate it because an actual transgender newborn is a tragedy and mistake of the human genome.
These parties reinforce that there are only two genders.
New Year’s Update on Electric Vehicles, the Blood Diamonds of the Climate Cult
Love that quote: ‘The Blood Diamonds of the Climate Cult’.
From the Ace of Spades. Scroll down to his ‘Morning Rant’ for his wisdom and some great references on the topic.
Gender reveal party, don’t dump your load and pull up at the same time.
Good to know there are trolls here who agree with the Muslim cleric who described Jews as descendants of pigs and apes.
132andBush
Jan 2, 2024 9:15 AM
Ouch!
Overestimating the strength of the wings, obviously not an aerobatic plane.
Under a very heavy ElNino thunderstorm right now.
An aluminum caravan is a Faraday Cage, yes?
This is intolerable and a serious indictable offence. This is also in part why we need 2A. Morally speaking, the right to self defence is inviolable.
Shabbat observing people not to be trifled with:
http://jpfo.org/
Rabz, here is an original 50’s pic of what The Famous Five looked like.
Georgina, cousin to Anne, Julian and Timmy may have been an incipient Lezzo, but far more likely to have been an ordinary pre-pubescent girl playing tomboy before she grew out of it, like my Big Sis. Big Sis always wanted to do boy things like like lead the gang, and ride the faster borrowed bikes with bars on them. Now a successful much-married medical specialist. Timmy was every dog any child has ever owned. A real person during games. I was happy with the bikes for girls, with room for skirts, and took Anne as my model for clothes and decorum. Never faltered from that since. 🙂
So how many cars did the exuberant keffiyeh wearing youth of France burn this NYE?
When did France end the excellent social discord rectification tradition of ‘a whiff of grapeshot’? Worked for Boney, even more relevant now.
Micron can’t ever win. He’s actually trying to be a level headed leader addressing a serious problem (pensions) and he’s hated for it.
France is like Greece but with a handbrake.
Happiness in the plebs is a distraction from their devotion to the grave causes progressives think the plebs are meant to submit their lives to.
The harm this has wrought has been a litany of disasters.
The plebs failed to make enough effort in combatting global cooling in the 1970’s, were lackadaisical saving us from the economic and societal collapse as we careened faster and faster down the dry side of peak oil, were reluctant to do what needed to be done to disarm the population bomb as precious seconds ticked away, and now they are sitting back watching TV and having parties even as Antarctic meltwater is literally lapping around their ankles.
Yes indeed, the recalcitrance of the lowly hoi polloi has been a disaster, or series of disasters, and they still refuse to do as they are told.
Zatara,
I am glad you posted that piece from Ace. I was going to, but the dreaded housework called. It is, 100% correct.
You have to ignore them, Cassie. Even when you are fairly sure you are being downticked (disliked) for being yourself, rather than for what you say. It seems almost to be a competition on some recent comments of yours and mine to get the upticks to equal the downticks, with high numbers involved for both.
Such ill-will is despicable, but it exists, with good people trying to offer support leading to that competitive situation.
Compulsive downtickers are scum, blogwreckers.
“But that’s enough of a rant today, I’m mindful some here don’t like my rants.”
Cassie, never apologise for your rants. If some here don’t like them, that’s what the scroll button is for. Mine takes a hell of a pounding some days. 😀
If I make it to the Feb 4 march, with your ranting (firmly expressed opinions) and my partiality to a bit of biff, we should be able to get our point across. 😀
Yep. Just like some who continue on the Cat in spite of ill-wishers.
Why won’t we do as we’re told? 🙂
See you there, Pogria. With Cassie. Feb 4th.
May have been?
May.
Gayer than Elton Liberacé.
Look out, Sydney Town – you won’t know what’s hit you!
Lizzie,
I hope so. The drive to Sydney is no problem. I have to organise someone to feed the cats and dogs and, most important, lock the poultry away securely before dark.
Where there’s a will!
Report compiled in The Australian 4 hrs ago, with assistance from the WS Journal.
Putting it up in full as it is a good update and situation report.
Gender reveal incidents
Fascinating Horror is a cool channel.
Meanwhile, Australia’s sad sack Albanese implicitly supports the Houthi’s.
Of course we could send a frigate or two. But he and Wong won’t.
Rigging Elections Worldwide?
COMMENT: Finland’s Presidential Election
The only opposition candidate in the Finnish presidential election, Paavo Väyrynen, was prevented from standing as a candidate by a hybrid operation in which the state-owned postal service routed the supporting cards sent to him to Estonia (and the cards were not found until the deadline had expired).
Finland’s political decision-makers are selected by the “EU” Centre for Hybrid Warfare, located in Helsinki.
Now voters have only one political line to choose: the war against Russia, even though there are several candidates running.
REPLY: Elections are being rigged around the world to support this war agenda. I am getting emails from so many countries. This is an agenda, and there is no way to stop it. This is not about votes. We no longer matter.”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/voting-elections/rigging-elections-worldwide/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=RS
Nope. Just a pre-pubescent young girl being a tomboy.
Ask Rita Panahi, who always declares she was the same.
And many other women who are still sexually-normal women.
The restrictions placed on women culturally led to many women being ‘Tomboys’ and to some even continuing on with a masculine persona in order to write and publish or do other independent and ‘masculine’ things denied to them.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Giving women some civil freedoms and opportunities has been a good thing for many, but abused by modern feminism.
“Sancho Panzer
Jan 2, 2024 10:12 AM
Georgina, cousin to Anne, Julian and Timmy may have been an incipient Lezzo …
May have been?
May.
Gayer than Elton Liberacé.”
NO, No, No. Just because a young girl goes Full Tomboy in her early years, does NOT mean she is gay. I met a young girl whom, when first introduced, I thought was a boy. She played soccer, was always wearing her soccer togs, hair short, very butch looking. Until her parents said her name, I had no idea she was a girl. She was around ten at the time.
She was like that for the next couple of years that I knew her. I didn’t see her then for about three years when, one day at s Shopping Centre, a very beautiful young girl said hi, and gave me a hug. It was my young tomboy friend. She was 14 by then, had grown her hair and had it styled. Was wearing contemporary clothes and was with a group of girls all of who, including my young friend, had discovered boys.
I was a Tomboy myself, except I would NEVER cut my waist length hair and I enjoyed make-up. Still wear jeans and boots every day. Skirts and high heels don’t work when you’re striding through the paddock with the dogs. 😀
There are at least nine other candidates who qualified and another candidate who did not.
Armstrong is so full of shit.
Snap, Lizzie.
Grandson coming for lunch. Taking him and my son out to eat.
Much prepare stern face but loving arms. 🙂
Compulsive downtickers are scum, blogwreckers.
I get down thumbs all the time. So what? Water off a Duck’s Back for me.
Here’s your typical “opposition candidate” with absolutely no establishment links or geriatric medical issues:
He’s part of the problem and isn’t popular enough to be on the ballot.
Suck it up chief.
9 other candidates on the ballot.
2 candidates failed to reach the minimum level of support.
“ELECTIONS ARE BEING RIGGED EVERYWHERE BY THE ESTABLISHMENT!”
What a LARPing con man.
Ukraine Propaganda
QUESTION: Regrding Ukraines’ failing economy article, posted on Dec 31st 2023.
Why is it, do you think, that the west wants to weaken Russia so badly? Isn’t the greater threat China?
And also, wasn’t it Russia that started the invasion, so do they not have themselves to blame for the scrambling of war mongering from the west, as well as resistance to the invasion from Ukraine. Should Ukraine just have let Russia take over the whole of Ukraine? And if they shouldn’t have just given up, when is to say when they should lay down their arms? Now? Just because you might think there is no point in going on?
Many questions, thank you for takimg the time to read.
Best regards,
KS
ANSWER: I think you are crediting the propaganda about Russia and are blind to the manipulations that are underway. The West negotiated in bad faith with the Minsk Agreement to buy time for Ukraine to build an army trained, BTW, by NATO. The Belgrade Agreement was that Ukraine, the 3rd largest nuclear power in the world in 1991, surrendered its nukes, promising that it would remain neutral and neither NATO would advance nor Russia would invade. Zelensky broke both agreements on the order of the Neocons.
When Zelensky was elected, he promised to end the civil war and seek peace with Russia. Even Russia was very hopeful for an end to the civil war, which was instigated by the West, and it was Kiev that first attacked the Donbas under the unelected government installed by the West in 2014 before elections.
There was never a country of Ukraine. It was fashioned entirely by Khruschev. The Minsk Agreement was to allow the Donbas, which was Russian for centuries, to vote for their independence.
Putin even sought to explain the importance of the Minsk Agreement to Zelensky to PREVENT war.
Even the Ukrainian press exposed that Boris Johnson was there to instruct Zelensky that he was NOT allowed to seek peace with Russia. The West has wanted to conquer Russia for centuries. All Ukraine had to do was honor the Minsk Agreement, and the war would have been over in 24 hours. Zelensky has outlawed the Russian language in the Donbas and their religion. They were no longer allowed to be part of the Orthodox Religion under the Patriarch of Moscow. Zelensky has just announced that Christmas will be December 25th, as in the West. What? These people are to change their religion and no longer speak their native young for a regime that never existed pre-1991? Human Rights dictate that they should have the right to vote on their own future. Only Kiev has the right to stage a revolution – not the Russians who have lived in the Donbas for centuries.
As far as China is concerned, the Biden Administration led by the Neocons has overturned the agreement of One China that has protected Taiwan since 1949. These Neocons are intent on creating war. The criticism of Putin in Russia is the opposite of the propaganda in the West. The hardliners say Putin has been too soft. He did what he said, and he was there only to protect the Donbas. The hardliners argue Russia is not at war with Ukraine but with NATO and the USA. Putin should have gone into Ukraine as the US did to Iraq, and this war would have been over in a few weeks.
So, while you seem to be listening to the propaganda of the West that Russia and China are the aggressors, open your eyes. Nobody wants peace in Europe or the United States administrations, and you are going to witness World War III, for this is the deliberate objective. However, our computer warns that this time, the West will lose. PEACE is attained by free trade, as was the case under the Roman Empire. When everyone benefits, war does not rise. This is why the Democrats are not just trying to take Trump off the ballots, but they are also trying to prevent any Democratic challenger from the primary. This is a dictatorship under the pretense of democracy.
Between 8 and 10 million have now fled Ukraine, with the majority having no intention of returning. Over 500,000 Ukrainians have died in this proxy war for what? Territory? Honor the Minsk Agreement, and nobody would have died.
Sorry, there is another agenda here, and your life and future hang in the balance.”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/ukraine/ukraine-propaganda/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=RSS
Oops, error between head and finger. As is clear later in my comment, Timmy is the derg. The other brother was Dick. Julian was the ‘sensible’ one, Dick was wilder. Anne was dependent and sheltered, occasionally finding her bravery, while fearless George wore girls’ shorts and a blouse and had shorter hair, and a name handy to crop like a boy’s.
Grandson coming for lunch. Taking him and my son out to eat.
Much prepare stern face but loving arms.
Lizzie – this generation has been conditioned by their parents – we take that into consideration.
Today our grandson is arriving at his parent’s place on the Northern Beaches to fly for a holiday in Byron Bay tomorrow. We will not see him as, although we are minding daughter’s house (& looking after pets etc) while they are all in Byron, we have not been invited to special dinner tonight.
BTW a 4 page email arrived this morning with every detail you can imagine (talk about anal!) about looking after the Taj Mahal. The titles to the notes are :
Basics, Garbage details, Pets (each one with detailed needs), Air Con (4 different units), Garage (we can actually use it!) , House Plants, Pool, Laundry, No go areas for food and drinks (!), “Other” (eg deliveries arriving) , Bus timetables, Restaurant details.
Poor George. A sitting duck for the lgbtiqxyz crowd.
The great revelation of the last 8 years continues. The human rights/ anti discrimination laws weren’t really about human rights or discrimination but about restricting debate re immigration. Many suspected this. Remember Dame Roma Mitchell demanding prosecutions for incitement to racial hatred?
This may have been reported already, but London had the same “politically correct” NY celebrations as we did:
But with every successive year, they have been increasingly politicised. Can we not just enjoy a simple (well very extravagant) fireworks display without being bombarded with political messages or having the latest thing shoved down our throats? Let’s just celebrate another lap around the sun without being told what we should or shouldn’t be thinking that evening.
Of course, Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, had to start the evening with his name in lights. Thank you Dear Leader for your wonderful gift!
On a side note, after this the BBC warns us that there will be flashing images. At a fireworks display? Whoever would have thought!?
Back to the display and within a few minutes of Big Ben producing its last bong to signal the arrival of midnight, the political messaging began.
It started with King Charles III telling us that “our society is woven from diverse threads, comprising stories of remarkable courage and sacrifice, determination and strength. Though drawn from different parts of the world, they collectively enrich the fabric of our collective life”.
Next we had someone wishing the National Health Service (NHS) a happy 75th birthday. “Thank you so much for all that you do”, the narrator said. Firstly, stop personifying this service that we all pay for and secondly, we are in our fourth year of massive excess deaths, clearly whatever they are doing, needs some adjusting.
“We have to keep showing how we love our NHS so it will continue to be with us through it all”, the narrator continued. I can’t stand “our NHS”, a term started during the pandemic, making it very difficult to criticise what a bad job it was doing. “You can’t possibly mean OUR NHS? OUR NHS has saved millions of lives you evil human being”.
It then moved on to celebrate 10 years since same sex marriage was made legal in England and Wales. Naturally, at this point the fireworks became rainbow coloured.
Following this the fireworks changed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush. In 1948 British colonies were given the right to settle in the UK and nearly half a million people moved here from the Caribbean. Those who came were known as the “Windrush generation” because they arrived on the ship HMT Empire Windrush. In 2018 a scandal emerged because hundreds of these immigrants were told they did not have the right to stay in the UK and were threatened with deportation.
Finally, we had the obligatory nod to Climate Change. Let’s not fall out of sync with nature we were told, as drones formed dandelion’s petals that blew away in the wind.
Of course, individually there is nothing wrong with these messages. Of course many aspects of a diverse culture enriches our lives. Of course the NHS is a great service to have available whatever your financial circumstances. And it often does a great job, especially in emergencies. Yes love who you want to love and look after the planet. And of course, the Windrush generation was a positive addition to the UK and the scandal was terrible.
But this display was touted as delivering a message of unity when in reality, it was highlighting the minority. And when you only highlight the minority, you don’t create unity, you create disharmony and division.
As I say, the messages themselves aren’t the problem. The problem is how the political propaganda was woven into the show so that you were forced to listen to it all, consciously or sub-consciously. People defending the propaganda, by calling others bigots or homophobes for questioning it, would be the same people laughing at a similar display in China or Russia.
Sadiq Khan is chair of C40 cities which is a global network of cities that are “united in action to confront the climate crisis”. Translated, this means impoverishing citizens, controlling every aspect of their lives and restricting their movement to appease the Net Zero gods.
Khan has infamously brought in the Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ) to London meaning the poor, who can’t afford EVs, have to pay exorbitant fees just to travel to work. He says he has done this to improve air pollution which he claims has caused thousands of deaths. A quick search reveals massive firework displays are extremely bad for air quality. Particles and gases are released into the air that are blown around for miles and can stay in the sky for days. Hypocrite Khan is happy to produce this kind of air pollution because it means his name is displayed in bright lights.
This all might seem like getting triggered over nothing but this North Korean level of political propaganda is completely unnecessary and very un-British. But I guess if people weren’t told what to think about for the next year, they might have to start thinking for themselves.
lol, Vicki. No doubt our cat-sitter thinks the same about our missives re care of our place when we are overseas. Attapuss is a cat who has a difficult temperament and special requirements depending on which food he is currently turning his nose up at.
There are also what the sitter once called ‘quirks’ of the place. Every place has them, she noted philosophically, and is glad to be forewarned. And we don’t even leave them the garage, full of our car or things. It’s ‘street parking for you’ – does that make us Steinfeld-type Garage Nazis?
Still wear jeans and boots every day. Skirts and high heels don’t work when you’re striding through the paddock with the dogs.
Ditto, Pogria!
Seinfeld-type. To think I used once to be proud of my typing…..
This is ahistorical bullshit.
Ukraine existed before the USSR and Russian Imperial ethnography in 1915 indicated that “Little Russians” were the ethnic majority in all of the area of pre 2014 Ukraine plus Rostov on Don and bits of Belarus.
All it does it weaken the Russian arguments for the case for war. Only the most fanatical or gullible believe it.
Whatever justification Putin has, claiming Ukraine isn’t a country is absurd as claiming Russia isn’t a country either.
lol, Vicki. No doubt our cat-sitter thinks the same about our missives re care of our place when we are overseas. Attapuss is a cat who has a difficult temperament and special requirements depending on which food he is currently turning his nose up at.
As you know, Lizzie, I am an animal lover. Consequently the animal requirements are the least of my problems. The two part Maine Coons have calmed down a lot & are more sociable. The British Blue, a nasty piece of work, knows us well enough to be on speaking terms, and the Japanese Spitz dog loves us & provides the only genuine welcome we get.
It is more the intricate workings of this highly technical household and its impeccable condition that is intimidating. Daughter thinks it is a holiday for the old folk. I see it as a sentence.
Next up from Marty’s AI MS-DOS Supercomputer:
Only the Russians have free and fair elections
Terrorist Alex Navalny honourably commits suicide off Arctic prison tower
If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and of Hiroshima.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
Ergo, The Voice. Albanese’s great failure to read this room.
Cassie of Sydney:
Then the ones who don’t like your rants can just scroll on by. But they don’t, do they? They read every one just in case they can find something they can sneer at for days.
Some of them sound like ten year old boys who have heard their first funny joke – then keep repeating the punchline every time they think of it – and find it just as amusing the 87th time as it was the first time.
Pathetic.
As I have previously stated, I have been fascinated by the growth of drones in the Russia/Urkarine Conflict & now the Israel/Gazan/Hezzbollah Conflicts
The summary below from Simplicius is excellent
End of 2023 Roundup – Update on the War’s Technological Progress
SIMPLICIUS THE THINKER
31 DEC 2023
As the year heads towards a close, let’s take a look at where things may be headed technologically in the conflict, as well as give a summary of sorts of where Russia needs to militarily improve to finish off Ukraine.
This article is going to focus on the technological aspects of the war, and is therefore a direct sequel, of sorts, to this one from February 2023, where I tried to look forward to the technological changes expected to come, should the war last several years.
In the broad sense, anyone could, and did, predict the general slant of modern warfare: drones, AI, etc.
But I’m not sure that many quite predicted, specifically, how lethal and un-counterable the FPV threat, in particular, has gotten. This has really become one of the main issues presently, and it’s a quite intractable one.
Suffering from standard artillery shell hunger, Ukraine has asymmetrically invested into small, cheap drone production—and it’s paying off for them, as Russia is struggling to develop a consistent counter against them.
Sure, Russia itself outproduces Ukraine in raw FPVs, but the issue is, since it’s Russia that is now on the offensive, the situation favors Ukraine.
Russian forces have to go out in the open to attack, creating a target-rich environment for the AFU.
The problem is, the better ones are still few and far in between, and as stop-gaps Russian troops import a lot of cheap consumer Chinese jammers, many of them cobbled together from random assorted parts.
Many of these have big limitations and are of marginal efficacy—they’ll either be highly directional and therefore not able to do sector coverage; or they jam very narrow frequency bands, which doesn’t cover the majority of drone types; or their output wattage is simply too weak to create a truly protective screen.
I monitor several obscure radioelectronics channels on both sides—and believe me, the Ukrainian ones are even more revealing, as they often do breakdowns of captured Russian electronics with unvarnished commentary and insight.
There are many Russian devices pertaining to drone and jamming technology which they’ve captured and are impressed with, and many others they ridicule for being lowgrade consumer junk purchased from Chinese sites like Aliexpress.
Here’s one example of a Ukrainian video of an FPV hitting a Russian tank with a jammer on it, which clearly did nothing:
WASHINGTON — The observable success of electronic warfare in the Russia-Ukraine war is motivating the U.S. Army to get its own in-development jammers deployed as soon as possible, according to an acquisition official.
After decades of arsenal atrophy, the service is again prioritizing electronic warfare, including through its Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team and -Echelons Above Brigade initiatives.
The US Navy has reportedly already been deploying and testing a system called DRAKE (Drone Restricted Access Using Known EW):
The problem is, it’s one thing to develop a few test platforms and a whole other thing to equip a massive 500k+ man army with enough ready units to resist an unprecedented number of drones—hundreds of thousands per month.
Every single brigade, battalion, company, platoon, etc., needs their own units, and it’s proving a tall challenge.
Recently we’ve seen the highest number of FPV hits against Russian forces since the start of the conflict. Everything is being hit, which is compounded by the earlier mentioned fact of Russia going on the offensive everywhere, requiring many units to be exposed and out in the open. However, despite the huge uptick in hits, there are a few silver-lining takeaways.
What I’m finding is the actual trenches and deployment points appear very well protected. They are rarely appreciably penetrated or even reached by Ukrainian drones of any kind. No, almost every hit is made against:
. Mobile armor units on the move toward an AFU landing across the gray zone
. Straggling solo troops which are doing supply runs to their small unit dugout
. Lone supply carts (Bukhanka wagons) on the second echelon line
This is in stark contrast to how Russia is hitting the AFU, as Russian FPVs regularly penetrate every single AFU trench, fortification, dugout, stronghold, etc., which allows us to visualize a large disparity between EW capability.
In short: Russian trench EW “dome” systems appear widespread and systematized quite well. But anything outside of the trench’s safekeeping instantly turns lethal.
Anyone monitoring the internal chats of actual frontline Russian troops, correspondents, etc., will note virtually all discussion and outrage presently centers on this major growing drone problem.
No one is talking about any artillery shortages, or even drone shortages of their own.
The issue is solely that FPVs have become an intractable thorn in Russia’s side.
Some critical frontline areas have been so utterly locked down that Russian troops are literally unable to move or leave their trench.
They have to get food delivered to them via a drone, which drops food and water.
The moment they step out they’re targeted and killed with enemy FPVs.
Yesterday they even began to write about the new Ukrainian tactic involving two FPV operators working in pairs, which fly their drones together, and are able to immediately finish off any soldier that the first operator happened to merely ‘wound’.
It may seem like a pedantically obvious tactic, but until now most FPV teams continue to operate solo, one at a time.
So there are some areas where Russia lags, but others where it’s clearly ahead by a long mile; it’s an asymmetric game.
Not having the Federal Reserve’s endless money printing abilities, Russia is forced to take bets with investments in key areas, while neglecting other—deemed to be—non-critical ones.
The next—and final—big ballgame is of course AI and swarm technologies, as always. All year we’ve been treated to announcements on every side regarding new initiatives in this direction:
In that same spirit, I’ll try to predict the tenor of the conflict for 2024.
Given this preponderance of FPVs and no realistic solution to effectively and consistently neutralize them, I foresee the conflict continuing to get bloodier for anyone daring to assault.
Unlike artillery production, FPVs can be easily scaled up by spreading around their easy-to-3D-print manufacturing processes to any and all countries, including those without any military capacity of any kind.
That means unlike all other weapon types, FPVs are the one area where AFU will likely continue increasing their capabilities unhindered.
The most valuable target on the battlefield will be the FPV drone op, and they will be ruthlessly hunted via the electromagnetic spectrum, and every other means.
One of the reasons is it takes time to build up the skills of a truly talented FPV drone operator. Just take a look at how Russia trains their accuracy:
Furthermore, it’s now being written that a simple ability to steer a drone isn’t enough. True drone ops need to be experts in demolitions and engineering so as to be able to handle the explosives with which their drones operate, knowing the nuances and all the ins and outs.
Furthermore, it’s now being written that a simple ability to steer a drone isn’t enough. True drone ops need to be experts in demolitions and engineering so as to be able to handle the explosives with which their drones operate, knowing the nuances and all the ins and outs.
It will simply have to come down to each squad having a mandatory SOP of at least one drone-jammer with strict protocols of how far each member of the unit can ever stray from the guy with the jamming station backpack. This member should basically be without arms but rather trained to exclusively monitor all acoustic, electromagnetic, thermal and other channels for FPV signals. This has to be a squad level thing no different to a grenadier MOS, but unfortunately we’re probably a long way off from any such standardization.
Also advancements will have to be made in some sort of IFF (Identify Friend Foe) networking for drones and EW systems. One of the problems is Russia has powerful enterprise-level EW that often can’t be used as it jams their own consumer-grade drones.
In the past, forward deployed scouts had to be everywhere in order to observe the battlefield.
Now the enemy sits in covered positions, underground, etc., and flies drones to see everything. Even ATGM stations can now be unmanned, as the Ukrainian Stugna-P has proved.
That means modern ISR has to be increasingly advanced and sensitive in order to identify enemy positions. All enemy suppression starts with ISR and being able to locate firing positions. Though Russia has a strong ISR tradition, integration, and training, many of the systems themselves are long in the tooth and not up to task of the modern battlefield.
But as we get down to the year’s dregs, I hereby declare 2023 to be the year of the Russian soldier.
Because beneath all this techno-babble and issues of incompetent command or MIC corruption, it’s really the Russian soldier who has borne all success on his back alone. And it is only him that stands stalwart and firm in the face of the innumerable enemies and threats that continue to materialize. It’s not meant as a trite platitude, but in truth.
When we look back at the year and all its tumultuous ups and downs, all the fearful uncertainties about technological and political issues, and threatening new ‘wunderwaffen’ ever on the horizon, it has still come down to the soldier on the ground most of all, in his wet boots and mudstained uniform and heart of courage.
And as 2023 closes, I even salute the Ukrainian soldier—because they too have proven their mettle in their near-unbreakable will and defensive lines.
Why? Because true honor obliges us to salute those who risk it all.
Recall that most AFU troops are not the same ideological Nazis as some of the radical elements, particularly now, when a huge proportion are just common shlubs dragged off the street by Zelensky’s gestapo thugs.
Ukrainian soldiers have shown infinitely more courage than their NATO counterparts—at least they had the balls to face Russia on the field of battle, something NATO cowards would never dare to do, preferring to hide behind proxies.
Strategy Page has a further excellent article on the same topic
Air Weapons: Swarms of Armed UAVs Doing the Most Damage
December 30, 2023: in Ukraine, swarms of FPV (First Person View) UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are revolutionizing how wars are fought.
There are few methods to defeat UAV attacks. The primary defensive measure is electronic jamming of the control signal between the UAV operator and the UAV. Jamming is of limited effectiveness because active jammers are easy targets for UAVs programmed to detect, home in on and destroy jammers. Depending on how they are programmed, UAVs will either land if jammed or return to where they were launched.
Despite those defensive measures, and the small explosive payload UAVs carry, about half the armored vehicles damaged or destroyed in Ukraine were done in by armed UAVs.
Training of UAV operators is critical as it takes over a hundred hours of operating UAVs to gain a minimal skill level.
Female soldiers can excel as UAV operators while mostly avoiding the battlefield risk of death or injury. Unlike pilots of combat aircraft, UAV operators are much less likely to be put out of action by death, injury, or capture. UAV operators are relatively close to the front lines and exposed to some risk, but not nearly as much as pilots.
Such reduced casualties shorten the learning curve for UAV operators and make them more dangerous faster compared to infantry whose effective combat “lifetime” is much shorter.
UAV warfare is increasingly common and dominating some combat zones. Tactics and techniques are also evolving as Ukraine and Russia both experiment with new tactics, techniques, and UAV designs.
Both nations are also increasing production of UAVs and the number of trained operators.
Both Russia and Ukraine realize that UAVs provide unprecedented surveillance of the battlefield, but not all of it.
That requires more UAVs and operators. One solution for this shortcoming is operator software that enables one operator to control several UAVs.
The number one operator can handle simultaneously depends on operator experience. That cannot be manufactured but must be developed. Whoever can obtain the most trained operators has an advantage.
Dot
Jan 2, 2024 10:55 AM
Free and fair elections are no where to be seen. Along with the Candidates. More Branch stacking anyone?
Old Faustus’ Almanac predictions for 2024:
1) Iran tests a nuclear weapon.
Under the watchful eyes of the IAEA, Iran is presently enriching uranium to 60% U-235 at increased rates. Uranium enriched to this level has no purpose other than to provide feedstock for fast-track enrichment to weapons grade (90%) metal. In early 2023, Iran was revealed to have the technology in its existing centrifuge fleet to achieve weapons grade levels.
Assuming it has the ‘Paki Bomb’ engineering sorted, with the uranium metal presently at its disposal, within months Iran can test fire one small nuke and claim an arsenal of two more.
At that point Iran becomes the sub-hegemon of the Gulf and Arab states – and US carrier groups venture into the Red Sea, Mediterranean, and Persian Gulf at theoretical peril of being vapourised.
China and Russia smile. Iran is free to continue its war with Israel at elevated levels via its proxies, while uttering horrible oaths of God’s Will destruction at any opposition.
2) The US and European NATO counties run out of political and economic will to supply Ukraine into the ground and China mediates a ceasefire leaving Russia in control of the occupied territory. A second major military fail for the US in the one Presidency leaves Taiwan dangling and provides a welcome distraction for the CCP.
Emperor Xi smiles.
3) The US election staggers forward under a Banana Republic cloud. Trump is removed from the scene, either indicted, chewed up by Antebellum lawfare, or otherwise unfortunately indisposed by a latter-day Oswald. The well-polished Democrat machine gets up whatever candidate it chooses – even Zombie Biden 2.0.
Emperor Xi and the Poot smile. No more holier-than-thou finger pointing at them, or their political systems.
4) Energised by the Islamic community immunity, mob rule takes to Australian streets. Make the issue Green enough to appeal to the 18-35 demographic, locate the issue on a marginal location, and see whether any sitting government dares.
Hi Ho, Hi Ho, [Albanese] You Have to Go.
Adam Bandt smiles.
5) Albo. Poor little Albo. The ALP has to find a way to ease him out of the picture in 2024 to have any hope of holding on in a 2025 election. Difficult when the realistic PM alternatives are the near invisible Plibersek or a recycled Goblin Shorten.
30% chance of a Hail Mary early election.
Multiple Labor grotesques discover Field Marshall’s batons in their haversacks.
6) Unless a solution is found in 2024 to sustaining Eraring for another five years, East Coast Australia is locked into a future of load shedding and rolling blackouts under any reasonable set of assumptions.
No, Mable, gas won’t cut it.
7) The internal contradictions between Australian construction capacity and the demand of new public infrastructure projects will become unavoidable in 2024. Perhaps it can be solved by importing New Australians – perhaps Handsome Boy (if he survives) can reach a deal with Emperor Xi’s eunuchs to bring Belt and Road to Australia.
The CFMEU warlords smile.
Bear up, Vicki. You’ll be home soon, where the world is lived normally, home-style.
As with Pogria, I guess you also have to get someone to mind your animals on the farm while you help out or travel elsewhere. Our place here is pretty much lock up and go, except for Attapuss. My lovely boy, I hope he didn’t hear that. 🙂
I never accepted Communist dogma or theory.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
We need TROT – the Return of Trump, h/t to someone here on the Cat.
Israel needs to keep some firepower in reserve for Iran if it comes to that.
Israeli reserve firepower has “NEVER AGAIN” embossed in the casings…
Rabz at 10.29pm last night regarding the comments between two valued posters.
Great stuff, Rabz. I know you’re not a religious fella but; “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
Well said, Mate.
Hmmm, I’m thinking the lack of any real alternatives will see Albo limp to 2025. If he can survive the Voice it will be hard to see what will unseat him in 2024. Like Bowen, he just blunders on.
As with Pogria, I guess you also have to get someone to mind your animals on the farm while you help out or travel elsewhere.
There are few that I would trust. But yes – we have a Sydney couple who had a farm themselves & also farm neighbours who are good friends.
This time two months ago I was expecting to have to nurse the garden through what BOM warned could be the “hottest & driest summer in decades” with tank water.
As it is, the ground is saturated after two months of well above average rainfall. But spare a thought for Gold Coast hinterland residents, where up to 500mm of rain was reported in one spot yesterday and some residents may be without power for 10 days.
I understand storm activity is hard to predict, but what exactly were the inputs into BOM’s “climate outlook” modelling that resulted in them getting it so wrong for SE QLD?
Watch, Humphrey.
The one thing those in power hate is the loss of power.
The Faceless Men will move on Elbow when Newspoll finds it won’t even be close in 2025.
PS: Liars history is they always look to a woman to take one for the team when loss of power looms.
The A$ remains at 0.6808 today. Is there a reason for this? It seems a bit high as the fundamentals don’t appear to have changed all that much since October. Or is it that US is having a hard time of it at the moment?
what happens when young women are confined to their homes.
If so, it’ll likely be with Green & Teal baggage.
They read it in the entrails of an owl.
I can’t envisage Blabbersak in that scenario. She’s been too valuable an apparatchik to sacrifice herself. Unless she’s happy to draw a Leader of the Opposition salary and subsequent increased super.
She’s only 54, and still has plenty of years of sponging left in her.
As I have previously stated, I have been fascinated by the growth of drones in the Russia/Urkarine Conflict & now the Israel/Gazan/Hezzbollah Conflicts
The summary below from Simplicius is excellent
End of 2023 Roundup – Update on the War’s Technological Progress
Thank you so much, Old Ozzie! This was a brilliant analysis of the role of drones in the combat zones in Ukraine. An eye opener – for me, at least.
Vicki:
Sounds like a high tech gaol/palace. Not a home. I wonder how their kids feel about it all.
Not sure Plibbers represents the Save the Furniture option that KRudd 2.0 represented after the Gillard experiment ended in failure. May pull a SloMo win out of the hat against Spud.
Peanut Head is, was and remains unelectable.
Rosie, that tallies with that horrible “sermon” that was linked around a week ago warning daughters to dress modestly at home lest their fathers be consumed with “lust”. Because they were only men and might lose control.
Of course, it isn’t just fathers. There’s a whole extended family out there free to take their pick.
Grim.
Has anyone noticed the extra levy (“Fund Levy”) on Compulsory Green Slip? It is quite significant – husband just noticed an extra $110 on the cost of insuring our farm ute. What is that, we wondered?
A Fund Levy is also included in the cost of each Green Slip. This is estimated to cover the cost of future claims as well as ongoing costs and profit. Insurers choose their own rating factors, these are used to assess the risk of each policy.
PS: Liars history is they always look to a woman to take one for the team when loss of power looms.
I guess that excludes Wong then.
With SloMo on the back bench and practically invisible I expect Spud and the Lieborals will be competitive. Qld and WA back on board.
Calli, Plibersek won’t sacrifice herself. It’ll be someone else — i.e., someone who’s obviously taking one for the team.
Sounds like a high tech gaol/palace. Not a home. I wonder how their kids feel about it all.
One has cleared out to attend uni in another city. The other is contemplating doing the same. This is despite the house having every conceivable luxury – gymnasium, cellar & tasting room, poolroom, pool etc etc.
Calli, Plibersek won’t sacrifice herself. It’ll be someone else — i.e., someone who’s obviously taking one for the team.
I don’t know – I’m thinking Plibers because 1) she’s a woman 2) she knows (whatever she protests) that she should have been the previous choice of leader 3) all labor hacks have a distorted sense of history
Less than 24 hours to go for the list of names. Pretty sure another famous Bill going to be on the list.
Former US president Bill Clinton will allegedly be identified as “John Doe 36” in the trove of court documents, which are expected to be released on January 2, given the New Year’s Day public holiday in the US.
Mr Clinton is allegedly mentioned more than 50 times across redacted documents related to a 2015 lawsuit from Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, according to ABC News in the US.
Vicki
Jan 2, 2024 11:38 AM
Has anyone noticed the extra levy (“Fund Levy”) on Compulsory Green Slip? It is quite significant – husband just noticed an extra $110 on the cost of insuring our farm ute. What is that, we wondered?
A Fund Levy is also included in the cost of each Green Slip. This is estimated to cover the cost of future claims as well as ongoing costs and profit. Insurers choose their own rating factors, these are used to assess the risk of each policy.
Vicki,
NSW Levy $144.12 on Honda Jazz Greenslip for this month
“The Fund Levy funds ambulance, hospital, lifetime care and other services for people injured inmotor vehicle accidents”
I am sure that Israel has sufficient nukes targeting prime areas of Iran and will use them if necessary.
Speaking about the weather, we’ve had many, many Flanneries here at Bribie Island since Christmas and bucketing down as I type. From the OZ for those that might be interested …
Hey, Blackout Bowen, how is that Energy Plan going? How about Nuclear you fraud.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1741672841429549523
Vicki at 11:48 – now or never for Plibbers. She won’t be here for the next go around. That may be enough.
Bowen’s electricity plan still far short of a $5trn task
The Capacity Investment Scheme is just a down payment in the eye-popping national effort that will be needed to rebuild and transform Australia’s ageing energy supply.
Michael Brear – Energy and climate expert
Fresh back from Dubai, the Albanese government hailed COP 28 as a “turning point” in the “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems”. Just before that, the government also announced an expanded Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) with an additional 32 gigawatts of renewables and storage, all operating by 2030.
Promising stuff. This more than doubles the wind, solar and storage built over the past 20 or so years. In about six years.
But 32 GW of renewables and storage isn’t enough to get us to the government’s legislated and economy-wide 2030 greenhouse gas abatement target of 43 per cent relative to 2005 levels, even if it does help the Albanese government meet its unlegislated target of 82 per cent renewables by 2030.
The Net Zero Australia Project sets a comparable 2030 emissions target and finds that about 150 GW of renewables plus many other investments are needed: storage, gas-fired generation, electrification of transport and buildings, land sector abatement and others.
This is at least 2½ times more than the CIS’s 32 GW plus the 27 GW of existing renewables and storage.
So, the CIS does not appear to be consistent with the Albanese government’s own legislated 2030 abatement target.
Let alone consistent with a path to a 2050 net zero commitment which the Net Zero Australia Project estimates will require 350-500 GW of renewables depending on the pathway.
Perhaps the Safeguard Mechanism and other Commonwealth measures are going take up this slack out to 2030.
But it is hard to see how, given the scale of the task.
And what will the CIS cost?
No one yet knows because it will be implemented via a series of reverse auctions that will begin in 2024.
But, if batteries and renewables currently cost about $1 to $1.7 per watt, a back-of-the-envelope costing is about $30 billion to $55 billion for the CIS excluding new transmission and other costs.
This will be paid for via a combination of government subsidy and our energy bills.
Trillions to be spent
Hopefully, most of this investment will be paid by energy bills that stay about the same as they are now, and the wholesale electricity market revenues which currently go to electricity generators that will retire as the renewable investments under the CIS come online.
This includes coal generation that might retire sooner than many had expected.
These back-of-the-envelope estimates compare to the trillions of dollars to be spent to mid-century just keeping the lights on, irrespective of whether we get to net zero.
The Net Zero Australia Project estimates that achieving a net zero domestic energy system by 2050 will cost something like $5 trillion in current terms.
That is for the whole energy system, not just electricity, and includes energy generation of all forms, energy networks, our cars and the appliances in our homes and businesses.
We already spend more than $50 billion a year on new vehicles, so vehicles alone are roughly a $1 trillion spend out to mid-century.
And, remarkably, the Net Zero Australia Project also estimates that it will cost roughly $4.3 trillion to 2050 for the counterfactual of forgetting about decarbonisation while we keep the lights on.
Most of which would be spent on fossil fuels and new fossil fuel-burning assets to replace the old ones.
But it includes about 100 GW of renewables that this market will want. So, no matter how the CIS enables its proposed investments, it should represent about 1 per cent of these total costs, irrespective of whether we reach net zero by 2050.
What is the prize if we do achieve the CIS’s 2030 build target? A lot more work. For decades.
It is therefore hard to argue that the CIS’s proposed investments are unaffordable or won’t be used.
The energy transition is much bigger than we all appreciate.
And discussion of such matters needs to consider the significant costs of all potential futures, and not just those that are about decarbonising.
We also need to appreciate that the costs of serving export markets should not be paid by Australian households but by our export customers. All these costs and their distributions are sometimes wrongly ignored, as indeed are the much larger likely future costs of the damages caused by climate change.
So, are we likely to achieve the CIS’s build by 2030?
Possibly, but it will be a significant challenge.
Even if we solve some big technical and regulatory problems, it is also going to require a lot of co-ordination, deep community engagement and trust building. This is in parallel with careful planning, investment and construction. All supported by more skilled workers.
Putting this into perspective, the CIS’s average annual new build rate is more than our best year of building large-scale renewables and storage to date.
We added 4.4 GW of wind, large-scale solar and batteries in 2021-22. But assuming construction starts in 2025, the CIS will have to average 5 GW to 6 GW with a tight labour market, strained supply chains, mounting community concerns and a more congested electricity system.
Such are the realities of achieving deep decarbonisation. It is harder than some suggest. Even the CIS, let alone net zero, is a serious national effort.
And finally, what is the prize if we do achieve the CIS’s 2030 build target?
A lot more work. Much more work per annum. Year on year. For decades. If we are serious about getting close to net zero by 2050.
No doubt this has already been posted or linked to: Michael Ramirez cartoons of 2023.
This one is stunning in it’s simplicity.
The sheer numbers slaughtered in Rwanda all those years ago seemed abstract; but the cold-blooded response by so many of our ‘betters’ to the events of the 7th of October still stuns me.
Though they were far from alone, the absence of empathy* from the dinosaur media is so chilling that I believe an organisational psychopathy – which I previously considered to have been perfected by a former employer – is now deeply, irrevocably ingrained.
* Contrary to many, I do not believe the media actually supports h@m@s in a genuine sense. They view the latter as useful tools to temporarily sustain their own relevance in a world which no longer needs them. My one great non-personal wish, is for the successful introduction of a disruptive technology or concept that will incinerate the majority of the zombie media. May their bloated carcasses erupt like a tropical downpour.
ALP actually did poorly in QLD in ’22.
And lost 1 Brisbane seat to the Greens to boot.
The AFR View
Cowardice and populism must not mark politics in 2024
This will be an election year in all but name. Anthony Albanese has to finally live up to the economic reform challenges
This is to be a year of elections. Up to 2 billion voters will head for the polls in the US, India, Indonesia, the European Union, the UK, Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan. The results in the US and Taiwan could change history, ensuring that last year’s global volatility continues through 2024.
In Australia, no federal election is required to take place until May 2025, but it will feel like an election year anyway. Anthony Albanese has to put the political misjudgment of the Voice referendum behind him and find his own voice on the economic issues that have so far eluded him.
He has not delivered the improvement in living standards which he promised in 2023.
Higher prices, higher mortgage rates, and the fastest rise in the tax take in 20 years as personal tax bracket creep has bitten, all pushed Australian household incomes to their lowest in eight years during 2023 – the biggest drop of any advanced economy.
Two-thirds of voters now think they are worse off.
Mr Albanese’s polling lead over Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has narrowed, and Labor would be in minority government territory if the election were held today.
That’s the corrosive political power of inflation.
It’s significant that Treasurer Jim Chalmers is now selling the July 1 stage three tax cuts he reluctantly inherited from the Morrison government as a boost for hard-pressed voters.
But with the jury still out on whether the official cash rate can come down this year, the government’s other policies all lean against that happening.
As the survey of 40 economists in The Australian Financial Review today shows, many market economists are betting that the Reserve Bank will start cutting rates this year; September is the median view.
But the RBA still believes that is wishful thinking, and that the last lap in beating sticky inflation in labour-intensive service sectors will be the hardest, with inflation not returning to its 2 per cent to 3 per cent target range until late next year.
The Albanese government has tried to take a shortcut to better living standards by raising already high minimum wages by edict.
Nor will central banks elsewhere move to cut their rates until they are confident the supply side of their economies, running at full capacity, can cope with rebooted demand without reheating prices.
Job markets in Australia are still tight. Nominal interest rates here are also below the inflation rate, which suggests that they may still not be high enough to reduce demand and inflation.
So far, the US and other big economies have already managed to reverse inflation without smashing employment, and are expected to start easing soon.
Yet in Australia, the Albanese government has tried to take a shortcut to better living standards by raising already high minimum wages by edict, and by re-empowering unions to fight against the flexibilities that are normal and essential in 21st-century workplaces.
And there is no sign of policies that create growth and raise wages based on incentive and rising productivity.
It is assumed productivity will just grow by itself.
Australia’s next election will take place within months of a November election in the US that could put Donald Trump back in the White House.
That shockwave could distort other elections around the world. It might increase the attraction of the status quo.
Or it may tempt the Coalition into populism on the population and immigration politics that are driving Mr Trump’s support.
That is especially a concern after last year’s temporary surge in migration got caught up in the long-running failure to build enough houses in Australia, driving up rents even faster.
Yet without more workers, inflation will also persist, and it was disappointing that Labor’s migration review caved in to union wishes to slow the arrival of the right skills.
Labor’s reform cowardice and the Coalition’s populism are not a good start to an election period.
The economy is still in the throes of an inflation bout brought on as monetary and fiscal policy pushed hard in the same direction during an extraordinary pandemic era, overcompensating for the damage done and spilling into inflation.
Now monetary policy is being normalised, and though Dr Chalmers has resisted pressure for quick cost-of-living handouts, government is at its largest since the mid-1980s as taxation and spending have structurally grown.
But of pro-growth policies to pay for it all, there is nothing.
In that sense it was an anomalous election win and may portend more green ill for the future.
You’d have to think that.
But, the cautionary tale of the Mysterious Premiership of Anastacia Palacechook must figure in her political calculation of when to sit pat.
Numerically, as things sit at the moment, the chances of either the ALP or the Coalition winning majority government seem slight to non-existent.
Hence the (at least arguable IMHO) increased possibility of an early election – aiming to avoid 18 months of political torture in a deeply uncertain world, feeding Dutton into power on a steady diet of ALP policy failure – with the likely backstop of minority ALP government supported by the Greens.
Admittedly, a fairly low probability.
How to watch Dakar Rally 2024 exclusive and free on SBS
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With SloMo on the back bench and practically invisible I expect Spud and the Lieborals will be competitive. Qld and WA back on board.
Yep, and if the Liberals want to win bigly all they have to do in electorates like Bennelong, Aston, Banks, Chisolm, Parramatta and many others is to put up hundreds of posters up with the following words…
If you want to keep your gas connection, Vote Liberal.
But don’t worry, they won’t. I like Dutton but there are still too many in the Liberal Party who insist on fighting elections using Queensberry rules. All kid gloves should be off and they should put on boxing gloves and START PUNCHING.
Again, no doubt this has already been posted, but I believe it is worth a repeat:
Freed hostage Mia Schem: ‘I experienced hell. There are no innocent civilians in Gaza’
I cannot image the state of mind of those hostages (if any) who are still alive.
Yet h@m@s are still firing rockets into Israel. It’s a pretty weak ‘genocide’ when you have the time and resources to continue targeting your enemy’s civilian population.
I doubt we won’t know anything we already don’t. I’m even more doubtful a reasonable criminal case could be made.
Epstein also bullshitted a lot too. That’s evident in the emails.
The thing is, look at Weinstein. The NYCPD helped complainants alter evidence and their devices. What a joke!
Evidence exists if someone with enough authority wants it to exist.
Sad but true. That’s what probity essentially comes down to.
Any further revelations about Epstein will just be used to go after low hanging fruit. The likes of Clinton, Gates and so on will not be targeted.
Har har har! Watch Adam Brandt’s head explode. This request must really hurt their brains …. From the Oz.
Someone tweet this at the doom pixie.
Stop making sense! There will be a regime change! 50,000 sealed indictments!
Hmm, OK. Now tell us what the base premium covers.
This time two months ago I was expecting to have to nurse the garden through what BOM warned could be the “hottest & driest summer in decades” with tank water.
I put a tank in on the strength of their predictions six months ago we will now get several years of “hot and dry” summers and “warmer with less rain” winters. So far the tank stays full because there is enough rain to water the gardens anyway.
Current cost of the Bureau of Meteorology is $479 million. This is the organisation that spent $220k on “re-branding”:
A breakdown provided by BOM to the federal government puts the total cost at $220,296.
A $118,177 contract was awarded for “brand strategy and design”, which included things like research, visual style and logo.
Another agency was allocated $69,300 for “communication and implementation planning support”, while $32,819 was spent on so-called “implementation costs”.
Or Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia etc. I can see an attack by Russia on one of them raises heckles all over the old Soviet Union region, the countries behind the Iron Curtain and even Sweden and Finland.
Opinions on the Bezzerra Mitica Top PID Coffee machine?
“Only” 4K AUD.
https://alternativebrewing.com.au/products/bezzera-mitica-top
I see he’s promised “fresh ideas” in 2024.
I suspect these new initiatives will have a distinctly green hue, in the Whitlamite spirit of “crash through or crash.”
Yeah!
Mass arrests! Gitmo full! Army tanks!
You can have one operator control an entire battlefield with the help of AI. The future of warfare will be decided by the amount of hardware controlled by the most advanced software, almost without human presence.
Well said Winston.
As for me, Cassie’s rants are always a highlight and worth every second reading.
Every Exercise you need to live to 100 – Week 1
Matt Roberts – The Telegraph
BOM accurate?
1) No they did not predict Cairns. Warnings were issued up and down the coast. Saying they predicted Cairns is like saying I predicted the T20 cricket score because I said it would be over 120.
2) Aside from the massive differences just a day out in temperatures throughout this summer, the issue with the BOM has been the frankly hysterical, wide ranging “dangerous storm” warnings. And you know they’re doing it a) to avoid criticism for missing them entirely, by spraying their stupid, useless cries of wolf across tens if not thousands of square kilometres. and b) so they can increase the count of “dangerous storms” and compare it to years past when dangerous storms were only counted as dangerous when they actually were.
There hasn’t been hail larger than a couple of small pebbles at my parents’ place since the 1980s, yet they insist on scaring Mum about her birds getting hurt multiple times a month.
I’m sorry, but this sounds like one of those “By 2000 we’ll all be riding about in flying cars like The Jetsons” predictions, Crossie.
Drones are certainly going to add some frisson to the life of infantry, but anti-drone technology will soon catch up.
Oops, error between head and finger
Known to my Danish mate as “Error 40” (approximate distance between the two)
Like you I also expected that I would be reduced to using the watering can by now as we had to by the end of 2019.
As for BOM, they are no longer in the weather forecasting business, they see themselves now as promoters of a certain ideology that can only persist due to deception and lysenkoism. If the whole bureau were abolished tomorrow nobody would notice.
It’s a one D ten T error
If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and of Hiroshima.
OTOH we have not had a nuclear war or a World War since 1945. Helps when the politicians and generals have themselves and their children in the front line.
1 D 10 T
Sry, that should have been “tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of square kilometers.”
1D4chan?
At about the time of 9/11 I came to the conclusion that the most devastating fate for a female child is to be born into a Muslim society.
Sure, and Iran has sufficient conventional ballistic and cruise missiles to flatten Israel’s key infrastructure. What then?
If Israel attacked Iran with nukes, Iran wouldn’t exist as a functioning state let alone one that could fight a (missile) war. What then, then?
Yep.
Tech already exists to shoot the things down without using conventional ammo. It’s a matter of time before a portable Phalanx-type anti-drone system is routinely used on battlefields.
It’s like stealing cars*. As soon as carmakers produce models with improved anti-theft arrangements, the tea leaves are at work identifying methods to get around them – and they do.
*Apparently.
WolfmanOz
Jan 2, 2024 1:04 PM
Winston Smith
Jan 2, 2024 10:57 AM
Cassie of Sydney:
Then the ones who don’t like your rants can just scroll on by. But they don’t, do they?
Well this little black duck certainly does.
“World’s most feminist religion.”
Even avowedly Muslim SJWs project their worldview onto Islam.
If I recall, Yassmin was corrected by the local chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood after making that absurd claim.
Wonder where they’ll source their uranium from now?
You don’t think Iran can detect launches of ballistic missiles?
True, her electorate will go green at the next election or she may retain it only with green preferences and will therefore be completely beholden to them. Now is her best chance to be a PM.
‘Even avowedly Muslim SJWs project their secular worldview onto Islam’, I probably should add.
That was the nature of the criticism she received from more…shall we say “devout”? Muslim brothers – that she was evaluating Islam from an essentially Western, secular viewpoint rather than on its own terms.
At the time she thanked them for it.
Submission.
If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.
If Israel attacked Iran with nukes, it wouldn’t be just one, but many and would be meant to annihilate the country and send the dozen survivors back to camel herding, so no, I don’t think their launch would be that effective. One nuke high up would likely destroy their communications.
Hey Dover, on anther note, I read earlier today that Iran has withdrawn bases inside Iraq. Do you think they were told to remove the basis peacefully or they would be removed forcefully, and (Iran) would have have to supply their own body bags? Have their proxies quietened down over the past 24 hours?
In many ways, it is incredible they got away with it for so long. For the past decade or so, mainstream politicians across Europe have stopped promising to improve their voters’ living standards. Instead, they have boasted about their plans to limit them. They have extolled the virtues of a higher cost of living, deindustrialisation and restrictions on personal freedoms. And they expected most people wouldn’t mind or perhaps even notice – because all this was to be done in the name of ‘saving the planet’ from climate change. But in 2023, that elite green consensus came crashing down to Earth.
Why Europeans are rising up against Net Zero
– Spiked
basis …. bases ..
Plibersek is presently in her seat with a decent 17% 2PP margin over the Green second-runner thanks to Liberal preferences.
rosie:
what happens when young women are confined to their homes.
And the authorities continue turning a blind eye to it. No wonder the family dynamics for this group are incapable of producing stable and productive citizens.
Yes I believe Tom corrected me about a very definition of incompetence regarding Ms O’Neill:
The very best of hands of Top Men. FMD
After caring for one of these, I feel this is like being welcomed to care for a heroin addict.
“Beware the llama spits”
And she was.
Knuckle Dragger most likely very happy:
The give a phuck meter is not registering much.
Big Nambas:
I sort of like – as an intermediate step – Irans dams and water infrastructure.
Not hitting the dams directly, but causing a landslide that can be blamed on an earthquake, and the volume of rock falling into the reservoir and creating a wave that smashes the concrete dam for which the administrators get the blame. Iran is already in trouble with water supplies to the major cities – this just may cause enough resentment at the clerics to topple the regime.
Right now, non-nuclear Iran is in the position to do terrible conventional damage to the Israeli population with its ballistic and cruise missiles. It doesn’t, presumably because the Mullocracy doesn’t think the payoff is worth it in terms of the risk of large and important parts of Iran being flattened in response.
That side of the equation probably isn’t going to be significantly changed by Tehran being able to nuke Tel Aviv.
Mak Siccar:
There are no good guys left, Mak. They’ve all been hunted out.
No. Sack all the BoM employees and put it up for sale.
Aye. Hear hear.
Now.
Oh, you’re hoping that they won’t notice in time to get their return volley in the air.
I think you’re confusing Iran with US here.
Yeah hoping, because you appear unable to cope with the idea that Iran could be blasted into the stone-age, and you’re now clutching a handbag full of conventional missiles.
This morning I read Iranian bases were being removed. What’s the US have to do with it. Either the claim I’m making is correct or it’s not.
Doc Faustus:
I’d put a good sum of money on one of the party machine players sabotaging Dutton to get what looks like the best chance of being the next PM. And then fluffing it by being Labor Lite.
Marty reckons he was experimenting with AI in the 1970s.
(He also reckons he taught Socrates to trade, despite losing 1 bn USD as a fund manager. Because he is an uneducated fraud and cannot understand the vector mathematics of neural nets, they must be BS!)
In the 1970s, microcomputers usually maxed out at 64kb of memory.
The IBM PC debuted in 1981 with 256kb of internal motherboard memory (RAM) expandable to 640kb and up to 320kb of floppy disc storage.
Even the letters he writes to himself are completely full of shit.
It’s like saying Steve Jobs whipped up ChatGPT on an Apple IIe and it (and not Jobs) later invented the iPod, iPad, iPhone, iMac, AAPL Watch, etc.
The handbag I – and Dr Faustus(above) – have clutched is called reality.
It’s not. The Americans are quietly leaving Iraq having now been given notice, firstly by the legislature, and most recently, the executive.
Musing from Reee!dit.
***GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters, and each parameter typically requires 32 bits (4 bytes) to be stored. Therefore, the total storage size in bytes can be calculated by multiplying the number of parameters by the size of each parameter: 175 billion parameters * 4 bytes/parameter = 700 billion bytes.
To convert this to terabytes, we divide by 1 trillion (1 TB = 1 trillion bytes): 700 billion bytes / 1 trillion bytes/TB = 0.7 terabytes (TB) . Likely about 750+ GB.***
The smallest AI programme I have seen requires 6-8GB, minimum.
Joining the idiotic fraud club is like voluntarily enrolling in the School of mental impairment. It’s so laughably sad, even clowns would trade in their red noses if they were part of the Marty Support Club.
I call bullshit.
It is not “Baggy Greens” plural.
A player is issued with a single baggy green cap, and only gets a replacement if the old one is worn out or lost.
I predict he will score another cap, which he will auction as his “last evah” cap.
The old one will then be found behind the couch and also auctioned.
Reality? As in conventional weapons are now more devastating than 100 nuclear bombs?
dover0beach
An assumption only on my behalf, but I’d suggest most of Israel’s nuclear weaponry would be air delivered – not missile.
It’s Gaygate.
Ackman. He won’t stop until the gay woman is gone and the board is reconstituted.
Who argued conventional weapons were more devastating than nuclear? No one. The point was that any nuclear first strike would be met by a devastating conventional strike on Israel’s key infrastructure. Nothing more, nothing less.
Correct. I remember Steve Waugh had a very tattered one at the end.
The SFLs cannot fight Labor effectively on climate as a good many of the SFLs are more extreme on climate than the the Government.
This was seen in Victoria where the Libs fell over themselves to put up more extreme policies than the government.
The chances of the Libs running a pro coal, pro gas let alone a pro nuclear policy into the election are IMHO remote.
They will tinker round the edges but do nothing concrete.
The Feds seem to be moving to the position of teh Libs in Victoria where they seem quite happy in opposition where noone really asks them to do anything.
Then it has to tangle with their AD as well as longer time to respond.
The MAD Mullahs.
MAD…get it?
I’ll see myself out.
Try the veal, I’m here till Tuesday.
I don’t have a reference, but I did read somewhere it was the other way round – eighty weapons, of which thirty were air delivered, the rest by Jericho missile.
You have all throughout this discussion, indirectly so. You don’t have to unambiguously state the obvious for the obvious to come to light.
And my point is that if Iran was met with a mass of nuclear weapons targeted for its destruction, they most likely would not be able to retaliate unless you think an irradiated cloud of human misty gas would be able to function as a normal human being.
Who would buy his cap? You’d have to be a bona fide crikkit tragic.
It’s like buying to toilet that Clarke flushed Bungle’s engagement ring down.
Take the L, JC.
Of course they will be able to retaliate.
Dr F
Two questions.
First, what are the estimated CEPs of Iranian ballistic and cruise missiles?
Second, what size HE warheads do they carry?
Bonus question, do they possess chemical or biological weapons?
What detection systems does Iran possess, ground based, airborne and satellite?
It’s estimate Israel has around 200 nuclear weapons that can be delivered by missile, subs, and by air. They are also supposed to have suit case nukes.
Do you think they wouldn’t be able to destroy the communication ability of Iran if Israel decided to annihilate Mullahstan? How would they be able to deliver even a telegram if most of the country is knocked out? Even carrier pigeons wouldn’t be able to work in that environment let along a camel train.
The subway? I always take the 6. Where does the L go?
Well I still remember the 6 day war, you know the one where the Arabs attacked Israel and everyone said Israel was finished! In my opinion the Iranians will be hoping that Biden can stop Israel from nuking them. Underestimate Israel if you wish but I would bet that they win anything that the Arabs start.