![](https://i0.wp.com/newcatallaxy.blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/William_Bouguereau_The-First-Mourning-1888.jpg?resize=601%2C480&ssl=1)
Of course – appointing a pubic serpent gives the impression of doing something about a problem, while doing absolutely nothing…
Of course – appointing a pubic serpent gives the impression of doing something about a problem, while doing absolutely nothing…
Then there are the food police at schools where they will check your childs lunch and remove items not deemed…
I lasted five minutes into the new “Persuasion” movie. Break the fourth wall at your peril – only the best…
While the headline growth figure is still in positive territory – just, at 0.2 per cent – that’s only because…
The Saudi’s haven’the stomache or inclination for a drawn out bloody war.And neither does the US.
She’ll be found a lesser place somewhere and convenienly forgotten.
Humors.
Weird how the fact that Gay refused to condemn antisemitism 17 times in a Congressional hearing isn’t mentioned. That’s why those idiots are having to resign, the plagiarism thing was just the crowbar, since Gay was refusing to go and was causing enormous reputational damage to Harvard. Plus fleeing donors – money always comes up trumps in the end.
That’s interesting because the writer himself has acted exactly like the Harvard board when when one of his pals, the extinguished naval officer, was caught with his pants down lifting an entire piece and calling it his own. Denial and defense.
The dishonesty, duplicity, the subsequent fraud in defense of the extinguished office was just incredible.
We need introspection and lots of it.
Officer
The hitherto untouchable Captain Marvellous, Pat Cummins, comes in for his first real taste of informed criticism:
Australia’s tail-ender tactics have come under fire, after they let Pakistan off the hook late on day one with a relentless short-ball barrage as Aamir Jamal record a career-best 82.
Australia stuck with its preferred lower-order plan of attack, which revolves around short-pitched bowling, but a reluctance to change things up was savaged by Pakistan great Wasim Akram and Australia’s Michael Hussey. (The Oz)
It also highlights the mighty power of the ‘identity defence’ against plagiarism – once upon a time a terminal condition for a career academic. Not many traditional plagiarists would be welcomed back into faculty, with the suggestion that citation in their 15-year-old PhD thesis and subsequent published works be ‘tidied up’.
I never saw the point of plagiarism, I want to research what interests me, not some other muppet.
You were offered bet for a significant sum on this. You chickened out.
Provide a citation for that, you lying chickenshit dago.
Harvard president’s resignation highlights new conservative weapon against colleges: plagiarism
Just more example of elitism. One rule for those at the top and another for the little peoples. Even when toppled elites get support not on offer to LPs…ongoing salaries, career options, book deals, speaking engagements. LPs crawl away and try to pick up the pieces of their lives.
But it saves overusing the “little grey cells”.
It’s happening!
Signed up to full service Stake Super. Credit card got some new year’s cobwebs blown, they’re a little cagey on if you can defer payment for 30 days or you need to be upfront…grrr.
Now here’s some financial advice from Sam Hyde.
Invest in an 802k, get the money when you are 120 years old.
Citation? You don’t need a citation as all you need to do is admit it was plagiarism. You could do that right now, without anyone having to waste time going through back pages, you dishonest, chickenshit piece of whitewash garbage.
Go!
I once caught a humor of the humerus, and let me tell you, it was no laughing matter.
Gawd! That takes me back.
REPORT THIS AD
This is some real BS! ABB have been golden so far but they’ve been batty farnarkled by the biggest, le plus noire rooster in the joint.
We’re very sorry (and a bit frustrated) to let you know that NBNCo has placed your order on hold. We know that they have attempted to connect you, but there’s a problem with their network, which means they need to do more work before your connection can go ahead.
They have not yet provided us with a date for these further works.
Whilst every individual case is different, we know from experience that network shortfalls can be fixed sometimes within days, but can also stretch out to weeks or months…
Perplexed of Brisbane:
It doesn’t count if you didn’t see the inscription.
Just paraphrasing a certain TV personality…
A little taste of yesteryear. Godspeed, road warrior.
Lol. Citation required!
Incidentally, last time this fraud was confronted about this , he suggested it was okay because it happened a long time ago.
Ranga gorn for 34
Jessica Tarlov’s dishonesty on Fox’s The Five is so obvious. The Hunter Biden Laptop: it’s just Hunter’s penis photos. Joe Biden is beating Trump. Rudi Giuliani welcomed illegal immigrants. It goes on and on.
Huge damage to power infrastructure from the big storms in Queensland.
ABC reported that complete rebuilds of power lines and sub stations were necessary in some instances.
Now, if we build tens of thousands of kms of new transmission lines for renewables this will not be a problem?
Planning to fail.
We could refer this to the geeks at Cricinfo, but I doubt there would have been many No.9 batsmen making 80 odd when he was bowling.
Highest test score by a No.9 was a ton made by Ian Smith the old NZ keeper. Top commentator presently.
Citation:-
Marcus Adonis, adorned with gold braid as he is (was) and driving a very, very big desk at Russell Offices, pinched an entire piece from a fairly widely read US online publication.
That is not in dispute.
What is contestable is the debate around what was the greatest of Rear Vice Admiral Adonis’s many flaws.
Was it the slothfulness which resulted in him pinching an entire article without adding on jot of his own work?
Or was it the incredible stupidity in thinking that none of a widely read Cat audience would pick it up?
Or perhaps the final phase of pathetic wimpering that it was some accident in transmission which left off the attribution.
Sitting in member’s stand. Just saw Warner off.
Excellent.
On reflection, I’m glad he got on the board. If he went for a duck in potentially his last Test innings it would have evoked comparisons to Bradman, which in turn would have compelled me to vomit with rage.
She’s playing the role she was hired to play though. Fox has always had a few of them around, too ridiculously dishonest and wrong to be taken seriously but enough to get some viewer’s blood pressure up.
Fox fools emeritus include Juan Williams, the late Bob Beckel, and occasional bit parts by Geraldo Rivera.
My dream of a pair is gone.
Revised dream.
Smiff makes sfa, but the Australian middle order racks up a decent first innings lead.
The Pakis are bowled out by the end of day three with a meagre lead of 10 or 20.
They return for the wrap-up on day 4 and Warner is castled for zero in front of a crowd of zero.
On that thread, he claimed it was original, abused all and sundry who questioned it and then he had no time to deal with this as he was too busy.
The Driller subsequently denied it was plagiarism and spiritedly defended him. A few others currently on this page did too.
It was one of the worst acts of treachery ever conducted on an Australian right wing blog. Harvard board before its time. Board must have read the old Cat on how to deceive when it comes to plagiarism, which of course failed.
OK.
I take KD’s point about the duck in the final innings and the comparisons to Bradman.
I’ll give him an inside edge for 2, then out.
Rendered “Great is My Truth and mighty above all things – and I’ll fkn see you in court of you don’t accept that” in the modern-day Apocrypha.
Avocados are racist.
The avocado debate: A polarizing fruit and its impact on society (Phys.org, 3 Jan)
And they’re killing the Planet. There you go woke progressive peoples, every time you have smashed avo on toast you are literally thrusting a dagger into the side of Gaia.
In November, Vietnam was the country of origin for the largest number of asylum seekers, 444 people, followed by China (230), Vanuatu (129) and India (121) and the biggest demographic were men aged 25-44 years.
230 from China .. sounds a bit suss? .. since when does China allow un-vetted folk to flee the coop … plus all these folk are arriving by air so they must have passports, paid tix & visas to get in yet still able to claim “refugee” status …….. and who’s paying the legal costs? ..
what a wonderful set of “care” systems we have .. Legal Aid, priority access to courts including the High Court (the High Court most tax payers can’t afford) & CentreLink to ensure they don’t go without food, lodgings or pocket money …….FFS!
Here’s an interesting impact: a living wage with exports or destitution and starvation without exports.
Amazingly, these people choose to work for exporters.
test
test
A Study of 500,000 Medical Records Links Viruses to Alzheimer’s Again And Again
The idea has been around for a very long time. The lesson is simple: avoid infections and don’t fall for that nonsense about “exercising the immune system”. That’s like telling a diabetic to exercise their pancreas by eating more sugar or a person with COPD to have another cig.
Qantas badge wearers to receive counselling. They should be sacked. They must know the rules and decided to break them. What else might they be willing to do? No second chances for rule breakers in air safety.
Avocado? Did not an avocado truck derail a train with fatal consequences? Dangerous stuff.
UK/London Has Fallen – Definitely circling the Drain!
Johnson condemns Met Police investigation into Israel ‘war crimes’
Former Prime Minister tells The Telegraph he is concerned about ‘worrying politicisation’ of the force as it appeals for potential witnesses
Robert Mendick, CHIEF REPORTER and Martin Evans, CRIME EDITOR
Boris Johnson has condemned a Metropolitan Police investigation into Israel over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Scotland Yard counter-terrorism police have launched an appeal for witnesses travelling through British airports to report allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Mr Johnson told The Telegraph on Wednesday he was concerned about “the worrying politicisation of the Met Police”.
The inquiry is being conducted by the war crimes team within the force, supporting a long-running investigation into Israel by the International Criminal Court (ICC), based in the Hague.
It will also examine events since the Hamas attacks of Oct 7 and investigate allegations of war crimes by Palestinian factions.
The Met investigation has caused serious concern among British Jews and threatens a diplomatic rift with Israel.
Scotland Yard said British police had a “responsibility to support” the ICC and that with “higher volumes” of British nationals returning to the UK since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, it anticipated a greater number of potential witnesses and victims of war crimes arriving from the region.
However, critics have said police resources would be better spent on tackling domestic problems such as knife crime.
Fears of an escalation of conflict in the Middle East were sparked on Wednesday when at least 95 people in Iran were killed in a bombing at the grave of Qassem Soleimani, the figurehead of Iran’s global terrorist operations.
There was no claim of responsibility for the deadliest bombing in the country since the foundation of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
The attack, which wounded more than 200 people, came less than 24 hours after the assassination of Hamas’s deputy political leader in a Beirut drone strike.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, vowed a “harsh response” against the “evil and criminal enemies of the Iranian nation”, but stopped short of blaming Israel.
The commander of the external wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said it was carried out by “the Zionist regime and the United States”.
In Britain, Jewish leaders and senior politicians accused the Metropolitan Police of effective double standards in failing to arrest pro-Hamas demonstrators for glorifying terrorism during London protests but trawling for witnesses to alleged atrocities by Israel.
Posters produced by counter-terror police have been seen at Heathrow and are understood to have been displayed at several other airports.
They are headlined
“Travellers who have been in Israel/Palestinian Territories” and add below: “If you have been in Israel/Palestinian Territories and have witnessed or been a victim of terrorism, war crimes or crimes against humanity, then you can report this to the UK police.”
The poster, written in Arabic and Hebrew as well as English, says: “UK policing is supporting the work of the International Criminal Court, which is investigating alleged war crimes in Israel and Palestine from June 2014 onwards.
“Any evidence gathered may be shared with the ICC in support of their investigation.”
On Wednesday night, Scotland Yard confirmed that its war crimes team had received more than 40 referrals “in recent weeks”, including from individuals returning from the region.
It is thought the vast majority are allegations of war crimes against Israel. Any relevant information is then passed to the ICC.
Israel, among other countries, is not signed up to the ICC and does not recognise its jurisdiction. It is conducting its own investigation into the Oct 7 massacre by Hamas.
Mr Johnson, who had stated his opposition to the ICC investigation, which began in 2019 when he was prime minister, said on Wednesday night:
“This sounds like a worrying politicisation of the Met Police – especially after Met officers were seen tearing down posters of Israeli hostages in Gaza.”
In October, two officers were pictured removing posters calling for the release of Israeli hostages. Scotland Yard said they had been acting to defuse local tensions.
Mr Johnson added: “When I was mayor of London I made it clear that we would not import foreign wars or disputes onto the streets of London.
The Met would be better off fighting knife crime in the capital.”
One former senior Cabinet minister said: “This begs the question of why the Met Police have got involved. They have a lot of work to do domestically, while what’s happening in Israel and Gaza is a grey area right now.
“Counter-terrorism reports directly to the Home Secretary, and he would have been briefed on this.
The Home Secretary should have offered guidance on whether this is an appropriate use of resources.”
Gideon Falter, the chief executive of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, said: “This poster campaign is utterly surreal.
“At a time when protesters are marching in London every week wearing Hamas-style headbands, shouting genocidal chants, calling for jihad against the Jewish state and inciting violent intifada with apparent impunity, the Met is concerned with acts of terrorism and allegations of war crimes halfway around the world, potentially even in contravention of the stated position of the British Government.
“The first duty and priority of Britain’s police must surely be the safety and well-being of British people in Britain.
The Met cannot hide its abject failure to discharge that duty over the past three months by turning attention to a foreign conflict.
“Britain’s cities have become no-go zones for Jews. Where are the Met’s posters addressing that unacceptable reality?”
Jonathan Turner, the chief executive of UK Lawyers for Israel, said: “These notices are inconsistent with the position expressed by prime minister Boris Johnson in April 2021 that the UK does not accept that the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction… In our view, he was right.”
Lord Austin, a former Labour minister and a member of Labour Friends of Israel, said:
“Why on earth are the police getting involved in this instead of solving crimes in London when the UK’s policy is to support Israel in defending itself against the Hamas terrorists responsible for the appalling atrocities on Oct 7?”
Fatou Bensouda, the ICC’s then chief prosecutor, announced in December 2019 that she believed war crimes were being committed in both the West Bank and Gaza after being initially petitioned by the Palestinian Authority, sparked by incidents during the conflict in 2014.
In December, Karim Khan KC, the ICC’s current chief prosecutor, visited the region following the Oct 7 massacre by Hamas, in which 1,200 civilians were killed. On his visit, Mr Khan condemned the attack on Israel as “one of the most serious international crimes” but also warned Israel that its response needed to be proportionate to comply with international law.
Israeli retaliatory strikes on Gaza have claimed the lives of at least 20,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, and razed vast swathes of the territory.
A spokesman for the Met Police said the force had a duty to assist the ICC. It also said officers were also gathering evidence relating to the Oct 7 attacks, given that British nationals had been victims of them.
In a statement, the force said: “As the UK’s investigative authority for war crimes, counter-terrorism policing – through the Met’s war crimes team – has a responsibility to support ICC investigations. The ICC opened an investigation in 2019 into alleged war crimes in Israel and Palestine.”
The spokesman added that “under the terms of the 1998 Rome Statute, our war crimes team is obliged to support any investigations opened by the ICC that could involve British subjects” and said the posters were put up to meet that obligation.
“With higher volumes of British nationals and UK-based individuals currently returning from Israel, Gaza and nearby countries, we anticipate there may be people who have evidence or relevant information to the ICC investigation,” said the spokesman. “We are therefore signposting people to reporting routes where appropriate.
“The Met’s Counter-Terrorism Command also continues to gather direct information and evidence relating to the terrorist attack in Israel on Oct 7 in support of the UK coronial investigations into British nationals who were killed during those attacks.
“At this time, there is no UK-based investigation by the war crimes team linked to the current events in the Middle East.”
The Met said it was “working round the clock” to identify suspected “terrorism offending” after setting up a task force to investigate potential crimes committed online and during protests.
In total, about 150 cases are being investigated. About 30 investigations are linked directly to alleged offences committed during London protests.
“Wear that stupid badge again and you are dismissed.”
And that is the sound of the site’s most rigorous intellect, with an IQ of a Jet pilot, walking his story backward.
“You don’t need a citation” = no such citation exists.
Mz Gay of Harvard is, in a way, being used as a scapegoat.
The suffocating close-minded progressive culture of Harvard preceded her, and her removal will not fix the problem. She just did a bad job of covering up what everyone from the Harvard Board down to the student organisations played roles.
I think it good she has had to step down because she was a bad person and a dishonest person but she is not the only one.
The Board accepted her resignation when they saw they could not ride the storm out, but now their donors have been alerted to what they have been funding – not what they were being told, and just as seriously people have seen that these bastions of progressivism are not impervious to attack and can indeed take damage.
Hmmm, doesn’t sound like they’ll be much interested in this then:
Massive anti-Israel rally scheduled for January in London (JPost, 3 Jan)
I wonder if they’ll get excitable? Given the studious inaction of Metplod, and their frustration from the completely wussy effort by Hamas, they just might.
Wind, solar farms give way to rooftop solar ‘juggernaut’
Angela Macdonald-Smith – Senior resources writer
Wind and solar farms are bearing a bigger hit from the boom in rooftop solar than coal-fired power stations, with grid-scale renewable generation getting squeezed out of the electricity market as abundant power from rooftop panels causes wholesale prices to dive.
Data from electricity market analysts shows rooftop solar eroding the market share of wind and solar farms to near-zero on days such as December 31 in Victoria and South Australia, amid subdued demand for power from the grid.
Rampant generation from household solar panels over clear, sunny days during the holiday period has frequently pushed wholesale prices close to zero or below, causing other generators to switch off until demand for grid power – and therefore prices – recover.
While coal plants also ramp down to reduce exposure to negative prices, they have to maintain a minimum operating level, so account for almost all of grid-connected generation still running at those times.
At 12.10pm on December 31, the only two supply sources running in Victoria were “the rooftop PV juggernaut” and eight of the state’s 10 brown coal power units, electricity news service WattClarity said.
“Rooftop solar is king, but it is subjugating not just coal but also wind and big solar,” said Melbourne-based economist Bruce Mountain, director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre.
Professor Mountain noted in a blog post that Victorian spot electricity prices were less than -$50 a megawatt-hour between 6.20am and 5.35pm on New Year’s Eve, deterring generation from wind and solar projects.
“Clearly wind and big solar scaled back in response,” he wrote.
“Big paradox here: more (big) VRE [variable renewable energy] is needed to displace coal, but RTS [rooftop solar] is poisoning its water.
Only huge expansion of storage will change this,” he added, noting that non-storage alternatives such as the active control of electricity consumption will also help.
On December 31, both Victoria and South Australia set fresh records for low demand for electricity from the grid as rooftop solar kicked into gear amid clear sunny skies and benign temperatures.
A lengthy period of negative wholesale prices benefited households with retailers that pass through spot prices, but the low demand posed problems for the energy market operator seeking to keep the power system stable.
The spate of negative prices helped push down quarterly average prices on the National Electricity Market, with Josh Stabler, managing director of adviser Energy Edge, calculating that December quarter prices were down 50-60 per cent from the peak winter June quarter.
He said rooftop solar pumped back into the grid was dispatched throughout October at negative prices, in contrast with the positive feed-in tariffs received by solar system owners.
The pressures on suppliers from the feed-in tariffs and the negative daytime wholesale prices have bolstered demands from electricity retailers for an increase in the margin they can receive under default retail electricity tariffs to be set by the energy regulator for 2024-25.
Retailers have made their views known to the Australian Energy Regulators in submissions on an issues paper on the default market offer (DMO) prices for next financial year but have been countered by consumer groups urging the regulator to keep a focus on protecting consumers from “unreasonable” prices.
A spokesman for the Australian Energy Council, which represents retailers, on Wednesday noted that ACIL Allen had advised the AER last year that smart meter data – which better reflects the impact of rooftop solar – should be included in the calculation of the default retail price “to better reflect the actual costs of doing business”.
“Previous DMO calculations have not assessed the impact of solar and have used only older accumulation meter data to estimate the usage,” the spokesman said.
“Using smart meter calculations as well as the net load data will better reflect the typical retailer’s actual costs in supplying the electricity.”
Professor Mountain cast doubt on the plausibility of retailers’ push for a lift to the default offer.
“Almost all retailers are offering big discounts relative to the default offers in order to attract new customers and in some cases retain them.
Why then does the default need to rise?”
Too busy?
Doing what?
Plagiarising a policy about marching in the dark from the USN?
The worst aspect was that he did it on a blog run by a right wing academic who many lefties would be itching to take down.
Which is why Sinc tried to shut it down so quickly.
Underneath all that he was seething about the exposure it represented for him.
As I said denial, defend, and then accuse the other side of lying.
(Harvard board. Denial there was plagiarism. defend the miscreant and threaten to sue NY Post for honest reporting.)
Driller, a bright light of heroism and honesty.
———–
Also, I notice former HRH Prince Andrew is in the news again having to deal with more accusations of an Epstein nature.
This retarded turkey was telling us former HRH would be lauded back in Britain.
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
Bill Ackman is the wealthy Harvard alumnus who has taken the lead in trying to reform that institution. In the wake of Claudine Gay’s self-destruction, he wrote this lengthy Twitter post in which he diagnoses the sickness of institutions like Harvard.
It is very good, and appropriately uncompromising in its denunciation of the totalitarian DEI culture that prevails on campuses and elsewhere.
Money quote:
DEI is inherently a racist and illegal movement in its implementation even if it purports to work on behalf of the so-called oppressed.
Click “show more” to see the whole thing:
Just browsing the Womadelaide program. I figure if you extract part of all the band’s blurbs you could get the perfect band. Start with the blurb then form the band.
“Our shamanistic identity explores the issues of environmental awareness, self empowerment, social justice and political inequity. By continual innovation we breakdown musical barriers, tell stories of shared humanity and use the transformative power of love. Let us help you to escape the feelings of sadness and despair.”
What a winner! Anyone can join, you don’t have to have any musical ability.
Plan to fail par deux.
All generation and transmission without storage makes Blackout Bowen a very dull boy.
He sure was and he was also all smiles and impressed by the spirited defense put up by the likes of this fraud, which is why he came close to throwing the defenders out the back door with a good arse-kicking.
Sinc really took heat from academia for that blog and the treacherous act was just shameful.
Let’s not give away this growth card
Migration once again seems likely to keep Australia out of more serious economic trouble. That makes it all the more important to get housing right.
The AFR View Editorial
Once again, Australia’s special standing as a magnet for migrants may help save it from any prolonged downturn.
Many of the 40 economists surveyed by The Australian Financial Review this week believe that the extra workers and consumers, after half a million people arrived last year in a catch-up surge of migration, will prevent Australia from following New Zealand and parts of Europe into downturns during 2024.
Back in 2008-09, a sharp rise in the working-age population through migration kept Australia out of recession even as the rest of the world collapsed into a post-global financial crisis torpor.
It ensured that Australia’s record run of economic expansion from 1991 kept going until 2020, when the pandemic changed everything.
In the short term, the extra demand from more people has been buoying up price inflation while the Reserve Bank has been pushing it down.
But over time, migration eases labour and skills shortages that would prolong inflation.
Jobs beget more jobs, and it is shortages of labour, skills and talent that will stifle our prospects in the long term.
That helps ensure that a bigger economy is also a better economy for most Australians.
Joblessness is set to inevitably rise from its record post-lockdown lows, but the reason why Australian CEOs are generally optimistic about businesses is the resilience of job numbers.
For most mainstream Australians, the most tangible aspect of a decent economy is having a job.
Yet even if Australia gets away with at worst only a technical recession of two negative quarters, as most economists suggest it will, the economy at the kitchen-table level will still feel tighter.
Per capita GDP growth is down, and the bout of inflation will still leave prices and costs higher than they were.
Migration matters politicised
Grumpy voters a year out from an election means both sides have been tempted to politicise migration matters.
Labor’s migration review did something to take the steam out of the issue, but the review also caved in to union demands to control the arrival of tradespeople.
And the Coalition has tried to use last year’s catch-up to demonstrate that Labor has lost control of the borders.
It is in housing where the angst over migration appears to be highest, and where rising rents are also behind stubbornly persistent services inflation.
But this is not new.
In successive resources booms from 2003, capital flowed into new mining development, drying up the investment needed in the cities to house the new population drawn in by the growth.
The result was continuous political panics over housing affordability and traffic congestion, with state governments all too willing to scapegoat migration.
That history is being repeated, with home builders competing for materials and labour with the huge state government infrastructure investment programs, which are essential if cities are to work – but which in Queensland, for example, have pushed up construction costs by 40 per cent.
It’s really a problem of success – but it is happening again because we have not learned the lessons of earlier migration and job booms.
Even if construction costs were still normal, Australia remains a land-rich but housing-poor country because it has made building land some of the most expensive in the world through taxes, regulation and slow approvals.
Up to 40 per cent of the cost of a new home is tax, on which state governments depend excessively.
And approvals often rest with local councils that worry more about NIMBY-ish local voters than accommodating the national population.
Crazed ideas like the Greens’ proposals for investment-killing rent controls have at least stung the Albanese government into more action.
But too much of its effort involves throwing money directly at new housing investment.
Some funding, however, is being used to persuade local councils to fast-track lower-risk housing development.
And once mortgage rates start coming down, there will be no shortage of buyers.
However, without more deregulation of a constipated land and housing supply system, house building will still struggle to keep up.
But it must.
Migration has been one of Australia’s special growth sauces for a long time, and it cannot be compromised because of a clunky planning system.
Our empty Malaysian Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur and the overloaded full flight back spoke volumes to us about legal visa holders coming in to then claim asylum. Or to ‘study’ and then claim residence.
We are sitting ducks as long as the outdated world war two UN refugee status laws are recognised in this country. Surely it is time for France, Italy, Britain, Australia and Canada and others affected to join together to reject this system?
This is not America: rates are not coming down in 2024
There are no grounds for the cash rate to fall here in 2024. The Albanese government’s big job will be selling that reality to voters.
Richard Holden – Economics professor
Here’s a happy economic narrative for 2024. In early 2022, it became clear that inflation was a problem.
Then in March of that year, the central bank began raising interest rates decisively. It was crystal clear that it would get inflation back to the target level in relatively short order.
Official rates rose, to about 200 basis points above the long-run neutral rate, and inflation started coming down.
At the end of 2023, it looked like inflation was headed back to target in the first half of 2024, and that rate cuts could then begin.
Unemployment remained low, productivity increased, and wages rose.
Happy New Year! If you happen to live in the United States.
In Australia, things look rather different.
Consider the contrasts.
In the US, inflation is 3.1 per cent; in Australia, it’s 5.4 per cent.
Over the past six months, core inflation (the “core personal consumption expenditure deflator”, which strips out the most volatile items) has been 1.9 per cent in the US.
The analogous measure in Australia (monthly CPI excluding volatile items) stands at 5.1 per cent.
Official interest rates in the US are 5.5 per cent, while in Australia they are 4.35 per cent. And that’s relative to a history where Australian rates are typically a percentage point or more higher than they are in the US.
The long-run neutral rate of interest in the US is probably 2.75 per cent. In Australia, it’s more like 3.5 per cent.
So with inflation genuinely coming under control in the US and rates well above the long-run level, it’s hardly surprising that markets expect rates to fall there in 2024.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers must be careful not to overpromise about 2024.
A similar narrative has taken hold in Australia.
It has been pushed by a range of commentators, and by Treasurer Jim Chalmers, and it’s also true that bond markets are tipping at least one rate cut in Australia in 2024. Perhaps all those folks are right, but there are good reasons to be sceptical.
Start with the raw facts. Australia has done less to get inflation under control, and made much less progress than the US (and other countries) in so doing.
Then there’s wages growth in Australia.
We’ve seen a 5.75 per cent increase in the minimum wage, a 15 per cent one-off increase for a quarter of a million aged-care workers.
Private sector wage growth was 4.2 per cent in the third quarter of 2023, putting overall wage growth at 4 per cent.
This is the highest level since 2009.
The damage is done
Now I’m certainly not saying that wage rises are bad.
But let’s be clear about a couple of things.
These increases are not being driven by productivity improvements, and wage rises in Australia tend to be very sticky because of our bargaining system.
So 4.2 per cent today is a good indication of above 4 per cent increases tomorrow.
And this risks baking in above-target inflation increases.
Indeed, elevated inflation in the services sector arguably already reflects this.
Taking all this together, a more plausible scenario for Australia in 2024 is that interest rates do not fall – and if anything may rise a little more to get inflation under control.
Reserve Bank of Australia governor Michele Bullock certainly seems to have a laser focus on getting inflation back inside the target band.
This is a good thing.
We may achieve a “soft landing” in the technical sense of not having an official recession in 2024, but per capita economic growth is already going backwards.
And if inflation does get back to 2.5 per cent sometime in 2025, then it’s worth remembering that prices will be about 20 per cent higher than they were before inflation took off.
And that also means that for every $100 you had in savings in 2021, you’ll effectively have $80 in 2025.
Is it any wonder, then, that people are not very happy about the state of the economy?
Inflation getting back to 2.5 per cent doesn’t undo the damage that’s been done to households.
It just means it’s not getting worse.
And in this is a critical lesson for Labor’s next election campaign.
It’s a really, really bad idea to tell people how awesome the economy is doing when the voters don’t feel that way.
It’s an even worse idea when the voters have a good reason to feel that way.
Even if the inflation rate has come down by the next election, prices won’t have.
They will just have stopped going up so fast.
The hard truth is that prices will be a lot higher than when Labor took office, and savings will implicitly be worth a lot less.
That may not be Labor’s fault. But nobody in the history of democracy won an election by telling the voters that it’s their fault.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers must be careful not to overpromise about 2024. And if rates fall elsewhere, but not here, he needs to be prepared to explain why Australia’s experience is different from other countries’.
And he’d also better develop an economic narrative for the upcoming election that doesn’t pretend things are rosier than they are, blame others for why they’re not, and he must outline a serious economic agenda for a second-term government that’s a little less sizzle and a lot more steak.
Richard Holden is professor of economics at UNSW Business School and President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
My comment in the Oz website re the proud Qantas badge-wearers is still awaiting approval after an hour:
Terrible. But Qantas management started their own crews being political and still do. Remember the black LGBTI rings that Joyce endorsed? And we still have the Acknowledgement of Country”every time an aircraft lands.
Get out of ALL politics Qantas, and then the staff won’t feel so entitled.
mUnty used the phrase “Hunter’s 9 inch hog”. Sounds like the same leftard talking points.
Not an actual citation.
Translation: You just made something up. As usual.
How about a properly run economy and a less generous welfare state to provide a job and a decent living to Australians rather than stressing housing and infrastructure and welfare by relying on a population Ponzi scheme to make our numbers look good; while we tighten our belts, can’t rent or buy a home, sit for hours in static expressways, and angrily head for bread and dripping around the kitchen table?
lol, Top Ender. It takes them an hour, or two days, or longer, to deal with ‘far right-wingers’ like you and me commenting at the Oz. You can feel their hackles rising as you remind them of a few obvious facts they’ve preferred to forget.
I’ve posted the plagiarism thread many times and this retarded turkey continually asks for citations. It’s actually offensive to the readership because he thinks this hi-jinks will get him over the line, but it doesn’t work.
We know, when he’s asking for citations, it’s blindingly true.
Salvatore:
It looks like JC and the Boy Wunder Sancho, finally got the stoush they’ve been trying to provoke for the last day or so.
Even if it did transgress DBs request to stop digging up shit from 5 years ago, on someone they have never met, and who – when he was asked about the ‘plagiarism’, Sinclair said he accepted Mk50’s explanation.
I wonder if it was due to an attempted doxxing?
See y’all later, lunchtime here and plenty to do this arvo.
Smile nicely for that camera, screen-hounds. You never know who’s looking. 🙂
We also know when he’s asked for citations to support his nonsense, and takes off for a few days , as per the NAB citation request (none given of course), his claim is always blowhard garbage.
Yet you’ve never provided a citation.
Meaning you lied, are lying, and continue to lie.
You were offered a bet on this, & welched.
You have no citation, as you are repeating a lie.
Why do you brokens continually get on all fours in front of me & crawl backward?
You haven’t got what it takes to confess you lied, or even weasel that you are “wrong” You double down with the lie.
You’re gutless, amoral, & continually exhibit the lack of values imbued during your upbringing.
Disgusting.
It was just lazy, he liked the article and wanted people to read it.
Comments are mainly along the lines of “125 million quid? Gee, where would all that money go?”
PM met Joyce in weeks after Qantas opposed extra Qatar flights, diary shows
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s diary reveals he had a meeting with then-Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce in November 2022, several weeks after the airline opposed overseas rival Qatar Airways’ application for greater access to the Australian aviation market.
Albanese’s official diary records from May 16, 2022 to December 11, 2022 were released after 16-month freedom of information battle between the government and former senator Rex Patrick and The Australian Financial Review.
They show that on November 23, 2022, Albanese had a half-hour meeting with Joyce.
The government came under sustained pressure in September last year after declining Qatar’s August 2022 bid to add 21 flights to its services from Doha into Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton accusing Albanese of a “sweetheart deal” with Qantas and arguing the decision would push up airfares.
Qantas registered its opposition to the application in October 2022, while Virgin Australia, which has a codeshare partnership with Qatar, was in favour.
Transport Minister Catherine King confirmed she decided to reject the Qatar application on July 10, 2023 and told Albanese before July 18.
During a heated question time debate in September, Albanese confirmed he had spoken with Virgin’s boss about the government’s move to block Qatar’s bid, but denied having a conversation with any Qantas executives, including Joyce, before the Qatar decision.
Under questioning about whether he met with Joyce, Albanese told parliament he had one “substantive conversation” on the Qatar decision, but it was not with any representative from Qantas.
“I received no lobbying from Qantas on this issue,” he told question time in September.
Asked about the meeting on Thursday, the prime minister’s office pointed to the question time remarks, saying: “As the prime minister told the House on 5 September: ‘I once again confirm I did not speak to the former Qantas CEO before a decision was made.’”
Let us all agree on definitions. I think you’re taking the piss here and this is why you haven’t been paid. To welch on a bet, you have to first accept it.
As a crazy gambler, perhaps the craziest gambler here*, you are taking liberties with the good name of the great art and science of wagering.
*My wagers had me characterised as an oppressor of the wukkin’ class, by a fellow right winger.
No one welched, because the logic of my wagers DESTROYED their argument with FACTS and LOGIC.
If you can show JC accepted a wager – well you will probably be paid promptly.
Michael Vaughn taking considerable leave of his senses:
Poll is who is the best Australian cricketer after Bradman?
Choices are Cummins, Warne, Ponting, Gilchrist, Greg Chappell, Keith Millar or Smiffy.
S K Warne for mine. Along with Bradman was named in Wisden Top 5 cricketers of the century.
Bungonia Bee
Jan 4, 2024 12:10 PM
Jessica Tarlov’s dishonesty on Fox’s The Five is so obvious.
Tarlov is an arrogant leftie kunt. I enjoy her though because Watters and Gutfeld tear her to shreds on every episode.
Turtlehead, from memory you were one of the ones also denying and defending the extinguished naval officer’s plagiarism.
You too, can defend or accede to the dishonest act right now.
Not so. I observed your protector offering up a serve against the Harvard plagiarism and thought it would be an opportune time to hold his knackers to a well lit fire when he’s acted exactly as what he was critical of. And listen to the squealing.
You too can deny or state it was plagiarism. Sinc wanted it to go away because of the problem. In any event, you moron, whatever Sinc said about the act doesn’t determine if the piece was lifted. It was.
You wonder about a lot of things. You wonder if the Chinese are going to invade Australia using commercial airliners to Melbourne airport. You wonder if a rural setting in Queersland will be targeted by a Tongan nuclear missile causing you to stock up on iodine. You wonder if something terrible is going to happen in August 2024. The exact month no less. Wondering around in an intellectual abyss is your forte.
“Wear that stupid badge again and you’re sacked”. Place I worked a bloke got caught pinching gear, he got sacked. Not only did he not return the stolen gear but took them to FairWork with a payout of $15k for not having been given a warning. If they’d got plod involved and got him prosecuted then sacked ok, but they were being nice. Wife had APS union rep not working but doing union shit. Written warning twice, he went sooky, no ones done that before. Better find somewhere else then, next time you’re down the road. BiL did similar thing. Offered to pay union fees for new guys. When taken up on the offer, when a downturn came along the guy gets sacked. Others who started later ok. Not union members. Last on first off. Always learn the rules and use them against the bestars. Almost said bastards but didn’t want to upset the shrinking violets.
Surely it is higher? It’s got to be the lowest retail lending rate, unless he is referring to the rate on savings.
Dot, he didn’t have the balls to accept. He bigmouthed & blowharded on a couple of topics, yapped louder than a poodle in a kennel.
He was continually offering bets to other commenters, of a size he believed they’d either not be able to match, or an amount that he believed they couldn’t afford to risk.
The bigmouth got called on his own bluff. He shat himself at the prospect of putting up real money, he knows he’d lose serious skin were he to take the bets offered.
Those bets expired. He revealed that he did not believe his own blowharding.
Game over. I won.
Money talks, bullshit walks.
He walked. He knows he backed down publicly, in front of me. 🙂
Warne, Ponting, Gilchrist, Border, McGrath.
Miss Three.
I’ll come to the post office with you Grandma!
Waiting at car.
You’ll have to go back inside and put your shoes on.
Oh okay.
Disappears inside.
A couple of minutes later returns wearing two rolls of packing tape around her ankles.
Please go back inside and put your real shoes on.
A couple of minutes later, no packing tape but no shoes.
You forgot to put your shoes on.
Oh, okay.
A couple of minutes later, shoes on, wrong feet.
Near enough.
Off we go.
I contend you can’t welch on a bet you never accepted. QED.
Dot
The lying sack of shit has been trying to make hay out of this for a good while.
The basic offering of the best was that I, and me, alone was supposed to send his legal rep several million dollars. Not him, but just me. Then his rep would determine who won the bet. Me, laughing at these antics, has been called welching ever since. There’s no limit to what this blowhard is capable of in terms of trying to present himself in a good light. for 20 years, he’s been a virtual reality pub owner.
BB, SKW is the best cricketer ever of all time for me. I’ve seen a lot of Bradman clips, the fielding side were slow and lazy. No wonder he scored so many.
Been geeking out on Cricket stuff.. Putting this up for the record.
Highest test scores by batting order.
Openers M. Hayden 380
No.3 B. Lara 400*
No.4 D. Jayawardene 374
No. 5 M. Clarke 329*
No.6 B. Stokes 258
No.7 D. Bradman 270
No.8 W. Akram 257*
No.9 I. Smith 173
No.10. W. Read 117
No. 11. A. Agar 98
I watched Agar’s innings live that night. It was random.
Was like Brian Lara in top gear. I recall Ian Botham saying “Hang on. This isn’t the strokeplay of your typical no.11”.
Funny as.
Greame Swann is a shit bloke for taking that catch.
Can’t agree with you here, Winnie. Satp, at 11:59 am, started this particular stoush and has been trying to keep it running since then. ” …lying chickenshit dago” sounds pretty provocative to me.
My guess is they lied that they were Christian to get into Australia as Lebanese Christians were given priority at the time. Once other Muslim arrived en masse they would have felt safe in practicing their religion openly.
Bruce of Newcastle
Jan 4, 2024 12:29 PM
Avocados are racist.
And they’re killing the Planet. There you go woke progressive peoples, every time you have smashed avo on toast you are literally thrusting a dagger into the side of Gaia.
But when you eat smashed avo on toast, you can’t afford a house therefore you are poor like black people because of the racist white man or something. So they can’t be racist. Or is poverty among whites cultural appropriation and therefore racist?
Can somebody call a Dr? I think I may have had a stroke while writing that.
Now if we were talking about the greatest sporting moustache …
Marsh or Boonie?
Looks like another heavy scrolling day while watching boring cricket.
JC on the turps very early today.
Interest rates alone aren’t meaningful in describing the stance of monetary policy. As crazy as it sounds 5.5% could be considered loose and 4.35 could be considered tight. There are other factors that go into it.
Though, you’re you’re not scrolling are you? You’re just telling others they should even though you’re not.
Scroll
LOL Toad.
First of the Year SITREP – Hypersonic Strikes, Disasters, War, and More Global Trends
SIMPLICIUS THE THINKER
Elon Musk predicted 2024 to be ‘even crazier’ than 2023.
On the same tack, Medvedev gave his own tongue-in-cheek predictions for the new year, which was quite entertaining to read:
The year is drawing to a close. Time to make predictions?
There is nothing more meaningless and hopeless than this.
A year ago I wrote this: I want to contribute to the most absurd and ridiculous predictions for the future.
No, they still write with indignation, but why isn’t anything being done? For mercy, how can it not be fulfilled?
Didn’t Scholz say that Germany is paying ten times more for gas than before? Didn’t Elon Musk become the President of the United States, if not by position, then by influence (despite the fact that he does not have the right to be elected to the presidency, because he was born in Africa)? Isn’t Poland preparing to seize part of Ukraine, and Northern Ireland to break away from Foggy Albion? And so on and so forth… In short, everything absurd in our lives has almost come true and continues to come true.
Therefore, catch a new portion of forecasts, already for 2024 (and these are not the glamorous ideas of Saxo Bank):
2. Nationalization of the military-industrial complex of the countries of the European Union, the USA and Canada with a view to subsequently donating all defense production to the offended Kyiv regime to maintain its military potential. Allocation to Ukraine of a loan syndicated by Western countries in the amount of 25.5 trillion US dollars (corresponding to the size of US GDP at PPP).
The theft of this loan within 24 hours by the ruling regime in Kyiv with the participation of Hunter Biden.
3. Dissolution of regular police forces in all EU countries with the transfer of their functions to German and Ukrobander police, taking into account their joint historical experience.
4. Putting Joe Biden on the international wanted list in connection with his careless departure from the stage during a speech and the persistent loss of the US President behind the scenes by his assistants.
5. A sentence in criminal cases brought against Donald Trump in the form of a 99-year prison sentence, a ban on Trump being elected in all states of America.
His election as the new US President instead of Biden, who was lost behind the scenes.
6. Massive sinister revival of alien mummies hidden on US military bases, their entry into American politics with the subsequent acquisition of more than half of the seats by aliens in the US Senate and House of Representatives.
7. Godzilla’s seizure of power in Japan and his proclamation as ?? (Emperor of Japan) ???I (Godzilla I). The beginning of the reign of the Reptilian Dynasty in Japan.
So, the new year 2024 will bring us a lot of interesting things. Look forward to!
Interestingly enough, the alien prediction of #6 is already fulfilling, as on cue the US Congress is rolling out more of its diversionary fare, with secret briefings around “UAPs”—as they’re now being called—scheduled for the coming week:
Toad means scholl as in Scholl footwear for those with foot problems
Su-57 Production Surging to Over 20 Aircraft in 2024: Delivery Rate to Surpass All Other Russian Fighters
The Russian Defence Ministry is reportedly set to receive twice the number of Su-57 fifth generation fighters in 2024 as it did the previous year, according to a statement by the CEO of the state owned United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) Yuri Slyusar. “We have completed the state defence order.
Everything stipulated by signed contracts and time schedules was delivered in time, even in advance for certain plants,” he stated, adding that “concerning new airplanes, the order for the Su-57 aircraft has increased almost twofold.” “The order is even greater and even more work will have to be done in 2024,” he concluded. UAC delivered 12 Su-57s in 2023 up from just six in 2022, with Slyusar’s statement confirming reports that deliveries for 2024 are scheduled to exceed 20 aircraft.
This increase would make the Su-57 by far the most produced fighter class in Russia, effectively doubling the fleet size over the next 12 months, with second place for manufacturing scale held by the Su-34M which has also seen production expand.
Su-34 annual delivery rates are expected to reach a little under 20 airframes despite no expectation of exports, although the class is estimated to cost well under half as much as the Su-57 to produce.
76 Su-57 fighters are currently on order and expected to be delivered before 2028.
The expansion of production will allow Russia not only to meet this goal, but also to potentially begin exports, with Algeria is widely reported by multiple sources to have already placed orders for an estimated 12-14 aircraft.
A key facilitator of large scale acquisitions is that the Su-57’s lifetime costs are comparable to those of the Su-27, Su-30 and Su-35 it was designed to replace, allowing it to be deployed in place of these fourth generation fighters one-for-one.
This contrasts sharply to the American F-35 and F-22 fifth generation fighters which, due to major overruns in their operational costs and very high maintenance needs, are unaffordable for acquisitions to similarly replace their predecessors.
A key means by which the Su-57 achieved this has been through the use of innovative solutions such as radar absorbent fibreglass to avoid the need for special radar absorbent coatings to be applied as is done on American fighters – which are particularly difficult to apply and maintain.
A further factor is the use of the AL-51 engine (previously known as the Saturn 30) which has lower maintenance needs and operational costs than the preceding AL-31 and AL-41 which powered the Su-27/30 and Su-35 respectively.
Tradie report.
Young electrician required to fix electrical fault which had us with only half the house in working mode since yesterday.
Efficient and articulate. Busy installing generators all over town, will quote us.
Voted Labor when 18, but never again. He and mates just back from camping 10 days upper Murray, all agree climate change is utter BS, and Bowen is wrecking the country.
Hamas out for 47 on DRS
Bragging about 20 obsolete fighter planes and zero T-14 Armatas.
Pathetic.
On reflection, I’m glad he got on the board. If he went for a duck in potentially his last Test innings it would have evoked comparisons to Bradman, which in turn would have compelled me to vomit with rage
Please, stop doing that with the second hand baggy green cap, its not that sort of blog.
Ian Chappell is our greatest cricketer. Best cricketers are your captians.
Allan Border did a good job also.
Claudine Gay has exposed the rot at the heart of the woke establishment
The former Harvard president failed to stand up against racism. The BBC and the Left are bizarrely treating her as the victim
DOUGLAS MURRAY
Last month’s Congressional hearings on anti-Semitism on US campuses will go down as one of the biggest disasters in modern academic history.
The presidents of three major US universities all proved unable to answer the question of whether calling for the genocide of Jews would be considered beyond the pale on their campuses.
The president of the University of Pennsylvania – Liz Magill – managed to ride out the backlash for a few days.
Harvard’s president held on rather longer. But this week she, too, finally resigned.
Claudine Gay might have weathered the storm because she had the protective cover of being Harvard’s first black female president, and in an age of identity politics that puts her very close to the top of the oppression Olympics that now dominate everything in American public life.
You can be rich, privileged and the president of Harvard.
But it transpires that you can still claim to be a victim if you are Claudine Gay.
That is what she tried to claim in her resignation statement on Tuesday.
She said that there had been “racial animus” in the attacks on her.
In fact, the attacks started because of her glaring inability to stand up to racism, followed by allegations that Gay’s distinctly meagre academic work, included a significant amount of plagiarism.
The plagiarism story had been around for a while, but after her Congressional embarrassment, a larger number of people – including Leftist media – started to look into these serious allegations.
At first, Harvard tried to ignore them.
Its board embarrassed itself by repeatedly expressing its full support for her.
Ordinarily, basic academic failings like seeming to lift whole chunks of work – including acknowledgements – from the works of others would have seen a student censured.
But not the Harvard president, apparently.
Finally it became too much.
Gay’s resignation letter on Tuesday could have confessed to her failings and apologised.
But it did no such thing.
She went out the same way she had got in: on a blizzard of victimhood.
Others joined in her defence. Ibram X Kendi (author of the mistitled bestseller How To Be an Antiracist) claimed that “Racist mobs won’t stop until they topple all Black people from positions of power and influence who are not reinforcing the structure of racism.”
Nikole Hannah-Jones (who initiated the New York Times’s lamentably ahistorical “1619 Project”) claimed something similar.
She said in the wake of Gay’s resignation that “Academic freedom is under attack.
Racial justice programs are under attack. Black women will be made to pay.”
In its coverage of Gay’s resignation, even the BBC claimed that the embattled former president had been a victim of America’s “campus culture wars”.
The broadcaster also said that “For her Right-wing critics, Dr Gay – who is black – represents much of what they loathe about modern American higher education, which they view as being dominated by a Left-wing ideology that places a greater emphasis on ethnic and gender diversity than on academic rigour.”
Which is a typical BBC smear.
Note the way in which the report implies that Gay being black was the problem here.
And that the idea that identity politics trumps academic rigour is some kind of phantasm from the fevered imagination of the Right.
The trouble is that identity politics does trump academic rigour in the modern American academy.
Gay’s own appointment last year was testimony to this.
Although in her bitter resignation statement she claimed that academic excellence and standards are central to who she is, they have never been obviously so.
She herself is almost entirely without academic distinction.
She has written no published books and only has 11 journal articles to her name.
Nearly all of these are about the usual modern American sociology obsessions about race and status.
It is an embarrassingly thin output for anyone expecting any academic preferment.
The idea that someone with such paltry achievements could ever have risen to be president of Harvard would until recently have been preposterous.
The very idea is ridiculous.
But it doesn’t mean that the Left in America and further afield will not continue to excuse Gay.
The truth is that as well as being a moral catastrophe, she was a walking disaster for Harvard.
It was high time she went.
But nobody should feel sorry for her.
This already very privileged woman is going to remain on the teaching faculty of Harvard with a nice pay package of around $900,000 a year.
Victimhood turns out to be nice work if you can get it.
If secret negotiations are being conducted, whether or not there is a consensus is moot.
Japan Airlines fire to give insights into latest manufacturing materials
Complete loss by fire of airliner made largely from carbon fibre was a first for modern aviation
The wreckage of the Japan Airlines plane at Tokyo’s Haneda airport is testimony to the fierceness of the blaze that consumed it on Monday evening after it collided with a smaller plane.
For investigators and aviation experts, the episode — and how all 379 people onboard the JAL flight managed to escape — is likely to yield important insights into the modern materials used to build many aircraft and the best ways of safely evacuating passengers in emergencies.
The crash was the first loss of an Airbus A350, a model that entered service in 2015, and first complete destruction by fire of an airliner made largely from carbon fibre, a material increasingly used in aerospace.
“The JAL A350 is the first hull loss of a composite airliner and the first by fire,” noted Scott Hamilton, head of consultancy and news site Leeham News. “Investigators will learn all kinds of lessons from the A350 accident.”
Five of the six people onboard a smaller De Havilland Dash-8 Japan Coast Guard aircraft that collided with the JAL plane died.
While the cause of the accident and the exact sequence of events remains under investigation by the Japan Transport Safety Board, police and other official agencies, experts said the evacuation of the 367 passengers and 12 crew from the JAL plane was remarkable.
Early indications suggest the intercom system between the flight deck and the cabin had broken down following the collision while only three of the eight exit doors were available for evacuation given the fire on the outside of the aircraft.
“It was a good outcome but the evacuation scenario was high risk,” said Ed Galea, a professor at the University of Greenwich in London, who specialises in fire safety. He noted that the nose was also angled downwards, making it harder to use the inflatable slides.
“In these circumstances, every second counts.”
Modern aircraft are required to prove to regulators that they can evacuate all passengers and crew within 90 seconds using half the number of the available exits. Aircraft cabins are designed to prevent flames from spreading for as long as possible.
“The most important part, whether the plane is aluminium or carbon fibre, is that you have protection for many, many minutes from external heat,” said Bjorn Fehrm, an aeronautical engineer and an analyst at Leeham News. “In this case, the carbon fibre is giving that heat-shield protection.”
Airbus said that composite materials made up 53 per cent of the model in question, the A350-900.
The plane maker said tests had shown that composite structures offered a similar level of fire resistance as aluminium, typically used in older aircraft.
While composite materials are not new to the aerospace industry, their use has increased significantly in recent years as both Airbus and Boeing have focused on reducing weight and increasing fuel efficiency.
Leeham’s Hamilton pointed out that fires have previously occurred on two Boeing 787s with similar amounts of composite materials.
In January 2013, a battery overheated and started a fire in a JAL aircraft parked at Boston airport after a flight from Tokyo. In July of the same year, an Ethiopian 787 parked in London suffered fire damage caused by a short circuit at the emergency locator transmitter. Both planes were heavily damaged but repaired.
Aviation experts said the images of the burning JAL A350 showed that the composite structure appeared to withstand the heat for a long time.
Aluminium melts at about 600 degrees Celsius and, although composites would burn at a lower temperature, they reacted differently to fire, said Emile Greenhalgh, professor of composite materials at Imperial College in London.
“As the material burns, all the flammable material forms a char layer?.?.?.[so] you end up with a barrier against the progression of fire.”
The accounts from both crew and passengers on how they pulled off the evacuation in such demanding circumstances should also provide lessons on best practice and safety at airports, experts said.
Although everyone on the JAL plane survived, Galea at the University of Greenwich questioned the efficacy of the 90-second evacuation tests because they often bore little resemblance to real-life accidents.
“I call it a benchmark as it says nothing of the performance of the aircraft in the event of an accident.”
It seems Delta A did not read a certain post at 11.45am.
Dearie me. Tsk tsk.
Its a long one, as the bishop said to the actress.
Epstein news…
The inclusion of a name in this list does not mean that said associate has been accused of wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. Among the names are people mentioned in passing at legal proceedings.
In a deposition, Maxwell appears to say that Andrew visited Epstein’s Island in the US Virgin Islands. Epstein has been accused of abusing numerous girls on this island.
“Were you present on the island when Prince Andrew visited?” Maxwell was asked.
She responded in the affirmative and, when asked how many times, she said: “I can only remember once.” When asked if there were any girls on the island at that time, Maxwell insisted: “There were no girls on the island at all. No girls, no women, other than the staff who work at the house.”
One document included a deposition given by Johanna Sjoberg, whom Maxwell allegedly procured for the purpose of performing sex acts on Epstein.
Sjoberg said in her deposition that Epstein “said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls”.
In 2019, Clinton’s spokesperson Angel Ureña denied claims made about Clinton’s involvement with Epstein and wrote in a statement on Twitter that “President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.”
Clinton notably had an 18-month long affair with Monica Lewinsky, his then 22-year-old intern, during his first term as president. He was 49 years old.
Sjoberg also said that the late musician Michael Jackson was at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion, and that she met the famed magician David Copperfield.
“Did you ever meet anybody famous when you were with Jeffrey? she was asked. “I met Michael Jackson … at [Epstein’s] house in Palm Beach.”
Asked whether she massaged Jackson, Sjoberg said: “I did not.”
As for Copperfield, Sjoberg said that he attended dinner at one of Epstein’s homes and “he did some magic tricks”.
“Did you observe David Copperfield to be a friend of Jeffrey Epstein’s?” she was asked. Sjoberg replied in the affirmative.
“Did Copperfield ever discuss Jeffrey’s involvement with young girls with you?” she was also asked. “He questioned me if I was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls.”
Copperfield, she said in the deposition, didn’t tell her any specifics of that question. “Did he say whether they were teenagers or anything along those lines?” she was also asked. “He did not.”
Donald Trump, whose association with Epstein has been widely reported, was also mentioned in the documents; the former US president is not accused of wrongdoing. In Sjoberg’s deposition, she said that they went to one of Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City when a storm prevented Epstein’s plane from landing in New York City.
“Jeffrey said, Great, we’ll call up Trump and we’ll go to – I don’t recall the name of the casino, but – we’ll go to the casino.” Asked at one point whether she ever gave Trump a massage, Sjoberg said “no”.
The deposition also includes Sjoberg’s account of allegedly meeting Prince Andrew at Epstein’s New York home. “Ghislaine asked me to come to a closet. She just said, Come with me. We went to a closet and grabbed the puppet, the puppet of Prince Andrew,” she said in the deposition.
“And I knew it was Prince Andrew because I had recognized him as a person. I didn’t know who he was. And so when I saw the tag that said Prince Andrew, then it clicked. I’m like, that’s who it is.”
Sjoberg and Maxwell then returned to the living room with the puppet. “I just remember someone suggesting a photo, and they told us to go get on the couch. And so Andrew and Virginia sat on the couch, and they put the puppet, the puppet on her lap,” Sjoberg recalled. “And so then I sat on Andrew’s lap, and I believe on my own volition, and they took the puppet’s hands and put it on Virginia’s breast, and so Andrew put his on mine.”
Sjoberg said she went to bed shortly thereafter. “Did you hear Ghislaine Maxwell tell Virginia to do anything while you were in that room?” she was asked. Sjoberg replied: “No.”
Giuffre, who claimed that Epstein and Maxwell forced her into a sexual encounter with Britain’s Prince Andrew at age 17, had sued the publishing heiress for defamation after claiming the accuser lied. Giuffre settled her lawsuit against Maxwell in 2017.
In 2021, Giuffre sued Prince Andrew over the alleged sexual abuse. The suit settled in early 2022. Andrew has always strenuously denied any wrongdoing. As part of the settlement, he agreed to donate to Giuffre’s victims’ rights charity.
The documents’ release is among several tranches of filings in Giuffre’s civil case that were unsealed following the Miami Herald’s years-long effort to make them public. Giuffre did not make allegations of wrongdoing against Clinton.
In one set of documents released in July 2020, Giuffre claimed that Maxwell participated in Epstein’s sexual abuse of teen girls. These documents were released several weeks after Maxwell’s arrest for her involvement in Epstein’s sex trafficking.
Giuffre claimed that Maxwell lured her into Epstein’s perverse orbit under the false pretense of work as a professional masseuse. Instead, Giuffre said, Maxwell “trained me as a sex slave”, according to a filing in that set of unsealed court papers.
The documents released in July 2020 also provided insight into Maxwell and Epstein’s relationship.
In a January 2015 email exchange, Epstein told Maxwell: “You have done nothing wrong and i woudl [sic] urge you to start acting like it … go outside, head high, not as an esacping [sic] convict. go to parties. deal with it.”
A large collection of documents in Giuffre’s civil case were also unsealed in August 2019. Those papers included accusations, since denied, that global leaders were participants in Epstein’s trafficking ring.
Epstein was arrested on 6 July 2019 for sex trafficking. He was found dead in his jail cell on 10 August of that year; authorities determined that he hanged himself.
Maxwell was sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years imprisonment. She has maintained her innocence and is appealing her conviction.
Asked for comment on the documents’ unsealing, Maxwell’s attorneys, Arthur L Aidala and Diana Fabi Samson, said: “Ghislaine Maxwell took no position on the court’s recent decision to unseal documents in Giuffre v Maxwell as these disclosures have no bearing on her or her pending appeal.”
“Ghislaine’s focus is on the upcoming appellate argument asking for her entire case to dismissed,” they also said. “She is confident that she will obtain justice in the second circuit court of appeals. She has consistently and vehemently maintained her innocence.”
Monty will be in to tick tock over Clinton any,… minute….now…
As Usman ‘Hamas lives matter’ walked off, I didn’t stand for him.
Good old Way back machine.
Dot, sdog presents a very good case it was plagiarism and you can see it for yourself by reading both pieces.
sdog links to the original piece in American Thinker. In fact sdog had been warning about Adonis’ plagiarism in previous threads.
It’s pretty obvious. Also funny how Adonis asks if was possible that the other writer had copied his. The original, American Thinker piece came first though. 🙂
Here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130312063614/http://catallaxyfiles.com/2013/03/03/guest-post-mk50-european-fascism-redux/
Merv.
Building offshore wind farms can permanently deafen porpoises, but it’s OK now with Bubble Walls
By Jo Nova
Now they tell us
Wind farms save the world, and absolutely do not hurt dolphins or whales but did you know the industry has developed bubble curtains to protect porpoises hearing from the things that never harm them (isn’t that nice of them)?
Bubble curtains are being “widely” used in Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.
The BBC is happy to report it now there are good results from a study, but apparently they weren’t too enthused in 2013 about telling us how pile -driving during construction can permanently destroy hearing in marine mammals.
Indeed, ocean noise is such a problem the pile-driving teams use acoustic deterrents — loud noises designed to scare marine life away before they get started on the industrial noise.
But even the “safety warning” may itself be dangerous.
So that’s alright then, windfarm construction used to kill porpoises, and the BBC kept that a secret, but now that we’ve solved it, it’s news we can use, right?
“Like a giant jacuzzi.”
How bubble curtains protect porpoises from wind farm noise
As huge offshore wind farms spread across Europe’s North and Baltic seas, efforts grow to buffer the impact on wildlife.
Over the past decade, a curious invention has spread across Europe’s northern seas. It’s called a big bubble curtain, it works a bit like a giant jacuzzi, and it helps protect porpoises from the massive underwater noise caused by wind farm construction.
The original pile-driving in that study was actually done around 2009. If intrepid investigators from the BBC cared about marine life for real and investigated, they could possibly have reported it 14 years ago and before another 4,000 wind turbines were hammered in to the sea floor.
Do dolphins matter or don’t they?
It appears the BBC only mentioned underwater noise pollution once before in 2018, and the one reference to a windfarm was buried in a list of other industrial sources of noise.
There were no headlines “Windfarm construction kills porpoises”.
If coal miners used pile-drivers and was killing dolphins, the BBC would headline it and then repeat it until children at school were signing songs about it.
But those wind farmers are the nicest guys designing these jucuzzis just for porpoises:
Some in crowd abusing Smith as he walks off.
However, according to readers of this masthead, Vaughan may have jumped the gun in giving Cummins such high praise.
In our house, “Pattie” was a great favourite. Until he “took the knee”.
Correction …
“Great is My Truth and mighty above all things.”
From Michael Smith News
Disney Pixar Magic Island
Count the media organisations that accurately report this:
Trump DID NOT go to Epstein’s Paedo Island.
Some in crowd abusing Smith as he walks off.
I assume because of the sandpaper incident. Yet they fawn before that mongrel Warner.
We reckon that Smith palpably wears his disgrace. He knows, and accepts, that he will never be Captain again. He is lucky to be still playing Test cricket for Australia & knows it. No such demeanour from Warner.
I have nothing but respect for the crew on that JAL plane. And also the self-discipline of the passengers. It’s a remarkable story.
Has the rumour about Tilly Fleischer (1932 Olympian medalist and Berlin Games Gold Medalist) having an affair with and kid (Gisella) with Adolf Hitler ever been conclusively disproven?
Qantas – The Spirit of Islam.
I regret I have but one tick to give you for that one oldozzie
Comments on flags in Sydney.
Ferries flying Aboriginal flags.
Astra Zenica HQ flying Oz, Aboriginal and rainbow flags
My favourite is Queen Victoria building. Has the Oz, Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander flags but the Oz flag is in the middle and much larger.
As Usman ‘Hamas lives matter’ walked off, I didn’t stand for him.
Yea Cassie! I don’t think Ozzie is the sharpest tack in the pack. You would think he would pull his head in, considering his brother’s involvement in a fake terror incident.
Why Iran and Hezbollah are cautious of escalating the war with Israel
Leader of militant group delivers measured response to Beirut attack, holding back from making explicit threats
Paul Nuki, GLOBAL HEALTH SECURITY EDITOR, LONDON
At 6pm Beirut time, the world tuned in to listen to Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, the region’s foremost militant group.
Would he unleash a hellfire of rockets on Israel in revenge for Tuesday’s killing of a Hamas delegation on Lebanese soil, or would he hold off?
And what of the twin explosions that ripped through a crowd in the Iranian city of Kerman on Wednesday, killing more than 100 civilians near the grave of the slain Revolutionary Guards general Qassem Soleimani? Would that also be attributed to Israel and, if so, might Iran order its proxy Hezbollah and Nasrallah to launch a major assault on Israel?
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, did not name Israel in his response to the bombing on Wednesday but vowed a “harsh response”.
If Iran intends that response to be directed at Israel and to come from Hezbollah, it was not evident from Nasrallah’s decidedly cautious speech.
Just as he took a “nothing to do with us” approach after the Oct 7 massacre, telling the world that Hamas had acted independently and without warning, he again held back.
The strike on Beirut was “a major, dangerous crime about which we cannot be silent” but he made no explicit threats, saying only that if Israel launched a war against Lebanon it “will regret it” and Hezbollah would fight “until the end”.
Iran has been manoeuvring since the Oct 7 attack to distance itself from the massacre.
It fears – probably correctly – that some in Israel would like to bounce the US into a full-blown regional war and does not want to give it any further excuse for doing so.
It worries, too, that Israel may already have resolved to turn Hezbollah, its ace card, to dust.
This is why Israeli analysts were predicting a “measured” response from Nasrallah ahead of his speech. It would not have been proofread by Iran but it may as well have been.
Tuesday’s strike in southern Beirut, which killed six, had been precise and carefully targeted, said Israeli experts. There was no collateral damage and the main target, Saleh al-Arouri, a founder of Hamas’s military wing, had long been seen as a legitimate military target.
A Hezbollah response is still expected, but is likely to be a limited strike on a military target. The killing of a group of IDF soldiers, perhaps.
That would fit within the acceptable tit-for-tat boundaries that now pass for normal in Israel’s north. A rocket strike on Tel Aviv which killed civilians, in contrast, might precipitate an overwhelming Israeli assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Sima Shine, an Iran specialist who served as head of research at the Israeli intelligence division of Mossad, said she expected Nasrallah to look for something that was “different” from the daily exchange of rocket fire that has characterised fighting in the north since Oct 7, while remaining within the unwritten but established rules of limited engagement.
“If he finds a situation where he finds a group of 10 [Israeli] soldiers, that, from his point of view, will be wonderful. But he knows we are being very careful about that so perhaps he will have to wait,” she told The Telegraph.
Shine dismissed any suggestion that Israel would have had any role in the bombing of the Iranian crowd or that Iran would hit Israel directly. “They know that was not us. Israel does not do attacks like that and they know it. It is likely internal. IS or one of the terror groups like that.”
Military logic for Israeli attack on Hezbollah
Lebanon is already on its knees economically, and Hezbollah, one of the country’s leading political parties, will not be forgiven by voters if it brings the wrath of Israel down on them.
Nasrallah will also be well aware that the Benjamin Netanyahu-led coalition government in Israel is becoming increasingly fragile and may – consciously or otherwise – see a new front in Lebanon as a means to defer the domestic political reckoning to come.
An Israeli attack on Hezbollah, and perhaps even Iran, has a military logic too: Israel’s towns in the north have already been evacuated, the fighting in Gaza is slowing and the US has a naval task force in the area which could be bounced into providing help if necessary.
Why live with Hezbollah hanging like a sword of Damocles over your head while you could just get on and bomb it now to kingdom come, some in the Israeli cabinet are said to be asking.
“What we are doing in Gaza, we can do in Beirut,” Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, warned just three weeks ago on a visit to Israel’s northern border. “If we will be dragged into a violent conflict, a war, [Hezbollah] will pay a heavy price.”
‘Hezbollah’s strength should not be wasted’
Emile Hokayem, director for regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said he thought Hezbollah would respond cautiously.
“I suspect Hezbollah’s (and Iran’s) preference is to refrain from responding immediately and massively,” he said on X, formerly Twitter.
“The same basic calculus holds: Hezbollah is to be engaged only if Tehran sees an existential threat to itself. Its advanced capabilities and military strength should not be wasted in an indirect and inconclusive war.”
Even if Nasrallah and his Iranian backers prefer caution, there is a significant risk that some of his fighters go it alone, or that a mundane daily exchange goes awry and escalates quickly into a full blown war.
There have already been over 100 Hezbollah fighters killed in Southern Lebanon since this war began, so tensions are high.
If he can, Nasrallah – who has experienced the power of an Israeli bombardment previously – will get Hezbollah to play the long game.
He knows that Israel is losing international support as the memory of the October massacre fades and the killing in Gaza continues unabated. He can see, too, that Israeli society and politics is horribly fractured.
If he can contain his fighters, he will wait to strike Israel at its weakest possible moment. For the same reason, Israel may decide to take out Hezbollah now.
Jeff Thomson.
If measuring opposition fear levels he was the best. Only whispering death Holding compared to this guy.
Which century was the Adonis plagiarism scandal ?
Seems so far back that Rameses II was ruling.
Clearly a very important moment in the history of the world. Up there with 1066, the American Civil War and WW2.
There are hundreds if not thousands of F-35s on order and hundreds being produced each year. The F 22 has high maintenance needs and exorbitant cost per hour(~70,000 USD) but are no longer being manufactured. The F-35 is not unaffordable, it is now cheaper than some 4th gens. The F-35 running costs have much reduced and due to economies of scale and the cost per plane is much better than before. Most people don’t realise that costing of US aircraft often incorporates R&D, ground crew salaries and maintenance facilities so comparisons with Russia are dubious. The F-35 is superior to the SU-57 and always will be. BTW I’m doubtful about fiberglass radar absorption, additionally shape is still an important factor in stealth and the SU-57 is not optimized in that regard. It is the superior 4++ fighter but will never make the 5th gen category. 20 aircraft is a pitiful production run.
This article is propaganda BS written for an audience ignorant about modern fighter procurement and maintenance.
Ed (“My Assertions Are Facts”) Case has previously claimed on C.L.’s blog that he did.
But he has always had it in for Trump.
sdog, Gab, Fisk, semenblogger and Oh Clne On called out the incident.
I wasn’t reading the blog at the time it seems. I agree with Jarrah. I couldn’t care less who wrote it, they are interesting ideas. Then again, I can see why Sinc might have been pissed off.
Anthony Albanese urged to reveal discussions with Alan Joyce at parliament meeting, weeks after Qantas opposed Qatar Airways’ bid for extra flights into Australia
The Coalition has demanded Anthony Albanese come clean on what was discussed with former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce at a private meeting just weeks after the Australian airline opposed Qatar’s application for more services into the country.
David Wu
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is facing scrutiny again over the government’s decision to block extra flights into Australia by a Middle Eastern airline, after it was revealed he held a secret meeting with Qantas’ former chief executive officer.
Qatar Airways had sought the Australian government in August 2022 to expand its 28 services in major capital cities by another 21 flights each week.
However, the request was denied almost one year later by Transport Minister Catherine King before accusations were thrown around it was to help Qantas remain dominant.
Mr Albanese repeatedly stressed in the days and weeks after the rejection that Qantas played no part in the government’s decision to block Qatar’s application.
But a redacted copy of the Prime Minister’s diary has revealed he met with then-Qantas chief Alan Joyce six weeks after the Middle Eastern airline made its request.
According to the Australian Financial Review, Mr Albanese had a meeting with Mr Joyce for 30 minutes at Parliament House on the morning of November 23, 2022, about six weeks after the Flying Kangaroo opposed Qatar’s application.
The government had asked for input by Qantas as part of the application process for bilateral air rights.
The airline flagged the extra flights was unfair to non-government funded airlines and suggested it would result in Australian job losses, according to The Australian.
Ms King in a press conference said the decision was in the nation’s interest, later pointing to the invasive search of five Australian women – who had implored the government not to approve the airline’s extra flight request – at a Qatari airport in 2020.
In light of the new revelation, the opposition has called on Mr Albanese to come clean and reveal what he and Mr Joyce discussed in their Parliament House meeting.
Apparently some Palli supporters have stormed the Californian Parliament…
https://www.kcra.com/article/pro-palestine-demonstrators-force-california-assembly-into-recess-gaza-cease-fire/46278609
I’m expecting each of them to be sentenced…. lol! farken…
Actually I promoted my own guest piece and laid the boot into the semenblogger.
On the Epstein List.
So far nothing much that hasn’t been previously reported.
At this stage, if the official accounts of the named ‘names’ are to be believed, the whole sordid sex empire was done exclusively for Epstein’s personal benefit.
Apparently.
The early morning press in London appears to be working overtime, thumbing through 943 pages of unsealed evidence, desperate to be the first out with evidence that links P. Andrew to criminal activity and moah Shock Horror Scandal.
The Beaby See tells us to watch this space.
Looks like the SCG is about to get a drenching Cassie, unfortunately for you. Rain radar has a lot of fairly chunky stuff coming for the next two or three hours.
It was almost 11 years ago, people have got to forget about it, either way.
Migration once again seems likely to keep Australia out of more serious economic trouble. That makes it all the more important to get housing right. AFR
I refuse to accept this mantra. Note there are absolutely no qualifications made in this article in the AFR.
While increased population obviously increases economic demand – there are other consequences of unrestrained migration from overseas. We are witnessing the worst at this very juncture in our history – the social division caused by multicultural immigration that does not reflect the values of the existing populations.
Inflationary trends only add to the problems caused by continuous and growing immigration.
It is mentioned by only one person.
That person mentions it continually.
Rooster
It was the same “century” when the former Harvard president was plagiarising. In fact hers was before the old Cat incident. I just thought it was interesting how the Driller was going throttle-up against her lifting when he’s been caught defending and denying Adonis’. Other than the century, what’s your position on lifting in general?
(It doesn’t appear you’ve had tertiary training otherwise you wouldn’t be so blase about plagiarism. I can understand that.)
Is this really a surprise?
The fever swamp did their head in over 50,000 sealed indictments.
I don’t expect anything that comes from kite flying anymore.
You also keep on saying he welched on a bet he never participated in.
It wouldn’t be an SCG test without a rain delay!
At least 95 killed in Iran ‘terrorist attack’ at event honoring general taken out in US drone strike, Tehran and WH official says
Nearly 100 people were killed at an event honoring former Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani on Wednesday in what local authorities and a senior White House official are calling a “terrorist” attack.
Thousands of Iranians had gathered at Soleimani’s gravesite in Kerman to mark the fourth anniversary of his death, carrying photos of the former head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, when authorities say two bombs went off.
The first explosion occurred just 700 meters from Soleimani’s grave, while the second was a kilometer away, Iranian national media reports.
Graphic video shared online later showed the crowds running away as emergency crews responded, with bodies lying on the ground.
The footage suggested that the second blast occurred some 15 minutes after the first — a tactic often used by terrorist groups to target emergency responders and increase the death toll.
The two bombs were reportedly placed in suitcases and detonated remotely.
“The blasts were caused by terrorist attacks,” one local official said. “Several gas canisters exploded on the road leading to the cemetery.”
A senior White House official said that “just based on the MO, it does look like a terrorist attack. [It’s] a type of thing we’ve seen ISIS do in the past.”
The death toll from the explosions rose quickly Wednesday morning, with the head of Kerman’s emergency services telling state-run media it was at 103 by 10 a.m. EST.
But later in the day, that number was revised to 95 when officials realized there were repeat names on a list of victims, Iranian Health Minister Bahram Einollahi told state TV.
However, the death toll could rise again as many of the at least 211 wounded are in critical condition.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
But Iran has multiple enemies that could be behind it, including exile groups, militant organizations and state actors.
The country has provided financial support to Hamas, as well as Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels — all of whom are currently fighting Israel.
Being on the Epstein list just means you did business with him, right? It doesn’t mean you’re an offender…?
(Being on there 50 times might be a bit of a worry, tho)
Never happened.
Provide citation ……….. or STFU.
Brilliant batsman, but a weak little man who’s not a captain’s bottom.
I expect a line of once-young personages with their hands out for no-admission settlements.
That’s a small step for mankind. We’re now moving along from
1. Citation or it didn’t happen.
2. Sinc was perfectly fine with it
3. You’re lying.
4. You’re a dago wog.
5. you welshed on this bet. (there was none)
6. See, no citation exists.
7. You just made something up. As usual.
8. Just Scholl by
9. “You’re gutless, amoral, & continually exhibit the lack of values imbued during your upbringing.”
10. His always bringing up
To, it happened more than 10 years ago.
At least we’re now we’re getting somewhere.
Marsh or Boonie?
Merv.
Nah – always Boonie.
Still got my Boonie doll. Just needs fresh batteries so he can start yapping at 03:00AM for no apparent reason.
It is not so much a matter of him not having the balls to accept a bet.
He knows he blowhards & makes stuff up. He knows he’d lose the bet.
It is financial preservation on his part.
It is the equivalent of showing cowardice when called on something he said. He won’t ‘step outside’ after mouthing off, as he knows he’ll lose.
America’s role as guarantor of global freedom of navigation and defender of “Law of the Sea” treaties is taking a hit.
The Biden administration continues to dither rather than to act decisively in liquidating the capability of Iran’s proxy, the Yemeni Houthis, who have been effectively blocking passage of commercial ships in and out of the Red Sea, decimating traffic through the Suez Canal.
US Lack of Resolve Incentivizing China on Taiwan
. Bluntly put, the nations of the Free World have allowed global commerce to be held hostage by the revolutionary group of theocrat terrorists in Iran and their tribal terrorist tool in Yemen.
. The primary problem seems to be that so far at least, there has been no attempt to hold the ringleader, Iran, accountable economically, militarily, hold-on-power or any way. This, incidentally, is the same Iranian regime that has lately escalated its enrichment of uranium to near-nuclear weapons capability, and has now moved a warship to the Red Sea.
. That is why the Iranian regime has proxies: so that they will do the dirty work and take the hits — while the Iranians tuck into dinner.
. You can be sure that Communist China’s leaders are closely evaluating the inadequate US responses to more than 100 attacks on US forces in Syria and Iraq — just since October.
Houthi terrorists claim that they are only targeting vessels with goods bound for Israel or ships suspected of Israeli ownership, but the the US military’s Central Command reported that, since November 19, the Houthis have attacked 23 ships.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, the Houthis’ patron, closed out 2023 by launching its seventh drone attack on December 24 on a Japanese-owned freighter in the Indian Ocean.
This Iran-backed assault has caused several of the world’s largest shipping companies to suspend voyages through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, a route that normally enables the passage of 30% of the world’s container traffic, 9.2 million barrels of oil a day, and 4% of the shipping of natural gas.
The shipping giants that are pausing normal operations as a result of Houthi attacks may also be illustrating serious failing confidence in US pledges to protect freedom of navigation in the region.
Ships are being forced to haul cargo in a detour around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, a route that lengthens their voyage by about 6,000 nautical miles.
Bluntly put, the nations of the Free World have allowed global commerce to be held hostage by the revolutionary group of theocrat terrorists in Iran and their tribal terrorist tool in Yemen.
The US has been, until now, the ultimate guarantor freedom of commercial sea transport through the world’s maritime choke-points.
You can be sure that Communist China’s leaders are closely evaluating the inadequate US responses to more than 100 attacks on US forces in Syria and Iraq — just since October.
The US excuse for not taking more aggressive action against the Iran-directed Houthi terrorists — the fear of igniting a wider war in the Middle East beyond the Israeli-Hamas conflict — is not likely to encourage global economic growth or to placate adversaries.
China’s war planners are also not likely impressed by US naval and air assets’ interception of Houthi drones and missiles or even sinking a few Houthi vessels.
The primary problem seems to be that so far at least, there has been no attempt to hold the ringleader, Iran, accountable economically, militarily, hold-on-power or any way.
This, incidentally, is the same Iranian regime that has lately escalated its enrichment of uranium to near-nuclear weapons capability, and has now moved a warship to the Red Sea.
Alas no citation, nor a withdrawing of your remarks, nor an apology from you to me for your ‘mistaken’ comments.
Grow a pair of balls & admit your ‘mistake’
You coward.
Delta A,
go further back than 11.59 pm and you will find Danny De Vito and Sideshow Bob were fly fishing long before then in hopes of a bite.
It happens with monotonous regularity.
JC at 2:21.
As I remember it.
Sinc certainly did not indicate whether he accepted Mk50’s feeble explanation or not.
He linked to sdog tipping us off with the link to the American Thinker article, then linked to Mk50’s dissembling excuse making.
At no point did he indicate that he thought the implausible excuse-making was plausible.
In other words, he was not blinded by the gold braid on the sleeves.
Yes! A most excellently horrible piece of promotional tatt!
We believed ours was possessed and required excorcism.
Driller, for a blowhard to be talking about manliness and “balls” is something else. That’s supreme blowharding.
Here’s your chance to shine, cowboy.
Tells us if you believe it’s plagiarism or not and just end this infernal ambiguity you’re creating.
Go!
My comment in the Oz website re the proud Qantas badge-wearers is still awaiting approval after an hour:
Rejected of course. Have emailed them in protest.
I still reckon Merv. That thing had its own postcode.
a lot of fairly chunky stuff coming for the next two or three hours.
But, but the Bureau Of Mythology didn’t predict this. Some showers mainly in the West.
Bit like the Queensland showers.
Nanny state news (the Courier-Mail):
I’m with the pilot on this one. Too much bureaucracy. Stupid rules.
Hivemind tries some new squid inking to provide “clarity” on the Quaintarse pally badge wearers.
Su Dharmapala Votes Yes & #AI Chick
@SuDharmapala
Just FYI – Qantas staff frequently wear lapel pins from other countries to indicate to passengers that they speak the language from that country. For example – you may wear a French or German lapel pin. This staff member could well be someone who speaks Arabic.
…
Su Dharmapala Votes Yes & #AI Chick
@SuDharmapala
Taking photos of people without their consent in workplaces is illegal unless that person is engaging in illegal activities. This person could well be indicating that they speak Arabic. Let me come and take photos of you in your mum’s shed.
…
Su Dharmapala Votes Yes & #AI Chick
@SuDharmapala
Nothing males a white man feel more masculine quite like attacking a woman of colour for wearing a lapel pin. How these snowflakes survive is quite beyond me.
Im assuming the mandatory ÿou have a small dick”is her last tool in the box…
Sounds… joyful, infused with a deftly applied sense of humour.
More like the arts core dyke band Fran Kelly managed at university, something only Rick from The Young Ones could enjoy.
Why is everyone always trying to spoil the hard earned disreputable nature of the music profession. If they are any good the only extra curricular activities a musician should engage with are getting loaded and getting a leg over with the nearest available strumpet. All else is above their station.
But Iran has multiple enemies that could be behind it, including exile groups, militant organizations and state actors.
But why a terrorist attack on a memorial service for one of Iran’s greatest heroes, beloved by so many Iranians – particularly from rural Iran?
Pundits have suggested an ISIS attack. But a long shot would be that it is indicative of a counter revolutionary movement against the old ayatollahs who rule Iran. A long shot, I know.
Drillsie
I was actually trying to help you, you old dingo.
I read the critical missive you posted about the Harvard rat and subsequently realised your argument had a flashing lights deep hole there with the many times you’ve denied the rear admiral’s lift.
Good intentions always go unrewarded with you. I should’ve learnt my lesson ages ago after the countless times I’ve tried to help you.
They Shall Not Grow Postmodern: How Digital Trickery Is Changing How We View WWI, WWII & Swinging London
ED DRISCOLL
In the fall of 2018, Peter Jackson released his documentary on WWI, “They Shall Not Grow Old,” to its initial limited release in theaters before becoming a staple of streaming websites.
Given access to the newsreel footage of England’s Imperial War Museum and carte blanche to create any documentary he saw fit with it to commemorate the centennial of WWI’s armistice, Jackson’s technical crew did a brilliant job of restoring footage that was shot during the earliest days of movie newsreels.
His team stabilized the footage, corrected the speed of miles of hand-cranked images, and colorized the black and white footage, to make WWI accessible to a new generation of audiences who lack the patience to muddle through ancient, grainy black and white footage.
Jackson also used his own collection of WWI-era guns and artillery(!) to create sound effects that are as period-accurate as possible, and even hired forensic lip readers, who make their day-to-day living studying security camera footage of burglars, to ascertain what was being said by the men in the century-old silent footage his team had restored.
The recent Netflix series “World War II: From the Front Lines,” narrated by John Boyega, who played Finn in the recent “Star Wars” trilogy, attempts to do much the same for the next World War.
However, taken together with Jackson’s “They Shall Not Grow Old,” the two documentaries raise questions about how future generations will look back on the footage of the 20th century, and the authenticity of what they will be seeing – and quite possibly, the lack thereof.
The classic 1970s Thames Television WWII miniseries “The World at War” used the footage of the Imperial War Museum and numerous other stock footage libraries to tell the history of WWII as had never been explored on television before.
However, because film restoration technology was somewhere between non-existent and in its absolutely infancy, the black and white newsreel footage “The World at War” used was most assuredly the real thing, and not digitally processed and colorized to a fare-the-well.
Because of the role of the battlefield cameraman, the footage was rarely as “in your face” as something shot by Hollywood for a dramatic war movie, but it was believable because it was real.
In contrast, “World War II: From the Front Lines” takes wartime footage that was much more competently shot than footage from the previous war, and massively overcooks the processing, often to absurdly surrealistic ends, with shots that seem almost psychedelic in the end result.
Even more so than Peter Jackson’s reworking of WWI footage, it might make this material more palatable to 21st century audiences, but at the cost of diluting the original footage that’s somewhere at the base of the producers’ digital processing.
This trailer gives only a hint of how much processing has been slathered over some of the shots seen during the Netflix miniseries, but it does highlight another issue with the footage.
As with Peter Jackson’s WWI documentary, “World War II: From the Front Lines” recomposites the original 4X3 footage into the widescreen 16X9 aspect ratio used by most 21st century HDTV sets, to make the footage that much more appealing to Netflix viewers, with little care that 1940s-era audiences would not have viewed footage in this screen format:
But she was a big maori woman…. and they can be scary!
Suwheelbarrow needs to have a think.
Not a smart move to wear a non-nation palestinian badge on a flight from NZ to Australia. Especially after a well documented and proven slaughter by vile beasts.
Especially when the it wearing it has a head like a robber’s dog!
Ya couldn’t call that a hostess.
It’s a little more than that.
It is trying to gain status by claiming other’s work as your own.
How hard is it to type “From American Thinker. Well worth a read …” or something similar?
More from the Above Link
https://pjmedia.com/ed-driscoll/2024/01/03/they-shall-not-grow-postmodern-how-digital-trickery-is-changing-how-we-view-wwi-wwii-and-swinging-london-n4925206
Tomorrow Never Knows
If we can’t trust film these days, what about sound? The recent remixes of the Beatles’ best-selling albums of the 1960s raise the same questions about audio as the aforementioned WWI and WWII documentaries do about film. Stereo mixes for pop and rock LPs were rare until the late 1960s, as mono record players were far more common than stereo, at least until stereophonic FM radio became a staple of the underground rock world in the late 1960s. But even beyond going from mono to stereo, remixing a 50-year old album allows for a mix to be spread out in a manner that more primitive mixing desks wouldn’t have allowed in 1967, and deeper bass sounds than what was necessary to prevent the needles playing vinyl LP records from skipping out of their grooves back in the day. However, if taken too far, they run the risk of creating an experience that mid-‘60s
When remixing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” for its 50th anniversary in 2017, Giles Martin, the son of legendary Beatles producer George Martin, had access to all of the individual elements the Beatles had created for their classic album. This was because shortly before the Beatles began work on “Sgt. Pepper,” management at EMI, their record label, had some inkling of the historic nature of the work the band was creating, and had ordered their engineers to make safety copies of each track the band recorded before they were permanently bounced down onto studio’s four-track recorders.
However, no such edict existed when the Beatles recorded their equally groundbreaking “Revolver” the previous year, and the album was mixed using four-track recordings that contained bounces of numerous earlier tracks that until recent technological developments could not be isolated and recovered as separate elements:
The Phantom Digital Menace
Hollywood has been doing something similar for deceased or aging actors via digital technology for almost a decade prior. 2016’s “Star Wars: Rogue One” seemingly offered up the late actor Peter Cushing’s image as the evil Grand Moff Tarkin, and Carrie Fisher’s image as a young radiant Princess Leia from the first Star Wars movie.
As far as Darth Vader, in 2022, given that James Earl Jones was then 91-years old, it was announced that Disney would be replacing his voice with an AI-generated replica going forward:
Perhaps the most significant change to footage that millions had previously viewed was in 1997, when George Lucas used the re-releases of his first three “Star Wars” films as a sort of demonstration reel for the digital technology he was planning for his prequel trilogy beginning two years later with “The Phantom Menace.”
Perhaps the most extreme example of these changes were used in the scenes that introduce the iconic Mos Eisley space cantina in “Star Wars.” Lucas replaced the gritty exterior footage he had shot in Tunisia in 1976 with early computer-generated digital effects that resembled a cross between a cartoon and a video game:
It appears that IS could indeed be responsible for the attack in Kerman in Iran. I didn’t know that IS was making inroads into Iran. Iran may well have more to concern itself other than with Israel & the US.
In September, the Fars news agency reported that a key “operative” affiliated with the Islamic State group, in charge of carrying out “terrorist operations” in Iran, had been arrested in Kerman.
In July, Iran’s intelligence ministry said it had disbanded a network “linked to Israel’s spy organisation” that had been plotting “terrorist operations” across Iran, IRNA reported.
The alleged plots included “planning an explosion at the grave” of Soleimani, it said.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/iran-blames-israel-us-for-deadly-blasts-near-grave-of-guards-general-soleimani/articleshow/106529274.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
Pretty efficient allocation of resources. Those funeral processions always seem to have a high density of the wrong sort of people, the sort that could do with a bit of terrorising.
How would these Leftards feel if the flight attendant had a MAGA badge?
Seriously.
The attendant would be howled out of their job.
Still no:
a) Citation
b) Admission of ‘error’
c) or Apology.
This requires either:
a) Many citations, or
b) Many apologies for lying.
Choose one.
Another is the Baluchi insurgency. They regularly do this sort of thing in both Iran and Pakistan since Baluchistan stretches over both sides of the Iran-Paki border. Kerman, the city where the bombing happened, is pretty close to there, and there’s a recent history.
The relevance of Mk50’s theft of an article and passing it off as his own work is apparent in the (ahem) ‘context’ of Ms Gay of Harvard’s habitual lifting of the work of others.
As JC pointed out, many joining the (justified) stacks-on of Ms Gay were jumping in to defend Mk50’s dodgy behaviour at the time.
Flexible ethics.
Was I one of those ‘jumping in’ to defend the alleged dodgy behaviour?
From OldOzzie
Jan 4, 2024 3:00 PM
This is China taking the piss out of Washington.
The South China Morning Post gives us a great interactive graphic of the route of this “rapid and safe rail traffic“. From China to Europe, the rapid and safe rail link travels via Kazakistan, Russia, and Belarus – rapidly and safely, as only Russian and Chinese infrastructure could do.
The CCP is larfing at the US and its emasculated western allies.
“Former Prime Minister tells The Telegraph he is concerned about ‘worrying politicisation’ of the force as it appeals for potential witnesses”
Firstly, the London plod must be taking cues from the Vic Plod. Appealing for ‘potential witnesses’….where have we heard that before? I tell ya, the Vic Plod did the same thing to the late Cardinal George Pell.
But you know what? This tells you everything you need to know about the endless spinelessness, cowardice and laziness of successive right of centre governments across the Anglosphere for well over a decade. They all follow the same script of doing nothing. Be it Blob Johnson in the UK in December 2019, when Blob and the Tories were given a majority of over 80 seats in a landslide not seen in UK politics for decades, be it Tony Abbott and the Liberals in September 2013 when they were elected in a landslide, and once in power, do they do anything in government to combat the increasing politicisation, the never ending wokeness and the debilitating far-left progressive ideology that is slowly but surely being permeated to destroy everything? NO, they do NOTHING. When in power all of them refuse to fight any culture wars, in fact they capitulate to them.
I don’t think many here quite understand just how demoralised people are in the UK now, all of this has happened under woke conservative governments since 2010. Conservatives since 2010 did nothing to alter/take down any of the ruinous Blair policies. Successive Conservative governments have just stood idly by whilst ordinary indigenous Brits are smeared as racists, whilst crime is rampant in major cities, whilst immigration is out of control and is destroying the very soul of the UK, whilst ordinary indigenous Brits are not even allowed to take pride in their rich history, because they’re told that their history is waaaacist. And now, Even Enid Blyton’s Famous Five stories are not spared, the tomboy character of George (Georgina) has now been racialised. We’ve seen a black Anne Boleyn, a black Queen Charlotte and now a black George. Everything is now being blackwashed, white indigenous Europeans are being extinguished. I think it is despicable.
But back to Blob, when he was PM did he he speak up about any of this? Did he speak up for the indigenous peoples of the British isles? Did he speak to condemn the progressive cries of racism? Did he speak up to condemn the absurd and very politicised policing in the UK? No he did not, not a peep, not a whisper, not a word. All of this has been going on for years, with ordinary Brits being charged with ‘non-hate crimes” and so on. Blob. when PM, said nothing. He was too busy distracted by his girlfriend/wife, by net zero, by ruinables, and by partying whilst forcing others to lock down.
Blob Johnson should keep his fat mouth shut. He directly contributed to this.
Sure she does, but the one Arabic pin she is wearing just happens to be Palestinian, not, say, Iraqi.
And I suppose all the other flight attendants speak Arabic too?
Qantas staff are not allowed – or at least not supposed to make any kind of political statement, but then they have been flouting that rule for a while.
Toad, “Bureau of Mythology”, I’ll pay that one.
Driller
I’m trying to help you get past this. I can’t help if you continue to lie and obfuscate like this.
Frankly, this is becoming intolerable and you need to realise the damage you’re doing to yourself.
This Su Dharmapala woman is trying to claim resolution 43/177 in 1988 granted Palestine to be a country.
ffs, the idiocy!
Still no citation, nor apology.
What a chickenshit you are.
This staff member could well be someone who speaks Arabic.
Err…no, that staff member would be lucky to speak English properly.
Just admit it was plagiarism and we’re done for the day. Take a deep breath , push down and start typing. I know you can do it.
One sentence in a very long AFR article on immigration says everything that the supporters of a “Big Australia” want hidden:
Cassie of Sydney
Jan 4, 2024 3:47 PM
Its important to remember that the ëlites””hate those they rule over.
They look around at the sewer of graft and corruption they rule over, cushioned by a load of pubic serpents in an “Ïmperial” capital and wonder why the plebs want their lives to improve.
The sheer gall of the commoner looking up at the “kings” and expecting the mongocracy ensconced in both major parties to be capable of getting the basics right.
I find one very good proxy for quality of life to be the progressive shitholification of Australian gardens from green lawn covered pleasant places to dried up dustbowls of artificial lawn and cactus, done because the spacks in charge decided they should impose “price rationing”(were not FORCING you to stop gardening, we are just making its affordability more selective) rather than secure cheap, abundant resource that literally falls from the sky. While adding 500,000+ new consumption units to the GDP bullshit pile.
Judges overseeing cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot have handed down a combined 847 years’ worth of prison sentences to more than 450 defendants as of the end of 2023.
Sentences spanned from a few days to 22 years, according to court filings and Department of Justice data.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/january-6-defendants-combined-847-years-prison
I got into a little argument with a couple of twitter twats yesterday who claimed that the terrorists who groped Mia Shem was checking for injuries.
As though a) a terrorist would never sexually assault a woman and b) Mia couldn’t tell the difference between a sexual assault and a medical examination.
(She’d been shot in the hand/forearm)
Point is, some people will say ANYTHING.
Still no citation.
Lack of a citation is you agreeing you simply made something up.
No big deal, as nobody expects any better of you. Look around, nobody is prepared to back you on this. Nobody.
That may be a clue.
Bruce of Newcastle
Jan 4, 2024 3:36 PM
Another is the Baluchi insurgency. They regularly do this sort of thing in both Iran and Pakistan since Baluchistan stretches over both sides of the Iran-Paki border. Kerman, the city where the bombing happened, is pretty close to there, and there’s a recent history.
Good one Bruce. Baluchis are crazy as are all the Gulf Arabs on the northern shore of the.. er ..’Persian gulf’. These tribes have a history of constant warfare, raiding, looting. Even the Pakistanis can’t stand them as they frequently terrorise Karachi and the new port of Gwadar. I’ve met quite a few Balochs and they live up to the stereotype. The Pashtun are civilised by comparison. There are some that claimed asylum in Australia. It is all BS, but a great sob story always works with our bureaucrats.
Building dams, building nukes for desalinisation or boring deeper is too hard, and the private sector must be banned or severely curtailed from doing so, it would make us look bad.
Lawn, roses, conifers, deciduous plants. So much better than the Australian native crap.
For all his populist bluster, Bozza is very much part of the Establishment.
Sometime in the 1980’s, well before Johnson became a thing, the Establishment decided, or realised, that the migrant population, and the fractured communities that resulted, outranked the indigenous Brits on the totem pole of challenge to authority. In the result, the British social compact has been redesigned from the top down by policy and legislation and experts and the courts and the commentariat and the administration that has grown up around all that.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is being shown to be unfit for purpose.
So our quality of life has declined.
Except for Ray Epps.
Feds Want To Jail Ray Epps For Just 6 Months Over Role In Jan. 6 Riot (4 Jan)
Just so that you know (a) he is indeed a Fed aka “compelling mitigating factors” and (b) the fix is in. I doubt he’ll ever actually see the inside of Rikers, or any prison however soft.
Cassie is hereby granted the title of “Rantologist Extraordinare” because of the quality of her rants. (99% of which I agree with btw.)
(Why only 99% I hear you ask, because only God is perfect.)
Thanks Cassie, and more power to your fingers on the type pad.
Dot have a look at Hossenfelder’s latest vids on nuke plants. She reveals so much dishonest crap being peddled by the likes of Bowen. Nuke plants can be built well under 10 years, the huge cost is mostly paranoia driven red tape, and the waste problem is rubbish. I’d love to see Bowen argue with people like Hossenfelder. The idiot is leading us into disastrous territory.
Nuclear Power Comeback Update: Poland Authorizes Small Modular Reactors
Is nuclear power really that slow and expensive as they say?
Diversity and Vicpol in action.
Another is the Baluchi insurgency. They regularly do this sort of thing in both Iran and Pakistan since Baluchistan stretches over both sides of the Iran-Paki border. Kerman, the city where the bombing happened, is pretty close to there, and there’s a recent history.
Thanks BoN. Another group of actors to consider. At least it keeps the mullahs busy.
Yes, she’s right John. The assumptions have to do with 1960s build technology and fuel use. They haven’t been relevant for 50 or so years.
I don’t genuinely hate most politicians. Bowen is an exception. He’s a nasty, stupid prick with no idea how destructive he is. He’s like a kid throwing shit in the Louvre smearing crap on Monets and running amok. The worst thing is, that he thinks he is immensely popular and clever. He’s also very far left and hates libertarians.
He’s an idiot who couldn’t survive in the private sector.
Don’t Melbourne coppers carry teargas and truncheons?
BREAKING: HERE ARE THE 37 EPSTEIN DOCUMENTS RELEASED TONIGHT IN THEIR ENTIRETY!
More Than 100 Killed in Terror Attack in Iran Near General Soleimani’s Grave
UN “x-spurts”
UN experts sound alarm over planned first US execution by nitrogen gas
Entire EU….
Maker of suicide pod plans to launch in Switzerland
By contrast, the pod – which can be placed anywhere – is flooded with nitrogen, reducing the oxygen levels rapidly
https://imgflip.com/i/8b8ln0