Maybe they broke it over his head. Just to make sure.
Open Thread – Fri 5 Jan 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 17 Oct 2024
- Open Thread – Mon 14 Oct 2024
- The Fifth Problem of the Bowen Kind
- Open Thread – Weekend 12 Oct 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 10 Oct 2024
Great audio and visual edit. Barry Manilow – Copacabana (At The Copa) (Extended Disco Version)
The production in that film is great. It is modern production that sucks. Too many cuts and too much loud…
Henry VIII was an egocentric tyrant – a vile human being.
The Israeli soldiers didn’t want to be contaminated by touching it, so they used a piece of timber to lift…
The Red Sea is getting really dangerous now – and it’s not just the Houthis
Dithering governments have condemned our sailors to being ‘permanent goalkeepers’
TOM SHARPE
“Air threat warning Red” is up there with the calls you least want to hear in a warship. It means “air or missile attack is underway or imminent”.
Between 26 October and last night, sailors aboard warships in the Red Sea will have heard this call many times in response to 72 drone and 21 missile attacks across the period. And it is still happening. Last night three more weapons were fired at the CMA CGM Tage container ship but missed.
Looking at the anti-ship ballistic missiles that have been fired, imagine you’re on station 30 miles from the coast as some of those warships will be, and one is detected closing you at 2000 mph.
If you detect it as it goes ‘feet wet’ you have 54 seconds until it hits you.
Except it’s less. Take a few seconds off so that you can engage the inbound weapon at a range that ensures the remaining bits don’t still hit you at ballistic speeds.
Then take a few more off for the command decision to fire, and then a few more for your interceptor missile to launch, stabilise and close the target.
This example leaves you about 30 seconds to see the target, get a track on it (if the system hasn’t done it automatically), classify it as hostile (at least that is simple in this particular case of a ballistic threat), inform other ships, allocate your weapon systems, manoeuvre the ship to give your other countermeasures the best chance of success … and fire.
All this assumes that you have an interceptor missile which is capable of dealing with the incoming threat: not always true for the non-US warships.
Thirty seconds – imagine sustaining a crew at that level of alertness for weeks at a time.
Much has been made of the sustainability problems of engaging £20k drones with £1.5m missiles and rightly so.
But what about the people?
If you’re an air picture compiler in the operations room and in your last six-hour rest period you didn’t sleep very well, no one will thank you if you miss 10 of those 30 seconds because you were asking for a coffee.
By and large, warships operate in one of three postures – ‘normal’, ‘defence’ and ‘action’.
The ‘action’ state sees the whole ship closed up, every sensor, weapon and bit of machinery crewed, damage-control parties ready and all hatches battened shut.
If you know an attack is coming, and you have time to get to this state, this is where you want to be.
The trouble is, it isn’t sustainable – no one sleeps.
So you have to find a compromise and this is where the ‘defence’ state comes in – split the ship’s company in half and rotate every six hours.
Six hours on watch and six off – during which you can normally get about four hours sleep – is sustainable.
It isn’t a huge amount of fun but ships and submarines routinely do it for protracted periods.
How little fun it is depends on what you are doing.
If you are conducting anti-submarine operations where decision-making can be done by semaphore over a cup of tea then it’s fine.
Even anti-piracy operations are OK; you still have minutes to gather information and start the process.
But if you’re at 30 seconds notice – life or death – and you are glued to your radar for six hours at a time, it is grim.
Part of the deal when operating in this environment is to operate as a network of ships, all connected and fighting off the same picture. Let’s say the example above is now a subsonic cruise missile doing 600 knots. You now have the ‘luxury’ of three minutes before it hits you.
You have your own radar picture but due to the vagaries of GPS and other factors, it is slightly different to the other ships of the group.
Whole teams in each ship are dedicated to fusing the different picture in real time into what is called the Recognised Air Picture (RAP).
This is essential: perhaps the target coming towards you, that you have identified as a missile and therefore hostile, is in fact a commercial airliner – it’s just that you are not detecting its transponder and have therefore misclassified it.
At that point you need another ship to query your assessment, and quickly.
Or, what is that other contact heading towards us at 140 knots, not ‘squawking’ on its transponder and not answering on the radio.
Is it a ‘low slow flyer’, a cheap and simple drone packed with explosives coming for us, or is it Indian Ship Kolkata’s helicopter returning to mother?
Without a good theatre-wide RAP, you may get the answer catastrophically wrong.
This is where things are getting interesting with three Chinese, four Indian and two Iranian ships now there, all operating as independent groups with their own air pictures and fighting circuits.
Then there are ships from the US and its friends, close and less close, mostly operating in some way under the international Operation Prosperity Guardian.
Countries all have valid reasons for being there and under the very international law Prosperity Guardian is set up to protect, are entitled to be so.
The problem is, every time a warship or a task force turns up and acts independently, the risk of miscalculation goes up.
British ships in the area will naturally be joined up properly with the US. French, Spanish, and Italian ships are still playing tunes on whether they’re operating under Operation Prosperity Guardian or the organisation running it, Combined Task Force 153.
This is for political reasons so that they can be seen to help but without condoning the US posture in Israel.
Nevertheless, you can guarantee those vessels at least are all operating off the same air picture.
The Greek and Danish ships will too when they join.
Japanese Ship Akebono is in the thick of it and will also be ‘plugged in’. She is not formally part of Prosperity Guardian but her time as part of CTF 151, on anti-piracy in the Gulf of Aden, will make her used to operating like this.
Of the 93 drones and missiles fired, 73 have been intercepted.
Of the 20 ‘leakers’ many have missed but some have hit merchant ships causing fires and damage.
That no sailors have been killed yet, and no ship has yet been sunk sunk spilling its contents all over the Red Sea, is a function of the alertness of the warships there: but also good luck.
How long will that luck hold?
Robust statements from the UK Defence Secretary declaring that the UK is “willing to take direct action” to repel Houthi attacks would indicate that the UK at least is willing to attack Houthi targets ashore.
So far the US has not been so willing, despite having all the assets it could possibly need ready on hand, though US Navy helicopters did kill ten Houthis who were attempting to board a ship at sea three days ago.
“Direct action” by the UK against Houthi-controlled Yemen would involve sending something to the Red Sea that the UK doesn’t yet have there: our carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, a Tomahawk-armed submarine or long-range RAF strike sorties from Cyprus.
That only one of these is even available at the moment sits awkwardly alongside the bold British rhetoric, not to mention an announcement the following day from No 10 Downing Street that “there are no plans to send additional assets there” and “no decisions have been made”.
I would love to know what this means, but probably not as much as the British, American and other sailors sitting in the Red Sea playing permanent goalkeeper.
At this point we haven’t even discussed the difficult part of Prosperity Guardian – commercial to military liaison.
Combine this multi-layered challenge with politically ambiguous direction from multiple countries, and the nature of the defensive-only mission itself, and you can see why shipping companies are wobbling.
We should acknowledge the merchant mariners making this run as well, as it is our economies they are preserving.
Maersk held back in late December, then ran the gauntlet a few times under US protection, then got attacked (that was the incident in which the would-be boarders were blown away) and has now ‘postponed indefinitely’.
Hundreds of ships are rerouting: many are still making the passage.
Either way, insurance rates are climbing, journeys are delayed and box ship freight rates have doubled.
Costs in your home will go up.
There is a solution to this problem ashore, but that took a step backwards last night with the death of the Hamas deputy leader.
Meanwhile, back in the warships, they will be on a war footing. With 93 drones and missiles having been fired, some of them offering just 30 seconds notice to respond, how could they be anything else? Every person and system will be at high readiness for weeks at a time.
They’ll no doubt be wondering what kind of war it is where one isn’t allowed to shoot back.
Tom Sharpe is a former Royal Navy officer. He was a specialist in Anti Air Warfare and commanded a surface combatant warship
This thread dedicated to Read Admirals with one hand on their heart, and the other on a photocopier.
🙂
Housing targets at risk as building stalls at decade-low pace
Michael Bleby and Campbell Kwan
Home building will grind to its slowest pace in more than a decade in 2024 as the higher cost of materials, land and finance make it harder for developers to build dwellings profitably, raising doubts about the government’s ambitious housing targets.
Australia’s housing shortfall, expected to be at least 175,000 homes by 2027, reflects the failure to meet the key drivers of demand including smaller household sizes and the post-pandemic migration surge.
“There’s no question that the demand side is there,” said Benni Aroni, the developer of Melbourne’s Eureka Tower. “The problem is that we just can’t make a feasibility work. And we can’t make a feasibility work because we haven’t [got] stability of cost and the cost of finance. And neither of those is going anywhere south in the next 12 to 24 months.”
The cost of building a new house is still rising, although at a slower pace than the surge experienced two years ago, Housing Industry Association figures show.
The average value of a detached home approval in the September quarter was $461,077 – 11.5 per cent higher than in 2022. Prices for key items needed in new house construction have soared since before the pandemic. Terracotta tiles have risen 62 per cent since December 2019, timber windows have climbed 61 per cent, and reinforcing steel has risen 59 per cent.
Extreme labour shortages have added to construction costs, delaying projects despite growing demand from record-low vacancy and strong population growth, said Hutchinson Builders founder Scott Hutchinson.
In Queensland, where Mr Hutchinson’s residential property developer is busiest, competition for workers is fierce due to multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects, particularly on the Gold Coast.
With so many large subcontractors going broke, those remaining have spread their workers over more projects.
“Then you’ve got to employ more people and those people aren’t as nearly as good.
The cost then runs over because you’re not getting enough productivity, and then you go broke,” he said. “It hasn’t been like this in my working lifetime, and I’m 64.”
Target less achievable
Governments set a goal to build 1.2 million new homes over the five years from 2024 – an average of 240,000 new homes each year – a faster pace of construction than Australia has ever achieved.
Jarden economist Carlos Cacho said that goal was looking unlikely. “Despite housing prices picking up again, despite the chronic undersupply of housing, you haven’t seen a pick-up of sales,” he said. “On our numbers, we expect housing starts in calendar year 2024 to slow to about 155,000, which would be the lowest since 2012.”
The hurdles for buyers include a 30 per cent increase in construction costs and a 30 per cent reduction in buyers’ borrowing capacity, Mr Cacho said.
“Something doesn’t seem to stack up,” he said. “While new supply is badly needed, higher interest rates and construction cost means many potential buyers cannot afford new housing. Including land, we estimate new house costs are up 26 per cent since December 2019.”
That is showing up in the numbers. The HIA figures show the volume of new homes sold in Australia – a leading indicator of housing activity – rose 10.4 per cent in the September quarter from June, but was still down 18 per cent on the same quarter a year earlier.
The building target, which kicks off from July 1 this year, was agreed to by the Commonwealth and the states through national cabinet. An Albanese government spokesman pointed to the government’s multibillion-dollar funding packages to “support state and territories to meet this target” but declined to say if it was confident the goal would be met.
The Victorian government, which has its own goal of building 80,000 new homes annually for the next 10 years, said “bold” targets were necessary to meet population growth projections. Melbourne is expected to grow to 9 million people – the size of London – by 2050, up from 4.8 million today.
“The status quo is not an option, and admiring the problem will only make it worse,” a Victorian government spokesman said. “Unless we take bold and decisive action now, Victorians will be paying the price for generations to come.”
Hickory managing director Michael Argyrou said rising sale prices meant affordability – how much homes cost relative to incomes – was getting worse, and would further depress demand for apartments, which his company builds.
“What we used to sell [in Melbourne] for $8000 to $12,000 [per square metre], now to make this work, it is going to have to sell for $12,000 to $18,000,” he said.
For housing affordability to improve and for price-to-income ratios to return to levels that would bring first-home buyers back into the new home market, costs would have to fall nationally by $90,000 or 12 per cent, reflecting a 30 per cent decline in land prices or a 20 per cent drop in construction prices, Mr Cacho said.
With neither of those likely to happen, the only improvement in people’s ability to buy new homes would come when they could borrow more, he said.
“That really leaves us with a bit of income growth and interest rates coming down to improve the affordability,” Mr Cacho said.
Mr Aroni said sentiment would also change in time. “Every reason not to do a project is found by various people. But that’s partly also because of a lack of confidence. We’re just going through a trough of confidence.”
Overall, growth in the cost of materials is easing somewhat. The HIA’s home building materials index was 4.4 per cent higher in the September quarter year-on-year, but unchanged from the previous quarter.
‘FOMO has started to creep back in’
In the race to build more homes, Western Australia may fare better, said Cedar Woods managing director Nathan Blackburne.
The WA-based residential developer expects its revenue growth to outpace costs in 2024 – even as material and labour costs rise – due to strong housing demand. As a result, the developer will not be pressured into pausing projects because feasibility had become more difficult.
“The lack of supply, more broadly, meant FOMO has started to creep back in,” Mr Blackburne said.
Western Australia’s relatively lower housing prices also means homebuyers still have the borrowing capacity to buy newly built homes even if they were to become more expensive, unlike in Queensland. Neither does the western state face as great a labour shortage when compared with Queensland, Mr Blackburne said.
“I think the improvement in conditions of the construction sector will be quite broad-based, with some exceptions like Queensland, where they’re experiencing a high volume of public works in preparing for the Olympics and in recovery efforts from natural disasters.”
The vast majority of new housing in this country is developed using private money. Australian Bureau of Statistics records show the proportion of privately funded housing development grew from 88 per cent of the total in 1986 to 98.3 per cent in the year to June.
In future, there will be development from institutional investors keen to get into the growing build-to-rent market, but that will remain a minor part of the wider housing landscape for some years.
There will also be a public boost from the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, which will tap super funds to build 30,000 new social and affordable rental homes over five years, as well as a further 10,000 affordable homes under the so-called national housing accord.
Oh my lordy. Rear Admirals.
And caravans.
Nothing commands respect like a bit of gold braid around the Big 4. Straight to the front of the line for the washing machines.
My tag ?
It is a New Year .. time to evaluate our grievances and grovelling hatreds… and perhaps sit back and contemplate ; what good did they do us ? Would it not serve Us better to shed … grudges that eat into us but fail to pull us in any positive direction ?
Or to put into the more vernacular … “Horses that eat and fail to pull”
To all who have savaged me .. Hey I stilll got a chin .
To Those that didnt … been interesting … mostly ..
But to all of You Happy New Year and may You and your people thrive and join into the time limited task of making Our Puny Little Lives as productive and rewarding as they can be.
Peace Brothers And Sisters.
I would heartily recommend some of you study Economics… It isnt some tussle between Ayn Rand “rock ribbed ” individualists ; Conservatives and blood sucking Socialists … It Isnt Team Red VS Team Blue Rugby match. This is a fiction designed to paracitise both polarities. If a Society gets divided into either of those delusions it will work out inefficiently and be a drag on the entire Community .
Peace and Prosperity Brothers and Sisters.
@ OldOzzie
Jan 5, 2024 12:04 AM
Some have taken you to task for posting entire News Articles .. I for one dont . I for one applaud you !!
The Cat was born as an aggregator ..where folks get to read the nonsense or otherwise … with references. Which you do..
I am going back decades with the Cat when that was what they all did ..with the occasional and amusing “Meiow” …
Now it is all POHC … like some crazy lady … Pong of a Hundred Cats …
As I was saying to Old Mate … Australia doesn’t have a proper Media Aggregator any more ..
At least if Cats Chased mice … well they dont seem to ion the domestic scal and nor do you …
Some of Us have told this BB quite a bit about ourselves in the interests of making a real person and not just one that has no interest or persona.
Johannes Leak.
Mark Knight.
Peter Broelman.
Christian Adams.
Michael Ramirez.
A.F. Branco.
Gary Varvel.
Tom Stiglich.
Chip Bok.
Henry Payne.
Lisa Benson.
Ben Garrison.
Thanks Tom. Happy Friday.
Youse lot need to lift your game.
I don’t. Copyright breach, as are the cartoon photos. Ironic given the discussion about plagiarism on this blog yesterday. Apparently some conservatives here don’t respect intellectual property rights.
another easily replaceable gone
I agree, reducing economics to that polarity is misguided and misleading.
You are dreaming if you think people will stop thinking about that polarity. As much as I think Jung was dead wrong about human behavior his idea of polarities has some merit. To be fair to Jung in his time they had no choice but to make stuff up. If he were alive today I think his approach to understanding human behavior would have relied on the huge volume of research now available in so many fields, from population to molecules our understanding has made huge strides.
more boohoo that Palestinian doesn’t come in the DNA also the falsehood that DNA tests are banned in Israel
Israel still not transferring funds to PA pay for slay
Was the 2020 Election Rigged?
COMMENT: You are just a Trump supporter. The election was not rigged. Get over it.
Anonymous
REPLY: I am terribly sorry, but the forecasts from markets to politics are NEVER my personal opinion. I am just along for the ride. Clients come to us for the plain and simple reason that it is the UNBIASED computer forecasts they seek – not how I felt when I woke up that day. People typically judge others by themselves. For you to accuse me means you must be in the anti-Trump camp. I feel sorry for you because you are too biased to ever look at anything from an open minded perspective.
Our models made it obvious that it was a 50/50 split on the Popular Vote, which I relayed. Our models on the Electoral College were conclusive – Trump should have won. This is not my personal opinion. I have previously reported that our model showed that Al Gore should have won against Bush, but the Supreme Court handed that to Bush. Even politicians come to our site because they KNOW it is never my personal opinion.
This entire move to authoritarianism is because Trump won in 2016, and that scared the HELL out of politicians around the world. Suddenly, Democracy became evil Populism, and they realized that they could be voted out of office. Putin is popular because he was NOT a Communist nor an Oligarch. His polls are 83% approval right now. If the shoe were on the other foot, we would probably support our government as well when attacked by a foreign power.
Right now, the Democrats refuse to put RFK on their ticket, fearing he would win. Trump is polling now 50 points ahead of anyone else. The people rising to Trump are not because he is such a fantastic person; it is a vote against all the corrupt people in government.
You better open your eyes. This is a vote for World War III or against it. I wish there would be a real election. There is NO WAY the 2024 election will be fair. The Maine Secretary of State, Ms. Bellows, a Democrat who removed Trump from the ballot, should be criminally charged and removed from office. She dared to say in a Jan. 1 interview with NPR:
“Politics and my personal views played no role … I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, and that is what I did.”
Here she is in a conference call with other Democratic state politicians, talking about voter suppression, which is precisely what she engaged in. If Maine does not at least impeach her, that state will be on the list of other morally corrupt places to avoid at all costs. In her own words, when everyone participates, we “win” in protecting our democracy – which is not what we have; it’s a Republic. The people of Maine did not remove Trump from the ballot – she did behind closed doors.
She denied Trump Due Process of law, no charge, no trial; she was the prosecutor, the jury, and the judge with no public hearing, all behind secret closed doors. You cannot define the Constitution while violating it. She acted ruthlessly, as did Communist and Dictators historically. She has deliberately interfered with the election and violated everyone’s civil rights and should be barred from even being a dog catcher. You cannot violate the Constitution while pretending to defend it. Trump has NOT been charged with insurrection or rebellion, nor has anyone on January 6th. This is absolute proof that the 2024 election will be rigged, and this is not the first time. She should be dragged out of office in handcuffs, but of course, the Democratic-controlled DOJ will never charge a fellow Democrat.”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/politics/was-the-2020-election-rigged/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=RSS
Hmm, I wonder whose commercial building it was?
Commercial building fire spreading smoke across Sydney’s inner west (Sky News, 5 Jan)
Maybe we should ask Mr Bowen to hire more firies, ready for when we all have to drive EVs and ride e-bikes.
Bruce of Newcastle
Jan 5, 2024 6:50 AM
Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to find a way to fight these types of fires?
As a chemist, what do you think would work?
/not holding you to supply a solution just an opinion.
Gee thanks Bird, now drop and give me 50 push ups.
France doesn’t seem to be tolerating public anti Semitism
Gabor – you can’t fight them like a normal fire by removing the fuel away from the oxidizer, because they’re intimately mixed together. There was a Tesla burning underwater fairly recently.
All you can do is what they’re now doing: cool the fire as much as possible and let it slowly burn itself out. That might limit how many of the battery cells the fire spreads to, at least, and reduce the intensity. But that has its own problem as the uncombusted cells can reignite, which is a well known problem for firefighters and tow truck guys.
You could potentially add an aqueous reducing agent to get the energy out of the oxidant, but working against that is the fire is moving from sealed cell to sealed cell inside the battery. Because the cells are sealed until breached by the fire you can’t get a reducing agent in contact with the oxidant until it’s too late. And doing it would be messy, you’d have 40,000 L of wastewater containing chemicals polluting the area.
The more energy they cram into new battery designs the more dangerous this problem is going to be. It’s not unlike a solid fuel rocket booster, which also has the fuel and oxidizer intimately mixed, until it is ignited.
Is it too late to wish all a HNY?
I had a quick scroll of the place yesterday & saw a Cat asking about travel insurance for a full year.
Here’s a strategy that you might want to explore.
Get a platinum Amex.
If you purchase all your flights via the card, your medical expenses on the travel are covered (unless you are doing something deemed “high risk”).
Your cover on luggage etc is limited but I think the post was more about avoiding a monster hospital bill.
Any time I get a T&C update on mine, I go through it to ensure that travel cover hasn’t changed.
But worth checking the T&C’s on a new card versus an older card.
Downside, most Platinum Amex cards will cost you somewhere between 300-400 per year.
Also, if you get caught up with delays with COVID, your flights aren’t covered so you would need to get flexible air fares which obviously cost more.
Not a perfect solution, but if you want peace of mind regarding a hospital stay it would give it to you.
The only reliable way to put out a Tesla/electric car battery fire is fun, expensive and dangerous.
Call in an air strike from a F/A-18F Hornet from RAAF Base Amberley.
Hit it with a 500 lb JDAM, (GBU-38/BLU-111) as the fire will extinguish if the fuel is dispersed across several cubic acres at the molecular level.
References: Red Adair, Hellfighters starring John Wayne.
Nice work someone!
The practice of allowing Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp’s hire limousine to park illegally on the footpath outside Town Hall has been referred to the state’s corruption watchdog.
A complaint has been submitted to IBAC saying the parking rort was ignoring the road rules and that favours were being afforded to the car hire companies.
The complaint, the Herald Sun understands, claims that commercial favour was granted and that the rule 197 was conveniently and repeatedly ignored for the Lord Mayor’s benefit.
The complaint was lodged just days after the Herald Sun revealed that the private limousine used by Cr Capp was allowed to park on several occasions on the footpath, sometimes across the pavement, restricting pedestrian access.
Regular motorists would face a fine of $576 or could even be towed away.
Herald-Sun
Waffen SSM news (h/t Bill Leak).
LGBT Lobby: Christian Conservatives Look ‘More and More Like Nazis’ (4 Jan)
The projection is strong with this one. It’s not Christians who are killing babies and cutting the sex organs off small children.
File that under “you’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you?”. Most of us, just want to be left alone.
Hell, the actual “patriarchal white Christian nationalists” like Bo Gritz just want to be left alone too.
“Patriarchy” is a tell. It’s academic Marxist drivel. It means nothing.
response to claims of plagiarism
Happy New Year to you, Bern.
Here’s a LOTR dentist before/after meme to make it even happier.
Lithium battery fire in Sydney warehouse. Fire brigade in attendance, toxic fume danger.
There will be a lot more of this, thanks to the idiots and ideologues who govern us.
Clown World!
We’ll give you a gun when you’re guarding a prisoner out in tthe community but if you use it we’ll charge you with murder:
Moving high-risk convicted criminals through the community for medical, legal or funeral attendance will need new laws to give officers confidence to use lethal force to prevent an escape.
The call for national law reform comes as NSW taxpayers are set to be hit with a $2.4 million bill for the failed bid to convict a prisons officer with murder for shooting dead an escaping prisoner.
Public Service Association’s NSW general secretary Stewart Little said while the case happened in his state there were implications for prison guards and other law enforcers nationally in use of force.
A NSW Corrective Services officer, identified only as Officer A, was charged with murder after in March 2019 shooting dead prisoner Dwayne Johnstone who was attempting to escape custody during a visit to Lismore Hospital.
Johnstone was a violent offender with a long criminal history including knifing a female police officer in Victoria and was on remand for cattle prodding a man in NSW.
Officer A was found not guilty last month with a jury finding he had acted within the laws governing the use of force.
But Mr Little said police found he had no case to answer but the fact he was charged with murder by a Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) demanding national laws to protect officers doing their job.
There was also a similar case in Victoria several years ago in which that guard was also eventually exonerated.
“If prison officers are given firearms but they are not supposed to use them well that needs to be looked at,” Mr Stewart said.
“You’ve got murderers and rapists out there that the community expect to be protected from, because unfortunately they have to take them into the community whether it’s to go to the doctors, hospitals, funerals, legal hearings there are all sorts of things they have to escort them for.
“The officers need certainty but certainly we need some legislation in this at state level as a minimum and if that can be looked at federally we would support that as well but there are broader implications here for how all officers do their job.”
Mr Stewart confirmed his union would be demanding from the DPP up to $2.4 million the PSA paid in legal costs to defend Officer A in court for the two murder trials and an explanation as to why the case was pursued.
The Office of the DPP would not answer a series of questions about the case.
“The ODPP politely declines to comment,” a spokesman said.
Herald-Sun – full article; comments not allowed
When the poyrate supports something and refers to it as a “no brainer” is it actually trying to help or admitting its a brainless flog?
When its supporting a known flog does that cause some sort of flog = Mc2 effect of mongness?
Peter FitzSimons
@Peter_Fitz
·
15h
No-brainer. Let’s do it.
Quote
Mike Carlton
@MikeCarlton01
·
Jan 3
Yep. Makes sense. Four year terms for the House of Reps. AND the Senate. It’d require a referendum… https://theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/03/anthony-albanese-four-year-election-terms-australia?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Labor wants more women workers to join the Green Energy Sector to ensure enough person power to make fossil fuels history.
Only idiots and ideologues will approve.
Interesting, rosie. I note she didn’t once claim racism, sexism or any other type of -ism. Just accepted the omissions and apologised.
You’d think there would be fairly robust leg restraints?
In that case, they can’t run far and can’t dodge a wrench.
Media seem unwilling to attribute the bombs in Iran to internal opposition.
If Bandanaman and his exhibitionist wingman are spruiking something, you know it’s a toxic leftie crock.
Stay away.
Mainstream Jewish organisations, captured by progressive wankery, supported SSM (they had no right to). I doubt many mainstream Muslim organisations supported SSM. All of this was so predictable. Don’t know whether to laugh or cry, I think I’ll laugh.
Sydney Mardi Gras ‘no longer safe’ for gay Jews
A key organisation representing Sydney’s gay Jewish community says it is reconsidering its participation in this year’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and Fair Day events, amid fears for its members’ safety following the release of an open letter to Anthony Albanese regarding the Israel-Hamas war by Mardi Gras chief executive Gil Beckwith.
Not-for-profit group Dayenu, which has had a float at Mardi Gras for the past 24 years, says its members are reporting “feelings of distress and a sense of isolation”, which have been compounded by the conduct of the Mardi Gras offshoot group, Pride in Protest.
Pride in Protest, which has members on the Mardi Gras board, recently wrote to its supporters, celebrating the fact Mardi Gras had “ruled out Israeli sponsorship” of the event, and had “written an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to call for a permanent ceasefire in Palestine”.
“This indicates the impact of our campaign on this front,” the group said, announcing that it will be marching with a “Trans Pride, Not Genocide” float at the March 2 Mardi Gras parade “as a symbol of the work that has been and must still be done to bring about a just and equal society”.
Pride in Protest’s actions, and the failure of Ms Beckwith’s letter to mention Hamas, its October 7 killing of 1200 civilians in Israel, its taking of 240 hostages, and its role in breaking ceasefires, has left many Jewish members of the LGBTQIA+ community feeling deeply uncomfortable. “At a time when our members are reporting feelings of distress and a sense of isolation from the LGBTQIA+ community and the wider community it is disappointing that Mardi Gras did not reach out to Dayenu prior to posting an open letter to the Prime Minister,” Dayenu said.
“Dayenu would like to remind our LGBTQIA+ community that Israel offers sanctuary and continues to offer sanctuary to members of our community fleeing oppression and indeed the death penalty at the hands of the internationally recognised terrorist group Hamas within Palestine.
“The rights of the LGBTQIA+ community in Israel are set in law. “Due to an aggressive and ongoing anti-Semitic campaign by Pride in Protest, and a lack of consultation from Mardi Gras, Dayenu is reconsidering our involvement in Fair Day and the Mardi Gras Parade. We are concerned for the safety of our members in Sydney’s Queer spaces.”
Gay Jewish man Mordechai Aryeh Levin said Ms Beckwith’s open letter and Pride in Protest’s plans for a “trans rights, not genocide” float made him feel like there would not be a place for him at the event, as a proud Zionist, who has Moroccan-Israeli heritage on his mother’s side, and a paternal grandmother whose family inhabited pre-mandate Palestine for several generations in the 1800s.
“If we’re not in a place where we can feel safe to express our views and identities to the same degree and with the same freedoms as another group, then this is a serious concern for the future of a multicultural Australia,” Mr Levin said.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin said it was “heartbreaking to see Jewish members of the LGBTQIA+ community feeling afraid and marginalised”.
“They have overcome immense challenges because of their LGBTQIA+ identities and now they are facing exclusion in the LGBTQIA+ community because of their Jewish identities. This cannot be allowed to happen,” Mr Ryvchin said.
“LGBTQIA+ Jews are an inseverable part of our community and this attack on them is an attack on us all. We will not allow a band of fanatics who have sided with violent jihadists to intimidate our brothers and sisters.”
Australian Jewish Association CEO Robert Gregory described the open letter as “outrageous”.
“Israel is the only place where LGBT people are safe in the Middle East. Members of the LGBT community face severe persecution under both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Israel provides a refuge to gay Palestinian Arabs who may otherwise be murdered,” Mr Gregory said.
Mardi Gras organisers did not respond to a request for comment.
Is the shortage of Tradies due to the leftist push towards universities rather than TAFEs?
Unis are more likely to produce left-indoctrinated useful activists, whereas tradies get a regular dose of reality with their certificates. They are in effect small business people, the same sort who made it possible for Howard to win elections.
I like *fixed* four year terms but there is also a heap of other tweaking it would involve, including mechanisms for early elections as well when necessary, as part of a republic, different Senate voting, perhaps no head of state per se, reserve and prerogative powers distributed to various remaining parts of the government…
In Britain they don’t have fixed terms but they can go for five years. They could win three elections (let’s say they get the PMship through a party room coup) and perhaps stretch it out to 21 years of their BS…
Andy Crapp thinks she’s above the regular riff Raff. Good she’s been exposed.
Good article in spiked about empty suit ‘sir’ kier Starmer. I really loathe that political parasite.
Trouble with fixed terms of any length is you end up not being able to have an early election to get rid of the flogs. Notice the proponents never discuss three year fixed terms, but four. But people would vote for it as it means they don’t have to vote for them as often.
I reckon we can give the pirate a referendum on fixed terms as long as we also get to reduce the number of senators. To say three per state, and none at all for territories. They aren’t states. And senators only get one term, and can’t be ministers or initiate Bills. They can only review legislation that gets passed by the HoR.
Geez, the pirate and the Whale Beach flasher, what a truly ghastly combination. In a half decent world, the opinions of these two parasites would be confined to a rubbish dump.
No surprises that the pirate and Whale Beach flasher support four year fixed terms. As I wrote yesterday here on this blog, fixed four year terms only enable one side of politics. Here’s a clue, that side is not our side. But such folly won’t stop moronic Liberals and Nationals from supporting it.
Media seem unwilling to attribute the bombs in Iran to internal opposition.
Always better to blame the Jews.
This is why there ought to be tinkering and it isn’t a “no-brainer”. You need recall elections and CIR to strike down bad legislation.
Some nice insults in this analysis:
Anthony Albanese has concluded a memorable finish to 2023. He was called a “handsome boy” by his new BFF in China; lost his most senior press secretary to resignation; reportedly tasted $500 bottles of wine while on holiday in Western Australia; and spent almost $4m on travel in one year.
But of all the many low points to pick from in 2023, he arguably saved his best until last, when the Prime Minister gaslit his own Albanese voice.
Albanese airbrushed any mention of it from his Christmas message and went further by saying he had nothing to do with the voice referendum on which he staked so much. To the soundtrack of Shaggy’s “It wasn’t me”, he excused himself by saying First Nations people were used to being let down.
But if you thought 2023 was bad, 2024 is shaping up as Albanese’s Annus Horribilis. Cost-of-living pressures aren’t going anywhere. Interest rates will remain high. The floodgates of migrants – unleashed by Labor to avoid a recession in Australia – will still be fighting for already scarce houses and units, and drive up costs with further demand in a supply-constrained market.
Albanese has been called out by Noel Pearson as reportedly “running away” from First Nations issues. He is trying for a crass reset by saying cost of living is now his number one issue for 2024, as he reiterated in his bizarre press conference on Wednesday.
He said that before the 2022 election and again in 2023 on Ben Fordham’s 2GB – and look how that turned out.
But in early 2024, Albanese will be tested by the voters. There will be a by-election in the Victorian seat of Dunkley caused by the passing of the very popular Labor MP Peta Murphy. The by-election means Albanese may no longer be able to avoid having to meet some voters. He might have to talk about the cost of living rather than the Albanese voice, while keeping Toto One parked up on the tarmac in Australia’s time zone.
The by-election will be scheduled by the Speaker, Milton Dick, and the PM will have to cut whatever wine tasting holiday he had planned overseas and schlep his way down to the bayside shopping centre at the heart of Dunkley.
Doubtless he’ll still look to spend three days on the beers at the Australian Open in nearby Melbourne and maybe even have to stomach three hours at an Australia Day citizenship event at the Frankston Council Chambers in Dunkley.
Dunkley has a margin of 6.3 per cent. This matters because below that margin Labor holds a further 16 seats. It’s a critical bellwether seat that only the Victorian division of the Liberal Party could stuff up from here and not win.
The southern part of the seat is Liberal-voting. It was the reason why the seat was held by the Liberals until as recently as 2019. The rest of the seat is older working class and newer mortgage belt voters, living at the end of the suburban train line to Melbourne.
It voted 56 per cent No to the voice. This is no Aston, but rather the quintessential electorate of lower and middle Australia being crushed by the Albanese government’s tin ear on the current cost-of-living pain. Instinctively, they know elites don’t care for their plight.
The Labor Party has consistently performed better in Victoria than elsewhere in Australia. Victoria has kept Labor in the game as states like Queensland have underperformed and shrunk the Labor vote federally.
A Peter Dutton win in the supposedly progressive, green-tinged southern state would send a huge wake-up call to a complacent, timid and impotent Labor caucus lulled into stupor by Albanese’s many excuses.
Federally, Labor is already in considerable trouble.
Labor in WA will lose seats on an inevitable post-Mark McGowan correction. It remains deeply vulnerable to the Greens in McNamara and Wills.
An independent in Hawke could make the well-coiffed Sam Rae take out the 2025 Kristina Keneally award for trashing a “safe” Labor seat.
Myopic left-wing commentators and some lazy journalists think Dutton’s only path to victory is to win back all the teal seats. But what if Dutton didn’t need to win them, but instead win enough directly from Labor? Only 34 out of 151 seats voted for the voice; only 21 of Labor’s 78 seats voted for Albanese’s voice.
The PM’s personal numbers are in free fall, providing a clear drag on Labor’s already alarmingly low primary vote. He doesn’t do shopping centre walk-throughs anymore and appears distracted and aloof.
Dunkley will be a referendum on the cost of living. But issues like the release of foreign murderers, rapists and pedophiles will also feature.
Hopefully, Labor will be able to hold on to Dunkley, with the strong showing of the new Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan and Treasurer Jim Chalmers on the hustings.
Community goodwill to Peta Murphy and her hard work will also help Labor resist any anti-Albo sentiment in the electorate.
If Labor loses Dunkley, we’ll no doubt have Foreign Minister Penny Wong take time from planning her nuptials to intone that “by-elections are notoriously hard for governments to win” as she moves from appeaser to apologist.
The more important lesson for Labor would be that Dutton is competitive. This year will be a crucial test for Albanese, and the Dunkley by-election will be only the start.
Oz
I am sympathetic to this but if Senators can’t initiate bills, then minor parties cannot repeal anything. Also the Senate absolutely must be allowed to refuse to pass legislation. It was baked in at Federation. The usual complainers are Paul Keating so I’ll leave it at that.
I think the Senate would be better as a national list with weighted votes. Or, sortition.
Given the history of fixed four year state governments in this country, particularly in Victoria and NSW where grubby corrupt Labor governments become entrenched, nobody should be supporting fixed four year terms. Fixed terms are anathema to the Westminster system and all they do is encourage voter malaise and indifference.
Oh dear. The top paddock is certainly being burned off.
I joined the Free Speech Union yesterday. I received a very polite note telling me that I was already a member.
Now where did I leave that bloody walker?
Fillum news.
Nolte: Disney Blunders Into 2024 PR Disaster with Man-Hating ‘Star Wars’ Director (4 Jan)
BBC hits back at complaints over Doctor Who transgender character (4 Jan)
So a gay black Who with a black trannie offsider. And more woke Star Wars movies that scold men. Nolte is right: they do really hate their audience. The vast amounts of money the studios are bleeding to make movies no one in their right mind wants to see will give us the last laugh though.
I suppose everyone (except Indolent) is very “over” Covid information.
But this transcript of advice from two good doctors in the USA in 2020 reminds us of the depth of panic and BAD medicine that we were subjected to by government advisers and their lackeys.
It is relevant even today, when we (& I admit to it) can still be over concerned when new strains start occurring (similar to influenza every year). Worth reading.
Who Remembers These Guys?
A blast from the past
NE – NAKEDEMPEROR.SUBSTACK.COM
JAN 4
Just a month after the first lockdowns were enforced in 2020, two Californian doctors, Dan Erikson and Artin Massihi, held a press conference. I remember it well, do you?
They told us that now that we have the facts, the death rate from Covid is similar to the flu. The doctors questioned why businesses were being closed down, suggesting that this would impact people’s health.
You will be shocked to learn (sarcasm) that very quickly YouTube took down their video for breaching “community guidelines”. It went against The Guidance and The Science so would not be tolerated. It is still banned today.
“If you’re going to dance on someone’s constitutional rights you better have a good reason, you better have a really good reason, not just a theory,”
If only more people had listened to these doctors at the time.
We’d like to look at how we’ve responded as a nation, and why you responded. Our first initial response two months ago was a little bit of fear: [the government] decided to shut down travel to and from China. These are good ideas when you don’t have any facts. [Governments] decided to keep people at home and isolate them. Typically you quarantine the sick. When someone has measles you quarantine them. We’ve never seen where we quarantine the healthy.
So that’s kind of how we started. We don’t know what’s going on, we see this new virus. How should we respond? So we did that initially, and over the last couple months we’ve gained a lot of data typically. We’re going to go over the numbers a little bit to kind of help you see how widespread COVID is, and see how we should be responding to it based on its prevalence throughout society—or the existence of the cases that we already know about….
So if you look at California—these numbers are from yesterday—we have 33,865 COVID cases, out of a total of 280,900 total tested. That’s 12% of Californians were positive for COVID. So we don’t, the initial—as you guys know, the initial models were woefully inaccurate. They predicted millions of cases of death—not of prevalence or incidence—but death. That is not materializing. What is materializing is, in the state of California is 12% positives. You have a 0.03 chance of dying from COVID in the state of California. Does that necessitate sheltering in place? Does that necessitate shutting down medical systems? Does that necessitate people being out of work? 96% of people in California who get COVID would recover, with almost no significant sequelae; or no significant continuing medical problems. Two months ago we didn’t know this. The more you test, the more positives you get. The prevalence number goes up, and the death rate stays the same. So [the death rate] gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And as we move through this data—what I want you to see is—millions of cases, small death. Millions of cases, small death.
We extrapolate data, we test people, and then we extrapolate for the entire community based on the numbers. The initial models were so inaccurate they’re not even correct. And some of them were based on social distancing and still predicted hundreds of thousands of deaths, which has been inaccurate. In New York the ones they tested they found 39% positive. So if they tested the whole state would we indeed have 7.5 million cases? We don’t know; we will never test the entire state. So we extrapolate out; we use the data we have because it’s the most we have versus a predictive model that has been nowhere in the ballpark of accurate. How many deaths do they have? 19,410 out of 19 million people, which is a 0.1% chance of dying from COVID in the state of New York. If you are indeed diagnosed with COVID-19, 92% of you will recover.
We’ve tested over 4 million… which gives us a 19.6% positive out of those who are tested for COVID-19. So if this is a typical extrapolation 328 million people times 19.6 is 64 million. That’s a significant amount of people with COVID; it’s similar to the flu. If you study the numbers in 2017 and 2018 we had 50 to 60 million with the flu. And we had a similar death rate in the deaths the United States were 43,545—similar to the flu of 2017-2018. We always have between 37,000 and 60,000 deaths in the United States, every single year. No pandemic talk. No shelter-in-place. No shutting down businesses…
We do thousands of flu tests every year. We don’t report every one, because the flu is ubiquitous and to that note we have a flu vaccine. How many people even get the flu vaccine? The flu is dangerous, it kills people. Just because you have a vaccine doesn’t mean it’s gonna be everywhere and it doesn’t mean everyone’s going to take it… I would say probably 50% of the public doesn’t even want it. Just because you have a vaccine—unless you forced it on the public—doesn’t mean they’re going to take it.
Norway has locked down; Sweden does not have lock down. What happened in those two countries? Are they vastly different? Did Sweden have a massive outbreak of cases? Did Norway have nothing? Let’s look at the numbers. Sweden has 15,322 cases of COVID—21% of all those tested came out positive for COVID. What’s the population of Sweden? About 10.4 million. So if we extrapolate out the data about 2 million cases of COVID in Sweden. They did a little bit of social distancing; they would wear masks and separate; they went to schools; stores were open. They were almost about their normal daily life with a little bit of social distancing. They had how many deaths? 1,765. California’s had 1,220 with isolation. No isolation: 1,765. We have more people. Norway: its next-door neighbor. These are two Scandinavian nations; we can compare them as they are similar. 4.9% of all COVID tests were positive in Norway. Population of Norway: 5.4 million. So if we extrapolate the data, as we’ve been doing, which is the best we can do at this point, they have about 1.3 million cases. Now their deaths as a total number, were 182. So you have a 0.003 chance of death as a citizen of Norway and a 97% recovery. Their numbers are a little bit better. Does it necessitate shutdown, loss of jobs, destruction of the oil company, furloughing doctors?
I wanted to talk about the effects of COVID-19, the secondary effects. COVID-19 is one aspect of our health sector. What has it caused to have us be involved in social isolation? What does it cause that we are seeing the community respond to? Child molestation is increasing at a severe rate. We could go over multiple cases of children who have been molested due to angry family members who are intoxicated, who are home, who have no paycheck. Spousal abuse: we are seeing people coming in here with black eyes and cuts on their face. It’s an obvious abuse of case. These are things that will affect them for a lifetime, not for a season. Alcoholism, anxiety, depression, suicide. Suicide is spiking; education is dropped off; economic collapse. Medical industry we’re all suffering because our staff isn’t here and we have no volume. We have clinics from Fresno to San Diego and these things are spiking in our community. These things will affect people for a lifetime, not for a season.
I’d like to go over some basic things about how the immune system functions so people have a good understanding. The immune system is built by exposure to antigens: viruses, bacteria. When you’re a little child crawling on the ground, putting stuff in your mouth, viruses and bacteria come in. You form an antigen antibody complex. You form IgG IgM. This is how your immune system is built. You don’t take a small child put them in bubble wrap in a room and say, “go have a healthy immune system.”
This is immunology, microbiology 101. This is the basis of what we’ve known for years. When you take human beings and you say, “go into your house, clean all your counters—Lysol them down you’re gonna kill 99% of viruses and bacteria; wear a mask; don’t go outside,” what does it do to our immune system? Our immune system is used to touching. We share bacteria. Staphylococcus, streptococcal, bacteria, viruses.
Sheltering in place decreases your immune system. And then as we all come out of shelter in place with a lower immune system and start trading viruses, bacteria—what do you think is going to happen? Disease is going to spike. And then you’ve got diseases spike—amongst a hospital system with furloughed doctors and nurses. This is not the combination we want to set up for a healthy society. It doesn’t make any sense.
…Did we respond appropriately? Initially the response, fine shut it down, but as the data comes across—and we say now, wait a second, we’ve never, ever responded like this in the history of the country why are we doing this now? Any time you have something new in the community medical community it sparks fear—and I would have done what Dr. Fauci did—so we both would have initially. Because the first thing you do is, you want to make sure you limit liability—and deaths—and I think what they did was brilliant, initially. But you know, looking at theories and models—which is what these folks use—is very different than the way the actual virus presents itself throughout communities….
Nobody talks about the fact that coronavirus lives on plastics for three days and we’re all sheltering in place. Where’d you get your water bottles from? Costco. Where did you get that plastic shovel from? Home Depot. If I swab things in your home I would likely find COVID-19. And so you think you’re protected. Do you see the lack of consistency here? Do you think you’re protected from COVID when you wear gloves that transfer disease everywhere? Those gloves have bacteria all over them. We wear masks in an acute setting to protect us. We’re not wearing masks. Why is that? Because we understand microbiology; we understand immunology; and we want strong immune systems. I don’t want to hide in my home, develop a weak immune system, and then come out and get disease.
When someone dies in this country right now they’re not talking about the high blood pressure, the diabetes, the stroke. They say they died from COVID. We’ve been to hundreds of autopsies. You don’t talk about one thing, you talk about comorbidities. COVID was part of it, it is not the reason they died folks. When I’m writing up my death report I’m being pressured to add COVID.
Why is that? Why are we being pressured to add COVID? To maybe increase the numbers, and make it look a little bit worse than it is. We’re being pressured in-house to add COVID to the diagnostic list when we think it has nothing to do with the actual cause of death. The actual cause of death was not COVID, but it’s being reported as one of the disease processes and being added to the death list. COVID didn’t kill them, 25 years of tobacco use killed.
There’s two ways to get rid of virus: either burns itself out or herd immunity. For hundreds of years we relied on herd immunity. Viruses kill people, end of story. The flu kills people. COVID kills people. But for the rest of us we develop herd immunity. We developed the ability to take this virus in and defeat it and for the vast majority 95% of those around the globe. Do you want your immune system built or do you want it not built? The building blocks of your immune system is a virus and bacteria. There’s normal bacteria in normal flora that we have to be exposed to bacteria and viruses that are not virulent are our friends. They protect us against bad bacteria and bad viruses.
Right now, if you look at Dr. Erikson’s skin or my skin we have strep, we have stuff—they protect us against opportunistic infections. That’s why for the first three to six months [babies are] extremely vulnerable to opportunistic infection. Which is why, when we see a little baby in the ER with fever who is one month old, you do a spinal tap, you do a chest x-ray, you do blood cultures, you do urine cultures. But if you had a fever I wouldn’t do that for you. Why? Because that baby does not have the normal bacteria and flora from the community, whereas you do. I guarantee when we reopen there’s going to be a huge, huge amount of illness that’s going to be rampant because our immune systems have weakened. That’s just basic immunology.
Do we need to still shelter in place? Our answer is emphatically no. Do we need businesses to be shut down? Emphatically no. Do we need to have it, do we need to test them, and get them back to work? Yes, we do. The the secondary effects that we went over—the child abuse, alcoholism, loss of revenue—all these are, in our opinion, a significantly more detrimental thing to society than a virus that has proven similar in nature to the seasonal flu we have every year.
We also need to put measures in place so economic shutdown like this does not happen again. We want to make sure we understand that quarantining the sick is what we do, not quarantine the healthy. We need to make sure if you’re gonna dance on someone’s constitutional rights you better have a good reason. You better have a really good scientific reason, and not just theory.
One of the most important things is we need our hospitals back up. We need our furloughed doctors back. We need our nurses back. Because when we lift this thing, we’re gonna need all hands on deck. I know the local hospitals have closed two floors. Folks, that’s not the situation you want. We’re essentially setting ourselves up to have minimal staff, and we’re going to have significant disease. That’s the wrong combination.
I’ve talked to our local head of the Health Department and he’s waiting… for the powers that be to lift. Because the data is showing it’s time to lift. I would start slowly [open up schools sporting events] I think we need to open up the schools start getting kids back to the immune system you know and the major events the sporting events these are non-essential let’s get back to those slowly let’s start with schools let’s start with cafe Rio and the pizza place here… Does that make sense to you guys and I think I can go into Costco and I can shop with people and there’s probably a couple hundred people but I can’t go in Cafe Rio so big businesses are open little businesses are not….
Eventually we treat this like we treat flu. Which is if you have the flu and you’re feeling fever and body aches you just stay home if you have coughing or shortness of breath—COVID is more of a respiratory thing—you stay home. You don’t get tested, even when people come with flu a lot of times we don’t test them. We go, “you have flu. Here’s a medication.” You have COVID, go home, let it resolve and come back negative.
If you have no symptoms you should be able to return to work. Are you an asymptomatic viral spreader? Maybe, but we can’t test all of humanity. Sure we’re gonna miss cases of coronavirus, just like we miss cases of the flu. It would be nice to capture every coronavirus patient, but is that realistic? Are we gonna keep the economy shut down for two years and vaccinate everybody? That’s an unrealistic expectation. You’re going to cause financial ruin, domestic violence, suicide, rape, violence and what are you going to get out of it? You’re still going to miss a lot of cases. So we need to treat this like the flu, which is familiar, and eventually this will mutate and become less and less virulent…
I don’t need a double-blind clinically controlled trial to tell me if sheltering in place is appropriate, that is a college-level understanding of microbiology. A lot of times in medicine you have to make educated decisions with the data that you have. I can sit up in the 47th-floor in the penthouse and say we should do this, this, and this, but I haven’t seen a patient for 20 years—that’s not realistic.
If you’re healthy and you don’t have significant comorbidities and you know you’re not immunodeficient and you’re not elderly you should be able to go out without any gloves and without a mask. If you are those things you should either shelter in place or wear a mask and gloves. I don’t think everybody needs to wear the masks and gloves because it reduces your bacterial flora… and your bacterial flora and your viruses your friends that protect you from other diseases [if they] end up going away and now you’re more likely to get opportunistic infections infections that are hoping you don’t have your good bugs fighting for you.
This thread dedicated to Rear Admirals with one hand on their heart, and the other on a photocopier.
(All my own work and totally original).
There has to be a porn genre about gay sex and gold braids.
I joined the Free Speech Union yesterday. I received a very polite note telling me that I was already a member.
Now where did I leave that bloody walker?
Don’t worry, Bons! It’s a bloody big club!!!
Media seem unwilling to attribute the bombs in Iran to internal opposition.
I haven’t read the newsprint this morning, but TV news reporting that Iran has acknowledged the attack was by ISIS.
You get over plagiarism when you buy a companion study guide to the text and you ace the assessments because the uni has the same question bank as the textbook’s official SG.
You get over it real quick.
And not allowed to vote for the leadership of the lower house. The pm should only be chosen by lower house members.
Not a chip off the old block.
John Lennon’s Son Sean: DEI Stands for ‘Dumb Evil Idiots’ (4 Jan)
Red pilled!
Labor is funding c. 300 000 TAFE places in a belated attempt to rectify this problem.
Let’s just hope it’s not all basket weaving.
The problem with lithium batteries is that, once damaged, they are self igniting – the damaged battery short circuits and heats up, which causes a fire. If you ‘extinguish’ it, it just heats up again and re-ignites. It usually does this until all the stored energy is dissipated.
Our CFS ‘Tesla fire’ SOP was ‘order 10 tons of water and quarantine for 3 days’.
How dare you!
What I thought of “Lt Cmdr Joanne Galloway” (especially in the white dress uniform) as a young teenager is sacred and should remain private!
Eyrie from the OOT. It was Hawke who shut down the Uranium industry when the Liars came to power in the early 80’s. I was doing some work for Power Nuclear Co(Japan) at the time in the Great Victoria Desert. The site doesn’t even get mentioned on WA government information anymore, no doubt being a nature reserve its fully protected, we are talking about a nature reserve the size of Greece. Only in Australia.
Handsome Boy roars like a tiger:
Houthis everywhere reach for clean underwear. Norman is holding them responsible.
Unlike our foremost trading partner, China.
Add to that the other half of the couple, his wife who spews out copious copy and wrapping herself in a mist of professional journalist mystique but, as soon as the clean light of day hit it, it evaporated and laid bare a small mean-spirited schoolgirl drenched in the thrill of hurting people she doesn’t like because she can.
These two are considered a ‘power couple’ by the Australian left.
Blow me down with a feather. Warner’s baggy greens have turned up. Did he get a third one for the first innings?
That Brian Hinkle fella has gone nuts.
Stanning Kim Jong Un as a “true leader”.
Further to the fillum stuff, advertising has fallen into the same weird hole.
When Did Commercials Become Filled With Ugly People? (4 Jan)
There’s a place for negative advertising (Wallet Wizard!!!) but every ad is now getting so woke that you wonder whether people will buy the stuff or be repelled by it. They don’t seem to’ve learned the lessons of Kellogg, Gillette and Bud Light.
Speaking of which, Peter Zeihan predicts a rough five years ahead for Australia if China’s economic malaise continues and impacts commodities demand.
Cassie, I hope you’re not surprised the people running the Sydney gay lobby have lined up with the racist anti-semites.
When gay “marriage” was politicised in Australia, it had only one option – to join the lefty tribe, which has all sorts of spoken and unspoken rules, currently including racism against Jews.
There was never any intra-tribal debate about the matter as “Palestinian” Arabs are one of the left’s proven groups of useful idiots because they hate Western civilisation – even though Arabs hate and regularly kill gays.
As a member of the leftist tribe, it’s your duty to correctly guess which of the tribe’s rules apply this week — and ancient hatreds like anti-semitism are back on the list.
Guess wrong and you’re thrown out of the tribe for thought crimes.
That’s why leftards are cunning: at any moment, they can be unpersoned for a wrong guess about what’s currently fashionable in the tribe.
The advertising people live in a bubble & get paid handsomely regardless of the success of the ad; it’s the corporate executives who sign off on the stuff who need their heads read. They seem to despise their customers.
Precisely.
John Lennon’s son rips DEI initiatives: ‘Creating institutional racism’
LGBTQ Activist Dylan Butler Reported as Iowa Mass Shooter
Flashback: A Sky News reporter discovered that African men struggle to understand that rape is bad…
Let’s see who turn up to their Australia Day bash this year.
Is it still on?
She’s not best known for Mary Poppins. She was a major star in her own right. She was wonderful.
Glynis Johns, most known for role in ‘Mary Poppins,’ dies at 100
custard
Jan 4, 2024 10:45 PM
Good evening JC
The problem with money, time immemorial, is that trust is lost. We’ve seen silver diluted with other metals (to cheat) in Roman times, and the USA removing the gold standard during Nixon.
custurd,
working my way through reading Lindsey Davis Falco Series, and the first book in the Marcus Didius Falco Mysteries series
The Silver Pigs is a 1989 historical mystery crime novel by Lindsey Davis and the first book in the Marcus Didius Falco Mysteries series.
Set in Rome and Britannia during AD 70, just after the year of the four emperors, the novel stars Marcus Didius Falco, informer and imperial agent.
The book’s title refers to 200-pound lead ingots “pigs” filled with silver ore and stolen from Roman Britain, which feature prominently in the plot.
That’s a South African issue. That revolver article is pretty awful.
The preachers in Uganda and Malawi do not stand for such sinning.
David Warner locates missing baggy green
After an exhaustive search, one of David Warner’s missing baggy green caps has shown up.
By Tom Decent
What do they mean “ONE of” ? I thought you only get one????
Fixed terms are anathema to the Westminster system
Yet, over the Pacific in the other branch of Oz’s Washminster family tree, four year fixed terms are part of the national cliche.
For numerous reasons i’ve stated before, i would like four year terms for the federal elections. But my wish list also contains abolishing the state governments and the Senate to boot, and it’s now all eclipsed by my hatred of slimy John Sands-grade referendums…
…so, it’s muskets time
The A-list stars, politicians and leading figures named in the Jeffrey Epstein files: Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Naomi Campbell and Leonardo DiCaprio are among famous faces in bombshell 1,000-page document
It’s a nothingburger.
Dr. John Campbell
High deaths in middle age
@ Dot:
“File that under “you’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you?”. Most of us, just want to be left alone. ”
As in:
https://drhurd.com/2021/12/13/the-men-who-wanted-to-be-left-alone/
Labor wants more women workers to join the Green Energy Sector to ensure enough person power to make fossil fuels history.
This story could be portrayed another way…
‘Young Female Green voters refuse to do the work required to make fossil fuel history.’
thefrollickingmole at 8:07
When it’s Pirate Pete agreeing with Mike Carlton it’s a literal description of what you are dealing with. We should have some sympathy for the Pirate who will soon be thrust into the role of bread provider with no obvious skills or talent.
ISIS takes credit for suicide bombings in Iran
Jon Gambrell and Bassem Mroue
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility Thursday for two suicide bombings targeting a commemoration for an Iranian general slain in a 2020 US drone strike, the worst militant attack to strike Iran in decades as the wider Middle East remains on edge.
Experts who follow the group confirmed that the statement, circulated online among jihadists, came from the extremists, who likely hope to take advantage of the chaos gripping the region amid Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Earlier the New York Times reported that US officials believe that the attack in Kerman, Iran, was most likely the work of the Islamic State militant group.
Two regional military officials also told the Times that they believed the Islamic State had perpetrated the attack, which killed 84 people during a memorial ceremony at the tomb of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated four years ago in a US drone attack.
Some Iranian leaders initially appeared to blame Israel for the attack, but the US officials said early intelligence assessments indicated that Israel was not behind the explosions. Although Israel is believed to have regularly carried out covert operations in Iran, they have typically been targeted operations against specific individuals — such as Iranian scientists or officials — or strikes to destroy nuclear or weapons facilities.
The US officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, cautioned that their assessment of the bombings could evolve.
The Islamic State group claim identified the two attackers as Omar al-Mowahed and Seif-Allah al-Mujahed. The claim said the men carried out the attacks with explosive vests. It also used disparaging language when discussing Shiites, which the Islamic State group views as heretics.
The statement did not mention which regional arm of the extremists carried out the attack, which other claims in the past have had. But Aaron Y. Zelin, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that some previous claims have not specified the regional arm, and that the latest claim came directly from an account associated with the group.
The group likely hoped to see Iran strike at Israel, widening its war on Hamas into a regional conflict that Islamic State could potentially take advantage of, Zelin said.
“This falls under the modus operandi of IS, especially since it was such a mass casualty attack,” Zelin said. “They are kind of like the Joker. They want to see the world burn. They don’t care how it happens as long as it benefits them.”
The Islamic State group, which once held vast territory across Iraq and Syria, ultimately were beaten back by US-led forces. It has been in disarray in the years since, though it has mounted major assaults.
Iran did not immediately acknowledge the claim.
An earlier report by the state-run IRNA news agency, later aired by state television, quoted an unnamed “informed source” as saying that surveillance footage from the route to the commemoration at Kerman’s Matryrs Cemetery clearly showed a male suicide bomber detonating explosives.
The official said the second blast “probably” came from another suicide bomber, though it hadn’t been determined beyond doubt.
The Iranian state media reports also gave new distances for how far apart the blasts happened, describing them as occurring 1.5 kilometers and 2.7 kilometres away from Soleimani’s crypt. The official said the bombers likely chose the locations because they were outside of the security perimeter for the commemoration.
An earlier death toll of 103 was twice revised lower after officials realised that some names had been repeated on a list of victims and due to the severity of wounds suffered by some of the dead, health authorities said. Many of the wounded were in critical condition, however, so the death toll could rise.
The gathering marked the fourth anniversary of the killing of Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, in a US drone strike in Iraq. The explosions occurred as long lines of people gathered to mark the event.
Iranian state television and officials described the attacks as bombings, without immediately giving clear details of what happened. The attacks came a day after a deputy head of the Palestinian militant group Hamas was killed in a suspected Israeli strike in Beirut.
Dr. McCullough: ‘Hyper-vaccination’ of children likely behind rise in autism, transgenderism
I think “trangenderism” is a mental illness deliberately encouraged by evil players with an agenda.
Mother Lode
Jan 5, 2024 9:04 AM
I think you’ve said it best.
Dr Hurd is great.
Er…being named in these documents is not evidence of wrongdoing.
Trump is named because Epstein partied at his casino.
Being “named in a document” is Titus Oates level fear mongering and slander.
It’s how you’d imply a victim of child abuse was a perpetrator.
No worries…at this very moment the AI is furiously at work on his next tome.
So much cheaper than all those human researchers.
“You’re losing it babe, there’s no such words as *gaslighting* and *crazy*…”
Gyppos getting too much heat from the Arab street it seems.
Egypt freezes involvement in Israel-Hamas negotiations (4 Jan)
No one in any MENA government likes the Palis, but their own citizens do. Egypt for example has a big Salafi voting bloc, as well as the many Muslim Brotherhood bros who elected Al-Sisi’s predecessor. It’s been entertaining to watch the squirming from “officials” as they try to keep the lid on.
Just watched it before you posted. The comments are interesting.
Then when you listen to Sleazy , who only seems to be interested in “green” jobs , you think Zeihan is wrong, it will be worse, much worse if the collapse in demand happens during his PMship, and he ignores reality and perseveres with his folly.
Why?
I have more sympathy for the dead trees robbed of life to fabricate his fabrications. And will no one think of the poor, tortured pixels?
Cassie, I hope you’re not surprised the people running the Sydney gay lobby have lined up with the racist anti-semites.
Tom, I’m not surprised by any of this. In fact, I’ve been warning about this for years. And since 7 October 2023 the scab has been pulled off the whole LGBTQI+ and “believe all women” progressive crapola that’s been smothering and strangling our political and social discourse for the last decade and particularly over the 7 years (since Trump was elected).
Chlamydia Ford, Abbie Chuckfield (I won’t platform a Zionist), Laura Shingle, Antoinette Latosh, the Amphibian from Mosman and all the rest of the progressive scum don’t care about real rape, nah, nah, nah, they only care about so called allegations of sexual impropriety when when it can be used against their ideological opponents…..that is right of centre politicians and commentators.
John Knox, the Scottish theologian, warned about the hideous cabal of the sisterhood. Knox was right.
There’s an internet ad for- i think- Qantas.
Features two twenty-y-o stunnas, in milk and white chocolate flavours, talking about buying a house under a flightpath.
The magic of Optus digitally cleans up their confused language, which turns out they’re saying that they’re having a baby as a big jet-shaped phallus ploughs through their headspace.
On the other end, a balding low T chap and a drag queen in a sari clutches his heart at the news that their adopted daughters are getting a child flown in from Estonia.
…i think i’ve interpreted the message right. I’d like a closer look as the “young and curious” couple.
Very carefully curated at least.
This Is Not the Epstein ‘Client List’, And it really doesn’t amount to much (Daniel Greenfield, 4 Jan)
President Claudine Gay Falls at Harvard
Her resignation offers a chance for an educational reset.
By WSJ The Editorial Board
Claudine Gay’s resignation Tuesday from the presidency of Harvard is a measure of accountability amid scandals on campus antisemitism and plagiarism.
Her leadership had clearly become a drain on the school’s reputation. The question is whether the Harvard Corporation that chose her and presided over this debacle will rebalance by installing an educator who isn’t afraid to challenge the school’s dominant and censorious progressive factions.
In the months since Hamas brutally murdered Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, the atmosphere on Harvard’s campus has been hostile to Jewish students. During one rally, the Crimson newspaper reported, a student “led the crowd in a chant of ‘Long live Palestine; long live the intifada; intifada, intifada; globalize the intifada.” Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi of Harvard Chabad said Dec. 13 that a menorah couldn’t be left outside on campus overnight, “because there’s fear that it’ll be vandalized.” Sen. Dan Sullivan described on these pages the intimidating scene inside the school’s Widener Library.
That was only days after Ms. Gay’s disastrous testimony to the House, which also prompted the University of Pennsylvania’s president to quit. Asked about chants to “globalize the intifada,” Ms. Gay said such calls were “hateful,” “abhorrent,” and “at odds with the values of Harvard,” but she would not say that they violated the code of conduct.
Ms. Gay’s focus was what constitutes actionable bullying or harassment under First Amendment principles. But the double standard on her campus is obvious, and the presidents struck many Americans as smugly dismissive.
Ms. Gay soon apologized, saying she “failed to convey what is my truth,” a thoroughly modern thing to say at an institution whose venerable motto is Veritas. “Her” truth, as opposed to the truth, which is what veritas is supposed to stand for.
Then came allegations that passages of text in Ms. Gay’s academic papers had been duplicated, sometimes almost verbatim, from other scholars. Harvard initially told the New York Post that plagiarism claims were “demonstrably false,” via a letter from a law firm with experience in defamation lawsuits, before admitting “inadequate citation” after stories about the allegations broke.
The Harvard Corporation has embarrassed itself throughout these controversies, declaring as recently as Dec. 12: “Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.” The process of finding a new president, it said Tuesday, “will begin in due course.” In the interim, the role will be filled by Provost Alan Garber.
The prescription should be clear, at Harvard and beyond.
What has been happening on college campuses results from the failure of leaders to support traditional liberal values of free inquiry and debate.
Prestigious institutions are racked with ideological protest from a contingent of students and many faculty who seem to care more about activism than learning.
Despite the distraction, or worse, that this poses to good academic work, administrators keep flinching instead of drawing hard lines.
It’s time to try the opposite. Perhaps Larry Summers is available to give it another go.
is this country governed by total imbeciles, or what? $10 billion of market demand shock pushing up prices of materials and labour for an unachievable target. No attempt to address the real issues of taxation and regulation burdens.
It’s for the Google Pixel and it is insufferable.
Desi parents would not approve, a woman is not a suitable boy.
Grey ranga, Hawke had a “three mines only” policy but it was Howard who legislated the nuclear power ban.
Oh yes; Zeihan says we can avoid the worst if we react quickly to what’s on the horizon. Not much chance of that under the laziest and least aware PM in our modern history and his cabinet of third raters.
She’s not best known for Mary Poppins. She was a major star in her own right. She was wonderful.
She was in at least two movies with Jimmy Stewart. No Highway in the Sky was one.
Jimmy Stewarts depiction of an on the spectrum engineer/scientist was good.
We have friends where the lady is married to a mechanical engineer and a daughter is one also. Told them to watch the movie. The lady says she laughed and laughed throughout.
There has to be a porn genre about gay sex and gold braids.
There was, it was called JAG.
Gayer than Freddie Mercury on a meth and gerbil bender
Salvatore, the Queensland jury duty thing was as of 2018. Who knows what they did since. Mrs Eyrie found out then when she was called up three weeks after becoming a citizen.
Thirty nine new citizens at that ceremony. Three whites and the rest brown/black or with headscarves or both. I think they were taking the piss out of us just because they could as we were captives for the duration. Gave an award to a grossly fat “aboriginal” (read you couldn’t tell) female as an additional calculated insult.
Not even the glorious visage of Lt Cmdr Joanne Galloway can wipe away the cinematic stain that is Lt Cmdr Mick Brumby.
Be interesting to delve into the funding of Liberal Party MPs.
Green Billionaires Fund Large Backbench Tory Net Zero Parliamentary Caucus (4 Jan)
Bribery works, we see that over and over with the Democrat Party including Mr 10% for the Big Guy.
We should have some sympathy for the Pirate
NAH. This cretin and his hideous wife have used their media profiles for decades to go after people whose opinions they don’t like. They have regularly belittled, smeared, mocked and taunted people. They have trashed people’s lives and in the Amphibian’s case, she prejudiced a criminal trial.
If you want some insights into how this ghastly man and his wife think, here are two….
The first was back in 2021 when the Amphibian used her Project platform to launch into Gladys B, then premier of NSW, for her softer approach to lockdowns. This truly vile Amphibian then praised Daniel Andrews and Victoria for his severe lockdowns. She wanted HARD lockdowns. I suppose you can weather a hard lockdown when you reside in a mansion on Sydney Harbour with a swimming pool and lotsa garden.
The second insight, and to me it really proved just how venal and toxic this vile woman named Lisa Wilkinson is, was the release of the recordings she made with Knickerless, Svengali Shazza and the other Ten producer (who has recently appeared in the dock and didn’t do himself any favours). The name Jacinta Nampijinpa Price came up, Price was then a candidate for the NT senate spot. You then hear Wilkinson’s voice change, she sneers, belittles, ridicules, and disparages Price, even mocking her indigenous name…..’Nampijinpa’.
In a better world, she and her pirate husband would be persons non grata in the MSM and decent society, but we don’t live in a ‘better’ world.
Qantas statement on staff wearing Palestinian terror badge
We understand there are strong and opposing views on the current conflict, but there is no room for these to be expressed by our employees in the workplace.
Our priority is creating a safe and respectful environment for our customers and all our people.
Unauthorised badges can’t be worn by employees and we’ve reinforced this to the crew member involved, along with the seriousness of this particular matter. We have also reminded all employees of this policy.
Qantas does not intend to make any further statements on this issue.
From the Comments
– There was also strong views on The Voice but that didn’t stop Quaintarse and their crews getting involved in that.
Stick to flying planes hypocrites!
– Their response is why people have the shits with Qantas.
One minute its repaint the planes and free trips for the YES mob and the next don’t wear badges? WTF??
Be great if publicly listed companies and employees kept their noses right out of politics whilst at work
and what’s the deal the the Chairman’s lounge? sounds like a slimy way to “buy” influence.
– “Qantas does not intend to make any further statements on this issue”
No! Really? And I was going to ask why painting a big YES on the tail of Qantas aeroplanes was ok.
Isn’t a good lefty woke cause as good as another lefty woke cause then?
Oh well, I guess we will never know.
What is the word I am thinking of? Oh yes: Schadenfreude!
Ms Melissa Fleming of the UN, Under Secretary for UN Communications, 23rd Oct l, 2023 came up with more commie jargon:
Pre-bunking.
“Seems like a convenient way to make up your own propaganda.”
“Pre-bunking”
It’s a totally unsurprising nothingburger.
The released documents are depositions from Guiffre v Maxwell. Mainly centred on the alleged Prince Andrew porkage and very far from previously unreported.
To the misery of tabloid editors everywhere.
After Nasrallah angrily stated in his speech yesterday that Hezbollah are not afraid of a war with Israel,
this morning the Lebanese Foreign Minister declares:
“The government of Lebanon and the Lebanese do not want war. We are afraid that they will drag us into a regional war.”
Hezbollah = Hamas = Isis = IRGC
All same shit who are willing to sacrifice the innocent citizens for their shitty agenda of hate.
I have noticed* that in recent movies; full of weirdos. All from Hollyweird. “Make it gay and put a chic in it” weird. The women are no longer attractive, and there is usually a transgender, who is not shown as suffering from mental health conditions.
* damn obvious actually
Same issue the ICC/CA had with Khawaja’s shoes. It wasn’t authorised.
The big wigs are quite happy to use employees as political props, but only for causes they see a commercial advantage in endorsing.
a transgender, who is not shown as suffering from mental health conditions.
Of course not. It’s you who’s crazy to think it’s somehow not normal, you transgenocide ultra maga creep.
Another one bites the dust, er, or sinks at sea.
Giant offshore wind project axed in blow to Biden’s green goals (4 Jan)
At this rate Bowen is going to have a real problem finding any company willing to build all those hordes of off-shore windmills he wants constructed.
Just ask Albo Jnr.
You are correct Eyrie. I’d forgotten about that time period. Another of Howard’s failings.
I’m not crazy for SIMPing over the original
Princess Irulan or Lt Cmdr Joanne Galloway.
Movies were better with better looking people, objective beauty standards and objective good and evil.
An older friend of mine’s niece died last year. Early 30s. Wide as a fridge. She’d eat a whole bag of chips and a cake as a snack.
No joke. We gotta bring back fat shaming.
Frank Galbally says all the right things.
The problem is he’s about 40 years too late.
I remember a Christian Lebanese friend at uni saying we were importing big problems with the Muslim hillbillies.
Bruce of Newcastle
Jan 5, 2024 10:11 AM
Another one bites the dust, er, or sinks at sea.
Giant offshore wind project axed in blow to Biden’s green goals (4 Jan)
Global energy developers Equinor and BP on Wednesday announced they are canceling the contract for a massive wind project slated for construction off the coast of New York.
The two companies said they had reached an agreement with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to terminate the offshore wind renewable energy certificate for their Empire Wind 2 project. Equinor and BP explained that commercial conditions, namely inflation, interest rates and supply chain disruptions, prevented its contract for the project from remaining viable.
At this rate Bowen is going to have a real problem finding any company willing to build all those hordes of off-shore windmills he wants constructed.
BON,
and that is before taking into consideration damage by salt
Looking at Son’s place in Manly salt wear rate high & Catholic Primary School Manly had to replace Aluminium Windows that were destroyed by Salt Spray over a number of years
I note (remember badly colour blind) – water off New York also seems lower salinity
https://encounteredu.com/multimedia/images/how-salty-is-the-ocean
Just when the Epstein list was being released.
Coincidence?
So if Giuffre had been asked if she ever saw Queen Elizabeth on the island, Liz would now be “linked with Epstein” according to the MSM?
Well, certainly not by “or what”.
The $10bn is a drop compared to the Commonwealth $120bn 10-year bucket of Strategic Land Transport Infrastructure projects announced last year – many of which were subsequently canned because cost blow outs of committed projects meant most uncommitted projects beyond 2029 couldn’t be funded from the $120bn pot.
Add to that the $billions of State infrastructure projects (hello Olympics), the Bowen $23 bn Rewiring the Nation cunning plan, plus $200+bn of renewables buildout – and we can vaguely glimpse why Australia is up shit creek from the perspective of resourcing affordable housing.
Australia: where incompetent managerial government is taken to an art form barely scratched at by Soviet 5-year plans.
Top Tovariches.
The India South Africa test was fun.
Siraj, Bumrah bowl India to victory in record time (4 Jan)
Carnage in all directions!
They make Donald Horne’s “second raters” look like geniuses by comparison.
And at least they didn’t hate the country.
Jesus H Christ the comments on PJW videos get more and more unhinged.
It’s a bizarre mix of anti semitism, anti Catholic bigotry, Jehovah’s Witness medical science and belief that Stephen Hawking was actually able bodied – also the Epstein facilities are “business as usual” trafficking children in tunnels.
There would be obvious questions about what she knew about Stephen Hawkins’ involvement in underage orgies.
Given this, we should rightly ask: Why aren’t these Muslim leaders being called out by our leaders and charged by the appropriate authorities?
What a joke. They have been doing this for last 1400 years. Australia has just woken up. Normally it is in Arabic and no one has bothered to find out. Our intelligence services are pathetic. The Friday sermon (khutbah – if you want to find out ) is the big one for exterminating crusaders ( that’s us by the way) and Jews. That is when they pour out of the mosque ready for action. It would be interesting to find out when the most ‘spontaneous’ Muz actions occur. I can bet it is on or soon after Friday evening.
All of them, of course, are ‘lone wolves’.
Mulberry tree fruiting for the second time this season without any special pruning or attention.
Damned global warming.
One for Wolfman. A loss for science I think, given she overachieved like crazy.
Actress in Mary Poppins Glynis Johns dies aged 100 (5 Jan)
Wiki:
RIP, beautiful lady.
I find it disappointing that on a day where Test cricket actively promotes the righteous cause of breast cancer, all the money raised and commensurate goodwill is overshadowed by the following headline:
‘Cheating Scrote Finds Hat’
Dr Faustus
Jan 5, 2024 10:36 AM
is this country governed by total imbeciles, or what? $10 billion of market demand shock pushing up prices of materials and labour for an unachievable target.
Well, certainly not by “or what”.
Meanwhile
The AFR View
Australia’s prosperity is not iron-clad
Iron ore is the gift that keeps on giving to this country’s economy – but we are all taking it for granted.
For all the nightmares visited on China’s staggering residential property sector, iron ore somehow remains the Australian treasurer’s reliable hollow log.
There’s been enough momentum in other types of construction, manufacturing, and steel exports to send the iron price to $US145 a tonne, the highest since April 2022 after rising steadily all through last year.
That delivers a huge tax revenue bonus over prices set prudently much lower in the budget, which assumed they would peak at $US105 last year and fall to $US60 this year.
Economist Chris Richardson reckons it will be worth $18 billion over this financial year and next. That means that Treasurer Jim Chalmers will get a headline second budget surplus in May.
These gains are often referred to as an earnings windfall, but really they aren’t. Yes, it depends on the vagaries of changeable global commodities markets. But it is also the result of huge investments by BHP, Rio Tinto, Fortescue and others in turning the Pilbara into an iron ore production machine. That’s given them the scale and efficiency to make profits, and generate tax revenues, at most price points.
Yet there is a huge disconnect in the way politicians are happy to hobble a resources industry that is paying down the budget deficits they have run up, and funding the election handouts that will appear this year.
Like many Australians, politicians seem unaware of the source of their own prosperity, saddling the industry with more royalties, giving the unions more power, as if the world had no alternatives.
Right now, it’s bonanza time, but that does not mean it lasts forever.
Involved like a potato at the Olympic Games.
You didn’t know?
There’s actually nothing wrong with him. It’s an act.
Like Keyser Soze.
See above re Peter Zeihan.
Bruce of Newcastle Avatar
Bruce of Newcastle
Jan 5, 2024 9:40 AM
It’s a nothingburger.
Very carefully curated at least.
This Is Not the Epstein ‘Client List’, And it really doesn’t amount to much (Daniel Greenfield, 4 Jan)
What is really interesting is that bill gates, whose wife left him because of his Epstein connections, was the first dignitary to meet with rub and tug. Is rub and tug on the list?
Past tense please.
He carked it.
LOL, this:
Curious twist as David Warner’s baggy green found in strange location (5 Jan)
I’m calling it: he forgot his backpack.
Or did he!?
Australia is becoming green, powerless and defenceless
Viv Forbes reminds us of how quickly peace can turn to war and how important energy and industrial strength suddenly was.
At this point Australia has lost half the refining capacity it once had and has only about one month of diesel and petrol.
In the event of something hostile stopping the supply of foreign oil, Australian planes would be grounded in a couple of weeks.
After Singapore fell, fuel was in such short supply, that cars and trucks were run on charcoal burners.
When copper was needed for the war effort, one smelter was repurposed with parts cobbled together in a rush from many other smelters.
But Australia has closed 6 smelters in the last 20 years. Where are the spare parts and spare expertise to reindustrialize if and when we need it?
Instead we ship off ore and hope the nice people at the other end send up back the things we need, while we build unreliable generators like talismans to weather Gods in the hope the world, apparently, won’t see as a climate pariah.
The patsies quake at the thought of being “left behind” in a race to nowhere, while another nation burns half the coal in the world, will soon have the largest fleet of nuclear power plants and builds the largest navy.
As net zero strangles Australian industry, Australia is becoming green, powerless and defenceless
By Viv Forbes
History holds lessons which we ignore at our peril.
Tom Sharpe is a former Royal Navy officer. He was a specialist in Anti Air Warfare and commanded a surface combatant warship
He is right on the money. Far too few people understand the situation of a warship at action stations…. The human analogy is the ‘fight or flight syndrome’ at full ‘fight’ mode… with hundreds of well trained, highly disciplined professionals acting in unison… A thing to behold.
also
Looks like a scientist CAN do everything in life. BoN, you have done well; but we can do better.
Damn, where did I put the bunsen burner and test tube holder…
Nile Red’s credibility as a chemist plummeted when he said hydrogen peroxide would make a solution more basic.
Chris, some more from the wiki:
A dancer with 25 gold medals, and actress in more than 60 movies and 30 plays, and wanted to be a scientist…
I can’t dance or act to save myself. 😀
The Friday sermon (khutbah – if you want to find out ) is the big one for exterminating crusaders ( that’s us by the way) and Jews. That is when they pour out of the mosque ready for action. It would be interesting to find out when the most ‘spontaneous’ Muz actions occur. I can bet it is on or soon after Friday evening.
All of them, of course, are ‘lone wolves’.
On Friday 2 October 2015, Farhad Jabar left school and walked to the local Parramatta mosque he regularly attended. Jabar prayed to Allah, listened to a radical sermon, was handed a gun and he then walked to the NSW Police Force headquarters a street away where he shot dead an innocent, hardworking Australian man by the name of Curtis Cheng.
Bladerunner sequel announced.
Oscar Pistorius to leave prison on Friday (Paywallian)
Maybe he should get together with OJ.
Talented lady… I had to look her up but her photos did jog memories of seeing her in films over the years.
I note her mother was Australian and a concert pianist.
That’s the whole point of Net Zero.
Nothing to do with the weather.
Net Zero is designed to kill the free market economy and send our living standards back to the 19th century with commerce controlled by government socialists.
Yes, that incident came immediately to my mind too, Cassie.
“Letting off steam.”
I’m calling it: he forgot his backpack.
I suspect some team members were having fun.
And they would have been pissing themselves laughing when Albo jumped in
The Europeans are presently revolting against it.
Given that and a Trump victory, I can’t see us continuing with it, given that it was threats from the EU & Biden’s government that forced Morrison’s hand on Net Zero.
To do so in a changed political landscape would be a special kind of idiocy indeed.
No, I refuse to believe this man’s guilt. Iraqis raping under age girls? Never in a million years.
An Iraqi refugee and a 17-year-old accomplice accused of holding a 15-year-old girl hostage inside a hotel room and raping her at knifepoint allegedly used a gun to scare off another man who tried to help her, a court has heard.
OOOOH!
She was the hottie with Danny Kaye in The Court Jester!
Awesome film; if you don’t know it get it and watch it, with all your generations!
Cassie, that should never be forgotten. And should be hurled in Tony Burqas face daily.
On Friday 2 October 2015, Farhad Jabar left school and walked to the local Parramatta mosque he regularly attended. Jabar prayed to Allah, listened to a radical sermon, was handed a gun and he then walked to the NSW Police Force headquarters a street away where he shot dead an innocent, hardworking Australian man by the name of Curtis Cheng.
I have to love the discussion about government terms and senate power.
None of these things mean anything.
There is no value in democracy. Just civilisation. Inasmuch as you allow voting to play a part in government it needs to be rigged – and be seen to be rigged – to ensure only demographics who typically value civilization can vote.
An actually useful rule is that anybody writing and voting for legislation that requires a sacrifice from anybody has to wear the equivalent sacrifice personally. Eg an additional tax on “profits” requires the legislation writer to bear an equivalent increase to their own taxes.
Plausible, if not likely.
Some of those very team members were thrown under the bus by Warner immediately post-SandpaperGate, when he very clearly implied that they knew and approved of the cheatery.
If this was the case, they should have given the cap to a passing derro outside the team hotel.
I’m pretty sure the houso ranga is not the most popular bloke on the team bus
As Anna in 49th Parallel:
49th Parallel (1941) Trailer
Movie of the week – 49th Parallel – 1941 Film – 2hrs
Farhad Jabar
Did I mention that Farhad Jabar was 15 years old?
I know someone who once worked with Curtis Cheng. He told me you’d be hard pressed to find anyone more decent, more hardworking, and more modest and unassuming than Curtis. A truly great Australian.
The vermin who murdered Cheng, Farhad Jabar, is buried at Rookwood. Jabar’s bones should be dug up, burnt and the ashes scattered in the wind.
Whether it’s the mass importation of terrorists and their sympathisers or appointing soft-on-crime maaates to the judiciary, state and federal Labor governments make our streets more dangerous — every single time.
Yes, they do.
Are you stanning Kim Jong Un as a great leader now?
Clearly, voting does mean something if you are noting how voting is gerrymandered.
Consent of the governed is an improvement on the divine right of kings, but it isn’t as good as rock-ribbed classical republicanism.
Secure property rights, term limits and sunset clauses go a long way. Republican checks on democracy.
Dot
Jan 5, 2024 8:30 AM
I am sympathetic to this but if Senators can’t initiate bills, then minor parties cannot repeal anything. Also the Senate absolutely must be allowed to refuse to pass legislation. It was baked in at Federation. The usual complainers are Paul Keating so I’ll leave it at that.I did not mean to say that the senate can’t reject legislation. Just that they can’t initiate legislation.
that would be an awesome way of appointing the senate. Say, a state-based lotto of everyone that officially retired that year. Those whose ball came up can decline, or take the job on for a term.
Dot
Jan 5, 2024 8:30 AM
And senators only get one term, and can’t be ministers or initiate Bills. They can only review legislation that gets passed by the HoR.
I am sympathetic to this but if Senators can’t initiate bills, then minor parties cannot repeal anything. Also the Senate absolutely must be allowed to refuse to pass legislation. It was baked in at Federation. The usual complainers are Paul Keating so I’ll leave it at that.
I think the Senate would be better as a national list with weighted votes. Or, sortition.
Hold up. This should be investigated!
Thanks for the tip, Chris.
I note Aussie journeyman actor Michael Pate is in it too.
Do you mean, a committee of elders?
Guess it depends on how strong it is and to what it’s being added 🙂
FMD. Cry baby Smith is whining about a spot on the sight screen.
Effing pathetic you big mary.
(Apologies to real Marys everywhere)
It’s Happening!
… on the day the Epstein list was published.
John – you probably already know this, but, this is why everyone needs to be precise with language and check if their maths or predictions pass the sniff test.
0.5 N HCl has a higher pH than 37% HCl because the dissociation is complete. 10 M HCl is merely nearly complete.
“Concentrated HCl is less dangerous than very dilute HCl”
The guy is a dumbarse, a rich kid with money to ruin stuff in a fake lab.
If you abuse the basic maths, you can prove that very low molar HCl is actually around a pH of 8.
Let’s not bore everyone else with the two main theories of what an acid is, then the inorganic and organic definitions of electron [air donation etc.
Isle of dogs.
Iconic Bluey episode accused of promoting ‘genocide’ (Sky, 4 Jan)
Worth watching the video, to say a long bow is being drawn is an understatement. Especially since cricket is involved.
Hahaha – cry baby out to a shite shot.
There’ll be whining in the change rooms.
Would Davey Warner be eligible?
Must have been that dot on the sight screen!
Good. Society needs more healthy people.
Don’t learn chem from copypaste Bharati online.
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-pH-of-0-05M-HCl
I somehow had Glyis Johns mixed up with Sarah Miles who I loved in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Those_Magnificent_Men_in_Their_Flying_Machines
In the air we breathe?
How about re-burying under a a pig sty where pigs can shit on him forever?