After reading todays News Poll I am more convinced that my grandfather was correct! “You will never go broke underestimating…
Open Thread – Weekend 3 Feb 2024
- Open Thread – Mon 20 May 2024
- Guest Post: Wally Dali- Archibald Prize predictions
- TULIP versus ruinous Labor
- Open Thread – Weekend 18 May 2024
- Bumtree #15
Neil Oliver ‘People making life or death decisions did NOT have the experience’ COVID Inquiry shock revelations
Mossad!
Douglas Crabbe: Uluru killer approved for parole after 40 years in jail over 1983 deaths One of Australia’s most notorious…
Trump Indictments Have Ignited a Juggernaut of a Presidential Campaign
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Feb 2, 2024 9:06 PM
Add a dash of Pepsi to dilute it a bit
Go and bang your head on the floor, until you are forgiven. It may take several days!
Sorry Zulu had to downtick,
I like Johhny Walker % Pepsi Max – but staple is Bundy & Pepsi Max
But if Single Malt – Neat
Clapham chemical attack suspect ‘a good Muslim’ despite claiming to convert to Christianity
Friends of pizza takeaway chef who claimed to have changed religion to gain asylum say he planned to return to Afghanistan to ‘find a wife’
Steve Bird
The Clapham chemical attack suspect was a “good Muslim” despite claiming he had converted to Christianity to claim asylum in the UK, his friends have told The Telegraph.
Abdul Shakoor Ezedi, 35, told a shopkeeper at his favourite Middle Eastern speciality food store – where he bought Halal meat – how he planned to one day return to Afghanistan “to find a wife”.
Staff at the Byker butcher shop in the east of Newcastle, where Ezedi lived for about a year, said they were “horrified” that the pizza takeaway chef had been connected to the attack because he was a “good Muslim”.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Halal butcher, who is a Kurdish Iranian, said Ezedi would pay £50 to £60 for a half a Halal sheep which he put in his freezer and would last a couple of weeks.
Ezedi, who arrived illegally in the UK in the back of a lorry in 2016, claimed his life would be endangered if he was returned to Afghanistan.
Twice refused asylum
He was twice refused asylum before being granted leave to remain in 2021 or 2022, despite having been convicted of a sex offence in Newcastle crown court in 2018.
His third asylum claim was successful after a priest vouched for his conversion and argued he was “wholly committed” to his new religion.
An asylum seeker can make a claim based on their conversion to a new religion if they will face persecution in their home country because of their new faith.
Ezedi is not the first refugee to have gained asylum after converting to Christianity. In November 2021, it emerged that a suicide bomber who blew himself up outside a maternity hospital in Liverpool on Remembrance Sunday had converted at the city’s cathedral.
Emad al-Swealmeen, 32, who came to the UK from Iraq as an asylum seeker, was confirmed by the Rt Rev Cyril Ashton at Liverpool Cathedral in 2017.
Ezedi was last in the Newcastle butcher’s shop the day before he was alleged to have attacked a woman and two children in Clapham, south west London.
He remains on the loose, having sustained severe facial injuries in the chemical attack on Wednesday night.
Ezedi is suspected of attacking a 31-year-old woman and her two children, aged three and eight, with an alkaline substance and attempting to run them over before fleeing.
Police officers were among the 12 people injured, with witnesses saying the mother had been blinded.
Ezedi visited the butcher on Tuesday afternoon wearing a “puffed-up” black hoodie jacket, according to another member of staff, also a Kurd from Iran.
Police released CCTV of Ezedi an hour after the attack wearing a black hooded puffer jacket, his face visibly disfigured.
The butcher added: “He works in a pizza shop. Every two weeks he would come here to buy a half sheep.
“He would say, ‘I am working in a pizza shop at night and I have no time to shop and you are closed when I finish work.’ So, he would pay £50 or £60 for the meat. He said he put the meat in the freezer.”
‘He never bought any alcohol’
The butcher added: “He would come in during the day. He would say, “Cut the meat for me.” I would cut it for him and he would also buy juice and Persian rice. He would spend about £100 in total.
“He never bought any alcohol. He was a good Muslim. Some Muslims do buy alcohol. But he never bought alcohol.
“He was a little man, short. He was very respectful, I never saw anything bad about him. One of my customers sent me the news that he was wanted. It is horrifying. If I see him I will call the police.
“But, I thought he was respectful and a very good guy, a good Muslim.
“I know he was Afghani. He doesn’t have a wife. I don’t think so. I never saw him with a woman, ever. I thought he was single.”
The shopkeeper recalled his last conversation with Ezedi about a month ago.
“Last time I had a talk with him, I asked him why doesn’t get married, he said: ‘I have no money. I have to go to Afghanistan to get married, to be with one of our people’.
“He said he was always working – seven days, it is very hard [to find a wife].
“He asked me why I am not married. I said I cannot go back to Iran on political grounds, so it is difficult to find a wife. He said, ‘I have to go back to Afghanistan to find a wife.’ He would start work at 3pm.”
He added that details about Ezedi had been shared among Kurdish people on a local Instagram group because he was known in the east of Newcastle.
From the Comments
– If they say they have converted to Christianity, the first thing they should do is offer them bacon butties and see what happens.
They out to be going after that clergyman as hard as they are after the perp.
– If as he claimed when making his first asylum application his life would be in danger if he was returned to Afghanistan, how come he was now planning to return there to find a wife?
The pleasures of antisemitism
From Fathom a decade ago. (reposted from the tail end of Wednesday’s OT)
Full article
Old Ozzie 3/12 @ 12:08
Say it’s not so Red label and cola
A bottle of Schweppes dry but not cola
(This is unavoidable at the footy)
DP World’s 23pc pay deal ‘will cost consumers’
David Marin-Guzman – Workplace correspondent
Prices for imported goods are expected to rise after stevedore DP World ended months of industrial action by agreeing to a 23 per cent pay rise over four years, one of the most generous agreements under the Labor government.
The deal comes on the same day DP World started charging up to 52 per cent more to move a container, with a backlog of more than 50,000 containers still to be cleared.
The Maritime Union of Australia reached the in-principle four-year agreement with the stevedore on Thursday evening following two weeks of intense bargaining facilitated by the Fair Work Commission, where the union is understood to have accepted rosters suited for a 24/7 workplace.
Sources familiar with the agreement said the proposed deal – still be to ratified by members – includes annual pay rises of 8 per cent, 7 per cent, 4 per cent and 4.5 per cent for the 1800 wharfies, as well as a sign-on bonus of $2000.
The record pay rise came as DP World imposed its biggest hikes yet to terminal access charges.
First flagged in November, fees increased for trucks and trains dropping off or collecting containers by 52 per cent for exports in Melbourne and 25 per cent for imports in Sydney.
Container Transport Alliance Australia director Neil Chambers said consumers would ultimately feel the pain.
“Wait until next year and the year after that when they [DP World] have to account for these added labour costs,” he said.
“All of those fees are naturally passed on to customers, particularly for low-value commodities like grain and anything from toys, furniture or other consumables.”
The Productivity Commission has labelled previous stevedore fee increases “an abuse of market power” but the competition watchdog has so far shied away from regulating them.
Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said the end of four months of industrial action was welcome but it came “at a long-term cost for industry and consumers”.
“The agreement involves a series of wage increases well above the current inflation rate (which is on the downturn), as well as projected inflation, which will inevitably lead to increased costs and charges for industry and end consumers in the years ahead.”
DP World, the shipping industry and affected businesses had pleaded for Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke to intervene to stop the MUA’s action, which kicked off in October, due to what they argued was significant disruption to the economy from delays to goods brought in and out of port.
However, Mr Burke refused to do so last month, saying Australians were “sick to death of having highly profitable companies say everything is the fault of them having to pay their workforce the same as their competitors”.
The MUA has now halted its rolling stoppages and bans on ships.
However, DP World, which moves about 40 per cent of the country’s containerised goods, estimates it will still take four to six weeks to resume normal operations and clear the backlog of 50,220 containers that has resulted.
Mr Burke said “this is how enterprise bargaining is meant to work”.
“Both parties negotiating in good faith to reach an agreement that acknowledges the common interests between employers and workers,” he said.
“Had I intervened – as Peter Dutton and others encouraged me to do – this dispute would have dragged on for months.
“It would have been the wrong call and it highlights Mr Dutton’s appalling judgment.”
In a statement on Friday, DP World said the deal included “key provisions aimed at ensuring fair compensation, enhanced safety measures, effective fatigue management, along with guarantees of job security and work-life balance for employees”.
“This agreement is a testament to our commitment to our workforce and to providing uninterrupted services to our customers,” said Nicolaj Noes, executive vice president at DP World Oceania.
Agreement to include work-life balance
MUA national assistant secretary Adrian Evans said “the past fortnight has shown how quickly a fair and sustainable deal can be resolved once both the workforce and the employer are fully engaged in the negotiation process”.
“Wharfies perform hard, physical work on a 24-hour, seven-day working week, in all conditions and all seasons,” he said. “They are among the hardest working, most productive and most flexible workforces in the Australian economic landscape.”
The deal only concerns general terminal conditions and conditions specific to individual terminals still require agreement.
Mr Burke said that “while there are some processes still to complete, this in-principle agreement is good for the company, good for the workers and good for the Australian community”.
However, Mr Willox said “it would have been better if the federal government had used its influence to resolve the dispute earlier rather than simply verbally beating up the company involved”.
“That it didn’t intervene gives industry concern that it will stand by in similar disputes in the future and not play a role to resolve differences in disputes that have widespread economic consequences.”
The agreement was reached just days before the stevedore was set to impose controversial new rosters on Monday to better suit its 24-7 operation, including more night and weekend shifts within a 35-hour week.
The MUA had objected to the rosters because it claimed it would result in pay cuts for workers – contradicting DP World’s calculations it would increase pay – and reduce their work-life balance.
While both sides declined to comment about the details of the agreement before it was voted on, it is understood part of the agreement includes allowing the new rosters to operate alongside “work-life balance” conditions such as six-month notice for roster changes.
Corte or Corti
Train trip is very picturesque but I knew that from last time when I caught it through to Ajaccio
The ‘haute ville’ is as rustically quaint as one might expect in its mountainous setting, especially in the bright winter sun but with no wind there is odour of wood smoke in the air which does not suit my asthmatic self at all.
Now killing time with a €2.50 bottle of l’eau at a local watering hole, quite a while til there is a train back.
So glad I didn’t opt to stay a couple of nights here, which I had considered back in Australia.
The AFR View
Milking the strivers comes at a cost
Australia already has a highly progressive tax system. But it depends too much on pulling ever more people into tax brackets meant for the rich.
Blessed are the higher earners, for they do the heavy lifting in the tax system.
Australia’s progressive taxation means that the more you earn, the more you pay.
The top 10 per cent of income earners account for 46 per cent of personal income tax and the lowest 50 per cent just 11 per cent of income tax.
Yet Anthony Albanese is selling his stage three backflip as taking back for middle Australia the ill-gotten tax gains of the well-off.
The Greens that Mr Albanese could depend on in potential minority government next year are in full eat-the-rich mode and don’t think he’s gone far enough.
The premise of both is false, because if someone pays more tax in the first place the tax “cuts” that would leave them in the same place after inflation look bigger too.
Stage three was meant to reverse some of the stealth effect of bracket creep, pushing a million Australians by the end of the decade into a top 45 per cent tax bracket that cuts in at just $190,000, putting ambitious tradies into the same tax territory as the seriously rich.
Paul Keating called any top marginal rate over 40 per cent “punitive”.
Both parties had once aimed to remove the intermediate 37 per cent tax bracket altogether, as the Coalition’s original stage three plan did.
Mr Albanese has now put it back, tripping up aspirational Australians earning $120,000 to $130,000 who will pay the bulk of future bracket creep as they earn more. And flattening the system, so that most paid 30 per cent, would have been an important stepping stone towards a 40 per cent top rate.
An unpredictable system encourages those who can to protect themselves from it.
The low threshold for top tax and the bigger tax cut for those on lower income offer a big pair of incentives for people to reduce their taxable income through extra super contributions, a family trust, or negatively gearing a property.
It might now be worthwhile for tradies to turn themselves into companies. The use of shelters complicates future reform. But a government that refuses reform just gives people a reason to use them.
Abandoning any fix for bracket creep leaves the tax system excessively dependent on taking the earnings of Australians in wages and profits. It’s not even sustainable. It undermines the incentive needed to grow the economy, and the tax base of the future.
The workforce is ageing and shrinking, and taxation of wages and profits scares away the investment that might make them more productive, and the migrant talent that would augment them.
The tax system is already a burning platform. Mr Albanese might have saved his own political skin, but he’s made things worse for the better government that does come along to fix it.
Pleasure, emotion, cognitive error … part of the picture. What’s missing is the motivation created by believing one is involved in an activity that is saving the world from some peril. That’s similar to why some people are drawn to political, social, and religious movements. The pleasure is derived from the belief that one is involved in a cause larger than one’s self. For reasons beyond my understanding that is very common in human beings. I’ve been like that myself but not anymore. The world can go to hell but let me have my tea.
For a detailed neurobiological account Sapolsky has an interesting lecture on prejudice, how it is sustained, and potentially how it can be overcome.
The AFR View
A disconnected disaster
Tony Burke’s push for a right to disconnect from the boss risks all the flexibility that many workers have come to prize.
Smartphones and Zoom calls have transformed the world of work, allowing a third of Australians to work from home or work irregular hours that suit them better.
Now Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke wants to re-impose old rigidities on communication that makes such work possible – but only for the employer.
He plans to push through new “right to disconnect” laws that limit how much the boss can communicate with workforces as soon as next Thursday in the second tranche of the Closing Loopholes Bill. It’s a Greens demand he agreed to last year, but there’s little information on what’s involved, and no consultations with the employers who will be held liable for managing it.
Everybody understands the risk of 24/7 intrusion in the ubiquitous smartphone era.
But over-policing would lose all the gains of instant communication and sending everyone back to 9-to-5 work in the same place.
Will employers be penalised for sending a text message or email to their employees outside some rigid work times that employees themselves adapt to their own convenience?
Crossbench Senator Jacqui Lambie says it’s another minefield for small businesses.
Her colleague David Pocock warns that the disconnect rules could be used for vexatious complaints by employees.
This looks like an ill-conceived policy, delivered through bad process, and with unpredictable results.
But from a minister who finds profitable companies a problem, and stitched up business once before at a rubber stamp Jobs Summit, it’s par for the course.
Calling BOM and their Worker in America or
‘Nobody is ever going to hire me’: Sacked WFH Aussie Suzie Cheiko breaks silence
A WFH employee who was sacked after her boss tracked her computer activity has revealed she fears “never” getting hired again.
The Fair Work Commission upheld IAG’s decision to sack her, as revealed by news.com.au this week.
The FWC heard Ms Cheiko didn’t work her rostered hours on 44 of the 49 tracked days, started late on 47 days, finished early on 29 days and performed zero hours of work on 4 days.
‘Total anarchy’: Fresh outbreak of looting in Papua New Guinea after violent riots left 16 dead
Two weeks after shocking riots that killed 16 people, there are fears a country on our doorstep is in “serious trouble” and could be “f**ked” if something “does not change”.
Unwra’s definition of refugee is so broad Gigi Hadad qualifies, most likely Joe Hockey and his children also qualify (his dad was born in Bethlehem and emigrated in 1948).
Australian Muslim Honour Stabbing, “She deserved it” says father.
From the Comments
– Has the A.L.P. gifted the perpetrator their standard $42.5 million donation for doing the killing yet?
– Nice family!
Multiculturalism at its finest.
The worlds’ most peaceful religion at its finest.
– Another illustration of muslims exercising the cruel, unnatural tenets of islam and its ultra hatred on non believers.
The 21 y.o daughter liked a Christian man.
If a mother, father & siblings can perpetrate such a crime on their own family, would they hesitate with any of us ?
Islam is not a religion for humans. Its a disease and a curse on civilisation.
Our despicable pollies willingly support and import it under the guise multiculturalism which in reality doesn’t exist
– That whole family must be deported. Dont even waste money on a court case
Of course “cultural concerns” must be taken into account by the wokerati legal system.
If so send the muslimes back to their cultural homeland Afghanistan.
Better still strap some parachutes on, give them a day’s water and some snacks and drop them out over a remote part of their cultural homeland.
THis kind of shiite must not be allowed to happen here.
If they get a light sentence, it will be repeated over and over and over.
Mitigation offered by lawyer & other muslims – they were influenced by Afghan tribal honor.
Volvo to stop funding Polestar, may sell its shares to China’s Geely
Volvo has hand-balled the job of funding of Polestar to parent company Geely, as the electric-car spin-off remains in the red.
Volvo is preparing to cut financial ties with its own electric-car spin-off – and sell much of its 48 per cent share to parent company Geely – as Polestar misses its sales targets and continues to lose money.
Polestar was previously Volvo’s performance-car division – similar to BMW M or Mercedes-AMG – until it was spun off to become an electric-car brand in 2017.
However in the years since it has been placed on a collision course with Volvo – which is now set to go electric by the end of the decade – and last year Polestar missed its sales target of 60,000 cars, itself slashed from a goal of 80,000 set at the start of the year.
Polestar says it requires about $US1.3 billion ($AU2 billion) in “expected external funding” to break even and pull it out of the red, but it will not come from Volvo.
The Swedish car maker has announced “full operational and financial support” for Polestar will be provided by Geely – the Chinese giant which owns most of Volvo – to allow Volvo to focus on its own electric-car rollout.
Providing Cover – U.S. Intel Officials Proclaim Iran Didn’t Have Control Over Terror Group that Killed U.S. Military with Drone
February 2, 2024 – Sundance
Obama and Biden like Iran. Obama and Biden are facilitating a pro-Iran policy.
Obama and Biden don’t want to do anything against the interests of their pro-Iran position. That’s the simple baseline.
As a direct consequence, the same U.S. intelligence community that proclaimed the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation, now modify their prior intelligence to proclaim that Iran likely doesn’t have any control over the various terrorist networks they support.
As a result, Biden cannot conduct a retaliatory strike against Iran because Biden cannot prove a direct link to Iran.
Our intel agencies are essentially falling on the sword of ‘some people did something, but we can’t be sure.’ See how this works?
WASHINGTON – Intelligence officials have calculated that Tehran does not have full control over its proxy groups in the Middle East, including those responsible for attacking and killing U.S. troops in recent weeks, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The Quds Force — an elite branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps — is responsible for sending weapons and military advisers as well as intelligence to support militias in Iraq and Syria as well as the Houthis in Yemen.
The groups have varying ambitions and agendas, which sometimes overlap, but Tehran does not appear to have complete authority over their operational decision-making, the officials said.
While the disclosure means it may be particularly hard to predict what actions these groups will take, it also could lower the chance of the U.S. getting pulled into a direct confrontation with Iran.
Any indication that Tehran was directly involved in ordering or overseeing the attacks would make U.S. retaliation against Iran more likely. (read more)
Cassia, just read your account of what you saw on 9 Oct. Just terrible what happened.
The majority of people I come across most definitely on side of the Jewish people. Even much to my surprise a normally very leftie Union guy.
Learning from David Solway’s insights about Islam and Western leftism
By Andrea Widburg
One of the most perplexing things about today’s leftists, who currently have a death grip on Western politics and culture, is the cognitive dissonance that sees them embrace ideas at complete variance with reality.
That’s why it’s fascinating to read an interview with David Solway, a writer, philosopher, and teacher.
The author of (most recently) Crossing the Jordan: On Judaism, Islam, and the West, offers insights about the West’s fatal love affair with Islam, the inevitable failures of socialism, or dangerous schisms within Judaism, you will learn something.
One of Solway’s more interesting points is about the nature of memory, leftism, and modern culture. Yesterday, I wrote that MSN.com’s AI algorithm has decided that the name of one of America’s greatest comic actors is an obscenity that must be redacted.
Is America Already A Dead Country?
Robin M. Itzler
Probably not yet but, depending on how the November election turns out, it could well be.
If you had made a list of all the actions a “president” could take to destroy the United States of America, it would include almost everything Joe Biden has done since moving into the White House.
Biden’s “success” in wrecking this country is helped by a Republican party filled with too many RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) and not enough America First Patriots.
Our republic’s Founding Fathers, all men of strong Christian faith who believed in Judeo-Christian values and limited government, would be aghast to see what has become of our country.
Many political observers think 2024 is our last opportunity to save the republic. Bernie Marcus, Home Depot co-founder and a staunch Donald Trump supporter, said on Larry Kudlow’s Fox News Business program:
But the truth of the matter is that if we don’t change the government in this next ‘24 election, this country is dead. I’ve never said that before. I don’t see any way out.
Will Donald Trump stop the Democrat party from spreading its socialist tentacles, or is America already like Dr. Malcolm Crowe?
The FBI Again Tries To Block Seth Rich’s Laptop From Public View
By Ron Wright
Not surprisingly, our media have ignored the Rich story.
As I sat at Starbucks, I showed twelve random people a recent news photograph of FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Most were under thirty and primarily female.
None could identify Wray by name or position. I blame our media for the absence of objective reporting, censoring information, and publishing propaganda without question, i.e., false war porn and casualty counts of Hamas.
Small wonder, then, that so many people don’t know about Seth Rich and his sad death, yet continuous trickles of new information make it increasingly clear that the FBI is hiding something.
Most American Thinker readers are familiar with the fact that Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee employee, was murdered on D.C.’s streets in 2016.
Inconsistencies in reports about his death, combined with its timing vis-à-vis the Russia Hoax, have made it easy to believe that this was no mere street crime.
What’s been most suspicious is the FBI’s desperate efforts to keep secret information about its investigation into Rich’s death, and it’s the FBI’s conduct that is the subject of this post.
From Hamas to drunk drivers, is there anybody Democrats won’t vote against deporting?
By Monica Showalter
Other than German homeschoolers, is there any group of illegally present foreign nationals Democrats won’t vote to protect from deportation?
Four immigration bills were presented in Congress and all were no-brainers to pass, but Democrats voted ‘no,’ on all of them.
Among the millions of illegals in the U.S. there are the Social Security number thieves, identity thieves who steal others’ Social Security benefits.
What did Democrats do in Congress when a deportation bill came up on Thursday?
But of course. They voted against deporting them.
In the same bill, they voted to keep illegals convicted of drunk driving exempt from deportation, too.
FAA turned away qualified air traffic controllers based solely on race
By Editorial Board – The Washington Times
The disturbing rise in near misses at our nation’s airports is no accident.
A class-action lawsuit by the Mountain States Legal Foundation has amassed a trove of documents shedding new light on an Obama-era Federal Aviation Administration initiative that rejected prospective air traffic controllers based solely on their race.
A 2013 FAA document, “Controller Hiring by the Numbers,” raised the issue in stark terms, asking, “How much of a change in job performance is acceptable to achieve what diversity goals?”
When failure is measured in human blood, the answer should have been none.
At the beginning of the year, five people died at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport after a jumbo jet carrying 379 travelers crashed into a smaller coast guard plane that had mistakenly entered the runway. It’s the job of air traffic controllers to keep this from happening.
There hasn’t been a fatal airline crash in the United States since 2009, but it’s only a matter of time before the streak ends.
The FAA recorded two serious, near-miss “runway incursions” at Reagan National and Baltimore-Washington International last year.
Vigilance is waning because the nation’s air traffic control towers are woefully understaffed.
The people responsible for keeping planes from smashing into one another are tired after working long, mandatory overtime shifts to make up for the lack of controllers.
Contributing to the shortage, the FAA temporarily put the brakes on hiring in 2012 so it could replace race-blind hiring rules with a “Biographical Assessment” stratagem designed to hire more minorities.
This quiz served as further screening of applicants who had already graduated from a 200-hour training program and achieved high scores on AT-SAT, a grueling, eight-hour cognitive test that measures each of the specific skills needed to do the job properly.
The questionnaire sought irrelevant information such as the “college subject in which I received my lowest grade.”
Those answering “history/political science” received 15 points.
Playing four or more sports in high school was worth 5 points.
By contrast, holding a pilot’s license — a major advantage for a controller — was worth only 2 points.
And having valuable experience as an air traffic controller in the military was worth no points at all.
Andrew Brigida became lead plaintiff in the lawsuit after his application was turned down despite his achieving a perfect, 100% score on the AT-SAT.
Mr. Brigida’s attorneys claim there was a method to the madness.
Race-hustling activist groups conspired with FAA officials to create the quiz so they could let their members in on a secret:
Anyone could pass the Biographical Assessment by answering A to all but one of the questions.
More than 3,000 top-performing, motivated applicants lost out because they weren’t members of this ethnic club.
From an Australian Naval Perspective, probably of more use than Submarines
Surface Forces: Use of Unmanned Ships Grows
February 1, 2024:
The U.S. Navy has sent more crewless ships to sea.
Recent fleet exercises in the Pacific featured the use of four new USVs (Unmanned Surface Vessels) for what the navy calls Ghost Fleet Overload.
During the exercises the four USVs travelled 82,000 kilometers.
This meant to test the accuracy, reliability, and durability of the USVs navigation systems. A shore-based facility and another aboard a destroyer at sea controlled and monitored the USVs.
The navy is monitoring three aspects of the UAVS to see what changes or improvements are needed.
First, the autonomous systems on the vessels are monitored. Then there are the command-and-control communications links, and finally how the hull, mechanical and engineering systems operate.
It was discovered that the USVs could operate for about two weeks at a time without human intervention to troubleshoot in one of the three system categories.
As a precaution some civilian mariners were aboard each USV to shut down any system that malfunctioned.
These onboard personnel had to shut down autonomous systems on these USVs 13 times as a precaution and for safety reasons.
Only six of those shutdowns were about how well the autonomous systems were controlling the ship.
The other shutdowns because of rough seas or suspicion that one off the hip systems was about to malfunction.
These shutdowns occurred about once every five or six weeks.
The navy is also working on how to carry about repairs while the USVs are at sea.
Foreign Affairs – How Russia Stopped Ukraine’s Momentum
A Deep Defense Is Hard to Beat
Many held high hopes for Ukraine’s 2023 summer offensive.
Previous Ukrainian successes at Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson encouraged expectations that a new effort, reinforced with new Western equipment and training, might rupture Russian defenses on a larger scale and sever the Russian land bridge to Crimea.
If it did, the thinking went, the resulting threat to Crimea might persuade Putin to end the war.
The results fell far short of such hopes.
Although the summer brought some Ukrainian successes (especially against Russian warships in the Black Sea), there was no breakthrough on land.
Limited advances were bought at great cost and have now been significantly offset by Russian advances elsewhere on the battlefield. It is now clear that the offensive failed.
Why? And what does this mean for the future of the Ukraine War and the future of warfare more broadly?
Robust answers will require data and evidence that are not yet publicly available.
But the best answer for now lies in the way the two sides, and especially the Russian defenders, used their available forces.
By late spring, the Russians had adopted the kind of deep, prepared defenses that have been very difficult for attackers to break through for more than the last century of combat experience.
Breakthrough has been—and still is—possible in land warfare. But this has long required permissive conditions that are now absent in Ukraine: a defender, in this case Russia, whose dispositions are shallow, forward, ill prepared, or logistically unsupported or whose troops are unmotivated and unwilling to defend their positions.
That was true of Russian forces in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson in 2022. It is no longer the case.
The implications of this for Ukraine are grim.
Without an offensive breakthrough, success in land warfare becomes an attrition struggle. A favorable outcome for Ukraine in a war of attrition is not impossible, but it will require its forces to outlast a numerically superior foe in what could become a very long war.
– QUESTIONABLE EXPLANATIONS
– INTRINSICALLY DIFFICULT
– QUALITY VERSUS QUANTITY
Quality is necessary for opportunity but may be insufficient in itself for success.
And if so, the United States may need to rethink its balance of quality and quantity in a world where permissive conditions happen sometimes but cannot be guaranteed
London Acid Attack Suspect is an Afghan Asylum Seeker and Convicted Sex Offender
Shocking huh?
I can’t help but feel sorry for Mark Steyn, only way we can help is by donating for his cause, but the man is fighting not only for his life but fighting a despicable individual in a DC court.
Practically no chance of him winning, one of his opponent’s lawyer said to him, “this will not end with your death”
As he said ‘only in America’ can this happen and the way it is happening.
All the best Mark on both fronts.
Johannes Leak.
Peter Broelman.
Matt Pritchett.
Michael Ramirez.
A.F. Branco.
Matt Margolis.
Chip Bok.
Tom Stiglich.
Steve Kelley.
Lisa Benson.
Ben Garrison.
Unplanned stop on the train.
Une vache blanche on the line.
Just as well the driver didn’t hit it.
So much stupid.
Also read that Barcelona is in a severe drought, dams down to 16%
East Coast Australia stole all the water.
the lost baguettes
Friends of pizza takeaway chef who claimed to have changed religion to gain asylum say he planned to return to Afghanistan to ‘find a wife’
This shit needs to stop.
If you are granted asylum, it needs to be on the basis that your travel out of the country is restricted.
It’s a DC court, he is guaranteed to lose.
Reading more on the South Australian attempted murder by “honour killing”.
Why did the plod agree to a plea deal?
It is a clear class of attempted murder & conspiracy to commit murder.
All those involved in that community that knew about this & did nothing should also face some pretty harsh sanctions.
Joe Rogan gets another $US250mill.
And it’s not exclusive to spotify anymore.
Meaning he can now also earn ad revenue off other platforms.
If you’re granted asylum because of persecution and you revisit your country of persecution your refugee status should be cancelled and you should not be allowed back in Australia.
+1000 Katz.
As for the free security stuff, Javacool software used to make decent stuff before Windows pulled their finger out…Norton destroyed one computer and uninstalling it was a nightmare!
I also use CC Cleaner and BitBleach (“what, with a cloth?”) but I like living on the edge.
Johnny Walker, Bundy, Pepsi. Any other cleaning products you drink? One of my son’s friends left a bottle of bundy behind after a party at our place. I tipped it down the sink.
Thanks. I’ll look for it.
That’s a key idea.
Leak just gets better and better.
From the old thread.
It’s easy to be wise after the event. It’s not so easy while it’s happening. I always try to think the best of people and their motives. The story about moving states, setting up business and meanwhile settling six children made sense to me, because I tend to empathy. I see Muddy was another.
You voted early with your feet (or is that your pixels). I persevered until met with a wall of nothing. Others have done the same. The events of Oct 7 have been a revealing watershed everywhere.
As for “no d*ckheads”, d*ckheadery is all in the eye of the beholder. Apparently you can type all sorts of garbage so long as you’re not “mean” to anyone. Or not reported for some sort of infringement of invisible rules. Not for me, it smacks too much of Lewis’ Inner Ring.
Dominance of advertising by the Left and the demonetizing of righties has been a powerful means of persecuting us. So it’s good to see an alternative advertising platform being set up by righties:
New Ad Agency Fights Back Against The Woke Advertising Cabal (2 Feb)
I hope they are successful.
Paywallion:
Scrutiny overdue on pedophilia in our state schools
GERARD HENDERSON
3 Feb 2024
Next Thursday Jacinta Allan, the Labor Premier of Victoria, will deliver an apology on behalf of the Victorian government to care leavers who experienced historical abuse and neglect as children in institutional care in Victoria. Care leavers are classified as persons who spent time in care as a child.
Later in the year, Allan will deliver a second apology – this one to survivors of child sexual abuse in government schools. This will follow the board of inquiry report, chaired by Kathleen Foley SC, into historical child sexual abuse at Beaumaris Primary School and certain other government schools, which is due to be delivered by the end of the month.
Daniel Andrews, the former Victorian Labor premier, promised in February 2023 to make a formal apology to survivors of institutional sexual abuse, including that which occurred in state government schools. However, he resigned from politics before doing so.
The very existence of the Foley board of inquiry underlies the failure of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, chaired by Peter McClellan KC, which ran for five years from 2013 to 2017. The McClellan royal commission undertook 57 case studies during which he heard evidence of historical child sexual abuse within institutions.
Despite the extension of two years (from the original three years) along with a staff of around 300 at any one time and a budget of some $372m, McClellan and his team did not do a case study of pedophilia in one government school. Not one.
Moreover, it spent little time on other government institutions. This despite the fact that the letters patent gave McClellan “wide scope” with respect to his investigations.
The prime focus of the royal commission was Catholic and other Christian schools. Writing in these pages on August 19, 2017, Professor Greg Craven focused on the royal commission’s obsession with “the Catholics”, commenting: “The rule is, if an inquiry gives the impression it is about one subject, the public will take it at its word.”
And so it came to pass – with most complaints coming with respect to Christian institutions. It was only after the royal commission concluded that a large number of complainants emerged alleging they had been sexually abused in government schools.
In September, the Foley inquiry was set up to examine the actions of multiple male staff members at Beaumaris Primary in the 1960s and 1970s. In time, this was extended to 24 schools where the teachers also worked.
It is impossible to believe that the only pedophile teachers in the Victorian education system at the time were confined to Beaumaris Primary and a few other schools. In view of this, the scope of the Foley inquiry is quite limited.
On November 17, Jenny Atta, secretary of the Victorian Department of Education, appeared before the Foley inquiry. She apologised for her department’s “catastrophic failures” in protecting children who suffered historical sexual abuse in government schools between the 1960s and 1990s.
The McClellan royal commission was not the only inquiry to overlook government schools, even though it had terms of reference to do so. In April 2012, Ted Baillieu’s Coalition government in Victoria set up the Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and other Non-Government Institutions.
Beaumaris Primary is of special interest. As John Ferguson reported in these pages on September 18, eight-year-old Eloise Worledge disappeared from her home in January 1976.
Victoria Police was of the view that she left the house in the company of an adult. Eloise has never been seen since and is presumed dead. She attended Beaumaris Primary, where there was a nest of pedophile teachers.
George Pell set up the Melbourne Response in late 1996, shortly after he became Catholic archbishop of Melbourne in July 1996, to deal with pedophilia in the Catholic Church. In contrast, it took the Victorian Education Department until 2023 to formally address this issue. Priest and author Frank Brennan explained the formation of the Melbourne Response in a recent speech to The Sydney Institute during the question period. It can be located on the Institute’s website.
The McClellan royal commission was also a failure with respect to Tasmania – as I have commented previously. It did two case studies in the state. One into The Hutchins School, a Christian institution with links to the Anglican Church. The other into the Church of England Boys’ Society.
McClellan did not inquire into any government schools in the state. The gap was filled by the Tasmanian government (after the McClellan commission wound up), which set up the Smallbone-McCormack inquiry. It found evidence of widespread pedophilia in government schools. For example, one male teacher was moved from school to school as his crimes were covered up. In time he pleaded guilty and was jailed. There were many such cases.
The Tasmanian government also set up an inquiry headed by former judge Marcia Neave into such government institutions as Launceston General Hospital and the Ashley Youth Detention Centre. The Neave inquiry also looked at government schools. It found the cover-up of attacks by pedophiles on boys and girls in Tasmanian government institutions going back decades.
The February 2024 edition of The Monthly contains a 10,000-word article by Nick Feik. It all but ignored government schools and focused on Launceston General Hospital and the Ashley Youth Detention Centre for boys (which also housed a few girls). Like Atta, Feik used the word “catastrophic” to describe abuse of young people and the cover-up by state bureaucracies.
It is easy to focus on pedophilia in religious institutions, sporting bodies and the like. But a real failure in this area turned on the inability or unwillingness of governments to act against pedophiles within state schools. Unfortunately, the McClellan royal commission was not fit for purpose in this instance.
However, the recent inquiries in Tasmania went well. It remains to be seen what the Foley inquiry will find and whether it will recommend a wider remit than a mere 24 schools in the large Victorian education system. Then the apology promised by Andrews for 2023 will be delivered by Allan in 2024.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.
GERARD HENDERSON COLUMNIST
Leak stating the bleedin’ obvious.
They’ve tried to paper over the evil so they don’t have to act on it. They don’t want to do their jobs.
It’s policing by consent, alright. The consent of a narrow, violent and dangerous section of the public. The rest of us can go hang.
Firstly, Leak nails it. That young man is on fire.
Secondly, from last night old fred…
Zatara
Feb 2, 2024 10:34 PM
Regarding the inability for the MSW plods to hear the words “Gas the Jews”, it appears more likely than not that they chose not to hear it as if they heard it they would have an obligation to act.
Zatara has nailed it. They don’t want to hear it. I can assure you all that I am not hard of hearing, nor is anyone else for that matter, and the words “gas the Jews” were most definitely screamed out that night, along with ‘kill the Jews’, followed by ‘where’s the Jews’.
As I said outlined in my rather long screed early last night, what happened on the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House is actually a lot more sinister than just a frenzied, frothing, rabid mob of Muslim and leftist Jew haters descending on that forecourt to burn flags, jump up and down with hysterical glee and scream some words, this mob that Monday night was Jew hunting, that’s why they wanted to go down to the Opera House because they thought there’d be some Jews there to hunt down, and this Jew hunt was sanctioned and provided a personal escort by the NSWaffen Police.
It is now official, and yesterday statement by the utterly discredited and disgusting NSW Police prove it, we are now living in Dhimmi world and the NSWaqf Police are now the custodians of instituting sharia law and Muslims are a protected species.
As I wrote yesterday, I spit on the NSWaqf Police.
Today’s Tele:
ALBO’S CHOICE: LISTEN TO THE REAL PEOPLE OR
RENT-AN-ACTIVIST CROWD
VIKKI Campion
3 Feb 2024
If Lisa Wilkinson’s preened and perfumed women’s march on parliament’s lawn had been disrupted by a men’s rights lobby, the screeches of misogyny would have been deafening.
As would the hollering cries of racism if No voters had targeted the Vote Yes voice walk to Canberra.
Yet a peaceful rally, planned initially to enlighten the elected on the experiences of farmers, residents and environmentalists against foreign power companies knocking out native bush, agricultural land and dolphin habitat for industrial wind, solar and high-voltage transmission lines, gets no such grace.
Fears of bushfires caused by towers in areas where the only firefighters are the residents who live there are obvious but dismissed.
Losses to heritage, biodiversity and property values would be deemed utterly unacceptable if they occurred in Marrickville or a lush Canberra suburb.
Yet, these concerns are waved off as NIMBYism if they are far enough
from the eyeline of Capital Hill. Instead, the rally against reckless renewables, protesting against a foreign developer-led, government-subsidised, gold rush on bush, oceans and farmland with more than 1000 projects proposed, has become the target of extremists circulating a counter-protest.
It has left mums and dads from farming and coastal tourist towns feeling threatened yet if their issue was for a different hue they could rally without worry.
The groups circulating a counter-protest include the sticky protesters Extinction Rebellion, notorious for gluing themselves to Canberra bridges and gallery banisters and lighting baby’s prams on fire.
GetUp, essentially an unregistered political party, joins them along with elements of the union movement, which Labor called upon relentlessly for Yes work during the failed Voice campaign.
Politics is changing in Australia.
When Coalition opposition leaders rallied at the carbon tax protest and the mining tax protest on that same lawn more than a decade ago, no opposing force showed up just to shut them down.
Now it’s not enough to report people’s Facebook posts of their experiences as “misinformation” to Meta. If our experiences don’t match what they want them to be, they intimidate and spread ludicrous propositions that anyone who turns up is funded by “big oil”.
Many rallying next week are pro-nuclear, a position they have come to after witnessing hectares of koala habitat gobbled up for industrial factory projects and their energy bill rise. GetUp, in its counter-attack, deems pro-nuclear views “dangerous, expensive” even though every other continent, except Antarctica, relies on it. Such is their disinformation; GetUp wildly claims rally attendees could be funded by big oil from the United States.
The reality is a little less sensational – and attendees have reduced bank accounts to prove it.
It’s people paying as much as $150 return for a bus ticket from northern NSW and using the cheaper motels at towns outside of Canberra.
Motels around Canberra are unaffordable to an average family during a sitting week, when room rates soar to gobble up political staffer travel allowances.
People are rallying to bring some reality to the decisions made in political offices at the behest of renewable lobbyists, academics pushing their barrow and philosophical zealots under the guise of a climate change crusade.
These people call to MPs and senators across the political spectrum, since many of their own in Labor seats aren’t listening. And they are waiting for Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen to respond to Australian EnergyInfrastructure Commissioner Dr Andrew Dyer’s recommendations – the one he has been sitting on since last
year.
GetUp has been invisible since the Albanese Government came into power. What mattered to GetUp under the Coalition doesn’t matter to them under Labor – but now they have been ordered to attack.
Finally, they can rally their troops, fundraise and shut down different points of view that they deem “toxic” and “dangerous”.
If they can’t win it with logic, they will try other means. Some of their tactics have worked already.
A number of mums with smaller children changed their attendance plans.
A peaceful rally is one thing to attend with your breastfed baby; one where Extinction Rebellion, GetUp, unions and farmers could collide under the watch of the Australian Federal Police is another. And why are unions, who are yet to see any major job creation from the transition with overseas workers flying in on migrant visas, coming in to be the muscle of a student pensioner protest group? Of the 600,000 renewable jobs Albanese promised for the transition, the only ones regularly advertised in a local Renewable Energy Zone are for highly paid corporate spin doctors and lower-paying lawn mowing-type maintenance.
The local community doesn’t see a dollar from predominantly Irish and European tradies getting bussed in and out of developments for 12-hour days. NSW transmission agencies such as EnCo are giving councils $250,000 grants for feasibility studies on setting up “donga towns” for wind tower workers – if these jobs were going to locals, wouldn’t they already have an address?
Regular people, inexperienced in fighting bureaucracy and genuinely hurt by Government policy, are not just up against the department spin but also the emergence of professional activists. It’s a new class of the entitled disgruntled. They are engaging in cancel culture, funded by others, organised by quasi-political parties, and bullying people in the middle who must live and work under transmission lines and wind turbines.
Far from being a benevolent order the kids should follow to attain moral enlightenment, the reality is strident tactics; unleashing submissions purporting to speak on behalf of communities they have never been to and have no interest in other than enforcing their “vision”.
An example is the North West Protection Advocacy group, which has spent years campaigning and participating in government inquiries and planning hearings. It has an unauthorised website with zero transparency, where some members claim to live in Narrabri but investigations have revealed most live in inner Sydney and coastal
towns.
They adopt the guise of an organised group of concerned locals but it’s actually a couple of puppet masters running the show.
Or look at the Rising Tide protest in Newcastle, which flew in activists from Queensland, Adelaide and Perth.
Planning authorities aren’t interested in the difference.
Only a certain person has the luxury to abscond from all pressing responsibilities to picket for even a day.
They must have time – which rules out most parents getting their kids to school – and money, which rules out those under the crunch of a cost-of-living crisis who must turn up to work.
The Albanese Government will start next sitting week choosing to either listen to the people who genuinely live in their seats – Labor seats – or the hired help of foreign wind factory proponents.
There’s only one explanation for them being at the Opera House at all.
The place was lit with the Israeli flag colours (note – no Magen David) in sympathy for the events of Oct 7. The expectation was that there would be some Jews there at the vigil ripe for roughing up (or worse).
They were denied prey. Like the frustrated wild animals they were, gee-ing each other up to commit crime en masse. And last time I looked, incitement to commit crime is also a crime.
No charges, nothing. Even worse an escort to the ES to intimidate Jews at home because they won’t travel further afield to be convenient punching bags for the sand monkeys.
This is Australia. This is Sydney, the city of my birth. A country that once prided itself on tolerance, openness, friendliness. A country betrayed.
On the other hand, NSWPLOD will be able to decipher “Kill the !@#$%^&”. Look forward to the knock at the door.
I see your downticker has wet the bed again calli.
from the old thread about “???? the Jews”
From how high up are their orders about this, with the same occuring in England, Canada, USA, etc, etc. Is it somewhat in parallel with the WuFlu? Is the Anglosphere still too free compared to the EU, so needs another round of suppression to bring us to heel?
The Collapse of the Rule of Law
COMMENT: Well, you were right that Jack Smith did not have the authority to prosecute Trump. You have a very diverse background in markets and law.
All the best
FE
REPLY: “Jack Smith was never formally appointed by the president and had to be confirmed by the US Senate. He not only lacks Constitutional authority to prosecute Trump, but he has pulled off a serious constitutional question that the Sixth Amendment was all about.
Yes, Ed Meese, who was attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals last month where he pointed out that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. Thus, this prosecution of Trump is therefore illegal – null and void.
Meese wrote in his brief that Smith was “not properly clothed in the authority of the federal government, [and] Smith is a modern example of the naked emperor.”
Smith has violated the intent of the Constitution for the Sixth Amendment was to secure your right to counsel and to be put on trial in the “district wherein the crime shall have been committed” because the King would charge you in England for a crime in the colonies where he KNEW an English jury would always rule in favor of the King but a trial in the colonies would rule against the king. Smith charged Trump in Washington DC, where he had a 95%+ Democratic bias for a crime in Florida. He had to charge him in Florida for a trial to pretend he was complying with the Sixth Amendment but cleverly indicted him in Washington when that is not where the crime took place.
Then you have the whole dubious prosecution in Georgia where the District Attorney appointed her lover as the prosecutor of Trump, who was a private lawyer and not a government employee. Then, in New York City, arguing that Trump overvalued assets on bank loans that were paid off as if that was defrauding a bank that has their own appraisers. Virtually every borrower in New York City could be charged under that theory.
All of these prosecutions are seriously disturbing and are stretching the law to the point that there is no rule of law. This shows how desperate the LEFT is to seize control of this country at all costs. If the Constitution no longer matters, the historical response is always a violent revolution. There does not seem to be anyone willing to defend the actual law. Defeat Trump at the polls – not by illegal and questionable prosecutions.”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/politics/the-collapse-of-the-rule-of-law-2/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=RSS
Dot
Feb 3, 2024 6:41 AM
As for the free security stuff, Javacool software used to make decent stuff before Windows pulled their finger out…Norton destroyed one computer and uninstalling it was a nightmare!
I also use CC Cleaner and BitBleach (“what, with a cloth?”) but I like living on the edge.
I was very happy with Kaspersky for many years but I have need to log into my work network from time to time and they decided it was Russian spyware. So I got BitDefender. I asked the IT guy if he was happy I replaced the Russian spyware with American spyware. He just laughed and said, “Yeah, good one.”
Waste of perfectly good antiseptic if you ask me.
Ho Chi Minns has lost control of the NSWaffen. The corpulent constabulary can never be more than two minutes away from a doughnut or a sausage mcmuffin.
Seriously, when was the last time anyone ever saw a fit copper? While there was a lot of corruption in the force during the seventies and eighties, at least those coppers were hard men who weren’t afraid of a bit of biff. The plod right now couldn’t even carry an Aldi bag with a credit card in it.
Well the people are certainly giving their thoughts on NSW police in the comments at The Australian.
Yet another nail in the coffin of police credibility.
One of life’s mysteries.
I watch Joe Rogan on Spotify for free and ad free. I don’t pay a subscription and don’t watch any other Spotify shows.
How do they make money out of me?
PS. Same for me watching Tucker Carlson on Twitter.
I think we need a “what did NSW police hear” thread so we can mock en-masse.
They also decoded the lyrics to that Cold Chisel song “Sheep flying and a 3 legged goat”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUGlWCCVA4M
MLK with his famous “I have a room” speech.
Hawkie with ” No child will live in a property”
Whitlam with ” Well done I say.. to the Governor General”
Hilarious.
What did they think was going to happen?
Today’s Tele:
COUNCIL BACKFLIP IN STINK OVER BINS
JAMES O’DOHERTY
3 Feb 2024
One of the state’s greenest councils has been forced into an embarrassing backflip after residents revolted over a climate-saving food waste plan.
Inner West Council reigns over an area famous for its devotion to green issues but has been forced to reinstate its weekly red bin collection, after residents complained that saving the planet was too hard when it required you to have dirty nappies and dog poo in a bin for as long as two weeks.
Residents will be able to opt in for the new weekly collection, after the plan is rubber-stamped at the council’s next meeting on February 13.
The backflip comes after the Labor-dominated council halved red bin collection for Inner West residents, instead providing weekly collection of food and garden waste so it could be recycled into compost. General waste – including dirty nappies and dog poo – was only collected every fortnight.
Despite being spruiked as one of the best ways to help save the planet, residents complained about garbage spilling over in local streets attracting maggots, flies and rats.
In an embarrassing backdown, Labor councillors are now proposing to bring back a free weekly red bin collection, for residents who “opt-in”.
However, relief for residents dealing with overflowing bins is still weeks away; the proposal will need to be approved by councillors on February 13 before the weekly collection gets up and running. If 15 per cent of residents take up the offer of a weekly red bin collection, the service is expected to cost the council $1m per year.
Mayor Darcy Byrne described the backflip as a “pragmatic decision”.
“We said all along that we would listen to residents and assess after the initial roll out if more support was needed. The new opt-in service is a pragmatic decision that will help the minority of people who are finding it a challenge and allow us to make food recycling an ongoing success,” he said.
In a statement, Inner West Council said the system had “diverted 5900 tonnes of organic waste to compost, instead of rotting in landfill”.
I didn’t know Iran and the Houthis changed sides.
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2024/02/ukraine-sinks-russian-tarantul-ii-class-corvette-with-kamikaze-usv-swarm-attack/
There is a lot of straight up fraud in these companies.
Yes they have to pay Rogan. Thats an example of provable cashflow. How much he actually gets paid is another thing.
If Facebook really has a trillion dollars of revenue, they’d affect the US banking system. I bet they can’t show a corporate passbook with that cash flow.
A UK conservative minister is quitting politics because he’s been threatened by Islamists. This has happened under a Conservative government and after fourteen years of Conservative governments.
Here, we had nine years of ‘Coalition’ governance. NSW had twelve years of spineless, cowardly Liberal/National governance.
NOBODY speaks up for the silent majority. NOBODY. All they do, when in power, is court the lie and bullshit that is multiculturalism, nobody calls out Islam or the left, except for a few fringe players such as Mark Latham, Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts and some others like Gerard Rennick. That’s it. For their truth telling, they are pilloried and mocked.
A few months ago I spoke to a Jewish communal leader who said to me that the good and safe times for Australian Jews were over. Finito, kaput. I thought he was engaging in a bit of hyperbole, but no longer and particularly after hearing the statement by the NWWaqf yesterday, this communal leader is right.
Here’s an example of vomitous double standards….
Jihad Dib’s skank of a wife is a far-left spruiker for the Palestinian cause, she’s a teacher at a inner-city girl’s high school. This skank has been caught on tape advocating for children to be indoctrinated into the ‘Palestinian cause’.
Now imagine if a partner/wife or husband of a Coalition, One Nation or UAP politician had been caught on tape spruiking some far-right cause to children, such as the actions of those men who were swooped upon by NSWaqf last Friday. Now, who here reckons such a person would still be in his/her role at a school?
What I’m trying to say is that be it on Jew hatred, climate, immigration, in fact on everything, right of centre parties have gone AWOL for over a decade, and they’ve said and done NOTHING to curb/curtail this. For far too long they’ve allowed themselves to be cowered by leftist and Muslim scum shouting, screaming and screeching at them….’NAZIS”
Gosh, good golly miss molly, we’ve even had a slug here who loves to accuse those of us on the right as being ‘Nazis’ even though the only Nazi is himself. Some wonder why I come down on this verminous hypocrite like a tonne of bricks, because he and his leftist ilk are SCUM. THEY ARE THE NAZIS.
I watch Joe Rogan on Spotify for free and ad free. I don’t pay a subscription and don’t watch any other Spotify shows.
I don’t pay a subscription.
When I pause an episode which is multiple times if an episode goes 3 hours, I get an ad play when I resume.
A few months ago I spoke to a Jewish communal leader who said to me that the good and safe times for Australian Jews were over.
The police are there to selectively enforce property rights, selectively enforce laws & especially to enforce the policies of the unelected managerial class.
Protecting citizens from violence?
Not so much.
The Covid Thought Police were not supportive of bottled spirits as disinfectant; they are sold at 40% alc/vol but allegedly 80% was needed for antiseptic (though I do find a gargle of Glenfiddich helpful for oncoming sore throat).
I believe the Bundy might be more effective as engine degreaser or for cleaning mag wheels.
Musk puts it quite succinctly:
When you hear the names of legislation or anything done by the government, it is worth remembering that the group that sent so many people to the guillotine during the French Revolution was called “The Committee of Public Safety”, not the “Cut Off Their Heads Committee”
He posted it on X.
His opening up the platform to allow all opinions is another reason I think the Biden/Obummer mob are less sanguine about their chances in November. Previously they had all the social media platforms on the tank, and the few MSM outlets that were not in the thrall of the Versailles court that is the Democrat dominated swamp had their reach on social media platforms severely restricted. The New York Post had the scoop on Hunter’s laptop but looked what happened to them.
It will not be so easy to snuff out so big a story this time. A single broken link breaks a whole chain.
Britain’s Jews are being terrorised
The knife attack in Golders Green is merely the most shocking expression of the surge in anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism has surged in the UK since the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel on 7 October last year.
Earlier this week, a man wielding a knife threatened the staff of Kay’s kosher supermarket on Hamilton Road in the Golders Green district of London. He reportedly entered the shop and demanded to know where the staff stood on ‘Israel and Palestine’.
Fortunately, the shop staff bravely forced him to leave, using trolleys and broomsticks to keep him at bay, before he was later arrested. As a video of part of the confrontation shows, they can be heard shouting ‘yesh lo sakin’ (he has a knife) in Hebrew.
According to the police, ‘a 34-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon, criminal damage and racially aggravated affray’.
Tragically, this was no isolated incident.
A few weeks ago, three Israelis – two men and a woman – were attacked in London’s Leicester Square after their assailants heard them speaking Hebrew. The two men suffered head injuries as a result.
Also in London last month, a group of masked men mobbed a Jewish charity event for disaffected young boys.
The men tried to break into the charity’s office in Hendon, north London but were blocked by police.
They were also filmed abusing Jewish passers-by. Apparently, they had got wind that an Israeli soldier would be addressing the boys (his talk was on how to overcome adversity and avoid taking drugs).
The UK statistics on anti-Semitism paint a grim picture. Figures from the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that protects British Jews, show a 524 per cent increase in anti-Semitic incidents between 7 October and the middle of December last year.
This trend is not restricted to Britain.
In America, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported a 337 per cent increase in anti-Semitic incidents between 7 October and 11 December.
The ADL has also collated national data on anti-Semitic incidents in the weeks following Hamas’s pogrom from several countries around the world.
They show a 738 per cent increase in Australia, a 300 per cent increase in Austria, a 961 per cent increase in Brazil, a 1,000 per cent increase in France, a 320 per cent increase in Germany and an 818 per cent increase in the Netherlands. The statistics were calculated over different time periods, but they all show a sharp upward trend.
Julie Kelly
@julie_kelly2
Fani Willis caught taking booty calls at the office and laundering tax money through her lovah
Alvin Bragg lets off bird-flipping illegals who attacked police
Jack Smith can’t get either trial underway and probably got a tongue lashing from Judge Cannon this week.
TGIF!
Bons
There is a Good article in the weekend Oz “eastern europes chilling perspective on Putins war”.
The whole who caused the ukranian war resurfaces.
Your thoughts with regard to the election of tusk who appear to be in the vein if Trudeau Merkel etc.
The eu largesse.
What if kalingrad independence gains traction.
It’s a pity citizens can’t take their own governments to the Hague for failing to protect a minority from the threat of genocide, in contravention of the international convention we are a signatory to (1948/1951).
The Hague may be a toothless tiger, but the embarrassment would be acute.
I believe the Bundy might be more effective as engine degreaser or for cleaning mag wheels.
I think it also kills weeds between the pavers.
But you have to remember to hose it off otherwise the ants come for the sweet sweet sugar.
Australian Man Injured by Pfizer Vaccine Wins ‘Landmark’ Claim Against Employer
Twas a mistake I tells ya! A mistake! Herald Sun on a bit of lunacy:
Er darling, it’s exactly what you did. Anyone with 2 functioning synapses can see through your bullshit. Par for the course with Greens morons.
Nikki Haley skewered by former South Carolina ally Nancy Mace who calls her ‘China’s favorite governor’ and says GOP presidential hopeful would be ‘manufacturing spy balloons right here in our state’ if she had her way
How to ensure a big, ugly war with Iran
Victor Davis Hanson
Iranian-backed militias have attacked American installations and forces in Syria, Iraq, and Jordan some 170 times.
Ostensibly, these terrorist groups claim they are hitting U.S. forces to coerce America into dropping its support of Israel and demanding a cease-fire in the Gaza war.
In reality, these satellite terrorists are being directed in a larger effort by Iran to pry the U.S. out of the Middle East, in the manner of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing.
That way, Iran will be free to fulfill its old dream of becoming a nuclear shield for a new Shiite/Persian terrorist axis from Tehran to Damascus to Beirut to the West Bank and Gaza–surrounding Israel and intimidating the Gulf regimes and more moderate states like Jordan and Egypt into concessions.
These Iranian appendages have made a number of unfortunately correct assumptions about America in general and the Biden administration in particular.
One, after the recent serial humiliations of the flight from Afghanistan, the passivity of watching a Chinese spy balloon traverse with impunity the continental United States, the mixed American signals on the eve of the Ukraine war, the troubled Pentagon’s recruitment and leadership lapses, and the destruction of the U.S. southern border, both Iran and its surrogates feel that the United States either cannot or will do much of anything in response to their aggression.
They see the U.S. military short thousands of recruits, its leadership politicized, its munition stocks depleted by arms shipments to Ukraine and Israel, and the massive abandonment of weapons in Kabul.
Two, they view Joe Biden’s serial appeasement as a force multiplier of these perceptions of American weakness.
After entering office, the Biden administration begged for a renewed Iran deal from a preening theocracy.
It sought to ensure calm by delisting the Houthis from global terrorist designations and sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas and radical Palestinians to buy good behavior.
Biden may have agreed that Iran was the spider in the center of the Middle East Islamic terrorist web, but only thereby to win over it with bribes such as lifting embargoes and sanctions to ensure an Iranian windfall of $90 or more billion in oil sales revenue.
Biden greenlighted a bribery payment of $6 billion to Iran to return American hostages, thereby ensuring more will be taken.
It loudly distanced itself from the Netanyahu government.
The gulf encouraged radicals to believe they could coerce Israel into accepting radical Islamic states on the West Bank and Gaza.
Three, after hitting American stations and bases 170 times and seeing little sustained, much less disproportionate, responses, Iran and its satellites now feel they are winning proxy wars with the U.S.
They have all but shut down the Red Sea as an international shipping route–damaging Europe, Egypt and Israel, which all depend on Red Sea commerce for vital imports and exports.
Iran has forced Biden to publicly alienate the Netanyahu government and push a ceasefire down Israel’s throat. And it has helped to spark international pro-Hamas protests throughout Europe and the US that timid and compliant left-wing governments fear could lose them close elections.
But most damaging are administration spokesmen who mouth the same empty script after each serial attack:
1) The US will respond at the time and place of its own choosing.
2) The US finds no direct evidence of Iranian involvement, although it clearly has supplied the attackers;
03) The US does not wish a wider war and has no plans to attack Iran itself.
Translated to our enemies, it means an 80-year-old non-compos-mentis president is in no position to prevent, much less win, a theater-wide Middle East war that his own serial appeasement has now nearly birthed.
Biden and the Democratic Party know, as National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan pointed out just prior to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, that the administration inherited a deterred and quiet Middle East. And then it blew up on their appeasing watch.
Now they are terrified of a theater-wide conflict breaking out during an election year — a fact known to all of America’s Middle East enemies.
Biden and company have forgotten the ancient wisdom that preparing loudly only for peace guarantees war.
To prevent war, it should return to oil sanctions on Iran, embargo its banking transactions, slap a travel ban on Iran and its allies, cut off all aid to Hamas and the West Bank, and restore a true terrorist designation for the Houthis.
Further to our very own Nazi slug, I suspect he’s here lurking.
Oh ffs, get a grip all you Bundy hating clowns. It’s a marvelous drop. Extremely versatile too. Cold nights out fishing would be an ordeal without Bundy in the coffee. Try camping without Bundy to warm up around the camp fire. How many 5pm cocktails come to life with Bundy? How is it possible to watch Qld beat the cockies without a Bundy and Coke? Bundaberg Rum is a memory maker. All you heathens can get back to your queer beers now and cheer on the effeminate Aussie XI, leaving more for us men.
New York father loses legal battle to stop his son, 8, from taking puberty blockers to change gender
Speaking of such things.
Where have all the prisoners gone? (Tele, paywalled)
I suspect the criminal justice system is going the same way as lefty jurisdictions in the US: crims are being let out onto the street with slaps over the wrist and nothing else. That would especially be the case in Sydney where organized crime looks to be solidly captured by a certain demographic, whose incarceration would be politically problematic.
The US has started retaliation bombing and strikes around 4pm Eastern In Syria and Iraq, going after IRGC installations and storage depots.
CNN Anchor Stunned Into Silence After Panelist Explains Why Illegals Don’t Stay in Florida
EU Leaders Isolated Orban to Seal Ukraine Aid Deal
I watched episode 1 and 2 of Masters of the Air yesterday. Band of Brothers and Pacific were I think better but some yet to go , so I’ll reserve judgement. How far Boeing has fallen.
One for Tom – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/matt-cartoons-february-2024/
From the tail end of the old thread. It’s very worthwhile. Terrifying, actually. Weinstein has come a long way when he can say (paraphrasing) We must forgive ourselves for thinking what would once have been thought insane. It’s the first time I’ve heard the word “parasitoid”.
Tucker Carlson
@TuckerCarlson
Ep. 71 Bret Weinstein traveled to the Darien Gap to understand who’s behind the invasion of our country. His conclusion: “it’s not a friendly migration.”
Cameron’s latest gimmick is a knife in the back for the Jewish state
The Foreign Secretary was wrong on Brexit, and now the Israel-Hamas war
NILE GARDINER
David Cameron’s call for the UK and UN to consider recognising a Palestinian state is both shortsighted and fundamentally dangerous.
Lord Cameron’s poorly-timed remarks at a reception in Westminster earlier this week are among the most reckless comments made by a British Foreign Secretary in the modern era.
The Foreign Secretary’s extraordinary intervention comes across as an insidious attempt to undermine the legitimacy of Israel at a critical moment, just months after the biggest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
It is astonishing that the British Prime Minister would even think of signing off on statements like this when Israel is under attack, while US and UK forces are coming under direct fire in the Middle East from Iranian-backed militias who openly declare their intention to destroy Israel and create a Palestinian state.
Cameron’s statements run counter to the wishes of the Israeli government, and are a direct assault on Israeli statehood, as well as appearing like an appalling reward for Hamas’s campaign of mass murder and terror.
They risk strategically strengthening Iran, the biggest champion of Palestinian statehood in the region and the world’s largest state sponsor of terror.
They will be welcomed by the brutal Iranian regime, who will see this as a propaganda win, and a blow to Israel.
They will also be cheered by the pro-Palestine mobs who have occupied the streets of London in recent months, and who will delight at the prospect of Israel facing humiliating pressure from the West to make major concessions.
This is the kind of move one would expect from a far-Left government.
My former boss, Margaret Thatcher, would have strongly condemned this approach. It smacks of amateurism and a desire to kowtow to UN and European Union elites.
Israel’s very survival is now at stake, with the Israeli people menaced by an array of Islamist terrorist groups and an Iranian regime that is openly pledging to wipe Israel off the map.
To make a big call like this on Palestinian statehood without Israel at the table, and without the consent of its elected government, is a flagrant violation of Israel’s sovereignty and self-determination and a slap in the face for the Israeli people.
A Palestinian state would have to be recognised by both sides, and the Israelis rightly see no prospect of a two-state solution while Palestinian terrorist groups and their Iranian backers threaten Israel’s security and its very existence.
The drive for a two state path has prompted the Israeli Prime Minister to warn that it would “endanger the state of Israel”.
The Biden Administration has not yet pushed back against Cameron’s remarks, which has taken place against the backdrop of rising tensions between the US President and Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Biden White House should firmly reject Cameron’s latest intervention on the Palestinian issue as a bridge too far, but its support for the IDF’s war on Hamas is softening.
Biden’s foreign and national security policy has been an outright disaster, which the Cameron plan would fit into nicely.
There can be no doubt, however, that a post-Biden conservative administration would firmly reject the idea of Palestinian statehood carved out by external powers. A potential second Trump presidency would throw this plan out of the window and unequivocally stand with the nation of Israel in their hour of need. It would result in a major clash between Washington and London and damage the special relationship between the US and UK.
It is hard to see how the British government picking a fight with Israel, and helping out the cause of Iran, in any way benefits the British people.
David Cameron was wrong on Brexit, bowing to the Eurofederalist elites of Brussels, and he is fundamentally wrong today in grovelling to the enemies of Israel with his call for the UK to consider recognising a Palestinian state.
Great Britain should stand with the Israeli people, not undercut them.
Nile Gardiner is the director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation
Bundy rum is quite useful for curing blowfly strike in sheep. It was never intended for human consumption.
Rhonda Garad, City of Greater Dandenong councillor, said she “didn’t mean” to share the anti-Semitic post, which she has since deleted.
Didn’t mean to get caught.
Didn’t think people would notice.
What an dumb, evil, cnut.
True!
I confess, I admire the alcohol content greatly. If I were inclined to mix my spirits with sufficiently… diverse liquids I might also enjoy the taste.
But taking the p1$$ is good fun.
It’s the Rum Rebellion!
The relevant clauses of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which could be applied to what transpired at the Sydney Opera House and subsequently:
Art. II (b)
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Art. III (c)
Direct and public incitement to commit genocide
Art. IV
Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.
Art. V
The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention, and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.
I was going to watch Gutfeld today because Walter Kirn is on.
But it looks like the well telegraphed bombings might interrupt regular programming.
I suspect the police staffing crisis has something to do with it as well.
I haven’t seen clear up rate stats recently, but I know that in QLD detectives have quite a backlog of unsolved cases because they lack the manpower to investigate promptly unless the crime is of the most serious nature.
James Campbell:
Coming to Australia under the Australian Labor Party/Greens/TEALS?/Senator David Pocock?
Forget the economics, there’s a moral imperative to abolish Britain’s worst tax
Next month’s Budget is the Conservatives’ last chance to put things right
BEN WILKINSON – HEAD OF MONEY
It seems that everyone but the British public wants Jeremy Hunt to put off tax cuts.
The International Monetary Fund said this week that now is just not the time, and the Office for Budget Responsibility is said to be warning there is much less “fiscal headroom” available to the Chancellor ahead of next month’s Budget.
Labour, of course, would love to see a general election fought when the tax burden sits at a 70-year high and has nowhere else to go but down.
However, regardless of the economics, the Conservatives now have a moral imperative to deal with the mess that inheritance tax has become.
Labour certainly won’t be rushing to end the injustice.
We cannot forget that since David Cameron took power in 2010, inheritance tax has mutated into a charge that now looms over anyone with a family home and modest wealth.
The long-standing freeze on allowances, coupled with a house price boom and a bout of high inflation, now means that the Treasury is reaping record rates of death duties every week.
It cannot be stressed enough that this is not from the very richest who can easily side step inheritance tax with a little financial planning, but the unwitting families who never dreamed they would be considered wealthy enough to be affected.
The number of families stung by the charge has already more than doubled under the Tories and is expected to surge to around 50,000 a year by the end of the decade.
But now civil service probate delays are making matters worse.
Probate, the legal document needed to deal with a loved one’s finances, is now taking an average of four months to obtain but in some cases executors are having to wait up to a year.
Yet inheritance tax bills have to be settled within six months of death – failing that interest is piled on at 7.75pc. This works out at £320 a week on the average bill of £214,000.
So bereaved families who cannot afford to pay such a bill upfront are being penalised through no fault of their own – because the civil service cannot get its act together and the Government can’t balance the books.
This cannot be right, and families hit by this incompetence should be spared from interest.
The very wealthiest, of course, have the cash on hand to settle these bills upfront without issue.
Again, it’s those who do not have the money who have no choice but to obtain probate to pay the bill and are now at risk of unfairly high interest rates compounding their misery.
This sorry saga is just another reason why inheritance tax should be not just cut but abolished entirely.
The way it is levied and collected is no longer fair or justified.
Inheritance tax is consistently rated Britain’s most hated tax.
Even those who have no fear of paying it despise it because it goes against the human instinct to look after your family the best you can.
Next month’s Budget is still perhaps the Conservatives’ last chance to put things right before Labour wipe the floor with them in the general election.
If they can’t cut taxes they might as well surrender now.
I’m not buying the idea that the NSW plod love the muzzles so much they are providing cover for them with a language expertologist no less.
It has to be either that they received instructions from the Liars to go easy on them because of the vote herd in the west , or that by going easy they may mitigate a muz loon from committing a horror. They know Jews would never do such a thing.
It’s likely to be a combo of all three, but love of muzzle? Nope.
Ok so they are just fkg cowards then.
Which emboldens the mohamedans and their scum supporters, enabling escalations without any consequence.
NSWplods motives are irrelevant. It’s the outcomes that matter to everyone and the signals it all implies. Moslems are officially a protected species now. Well done to all the multiculti supporters the Big Australia fruitcakes.
My gob, smacked.
Has to be media getting out of hand with a ten-years-old story.
Surely.
They ignored the warnings and nascent threats for years the hate-filled sermonising in the mosques, the refusal to assimilate (or, rather, acknowledge the validity of the rest of Australia’s culture and laws), their clinging to culture that exalts violence against outsiders, and the demands for special treatment like prayer rooms or demanding the right to slaughter animals in ways illegal for others (due to laws that were presumably written for cogent reasons) or demanding blasphemy laws to be binding on ALL Australians for reference to Allah or Mo PBUH (Pox Be Upon Him).
So the problem was allowed to sink its roots deep and to grow, and now it is so big they can’t bring it back under control.
How far Boeing has fallen
Boeing had really good PR for a long time. You’d think B-17s were all that was used in the daylight bombing of Europe but there were large numbers of B-24s which were slowed down by having to operate with the slower B-17.
The B-17 was designed earlier than the B-24 by a few years. Later bombers like the
B-24 had higher aspect ratio wings and higher wing loadings giving higher performance.
I’m not sure the celing of the B-17 (35000 feet) vs B24 (28000 feet) would have made much difference. A few years back the Lockheed U-2 cockpit was pressurised to 29000 feet and many pilots had problems with the bends. Neither the B17 nor B-24 were pressurised.
ADF to train eagles as counter measure for killer-drones
So the wind farms that kill Wedgies are destroying a defence asset?
In which case the unspoken threat of acts of terror renders a sub-group immune from some laws.
Which will only further embolden them to seek expanded favourable treatment from the authorities.
As Sweden has belatedly discovered, that is a recipe for localised social breakdown and general loss of confidence in the state.
i.e. “no go” areas
Weren’t the Liberators used more on the coastal and nearby coastal targets in Occupied Europe than the Fortresses? There’s a significant payload difference but the 24’s were well suited to the accuracy needed on the coastal work. They did the heavy lifting for Overlord, or so I thought.
I have not always been a fan of Dave Sharma & thought he was a disappointment as an MP. But he has written an excellent article in today’s Oz which explores in more depth than usual – the serious errors made by Wong & co in relation to the monetary assistance to UNRWA & other issues. Sorry, I wasn’t able to copy the whole article.
https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=183aca1f-3035-4f02-b107-39b6bba6f90e&share=true
What a surprise.
It did copy! Excellent. Good read.
I know it was built in a hurry, but Boeing build good aircraft, right?
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/heres-why-the-b-29-could-have-had-a-higher-loss-rate-than-the-b-17-and-b-24-over-germany-in-1943/
Engine fires caused the majority of losses.
The Consolidated B-32 Dominator might have been a better choice all along – basically a super B-24. The same engines as the B-29 but did not have the cooling issues due to better cowling design.
Ace is loving the Fannis fanny story.
CashApp Cougar Fani Willis: Okay, Fine, So I Used Taxpayer Money to Hire a Human Meat-Mallet to Pound My Snizz Into Thin Tender Strips Like Veal Scallopini
johnny maga
@_johnnymaga
MSNBC sent a reporter to a black barbershop and one of the guests said “a lot” of his friends are voting for Trump
“We’re broke with Biden… we weren’t with Trump”
“With Trump, we had money”
BTW one of more interesting coffee pals in Sydney is a military historian and evaluator of military equipment etc who is still on the circuit. He was telling me this morning that lots of excellent drones being produced in Perth. Trouble is we gave a heck of a lot to Ukraine.
Personally, I would like to start keeping what we actually manufacture.
Exclusive — Rep. Waltz: Biden ‘Deliberately’ Sabotaging Surprise Element in Response to Iran-Backed Attack on U.S. Troops
Makka, I couldn’t find exact numbers but one source said one entire division of the 8th Air Force was equipped with B-24s. You are correct about the other roles also.
Dr. Mike Yeadon: “Pandemics are Not a Thing.”
They’ve tried to paper over the evil so they don’t have to act on it. They don’t want to do their jobs.
So lame and contemptible.
There is plenty of evidence to bear this out. We’ve been discussing it for years.
Deaths During the “First Wave” of the Pseudopandemic Were Caused by Iatrocide.
Good for him, but that’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
The Cradle reports that the conflict in Gaza has effectively shattered the UAE proxy in Yemen, which is facing mass defection to the government in Sana’a.
Could you explain the background, please, Dover?
Good for him, but that’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Have a read of it, Roge.
Many thanks to the Cat who posted about Kurt Schlicter’s new novel- The Attack.
Reading my copy now. A scary template for the next 5 years or so, I hope it isn’t.
‘Not a joke’: ADF to train eagles as counter measure for killer-drones
February 01, 2024 – 11:09PM
Well, the local big boy eagle in our valley attacks our neighbour’s glider when he flies close to the escarpments.
Scares the daylights out of him.
Actually that is likely to be a good thing.
A large stock of two or ten year old electronics is unlikely to be a big help; its better that the old ones are burned in battle so we are actively improving the design based on feedback from the real world.
Meanwhile, the glowing forges of Mordor, er, Perth dronemakers, are still in business. Its normal for manufacturers to go broke after supplying an initial military order because they scale up, then don’t get ongoing orders to pay off the loans.
170 million followers of Elon read this.
There is no denying that Biden is committing treason by allowing adversaries of the US to walk freely across the southern border in their tens of thousands. This senile kiddy fiddler should be behind bars at Leavenworth, awaiting sentence.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1753056577395798453
HOW WASHINGTON FIGURES JOB CREATION: Hiring Accelerated With 353,000 Jobs Added in January.
How the private sector does it: January hiring was the lowest for the month on record as layoffs surged.
There’s nothing in it that hasn’t been discussed here, Vicki.
But good on him for putting it to a wider audience.
Is This Not Treason by the American President?
Guess What Happened After Biden Gave Iran a Preview of Its Retaliation Plans?
MATT MARGOLIS
Last week, three American troops were killed in an Iranian-backed drone strike in Jordan. It was a damning indictment of Joe Biden’s record of appeasing Iran, which dates back to his time as vice president.
Biden has been talking tough with Iran for many, many weeks, and Iran has repeatedly proven that it is not deterred by his words.
But the moment troops were killed, Biden was suddenly under pressure to respond with more than just idle threats. And he did promise a response.
And then promptly broadcast those plans to Iran.
Sources within the administration leaked the details of potential moves by the administration to Politico.
“Within the administration, top aides are trying to thread a needle,” Jonathan Lemire and Alexander Ward of Politico reported Monday night.
“Biden is ordering his advisers to present a range of U.S. response options that would forcefully deter other attacks while also not further inflaming a smoldering region, according to two officials granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about private deliberations.”
According to the report, “Among the options on the table for the Pentagon: striking Iranian personnel in Syria or Iraq or Iranian naval assets in the Persian Gulf, according to the officials.
The Iranian government, for its part, has suggested that a strike on Iran itself would be a red line.
The officials suggested that, once the president gave the go-ahead, the retaliation would likely begin in the next couple of days and come in waves against a range of targets.”
The administration subsequently leaked which targets had been approved.
The only thing Biden didn’t do was ask the Iranian mullahs for permission to drop a few bombs—though perhaps they did and were wise enough to keep that under wraps.
It was clear that despite Biden’s public front about retaliation, his administration was never serious about retaliating or creating an effective deterrence—otherwise, they wouldn’t have broadcast to the world what the potential targets were.
And naturally, Iran saw the ol’ “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” from Biden and responded accordingly.
According to Fox News’ chief national security correspondent at the Pentagon, Jennifer Griffin, IRGC commanders in the target areas have left and gone into hiding.
Dr Garad sincerely apologised
Not another ‘doctor’? Oh yes. Rhonda’s work is in public health and focused on the implementation of research outcomes. She has a strong focus on influencing systems-based change and the orientation of care to meet the needs of end-users. Her PhD was in the field of health literacy, and she co-delivers a unit in the Monash master’s program on implementation science.
Just another don
They called Monash ‘the sewer’ in the 60s I believe. They collected money for the VC there. What a despicable abomination of a place.
This looks good.
A new movie by Guy Ritchie starring Henry Cavill. Action, adventure and Henry Cavill. swoooooooon.
My understanding is that Waverley police have known for years about the inevitable weekly threats to local Jewish schools by…certain people.
Oct 9 at the Opera House came as no surprise, so they needn’t pretend that this is all new following the South Israel reaving.
Hate-filled.
The NHS recently went through a review along these lines.
The “end users” now report that it is even more unfriendly to patients than before, with an extra layer of bureaucracy interposed between patients (& their GPs) and the hospital and allied health systems.
Makka bundy is definitely not a memory making drink otherwise you’d remember it tastes like shite. I drink rum, in fact Beenleigh is one of the best. Appletons is hard to go past for those on a budget.
Biden should be hung, drawn and quartered.
A traitor.
Billy Clinton just splashed a frock. But got worse treatment.
I’ve said before I know, but the post WWII expansion of hiya ejucashun has been an unmitigated disaster. Tax payer funded nests for marxist wreckers and other nincompoops that value thoughts over achievement.
Haha, I like him already, you don’t need to do anything more to convince me.
Trump Derangement Syndrome Meltdown of the Week (1 Feb)
Sounds great. Bring on the Environmental Apocalypse™, we’ll get to see which side of politics survives better in the absence of those totally essential almond milk lattes and smashed avo toasties.
Actually, Billy Clintons worst crime was marrying his missus.
haha- yes monster is an understatement. Horrible, horrible witch.
They’ve gotten the Band back together.
They’ve also stuck to the original premise. yay.
Muzzies and multi-culti should never be seen in the same sentence. They don’t fit in anywhere, not even in their own countries. Is there not a country that’s not a shiiteheep with muzzies in control. The Emirates not withstanding and I reckon they could fall over any time.
Listen to the Weinstein interview. They’s not just encouraging it, they’re actively facilitating it, with taxpayer’s money – in conjunction with the U.N., also with U.S. taxpayer’s money.
Well, there are the gay rums too of course.
Opinion US-Iran tensions
Biden’s dilemma over Iran’s skilled game of chicken
Tehran is gradually turning the Hamas crisis to its advantage but concerns about domestic stability remain high
JOHN SAWERS
The writer is former chief of MI6 and UK Ambassador to the UN
Iran was wrongfooted by Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel. Tehran hadn’t been consulted and the operation risked pulling Iran into a wider conflict it didn’t want.
Six billion dollars that was about to be released by the United States in return for a prisoner exchange was blocked.
There was a hint of irritation at Hamas in public comments by Iranian leaders.
But in the nearly four months since, Iran has gradually turned the situation to its advantage.
Hamas’s attack hurt Israel and exposed its vulnerability. It also stalled efforts to get Saudi Arabia to establish relations with Israel.
So there were benefits for Tehran to build on.
Across the Middle East, militants trained and equipped by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have ratcheted up the pressure against shipping in the Red Sea and bases used by US forces in Iraq, Syria and now Jordan. Hizbollah in Lebanon, by some way the most important of the Iran-backed groups, has added to Israel’s discomfort while keeping within the unwritten parameters of rocket exchanges across the border.
US President Joe Biden has a lot on his plate in an election year. Who can blame him for wanting to avoid another conflict in the Middle East when memories of Iraq and Afghanistan are still sore?
Iran doesn’t want a regional war either.
But Biden’s clear priority of avoiding escalation has given Iran confidence to up the pressure, assessing that the consequences would be manageable.
Meanwhile, Israel’s offensive in Gaza has lost momentum with Hamas’s leaders still alive and Israeli hostages still in captivity.
As the shock at Hamas’s brutality recedes, western leaders are looking for a way to end the crisis, blocked only by a recalcitrant Netanyahu, fighting for his political survival.
So is the Gaza crisis a victory for Iran? Are their leaders privately crowing?
There are certainly positives for Tehran.
Their strategy of forward defence — building up militias and creating the so-called Axis of Resistance — has proved itself.
Each militia has its own identity and a degree of autonomy.
Hamas’s assault in October shows that they are not all centrally directed by the IRGC’s Qods Force.
Militias like Kata’ib Hizbollah, part of the umbrella group blamed by Washington for the drone strike that killed three US soldiers, have their own animus against America — their leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was killed in the US strike in 2020 that assassinated Qassem Soleimani, the Qods Force leader.
All these militias depend on Iran for funding and weapons.
The Houthis in Yemen, for example, would not be able to launch missile and drone attacks on Red Sea shipping, or rappel down ropes from helicopters to board vessels, without very specific IRGC training and materiel.
But keeping them at arm’s length enables Iran to deny direct responsibility.
That puts the burden of escalation on America’s back.
But at the same time, Iran has its own security problems to deal with.
The widespread street protests in late 2022 showed the underlying level of dissent against the regime.
We think of Iran as a unitary state.
But the regime has to deal with a variety of regional movements.
The Baluch were briefly in the news last month after successful attacks in the country’s south-east and the bizarre Iranian response of missile strikes against Pakistan who face a similar Baluch separatist challenge.
The Kurds are as big a problem for Iran as for Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
Arabic speakers in oil-rich Khuzestan have been prone to unrest, and even the well-integrated Azeris in the north object to central direction, for example over language policy in the local media.
In addition, Iran was targeted by Sunni terrorists last month, when more than 80 were killed by an offshoot of Isis operating out of Afghanistan.
The regime’s lack of grip was exposed when they were unable to stop the attack even after advance warning from the US — an act of unrequited intelligence sharing.
The biggest worry in Tehran is how to manage the leadership transition when the 84-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is no longer able to continue as Supreme Leader.
Transitions are always a dangerous moment for autocratic regimes and there is no obvious successor.
Behind the scenes, there is debate on whether power should shift more overtly to the security forces.
Soleimani’s killing in 2020 removed a charismatic leader who could have provided the glue in the regime.
Calls by Khamenei on the IRGC to show “strategic patience” make me wonder whether there are increasing strains between them and the Supreme Leader’s Office.
On top of all this is the nuclear question.
The 2015 nuclear deal had its weaknesses but Trump’s abandonment of it let Iran off the hook of tight limits on its stocks of nuclear material and the IAEA’s close monitoring. As a result, Iran is getting ever closer to the threshold of nuclear weapons. The issue, rightly, remains a vital factor in the Biden team’s calculations.
There is no easy answer to the dilemma facing the White House of how to prevent further militia attacks.
The Iranian leadership is skilled at the elaborate game of chicken that is being played out.
American strikes are expected following the attack in Jordan.
To get Iran to rein in its proxies, these will have to play on the regime’s nervousness about stability at home.
Frank diplomacy combined with a willingness to escalate will be required.
“so they needn’t pretend that this is all new following the South Israel reaving.”
Calli,
you have given the best description of Mo-filth ever. Reavers.
I will be using it from now on.
Roger at 10:08
Sounds like one for our Malmo correspondent.
Ukraine intends to build 1 million antipersonnel drones this year. Russia, I suspect, can will be building even more than that. Then there’s China…
We’re going to need a lot of eagles.
Menzies spearheaded Commonwealth funding for the universities from 1957, believing that they were foundational to a liberal democracy.
By 1968 the tax payer subsidised cultural revolution was well and truly underway.
Bill Burrows
February 3, 2024 at 9:26 am · Reply
Robert Onfray (a retired forester) wrote an article for the Australian Rural & Regional News newsletter (1 Dec 2023).
The most disturbing point spelt out by Onfray and alluded to in: ( StevenNowakowskiPanoscapes – Industrial Renewables in Central Queeensland See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vAEvDSVel0&ab_channel=StevenNowakowskiPanoscapes) is that Wind ‘Farm’ developments are exempted from Queensland’s Vegetation Management Act (1999)!
This is outrageous given the fragile landscapes where the majority of these “farms” are being located (especially in the Gladstone -Sarina coastal range region) and doubly so because of the fact that these higher areas are also refuges for iconic/endangered fauna such as koalas and greater gliders.
They are killing them off with not a blush of shame.
I’m disgusted! [If a rural landholder had inflicted that sort of disturbance on his/her land after the VMA became law he/she would have faced fines well into the 6 figures. And there are very many examples in the Court system files to highlight this point.
From Robert Onfray’s article: “The state has introduced strict vegetation management laws in response to receiving bad press about perceived tree-clearing rates and its management of the Great Barrier Reef.
However, no state-based legislation protects vulnerable wildlife and intact remnant vegetation from renewable energy projects.
The forest ecosystems affected by wind factories in Central Queensland are classified as 90 per cent plus remnant and intact vegetation.
However, wind factories are exempt from the Vegetation Management Act 1999 (Qld) and Nature Conservation Act 1992 (Qld)”. ————” Instead, they are subject to State Planning Code 23, the Wind Farm Code, which overrides those two acts.
Renewable energy companies can put wind and solar factories, transmission lines and pumped hydro schemes anywhere they like.
Under the Code, renewable energy companies don’t need to conduct environmental impact studies as part of the approval process.
We now have a situation where governments approve significant developments with minimal environmental review before sanctioning wholesale clearing.”
But that’s not all! Orchid Energy is in advanced planning for a 6000 MW offshore wind turbine facility off the Gladstone (& Capricorn Coast?).
The biggest turbines are currently c. 15 MW capacity suggesting about 400 are being planned for installation.
Most of these “farms” will presumably be sited 10-20 km offshore. But because of the height of the structures (200-300m) they will be clearly visible from the land.
And at night the individual towers need bright navigation lights to warn shipping and aircraft.
The vision splendid – and smack in the Curtis Channel.
The latter is a prime migration ‘highway’ for hump back whales. Hope the whales don’t interpret the red lights on top of the turbines as signals to stop their migration!
Poor bloody Gladstone is being squeezed by bird choppers by land and sea. Towers of Babel for the ages!
This is your brain on Jenkem.
Omar and Taylor need a good nuking. Also that wong chap.
The dialogue in Guy Ritchie’s films are killer. That new flick looks awesome, another Guy Ritchie triumph!
Fires, Farms and Forests
A Human History of Surrey Hills, north-west Tasmania
Retired professional forester and experienced land manager, Robert Onfray, has written his first book ‘Fires, Farms and Forests’. It is a fascinating human regional history which brings to life the rich past of Surrey Hills, a unique tract of land in north-west Tasmania.
Surrey Hills supports a wide range of significant cultural and environmental values.
It is home to some of the oldest cultural artefacts in north-west Tasmania.
Robert has worked in many forests across eastern Australia for over 33 years and spent 14 years managing Surrey Hills, including significant programs conserving threatened species, many of which he details in the book. ‘Fires, Farms and Forests’ is meticulously researched and a must read for anyone interested in Australian human history and land management.
The book is available from leading bookstores in Tasmania and direct from the publisher, Forty South.
You can order the book by clicking on the link to the left.
Robert also writes blogs on three different topics each month – stories about Surrey Hills, travelling around Australia, and forestry or land management issues he observed on his travels.
Leave your details below if you would like to subscribe to the monthly blogs.
UAE supported non-Houthi side in civil war. Houthi’s support of Gaza ceasefire via blockade has had the effect of increasing support for Houthis among non-Houthi faction and now they are joining the Houthis. This only increases their position as de facto Yemen government.
Billy Clinton just splashed a frock.
But what a frock.
In other obfuscation and mendacity news, our own local member, Meryl Swanson, has taken out a full page in the Port Stephens Exaggerator, a Fairfax publication.
The big ticket issue here is wind farms. And on this she will never win the locals over, many of whom have spent a lifetime building up businesses that depend on our pristine and beautiful coastline and all its marine life.
I wish I could link the thing, because it’s a nightmare of nonsense – and why wouldn’t it be? The photo is with her and Bowen with some debbildebbil chimbleys behind them, presumably at Liddell.
So here’s a little quote:
See what she does there? First, question the motives of the locals for being up in arms about Labor’s ruinous, destructive and useless wind farm plan. Second, bring in the wicked Opposition, intent on…something wicked. Thirdly, …Huh? Is she seriously thinking a nuclear power plant will be built on the sand spit that is the headland?
She’s more than happy to have the marine environment ruined. And she’s more than prepared to run dedicated high tension wires through pristine bushland to somewhere around the Tomago smelter and all the danger and destruction that entails.
But nuclear! The horror!
I know what I’d like to do with her ample back door. Give it a good kick.
Mount Gay rum is pretty good but after drinking bundy you’d likely mount a ghay.
Tom Slater is giving a Douglas Murray style kicking to the UK media and pollie muppets over the acid attack in Clapham.
It turns out the poor woman is also muslim and a reffo herself.
Gladstone is the world’s fourth largest coal export terminal by volume and Australia’s fifth largest multi-commodity port.
Not many people know that.
A fable about land management in the tropics
2 February 2024
This is a story to illustrate an instructive lesson on active land management. It involves animals including humans, plants and forces of nature.
My story is a call to arms to highlight that our land management issues are not straightforward and the solutions require the fortitude to go against elitist and misguided orthodoxy.
For too long, people parading as experts have monopolised the spotlight by offering a convenient, but flawed narrative.
These “experts” are in government agencies, conservation groups, environmental consultantancies and academia.
All they bring to the table is a simplistic preservation ideology that cannot address the land management problems in the tropics.
I will use Kakadu National Park (KNP) as the case study. KNP has experienced a relatively long period of preservation management; however, the park isn’t faring well.
The preoccupation of the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service (ANPWS) to conduct broadscale burning only in the early dry season, supposedly to mimic traditional burning, and their inability to conjure a more complex fire management program to suit the modern landscape, highlights the essence of the problem.
The setting
KNP is one of Australia’s most iconic places to visit. Situated in Australia’s tropical north, it is a must-see destination.
Aborigines held sway in the Arnhem Plateau from European dominance until after World War II. After the war until the 1970s, the southern area was managed as two immense cattle stations before it became part of KNP. The northern region was a hide processing industry hub using feral Asian water buffalos (Bubalus bubalis).
The government dedicated KNP in three stages between 1979 and 1987. Many of its outstanding natural features – a stunning sandstone sheet and associated escarpment, unrivalled wetlands covering over 67 per cent of the total park area, and over 5,000 galleries of Aboriginal rock art – were first recognised in the 1960s.
However, before the government could seriously consider recommendations for a national park, geologists discovered significant uranium deposits.
Consequently, they delayed any decision for more than a decade while they carried out an environmental impact study and an Inquiry to allow mining of the uranium.
If the government approves a wind farm or solar farm in your neck of the woods, you should receive a massive discount on your power bill.
If you have to put up with all the negatives, you should receive an outsized benefit.
Hallmark Reinvents Sense and Sensibility as All-Black
To be fair the planned bio of obuma should have an albino playing him.
Back in my days in the CMF/Army Reserve, we were on a weekend bivouac in a cold spot.
Late on the Saturday evening, the brew truck arrived. You beaudy! I tossed some instant coffee and sugar in my mug, and filled it up from the urn on the back of the truck. As I stepped away, a mate offered a slug of Bundy, gratefully accepted.
Has anyone else ever drunk coffee with Bundy, made with the tea (not hot water) in the urn?
Okay, the Houthis win the civil war.
Now what?
In other obfuscation and mendacity news, our own local member, Meryl Swanson, has taken out a full page in the Port Stephens Exaggerator, a Fairfax publication.
Swanson is a kunt. She used to be a dj on 2SM and ever hid her bias: wide eyed, innocent pucker and a (simple) mind like a rat trap.
The 1939 fires – a blame game
5 January 2024
“And of course there were ignitions by the fistful. Lightning kindled some fires, but most emanated from a register of casual incendiarists that reads like a roster of rural Australia: settlers, graziers, prospectors, splitters, mineworkers, arsonists, loggers and mill bushmen, hunters looking to drive game, fishermen hoping to open up the scrub around the streams, foresters unable to contain controlled burns, bush residents seeking to ward off wildfire by protective fire, travellers and transients of all kinds. Honey gatherers lit smoking fires.
Campers burned to facilitate travel through the thick scrub.
Locomotives through out sparks along their tracks. A jackaroo tossed lighted matches alongside a track so that his boss would know where he was. Residents hoping to be hired to fight fires set fires”.
Stephen Pyne “A Burning Bush”
Recently, I read an article that outlined how the Forests Commission of Victoria (FCV) were misguided in blaming graziers for inappropriate fires left uncontrolled into hot summer months before the 1939 Black Friday fires because lightning started most of the wildfires, not “the hand of man” as Royal Commissioner Judge Leonard Stretton wrote.
It has also been argued elsewhere that the forests of East Gippsland escaped large severe fires in the summer of 1938-39 simply because graziers were allowed to continue low intensity burning unhindered on Crown Land that supported their grazing leases.
While the frustrations of graziers about the lack of more broadscale burning by FCV are valid, how some of the graziers dealt with the issue is certainly not justified, as some of the carnage of the Black Friday fires shows.
Burning off was a rural ritual across the landscape, and many fires were lit in the lead up to summer 1938 in country areas. It was done casually to bring on a green pick or for clearing.
Sometimes, people would throw a match over their back fence when they saw smoke on the horizon, because a newly burnt home paddock was like a safety blanket.
By the end of October 1938, 27 fires on reserved and protected forests were known and reported to FCV.
On 22 November, a proclamation was issued to prohibit lighting fires “in the open” in practically all parts of the state until 31 March of the following year.
A Councillor in the Narracan shire in late December was very worried. Despite the proclamation, he said:
“People were burning off at any time, and they seemed to get away with it and none were prosecuted”.
He provided what turned out to be a prescient forecast when he predicted “fire would sweep the whole countryside” and people who light fires “about Christmas time should be prosecuted”.
Hundreds of small fires, burning since early December, smouldered unattended in the week leading up to Black Friday when, fanned by the gale-force winds, they joined into a massive fire front to create an inferno.
Despite the number of fires burning and the severe conditions, some bushmen and graziers lit additional fires to protect themselves – only for these fires to get out of control and spread.
The climax of the 1939 fires was Friday, 13 January – Black Friday.
A horror day at the end of a horror week that “sucked 150 years of settlement into a colossal maelstrom of fire”.
It remains a seminal point in Australia’s modern environmental history.
Even after many fire catastrophes have occurred since 1939, the damage of the Black Friday fires was substantial – 79 people died, townships were obliterated in minutes, 1,300 homes and 69 sawmills burned, and millions of hectares of forests were damaged.
The aftermath heralded many subsequent changes in how fire was managed in Victoria and across the nation.
Extremely Long & Interesting Read!
Bern, this is the “conservative” end of the electorate. Tradies, retirees and money.
They don’t give a sh*t about the place. All they want is to keep their seats at the trough.
That might change when the rusted on Labor-voting Novocastrians come up for weekends only to find their watering hole trashed. But, like most parasites, they’ll move a bit further up the coast for fresher fields.
The US should leave Yemen to the Saudi’s to deal with. In the First Gulf War , Yemen sided with Saddam. So KSA kicked out the million or so Yemeni’s in-country- construction, retailers, fruit and veg commercial types. For weeks they gathered up their lives and left the Magic Kingdom. No love loss there. And if the Saudi’s need help, Israel then the US could easily deal with Yemen. All that’s needed is a POTUS with a hand full of functioning brain cells.
Why Anthony Albanese’s Voice nightmare is still not over: Activists behind wildly successful No campaign are taking on the PM in new battleground
. Voice opponents campaign in by-election
. Advance Australia targeting Dunkley
In a message sent to the group’s supporters, Advance Executive Director Matthew Sheahan said the group wanted to turn the upcoming Dunkley by-election in Victoria into ‘a referendum on the Prime Minister’.
‘It will be a vote on the dismal report card of his first two years of office,’ Mr Sheahan wrote.
‘If we convince voters in this one seat to put Labor last on March 2, the pressure will pile on Anthony Albanese in ways he can’t imagine.’
The main issues Advance wants to focus Dunkley’s voters on are ‘cost of living, on broken promises, on housing and rental costs’.
‘The people in Dunkley are like Aussies everywhere,’ Mr Sheahan writes.
‘They’ve been under the pump with Albo’s government, just like you.
‘You and I know that they’ve had enough of the Labor/Green/Teal experiment.
‘If we can convince them to put Labor last, we’ll be one step closer to ending it.’
Mr Sheahan told Daily Mail Australia on Saturday that he wanted to send a message to Canberra.
‘Australians have had enough – they have been smashed by Labor and the cost-of-living crisis,’ he said.
‘The by-election won’t change the government, but it can send a message and we will be encouraging all voters to send the PM and Labor a message by putting Labor last.’
Advance are also set to remind voters of Labor woes in handling the release of foreign-born lawbreakers freed by a High Court decision against indefinite detention for those who could not be deported.
Seven of the 148 people released after November judgment have since been arrested for alleged new crimes and breaching their release conditions.
To get out their message Advance will use social media advertising, sponsor ad trucks in the electorate, make live calls to voters and be visible on election day.
Advance, who changed their name from Advance Australia in May, are prepared to splash $200,000 in Dunkley out of the $5.1m in donations the group received last year.
A number of wealthy business figures were revealed to have backed Advance in AEC disclosures released last week.
The largest donor was Perth car dealer Brian Anderson who gave Advance a whopping $1 million.
Former Shark Tank judge and tech investor Steve Baxter gave the organisation $20,000, while Kennards Self Storage’s Sam Kennard put in $115,000.
Bakers Delight founder Roger Gillespie donated $20,000 and Marcus Blackmore, the son of the founder of natural health supplements giant Blackmores, also gave $25,000 and was a vocal critic of the Voice.
Melbourne Storm NRL club director and transport businessman Brett Ralph also donated $50,000 to Advance.
The war chest allowed Advance to help spearhead the successful No campaign against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which was resoundingly defeated in October’s referendum.
Beside the point; she just has to get enough locals to believe it possible.
From the “whatever it takes” playbook.
Dover – You didn’t mention that Saudi has signed an agreement with Iran recently. That pretty much ended the Yemeni civil war, since Saudi with UAE were supporting the Aden side. Since that rapprochement there hasn’t been much in the way of biff between Sana’a and Aden, and Saudi oil refineries haven’t been being shot at.
So the problem here is Saudi is not seen as the strong horse. Iran is. It makes sense therefore that the kiddies are switching sides.
As we’ve been seeing with Sunni Hamas and Shi’a Iran the Sunni-Shi’a divide tends to evaporate when there’re infidels to shoot at instead.
I had many work interactions with a Michael Shoebridge around 25 years ago.
That Michael Shoebridge seemed quite sensible.
In mitigation and extenuation the crime did stymie
her highest political ambition.
You best address this to the State Department, KSA, UAE, who spent billions and several years supporting the losing side.
Makka – That’s actually a really fun idea. Saudi needs to ship oil out of their Red Sea ports as well as their Persian Gulf ports. If the Houthis are interdicting the former and the Iranians the latter the Saudis are going to be in a lot of strife. That deal Iran and Saudi signed to cease the Yemen civil war may be getting frayed around the edges quite rapidly.
Morn all. Lovely Saturday by the looks.
Much talk about the laughable NSW Pol and their anonymous “eminent expert.”
I just googled the assistant commissioner, well well well. This grub looks like has a taste for grog and abusing paramedics. As doc faustus often quips, top men.
https://www.mondaq.com/australia/public-order/1111686/inquiry-into-nsw-police-deputy-commissioner-mal-lanyon-drunken-abuse-of-paramedics
I’m off to Seymour today visiting as it’s too good a day to be inside.. This ha the feel of a winter NQ day, noice.
Slowly reality sinks in, you pay way more for an EV than ICE and unless you charge from your own solar it costs more to drive!
And to make matters worse, Evie, one of Australia’s largest privately owned EV charging station operators with hundreds of charging stations around the country, has just increased charging prices by up to 43 per cent.
The result – it is now cheaper to drive a combustion engine vehicle powered with regular unleaded fuel from Sydney to Melbourne, compared with an equivalent electric vehicle.
For the slower 22kW public chargers, the price has increased from 35c per kWh to 50c, while fast charging at 150kW has increased by a smaller amount, from 60c per kWh to 68c.
From the Australian.
If the “expert” isn’t prepared to put their name to the finding, then I’ll file it in the Things That Never Happened bin.
Okay, but what would they say?
There is still a sizable SAS presence rotating regularly through nearby Oman. These games played in the ME and particularly on the Arabian Peninsula can be a very complex amalgam of Friends , allies and a*seholes.. Many moving parts.
Apollo Creed.
Brown bread. Oh my lordy.
Roll Shari Markson from a month ago. My own highly respected ears can’t quite pick out “Where’s the Jews” from the overriding “Gas the Jews” chanting (@ 2:25) – perhaps the “eminent expert” from the National Centre of Biometric Science didn’t get to listen to this clip.
Already in hand.
Already in hand:
Memo to Minns: Just get some ‘social cohesion’ arrests done and the payoff will be ‘Peace in our time’.
The Law of Capture in operation.
BB at 11.29:
Apparently Mal Lanyon was one of the NSWPlod higher-ups slated for the bin during the cleanout, which started about ten seconds after Karen (ha) Webb got the top job there.
At about the same time Lanyon got himself involved in the incident detailed in that link, so it should have been a walk-up start to give him the lemon and sars.
Inexplicably – to outsiders, at least – he stayed. Either there’s pre-existing relationship, or a different sort of relationship involving footage and/or computer files.
Either way, make no mistake – this is Lanyon part-paying his debts for being allowed to stay in the trough.
Always the victim.
Always, even when they’re in blood up to their elbows.
They went to the Opera House to beat up mourning Jews. They were stymied in the attempt. Now they go the lawfare route on the prey.
Oh, and by the way, who uploaded the original footage? Deadbeats.
CTE or the jab? He was too young to go.
It was the BBQ meat.
HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR BBQ!?
George Washington Lincoln “Sundog” Brown
RIP
If this were merely about the strongest horse why are they now aligning with the side opposed to the US and abandoning the side allied with them?
When not raping, when not murdering, they’re intimidating and threatening and yet….yet…..yet….they’re always the victims.
I despise Islam, it is an evil toxic ideology.
Well he was 76. ‘Passed away in his sleep’, it is said.
Rocky and sequels.
Predator.
Action Jackson.
Happy Gilmore.
In Action Jackson he points a flamethrower at one of the villains, and then says ‘How do you like your ribs?’ before flaming him up. You just don’t see those scripts any more.
I searched for the biometrics institute the ABC referenced.
It doesn’t have an online presence, but something with a similar name associated with the Uni of Canberra does.
Has someone made an honest error or do they really think people are that stupid?
Damn. I always screw up those one-liners, maybe I don’t have the cool dry wit of an action hero.
Now for another meating, in bed.
We won.
Killing koalas to “save” polar bears
“They are farming us of our money, not farming the wind or solar.”
“Queensland will be covered in glass and steel to meet ambitious renewable energy targets”
In a previous post, I wrote about the mad scramble by federal and state governments to force a rapid transition to renewable energy despite insurmountable engineering constraints, costs blowouts by a factor of 20 from $78 billion to $1.5 trillion in 2030 and $9 trillion by 2050, and the refusal of our federal minister, Chris Bowen to face up to reality, even after a relentless stream of delays to major renewable projects hits the news each month.
I also touched briefly on the environmental destruction wrought by wind and solar factories and massive transmission lines along the eastern seaboard from Cairns to Melbourne and westwards to Adelaide.
This blog will detail the lack of environmental scrutiny of the wind factories and pumped hydro projects built or planned in Queensland as the state sanctions the wholesale clearing of remnant native forest on the coastal ranges straddling the Great Dividing Range.
The great renewable energy transition
A very apt cartoon doing the rounds on social media.
To reduce carbon emissions to near zero by 2050, the Queensland Government is rolling out many renewable projects across the state. They include solar and wind factories and pumped hydro schemes. Many kilometres of large transmission lines are also required to link these isolated projects to the Eastern Grid.
The government announced its plans through two papers.
One is the Energy and Jobs Plan released in September 2022.
The other is the Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) Roadmap released in July 2023. Both documents outline the planned location of the renewable energy projects along the coastal ranges from Brisbane to Cairns.
Each REZ is designed to “coordinate the development of clean energy infrastructure in areas of high renewable potential, maximising benefits for regional communities”.
The REZ document mentions the word “benefit” to the community of the transition on 22 occasions without going into detail about what those benefits are, except there will be the creation of 4,000 long-term jobs.
However, it is not clear if that is a net figure after accounting for the loss of jobs at the coal mines and power plants.
The map below shows the vast spatial footprint of the proposed Queensland REZs, resulting in the clearing of habitat in Queensland’s most important wildlife corridor along the spine of the Great Dividing Range.
The plan is to install 3,183 wind turbines stretching hundreds of kilometres from the Barron River, west of Cairns, to Kariboe, south of Gladstone.
Tom the Cartoon mentioned is a Bottler – Worth putting up for tomorrow’s cartoons
Again another long and excellent read!