I’ m reading Seymour Hersh’s account of the Presidency of John Kennedy “The Dark Side of Camelot.” Seems that, for most of his adult life, Kennedy was infected with V.D……

Australia Censored: Defending free speech with John Roskam

Never suggested that, “Pub owner”. I always said there will be return serve.

By the way, whatever happened to the I’m done with you and never interact again.

Lasted 24 hours.

The only business you’re in is blowharding. Driller Blowhard Pty Ltd. ABN 321 35 230

Johnny Rotten
Feb 12, 2024 5:59 PM

Great idea that.

What would Mary’s shoe sniffer know about a good idea?

He’s exactly right. I’m just sorry this wasn’t really covered in the Tucker interview.

Voice Unchained
@VocUnchained

Vladimir Putin says the west is at war with itself by attacking the nuclear family, normalizing pedophilia and destroying its own traditions, culture & national identity.
This seems to be the reason why Tucker Carlson’s in Russia and is seen as a threat !

20 terrorists arrested inside Gaza hospital

Oh – yeah. Noted. The creature cannot elude multiple exposures. BTW, Sal – are you and I having an affair as the dipstick stated a few pages back? Bwahahaha.

No, I most certainly didn’t. The mere thought would be too horrible to contemplate. And as much as I have contempt for the Driller, I don’t want him aimlessly wondering the Malee desert minus his head.

Driller, for your sake don’t not respond to any romantic approaches from the black widow, Crazy Karen.

I disagree with the author. I think it’s entirely deliberate. They want WWIII.

Warning Sounded: ‘Biden has Opened the Floodgates of Hell’

Freed hostages?
That’s extraordinarily good news!

‘Luxury Beliefs’ That Only the Privileged Can Afford

What’s one private jet when you can fly two? Taylor Swift ramps up the old carbon footprint to new levels

DHS Secretary Mayorkas Tells NBC Hack: “We Don’t Bear Responsibility” for Open US Border and 11 Million Illegal Alien Invasion

times of Israel story on hostages

Your alleged fans here are waking up, bimbo.

I’m sure they can, whereas parts of yours are in a freezer.

Victor Davis Hanson: The Demise of Europe

shatterzzz

Feb 12, 2024 5:19 PM

When we contacted them they tried to get details of drivers licence numbers etc . “What for ?”

I contacted my local Fed member , Dai Le, by email over a gummint matter last week and the 1st reply asked for .. full name/address/phone .. DoB .. and a photo copy of driving licence/similar ID front & back ……

Unfortunately shatterzzz, because Dai Le knocked off Mean Girl 2 in the last election, the Liars are out to get her.
One trick is, Liars pricks in the public service or union offices spam her electoral office with thousands of bogus queries.
Then, come next election, they spruik that Dai Le only answers 31% of questions from “the public”.

Labour’s DEI dystopia

German political obsession with Ukraine reaches dangerous levels

My God. You are still so obsessed with yourself, I’ve run out of paper bags to vomit into.

Do you keep that in the fridge too, GMH?

A gap in transmission between 1830 and just now?

A gap in transmission between 1830 and just now?

Yep, I kept getting a could not establish connection to the database error.

Oops … link no work. No idea why; I cut and pasted the link.

Zafiro
Feb 12, 2024 4:50 PM
I don’t know the exact stuff, but I would imagine that SAS soldiers have a bit more executive freedom than regular grunts etc.

No.
They are trusted to have and use good judgement. They failed. They abide by exactly the same rules.

H B Bear

Feb 12, 2024 8:09 PM

Going broke, selling beer to Australians…

Bondy and Big John (RIP)already ahead of you. It can be done but takes some effort.

If Bondy was still with us he’d probably be bidding for Channel 10 now.

More here:

Sorry, it’s a long piece, but I thought folks would be interested.

Part 2.

“Our forecasts for 2022 and 2023 were already low but the real situation has turned out to be worse,” said Xiujian Peng, a senior research fellow at Victoria University who leads the population research in Melbourne.

China’s fertility rate is approaching one birth for every woman, less than half the 2.1 replacement rate that keeps a population stable. In the late 1970s, the fertility rate hovered around 3.

At the time, China was coming out of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and about to embark on economic reforms. The country’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, and other officials became alarmed when a group of scientists told them that unless they started restricting births, China would have more than four billion mouths to feed in a hundred years.

An essay by some of the scientists published by the official People’s Daily in early 1980 suggested China’s search for a response to overpopulation “points to bringing the fertility rate down to 1…each couple having only one child.”

That fall, China started enforcing the one-child policy nationwide—but the calculations had missed some crucial factors.

China wasn’t the only country worried about overpopulation at the time. The rapid rise in the global population in the 1960s and ‘70s prompted fears that humanity would reproduce faster than food production could rise, an idea argued nearly two centuries earlier by economist Thomas Malthus.

Chinese officials were increasingly reviving scientific research after the Cultural Revolution. While social scientists had been persecuted by Mao’s Red Guards, others doing work related to the military had been partly shielded.

The group included Song Jian, a protégé of the father of China’s atomic-bomb program and one of China’s top scientists working on satellites and rockets. Song had studied in Moscow, where he got advanced degrees in a branch of mathematics known as control theory and in military science. Military officials sent him to a launch site for rockets and satellites in the Gobi Desert to escape the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

Song, who eventually became China’s senior cabinet member heading science and technology, is now 92. He didn’t respond to requests for comment sent to the State Council and the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

In 1975, Song had been part of a Chinese academic delegation visiting the University of Twente in the Netherlands, where he got to know a Dutch mathematician, Geert Jan Olsder. Three years later, the two met a second time, at a conference in Finland.

Olsder, now in his 80s, said he talked about how his research with other mathematicians had been inspired by the warnings about finite global resources and how mathematical models could be applied to birthrates.
Song Jian with Dutch mathematician Geert Jan Olsder in 2004. Photo: Elke Toxopeus

Song spoke with the others in fluent English and showed a clear interest in mathematical modeling, Olsder wrote in an email. If the two hadn’t met, he said, he’s sure that some kind of population policy would have started in China, but perhaps a little later. “I feel like a domino stone in a long series of such stones,” he wrote.

Song refined his modeling over the next few years, and with a team of scientists began calculating how different fertility rates could affect China’s population size. In late 1979 he began to present officials with reports based on their modeling. He calculated that, at a constant fertility rate of three babies for every woman, China’s population would hit 4.26 billion by 2080.

With his computer-assisted mathematical models and political connections, Song caught the attention of top leaders. He argued that rapid population growth would prevent China from becoming a rich, modern country, said Susan Greenhalgh, an anthropologist at Harvard University who has written books about the one-child policy.

“He used a frightening narrative of a coming demographic-economic-ecological crisis to persuade people,” she said.

To ward off skepticism, officials said China could switch gears if births dropped too much. “In 30 years, the current problem of especially dreadful population growth may be alleviated and then [we can] adopt different population policies,” the Communist Party said in an open letter in 1980.

Within a little more than a decade, the fertility rate had dipped below the replacement rate. The cohort of young women was still massive, which kept the population growing. But the number of newborn girls was quickly dwindling.
Babies in a maternity hospital in Beijing in 1989. Photo: Peter Turnley/Corbis/Getty
Impact

As the decades passed, a growing number of demographers and economists called out the policy as outdated and flawed. China’s fertility rate would have gone down on its own as life expectancies rose and economic conditions improved, they say.

One factor missing from Song’s population math was human behavior. The government’s sometimes brutal enforcement, including forced abortions and sterilizations, as well as decadeslong propaganda about the benefits of having a small family, left a lasting one-child mindset. The modeling also failed to take into account the traditional preference for sons. If couples could only have one child, they would prefer to have a boy.

Young women are now at the core of China’s demographic dilemma. They are increasingly reluctant to have children—and there are fewer of them every year.

Greenhalgh, the Harvard anthropologist, said that the women growing up under the one-child policy were raised in line with Beijing’s goals of a smaller but what it called “higher-quality” population: well-educated, savvy and independent. “These women are not going to accept going back to the family to be housewives,” she said.

Apart from cultural and social changes, Song’s model hadn’t taken into account economic forces, such as the enormous migration flows to cities unleashed by Deng’s reforms, which played a bigger role than anyone had imagined in pushing down fertility rates, researchers have said.

Zuo Xuejin, a retired demographer who is leading the research team at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, sounded alarms about demographic implosion more than a decade ago, saying the conditions that may have warranted birth-restriction measures had all faded away.

“For many years overpopulation was China’s major concern. It was difficult to convince the government and the public that China will have the problem of fast decline and aging of the population,” Zuo wrote in an email.

Song has said he believed it had been a good call. China had successfully defused the bomb that could have led to a “population explosion,” he wrote in a 2010 essay published by the University of Jinan, his alma mater. “Zero growth [in population] is the destiny of modern mankind and an urgent task for contemporary China,” Song wrote. He estimated China’s population wouldn’t start shrinking until after 2035. He was off by more than a decade, with official data showing the drop starting in 2022.

Beijing has said the policy prevented 400 million births, a claim it has often put forth as a kind of Chinese gift to the world, including at the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen. Demographers have disputed the figure, saying China’s fertility rate would have gone down on its own as economic conditions improved.

Demographer scramble

Even when Beijing dropped the one-child policy in 2015, leaders didn’t abolish birth restrictions altogether. Instead, it just pivoted to a two-child policy. Now, Beijing is urging people to have three, trumpeting the need to return to a “birth-friendly culture.”

Entrepreneurs, economists and demographers have tried to convey the idea that China needs more babies.

James Liang, co-founder and chairman of travel service provider Trip.com Group
and a research professor of economics at Peking University, co-founded YuWa Population Research Institute, a private think tank focused on demographic and public policy analysis.

Liang estimated that China needs to devote 5% of its gross domestic product—roughly equivalent to its education spending—on direct subsidies to promote births and lower the costs of raising children in order for the fertility rate to recover to 1.4, the average rate of advanced economies. His company gives its long-term employees an annual cash bonus of 10,000 yuan ($1,406) for each of their children until they are 5 years old.

Demographers are trying to catch up on the rapidly falling births. The United Nations’ population predictions for China, which were based on the country’s 2020 census and assumed a fertility rate of 1.19, are already out of step with reality.

Patrick Gerland, head of the U.N.’s population estimates and projection section, said their computing tries to capture long-term trends and isn’t made for rapid changes. He agrees with other researchers that put China’s fertility rate closer to 1.0.
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“In the case of a country like China where the fertility from one year to the next year has been changing so fast, we’ll have smaller population [projections] than what we had expected two years ago,” he said. The U.N. plans to update its forecasts in July.
Elderly people exercised at a park in Beijing in January. Photo: mark r cristino/

Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a critic of China’s birth restrictions, has long argued the situation is even worse than official data suggests. Yi believes China’s population actually started shrinking years ago, based on birth estimates pieced together from other available data, such as school enrollment and the number of vaccines for newborns.

“All of China’s population policies for decades have been based on erroneous projections,” Yi said. “China’s demographic crisis is beyond the imagination of Chinese officials and the international community.”

Once a generation of young people has made up their minds, it’s hard to change them, said Cai Yong, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

It’s possible fertility rates could now increase with official messages and policies promoting bigger families to a newer generation, said Cai, but “if it’s going to happen, it’s not going to happen in the short term.”

Shane Drumgold, Walter Sofronoff Supreme Court showdown begins

By ellie dudley
Legal Affairs Correspondent
7:35PM February 12, 2024

The first day of a legal throwdown brought by former ACT director of public prosecutions Shane Drumgold SC against the inquiry that ended his career will be heard in the ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday, in a battle the disgraced prosecutor hopes will reinstate his reputation and possibly catapult him back into his old job.

Mr Drumgold launched legal action against the ACT government and the inquiry, chaired by Walter Sofronoff KC, last year, challenging findings in the final report that he engaged in serious malpractice and grossly ­unethical conduct during the rape trial of Bruce Lehrmann.

Mr Sofronoff’s report – from an inquiry Mr Drumgold called for – found Mr Drumgold betrayed a junior lawyer who trusted him, acted with “Pilate-like detachment” during the trial, and treated criminal litigation as “a poker game”.

Mr Drumgold has conceded he made mistakes in the case but ­rejects the key findings of the inquiry that he had lied to the ­Supreme Court and engaged in serious misconduct.

He has also taken issue with the fact Mr Sofronoff gave his report to The Australian and the ABC under embargo before the ACT government made the findings public, alleging Mr ­Sofronoff failed to comply with s. 17 of the ACT Inquiries Act.

As such, he has taken the matter to the ACT Supreme Court claiming to have been denied procedural fairness, and is seeking a declaration that the report and its decisions are invalid.

The matter will be heard before Victorian Supreme Court judge Stephen Kaye because of a conflict of interest issue preventing it from being heard by a judge in Mr Drumgold’s jurisdiction.

In January, the court heard Mr Drumgold would attempt to prove Mr Sofronoff engaged in an “unreasonable” relationship with The Australian’s columnist Janet Albrechtsen while he was conducting the inquiry.

Mr Drumgold’s lawyer, Dan O’Gorman SC, wished to submit evidence of text messages, phone calls and emails between Mr Sof­ronoff and Albrechtsen, which he says speak to the “unreasonableness” of their relationship while the inquiry was conducted.

“We say the apprehended bias arises in this way – in the months leading up to and during the inquiry, Ms Albrechtsen was writing numerous articles … critical of Mr Drumgold,” Mr O’Gorman told the court.

He continued: “A comparison is made of communications Mr Sofronoff had with Ms Albrechtsen in particular and with other journalists. We point out that Mr Sofronoff made 65 telephone calls between Feb 9 and July 31, and … 55 were with The Australian.”

Mr Drumgold failed in a bid to strike out parts of Mr Sofronoff’s affidavit explaining why he engaged with the media throughout the inquiry, including comments “his interest was to ensure the accurate coverage of the work of the inquiry so far as he was able to do so”.

In mid-December, Justice Kaye allowed an application by six police officers seeking to uphold the inquiry’s findings to be joined as defendants.

His report found that while investigating the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins, the police “performed their duties in absolute good faith”.

Mark Bolton
Feb 12, 2024 6:15 PM
This is why we need up and, in this vile case, downticks.

I don’t want visitors to believe that this is how all Cats think.

Disgusting!

It is simple. Lets say there are three pairs of people that are constantly at it.
A v B
C v D
C v E
They are simply told they can no longer interact with each other. Mention the other and a suspension for 3 days with no posting ability.

You wouldn’t need to go even that far to end the juvenile carryings-on.

Try it at Public House, Drills. Have Rooster support you.

While you’re here, see if you can comment on something worthwhile like the huge population contraction in the world’s biggest and most potentially dangerous nation.

No wonder Marylin topped herself, copping a nasty dose from JFK.

Jacqueline Kennedy’s reaction…..

Knuckle Dragger
Feb 12, 2024 8:56 PM

No shit. Approx 48 hours ago, Driller promised to never converse with me again or about me. It took less than 24 hours for a triggering to break his undertaking.

“Starship Troopers” depicts the US as a fascistic society? It was filmed as a deliberate slap in the face for Heinlein? It shows how citizens are lied to by their own government? The bugs are actually innocent creatures fighting for their own survival against the evils of colonisation?

Well, must admit, I hadn’t quite regarded it that way. But, see what you think.

Wolfman, I’d love your take on this.

NOW, the link works … except it’s the wrong one. That’s the Maxim gun link.

WTF??

This should be the Starship Troopers link.

I’m inclined to Hamas adjacent as they knew which room they were in.
Of course it could have been a family hosting but given the apparent quantity of hamas on guard duty I’d say very intimate, and probably had made themselves scarce.

The West is importing replacements, China, not so much.

Whatever the takeaway is about China , the problem focuses on our exports. Exports pay for our imports and the last time commodity prices were in the doldrums, the aussie reached a low of .4850. Potentially a massive problem for us.

Rosie
Feb 12, 2024 8:59 PM

Agreed Delta
Posting hamas talking points again and again and again.

Re the beheaded babies.
The fact this was not true was used against me yesterday in a very tense and ongoing debate with a lefty Palestinian supporter friend.
I countered with the fact that any babies being murdered was an atrocity.
The sad fact is these non verified reports, when proved false, are not helpful.

the involvement of Shin Bet suggests either an informer, or the unit (of Shin Bet or the police, I cannot remember) that specialises in inserting ‘Arabic’ agents.

I don’t have a link, but I would cite you the case of the terrorist cell that wasn’t having a successful run – their operations were failures, and Israeli police rounded up their members. They were in the habit of patronizing an elderly Arab, who ran a stall selling tea, and who they talked quite freely about upcoming operations in his presence.

Imagine their consternation when the Israeli Army raided their headquarters and arrested the lot, and one of those present, in Israeli uniform, was an elderly Arab who ran a stall selling tea…

Search The Times and The Sunday Times
French burglars get away with vintage wines worth millions
Gangs beat high-tech security to steal bottles destined for the tables of Beijing and Moscow
Adam Sage, Paris
Sunday February 11 2024, 8.30pm, The Times
Food and drink
PATRICK KOVARIK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Share

France’s finest wines are not only cherished by connoisseurs, but criminals too have a taste for them.

With prices reaching thousands of euros a bottle and rising demand from Russian oligarchs and a new generation of millionaires in Asia, a sophisticated black market has developed.

“There have been gangs stealing great Bordeaux wines for the past century,” said Maître Julien Plouton, a lawyer in the city who has defended suspects accused of wine thefts in prominent cases. “But since 2019 there has been a very big increase linked to strong demand on the Asian market, notably in Hong Kong and mainland China.”

Last month La Tour d’Argent, a Paris restaurant, discovered that it had lost 83 bottles worth a total of €1.5 million. There was no sign of a break-in, prompting speculation that the theft was either an inside job or linked to recent building work.

The restaurant, which is said to have up to 400,000 bottles in a cellar that contains one of the world’s great collections, seems to have little clue when they disappeared. All it knows is that it must have happened at some point between 2020, when one inventory was completed, and the start of this year, when another was undertaken.

Aymeric de Clouet, an expert who oversaw an auction of 18,000 of La Tour d’Argent’s bottles in 2009, said the thieves had been blinded by greed. Among their haul was at least one bottle of Romanée-Conti, the most sought-after Burgundy. It is valuable: a bottle of the 1945 fetched £439,000 at an auction six years ago. But is also difficult to sell, he said.

For example, Russia is a strange case that doesn’t easily fit into the picture.

What’s the story there?

Albo cleaning a toilet with a toothbrush, what a wonderful fantasy!

“Recruit Albanese! You horrible, disgusting disgrace to the Queens uniform! There is one thing lower then shark sh!t at the bottom of the ocean, and you are IT!”

hostages reunited with their families footage

Recruit Albanese LOL. He reminds me of some schmucks who got punted early doors at Kapooka.

“Recruit Albanese! Caught with your hands in your pockets! Two grades of people are permitted to have their hands in their pockets in this military district! One are pregnant women, the other are p##fters! It is obvious that you are not pregnant, so we must endeavor to curb your disgusting tendencies! Three times around the parade ground! DOUBLE AWAY!”

not that hungry, actually

Eylon Levy quoting David Shoebridge complaining about how the IDF rescued Israelis during Super Bowl.
the greens