there is a bullet or bomb with your name on it out there and stay too long in areas like Gaza, it will find you. The Aussie chick, she was 43 and this wasn’t her first rodeo, she knew the risks

Damn straight.

This is straight out shameless political buffoonery by incompetents.

But the BMI people over 40 are not allowed in. Is that wot’ you really mean?

Yep. Like you, porky.

JC

April 4, 2024 8:14 pm

Here’s her CV, Cronkite.

Not the brightest spark. Howard university is basically for black dumbos.

Letitia Ann James (born October 18, 1958) is an American lawyer and politician serving since 2019 as the Attorney General of New York (NYAG), having won the 2018 election to succeed Barbara Underwood. A member… etc.. etc..

If I’m not mistaken in my arithmetics-alising, JC has just found the quantum wormhole in WordPress’ limit of 2 links per post.

And with many bells on!

Aaaaand…good morning to you, Hatey MacHateface!

What have I said that’s untrue or unfair? Or is it just the set of my jaw that you don’t like?

Fortunately, I rarely lead with it. 😀

Lol, KevinM.

Here’s something for the derg lovers on this wet, east coast low morning. The surf’s up – I can hear it from the kitchen and the pool is brimming after last night’s rain. About time.

Thanks Tom.

A lot of Flanneries about today.

Of course, they won’t sink into the ground or top up any dams will they?

Ask Timeeee.
t

Stock rumour..

And treat as rumour only.

Wiluna Gold (currently not trading) is being courted by 2 companies for a buy out.
The owners of Jundee Gold mine (80 or so km up the road)
Northern Star: https://www.nsrltd.com/our-assets/resources-and-reserves
and Mark Creasys mob. https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/mark-creasy-lithium-kingmaker-strikes-rivers-of-investment-gold-20240104-p5ev99

Norther Star would be a natural fit, as they would gain a very large exploration area.
Mr Creasy’s mob would be a “legacy” buy, its where he kicked off as a prospector. (he found and sold Jundee).
Both have had representatives here in the last week or so.

Northern Star might be worth some beer money.

New please explain

Another cracker. This is why knighthoods should come back in.

Excellent as always – a must read from today’s Oz.
I fear for our future.

‘Truth-telling’ crusade abandons history for morality

Henry Ergas

APRIL 5, 2024

Two weeks ago, the small town of Quesnel in British Columbia was rocked by a scandal. The mayor’s wife had, it seems, distributed copies of Grave Error, a recently published book that contests the claim that hundreds, if not thousands, of Indigenous children died, and were buried in unmarked mass graves, in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. 

After a stormy town council meeting, the mayor managed to hold on to his job, albeit at the cost of publicly condemning his wife’s conduct and endorsing a resolution that denounces the book and laments the hurt it causes Indigenous Canadians. 
That the issue provoked so intense a reaction is unsurprising. Canadians had received a seismic shock when tribal chief Rosanne Casimir announced, on May 27, 2021, that ground-penetrating radar had “located the remains of 215 missing children” in an area adjacent to British Columbia’s Kamloops Indian Residential School, which had closed in 1978.
Three days after Casimir’s announcement, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered that Canadian flags be flown at half-mast for an unprecedented 165 days to honour the “children whose lives were taken at the Kamloops residential school”. 
Trudeau’s dramatic gesture induced waves of additional discoveries. By August 2023, traces of mass graves had been located by GPR at 20 former residential schools. As remorse gripped the country, Pope Francis urged Canadians to engage in collective repentance and seek forgiveness for their shameful history. 
However, it didn’t take long for difficulties to arise. Excavations were undertaken, but no mass graves were found. Nor did any solid evidence emerge of scores of children going missing. On the contrary, particularly after the mid-1930s, both the then federal Department of Indian Affairs and the Indian schools tracked the school system’s student population, all the more so as federal subsidies depended on the numbers enrolled.
In short, the contentions were, at best unproven, at worst concocted. Yet they did not descend from the skies. Rather, they had originated in the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was tasked with establishing the facts about the Indian Residential Schools. 
The Commission’s six-volume report, published in 2015, did not mince words. The Indian Residential Schools, it said, had systematically abused children, in some instances brutally. Children had disappeared, presumably killed; as for those who escaped that fate, they were “Survivors” with a capital “S”, whose lives, and those of their descendants, had been permanently scarred, if not shattered, by the experience. 
It was therefore only fitting that every “Survivor” be compensated financially – as they eventually were, at a cost of about $5bn.
Detailing the report’s glaring deficiencies would take too long. What is striking, however, is the Commission’s casual attitude to uncovering the truth. It relied on uncorroborated witness statements, even when they were manifestly implausible; there was none of the searing testing of memories that characterised the Holocaust trials. To make things worse, witnesses were actively encouraged to criticise the system and, even more importantly, actively discouraged from defending it. 
Indeed, the Commission’s proceedings were designed to elicit, and psychologically reward, traumatic memories. Each hearing began with warnings that “tears would be shed” about “a very painful past”. Handkerchiefs were distributed, as “health support workers”, dressed in brightly coloured clothing, were introduced to participants. Any used tissues were to be placed in a “sacred fire” by a “fire-keeper”, thus returning them “to the Creator as part of their healing”.
In that trauma-laden atmosphere, the slightest suggestion that the schools might not have been part of a “genocidal” scheme was met with outrage – as Reverend Tom Cavanaugh, an Oblate Father, learned to his cost. When Cavanaugh said his school had offered a good education in a nurturing environment, the chief commissioner called for “health supports” to be urgently provided to the audience, which descended into uncontrollable sobbing. After that, very few witnesses who might have confirmed Cavanaugh’s claims came forward – nor were any sought. 
Rather, in its effort to shun “denialism”, the Commission placed scarcely any weight on the schools’ record in producing generations of Indigenous leaders or on the published memoirs of their founders, students, teachers and administrators.
It is simply impossible to imagine a starker contrast to the Western tradition for determining historical truth. Hadn’t Herodotus, its founding father, stressed, in his History’s very first sentence, the importance of recognising that “magnificent deeds” had been accomplished by “Greeks and barbarians alike”, rather than by one side alone? 
And wasn’t he careful to emphasise the difference between history and memory, noting that the historian, unlike the mere chronicler, “must tell what he has been told, but is scarcely forced to believe it”?
Thucydides, the greatest ancient historian, went even further. Those who, “aiming more at attracting their audience than getting at the truth, put their accounts together from materials which cannot be checked”, were, he wrote, just myth makers. Especially lamentable was uncritically accepting testimony, for “different witnesses give different accounts, because of partiality or imperfect memories”.
Testing every claim “as thoroughly as possible”, he differentiated himself from the charlatans by systematically presenting alternative viewpoints, so readers could judge for themselves. 
That, centuries later, was the model Leopold von Ranke had in mind when he set down the axioms framing modern historical method. The task of history, he wrote in 1824, was not to serve this interest or that; it was to scrupulously ascertain the past “as it had really been – wie es eigentlich gewesen”. 
Nor was good historical analysis a morality tale, praising some and damning others; it was a reasoned account of what actually happened. And objectivity in framing that account was not a virtue; it was a duty.
Now, however, all that has been cast aside. Canada’s Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1991-96) led the way, arguing that its Aboriginal “conception of history” was not concerned with “establishing objective truth” but with probing a deeper, more spiritual reality. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission echoed that call, saying “factual truth” was just one of truth’s many forms, and not necessarily the most important. 
Its Canadian equivalent then took the final step, judging research not on its accuracy and impartiality but on the basis of whether it “benefited Indigenous people”, including through the “defence of Indigenous sovereignty”.
Truth, it seems, would not be the basis for reconciliation; what served reconciliation, as defined by the Commission, would be the basis for determining what was the truth. As for those who – like the Quesnel mayor’s wife – dared question whether that “truth” portrayed the past “as it had really been”, all they could expect was to be ostracised. 
Judging by Victoria’s “truth-telling” Yoorrook Commission, that is where we are headed, with the defeat of the voice only strengthening the activists’ push in that direction.
But no free society can survive without an overriding commitment to truth and truthfulness. For by illuminating a path through the darkness of reality, they are the foundation of the most important of human freedoms: the freedom to rationally shape a better life and a better world. When they go, human freedom invariably goes too – and the prospect of genuine reconciliation will go with them.

Pretty boy, eloi, dilettante Minns. The garbage that is the modern political class.

Those dastardly white Chinese potters!

Doctoral student confronts ‘whiteness’ by crushing porcelain eggshells (4 Apr)

A doctoral student explores the ways porcelain can be used to confront “whiteness” by crushing crafted eggshells.

Victoria Burgher, a researcher at the University of Westminster, detailed her research in the Holt Journal for Artistic Research.

One way includes performance art involving stepping on porcelain eggshells while reciting a speech called “shattering whiteness” (portion below).

“The performance ended with me knocking the porcelain pot off its plinth, which smashed loudly and violently on the floor,” she wrote. …

After flagellating herself for being a white woman, Burgher explained how porcelain is intimately linked to European colonization.

“Porcelain” is representative of “whiteness,” according to Burgher.

In her essay, she described the connections between porcelain and racism.

Ironic that an art PhD candidate doesn’t know where porcelain came from.

Broadcast from Justice Lee’s court commences 10:45am

https://www.youtube.com/@FederalCourtAus

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/04/scots-flood-first-minister-humza-yousafs-hate-crime/

3000 complaints about antiwhite hate speech used by Scottish Minister who introduced a new ‘hate speech’ law

the establishment response ….

Community Safety Minister Siobhian Brown said people were making “fake and vexatious complaints”. Police Scotland said complaints about Mr Yousaf’s speech were assessed at the time, with no crime committed and no action taken. The new law will not apply retrospectively.

One rule for me, another for thee… of course!

Exploding elephants.

Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany in trophy hunting row (3 Apr)

Botswana’s president has threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany amid a dispute over the import of hunting trophies. Earlier this year Germany’s environment ministry raised the possibility of stricter limits on the import of hunting trophies over poaching concerns. But a ban on the import of hunting trophies would only impoverish Botswanans, Mokgweetsi Masisi told German daily Bild. The African leader argued that conservation efforts have led to an explosion in the number of elephants and that hunting is an important means to keep them in check. …

“This is not a joke,” said Masisi, whose country has seen its elephant population grow to some 130,000.

Botswana, home of the world’s largest elephant population, has already offered 8,000 elephants to Angola and another 500 to Mozambique, as it seeks to tackle what Masisi described as “overpopulation”. Officials in March also threatened to send 10,000 elephants to London.

I rather like the idea of Botswana getting rid of their excess elephants by shipping them to Germany, but I doubt the Botswanan government could afford the freight cost. Surely, though, London’s mayor will step up to help them out, he likes African immigrants.

It’s a natural outcome of of growing distrust and loathing after witnessing your Govt betray you day after day, to control all aspects of your life, ruin your standard of living, inject nasty chemicals into your body by force, subvert the electoral process, pile on Trillion$ in debt in foreign corrupt wars, censoring alternative opinion and comment, shoving deviant culture down your throat, going after your kids – after watching Govt hollow out your economy for decades.

FACTCHECK – TRUE X 1000

I like the conjunction between these two headlines. Says a lot about our current society.

Awe and dread: How religions have responded to total solar eclipses over the centuries (Phys.org, 4 Apr)

Why are states and counties declaring emergencies for the solar eclipse? Let’s talk about it (Notthebee, 4 Apr)

They also think SUVs control the weather, so there is that.

What would George McDonald Fraser have said?

JK Rowling has entered a fresh war of words with Scotland’s First Minister, slating what she called his ‘bumbling incompetence and illiberal authoritarianism’ as his government enacted a controversial new hate crime law.

The multimillionaire Harry Potter author, 58, hit out at Humza Yousaf after he branded her remarks about transgender people ‘offensive and upsetting’ despite police ruling that they did not meet the threshold to be considered a hate crime.

Rowling had taken to X, formerly Twitter, on April 1 to launch a scathing attack on trans women, singling out a number of convicted criminals as well as high-profile figures such as newsreader India Willoughby in her remarks.

Daily Mail

BMI is fairly unreliable

I suspect it might work better for the ladies…am I allowed to say that?

Study finds lonely women experience increased activation in regions of the brain associated with food cravings (MedXpress, 4 Apr)

Powerline has a complementary post today:

The Daily Chart: Youth Angst for Real | Power Line (4 Apr)

The data is clear as – women are depressed. So they eat…

Roger

 April 5, 2024 11:30 am

Too late, the appointment of Quentin Bryce already did that.

And before Bryce there was Deane & Hayden.

To be fair to Hayden, he was generally careful in his behaviour, as was Hasluck.

But Holy Billy Deane, described by some j’ismists as the “conscience of the nation” was rather too overt in his politics.

Anyone willing to fulfil this?

Supply, delivery, installation and commissioning of 1 year of social listening service to Wee Kim Wee School of Communication & Information, Nanyang Technological University

Tenders open.

Kate Bush?
I am a firm believer that one in Kate Bush is worth two in the hand.

Haha – pay that Bruce.