Tim Blair is back!

Everybody is laughing at Australia’s Olympic breakdancing queen Rachael Gunn, especially everybody here in the US where the alleged sport was invented.

Of course, it was invented way back in the 1980s, and any surviving early-days dancers would likely break their pelvises if they tried now to duplicate Raygun’s bolder moves.

Such as the Injured Spider, the Blunder Plunge with Giggle Hands or her awesome, globally celebrated Skippy Hop.

So score some fracture-avoidance points there for our white 36-year-old university lecturer, who didn’t actually score any official Olympic points at all for her attempts to emulate a black teenager’s street performances from a time prior to her birth.

According to Macquarie University lecturer Raygun – or Napoleon Vegemite, as she’s more wittily been dubbed – is “an interdisciplinary and practice-based researcher interested in the cultural politics of breaking”.

Seems about right, considering she’s probably busted any chance of breakdancing ever being taken seriously at any level outside of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo 80s nostalgia festivals.

Any of Raygun’s fellow “interdisciplinary and practice-based researchers” who are “interested in the cultural politics of breaking” must be absolutely besides themselves.

Which would make a total of, I don’t know, possibly two.

Raygun does have her defenders, who applaud the academic for doing her own thing and not being afraid to be different

Which is their way of saying that breakdancing isn’t a real sport, because they’d never offer those excuses for anyone who ran the 100m sprint backwards or turned up at the dressage finals with a walrus.

And the biggest Raygun defender is Raygun herself. “All my moves are original,” she told CNN in Paris, accurately if unintentionally identifying her central problem.

“Creativity is really important to me,” the lecturer added, creatively.

“I go out there and I show my artistry. Sometimes it speaks to the judges and sometimes it doesn’t. I do my thing and it represents art. That is what it is about.”

Well, OK. But before placing this entire debacle in the ever-bulging file of historic Olympic oddities, let’s consider applying Raygun’s artistic way of doing things in a different format.

We’ve just seen what happens when a Sydney humanities lecturer attempts to become a breakdancing champion.

It is only fair, then, that surly head-spinning rappers and the like be allowed to replace Sydney humanities lecturers.

Breakdancing may be dead as an Olympic sport, but dead concepts simply never die in Australian arts faculties. Let the dance continue.

But keep Raygun out of it. We’ve only got so many surviving sets of functioning eyeballs.

Excellent Mr Blair. Polite golf clap.

Is the West finally seeing through Hamas’s lies?

Jake Wallis Simons The Spectator (Australia) 14 August, 2024

On Saturday, when Israel attacked the al-Taba’een Hamas command centre in Gaza City, jihadi propagandists swung into action straight away. The group had placed the military facility inside a school compound for precisely this reason. Now it was time to cash in. At first, things seemed to be going according to plan. ‘Nearly 100 killed in Israeli strike on school, Gaza officials say,’ blared the Washington Post, a typical example. In the story, Mahmoud Bassal, a ‘Gaza civil defence spokesman’, was given space to hype up the attack without any indication that the Gaza civil defence is controlled by Hamas.

Hamas sat back and waited for the international outrage to place Israel under pressure. This time, however, Jerusalem was prepared. In short order, the IDF released a list of the names and mugshots of the terrorists who had been targeted, as well as their ages and the ranks they held within Hamas and Islamic Jihad. First, it provided the details of 19 such combatants. Then, when Hamas revised its numbers to say that only 40 had lost their lives, Israel released a further batch of information about 38 dead terrorists.

The truth remains elusive. Aside from treating Hamas’s numbers with well-deserved scepticism, Israel has not offered a definitive answer on the numbers of civilians killed. In war, it takes much time to ascertain the numbers of the dead; all these years later, estimations of the casualties of the Iraq war, for instance, range within a spectrum of hundreds of thousands. The IDF has, however, confirmed that small and precise munitions were used in the strike to avoid harming civilians sheltering nearby and published a video showing that the compound was still intact, contrasting with unverified social media footage of the bodies of women and children.

Track records, however, speak for themselves. In the past, Hamas’s strategy for manipulating the media, and consequently world opinion, has worked shamefully well. From casualty numbers to myths about Israeli soldiers menacing detainees with dogs, from allegations about starvation and genocide to specific lies about strikes on hospitals, its narrative has been lapped up by many influential organisations and figures who should have known better. The group has mastered the art of tapping the repressed Israelophobia in western audiences by appropriating the progressive language of human rights and anti-colonialism. All this has had a mass effect. The way in which Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime have felt comfortable openly celebrating the hordes of keffiyeh-clad westerners on the streets of our capitals, safe in the knowledge that their praise would put nobody off, is testament to the propaganda genius of the jihadis.

‘As the vilest writer has his readers, so the greatest liar has his believers,’ Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710. ‘And it often happens that if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies and truth comes limping after it; so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late.’

On this occasion, however, Hamas’s efforts were far less successful. It is true that the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, condemned Israel’s strike on the terror headquarters, tweeting that he was ‘appalled’ by the attack and ‘the tragic loss’ of life; he was echoed, predictably enough, by the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, who declared that there was ‘no justification for these massacres’.

But players such as these are of little consequence in comparison with the United States. Although Kamala Harris stated that ‘far too many’ civilians had been killed in Gaza, it was ambiguous whether she was referring to the supposed innocent victims of the al-Taba’een strike or the war in general. This throat-clearing was followed by a pointed insistence that Israel had a right to ‘go after Hamas’. All rather different from the hostile American rhetoric that has come to be expected of late.

Ironically, many of the casualties of al-Taba’een were taken to the al-Ahli hospital. This was the same place that had become notorious in November after it was hit by a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket that was wrongly blamed on Israel. At that time, the world’s media reported that up to 500 people, mostly civilians, had been killed. In the end, it turned out to have been a much, much smaller number, and the rocket had fallen not in the hospital but the adjacent car park. In the face of such manipulation, is the world finally showing signs of fatigue? After all, even the most sophisticated lies remain vulnerable eventually to the truth.

It seems that Hamas’s old tricks are beginning to fail them. With the November election dominating the news agenda stateside, the Olympics sucking up airtime in Europe and the Gaza rallies being diverted towards the far-right in Britain, the story is getting less oxygen. The Gaza activists, whose marches were once a disturbing fixture of city life across the west, ignored the al-Taba’een attack. In fact, they have been a shadow of their former selves all summer. With the universities on holiday and their Gaza encampments either deserted or dismantled, the wind seems to be ebbing from the sails of terror.

For Hamas, this is more than simply a frustration. It represents the collapse of its main strategy for victory, by which confected international outrage is supposed to hamstring its superior democratic foe. This growing impotence comes as the group finds itself abandoned by its allies, exhausted in its fox-holes and suffering crippling military pain. For some months, it looked as if its propaganda efforts would succeed in forcing Israel not to invade Rafah in the south. To his credit, Netanyahu eventually shook off American concerns and the city fell quickly and with very few civilian casualties. As a result, the IDF now holds the Philadelphi corridor, an alley of land across the border between Egypt and Gaza.

This achievement alone is throttling Hamas. For more than a decade, arms, ammunition, cash and supplies have been smuggled through the Philadelphi corridor into Rafah from Egypt, both via subterranean tunnels and with the assistance of corrupt officials at the regular crossing. All of this has stopped. Deprived of the ability to resupply and reeling from the deaths of two of its three most important leaders, Hamas finds itself peering into the abyss. It is no coincidence that it seems to be taking more kindly to the prospect of negotiations with Israel.

For the jihadis of Gaza, the war is starting to look like a miscalculation. Israel is wounded but showing intimidating levels of resolve and military might, with much more held in reserve. For this Hamas brought itself to the brink of destruction? For this it brought such suffering upon the heads of its own people? In launching the October savagery, it aimed to drag Iran and Hezbollah into a regional conflict that would herald the fall of Jerusalem. But its allies held back from the fray and have shown no sign of changing their minds. An Iranian reprisal for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran will come. But most analysts expect it to be calibrated to fall beneath the threshold for open war.

Small wonder. In April, after hundreds of Iranian projectiles had been fired into Israeli skies, the Jewish state showed its superiority by destroying a key strategic target with just two missiles. Last month, it clinically assassinated both Mohammad Deif in Gaza and Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, as well as Hezbollah’s number two, Fuad Shukr, in southern Lebanon. These were men who had been hunted for decades and not just by the Israelis. Jerusalem has also let it be known that any attack by Iran and Hezbollah will meet with a response commensurate to its scale rather than its effectiveness. This time, the message is clear: launch another 300 missiles at us and – even if every last one is intercepted – you’ll get pain, not fear, in response.

Guerilla warfare in Gaza will likely drag on for a long time. But Hamas is losing badly. Whereas Israeli troops can be rotated out for rest and recuperation, no such luxury is afforded the terrorist butchers as they squat in their own filth underground. Major challenges lie ahead for Israel in the form of Hezbollah and Iran. But Netanyahu’s boot is on the windpipe of Hamas and the world is starting not to care.

This article first appeared in Jake Wallis Simons’s Notes on the New Radicalism Substack

Is the West finally seeing through Hamas’s lies?

Not quite, Jake; Penny Wong joins the UK’s intellectually challenged FS in maintaining the rage.

@EndWokeness

Taliban is holding a parade showing off equipment left behind by Biden-Harris

Enablers of a saga: Team Brittany offers the wrong support

Janet Albrechtsen The Australian 14 August, 2024

One of the lingering conundrums at the centre of the Brittany Higgins saga is that those who most publicly have professed support for the young woman have offered, on any objective reading, the wrong kind of support. And those who have been accused very publicly of not offering Higgins support in fact offered the right kind – but quietly.

As Justice Michael Lee said last year when rejecting as false Higgins’s claim that Linda Reynolds and Fiona Brown tried to cover up an alleged rape, this was “the only alleged cover-up of which I am aware where those said to be responsible for the covering up were almost insisting the complainant go to the police”.

Most of Higgins’s high-profile “supporters” are better described as enablers. They bear a great deal of responsibility for how long and how badly this saga has turned out for her.

In keeping with this inverted moral universe, writer Julia Baird thinks Higgins should not be held to account for damage she may have done to others when she made untrue claims of a political cover-up more than two years after the alleged rape.

Last weekend, under the headline “What I wish Linda Reynolds would say, instead of suing Brittany Higgins”, Baird wrote this in Nine papers: “Why would Reynolds not say: ‘Look, I think, and Justice Lee found, that Brittany Higgins and The Project promoted regretful, baseless claims of a political conspiracy that I was falsely alleged to be part of. This has been damaging to my health and reputation. But I accept that a great wrong was found to have occurred to a young woman in my employ and I will avoid further litigation in the hope she can put this awful episode behind her. I wish her well.”

Baird’s feelings for Higgins are clear enough. Her logic is harder to locate. Does Baird mean that if a woman is found, on the balance of probabilities, to have been raped in 2019, the woman will get a leave pass more than two years later for making false allegations against other people, allegations that damage their physical and mental health, their careers and reputations, their lives?

Justice Lee found that Higgins’s claims of a political cover-up were false. He found that claims that Reynolds and Brown “were active participants in a systemic cover-up of alleged criminal conduct” lacked “any solid, verifiable material” in support.

The Federal Court judge drew a sharp distinction between the character of Higgins’s evidence in 2019 with the character of her claims in 2021. He acknowledged that “any inconsistent or untrue representations in 2019 are not inconsistent with the conduct of a genuine victim of sexual assault struggling to process what happened, seeking to cope, and working through her options”.

Equally important with his findings about rape trauma, the judge definitively rejected rape trauma as an explanation or excuse for Higgins’s untrue statements made some two years later when she alleged that Reynolds and Brown had treated her badly as part of her larger story of a political cover-up.

Setting aside minor inaccuracies, and without being exhaustive, the judge listed nine falsehoods at the centre of Higgins’s political cover-up allegations.

Yet, like Baird last weekend, fellow writer Margaret Simons suggested soon after Lee’s judgment that someone raped in 2019 should have some kind of general exemption from sanctions for actions in 2021 and 2022. Even after Lee found Higgins had made nine false statements in her claim against the commonwealth, Simons suggested it would be terrible for the National Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate a payment by the commonwealth to “a victim of a traumatising crime” by way of “compensation”.

Simons’s proposition was absurd. Compensation was not paid to Higgins for a rape. Money was paid for her claims that she was treated badly by senior ministers and by Brown. Lee found that Higgins made untrue statements in her claim.

Baird’s suggestion that Reynolds spare Higgins by walking away from the defamation claim under way in the West Australian Supreme Court is equally absurd. The double standards from the host of a podcast called Not Stupid are, well, stupid. Baird treats Reynolds as collateral damage, as a woman whose claims apparently need not be taken too seriously because she was Higgins’s older boss.

Baird failed to address the reasons Reynolds is now in court. The WA senator has never had the chance to fully defend herself in court against Higgins’s false allegations of a political cover-up. Not in the criminal trial in October 2022, nor when the commonwealth decided to pay Higgins $2.4m in December 2022 as compensation for claims that she was mistreated by Reynolds and others. Not during the Sofronoff inquiry in July last year as it concerned the criminal trial.

And not during Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation trial in December last year against Ten and Lisa Wilkinson.

Put simply, Reynolds is in court right now because Higgins refused to apologise for social media posts that Reynolds says form a long and well-orchestrated plan by Higgins and David Sharaz to damage Reynolds with false allegations of a political cover-up.

There is one sound reason Reynolds might have chosen not to sue Higgins – though Baird didn’t mention this. Reynolds may lose. Notwithstanding Lee’s findings, it is entirely possible that Justice Paul Tottle finds, for any number of reasons, against Reynolds. That is a different matter entirely from Baird’s absurd suggestion that Higgins should not have to account for her behaviour more than two years later.

A small measure of reason might prevail among some of Higgins’s supporters if one proposes the same scenario – with no names. Or is Baird’s suggested leave pass suitable only for a woman named Brittany Higgins? Is there an expiry date on this leave pass?

The most logical way this ghastly saga could have ended long ago is the same one Higgins’s enablers will not countenance. I wish Higgins could have said sorry. Sorry to Reynolds and so sorry to Brown for making allegations against them that Lee found to be false.

Alas, sorry is the hardest word for Higgins. Admitting to the false claims with an apology would surely mean the Albanese government would have to revisit its $2.4m payment to Higgins. It would ensnare senior ministers Katy Gallagher and Penny Wong who, like Wilkinson, were willing to destroy Reynolds and Brown over a claim that lacked any solid, verifiable evidence.

And Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus’s efforts to ensure that Higgins’s claims were not tested should attract fierce scrutiny from, at minimum, the National Audit Office but more appropriately by the National Anti-Corruption Commission.

This dilemma may have more tragic consequences for Higgins than financial ones. Even if Justice Tottle finds against Reynolds, short of him finding there was indeed a political cover-up, Higgins risks being defined forever by her untrue claims of a political cover-up in Parliament House.

A genuine apology from Higgins long ago, but certainly after Lee’s judgment, could have headed off all this future calamity.

I wish Higgins could have said sorry to Reynolds and to Brown for another reason. It could have been cathartic for her. And I wish Baird and other “supporters” like her would say sorry for, effectively, encouraging Higgins to think that she didn’t have to say sorry.

Does she ever get it across!

@hodgetwins

Our girl here knows exactly how everybody feels that listened to Trump and Elon

I have concluded that the winner by a long way is … puff pastry.

Ah, just the man for a little French https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/cinnamon-spice-palmiers/ Palmier.

Peter

24 minutes ago
There’d be plenty of empty bedrooms in Ms Steggall’s wealthy electorate so why not suggest some of the Gazan refugees be settled there until they can find permanent accommodation.

GreyRanga
 August 15, 2024 11:23 am

 Reply to  Sancho Panzer

Mille-Feuille is the way to go

I had a funny exchange with a waiter in France a few years back where he said he would refuse to serve me mille-feuille unless I could pronounce it to his satisfaction.
“Non non. It is not “mill fuel” (mimicking my Australian accent). Repeat after me … mille … feuille …”
All in good fun, and broke the stereotype of the humourless, aloof French waiter.
But, yes, the same pastry just cooked a little darker and the taste is completely different.

I had a funny exchange with a waiter in France a few years back where he said he would refuse to serve me mille-feuille unless I could pronounce it to his satisfaction.

We had a slightly similar event, but with a whiff of the old Frog arrogance. When the waiter asked if we wanted water for the table, wifey (the food&drink nazi) asked if regular tap water was okay to drink. His reply , “madam, this is France”.

Fatboy

Are you ever right on anything? Seriously, if I made a bet on any of your revelations I’d be a billionaire now. There’s not a single thing you’ve ever got right.

Yesterday, you were telling us, Trump’s lisp/slur was a sign of a medical problem. Definitive proof came out that proves 100% it was a technology issue.

Are you prepared to say you were wrong and apologize to the site? Man up, you fat lesbian.

I care little for free trade.
I care little for free speech.
I care not at all for the lives of endangered species.
I care little for how equal anyone is.
I don’t care about workplace safety: mine or anyone else’s.
I don’t care about your minority status or identity.
I care not for the poverty levels in China or India.
I’m not worried about CO2 levels.
I care little for whatever “rights” they pretend we have.
I care not for sports.
I care not for whatever side or tribe you are on.
I care little for refugees, principles or animal rights.
I don’t care what technology we use.
I don’t much care about the specifics of how taxation is collected.
I don’t care much what things are public or private.

I care mostly about the one thing that makes all our lives better: living in a country with secure borders, the rule of law, and the ability to make the things in massive amounts which will cause any enemy to fear war with us.
I care most about that because losing that is the biggest threat and the most immediate danger.

Can you believe this:

NSW Liberal party misses deadline to submit council nominations

However, they are getting chock full of diversity inclusion and aboriginal rubbish up the wahzoo.

I recently starting volunteering at a local museum. They asked me to look at the primary history syllabus to see what we could do encourage primary school excursions.

I have loved history as long as I can remember,but the Australian Curriculum v9 would have killed that love stone dead!

Read and weep
https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/content/dam/en/curriculum/ac-version-9/downloads/humanities-and-social-sciences/hass-f-6/humanities-and-social-sciences-hass-f-6-curriculum-content-v9.docx

What a basket case the parliamentary democracy is in this country. In spite of the now overwhelming acceptance around the world that the global response to Covid was over the top, and that the mRNA vaccines were not sufficiently tested & were most likely to have caused excess mortality rates – our esteemed federal polls in the Senate have just voted down One Nation’s Covid-19 Vaccination Status (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill. This bill would have prevented any future government mandating of vaccinations & discrimination based on vax status.

What scum and half-wits those opponents of freedom are!!!

Senate votes down bill to protect Australians from discrimination based on Covid vaccination status
Labor said mandatory vaccines are ‘voluntary’ and labelled vaccine concerns ‘conspiracy theories’REBEKAH BARNETT
AUG 15

Today, the Labor Government and the Greens signalled their ongoing support for medical discrimination, voting down a bill to prevent discrimination based on Covid vaccination status. 

The vote comes after former New South Wales Premier Dominique Perrottet admitted last week that Covid vaccine mandates were “wrong.”
The COVID-19 Vaccination Status (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill 2022was tabled by Senator Pauline Hanson, who has been a vocal opponent of Covid vaccine mandates from the outset. 
Senator Hanson’s party, One Nation, has previously tabled bills to prevent Covid vaccine mandates and to amend the Fair Work Act to prevent employment discrimination on the grounds of Covid vaccination status, but they were not successful.

Covid vaccines were mandated during the pandemic as a condition of work, travel, participation in social life, and access to family members in care in every state and territory of Australia. 

Though most of the mandates have been retired for the time being, Covid vaccination is still a requirement for some professions and medical procedures, and Australia’s political and bureaucratic leadership has generally indicated that mandates are on the table for future pandemics. 
In a statement made on X after the vote, Senator Hanson said,

“This bill would have protected Australians from discrimination based on COVID-19 vaccination status across Australia, including in employment, education, accommodation, and services.

“It would have applied to the Commonwealth, States, Territories, and non-government entities, ensuring individuals are not unfairly treated due to their vaccination status.

“It would have protected free movement within and between States and given parents greater power to protect their children from vaccination coercion.

“This bill would have upheld Australians’ rights and freedoms against government overreach and abuse.”

In a charged speech, Senator Hanson railed for 15 minutes about the need to balance human and civil rights and vaccine safety with public health imperatives.For a moment, it appeared as though the bill had passed, as Labor sided with Aye. However, Senate Whip Anne Urquhart (Labor) quickly communicated that Labor had voted in error, asking for a revote.
The final vote was 25 Ayes to 32 Noes, with One Nation, Senator Ralph Babet of the United Australia Party, and the Coalition voting Aye, and Labor, the Greens, and independent Senator Fatima Payman voting No.
Independent Senators Jaqui Lambie, Tammy Tyrell, David Pocock, David Van and Lidia Thorpe were absent from the chamber.

During speaking time, Senator Urquhart delivered a monologue best described as a recitation of faith-based Scientism dogmas with a touch of gaslighting.Senator Urquhart called One Nation’s anti-discrimination bill a “stunt,” declared that Covid vaccination is “voluntary” despite Australia’s world-famous coercive mandates, and characterised Senator Hanson’s stated concerns over civil rights and vaccine safety as “conspiracy theories and fringe agendas.”

In her short speech, Senator Urquhart stated twice that Covid vaccinations are necessary to prevent severe illness and death, adding a third specific claim that, “Vaccination has been critical in reducing hospitalisations and admissions to intensive care units (ICU) and deaths.”

Senator Urquhart lauded Covid vaccines for having been “instrumental in allowing society to reopen both socially and economically,” and said that, “we shouldn’t focus on conspiracy theories and fringe agendas,” but should rather focus on getting everyone vaccinated in line with the experts’ recommendations for their age and health status.