Open Thread – Weekend 15 March 2025


Autumn, Path through the Woods, Camille Pissarro, 1876

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

59 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Megan
Megan
March 15, 2025 12:23 am

Gorgeous painting!

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
March 15, 2025 12:23 am

BAM.

This thread dedicated to Penelope Wong and her astute ability to read the room.

Oh wait.

Bruce in WA
March 15, 2025 12:50 am

From the OT regarding Jeff Wayne’s The war of the worlds.

Watch the video of the entire concert here. (Apart from the bloody ads.)

Volume UP!!

(For some reason the link starts a few seconds in: slide back to the start.)

Last edited 7 hours ago by Bruce in WA
Steve trickler
Steve trickler
March 15, 2025 1:09 am

Yep, put the car into a Meusem. It’s a shame they didn’t go to the States. That small block Ford 302 Windsor is a howler!

Impeccable throttle control on show here. I reckon the next project will ultimatey end up at Garrets place * ( Cleetus ) – That car here is officially worth, BIG BUCKS!

Last skid for SICKO – GM176 is about to retire from the burnout scene.

Last edited 7 hours ago by Steve Trickler
Steve trickler
Steve trickler
March 15, 2025 1:21 am

Classic repeats!

That Ford 302- Windsor just purrs like a kitten.

SICKO WINS THE BURNOUT MASTERS AT SUMMERNATS 32

Last edited 7 hours ago by Steve Trickler
Steve trickler
Steve trickler
March 15, 2025 1:52 am

Sleep well, Ladies and Gents.

Wally Dali
Wally Dali
March 15, 2025 2:18 am

Insert “beware the ides of March” reference here
….apart from that, goodnight all

Tom
Tom
March 15, 2025 4:00 am
Barking Toad
Barking Toad
March 15, 2025 4:59 am
Reply to  Tom

Beautifully scathing!

Tintarella di Luna
Tintarella di Luna
March 15, 2025 6:57 am
Reply to  Tom

Brutal and beautiful all at once — Abalone!!!!

Tom
Tom
March 15, 2025 4:01 am
Tom
Tom
March 15, 2025 4:02 am
Tom
Tom
March 15, 2025 4:03 am
Tom
Tom
March 15, 2025 4:04 am
Tom
Tom
March 15, 2025 4:05 am
Tom
Tom
March 15, 2025 4:06 am
Tom
Tom
March 15, 2025 4:07 am
Tom
Tom
March 15, 2025 4:08 am
Tom
Tom
March 15, 2025 4:08 am
Tom
Tom
March 15, 2025 4:09 am
Tom
Tom
March 15, 2025 4:10 am
Winston Smith
Winston Smith
March 15, 2025 5:59 am

Roger: March 14, 2025 1:47 pm

Anthony Albanese will join a phone hook-up with world leaders tomorrow night to discuss a potential peacekeeping mission to Ukraine.

France, Germany, Italy and Canada will also be part of the call arranged by British PM Keir Starmer.

Oh ffs.
The prick won’t be able to hold himself back as he promises to offer troops and aircraft for the ‘peacekeeping’ force.
Conscription here we come.
Anything to sit at the big table.

Beertruk
March 15, 2025 6:01 am

Today’s Saturday Tele:

RENEWABLE POWER HAS A DIRTY SECRET: SLAVERY

Vikki Campion
15 Mar 2025

When the luxury of sugar in British tea became commonplace, it came off the backs of the enslaved in the Americas. Today, people say they would refuse to tolerate any such evil, but the reality is we still do. The sugar in the cup is now the battery in the bus and the panel on the farm.

It turns out our government procurement teams and intermittent power developers are not so different from hoity-toity classes delicately tonging cubes of sugar into Royal Doulton while plantation slaves suffered in the Caribbean.

During a heated interrogation in NSW parliament this week, Shooters MLC Mark Banasiak and Liberal MLC Damien Tudehope exposed a system with a gaping loophole.

Companies operating in communist China, which considers the Uyghur cultural identity a mental illness, are asked to self-disclose any enslavement of a race they barely regard as human.

Subject to ethnic cleansing, forced marriage, forced abortion and a stolen generation banned from speaking their language, there is far and wide evidence of Uyghurs being forced to “volunteer” in government programs in mines and factories.

In parliament, the NSW transport minister was forced to defend buying hundreds of EV bus batteries from Chinese battery manufacturer and technology company CATL.

According to a US congressional investigation, there is “indisputable evidence” that CATL uses slave labour in making its components.

But never mind, Transport Minister John Graham told estimates he had “significant assurances in the deed” that “require companies to be upfront” about using slave labour to make electric bus batteries.

When you self-regulate, money can be made in self-approval, especially from climate zealots on the NSW public purse.

CATL in Xinjiang assures us we have nothing to worry about, pointing to its “Due Diligence Management Policy for Responsible Mineral Resources Supply Chain”, which distances itself from “any forms of forced or compulsory labour”.

And how many NSW bureaucrats are in Xinjiang on quality assurance?

None. Neither are they federally; in fact, no one is allowed to go to Xinjiang without approval.

Most of our EV batteries are made in the same province, with the sugar on top being Australian taxpayers spending $560m a year in tax breaks to put our wealthy into luxury electric cars.

Uyghur migrant Ramila Chanisheff of the Australian Uyghur and Tangritagh Women’s Association has a very good idea of how these so-called quality assurance schemes work in a region that mines the essential minerals required for the “transition”. She begged for the bus contracts to be ripped up, and recently appealed to a NSW Independent Planning Commission hearing of a massive solar factory at Birrawa: “Please, please, I urge that the solar panels that you are bringing in or that you are engaging with China will have the blood of my family, of every Uyghur.”

Disgracefully, the commission asked her no questions and instead approved the Birrawa Solar Factory with no disclosure about from where its solar panels were to be sourced.

Its Philippine developer ACEN Australia claims to use “tier one” suppliers, but is hardly forthcoming in disclosing specifics. With 13 major wind and solar factories in the pipeline, when ACEN discloses what will be sourced locally, it lists skills such as fencing and products such as personal protective equipment. What’s conveniently not on the locally made list? The solar panels themselves. Two years ago, Mr Banasiak called out the Modern Slavery Register’s disclaimer that states: “The publication of modern slavery statements on this Register does not indicate compliance with the requirements of the Modern Slavery Act 2018.” You get a better warranty on a vacuum cleaner. A whole review and an Albanese government response later, that disclaimer remains today.

A Chinese company in a communist regime that shifts ethical responsibility to suppliers is not surprising, but it leaves a bitter taste when our taxpayer-funded net zero choir sings with a slavemade organ.

Especially in NSW, a state so morally uptight that it bans plastic straws yet happily procures batteries and solar panels from an area notorious for slave labour. Embellishing the virtue of your product by absconding quality control of the humanity behind it leaves a bitter taste, even at the swankiest of tea parties.

LIFTER

Liberal MLC Jacqui Munro for revealing the $267,000 bill to recruit a new NSW Art Gallery CEO, to which Arts Minister John Graham declared: “We’re not prepared to cut corners on a worldwide search for this incredible institution.” Everybody who can’t afford groceries must be stoked.

LEANER

The brains behind the environmental conference COP30 where they are pulling down Amazon rainforest to host a conference to save it.

The ‘net zero choir’…the virtual signalling modern day slave trade enablers.

Beertruk
March 15, 2025 6:12 am

Vikki cont’d/ :

THE PARTY THAT CLAIMS IT IS NOT A PARTY SURE ACTS LIKE IT IS A PARTY

SHY and reclusive Kennedy MP Bob Katter has never been caught out on his own social media post congratulating himself for his insightful commentary.

Over his 30-year political career, many have struggled to decipher his press conferences but all would have to concur they are unique and should serve a lesson of what genuine independent thought looks like, as perplexing as living in the precinct of man-eating crocodiles may be. However, away from the mangroves of Far North Queensland, the other so-called independents have conjured up an incredible trick, to think and talk the same. No doubt we can put this down to their shared life experience.

Mackellar’s very independent MP Dr Sophie Scamps complicated her independence last Friday when she went viral for her heartfelt comment on fellow Climate 200 funded independent Allegra Spender’s page criticising “grubby politics” and in a remarkable turn, Scamp’s campaign account replied to her own comment with “spot on.”

Endorsing your own comment in a matter of moments would make even Bob blush. Such occurrences may be excused when a person, like hypothetically a social media guy who manages multiple candidate accounts at the same time, has a finger slip.

Where it’s not supposed to happen is when a candidate is genuinely independent, as we are assured is the case with Climate 200 acting as a third-party fundraiser and not a political party. Climate 200 MPs are still chucking in the cash to promote their very independent ways.

Bob, who doesn’t have to confirm his independence, has still spent $0 in total in advertising it online.

We’re told this week that the Climate 200 funded candidates are so independent they can even choose to support a Liberal government while they fund ads against it.

If it walks like a party and quacks like a party, it’s probably a party.

Rosie
Rosie
March 15, 2025 6:18 am

“Federal immigration authorities arrested a second person who participated in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, and have revoked the visa of another student, they announced Friday.”
One student has self deported after her visa was revoked.
The arrested one should have been deported over 2 years ago.
https://apnews.com/article/columbia-university-mahmoud-khalil-ice-arrests-3a8db6e646b786a721089a6f0bc8d9fc

Rosie
Rosie
March 15, 2025 6:22 am

Hamas now publicly saying they will release one living American Edan Alexander and four dead Americans but apparently behind closed doors still making outrageous demands.
Meanwhile in Gaza while (frozen) meat is still available for restaurants and food kitchens ordinary people can only buy tinned meat.
Fresh fruit and vegetables are also about done.
Genocide in Gaza is being forced to eat canned food so the border closure is starting to bite.

Rosie
Rosie
March 15, 2025 6:34 am

“Donald Trump is set to implement a travel ban focused on Muslim-majority nations such as Afghanistan, Syria, and Pakistan, with the goal of protecting the United States from potential jihadist threats.”
Syria is safe for Sunni, send them all home.
https://x.com/Awesome_Jew_/status/1900572375353074044?t=Q6XG0p3_86lHFiys88LU0A&s=19

Rosie
Rosie
March 15, 2025 6:36 am
Beertruk
March 15, 2025 6:45 am
Reply to  Rosie

Noice… 🙂

Beertruk
March 15, 2025 6:36 am

Meanwhile in other news…more trouble at the mill…

Today’s Saturday Tele:

MPS AT RISK IN SECURITY BUNGLE EXCLUSIVE

JAMES O’DOHERTY
15 Mar 2025

Premier Chris Minns’ department is at the centre of a “catastrophic” privacy breach after publishing the home addresses of almost 20 former Coalition ministers, leaving current and former MPs fearing for their safety.

In the latest twist of the ministerial drivers saga, the NSW government’s top department failed to redact former ministers’ home addresses from driver booking logs published online on Wednesday.

Former ministers impacted by the extraordinary data breach – including ministers responsible for sensitive police and counter-terror portfolios – say they have been forced to take steps to protect their families, and are considering taking legal action. There are also calls for security arrangements for former MPs to be urgently reviewed.

The state could now be liable for as much as $720,000 in compensation payments.

The Premier’s Department was plunged into crisis on Thursday, after bureaucrats realised that they failed to redact highly sensitive personal details from documents released under freedom of information laws.

The material was online for six hours before being taken down.

Parliamentary officials are understood to have been furious at the privacy breach. Former ministers said Speaker Greg Piper and parliamentary security officials have been frantically trying to reassure MPs about their safety.

The documents listed then-ministers’ “home” or “residence” as locations for pick-up and drop-off in drivers’ logs.

Former Counter Terrorism Minister Anthony Roberts, who’s personal address was included in the document release said the “catastrophic breach” could put people at risk.

“We go to great lengths, particularly in sensitive portfolios, to make it as hard as possible for people to identify our residential address,” he said.

While politicians are required to disclose the suburb of properties they own on their register of interests, addresses are typically kept secret.

Mr Roberts called for security arrangements of former ministers to be reviewed to protect their safety.

Former premier Dominic Perrottet, Liberal leader Mark Speakman, and Nationals leader Dugald Saunders were among some 18 current and former MPs who had their addresses published.

Mr Speakman and Mr Saunders have now demanded an explanation over how the “serious security risk” occurred.

“The Premier’s Department … failed to protect the personal addresses of current and former members of parliament, including former premiers,” Mr Speakman said. “This is a serious security risk.”

The Nationals leader said the breach had left Nationals MPs feeling vulnerable and violated.

Former police minister David Elliott was among those told by bureaucrats that their addresses “may” have been published.

Mr Elliott said it was an “inexcusable” error, over which heads should roll.

Last edited 1 hour ago by Beertruk
Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
March 15, 2025 7:05 am
Reply to  Beertruk

So Minns, who is under pressure from the wine-and-dine scandal has released the Coalition’s driver log books, not his own party’s ones, and just accidentally forgot to black out their personal details?

Colour me deeply sceptical that this was an “error”.

Crossie
Crossie
March 15, 2025 8:24 am

Funny how these mistakes always go in one direction. Minns thinks we are all stupid. Cassie is right, he is a pretty face hiding the Labor skullduggery, bet he has a good laugh about pulling the wool over naive people who want to be fooled.

calli
calli
March 15, 2025 7:38 am
Reply to  Beertruk

Despicable. Like the swatting and doxxing, it’s all of a piece and cut from the same cloth.

They used to make the Mao suits from it, and there’s still plenty on the bolt.

Rosie
Rosie
March 15, 2025 6:37 am

Couldn’t choose better countries for displaced Gazans.
https://x.com/Osint613/status/1900449925114069176?t=SQHaIFcmdAyRUgr8wWqyBA&s=19

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
March 15, 2025 7:10 am
Reply to  Rosie

Somaliland is a real chance. They’ve been trying to get recognition as an independent state for a long time. So offered that, plus say $10 billion in compo, they might well do a deal to take the Gazans.

The only problem is the Houthis would shoot at any passenger liners transporting them, as they sailed past. Which would put a lot of pressure on the US Navy.

Pogria
Pogria
March 15, 2025 7:41 am
Reply to  Rosie

Oh NICE! 😀

Last edited 47 minutes ago by Pogria
Bungonia bee
Bungonia bee
March 15, 2025 6:38 am
Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
March 15, 2025 6:49 am

Kari Lake gets going:

Voice of America Ending Contracts With AP, Reuters, Agence France Presse (14 Mar)

“We should not be paying outside news organizations to tell us what the news is,” said Lake, who ran unsuccessfully for Arizona governor. “With a nearly billion-dollar budget, we should be producing news ourselves. And if that’s not possible, the American taxpayer should demand to know why.”

In a meeting on Friday, VOA staffers were told to stop using wire service material for their reports, according to journalists who spoke under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

Excellent. Ass Press, Reuters and AFP are all notoriously lefty.

Bungonia bee
Bungonia bee
March 15, 2025 7:09 am

There were two main preoccupations of the BBC overnight. Climate change is melting the Winter Olympics and making the Summer Olympics too hot.
And:
Trump is treating Putin much more nicely than he did Zelenskyy in that famous Oval Office Barney. He imposed “conditions” on Z man, but isn’t imposing any on Putin, the story went.
Steady on!. He refused to give Z a security guarantee, which we assume would be a promise of US troops. We have yet to see the full picture of what the peace agreement will look like, but it will certainly have something in it to allow Russia to keep the Crimea. Otherwise there will be no agreement at all.
Nor do we know what threats may have been made to Putin.
So the Beeb continues in their own sneaky way to paint Trump as Putin’s mate.

Bungonia bee
Bungonia bee
March 15, 2025 7:28 am
Reply to  Bungonia bee
Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
March 15, 2025 7:20 am

Sad news: Steven Hayward is leaving Powerline. I don’t know what that means for the WiP.

Bungonia bee
Bungonia bee
March 15, 2025 7:21 am

The hot weather at the moment isn’t Climate Change, it’s Synoptic Alignments. Australia is a big place and we get cold blasts from the south and hot blasts from the north. The two large pressure systems dominating the weather have formed a channel for hot air to come down the map.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
March 15, 2025 7:38 am

Popcorn…

Civil War Breaks Out Among Democrats After Schumer Folds On GOP Funding Bill (15 Mar)

They have to vote some time today for the funding bill or the government shuts down. About which John Hinderaker says: “Which I wouldn’t have minded at all.” My sentiment also.

Johnny Rotten
Johnny Rotten
March 15, 2025 7:38 am

comment image

Mak Siccar
Mak Siccar
March 15, 2025 7:43 am

A read with your morning coffee.

Australia’s self-inflicted Covid damage is only in hindsight? What a sick joke that is
Steve Waterson

Well those years flew by, didn’t they? I remember early in 2020 checking flights to Spain for my nephew’s July wedding, and hoping the news of an unpleasant flu virus coming out of China wouldn’t interfere with our plans. 

Innocent soul that I was, I never imagined the event would be put off for two years; even less did I think we’d be unable to attend after that delay, still forbidden to leave our hermit kingdom.

It’s hard to determine what tops the league table of outrages Australians were subjected to during our embrace of the Covid pandemic. The international travel ban hurt me not so much because of missed holidays but because it stopped me seeing my terminally ill father in England before he died. I’d still like to hear how my departure from this country would have presented a threat to those who remained, just as so many others would like an explanation for why they were denied the right to see dying relatives by a bureaucracy with the compassion of Daleks (but I’ve answered my own question).

For me, the lack of humanity – graphically illustrated by socially distanced and attendance-capped funerals, the heartbreakingly lonely scenes in aged-care homes, the Queensland premier closing the state border even to medical emergencies and gloating that “we have Queensland hospitals for our people”, the demented curfews and house arrests – turned on its head everything I’d always believed about this country, its proud tradition of mateship abandoned by government fiat, evanescent as a soap bubble.

Others were disgusted by the obfuscation, perhaps absence, of any medical justification for the unprecedented – unlike the panic-mongers, I use the word in its true sense – suppression of our civil liberties. We were told ad bloody nauseam that the strategy was based on the finest advice, that our pants-wetting governments and their suddenly beatified health mandarins were following the science; but whose science, whose advice, was never made clear.

Were we inspired, perhaps, by the proportionate response of the Chinese Communist Party, which sensitively and scientifically welded its subjects into their Wuhan apartments and bludgeoned their pets to death in the streets below? Or by the warnings of serially discredited epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, who predicted, on the basis of his fantasy modelling, more than half a million Covid deaths in Britain? 
We may never know because this high-level, utterly compelling advice, if it ever existed, has to this day not been released.

We certainly weren’t listening to Oxford University’s professor of evidence-based medicine, Carl Heneghan, who said in March 2020, before the lunacy began, “people with no co-morbidities can relax; you may feel funny but the mortality is incredibly low”; nor were we persuaded by Britain’s deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries, who joined Heneghan in declaring “for most people it really is going to be a very mild disease”. 

And so it was, for most people; but we underestimated our politicians’ egos. They would rather double down, dig in, go to any lengths to spare themselves the embarrassment of confessing their mistake or apologise for their catastrophically expensive overreaction. 

Inevitable, then, that the political, medical and bureaucratic elites behind it would one day seek to rewrite history to reflect their noble success in guiding us wisely, gently and safely through a once-in-a-lifetime emergency. 

What I didn’t foresee, though, was that they’d be so brazen as to do so before the bruises begin to fade. The latest thinking cheekily recommends we develop a plan for the next pandemic, ignoring that we already had one, updated and refined at great expense, that was abandoned the moment panic replaced sensible, calm leadership. Or did we? 
Health Minister Mark Butler had a different opinion at the launch of the government’s once-over-lightly Covid inquiry in October 2024, saying “our pandemic plans were grossly inadequate for the scale of the challenge that Covid-19 presented to us”. Warming to his theme, Butler complained that our standing pandemic response “included no plan that would deal with the closure of the international border, which was such a central part of our response”, and there was “no plan to deal with quarantine, which was also incredibly important”. 

Sorry, Minister, far from it.

The reason such measures were missing from the prepared plans was not an oversight; they had been widely dismissed as ineffective, even by so cautious a body as the World Health Organisation, which produced an 85-page report that gathered expertise from across the globe on ways to mitigate the impact of epidemic and pandemic influenzas. 

Published in October 2019, just weeks before the first cases of Covid were identified in China, the document analysed previous pandemics and the effectiveness of proposed ways of dealing with them. It stated explicitly that of all the possible interventions, “contact tracing”, “quarantine of exposed individuals” and “border closures” were “not recommended in any circumstances”, concluding “the disadvantages outweigh the advantages”. 

Not that any such prudence detained our leaders, whose nonsensical decrees about social distancing, exercise, going to the beach, park or golf course, 5km limits, carrying ID papers, QR codes, masks and so on were grudgingly followed. The compliance was hardly surprising, when our leaders were backed by a complicit mob of state-sponsored thugs – police officers, we used to call them – eager to strap on their armour and pepper-spray canisters, load the rubber-bullet guns and give any impertinent dissenters a good kicking.

Wasting my breath, of course, but the need for a royal commission into the entire fiasco, headed by someone of unimpeachable integrity, not beholden in any way to our governmental and bureaucratic overlords, is as urgent now as it was three years ago, when the grip on our throats began to relax. 

The problem is that if we found such a person, nobody in authority looks brave enough to appoint them for fear their peers’ incompetence would be exposed. Besides, most of the main offenders have snuffled along the trough to secure positions closer to the swill bucket tipping out our taxpayer dollars.

Instead we’ll get more half-baked pseudo-inquiries that all open with the same exculpatory formulation that assumes the very thing many of us have questioned since the beginning: “The initial response to Covid saved thousands of lives”, they begin, then make a mealy-mouthed concession, “but looking back it appears there was some government overreach …” Or as Butler put it last year, “it is easy with the benefit of hindsight to second-guess decisions … made in the heat of the fight against a once-in-a-century pandemic”.
The Australian Human Rights Commission was at it this week with the release of its Collateral Damage report. “While Australia’s government responses during the Covid-19 pandemic helped save lives,” it said in a section labelled Lessons Learnt, “human rights impacts were not always considered or protected.” 

This was followed by a selection of moving stories of people’s distress. It’s gratifying to learn the AHRC has pivoted away from hounding cartoonists to try to live up to its name, but it comes a few years too late to rejoice. It’s not for me to tell them how to do their job, but I fancy the ideal time to be bold in defence of our human rights might have been when they were under attack. 

Can we once and for all bury this notion that the madness revealed itself only in the rear-view mirror of hindsight? It’s an insulting myth that suggests we were all initially supportive of the snap restrictions, only rebelling once our leaders had made us feel safe enough to do so. It was in fact obvious within days that Covid was a serious danger to the elderly and infirm but not to the young and fit. 

So isolate the sick, protect and care for them, and leave the healthy to keep the country ticking over as normally as possible. How difficult an ambition would that have been? Instead we failed everyone, especially those who died early because their cancers grew undetected or who will live in pain because of surgery and treatments delayed.
There were many people who from the start viewed the approaching threat to long-cherished freedoms as more sinister than the virus and were prepared to say so immediately. 

As one of them, I was fortunate to be employed by a publication that presents a broad range of opinions, including ones deemed “unhelpful” by the government of the day, so had the privilege of voicing my concerns more widely than most; but in comments on my first column on the topic, published on April 4, 2020, hundreds of readers also expressed their own misgivings with furious eloquence. 

Many noted that the resources of the nation were focused on terrifying the population into submission, a suspicion confirmed later that month by Queensland’s chief health officer (now, after one of history’s most ludicrous promotions, the state’s Governor), who revealed the scare tactics, simultaneously monstrous and infantilising: “If you go out to the community and say, ‘This is so bad, we can’t even have schools, all schools have got to be closed’, you are really getting to people,” she said. “So sometimes it’s more than just the science and the health, it’s about the messaging.”

It should come as no surprise, particularly to a doctor, that impressionable children absorbed that messaging so completely. The adults supposed to reassure them had abandoned that role, instead screaming all the horrors their fevered imaginations conjured up. 

Is it any wonder we are now seeing the deleterious impact on young people’s mental health, socialisation and education after three years of poisoning their developing minds with cynically manufactured anxiety?

Nor should we ignore the shameful contribution of some fawning media that sat at the feet of the dictators and amplified that anxiety. Not only are journalists as susceptible as anyone else to manipulation but many of us have a default setting that revels in chaos and disaster, in this case irresponsibly regurg­itating the doom-laden pronounce­ments of some of the world’s least telegenic per­sonalities while basking in their attent­ion. 

I shudder at the memory of the patronising “I make no apologies” premiers as they daily took to the stage to recite meaningless numbers of infection cases and thank us for our fine-induced obedience, vile exemplars of the dictum that politics is show business for ugly people. “Conviction” politicians all, convinced – against the evidence – of their own wisdom, brilliance and moral superiority. We allowed them to run our country into the ground when the morons shouldn’t have been trusted with running a bath. 

Finally, consider the lost jobs, the small businesses destroyed, the untested generosity of JobKeeper payments, the productivity drain of work-from-home rorts, the billions squandered on negative testing and myriad other expenses and you’re getting no change from half a trillion dollars, a debt we’ll be servicing for decades. 

It’s no surprise the predicted economic crisis now looks to be on its way, perhaps heralding a recession we didn’t need to have; it should be an interesting challenge for whichever party of disappointment crawls into government. 

This week the world’s newspapers, TV channels and websites have been flooded with thoughtful articles on the lessons of Covid five years on, as though it was some external catastrophe, when the painful truth is that it was a disaster entirely of our own making. 

The whole dismal experience certainly has plenty to teach us; what a pity the people who learn those lessons won’t be the ones who need to.

Beertruk
March 15, 2025 7:52 am
Reply to  Mak Siccar

Bewdy.

You beat me to it.

Just finished reading that on the Oz / Paywallion and was going to post it.

Pogria
Pogria
March 15, 2025 8:09 am
Reply to  Mak Siccar

Steve forgot to mention that Mosques were open for business where every other denomination was locked down.
Also, no raghead gathering was banned or policed with pepper spray and rubber bullets.

Perplexed of Brisbane
Perplexed of Brisbane
March 15, 2025 8:21 am
Reply to  Mak Siccar

Unless any inquiry outcome contains the words – politicians, health officers, trials, jail terms and hangings in the same sentence, it will be a failure.

I want to see no statute of limitations on them. Like the Jews going after WW2 nazis. I don’t care if they are 100 years old, if they get to stand trial for their crimes against humanity, then they get to suffer whatever earthly penalty is placed on them.

Eternal penalties is the realm of the almighty. At least we’ll know all the communist premiers will meet their ultimate redoubt.

Winston Smith
Winston Smith
March 15, 2025 7:51 am

Johnny Rotten – The Great Reparations Swindle.

 …demanded only the West meet its demand for $US777 trillion in compensation.

Send it back to them in nukes – with dead man fuses.
I’m so bloody sick and tired of these arrogant bastards and our weak as piss leaders who refuse to stand up to a mob of <75 IQ savages.

feelthebern
feelthebern
March 15, 2025 7:55 am

I’ve now muted the term “Canada” on twitterX.
First Tate, now Canada.
Downside, Canada does something productive.
Upside, I no longer get ridiculous stories clogging up my feed.
I will unblock when people understand how electoral maths works.

Mak Siccar
Mak Siccar
March 15, 2025 7:58 am

A read with your lunch time coffee.

Western ‘society of tolerance’ has led to ‘universal moral drought’Gemma Tognini

There’s a lot I could say about Elica Le Bon. 

I could tell you she has a laugh that feels like an invitation to cook up some kind of mischief. That she is surprisingly petite. That she has confronted and bested some of the most vicious anti-Semitic voices in the world during her rise to prominence as an advocate and activist. 

Then there is a grace with which she carries herself that makes our interview seem more like a catch-up with an old friend.

But the one thing I really want to say is this: Underestimate Le Bon at your peril. 

It’s Thursday afternoon just gone and we’re seated at a beachside cafe. She has been in Sydney for less than three hours (her first time in Australia) and has agreed to meet me ahead of her upcoming speaking tour.

She is dressed for the beach, in casual T-shirt and shorts, her dark hair held back by a bright scarf, and she looks ridiculously fresh after a long-haul flight. She wears a gold necklace with a word in script I don’t understand. 

Le Bon is in Australia to speak at a sold-out series of events in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. The tour was organised by United Israel Appeal, an apolitical, not-for-profit humanitarian organisation. 

Is it any wonder the tour is sold out? For those following the conflict in the Middle East, and the global fight against Islamic extremism more broadly, Le Bon has become a voice to be reckoned with.

For those unfamiliar with her story, she was born in London to Iranian parents. Her father was studying for his PhD at Oxford University and was granted asylum when the shah of Iran fell. Her mother escaped from the notorious Evin prison, one of very few people to do so in the early days of the Islamic revolution. Le Bon moved to the US to study law and spent a decade being a criminal defence lawyer. 

I ask her, given her family story, if this life as a global voice for Israel since October 7, as an activist and an advocate for people living under extremist regimes throughout the Middle East, was planned. 

She tosses her head back and laughs loudly.

“No, nooooo way.” She leans forward, her face animated as if imagining the absurdity of being able to orchestrate it all. 
“I would have actually carried on being a leftie my whole life. I would have probably lived this sort of semi-leftie bleeding heart, let’s fix the crime thing.”

While the subject matter is weighty, Le Bon holds it with a lightness that opens the door to greater inquiry. Describing herself frequently as a former leftie leads me to probe the why and the how of her ideological shift. She says it was organic.
“The thing that let me know something was wrong was there was a conflict between my mind and my gut,” Le Bon says.
“(Joe) Biden, for example, was giving $US6bn to the (Iranian) regime as part of this hostage exchange … and you had thousands of Iranians saying, please don’t do this, they will commit terrorism, and they refroze the money after October 7, but the whole point is that as I was watching this all unfold, I was like, ‘Oh my god, you guys are liars.’ 

“That was the unravelling for me, where I was just … I thought that between the left and the right I was protected by the left and when I realised I wasn’t it was like, there’s something very dishonest happening on the left.

“After October 7 when people started supporting terrorists I think that was sort of the calling for me. I had been posting about Iran since the uprising and the killing of Mahsa Amini, who was killed for showing a little bit of her hair. That was in 2022. 

“Even that time people still understood that these were terrorists, you know, this was a terrorist regime, people got it. Then, after October 7, people started saying: ‘Oh, but these aren’t terrorists, these are freedom fighters’, and not understanding that it was the same thing.”

Le Bon quit the law in December 2024. She is now an “author to be” (her description) and an activist. 
“We are living in a time of universal moral drought. Universal moral confusion, depravity, all of those things,” she says, firmly and with conviction. 

“I just realised that’s where my mission is. It’s about sort of restoring moral clarity where it’s been lost. Because look, once people have that moral clarity, all of the issues just make sense. You don’t have to do the separate thing of Iran, Israel, it’s applicable everywhere and it just makes sense.”

Our conversation meanders at an easy pace. From our respective visits to Israel since the war with Hamas began, to this overwhelming sense of bewilderment at the West’s insatiable appetite to sacrifice values on the altar of “tolerance”. 

She uses the word brainwashed often in this context, especially as we repeatedly circle the subject of privileged women in Western democracies who support regimes whose record on the treatment of women and girls is horrifying, who side with the perpetrators.

“They’re brainwashed,” She says firmly. “They don’t know any better. Women have become so brainwashed even to the extent that they don’t even know how to protect feminism any more.” 

So, who is to blame, I ask. 

“You know what I’ll tell you it is? It’s the softness of our Western society. We have become a society of so much tolerance that all of these ridiculous, grotesque ideologies that have been passing through the media, through universities, through this, through that, saying ‘oh … free speech, it’s all fine, it’s all good’, it’s like these aren’t thoughts and ideas, this is ideological subversion, which is incredibly, incredibly dangerous.”

Ours has been a relaxed conversation until this point, when Le Bon begins to fire up the engine of her formidable intellect.
She starts laying out in detail the history of misinformation aimed at destabilising the US and the West more broadly that started back in the 1920s. With an unholy alliance between communism and Islamic extremists, united by a common hatred of the West and of Israel. 

“People don’t understand that these ideologies have deeply, deeply infiltrated our institutions, our media, our universities,” Le Bon says. “Historically, these were actual disinformation agents. But they were deliberate.” 

She references Romanian Ion Mihai Pacepa (whom to my shame I have to Google when I get home from our interview), the highest ranking Soviet bloc defector who, after escaping to the West in 1978, detailed the extent to which the Soviet Union had dedicated itself to spreading misinformation in Western democracies. It was a deliberate plan with future generations in mind. As Le Bon says, they were playing the long game. 

Pacepa later co-wrote a book with law professor Ronald J. Rychlak called Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion and Promoting Terrorism.

“This isn’t an accident,” Le Bon says. “This isn’t like, wow, where did this come from? We can actually trace the inception of these ideologies and they’re so, so, so dangerous to the fabric of our society. And so I think, seeing what happened to Iran, where Iran fell in the last instance, it was a direct result of these exact ideologies that we’re seeing in the West today and that’s very concerning.”

A soft breeze beckons to the ocean a few short blocks away. Le Bon asks if the gelato shop next door is any good. I mean to ask her about her necklace, what it says, but forget, and we say our goodbyes. 

Later that night, fact-checking her quotes, I ask. The necklace is in Russian.

“It says disinformation,” she says. “Because it’s the root of everything.”

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
March 15, 2025 8:01 am

From all the enormous billboards and posters it’s clear there’s some big money behind this campaign. You may have to wait a bit for all the tweets in the story to load, as I’m finding X/twitter has been very slow lately. Probably still under attack.

Mass Cases Of EDS Reported All Over The World… (15 Mar)

A new global pandemic has taken hold with mass cases of Elon Derangement Syndrome breaking out all over the globe.

Yesterday we reported on Greg, a guy who bought a Tesla just to smash it up with an axe. … Symptoms of the disease previously seen in the U.S., including hysterical frothing, weird public tantrums and calling everyone who you disagree with a Nazi, have now also been reported in London.

These billboards and ads are popping up everywhere across the city in a coordinated effort to smear Musk for merely being associated with President Trump.

More Teslas have been firebombed and dealerships shot up. Lefties are the real jackbooted fascists, it seems from their behaviour.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
March 15, 2025 8:04 am

While on the subject of Elon, SpaceX is planning to launch the rescue mission to the International Space Station today.

Live coverage is due to start in a bit less than an hour.

https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1ZkJzYzvvXLGv

Indolent
Indolent
March 15, 2025 8:08 am

She is really wonderful.

@PressSec

The Executive Branch cannot properly function if activist liberal judges can unilaterally block presidential actions over the entire country.

If a federal district court judge wants executive powers, they can try and run for President themselves.

The Trump Administration will immediately fight back against these absurd and unconstitutional orders.

The American people overwhelmingly voted for President Trump’s agenda, and it will be fully implemented.

Indolent
Indolent
March 15, 2025 8:17 am

@FBIDirectorKash

I want to address the alarming rise in ‘Swatting’ incidents targeting media figures. The FBI is aware of this dangerous trend, and my team and I are already taking action to investigate and hold those responsible accountable.

This isn’t about politics—weaponizing law enforcement against ANY American is not only morally reprehensible but also endangers lives, including those of our officers. That will not be tolerated.

We are fully committed to working with local law enforcement to crack down on these crimes.

More updates to come.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
March 15, 2025 8:24 am
Reply to  Indolent
Beertruk
March 15, 2025 8:27 am

Chris Uhlmann is not everyone’s cup of tea but anyway…

Paywallion:

Biggest mistake we could make is to think Donald Trump and his disciples are fools
Chris Uhlmann
11 hours ago

American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr is credited with writing the prayer now synonymous with Alcoholics Anonymous: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The Albanese government should adopt this as a mantra in dealing with Donald Trump. 

No one can control what the US President will do, so Australia must focus on the things within its command. At the top of the list should be cutting the cost of energy, removing onerous labour laws and slashing the sea of red tape, all of which are making Australia a bad place to do business. If there is to be a full-blown tariff war then this is just the first shot and we need to be fit to fight.

That also means not living a delusion. No one was going to change the President’s mind on tariffs: a different ambassador, a different government or more baksheesh would not have counted for a hill of beans. Sacking Kevin Rudd would be seen as a sign of weakness. No one will work harder than the former prime minister to press Australia’s case, or be less daunted by roadblocks. Rudd is nothing if not relentless.

Malcolm Turnbull’s intervention might have been unhelpful but it was wholly unremarkable, as was Trump’s response. And it’s more than a little discordant when those who loudly champion free speech now treat criticising the US President as a thought crime.

But if Turnbull really wants to help he can disavow Australia’s economy-crippling energy “transition”. The energy regulator signalled another hike in electricity prices this week, marking the latest milestone on our pathway to poverty. We are witnessing a wilful demolition of this nation’s wealth by clueless state and federal governments.

The Coalition is walking through a minefield by insinuating that it would have won a tariff reprieve. If, against the odds, every card falls its way and it wins government in May, this claim will rapidly be put to the test. Does it really feel that lucky? And Liberals and Nationals might find walking in Trump’s shadow a cold place to be in the run-up to the poll.

Trump has shown no inclination to help conservative fellow travellers. His trolling of Canada has breathed life back into that country’s Liberal Party, which was on track for an epic defeat at the hands of the Conservatives in an election that must come by October. The Liberals have dumped the dead weights of Justin Trudeau and its commitment to a consumer carbon tax. New Prime Minister Mark Carney – former head of the British and Canada central banks – is building his fight back on campaigning against Trump.

“We didn’t ask for this fight but Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves,” Carney said, referring to the endearing habit of ice hockey players who shake off their mitts to signal a fistfight is about to begin. “The Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country. Think about it. If they succeed, they will destroy our way of life.”

On February 15, that metaphorical brawl was made real in a match between the US and Canada. The Canadians booed as the US anthem played and when the game began it was stopped by three fights in the first nine seconds. There is a price to pay for treating people with contempt.

Most Australians are also leery of the US President so expect Labor, the Greens and the teals to cast Peter Dutton as a Trump clone or ally as the election race heats up. In close races, a handful of votes will count and, with tariffs rises now a given, the risk of blowback on the government is minimal.

Surely the lesson for the Liberal Party from the past week of international and domestic politics is that it also needs to focus on the things it can control. The West Australian state poll was a catastrophe, worse than the near-extinction level event of 2021 because the excuse of pandemic politics was gone. It points to a state division in terminal decline.

The Liberal story is little better in South Australia, where two historically bad by-election losses now leave it with 13 out of 47 seats in the House of Assembly, its equal lowest representation ever.

The Victoria Liberals thought the best way to spend most of the past two years was brawling over the spoils of permanent opposition. The NSW division is under administration.

What part of this screams a May miracle victory to you?

All parties should now be mapping out how they will guide Australia in a world where the road rules have been torn up. All should plan for more disruption from the US, China and Russia.

The biggest mistake in drafting those maps is to start from the position that Trump and his disciples are fools. No one who has managed to dominate US politics for a decade is an idiot. Many on the Trump caravan are highly qualified and have long debated the consequences of their actions. It makes more sense to look for the order in the Trumpian chaos, the method in the madness.

There is a guidebook. The four wilderness years were not wasted. Under the banner of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation produced Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. It’s a manifesto for the radical reordering of the US and the world.

Among its 887 pages are two essays making the cases for and against free trade.

The case for protection was written by former professor of economics and public policy at the University of California, Peter Navarro. The China hawk and tariff warrior was part of the first Trump administration. He refused to testify before the committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riots and was jailed for four months. In a land where loyalty to the king is currency, no one has stored more treasure than Navarro.

Navarro rejects the free trade orthodoxy because he believes it enriches America’s allies and adversaries while hurting the US, weakening its industrial base and strengthening China’s. He believes it benefits Wall Street at the expense of “Main Street manufacturers and workers”. He’s not alone. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared this week: “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream. 

“The American dream is rooted in the concept that any citizen can achieve prosperity, upward mobility and economic security,” Bessent said. “For too long, the designers of multilateral trade deals have lost sight of this.”

These men wager that tariffs will reshore manufacturing and higher prices will be offset by better jobs, better economic and national security and a better society. They expect costs and disruption and wager that, if there is to be a recession, it’s best to have it before the November 2026 congressional elections.

They may be wildly wrong on every element of this but it will be an interesting experiment.

There are scant references to Australia in the conservative manifesto but we should pay heed to page 94. There, on defence, it says: “Support greater spending and collaboration by Taiwan and allies in the Asia-Pacific like Japan and Australia to create a collective defence model.”

Australia’s best defence is to study the form guide and expect that we will have to pay the price for our own economic and national security. Both demand that we use the resources beneath our feet.

Let us pray that we have leaders capable of navigating this era. But I wouldn’t give up drinking.

Indolent
Indolent
March 15, 2025 8:28 am

@EricLDaugh

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS COMPLICIT.

I can count on one hand the amount of well-known media outlets reporting on the domestic terrorism occurring against conservatives in false SWATTING calls.

CNN, New York Times and Washington Post would have probably already DOXXED the false-callers if they were targeting liberals. Every Democratic politician would be denouncing it.

When it’s conservatives? They literally ignore it. They don’t want to put any pressure on these extremists to stop. They want it to keep happening.

  1. @EricLDaugh THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS COMPLICIT. I can count on one hand the amount of well-known media outlets reporting on…

  2. On the swatting story: FBI Investigating “Alarming Rise In ‘Swatting’ Incidents” Targeting Conservative Influencers (15 Mar)

59
0
Oh, you think that, do you? Care to put it on record?x
()
x