Thursday is always a quiet day for the lizard Oz, or at least the pond observing the reptiles at play, because of the ongoing ban on petulant Peta, unsurprisingly off with the ratbag bigoted alleged radical feminists at one with Nazis ...
It's just more trans bashing, business as usual for busy Nazi-loving reptiles, but there was an oopsie across the digital page ...
The pond got suitably tense with chortles, but sadly the pond couldn't stay awake long enough to see Boris's performance, what with it being in the UK afternoon ...
When the pond checked in with Sky before nodding off, all that had dropped were the briefing papers.
So the pond was left this morning with Martin Kettle and Boris Johnson has been sliced and diced. The real winner is Rishi Sunak.
The Graudian's UK edition was in full flight for those who cared ...
Exit Boris, come on down tax returns, but the real tell came in another story ...Boris Johnson and Liz Truss among 22 Tory rebels as NI Brexit plan passes.
Trussed up in a rump of 22?
The pond hopes that a marinating Hyde and the cracking Crace, Impervious to advice or rules, Johnson held up the shield of stupidity, can squeeze some juice out of Rish!'s tax returns.
How will the pond and cartoonists survive? Is there nothing left but to drop a little poop on the statues?
Meanwhile, the pond was left looking a little threadbare ...
Desperate times, and so in desperation, the pond turned to Jennings, whom the pond routinely mistook as the lad who attended Linbury Court prep school in England ...
Jokes about neighsayers whinnying and whining aside, this Jennings was recently a star in a
Media Watch piece
, War with China? ...
For those who came in late ...
... it’s dire alright — seems World War III is on the way.
Because there it was, screaming out of the front page of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday, in the first of an alarming three-part series.
With the two papers chorusing:
"Australia faces the real prospect of a war with China within three years that could involve a direct attack on our mainland …" - The Age/Sydney Morning Herald, 7 March, 2023
That warning of imminent attack came with a comic-book sketch of jets flying out of red China to bomb Australia.
So, who was sounding the air raid alarm?
A panel of five science and security experts, assembled by the Nine papers and by international editor Peter Hartcher — who is a well-known China hawk — and featuring Peter Jennings, who has made a habit of predicting that conflict with China is coming.
Jennings told readers:
“It really is all about China, China, China.” - Sydney Morning Herald, 7 March, 2023
And he added: “This is not about 10 to 20 years; it’s really three years.” - Sydney Morning Herald, 7 March, 2023
There was no contrary view and no shading of the possibilities.
So, maybe those views got a look in on day two of Red Alert, when the Herald and Age followed up with this:
"How a conflict over Taiwan could swiftly reach our shores" - The Age/Sydney Morning Herald, 8 March, 2023
But no. Instead, we got more alarming predictions from Jennings:
"Within 72 hours of a conflict breaking out over Taiwan, Chinese missile bombardments and devastating cyberattacks on Australia would begin. For the first time since World War II, the mainland would be under attack." - The Age, 8 March, 2023
So who is Jennings?
The pond saw enough Saturday matinee serials in its time to recognise it's cliffhanger time, and decided to leave that question lingering.
First there must be another gobbet ...
The pond hates to interrupt a listicle just when it's got going, but the pond feels guilty about leaving that cliffhanger. Time for the next episode, and as always, we must begin the episode with the line where the last ep. left off...
There are two things in that episode the pond particularly loved ...that bit about funding supplied by a bevy of arms dealers, and war being measured not in years but in months ...
Now back to the listicle ...
Of course Media Watch didn't quite get it right and had to issue a clarification ... ASPI says Jennings no longer plays an active role with the institute and it was not involved in framing the Age and Herald’s report. ASPI also says it receives funding from only 4 defence manufacturers and it’s 2 per cent of their budget.
But why take anything? Even a little cash in the paw from defence manufacturers makes you look and sound like apologist gooses ...
And what happened to Jennings, prime prognosticator of gloom and dedicated war hawk?
...Jennings had previously been CEO of the Australian Strategic and Policy Institute (ASPI) before he was replaced by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton on 29 February 2022, 12 days before the writs for the 2022 Election were issued and the Government went into caretaker mode. Dutton and former PM Scott Morrison then fought the Election on their coming “war with China” policies and the L-NP suffered its most massive electoral defeat ever.
Dutton replaced Jennings with Justin Bassi, whose previous job was chief of staff to L-NP Foreign Minister Marise Payne. Before that, Bassi had worked in Malcolm Turnbull’s office and before that, for L-NP Attorney-General George Brandis. As well as appointing this ex-Coalition staffer to replace Jennings as head of ASPI, Dutton also appointed former L-NP Ministers John Anderson and Michael Keenan to the board of ASPI.
ASPI is supposed to be an independent, non-partisan body that provides military and strategic advice to Australian governments. Dutton’s stacking of ASPI’s board with former L-NP ministers and staffers, weeks before an election the L-NP was expected to lose, shreds any lingering doubts about ASPI’s bi-partisanship. Dutton’s selections were bipartisan only in the sense that he chose both a former Liberal and a former National Party minister. All jokes aside, it was surprising that John Barilaro wasn’t appointed to the ASPI board.
Yes, a Barilaro joke really is all jokes aside, but meanwhile that listicle was still unfolding ...
Some might wonder if the pond had actually been reading the thoughts of this ozard, sometimes ozard squared, or ozard cubed, but the pond stopped paying attention when this latterday Jennings assured Oz readers - the other Ozards - that submarine detection would stay in stasis for decades, apparently unaware that it would be decades before we actually had the subs needed for the war over Taiwan that was going to happen within months ...
A man with these predictive skills really should take a powder, but inevitably is back at home in the lizard Oz, after helping gee up the Nine rags ...
And so to a final, thankfully brief, flourish ...
Yes, it's China, China, China, and they'll have their war by Xmas if it kills them ...
And so to a bonus, and sad to say, it had nothing to do with this infallible Pope outing ...
There's a real opportunity for an opposition that cared about climate science and the planet ...
Okay, that's another Barilaro joke, as befits an opposition led by a mutton denialist Dutton imitating a potato ... is potato ... and beefy boofhead Angus stationed in Goulburn and still nurturing a deep, undying hatred for windmills...
Instead the mob who picked devious Deves and hoped to win on culture war issues (not to mention war with China) were still at that game, and naturally the bouffant one was there to cheer them on ...
Bashing trans people in a bigoted way had been such fun and then the Nazis came along and ruined the game ...
Such spoilsports, and at this point the reptiles inserted a snap of a gloomy Dreyfus ... so the pond cut it down to size ...
So a dummy spit is reckoned to be a sublime example of politicians at the top of their game? So it seems, and make sure to blame the other mob for the dummy spit, and never mind the culture war games and the likes of the devious Deves and the other cranks and eccentrics and bigots littering the Liberal party of late ...
Yep, they had a dummy spit, and what a pity that the Nazis came out to play and ruined the sport of trans bashing ... and as for
talking about Nazis...
...The Liberal Party's former candidate for the federal NSW seat of Warringah, who is also the co-founder of Save Women's Sport, was strongly criticised last year after a number of now-deleted comments on social media resurfaced.
In them, Ms Deves called trans children "surgically mutilated and sterilised" and likened her lobbying to stop transgender athletes from competing in women’s sport to standing up against the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Oh dear ....
And so to Wilcox, announcing peace in our time, and perhaps Jennings of the fifth form might at some point turn his attention to the shit going down in Ukraine...
Of THE FIVE physical assaults at my teenagers NSW high school - in 8 weeks - one was a trans kid bashing a heckler. It has come to this. 3 years of taunts and the kid lost it
ReplyDeleteAnother assault was 3 kids kicking and punching a kid in a fetal position. The teadher had to shoulder charge the mob as no amount of yelling stopped the perpetrators.
And in Geography the other day, after viwing news of trans baahing, and being asked to write about trans / minority groups abuse, were vocal in issuing death threats to trans people. Consequences? The teacher riooed thenoage out if ine if the genicidal idiots book and riooed it to shreds. And called the parents.
The teacher.
Numerous kids have left for a job or Tafe. Mine contemplated home schooling. The deputy head watches the CCTV. 90 cameras in a achool of 900. A panopticon.
Teachers bear the brunt and need support. They get none. Society pays.
Oops.
ReplyDelete. ..news of trans baahing, and being asked to write about trans / minority groups abuse, 2 kids were vocal in issuing death threats to trans people. Consequences? The teacher ripped the page out of one of the genocidal idiots book and tore it to shreds. And called the parents.
Jennings: "Within 72 hours of a conflict breaking out over Taiwan, Chinese missile bombardments and devastating cyberattacks on Australia would begin." No, no, those valiant, if ancient, Collins Class subs would hold them at bay while we wait for the AUKUS subs to arrive and destroy them.
ReplyDeleteThose devious Chinese wouldn't really use missiles (hypersonics ?) instead of a good old traditional (the Chinese love tradition) naval attack, would they ? So: "Progressive politics loves a cause ..." - is he really calling "Paul Keating, Bob Carr, at least one Labor backbencher and former Labor staff" progressives ? Wau, they'd be unbeatable, wouldn't they.
But what a choice for an 'expert' to refute: Robert Gottliebson. Sure he'd know all about submarine detection technology, wouldn't he. Well, at least he'd know what he's read in the Murdoch media, I guess. But aerial detection of submarine wakes ? Maybe. But how about 'smart torpedoes' (even the Russkis have them) and automated underwater drones and such like - how's that technology coming along ?
But hey: "It is true that submarine hunting technology will improve, but submarines also will get quieter and faster...and weapons will have longer ranges." Yeah, so by the speed that China is expanding its submarine fleet (at least partially nuclear I think), we can guess that they don't reckon the USA has radically effective submarine detection capability already. But how about subs getting "quieter and faster"? Well maybe, but how many years will it take to design and build a bunch of new subs ? Just three years, maybe ? And will our AUKUS subs be of the new "quieter and faster" kind ?
However: "we will not have eight AUKUS subs in the water until the early 2060s" - all utterly undetectable, of course with missiles that could be fired from the other side of the planet - so why do we need nuclear subs again ? Oh yes, to park between Taiwan and China to sink all the massive troop carriers that will ferry 10 million Chinese troops over to invade, yes ? In less than 3 years time, BOC.
GB. But what are they to talk about if they cannot create their own news to sell more newspapers.
DeleteThat would have been a good question once upon a time, Anony, but nowadays it's much more like creating their own news to sell fewer [not "less"] newspapers.
DeleteIt seems odd that they are saying that we need to do something that we know will provoke a response from the designated enemy but that thing cannot protect us from said enemy.
DeleteJennings reminds me of the guy that used to pop up on your doorstep with a Kirby vacuum cleaner. You never realised that the dust mites were about to kill the whole family, but never fear, this could all be cured by purchasing a cleaning device that cost more than the car you currently drove. Needless to say the only pest infestation we had was Kirby salesmen (he had a trainee in tow).
ASPI is exactly the same. I don’t know if they are registered as an agent of foreign influence but it is readily apparent that they should be. When you look at this list of grifting freeloaders it’s a wonder there is any unemployment in Australia.
https://www.aspi.org.au/our-people
Some of those listed as experts seem to have been ranked according to how far they had travelled up the LNP cloaca.
As for the real purpose
https://michaelwest.com.au/revealed-radical-escalation-in-us-war-machine-funding-for-australian-government-think-tank-aspi/
Just as an aside, I hadn’t realised that Stan Grant was Senior Fellow at ASPI. This came to light in intertube chat about Stan talking down Geoffrey Robertson on Q & I (I didn’t watch it). It seems that Robertson was making a point about AUKUS emerging from the mind of Scott Morrison when Stan realised that he hadn’t heard his own voice for a while. Others thought his association with the death industry was the real reason.
So, a short stint in Beijing qualifies you as a China expert and I guess you can never have too many pompous windbags.
Gotta power those wind turbines in a dunkelflaute, Bef, and a bevy of windbags is just the way to do it.
DeleteHow about a dunkelflaute of blowhards GB?
DeleteShirty Shanners: "Coalition MPs began to walk out as he spoke - a damning parliamentary rebuke for a Speaker - and virtually emptied the Coalition benches." Wau, for a minority opposition "virtually" emptying their benches is absolutely terrible, isn't it. Why, absolutely no government business of any kind - even just the odd guffaw about the odd Coalition - could happen, could it.
ReplyDeleteNow let's see:
"Section 39 of the Constitution states:
Until the Parliament otherwise provides, the presence of at least one-third of the whole number of the members of the House of Representatives shall be necessary to constitute a meeting of the House for the exercise of its powers.
In 1989 the Parliament ‘otherwise provided’ by enacting the House of Representatives (Quorum) Bill 1988. The bill provided:
The presence of at least one-fifth of the whole number of the members of the House of Representatives is necessary to constitute a meeting of the House for the exercise of its powers/."
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/House_of_Representatives/Powers_practice_and_procedure/Practice7/HTML/Chapter8/Quorum
So I'd reckon the governent had a clear quorum, didn't it. So that couldn't be a "lost day" could it.
Wau, Beethoven was a bastard's bastard's ... bastard:
ReplyDelete"The analysis also yielded a surprise: Beethoven’s Y chromosome didn’t match those from living relatives. The common relative they all share was Aert van Beethoven, who lived in the 16th century. Somewhere in the seven generations between Aert and Ludwig van Beethoven, a woman in the family tree had a child with an unknown man, and Beethoven seems to be a descendant of that pairing."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/03/22/beethoven-genome-hair
Let's hear it for bastardry!
DeleteAnd we can blame it all on Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam !
DeleteHere we go:
ReplyDeleteWe now know exactly what question the Voice referendum will ask Australians. A constitutional law expert explains
https://theconversation.com/we-now-know-exactly-what-question-the-voice-referendum-will-ask-australians-a-constitutional-law-expert-explains-202143
And Liberal leader Potato takes his tactical lead from this
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh4JgwstBtE
I think he also cites the Craven as a source of 'constitutional advice', so - clash of mighty intellects. Like a true leader, Littleproud is upstaged by Senator Jacinta Yangapi Nampijinpa Price (must get all her affiliations in) to say 'Naaaah'. Simpler, from the party of simple.
Just a wee small diversion into the world of Pareto's 80-20 rule:
ReplyDeleteWe were told we’d be riding in self-driving cars by now. What happened to the promised revolution?
https://theconversation.com/we-were-told-wed-be-riding-in-self-driving-cars-by-now-what-happened-to-the-promised-revolution-201088
So in this case, it's the 97.5-2.5 rule: 97.5 % of 'self-driving cars' was easy; the last 2.5 % is probably impossible.