The venerable Meade's regular, reliable guide for herpetology students was mentioned in correspondent despatches yesterday, but the pond has a bone to pick.
The venerable Meade struck hard with a pithy comment:
We do know that The Australian surely knows its demographic, judging by the picture used to illustrate its story.
The picture?
Amen, but how did they get a snap of Dorothy? The pond tries to limit circulation of any portraits.
Unfortunately, in the process the pond hit on a link and ended up on YouTube watching a deeply silly lizard Oz promo (no the pond won't link; drink some more Meade if you must):
That's 15 seconds the pond will never get back, though gratifyingly, it had scored just 361views at time of writing, over 11 days, with zero comments.
Speaking of the risible notion that a hive mind is open to the contest of ideas, the pond wondered what had been happening with the war on Xmas?
Too soon?
Imagine the pond's anticipation and hope when spotting Annie Lowrey's piece for The Atlantic, Donald Trump’s War on Christmas (*archive link)
Imagine the pond's disappointment reading the sub-header: It’s a bad year for shoppers. It’s a terrible year for small-business owners.
It was all about tariffs and the economy and swanky bags stuck in India - not a word about how demonic Satan-worshipping secularists were determined to wipe Western Civilisation and the Judaeo-Xian tradition off the planet.
Come on reptiles, do better, be best.
And so to the tragic notion of the contest of ideas early on a Saturday morning.
Relax, in the hive mind that translates into never ending jihads.
The pond has more than 15 seconds to waste, the pond has precious minutes, but must exercise some discrimination ...and there had to be a culling:
Yes, the reptiles, spearheaded by Dame Slap, were at it again...
Beyond a sigh, more a deep groan ...
‘Too much to lose’: weak, wary Libs squib push for Higgins inquiry
The opposition’s proposal for a full inquiry into the Brittany Higgins scandal was dumped on fears it would renew scrutiny of the callous treatment of former Liberal staffer Fiona Brown.
By Janet Albrechtsen and Stephen Rice
Greens and teals show mean girl colours as PM runs for cover
Forget Brittany Higgins – this scandal is way beyond that. The big story now is about how Labor used blatantly false claims about two Liberal women for political gain.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Inquirer? More like monomaniacal obsessiveness.
Way too much already.
Even those busy competing with the lettuce aren't buying?
Forget it Jake, anyone wanting to follow that endless, beyond the valley of the tedious, crusade will have to head off to the intermittent archive.
Also consigned to the archive is a culture wars item ...
by John Ferguson
The decision to remove Melbourne’s historic Burke and Wills monument from the city square amid concerns over a First Nations and colonial clash has sparked outrage. As in
The pond should care about about two colonial clowns who got lost in the desert, with neither the box office flop movie, nor the box office flop satirical movie joke about the pair - a 3 week run for a humbling $54k - worth anyone's dead heart time.
Relax, Fergo, only the pigeons will care ...
The one amusing note? The clever way the reptiles changed the words, and introduced "cancellation" in place of the original "banished", what with the culture wars never dead in the reptile "contest of ideas" ...
The bouffant one was determined to keep the lettuce's competitive spirits up ...
There's more at the intermittent archive ... just follow the link:
The opposition had a golden opportunity handed to it by Labor when Chris Bowen’s appointment as UN climate president finally embarrassed Anthony Albanese. Sussan Ley squibbed it.
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor
Thanks Shanners, but the lettuce is feeling its oats and doing fine.
The only upside the pond could see was that it was all a useful distraction from Tamworth's undying shame, celebrated by Moir ...
With all the preliminaries of the reptile dance done, it turned out that there were plenty of other reptile fishies to fry, with the Ughmann front and centre.
Early Saturday morning, he was top of the world ma, over on the extreme far right and also in the "news" section with an EXCLUSIVE ...
The "news" splash ...
The pond consigned the bulk of the EXCLUSIVE to the intermittent archive ...
Real instant calmer: electricity grid faces threat from energy transition
Australia’s renewable energy roadmap relies on flawed weather data that missed wind generation plummeting to just 4 per cent capacity during multiple week-long droughts last year.
By Chris Uhlmann
More than enough already with the cute animation used to produce a blackout... and so a little teaser to see the gag in action ...
The gag - if you can call it that - was that the image flashed between black and white and colour.
Ha hah.
Sensibly no one claimed credit, and the reptiles didn't bother to replicate the gag over in the extreme far right outing... but they did feature terrifying whale-killing windmills as the opening visual flourish.
Turns out the reptiles are even more obsessed with windmills than King Donald or the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way ...
The header: Real world data blows a hole in renewable energy modelling, The irony is, from the moment humanity first burned wood, we have used fossil fuels to protect ourselves from the fury of the weather. Now, we are rebuilding our entire power system on the whims of wind and sunshine.
The caption for those terrifying whale-killers: Long-run wind and solar droughts are most likely to fall in winter. Picture: AFP
The Ughmann spent only four minutes, and tried to open with classical references, a reminder that this sort of guff is best left to Our Henry, at least when the fixer of holes in buckets is in peak form, unlike yesterday's outing.
As for arguing with the unreformed seminarian? The pond will leave that to correspondents capable of mustering the strength.
The pond is well over this "contest of ideas", aka endless crusading jihad, where once something is written, it must be repeated over and over again ad nauseam ...
It was as if Zeus had decided to remind the planners how little command mortals have over the winds, and how foolish it is to mistake a model for reality.
Yet we seem fated to live in a real world governed by people who prefer a fantasy. From projections of what carbon emissions will do to the weather, to models that show more wind and solar will cut electricity bills, our politicians cling to the neat certainty of imaginary numbers rather than deal with the unruly and unpredictable world outside.
But every now and then the real world intrudes, and we owe a debt of gratitude to Queensland-based Global Power Energy for the latest reality check.
This specialist energy company did something that’s too often missing in the debate about the electricity transition: it didn’t model the weather, it measured it. And that scientific process proved, again, that observation trumps assumption.
The company showed that in the same month the Australian Energy Market Operator released its model for a worst-case future wind drought last year, real wind generation collapsed to barely half that level.
It exposed that, under those conditions, the operator’s plans for building resilience into a highly weather-dependent electricity system would fail, risking blackouts across the east coast.
Gotcha moment done, it was back to the Ughmann in dire fear-monger mode ...
“If in God we trust and everyone else brings data, then using AEMO’s own methodology for how that data should be used shows a national security-sized risk,” Elkins told this column.
“There needs to be a national discussion on how to manage renewable fuel shortages in our climate changed future.”
The problem is buried in an appendix of the market operator’s Integrated System Plan, which plots the road map for how the eastern national electricity market will work as coal-fuelled power is largely replaced with generators that run on wind and sunshine.
The operator’s latest plan was released in June 2024 and it explicitly addresses the risk of long-run wind and solar droughts that most likely will fall in winter.
“The national electricity market must be resilient in its capability to provide energy in all weather conditions, including when there is minimal or no sunshine or wind for prolonged periods,” it says.
It then modelled a worst-case scenario by isolating “a historical severe dark and still weather event observed in June 2019” – where only 14 per cent of available wind capacity was producing power – and projecting that across eight days. The operator’s plan for the backup generation needed under these extreme conditions was built around that assumption.
Could it truly be a climate science denialist Ughmann piece without the presence of climate science denialist Bolter? Of course not ... Sky News host Andrew Bolt highlights how the Australian landscape is being ruined by Labor’s green dream. “Again and again in this gorgeous part of Australia we saw them,” Mr Bolt said. “There they are, straight in front of you.”
Eek, more terrifying windmills!
And who'd have thought of the Bolter as lyrical Wordsworthian aesthetic and worshipper of rustic landscapes, but needs must, as the Ughmann carried on ...
Global Power Energy mapped what happened to southern wind generation through autumn and winter last year. From mid-April the wind collapsed to about 6 to 11 per cent of generation capacity, with a run of seven consecutive days in that band. From May 12 to 16 , wind generation stayed deeply depressed, hovering around 10 per cent for five days straight. Between May 22 and 27, southern wind generation slumped into one of its deepest lulls, sitting between 4 and 8 per cent for six straight days.
From mid-June through mid-July, the wind repeatedly slumped below the market operator’s 14 per cent extreme line, with multiple dips under 10 per cent – including deep troughs around June 13, June 18 and June 21-22, along with days below 14 per cent, on July 1 and July 12-13 – before beginning to strengthen in the second half of the month.
The market operator’s modelling shows that during a multi-day wind drought the system drains its backup supplies in a predictable order.
Short-duration batteries run flat first because they can shift energy for only a few hours and can’t recharge once wind and solar collapse. After that, the grid leans on longer-duration storage such as pumped hydro and other multi-hour batteries, which begin to run down steadily over the first several days.
As those reserves fall, gas generators must run flat out, but winter gas demand means the pipeline system cannot always supply enough fuel – forcing stations to switch to diesel stored on site. AEMO assumes every new gas unit will carry 14 hours of diesel in tanks, and its modelling shows southern gas plants would burn the equivalent of 30,000 litres of diesel in a single extreme day to keep the lights on.
The reptiles decided to give the windmills a break, by gassing the country ... if only there was enough gas ...Australia’s gas pipeline is not big enough to cover the renewables shortfall.
Credit where credit is due.
Not once did the Ughmann suggest the need to nuke the country.
That particular figleaf has fallen from the statue:
Elkins says this exposes Australia to unacceptable risks. “The gas pipeline is not big enough to cover this shortfall,” he says. “Building three to four times more renewables to cover this gap does not seem logical, cost effective or practical. That’s just building more generation we won’t have any fuel for.” It also underlines the risks of building a weather-dependent grid when future weather cannot be modelled.
“AEMO, the entire energy sector, we all agree we need to design a future grid that is capable of managing renewable fuels shortages,” Elkins says. “So what are we going to do? Hope we don’t have a fuel shortage worse than 2024 in a climate-changed 2040, 50 or 60? The science has been telling us for more than 25 years that we must plan for a changed climate.”
The irony is, from the moment humanity first burned wood, we have used fossil fuels to protect ourselves from the fury of the weather. Now, just as many warn the climate will become more extreme, we are rebuilding our entire power system on the whims of wind and sunshine.
It has the feel of an Icarus moment: a civilisation convinced it can defy gravity, only to discover the wax melts in real sunlight.
Icarus? That's the best he can do?
Despite his poor performance yesterday, Our Henry is safe from the unreformed seminarian's feeble to attempts to mangle science with mythology.
Bless his Xian socks, the bromancer was also out and about today, and having his usual anxiety attack:
The header: Trump’s art of the raw deal for Ukraine ... and Taiwan? Peace in Ukraine and calm relations with Beijing are welcome, but not at any price. Through bizarre negotiations led by an unqualified envoy, Trump appears ready to abandon allies for deals with China and Russia.
The caption: Donald Trump’s Ukraine deal sparks Taiwan security concerns.
The bromancer ranted for a goodly ten minutes, so the reptiles clocked him, which left no room for "Ned", or Polonius or the dog botherer, but there's always Sunday.
Meanwhile, please fill the void with a 'context of ideas', and take it away bromancer ...
These questions hinge on the most important variable in contemporary geo-strategic conflict – the ultimate character of the American President.
Ukraine today is in agony. On the battlefield it’s slowly losing, suffering desertions and desperately short of weapons and ammunition. Every night, hundreds of Russian missiles and drones rain down on innocent Ukrainian civilians. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s credibility is torn by a shocking corruption scandal involving some of his close associates. At no point since Russia began its invasion nearly four years ago has Kyiv’s outlook been so bleak, internally and externally. Never has it more needed the support of friends and allies.
Negotiations involving Ukraine, the US and Russia are at a critical juncture. Vladimir Putin may be on the brink of a historic victory that will transform the geo-strategic situation vastly for the worse. It’s difficult to see peace any time soon. The bizarre nature of Trump’s peace negotiations, especially the influence of Trump’s unconventional envoy, Steve Witkoff, who appears committed to a pro-Moscow view, may well have weakened Ukraine at the worst possible moment. Trump may even abandon Ukraine altogether, as he has sometimes threatened.
Meanwhile, China is conducting a vendetta against Japan, whose new Prime Minister, the plucky Sanae Takaichi, infuriated Beijing by saying Tokyo would likely offer military assistance to Taiwan if China attacked.
Ah yes, Vlad the triumphant impaler, Russia's President addresses Donald Trump's Ukraine plan. Vladimir Putin says it can be a basis for future agreements.
The bromancer was gloomy about his looming war with China, surely not due by Xmas now:
Chinese government newspapers demanded Trump rein in Japan. Trump secretly did as he was told. Leaked reports now reveal that in a phone conversation Trump told Takaichi to stop provoking Beijing, to turn down the volume, as though the root cause of the problem in north Asia is not Beijing’s aggression but Tokyo’s alliance solidarity.
When Beijing briefed its version of the conversation, it didn’t mention the invitation to Trump but put Taiwan front and centre. The US must realise, Xi told Trump, that Taiwan coming under Beijing’s rule was a central part of the post World War II settlement. Trump must understand the centrality and importance of Taiwan to Beijing. According to Beijing, Trump said he understood.
Now, out of all this, it’s hard to work out where Trump’s going. Steady deterrence seems less the policy than is the characteristic Trump temptation to try for a grand bargain. Trump has only two registers with other great powers – double-plus love or double-plus hate. Both are pretty dangerous.
You can make a strong case for what Trump is trying to achieve – peace in Ukraine and a calm relationship with Beijing.
They’re good objectives, but not at any price. They’re not worth the US abandoning allies for. If peace in Ukraine is bought with major Russian strategic advances, and calmness with Beijing is bought by sacrificing Taiwan’s interests and weakening the US security system in Asia, that could be disastrous.
Trump doesn’t govern by any consistent philosophy or ideology. He rules by deals, bluster and intimidation. With leaders he can’t easily intimidate, such as Xi and Putin, it’s more often deals than threats. In these deals, Trump’s own interests and the interests of the US are often conflated. Nonetheless, sometimes he does good deals, such as the Abraham Accords from his first term that resulted in peace treaties between Israel and several Arab and Muslim neighbours.
Sometimes he does deals, as in Gaza, that improve a situation, even if finally they’re not implemented in anything like their announced form.
The reptiles interrupted with a uncredited collage, even more feeble than usual: Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea in October. Picture: AFP
Yet even in all this, the bromancer could find a kind word ...
Conservatives (like me) who like quite a lot about Trump
The anatomy of the recent Ukraine peace negotiations is instructive and profoundly disturbing. Central to the dysfunction is Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy. Witkoff is a long-term Trump friend and fellow real estate developer. The Economist has pointed out that Witkoff’s son is in a cryptocurrency partnership with members of Trump’s immediate family and that a number of the nations Witkoff has done deals with in the Middle East have entered into business partnerships with Witkoff’s son’s firm while they’re negotiating with Witkoff.
Conservatives (like me) who like quite a lot about Trump would find such arrangements morally catastrophic if they took place in a Clinton or Biden presidency.
Famously, Witkoff has no background in international politics and has often, on Ukraine, made preposterous statements that are factually wrong. Weeks ago he gave an embarrassing, cringe-worthy interview to Tucker Carlson in which he couldn’t even recall the names of the provinces he wanted Ukraine to surrender to Russia.
He mostly travels in a plane without secure communications and rarely takes professional US foreign service or Pentagon staff with him.
This is a grossly dysfunctional way to conduct international policy and puts the US at a tremendous disadvantage, dealing with interlocutors who systematically study their American opponents.
Witkoff is an effective negotiator in only one way and for only one reason. His interlocutors know he gives almost perfect expression to Trump’s wishes, and Trump will generally back what Witkoff agrees to.
Trump had a summit with Putin in Alaska in August and announced immediately afterwards that peace was at hand in Ukraine. Nothing came from it. But it appears Trump agreed at that meeting that Ukraine would have to give up to Russia Ukrainian sovereign territory, which Kyiv still holds, in Donetsk, as part of a peace deal.
Subsequently Witkoff has been refining the deal with Putin and his senior advisers. Two of his conversations with Putin’s advisers were leaked and transcribed. There is already a wide industry in trying to work out who leaked the conversations – Russians, Americans, Chinese? In one, in October, Witkoff tells his Russian counterpart that Putin should begin his next conversation by flattering Trump, lauding him as “a man of peace”.
Telling the Russians to flatter Trump at every opportunity is hardly divulging state secrets. It was Witkoff’s obvious identification with his Russian friends that was worrying.
In another conversation Witkoff tells the Russians about a forthcoming meeting between Trump and Zelensky. At that meeting Trump was expected to agree to sell Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. The Ukrainians believe their only chance of a decent negotiated outcome is to raise the cost of war to Russia. They can do this only by striking Russian targets, especially military and energy targets. The Tomahawks, a venerable weapon, are the world’s premier strike cruise missiles. They would give Kyiv a genuine deterrent.
The reptiles introduced a snap of the negotiating team in action: US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, second left, and US Secretary of state Marco Rubio, right, at the beginning of talks with the Ukrainian delegation at the US Permanent Mission in Switzerland. Picture: Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP
Is the peace plan too hard for the bromancer to understand? It seems simple enough ...
The bromancer began to fret at length ...
This reprises the deadly pattern of the Ukraine war. The Russians have deterred the Western powers, chiefly the US, under both Joe Biden and Trump, from giving Ukraine a full range of weapons. The US, the West generally, has not deterred Moscow from the most aggressive, violent, murderous, sustained military action against Ukraine.
Witkoff devised a peace plan that Trump broadly endorsed. Washington presented it to the Ukrainians, who were horrified. It not only involved Ukraine surrendering territory it still controls, it also involved halving the size of the Ukrainian army, restricting it from having heavy weapons, banning it from ever joining NATO or ever hosting foreign military forces as part of a security guarantee. It also would restore the Russian Orthodox Church and grant special rights to Russian language. All sanctions against Moscow would be dropped. Putin would be invited back into the G7, which would become the G8.
Surely the Americans knew Zelensky could never accept this? Reportedly, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was aghast. Within the often chaotic Trump administration there’s something like a power struggle going on between Rubio and Vice-President JD Vance. Vance is much more a MAGA isolationist. Rubio is Ukraine’s best friend in Trump’s outfit and the only bona fide adult at the top of the Trump administration’s national security team.
Rubio denies any internal dissent but these are dangerous days for the Secretary of State. There typically comes a moment of truth when a good man serving Trump is asked to do something worse than dishonourable, as when Trump demanded that his then vice-president, Mike Pence, refuse to certify the results of the 2020 election. The path of honour is then the path of estrangement from Trump.
It’s absurd that Rubio has been so marginal in these negotiations. However, in the next phase Rubio was more involved. Rubio and a broad representation of European nations worked with Ukraine to turn the 28-point defeatist monstrosity into 19 points Kyiv could agree to.
This involved a much larger Ukrainian military but left the most sensitive issues, namely territorial concessions and the nature of any security guarantee from the US for Ukraine, to later talks involving Trump and Zelensky. The Russians, however, expressed no interest in the new version.
They want an agreement that gives them a massive advantage, which is what they believe Trump promised Putin in Alaska, or they will continue fighting, as they are slowly making territorial gains. Miracles are possible, Trump could conceivably get something that protects Ukrainian security, but it’s extremely unlikely.
The war has inflicted a shocking cost on both Russia and Ukraine. Russia has suffered more than a million casualties, killed or wounded. Ukraine has suffered at least half that number.
This is a terrible and grotesque toll of human misery. The war is not popular in Russia. The Russian economy is not doing well, especially since Trump imposed new sanctions on the two oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. But Putin is a secure dictator. This war has conformed to Russian history. Typically Russia has terrible logistics and a corrupt officer and logistics corps. It starts wars badly. But it has enormous territory that gives it great strategic depth, it has a large population (144 million to Ukraine 37 million) and Russia’s rulers seldom care how much their people suffer. Also, it’s intensely nationalist. It prevails eventually.
Despite the bromancer having scribbled at length about the complete uselessness of tanks in modern warfare, the graphics department decided to terrify him. with a snap of ancient tanks, Russian T-90M tanks drive through central Moscow. Picture: AFP
It turns out that that the T-90 entered service way back in 1992, with even the M upgrade already six years old, but it was enough to set the bromancer right off ...
The prospect of Ukraine getting new types of weapons is remote. A bitter winter is approaching and Putin will savagely attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Russia itself is now an economy structured for war. Putin will accept Ukrainian surrender or he’ll keep going.
Already, Trump spends no money helping Ukraine. Washington sells weapons that the Europeans pay for. The failure of both the US and Europe to ramp up weapons manufacture and supply, even after four years of Russian war, and with everything that Beijing is doing, reinforces the view in Moscow and Beijing that the West has gone soft and will accept defeat.
Assuming Putin rejects or just endlessly delays the refined peace proposal, the way Trump reacts will be crucial. Trump will want someone to blame. If he blames Putin, it’s just barely possible he could increase support for Ukraine.
But remember, Trump promised to end this war on “day one” of his administration. He wants a peace announcement and support for his ridiculous bid for a Nobel Peace Prize. He seems to think his best chance is to pressure Zelensky into maximum concessions that will leave Ukraine vulnerable to an inevitable new Russian invasion a few years down the track, but would allow a “PEACE NOW” announcement. If Zelensky refuses, Trump could “walk away”.
Although Trump no longer gives direct aid to Ukraine, the US is critical to Kyiv in three ways.
First, it sells weapons to the Europeans for Ukraine to use. The Europeans, rich as they are, don’t manufacture the full range of weapons themselves. Second, the US provides satellite intelligence for Ukrainian weapons targeting. Without this, Ukrainian weapons are much less effective. And third, Washington imposes some limited sanction and political isolation on Moscow.
QED. Be nice to the bear, and help with the makeover:
The bromancer was still fretting about his war with China, which wasn't looking that good ...
All of this also has direct and indirect consequences for the Indo-Pacific, for China and Taiwan, and for the whole region, especially US allies such as Japan and Australia.The US alliance system has held together pretty well in Asia. New polling from the US Studies Centre shows that a plurality of Australians, Americans and Japanese support coming to Taiwan’s military aid if it’s attacked by China. Australian support for this is as strong as American support.Trump has said at least once that he probably wouldn’t use military force against China if it invaded Taiwan.
He’d use sanctions instead. But it’s almost inconceivable the US could lead a sufficiently strong global sanctions regime that it would force Beijing to abandon military action.Beijing is much more formidable than Moscow. By threatening to cut off exports to the US of rare earths and critical minerals that are necessary for most hi-tech, Beijing demonstrated a superior trade weapon to Trump’s routine tariff threats. Nonetheless, Beijing must still be scared that the US might after all intervene to help Taiwan and could lead a coalition involving perhaps Japan, South Korea, The Philippines, Australia and potentially others.
Xi wants above all to secure Taiwan without the use of force. Trump’s power in the US is already starting to wane as his inability to discipline Republicans over their desire to have the Epstein files released demonstrates.Trump will never appear on a national ballot again. After next year’s congressional elections, which on present polling will go badly for the Republicans, he enters classic lame-duck territory. Trump wants big deals. Beijing spies opportunity.
Unlike Witkoff, Chinese policymakers study adversaries in great detail. Next year, with reciprocal Trump-Xi visits, involving all the pomp and pageantry Trump so loves, and with Ukraine’s prospects, and therefore European democracy’s prospects, as bleak as they’ve ever been, becomes the year of living dangerously for Taiwan. And for all of us.
And yet this mug punter, deep in his cult kool-aid cups, could still scribble this line ...
Conservatives (like me) who like quite a lot about Trump
So much for the contest of ideas, because it's pretty much the same as when Toles produced this 'toon a good five years or so ago ...
Oh yes ...
And here's that dismal week in review, with the real estate dude making an appearance towards the end of the clip ...
Given the Reptiles’ love of “Orwellian” - the more inane its use the better - perhaps a more appropriate slogan might have been “”The Australian - your Two Minute Hate”.
ReplyDeleteStill, credit to their advertising people; it takes some real audacity to deliver such as slogan for an outfit that primarily delivers tired reactionary propaganda, unending repetitive crusades and venomous invective.
Just look at today’s offerings. Have the Bromancer and the Ughmann ever provided a single idea between them, let alone a contest? The Bro serves up his usual mess of diplomatic gossip and mounting hysteria, while the Seminarian provides yet another cribbed summary of a consultant’s report and a snippet of the wit and wisdom of the Bolter (a man who’s soul surely soars at the sight of the natural beauty of an open-cut coal mine). Just like last time, and the time before that, and so on into infinity.
One slightly interesting note - what’s with the references to Zeus and Icarus? Is the Ughmann sliding towards Greek paganism, abandoning the One True Faith for pagan idolatry?
But Anony, DP has noted some statements by the Bro"
ReplyDelete"Conservatives (like me) who like quite a lot about Trump"
and
"Trump doesn’t govern by any consistent philosophy or ideology. He rules by deals, bluster and intimidation."
Now surely that's as passionate a contest of ideas as you could find ?
Well - I suppose it does at least demonstrate the total inconsistency of the Bro’s thought processes - but I suspect we were all already well aware of that.
DeleteAfter the Henry fizzer of yesterday, y'r h'mbl, following his commission to look at the outer reaches of ratbaggery, found a clash of mighty intellects on Sky Noise. Yep, hosted (?) by Rowan, who sought comments from Michael Danby (always labelled as 'ex Labor MP' - wonder if Bananaby will get more regular gigs with label 'former Deputy PM'?) and Alex Antic, on the Henry column. This, natch, gave all three the opening to claim that Muslim interests were pretty much our entire national security problem, aided by various 'woke' quasi-government commissions.
ReplyDeleteFor verification, but NOT as any kind of recommendation that any person who comes here should risk even 5 minutes of the rest of their life watching -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gauh-Fljtc
Meanwhile, not far from our patch, there is still a lot of comment about the inquiry into the Wieambilla shootings. Difficult to find mention in any 'commercial' news sources that the Trains had willingly become part of a barking-mad Xian fundamentalist group. The phrase 'shared psychosis' was favoured by most.
For this day, everybody's ABC has item -
ReplyDelete'A new DNA study suggests the first humans came to the ancient landmass that is now Australia via two distinct routes 60,000 years ago — much earlier than previous genetic evidence.
Archaeologists say the research is the first to "comprehensively" close the gap between genetic and archaeological evidence, which places arrival about 65,000 years ago. '
The ABC site gives a link to the actual paper, in full, so a lot of detail for this happy reader to work through. The paper speculates that this was one of the earliest migrations out of Africa, and that it required those migrants to cross perhaps 100km of sea.
The many contributors are from research institutions in the UK, and across Europe, (Italy well represented) and the listed sources of funding appear to be all UK/European. So - no obvious contribution of personnal, or funds, to the study, from Australia.