Tuesday Open Thread

Happy Australia Day! 

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157 comments to Tuesday Open Thread

  • #
    OriginalSteve

    Would be interested in comments on this.

    https://scienceintegritydigest.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/fioranelli.pdf

    Use of EMR to manufacture viruses, invivo?

    Its the stuff of science fiction…maybe no longer?

    “JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL REGULATORS & HOMEOSTATIC AGENTS
    Copyright

    “EDITORIAL

    “5G Technology and induction of coronavirus in skin cells
    Vol. 34, no. 4, xx-xx (2020)
    Biolife

    “M. Fioranelli1, A. Sepehri1, M.G. Roccia1, M. Jafferany2, O. Yu. Olisova3, K.M. Lomonosov3 and T. Lotti1,3

    “1Department of Nuclear, Sub-nuclear and Radiation Physics, G. Marconi University, Rome, Italy; 2Central Michigan Saginaw, Michigan , USA; 3Department of Dermatology and Venereology, I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, Moscow, Russia

    “Received May 13, 2020 – Accepted June 9, 2020

    “These waves produce some holes in liquids within the nucleus. To fill these holes, some extra hexagonal and pentagonal bases are produced. These bases could join to each other and form virus-like structures such as Coronavirus. To produce these viruses within a cell, it is necessary that the wavelength of external waves be shorter than the size of the cell. Thus 5G millimeter waves could be good candidates for applying in constructing virus-like structures such as Coronaviruses (COVID-19) within cells.

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    • #
      joseph

      ‘Would be interested in comments on this.’

      Me too!

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    • #
      DavidH

      From the paper: “To produce these viruses, it is necessary that the wavelengths of external electromagnetic fields be equal or less than the size of a cell. ” But 5G wavelength is from 1mm to 10mm and human cells are sub-millimetre (my intense research – i.e. a quick google – says up to 0.1mm). So the paper seems to be a fail just on that basis, despite all the complicated equations in it.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        You would need approx 300 Ghz to attain 1mm wavelegth.

        The US is going to use frequencies greater than 95 Ghz, but dont say exactly what.

        https://www.rfpage.com/what-are-5g-frequency-bands/

        Im fascinated by whether cells could be manipulated by non ionizing RF. This obviously has potential dangers too. Not sure whether cells may take in mm waves but through electrical coupling, retransmit internally at a higher frequency.

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        • #
          mobihci

          it is all about the power levels. rf can be harmful all the way down to tv frequencies if for example you hug a huge transmission tower for long enough, but the harm is inverse square away from the tower, so not far.

          an example of harm is microwave in the mm range where your cells can be damaged by eg placing yourself in a 1 KW microwave oven (if that were possible), the frequency used is 2.5GHz or 5Ghz (about 60 to 120mm), yet this is also the frequency used in normal Wifi and we live in a soup of wifi, bluetooth etc. the interaction with cells is just not there when there is not enough energy (incidence of photons) to drive water (or any other fluid) into higher states or rotate/vibrate with any great effect.

          when you get to IR frequencies the effect is obvious to us. heat at high power and a tv remote control at low power.

          when you get to light and UV, the damage to skin cells is obvious and severe even with fairly low power.. ie you get sunburn. at these higher frequencies (ir up) the penetration becomes less due to the fact that there will be something that will absorb or reflect the photons. water absorbs well at ir, but not a light frequencies.

          go even higher to Xrays and the reverse starts to happen where what can absorb in the body becomes lesser (water etc). radiation such as this can seriously damage cells and requires limited exposure. higher just gets worse, but it is always about the power or amount of photons you may place yourself in the path of.

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      • #
        TedM

        Thought that myself. Also just what have they actually demonstrated? Nothing that I can see.

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      • #
        Barry

        That’s the wavelength in air, not wet tissue. Interesting to see the effect of microwaves on two touching spheres (grapes) on youtube, due to the wavelength being similar to a sphere of that size, despite wavelength in air being around 12cm.

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        • #
          mobihci

          resonance is irrelevant. cells may be somewhat individual, but unless their surrounds (not just cell walls) are non absorbing and reflective, then there will be no importance to their size. you could fry a single cell if the surrounds were air and the power levels were 10s of thousands of times higher than normal radiation from phone towers etc, but what sort of experiment is that? remember a 1KW microwave achieves the heating it does from bouncing that high power around a small completely reflective chamber. try cooking even a grape in a none enclosed microwave beam! power levels need to amp up considerably. the most important thing is power levels.

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    • #
      Warrick

      It’s to frighten those no longer worried by drop bears.

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  • #
    Lance

    Germany is rationing power now because of grid instability.

    https://notrickszone.com/2021/01/19/last-ditch-effort-germany-weighs-electricity-rationing-scheme-to-stabilize-its-now-shaky-green-power-grid/

    GE traded a stable grid for an unstable “green” grid that cannot sustain their manufacturing base, much less 5 M EV cars charging at some 30,000 charging stations.

    Smart people might want to learn from the GE folly, and that, from a distance.

    EU and UK are committing economic suicide at a rapid pace.

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    • #
      Mal

      Economic suicide!
      Australia wants to join them!

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      • #
        Lance

        Apparently so. Very sad.

        If people understood, they’d be angry.

        It costs about 5 cents in fuel to generate 1 kW. It costs USD 150 to store 1 kW. Is that stupid or what?

        All of the “ancillary services” that thermal power plants provide to stabilize intermittents ought be costed to intermittents.

        All of the transmission line costs to connect intermittents ought be costed to intermittents.

        The Grid follows the Load. That’s why power plants are called “load following primary generators”. Intermittents follow the primary generators and interfere with their control systems and provide no frequency or reactive power support.

        The best use of wind machines might be as ship anchors.

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        • #
          Epicurious

          Ships anchors, no thanks we need something reliable. Perhaps they could be used as vents over Parley-a-ment House to exhaust the massive amounts of methane from the pigs, oops this isn’t Animal Farm, I meant the politicians.

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          • #
            Dennis

            No offence intended, but your comment reminded me of this saying which I believe applies to most of our supposed to be elected representatives …

            “the dogs (we the people) bark but the caravan (parliaments) move on”

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            • #
              Lance

              Every political opinion about something the politicians wish to ignore or hide is to “move on”.

              “Moving On” is the equivalent of ignoring reality without dealing with reality. Like hiding in a closet.

              The “Caravan” will go “dead stop” if the “dogs” decide they’ve had enough. That’s when things go sideways.

              Politicians may hide the costs, deny the dysfunctionality, blame the utilities, and extol the virtues of green, but they can’t quite do that when the lights go out, the jobs fail, the economy crashes, and the riots begin.

              Government is not the solution to real issues, it is the cause of real issues.

              Ordinary people do very well at finding value, evaluating risk, solving problems, and being civil.

              Government exists to exploit ordinary people, and has done very well at that task for the last 80 years or more.

              “The People” have little need for the unrequited ignorance, venality, and greed of the elected class.

              Individuals are smart. Groups are ignorant. Government is fatally delusional for the People.

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              • #
                Saighdear

                So can we, why wasn’t there, an american version of a Silk or Velvet Revolution – The COTTON Revolution! – but maybe too many Negative connotations -Deep, South, etc ( cotton is perceived to be cheap and disposable compared with SILK or VELVET ) OIL, maybe? Naww – too messy……. Silicon, then

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        • #
          jelly34

          We gave away electric cars 100 years ago and the same for windmills because none of them was fit for purpose.So it still amazes me of the shear stupidity of both the greenies bureaucRATS and politicians. ScoMo had better get off his fat ass and soon because he and the liberal(sic)party may not survive the”Train Wreck”heading their way.

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      • #
        Dennis

        Correction: is joining them.

        And a majority of our politicians ignore submissions pointing out the problems.

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        • #
          Lance

          One may ignore reality. One may not ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

          Sooner or later, reality catches up with illusion, and govts run out of other people’s money to sustain the fraud.

          I’ll not disagree with you, Dennis.

          But.

          Reality has the last laugh, is the last Judge, and will bring everyone to their knees.

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    • #
      vince whirlwind

      That story is based on an event which *almost* caused a blackout.
      The vague generalisation about grid stability is comprehensively debunked by looking at the facts:
      Germand grid instability events have *halved* in number over tthe last 15 years:
      https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/paragraph_text_image/public/paragraphs/images/germany-annual-power-supply-interruption-2006-2018.png?itok=9uU-55LW

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  • #
    Maptram

    Cobar NSW could be an interesting place from a weather and climate aspect. Cobar has two weather stations, one at the airport and the other closer to the town. They are about 7 kms apart, but the observations and climate data records often show significant differences in temperature and wind speed and direction.

    Of course, since I don’t live in Cobar, my comments are based on a desktop study.

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  • #
    Kalm Keith

    CO2, the non event.

    Kalm Keith
    November 14, 2019 at 4:14 pm

    It’s always good to bring it back to the core like that.

    Basic physics denies the possibility of CO2 trapping the low energy heat sent from ground level to space.

    Basic factor analysis excludes CO2 from being a player because atmospheric water vapour operates in the same relevant portion of the absorption/emission spectrum as CO2 and makes any consideration of CO2 quantitatively irrelevant.

    The facts are that the phase transformation cycles of water at the surface and later at altitude move huge amounts of valuable energy to its jump off point near deep space.

    All else is hyperventilating, IPCCCCCish, manipulative , controlling, pseudreligious pseudoscience.

    The real problem is not the atmosphere.

    It’s the deliberate Pollution of our Minds and Brains and I would suggest that the mental health of the world population has never been so tenuous as now.

    Breaking Free is not going to be easy considering that there are thirty or more years of creating the social structure that supports the manipulators.

    The Elites on both sides of politics are currently skimming for all that they are worth, and we are unable to stop them.

    KK

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    • #
      Serp

      It’s over Kalm Keith; the way out of this subjugation would be through education and that was the first resource throttled by your manipulators. The sole remaining option is to bid welcome to the Iron Heel.

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  • #
    RickWill

    When temperature data is shown as anomalies, it hides a lot of reality.

    I believe the UAH temperature anomaly is biased to a warming trend. The satellite data has many corrections to achieve something that relates to a temperature. I cannot find the actual UAH data but the RSS data, which I understand uses the same satellite input, is available on Climate Explorer. This link has the Nino34 region graphed for this century:
    http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/irss_tlt_-120–170E_-5-5N_n.png
    There is a clear upward trend. I know this cannot happen because this region includes some of the Nino4 region where the surface temperature is limited to just over 30C.

    The moored buoy data for the Nino34 region has no trend:
    https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNg3j-MHBpf4wRGuhf

    When anyone makes a claim that some measurement shows a trend over a few decades then look for the measurement error. I am yet to find a trend that does not have measurement errors well outside the likely claimed trend.

    The fact that UAH and RSS are measuring something high in the atmosphere may mean that atmospheric constuients affect the measurement but they do not have any bearing on the surface temperature, which is thermostatically controlled by the physics of water in the oceans and water in the atmosphere.

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    • #
      RickWill

      No idea why #5 went into moderation.

      On the topic of measurement induced trends, there is a comprehensive list of Australian weather stations and when they were converted to electronic recording:
      ftp://ftp.bom.gov.au/anon2/home/ncc/metadata/sitelists/aws_firstdate.xls
      The file will download from this link.

      It is useful to identify the cause of apparent step changes in the recording.

      It is also useful to know that there are a lot of closed sites that are a rich source of actual measurements. Most were manual stations. So if you go to the BoM climate data site linked, make certain to ‘uncheck” the “only show open stations” box when selecting the station.

      For example if you wanted data for Brisbane and you do not look at the closed stations then you get this:
      http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=040913&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
      Not much of a trend there but it is only this century.

      If you look at closed stations then you would find this:
      http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=040214&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
      It was quite a bit warmer in the first decade of the 20th century than the sixth.

      The best long term trend near Brisbane comes from Cape Moreton:
      http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=040043&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
      It was warm when first installed but stayed near zero trend for most of the the 20th century. In then has a step up. I checked on the first date file and it is not listed. But the BoM are finally doing a quality review and providing a lot of information on station changes. The history for Cape Moreton can be found here:
      http://www.bom.gov.au/clim_data/cdio/metadata/pdf/siteinfo/IDCJMD0040.040043.SiteInfo.pdf
      You need to get down to page 14 to identify when the temperature reading went to electronic. It was 1995. That is basically the time when the readings began to head northward of 24C. By 2011 it was clear that the temperature had stabilised at a new peak so there was a recalibration to ensure it maintained the upward trend. Call me a skeptic.

      But at least there is now data in the public domain to check what the BoM are up to.

      I guess as people retire and it gets harder to keep an upward trend by calibration there might be a day when the BoM, CSIRO and a whole raft of universities admit they got it wrong.

      There are no two climate models that produce the same result. There are no climate models that produce a zero trend, hence not one of them is correct.

      Climate models are waste of resources. The answer is that Earth’s temperature is thermostatically controlled. If they do not show this then they are wrong.

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      • #
        David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

        G’day RW,
        I also had a bout of immediate moderation last week, but AD discovered which I’m now testing. His discovery was of a mistake I’d made, but not detected, and am trying now.
        Cheers,
        Dave B

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      • #
        David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

        G’day AD,
        Your comment about my new email address the other day confused me, as I hadn’t consciously changed it, and didn’t see the error when I accidentally dropped the final “m” when I had to re-enter my details after an update to my Windows laptop. Even though I checked it. (!)
        I’ve now introduced the same error to my email address here, so I’ll try a reply later, using it. But don’t forget to add the “m” if you ever need to email me…
        Thanks, and cheers,
        Dave B

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    • #
      RickWill

      I suspect as reality bites in the coming decades there will be a few old academics who hang on grimly to the global warming fairytale. But there will be new comers who think independently and will recognise the level of deception.

      There are already signs that a number of academics are taking a more realistic view of actual data. Here is a good example from NASA:
      https://climatechangedispatch.com/nasa-clouds-climate-models/
      This was written in 2019 and is damning of climate models:

      The IPCC has admitted there is a great deal of “continuing uncertainty” in the sign and magnitude of the cloud influence. Most models indicate positive feedback (more warming), but this “is not well understood” and the IPCC scientists “are not confident that it is realistic.”

      The cannot even agree on the “sign” let alone the magnitude. I can help them out. The cloud will do whatever is needed to limit the sea surface temperature without convergence to 32C and with convergence to under 31C.

      It is only a matter of time that they realise it is ALL nonsense. Earth’s temperature is thermostatically controlled and will be basically stuck where it is now for the next millennia. I also believe Earth will miss the next period of glaciation that should occur within 20kyr. The orbit is too close to circular to get the hemispherical insolation imbalance that caused glaciation.

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    • #
      RickWill

      Just to be clear with regard to Climate Change:
      1. There is no Global Warming.
      2. There is no “Greenhouse Effect”
      3. Earth’s temperature is thermostatically controlled.

      These are the tree key points. Anything else is distraction.

      It follows that any data showing a trend has a measurement error. It may take some effort to find the cause of the error but have confidence that it is in error.

      There appears to be some long term trend in ocean warming that is not yet outside the measurement error. The evidence is in estimates of water expansion in addition to any glacier meltwater. Given the thermal mass of the oceans, it is likely the deep oceans never reach an equilibrium because the orbital geometry varies enough to cause change. The deep oceans may still be coming out of the last period of glaciation.

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  • #
    Lance

    Something of reference for sparky types in Oz.

    2008 VIC AU Transmission cost benchmarking

    https://www.erawa.com.au/cproot/6979/2/20081008%20AAI%20Appendix%204%20-%20Transmission%20Asset%20Cost%20Benchmarking.PDF

    might help in estimating what all of those PV/Wind feeder lines will cost.

    It is a big number.

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  • #
    MichaelinBrisbane

    I’d like to see a critique on Twiggy Forrest’s green steel ideas.
    Is there someone who could do this please.

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    • #
      Kalm Keith

      I read his speech that someone linked to.

      I laughed all the way through, he’s trained as an economist or something.

      The thrust of his ideas seemed focussed on convincing the masses that He was essentially a greenie and he would be with them next year.

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  • #
    TdeF

    The attempt to label Australia Day as a day of shame is amazing. Why?

    Aborigines did not have a country. They were nomadic hunter gatherers. Stone age. They had no idea where they lived. No boats. No agriculture. No metal. No houses. But as top predator they did not need these things. The only real danger was from other aborigines. And so after 50,000 years a tiny population only 1% of the population today, a mere 233 years after a few people landed to settle. It was not an invasion. It was a rescue.

    My Scottish and Irish and Dutch family has been here most of 200 years and they came with nothing. Like the Chinese, Indians, Afghans, Irish, Scots, Germans, Greeks, Italians, Russians, Yugoslavs, Polish, Japanese and more. When do we get the handouts? How long before we are the owners of the land?

    And the Terra Nullius lack of settlement and ownership was overthrown on the basis that Eddie Mabo’ s family settled on the island of Mer in the Torres Strait and had a fixed home and agriculture. Great. Then in a breathtaking feat of racism it was simply applied to quite different aborigines who had neither of those critical things and the whole of Australia was deemed stolen. So a court decided Australia was all settled and so we have to pay and keep paying forever. And we even have to thank aborigines simply for arriving first. When do we get any thanks?

    And the Welcome to the Country was invented by Ernie Dingo and a flag did not exist.

    So as we celebrate the birth of a peaceful society with legislated freedom and equality under the law and massive subsidies for aborigines on the basis of race alone, we have so much else to celebrate. I am heartily tired of giving thanks in every public event.

    Without the British Empire there would be no Australia. No New Zealand. No United States. No South Africa or India or Pakistan. And at the time no Germany or Greece or Italy. The British ruled lines on the maps of Europe too. We cannot imagine a world without countries now.

    But the EU and UN want to be the one world government in partnership with China apparently. First they have to subjugate everyone. Climate Change, Critical Race theory and BLM are the tools they use. All based on Christian guilt. And they detest our celebration of Nationality and what we Australians all have achieved in creating such a wonderful country from nothing, because there was nothing here in 1788. By all means make a list of what was here. The treasures of gold and iron and coal and agriculture and herds and crops did not exist.

    If it is now deemed an invasion against all logic and the facts, it was the most peaceful invasion in history. And prior to the China flu, over 5 million people a year invade to see what we have achieved. One continent, one country, one people. Living happily. And we have chops and prawns and barbies. Most don’t.

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    • #
      RickWill

      Think of the administration fee for all that Biden “ambition”. Apparently ScoMo is to join Biden’s “ambition”, promising boat loads of money to the UN so they can distribute it to UN friendly dictators.

      The dictators will buy lots of climate related hardware to mow down their unfriendly constituents. Reducing population is considered an effective means of controlling the climate.

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    • #
      Dennis

      Today activists are demanding A$1 million each be paid in compensation to every Australian who claims to be an Australian Aborigine. I suppose they want to ignore the tens of billions of dollars a year spent on indigenous affairs already and ongoing from decades past. Per capita (one per cent of the population) a huge amount of money.

      And I believe that of the one per cent of population a majority are of mixed ancestry including from migrants that arrived here since 1788.

      There were never “First Nations” here, the people lived in small tribes on tribal land and their ancestors came here via the Kimberlys WA and Cape York QLD as migrants, others later in history came by boat to fish and trade and some stayed.

      However, while recognising the people who were here in 1788 we are all Australians now.

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    • #
      Gary Simpson

      Also noticed that the Google header for tor today has an image of a bird sitting in a eucalypt.
      When you hover on the image, the text appears as ‘January 26 2021’ and NOT ‘Australia day 2021’.
      To add further insult to injury, when you then click on the image, the three top ‘news’ stories of the day appear – every one making reference to ‘Invasion Day’. This blatant distortion of historical fact is so typical of the leftist push in the media and is becoming so tiresome that I fear (hope) that there is some severe pushback approaching.

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      • #
        Dennis

        The longer a lie is repeated eventually the lie becomes a fact.

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      • #
        Gary Simpson

        Sorry, almost forgot – Happy Australia Day everybody.

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      • #
        jelly34

        We can all push back.The power of the purse is a very effective weapon against our enemies.Stop using fakebook,twitts,instagram,utube etc and don’t forget don’t shop at all the big supermarkets.So far the deplatforming of people has cost fakebook and twitts 51 billion dollars in lost revenue.So it does work.

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    • #
      el gordo

      ‘It was not an invasion.’

      It was an invasion, they knew from Sir Joesph Banks that the locals were fairly docile, compared to the ferocious Maori, but they came fully armed just in case.

      The best weapon they had was smallpox, the people of Manly (troublemakers) were wiped out.

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      Maptram

      Also there is no mention of how dingoes got here. I have read that dingoes arrived in Australia about 3000 years ago. But how did they get here. It seems to me that they could have walked, or been brought in by boat. If they were brought in by boat, did the boats go out and back, in other words descendants of the original inhabitants, or did a new group bring them and settle.

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      • #
        TdeF

        They walked. Mainly. There was at least one gap they would have to cross by raft perhaps but the seas North of Australia are still very shallow. It is the same way early Britons reach England and Ireland. And the three invasions of the Americas across the Aleutians.

        Hunter gatherer societies fight to the death for territory, so the pressure to keep moving is always there. Agriculture changed all that, but it was only invented 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent in Southern Turkey/Iraq/Lebanon. Then the wheel, domestication and more. Explosive growth of knowledge.

        Luckily the Europeans learned to domesticate horses. The aborigines wiped out all the defenceless large animals
        and the American invaders wiped out the horses. And horses changed society, especially with ploughing and defence and trade.

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      • #
        Chris

        Until the 1960’s it was well known that pigmy people lived across northern Australia . In fact there was a mission for them outside of Cairns which closed in the late 60’s . If you google Queensland negritas information and photos may still be available . Ernie Dingo often mentioned his very short Aunties.

        At school I was taught that the dingos came 7000 years ago with aboriginal people who came after the Negritas. Dingos are genetically identical to the dogs of Sri Lanka

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      • #
        el gordo

        There is a story going the rounds that refugees from west India around 4000 years ago, but with new DNA evidence the dingoes came from Sulawesi on fishing boats.

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    • #
      Harley

      Yes Tdef, those ungrateful aborigines should thank their lucky stars for being ‘rescued ‘.
      I think you should present your insights to some of them.

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        • #
          OldOzzie

          Life and Death in Pre-Contact Aboriginal Australia

          When Europeans first settled in Australia in 1788, they encountered an Aboriginal society of almost incredible barbarism and violence. This was the reality of what they found. The reasons for the violence and barbarism of Aboriginal society derive entirely, or almost entirely, from one factor alone. All of the Aborigines of Australia were hunter-gatherers who had not domesticated livestock nor grown crops for food. As a result, the lives of the hundreds of small tribes that constituted Aboriginal society were engaged in a never-ending struggle to find what food they could from what little existed on this continent. Directly because of this central fact, it was absolutely necessary to keep the size of each tribe small enough for its members to be kept alive by what food and other sustenance they could find.

          It was therefore absolutely necessary for them to avoid adding any excess mouths to feed to the limited numbers who could be kept alive by the methods of hunter-gatherers in the Dry Continent. They did this by systematically eliminating the excess mouths.

          Probably the most important method of eliminating these excess mouths was infanticide, as Ludwik Krzywicki detailed in his 1934 anthropological study Primitive Society and Its Vital Statistics.1 Deliberate infanticide existed throughout Aboriginal society, and it was practised by nearly all of the Aboriginal tribes in Australia.

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          Boris

          Robert, The inroads of Bruce Pascoe’s thesis amongst academics has slowly subverted the public narrative, unfortunately.

          But it seems that academic rigour is still being applied in anthropology in some quarters.

          https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/01/bruce-pascoe-dumped-upon-from-a-great-height/

          You might find it informative, Harley.

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          • #
            robert rosicka

            Boris it seems Harley struggles with reality so not much chance , Pascoe was right on a couple of things but the book is mostly fiction from what I’ve seen .
            Aborigines did plant trees etc that provided food but this was restricted by their own laws and I’m only aware of it happening in northwest WA .

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            • #
              David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

              G’day r r,
              I’ve also read that they planted bunya pines in Qld and NSW. Also as part of ritual or by tribal elders.
              Cheers
              Dave B

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      • #
        TdeF

        Most now live in Western Sydney and would not go back to living as they did, even if you paid them. Any more than you would. The myth of the happy noble savage was a popular philosophy of Christian Europe. At the time. They were not happy. It was a brutal short existence.

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        Chris

        Yes Harley they should. Some one would have eventually arrived and settled. They were fortunate that it was the British, it could have been the Portuguese or Spanish or German or even Japanese. Australia would look a lot different now if any of these nations had arrived. And don’t think Aboriginal people lived in an idyllic utopia, life was tough and brutal and their fucundity rate barely replaced the population.

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      • #
        Harley

        Horrible times RR, we all have that in our distant past (unless you’re a creationist of course ) so don’t be high minded. Do you prefer the story that the Brits came over to save them with smallpox?.

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    • #
      OldOzzie

      tdf

      Aborigines did not have a country. They were nomadic hunter gatherers. Stone age. They had no idea where they lived. No boats. No agriculture. No metal. No houses. But as top predator they did not need these things. The only real danger was from other aborigines. And so after 50,000 years a tiny population only 1% of the population today, a mere 233 years after a few people landed to settle. It was not an invasion. It was a rescue.

      supported by

      Native Tribes of Central Australia

      Spencer, Baldwin, Sir (1860-1929)
      Gillen, Francis James (1856-1912)

      and

      The northern tribes of central Australia

      by Spencer, Baldwin, Sir, 1860-1929; Gillen, Francis James, 1856-1912, joint author

      “Sequel to the Native tribes of central Australia, published … in 1899.”

      Excellent Reads

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        OldOzzie

        Spencer & Gillen – A journey through Aboriginal Australia

        Francis James Gillen and Walter Baldwin Spencer amassed what is perhaps the most influential collection of Australian ethnographic material ever assembled. Their work had a decisive influence on the early development of anthropology, particularly in Europe.

        Gillen and Spencer developed their collection at a time when Aboriginal people in Central Australia were relatively unaffected by European contact (between 1875 and 1912) and as such constitutes one of the most comprehensive inventories of a regional Aboriginal group in existence.

        Legacy

        Their extensive collection and published works continue to shape the production of knowledge about past and present Aboriginal life in both anthropology and the popular imagination. Just as importantly, it also provides an invaluable cultural archive for the descendants of the Aboriginal people with whom Spencer and Gillen worked in Central Australia; the Arrernte, Anmatyerr, Kaytetye, Warumungu, Luritja and Arabana people who still have a substantial presence in the region.

        The various elements of the collection are currently located in a number of institutions, both in Australia and overseas. Despite its undeniable significance, the material gathered by Spencer and Gillen has never been fully integrated into a single catalogue, and is now dispersed across the institutions listed above.

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        el gordo

        They knew where they lived and Sydney locals had canoes.

        https://www.sydneybarani.com.au/sites/aboriginal-people-and-place/

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      Harves

      Apparently the latest virtue signal is “Sovereignty never ceded”.
      Five questions:
      1. What was this supposedly sovereign nation commonly called by its citizens?
      2. Who was the leader of this sovereign nation who in 1788 chose not to secede and not to defend his (or her) nation?
      3. What’s he/she a king, emperor, chief or President?
      4. Where was the centre of government/power in this sovereign nation?
      5. Given the citizens had no written communication and spoke hundreds of different languages, how did citizens in say Northern Australia know they were part of a nation across all of Australia?

      If you can’t answer these basic questions about this supposed ‘sovereign entity’, then I suspect you are just making stuff up.

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        Tilba Tilba

        Apparently the latest virtue signal is “Sovereignty never ceded”.

        Have you read at least a summary of the Mabo Decision? Do you understand that native title is recognised in Australian law, and that where it has not been extinguished by the issue of freehold title, it is indeed “sovereignty” for the traditional landowners.

        Your five questions are simply a familiar European concept of what sovereignty is, and what constitutes nationhood and identity.

        And given the pretty disgusting and bloody history of Europe between 800 (Charlemagne) and 2000 (the Balkans), it could be argued that traditional forms of land ownership on the Australian continent are for more long-standing and solid than they have ever been in Europe.

        And the reality is that Indigenous Australians have never signed any treaties ceding their sovereignty in return for … something else. In specific instances, native title cases have been lost because there appeared to be historical ceding, and loss of connection to land – but in general Indigenous People do not agree that they ever gave up land (or “sovereignty”) voluntarily.

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    Hanrahan

    Democrats CAN’T walk and chew gum at the same time.

    In recent years the dems have been so preoccupied with Trump, in cities they run they have dropped the ball on gun violence and murder. The figures for homicides for the first three qtrs are way up. DC itself has spiked for three years.

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    David Maddison

    When I hear about “Invasion Day”, I wonder what country was invaded and who was its head of state?

    And what about previous settlements of indigenous people such as the “Pygmy Aboriginals”, now extinct.

    https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2002/06/the-extinction-of-the-australian-pygmies/

    Of course, the Left have written these people out of history, as required by their instruction manual, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four.

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      Pauly

      David,
      When talking about Australia’s first settlers, I prefer to present the Bradshaw paintings:
      http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/bradshaws/index.php

      These paintings, of which over 100,000 have been found across WA and NT, depict a culture that no longer exists in Australia: ocean capable row boats, depictions of animals that never existed in Australia, and head dress, clothes and adornments that have no relationship to the Aboriginal culture.

      Estimates of their age vary, from at least 17,000 years ago to up to 65,000 years ago, which would predate earliest estimates of Aboriginal arrival. Given that age, sea levels would have been much lower, and any settlements are likely to have been submerged long ago. But the prolific number of these art works speaks of a culture that was widespread in Australia, before Aboriginals arrived.

      Of course, we are not allowed to suggest that there may have been a previous “invasion”.

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        David Maddison

        Good point Pauly. They are trying to misattribute the true origin of the Bradshaw paintings as well.

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        OldOzzie

        Pauly,

        I saw the Bradshaw Paintings on Mount Elizabeth Station Kimberleys, where we drove our 4WD on a Guided tour of the Property

        Having seen Aboriginal Paintings in Locations all across Australia and Locally, the Bradshaws were definitely different

        The Gwion Gwion: Australia’s First Civilisation

        Gwion Gwion (Bradshaw) Rock Art

        The Gwion Gwion or Bradshaw Paintings are incredibly sophisticated examples of rock art found predominantly in the Mitchell Plateau and Gibb River sections of Kimberley region of Western Australia. This art form, known to the local Aborigines as Gwion Gwion Gwion Gwion or Allarwhro, was first recorded by Joseph Bradshaw in 1891, when he was lost on an expedition through the Kimberley with his brother.

        Bradshaw published an illustrated account of his findings in 1892 (‘Notes on a Recent Trip to Prince Regent River’). Of them, Bradshaw said, “The most remarkable fact in connection with these drawings is that wherever a profile face is shown, the features are of a most pronounced aquiline (eagle-like) type, quite different from those of any native we encountered.” In 1938 Doctor Andreas Lommel, a member of the Frobenius Institute, lived for several months in the Outback of north-west Australia in the Kimberley, with the Unambal tribe, with the aim of copying Aboriginal rock paintings. On his second expedition to the Kimberley in 1955, he was joined by his wife Katharina. After that expedition, Dr. Lommel stated his belief that the rock art he referred to as and is now commonly identified as the Bradshaw Paintings may well predate the present Aborigines.

        Since the initial find by the Bradshaw brothers, over 1,000 paintings have been discovered. The painting sites extend in an area of about 50,000 square kilometres.

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      Wayne Job

      David, It would also be the original race that they wiped out for the fossil records show that a race like Neanderthals was here first.There was still a few in Tasmania when white men arrived
      My old memory seems to tell me they were hunted by white men the last female was named Trugganini she was transported to Victoria there is a road named after her.

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        TdeF

        We were taught that. The aborigines were wiped out, mainly by the climate, lack of clothes and the various flus which came with the settlers. That happens today with viruses. The myth of being intentional is ridiculous. Europeans had survived such viruses for tens of thousands of years but isolated stone age peoples had no resitance. Efforts to try to save them, notably by Governor Phillip, were doomed. Plus their total lack of resistance to alcohol as they had none and lacked the enzymes to metabolize it, as with 20% of Japanese.

        The insistence that all people are the same medically as well as legally has led to a disaster when aboriginal communities were allowed to buy alcohol. There is still a total lack of recognition that there is a medical problem which in turn means the problem is not being addressed and getting worse.

        Equality does not mean people are all the same, but they share the same rights. Introduction of alcohol vending near aboriginal communities is like setting up Chocolate stores next to settlements of diabetics. Unconscionable greed.

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          el gordo

          ‘The myth of being intentional is ridiculous. Europeans had survived such viruses for tens of thousands of years but isolated stone age peoples had no resitance.’

          The First Fleet travelled half way around the world without a smallpox outbreak. It seems curious that only the people of Manly succumbed, but the clannish nature of the locals might have created the equivalent to a suburban lockdown.

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        WokeBuster

        Hang on, I know where you are going with this. Some Europeans apparently have Neanderthal DNA in them. Now what petrol guzzling SUV should I buy with my reparations?

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        Graeme No.3

        I doubt that there were Neanderthals here, but it is possible. Some aboriginals look like Dravidians from the south of India. There is a claim that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of the Harrapan culture (Indus valley) but were displaced by climate change and invasion by IndoEuropean nomads from Central Asia, but that would have been well after the Bradshaw culture (3500 years ago).
        We know Homo erectus or some other group made it to Flores and nearby islands on the australia side of the Wallace trench, hence they had some means of crossing at least 20km. of deep water.

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    Pauly

    It was fun watching the ABC’s midday news today.

    After promoting “invasion day”, the ABC did a live cross to a reporter covering the small “invasion day” protest in Hobart. The (female) ABC reporter became the target of a heckling (female) protestor, who clearly took exception to the ABC reporter talking over the top of someone who had just started singing in the background.

    More protesters joined in as the ABC crew attempted to distract the heckler, blocking the reporter from view. The ensuing chaos was joyful to watch, until program control suddenly cut the live feed. The ABC must have realised:
    a. that the heckler was a complete drongo,
    b. that the protesters could care less about the left-leaning ABC, and
    c. that the crew’s actions being broadcast live were bordering on assault.

    The vision was obviously not what the ABC expected. Perhaps the ABC will learn that appeasing radicals never ends well.

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      Dennis

      JoeBama and cronies are discovering this in the US, BLM, Antifa and others on the rampage again despite the steal.

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      PeterS

      It should happen more often. Perhaps the PM will then get the message through his thick skull; defund the ABC.

      50

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    David Maddison

    “Invasion Day” is more a movement of Elitist white people than Aborigines.

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      TdeF

      And the BLM ‘protesters’ are all white, dressed in black, often with body armour. The real black people are downtown looting the expensive Michigan avenue stores while the alleged protestors burn down the stores in the black neighbourhood like Wendy, destroying the black neighbourhood. But that is all labelled as largely peaceful protesting?
      It is planned anarchy.

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      Macspee

      Maybe “victory day”. If they want to have been invaded why not celebrate the victory?

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Tony Heller’s latest on the lies of the “fact checkers”. Apologies for the censored Leftist YouTube link, it hasn’t yet appeared on the free speech NewTube site.

    https://youtu.be/yugqz2CadPY

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    • #
      another ian

      DM

      Suggested spelling correction – the second word should start with “fu” and drop the “e”

      11

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  • #
    dinn, rob

    HR-1 bill; centralizing power in the hands of the federal government has long been at the heart of liberal politics
    https://balance10.blogspot.com/2021/01/centralizing-power-in-hands-of-federal.html

    10

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    Contemptible Blackguard

    Maybe the foolish pixies that demonstrate might have preferred the Japanese to invade in 1942? Or why don’t we try the CCP now, as they are really keen to take over this and every other country in the region?

    Let’s try to find what it is like to experience real oppression, so we can all end up in re-education camps?

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      TdeF

      We are already in a reeducation camp. It is government funded and National and far bigger than the commercial press. It is called the ABC.

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  • #
    OriginalSteve

    Has it begun?

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/25/business/leon-black-apollo-jeffrey-epstein.html

    “The review — ordered by the firm’s board at Mr. Black’s behest in October, after The New York Times detailed at least $75 million in payments — found that Mr. Black had paid Mr. Epstein $158 million in a five-year period ending in 2017. He had also lent Mr. Epstein more than $30 million, only $10 million of which was paid back, the report found.

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    Tilba Tilba

    Happy Australia Day!

    I think it’s inevitable that the date of Australia Day will be moved – perhaps not until Australia is a republic, and it won’t be a republic while the Queen is still queen.

    There are quite good reasons for “Australia Day” not to be 26 January:

    1. It’s the hottest time of the year for many places
    2. It’s the wettest time of year for the northern third of the country
    3. Most of us have just ended four weeks of annual holidays
    4. It’s not remotely close to when Europeans first landed here (1606)
    5. It really is Sydney-centric, and ignores the other colonies/states

    But mostly, it is very contentious for Indigenous People, and it has been since “identity politics” took root here around 1980, and a certain form of “national identity” also emerged around the same time.

    Prior to that, Australia Day was pretty ho-hum as a holiday, held on the nearest Monday – and mainly associated with honours, low-key citizenship ceremonies, and a Test Match at the Adelaide Oval.

    We could make 1 January “Australia Day”, since the country formally came into being on that day, but that is already a public holiday, and still very much a “European” focused occasion.

    Perhaps 27 May would be good – the date of the 1967 Referendum, when Australians voted overwhelmingly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples to be recognised as full citizens in the Constitution.

    Whatever one’s view on it, Indigenous recognition & reconciliation are a big deal both culturally and politically in this country, and moving Australia Day from “Invasion Day” I think is both a good move and inevitable – so why not be positive about it?

    And be inclusive of Indigenous representatives, in terms of the choice of a new date.

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      Graeme No.3

      Are you plotting to deprive Adelaide of its Test Match?

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      • #
        Tilba Tilba

        Are you plotting to deprive Adelaide of its Test Match?

        That ship sailed a long time ago, digger! But I used to like it too – it prolonged the long form of the game right through the holiday period.

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      Harves

      I think I might move my birthday because it’s often a bit cold in May. Seriously Tilba, you’ve outdone your lefty self this time.

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        Tilba Tilba

        Lefty self? I’m dyed-in-the-wool middle of the road, comrade!

        Anyway – why does having a view that 26 January is not the best date for Australia Day constitute being a “lefty” … I am rational and fact-based … which is all you can ask of any citizen.

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    Graeme No.3

    I wonder if many readers are aware of the Mississippi bubble in France (1716-1720). It served as a template for the slightly later South Sea Bubble or fraud (1719-1721).
    It started when a scotsman (John Law) came up with a theory that credit could be expanded by copious issues of banknotes. Previously ‘money’ was supposed to have some (precious) metal content. John Law found himself on a ‘treadmill) where he had to issue ever increasing amounts of banknotes just to keep his System going. This lead to inflation and a loss of faith in said banknotes. Eventually the System collapsed. Most of the French public debt had been converted into shares in the Mississippi company** and these were now worthless. The French government then “adjusted” transactions so that ordinary people lost most and the aristocracy won (a couple of Dukes took away cartloads of gold but ordinary people got worthless paper). So the French government went from bankruptcy to solvent and then back to bankruptcy 68 years later and got the French Revolution.
    Something similar happened in England where government debt was changed into shares in the South Sea Company. The government benefitted collectively, but barely survived (minus the 2 chief ministers, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and sundry other ministers). Importantly the ringleaders were fined heavily (up to 95% of their net wealth) but the aristocracy weren’t given favours. Dukes and Earls suffered losses just as ordinary people did.

    What I am leading up to is that currently a lot of governments are issuing money at frantic rates via quantity easing or deficit spending for doubtful purposes, without any hope of repaying the huge debts. The general public is encouraged to believe that hyperinflation won’t occur. There is distinct possibility of the latter and we know from previous examples that the middle class will be wiped out in a great reset.
    Just a thought.

    ** with some governent paper selling (with difficulty) at 15% face value who could blame holders looking for what seemed a better option. (incidentally the word millionaire was coined then to describe successful speculators).

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      RickWill

      All the new money that the Federal Government created through 2020 ended up in business and household savings accounts; up by $200bn in 2020. It is not driving consumer inflation.

      Fuel prices are still low. I actually got notice that the peak electricity charge would drop by 1c/kWh. I think that is the first time I have been advised of an electricity price drop.

      A lot of money going back into housing so it is one area seeing inflation.

      Travel costs are high but only to get back into Australia. Likely a lot of travel businesses will fail unless Jobkeeper continues.

      Big pressure on caravans and boats as people look to holiday in Australia.

      Streaming services have all but replaced visits to the cinema. Amazon Prime is available for $7/month. Even cheaper than tight-@ss Tuesday and you can count on a couple of hours of good viewing a week.

      I think health insurers are making billions though avoidance of elective surgery. But health insurance remains a big cost. I do not see any reason for inflation there though.

      The Government have agreed to fly in fruit pickers. That should reduce the losses in unpicked crops. Any fruit is lower cost than it has been. Seafood seems to be as low as it has been. I think loss of the Chinese market is impacting on a number of food items. Wine is really good value.

      Having worked from home from 2002 to 2012, I felt there was a great opportunity to improve workforce productivity by people working from home. I expect that could be a permanent change in the way most people live and work.

      My son has a physio practice and he said that the increased number of people working from home has made his visit scheduling much easier. Before Covid he said he had to work around patient’s time at work. Now a significant number are much more flexible with appointment times. The start late, finish early or have an extended lunch.

      It appears all the whitewoods out of China are not experiencing inflation. Large screen TVs are still coming down in price.

      Some indication that car sales are hotting up. Probably harder to find a deal than a year ago. Apparently used cars rose 8% in December – a big jump for a month.

      I think economic conditions in Australia are stronger than most other countries so the world is likely still in deflationary mode. If Biden taxes fossil fuels that will be good for the rest of the world. If he cuts of supplies without reducing demand then that will be bad. Talk in the UK is that they need to tax the blood out of ICE vehicles so EVs look attractive. Europe are doing the same so that depresses demand for fossil fuels. As does dramatic reduction in air travel.

      ZOOM may be another huge step in productivity improvement.

      After all that, I do not see much evidence of inflation. It is probably a good time to be making and selling caravans.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    The Left are trying to impeach Trump. If impeached and found guilty of the fabricated charges against him he will be disqualified from running 2024, assuming the US ever has fair or free elections again. They are terrified of him running. A successful impeachment relies on votes from 50 DemocRAT senators and and 16 Republican. Given that 10 Republicans already voted to impeach him, it could be a tight vote. Certain Republican senators who visited the Epstein island might be blackmailed into voting against Trump.

    60

    • #
      Tilba Tilba

      The Left are trying to impeach Trump

      Not sure about the left … but the mainstream stodgy old Democrat leadership are giving it a crack!

      Technical note: ten Republican Reps voted to impeach Trump in the House, so if Mitch McConnell really wants to rid the Republican Party of Trump and Trumpism (as he has outlived his political usefulness) he needs to find 16 other Republican senators to agree with him.

      It might be possible, but Trump remains popular with the party faithful, so finding 16 brave enough to take that on might be hard, even for McConnell.

      Not sure the Democrats are “terrified” of Trump at all … there is a school of thought that says if Trump were convicted (and then barred), it would give a lot of younger and ambitious Republicans clear air in 2022 and 2024 to run effective campaigns.

      But if Trump is still around and interested, then it keeps the GOP unstable and fairly dis-united – which could be to the Democrat’s advantage. There are arguments both ways.

      Personally I don’t think there is even a small chance that Trump will be around (in influence or ambition) to run again in 2024 … too old and he will have many other distractions as a private citizen before then – both legal and financial.

      I expect he’ll find golf more attractive than the Oval Office.

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      • #
        WokeBuster

        The Unity/CCP party may not be scared of Trump but they are shit scared of populism. Imagine the potential of populism in the hands of a more palatable candidate. Hence, their increasingly draconian and authoritarian behaviour.

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        • #
          Tilba Tilba

          Populism can throw up “leaders” from both the right and left. Last time (ie, 2016) Trump got to the top of the greasy pole (by a whisker). This time (2020) Trump had alienated so many demographics that he lost by a similar small margin.

          If the Democrats introduce a range of genuine reforms that assist the US working class | middle class, they might gain more from “populism” than a post-Trump Republican Party does.

          The $15.00 per hour minimum wage will certainly be a start – but there are a hundred other urgent reforms to get moving on (jobs obviously, health, education, infrastructure, the justice system, etc).

          There is always the danger they will get bogged down focusing on fringe stuff – important to the interest groups involved, but nevertheless not of big concern to the bulk of the poorest 50%.

          Personally I think they will need to very nuanced not to blow their massive (but tenuous) power advantage on big arm-waving agendas (Green New Deal, Immigration, all sorts of identity politics, etc). They also need to deal with race, urban mayhem, and policing, without turning everybody else off.

          And the idea that the Biden Democrats are the handmaidens of the CCP … this has become really old and stale.

          Just to repeat myself, it was not the Democrats or the working class unions that caused millions of jobs to disappear via globalisation – it was corporations and Wall Street moving investment to low-cost countries.

          01

    • #
      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      G’day D M,
      This story says only 3 Republicans attended the Senate for the presentation of the bill:
      https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-26/donald-trump-house-democrats-deliver-impeachment-senate/13092456
      I hope that’s indicative of their voting intentions.
      Cheers
      Dave B

      50

      • #
        Tilba Tilba

        I hope that’s indicative of their voting intentions.

        I think it fairly unlikely that 17 Republican senators will vote to convict Trump. But presence in the chamber is not the same as a vote – when they ring the bells all senators rush from their offices to the chamber to cast a vote – the Whips make this happen.

        And note that a two-thirds vote to convict is just two-thirds of those present … if half of Republican senators sit it out, the Democrats would get the two-thirds they require (50/75).

        Everyone will be there I expect.

        00

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    David

    Anyone bothered to check out what that loony Simon Parkes is saying now that Q failed to come through with the goods?

    30

    • #
      Tilba Tilba

      Presumably the QAnon faithful who were so badly duped are going through a painful withdrawal. Good.

      What on earth drove some millions of US citizens to go down that path? I trust they have learnt a hard lesson … all the conspiracy types are just in it for the easy money; they learnt their craft from the televangelists!

      37

    • #
      Chrism

      ‘its their timeline not yours’

      I’m wondering whether his earth wife has banned him from seeing his alien wife

      and how often his alien kid visits in a ufo ….

      20

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    Philip

    I just call it Invasion Day now. Yep. We invaded you and we won. That’s the way she goes. When you win that you defend it. Dont defend it the cycle starts again. You only own the land you can defend. But, you happen to be invaded by the most peaceful. prosperous and most civilised nation and peoples on earth so you’d better make the most of it. They’ll even assist you. If you’re Aboriginal, just go and ask for a government job. You WILL be given one somewhere. Something white folks do not enjoy.

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      WokeBuster

      I think you raise a good point. The natives were vulnerable and would have been eventually invaded by another colonial power. In all likelihood, the treatment would have been far worse under different colonial rule. Take for instance, the Belgians. Their atrocities in the Congo Free state in the late 19th Century were off the scale. The population was decimated by estimates of between 1m to 15m depending on which source you read. As far as I’m aware the Belgians have expressed a lot of regret but not a single cent has been provided in reparations.

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      • #
        Tilba Tilba

        The natives were vulnerable and would have been eventually invaded by another colonial power. In all likelihood, the treatment would have been far worse under different colonial rule.

        Raising the interesting philosophical question: Is it better to be bitten in half by a shark, or swallowed whole?

        I concede that the British were somewhat better than Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and because New South Wales was settled later – during the Enlightenment and Age of Reason – they weren’t quite so barbarous. But it was still a tragic event for the Aboriginal inhabitants.

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        • #
          Philip

          Tragic ? Being discovered by the most civilised peoples on earth to offer them 60000 years of development they missed out on ? What would you want ? To remain undiscovered living in their mythical utopia ? Not possible. If the Chinese discovered Austrlia in the 1400s, which they should have, Aus would be a population of 500 million by now and aborginal cries of oppression would see them land in a concentration camp for organ harvesting. But they wouldn’t even exist by now. Enough of all this apologist nonsense.

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          • #
            Kalm Keith

            🙂 🙂

            20

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            el gordo

            Try to think of it from their point of view, we have been invaded by aliens. They seemed harmless at first, but they brought disease which killed large numbers.

            Nowhere to run and before long they were talking about ‘smoothing the dying pillow’.

            13

    • #
      PeterS

      Australia is nation of laws and different cultures. If any person hates us celebrating the day Australia was founded and wants to move the date then they can stick it up where the sunshine doesn’t shine.

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      • #
        Tilba Tilba

        I think it’s reasonable to have the discussion, if reconciliation and recognition are going to be progressed. Anyway – as I said upthread – I expect it is inevitable, but I wouldn’t venture to put a timeline on it.

        02

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    • #
      Hatrack

      In the comments Kenji says:-

      Your government weaponisation against its “domestic enemies” has actually accelerated … not curtailed.

      30

  • #
    another ian

    “This evening we look back at a 1984 Apple ad that, unbeknownst to them at the time, previewed Low Information Leftist voters of 2020-2021. ‘”

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2021/01/26/january-26-2021-reader-tips/

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    OriginalSteve

    The off guardian in a cheeky quiz which pokes fun at the new abnormal……worth a go….

    https://off-guardian.org/2021/01/24/covid-odyssey/

    20

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  • #
    PeterS

    It’s interesting to note that some new Australians today made the comment the main reason they wanted to become Australian citizens is because it’s a country where free speech is allowed and people are not persecuted or treated badly for voicing their own opinions. Hoe come then companies like Google ban free speech so much for little or no reason? Isn’t there a law against such draconian acts? If not then there should be.

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    • #
      el gordo

      Its a balancing act between freedom and restraint. For example the freedom to incite violence is not permitted.

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      • #
        Serp

        You must surely bless each day that the freedom to incite boredom remains unrestrained.

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      • #
        PeterS

        el gordo in your usual false logic and devious attempts to change the topic you fail again. I wasn’t referring to inciting violence or for that matter burning and pillaging as done by the leftist anarchists. I’m just referring to posting an opinion on social media and being banned for no legitimate reason at all. Get a brain.

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        Harves

        I agree it’s a balancing act. They’ve balanced out the 50 or so BLM riots that were all to some extent organised and supported on Twitter/Facebook with a riot at the Capitol that wasn’t. Then banned a bunch of conservatives for fear that they might use these platforms to organise something in future.
        Perfectly balanced.

        30

        • #
          el gordo

          The tech giants want Biden to heavy Australia, that seems fair and balanced.

          ‘The United States wants Australia to abandon its plan to force Google and Facebook to pay media outlets for their news content, saying there could be “long-lasting negative consequences” for consumers and companies.

          ‘Australia intends to force the US tech giants to pay local media organisations for hosting news content or face millions of dollars in fines, in one of the most aggressive moves globally to check their power.’ (Bangkok Post)

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        • #
          another ian

          Harves

          Perfectly balanced means a chip on each shoulder

          00

  • #
    Annie

    Happy Australia Day, belatedly, to Jo and all who comment here. It should have been earlier but I fell asleep in the chair!

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    • #
      Kalm Keith

      Australia day has the same effect on me.

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      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      I always enjoyed Australia Day when it was celebrated on the nearest Monday to Jan 26. A lazy long weekend at the peak of summer, followed by the resumption of normal work, but with a short week to ease me into the heavy stuff.
      My celebration was always quiet, a quiet thank you to all those who’d done things in the hope of producing what I was then enjoying. And then someone decided we needed a “National Day” and destroyed the national long weekend, creating much angst instead.
      But I remain a happy Australian. Without screaming the house down.
      Cheers
      Dave B

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  • #
    graham dunton

    To add to the references already provided,
    Cape York The Savage Frontier- author Rodney Liddell
    His research is in-depth, recorded events and does not include too days Chinese whispers.
    If ever there was a book, that should be made into a factual series of exploration, this would be my choice for our Cape York peninsula, But certainly Not produced by the ABC- sanitizing the truth. .

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    • #
      Serp

      “This is the book the politicians tried to ban in the Federal Parliament in 1997” so it’s well worth finding; thanks for the tip.

      It was self published in 1996.

      From search result producing heading “Aboriginal dreamtime shattered by factual evidence” pointing to http://www.cirnow.com.au/fileuploads/Aboriginal_History.pdf the synopsis reads:
      “In the remarkable work, Cape York -The Savage Frontier, Queensland author Rodney Liddell asserts, from studying the Jardine diaries, the original Negritoes were hunted down and wiped out by invading aborigines from India. The tip of Cape York was one of the major landings used by the invaders who arrived in either canoes or on rafts.”

      Forget our ABC which has hitched its star to the Ernie Dingo and Bruce Pascoe entrepreneurial agenda and demonstrated yet again that only lies are fit for its purpose.

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      • #
        Serp

        After having read the link I posted I am able to report from pages 2 and 3 that Phoenicians left an inscription in a cave in NSW in 231BC; there’s a photo of it.

        I blame graham dunton for having opened the door to this room of oddities such as the eleven boomerangs Howard Carter reported buried with Tutankamen.

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      • #
        el gordo

        ‘ … the original Negritoes were hunted down and wiped out by invading aborigines from India. The tip of Cape York was one of the major landings used by the invaders who arrived in either canoes or on rafts.”

        The early New Guineans walked to Cape York and its unlikely that later arrivals wiped them out. Over thousands of years they integrated peacefully.

        The Tasmanians were fuzzy wuzzies, be amazed at how they walked there. Were they fleeing?

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  • #
    red edwards

    If you wonder about the hue and cry against re-purposed drugs for COVID read the book Plague.

    Look at the number of players who are the same.

    https://www.amazon.com/Plague-Scientist%C2%92s-Intrepid-Retroviruses-Syndrome-ebook/dp/B00EBO2DNI/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=plague&qid=1611697034&s=digital-text&sr=1-4

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