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Saturday

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127 comments to Saturday

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    OldOzzie

    An Interesting Read – A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System

    It turns out Trump’s entire game plan may have been taken from economic advisor Stephen Miran’s playbook.

    In November, Miran wrote A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System, which according to experts precisely parallels what Trump is now attempting to carry out.

    One of the core tenets of the document is the deliberate devaluation of the US dollar in order to make US exports favorable again to reignite American manufacturing. The entire issue revolves around the famous Triffin’s dilemma, which notes:

    A country whose currency is the global reserve currency, held by other nations as foreign exchange (FX) reserves to support international trade, must somehow supply the world with its currency in order to fulfill world demand for these FX reserves. This supply function is nominally accomplished by international trade, with the country holding reserve currency status being required to run an inevitable trade deficit.

    To summarize the above for the laymen, a country which holds the world’s reserve currency faces a significant dilemma wherein its national trade policy and monetary policy are effectively at odds against each other. In order to keep its currency as reserve status—and reap all the geopolitical benefits this creates—the country must hamstring its own economic output by running a huge trade deficit, which means the country imports far more than it exports, which hurts—or in the case of the US, kills—domestic manufacturing.

    Why must a country run a trade deficit to retain its global reserve currency status? Because when your currency is the global reserve currency, the entire world constantly hungers for it in order to use it in all the various countries’ international trade between each other. The only way to keep those countries constantly supplied with dollars is for Americans to buy tons of foreign imports, which effectively sends dollars to those countries, since these purchases are made with dollars. If the countries instead bought a ton of US exports, they would be paying for those exports with dollars, which means all the dollars would be sent back to the US, and global nations would have a severe lack of US dollars. What would happen then? They would have no choice but to trade with their own currencies, which would mean the collapse of the dollar reserve system.

    Plus – https://x.com/typesfast/status/1907600619420147833/photo/1

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      Simon

      On the flip side, the US has (had?) a massive advantage in that when it issues debt and introduces more money into circulation, the debt obligation reduces in real terms. When other countries devalue their currency, their debt obligation increases because the debt is usually denominated in USD.

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      farmerbraun

      ” to keep its currency as reserve status the country must run[ing] a huge trade deficit, which means the country imports far more than it exports, which hurts—or in the case of the US, kills—domestic manufacturing.”

      Trump should therefore be aware that re-balancing the trade deficit to neutral means that $US can not be the sole reserve currency.

      If nobody needs $U.S. in order to trade, then all those $U.S. that are out there in the world will come home to The U.S.

      If the U.S ceases to be the net importer that it is now, then there will be a mass of $U.S. dollars looking for things to buy that are not imported (are NAFTA goods really imports? It depends).

      The inflation risk is fairly glaring, But The Don loves inflation . . .apparently.

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      • #

        Whatever the plan it has caused the worst two day stock wipe out ever

        https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/article-14571907/wall-street-stock-market-crash-trump-tariffs.html

        Presumably there a floor to all this but it’s easy to imagine the whole thing spiralling out of control as countries seek to retaliate and new alliances are formed

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        • #
          farmerbraun

          “the worst two day stock wipe out ever”

          The current 5% drop is a correction.

          25% is a wipe out.

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        • #
          OldOzzie

          Transcript – Secretary of State Marco Rubio Holds a Press Conference on Tariffs, NATO, Russia/Ukraine and More

          Question markets are crashing around the world for the second day in a row the consensus is that the president’s tariffs were much higher than expected and based on economic formulas that people do not understand um what is your reaction and what is the impact on Europeans you want them to spend more on defense

          Marco Rubio yes which they’re agreeing to

          Questioner finally but how can they do that when their economies are crashing and they
          are now

          No there, No no no no no their economies are not crashing their markets are reacting no their economies are not crashing

          their markets are reacting to a dramatic change in the global order in terms of trade and so what happens is pretty straightforward if you’re a company and you make a bunch of your products in China and all of a sudden shareholders or people that play the stock market realize that it’s going to cost a lot more to produce in China. your stock is going to go down but ultimately the markets as long as as long as they know what the the rules are going to be moving forward and as long as that’s set in and you can sustain where you’re going to be the markets will adjust businesses around the world including in trade and global trade

          they just need to know what the rules are once they know what the rules are they will adjust to those rules so I I don’t think it’s fair to say economies are crashing markets are crashing because markets are based on the stock value of companies who today are embedded in modes of production that are bad for the United States we have to be a country that think we’re the largest consumer market in the world and yet the only thing we export is services and we need to stop that we need to get back to a time of a country that can make things and to do that we have to reset the global order of trade term

          Questioner: and the other part of my question

          well the worst thing is to leave it the way it is forever i mean this is just can’t continue we can’t continue to be a country that doesn’t make things we have to be able to make things to provide jobs for Americans we and that that’s it

          it’s that simple china as an example i mean it’s outrageous i mean they don’t consume anything all they do is export and flood and and distort markets in addition to all the tariffs and barriers they put in place so the president rightly has concluded that the current status of global trade is bad for America and good for a bunch of other people and he’s going to reset it and he’s absolutely right to do it

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            • #
              OldOzzie

              Read the Comments

              IM BLOOOOOOWN AWAY AT HOW MUCH COMMON SENSE RUBIO HAS.. I didnt like him much before… UNTIL NOW WOOOOAH IM BLOWN AWAY… BRIGHT BRIGHT BRILLIANT MAN! Nothing but common sense! MUCH RESPECT TO YOU RUBIO. I’m impressed!

              Excellent Marco Rubio we could not have had a better foreign minister, knowledgeable and classy.

              Sir, Marco Rubio is straigt forward, he is one of best secretary in USA history, a great guy and a REAL AMERICAN

              Loving Marco, Love the direct way he answers questions and correcting at the same time the reporters accurate saying how it is. Bravo Marco.

              Finally, the age of intelligence! 👍

              Off Centre but good

              My neighbour accidentally left two tickets on the front seat for Snow White, and someone broke in and left four more. Please be careful out there.

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    • #
      Broadie

      Two points Old Ozzie,

      (1)Firstly:

      The only way to keep those countries constantly supplied with dollars is for Americans to buy tons of foreign imports, which effectively sends dollars to those countries, since these purchases are made with dollars.

      I believe this should be ‘The Primary way’ as I understand what was the the ‘Third World Debt’ held by institutions primarily the World Bank was laundered through various financial institutions and then sold to the US Pension Funds as an asset.
      Or you could sell the US population 10 doses of a ‘vaccine’, any number of pieces of paper pretending to be Derivatives, Property Portfolios, Prommisory Notes for Gold held in the City Of London ‘Fiat Gold’, or even cheap products inflated by being restricted such as Fentanyl, Coccaine, Pornography etc.
      Even, the sale of endless conflicts to the American people. The Ukraine war could be one such example.

      (2) And last but not least:

      In order to keep its currency as reserve status—and reap all the geopolitical benefits this creates—the country must hamstring its own economic output by running a huge trade deficit, which means the country imports far more than it exports, which hurts—or in the case of the US, kills—domestic manufacturing.

      So why is Australia undertaking this strategy when the Aussie Dollar commands the respect of the Peso?

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      • #
        farmerbraun

        “pieces of paper pretending to be. . . . . . ”

        That is so last century ; they will now accept zeroes and ones. No paper.

        And auto-sign is cool . . .apparently.

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    • #
      el+gordo

      As the old world order is on the wane BRICS could make progress trading in their own currencies, but that is a bit dodgy. The Reserve currency may end up being a crypto pool devoid of dollars.

      ‘The BRICS countries overtook the G7 countries share of the world’s total gross domestic product (GDP) in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) in 2018. By 2024, the difference had increased even further, the BRICS now holding a total 35 percent of the world’s GDP compared to 30 percent held by the G7 countries.’ (Statista)

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      • #
        KP

        In theory yes, but the problem always comes back to who controls the money supply, which country ‘invents’ new money to put in the pool to compensate for growth.

        The UN would love their “Special Drawing Rights” to be the reserve, so they control it. America their dollar of course. Crypto just gets played with until it matures enough to be understood and stable, and gold is still the best even if we just dig it up to bury it underground. I can’t see why the BRICS don’t use a gold-based standard, apart from the fear all Govts have of NOT being able to inflate their currency as they wish.

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          farmerbraun

          My understanding is the BRICS+ currency will be gold-backed , but also commodity -backed (oil, etc.) but not necessarily convertible on demand.

          China is not the only country buying gold.

          A U.S. gold-backed CBDC is not off the table. An impoverished populace might demand it if hyperinflation was killing them. They could all need new phones 🙂

          The transition will occur over the term of the current Presidency, and beyond ; so at least 4 years.

          And then some , surely.

          Anyway , Trump World has set the wheels in motion; presumably that’s his job.

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          el+gordo

          Why BRICS don’t use a gold-based standard just yet, they’ll wait for the dust to settle.

          Germany holds the second-largest hoard of gold on the planet, surpassed only by the United States.

          ‘For decades, the idea that Germany’s gold reserves – some of the largest in the world – might not be safe in the vaults of the New York Federal Reserve would have seemed like the stuff of conspiracy theories. But as the political landscape shifts in Washington – and questions have been raised as to what’s actually in US vaults, some German lawmakers are beginning to wonder aloud: Is their gold still secure?’ (Zerohedge)

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    • #
      Ted1

      Too many superlatives there. Wait till the dust settles.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Pat Condell is back on YouTube and in the following video discusses the now-dysfunctional woke institutions that identify as “universities”.

    It’s tragic what has become of them.

    They used to be centres of learning and scholarship, back in the day.

    https://youtu.be/DXqpAO9CNhw

    Under 5 mins.

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    • #
      Penguinite

      There’s no doubt about it this man speaks Truth to power in plain English. Thanks

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      Graeme No.3

      David M:
      Never mind the Universities, how about the schools?
      I was (very) recently in the supermarket but bought only 2 items. When I got to the (rather attractive young) checkout I handed them to her along with my bag. She put a price that seemed low. When I asked “that seems very cheap” she asked if I wanted a receipt. I asked for one and pointed out she had only charged for one. There the 2 items were in front of her on the bench. So she did another transaction.
      Surely the schools touch them 1+1 =2?

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  • #
    David Maddison

    The SpaceX Fram2 mission has returned from space, the capsule recovered and the crew are waiting to exit the capsule. I’m watching live.

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  • #

    Tariffs are NOT Reciprocal –

    “How did the Trump Administration come up with these tariff rates? Why would a nation like Madagascar, for example, with a small economy, be hit with a 47% tariff? Reciprocal tariffs were determined based on America’s trade deficit with other nations. They took each nation’s trade surplus with the US by total exports and divided that number by two, proclaiming we are asking them for half of what they have been charging the United States.

    The assumption behind this method is that a trade surplus means one country is “taking advantage” of the other. However, trade imbalances do not function in such a cut-and-dry manner. The US runs trade deficits with some countries while running surpluses with others. The global economy is interconnected, and imposing arbitrary tariffs based on a deficit does not reflect the broader picture.

    For example, China may have a surplus with the US, but it also imports raw materials from other nations to manufacture goods. If the US places a retaliatory tariff, it does not necessarily mean that China has been unfairly charging the US. China’s advantages of natural resources and lower production costs is part of the trade deal. There is a reason the US and China were one the largest trading partners, as China relied on American consumers the same way that America relied on cheaper Chinese goods. China was then investing in US debt, which it once viewed as a safe trade, but that is no longer the case, and America will suffer as a result. All of these measures are causing America’s trading partners to flee.”

    More at –

    https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/world-trade/tariffs-not-reciprocal/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=RSS

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    • #
      Penguinite

      Maybe it’s Trumps concern for the “little country” that is being usurped by China which is on route for global domination one little country at a time. Australia too is on the verge and our uniparty doesn’t fill me with much joy.

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    • #
      KP

      ” They took each nation’s trade surplus with the US by total exports and divided that number by two, ”

      Simplicious reckons they took each country’s trade imbalance and divided by the US imports from that country, but yes, a straight-line formula. America’s biggest export is the American dollar, as it has been since WW2, and they don’t need to export anything else so long as the rest of the world keeps buying them. That’s why they are happy to go to war with anyone who thinks of moving away from the $US, and Trump is going to have to tackle the BRICS over this or America will have to work for a living.

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      • #
        farmerbraun

        “America will have to work for a living.”

        In its present condition?

        Mate , you’re dreaming.

        On the other hand, if the Depression was deep enough . . . who knows?

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        Hanrahan

        How can the rest of the world keep buying from them if they hoover up all the profitable industries, which is undeniably Trump’s goal?

        If Trump’s formula works and he has a trade surplus with every country, the world will fall into the Greater Depression in just a few years.

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  • #
    OldOzzie

    Flood of the century: how our most stoic Aussies survived outback disaster

    JAMIE WALKER and MACKENZIE SCOTT

    To begin with, it made such a beautiful noise: rain, sweet rain, drumming on the roof of Ted and Pip Robinson’s home in Adavale.

    The Vietnam veteran and his wife went to bed early, as people do in this far-flung corner of the Channel Country in southwest Queensland.

    It had been tipping down for days but they weren’t worried: every drop seemed like manna from heaven after a parched and punishing summer.

    Blackwater Creek, wrapping around their place, was running again, part of the spider’s web of ephemeral rivers and waterways that crisscross the vast western plains leading into the Simpson Desert.

    The couple knew what happened when they erupted – how drought turned to flood overnight – yet nothing could prepare them or their friends and neighbours, in communities and stations stretching all the way to Longreach, for the 12 desperate hours to come.

    Flood of the century

    The time was 3.30am on Thursday, March 27, day one of the outback’s flood of the century.

    Only now, as the flood ebbs, having inundated an area twice the size of Victoria, killing at least 150,000 head of cattle, sheep, horses and other stock as well as a multitude of wildlife, are people able to draw breath and share their stories of courage and forbearance in the face of this epic disaster.

    The cost will be counted in a damage bill of billions and higher meat prices nationwide, but also in the trauma experienced by some of our most stoic Australians.

    Hard-bitten cattlemen are dreading the clean-up. Mass graves will be dug to accommodate the reeking piles of decayed carcasses blackening the landscape.

    There’s anger at the absence of warnings about the scale of the rain event, partly due to a blindspot in the Bureau of Meteorology’s weather radar system.

    Thousands of kilometres of fencing and hundreds of properties have been devastated, erasing a lifetime of sweat and back-breaking toil for the hardest-hit graziers and business operators in the stricken towns.

    “People are potentially going to go three years without income,” warned Quilpie mayor Ben Hall.

    “That’s three years before they generate a dollar, not making a living. They may be able to keep their head above water for a period, but realistically what are they going to survive off when their entire livelihood has been wiped out?”

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  • #
    David Maddison

    As Donald TRUMP said, “Everything woke turns to s**t.”

    https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/back-to-stick-figures-how-woke-warriors

    Back to Stick Figures: How Woke Warriors Destroyed Anthropology

    By prioritizing ideological concerns over scientific inquiry, anthropology is losing its ability to educate and innovate.

    Elizabeth Weiss
    Jan 17, 2025

    Biological anthropology and archaeology are facing a censorship crisis. Censorship can be defined simply as the suppression of speech, public communication, or information, often because it is deemed harmful or offensive. It can be enforced by government agencies or private institutions. Even self-censorship is increasingly prevalent, such as when an author decides not to publish something due to fear of backlash from their colleagues, or the belief that their findings may cause harm.

    SEE LINK FOR REST

    The Left destroy everything.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Here is a video regarding the dispute over the age of the Omo 1 skeleton founded in Ethiopia in 1967. The real age has a huge impact on the “out of Africa” theory.

    But woke anthropology (“consensus science”) has already established the Official Narrative and won’t allow alternative interpretations.

    https://youtu.be/Byk18lRBKa0

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Domestic terrorists in the US, Leftists, are facing 20 years jail for setting fire to electric car dealerships.

    But don’t the Left want EVs to “save the planet”?

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c204yvv1eexo

    Tesla vandals face up to 20 years in prison, says attorney general

    21 March 2025
    US Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Thursday that three defendants accused of vandalism targeting Elon Musk’s Tesla electric vehicle company could face up to 20 years in prison.

    Bondi said the damage to Tesla cars, dealerships and charging stations was “domestic terrorism”.

    Arrests and charges against the three suspects were previously announced by prosecutors.

    Tesla dealerships across the country have been targeted in a wave of protests, but also vandalism and arson attacks, in response to Musk’s influence over the Trump administration.

    And are Leftoids too stupid to understand that every time they destroy a Tesla insurance companies have to pay for another one to be purchased from Elon? It results in another sale!

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    • #
      MeAgain

      Cards are open on the table now.

      Tesla terrorism shows they were playing with pretty low cards.

      No more bluffing

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    • #
      Mike Jonas

      Maybe every time they torch a Tesla, two or three other people decide not to buy one.

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      • #
        GreatAuntJanet

        Maybe every time a Tesla-Torcher is sent to prison, some other unknown number of frothing fools decide not to torch one?

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    • #
      Greg in NZ

      Ism Schism Isis Crisis:

      First they burned the forests and shouted: See? Man-made Global Warming!

      Then they burned the towns & cities and shrieked: See? Trump’s fault! Change!

      After 4 years of ice-cream sleepwalking, they’re back, burning electric vehicles while shouting: See? Climate Crisis! Trump is H….r!

      Arson, [ah’-son], noun, wilful malicious burning of property [Latin arsio].

      Does one require a Degree of insanity to act this way or is it the final stage of Mental Breakdown Eugenics (MBE) Disorder?

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    • #
      Forrest Gardener

      Possibly not the sale of another Tesla and possibly not a battery powered car.

      But definitely increased insurance premiums for Tesla owners.

      Time will tell how effective law enforcement is on suppressing this spate of wilful property damage.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    https://drperlmutter.com/war-on-cholesterol/

    The war on cholesterol has been waged for the past couple of decades because cholesterol is obviously something very terrible…or not exactly. It turns out that lower cholesterol levels are strongly associated with increased risk for becoming demented. Again, the lower the cholesterol the higher the risk for becoming demented. In this video we will take a look at some of the science that will hopefully change your mind about this brain protective chemical.

    https://youtu.be/_IIOFO3m9IA

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    • #
      Peter C

      Where is the study (ies)?

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      • #
        Forrest Gardener

        As a data point my GP has offered me such an injection.

        I asked whether it was safe and effective.

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        Hanrahan

        If you’ve already had it are you immune? It was another malady I had after the safe and effective shot.

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        • #
          Earl

          Yip Israeli medical were first to identify upsurge of shingles post inoculations and suggested the shot reactivated the varicella zoster virus/chicken pox which kicked off the shingles.
          Of course the immediate pile on of counter claim started – not really sure how to take that “out of Africa” link contribution – and the original message got lost in the ether.

          Here is a pre-insanity period run down from University of Southern California before information was weaponized and instead of just sharing it was sharpened and sent.

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        • #
          Graeme No.3

          If you had chicken pox etc. when you were young you may be immune, but about 8 years ago my doctor recommended I have the vaccine just in case. It was a free dose for those over 70. So I did and haven’t had shingles nor chicken pox etc. since.
          I was in his surgery yesterday and he suggested a ‘flu injection which I refused (as he noted also from the previous 7 years).
          I haven’t had ‘flu in that time and Covid (while in hospital) which was so mild that I didn’t realise it but commented to the Nurse about a blocked nose. BANG! 7 days quarantine (and boredom). I wonder whether the daily 3,000 units of Vitamin D (+K2) might have helped.

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        GreatAuntJanet

        These fear campaigns (this one playing on the natural worry about dementia) are becoming familiar, and surely – surely – less effective.

        20

    • #
      John Connor II

      With over 250,000 medications on the market today, it is astonishing to realise that none of them have ever cured anything. Aside from penicillin—discovered in the early 20th century—there’s not a single medication that has truly eradicated the illness it was meant to target.

      For more than a century, these companies have pushed countless pills, potions, and lotions for every conceivable disease. Yet, we remain in the same cycle of sickness. People are diagnosed, they take their prescribed medication, and continue taking it for life. What’s the reason? Simply put, pharmaceutical companies don’t want to cure diseases—they want to treat symptoms and keep us coming back for more.

      https://www.visionnews.online/post/why-don-t-drug-companies-ever-cure-anyone-1

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        Strop

        Penicillin isn’t perfect. It hasn’t eradicated anything. It might help eradicate a particular ailment from the individual who takes it. But it doesn’t prevent another episode occurring in that individual.
        Then there are things that can develop penicillin resistance.

        While few things, if any, have actually been eradicated or can practically be; there’s plenty of effective drug treatments that we’re seemingly better off having had. Even if official total eradication hasn’t occurred.

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    MrGrimNasty

    One of the relentless string of climate propaganda sausage machine climate stories is appearing on most outlets.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14571397/Belizes-Great-Blue-Hole-concerning-secret.html

    The storm count proxy they have studied shows
    variability over millennia but more storms more recently, but long before man-made climate change was a factor.

    They have produced a hockey stick by adding a projection for the 21st century onto the end of the data, without this there is nothing outside the apparent recent ‘normal’ range.

    https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/sciadv.ads5624/asset/1f4b2584-6446-402a-b1ac-db0a808b8560/assets/images/large/sciadv.ads5624-f3.jpg

    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads5624

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      Graeme No.3

      The daily mail is not on my list of newspapers. Unlikely it will be in future.
      Still Michael Mann made a lot of money over 20+ years with his Hockey Stick Illusion, so I assume that the editor hopes for some subscribers.

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      el+gordo

      Appeal for grant money.

      ‘A 21st-century extrapolation suggests an unprecedented increase in TC frequency, attributable to the Industrial Age warming.’

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    David Maddison

    More on the experimental covid “vaccine”.

    https://www.malone.news/p/how-performative-activism-enabled-561

    How Performative Activism Enabled Mass Persecution (Part 2)

    By: Josh Stylman

    ROBERT W MALONE MD, MS
    MAR 30, 2025

    VAERS reports of miscarriages and stillbirths increased by 450% in 2022 compared to the previous decade’s baseline. While similar vaccines showed no such signal, authorities dismissed these reports without investigation. The same voices that popularized “believe women” suddenly found endless reasons to doubt women’s experiences when they contradicted pharmaceutical interests—just as my friend had dismissed the contradiction between forced medical procedures and bodily autonomy.

    REMINDER FOR LEFTOIDS: Time for your 37th booster.

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      Broadie

      Certainly messed with their reproductive systems from the information I was given by Pharmacy assistants talking to women who were undertaking the ‘gene therapy’. Happily post-menopausal women were suddenly having periods and women used to regular perods were missing periods. This caused great concern as many husbands were stuck in fly in fly out states or across borders and there was a possible virgin birth to be explained. One pharmacy assistant exclaimed at the increase in sales of preg tests, “They are breeding like rabbits”.

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    Ireneusz Palmowski

    Storms and tornadoes for 5 days in central US. Threat of flooding in the Mississippi Valley.
    https://i.ibb.co/TFCkYgk/gfs-hgt-trop-NA-f036.png
    https://i.ibb.co/1GWV7wp2/Screenshot-2025-04-04-22-19-05.png

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    David Maddison

    The remade Snow White was a woke disaster.

    Normal people refused to watch it.

    But surely there were enough wokesters out there to patronise it and make the film profitable for their favourite woke corporation?

    Where were they all?

    Or are wokesters just a noisy but influential minority that make life miserable for the rest of us?

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    Richard

    New article on NoTricksZone: “New Study: Corals Thrived When Global Sea Levels Were Meters Higher Than Today 6000 Years Ago”:

    https://notrickszone.com/2025/04/03/new-study-corals-thrived-when-global-sea-levels-were-meters-higher-than-today-6000-years-ago/

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    David Maddison

    I have seen a lot of Australian Government advertising to raise awareness of shingles and for certain age groups to get the shingles vaccination (which incidentally my doctor doesn’t believe to be very effective).

    Why the sudden need for awareness about shingles?

    Two possibilities are:

    1) The marketing arm of Big Pharma, the TGA is promoting the vaccine.

    2) Increased rate of shingles due to possible immune system damage by covid “vaccines”.

    Or both of the above.

    Of course, some blame covid-19, not covid-19 vaccination for the observation of increased shingles risk.

    https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/covid-19-linked-to-higher-shingles-risk-for-over-5

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      Forrest Gardener

      As I noted above my GP offered me such an injection.

      My question was whether it was safe and effective.
      If told him if he said no I wouldn’t take it.
      If he said yes I told him I would run a mile.
      He just said it was up to me.

      And therein lies the natural consequence of the recent compulsion and propaganda.

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      Dry Liberal

      Perhaps actually reading what’s in the link before posting would be beneficial:

      [the study] compared 394,677 individuals over the age of 50 who had contracted COVID-19 with the results of 1,577,346 people who up until that point had not had the virus. All those in the study had not been vaccinated.

      It found that COVID-19 diagnosis in those aged over 50 is linked to a ‘significantly increased’ risk of developing shingles.

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        David Maddison

        Perhaps actually reading what’s in the link before posting would be beneficial:

        Which is exactly why I wrote:

        Of course, some blame covid-19, not covid-19 vaccination for the observation of increased shingles risk.

        And as has been discussed here many times, many of these publications are utterly untrustworthy.

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          Dry Liberal

          You said:

          “Two possibilities are:” which implies you discounted the third one. I thought you linked to the study to argue your point, when the evidence it presents supports the third possibility (quite strongly actually).

          As for your second point, what evidence do you have for your claim that there is an “2) Increased rate of shingles due to possible immune system damage by covid “vaccines”.”?

          Cheers!

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          Dry Liberal

          If you look at a paper such as “Herpes zoster and simplex reactivation following COVID-19 vaccination: new insights from a vaccine adverse event reporting system (VAERS) database analysis” the conclusion is:

          The paucity of cases (almost all of non-serious nature) makes the potential occurrence of this adverse effect negligible from clinical standpoints,

          Cheers!

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        Broadie

        Dear Dry Liberal

        Perhaps actually reading what’s in the link before posting would be beneficial:

        If you follow the link to the paper, the Authors state:

        To be eligible, individuals could have no history of HZ (based on ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes) (Supplementary Data) and no history of vaccination against COVID-19 or HZ (based on National Drug Codes and Current Procedural Terminology codes) (Supplementary Data) before or on the index date.

        The ‘index date’ is defined as:

        The index date for individuals in the COVID-19_50+ cohort was the date of the first COVID-19 event during the study.

        My reading of this is that the individual was not vaccinated at the time of the occurrence of the first Covid 19 event. (Boy that would have been embarrassing, Safe & Effective and all that) We know from the Pfizer this could be that you were considered un-vaccinated even after having the shot. This would have been a tricky study for funding if the data had listed the occurrence of Herpes Zostera relative to having a ‘Jab’. So best leave the discussion of the Jab right out of the study and declare everyone unvaccinated due to the fact they were not registered as vaccinated at the time they had had their first runny nose etc:

        I could be wrong as many of the studies referred to had big words I have not taken time to digest. David I see has used the word untrustworthy, I would add confused.

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      MeAgain

      https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2025/03/shingles-vaccination-dementia.html

      The same sort of claims … statistics that assume you have a population that would have all had exactly the same results for whatever feature you are investigating, absent a feature that you decide to correlate … are also used to claim that the Shingles vaccine reduces dementia.

      Why – we don’t know, we don’t understand any clinical link between shingles and dementia … but we have warehouses full of shingles vaccines we need to sell.

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    David Maddison

    I have my amateur radio station running in the background and some people are chatting and I was alarmed to hear one proudly announce that he just had his covid “vaccination”. Apparently even now, there are true believers…

    He had a VK3 callsign so he is a Victoriastani.

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    another ian

    FWIW- How tariffs might work –

    “Tariffs: Wall Street versus Main Street

    There’s a significant amount of noise-versus-signal debate over President Trump’s new tariffs. I thought I’d offer a simple explanation, that glosses over many of the finer details but clarifies the essence of the problem.”

    https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/04/tariffs-wall-street-versus-main-street.html

    And

    “Heads up, shooters: tariffs and our ammo supply”

    https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/04/heads-up-shooters-tariffs-and-our-ammo.html

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    TdeF

    The US has been at war with China since Nixon. Not Russia. And China is playing the long game.

    The current issue is not exchange rate, tariffs, inflation, stocks, it is deaths. At present 100,000 young men a year are dying from Chinese Fentanyl, 50x more dangerous than Heroin.
    America lost 400,000 young men in WWII, a war which created the modern world to one of mass manufacture and consumer goods and booming life expectancy and quality of life, world wide.
    But the boom is faltering for lack of people.

    Economists blame the birth rate, contraception, choice for lack of workers and offshoring production and mass migration. But imagine what 100,000 young adults in America a year means. Every consumer society needs consumers and workers and new people.

    And the blame goes back to China. Aided by Canada and Mexico across two very long borders which have been wide open. With neighbours like these, who needs enemies?

    It’s not about exchange rates, the NYSE, electric cars or Facebook or gold or trade. It’s about the destruction of America by China and enabled by Mexico and Canada.

    But no one wants to talk about it. As if it didn’t exist. If the standoff with Russia was the Cold War. The attack on the United States is the Silent War between the US and China.

    In a nuclear age, the Wuhan Flu was just the start. From Darwin to Panama to Greenland and Europe, Taiwan and Japan, the war is hotting up. And Chinese warships are circling and threatening Australia and New Zealand and Taiwan. And spy balloons cross America and communications cables in the Baltic are cut accidentally by a number of Chinese ships, in a show of incredible weakness, governments pretend not to notice. Meanwhile Russia and China sign a friends forever pact. So reminiscent of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact in 1939.

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      TdeF

      And Trump is goading NATO and the UK into doing something in their own defence. But they are once again too busy squabbling and the world’s industrial giant of the 19th century, Britain, no longer makes and only melts steel. They can buy it all from China which makes over half the world’s steel. Plus Russia.

      All their money is going into reversing the industrial revolution because of a completely science free UN religion called Climate Change. Which almost no one else believes except Australia and New Zealand and Canada. Even though it is transparent nonsense run by a massive 80,000 person UN filled with retired politicians who care nothing about world peace. Fire the lot of them. As Trump has shown, we now have the telephone.

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      KP

      “Every consumer society needs consumers and workers and new people. ”

      It has been talked about for decades that this model was unsustainable, but no new idea were forthcoming until it was taken out of our hands. You will not have white Western societies in the future, women’s lib has taken that choice away.

      Its quite fascinating that giving women the choice to have children, the basis of life for us all, has resulted in them saying ‘no thanks, not in this sort of society’. So the declining birth rates mean we will run out of people, ie customers & the producers of production, or we will import people from other cultures and be drowned by them, or we will automate the means of production and have fewer people living in a different society with robots making everything.

      The internet is diluting the control Govts had over the propaganda for each country, so the differences are blurring and patriotism is fading. There will not be the pressure for immigrants to become staunchly Australian or British or whatever their new country is. Going to war might be a lot more difficult when a lot of your population side with the enemy…

      The selection of who ends up as the society is also interesting. Do we have the lowest classes leading a life of luxury attended to by robots, because they were the last ones breeding? Do we have a short-lived luxurious society where production is automated but the people are incapable of keeping it going as those who set it up are bred out of the society?

      I’m sure ‘the people’, those most affected, won’t get any choice in which direction the country goes.

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      Molotov Ribbentorp pact? Wasn’t that a rather short forever? 3D chess players theorise Taiwan is to justify China’s military buildup, but what they may really want is a return of their Siberian provinces. If they took them, there would be little objection from the west.

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    another ian

    FWIW –

    For better or worse?

    “New Car Performance Tech: Electrohydraulics Enable Software-Defined By-Wire Suspension”

    https://www.motortrend.com/news/new-car-performance-tech-electrohydraulics-enable-software-defined-by-wire-suspension/

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    another ian

    FWIW – Canada vs USA

    “Journalist: “are you going to boycott US strawberries?”

    Carney: “I dont buy my own groceries””

    https://x.com/Tablesalt13/status/1908135074979090914

    A line he got from “Elbow”?

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    another ian

    FWIW – latest Kunstler

    “You Wouldn’t Want to Be Him on That Dreadful Day
    “Perhaps history is teaching us that today’s popular leaders like Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen are not the people’s last chance. They are the globalist’s last chance.” — Kurt Schlichter”

    https://www.kunstler.com/p/you-wouldnt-want-to-be-him-on-that

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    • #
      Crakar24

      The comment that kicked all this off

      This woman (yes she’s a female) is part of a panel of 20 ‘experts’ hired by the WHO to draft their policy on caring for ‘trans people.’

      “People who belong in psychiatric wards are writing the guidelines for people who belong in psychiatric wards.”

      Will be interesting to see which way the e-safety board rule on this but probably not before the election.

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    John Connor II

    Klaus Schwab To Step Down As World Economic Forum’s Chair

    According to the Financial Times Klaus Schwab, the unelected mastermind behind the World Economic Forum (WEF) is preparing to step down as chair of the board of trustees.

    The latest announcement comes after Klaus Schwab announced his resignation as executive chairman of the WEF last year.

    After five decades of steering the WEF into a playground for elites, Schwab’s exit signals what could be the long-overdue unraveling of a technocratic agenda that aimed to dictate how the rest of us live, eat, travel, and think.

    Schwab’s announcement follows months of internal chaos, scandal, and growing global backlash against his Orwellian vision.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/globalist-puppetmaster-klaus-schwab-steps-down-as-world/

    Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      He wouldn’t be stepping down unless he’d appointed a trustworthy replacement to continue to carry out his destruction.

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    John Connor II

    British cities overrun by ‘cat-sized’ rats who gorge on rubbish flowing into the streets and multiply at a frightening speed

    They’ve taken over major cities including Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow.

    But rats aren’t stopping there as Tottenham has become the latest UK destination to be overrun by the giant rodents.

    London appears to have seen a rise in rat infestations in recent months, with increasing levels of fly-tipping on residential streets bringing in the vile rodents who like to feast on food waste.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14494749/British-cities-overrun-rats-rubbish-bins-streets.html

    Sounds just like New York.

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    David Maddison

    Copied from Farcebook.

    In 1972, a French scientist locked himself in a pitch-black cave 440 feet underground for 180 days.
    No light.
    No time.
    No human contact.
    He wanted to uncover the secrets of the human mind—and what he found was literally TIME-BENDING:

    Michel Siffre was a geologist and researcher obsessed with understanding human biology in extreme conditions.

    He believed the key to unlocking the human mind lay in its relationship with time.

    To test this, he devised a radical experiment.

    Siffre volunteered to live completely isolated in a cave.

    No clocks
    No sunlight
    No way to track time
    He wanted to find out:
    • How the brain reacts to total isolation
    • What happens when you’re cut off from natural cycles

    The world thought he was insane.

    In 1972, Siffre descended 440 feet underground into a cave in Texas.

    No contact with the outside world
    No sun to guide his days
    Just him, a sleeping bag, and tools for survival
    The darkness was absolute.
    The silence, deafening.

    At first, Siffre tried to maintain a routine.
    He followed hunger and fatigue to decide when to eat and sleep.

    But without light or clocks…
    His sense of time began to distort.

    Hours felt like minutes
    Days blurred together
    Siffre’s mental state deteriorated quickly:
    • He hallucinated shadows and voices
    • He became paranoid—convinced someone else was in the cave
    • His thoughts spiraled into chaos

    The isolation was breaking his mind.

    What he didn’t know:
    His team above ground was watching everything.

    They recorded his activity to compare it to real time.

    The results?
    Siffre was completely disconnected from reality.

    By Month 2, he believed 24 hours had passed when it had been nearly 48.

    His internal clock had slowed drastically.

    His body created a new rhythm:
    • 36 hours awake
    • 12 hours asleep

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    • #
      David Maddison

      This shocked scientists.

      Humans evolved to follow the 24-hour circadian rhythm set by sunlight.
      But without light, Siffre’s body invented its own clock—independent of the sun.

      It was proof that the human brain has a built-in time system.

      But there was a darker discovery.

      As weeks turned into months, his mental state worsened:
      • He forgot words mid-sentence
      • He struggled to remember basic facts
      • His emotions swung wildly between joy and despair

      Isolation was rewriting his brain.

      Siffre later described the experience as:
      “A slow slide into madness.”

      He talked to insects for company
      He found comfort in his own voice
      But silence always returned, crushing and relentless
      After 180 days, Siffre was pulled out of the cave.

      To him, only 151 days had passed.
      He was stunned to learn how much time he’d lost.

      Without external cues, the brain loses its grip on time.

      Siffre’s experiment revealed:
      • Time isn’t just external—it’s something the mind actively creates
      • Isolation and sensory deprivation warp this ability, causing disorientation

      His findings transformed our understanding of time perception.

      They led to breakthroughs in:
      • Circadian rhythm research
      • Space exploration (astronaut isolation)
      • Mental health in solitary confinement

      But the cost was high.

      Siffre didn’t emerge unscathed:
      • He suffered permanent memory loss
      • His mental health took years to recover
      • He described the cave as “an endless night” that haunted him for decades

      He paid a steep price for his discoveries.

      Yet despite the trauma, Siffre continued his research.
      He later isolated himself in other caves to replicate his findings.

      His work laid the foundation for modern sleep science and time psychology.

      But the questions he raised remain:
      What is time, really?
      Is it a construct of the external world—
      Or something created by the mind?

      Siffre’s experiments showed that time is both.
      And that the mind holds the ultimate power to shape it.

      “The mind is a universe of its own.” – Michel Siffre

      Siffre’s legacy is a reminder:
      Of both the resilience and fragility of the human brain.
      And how isolation can reveal the depths of our inner world.

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        John Connor II

        Interesting.

        It was proof that the human brain has a built-in time system.

        It sure does!
        I can wake at any specific time I choose accurate to 5 seconds. I don’t know how, but I don’t need an alarm clock.

        On a sidenote, who’s heard of biphasic sleep?
        In times gone by some people would wake in the wee small hours, get up and do an hour or 2 of work then go back to bed.
        No adverse effects and probably a good idea for those so affected.
        Meditteranean countries have a form of that by way of their midday naps.

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    John Connor II

    Breaking news: Trump is stepping down as POTUS to become even more powerful district court judge.

    /satire

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    John Connor II

    What would happen if we put Tesla signs on every parliament house in the country?
    Asking for a friend.

    50

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    John Connor II

    Microsoft turns 50 today

    https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-50/

    I used MS-DOS 2.0 back then but have v1.0 in my archives.

    Gates made his fortune on the biggest lie in business history. Nothing’s changed.

    30

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    John Connor II

    Blaze Star that’s 3,000 lightyears away will soon explode — and you’ll get to see it from Earth: ‘Once-in-a-lifetime event’

    A star system 3,000 lightyears away is ready to go nova — and when it blows, it will be visible from Earth.

    https://nypost.com/2025/04/04/us-news/blaze-star-thats-3000-lightyears-away-will-soon-explode/

    /Wording needs help

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    Vicki

    Seen on a post on a highway:

    “Albo – weak, woke and sending us broke”

    100

  • #
    Richard

    Been looking into the figure of Baphomet over the past few years, here and there, and find it endlessly fascinating. For those who may not know, Baphomet was basically an idol that the Knights Templars were accused to worshipping in the 14th-centuty. The idea really took off when occultist Éliphas Lévi drew that famous image of Baphomet most here would have probably seen. He said that Baphomet was a representation of what he called the “Astral Light” which was sort of like an energy that he thought pervaded the universe, and said the goat represented the “equilibrium of opposites”, male and female, light an dark, conscious and unconscious, macrocosm and microcosm, united as one. This idea of male and female joining as one also fascinated Austrian poet Robert Musil (1880–1942) where he wrote about Isis and Osiris joining as one and becoming a single being. This idea is also represented by the 12th-century figure of the Rebis, which represents male and female joined as one, the alchemical Great Work. No doubt that Jungian psychology and individuation also plays a part in these ideas too, where an individual becomes a unique, whole self by integrating conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche. Just started watching a documentary about Jung on Amazon. The guy was a genius.

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      Honk R Smith

      Read this book years ago.
      https://archive.org/details/barber-the-new-knighthood

      In it the author (as I recall) postulates that ‘Baphomet’ was a mishearing and mistakenly articulated recording of the word ‘Muhammad’ by the French examiners during the torture examination of the arrested knights.
      The knights, having fought alongside indigenous allied forces (Turcopoles), and living in the culture, likely absorbed an authentic pronunciation of the Arabic word, which the French examiners probably had never even heard.
      And easily and conveniently transmuted into proof of devil worship.

      The mythology of the Templers, is a scary example about how propaganda is often the historical narrative that smothers the facts and survives into the future.
      500 years from now, George Floyd will be a Saint.

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    David Maddison

    And on the subject of idols of the demonic Baphomet (above), we have this idol of Dan Andrews which is still going ahead.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14353395/Dan-Andrews-statue-Melbourne.html

    Revealed: Staggering cost to taxpayers of Daniel Andrews bronze statue in Melbourne

    08 Feb 2025

    Victorians have been warned a controversial statue to honour former state Premier Dan Andrews will cost taxpayers a fortune in repair bills from vandal attacks.

    The state is set to foot the bill after plans for the bronze statue were confirmed last September, a year after Andrews suddenly quit politics after nine years as premier.

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      Graeme No.3

      No problem; place the statue on top on a long greasy pole. Should be quite at home there.

      40

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        H P

        Nah, place the statue under lock and key in the deepest basement in central Melbourne and charge $1000.00 to see it. Cultural Icon. Will help pay Victoria’s debt in no time pmsl !!

        10

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    Dennis

    2023

    CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The Australian government announced Friday it has decided not to cancel a Chinese company’s 99-year lease on strategically important Darwin Port despite U.S. concerns that the foreign control could be used to spy on its military forces.

    The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet said it decided after an investigation of the eight-year-old lease that current monitoring and regulation measures are sufficient to manage security risks for critical infrastructure such as the port in the northern garrison city of Darwin.

    “Australians can have confidence that their safety will not be compromised while ensuring that Australia remains a competitive destination for foreign investment,” it said in a statement.

    Landbridge Industry Australia, a subsidiary of Rizhao-based Shandong Landbridge Group, signed the lease with the debt-laden Northern Territory government in 2015. That was three years after U.S. Marines began annual rotations through Darwin as part of the U.S. pivot to Asia.

    20

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    MeAgain

    https://ianbrighthope.substack.com/p/fed-to-disease-and-death

    Many studies over the decades have demonstrated that hospital patients often experience nutritional decline during their stay, leading to a higher prevalence of malnutrition at discharge compared to admission. For instance, a study published in Clinical Nutrition in 2020 reported that the proportion of malnourished patients increased from 29% at admission to 41% at discharge, indicating significant nutritional deterioration during hospitalization.

    10

  • #
    MeAgain

    A stroke within minutes of a COVID vaccine – c’mon you know by now correlation is not causation, except when it is correlation with a positive COVID PCR. Or a positive correlation in a medical trial for a vaccine being effective.

    https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com/p/vaccine-damage-payments-scheme-a

    10

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    Graeme4

    Channel 7 are looking at the overseas mining hazards for EVs in their Spotlight show on Sunday. Could be interesting.

    01

  • #
    another ian

    FWIW – Chiefio reviews

    “W.O.O.D. – 5 April 2025 – Tariffs, Talks, Tomahawks, & Troubles”

    https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2025/04/05/w-o-o-d-5-april-2025-tariffs-talks-tomahawks-troubles/

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    Ireneusz Palmowski

    How do you recognize a lack of immunity? It is the lack of response of the immune system to an infection. If, despite the infection, the level of leukocytes remains at about 4,000 and does not increase, this is cause for alarm. Taking antibiotics and steroids will only perpetuate this condition. It is best to use neutrophil growth factor. Neutrophils act like a broom in the body – they sweep pathogens and bacteria out of the body.
    After several hours, their levels naturally drop. Then you can take herbs that increase monocyte levels, such as uncaria tomentosa and echinacea.

    00

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