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Saturday
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Statistics
The nerds have the numbers on precious metals investments on the ASX
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Many negative aspects of covid lockdown should have been easily foreseen by our supposed betters. Here was a glaringly obvious one they failed to see coming-the effect on children
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/04/25/lockdowns-impact-on-children-to-last-well-into-2030s-says-lse-report/
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Big Pharma loved the Wuhan Flu. As did the WHO who created the pandemic, despite preventing pandemics being the sole function of the WHO.
And everyone else loved the PP business. Trillions of masks. Tests. It was a boom time for many. Plus the ability to suppress stories
of cheap, readily available and effective treatments in favor of mass endless inoculation with experimental vaccines, fully subsidized by the taxpayers.
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Not to mention the public serpents who never lost an hour of pay, got to provide even less service ‘working’ from home, and had the gall to attack those who dared go outside to try to save their business or provide for their family.
Biggest misinformation was “We’re all in this together”.
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But it wasn’t bad news for everyone:
Pandemic creates new billionaire every 30 hours — now a million people could fall into extreme poverty at same rate in 2022.
How the world’s richest people became much richer during the pandemic.
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Excess Deaths in Japan Hit 115,000 Following 3rd COVID Shot; New Study Explains Why
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/joe-wang-japans-excess-deaths-hit-115000-following-3rd-covid-shot-new-study-explains-why-5634129?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge
And
See – Cancer After the Jab: A Scientific Explanation
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The $34 trilion Us debt is only one of a number of problems facing that country and by implication, much of the rest of the world
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-worlds-troubles-all-lead-back-to-america/
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What worries the rest of the world is that world trade is still in $US, so the US does not have to worry about debt as much.
And all debt is either overseas or to your own citizens. In the case of Japan, most of their debt is to themselves. So while they look hopelessly indebted they are not.
Most of the US debt is to other countries who would fear a US devaluation as happened in the 2008 GFC.
China still stacks trillions in the US for safekeeping, hedging against their own controlled currency. And they were by far the biggest losers in 2008, putting their cash into (fake) government backed mortgages in Freddy Mac and Fannie May. So they could hardly complain or tell the world how much
they had invested/lost in the US.
China and Russia and others would love to break away from the US dollar, but can’t. Where Australian indebtedness is crippling the $A as we spend all our gains on Chinese windmills, solar panels, electric cars etc. And we are shutting our manufacturing. The forced closure of QENOS means another $1Bn a year off our balance of trade. (QENOS went into discussions immediately when they were told they were ‘the biggest polluters’ with CO2.)
The destruction of all Australian manufacture by the SafeGuard Mechanism 2023 gets no press. All we will see are endless closures. It is a massive tax on a fake concept to control CO2 which is not producing warming and which cannot be controlled anyway. All designated in 2011 Carbon Credits, the carbon ripoff both Labor and Liberal keep telling us we do not have and will not have.
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Unveiling a little-known intervention, the Federal Reserve injected $152 billion into big banks in March 2023, surpassing aid provided during both the 2008 and 2020 crises. As regional banks, grappling with precarious balance sheets, increasingly turn to the discount window for support, questions arise about the Fed’s strategy and the future of banking stability.
https://citizenwatchreport.com/federal-reserve-lent-big-banks-152b-in-march-2023-to-avert-crisis-regional-banks-rely-on-discount-window/
Watch the capital flow heatmaps for advance warning of the meltdown…
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“China and Russia and others would love to break away from the US dollar, but can’t.”
I read that they are. With sanctions from America Russia has no reason to deal with the $US. One day Putin will get the balls to stop all USA trade and deprive them of a lot of strategic minerals. Overall the sanctions will turn out to be an ‘own goal’ as they push the rest of the world to bypass the $US in trade with some countries, which will naturally expand to others.
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Of course they can but there is no magic switch and it will take time. The important. part, as it is for most things worth doing, is that they have started
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Russia has already broken away from the US dollar … sanctions gave them no choice.
As for China, I dunno but I think they need to keep trading with the USA since that’s one of their major customers for manufactured goods. They seem to have no problem doing international trade in more and one currency … maybe they can do math or something?!?
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The Age of Runaway Debt
The drawback is that, in the years since the end of the gold standard, there’s been a significant and growing lack of discipline when it comes to government spending. Before 1971, there was a natural limit to how much money could be printed. New issuances were dependent on the amount of gold sitting in the nation’s coffers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2021/01/25/the-gold-standard-ended-50-years-ago-federal-debt-has-only-exploded-since/?sh=5244f9f31e17
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Has Australia become world leaders in online censorhip[?
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/04/26/the-push-for-global-censorship-in-australia/
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Under the communist Albanese/Bandt government, controlling the online press is a gift. Censorship is in their DNA. They can suppress news like this site. Spreading misinformation which disagrees with their propaganda. Who cares about the facts. There will be no Carbon Tax in a government I lead. And it is a criminal offence to allege there is one.
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Vietnam is a communist state, Australia is not.
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(officially)
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The solution to censorship is simple. Censoring the government in return by voting them out of office & keeping them out of office using only the truth.
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Classic Attack the person rather than the argument when you have no argument – Australian politicians go into ‘complete meltdown’ over Elon Musk’s censorship pushback. If the left want to push their case then they need to be able to actually and strongly argue their case. That includes participating in proper discussions and debates. Otherwise all we see them being is a dung heap and them adding bucket loads to that dung heap.
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The people love their freedoms, so the draft bill will automatically be restricted.
Any attempt to gag free expression, as we enjoy on this blog, won’t be tolerated by the centre right.
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I guess that was a moderately relevant position to propose circa 1998.
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That was the year Johnny Howard defeated the socialist Labor Party and introduced the Native Title Amendment Act, which was passed.
Did I miss something?
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Actually we are constantly trading our freedoms for “safety”.
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Fair comment, the parliament was struggling with this a decade ago.
‘In Australia there has been considerable debate about what degree of filtering (if any) should be mandated.
‘The Howard Government favoured an approach which emphasised self-regulation by ISPs combined with a legislative component and education and freedom for families to choose between either computer or ISP filtering based on a list of unacceptable content.
‘The Rudd and Gillard Governments preferred the option of a mandatory ISP level filter, although this too was to be based on a ‘blacklist’ of prohibited content.
‘Both options have been criticised as being expensive and inefficient. In addition, it has been argued that the Rudd/Gillard option would have had a detrimental impact on Internet speeds and that it would set a precedent for future governments to widen filtering to other forms of expression.’ (Australian Parliament 2014)
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Free Speech, Free Speech, Free Speech!
Can’t say it often enough.
Gotta’send Jo chocolates.
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A big F*** You to Albo and his e-Safety [SNIP]
https://www.torproject.org/download/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/04/26/australia-is-not-a-free-country-will-australians-need-tor-browser-to-bypass-the-great-australian-firewall/
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“so is this regulatory pursuit of posts on X about the content, or is it about going after X?”
What, by the woman who was employed by Elon and obviously has a ‘thing’ about him?
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Who are ‘They’?
A coffee stained armchair analysis from a ‘Pandemic’ marginalized ordinary soul.
Those with pre-Pandemic exposure to the Climate Consensus understand that ‘They’ might be the UNIPCC.
A well funded powerful consortium of academics, quasi governmental operatives, and elite activists billionaires that were able to build a cooperative ‘Consensus’ that actively went about silencing opposing opinions.
Very effectively labeling qualified scientists such as Judith Curry, ‘Anti-Science’.
Fast forward to ‘Pandemic’ and the resistance to ‘following THE science’ is declared both anti-social and in some cases illegal (laws forbidding doctors to discuss alternative treatments and possible mitigating individual reasons for not receiving a falsely labeled ‘vaccine’.)
The alliance of social and cultural forces that produce the acceptable narrative is clear.
And was made clear by ‘Pandemic’.
It is a powerful ‘They’ that is too complex to identify.
It is a powerful ‘They’ that controls the socially acceptable information complex, and is the only self-declared official arbiter of truth.
We see them constructing the Final Solution Control of Truth as I sit drooling my coffee over this comment.
I apologize for any Malinformation* I may or may not perpetrate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malinformation
*Please not that this Wiki definition has recently been altered.
‘Truth’ has been changed to “information based on fact”.
A few weeks ago the first line read ‘truth that causes harm …”.
So ‘They’ are at it again.
We ain’t in Kansas anymore.
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“We see them constructing the Final Solution Control of Truth”
And Oz leads the way.
See tonyb’s comment #3.
If only Ozzians could lead the way in stopping it.
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The Internet is designed on a top down basis – server & client. That is the same topology as legacy media – publisher & reader. As such the top – the publisher has control and the reader gets to accept what is dished, or not dished, out to them. And malign governments have a censorship point.
An alternate topology is peer to peer where people publish directly to each other much like an email conversation. Putting their ‘private websites’ into the ‘virtual domain’ gets past all the controls. All it requires is for the technology to be put in place.
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The Internet is designed on a top down basis – server & client.
Originally it was but no more.
Albo the Commie and his Ministry of Truth are giving free publicity to decentralised social media networks.
It’s easy to target Elon Musk, but who do you target with a decentalised social media network?
https://sopa.tulane.edu/blog/decentralized-social-networks#:
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Very interesting. It’s not a full peer-to-peer mesh network. It does have a per user individual social media site. It’s not fully virtual. It’s still top down even though the top is very close to the base. It’s a good halfway house.
Each user would have to have a piece of hardware that hosts their server that is online all the time. It could be as simple as a Raspberry Pi (which requires some knowledge to set up). Far better to have dedicated off the shelf hardware.
A full virtual mesh network can operate with just software and with that software operating on everyday devices. It would be ephemeral – cache – based in it’s online existence.
The intercept points with all these are :- 1) the DDNS, 2) the ‘permission’ to be able to install the apps.
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This is war – Your thoughts on the TOR Browser
One option which is not currently illegal to my knowledge is downloading tools which allow circumvention of any censorship. One such tool is the TOR Browser.
TOR makes it very clear where they stand on internet censorship – from the TOR about page: “all of the people who have been involved in Tor are united by a common belief: internet users should have private access to an uncensored web.“
The TOR project was created to allow mainland Chinese and other oppressed peoples circumvent harsh national censorship policies, by disguising the internet route to censored site, using relay stations provided by volunteers.
https://www.torproject.org/download/
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I am always very suspicious. There is a lot of software out there, especially free software, that has been developed with secret service etc – CIA \ FBI \ DHS – funding and that is instrumented. A good source of security information is Naomi Brockwell (a fellow sandgroper). Browsers wise there is the Brave Browser.
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Kim is right. TOR ( The Onion Routing) was thought of in the military research laboratory (NRL). Their modern day claims to independence and goodness are a tad doubtful. Brave is indeed quite good , it kills ads without triggering adblock removal demands from a website as an extra bonus. VPNs have their minuses, but they do what they meant to do, pay if you need a decent one.
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Here is Rebel News Canada piece about how the Left are grooming young children into transgenderism with propaganda books. Do ten year olds really have to read this garbage?
They could instead be learning something about history, science or technology, which of course they aren’t because the Left are not interested in promoting real education. A population just smart enough to follow orders but not smart enough to question them is what they want.
https://youtu.be/K72i31vkWi0
Of course, they are doing the same thing in all Western countries.
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Trudeau Regime To Give Over $100 Million to Pro-Pedophilia Movement
The Trudeau regime has announced plans to donate over $100 million in taxpayer funds to pro-pedophilia groups in Canada who want to decriminalize sex between adults and children.
According to the 2024 Canadan Budget, a whopping CA$150 million ($110 million) has been allocated to promote the MAPs agenda by expanding equity groups such as the ‘2SLGBTQI+’.
https://thepeoplesvoice.tv/trudeau-regime-to-give-over-100-million-to-pro-pedophilia-movement/
We normals don’t hate them. We’re just offended by them, and the normalising of the criminality of child abuse.
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For the first time in Asia, in July 2011, Korea introduced using chemical castration on sexual offenders. Under the current law, perpetrators of sexual crimes against minors aged less than 16 yr are subject to chemical castration.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3565125/
Anyone object?
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Such text books are not available in China and Russia. No litter boxes in scholls either.
Just the basics of reading, writng and arithmatic (and advanced computer programming). Who is winning the educution wars?
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Smartphonrs are a pain aren’t thry. Gotta correct evety 3rd wird. 😆
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Glad someone recognised my Freudian slip
“Yesterday I couldn’t spell engineer. Now I are one.”
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On a tangent: Flint Dibble’s Experience On The JRE With Graham Hancock & Joe Rogan
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Latest loony fad: New style jeans looks like you pi$$ed yourself
FASHION hits a sticky spot after a designer brought out a pair of jeans with a ready made wet patch across the crotch.
The design, which was created by Jordan Luca and shown off during their Fall/Winter catwalk collection, is on sale now.
Jeans for the brand sell for around £500 but not everyone is a fan.
One person commented online: No more having to wait for the bathroom, you can just p*** yourself and say it’s the design.”
Another added: “Why would anyone wear this?”
https://citizenwatchreport.com/new-style-jeans-looks-like-you-pissed-yourself/
What next. Best not to ask.😉
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My preference is for jeans like these
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-celebrity-big-brother-star-angelique-frenchy-morgan-seen-wearing-pink-102933066.html
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That’s what’s known as a bimbo.😆
Presumably your preference is to look at them rather than wear them?😎
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Certainly not into a gay bar!
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As a joke 30 years ago I gave a tentative name of “Project Bluesuit” to a proposal at the company I worked for that I thought would never evenuate.
However, the name stuck and the CEO starting telling everyone about “Project Bluesuit”!
I was right and it never eventuated, however I got a trip to the UK and Denmark as part of the evaluation process.
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I believe the original saying is “doing business without advertising is like pissing in the dark. You know you’re doing it but nobody else does.”
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Fact Check: No, The Gateway Pundit is Not Losing Its Audience
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/04/fact-check-no-gateway-pundit-is-not-losing/
Next, some MSM spin and comment.
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Spin on TGP from MSM (and Straight Arrow News):
MAGA conspiracy blog files for bankruptcy amid string of defamation lawsuits [also see Straight Arrow News video embedded]
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/maga-conspiracy-blog-files-for-bankruptcy-amid-string-of-defamation-lawsuits/ar-AA1nFajT?rc=1&ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=d2e16525ed714120a29333d989ad5c37&ei=28
I read TGP every day, this must make me “far right” even though I also read left wing articles e.g. Glenn Greenwald, especially after watching his Hong Kong interview of Edward Snowden before he fled to Russia. That got my attention.
I think these left-biased media people would wet themselves if they actually met anyone genuinely far right or far left – there’s not much difference.
Think Antifa (communist/anarchist rooted in 1930s Germany) Ukraine’s Azov Battalion (socialist/fascist also rooted in 1930s Germany) Soviet Russia (Antifa) vs Nazi Germany (Azov). It’s not all black and white as even Huff Post concedes (see next).
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What Exactly Do We Mean By ‘Far Right’ [or ‘Far Left’]
By Roanna Carleton-Taylor
Anti Hate Activist, Co-Founder of Resisting Hate
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/roanna-carletontaylor/what-exactly-do-we-mean-b_b_17393486.html
Ok, so far so good but right at the end of the article I see this:
Astounding hypocrisy. We are witnessing the worst oppression devaluing (think debanking) and discrimination against the right by the supposedly liberal left that has ever been seen in USA and Canada.
In USA CAN NZ and OZ during covid we witnessed the rise of left-driven fascism i.e. the merger of corporate (e.g. Pfizer) and govt power, complete with corporate immunity from liability and govt goon squads.
Europe too of course, Carleton-Taylor goes there, but I’ll leave that can of worms unopened.
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‘ … left-driven fascism …’
That is the CCP model.
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The national Socialist model as used in Germany 90 years back actually.
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Hitler was impressed with Mussolini’s fascism.
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‘Over 98 percent’ of world’s central banks gearing up for new system of programmable, trackable ‘digital cash’ and 24 nations will have ‘live CBDCs’ by 2030
All this despite almost zero coverage in the mainstream corporate media to date, most of which still refers to a fully digitized monetary system as ‘conspiracy theory’
The era of cash money is nearing its end, and with it will come the end of privacy.
The World Economic Forum claims, in a new report, that 98 percent of the world’s central banks have agreed to implement the globalists’ long-awaited dream of a cashless society.
And the WEF is not the first to reveal the plans of the globalist elite, which have been preparing for years to eliminate paper fiat currencies. But this latest report indicates the grand plan is now very close to being realized, perhaps just awaiting a triggering event – a Black Swan event of some type – before making the switch to “digital cash.”
As first reported by Slay News, the latest revelation was made in a 83-page white paper from the WEF which declares that nations around the world will soon be ready to adopt a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, in place of traditional money.
https://leohohmann.com/2024/04/26/new-report-over-98-percent-of-worlds-central-banks-gearing-up-for-new-system-of-programmable-trackable-digital-cash-and-24-nations-will-have-live-cbdcs-by-2030/
https://youtu.be/ETxmCCsMoD0?si=L9e1kbodkzyh0rrH
Let them eat
cakebugs!90
Anyone living outside the urban areas can probably understand the word “barter”
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Especially after the internet goes down, or the power goes off, or the CBDC gets hacked, or banks get hacked or your personal account gets hacked…
The more centralised something becomes, the bigger the disaster when it fails.
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No sleep? Try creatine instead of coffee to sharpen your mind
A team from the German national research institution Forschungszentrum Jülich finds that a single high dose of creatine can temporarily improve cognitive performance after a night of poor sleep.
To conduct this research, published in Scientific Reports, the study authors gathered 15 participants and kept them awake all night. Over the course of their sleepless evening, everyone had to solve a series of cognitive tasks. Sleep deprivation is known to cause changes in brain metabolism that promote the cellular uptake of creatine. Before getting started, participants consumed a single, high dose of creatine – which is a key metabolic product found in food but also produced by the body itself.
Three hours after everyone took their creatine, researchers observed a positive effect on the brain metabolism and cognitive performance among the test participants. This effect reached its peak around four hours afterward and lasted for up to nine hours. More specifically, the research team recorded improvements in processing capacity and short-term memory.
https://studyfinds.org/sleep-creatine-sharpen-mind/
Creatine – it’s not just for muscles! 😉
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God bless Aussies and their humour!
https://youtu.be/WddwluTpmgY?si=vthkaxqR2lbSObhl
Never heard of Bush Barbie until now.😎
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If only Albo’s mother had got this message before her fling with handsome Italian steward Carlo Albanese on the Fairsky!
Maryanne Ellery’s relationship with Carlo had been brief, but in conservative early 1960s Australia she thought it wise to concoct the fiction of a marriage, adopt his surname and claim she was widowed even before their boy was born.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10716917/Secret-family-history-man-PM-Anthony-Albanese-long-lost-father.html
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As The Comment Said
Whoever thought this commercial up is a genius.
Best use of 45 Secs
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Blimey, that was brilliant! Never heard of her before.
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Orban, a voice of sanity in Europe.
“We have the leadership of the European Union, which has embarked on several major projects of its own choosing, such as the ‘green transition’, sustainable development policies, migration, military, and sanction policies, and all of them have failed. The current EU leadership must step down, and we need new leaders!”
I think his comments can easily be applied in Australia, where incompetence and self created problems are no strangers.
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““Australia is NOT a Free Country”: Elon Musk Threatened with Jail for Defying Censorship Demands”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/04/26/australia-is-not-a-free-country-will-australians-need-tor-browser-to-bypass-the-great-australian-firewall/
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“Australia is NOT a Free Country”
Is the current ruling party in Australia trying to put the leading opposition leader in jail?
If not, then Australia is freer than the US.
Are the federal police clearly and openly actively working for one side of the political spectrum?
How about your intelligence services?
Do members of your government foment hatred for your most popular opposition leader (say a former Prime Minister) and at the same time introduce legislation to strip him of his security protection.
The thread freedom hangs by in my country is unraveling.
It’s observable now.
It will just be clear to almost everybody within the next 18 months.
The rest will pretend.
Actually we’ll all be required to pretend.
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18 months, you’re optimistic!
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Recently our senior theologian was found guilty of an impossible child-sex offence by a corrupt judicial process egged on by ferocious state media. Politicians (always of the same non-Hard Leftist kind) have been sullied and hounded out of office in similar ways. Sure, we might trail the US by a few years, but in some ways we are true “leaders.”
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Saturday ejukayshun: world’s oldest toy
https://imgbox.com/XeJg4P8e
Amazing. It’s lasted 7,499 years longer than Chinesium products.😆
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I call and raise you one – a sex toy of course
https://www.barcelona-metropolitan.com/features/history/the-28-000-year-history-of-the-dildo/#:
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I am of course aware of that one, but didn’t want to post it as it might upset the gentle folk here. 😉
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Beats anything The Famed Australian Aboriginal Indigenous People Created or Lived in
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Stoneage.
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Thought for the day
How is it that NASA can provide 8k quality video from Mars, but video from security cameras on Earth look like Bigfoot in a fog?
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Similarly, in April 2021, NASA announced that they had managed to extract oxygen from CO2 on Mars.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-perseverance-mars-rover-extracts-first-oxygen-from-red-planet
According to the news release the technology extracts one oxygen molecule from each CO2 molecule leaving behind one CO (Carbon Monoxide) molecule.
No mention of course of further development to double the extraction of oxygen and leave behind one carbon atom. That wouldn’t suit the CO2 and climate change narrative.
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Photosynthesis on Mars?
Great.
10
FWIW
“Emergency-O-Rama”
https://kunstler.com/clusterf*-nation/emergency-o-rama/
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United Nations Climate Summit Host Azerbaijan: Oil and Gas a ‘Gift of the Gods’
https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2024/04/26/united-nations-climate-summit-host-azerbaijan-oil-gas-gift-gods/
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Small is Ugly
Why Real Environmentalists Go Big
Forget what you’ve heard. Small isn’t beautiful, at least when it comes to energy. Small is ugly, dirty, and expensive. Clean, affordable and reliable energy has to be a collective enterprise, no matter how much that conflicts with the mythic American-cum-environmentalist ideals of self-reliance and going it alone, ideas that may have fit on the frontier but don’t translate well to urban and suburban life.
I am, inadvertently, running a real-world confirmation of this proposition.
Last summer I bought a cabin in the woods in upstate New York. The previous owner had installed an 11 kilowatt generator. My wife and I picked the place for a variety of reasons, the generator not among them. But now I’m in a neighborhood where many, perhaps most, of the houses have emergency generators, because our supplier has a lot of “service interruptions.” (I’ll identify the company only as the Friendly Local Utility, FLU for short; names have been changed to protect the guilty.)
The generator kicks in at least once a week, but in stormy weather, several times a day. We could handle an interruption of a few minutes or a few hours, but the region is prone to storms and FLU may be out for days, which is another matter. Especially since the well and the septic system are essential, and they both have electric pumps.
And herein is an electric equivalent of the Tragedy of the Commons. When everybody has access to a public resource, people tend not to care for it. In another way, it resembles the plight of public education; people with money can insulate themselves from its troubles, and those who remain suffer. In the electricity case, people who can afford a private back-up will pay for that, and the impetus to strengthen the common system declines.
It’s a tragedy for everybody because small is ugly and the back-up is worse.
– The Trend to Go It Alone
My decision to bail (or, more properly, the decision by the previous owner of the house) is hardly unusual. In August, the Washington Post reported that in 2002 only 0.63 percent of houses had emergency generators, but now that number is 5.77 percent, and rising.
This counts installed systems.
Uncounted are the portable units on a contraption like a wheelbarrow, that require more gasoline every eight hours or so, that require the homeowner to go out and start it up, often in the dark, rain or snow, and then string extension cords through the house windows, to the refrigerator or other critical equipment.
– What does it cost?
– Other Approaches
– Or Blame Your Sinful Self
– Energy and Equity
And, as the current cliche goes, this is a first-world problem.
There is an equity issue; I can afford the 66 cents per kilowatt-hour, and a lot of other people can’t.
So people like me are opting out, or at least setting themselves up in a way where they’re not dependent on the common system. An analogue is sending your kids to private school and de-funding the public ones.
The real solution is more reliance on the grid. The grid, although much maligned as “creaky” or “outdated,” is the mechanism for moving clean energy around. Yes, solar can go on my roof, with a lot of expensive batteries in the basement, but solar “farms” are far less costly. Wind is only practical on a large scale, and so is hydro. Nuclear energy, an essential ingredient of a low-carbon system, only comes in large packages.
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Environmentalists vs. the Environment
Steven F. Hayward • 26 Apr, 2024
A funny thing has happened on the way to the glorious “energy transition” to a net-zero economy: environmentalists keep getting in the way.
It is well understood that the maniacal drive to install massive wind and solar power projects, not to mention large new battery farms and “carbon-capture” facilities, all require substantial expansion and upgrading of the electricity grid. When Sen. Joe Manchin finally capitulated in 2022 to supporting President Joe Biden’s blowout “green energy” subsidy bill (the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act”), it was supposed to be part of a deal in which regulatory and permitting reform would follow, not only to allow for a natural gas pipeline in West Virginia that is dear to Manchin, but other infrastructure projects, especially to enable new green energy supplies.
But the permitting reform legislation never passed Congress. Environmental fundamentalists, including 70 Democratic House members, opposed any permitting reform. The chief achievement of decades of environmental activism is the patchwork of laws at the national and state level, such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), that have empowered environmentalists to slow and sometimes block development of all kinds. While NEPA and its state-level versions have not stopped all development, they can delay or increase the cost of projects sufficiently that many projects are simply deterred from even being proposed. When one lawsuit fails, environmental lawyers are often ready at the courthouse steps to file a dozen more, and the cycle of delay repeats.
Environmentalists are loath to give up their superpower, even for the supposed “climate change” kryptonite of “green energy.” The Sierra Club, for example, has spent six years blocking a proposed transmission line intended to import emission-free hydropower from Canada. The Sierra Club has also opposed proposed solar power projects in California’s desert areas. (The silver lining here is that the Sierra Club is in deep financial trouble at the moment, with internal rifts and mass layoffs imminent, according to The New Republic.)
The Washington Post editorial page took note of this perverse state of affairs in a recent editorial, “Environmentalism Could Stop the Clean-Energy Transition.” The Post notes:
Incidentally, parallel to the energy story it is occurring to some liberals that the same regulatory hell used to throttle energy projects has also contributed significantly to the lack of affordable housing, especially in California and other high-cost states like New York.
Even the Biden administration has figured this out, recently issuing a report that concluded “meaningful change will require State and local governments to reevaluate the land-use regulations that reduce the housing supply.” But opposition to changes in housing regulation come most strongly from wealthy neighborhoods where Biden and Democrats typically receive two-thirds of the vote in elections.
00
Want free money? Simply find me a photo or short video showing ScoMo being anxious. Another case of “poor me”. Don’t believe a word of his sob story although I can imagine that being coerced into forcing MRNA injections onto the populace when the danger os well known might not sit well on people with a conscience.
80
Sorry, SloMo played the victim card first, you must listen to the victims.
30
Here is one with ScumMo giving the Hitler Salute
https://7news.com.au/politics/scott-morrison-hits-out-at-keyboard-warriors-attacking-happy-clapping-ways-c-71966
If it was not for Albo, ScumMo would take the award for Ausralia’s dumbest PM
20
Easy to dance on bones of a failed man ?
I, for one, would be happy top vote for him again, based on his overall record. He was not born a Leader and only half-heartedly tried to lead a party.
He did what he could in the circumstances and expected his team to follow his example – a naive man!
13
Interesting enough to share I thought
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/fallacy-rules-world
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>”As time went on, we encountered many studies showing that more vaccination was associated with more infection”
In NZ, more vaccination is associated with more deaths given the vax status of the dead. I tracked this for a while noting that the steep rise of vaxxed deaths was accompanied by a noticeable fall in reporting.
Still going on too:
Covid-19 update: 2383 new cases, 21 further deaths [NZ]
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/515003/covid-19-update-2383-new-cases-21-further-deaths
“deaths attributed to the virus”and “Of the new cases, 1490 were reinfections” – But the article studiously avoids stating vax status. A while ago that data was published on our Ministry of Health COVID-19: Case demographics page, but that’s been scrubbed now – a bit awkward for the narrative I suppose.
It is not that the data doesn’t exist, it does (see next).
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I found this data request at data.govt.nz (not Ministry of Health note) which is the data request with comment attached:
COVID-19 Hospitalisations and Deaths by vaccination status and age, plus person view vaccinations [Request]
https://data.govt.nz/datasetrequest/show/1011
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I disagree with “Getting a booster, reduced the protection, overall, to the level of the unvaccinated” previous. I tracked 13 weeks of death/vax status data in 2023 and at the end got these totals (note “unvaxxed” includes 1 shot – they didn’t separate out):
Deaths over 13 weeks 22/4 – 18/7 2023 (NZ)
6 – Unvaxxed plus 1 shot
9 – 2 shots
28 – Boosted
Earlier when RNZ was graphing the Ministry of Health data on a per 100,000 basis it was clear that 1 shot was marginally best followed by 0 shots followed by 2 shots and worst was 3 shots and over.
Those graphs disappeared when boosted deaths took off.
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Australia’s e-Safety Commissioner [Julie Inman Grantwill] need to work back this weekend to deal with Craig Kelly’s top 70 Albo memes and earn her $450,000 salary!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slwVbjB9piQ
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We are told household solar is creating difficulties in controlling the grid due to a flood of power being delivered in daylight hours but not when there is heavy power drawdown after dusk. In the real world, we are told, the subsidies must stop and those with solar panels (sold a pup) on their roofs must begin paying more to fund the problems ie remove incentives for more.
My question is, roof solar is one thing but why is the Federal government going all out to build more solar farms which surely must have exactly the same problems. Is it all about meeting these inane promises of ‘net zero’, broadcasting what great world citizens our governments are forcing us to seem to be? At the same time the same governments destroy the biggest business advantage our nation had ie cheap fossil fuel energy. We see the ramifications of this everywhere now but especially in soaking up any spare cash the middle classes had to maintain their standard of living.
On the same note, a couple of years ago after the lithium battery fires where noticed to be common place, a person who was expert in these matters came out and said: (to paraphrase) ‘Take note. You think those fires are worrisome. Just wait until one of those megabatteries goes up. It will be like having a huge bomb blow in the town.’ So to say batteries are the answer can only be the case if one can prove this sort of thing definitely cannot happen! My inexpert, untrained view.
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The “difficulties” of concern are the financial drawdowns arising from the effect of distributed generation on wind and large-scale solar.
I expect the renewables industry wants distributed generation only to be able to feed in to the grid when it is not competing with wind and large-scale solar, ie using battery storage.
10
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“Generals are always preparing for the last war”
Australia has already fallen.
The Chinese have already won
Sun Tzu was Chinese after all!
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
40
The ADF is preparing for the next war with drone technology.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-09/australia-boosts-combat-drone-program-amid-defense-tensions
12
Greg Sheridan is a complete tosser
40
It’s a bit hard to say when this government is at its most disgraceful.
No sooner does one think it and the government comes up with an even worse piece of behaviour.
I thought its worst piece now is (already since Sheridan’s) its non response to the pro-hamas demonstrations.
But I know even worse comes – which Dutton and others foolishly support – with its mis/disinformation legislation,
censorship, from which it excuses itself.
Governments are the biggest wielders of mis/disinformation. They employ huge numbers of wordsmiths, paid for by
taxpayers, just to write pieces in which mis/disinformation is in the ascendency to camouflage the worst parts
of policies to be brought down on us all. They treat the nation as a nation of fools, using ‘moral values’ to
‘defend’ some section of the community – and don’t we have a lot of ‘sections’.p but this legislation will make the politicians the only source of ‘truth’ that suits (themselves).
It’s already been said here that blogs like this will disappear under the threat of unpayable
fines being imposed by the AEMO. We’ve now seen this type of policy weaponised against Musk – he who had
already defied Rowlands and her threat of imposed huge fines lifting every day until he obeys her edict to remove
from ‘X’ material she considered mis/disinformation as though she is the world’s internet censor. Now we find the
same Musk attacked by our E Commissioner demanding he take down a factual video available it is said on other social
media platforms. What could go wrong? Jo must be expecting a visit the day this legislation is passed.
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Linking the ozone depletion non-recovery to climate change.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68906013
00
A good example for my post #19
00
Nothing to do with CFC or global warming.
‘That ozone loss is particular to the polar continent, because of chemical reactions that occur in very low temperature, high atmospheric clouds. Those reactions break down ozone – eating a hole in the layer.’
10
The whole BBC article reminds me of the expression ‘oh what a tangled web we weave….’.
They are trying to juggle so many of their dishonest narratives that anyone can see the ridiculous inconsistencies and contradictions.
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FWIW
“Bird-Flu, Censorship, & 100 Day Vaccines: 7 Predictions For “The Next Pandemic” ”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/bird-flu-censorship-100-day-vaccines-7-predictions-next-pandemic
I guess latest version of “Do this and two weeks to flatten the curve” will be about mid-year?
20
He’s expecting another virus.
Make sure you get your vitamin D levels up to speed, and its co-factors also. Before it comes.
Cheers
Dave B
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A warmer world is better for Londoners.
https://notrickszone.com/2024/04/25/new-study-a-warmer-london-has-reduced-the-winter-death-toll-by-447-per-year-since-1976/
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Taliban Join Climate Talks! We Are Saved!
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/04/25/taliban-join-climate-talks-we-are-saved-n3787171
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