jetstream

Here's the latest shot at 11 am, 08/03/2022, of the Jet Stream over Australia.

You don't have to be an expert to know it's pathetic. We cannot speculate really if the pissy Jet Stream of the last few days is the cause or is the effect of the silly weather we are having here in Sydney. My guess would be that because the Jet Stream is so weak, it cannot push away the "normal" alternate of high and low pressure system over the continent, usually changing the system every three days.

irishtoon

Broadly speaking, it’s no surprise that society’s elites hold their noses when they approach the topic of mass democracy. When have the wealthy and powerful ever thought it was a good idea to put decision-making in the hands of the poor and ignorant? The answer, ironically enough, is in Gladstone’s era, the century roughly beginning in 1850. That century is perhaps unique in all of human history in how much insistence there was on the importance of redistributing power from the elites to the masses.

sam...

 It's a trap...

The aim of the game is to destroy Russia.

The USA administration, an expert on deceit, is winning the “info war”, which in the olden days would have been called propaganda.

The question is does Putin cares about this at this stage? The info war has been basically set up as to entertain the Ukrainian population with “Dancing With The Stars” (a crass American kultur) while the US has been planning to place nukes on the Russian borders (for the final hard conquest).

As usual the USA set a trap. This time for the Russian bear. 

blessed

This is a story about America, an America that, even today, exists largely beyond the serious attention of mainstream politics and news media. Rather, these institutions ignore or marginalize the story's deeper significance, at a great cost to the country. In other words, the story is not about the usual things that are said to have caused the crisis in American democracy: policy gridlock, electoral fraud, political corruption, even insurrection. Nor is it about the competition between the ideologies of capitalism and socialism, nor the various threats to democracy, such as autocracy, plutocracy and kleptocracy.

America's deepest and most dangerous divide isn't between Democrats and Republicans

policy

Many Western journalists I meet tell me there are not many Nazis in Ukraine. At least no more than in a Western country such as Australia. I don’t argue. I have no proofs of the numbers and THEY have no proofs of the numbers either. But we can run an estimate. Eric Campbell mentioned that at the last elections in Ukraine the Nazis extreme right only got 3 per cent of the votes, This represents about 1.4 million people for the Nazi party.

Does our own extreme right party gets about the same proportion? who knows, but our breed of extreme right is different. They don’t carry guns. They just talk. So there. End of story.

barnaby

Barnaby Joyce has been called in to quell a revolt in a north-west New South Wales branch of the National party over the planned route of Australian Rail Track Corporation’s multi-billion-dollar inland rail project.

In an extraordinary move, the National party’s Narrabri branch voted last month to withdraw support for the government’s preferred route after hearing from long-term local irrigation and hydrology expert Jim Purcell.

grip 

THE NEWS YOU SEE:

A Ukrainian official says a second attempt to evacuate civilians from the under-siege city of Mariupol has failed due to continued Russian shelling.

Key points:

Evacuations from Mariupol were scheduled to begin at noon local time

But civilians were forced back into shelters as the bombardment continued

Russia said the military campaign in Ukraine was going "according to plan" and would not end until Kyiv stopped fighting

Most people in the port city are sleeping in bomb shelters to escape more than six days of near-constant bombardment by encircling Russian forces that has cut off food, water, power and heating supplies, according to the Ukrainian authorities.

hyper

Only self-sufficiency affords total independence. And the Big Picture has also been keenly understood by the Global South.

One of the key underlying themes of the Russia/Ukraine/NATO matrix is that the Empire of Lies (copyright Putin) has been rattled to the core by the combined ability of Russian hypersonic missiles and a defensive shield capable of blocking incoming nuclear missiles from the West, thereby ending Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.)

hyper

Only self-sufficiency affords total independence. And the Big Picture has also been keenly understood by the Global South.

One of the key underlying themes of the Russia/Ukraine/NATO matrix is that the Empire of Lies (copyright Putin) has been rattled to the core by the combined ability of Russian hypersonic missiles and a defensive shield capable of blocking incoming nuclear missiles from the West, thereby ending Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.)

olaf

For almost a decade the policy of the United States toward Russia has been based on Cold War logic. And today the western mainstream media blames Vladimir Putin for current events saying he wants the world to turn back the clock. For eight years, the leading nation of the NATO war pact has done everything in its power to turn the world against Russia. And now, having pushed the American brand of tyranny up to the gates of Moscow, it is Vladimir Putin who is the villain, yet again. The doomsday clock just clanged its first chime, but the liberal order still won’t relent. Dark and evil people and forces are at work today. Forces we thought were wearing white cowboy hats.

polls

Results from the 2019 federal election and the Willoughby by-election suggest that green preferences are likely to decide whether Independent candidates can win previously safe coalition seats.

Analysis of the last federal election results in seats with strong independent candidates and the recent NSW by-elections suggest Green preferences could decide whether Independent candidates can win key seats.

It is dangerous to read too much into any by-election. When they are for state seats while the forthcoming election will be federal it makes detailed assessment even more risky.

koalas

In a country expert in killing off mammal species at a rate exceeding that of others (to be fair, there are so many more to destroy, with more to come), Australians now face the prospect that the koala, one of its most singularly recognisable animals, has its days numbered.

assange 

A MESSAGE to President Zelensky from an old bloke — Gus Leonisky.

You won’t read this because very few people read Gus’s rants but I feel I should write it anyway. 

You are now aware that Russia has not used its full might against your country so far. 

If I may say, you have been foolish. You and your "so-called” friends (I use quote marks because they are devious and deceitful) have created an impossible situation — possibly a trap for Russia to fall into. President Putin can smell a NATO/US trap a million mile away and he had to know he could be stronger than the trap to dive into it.

news-cow

Fifty years ago, an Australian government had big plans for the media, seeing it as biased in favour of conservatism and its ownership too narrowly held. Powerful interests saw a sinister attempt to impose state control. With the death of Moss Cass, Australia’s second and last minister for the media, Mark Sawyer looks at a brave experiment and its legacy.

”I am depicted as a goateed Goebbels, or words to that effect, in seeking to control what the press says and does and so on.

So spoke Australia’s last Minister for the Media, in the House of Representatives, on August 19, 1975. It was a strange insult to level at a man given the name Moses and whose ancestors were eastern European Jews.

sam...

The US and its allies are quietly working on “contingency plans” in case Russian forces succeed in their operation in Ukraine and force the current government into exile, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.