kgwilson

Written from someone who has no concept of another culture that had no need of technology and inventions of Europe and Asia. They were in tune with the harsh land they lived in and managed to survive in every corner of it for those 60,000 years without building empires and monuments. The concept of ownership didn't even enter their minds.

As a Kiwi married to an Aussie & having lived here for 18 years now my observations are these Australians in general are racist. Aboriginals are seen as not equal to Europeans and cause problems. There is a culture of Us and Them. No government has ever done anything effective to deal with what they see as an Aboriginal problem. Politicians have their public opinion and their personal opinion (which is never admitted) but influences their decisions. Historically the treatment of aboriginal people has been absolutely appalling. Obviously these are generalisations and do not apply to everyone. Everything done to date with apologies for past injustices, Closing the Gap, providing handouts, etc has been an abject failure. How could it be anything else with current Aboriginal incarceration rates and the Alice Springs current issues among the hundreds of other things. Some recognition in the constitution and providing a Voice to Parliament may not be perfect but I think it is a good first step. The aboriginal Tribes and Mobs need to become masters of their own destiny and current processes don't provide this. Maybe the Voice will enable them to get together and get some consensus on issues that confront them. Maybe it won't. Trying to modify a many thousands of years old culture in 200 years is far to big an ask. The No campaigners seem to want something more in a sort of Treaty. How can you have a treaty 200 years after conquering these people? I'll be voting yes not because it will make anything perfect but because everything else done in the past has failed, and failed miserably.

So it's Gun God help America. I'll bet Moloch is in cahoots with the god of undertakers, I presume being America there is one among the 3000 or so identified gods around the world.

Somewhere way, way back in this thread there are examples from studies done in Australia of cropping and grazing in solar farms. The panels are not 100% cover like the picture shows over the canals and the result was very low loss of productivity from co-cropping/grazing with reduced water loss and shade/shelter provided by the solar panels. Wool growers reported better quality wool and higher yield from fewer sheep. The term agrivoltaics has been coined to describe the practice https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/05/31/graziers-in-nsw-agrisolar-trial-report-improved-wool-quality/ https://esdnews.com.au/growing-crops-under-solar-panels-agrivoltaics-takes-off/

Especially Djokovics father who was saying Long live Russia in Serbian next to the dickhead with the flag with the other dickheads mug on it. Many Serbs are Slavic and they were the ones who created the Omarska concentration camp in the 1990. They had a policy of ethnic cleansing & 4-5000 prisoners were killed & their bodies disposed of at the camp. I'll bet Djokovics father was a supporter of the ethnic cleansing given his support for Putin.

The Soviet union imploded because economically the USSR was bankrupt. They had spent 40 years building a nuclear arsenal, a huge military in terms of personnel and masses of equipment through a process of systematically stripping everything possible from the other Soviet republics without causing enough major dissent to fuel large internal rebellion. They had the best rocketry technology in the world, superb military aircraft and heavy tanks and the worst consumer goods and equipment imaginable. Opening up Russia provided the perfect spawning ground for the rise of Oligarchs and massive corruption while the general populace slowly found better quality food and consumer goods from the West to keep them happy. This was the perfect environment for Putin and others like him to work their way back in to gaining control and authority The Tsars had done this for centuries until dissent amongst the masses got the Bolsheviks in using Lenins philosophy as a cover. It took no time at all for the utter brutality to set in and control was established and once Stalin rose to the fore it reached fanatical levels with millions killed, imprisoned or enslaved. Putin became emboldened with oil and gas reserves that Western Europe was gobbling up at ever increasing rates and the 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for the Donbas rebels caused nothing but a minor irritation from the West who basically stood by and watched. Now Russias economy is in tatters. Putin and Oligarch mates have stripped the money from the country and they have been depleting the Soviet era build up of arms and equipment to the point where the next move is probably the last. Russias reserves are severely depleted but they do have a huge population to throw in as canon fodder. And there is the nuclear option although much of the old arsenal is probably inoperative. So who will make the next move? Russia has been sending equipment and personnel to Belarus on the pretext it is for military exercises. Putin is desperate for any ally but Lukashenko who supports him is deeply unpopular with Belarusians most of whom share more affinity with their other neighbours, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. There are only 9.4 Belarusians so it would not be hard for Putin to take control if Lukashenko was deposed. No wonder Poland is keen on building up its arms capacity and supplying Ukraine. The token Challenger 2, Leopard 2 and Abrams M1 tank supply to Ukraine is useful in a logistics and training perspective but also as a possible deterrent as Putin has nothing that can match any of these. More are likely to follow once the infrastructure for them is established. Another go to take Kiev is pretty unlikely to succeed given they will have no element of surprise and even without the supply of other equipment and ammunition Ukraine will most likely beat them back. It is 11 months since the start of the war. Another 12 months will hopefully see an end with the Russians pushed out and Putin gone. The problem the will be which other nutter will take over while the Russian brainwashed population continues to suffer.

The US is apparently now going to supply some 30 Abrams M1 tanks. While the experts agree it is a very capable tank, it is also very heavy and is a serious gas guzzler with its turbine engine. The logistics requirements are huge for this tank. This seems to be a common thread with high tech US supplied equipment. When the Taliban inherited a large amount of modern high tech US gear the comment from one of the senior US officials was that it didn't really matter what they left there because it was so unreliable, that it all needed specialised trained service personnel and numerous parts that they did not leave behind. The British Challenger 2 is also a very good tank & even the older Challenger 1 is better that any of the Russian tanks according to former NATO General Sir Richard Shirreff. Only 1 was incapacitated in the Gulf war & that was from British Artillery. Apparently Jordan has 400 Challenger 1s that could be purchased quite cheaply. The consensus though is that the German Leopard 2 is the best fit for use in Ukraine. The real issue is that the decisions on tank supply should have been made months ago as getting them to Ukraine plus training and logistics mean they will not be ready for any Spring Offensive and the numbers promised are too small. Ukraine needs several brigades with about 500 tanks plus the logistics support & training according to General Shirreff. This would allow them to take back and hold all of their lost territory with a huge ground offensive. Only nuclear weapons would stop this. Then of course the territory is useless for anyone.

They may not have been able to convict Pell though lack of evidence but he personally orchestrated the system of payouts to victims of abuse from all his Priest mates that cost the catholic church sweet FA, (the maximum was 50k, most got much less) in return for written statements that those poor buggers would never be able to make any further claim or criticise the catholic church. He was a grub. Good riddance.

No the mothership is shaped like a Cup hiding behind the moon so when they get back together the cup and saucer will be used by Dr Who in the blue Police box to poison Daleks who are trying to exterminate umm everything. Sounds plausible.

I am not a great Jazz & Soul fan but Renee Geyer was something else. Her voice has been described as being like "cigarettes rolled in honey". She had the rawness of Janis Joplin with the lift of Aretha Franklin. RIP Renee.

And lifted from TikTok. It's funny how UFOs are mostly depicted as flying saucers. It seems the people creating these scenes think that shape is the most likely one to draw gullible people in.

But did the number of bums match the number of heads? More bums wouldbe cause for concern.

Whatever happened to Bailey bridges? They were cheap to manufacture, easy to transport and easy and fast to erect. After WW2 they were everywhere and some still exist. That may be a good temporary way to get back on track. They are only single lane but that wouldn't matter.

I see that Andrey Medvedev a former high ranking Wagner group member who defected in July and has been on the run ever since has crossed the border to Norway and is seeking political asylum. He is reported to be ready to tell everything he knows about the Wagner group. Could be interesting though likely will just confirm what we already know.

It looks like Wagners have had a small gain in Soledar with Ukrainian forces withdrawing so as not to get cut off in a pincer movement. Ukrainian defence was pretty thin here. Wagners still can't make any progress in Bahkmut though where they have been losing mostly ex Russian prisoners for months.

WA seems to have the illegally parked/abandoned car/upcoming roadworks issue nailed.

If you can't afford medical insurance in the US you are generally f**ked.

I have private hospital cover but my GP bulk bills and prescriptions are capped to a certain amount annually & then they are free after that (unless the drug is not in the PBS) so the system works well for me. But the rumblings are getting louder and the system is struggling to attract GPs. Many clinics are now charging a co-payment as they say they cannot manage on the amount provided by the system so the number of bulk billing clinics is diminishing. Mine now charges for small procedures. I had a small punch biopsy on a suspected BCC recently & paid $50.00 (still cheap). The situation is probably worse in large cities with high costs associated with real estate/rent and wages/salaries. Getting an appointment urgently is almost impossible now. It used to be no problem. Some people are resorting to hospital ERs as they can't get an appointment with their GP. Family in NZ say the same is happening there so what is going on in the UK is occurring elsewhere. We just haven't caught up yet. Why this is happening everywhere I don't know & have not researched it, but it is a worrying trend. Seems to have accelerated since the pandemic.

The yanks have lost just about every war they have been in since WW2. They just keep fighting themselves at home with about 1.3 guns for every human alive & more than 1 mass shooting a day. Even 6 year olds are shooting teachers now. Their government changes every 2 years anyway so they don't need to get overthrown, though it was close a couple of years ago.🤐

It will be hard to shake the dyed in the wool older ex Soviet Russians who believe the nightly BS served up on State TV. Even when real information is available they don't believe it. The same can be said for the 50 million Trump nutters in the US who still believe the election was stolen despite not a single piece of evidence ever having been produced, the courts throwing all the appeals and lawsuits out & the lawyers being disbarred. Ultra right wing outfits are gaining ground everywhere. Look at Brazil. Long term though hopefully there will be enough dissent and disgruntlement to force through enough change to reverse the "Russian Empire rebuild" policies of Putin & his idiot followers.

I just read that in Virginia after a 6 year old shot his teacher, that guns must be secured from anyone under 14. So once your kid is 14 you can leave guns lying around the house for them to play with. Also apparently a 6 year does not have the ability or mental state to form the intent to commit a crime but a 7 year old does. Really? Only in America.

The counter attack a few months ago in the Luhansk was the major eye opener then the retreat from Kherson. The Russians have concentrated their attacks around Bahkmut but have made no progress in months. They keep probing to the North and South & gain a block or a paddock & then get beaten back again. The infamous Wagner group of mercenaries has been severely weakened as well & they will be running out of prisoners to send as new canon fodder. Ukraine has been hitting Russian airfields and their positions in Crimea and other select targets as they are smart enough to know that firing off artillery all the time will just use up reserves which is what the Russians have been doing. They have far superior intelligence and partisan contacts which the Russians lack. How long it will take for Putin to go I am not prepared to guess. The cap on the oil price, reduced gas supply and sanctions will be biting harder now that the Europeans have now got alternative supplies. I said it somewhere before but I like the statement Churchill made after the allied victory in North Africa. "This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, it is perhaps the end of the beginning". Churchill was right. Stalingrad & North Africa were the turning points in WW2. The Ukrainian gains in the North and liberation of Kherson I think will be the turning points in this war. Putin may have another go (something like the battle of Kursk or the battle of the Bulge) possibly from Belarus in another attempt to seize Kiev. If he does and it fails he is gone 100%.

At the end of WW2 thousands of returning Russian soldiers were pulled out of the lines and shipped East to the Gulags. Stalin imprisoned over 18 million people from 1920 till his death in 1953. The song by Al Stewart "Roads to Moscow" is an anthology of a Russian soldiers life from Hitlers invasion to incarceration at the end of WW2. Great song about 8 minutes long.

A farmer friend of mine went through the process about 10 years ago. The cost to get power to his new house & sheds was over 30k so he invested in solar & batteries plus a backup diesel generator which cost him less than connecting to the grid. He has no gas at all & runs his large property with several large freezers & everything else that a modern house requires from his solar installation. He has not yet had to run the generator because of lack of capacity of his system. He just fires it up a couple of times a year to make sure everything is still working.