old man emu

That's what Australia did. We grew food to feed the US military, provided logistical support repair base localities and so much of that "ten men at the rear to support one man at the Front. At war's end, the UA did want us to pay for machinery left behind, but it only took until about 1948 for a deal to be made and we bought heaps of stuff at pennies in the pound. That's why rural fire brigades were running around in Blitz wagons well into the 1980s.

As we have seen over the past month, a newly-sworn President can change almost anything with the stroke of a pen, or a Sharpie. Any arrangement Trump makes with any other country can be rescinded in a moment by the next President. Do you think that the Republican candidate in the 2028 election has a snowflakes chance of being elected?

The question is, "Is a continent of Australia's size defendable by such a small population?". As of June 2024, Australia's population aged 18 and over was 21,357,108 people. To what is the best cost/benefit application of finance for defence tools? We could go "lo-tech" and manufacture thousands of the drones we have sent to the Ukraine, or do we go "hi-tech" and invest in a few large naval vessels and anti-shipping aircraft? Do we rely on Nature to provide defensive barriers to invading forces, drawing a scratch line across the land across which they shall not pass?

How do you define "waste in government"? Is it paying for pie-in-the-sky events? Is it spending big advertising government programmes that most of us have no dire need for? Is it jet-setting around to world to conferences dealing with niche topics? Is it ignoring the expertise amongst the Public Service people you have hired for their expertise and out-sourcing to private companies, who will develop a plan for you, but tip off their friends before tabling the plan? I would say that a great way for government waste to be minimised is to recruit a large number of people and train them up as financial auditors, then let them loose on the financial records of all government departments. Let the auditors identify suspicious payments, and then, if fraud has occurred, do what it takes to recoup money. The auditors should also scrutinise all contracts to determine if costings haven't been puffed up. When the payouts for fraud and inflationary quotation have been eliminated, then governments can start funding health, education, defence, and other areas of basic need. One is likely to propose that the manipulation of tax indebtedness is also another area of fraud that needs to be addressed.

To paraphrase a Gun Lobby slogan, Nukes don't kill people. People who use nukes kill people. You've got to congratulate Trump for upholding the one truth of the American culture: In God we trust ..... ... all others pay cash. For a country that trumpets its Christianity, its approval of the current Administration's actions towards its own citizens, and citizens of the World brings these holy words to mind: Matthew 22:37-39 Jesus declared, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Thiis is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself." And love of neighbour is expressed as charity “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1).

Of course the EU States are giving massive support to Ukraine. Ukraine is their buffer zone against Russian expansionism. The other countries of Eastern Europe and Finland know well what it is like to live under Russian rule. They are starting to build up their defence capabilities. There are two main generators of worry about global peace - Trump and Putin. One wonders what sort of regimes would replace them if they dropped dead tomorrow.

It was on a routine, scheduled flight from Sydney to Melbourne. On 21 March 1931, the Southern Cloud departed at 8:10 AM from Sydney. Weather conditions en route were hazardous and much worse than predicted. The flight left Sydney before the crew had seen the synoptic chart published in the Sydney Morning Herald. The chart showed a deep Low pressure area across the route, which would have caused cloud and unstable area, along with westerly winds that would have drifted the plane towards the more mountainous heights than if it had diverted to the west Having no radio, nor radio navigation facilities, the crew could not be warned once the severity of the weather was known, nor could they have navigated to safety.

Australian National Airways, Ltd. (ANA) was a short-lived Australian airline, founded on 3 January 1929 by Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm. ANA began scheduled services on 1 January 1930. It owned five Avro 618 Tens, that were British license-built versions of Kingsford Smith and Ulm's famous Fokker VII/3m Southern Cross, which also flew as an ANA aircraft although was not owned by it. VH-UMF Southern Cloud (crashed March 1931) VH-UMG Southern Star. Sold March 1933 to Hart Aircraft Service of Melbourne to operate a regular Melbourne-Launceston service and renamed Tasman. VH-UMH Southern Sky, sold to Keith Virtue's New England Airways. VH-UMI Southern Moon. Sold 1933 to Charles Ulm, rebuilt as the long-distance flight aircraft VH-UXX Faith in Australia. VH-UNA Southern Sun (crashed November 1931) VH-USU Southern Cross, owned privately by Kingsford Smith and Ulm. Footnote: In researching this post, I found that there is a lot of information on the 'Net about the development of commercial aviation during the period 1930 to 1960. If you get bored reading stuff on this forum, you might enjoy using some of the names in this post to learn more about that history.

And MAGA caps - same place of production. If there is one thing we can say abut Trump's consistency, it is that he is a consistent liar.

Sorry, Nev. Smithy's Southern Cloud crashed in the Snowy Mountains in 1931. This is the Flying Cloud The Boeing Model 307 Stratoliner (or Strato-Clipper in Pan American service, or C-75 in USAAF service) is an American stressed-skin four-engine low-wing tailwheel monoplane airliner derived from the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, which entered commercial service in July 1940.

The American retailer, Costco, has 66 stores in Australia. It is a multinational corporation with its headquarters in the State of Washington. A visit to a Costco store is an amazing thing. You can buy so much foodstuff by the carton and they have everything that you would find in a major department store. The jeans I had bought were marked with Costco's home brand name - Kirkland. I chuckled to myself this morning as I was pulling on my blue jeans. I noticed that they were made in China. What's so funny? Can you imagine how sales will drop in Costco's 616 stores in the USA when Trump's tariffs are introduced? And think about the other stores which sell Levi Strauss jeans. Levi's are made in many developing countries, including Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Lesotho, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Mexico.

Don't you think that the concentration of the Press into the few hands of the wealthy, who see news as a product to be sold for profit, is the reason why people are accepting falsehoods as facts? Go visit the TROVE website and have a look at the old newspapers from your region. Long ago, these newspapers mainly reported simple facts. If a Minister said so-and-so, the newspaper would print the words spoken, and give reasonably equal space to the opposite view. Newspaper did not, on the whole, depend on sensationalism. As Joe Friday from Dragnet was want to say, "The facts, ma'am. Just the facts". Now we get a little bit of fact and a whole lot of comment and opinion, which is usually biased for or against by the whim of the newspaper's owners.

I was wrong in thinking that the original no longer existed, but it is on display at Brisbane Airport. I was thinking of the flying replica which is owned by HARS at Shellharbour Airport, Albion Park NSW.

There are many planes from the first half of the 20th Century that were used to do some unique things. Unfortunately, most of them no longer exist as saving today for our tomorrows wasn't a high priority in the aviation world of those times. Happily, around the world several of those unique planes remain. One can view Ross and Keith Smith's actual 1919 England to Australia Vickers Vimy at Adelaide Airport. But you won't see Smithy and Ulm's original Southern Cross. Happily there is one plane with a strong Aussie link that has recently undergone restoration to airworthy condition in England. This plane is Sidney Cotton's Lockheed 12-A Electra. Who, what do you ask? Sidney Cotton was an Australian-born character of the first half of the 20th Century. I would not be too far wrong in suggesting that that rake, Errol Flynn, modeled himself after Sidney Cotton. What do you wear in an open-cockpit military aircraft in WWI to keep out the the cold? Why, of course. You wear a Sidcot suit. His experience with high level and low-temperature flying as a member of the Royal Navy Air Service, led Cotton in 1917 to develop the revolutionary new 'Sidcot' suit, a flying suit which solved the problem pilots had in keeping warm in the cockpit. This flying suit was widely used by the Royal Air Force until the 1950s. In the 1930s, At a time when most photographs were in black and white, Cotton purchased the rights to sell outside of France a French colour film called Dufaycolor, which led him to engage in frequent travels throughout Europe, which he did flying himself about. In September 1938 during the Sudetenland crisis, Cotton was approached by agents of the Deuxième Bureau (the French intelligence department) to undertake spy flights over Germany. Cotton's role in promoting Dufaycolor gave him a plausible excuse to fly to Germany. Starting on 25 March 1939, using the cover of a newly founded dummy corporation, the Aeronautical Research and Sales Corporation of London, Cotton started to make spy flights over Germany, Italy and the Italian colony of Libya in the pay of the Deuxième Bureau. In April 1939, Cotton was recruited by Fred Winterbotham of MI6 to take clandestine aerial photographs of the German military buildup. Cotton turned over his Lockheed Electra airplane to the Deuxième Bureau while MI6 provided Cotton with a new Lockheed 12-A Electra aircraft. Cotton's was the last civilian aircraft to leave Berlin before the outbreak of hostilities. After Cotton took off from the airport in Berlin, he noticed Luftwaffe planes on their way to bomb Poland. Upon landing in Britain, he told British customs that he just left Berlin earlier that morning and was told: "Left it a bit late, haven't you?" One biography is titled Sidney Cotton: The Last Plane Out of Berlin It is this Lockheed 12-A Electra which has been returned to England and restored. The restoration is the subject of his video. The story of Cotton's escapades in spying on Germany was the subject of an Australian, made-for-television program. This is the trailer for the programme.

I've seen a creek run a banker.

Having honed my skills on the subject of identifying bots and AI generated posts, I have come to the conclusion that GON IS NOT a bot nor a user of AI.

when they come without factual support nor reasonable suggestions to solve what is being complained of.

Or $50.00 for this one: https://www.melbournetoolsales.com.au/double-headed-sheet-metal-nibbler-cutter-drill-att~9586?srsltid=AfmBOoor7LKvQol3eiNHRpmIAzEmWHDiyFFef_azu86X5snZ4agVE6AA

Hitler created and published his manifesto, Mein Kampf , Volumes 1 & 2 well before his Party got large enough to influence elections. His aims were there for everyone to see. IN the 1932 election, his Party only gained 196 of 584 seats with 33% of the total vote. Voting wasn't compulsory and voter turnout was reduced from prior elections. I think he had the support of the Social Democrat Party, which had 121 seats. The rest of the seats went to special interest groups, although the Communist were next best with 100 seats. Now move to the US 2024 election. Although Trump denied any involvement, Republican leaders produced their manifesto Project 2025 well before the election and publicised it widely. The problem was that Trump's advertising campaign did not reference it, relying on slogans and catchphrases as any successful sales campaign does. The problem that the USA is facing now is simply the result of the voters not reading the fine print of the contract they were entering into. A further problem lies in the way the Constitution deals with the replacement of a serving President. The process has to be initiated either by the Vice-President advising the Senate that the President can't do the job, or the Senate takes similar action. With the Republicans in control of both Houses, such an action is unlikely. Even if Trump was removed, the Constitution directs that the Vice-President takes up the reins. In any case, it's Trump or Vance for the next three years and eleven months.

It certainly considered a lot of things, especially Part 8.

I don't see it as a victory for Trump's deal making ability. This is written in the referenced article: Ukraine floated the idea of opening its critical minerals to investment by allies last autumn. It would seem that Zelenskiy's government has been trying to work out how to pay for the US materials since before Trump got elected. Although the plan at the early stage might have been a hedge bet incase Trump did win because he was telling the voters that he was going to make other countries pay for US military aid. Trump is simply harvesting in summer the crop planted in winter. Making recipients of US aid and then making them pay for it after a conflict has been resolved has been US policy since the introduction of the Lend Lease Act during WWII. It took the British many years to repay its debt, and Australia was paying for many years. The US not only got paid for its "aid", but a lot of the repayments were in the form of leases on military facilities. No doubt Germany is still under the debt burden of the Marshall Plan, whether in money terms or real estate.

He could have drawn a circle more neatly, but Wolfie had hold of him

I'm not as harsh a Nomad. Absolvo te.

Don't know about the stethoscope, but she looks like she'd be a high producing milker with those mammaries.

Long gone are the days when an invasion armada could sneak up to the shores of another country undetected. That was not so in 1942 when there was the threat of a Japanese invasion. Plans were made to evacuate coastal areas of NSW and have the people and livestock move west across the mountains. I can't remember where I sourced this information from some years ago, but I assure you that I have read it. Here's a link to a newspaper report https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/270574182 and another to a museum collection https://mhnsw.au/stories/general/world-war-ii-1942/ Please note that I am NOT referring to the idea of "The Brisbane Line" which was pretty much a furphy.