kgwilson

Scomo will definitely change after the election. Win or lose he will get worse. He won't give up his happy clapper religious nutjob role though. Everything will be OK because it will be a miracle that he lost and he has always believed in miracles.

I think that was the 7 minute clip called Slaughterbots and was made 3 years ago. It was a futuristic look at what is possible with existing technology. It is scary stuff. Now all they need is a delivery of these to the Kremlin targeting Putin and the red button pushers.

I don't think Putins aim has changed. He believes that the Ukraine is part of Russia & should never have been allowed its independence after the fall of the Soviet Union. The East has a lot of Russian speaking people and there are hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians living in Russia or vice versa. It has been this way for centuries and the Ukranians have always fought for their independence and although they were briefly recognised as a sovereign nation in 1917, factional fighting and eventual conquest by the Bolsheviks sealed their fate till the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Stalins collectives in Russia failed and he just took the grain from Ukraine and starved the population in 1931/32. Somewhere between 5 & 8 million people perished due to starvation. Putin doesn't care about that and it is irrelevant as far as he is concerned. Ukraine belongs to Russia in his eyes. I don't think he is doing this for any commercial benefit. Getting all the agricultural lands and industrial infrastructure would just be financial collateral. Ukrainian nationalism really came to the fore with the overthow of the Kremlin friendly Yanukovich government in 2014. This was the start of it all for Putin & of course he then seized the Crimea & tried to take the Donbas. He has just failed to recognise fierce Ukrainian nationalism. It has been bubbling under the surface for centuries but after 30 years of independence and a taste of Western style freedom they will not let it go now. Putin will likely never recognise this even after he is deposed, or disposed of.

That was the moment that I was finally fully convinced that Frydenburg was a corrupt Liberal hack. I am looking forward to him losing his seat in 2 weeks time.

No.

Latest reports say that Russian troops have been forced into defence mode and some have had to retreat back across the border in to Russia after Ukraine launched counter attacks around Kharkiv and Izium to the South East. https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/300586548/russian-troops-forced-to-retreat-back-across-the-border-in-fierce-ukrainian-counterattack Buoyed by recent successes Kyiv has now seemingly upgraded its ambitions to push Russia completely out of Ukraine, including the Crimea. The flow of western weapons needs to continue to grow with ever larger and more deadly capacity and this could be achievable but I imagine it would have to go hand in hand with the fall of Putins regime.

My wifes mother was born in Donetsk. She spoke Ukrainian & Russian, learned German, Romanian & Czech in a forced labour camp in WW2 & then English when she got to Australia in 1949 with her Romanian husband she met in the camp. Her accent was very thick and her English simple and poor. I could barely understand her but she could easily understand everything that was said in English around her and was an avid reader of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. She watched a lot of TV too, mostly crappy soap operas like days of our Lives etc. I always found it odd that her ability to speak English after living here for so long had not improved but she certainly understood what was going on around her. So is being fluent the ability to understand a language well or to speak it eloquently? She could only do the former.

Here is an analysis of the state of the Russian Military first published by the Ecomomist. Basically it is a complete basket case & recovery will be slow and painful. https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/economist/300584653/russias-army-is-in-a-woeful-state

They explain it well but then that is the problem, it has to be explained to people. It is not that difficult but far too complex for a lot of people who are FORCED to vote so they go in to the booth with a how to vote card & copy everything on to their ballot paper. This system was rejected when put forward at the rerefendum in NZ in the 90s where the old first past the post system was reviewed. The MMP system selected is simple as you have 1 vote for a candidate in the electorate & 1 vote for the party you like. The parliament is made up of 50% elected members & 50% of party votes based on the %age of what they got. Simple and truly proportional so you can vote for 2 different parties or an independent in your electorate and a party you think is best able to run a government. There is no upper house in NZ so when legislation is discussed & passed it can be implemented quickly. That would not work here though. The senate is the only way to try & keep the bastards honest though it doesn't always work & slows everything down. Both systems can end up with a hung parliament even with coalitions between parties. That is where independents and parties like the Greens (if LNP get back in) can have influence on decisions that otherwise might be damaging for the environment and full of false claims to benefit the wealthy or self interest above the good of all and the future beyond the next 3 years. So as they say Hung parliaments can be better for the country than what LNP & labour tell you.

You just have to look across the ditch. Voting is not compulsory but the voter turn out is usually very high, a little under 80% at the last election, and they have a labour government. Admittedly a charismatic woman PM who is well known & admired at home and around the world helps. In the US many of the Republican states go out of their way to make voting difficult for blacks and hispanics who make up the bulk of the lower paid working population so they actively discourage voting. Voter turnout in 2016 was just over 50% but in 2020 it was 62% mostly to make sure they got rid of Trump.

How to vote cards may have some use but the influence on the unwary or poorly informed is the issue. It is the system of preferential voting that is the real problem. When someone like Ricky Muir of the Motoring Enthusiasts Party gets in to the Senate and a $190,000.00 salary with only 0.51% of the primary vote in 2013, the system is broken.

One possibility is that neither the LNP Coalition or Labour wins anywhere near enough seats to form a government. That then leaves either the Greens or a consortium of Independents to become Kingmaker and no matter who they choose to partner with they should be able to ensure that the rorts stop, a Federal ICAC with teeth is set up, Indigenous people are recognised in the constitution, climate change actions are accelerated, are real and not political BS. Whether they can reduce the huge waste of taxpayer money like the 5.5 billion or so lost on the French Submarine fiasco is another matter. How much additional healthcare would that have been able to provide? It the LNP coalition is returned then it just demonstrates the stupidity and gullibility of the voting public. Personally I think part of the problem is that voting is compulsory. In my opinion this is undemocratic. Yes you can always spoil the paper or make a donkey vote but forcing people to choose when many do not have a clue and are poorly educated makes them easy political fodder. I also think the how to vote card BS should be banned as it can result in some people making a choice based on the best looking card. Also all political advertising should be banned on polling day not just radio & TV advertising. When I lived in NZ this was the case. There is no such thing as "How to Vote cards" there.

Angus Taylor is one of the most hypocritical, dishonest and corrupt liberal politicians in Australia. I can't remember a single time that he has ever spoken the truth when posed with difficult questions. He lies through his teeth with a straight face every time & completely ignores facts when presented to him. He should be in jail. Morrison is the same and of course there is Bridget Mackenzie (of Sports Rorts fame) & Barnaby from coalition partner, The Nationals currently forced to provide lip service to emissions reduction while promoting new coal mines. There are plenty more to add to the list. The Libs are really worried about the support shown for independent candidates and they could lose several seats and therefore any chance of a majority government. Morrison & the right wing media have now gone into attack dog mode over the independents gaining popularity. LNP still fail to do anything meaningful about Climate Change which has emerged far and away the most important issue to voters and is one of the major reasons many of the Independent candidates even exist as the LNP has been hijacked by the right & pushed moderates out. Morrison keeps harping on about how Australias emissions reduction are better than almost everyone else. For example about 88% of electricity comes from coal & gas fired power stations so a reduction of 20% of that is a lot easier than say NZ that already has 85% of its electricity from renewables & they have committed to 100% by 2030.

I wouldn't want to test the Russians ability to use their nukes old or not. They are not likely to have left them unattended or unmaintained. The US still has plenty of minuteman nuclear ICBMs from the 70s scattered all over the mid west in underground bunkers of farmers land. All are ready to go when the button is pushed.

If the reports of him going to hospital for cancer treatment are true they have a great opportunity to end it then and save face for Russia by then appointing someone who will negotiate first a cease fire & then a withdrawal of Russian troops. In the long run though I can see Ukraine becoming ever more bold and demanding a full return of the Donbas and Crimea and their eventual admission to NATO which by then will include Sweden & Finland. As has been said the elephant in the room is the 4000+ nuclear weapons. If there can be a negotiation to remove the nuclear threat in return for economic aid and a boost to Russias economy coupled with freedom of the press and expression then we'd have a very secure Europe. Maybe that will be when pigs fly and just as we destroy the planet with our failure to keep the rising temperature down below 2% anyway. The squeeze is continuing with Europe now beginning to stop imports of Russian oil as they secure new supply from other markets. The news for Putin is all bad.

Beliefs are the lynch pin of religions. None have any evidence their god or gods exist but they don't care anyway. It provides them with a reason for their existence and/or a crutch to lean on when things are not going well. It is interesting that when some agnostic people get to the point of absolute fear of death they start to change and pray to a god they have never thought about before in the hope they may be saved and keep on living. There is absolutely no logic to this situation as there has never been any divine intervention even though "believers" are able to convince themselves there is when they don't actually die at the time.

I thought Liz Cheney was OK. She hates Trump & called him out for his lies on the election & the insurrection so that means she is a good republican in my book.

Easy when enlarged. 2D, 2A.

In one of the latest acts of desperation, Russias idiot foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has stated in a interview on the Italian news channel that Hitler was a Jew. This has of course sparked outrage from Israel, their own Foreign Minister Yair Lapid stating Lavrovs statement as "Unforgivable, scandalous and a horrible historical error. The Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust,” said Lapid, the son of a Holocaust survivor. “The lowest level of racism against Jews is to blame Jews themselves for anti-semitism.” Next they will be saying the whole western world is run by Nazis when if they were really able to look inwardly at themselves they'd see all the similarities to Hitler and his henchmen in Putin and his murderous military.

Cracks emerge in Russian elite as tycoons start to bemoan invasion. The following article published today in the Washington Post gives an interesting insight into how Putins dictatorship has affected the rich and famous and silenced many but their tolerance is beginning to fade. A few more months and stagnation of Russian military operations will see the emerging cracks evolve into chasms and eventual internal self destruction. That is my hope anyway. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/29/russia-oligarchs-ukraine-invasion-dissent/

Putins Army Chiefs are reportedly urging Putin to declare war so that the general population can be mobilised and martial law declared. They are embarrassed & frustrated by their constant failures with the Ukraine invasion the latest after Afghanistan, Syria and Chechnya. How much military hardware can be mustered now is another problem. As well, Russian armament systems are chock full of Western technology so with no supply of that componentry those systems will slowly grind to a halt. If war & martial law is declared Western businesses will be nationalised & it seems that as Western companies are shutting up shop already that is underway now. So they call up reserves and their equipment, revoke the 1 year conscription limit, conscript more ordinary people, but if they run short of equipment and losses continue at the same alarming rate then who knows what will happen with their last resort being biological and nuclear options. Putin is unlikely to back down & his military won't accept total failure. The only options will be some sort of takeover by realists or it will end badly for the whole planet.

Absolutely. The problem is the sanctions are not going far enough. Russia must be isolated. There needs to be organised insurgency that will be able to persuade Russians to revolt big time, assassinate Putin, destroy his secret police structure and political stranglehold, release the political prisoners and negotiate a settlement. At the same time Finland, Sweden & Ukraine join the EU & later NATO. This could all happen easily if it wasn't for the threat of Nukes & with over 4000 of them perhaps the first priority is to get rid of the button pushers, then talk of total Nuke disarmament while pouring money in to Russia to raise their standard of living to that of a modern western society. But given Russias history this has buckleys of success.

Any investment organisation worth its salt will invest in whatever and wherever to get the best return it can for its investors within the risk envelope set for those investments. If that means investing offshore then that means the return to the Australian investors will be better than investing locally. It just makes financial sense. For example I had an old Super fund that was split in 3 ways for a moderate risk. Low risk was bonds and cash investments, medium risk was in blue chip stocks and high risk was in high performing but volatile companies. Combined the return was 5-7% annually except in a few bad years it was negative. Then once I retired & realised I had enough to keep me in a reasonable lifestyle I had become used to & I owned everything & had no debts, I decided to go the whole hog & put that old fund to work on the basis that I could lose it all. I started with 40k in 2005. I didn't know what companies the fund was investing in initially but later found it was a lot of Tech stock in the US, Europe & Japan and various start ups I'd never heard of. Returns after fees were 20 - 30% until I lost over 50k in a day in the 2008 GFC. I just left it there and the returns came back & in 2020 the annual return was 27% after fees, then it plateaued with the pandemic & talk of a stock market crash in September last year I took 150k out & put it in the bank. Between the decision & receiving the cash the value retreated 4k. That left 42k & today that is now 39k, just under what I started with.

As there is only one of you how can you pull yourself together and what are you going to get a grip of. Very confusing and sounds painfull so I think I'll pass on that suggestion.

I wouldn't send any editable document to anyone. A pdf can't be edited by anyone easily but anyone can modify a word document. Also I don't use any microsoft products, especially their office suite that they want you to keep paying for. I use Open Office which is free from Apache Software. Libre Office is another free system. Both are easier to use with more features that microsoft office. Same with Email. Microsoft email is appalling. I have Mozilla Thunderdird for all 6 of my email accounts & have them all on the same page & bluemail on my phone.