Do we have an astronaut program? No.
Do we have any significant space launch capability? No.
Do we have a pack of juvenile fools playacting as imperial troopers? Yes.
Australia threatening the Solomons in an attempt to force collaboration with the Western line on China:
“Pacific family”.
In order to defend Freedom™️ and Democracy™️, of course.
Ten year old kids, criminally charged and imprisoned.
If you’re suspecting that very few of the kids in this situation are white, you’d not be wrong.The last time I checked, every single imprisoned child in the NT was Indigenous.
AFAIAA, the majority of imprisoned kids across Australia are Indigenous. The main purpose of these laws is to lock up Black children.
Switching from “fifteen minutes with a hose” to “an hour with a carefully-directed sprinkler” seems to have done the trick. My peas and pumpkins are growing again.
We had a little rain yesterday, and there is more forecast for this weekend.
It’s very welcome; although it’s normally very damp around here (the natural state of the Kanamaluka foreshore is teatree swamp), it dries out very quickly and dramatically when the rainfall fails.
The mosses are taking a hammering. My land is normally somewhat squishy; at the moment, it’s as hard as concrete. In normal circumstances, I do no mowing in winter (the cold inhibits grass growth), but mow every ten days or so in summer.
I think I’ve only mown the lawn three times this summer.
On the bright side: even with this unprecedented drought, my water tanks have not dropped below 50%. And although the new shed is going in without a water tank, if I added one later it would almost double my collecting capacity.
This place is about as climate-proof as it is possible to be on this planet. Bushfire is a slim risk, but it’d have to be epic to make it through the pastureland between here and the serious forests. And there’s always the river for personal escape.
Cross fingers, knock on wood, etc.etc.
Yes, bOtH sIdeS etc
There are more than two parties here, fortunately. As well as a bunch of independents who are often vastly superior to the party hacks.
And, of course, there’s always the point that electoralism is neither the only way to approach politics, nor the most effective.
Certainly guillotines do hold an increasing level of appeal…
The “Labor” party.
(context for furriners: Rein is the wife of the ALP ex-PM Rudd, and is also a multimillionaire who acquired her bag running jobcop “employment” services)
In my working life, the only time that unemployment benefits were anywhere close to adequate for survival was when a far-right government temporarily boosted them in order to avoid confronting quarantined middle-class people with the reality of the status quo they support.
The ruling class were terrified by the prospect that they might discover empathy.
How Australia treats the innocent people that it imprisoned and abused for a decade:
They deserve an apology, compensation, medical care, and the choice of either unrestricted citizenship or free transport to a less malevolent nation.
Instead, they’re dumped with no support, and it’s left to the radical opposition (opposed by all major parties) to scrape together basic necessities.
A vote for the ALP is a vote for racist sadism. The point that the same can be said of the Coalition does not change that fact.