Wanderthread Redux (Part 1)

Wanderfound · May 31, 2021, 12:15am

Some local flavour:

Wanderfound · May 31, 2021, 12:19am

Wanderfound · May 31, 2021, 3:18am

Melbourne just locked down again; bad outbreak, fifty cases.

Meanwhile…

Wanderfound · May 31, 2021, 3:30am

Wanderfound · May 31, 2021, 5:22am

Wanderfound · May 31, 2021, 6:53am

Wanderfound · May 31, 2021, 12:33pm

Wanderfound · May 31, 2021, 10:06pm

Wanderfound · May 31, 2021, 10:10pm

Wanderfound · May 31, 2021, 10:31pm

Wanderfound · June 1, 2021, 12:23am

Wanderfound · June 1, 2021, 12:29am

Wanderfound · June 1, 2021, 12:45am

Wanderfound · June 1, 2021, 1:02am

Wanderfound · June 1, 2021, 1:19am

Wanderfound · June 1, 2021, 2:00am

Wanderfound · June 1, 2021, 2:03am

“Respect our Troops™️”

Wanderfound · June 1, 2021, 2:17am

Incidentally:

Rottnest Island, where the ridiculously cute quokkas live, was used by white Australians as an Indigenous prison for a century or so. The commandant was so over-the-top brutal that it eventually shocked even white consciences and he was forced into retirement.

The island is covered in the unmarked graves of Indigenous men. One of the old prison buildings has been converted into luxury tourist accomodation.

They don’t tell this story to the tourists, of course.

Wanderfound · June 1, 2021, 2:56am

—

If George W Bush had murdered a million Americans, if he had been responsible for three hundred 9/11 attacks, how concerned would you be about expressions of hostility towards him? How happy would you be to see him walking around unpunished, rehabilitated and accepted by the wealthy elites?

When I say that George W Bush is a mass-murdering war criminal, I am making a statement of fact. It is not a political slogan.

In a just world, he would be dragged before the Hague, stripped of all wealth and power, and spend the rest of his miserable life sweeping up the rubble in the cities he destroyed.

The continued acceptance of GWB by the US public is an insult to the survivors in the nations he attacked. It is also a very obvious demonstration of the point that the victims of the US empire are not really considered to be human.

Wanderfound · June 1, 2021, 3:28am

The “good” billionaire:

“I think Chevron’s benefited society in all kinds of ways, and I think it continues to do so,” said Buffett, whose company at the end of last year owned a 2.5% stake in the California-based driller. “We’re going to need a lot of hydrocarbons for a long time, and we’ll be very glad we’ve got them.”

While Buffett acknowledged that the world is “moving away from” fossil fuels he said “that could change.”

“Believe me, Chevron is not an evil company,” he added. “I have no compunction — in the least — about owning Chevron. And if we owned the entire business, I would not feel uncomfortable about being in that [industry].”

Buffett was responding to a question about whether it was fair to view the oil and gas industry as similar to the tobacco business, which Berkshire swore off in the 1990s.

Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, 97, went even further in his support for the company. He posed a scenario in which one of his family members was trying to decide whether to marry a young man who is an English professor at Swarthmore College or a Chevron employee.

“Which would you pick, sight unseen?” asked Munger. “I want to admit I’d take the guy from Chevron.”

Berkshire’s leaders also cast doubt on the potential for catastrophic impacts from climate change, which most scientists say is increasingly likely if the world blows past 1.5 degrees Celsius of average warming.

“What’s happening will be adapted to over time, just as we’ve adapted to all kinds of things,” said Buffett, who has a net worth north of $103 billion.

Munger was even more skeptical of the scientific consensus.

“I don’t think we think we know the answer to all these questions about global warming and so forth. And the people that ask the questions think they know the answers,” he said. “We’re just more modest.”