Rostrum!

About half past seven.

http://www.news.com.au/national/shark-kills-male-swimmer-at-gracetown-beach-western-australia/story-fncynjr2-1226766779499

More sharks eating surfers. In the choice between humans and sharks…the sharks have to go!

I think nature lovers would adjust their opinions about wildlife if koalas were man eaters!

China Absorbs the old Eastern Block

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2013-11/23/content_17125989.htm

Thank dog for Darren Scott Lehmann.

‘MICHAEL Clarke returned serve to England’s worst sledger, Jimmy Anderson, telling the bowler to “get ready for a broken f*%king arm”.

Daily Terror

I see there is a new push for reform in the ALP, Howes, Bracks and others are calling for the “re-engineering” of the ALP’s relationship with the unions.

There was a time when I copped all sorts of flack for suggesting this, as well as saying that there were plenty of party members who objected to the current relationship.

Fortunately those critics still read Gutter Trash, even though they’re too bashful to comment.

“The New York Times and the Washington Post each manages to publish a piece on the Kennedy assassination, by two different authors, focusing on what they see as the right-wing extremist environment in Dallas in 1963 . . . Look, guys. Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK. Oswald was a Communist. Not a small c, “all we are saying is give peace a chance and let’s support Negro civil rights” kind of Communist, but someone so committed to the cause (and so blind to the nature of the USSR) that he actually went to live in the Soviet Union. And when that didn’t work out, Oswald became a great admirer of Castro. He apparently would have gone to live in Cuba before the assassination if the Cubans would have had him. Before assassinating Kennedy, Oswald tried to kill a retired right-wing general. As near as we can tell, he targeted Kennedy in revenge for Kennedy’s anti-Castro actions.”

David Bernstein, The Volokh Conspiracy.

What the world needs is a hyperloop system, or if that looks unfeasible in the short term then a VFT building to start now.

‘Almost 10 million migrants over the next 50 years will swell Australia’s population to more than 40 million by 2060 and more than 50 million by 2100, under dramatically higher new projections by the Bureau of Statistics.

‘The projections, the first for five years, envisage tens of millions more people crowding into Australia’s capital cities over the next 50 years, overwhelmingly due to migration.

‘By 2060, the bureau estimates, Melbourne will have 8.5 million people, twice as many as now. Even by 2050, it would have 1.2 million more people than the state government assumed in its core planning strategy, Plan Melbourne, released last month.’

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/squeeze-is-on-as-australias-populations-boom-20131126-2y83k.html#ixzz2lmx37021

‘The UK’s Daily Mail Group has teamed up with Nine Entertainment’s Mi9 to launch a news and entertainment website in the new year which aims to be the largest digital operation in Australia.

‘The publisher of MailOnline, Martin Clarke, said dailymail.com.au would provide Australian readers with local and international news in a “reader-friendly” style.’

Guardian

Which one (in)famous person said all of the following?

1) “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates. Instead, they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.”

2) “Youth should learn to think and act as a mass. It is criminal to think as individuals!”

3) “The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”

4) “We must do away with all newspapers. A revolution cannot be accomplished with freedom of the press.”

5) “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.”

6) “Hatred is the central element of our struggle! Hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him a violent and cold-blooded killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus.”

7) “The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have conserved their racial purity by a lack of affinity with washing, have seen their patch invaded by a different kind of slave: The Portugese.”

8) “The black is indolent and fanciful, he spends his money on frivolity and drink; the European comes from a tradition of working and saving which follows him to this corner of America and drives him to get ahead.”

9) “I fired a .32 caliber bullet into the right hemisphere of his brain which came out through his left temple. He moaned for a few moments, then died.”

10) “I’d like to confess, Papa, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing.”

Answer here.

Noticed belatedly that Packer got his casino up in Sri Lanka, designed specifically for Chinese and Indian high rollers.

“Given that the transition towards more robust competition continues and a more competitive network is still emerging, I consider that now is not the right time for a 100 per cent foreign acquisition of this key Australian business,” Mr Hockey said about his Graincorp decision.

‘Very nice old colonial hotel currently being refurbished a section at a time.’

I’m harbouring ambition to form a consortium of ten to buy a run down old place in the heart of Kandy and turn it into a boutique hotel.

Unlikely to happen.