Straya!

[JimC]

Yeah, not good. It's deeply unhelpful for those advocating for the Palestinian cause to presume the current Israeli administration automatically has, and acts with, the full support of all Jewish people everywhere - even while Netanyahu et al claim exactly that. That said, quite a few Jewish communities fundraise for the settler movement, and there seems to be no shortage of Jewish community 'representatives' shilling for Israel in the media atm. In other words, these things don't happen in a vacuum.

The irony is that the synagogue that was fire bombed belongs to ultra-Orthodox Jews who oppose the Israeli government in many areas...

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, not good. It's deeply unhelpful for those advocating for the Palestinian cause to presume the current Israeli administration automatically has, and acts with, the full support of all Jewish people everywhere - even while Netanyahu et al claim exactly that. That said, quite a few Jewish communities fundraise for the settler movement, and there seems to be no shortage of Jewish community 'representatives' shilling for Israel in the media atm. In other words, these things don't happen in a vacuum.

The irony is that the synagogue that was fire bombed belongs to ultra-Orthodox Jews who oppose the Israeli government in many areas...

Hmmm. They oppose the current administration for not going far, herd, fast enough in eradicating the Palestinians

[JimC]

Yeah, not good. It's deeply unhelpful for those advocating for the Palestinian cause to presume the current Israeli administration automatically has, and acts with, the full support of all Jewish people everywhere - even while Netanyahu et al claim exactly that. That said, quite a few Jewish communities fundraise for the settler movement, and there seems to be no shortage of Jewish community 'representatives' shilling for Israel in the media atm. In other words, these things don't happen in a vacuum.

The irony is that the synagogue that was fire bombed belongs to ultra-Orthodox Jews who oppose the Israeli government in many areas...

Hmmm. They oppose the current administration for not going far, herd, fast enough in eradicating the Palestinians

No, they oppose it because they do not believe in the existence of Israel as a state...

[JimC]

From an Age article:

https://www.theage.com.au/national/vict ... 5kwg6.html

If the masked arsonists who torched a Melbourne synagogue in Friday’s pre-dawn hours intended to send an incendiary message about Israel’s war in Gaza, they picked the wrong Jews.

The members of the ultra-Orthodox community who pray at the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea are not Zionists. Nor are they politically active. Where many Jewish groups advocate strong views about the conflict in the Middle East, they tend to say little outside their small, cloistered community.

Where Israelis speak Hebrew, they speak Yiddish. While many of them have family connections within Israel and have spent time in the country, they have no truck with the state of Israel nor its government.

Put simply, this is not their war.
“We are a very quiet community,” Adass Israel board member Benjamin Klein says. “We are not involved in politics, we don’t have Israeli flags.

“We pray for Israel, we pray for peace. We don’t recognise the state per se but we don’t protest for or against. We really don’t get involved. We are busy trying to do the right thing by God. That is what our mission is and that is what we focus our lives on.”

The key is that they are very visibly Jewish, with that whole ultra-Orthodox look.

If Palestinian activists were to fire bomb the Israeli embassy, at least that would be politically rational, in a way. This was purely anti-Jewish.

[Brian Peacock]

I stand corrected. I guess they're just regular 'self-hating Jews' then!

[pErvinalia]

Bunch of antisemites.

[pErvinalia]

Islamic school bus torched in Adelaide. When can we expect the pollies and the AFP to declare this a terrorist attack like the Jewish synagogue fire?

https://7news.com.au/news/iqra-college- ... c-17021281

[pErvinalia]

Australia is going to spend $600 million over about six years or so on a new Papua New Guinea rugby league team in our national comp. Can't help thinking there's better things to spend money on. Although, it will provide a boost to our impoverished neighbour.

[Brian Peacock]

The Nauru Barracudas next?

[JimC]

The bushfire season is starting to bite...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-21/ ... /104753778

Emergency services have warned communities in the Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park to leave immediately, with holiday-makers urged to avoid the area.
The fire has tripled in size in the past 24 hours, to about 30,000 hectares.
There are two other bushfires burning out of control in Bullengarook near Gisborne and The Gurdies in South Gippsland.

[Brian Peacock]

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-14/ ... /104814368

Researchers have confirmed what they have suspected for the past two decades — that Australia's most famous and deadliest spider is actually made up of more than one species.

Warning: this story contains several pictures of spiders.

The iconic Sydney funnel-web is in fact three distinct species and the biggest, and most venomous of them all, calls Newcastle home.

The three species are known as the true Sydney funnel-web, found from the Central Coast and throughout the Sydney Basin, the southern Sydney funnel-web, most common in the Blue Mountains, south and west of Sydney, and now the largest of the three — the Newcastle funnel-web.

Scientists from the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change in Germany, the Australian Museum in Sydney, and Flinders University in Adelaide published their findings in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution on Monday.

To prove there was a new species in town, the research team collected new specimens of funnel-webs and focused on the spiders' DNA while comparing new and old specimens dating back to the early 1900s.

The good news is that, despite the differences, the antivenom is effective across all species.

Director of the Department of Clinical Toxicology at the Calvary Mater Newcastle, Professor Geoff Isbister, said it was well known that there were bigger funnel-web spiders in the Newcastle region for the past 20 years.

"These spiders have always been here; we're just understanding now that they're slightly different," he said.

"[Bites from] the two new species have been treated with funnel-web [antivenom] in the past. They just weren't called those species then, and it works absolutely fine."

Professor Isbister said the finding was significant in understanding an important Australian spider, as well as from a medical point of view.

"The funnel-web antivenom is very effective as long as it's given very soon after the bite, in an hour or two," he said.

"For the last 45 years … there hasn't been a death from a funnel-web bite," he said.


The curiosity surrounding the Newcastle funnel-web peaked when one, dubbed Big Boy, was handed in to the Australian Reptile Park for milking a few years ago.

Central Coast spider enthusiast Kane Christensen had been working as a milker at the time and brought its size to the attention of researchers.

His role in the discovery was rewarded with its scientific name — Atrax christenseni.

All the other countries in the world are jealous!

[Brian Peacock]

Except the Dutch.

[pErvinalia]

Toadies.

[JimC]

An addiction to ever increasing money and power. It is probably a consequence of aspects of our hominid past.