ttbn, he calls me a liar when in fact he couldn't lie straight in bed.

This is the type of person he is.

shadowminister quote, Tuesday 11th May 2021. Under Christian Porter and the ABC - Waiting Game

"The damages will likely reach several $m, with costs greater than $10m. The ABC will need to make a grovelling apology and fire another 100 employees to pay for it."

Paul,

You go to a lot of trouble to recall SM's bad calls. You do not lie. I believe you. But The Shadow suffers from a pathology that will not allow to him to admit that he is wrong, no matter what anyone says, no matter that there is evidence of what he wrongly prophesied.

Do you remember The Shadow? Comics, cartoon strips, wireless (that long ago) serials, even films I think. He was all fantasy, too.

Patrick Morgan is aware of the very different thinking of Putin. He writes that whereas most of us normally take notice of events happening around us and then try to understand them, Putin " ….. starts with his ideological fixations and then contorts reality into bizarre shapes so that it may live up to his preconceived expectations of it."

Hi ttbn,

I can just recall the comics and 'Shadow' a sort of evil character, he was not the most popular. They were a penny each, do you remember the Sunday comics in the papers, Ginger Meggs and The Potts being two I recall. The "wireless" another form of entertainment, not just for music and news but there were the evening plays etc, very entertaining.

As for Putin, hummm, I don't think he's off his chops like a Hitler, no great ideological slant, more like Stalin, who incidently was not a very good Communist, a cold calculating autocratic monster who ran the Cult of Stalin. Maybe its a Russian thing.

With regards to Porter- There is often a merging of propaganda and reality- on all sides- but one doesn't give support to the enemy- it's been acknowledged that the legal system and judges are vulnerable to propaganda on both sides- but usually in history there are biases- many appear to not have a voice due to socialist authoritarianism. In theory Aristotle's Politics saw government by rule of law as superior however it's still subject to the same vulnerabilities and arbitrariness of his other forms of government by sovereign. In a sense all courts are kangaroo courts. What does this mean for the foundations of democracy? I have returned to some of the concepts of monarchy.

Everyone perhaps becomes a bit crazy when someone steals what they think of as their lunch.

Politicians have told us that they were unprepared for the Covid pandemic because it was "unprecedented". The Russian/Ukraine war was "unthinkable". The fact is, though, that few things have had more precedents in history than plagues and wars. Yet, our elites have been 'surprised'.

These people are historical illiterates, and not fit to lead. Plagues have been well documented since the 16th Century. The Russian annexation of Crimea and the events in Donbas should have given an idea of Russia's intentions. Ukraine has always been important to its identity.

War is never 'unthinkable'. Non-thinking in the new, degraded West is.