It is reported that Packer won over $33 million in a week playing at the MGM Grand Casino instantly making him one of the most famous Australian gamblers. Another one of his famous wins came while playing a high-stakes game of baccarat where he won 20 hands in a row. Packer placed a wager of $155,000 on each hand. He passed away in 2005, having built a fortune of $6.5 billion.
YouTube video This is a MUST see toss a coin for $100m – Search Images
“Two years before his (A J Ayer) death1…he managed…. To rescue the supermodel Naomi Campbell from the unwanted attentions of Mike Tyson. Tyson informed Ayer, in rather strong words, he was the world heavyweight champion. Ayer replied, and I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field: I suggest that we talk about this like rational men.”
Note
1 He was 75 years old at the time
Source Nikhil Krishnan A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900-60 pp307-8
On May 2nd 2011,1 Obama watched Osama bin Laden being assassinated. Fourteen people watched the snuff movie with him,
President Obama said,
“Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So, his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and dignity.”2
The September 2001 massacres were a humiliation for America. They wanted vengeance.3 Their template was Dirty Harry4 (see Addendum). He was a fictional all-action policeman and featured in several films in the 1970s and 80s. Obama was a teenager then and was probably influenced by the gung-ho tropes.
Obama and the American public felt entitled to assassinate Osama.5 Obama gloried in the assassination. Assassination became a political policy and triumph. Osama was a terrorist mastermind but not unique. Did Obama’s peace and dignity imply a universal justification for assassinating people like Osama? If so, that’s inconvenient for American statesmen, including him.6
Currently America is sinking small boats because they say that the sailors are narco-terrorists.. Vice-president Vance said, with classic American hubris, “…that he did not even care if people call it a war crime,”7 demonstrating the mentality of the American government. War crimes are a suitable American policy because they aren’t really war crimes. American Exceptionalism relieves Americans from moral considerations.
Vance and Hegseth glorify illegal actions with childish reductionist rhetoric. This amounts to no more than,
‘I do it because I can. So, what! What can you do about it?’
They don’t prove drugs are on board because evidence is irrelevant. What matters is that the boats are sunk as a military PR stunt. If drugs were on the boats they could easily be intercepted using overwhelming American naval resources. Drugs aren’t the point. What matters is demonstrating American power.
Destroying boats and killing Latin Americans is machismo politics – it’s a Dirty Harry foreign policy. The importance of tiny boats in the supply of drugs to the gigantic American drug market is wildly implausible. Most illegal drugs are Chinese and Mexican and are imported by US citizens,
“Roughly 70% of all offenders were U.S. citizens, and almost half (49.4%) had little or no prior criminal history.”8
Obama’s elegant rhetoric and Vance’s boorish abuse are the same. Both believe that extra-judicial murder is OK when America does it.
Addendum: The ‘do you feel lucky punk’ quote
I know what you’re thinking: ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?’ Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do you, punk?
Notes
1 Osama bin Laden killed by U.S. forces – HISTORY see also Barack Obama: War Criminal | Odeboyz’s Blog
3 Obama took ownership of the action and was holding the smoking gun.
5 Osama Bin Laden: What happened to his body? – BBC News
6 Barack Obama: War Criminal | Odeboyz’s Blog
7 JD Vance Doesn’t Care If Venezuelan Boat Strike Called A War Crime | HuffPost UK Politics see also Hegseth names Caribbean anti-drug mission ‘Operation Southern Spear’ – NBC 6 South Florida He thinks that sinking small boats using overwhelming force is acceptable if he believes it to be justified.
I love kebabs, they give you all that meat, that saturated fat, and they give you that little bit of salad. What’s that, the healthy section? Never see a drunk do that, do you? “Where’s me salad! What you trying to do, kill me?”
During the war my father worked brutal hours building bombers. He worked for 20 days and then had a day off. His shifts were 12 hours on, 12 off, which alternated every 20 days between days and nights. He made good wages because he was paid union rates, which included overtime. In 1945 his wages plummeted when he returned to building sites.
I was born in 1945 and mum stayed at home until I was seven, then she went to work. That’s when I became a Latch Key Kid.
A ‘latch key kid’ had the door key on a string round their neck. When you got home you came into an empty house. As I couldn’t reach the lock, my dad built me a box, which I stood on. It was understood that if there was a problem, that I should go next door. Obviously there were other places as well. For example, my friends’ mums invited me in. But it was difficult to go every day. So, I didn’t.
The national press were against ‘latch key kids’ because it meant mothers weren’t doing their ‘job’. It was assumed ‘latch key kids’ were neglected and a symptom of the breakdown of society. It was also assumed it was a sign of grinding poverty, which wasn’t the case with us. Although we were poor, we always, as the saying goes, ’had food on the table’. People in grinding poverty didn’t eat every day. ‘Latch key kids’ like me were accepted. I was never bullied but we were seen as very ‘poor’. I was a ‘latch key kid because my mum was aspirational.
Part of the stigma was that mum was seen to be failing. There were ferocious expectations. My dad hated the fact that mum went to work and what was worse, she went for money. But the war had changed everything. Mum was keen to ‘get on’ and achieve things. This meant that I had to grow up and take responsibility for myself.
Children weren’t pampered by over-anxious parents. Protective micro-managing of children would have been laughable.
‘Taking a child to school. You must be mad! Why? Are you afraid of kidnapping’?
And, of course, that is exactly what people nowadays are frightened of. There’s an assumption of disaster, mayhem and chaos. Parents live in a state of terror. Trivialities like crime data are dismissed and people use very rare incidents to prove that they must take their children to school. Rare events are believed to be commonplace.
A ’latch key kid’ in Leeds in the 1950s came back to a freezing cold house during the winter. We had ‘proper’ winters in those days, with many days of snow, frosty days and bleak slab gray skies with drizzle. I made a coal fire but it was slow to warm the house. My mum baked a lot and so there was often a scone, or a piece of cake left out for me. Failing that there was home baked bread which was sliced ready for me. Obviously we didn’t have a fridge and so butter was on the table….in summer it was very, very soft.
There are no infallible ways of bringing up a child. A 2025 version of a ‘latch key kid’ would attract hostile attention. A child aged seven not being picked up from school by an adult….Shock, Horror!
The past is a different country; they do things differently there.1
Note
Jim and Sarah were watching TV when he got up and left the room. After a couple of minutes, he came back in wearing a coat, hat and scarf.
“Are you going out Jim?”
“No. I’ve turned the heating off.”
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