ezlxa1949
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@Germ
Thanks for that link to the NSW Health Surveillance Data. It is indeed extraordinary! Official data showing that the officlal line is false.Now how are TPTB going to respond to this? Treat it with ignore, minimise its exposure, create a different analysis, etc. They’va gone too far to back down now. The juggernaut rolls on.
With this as a background, it’s easy to see why stories about damaging vaccines fail to gather much of an audience. Sure, I know (other) people who doubt the official narrative, but they’re rather thin on the ground. We’ll just have to wait and see how things develop and what it will take to shift the paradigm.
For weeks and months now I have been reading in the TAE’s comment stream reports of sudden cardiac arrests and accelerated cancers and tapeworm-like bloodclots and so on.
But Canberra is one of the most vaccinated cities on the planet. Most people are jabbed, and most people are functioning normally. It’s largely back to business as usual. Restaurants and cafés and shops are open. Small business is doing well. Masks are disappearing. People are optimistic. Endless population growth is still on the agenda, as it is for the NSW government also.
So what’s going on here? The dam hasn’t broken yet? The media is concealing the true state of affairs? I await developments with morbid curiosity.
@phoenixvoice: In my part of the Anglophone (Oz, NZ, UK, ZA, etc) world the word for buttocks is still “arse”, deriving from the Greek orhos meaning buttocks. The word “ass” when I were a lad denoted an animal, only that and nothing more. Even in the US the word “arse” was in use, and I have seen it in US literature as recent as Hemingway or Ogden Nash.
“Ass” was introduced as a euphemism and the other word seems to have fallen out of use. Now it seems that the euphemism needs a euphemism!
In Oz the term “ass” seems to be growing in usage, thanks mainly to the growing perfusion of US culture. I dislike it because the way the thought police seem to be heading, we will no longer be able to mention even the braying of an ass. Pity. There are so many asses braying around here. They need to be pointed out.
Another good word is “bum”, meaning one’s posterior. Dead common in Oz, NZ, UK, etc. To have a good audience is to have a lot of bums on seats.
Quoted by John Day: “It’s the U.S. penchant for exporting its ideology that is the main concern for many.”
Don’t forget that free trade agreements with the US have often if not always included a clause permitting cultural access.
In other words, in the name of trade and commerce, Hollywood is permitted to penetrate and alter the other country’s culture, mores, attitudes, hopes, dreams, etc.
Even before that, however, I grew up in the 1950s (in Oz) and well remember the Cold War propaganda on TV, such as Superman (“Truth, Justice, and the American Way!”) or Captain America (softened here to Jet Jackson), or endless movies about how we won WW2 and now are fighting the Commies. All so blatantly obvious now but of course at the time I absorbed it unthinkingly. Took years to undo the conditioning.
In your copious spare time, I suggest you read “Hollywood vs America”, by Michael Medved. Here’s a Wikipedia link to a review. He is a conservative fim critic and doesn’t approve of what his industry stands for.
Existing weaponry has no economic value. Our addicted structures require new production.
John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards, 1992, p580.
He got that right!
The Antipodes experienced the Longest Day yesterday. Still warming up (32 predicted for Thursday). Harvested the rest of our broadbeans. New lots of silver beet growing nicely. People are in holiday mode.
Gets my mind of feeling like a tiny proto-mammal dodging the clumping feet of the dinosaurs.
A few comments about chimpanzees.
Chimps are nasty. I was told by a keeper of primates at the Wellington Zoo (NZ) that a fully-grown chimp has the strength of 10 adult men. TEN. The zoo has elaborate security and safety procedures and facilities in place. (For the record, a fully-grown orangutan has the strength of 7 adult men. SEVEN. No wonder orangs are routinely killed in Borneo when their forest is destroyed for palm oil plantations.) If a chimp manages to get hold of you the monkey can easily hold you in place, tear off your limbs, poke out your eyes, and you can do nothing about it except pray and scream for quick rescue.
The chimps one sees in the movies are all juveniles, as they are still weak enough to control easily. Chimps are nasty: they are unpredictable and can be very destructive.
In Africa there is a very similar-looking species, the Bonobo, whose territories tend to be adjacent to those of chimps. Bonobos are gentle and good-natured, and predated upon by chimps.
Why on earth the human race has gravitated to the vicious chimp instead of the gentle bonobo is a mystery. Or is it?
A few comments about the Australian aborigines.
Scholarshp in recent years has greatly expanded our knowledge of their societies and cultures.
No, they weren’t perfect. They had their squabbles and fights. They’re human beings after all, just like the rest of us.
No record of cannibalism, ritual or otherwise.
At the time of the European invasion, they were managing the entire continent almost as one huge estate, and managing it very well.
Little starvation, even in central Australian areas. Early British explorers starved to death in country that was supplying the aborigines with an ample, healthy diet.
In south-eastern regions, the Aborigines were harvesting and storing food surpluses in purpose-built granaries. The British burned them down upon discovery.
The country has been “sheep-wrecked”. Sheep and cattle have hard, chisel-like hooves which cut into the ground, destroy plants and damage the soil. (Same sort of thing is going on in contemporary Scotland.) Sheep feed by pulling plants out of the ground. The flat-footed marsupials feed by cutting the plants off above ground, letting them regrow. Cattle have been similarly destructive, especially in view of the deliberate over-stocking.
Many European photographs of Aboriginals sitting under primitive shelters depict not a primitive, unmeritable culture but rather a defeated, dispossessed people. Their means of livelihood have been denied them, their food supply decimated. (Reminiscent of parts of modern Europe.)
In some areas the British gave the Aborigines blankets infected with smallpox. Reasons obvious.
There is much, much more. I can provide references if anyone is interested. Otherwise I shall say no more.
Afewknowthetruth wrote, “By the way, I hate today’s artwork. Too much blue-and-yellow. Thoroughly sick of blue-and-yellow.”
Me too, especially the way it’s constantly thrust in front of us. But the national colours of Sweden are also blue and yellow. I wonder how they feel? Not that there’s a lot of choice in colours for flags, unless we enlarge the palette by using mixtures such as salmon pink or steel grey or cack brown. Etc.
From yesterday, a bit more re New Zealand a.k.a. “The Land of the Long White Cloud.” I’ve heard that parodied as “The Land of the Wrong White Crowd.” One could say something similar about its near neighbour, Australia. The European plunder machine has been harsh and unmerciful in how it uses both countries.
Hmmm, masks are ineffective. I won’t bother showing this to anyone. It’s easily dismissed: we may have 3 or 4 papers showing their ineffectiveness, while the other side have multiple dozens showing the opposite.
The average citizen has little or no time to look into such matters and relies on official pronouncements for ideas and opinions. It’s not their fault.
The term “black hole” is obscene in Russian — and maybe some of the other Slavic languages also. They use the term “frozen star.” Seems as good as any.
As I (try to) read the propaganda from both sides of this stoush in Europe, I wonder at the extraordinary amounts of money, time and weaponry being squandered on a massive game of King of the Mountain. The average Ukrainian suffers and suffers and no relief is in sight. Not that our leadership seems to care. So many resources wasted when so much of the world is in dire straits and in urgent need of help.
The US and NATO seem to be expending their strength in vain. But the Russians also seem to be expending their strength in vain. I think all sides have walked right into a trap.
Amazing painting by Shishkin! Almost photographic in its glorious detail and colours. Never knew he existed until you brought him to light — many thanks, Raúl. Good to see works by artists outside the mainstream.
Not in Australia. A public school is taxpayer-funded, a private school is, well, privately funded. This “public school” term is quite British.
Zerosum wrote, “The countries of the center of world capitalism do not care much about the hungry, especially since the inequality caused by the current world order remains the main cause of hunger.”
During the Irish Potato famine, the island of Ireland was growing a quantity of grains adequate to feed the population, but Her Majersty’s government refused to divert the food to the needy because they “did not want to disturb the market.”
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Another thought: if nukes do start popping up, that’s the end of the Australian electricity grid. I don’t think it’s been made EMP-proof at all.
And likely the end of the US grid too, or at least of enough of it to make life horrendous for huge numbers of people.
And the European grid(s). Ditto.
Are we committing electrical suicide?
Hmmm.
Ukraine is a testing ground for weapons systems. Reminiscent of the Spanish Civil War which I don’t personaly remember. That helped promote WW2.
Now we have nuclear threats being thrown around. Very reminiscent of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which I do presonally remember. That passed, but what might this Ukrainian Missile Crisis lead to?
Randy Newman’s song, “Political Science,” seems morbidly relevant Here’s some:
Boom goes London, boom Paree,
More room for you, and more room for me
And every city, the whole world ’round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it’ll be
We’ll set everybody free
You wear a Japanese kimono, babe
There’ll be Italian shoes for meThey all hate us anyhow
So let’s drop the big one now
Let’s drop the big one now.@willem
“Regarding the “end of energy”, a useful post was put up by a TAE community member a few weeks ago. (Whoever you are, please forgive me for failing to credit you properly.)”That was me but please, give me no credit; rather, give it all to Al Bartlett. I suggest downloading Prof Bartlett’s article from The Physics Teacher, and using Equation 5 to assess depletion rates yourself. The maths is not hard and there is a good worked example in the article.
It’s common for economists and politicians to trumpet the discovery of some new resource, and to annouce that it will last for X number of years. True, but they usually calculate the time to depletion on a steady rate of extraction based on current rates of usage. When the time is re-calculated based on the desirable, exponentially-increasing rateh of extraction, the picture changes completely.
I like Bartlett’s observation that “some prominent people reject the notion of limits.” They have to, they must, or else their system, their world, indeed their entire raison d’être, fails. For them, to acknowledge the existence of limits is highly likely to provoke a severe and possibly suicide-inducing existential crisis.
If you want to gain a yet better feel for limits, I suggest you watch
Riding Light – Traversing the Solar System at the speed of light.While breaking many of the laws of physics, this video nonetheless succeeds in giving us a splendid idea of how HUGE the Solar System is in comparison to planet Earth, how achingly and HOPELESSLY SLOW light is, and how TINY Earth’s storehouse of resources is when tasked with getting us off-planet and “conquering” space. “Conquering?” What a joke.
No wonder the transhumanists want to achieve immortality: without it our species will have died out or evolved into who know what eons prior to getting anywhere.
And what will Homo hubris DO with its “conquest” of the Solar System or the Galaxy?
The excerpt entitled “5 Thoughts on the Globa Dictatorship” by Paul Cudenec struck a strong chord with me, in particular this: “[it] deeply offends my ethical aesthetics of honour, justice, truthfulness and value.”
One aesthetic he doesn’t mention as such but which is clearly visible in his writing is that of Beauty.
The various global systems of governance and politics, trade and commerce and economics, media and entertainment, even religion, all strike me as not merely oppressive and polluting and contaminating, as Cudenec writes, but also as Ugly. Simply UGLY. None is a joy to behold nor contemplate; all are to be endured rather than enjoyed; they depress rather than uplift; destroy rather than build.
The theologian N.T. Wright has I think analysed the situation well. (Please set aside for a moment your scepticism that anything good can come from a theology.) He posits:
There are seven features of human life, which can be observed across different societies and times. I name these ‘vocations’, though they are often present as inarticulate aspirations and impulsions. We know them in our bones….
The seven are Justice, Beauty, Freedom, Truth and Power, Spirituality, and Relationships. Our modern word ‘religion’ doesn’t get near this complex of categories, which may be why many today leave ‘religion’ alone. The point about all seven, to put it crudely, is that we all know they matter but we all have trouble with them.
Justice? Too little.
Freedom? Badly eroded.
Truth? Stands far off.
Power? Grossly misapplied.
Spirituality? Flaccid.
Relationships? Stolen.How do we turn this around? I am trying but I can do only a very little.
Fed Gov. Chris Waller’s house drive-by: oh man, is that ever the weirdest exhibition ever. Why? What on earth is the point of it? Why, oh why, must people worship deathand the symbols of death?
Saddest thing is that Halloween has finally seeped into Australia after centuries of being gloriously absent. (So has St Valentine’s Day.) It’s not just another American import; it’s hugely popular in Italy among other places. Trick or treat is not at all a good or fun thing for kiddies to do: it gives them a grounding in extortion, threats and menaces.
No wonder so much of the planet is in dire straits, with ceremonies like this as part of the glorious cultural background and training.
Hmmm. “High excess deaths in Australia.” Maybe an extra reason why the federal government is being urged to resume high levels of immigration, in tghe order of 200,000 per annum. Never mind that we don’t have the resources or facilities to deal with such numbers. The only way our leaders know how to keep the economy alive is by endless increases in population numbers. Such is the design of The System that the entire country could be as densely built-up as Hong Kong and it still wouldn’t be enough.
Babylon is mad.
Interesting thing I learnt yesterday. One of my social circle retired a few months ago from his job as a Hansard reporter in Australia’s federal parliament. His job required him to work inside Parliament House. According to him, no-one working in Parliament House needed to be vaccinated, nor any MP.
Some decades ago I was working for the feds in a minor IT role. The neoliberal Howard government got elected and immediately implemented a policy of “if it moves, privatise it; if it doesn’t, sell it”. The IT sections of just about all government departments, including mine, were sold off to the likes of IBM and others. An acquaintance with an IT job in Parliament House tld me that the privatisation mandate did not touch them.
One rule for them, another rule for us…
Dr. D wrote, ” The territory you can get back; the men you can’t. The men take 25 years of careful growing with full mothers and happy homes.”
Cue AI soldaten, warrior robots that won’t take 25 or even 18 years to reproduce and need neither full mothers nor happy homes.
Next question. Who’s ahead in the AI race?
@D Benton Smith
Maybe I can summarise some of your points thus:
1. “Cogito ergo sum.”
2. Colonialism.
3. Extractivism.So, the IPA opines that “Australia’s Covd response cost $934.8 billion and resulted in 31 x more life years lost than were saved”.
Intriguing. What might this signal? The Institute of Public Affairs is a neoliberal, right-wing think tank. Australia had a neoliberal government in power when The Plague struck, a government that has been sternly criticised for its inept response.
Most wars are about access to resources. This RU-UA stoush — or rather, RU-NATO — is a good example. It won’t matter who wins because The System cannot survive unless it consumes alll manner of resources at an exponentially-increasing rate.
Please consider. Say the entire planet Earth were hollow and full of oil. How long would it last if we used it at a linear rate and at an exponentially increasing rate? Think how big the Earth is compared to us.
The world uses in the order of 88 million barrels per day. DIvide that into the volume of the Earth and we get 211,800 million years. Stupendous. That’s over 15 times the age of the Universe. Just turn those numbers over in your mind for a bit. Plenty of oil for everybody.
Now let’s use oil at an exponentially-increasing rate, 7.04% per annum: this is the rate of growth between 1880 to 1970, a golden period of industrial and economic development, and means a doubling of consumption every 9.8 years. Doesn’t seem much of a growth rate, does it? It’s the sort of growth rate that economists and politicians regard as the norm. Do the maths and planet Earth would be empty in about 330 years. That’s ALL!! So short a time! The difference is unbelievable, and all because of a tiny-looking difference between a linear and an exponential rate of consumption.
Here’s a hypothesis which I support: neither CO2 nor CH4 is THE greenhouse gas of concern. That gas is water vapour. For supporting evidence search for “Walter Jehne” and “soil carbon sponge.” Some good videos are on Youtube.
The pandemic may be over, or at least the end may be in sight, but the after-effects will linger for who knows how long. The cause of course is covid,: I have been seeing recently articles in the MSM telling us how covid has damaged our immune systems, and how even mild covid raises the chance of heart attacks and stroke. The vaccines, of course, like Caesar’s wife, are above suspicion. The Conversation told us this morning that “The increased risks of heart attack and stroke after COVID shown in a recent study, could drive a new pandemic of heart disease over coming years.” Yesterday it opined that “Evidence is growing there are changes to your immune system that may put you at risk of other infectious diseases.” The ABC has published similar.
No-one is immune from error, although some people do seem to be immune from truth. So much of this is he-said-she-said. I wish I had the time to do some research of my own into these matters and not rely on other people’s analyses.
It’s fine wishing for a second Enlightenment, one that removes the present set of rulers from office and replaces them with a kinder, gentler, more human lot. I wish for that too. One way to do this is via the ballot box, another by the direct overthrow and demolition of the power structures.
But the lesson of history seems to be that some time afterwards, another set of psychopaths grows up and gradually takes over, and we’re back to where we started.
What we need is a permanent change in the human psyche, one that will not atrophy over the years.
Warning, warning . . . . . if somebody doesn’t post something within the NEXT thirty minutes I’m going to start up again.
One problem for me is that TAE is posted while I’m sound asleep. I wake up to a well-populated comment stream and it’s all over.
Here is the editorial from today’s issue of The Conversation (ANZ edition).
Donald Trump’s popularity might have suffered a hit from the January 6 hearings in Washington but he continues to transfix Americans and capture headlines around the world. So his announcement early today that his Mar-A-Lago resort had been raided by the FBI caused a predictable – and presumably pre-emptive – sensation.
As Rodney Tiffen shows in today’s lead article, the former president’s response to the raid was characteristic. He reached for a big, misleading historical parallel – in this case, the Watergate scandal, which began unrolling just over fifty years ago – and resorted to the paranoid language that featured throughout his time in the White House.
Only time will tell whether the FBI has unearthed material that could block a run for the presidency in 2024. But there’s a sense the net is closing in on the man who did so much damage to American democracy.
Talking of agriculture and the food supply, the dreaded varroa mite has appeared in Australia. And it has appeared rather suddenly.
This mite kills bees and destroys hives. Treatments appear to be vailable but I don’tknow how safe and effective they are. The response here has been so far to destroy all hives within a 50km radius of Newcastle. Milllions of bes are doomed. If that doesn’t work, the next stepp is to go mad with a potent pesticide that will kill European honey bees and the native bees and a multitude of other insects. The consequences for Australian agriculture and horticulture could be enormous.
The almon industry is putting huge pressure on government to let hives be moved from NSW to Victoria in time for pollination. They ought to be denied AND compensated, but governments here, especially the neoliberal state governments, don’t believe in compensation.
Australia has long been free of the mite and we have been a major source of mite-free bees for other countries. That could all end if we’re not careful. Biosecurity at our ports has been far too lax for far too long. I strongly feel that in this mad world trade and commerce are more important than life itself.
Interesting how this varroa mite outbreak occurred just before it was time to move bees around. Forgive my cynicism.
