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One might argue that Trudeau has moved too far, too fast. He’s given the game away. The world can see clearly now how TPTB can (try to) control us simply by making it very difficult if not impossible to buy or sell using the state-authorised financial system.
This news is surely making its way around the world at very high speed, the Ukrainian sideshow not withstanding. I expect that a lot of people are making a lot of plans to deal with and counteract the situation.
So, maybe the stock market will do what proper science and the precautionary principle failed to do: control and punish the corporate culprits. How ironic: the Mammon-worshippers may be clobbered by Mammon.
On a different note, in Canberra plague conditions are easing. On Friday at 6pm the wretched masks will no longer be required except in certain “high risk” circumstances. Some venue limits have already have been eased, but since I never go to venues with limits, I am not affected. Third jabs have not been as accepted as the first two were; it’s something like 60% vs 98%. And yet we are being told that condtions are to be eased. Hmmm.
Why Friday 6pm? Canberra has late-night shopping on Fridays, and 6pm is knock-off time for most white-collar workers. (The blue-collar workers knocked off an hour or two earlier.) So now we can all go shopping! The traders were heeded by the government. Probably.
It always annoys me that the ending of any restrictions is always in the future, at some symbolic later date and time. If it was announced yesterday that masks aren’t needed as from COB Friday, then why couldn’t the change have been applied almost immediately? We have the technology these days to spread the news very fast, so it’s not as though a long period of adjustment is called for. Reminds me of a sort of a reverse Seneca Effect when it comes to the wielding of power: regulations are piled on very quickly but taken off slowly and reluctantly.
“…stakes can be continuously increased until the other side is compelled to capitulate.”
In fact, in the past entire wars have been decided this way. Opposing armies would gather on the field and simply parade around, maybe calling in extra units, building up the numbers and the armaments until one side’s general concluded that battle was futile and surrender.
Interesting idea in the video from SD Red that the truckers don’t need to gather, don’t need to protest in groups, don’t need to expose themselves to harassment, but simply decline to go to work. The Spanish have a saying that “the difference between civilisation and chaos is seven (missed) meals.” IOW, 2.33 days. I didn’t know that NYC is a mere 3 days away from empty food shelves. Here are some excerpts from an Australian government report from 2012, “Resilience in the Australian food supply chain” (emphasis mine):
1.5 Lessons from the Queensland floods
The Queensland floods during December 2010 to January 2011 were severe and widespread. The town of Rockhampton, with a population around 75,000, was cut off by road, rail and air for two weeks; the state capital, Brisbane, came within a day of running out of bread for its population; other towns and cities on the coast and inland were affected by floods, with around 100 large retail food stores and many more smaller food outlets inundated.
…
The experience revealed both the resilience and fragility of the food supply chain. While there were no reported instances of communities going hungry, this was only through massive effort on the part of both the food industry and authorities. This included logistics providers hiring large numbers of vehicles (trailers and prime movers) from Sydney, and large amounts of voluntary overtime by employees of trucking companies.
…
Concerns were also expressed about what a number of food industry participants saw as difficulties in working with the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to move food to affected areas. While respondents praised the efforts of Australian soldiers on the ground, they considered that logistically the lack of capacity and administrative hoops to be negotiated before food could be transported constitute a major risk.
…
A number of food industry stakeholders interviewed expressed disappointment at what they saw as lack of capability on the part of the ADF to assist with the food logistics task beyond immediate emergency food drops by helicopter. There is an apparent mismatch between industry expectations (among some businesses) and actual capacity. The ADF is not, in today’s defence planning environment, equipped to undertake large food logistics tasks, and itself relies on the private market for supply to its own messes and operational needs. It would be valuable to develop a better understanding within the industry of what ADF could realistically be expected to do in an emergency in relation to food supplies.Thanks, Doctor D., for that Guardian article. What a surprise! It actually addresses major concerns and collections of evidence! A reversal indeed.
As others are asking, where may this trend be heading? I feel that the trend in the Anglosphere and a number of European nations towards de-democratisation will not stop. We’re in for a period of fascistic rule, and can only hope that it will burn itself out when people learn that fascism will not save us from ourselves any more than any other political -ism.
Meanwhile the gyrations in the financial world seem to be growing larger. How long before the spinning top falls over? I’m not looking forward to that, but then, I don’t want the old, destructive system to continue either.
What Doug Ford said was music to my ears. The narrative is breaking down. If he ever wants to run for political office in Australia, I’d vote for him.
Switzerland’s example is a great encouragement!
The censorship decision by Public Health Scotland clearly illustrates the strictly scientific basis of health management, doesn’t it just.
I don’t know about Canada, but in Australia the Governor-General has the power to sack a government. This power has been exercised only once so far, in 1975. I’d LOVE to see it exercised again. Two small problems here: IMO there’s no credible replacement for the current bunch; and G-Gs are selected because they’re unlikely to rock the boat.
A federal election is coming up and the campaigning has already started. Early signs are that it will be NASTY and more than usually full of lies. The PM is already accusing the opposition of being “soft on China” (that’ll be the key, wedge issue—”national security”) but never mind it was his party’s government which signed a 99-year lease of the port of Darwin to a Chinese company. A reverse Hong Kong. Our defence industry is purchasing aluminium for new warships from — guess who — China, to protect us from — guess who — China, and we got a defective batch (I wonder how that happened). The PM has been scolded by ASIO (our chief spooks) for saying “unhelpful” things about China but the PM doesn’t care. If he’s part of Team WEF then I assume he will do whatever it takes to stay in power. Most of our petroleum products are imported from South-East Asian refineries through easily blocked maritime choke points. We are so utterly STUPID. Such a mess and a muddle we’ve made. A reasonable chap would think we’d planned it.
A brief note on house prices in Oz.
One Sydney property in a posh area:
1972 $33,900
1979 $123,000
1983 $127,600
2009 $1,300,000
2013 $2,580,000A very average house in a convenient area of Canberra:
1980 $69,000
2005 $400,000
2021 $1,900,000Some young people I’ve chatted with have told me that they have given up all hope of ever owning a house and a home.
Sorry to be glum but I think the Canadian protestors have lost this battle. I don’t know if it was planned this way, but Canada has served as a proving ground for repressive techniques. From where I sit, they appear to have been quite successful. Maybe not; but the current mood of TPTB and the apparent quiescence of the bulk of the population means that the Emergency Powers Act likely will be invoked as often as necessary.
I expect now that the abolition of cash will be done first in Canada. And spread as a preventative measure. It’s all about national security, don’cha know.
I keep coming back to Uruguay as an example of a democratic country that went fascist. A series of economic crises and the fight against left-wing guerillas provoked a coup d’état in 1973. Eventually democracy was returned in 1985, but the period left deep hurts in the population and calls for justice which have not been acted upon. One of my workmates years ago was a young fellow whose parents had fled Uruguay for Australia, which at that time was indeed a place of refuge for (many) oppressed people.
What the glorious west is seeing now is a coup d’état but from the top, by those already in power, not even a palace revolution. A new development in history? Probably other examples from elsewhere but I lack the time to find them.
Does the Canadian Emergency Powers Act stipulate a maximum period of time that it may be invoked, or may it remain invoked indefinitely? It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s can be permanent or at least indefinite. How convenient. Yep, this is what TPTB wanted: choose not to deal with a situation, let it grow, declare it a threat, and bring out the big guns to “fix” it. Forever.
I don’t know if Australia has similar legislation. Wouldn’t surprise me that it has but so far nationally we’ve been unproblematic for TPTB.
Rationing can be useful, especially now that we seem to be hitting limits to growth. (Look up Doughnut Economics.) Otherwise the market will drive up the price of a resource and trade in it until it’s utterly exhausted, or until hoarding and black-marketeering make it unavailable anyway. The caviar sturgeon is a good example: because caviar is always a valuable and lucrative commodity, overfishing has taken place. Not enough replacement. The result is that the very last sturgeon will be caught and cheerfully slaughtered for the last bit of caviar and the last bit of income for the fisherman, and then what? The market mechanism acts more quickly than natural replenishment cycles.
We’ve also got to be careful about freedom, what it is and how we do it. No-one has utter freedom; we all live in communities and must make allowances for each other. It’s a balancing act. In relatively peaceful times we all along quite well; times of stress and trials reveal the weaknesses and gaps.
I stumbled upon this excellent observation yesterday (emphasis mine):
Why would roughly 4% to 12% of CEOs be psychopaths (I’ve seen as high as 20% claimed, implying psychopaths might be statistically around 25 times as likely to become CEOs)? What is it about the human condition, or this era of civilization, that pushes the most potentially destructive people to the top of decision-making hierarchies? Is there some process inherent in the machinations of life on Earth that allows for this, and that we can deconstruct in order to prosper in a new era of happier, healthier, and less existentially dangerous living? Is there a way to decentralize power so as to limit the damage psychopaths might do, or better encourage hierarchies of competence and wisdom?
Is there a way? Sorry to be glum but under present circumstances, no. The lesson of history is that one lot of psychopaths is cleared away and another lot rise to the surface. Sigh.
What if the invasion of Ukraine does not place as advertisied? Another triumph of Western diplomacy! Can’t lose.
John day asked how the protests in Australia are doing. Thanks, Raúl, for posting that link. In the national capital where I live, it’s been big around Parliament House and the EPIC markets where they’ve been camping. Life in the suburbs has not been impacted at all unless you wanted to go to the markets. Unfortunately Lifeline’s vital fund-raising bookfair was cancelled, allegedly because of bad behaviour by some of the protestors making it “unsafe” to proceed.
A much-vilified MP, George Chritensen has some photos and a video on his website.
https://nationfirst.substack.com/p/you-should-see-these-photosHere’s some of what he wrote:
You see, yesterday I was at the Convoy to Canberra rally which was literally the largest protest I have seen in the nation’s capital in the 11 years I’ve been coming here as a Federal Member of Parliament.
You may have heard all the mainstream (fake news) media spin that it was violent, out of control and all the rest of it but, as someone who was actually there in the crowd, I can assure you it was anything but. In fact, I’ve never been to an event before where I saw so much hugging of complete strangers going on.
Far from violent, what I saw was the freedom movement breaking out into spontaneous acts of kindness. The only hatred on display was for all the vaccine mandates, division and restrictions, and those who have perpetrated that abuse on the Australian people.
You may have also heard stories about how small the crowd was. That’s nonsense. As I said, this was the largest rally I’ve seen in Canberra since I’ve been coming here. But don’t take it from me. Check out the photos and video below:
Yes, the ABC (government MSM) certainly alleged various levels of nastiness. Pity, because the ABC is usually quite prepared to criticise the government of the day — a major reason why successive governments, both left and right, have keen for decades to privatise it. They constantly fail because the public are protective of their ABC. It’s a real institution here, and often very good at investigative journalism. So sad that it can’t or won’t investigate certain topics.
Political orientation of truck protests: some say they’re left-wing, others right-wing. It’s the latter in Oz. This week’s Guardian describes the Canadian as right-wing in an article with carefully-framed photos showing only confused clumps of vehicles and nothing of the extent of the convoys.
I fear that resorting to violence will backfire hugely, unless the military refuse to hurt and destroy their own countryfolk. Battleship Potemkin again? Or have the protestors been adequately demonised by now to overcome moral qualms?
LURID article from ABC News this morning
How the Omicron wave smashed hospitalsThe message is both clear and confused: (a) omicron is absolutely terrible and bringing the Sydney hospital system to its knees; (b) and yet from the coalface we’re told this:
It’s pretty much back to where we were with the Delta wave. We are getting more people who need ventilation now, but not as much as before. They’re not as sick as last time. And there’s a lot of patients who are in our ICU now who are being treated for something else, and they incidentally also have COVID.
Now, about those unbreakable contracts with Pfizer et al. …
D Benton Smith writes that the Eighth Commandment is “You shall not steal.” Yep.
The Ninth Comandment is, “You shall not bear false witness.”
Australia has a PM who has let it be known that he is a churchgoer (Hillsong). To judge by his behaviour, he has never heard of either of those commandments. Neither apparently have the elites in ANY country.
Putin’s clip is chilling. He’s drawn a very clear line in the sand. Very clear. We would do well to listen.
The data from insurance companies is very significant. No doubt attempts will be made to ignore it or cover it up or retrospectively alter (i.e. falsify) it. It will be loudly proclaimed that “correlation is not causation” and the discussion will be deemed to stop right there.
But another possibility emerges. In Oz, owing to climate change some property insurance companies are close to declaring entire geographical areas as uninsurable. What if insurance companies in North America start to declare certain categories of people as uninsurable, especially for life and medical coverage? Insurance companies are not charities. What if, to keep their businesses going, they decline on a large scale to provide coverage? How would that look?
Australia’s mixed health care system, public and private, has preserved us from the worst excesses of the US system, but if the same statistics show up here, the private health insurers may start to back out of providing cover and push the burden back onto the public system. This is not what neoliberalism was meant to achieve, but it is how neoliberalism works: stop helping people when the profits vanish.
This is a very intriguing development. Add that to what the embalmers are discovering.
That letter from Marm McDonald M.D., assuming it’s genuine, gives me a new term to consider: fear addiction. I never considered that people could become addicted to fear. But there it is.
I don’t think the truckers in the Great Southern Land are having anywhere near the impact that those in North America are having. Possibly because we’re not as closely linked as the US and Canada. The only bridges we have are shipping routes and they’re not as easy to blockade. I suppose they could blockade the ports.
The MSM are treating our protestors with ignore. The general attitude is that they are deluded, conspiratorial ratbags. On the other hand, there is also an increasing number of people who see right through the whole thing.
I think what happens in North America will greatly influence what happens here, so I await developments with great interest and a measure of optimism.
BTW, it has now been officially decided that “fully vaccinated” means “up to date”. No national mandate; it’s up to the states and territories to decide on that.
Re Joe Rogan: this week’s Grauniad has an article about him. It’s not supportive of course.
Here’s a snippet: “Early last month, 270 scientists and medical professionals signed a letter urging Spotify to take action against Rogan, accusing him of spreading falsehoods on the podcast.” (Page 33; emphasis theirs, and included a blue background for the maximum possible effect.)
OK, but we’ve seen in times past that a list of scientists denying climate change turned out to have quite a number of non-scientists in it. This is the kind of statement that needs checking but I can’t do it for sheer lack of time.
At 11:59 this Friday night, it will no longer be required for Canberrans to check into most premises except for certain “high-risk” ones, e.g. night clubs and bars. (Let’s see how long this lasts.) Still waiting for these wretched masks to be made optional inside retail and other premises. They’re optional outdoors.
Nationally, booster shots are still optional, not mandatory. Nationally, Jabber the Nut & TPTB are discussing now whether to change the definition of “fully vaccinated” to “up to date” rather than “two jabs”. That’s a slippery slope if ever there was one.
Last Sunday the trucker convoy made itself evident around Parliament House. Still there. Only one arrest so far for firearms reasons, otherwise peaceful. Overall it isn’t making much of an impact anywhere else in the city. We went out on Sunday, nowhere near Parliament, and encountered a long procession or beautifully polished and tubbed up older model cars heading into the Arboretum. That was our destination too. We had a most enjoyable picnic. Plenty of other people taking the air and enjoying the day.
Autumn has arrived in Canberra about a month early after a cool, wet summer. This must surely give the climate change denialists plenty of ammunition: “a while ago we were told that the dams would never be full again, and now they’re overflowing.” One could suggest that climate instability is making itself felt here, but I don’t know how far that line of argument would go.
Beautiful, rare, ancient forest in Tasmania is about to be hewn down to feed the perpetual-growth machine. Along the way it will greatly harm the valuable honey industry. But the growth machine doesn’t care: trees have been financialised. They must be cut down and sold otherwise the workers won’t be able to afford honey to put on their toast.
On and on it goes. This is only one small example of a worldwide malaise. Governments everywhere seem to have lost patience with environmentalism. We are growing ourselves into extinction.
I was wrong yesterday in my prediction that we’d hear nothing from the Oz MSM about either of these truck convoys. The ABC had an article yesterday: “GoFundMe freezes $160,000 until organisers of Convoy to Canberra protests detail spending plan“. It mentions the Canadian convoy and GoFundMe’s reluctance to hand over the money it agreed to collect.
The article is about the money. And that’s it.
Today is 31/1. I live in Canberra. I have not seen a word in the MSM about the Freedom Convoy. I am confident that I will not see a word in the MSM when the convoy arrives or after it disperses.
I think it was one of the commentariat in a recent TAE edition who suggested we read Paul Kingsnorth’s essays about what lies behind the covid over-reaction. I took it up and what I read has great explanatory power. (Start here: The Vaccine Moment, part one.) It’s all about Population Control, using Disease Control as a stalking horse. We need to look behind the covid/vaccine narrative for the real motives. Some of what he writes seems hard to accept but I think he’s on the right track. For example:
… we have come at long last to the foothills of the future: an inverted version of The Matrix in which Agent Smith is the hero. A world both terrible and boring at the same time. As climate change bites, ecosystems continue to degrade, supply chains jam up, the social fabric frays, and mass urbanisation and mass migrations accelerate, it will become more and more necessary to micromanage, nudge and control the citizens of our mass societes just to keep the growth-&-progress show on the road. The pandemic has shown us how this can be achieved. Schwab is right that there is no turning back from the lessons it has taught.(Emphasis mine)
He feels some optimism, however:
Control: this is the story that the Machine tells about itself, and it is the story that we would all, at some level, like to be true. But control systems never last. The world is beyond both our understanding and our control, and so, in the end, are people. We barely understand ourselves. Perhaps Klaus Schwab’s desire to ‘improve the world’ is real and felt: but he will still never be able to grip it tightly enough to bend it to his will. Who can?
Passports were a introduced as a temporary measure after WW1, and it had been intended to abolish them, but the “Spanish” Flu of 1918 led leaders to retain passports for the purposes of health, disease control and national security. Now we have digital versions on the way spurred by another pandemic. It is only now that technology has made possible such a thing.
The real tool of the establishment is the mobile phone, better known as the cell phone, methinks. It is also the control system’s Achilles Heel. Most of the control technologies seem to be centred upon and concentrated into the handheld hypnotiser. Limit that and one limits so much else. How might we achieve that? Perhaps just wait? The degradation and mooted collapse of The System might do it.
Oops, “used” not “ousedld”. Where on earth did that typo come from? I’d edit it but the system acts strangely if I do.
A theatre nurse told me recently that in her experience masks should be changed every 20 minutes, otherwise they clog up from one’s breath and stop working. Also, NEVER touch the outside of the mask while wearing it.
That’s in the operating theatre, but I can’t see the 20-minute rule not applying elsewhere. We all breathe all the time, don’cha know.
So, 8 hours’ wearing @ new one every 20 minutes = 24 masks per day. See anybody doing that?
The mask manufacturers must really be enjoying the enhanced revenue stream.
How many ousedld ones have escaped into nature? 1.5 billion or the like, wasn’t it? Maybe multiply that by 24?
Slight unease in Australia
According to The Conversation today, that completely objective and totally impartial academic newsletter, momentum is growing for a Royal Commission into how the pandemic has been (mis)handled in general.
(If you’re not aware, a Royal Commission, a.k.a. Commission of Inquiry, can be very high-powered and unstoppable. For more details, go to Wikipedia.)
Good, but cynical me says that the terms of reference will carefully omit any reference to alternative treatments and why it may be argued that elements of the Australian medical establishment have deliberately withheld life-saving information from their own profession and from the general public.
But then this whole affair is such a tangled web of spaghetti that unravelling it could take years. Who knows what the state of public health will be like then. The government by then may well be completely different, and we all know how governments can and do ignore the findings of Royal Commissions.
Monoclonal antibodies withheld: in the US federation, aren’t the states paramount?
Can’t Florida steer its own course — at least to some extent?
Or are there no production facilities within the state?
British police in Austria? A newly borderless world?
Australia has a federal election coming up this year some time. In spite of ample and strident criticism of the incumbents from many quarters, including to an increasing extent the MSM (which surprises me), I gloomily expect the secretive neoliberals to be re-elected. Not only are there just too many who would vote for a drover’s dog if the party put one on the ticket, but also Her Majesty’s loyal opposition seem to have completely lost their mojo, their verve, their spark. Their silence is deafening. There are so many good, future-oriented ideas ready and waiting for implementation, but no. Baffling.
I read recently that Canberra is one of the most vaccinated cities on the planet. I think the figure is over 98%. So, in years to come, could that mean that Canberra will become one of the sickest cities on the planet? Or have we escaped the worst of the worst because for the over-50s we used AZ while reserving Pfizer for the under-50s? Time will tell.
And now they’re offering boosters. If we have made a vaccination mistake, there’s no correcting it.
Some snippets of the propaganda campaign in anti-Djokovic Australia:
1. The Saturday Paper, Jan 15–21, 2022, p7:
“Denial of the science of epidemiology is widespread, even among ‘experts.’ We are told repeatedly that SARS-CoV-2 will become ‘endemic.’ But it will never be endemic because it is an epidemic disease and always will be. … But what the past month has shown us that we cannot live with unmitigated Covid-19. Vaccinations will not be enough. We need a ventilation and vaccine-plus strategy to avoid the disruptive epidemic cycle, to protect health and the economy, and to regain a semblance of the life we all want.
Author is Raina Macintyre, who leads the biosecurity program at the Kirby Institute. She is on the WHO’s technical advisory group on Covid-19 vaccine composition.So I presume that ‘always epidemic, never endemic’ is the WHO’s official stance.
2. The Guardian Weekly, 14 January 2022, p29:
Article by Kerryn Phelps entitled, “The shambolic mess caused by the decision to just ‘let it rip’.”
“… The only example Australia is providing now is a warning about what not to do… Preventing transmission is the only way out of this.”
Phelps is a GP, past AMA president and member of OzSAGE.TPTB are most displeased with, inter alia, the covid parties being held by younger people who wish to catch the curative omicron variant. I guess this is part of the élites’ pushback.
Re Djokovic, recall that his visa was cancelled by Hawke on Friday. The notice was issued at 4:50pm — minutes before knock-off time for most AND on a Friday when most people are gearing up for the weekend.
In my book this was cowardly behaviour, so sadly typical of pollies who want to announce an unpopular decision and quickly sneak away.
Morrison said that the decisions was Hawke’s alone. Morrison and Hawke descibe themselves as “good mates.” We all know how that works.
One of my social circle is a retired theatre nurse. She told us that in her experience masks should (ideally) be changed every 20 minutes because they get soggy from breath. Also one should never touch the outside while wearing them.
So, if there are an estimated 1.5 billion of these things littering the environment, and assuming that these are discards from a day’s wearing, then 8 hours @ 1 mask per 20 minutes = 8 hours @ 3 masks/hour = 24 masks per day, times 1.5 billion = 36 billion discards.
I wonder what 36 billion look like in one place?
A bit more from an Antipodean regarding Djokovic in his “Land of Captivity.”
This issue is revealing more than a little incompetence or wilful ignorance or just plain short-sightedness on the part of the Australian Border Farce and/or the federal government. For instance, it should have been made perfectly clear on the visa application form what the requirements for issuance are. No good letting him arrive and then finding fault.
Or if the requirements were not made clear ahead of time, then that reveals bureaucratic ineptitude at least and possibly poorly-drafted legislation or legislation in need of amendment. Amendments are commonly made but they tend to be enacted in batches, so it is possible that a defect in the relevant Act is ready for amendment but it hasn’t happened yet.
Agencies commonly communicate with one another about matters like this to arrive at a decision, so if one agency was happy with him and another wasn’t, then this should have been made obvious in good time.
The Feds as usual are ducking and weaving, blaming everybody but themselves.
Djokovic is doing rather well to have got the Federal Court (second-highest in the land) to examine the matter so soon. Standards exist, and judges like standards. I do hope that the Feds are overruled. The bureaucrats have said that he is free to leave any time he likes. Of course; if he did that then they wouldn’t be drawn into a court case. I rather hope that he stays put.
For Djokovic and others, this affair is providing a wonderful amount of publicity. It’s shining a light in a murky area.
G’day oxymoron,
Trees in your bailiwick are dropping their branches to conserve water. In mine (Canberra) we have had a number of “tree failures” as the NSW government calls them, owing to far too MUCH water. Another big hail storm about an hour ago raged across the city, from south to north unusually, with tons (literally) of hail and high winds. Four or 5 trees were blown over near me, one damaging the fascia and part of the roof of a house. The big ironbark just to the west of my house dropped a couple of big branches, and has a cracked biggie sitting more or less safely way up high. The Fire & Rescue man suggested I don’t go under the tree for a while until they come and deal with it. Fine by me.
The SES have busy, quite a few sirens around the suburb. Half the power circuits in the house are out. At least the fridge is OK.
Amazing. The weather radar showed the oncoming storm with the black spot — maximum intensity — tracking right across Canberra. One would almost think it was deliberately aimed.
Tell me again the climate change is not any sort of reality. Now tell our recalcitrant pollies.
A chance remark from my Better Half this morning led me to:
https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2016/11/silent-cal-not-so-silent/Go there, scroll, down and watch both videos, one of Not-So-Silent Cal, the other of Senator Robert LaFollette. Both speeches were given almost 100 years old and yet the political undercurrents and directions (and consequences) don’t seem to have changed much at all.
Oxymoron’s comments about the urban agricultural propsects of Melbourne — viz. small to none — resonate well with me. The ACT (Canberra) government is increasingly concerned about its food supply, and thanks to a large number of Greens in the Assembly (parliament) is actually doing something positive about it. I am one of a number of people and teams contributing to a study into securing Canberra’s food supply. The ACT imports something like 90% of its food. Not sustainable, especially as toomuch of it relies on diesel fuel to get it here, and the whole country is in a precarious position regarding stocks and flows of diesel AND urea. No diesel, no food. We have been governed by myopia in both major parties for decades.
Melbourne and Sydney both are governed by devout growthist neoliberals who see no limits at all to any economic activity. In the main they believe that The Market if not regulated or hindered in any way and left to itself will infallibly and spontaneously produce endless prosperity.
Owing to the sharp drop in population growth due to the Plague border closures, the Australian Chamber of Commerce & Industry is demanding 200,000 or more “skilled” migrants annually as soon as borders re-open. The NSW government Treasury has called for 400,000 per year for 5 years. Never mind that this growth causes declining biodiversity, worsening traffic congestion, unaffordable housing (young people haven’t a hope), climate change, water shortages, infrastructure overload, loss of soil and natural areas. Nah, no worries: technology and growth will pay to fix all of that. Talk about a cargo cult.
Please make the insanity stop.
boscohorowitz wrote, “Even in Australia, I suspect the cops are growing leery of arresting anti-maskers.”
Not yet, but I have heard that the courts in NSW are dismissing many if not most cases.
We’ve got a federal election planned for early next year sometime (the campaigning is beginning now). The incumbent conservatives have shown themselves to be corrupt, cruel and stupid. Big problem: the labor opposition appear flabby, flaccid and indecisive. As Shakespeare wrote, there is small choice in rotten apples.
The Fear of Omicron is growing in Oz. Just got this email from the ACT Government:
Mandatory face masks reintroduced for indoor settings
The ACT will reintroduce the requirement to wear a mask indoors and tighten visitor restrictions for residential aged care facilities to help keep the community safe from the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
Wearing a mask is a simple and practical way to minimise transmission of COVID-19.
From 11.59pm tonight (Tuesday 21 December), mask wearing will once again be mandatory in indoor settings in the ACT.
Additionally, some restrictions for residential aged care facilities will be re-introduced. Residents will be restricted to five visitors per day with a maximum of five visitors at any one time. There will be no daily limit on the number of visitors for end of life care visits. Masks will be mandatory for staff and visitors.
From 11.59pm tonight, masks must be worn in all indoor settings other than a place of residence, including:-
Indoor retail settings
Public transport
Hospitality venues (except when seated, or eating or drinking)
Offices
Visitors and staff in a residential aged care facilityExceptions for mask usage can be found on the COVID-19 website.
When you’re outside your home, continue to check in at all stores using the Check In CBR app, regularly wash and sanitise your hands, and stay 1.5 metres away from people you don’t know.At least we can still hug people we do know. Better still, get to know them by hugging them.
I’m hopeful that Omicron proves to be the undoing of all of this. If it does, won’t it spoil the fun of a lot of people! Nothing to live for, nothing to fight against, no great purpose, back to their humdrum lives of two years ago.
Data Hesitancy
Chris Martenson has come up with the label “data hesitancy” to describe the mentality of those who see the data but refuse to accept what it says. Spread it around!
When someone launches into ad hominem attacks that involve vulgarities + insulting anyone that disagrees with their posts, that precludes any & all “robust debate”.
But I have witnessed rather sharp attacks on deflationista on grounds that to me seemed unjustified. Two can play at this game. Our conduct must be impeccable, else we only further discredit ourselves. Further? Yes. We are already discredited because we don’t go along with The Narrative.
And who is Jay Hanson? There’s necessarily a great deal of culturally-specific content in TAE comments, and I do not and cannot keep up with most of it. Only yesterday did I learn that Fauci gets huge media coverage and adulation; no wonder he cops a lot of stick from his opponents.
Could we PLEASE stop slanging off at each other? Surely this is not the TAE way. We might not like what deflationista says, but I find that what he/she/it posts to be quite challenging, with claims that need to be addressed. The claims may have substance, they may be exaggerations, but we should regard them and deal with them as a normal part of a “robust” debate.
We don’t have all the truth and neither does anyone else. The more I read TAE and the comments stream, the more I realise how complicated the situation is and how little I know.
Maxwell’s Chart is excellent. Needs wider exposure.
The case against Pfizer appears to be building nicely. I do wait for the day when some government will pluck up what’s left of its courage, take a deep breath and announce in solemn, majestic and carefully measured tones that “Pfizer can get stuffed.”
Yeah, that’ll be the day.
So, India will starve people into jabbing compliance. Amazing how our various rights are being disappeared. On 20/12/2010 the Human Rights Council (HRC) of the UN issued a “Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter”. (Link) The HRC describes itself as involved in the “[p]romotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development”. What happened? The plague has swept all that aside, it seems.
As for the mRNA vaccine developed at Monash Uni, good luck getting it to market. The contract signed by the secrecy-obsessed Feds of Oz hasn’t been made public, but I would not be surprised if it provides for a Pfizer monopoly.
Heard yesterday that Oz too will bring forward the booster shots by 4 months, meaning a 2 month gap istead of the current six. Pfizer must be in need of a revenue boost. Does this mean that we will be jabbed at 2-month intervals now instead of 6?
Veracious Poet, don’t overlook control of 8> Food and drink.
Whoever controls the food supply controls the people.
The food system is increasingly falling under corporate control. Small farms and farmers are being forced out, agribusiness is taking over ever more land and their land management methods are steadily degrading and destroying soils worldwide. The FAO estimates the world has about 55 harvests left until all soils worldwide are so depleted that little will or can grow.
The world’s seed supplies are falling into the hands of fewer and larger corporations. The number of varieties is shrinking alarmingly. Biodiversity is being lost, perhaps by design. Genetic modification makes it possible to patent plants (and animals) that were formerly in the shared commons.
The nutritional density of a variety of fruits and vegetables has been declining for decades, and they are replaced by foodlike substances now found in the diet of millions. This promotes obesity, immune system deficiency, gastrointestinal maladies and poor mental health. (Perhaps one reason why so many people are so confused by what is being done to them.)
The promise is that science and technology will save us, but this has not been demonstrated.
The heavy reliance on fossil fuels to make industrial agriculture possible is its Achilles Heel. We imagine that we will have bountiful energy forever to make the corporate system run.
Chemicals used in industrial farming cause cancers and directly kill farmers. Indirectly they kill consumers.
And on it goes.
Omicron arrives just as parts of the People’s Democartic Republic of Australia are coming out of long and tedious house arrest, blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight and fresh air. Bugger. Soon we’ll all be plunged back into it again.
I just had a young builder and his apprentice complete some much-needed repairs to my house. He told me how glad he was to be able to get back to work again after 10 or 12 weeks without work or income. He’s been existing on savings and was getting quite nervous about when they’d run out. Restrictions eased just in time for him and thousands like him, but now we may have them imposed afresh. Being self-employed, his vaccination status did not improve his income earning potential at all.
It’s not just the particular job or job category that is affected; it’s also the entire job and work ecology that is harmed. Everything is attached to everything and in more ways than one. Tug too much on a thread here and the whole basted suit falls apart. To mix my metaphors.
BTW, I presume you know that “al dente” is Italian for “not cooked” ?
