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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” ?
The details of the agreement that The Feds of Oz signed with Pfizer will be kept a deep, dark secret. This government is obsessed with secrecy. More and more governmental activities and decison-making are shielded from the public on the grounds of “national security” or “commercial-in-confidence” or both. The level of secrecy itself seems to be a secret.
I suspect the sales agreement closely resembles the one Brazil entered into. References to AstraZeneca seem to be fading away, Novavax is a non-starter, Moderna and J&J are nowhere to be seen, local efforts to develop a vaccine get nowhere.
John Day wrote of the “Penal Continent of Oz”. Not bad, but as I recently wrote (here or somewhere else; forget) I much prefer “The People’s Democratic Republic of Australia.” Splendid misnomer: it’s not of the people any more, democracy is steadily receding, and it never was a republic. Sigh. Another form of governance and government gets thrown into the dustbin of history, another failed experiment. We know what’s next — a reversion to form.
By the way, Britain sent more convicts to north America prior to the War of National Liberation than were ever sent to Australia.
In Australia there are proposals to frack large areas of land which is of deep cultural significance to the indigenous peoples. These have been mounting a resistance campaign with much popular support.
The Feds here are OBSESSED with exhuming and selling fossils fuels, especially natural gas: they want a “gas-led recovery” to use their own term.
I am not sure and don’t have time to investigate, but this forced deportation of at least some first nations people — another stolen generation or three — may perhaps provide a convenient way to undermine indigenous opposition to Extractivist Economics and Politics.
May God have mercy upon them all.
The problem with shame is that it requires a sense of guilt over one’s actions.
Australia is blessed with a prime minister who has said publicly (on radio 3AW) that he has never — knowingly — lied in public. Yeah, right.
What is more, in the benighted land of Oz it is NOT illegal for political campaign advertisements to make totally false accusations and allegations. Few of the political establishment seem bothered about this.
Our PM has let it be known that he is a churchgoer (Hillsong). What on earth does that church teach its congregations? The Epic of Gilgamesh? Certainly not the 9th commandment, “You shall not bear false witness.”
Casualty estimates:
World War I (Great War): 1.7 to 2.3% of global population.
World War II: 3 to 3.75% ditto. Over twice as many civilians died as military.
World War V (accine): stay tuned
The Conversation editorial this morning:
It’s a common phrase to see online at this point in the pandemic – that vaccinated people who contract COVID are just as infectious as unvaccinated people.
However, it’s false, according to Victoria University immunologists Jack Feehan and Vasso Apostolopoulos.
It’s borne out of studies that show vaccinated people have a similar peak viral load to unvaccinated people if they do get the Delta variant of COVID.
While this is true, this does not mean vaccinated people are as infectious to others as people who haven’t been vaccinated. Firstly, because vaccinated people are less likely to get COVID in the first place.
And secondly, even if the peak is similar, research suggests vaccinated people clear the virus faster, have less time with very high levels of virus present, have less virus overall, and are contagious for a shorter period of time.
So, on average, they’re likely to be less contagious than people who haven’t been vaccinated.
Got work to do now, but later today I’ll read the article. Wil I understand it?
I wish you all the best. Hope that toilet remains available.
Maybe the effects of that big demo in Melbourne will flow through, but how long will it take? How long will the insanity go on until someone, somewhere gets his Ceausescu moment on an equivalent balcony?
And yet consider how many people in former Communist countries think that their lives were better pre 1989.
TAE Summary, a thousand thanks for that post. It describes our national (Oz) cognitive environment very closely indeed.
It also describes the cognitive environment of religious cults very well. Among the more extreme, prophecies can be an important component of the belief system, a fear- or promise-based means of exercising dominion over the congregation.
If dire prophecies fail, never mind, God changed his strategy, we must plug on regardless. Better luck next time.
If the promises fail, it was because we did not merit God’s gift. Obviously. We must repent and change our ways. Better luck next time.
In the above, replace the words “prophecies” and “promises” with “vaccine”, and “God” with “medical science” and see how it reads.
It’s too late now to do much to counter the vaccination
hysteriaprogram. If the promises fail, what can we do? If the dire prophecies turn out to be over-wrought, OK then, some form of society will continue. Either way, all we can do is wait and watch.In Canberra because of our (uniquely?) high vaccine rate, we’re starting to relax and lift restrictions, e.g. don’t need the wretched masks outdoors any more, we can go shopping again especially in big box retail stores, sizes of private and public gatherings have been increased yet again. The gov’t is meeting now to consider relaxing things even more.
The moral? In Vaccine We Trust.
Given the demonstrably high vaccine failure rates, I am morbidly curious to see how quickly and extensively the cases resurge, and how soon after that all the restrictions and the de facto house arrest come back. The main part of the response I expect will of course be to get busy with the booster shots, not to look for alternative treatments.
Maybe, just maybe, our experience will add weight to the claim that the vaccines aren’t working. I dunno. The juggernaut has gained so much momentum, nothing will stop it.
Will we see justice? Eventually perhaps. But how many corpses lined the roads to Nuremberg?
“This is the line at an NYPD station of officers lined up to go out sick tomorrow as that’s the deadline for the vaccination.”
Sorry, I’m a hopeless laggard when it comes to this sort of thing: are these officers taking a sickie to avoid being vaccinated? Or are they de facto quitting their jobs? What happens to them next week?Does anyone know the statistics: out of the total number of NYPD officers, how many are refusing the jab and how many are accepting it? I suspect that this is the only statistic that TPTB will care about: weight of numbers.
(And this “Let’s go Brandon” thing that’s floating around has no resonance in Oz at the moment. No doubt it will filter into our consciousness eventually, given the all-pervasive US media presence, but not yet.)
“The “pandemic of the unvaccinated” phrase is officially dead”
Not in Australia. It still resonates in Viktoria.“You can cite all the trivia you want, but we know this is what works”
Yes, in Australia. This is a widespread attitude, clearly evident in the censorship carried out by formerly reputable organisations such as the MSM and my favourite bugbear, The Conversation, which has badly let us down with its one-sided narratives.“He also expressed hope that the vaccines would in the end make Corona indistinguishable from the common cold.”
Vaccine failure, a.k.a. we-need-booster-shots, has been accepted as a fact by at least some of the state health authorities and by the Oz Feds who reportedly are laconically signing up to purchase plentiful supples of Pfizer (and only Pfizer) for booster shots to be administered in 6 months’ time. And presumably again and again until the virus is vaccinated into oblivion. The reports say that this booster won’t be mandatory. Yeah, right.“we ARE the majority. The tide has turned against them and they are losing the narrative battle.”
Not in Australia. Most people believe that we orta get jabbed because it just works. Simple as that. I was speaking to an acquaintance a couple of days ago, a highly educated engineer with no more of a medical education than I have (i.e. tiny), who told me happily that the NSW data shows the double-jabbed have one-third the risk of infection of the non-jabbed. Or something.I don’t blame the GP (general public) for thinking as they do: a tremendous indoctrination campaign has had the desired effect. If it hadn’t been for sites like TAE, I would be completely among them.
The antipodean summer is coming in. I’ve been tending to my veggie gardens — lovely day today to be outside in the sun and fresh air. If cold weather provokes infection, then we are in for a comparatively quiet season. But I unhappily await narrative-puncturing developments in the wintry northern hemisphere. Oh the humanity.
The august, objective, rational, unbiased, scientific, apolitical, academic-powered website calling itself “The Conversation today emitted an article entitled “COVID vaccines for 5 to 11 year olds are inching closer. Here’s what we know so far“.
I thought I’d stir the possum a little by chucking in a comment along these lines:
I would like your opinion on where we are heading in view of this: ‘70% of Covid Patients in Flemish Hospitals are now fully “vaccinated,” Belgian Health Minister yesterday in Parliament’
But when I went to post it, oh what a perfect surprise: comments are blocked! Who would ever have guessed that The Conversation would be, could be, one-sided?
Hmmph.
A great many Irish migrated to Australia for various reasons including the potato famine. They’re quite a noticeable element of our society.
Ireland had become too reliant on a single variety of potato, and this lack of biodiversity was a major factor in the famine (1842–1852). When it was well under way, Ireland was exporting grain. This should have been fed to the people, but no. According to a TV documentary I saw some time ago, “Her Majesty’s government did not wish to disturb the market.”
Good grief. The Great God Market must not be disturbed or else he will punish us. Nothing has changed.
If the “Great Die-Off” has started, then I await with interest to see who among the jabbed ruling classes does NOT die off.
… although to make this a proper experiment we need better knowledge of what they have been inoculated with.
Australia’s PM made a big point of being photographed while being jabbed. Marketing? Or leading by example? So far he seems quite healthy. On verra, as the French say.
To much rejoicing, NSW has greatly eased restrictions, Sydney will become accessible to outsiders in a few weeks (but only to the double-jabbed), house arrest in Melbourne has at last almost ceased, Canberra won’t require masks in the great outdoors as of today, and so on.
Based on what I’ve been reading thus far, the great resurgence lies just ahead. But so does summer.
Thanks, Dr Day, for your splendid attitude: “Let’s help them out by gently relieving them of duty. Nope, I’m not sure how that works, but not by becoming like them…” It never works to respond in kind to threats and bullying.
Talking of “the totalitarianism of vaccination in places like Australia”, as a resident of that country, it doesn’t FEEL like a totalitarian state much at all. Riots and demonstrations have been few in number, but luridly presented in the MSM. Only Sydney and Melbourne have had much in the way of unrest. In the national capital where I live, conditions have been calm and peaceful for the entire plague period.
The people in the main are entirely convinced of the need to be jabbed, and there is comparatively little social division because of it. Canberra is one of the most jabbed cities in the world, methinks. Today’s report is that 98.8% of the people aged 12+ have been jabbed once, 74.7% twice.
Only time will tell if we’re vaccinating ourselves into extinction. The Southern Hemisphere summer is approaching, so if the plague is made worse by winter then we have a long time to wait before experiencing that ourselves.
I await developments with interest — and morbid curiority.
So, ADE begins.
Where does that portend for Canberra? Here are our latest statistics as of yesterday:
41 new cases
407 active cases
694 recovered
3,109 new negative tests
15 in hospital (7 in ICU, 6 of them on ventilators)
6 lives lost (all were aged and in palliative care)
96% vaccinated once (ages 12+)
67.2% jabbed twice
Total vaccines doses at ACT Government Clinics now at 342,233
Canberra’s population is about 460,000.I await developments.
@ TDub
So, a Chinese rocket over Australia. They could have fired it in many directions but chose to send it over us? Pretty well over my head.
Hmmm. A warning shot across our metaphoric bows, perhaps. No wonder that our prime minister, who seems to think that he has the Mandate of Heaven, has jilted France and gone back to the old lovers, the US and UK, for (imagined) defence — and has copped enormous flak for it.
Beats me why the MSM here aren’t reporting this, as it would bolster his case for making the AUKUS deal at all. Maybe it’s too early?
I haven’t visited TAE for a few days. Oh man, even a short break is enough to show the level of insanity in this world is increasing exponentially, especially in the Glorious West. We who were so proud of our commitment to justice and fairness, we who imagined ourselves embarked upon la mission civilisatrice, we who esteemed ourselves nobly setting out to bear the white man’s burden, are now disintegrating at an equal and opposite exponential rate while an astonished world watches.
I’m old and glad to be — not much time left in the asylum Fine for me, but what about our younger people in mid-career with families and responsibilities? God help us all, because nothing else can.
Good on the Australian corporations for taking a stand at last. A big problem here is that the feds are desperate to re-open the economy but the states are scared silly that the plague will swamp their healthcare systems (each state runs its own) if they don’t take extraordinary precautionary measures. So we have two diametrically opposed viewpoints.
This makes me wonder that if covid is just a stalking horse for the Big Reset, then why aren’t the Australian feds supporting indefinite restrictions and economic paralysis by agreeing with the states that the plague is too dangerous to deal with carelessly? Or are they playing some kind of clever double game, pretending to oppose the states while underneath supporting them?
Because the medical community here has by and large accepted the doctrine that covid has no treatment other than vaccines, they see no alternative path out of the morass. Because Australia has lagged far behind the likes of Israel in jabbing its people, we still don’t see much if any empirical evidence that vaccine effectiveness wears off after just a few months — while, paradoxically, there appears to be growing public awareness that this will happen. Until vaccine failure becomes impossible to ignore, the juggernaut will roll on and over us. What happens later I cannot guess.
I was zooming the other day with some people widely scattered around the country, and we got onto the topic of vaccines (well off-agenda). I was pleasantly surprised at how they viewed the situation, seeing it as a loss of democracy and covering up some other agenda. I don’t know if any of them reads TAE (fairly sure they don’t read PP), so it was good to see this high level of knowledge and disapproval displayed. We also agreed that the juggernaut is very large and will be very hard to deal with as it gains yet more momentum.
Youtube deleting and re-instating Ron Paul’s account is just a warning shot to everyone. “We can take you out of existence at any time we choose.” Why we’ve let Youtube achieve the quasi-monopoly position is has is sad. In other areas I find Youtube a hugely useful source of knowledge in practical matters such as home maintenance.
Posting this again minus the links. First posting disappeared.
The august, science-affirming, academically-powered, trustworthy blog known as The Conversation just did it again: censorship!
This morning they ran this: “Ivermectin shows us how hard it is to use old drugs for COVID. Here’s how to do better next time”
People started to make comments, some of which did not support the narrative. I weighed in with what I’ve posted below. About 10 minutes later I reloaded the article to see who else had made comments, and lo and behold! all comments had been deleted and the comments closed off. Yep, science has been replaced by ideology.
——-
Here are some articles to digest.
1. Ivermectin, successfully used in India, confirmed as Covid treatment by Bombay High Court
2. LEGAL NOTICE FOR CONTEMPT OF COURT AGAINST DR. TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS, DR. SOUMYA SWAMINATHAN AND THE DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF HEALTH SERVICES (DGHS)
The accused are served legal notice for their attempt to undermine the authority of the Bombay High Court and obstruct the use of Ivermectin for Covid-19 treatment.
3.Uttar Pradesh government says early use of Ivermectin helped to keep positivity, deaths low, claiming that timely introduction of Ivermectin since the first wave has helped the state maintain a relatively low positivity rate despite in its high population density.
4.HUGE: Uttar Pradesh, India Announces State Is COVID-19 Free Proving the Effectiveness of “Deworming Drug” IVERMECTIN
5.Indian Bar Association vs WHO | Adv. Dipali Ojha with Rajiv Malhotra
Advocate Dipali Ojha of the Indian bar association and a team of young indian lawyers have issued a legal notice to the world health organization over their blatant campaign against any alternative treatments. (Watch this asap before Youtube delete it.)
The Indian and Australian stances simply do not comport. In view of the evidence from India, I would say that the Indians have it right and the Australians don’t.
While this was written to ancient Israel first, it is sharply relevant to just about all Australian governments right now, and clearly reflects the situation worldwide.
Isaiah 3:4–7: I will make boys their officials; mere children will govern them. People will oppress each other—man against man, neighbour against neighbour. The young will rise up against the old, the base against the honourable. A man will seize one of his brothers at his father’s home, and say, “You have a cloak, you be our leader; take charge of this heap of ruins!” But in that day he will cry out, “I have no remedy. I have no food or clothing in my house; do not make me the leader of the people.”
Am I waiting for the day when people will NOT want to be leaders, to dominate and control? Yes? I am entitled to dream, no?
A non-vaccine comment: this astounding new tripartite anti-China alliance rejoices in the acronym of AUKUS. The Great Auk is an extinct bird. How long before the Great AUKUS follows suit?
vivarta,
Thanks for linking to those articles in the Indian media. I’d been after such reports for a while and couldn’t find them!
The chief minister of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), site of the city of Canberra where I live, has said that he is reluctant to start a passport vaccination system because it would be discriminatory and unfair. This is encouraging, unlike Victoria which seems pleased to starve the unvaxxed into compliance.
OTOH, I wonder what pressures will be brought to bear on him to change his mind?
The most-afflicted states, NSW and Victoria, are tired of the restrictions and consequent huge economic damage, and want them gone, and this includes the various levels of government. Naturally, being convinced that vaccination is the only way out, they are enthusiastically promoting the campaigns, dangling before us the carrot of freedom-if-we-reach- 80%-or-so!
I presume we go through this rigmarole all over again in 6 months’ time. And 12 months. And 18 months…
Australia just jilted France after only a few months ago declaring what great like-minded, freedom-loving friends we are. Now we’ve become yet more entangled in US affairs and US ambitions, yet more losses of independence and freedom.
I’ll try to be even-handed in this brief analysis: maybe the Antipodean PTB really do foresee great dangers in our future and they really do think that insulting and angering France, and putting our free trade deal with the EU at risk, is an acceptable price to pay.
Good grief, we’ve really poked the dragon now, the very dragon upon whose trade and commerce depends almost our entire national livelihood. China could bring us to our knees in a week simply by cutting off most trade with us. It would inconvenience them; it would crush us.
Trouble with living on an island, even of continental size, is that there’s nowhere to go; no border guards to bribe to slip under the wire. I gave up my Norwegian citzenship decades ago. I wonder if they’d let me have it back?
Splendid essay, David! Many thanks for writing and sharing it with us, and many thanks to Raúl for providing the medium to do it.
David’s gentle, reasoned and reasoning approach is most welcome in these increasingly disturbed and quasi-deranged times.
It seems only yesterday that RetroSuburbia was released. Who’d have thought then that the future would include today’s situation. We may be retrofitting our suburbs far sooner than anyone anticipated.
I strongly recommend that everybody read How to Have Impossible Conversations by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay (ISBN: 9780738285320). I have read it, need to re-read it, and find that it is indeed a very practical guide. Today more than ever we need this kind of practical wisdom and advice. May those who attend TAE become bright examples of reasoning and reasoned discourse.
From Booktopia:
Whether you’re in a classroom, an office, a town hall–or just hoping to get through a family dinner with a stubborn relative–here is a guide to having effective, civil discussions about today’s most divisive issues.
In our current political climate, it seems impossible to have a civil conversation with someone who has a different opinion. Dialogue is shut down when perspectives clash. Heated debates on Facebook and Twitter often lead to shaming, hindering any possibility of productive discourse. How To Make Impossible Conversations guides readers through the process of having effective, civil discussions about any divisive issues–not just religious faith but climate change, race, gender, poverty, immigration, and gun control.
Coauthors Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay distinguish between two types of conversations: those that are oriented toward arriving at truth, and those that may require changing the beliefs of people who do not want their beliefs changed (interventions). They then guide readers through the straightforward, practical, conversational techniques necessary for every successful conversation, up to expert- and master-level techniques to deal with hardliners and extremists. With key principles like the “Seven Fundamentals Necessary for Good Conversations,” this book is the manual everyone needs to foster connection and empathy with anyone.
Please do not buy it from Amazon if you can possibly avoid it. Give someone else a go.
