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In Australia 9/11 produced some comment in the media, but not much. That day is already ancient history for so many people.
Thomas Cole’s painting is one of a series of 5. Number 4 has had a lot of exposure on the Internet. Wikipedia says that his paintings reflect “popular American sentiments of the times, when many saw pastoralism as the ideal phase of human civilization, fearing that empire would lead to gluttony and inevitable decay”.
Gluttony and decay. Ain’t that the prophectic truth! All empires follow the same trajectory. When will they ever learn?
Great post thanks! In view of the waning effectiveness of the vaccines, having other treatments available may be vital.
OTC in Texas might not be OTC in Australia. A research project awaits me!
The situation in Victoria is becoming totally surreal, a huge experiment in applied psychopathy. The madness is affecting other parts of the country. Only 18 months ago we had plenty of our freedoms, although even then the various federal and state governments were drawing up and passing restrictive legislation.
The only way out of this is through it. We’ll just have to wait for the side effects to kick in — if any. Who knows; there may be few of them after all. There’s no shortage of other catastrophes looming: climate change, financial collapse, biosphere destruction, soil depletion, plastic pollution, costly energy, and so on.
No hiding place anywhere. The entire planet is being shaken to its foundations. What next?
Really like Vighi’s paper. Most of it rings very true. He doesn’t say in as many words that the plague was deliberately released. It may have been an accident. Whatever; it’s here now and being exploited.
It always makes me wonder how TPTB, if they’re so intent on saving themselves and disposing of the rest of us, imagine their heavily depopulated economy will succeed. Capitalism relies on a consumer class, and if there’s too few consumers then there’s no real economy. Do TPTB really imagine themselves living luxurious, technologically maintained lives in their castles, while the plebs somehow make a living outside the moat? If this is anything like their thinking, then it has no future. It can’t have a future. If so, the term “suicide capitalism” has never seemed more appropriate.
Here’s a recent video from Steve Keen, one of my gurus. The first half is mostly about economics; the second half is a discussion of the climate crisis from an economist’s point of view. A bit of (understandable) bad language in it. Steve heavily criticises neoliberalism for much if not most of the mess we’re in, and is profoundly and yet almost cheerfully pessimistic.
The Arctic and Greenland icecaps are melting far more rapidly than projected, it won’t be too many decades until sea level rise drowns the world economy — and the projected 6m rise is more than enough to stop the game.
Kendrick’s article articulates what I have been feeling for some time: what is truth? Yesterday I spent some time looking for solid evidence of the effectiveness of IVM in Uttar Pradesh (or even India more generally). I found evidence for and just as much against. So hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. We can ask the age-old question, “What is truth?” Reminds me of a situation in ancient Israel where “… justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.” Nothing new under the sun.
After Australia reaches its target of 80% vaccination and the heavens are opened and blessings poured out upon us, I rather expect those who are not jabbed to become the scapegoats, our sins loaded upon us and driven into the wilderness, preferably to die. Even when the effectiveness wears off and the vaccinated become infected and new variants arise, still it will somehow be the fault of the control group.
Sorry. I’m getting a bit too maudlin today.
That BHF article is hugely interesting and relevant to me as I have heart disease. A pacemaker is keeping my condition stable, but if the heart tissue itself is undermined then I doubt that the pacemaker could resurrect me!
My concern with these articles is that they can be traced back to quality sources. I’m hoping to accumulate a dossier that may have weight in any argument. If ever I have to mount a defence of my position, most anecdotal sources will be deemed irrelevant — maybe a medical doctor’s personal blog would count for something but I suspect I’d need a few of those to avoid being laughed out of court. So far so good.
A couple of days ago I received this reply to an inquiry I made about Novavax in Australia, having noted that our federal government has ordered 51 million doses of it. Make of it what you will.
Thank you for contacting the Australian Government Department of Health.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration, or TGA, has granted the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine with provisional determination and is currently evaluating it.
Provisional determination means that the TGA has decided that US biotechnology company Novavax is eligible to apply for provisional registration for its vaccine. The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine is not yet approved for use in Australia — or anywhere in the world.
The Novavax vaccine must pass the TGA’s rigorous assessment and approval processes before it can be approved for use in Australia. These processes include assessment of the vaccine’s safety, quality and effectiveness.
If the vaccine is proven to be safe and effective and the TGA approves it for use, it’s expected that the first of 51 million doses will be available for use in the second half of 2021.
In Oz we are seeing a growing number of MSM warnings about this dangerous ivermectin. Its safety record is of course never mentioned. The people must not be allowed to make up their own minds. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Well, yes it is. But I don’t mind warnings but I do mind that they’re totally one-sided. No recgnition, no possibility of alternatives. There is only one true god, whose name is vaccine. Do we see a form of medical idolatry in all this? An overblown faith in the ability of medical technology to solve this problem, and by extension all health problems? I think I do.
In the graphic near the top of this edition, I think the most telling argument is that if the vaccines are so safe, why do the manufacturers have no liability? Flies in the face of just about all other consumer protections — and we the people are consumers of vaccines as much of anything else.
Res ipsa loquitur, I think.
Dr Da Costa’s testimony has the ring of truth and aligns with much of what I have seen and read and heard elsewhere. Thanks Germ for bringing this to our attention.
I am at a total loss in what to think of the Australian medical establishment who continue to reject ivermectin saying that it doesn’t work and now is becoming dangerous.
Are they genuinely concerned and protective of public health?
Are their standards of evidence too high?
Are they wilfully blind?
Are they deceived?
Are they ignorant?
Are they frightened?
Are they lazy?
Are they proud?
Are they … ?Just learned that yesterday afternoon in parliament, a vote to stop the Morrison Government granting $50 million in public money to oil and gas corporations to frack the Beetaloo and McArthur Basins failed – opening up the largest new fossil fuel basins in the country against the consent of Traditional Owners. The loyal opposition also voted for the grant.
We are squandering our resource base as fast as we possibly can, and never mind the consequences because there won’t be any. Both major political parties regard climate change as a myth, and if it isn’t, technology will always save us.
Covid has conveniently shut down a lot of possibilities for protest, and even before it struck the feds were working out ways to silence and/or destroy charities who make any sort of political noise.
I am bitterly ashamed of where Australia has gone and is going. No integrity, no reason, no honour; only galloping greed and terminal stupidity.
Sorry to be so glum. I do have my cheerful monents.
The ABC article I referred to above has as its first line:
A growing number of people are importing an unproven treatment for COVID-19, prompting warnings from the nation’s pharmaceutical regulator.
So for the time being importation into Australia is a fact. How soon before they close off that avenue remains to be seen.
It links to another ABC article reporting on the bright idea in Queensland of not letting unjabbed people go to the hairdresser. The hairdressers are resisting—good. If the worst comes to the worst, my cutting my wife’s hair would be a tonsorial catastrophe!
In ancient Israel lepers were required to keep at least 4 cubits or about 2 metres distance from others. If one was downwind from the leper, it was 100 cubits at least.
Today, depending on the part of the world you’re in, the physcial distancing requirement is anywhere from 1.5 to 2 metres, or 3 to 4 cubits.
I guess we’re all lepers now.
ABC (Australia) ran an anti-IVM hit piece yesterday, very similar to the Rolling Stone article of a day or two before that.
Totaler Krieg.
Hmmm, truckie blockade in parts of God Zone Country, Australia? Wouldn’t be the first. I recall in 1979 the truckies blockading Canberra among other places as a political protest. It was quite effective. The federal government of the day had the good sense to negotiate and end it, but the feds also came within a whisker of calling in the military to end it. There was another in 1988 but it was small, more of a nuisance than anything else, and ended quickly.
In the current climate of paranoid Lysenkoism, I can expect any blockade to be smashed immediately by the military. They’re already out in the streets (in small numbers in a few parts of the country), so a precedent has been set.
Still and all, I will analyse the depth of my pantry. To stock up now is making wise provision; to stock up after a blockade has begun (if it begins) is hoarding.
@russell
One Nation and/or Katter/PUP coming to power? Ghastly. <racking sob>
Too bad it’s too late to emigrate.
Don’t know where I’d go, though.
Too much fire, too many frying pans.(Hmmm. Could I make a haiku out of that?)
@Doc Robinson
Deficient, yep. Never thought too search by image. Thanks.,and good on @ianmSC.
“Bewdy!” (idiom)
@Doc Robinson
Thanks for the bigger image! I want to see some faces when I show them that. Could you please tell me where you found it? I need a primary source.
I ask for the source because only “official & trusted sources” will count in any debate. I don’t want to be laughed out of court, so to speak.
@Dr. D
Where did you get that splendid graphic of how well lockdowns are working in Australia? And did it come with the dates of lockdown already drawn on it, or did someone else do that?
The image is clickable and can be enlarged, but I still can’t read the fine print. It comes from Zerohedge but that doesn’t lead me anywhere.
I could use it elsewhere.
In Australia TPTB are getting desperate, especially the governments of NSW, Vic and the ACT. All state governments here are firmly convinced that the only way out of this situation is by mass vaccination. They also think that a return to zero covid is possible, and are enforcing draconian measures to get there. A lot of the ugliness the world is seeing now is a product of those. I loath what is happening but am powerless of course to do anything about it.
The NSW Treasurer has been expressing concern about the serious economic effects, and he is right to do so. They are serious! Hence the vaccine panic.
The Prime Minister has been copping a lot of flak for saying that Covid won’t go away and that we must learn to live with it.
The Chief Minister of the ACT in a press conference yesterday again urged all Canberrans to get vaccinated, and that “it’s a race against time.”
The Conversation (Aust. edition) told us this morning that cases are surging in Israel, the main reason being that:
78% of Israel’s 12 and over population is only around 60% of the total population. And 60% vaccination coverage is simply not high enough to achieve herd immunity with the more infectious Delta variant.
She says the country’s experience, along with that of certain undervaccinated parts of the US and UK, provides a glimpse of what might happen in Sydney if the NSW government lifts restrictions before the population is adequately vaccinated.
It’s important to note vaccines remain highly protective against severe outcomes. The rate of serious cases in Israel is nine times higher for unvaccinated over-60s than vaccinated over-60s.
To open safely, it’s about reaching high enough vaccine coverage plus focusing on other measures such as adequate ventilation, masks, third booster doses for health workers, and vaccinating children.
Nothing there about leakage or waning effectiveness or adverse effects or the efficacy of non-vaccine treatments. Nope; while adverse effects exist, in proportion to the number of vaccinations they are small to the point of irrelevance. So we are all urged to stop worrying and love the vaccines. Everything will be all right.
And that pretty well IS the official view here, among medicos, academics and hence politicians, the media, and hence the general public. I know a number of dear people who have been jabbed, and I do hope that in fact the vaccines prove safe for them.
No it didn’t. Follow the link and scroll down until you see a big blue circle. Dramatic!
Could someone tell me how to insert an image in a post? Attachment didn’t work. The IMG tags wants a URL but the image is on my computer.
An academic, official depiction of one risk factor (blood clotting) cause by the AZ vaccine. If I had time I’d produce a similar diagram of other risk factors, official and unofficial, for other risk factors and other vaccines. But I don’t.
No wonder the public and politicians are relaxed about vaccination policy.
To be honest, if push comes to shove then I might consider the Novavax offering (protein-based, not GMO), but I can’t find enough layman-level analysis of it to have a better informed opinion. The last report I read said that it may be approved in Australia in the last quarter of this year.
(Let’s see if this works.)
Could I ask everyone posting here, would you please not just post a link to something or other, but at the same time provide a brief summary of what it’s about?
I’m finding it takes me longer and longer to peruse TAE’s (important) daily digests, I have other things to do during the day (like planting several rows of silver beet yesterday), and I need to estimate where my time is best spent. Summaries, however brief, would be really, really useful.
I remember about a year ago when Canberra underwent its first period of restrictions (I refuse to use the L-word), hearing on the radio a presenter saying how eagerly she was looking forward to the arrival of the vaccines so that she and everyone else could be liberated.
Another reason for the maintenance of the vaccination program is that the public need HOPE. We’re all weary of the plague and its management, and to take away hope of relief from the public is a big ask. The vaccination crew are selling hope as much as anything else.
I have read somewhere that the delta variant is virulent enough so that Dr Kory has become infected, and he is finding that IVM has reduced effectiveness. What then lies ahead with, say, the lambda variant? Or later on the omega?
We’ve all seen bottles of hand sanitiser and kitchen cleansers and the like proclaiming that they “kill 99% of all germs.” It seems to be general knowledge now (at last) that this means 1% of the germs are not killed, and it is these tough ones that prosper and breed. Human action promotes selective breeding for sanitiser resistance. Our profligate misues of antibiotics in the food chain is destroying the effectiveness of antibiotics for human health purposes.
So yes, why should this virus behave any differently?
Just now successfully accessed John Day’s blog: 11:04, 18/8/2021, AEST. Hope its unavailability was just a glitch.
phoenixvoice asked, “(1) Are run of the mill people in Australia aware that the vaccinated can still contract and transmit Covid?
(2) Are run of the mill people in Australia aware of the myocarditis/pericarditis risks, of the blood clot risks?
(3) Are they really going to permit their precious children to get jabbed?
(4) WTF is going on?”Four questions, my four answers in brief:
1. Increasingly so but thus far it’s a s-l-o-w process.
2. In general, no. The general attitude is that such side effects are rare to the point of irrelevance.
3. Yes.
4. Among other things, a dose of our own medicine.Let me enlarge a little.
Re (1), the news is slowly seeping in around the edges, but the MSM narrative, including academic sites like The Conversation, still hew to the party line. It’ll take a mighty lot of adverse effects to change their minds. And to be impartial we must address the hypothesis that the mooted side effects may not prove as severe as many fear. This requires time to assess and we’re not being given time — THAT is my main gripe about all of this. Lack of time.
It’s also starting to happen that information about non-vaccine treatments is making its way into the public forum. People need to be given the choice of vaccine or non-vaccine treatment — but they’re not.
Re (2), this sort of info is a bit abstruse yet. Give it time.
Re (3), I know a mother of 3 young children, oldest about 11, who believes firmly in the powers of vaccines to keep her and hers safe. She has willingly accepted the jab herself and is impervious to arguments against it. She is understandably keen to protect her kids, and in her estimation this is best done by trusting medical science. She is NOT evil, NOT stupid. Her days are full and she does not have the luxury of time to pore over discussions on TAE and other websites. Now multiply this by the hundreds of thousands and it’s obvious why we’re in this situation.
Re (4), one thing going on here is that it rhymes with what we did to the indigenous peoples of this country. A big dose of our own medicine. It is a great sadness of the epidemic that its arrival shut down an important exhibition at the Australia Museum in Sydney about the European invasion and occupation of this country. The exhibition is due to close on 10 Oct, and on present indications the plague will still be with us then.
The exhibition shows clear and indisputable historical evidence that the Brits simply invaded this country, Roman-style, seeking geopolitical advantage and another territory to plunder. The indigenous peoples were brutally pushed aside, in spite of much surprisingly successful early resistance. My delightful forebears used germ warfare (smallpox-infected blankets) to turn the tide. Later on we stole their children from them. We chased them of their lands and imprisoned them in a foreign system. The incarceration rate for indigenous people is vastly higher than for the rest. They have been pushed to the bottom of the heap and are kept there. Sensible and humanitarian recommendations of Royal Commissions are in the main ignored. Recently the world learnt how horribly much of this was duplicated in Canada and the US.
The plague is kind of doing to us what we did to them. It invaded us. It is locking us up and badly damaging our economy, just as we damaged and largely destroyed the indigenous economy. It is afflicting our children and our adults in many ways: physically and psychologically. We have choices and freedoms taken away from us. The parallels go on and on.
It is all so sad. In particular I deplore the polarisation taking place. We are divided in two and set against each other. I think the analogy is a good one, that of rats in the cage subjected to electric shocks who attack each other as scapegoats for the externally-applied shocks.
Ulysses S. Grant said, “I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.”
Is this a realistic hope in this era? Seems to me that the machinery of oppression and subjugation has been fine-tuned after centuries of experience, especially to the point of convincing the general public that imprisonment is a form of liberty.
At the moment I think that Australia is a lost cause. The only thing that might mitigate the tribulation, but not avoid it, could be the multiplication of variants and the consequent realisation that it’s all out of our control. And in the MSM here there DOES seem to be a growing acceptance of vaccination futility. It’s got a long way to go, but it has started.
Chink in the IVM denialist armour?
A month ago the Spectator’s Australian edition published an article entitled “Hunt goes off-script with IVM”. Excerpt:
Indeed, federal Health Minister Greg Hunt wrote to one of the doctors in Australia who prescribes ivermectin confirming that he was aware that some physicians are prescribing ivermectin off-label for Covid and that they were quite within their rights as the practice of prescribing registered medicines outside of their approved indications is not regulated or controlled by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), it is at the discretion of the prescribing physician. Yet the silence persists. Ivermectin is the drug that dare not speak its name.
About 3 weeks ago it published “Ivermectin: It’s as Aussie as Vegemite”. Excerpt:
That treatment was discovered by Australian Professor Thomas Borody based on research by Australian scientists at the Doherty Institute and Monash University. Borody, who discovered the cure for peptic ulcers using a triple-therapy, has developed a triple-therapy for Covid using safe, cheap, approved medications.
Doctors are already legally prescribing his therapy in Australia and the key medication — ivermectin — is being used in various combinations around the world and has been credited not just with dramatically reducing cases and deaths in the devastating second wave in India but also in Mexico City. Indeed, it is currently being used in 17 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America and even in the US, where it is legal but where families sometimes have to get court orders to force hospitals to use it, to save their relatives lives.
The Spectator is rather right-wing and I don’t always like its style, but in this case what the columnist wrote aligns with what I’ve been reading all over the place. Indeed, if the right-wing Spectator publishes articles like this, maybe the right-wing Murdoch press will do likewise? That could be good for spreading the word owing to the excessive influence Murdoch has in this country.
Even the ABC today is writing that owing to delta, herd immunity via vaccination is impossible. A bit more:
Local experts say in addition to the US example, data from multiple international jurisdictions across the world means the concept of herd immunity is now an “impossibility”.
“It [herd immunity] requires people getting immunity from being vaccinated and immunity from contracting COVID, and recovering.
“In the UK, for example, more than 90 per cent of people have either been vaccinated or recovered from COVID and even they haven’t got herd immunity.
“In Australia, we’re relying purely on vaccination, as we don’t have enough people who had had COVID and recovered. …”
[However] “Biden’s right, it’s becoming a ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’.”Interesting that the quoted experts say that immunity can be achieved by the jab or by recovering from infection. No mention of adverse effects, though.
@vlad
“I sometimes add someting to the comments at the Australian “Conversation” site, which is a bit like an atheist trying to address a synod.”
Hilarious! My feelings exactly!I do look forward to the Great Wall of Academia having many more holes bored in it.
It seems that ivermectin is not as effective against delta as against the rest of the alphabet. Pierre Kory has caught the plague now. He says that early treatment is vital. It starts to sound as though the lambda variant is not bothered by any of the major vaccines.
Now what?
Plague comes back to Canberra
As of 17:00 today we get locked up for a week. As I write it’s 13:10.
It’s been a year since the last time, but Canberra has been expecting this, and may of us have been stocking up in preparation.
Now to see the extent to which Delta tears through the community.
Finding ivermectin in Oz
Owing to the slow spread of the plague here, I’ve not needed to find a source of supply of IVM. It’s a prescription-only medication here, and I haven’t tried importing any from India. I suspect it would not make it through Customs.
A horse paste exists which contains the forbidden substance. I won’t name it lest it be banned or jumped on or whatever. Yesterday I went to several internet-based outlets and found that it’s out of stock. Hmmm.
A few snippets from the Australian Museum’s article on the Spanish Flu of 1918:
Influenza was first noted in Australia in 1820 and reported in the Sydney Almanack of 1834.
While influenza epidemics commonly occur each winter, there have been a number of pandemics (epidemics of worldwide proportion) in Australia’s history. These include a series of pandemics in the 1890s, 1957, 1968 and 2009. The most devastating pandemic took place in 1918–19.
The virus mutates rapidly and constantly, meaning the human population cannot build up an enduring immunity. The flu is estimated to cause up to 3500 deaths in Australia each year.
Unusually, the Spanish flu affected healthy young adults much more than its usual targets: children, the elderly or those with weakened immune systems. In Australia, the virus became known as ‘pneumonic influenza’.
The first line of defence was to try to prevent the virus reaching the Australian mainland. The Australian Quarantine Service monitored the spread of the pandemic and implemented maritime quarantine on 17 October 1918 after learning of outbreaks in New Zealand and South Africa.
The first infected ship to enter Australian waters was the Mataram, from Singapore, which arrived in Darwin on 18 October 1918. Over the next six months the service intercepted 323 vessels, 174 of which carried the infection. Of the 81,510 people who were checked, 1102 were infected.
The federal government’s second line of defence was to establish a consistent response in handling and containing any pneumonic influenza outbreaks that might occur in Australia.
Commonwealth Serum Laboratories was established during the First World War to alleviate Australia’s dependence on imported vaccines. In 1918 it developed its first, experimental vaccine in anticipation of pneumonic influenza reaching mainland Australia.
Researchers did not know what caused influenza, but produced a vaccine that addressed the more serious secondary bacterial infections that were likely to cause death.
Between 15 October 1918 and 15 March 1919, CSL produced three million free doses for Australian troops and civilians. It later evaluated the vaccines to be partially effective in preventing death in inoculated individuals.
By the end of 1919, the influenza pandemic was over.
Across the globe, the pandemic had had a devastating effect on a population only just beginning to recover from years of war. Many more people died from the influenza pandemic (50–100 million) than had died during the First World War (18 million).
In Australia, while the estimated death toll of 15,000 people was still high, it was less than a quarter of the country’s 62,000 death toll from the First World War. Australia’s death rate of 2.7 per 1000 of population was one of the lowest recorded of any country during the pandemic.
So many lessons here, so many forgotten.
While the plague is among us — while the fungus is among us — TPTB seem to be indulging in resource grabs. There’s a recent proposal to hugely increase visitation to Kosciuszko National Park, even though the environment is fragile and healing after the disastrous fires.
Another proposal is to build over 3000 private units and a marina of 42ha in a vital wildlife area (a Ramsar wetland).There appears to be political corruption involved.
Ancient Gondwanaland-vintage forests in Tasmania are slated to be logged regardless of the loss of habitat and a source of unique honey and tourism (if ever that starts again) worth more than the timber.
Coal projects continue to be approved regardless of the effects on the Barrier Reef. Large areas of land in the north have been thrown open to fracking, land with powerful indigenous meaning which lies over Great Artesian Basin and never mind the thousands of wells some whose casings inevitably will crack and leak into the artesian waters and permanently poison it but this won’t happen because all of them are safe enough and anyway we must pursue a gas-led economic recovery because we’ve got nothing much left from which to earn an income having sent too much of our manufacturing to China or Vietnam or anywhere profitable.
Their mantra seems to be that even the biosphere is irrelevant to development. Got that? Projects are waiting.
A form of mania has seized our elites. The greed and stupidity are hard to comprehend. Almost as though they think some kind of enemy is coming and we need to prepare in a huge hurry.
One idea discernible among the Religious Right (RR) is that God has given us enough resources to
squanderlive well until Christ returns, whereupon the righteous will depart this planet for a better place and the unrighteous fry or die or something. Never mind how poorly we treat the planet on the way to heaven, it’s all going to be burnt up anyway and a new heavens and a new earth will be created. If a powerful contingent of our leaders, political and business, think like that, then no wonder we’re in trouble.One comfort is that the influence of the RR is declining. Good, but how long and with what shall we replace it?
Sure, Here are some links:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/adf-soldiers-to-arrive-in-sydney-covid19-lockdown/100336124
https://news.defence.gov.au/national/adf-teams-injected-vaccine-rollout
https://www.theleader.com.au/story/7371650/photos-covid-compliance-checks-at-bangor-and-hurstville/#slide=0The first link is east coast, the last to the west coast.
I don’t like the precedent at all, even though the practice is mostly benign for now. We have a federal government which exhibits overtly authoritarian behaviour. Mind you, I saw the same kind of authoritarianism during the Vietnam War, so to me it’s nothing new. Even so, it’s a very bad trend.
If you believe in any sort of karma, then maybe the general public here are getting a dose of their own medicine. We have kept refugees in durance vile for the heinous crime of coming to this country by boat instead of aircraft — and the public has tolerated it. We have allowed Julian Assange to be grossly abused — and the public has tolerated it. We have oppressed and killed our indigenous peoples — and the public has tolerated it. Our federal government has too many members from the Christian Right who make a show of their religion. They have a form of godliness but deny it any place in their public lives. This double standard is quite obvious and many people are outraged by it — but the public tolerate it.
A short word about the Australian military and plague management
It’s not as dire as depicted in recent TAE posts. Yet. The ADF (Australian Defence Force) have been co-opted into various plague control measures, mainly to provide more manpower for monitoring and distribution work. In the streets when accompanying police they are uniformed but unarmed. In Canberra I have seen none of this.
Of course, this can be thin-end-of-the-wedge stuff, velvet glove and iron fist sort of thing. I await with morbid curiosity to see what the mooted vaccine passport scheme will do to us.
One thing I do NOT want to see is violence in the streets, especially the lethal kind. I look at young policemen and wonder how many of them have children waiting for daddy to come home. Both the authorities and the people are really on the same side but don’t know it yet. Unless and until bad side effects appear which cannot be blamed on anything but the vaccines, then the narrative will continue and the public will accept it.
It’s got to the stage here where the incumbent federal government may be voted out at the next elections owing to the allegedly incompetent and tardy manner in which it commenced a mass vaccination program!
“Australians getting ready to overthrow tyrannical government” ? Ha ha, glad this is satire.
But I don’t like the idea that because we have “given up” our guns, then we have gone into captivity. Most people here don’t want a gun culture; this is our cultural choice and should be respected. Outsiders criticise us for being subservient and not independent enough. Not at all: we are a surprisingly patient and enduring lot, willing to put up with a certain level of abuses and insults for a better outcome.
Only time will tell which cultural choice is the better of a bad lot.
@russellnbibs
Correct: the Feds have no power to mandate medical treatment. Health schemes are a state responsibility. I suspect what the Feds could do is to set up a (presumably privatised) tracking system based on data in the Australian Immunisation Register and then let the states do the whip-cracking.
I have already sent in the form asking for my IMR data NOT to be given out to third parties. Whether that will do any good remains to be seen. If my name does not appear in the tracking system but if my status needs to be determined when I appear at some checkpoint or other, then I guess the presumption will be that I am unjabbed.
And remember that a state of emergency over-rides many other considerations. These are desperate times, anything goes!
