ezlxa1949
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I haven’t seen even one say, I’m sorry, I failed, I step down. Instead they all talk about doing more of what didn’t work.
Not all entirely. We’ve just seen a pollie resign in Australia:
At Victoria’s COVID-19 hotel quarantine inquiry, Daniel Andrews squarely pointed the finger of blame at Jenny MikakosMikakos was thrown under the proverbial bus, and the catastrophe continues.
I get a strong sense of déjà vu when reading news reports from the US these days. It’s the Red Guards all over again.
the WikiLeaks publisher is largely being treated as a “non-person” by the Australian political and media establishment. Moreover, they, no less than their counterparts internationally, are committed to an agenda of militarism and escalating attacks on democratic rights
We know, we know, we know. It is to our undying shame that this vicious, vindictive neo-Stalinist show trial continues unopposed and unmentioned. There’s a similar SECRET show trial taking place in Australia even now, of a whistleblower who revealed Australian bugging operations in Timor Leste. Search for “Witness K” and “Collaery” if you want to know more.
There is no honour left, no dignity. Visit Psychology Today and look for “Dark Personalities.” These exist in swarms at the top of our hierarchy. So sad.
polder dweller wrote,
they all believe that Assange is a traitor who should be locked up
I’ve seen the charge of “traitor” levelled at Assange from other directions. But Assange is not a US citizen, so under current legal definitions it is impossible for him to commmit treason.
Unless of course the US has decided, like ancient Rome towards its end, to grant citizenship to everyone within its borders, in this case those borders being the entire planet.
At the same time it is of course ignoring the controversial HCQ and Ivermectin alternatives costing about 50c a time. Nice for some!
As a result of this and other features our Prime Ministers and Leaders of the other parties tend to be very young.
Maybe so, but the flip side is that the politicians tend to have no breadth of life experience. Too many of them are lawyers who know nothing about their portfolios. They tend to arise from the wealthy ranks of society and do not understand what real people endure in life. They have a naive faith and a huge investment in the status quo. They have done well for themselves in life, so anyone who is doing it tough has only himself to blame for being lazy, indolent and lacking enterprise. All benefits should be removed because that only encourages indolence and dependence.
The party political system has failed. The only roll of the dice left is sortition, which of course the ruling classes will oppose fiercely.
Australia Post recently announced that owing to the enormous volume of parcels they’re now handling, deliveries of conventional mail (i.e. in envelopes) will be cut back to every other day, while parcels will continue to be delivered daily.
Thought you might like to know this.
Talking of the US Post Office, some years ago its overseas postage rates went up quite suddenly by a factor of about 10.
Recently I purchased two CDs, one from the UK and one from the US. British postal charges were £5.50, the US was $22.43, or about double the British cost for a shorter distance.
I’ve largely stopped ordering anything by mail from the US as a result.
Australia to self-isolate? Good!
For far too long we’ve been relying on mass immigration to keep the Ponzi scheme operating. It’s about time that reality caught up with us. Infinite, low- or no-cost growth is a thing of the past.
If one can enjoy anything in this Year of the Plague, it’s watching the staunchly, sociopathically neoliberal Federal government being forced to examine its Market Theology and, if only for a few brief months,
- abandon them
. It’s actually been giving suffering people a stipend large enough to survive on! Oh, the horror — ! How amazing is that! The subsidy will be reduced soon from $600 to $250 — at least it’s not stopping entirely.
Sorry, my schadenfreude is getting the better of me.
Early Treatment with Zinc, Low Dose HCQ and Azithromycin (Zelenko et al)
Maybe download it now in case it disappears.
More on Modern Monetary Theory
Interview with Kelton by The Australia Institute (a leftish economic thinktank)
Criticism from The Mises Institute (not lengthy)Australia’s stalled migrant boom derails golden economic run
About time we had this Ponzi Scheme revealed for what it is. TO dream the impossible dream, growth can go on forever. The pollies and corporates are unable and unwilling to see beyond tomorrow.
Until recently the mantra has been that tomorrow will be just like today only more so! Glorious growth.
Now maybe we will be forced to see that tomorrow will be just like today, only more so! A rich banquet of consequences will be served.I detest this word “lockdown”. That’s a prison term.
What’s wrong with good old “isolation” (the sick separated from the healthy) or “quarantine” (the healthy separated from the sick)?
Some conditioning going on here perhaps.
Australia’s Tracing App is optional — for now. There was talk recently about it being mandatory to download it. There was no talk about it being mandatory to carry an iPhone everywhere.
But I don’t take my iPhone, i.e.electronic ball and chain, with me anywhere. Cell phones have become a curse on society. I survived my first 65 years without one, amazing to say, and I intend to spend my remaining years without one.
Yes, it seems to be war on a cheap, effective drug.
If you want solid evidence of the success of treatments involving chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, do a search for “Doctor Zev Zelenko.” Or to make it easier for you, here’s his letter to medical professionals aroiund the world. He claims to have treated almost 400 patients with no intubation, no hospitalisation, no deaths. Except for one patient who did die, but that was because her refused to follow the regimen.
My [Zelenko’s] outpatient treatment regimen is as follows:
1. Hydroxychloroquine 200mg twice a day for 5 days
2. Azithromycin 500mg once a day for 5 days
3. Zinc sulfate 220mg once a day for 5 days.Zelenko says treatment must start not too early, not too late. I need to do more research.
Other MDs are coming on board.
But Big Pharma will ignore this. No profit in it. (Cynical, who’s cynical?)
Has a succesful treatment program emerged at last?
I’m taking this at face value for now.
Be careful with chloroquine phosphate: webmd has a long list of unpleasant side-effects. The problem with vision loss seems to arise with long-term usage. The Chinese article refers to the drug as “cheap and safe that has been used for more than 70 years.”
Another possible source of supply: https://aquariumstoredepot.com/products/chloroquine-phosphate
Never would have guessed this one. Allegedly 99% pure, but is it?Has a simple, cheap cure for corona virus been found?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32074550 (links to abstract only)
And
“Chloroquine phosphate has shown apparent efficacy in treatment of COVID-19 associated pneumonia in clinical studies”
link to the PDF version: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bst/advpub/0/advpub_2020.01047/_pdf/-char/en
And
This video, with some nice sarcastic comments about the medical industry. It’s in French so you may need to set the auto-translate to your preferred language:
With so much of SE Australia burning to ashes, with a major fire burning out of control near Canberra (my home), and the national mood becoming quite depressed over the scale and extent of the devastation, the US antics with Trump and the others seem distantly, strangely irrelevant. I for one am totally bored with it all.
But amid all of this I observe Britain escaping from the European frying pan only to fall into the US fire. The Empire has a new province to plunder and denude of assets. Prize-winning idiots, the lot of them.
“Will Australians ever wake up to their political reality?”
Oh believe me, a great many have, but as long as the Murdoch press maintains its prominent position in Australian media readership (Qld and SA have ONLY the Murdoch message to read), then too many people unwittingly obtain all their ideas and opinions and electoral preferences from it.
Out of morbid curiosity, I’d like to know what Rupert’s glittering vision is, what state of affairs he’s working towards, whom it will benefit, and so on. What the elites hope to do when they own and control everything remains to be seen. Their lives are totally futile and pointless, but they are and remain wilfully blind to that.
Australia is run by sociopaths for the benefit of the elites. The ordinary people are expendable. The biosphere is NOT connected to the economy. Some economists reckon the planet can support a trillion people: no worries, no limits, no shortages.
Morrison’s days may be numbered (oh, please) but unless the voters dump his political party too, there is only worse waiting in the wings, and it ain’t the not-quite-as-clueless loyal Opposition.
No, I have concluded that humans can’t save themselves. We’re such an unlovely species right now.
“Tree-planting anyone?”
Trees won’t absorb anywhere near enough carbon to make a difference. One scientist in my part of the world reckons that we’ve lost agency over CO2 emissions for the next 1,000 years. We’ve got to stop throwing megatons of stored carbon, i.e. fossil fuels, into the atmosphere. But the world economy is completely reliant on fossil fuels and at the moment renewable energy sources cannot be developed in the absence of fossil fuels. What to do? What a predicament!
And in Oz at the moment if you want to plant trees, go ahead. Only there’s no water for them, no rain now and none predicted in my part of the country until April maybe possibly perhaps. The current fires cannot be extinguished and they will simply burn and burn and burn until all natural fuel is consumed. No rain, no regeneration. We’re making the land into a desert. We are such total fossil fools.
Chernobyl helped push over the crumbling Soviet Union. Some good news: the current federal government may have experienced its Chernobyl moment as the bushfire disaster may possibly help push over the increasingly inept and delusional feds as they show themselves unable and unwilling to confront the situation. They seem to be losing their moral legitimacy and claims to govern.
I would applaud this development except that the Opposition are just as bereft of reason and useful ideas as the Government. They too worship coal. And if all that happens is that we lose the current PM but the party remains in power, then the man likely to occupy the office next has been nicknamed “Benito” by one of the more rational daily newspapers. As Shakespeare wrote, there is small choice in rotten apples.
” They wanted lower population…”
No, they wanted a larger population, a “Big Australia” as a previous PM put it. We’ve been running the largest mass migration program in all history, and now we’ve run into the limits to growth. Only TPTB can’t, won’t admit it, partly because they have no alternative, and partly because — yes — they’re greedy for yet more gain.Yes, humans are part of nature but the neoliberal cult doesn’t think so. Their god, The Infinite Growth Economy, is not part of the environment, is detached from it. They think their god can survive all impacts and disturbances, and will sail serenely on. There are encouraging signs of politicians waking up to reality, but oh what a terrible price we’ve had to pay to achieve that. And will enough of them change their minds anyway?
One more thing.
The Oz PM returns from his trip to Hawaii to a fire-devastated country and announces that his government is not changing its climate policies.
To say that they’re in the grip of a powerful delusion is something of an understatement.
I still can’t take Oz politics serious[ly].
The nation is sitting down now to a huge banquest of consequences arising from 30 years of appallingly bad decisions, most if not all of arise from the neoliberal economic system which has been guiding and deceiving our leaders all along.
They firmly believe that infinite growth on a finite foundation is both possible and desirable. The economic system — the neoliberal false god and object of cult worship — cannot survive unless it grows continuously at an exponential rate forever.
The neoliberal cult will continue to destroy the biosphere for profit. It must do so, it has no choice. Consume or die. It admits no error, considers no alternatives.
My once-lovely country is now increasingly a pile of floral ashes and faunal corpses. We have sorely maltreated the land and now it is vomiting us out.
I weep tears of helpless frustration.
Hello Raúl,
First, many, many thanks for your unremitting efforts over the years. To assemble and circulate all of this material on a daily basis was, is and remains a mammoth undertaking! I’m not surprised that you need a break and a new direction.
I disagree with your idea that the Debt Rattles were becoming bland. Not at all. Like so many others I despair as I watch The System destroy the biosphere for profit. The sheer amount of skullduggery that goes on in the world is mind-boggling, and many articles you have drawn to our attention have been illuminating and useful. I’d rather know the truth, however painful, than to live in a dream.
You and Nicole came to Australia some years ago — was it 2015, or earlier? — and she gave a standing-room-only presentation in a large lecture theatre at the Australian National University. I was in the middle of the audience, and at least I can say that I saw you from a distance!
I’d help out financially if I could but my resources are limited. I have donated only a little to help Greece and refugees; wish I could do more. People like Bill gates could do so much if they would only put their minds to it. Sad. To those that have, it shall be given; from those that have not, it shall be taken away.
All the best for your (and our) future.
I neglected to add that in Parliament the Opposition do a hopelessly feeble job of holding the Government’s policies and proposals up to scrutiny, and coming up with better ideas. They wave through bill after bill, and congratulate themselves on doing well.
Bah. They’re not the Opposition any more; they’re the Permission.
Does the term “sick despair” have any resonance with you?
A country of Cheaters.
Fair go, mijnheer! Please be assured that there are many, MANY people in this benighted country who are appalled and distressed by the fossil fuel monomaniacs who infest our government. But the elites have a gotten a death grip on the levers of power and deny everything.
The most galling aspect is that our PM makes loud noises about his Christianity, waves it around like a banner, claims to be doing the will of God. (Exactly which God I cannot say.) When one examines their attitudes, goals and performance, one clearly sees the Christianity of the Dickensian workhouse, the Christianity of the Spanish Inquisition, the Christianity of the slaveowners against whom Wilberforce campaigned and won.
“Winston Churchill is said to have remarked that one of his greatest regrets was not to have honored the promise of granting an independent Kurdistan as agreed to upon the signing of the Treaty of Sevres in 1920. That treaty provided for the partition of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I after Turkey had allied itself with defeated Germany and Austria-Hungary.
“The rise of Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, however, had changed British policy and Ataturk was skilled at exploiting divisions within the Kurdish community, which comprised approximately one third of the population within the borders of present day Turkey. The Armenian population was also rather extensive and occupied much of the same territory inhabited by the Kurds where they had previously lived in relative harmony. Many of the Kurds were more conservative in their Islamist beliefs at that time and some were encouraged by the Kemalists to join in the genocide of the Armenian christians. Others, that refused were exiled or became the victims of genocide themselves. Some had not yet been triggered by nationalist aspirations.
“As the Kemalists exploited these differences, they consolidated their power and the British and their European allies lost their zeal for Kurdish independence, reneging on their promise. Instead, they signed the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) which allowed the Turks to retain a large swathe of Anatolia, while carving up the remains of the Ottoman Empire and granting themselves colonial control of the remaining territory. This is the background for the current conflicts and it shouldn’t be difficult to deduce why Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria oppose giving up any territory.”
Poor old Thomas Cook. Another pillar falls.
I’m a bit surprised the austerity-obsessed Tory government will actually spend money to bring its stranded hoi polloi, oops, citizens, home. I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer loses lots of sleep over that prospect. <end sarcasm>
Meanwhile commercial aviation will redouble its efforts to continue emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at a good altitude to have the maximum effect — on both the climate and, more importantly, on the economy.
Let’s see… Ryanair have 4,200 pilots. So if O’Leary sacks 700 of them and gets €100 million bonus, then if he sacks all of them, his bonus should be €600 million. That’s how it works, isn’t it? The more employees eliminated, the greater the CEO bonus? Or is there a flaw in my logic? Surely not.
Hey, why not get rid of ALL flight crew? If drones can traverse thousands of kilometres of inhospitable Saudi terrain and land with pin-point precision upon tiny, spherical, apparently empty gas tanks, then why can’t Ryanair fly their SLC (self-loading cargo = passengers) in drones too, travelling from great big well-located airports to other great big, well-located airports? Who needs human employees? For that matter, who needs human passengers?
Golly gosh, what a brave new world has just opened up! Robots serving robots for robotic ends! I can hardly wait to enter it!
By one estimate we can’t do much about reducing CO2 levels for a thousand years. Stable. Horse.
But there IS way to cool the climate using THE greenhouse gas. Look here:Part 1 (15m 46s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBngaoG_-6A
Part 2 (11m 24s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMFNqaBXBwoThe real question is whether the human race and its BAU-obsessed leaders will or can do any of it.
On the Peak Prosperity website I have seen satellite images of the damaged oil facilities. The tanks with holes in them are spherical and apparently hold gas (LNG), not oil or petrol or diesel or kerosene, etc. The holes appear to be quite neat and round and in much the same place on each spheroid and all oriented in the same direction, towards the north-west. The tanks appear also to have been empty. A punctured tank of LNG would burn like a blowtorch, not explode, and there should be scorch marks around the hole and elsewhere.
And why would Iran do anything so stupid like this when diplomatic efforts appear to be paying off? The Iranians are anything but stupid. This whole event is bizarre. Someone somewhere seems keen to start a shooting war.
The article by Narváez is astonishing. Note that his ultimate position of First Secretary is an important one, senior office manager, giving him oversight of much of the Embassy’s internal operations. So many lies to refute, so little time. I will keep this article and attempt to pass it on to people who make comments about the evils of Assange. Wish me luck.
I love the composition of Valloton’s painting, the small central figure anchored by two larger ones, the umbrella providing a visually surprising point of focus. My eyes go back and forth across the tableau: pink – red – yellow – red – pink, set off by the muted tones of sea and sand. I presume the trio is sitting at some height above the waterline. It looks like a calm day, not much wave activity.
I can’t help contrasting this scene with that of the modern Australian beach in warm or hot weather. Life in those days for both men and women, but more so the latter, seems to have been hot, hot, hot. Fashion kept both sexes heavily clothed, even in summer. I have photos of relatives on summery beaches in the early 1900s, and the only concession they made to the location is for the men to roll their trousers up and the women to sit under big hats or parasols. How they didn’t all die of heat stroke escapes me.
Men in the Moon and all that…
What about the Lunar Laser Ranging experiment? Where US astronauts allegedly left a reflector on the moon for the laser beams of earth-bound scientists? And what about the Lunokhod arrays? See Wikipedia.
After applying Occam’s Razor I conclude that these alleged reflectors are actual reflectors. Etc etc etc.
The Jimmy Carter article was written in 2009. It went viral recently. The Age has an analysis here.
Extraordinary Collapse In Home Ownership In Sydney And Melbourne
The state and federal governments have no idea how to keep the party going except by the endless importation of people and yet more people, who are meant to take out mortgages and loans for housing, and thereby constantly transfuse and stimulate the stumbling economy.
This is a Ponzi scheme. It will succeed until it doesn’t.
Sydney and Melbourne have become seething antheaps of overstressed humanity. They have a huge and permanent arrears of infrastructure. Governments constantly make promises to fix it but never do — because they can’t. The system works against itself but the politicians and their galaxy of lobbyists simply cannot see that.
