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Rishi Sunak’s hawkish antagonization of Beijing has not gone unnoticed

By Timur Fomenko | RT | November 23, 2022

Since the conclusion of China’s 20th Communist Party Congress, Xi Jinping has been on a diplomatic blitzkrieg. He’s met with leaders from countries all over the world, including the German chancellor, the French president and even US President Joe Biden himself. He’s keeping up the momentum as New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has received an invitation to visit Beijing. China believes that diplomacy is critical to prevent the US from isolating it.

But one important country has thus far been left on the sidelines – the United Kingdom. A meeting between Xi Jinping and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, scheduled at the UK’s request during the recent G20 summit, was cancelled. It came just as Sunak, at least superficially, softened his rhetoric on Beijing and sought to re-engage, after having portrayed himself as an ultra-hawk during the leadership contest at home. He even scrapped Liz Truss’s designation of Beijing as a “security threat” to his country.

But that hasn’t saved him from Beijing’s wrath. China is getting tough on Britain, in a similar way to how it did on Scott Morrison’s Australia. While the impasse with Canberra ended with the election of Antony Albanese as Prime Minister, who is more pragmatic in handling China ties, Beijing now sees London as the one playing the role of the “insufferable poodle” of the US, and will likely deliberately block engagement until it changes course.

Out of all allies of the United States, China is especially wary of what is known as “The Anglosphere” or the “Five Eyes” – That is Australia, Canada, New Zealand (although not these days) and the United Kingdom. These Anglophone countries, direct products of the British Empire, are the states which are most invested in American hegemony and closest to the United States in terms of ideology and worldview. While Continental European nations may to varying degrees differentiate themselves from the US, the Anglosphere nations are “true believers” in the US cause.

Hence, when the US invaded Iraq, it was the UK and Australia who answered the call, just to cite one instance. China therefore naturally sees members of the Five Eyes with geopolitical suspicion. Additionally, Beijing does not see them as truly “sovereign” countries or as equals to itself, but rather as US vassals. However, it has to balance this with the reality that all of these countries are critical economic and trade partners, due to their accumulated wealth and market influence. In which case, China’s geopolitical objective is not to treat these countries as adversaries, but to use a very explicit “carrot and stick” mode of diplomacy whereby it punishes them for “bad behaviour” in following the US too closely on the one hand, but rewards them for deeper bilateral engagement on the other.

And there is no more explicit example of this ongoing right now than the contrast between China deepening its engagement with New Zealand and shutting out the United Kingdom. When Beijing deems that a leader of an Anglosphere state, such as Scott Morrison of Australia, or Rishi Sunak of the UK, is too deeply following the United States, then there is absolutely no point in engaging them because the fundamental decisions are being made in Washington and not their respective capitals. The metric of right-wing populism, when these respective leaders are actively demonizing China for domestic political gain, is also a ‘naughty step’ offense. Only the US has the political privilege and power to be able to demonize Beijing, but still get engagement with it, hence why America is able to provoke China and never receive the reactions which smaller nations get from China.

This is how Beijing tries to “dilute” American power. The US itself is never confronted, but those who follow Washington too closely are. And on this, China has caught Sunak off guard. Beijing tolerated the government of Boris Johnson because he described himself as a “Sinophile” determined to improve ties with China. Sunak, however, used antagonism of China for partisan gain. The Prime Minister has since moderated his rhetoric and spoken about “keeping ties open,” believing that his spree of anti-China hyperbole, as well as a recent Ministerial visit to Taiwan, would simply be brushed off and that Beijing would welcome him with open arms. He was wrong, and Beijing is now showing that when it is not about the US, engagement with China is conditional on “good behaviour.”

China also recognizes the UK economy is weak, and as loath as London is to admit it, the UK needs ties with China. Inflation is surging, industrial unrest is picking up, chancellor Jeremy Hunt says the country is already in a state of recession. In which case, Beijing is exploiting these vulnerabilities and, similar to Australia, it will place a number of “demands” on Britain which will become pre-requisites to normalization again, which usually involve respecting Beijing’s position on Taiwan and not following the US agenda.

However, whether this works is another story. In the case of Australia, Scott Morrison’s government did not change course, and it simply became the case that China had to wait him out before re-engaging with his successor. That could very much be the case here too. Britain has ultimately made the choice to follow the US on China, even when those policies prove to be blatantly self-defeating, as is the case with the Newport Wafer Fab. Nonetheless, if Sunak is trying to be pragmatic, this should be a reality check for him.

November 23, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Alarming Rise of Mass Surveillance

By Dijana Dragomirovic | Australian Medical Network | November 17, 2022

In Australia, a team from the university of NSW (UNSW) has developed an AI-driven early warning detection system for epidemics, called EpiWatch. The system curates, prioritises and filters incoming global data to capture and detect early epidemic signals – essentially a risk analytic tool, which will help governments prioritise responses and stop early spread.

The UNSW EpiWatch team anticipates “many more pandemics will emerge, and are striving to provide an end-to-end solution that will help prevent the next pandemic and ensure health security for all”.

The recent pandemic which started in 2020 witnessed in many countries the fast mobilisation of a raft of Government responses that included social distancing, fines, lockdowns, imprisonment, mask wearing, contact tracing and PCR testing. We must also not forget the relentless and heavy-handed campaign to take a provisionally approved experimental mRNA therapy, mandates and proof of vaccine certificates in order to work, have surgery, see loved ones, marry, bury loved ones, study, shop, worship, play or travel.

While an early detection system may be a useful innovation, the omnipotent view that it will “ensure health security for all” is concerning. The epidemic system is one thing, what is more important to know is how and for what reasons politicians, global organisations such as the WHO, profit seeking companies, foundations, NGOs and powerful bureaucrats will use this information. Another vital component not factored into this equation is an individual’s health and human rights. In Australia many liberties were breached over the past three years and continues to be breached by government and business to this day. Case in point: there are thousands of healthy doctors and nurses willing to work, but cannot because vaccine mandates are still in force.

With the current global mindset held by the various dominating governmental and business superclass, AI systems such as EpiWatch may provide them with even more powers to enforce a complete surveillance state and it will be conveniently enforced under the guise of public health or public confidence in health and safety. Both surveillance systems and government responses are at a high risk of being deployed with very little investigation and debate.

History has demonstrated that new governmental powers obtained in times of crisis frequently outlast the initial danger. After 9/11, governments throughout the world hastened the powers of law enforcement, gave state departments and agencies broader capabilities with little accountability, increased distrust of and discrimination against vulnerable groups and systemised mass surveillance as a ‘necessary’ safety response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the constant replay of restrictions, use of the military and police, locking down and restricting the movement of healthy individuals, shutting down industries and then ‘here are your freedoms back’ may now act as a catalyst for harms of this nature. In Australia, authorities and businesses took advantage of the public health emergency to enact intrusive surveillance and restrictions with almost zero checks and balances in place.

EpiWatch and other start-ups alike are willingly playing their part in a much larger surveillance ecosystem and are failing to incorporate clear privacy and mitigation tools against potential abuse of power by state and non-state actors.

Surveillance 21st Century Style

Today, security agencies, government ministers and bureaucracies are ushering in problematic digital technologies. What we do as a society next will determine the future of our health systems and laws, the safeguarding of our bodily integrity, privacy, national sovereignty and other fundamental liberties.

It is crucial for the public to consider and openly debate whether specific new surveillance techniques are desirable and necessary in a democratic society. Greater engagement is needed to reject exaggerated or unrealistic claims made by developers of high-tech AI, AR (Augmented Reality) or ML (Machine Learning), and pressure needs to be exerted on elected officials to control the bureaucracy, respect existing laws and enact laws with robust privacy and bodily autonomy protections. Nations are implored to take the initiative. However, only people, communities and global cooperation will be able to rein in present power excesses, imbalances and slow the ‘spread’ of the developing AI and digital surveillance state threatening to capture every person and nation.

November 18, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | 2 Comments

French elites privately fear the US and new research explains why

By Felix Livshitz | RT | November 15, 2022

New research published by France’s Ecole de Guerre Economique has revealed some extraordinary findings about who and what the French intelligence services fear most when it comes to threats to the country’s economy.

The findings are based on extensive research and interviews with French intelligence experts, including representatives of spy agencies, and so reflect the positions and thinking of specialists in the under-researched field of economic warfare. Their collective view is very clear – 97 percent consider the US to be the foreign power that “most threatens” the “economic interests” of Paris.

Who is your true enemy?

The research was conducted to answer the question, “what will become of France in an increasingly exacerbated context of economic war?” This query has become increasingly urgent for the EU as Western sanctions on Moscow’s exports, in particular energy, have had a catastrophic effect on European countries, but have not had the predicted effect Russia. Nor have they hurt the US, the country pushing most aggressively for these measures.

Yet, the question is not being asked in other EU capitals. It is precisely the continent-wide failure, or unwillingness at least, to consider the “negative repercussions on the daily lives” of European citizens that inspired the Ecole de Guerre Economique report.

As the report’s lead author Christian Harbulot explains, ever since the end of World War II, France has “lived in a state of the unspoken,” as have other European countries.

At the conclusion of that conflict, “manifest fear” among French elites of the Communist Party taking power in France “strongly incited a part of the political class to place our security in the hands of the US, in particular by calling for the establishment of permanent military bases in France.”

“It goes without saying that everything has its price. The compensation for this aid from across the Atlantic was to make us enter into a state of global dependence – monetary, financial, technological – with regard to the US,” Harbulot says. And aside from 1958 – 1965 when General Charles de Gaulle attempted to increase the autonomy of Paris from Washington and NATO, French leaders have “fallen into line.”

This acceptance means aside from rare public scandals such as the sale of French assets to US companies, or Australia canceling its purchase of French-made submarines in favor of a controversial deal with the US and UK (AUKUS), there is little recognition – let alone discussion – in the mainstream as to how Washington exerts a significant degree of control over France’s economy, and therefore politics.

As a result, politicians and the public alike struggle to identify “who their enemy” truly is. “In spheres of power” across Europe, Harbulot says, “it is customary to keep this kind of problem silent,” and economic warfare remains an “underground confrontation which precedes, accompanies and then takes over from classic military conflicts.”

This in turn means any debate about “hostility or harmfulness” in Europe’s relations with Washington misses the underlying point that “the US seeks to ensure its supremacy over the world, without displaying itself as a traditional empire.”

The EU might have a trade surplus of 150 billion euros with the US, but the latter would never willingly allow this economic advantage to translate to “strategic autonomy” from it. And this gain is achieved against the constant backdrop of – and more than offset by – “strong geopolitical and military pressure” from the US at all times.

I spy with my Five Eyes

Harbulot believes the “state of the unspoken” to be even more pronounced in Germany, as Berlin “seeks to establish a new form of supremacy within Europe” based on its dependency on the US.

As France “is not in a phase of power building but rather in a search to preserve its power” – a “very different” state of affairs – this should mean the French can more easily recognize and admit to toxic dependency on Washington, and see it as a problem that must be resolved.

It is certainly hard to imagine such an illuminating and honest report being produced by a Berlin-based academic institute, despite the country being the most badly affected by anti-Russian sanctions. Some analysts have spoken of a possible deindustrialization of Germany, as its inability to power energy-intensive economic sectors has destroyed its 30-year-long trade surplus – maybe forever.

But aside from France’s “dependency” on Washington being different to that of Germany, Paris has other reasons for cultivating a “culture of economic combat,” and keeping very close track of the “foreign interests” that are harming the country’s economy and companies.

A US National Security Agency spying order sent to other members of the Five Eyes global spying network – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK – released by WikiLeaks, shows that since at least 2002 Washington has issued its English-speaking allies annual “information need” requests, seeking any and all information they can dig up on the economic activities of French companies, the economic and trade policies of France’s government, and the views of Paris on the yearly G8 and G20 summits.

Whatever is unearthed is shared with key US economic decision-makers and departments, including the Federal Reserve and Treasury, as well as intelligence agencies, such as the CIA. Another classified WikiLeaks release shows that the latter – between November 2011 and July 2012 – employed spies from across the Five Eyes (OREA) to infiltrate and monitor the campaigns of parties and candidates in France’s presidential election.

Washington was particularly worried about a Socialist Party victory, and so sought information on a variety of topics, “to prepare key US policymakers for the post-election French political landscape and the potential impact on US-France relations.” Of particular interest was “the presidential candidates’ views on the French economy, what current economic policies…they see as not working, and what policies… they promote to help boost France’s economic growth prospects[.]”

The CIA was also very interested in the “views and characterization” of the US on the part of presidential candidates, and any efforts by them and the parties they represented to “reach out to leaders of other countries,” including some of the states that form the Five Eyes network itself.

Naturally, those members would be unaware that their friends in Washington, and other Five Eyes capitals, would be spying on them while they spied on France.

It was clearly not for nothing that veteran US grand strategist and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once remarked, “to be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”

November 15, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How the British royals overthrew Australian democracy

By Kit Klarenberg | Press TV | November 13, 2022

This week marked the 47th anniversary of the dismissal of former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam by the country’s British-appointed governor-general John Kerr.

The role and power of governors-general is little known, let alone understood today, but they wield enormous clout over many countries that once comprised the British Empire.

Appointed by a royal decree, they serve as the reigning British monarch’s local representatives, appoint government ministers, judges and ambassadors, grant royal assent to laws passed by parliament, bestow state honors, and are commanders-in-chief of the respective nation’s armed forces, among other things.

The unceremonious dismissal of Whitlam and his elected government is largely forgotten today, but the sordid episode detonated the myth that constituents of the British Commonwealth are independent, sovereign states, free from control or influence of their former imperial master – however briefly.

Elected in 1972 on a wave of popular upheaval, Whitlam was an upstart social democrat who made clear his country would not be dominated by the interests of foreign powers.

Within months, he abolished royal patronage, recognised the People’s Republic of China, drew up plans for Aboriginal land rights, ended conscription, and withdrew all Australian troops from Vietnam, with his ministers referring to the US war as “corrupt and barbaric.”

Fast forward to November 1975, and he was thrown out of office upon the request of governor-general John Kerr. When that fateful day came, Queen Elizabeth II’s deputy private secretary William Heseltine, an Australian citizen, stated that “the palace was in a state of total ignorance.”

Secret communications between Buckingham Palace and Kerr, recently reported on in forensic detail by Declassified Australia, prove Helestine’s professions to be an outright lie, beyond doubt.

Doing the monarchy ‘good’

In a series of letters, starting in September 1975, Kerr openly discussed ways in which Whitlam could be removed from power in a bloodless coup with both the Queen and Prince Charles, now King of Great Britain, and Australia.

This was despite vice-regal convention dictating that a governor-general must “advise, counsel and warn” an elected prime minister about their planning and thinking, even in the event of potential dismissal, the British monarch theoretically being duty-bound to remain disinterested and politically neutral, and Australian High Court justice Anthony Mason warning Kerr that his behavior was “deceptive”.

Both he and the palace were unfazed, no doubt confident that “royal secrecy” laws would conceal their activities forever.

Among the earliest communications are notes from a meeting between Prince Charles and Kerr during Papua New Guinea’s 1975 independence celebrations. The governor-general made clear what he was plotting, but expressed anxiety that Whitlam, if he caught wind of the conspiracy, would dismiss him first.

“The Queen should not have to accept advice that you should be recalled at the very time, should this happen, when you were considering having to dismiss the government,” Kerr cited Charles as saying.

Upon returning to Britain, Charles informed the Queen of the plan in motion. Charteris then wrote to Kerr outlining how he would be protected in the event Whitlam requested that the palace recall the governor-general.

Should that “contingency” arise, Charteris said, Elizabeth II would “try to delay things” rather than responding promptly according to protocol, allowing Kerr to plunge the dagger first.

While the Queen took the lead role in consulting with Kerr on legal and regulatory routes to oust Whitlam, Prince Charles was also intimately involved, actively encouraging and counseling the governor-general.

In order to legitimize his sinister scheme, Kerr sought the advice of Australia’s two most senior law officers as to whether Whitlam could be dismissed under “reserve powers”. This authority, only usable in specific, adverse circumstances such as crises, would allow the governor-general to act unilaterally, without governmental or parliamentary approval.

Kerr knew that it was likely no legitimate grounds for such an extraordinary intervention would be identified, and accordingly warned the palace in early November, although made clear he would move ahead anyway.

In a series of letters, Charteris variously reassured Kerr, “that you have powers is recognised,” “those powers do exist,” and “if you do, as you will, what the constitution dictates, you cannot possibly do the monarchy any avoidable harm. The chances are you will do it good.”

The senior Australian legal officers’ opinion arrived on November 6, 1975 – and as expected, they warned Kerr he had no legal or constitutional grounds for overthrowing the Whitlam government. Five days later, he did so anyway.

In March 1976, Prince Charles wrote to Kerr, praising him for his actions and stellar work as Buckingham Palace’s man Down Under more generally.

“I wanted you to know that I appreciate what you do and admire enormously the way you have performed in your many and varied duties. Please don’t lose heart. What you did last year was right and the courageous thing to do,” the King-in-waiting fawned.

Web of lies and connivance

The public would be utterly in the dark about this web of lies and connivance, were it not for a bitter four-year-long High Court battle in Australia to secure declassification of these highly incriminating papers.

Within hours of the release of letters, Buckingham Palace issued a public statement, denying the dark reality so amply exposed by the disclosure: “Neither Her Majesty nor the Royal Household had any part to play in Kerr’s decision to dismiss Whitlam.”

The High Court decision was a landmark development, marking the first time the concept of “royal secrecy” had been overturned anywhere in the British Commonwealth.

It has remained unchallenged in every other constituent country ever since, meaning the obvious question of whether similar chicanery was undertaken against troublesomely independent figures elsewhere in the political association remains an open one.

This is particularly relevant to consider given that the new British King has a dual history of directly pressuring state officials at home to structure policy and action domestically and internationally according to his personal will, and doggedly attempting to keep such lobbying hidden from public view.

In May 2015, over two dozen private communications between then-Prince Charles and British ministers were published after a 10-year-long legal struggle, which cost successive governments hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The contents of these letters showed Charles – again in breach of conventions on “political neutrality” – petitioning elected representatives on subjects ranging from the Iraq War to alternative medicines.

In some, then-heir to the British throne openly warned a health secretary that “chickens will come home to roost” in their government department if redevelopment of a hospital – in which the Prince’s architecture charity was involved – was not accelerated.

It’s clear though that Charles didn’t typically need to rely on threats – government officials were usually willing to obsequiously roll over how and when he requested them to.

In response to one royal intervention, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair unctuously stated: “I always value and look forward to your views.” In another, an education secretary signed off: “I have the honour to be Your Royal Highness’s most humble and obedient servant.”

The letters were released at a time when speculation was rife in the mainstream media that Charles intended to rule in a far more outspoken way than his publicly taciturn mother.

Since taking the throne, there is little sign publicly of this – although that could in part be attributed to the British government amending the Freedom of Information Act to provide an “absolute exemption” on all requests relating to the royal family since.

Now that more and more countries are choosing to unbridle themselves from the yoke of British rule and secede from the Commonwealth, it’s surely never been more important for the royal family to maintain an intensive cloak of secrecy around their political influence.

And the temptation to employ “reserve powers” to displace upstart governments in the manner of Gough Whitlam’s has surely never been higher.

November 13, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , | 3 Comments

Australian Media: “Majestic Princess cruise with 800 COVID-19 patients set to dock in Sydney”

Three years later and the press is still reporting cruise ship outbreaks like they matter. I just want everything to stop being so stupid.

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | November 11, 2022

Somehow cruises are still a thing, which people are still somehow doing.

Specifically, around 4,600 people are currently aboard the Majestic Princess as she approaches Sydney. Among the amusements provided them by the wise administrators of Princess Cruises is apparently a rigorous antigen testing regimen, doubtless because passengers and crew alike believe this is hygienic and responsible, even though none of them, if challenged, could defend their bizarre compulsion or explain its benefits in any way at all. Alas, idiocy has consequences, and suddenly around 800 testees turn out to have SARS-2 antigens in their mucus. This is now a newspaper story in multiple languages, because everything has to be extremely, unbearably stupid all the time now.

According to press reports, some of these 800 people feel mildly unwell, while others feel totally healthy. Nobody is dying or seriously ill in any way. Regardless of anybody’s actual medical condition, all 800 have been confined to quarters, while the rest of the passengers have been required to don masks, and – I swear this is real – “crew members have been advised to wear full PPE.”

Australian news also notes that “The Majestic Princess has been ranked by NSW Health as a tier three risk level,” which sounds extremely terrible. They report further that “there are no plans to prevent any unwell passengers from disembarking” when the ship arrives at port tomorrow morning, and if you can detect a little regret behind those words, perhaps it’s because 800 positive passengers represents a staggering 4% increase in the current case count of New South Wales.

Some days I am very optimistic that the pandemic at least is behind us, and then I stumble across a story like this one, and I basically want to abandon all of civilisation and take up residence by myself on a desert island somewhere. While the most intrusive pandemicist policies have died an ignominious death, the toxic and idiotic cultural attitudes that supported them are still alive and well, and waiting – just waiting – to seize the levers of policy once again.

November 11, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | 6 Comments

Australia stonewalls torture prevention inspection – UN

Samizdat | October 23, 2022

The United Nations torture prevention body has suspended its tour of Australian detention facilities, citing local authorities’ efforts to put roadblocks in its way, according to the organization’s statement released on Sunday.

The UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) noted that its delegation “has been prevented from visiting several places where people are detained” while lamenting “difficulties in carrying out a full visit at other locations.” Inspectors were not given all the information and documentation they had requested, the organization stated.

The SPT went on to accuse Australia of a “clear breach” of its obligations under the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT), adding that the inspection, which kicked off on October 16 and was supposed to run until October 27, was “compromised to such an extent that they had no other option but to suspend it”.

Initially, the SPT sought to assess situation on the ground and “examine the existing protection measures against torture” and other cruel treatment.

The UN body stopped the inspection after earlier this week its delegation was denied entry to a facility in the city of Queanbeyan in the state of New South Wales, eastern Australia.

According to local media reports, Queensland, another Australian state, also blocked visits to mental health facilities, citing local health legislation.

Explaining the decision to prevent UN inspectors from examining the Queanbeyan facility, Geoff Lee, New South Wales Minister for Corrections, argued that “the whole role of our jail system is to keep people safe” and protect them from criminals. “It’s not to allow people just to wander through at their leisure,” he added.

The official stance sparked a backlash from former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who urged local authorities to “think carefully about the international company they are keeping” by blocking access to UN inspectors.

The Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, which has been ratified by 91 nations including Australia, obliges its members to allow SPT unannounced and unhindered visits to “all places where persons are deprived of their liberty” as well as to talk privately to them without witnesses.

October 23, 2022 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | | 1 Comment

Agree with Us or Hold your Tongue

BY RAMESH THAKUR | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | OCTOBER 19, 2022

Every crisis, they say, is an opportunity. Governments, health bureaucrats and drug regulators all over the world have exploited the Covid-19 crisis to grab power and gain control over our lives. Predictably, rather than to most people’s surprise, many are proving singularly resistant to relinquishing their extraordinary powers, instead extending the emergency and broadening its scope to embrace other issues.

Efforts to control the pandemic narrative began with a systematic suppression of any suggestion that it might have originated in a research lab of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, then moved on to denigrate, silence and smear critics of lockdowns, masks and vaccine efficacy and mandates.

Australia’s Amended Health Practitioner Regulation National Law

The latest iteration in Australia occurred on October 13 when the Queensland Parliament amended the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act to fundamentally reshape the relationship between doctors, patients and health regulators. As per an existing intergovernmental agreement, the Queensland change will be replicated in cascading legislative amendments in other states and territories to ensure a uniform National Law.

On February 22, Australian federal and state health ministers had approved the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Amendment Bill. The updates to the guiding principles included “an increase in the regulatory responses available to protect public safety.” At best, this is vague and ambiguous.

At worst, it shifts the balance decisively from the individual-centric in liberal democracies to the collective safetyism of technocrats and experts, justifying restrictions on individual rights and agency for the greater good as determined by government agencies. Doctors will be prohibited from expressing their opinion and using their experience, training, education and knowledge of the patient, if this contradicts what the health bureaucrats say is in the interests of “public confidence in safety.” The latter will remote-control how doctors should approach treatment recommendations for patients.

There were several submissions arguing against various elements of the amendment. The Australian Medical Association queried what a “main guiding principle” means “in practice” and argued that the “concept of public confidence is not always clear cut.” The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners submitted that the amendments would imbalance the system even further away from the protection of patient safety and toward “the prosecution of practitioners,” to the detriment of doctors’ confidence in the National Law.

The most substantial submission came from the Australian Medical Professionals Society and the Nurses Professional Association of Australia representing more than 10,000 health professionals. They expressed concern that “the broad and discretionary nature of claims to ‘public safety and confidence’” can be abused “as a mechanism to enforce compliance with government directives.” On the one hand, these could be disconnected from science and evidence.

On the other, they could be used to control health practitioners in direct “conflict with their ethical duties and code of conduct obligations.” They weren’t confident that the provisions for public health and safety would in fact either “improve public protection from clinical misconduct” or “increase confidence in the public health system.” Instead the proposed powers would “serve to conveniently silence voices of expertise that wish to correct health authorities” and prove counterproductive by preventing “necessary information and communication from entering the public sphere.”

Everything done by health bureaucrats and regulators since March 2020, in the name of ensuring public safety and stopping disinformation, indicates we should fear the worst and would be naive to hope for the best. This includes psychological manipulation of emotions and feelings to nudge people into compliance with health directives.

Long-standing principles that have guided Australian doctors and ensured its health system is second to none will be undermined: the Hippocratic Oath’s duty of “Do no harm,” informed consent of the patient based on a harm-benefit evaluation of different treatment options, the risks associated with them in the best professional judgment of the doctor, and the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship.

People’s faith in their GPs could collapse once they realize doctors are barred from questioning putative benefits or pointing to possible risks of recommended treatments. Instead, they must stay within the boundaries laid down by bureaucrats and regulators, the latter often subject to industry capture.

California has passed a similar law empowering the state’s medical board to revoke the license of physicians who express opinions “contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus to the standard of care.” Or, as helpfully translated by the New York Post sub-editors: “California makes it illegal for doctors to disagree with politicians.”

The Debate on the Harm-Benefit Balance of Covid Vaccines

For health bureaucrats and regulators, the latter often with compromising links to industry, to claim a monopoly on scientific truth is scandalous. The effort to shut down legitimate debates on pain of excommunication from the medical profession represents a clear and present danger to public health.

Having overturned a hundred years of science and policy orthodoxy on pandemic management with Covid, we are intent on revolutionizing the everyday practice of medicine by subordinating the professional judgment of doctors on the best treatment options for their patients, to the directives of bureaucrats and health regulators. With public esteem for politicians at all-time lows, this is not likely to inspire confidence in the health service.

Consider globally contested opinion on the benefit-harm balance of Covid vaccines for children. Their risk of severe illness or death from Covid is tiny, of serious adverse reactions is higher and the long-term effects are unknown. On October 7, Florida issued a press release recommending against mRNA Covid vaccines for 18–39 year-old males. Their analysis had found an 84 percent higher risk of cardiac-related death within 28 days of vaccination in this group. Over-60s have a 10 percent increased risk.

This complements Florida’s guidance on paediatric vaccine guidance issued in March which recommends against Covid vaccines for healthy under-18s. They note the limited risk to infants and children of severe illness due to Covid, the high prevalence of existing immunity among them, reduced vaccine efficacy and “higher than anticipated” severe adverse events, including myocarditis.

Florida thus joins DenmarkNorway and Sweden in ending vaccine recommendations for 12–17 year-olds and also, in two of these, for under 50s and 65s. Albeit contested, there is a substantial and growing body of scientific studies that support their skepticism toward the net benefits of Covid vaccines for infants, children and adolescents.

Florida’s guidance includes three recommendations that are directly relevant to Australia’s National Law:

  1. People are encouraged to discuss all potential vaccine benefits and risks with their health care provider.
  2. The risk associated with mRNA vaccination should be weighed against that with Covid infection.
  3. Doctors should inform patients of the possible cardiac complications that can arise after receiving an mRNA vaccine.

Yet Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration has approved vaccines for children aged 6 months-5 years. Meanwhile, many of the claims advanced in support of the vaccines – they stop infection and transmission and prevent severe illness and death – have had to be abandoned one after another but were never “fact-checked” by social media platforms, while the early critics of these claims were assessed by the self-styled fact-checkers to be spreading disinformation and promoting conspiracy theories – until they aren’t any longer.

Moreover, people who die inside 14 days of a vaccine dose are wrongly classified as “unvaccinated.” This distorts the statistics on the net harm-benefit balance to an indeterminate degree. In a particularly egregious example, an article in Nature on September 23 explained that the authors (1) had classified unvaccinated and single-dose vaccinated into the one catch-all category of unvaccinated, and (2) unvaccinated individuals with previous infection had been classified as “fully vaccinated” (Supplementary Table 2).

This in a study whose main objective was to assess the comparative susceptibility to infection by the Omicron variant of the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated within Danish households in December 2021. They concluded that the vaccinated are less susceptible. I can empathize with the reaction of Julian Conradson that after such analytical legerdemain in a leading peer-reviewed journal, “Academia Is Dead.” Little wonder that a poll by the Pew Research Center in February mapped falling confidence in medical scientists since 2020.

Examples of Off-Limits Topics

Examples of studies that doctors could not discuss without fear of investigation and repercussions include:

  • In a new study in preprint that looked at 31 pre-vaccination national seroprevalence studies to estimate the infection fatality rate (IFR) stratified by age, John Ioannidis and his team found that the average IFR was 0.0003% at 0-19 years, 0.003% at 20-29 years, 0.011% at 30-39 years, and 0.035% at 40-49 years. The median for 0-59 year-olds was just 0.035%. These are well within and often lower than the seasonal flu range for the under-60s. The last sentence would be ruled out as disinformation, or misleading, or at the very least missing context.
  • In the weekly report for August 14–20, NSW Health said: “The minority of the overall population who have not been vaccinated are significantly overrepresented among patients in hospitals and ICUs with Covid-19” (p. 2). Two pages later, the same report gives us the data for hospital and ICU admissions by vaccination status. The number of unvaccinated is exactly zero for both. Now, this makes it mathematically impossible for the unvaccinated to be “overrepresented” among hospital and ICU Covid patients. There is an important conceptual distinction between the statement on page 2 and the statistics in Table 1 two pages later. The first is part of public messaging by the health department of Covid vaccines being “safe and effective.” The second is actual data. The way I read the amended National Law, and therefore the way that some AHPRA (Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency) official could read it at some time in the future against any doctor, the latter must conform to the public message and not mention the actual data.
  • Imagine a family of 45-year-old parents with three young children aged 5-12 who visit their family doctor to discuss vaccination for their kids and boosters for themselves, both to protect themselves and their parents in turn as they take the kids to spend quality time with grandparents. In the name of public safety, will Australian doctors have to promote the mRNA vaccines to children, boosters to grown-ups and be forbidden to mention advice to the contrary in Scandinavia and Florida?  In New South Wales, of the 2,311 Covid-related deaths since May 22, only 3 have been under 20 and 34 under 50. Has any healthy under-20 died of Covid in Australia through the pandemic? If children are at virtually no risk and vaccines don’t stop transmission, why expose children to the risk of serious adverse events?
  • What of the startling revelation that Pfizer had never tested its vaccines for transmissibility and therefore the entire vaccine passport requirement was built on a conspiracy of lies? In an NBC interview on February 26, 2021 Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla clearly says “there are a lot of indications right now that are telling us that there is a protection against transmission of the disease” provided by the vaccine. In a CBS interview on May, 26, 2021, Anthony Fauci said: “when you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health, that of the family, but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community … you become a dead end to the virus.” Australian data too confirm that while vaccines and boosters continue to provide protective benefits against severe disease and deaths, despite 95 percent adult vaccination they do not provide immunity against infection, hospitalization, ICU admission or even death (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Covid-19 statistics for New South Wales (NSW) by vaccination status, May 22–October 10, 2022. Source: NSW Health, Weekly Surveillance Reports.

In an article on news.com.au, Frank Chung has done Australians a great service by compiling a list of statements from Australian ministers and health bureaucrats repeatedly stating their firm conviction that vaccines stop transmission. Michael Senger has done us all a service with a similar look back at the demonization of the unvaccinated by various public authorities, only too eagerly amplified by the media, and all predicated in the false belief that vaccines stop transmission.

For readers with an interest in Australia, Richard Kelly provides a review of many head-shaking edicts and enforcement actions – such as fining a delivery man for washing his van at an empty car wash at 1.15 a.m. and a teenage learner driver for going for a lesson with her mum – that were issued by public health officials. Their ignorance about the disease was exceeded only by their arrogance and hubris about their ability to control the behavior of a coronavirus. Would Australian doctors be at risk of deregistration for mentioning any of this?

Oliver May of News UNCUT wrote an open letter to 20 British news editors on October 12, asking them to explain why they had failed to run a story either on the powerful documentary on vaccine injuries called Safe and Effective: A Second Opinion, or on Dr. Aseem Malhotra’s painfully honest peer-reviewed study calling for a pause in Covid vaccination because of serious adverse events until all the raw data has been subjected to fully independent scrutiny. Both would be interesting to the public and both are very much in the public interest. We shouldn’t hold our breath for an answer. Maryland School of Pharmacy’s Peter Doshi, senior editor of the  British Medical Journal, is right to call out the legacy media for their lack of balanced coverage of Covid vaccines.

Remarkably, the Pfizer admission has been studiously ignored by the Australian MSM. In case I had missed the coverage of the bombshell interview in the Australian media, I did a search on the website of ABC (Australia’s version of the BBC), AgeAustralian and Sydney Morning Herald papers. I got zero hits for Robert Roos, the Dutch MEP who asked the question in the European Parliament of Pfizer director Janine Small, and for the latter who confessed to lack of testing for transmissibility. Fading trust in our principal institutions is contributing to the multipronged global crisis of democracy.

The lack of media interest and coverage means there is little pressure for public accountability. Absent that, there will not be any punishment meted out to ministers and bureaucrats for the extensive range of malfeasance in inflicting cruel and inhumane harms on millions of their citizens; no prospect of emotional closure for the people for the trauma they have suffered, including deaths of despair and desolation born of loneliness; delayed prospects of the masses shedding their sheer dread of a virus that for most healthy people under 70 or 65 is not really a severe illness; and a refusal to institute the most powerful deterrent of all for any repeats of public criminality on a grand scale.

Instead we can all look forward to endless cycles of rinse and repeat of surveillance, compulsion and coercion of the masses on the whims of their technocratic betters.

Ramesh Thakur, a Brownstone Institute Senior Scholar, is a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, and emeritus professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.

October 19, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

mRNA in your food

NSW fast tracks vaccines for cattle

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | October 19, 2022

The NSW Department of Primary Industries have partnered with the Queensland Government, the Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Meat and Livestock Australia. These will be the first mRNA vaccines for these diseases and will be created by US biotech company, Tiba Biotech.

Deputy Premier and Minister for Regional NSW, Paul Toole wants to prepare for a potential outbreak and so has written to vaccine manufacturers to develop both vaccines by 1 August 2023.

Cattle are currently vaccinated for FMD using traditional live attenuated virus vaccines and there is no LSD vaccine in use in Australia. Therefore, Minister for Agriculture, Dugald Saunders, wants mRNA vaccines quickly because they are “cheaper and quicker to produce, highly effective and very safe.”

Except for there haven’t been any trials to see if these vaccines are highly effective and very safe because they haven’t been designed yet.

Meat and Livestock Australia managing director Jason Strong said “This type of vaccine technology may not require the longer testing and approval processes required for conventional vaccine development and importation as it does not use animal products”.

Sounds reassuring?

The NSW Government has spent 229 million Australian Dollars (144 million USD) on biosecurity so far this year.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, mRNA technology is an exciting development but it is relatively new and needs far more extensive testing.

Fact checkers from last year said vaccinated Mothers didn’t have mRNA in their breast milk. Studies this year contradict those fact checks and say they do. Before mRNA is pumped into every animal on the planet, I want long term studies showing what happens to that mRNA, whether it transfers via milk and meat, how long it takes for the mRNA to degrade and most importantly how it interacts with humans if it passes to them.

For all we know, the mRNA could transfer to humans, where our cells start producing proteins from the FMD and LSD viruses.

It’s opening a whole can of worms to not test these things and to fast track approval is ridiculous.

Looks like I will be eating bugs after all!

October 19, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | 3 Comments

A Look Back at the Demonization of the Unvaccinated

By Michael P Senger  | The New Normal | October 13, 2022

Social media has been in an uproar since a member of European Parliament posted a video of a hearing in which a Pfizer director admitted the company never tested whether its Covid mRNA vaccine prevents transmission prior to its approval for emergency use.

Though the fact that Covid mRNA vaccines do not prevent transmission was, of course, abundantly clear from the data soon after their implementation, this myth was a primary justification for vaccine passes and a primary cause of the unprecedented venom launched at those who refused Covid vaccines throughout 2021 and continuing through today.

Not only did governments exert this pressure through policy, but in many cases politicians and officials used their office to deliberately stoke the social stigmatization of the unvaccinated. Here’s a look back at some of the unprecedented vitriol that was launched at those who refused Covid vaccines from 2021 and beyond.

Officials in many jurisdictions proposed making the unvaccinated pay more for healthcare.

 

In Victoria, Australia — where lockdowns were longer than in perhaps any other city in the world—one politician proposed cutting the unvaccinated out of the national health system entirely.

 

A particularly disturbing idea that began to gain serious traction among the elite commentariat was to have hospitals triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last, or even deny healthcare to the unvaccinated entirely—a fairly clear-cut crime against humanity.

 

One vocal proponent of the idea of triaging emergency care to disfavor the unvaccinated was David Frum, Senior Editor of the Atlantic, most famous for his outspoken support for the invasion of Iraq. When his infamous tweet on the subject sparked an uproar, Frum doubled down.

Piers Morgan agreed that the unvaccinated should be denied emergency care.

 

Shockingly, this appalling idea of triaging emergency care based on vaccination status is still being proposed to this day.

 

The demonization of the unvaccinated was, of course, far from limited to healthcare. Vilifying the unvaccinated became a kind of illiberal fad among the elite commentariat. The US CDC even paid screen writers and comedians to promote Covid vaccines, which in some cases involved paying them to mock the unvaccinated.

In a bout of recidivism to the early 20th century, Austria and Germany introduced the chilling concept of “lockdown for the unvaccinated.”

“Lockdown for the unvaccinated” gained traction in the English-speaking world as well.

Most countries, cities, and states across the western world introduced vaccine passes that their own citizens had to show in order to partake in daily life. The World Health Organization published an extensive document on implementing a digital vaccine-pass system, including an international vaccine status registry and instructions on how to later revoke someone’s vaccine pass.

 

The most dystopian of these vaccine pass systems was in Lithuania, where the unvaccinated were banned from nearly all public spaces and employment outside their homes; the few shops where they could purchase essentials had to post large red signs on their doors indicating that unvaccinated persons could be present.

And of course, who could forget Justin Trudeau’s classic fuhrer-style rant about having to share public transportation with the unvaccinated, despite government documents later revealing that he had no science to back any of these claims.

Like so much of the response to Covid, these vaccine passes and the illiberal fad of stigmatizing the unvaccinated were unscientific, unprecedented, ineffective, totalitarian, brutal, and dumb.

It was never remotely realistic for any government to expect every single person to get vaccinated, especially when the vaccine in question involved a novel genetic-based therapy. Thus, these proposals to impose draconian hardships on those who refused Covid vaccines would inevitably involve the state imposing draconian hardships on a sizable portion of the population.

According to Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, one of the most credible voices on the subject, Covid vaccines likely yielded benefits for the elderly and vulnerable, but it remains entirely unclear whether Covid vaccines have yielded any benefit at all for healthy adults and especially for children. Coupled with the still-unknown risks associated with mRNA technology and the now well-documented cases of death and serious injury from these vaccines, for governments across the world to have exerted extreme pressure on children and healthy adults to get these vaccines is absolutely sickening.

That some healthy young people were surely coerced into receiving an injection that led to their death or serious injury, when the data showed that the benefits did not outweigh the risks, is an unconscionable tragedy.

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ex-Aussie PM Calls Quad ‘Piece of Strategic Nonsense’

Samizdat – 12.10.2022

The Quad was officially launched in 2007 but suspended in 2008 after Australia pulled out of the US-led grouping over concerns expressed by China. The grouping was revived in 2017, a year after the US announced its ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’. Beijing has labelled the Quad ‘Asian NATO’, accusing Washington of inciting tensions in the region.

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating has slammed the US-led Quad grouping as “illegitimate” and a “strategic piece of nonsense,” as he advised Canberra to not be a part of the US-led efforts to “ring-fence” China.

The Quad, which comprises Australia, India, Japan and the US, says that its official goal is to maintain a “free and open Indo-Pacific region”.

“We shouldn’t be stringing together the US, Japan, India and Australia to try to contain China,” Keating, a senior party colleague of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, said on Wednesday.

Keating argued that that Beijing’s “ambitions are in the west, not the east,” as he underlined the inroads made by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in regions outside Asia. “Everywhere between Wuhan and Istanbul, in the next 30 years, will have a huge Chinese influence.”

Keating pointed out that the BRI has already financed infrastructure projects in the Baltic states as well as in former Soviet countries.

The multi-trillion-dollar BRI initiative was launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 and strives to connect east Asia with Europe and beyond through connectivity and infrastructure projects. As of March 2022, a total of 147 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, South America as well as North America have been members of the Beijing-backed global initiative.

Keating also reckoned that the era of US “supremacy” as the pre-eminent global power has already passed.

“This idea that the US is an exceptional power… they have God’s ear and proselytizing democracy was fine in the 20th century. The 20th century was owned by the US. The 21st century belongs to someone else,” stated Keating.

He also expressed doubts whether the US would come to the help of Taiwan if Beijing went ahead with the re-unification of the island with the mainland through military means.

Beijing has doubled down on its commitment to “reunify” Taiwan with the mainland following the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taipei in August. Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that reunifying Taiwan is part of China’s goal to achieve “national rejuvenation”.

“China would see every amphibious vessel coming towards the United States, whether it is San Diego or Honolulu. They would see them and sink them,” the former Australian PM claimed, suggesting that the chances of an American “victory” in such a scenario would be “nil”.

Keating advised the Australian government not to get involved in the “geopolitical conflict” around Taiwan.

“We should be no more interested in the political system of Taiwan than Vietnam and Kazakhstan,” argued Keating.

October 12, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | 1 Comment

Has AUKUS nuclear submarine deal stalled?

With a deal that threatens non-proliferation, Australia is now yet another focal point of US-China tensions.

By Uriel Araujo | October 10, 2022

According to recent reports, an amendment proposed by AUKUS (Australia, UK and the US) countries to legitimize their nuclear submarine cooperation is being curbed by Chinese diplomatic efforts. The $122.4 billion dollars deal reached in September 2021 had been announced as the core component of this new strategic partnership. 

AUKUS, the security pact between these three Anglo-Saxon countries to counter China, was announced in September 2021, and has been controversial from the very start. Together with the QUAD, it has certainly increased tensions in the Asia-Pacific region.

In this context, Australian authorities in Canberra plan to acquire at least eight nuclear submarines, thereby possibly making the Indo-Pacific state the first one in the Southern Hemisphere to possess such vessels, as well as the first country that is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to do so other than the five recognized weapon states, namely the US, Russia, China, UK, and France. According to the International Atomic Energy (IAE) Rafael Grossi, these submarines will be fuelled by “highly enriched uranium”, so they could be weapons-grade or close to it. Beijing’s Permanent Mission, in a position paper sent to the IAE last month, emphasized the fact that the “AUKUS partnership involves the illegal transfer of nuclear weapon materials, making it essentially an act of nuclear proliferation.”

The AUKUS countries in turn argue that the NPT allows marine nuclear propulsion as long as the proper arrangements are made with the Agency. However, in this case, nuclear material will be transferred to rather than produced by Australia itself. China disagrees with the AUKUS’ stance, arguing that the IAE is in fact overstepping its mandate. Beijing has called for an “inter-governmental” process to examine the issue at hand.

This is a complicated matter: when nuclear submarines are at sea, their fuel is not within the reach of the IAE’s inspectors and there is no way to keep track of the nuclear material. The agency’s director himself, Rafael Grossi, has told the BBC the AUKUS submarine deal would be “very tricky” for nuclear inspectors.

China’s mission to the UN in Vienna has also bluntly described AUKUS’ plans as nuclear proliferation under a naval nuclear propulsion “cover”. Ambassador Wang Qun, Chinese Permanent Representative to the UN accused the AUKUS states of “double standard” in a September 19 interview

American-Chinese tensions are already too high over the issue of Taiwan and to add fuel to the fire, Beijing perceives the US-led AUKUS plans as the West pushing its sea frontiers against China by weaponizing its ally Australia with nuclear submarines. To make matters worse, under the current arrangements the fleet would be a US-controlled squadron. Given the ongoing American “dual containment” policy, Beijing’s concerns do make a lot of sense.

Chen Hong, president of the Chinese Association of Australian Studies and also a director of the Australian Studies Center at East China Normal University, has even warned that by playing a part in this, Canberra could be sacrificing its own national security for the sake of other countries’ national interests.

In July, two Chinese think-thanks (China Arms Control and Disarmament Association and China Institute of Nuclear Industry Strategy) had already warned that the AUKUS submarine project could set a “dangerous precedent” and thus threaten non-proliferation in a lengthy report called “A Dangerous Conspiracy: The Nuclear Proliferation Risk of the Nuclear-powered Submarines Collaboration in the Context of AUKUS.” 

According to the document, if the US and the UK have their way, nuclear states will for the very first time be transferring weapons-grade nuclear material to a non-nuclear state (Australia). Such a precedent, it warns, “ferments potential risks and hazards in multiple aspects such as nuclear security, arms race in nuclear submarines and missile technology proliferation, with a profound negative impact on global strategic balance and stability.” The report also controversially evokes the possibility that Canberra might actually be intent on acquiring nuclear weapons, given its historical pursuit of the technology since the 1950s.

Meanwhile, Rob Wittman and Donald Norcross, two members of the US House Armed Services Committee, in a Wilson Center discussion on southeast Asia and the Pacific, have  urged Australians to work closely with the US to master nuclear technology.

Anthony Moretti, a Department of Communication and Organizational Leadership Professor at the Robert Morris University argues that there is a loophole in the NPT which would allow Canberra to acknowledge to the IEA that it has acquired nuclear materials and then simply refuse to allow any inspections validating its procedures. This would be the only way for Australia to go ahead with the AUKUS deal under the current framework, but the problem is the dangerous precedent it would set, as mentioned above. It is quite hard to imagine how Beijing could possibly allow such development. 

In his recent book titled “Sub-Imperial Power: Australia in the International Arena”, retired Australian army intelligence officer, Clinton Fernandes makes the convincing point that Canberra’s defense strategy has been built around a “structural dependence” on the US, which leaves it unable to defend itself in any scenario other than “in the context of the US Alliance.”

Australia has been called the “coup capital” of the so-called democratic world and the American influence on the country over the years has a lot to do with this. Washington has also controlled Canberra’s foreign policy for decades, as exemplified by the infamous Anglo-American coup that “dismissed” Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Right now, the island-country has become yet another focal point of tensions between great powers.

Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

October 10, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

They denounce Meloni, but the despots of the Covid State are the real fascists

By Paul Collits | TCW Defending Freedom | October 5, 2022

ACCORDING to the dictionary, fascism is: ‘A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc, and emphasising an aggressive nationalism and often racism.’

That’s all right as far as it goes. But I would add two other elements – the reach of fascism (and totalitarianism more generally) into people’s private lives, and the corporatist state model as fascism’s operating system.

The election in Italy – technically the home of fascism – of a Right-wing politician, Giorgia Meloni, was all too much for the dreary Left. Here in Australia, the Guardian’s Van Badham has given us the headline: The election of Italy’s fascist-adjacent Giorgia Meloni is a public reminder that women can be just as awful as men 

I have previously noted Badham in the context of women in politics. Here our interest is in Meloni’s other defining characteristic, her alleged fascism. Comparing perceived Right-wingers to Hitler is, of course, an old trick. But fascism is again all the rage with Meloni’s election.

Two of fascism reporting’s traditional attributes are the frequent misuse of the term (do most journalists even know what it means?), and the clueless irony of accusations of fascism by those who exhibit all the signs of being, well, fascists themselves.

I was not familiar with Badham’s Covid writing, and a quick internet search suggests I would not find it rewarding. More broadly, the Guardian has been at the forefront of Covidmania, what with all the death reporting (which it still runs) and the modern Left’s endless appetite for lockdowns and all the rest.

It is becoming tedious to report that (of course) the Guardian is funded by Bill Gates. So, no prizes for guessing the rag’s line on anti-vaxxers, and on all matters Covid.

Only this week, it reported on the vaccine review conducted by ‘respected’ public servant Jane Halton, aka Bill Gates’s girl in Canberra. Her conclusions? Keep the vaccines coming!  We aren’t out of the woods yet. A ‘twindemic’ is coming this British winter.

Jane reckons we are not yet at ‘Covid stable’. Yes, the commissars of the Covid State do actually talk like this. She says we should keep advertising the (unnecessary, dangerous and ineffective) vaccines ‘till 2024’. Why stop at 2024?

Seriously, how does this woman have the gall to keep telling blatant, self-serving porkies?  (To see why I say self-serving, just search her CV; she has a massive interest in prolonging the narrative).

To say that the Guardian’s reportage of Covid remains breathless would be to indulge in understatement. (‘Twindemic’ and ‘Covid stable’ are vying for Covid Bulls**t Term of the Week at this point).

Mercifully, the Guardian is still keeping us informed of Gates’s moods, with one recent headline stating: ‘The strain is the worst of my lifetime’: How Bill Gates is staying optimistic.  

Thank God Bill is staying optimistic. He has doubled his wealth in his proclaimed ‘decade of vaccines’, and now, in effect, runs global public health. The New World Order is running to plan. No wonder he is optimistic. And to have the Left media on side as well!

The point is that fascism as an ideology has far more in common with the Left than with the conservative or libertarian versions of ‘the Right’. The American conservative writer Jonah Goldberg realised this some time back, when he published his excellent book Liberal Fascism.

Fascism has more in common with anyone (like the World Economic Forum) supporting public-private partnerships, than with Meloni-type pollies – since fascism is, above all else, an ideology of the corporate state, big government and of global crony capitalism.

The irony of Left-wing media siding with Big Capitalism is exquisite, or would be if it were not so deadly. The Covid State IS fascism, nothing more and nothing less.

The ‘fascist-adjacent’ Meloni actually wants to get rid of the vile Green Passes (vaccine passports) in Italy. Hint to the Left – this is precisely why she was elected.

This is despite Meloni’s apparent support for elements of the Covid State in the past. It would be hilarious if Badham accidentally spoke the truth about Meloni. Perhaps Badham is like the broken clock, right twice a day. But for the wrong reasons, and she would not understand if I tried to explain it.

Supporting Covid policies in the past is the only link to fascism that I can see in Meloni, and it is tenuous at best. The alt-media as a jury is still very much out on the new Italian PM, not least because of the Covid stances referred to above. She also sounds too good to be true.

But it seems Meloni has clearly seen the error of her Covid policy ways.  (Like the economist John Maynard Keynes, who is famously said to have stated: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’) Fact is, Meloni’s party alone in Italy stood up for freedom when it mattered in 2021.

Nicholas Farrell in the Spectator last year saw the irony, and was bemused by the non-opposition from Leftists to the Green Pass.   

He wrote: ‘Here is your starter for ten. Which Italian political party believes that individual liberty is sacred? Answer: The party invariably defined by the international media as “far Right” or “fascist” and jointly Italy’s most popular party in the opinion polls – in other words, the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy).

‘Here in Italy, birthplace of fascism, the 44-year-old leader of the Right-wing Fratelli d’Italia – Giorgia Meloni – has been busy promoting distinctly anti-fascist values. In defence of human liberty, she has spoken out passionately against the decree issued on 22 July by Italian Premier Mario Draghi which will introduce the “Green Pass” to Italy.

‘As of this Friday, all Italians over the age of 12 will be banned from most enclosed public spaces and many open-air ones as well, unless they are equipped with this digital pass that proves they have had at least one Covid vaccine.’

But the legacy media cannot resist all the ‘far Right’ nonsense in its reportage on the Italian election. Here is Roberto Saviano in the Guardian: ‘The Brothers of Italy (a delightfully sexist name for a political party) leader denies she is a fascist, but clings to the Mussolini-era slogan “God, homeland, family”’.

It is hard to say which is the more ludicrous – bagging the support for nation, religion and family as dangerous, or branding it as fascist.

For patriots, deplorables, populists and conservatives everywhere, such a motto might be summarised thus: ‘Not all that we want, but a fine start’.

Throw in some ‘climate inaction now’, ‘woke comes here to die’ (with apologies to Ron DeSantis) and ‘crush the Covid State’ and we might just have a platform worth supporting.  And a platform that is not remotely fascist, by the way, on any definition.

Saviano also claims that Hungarians have lost all their rights under Meloni’s assumed mentor, Viktor Orban, another hate-figure for the Left and globalists everywhere.

Lost rights? This is rich coming from the Covid State’s chief media promoter. Here is the irony again. It is the truly fascist Covid Class that has disempowered people across the world.  The Guardianistas obviously don’t do irony, or read dictionaries.

October 5, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 1 Comment