De-Transitioning: Jillian Spencer extended interview
7NEWS Spotlight | September 3, 2023
Vaccination rates fall… ‘Quick, let’s vaccinate more people!’
A shallow, disingenuous report from the Grattan Institute.
By Richard Kelly| The view from down here | November 27, 2023
The Grattan (‘We change the nation – for good’) Institute, has released a shallow, disingenuous report calling for the government to spend lots of money, because vaccination rates are not high enough, according to them.
Not once in this report is any consideration given to the personal needs or wishes of individual Australian patients who are the ultimate targets of the recommendations. The recommendations focus solely on getting more people vaccinated, for more illness or conditions, more often.
The report’s authors are either ignorant of, or wilfully blind to, the concept of free will. So much of the language and framing of the report bends in this direction, with many examples where ‘the government’ is exhorted to take this or that action in order to bring about a behaviour change in people which results in more ‘jabs’. Even the use of the term ‘jabs’ is a sneering shorthand and betrays a desire to normalise through colloquialism the idea of blindly accepting participation in a clinical trial of a novel gene-based therapy.
The overview sets the scene. There is no evidence that the authors feel any compunction about using manipulative techniques, like bald assertions, emotional blackmail and appeals to authority:
Each year, vaccines save thousands of lives and prevent countless sick days. But millions of older Australians at high risk of serious illness are missing out.
Then the good cop routine, with a side of gaslighting:
The pandemic has left many of us sick of vaccination, confused about which jabs we need, misled by misinformation, or complacent about the risks of not being vaccinated.
Sick ‘of’ vaccination, or sick from vaccination? Now it’s our fault, because we’re ‘confused’, or ‘misled’ or ‘complacent’.
COVID vaccination rates have plunged. At the start of winter 2023, 2.5 million people over 65 weren’t up-to-date with their vaccinations – two million more than a year earlier.
Again, our fault for not being ‘up-to-date’ – a term which is imbued with more rigour than it deserves.
The tone-deaf nature of this kind of language is astonishing. But the report isn’t really addressed to those who are not ‘up-to-date’. It’s a rent-seeking sales pitch to those who hold the treasury purse strings. Nothing more. Here is a list of the demands for taxpayer money that appear throughout the report.
- Supporting GP clinics, pharmacies, and aged care providers to improve, with $10 million a year, for five years. (p4)
- Piloting Community Health Workers across six PHNs, with $750,000 a year, for five years. (p4)
- States should develop tailored local initiatives with communities that face the biggest barriers to vaccination. Federal and state governments should contribute equally to $20 million a year, for five years. (p4)
- Funding for Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation vaccination programs should be increased by $10 million a year. (p4)
- A budget of $22 million for two years (for a new Australian Centre for Disease Control – Ed.) should be used to raise adult vaccine awareness and acceptance, and to re-set the adult vaccine narrative. (p29)
- Across the PHNs and the states, our total proposed funding is $150 million over five years, for improving access to mainstream services and for tailored initiatives to reach persistently low-vaccination communities.
- We therefore recommend a budget of $3 million per campaign-month for COVID and flu, for three months in each of two years, because the campaign has to reach a wider and potentially less-engaged audience than for childhood vaccines. (p54)
- To raise awareness of shingles and pneumococcal vaccines, we recommend a budget of $2 million for two years’ worth of a two-month campaigns, equivalent to twice the spending per month on adolescent vaccines, to target a broader audience that is not easily reached through school-based vaccination programs. (p54)
Apart from the funding recommendations, the language is the thing that betrays the authors’ utilitarian view of humans, as if we are so many cattle to be herded through the crush with ever-increasing, and frankly unregulated, frequency. To wit:
The federal government should introduce vaccination ‘surges’, resetting community attitudes and making seasonal vaccination easier by:
- Making vaccination intervals flexible for high-risk people, so more people are eligible for vaccination during surges.
What? Just tinker with the intervals so that it doesn’t matter when you get your next shot? They have dropped all pretence to there being some sort of valid reason for a given interval. The underlying motive could not be clearer – more shots for the sake of more shots, and more money, of course.
Only the most fleeting acknowledgement of the intrusions into our personal lives finds its way into this report. Lamenting the drop in vaccination rate, the authors write:
In December 2021, more than nine in 10 high-risk adults had been vaccinated for COVID in the previous six months. At that time, a range of vaccine mandates and restrictions were in place. By the end of February 2023, the share of high-risk people who were vaccinated in the last six months had crashed to below one in 10 (Figure 2.2).
To borrow from Saint Greta, “How dare they!” Blithely dismissing lockdowns and the devastation they inflicted on personal wellbeing, livelihood, and lives, and the outright coercion to give up bodily autonomy on pain of keeping your job, as “a range of vaccine mandates and restrictions” is insulting in the extreme. But they still hold out hope that we can be made to suffer like that again:
It is probably unrealistic to hope to repeat the high vaccination rates achieved during the worst of the pandemic. Those levels of vaccination were supported by vaccine mandates and unprecedented public health restrictions, and came in the context of surges of hospitalisations and deaths from COVID, and constant media coverage.
“Supported by vaccine mandates” is so disingenuous. It implies that mandates were a good thing. Mandates were a bad thing, and people have voted with their feet ever since they were lifted.
In their search for the mystifying reasons why people have shunned the wonder products that are so safe and effective, the authors propose a few reasons:
There are many reasons people don’t get vaccinated. Barriers can be trivial (forgetfulness), logistical (convenience), financial (not being paid for any time off work from side-effects), or even ideological (misinformation and conspiracy theories).
But they leave out a couple of big ones. How about prudence, for a start? Why accept a rushed experimental drug when there are no long term studies, by definition? For another, why trust a TGA which is funded 96% by industry?
This is a bureaucrat’s report lobbying for a bureaucratic gravy train. The patient is nowhere to be seen or heard in the entire 58 pages. New administrative organs are proposed. Experts will be required. New agreements between federal and state governments are demanded. Millions of taxpayer dollars will be needed.
The Agreement should also establish a Vaccine Implementation Committee, to coordinate effort, troubleshoot problems, and evaluate progress. This committee should be made up of experts, and representatives from federal and state governments and the Australian Centre for Disease Control (ACDC). (p24)
For bureaucrats, ‘targets’ are the stuff of dreams. Wet dreams in this case. They want to measure everything, and reward those who hit the targets. Conflict of interest, anyone? Get more vaccinations done in pharmacies? Sure – but who is better placed to advise a patient of risks and benefits?
Pharmacy vaccination should be continued, with red tape removed
The federal government has recently committed to four years of funding support for pharmacists who deliver free COVID and NIP vaccines to eligible people.
This makes it much easier to organise adult vaccines, increasing the number of locations where people can get vaccines by about 60 per cent. Increasing the pool of vaccinators also means people can more easily get vaccinated by someone who speaks their language, or who (sic) they already trust. By the end of 2022 nearly half of all COVID vaccinations were delivered in pharmacies. (p30)
The word ‘adverse’ appears only 4 times in the whole report. The most glaring example here:
Public insurance could cover other vaccination costs
Although vaccines on the National Immunisation Program are free up-front, people might worry about the cost of adverse reactions.
The government should evaluate whether Australia needs a vaccine injury compensation scheme, like 24 other countries already have. These schemes help cover costs if someone has a moderate or severe reaction to a vaccine. (p30)
No – the cost is not what people worry about. It’s the pain, disability, and death that people worry about.
I could go on about this report. But I think you get the drift.
Experts refute Australian charge claiming PLA destroyer’s use of sonar ‘unprofessional,’ question Australian frigate’s location, purpose
By Liu Xuanzun and Guo Yuandan | Global Times | November 19, 2023
Chinese experts on Sunday refuted accusations from Australia claiming that a Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) destroyer used sonar to force divers from an Australian frigate to exit the water, saying that the Australian statement is vague and one-sided, and aims to hype the “China threat” theory.
The HMAS Toowoomba, an Anzac-class frigate of the Royal Australian Navy, on Tuesday sailed in “international waters inside of Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone” en route to commence a scheduled port visit during “operations in support of United Nations sanctions enforcement in the region” when it stopped to conduct diving operations in order to clear fishing nets that had become entangled around its propellers, the Australian defense department said in a press release on Saturday.
While diving operations were underway, a PLA Navy destroyer, the Sovremenny-class guided missile destroyer Ningbo (Hull 139), operating in the vicinity closed toward the HMAS Toowoomba, the Australian press release said.
According to the Australian press release, the two countries’ vessels were able to establish communications, before the Australian ship detected the Chinese ship operating its hull-mounted sonar “in a manner that posed a risk to the safety of the Australian divers who were forced to exit the water.”
The Australian press release is widely questioned by Chinese military experts, especially about the vague location given where the incident is supposed to have taken place.
Zhang Junshe, a Chinese naval expert, told the Global Times on Sunday that while Australia claimed the incident happened in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, it did not give the exact location.
If the incident took place in waters to the west of Japan, China and Japan have not carried out maritime delimitation in relevant waters, so Japan’s self-proclaimed exclusive economic zone could be well within waters administered by China, Zhang said.
Another Chinese military expert who requested anonymity told the Global Times on Sunday that Australia likely intentionally chose not to disclose the exact location because it has a guilty conscience.
“Did the incident take place near China’s Diaoyu Islands or the island of Taiwan? Or was it close to a PLA training exercise? If that is the case, it was obvious that the Australian warship provoked China in the first place,” the expert said.
Analysts pointed out that the Australian press release is one-sided as it failed to mention the Chinese input during the communications between the two countries’ ships.
Since the Australian side admitted that it had established communications with the Chinese side, it is very likely that the Chinese ship issued verbal warnings which the Australian ship had ignored, and the Chinese ship was forced to take the ensuing step which was to send a warning through sonar, the abovementioned anonymous expert said.
Some of the main purposes of a sonar system is to detect submarines and underwater terrains, similar to how a radar system is used to detect aircraft, the expert said, explaining that active sonar generates sound waves that vibrate underwater.
Pinging with sonar is also a means to communicate, and in this case, was likely used to warn the Australian operation, the expert said.
Australia claimed that the sonar pulses likely caused minor injuries to the Australian divers, but the wording is also very vague and has no proof, analysts said.
“Australia said it had fishing nets that had become entangled around its frigate’s propellers. It shows that such a close-in reconnaissance attempt not only posed threats to China’s national security, but also to the normal maritime work of fishing boats,” Zhang said.
In the recent period, countries like Australia and Canada have been repeatedly accusing Chinese warships and warplanes of “unsafe, unprofessional” interactions, as these forces from outside of the region conducted close-in reconnaissance operations on China’s doorstep in the name of UN sanctions enforcement, observers said.
Alert patrols by Chinese warplanes and warships on China’s doorstep are normal and should not have been hyped as “China threat,” Zhang said.
These countries should stop sending warships and warplanes from thousands of kilometers away to stir up troubles and flex their muscles on China’s doorstep, experts said.
Don’t gaslight me
By Richard Kelly | The view from down here | November 13, 2023
An email from the editor of a major daily Melbourne newspaper has come into my possession. I won’t say how, since it might incriminate me as being part of a household that pays for a subscription. Let’s just say that it’s possible that the subscription was taken out using an email address that I have access to. Or something. The very first words of the email are:
As a subscription benefit, from today [masthead name redacted] editor [name redacted] will send you an exclusive analysis of the week’s most important stories each Friday.
That’s what I call a ‘marmalade dropper’, a statement so utterly preposterous that to read it over breakfast would cause such a fit of apoplexy that one would choke on one’s marmalade toast and drop it on the floor, for it to be consumed by the dog.
Luckily, I’d had breakfast already. Intrigued by this alleged ‘benefit’, which might better be regarded as a ‘threat’, I read on. The newish editor started off by quoting a former editor:
[Masthead redacted] “does certain things differently from other newspapers simply because … we’re not there as a means of simply passing a word from a mouth to an eye, we’ve a responsibility to our readers and to society in general”.
That is an unabashed endorsement of the practice of selecting and then framing the stories they deem fit to print, rather than simply reporting the bare facts. Then this:
Readers of [masthead redacted] want more than the kind of imitable journalism they can find on countless free-to-read news sites and unoriginal, uninspiring and sometimes unhinged publications.
The editor couldn’t resist, either through spite or an inferiority complex, a swipe at other news sites. Too gutless to name those he thinks ‘unhinged’.
It goes on:
… our readers want depth and quality, excellence and rigour. They want a publication with scruples that is willing to fight for its readers, its city, and hold power to account, without fear or favour. One that will doggedly pursue public interest investigations to shine light on the darkest parts of our society, but also celebrate Melbourne’s successes and be constructive and mature in its approach to difficult subjects.
“Fight for its readers”? Did it fight for those who were shot in the back with rubber bullets when Victoria Police corralled them at the Shrine of Remembrance? “Doggedly pursue public interest investigations”? Did they doggedly pursue the hotel quarantine fiasco? As I recall it was only Peta Credlin who had the guts to ask the then Premier any hard questions about this and other Covid crimes. Did they ever get to the bottom of who ordered the curfew? Was it the Premier, the Chief Health Officer, or the Police Commissioner?
“… be constructive and mature in its approach to difficult subjects”? What a string of weasel words that is! The translation is “ignore totally any concerns about vaccine safety and smear anyone who raises the issue”.
But there’s more. The email goes on to list the things they did talk about in the last 12 months. See if you can spot what’s missing.
… war crimes of Australia’s most decorated soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith. We promoted mature discussion about the future of Melbourne and its suburbs. We broke the news that the nation’s biggest plastic bag recycling scheme was continuing to operate even though its recycling function had collapsed, resulting in millions of bags being stuffed into warehouses across the country.
We exposed huge failings in the Department of Home Affairs across a range of stories that exposed a failure to prevent human trafficking and questionable payments of Australian taxpayer money to foreign officials. When we reported that the influential head of that department, Mike Pezzullo, had attempted to influence and cosy up to politicians, he was stood down pending an investigation.
We pored over every detail of the state government’s cancellation of the Commonwealth Games and exposed the shambolic management of that decision. We sent reporters to cover a war in the Middle East with huge emotional impacts on many in Australia, and indeed on domestic politics.
We led the coverage of one of the most extraordinary murder investigations in recent history. We’ve looked at the schools we send our children to and turned our attention to the burgeoning suburbs where Melburnians are increasingly choosing to live.
We fought for our readers’ right to know what is happening within the justice system, by opposing suppression orders and battling for access to court documents in the Magistrates’, County and Supreme Courts, all the way up to the High Court of Australia.
We’ve celebrated the city’s major events. We didn’t miss a beat during one of the great AFL seasons. We took readers inside the Lord’s Long Room at one of the most controversial moments in its history and we replayed the Bairstow dismissal as frequently as we possibly could.
What great stuff. Plastic bag recycling. Australian Rules football. Cricket dismissals. Phonics in schools. A reporter sent to a war zone. A spectator at the bankruptcy of third-world Victoria, epitomised by the cancellation of the Commonwealth Games and the Airport Rail.
There’s an enormous gaping hole in the coverage, just like there’s an enormous gaping space in the foyers of office towers all over the city, as the utter destruction of our once beautiful Melbourne echoes the utter destruction of lives and livelihoods caused by mask mandates, ‘social distancing’ and vaccine mandates. Nothing about the morality of excluding people from daily society. No mention of excess mortality. No mention of the Forest of the Fallen. Nothing about the imminent WHO changes. Nothing about the dangers of Digital ID or the Misinformation Bill. Nothing about the risks of Central Bank Digital Currencies. Evidently the editor sees no “responsibility to our readers and to society in general” in respect of these issues. I’ll be waiting for an age, I think, to get that kind of coverage.
A final quote from the email is even more chilling:
You, our subscribers, made all this and more possible by supporting our journalism. And I can assure you, this is only the start of what we believe we can accomplish as a newsroom.
So what is it that they are only at the start of accomplishing as a newsroom? What is it, other than suppressing some stories and promoting others, that they want to do?
At least I don’t pay for this stuff. Oh, wait.
Australian whistleblower for Afghan war crimes stands trial
Press TV – November 12, 2023
The Australian government is set to put a former military lawyer on trial for leaking classified documents about the perpetration of crimes by Australian occupation troops during the invasion of Afghanistan.
David McBride is scheduled to appear in the Supreme Court in Canberra on Monday for breaching the Defence Act and unauthorised disclosure of information. He could be facing a “life sentence” if found guilty at the Australian top court.
McBride is accused of leaking classified defence information to three senior journalists at the ABC and the then Fairfax Media newspapers.
The material later formed the basis of “The Afghan Files,” a 2017 ABC expose revealing allegations of misconduct by Australian special forces in Afghanistan, including possible unlawful killings. The disclosures also led to a much-publicised federal police raid on the ABC’s Sydney offices in 2019.
McBride has pleaded not guilty to five charges, including the unauthorised disclosure of information, theft of commonwealth property and breaching the Defence Act.
He has not been the first or only person to reveal information about alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan.
Back in 2020, an Australian military investigation confirmed that Australian forces had murdered dozens of civilians and prisoners in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.
The report, released by Major General Justice Paul Brereton, determined that Australian special forces had murdered 39 civilians and prisoners, including children, in Afghanistan.
The Australian government had previously spent years trying to gag whistle-blowers or dismiss reports of wrongdoings by the country’s military personnel.
Australia, which is not a member of NATO, has had an active role in Afghanistan since the US, along with a number of its allies, invaded the country in 2001.
A new law is about to kill free speech and democracy in Australia
By Augusto Zimmermann | RT | November 5, 2023
The Australian Government has recently introduced in Parliament a new law proposal to ban officially unapproved online content. Digital companies are expected to adopt a code of conduct which will see them censor speech based on broad, vague and far-reaching directives.
The Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023 foreshadows the imposition of a legal obligation on digital platforms to police alleged ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’. If that does not work, the law proposal provides for the full empowerment of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to directly intervene for the purpose of preventing ‘harm’.
Section 2 of the proposed legislation defines ‘harm’ as follows:
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(a) hatred against a group in Australian society on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion or physical or mental disability;
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(b) disruption of public order or society in Australia;
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(c) harm to the integrity of Australian democratic processes or of Commonwealth, State, Territory or local government institutions;
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(d) harm to the health of Australians;
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(e) harm to the Australian environment;
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(f) economic or financial harm to Australians, the Australian economy or a sector of the Australian economy.
The concept of ‘harm’ peddled by the bill is illusory, and its content would be subjectively determined by a powerful government agency. The definition of what is and what isn’t harm is malleable and can expand and contract depending on ACMA’s prevailing views. Ultimately, any type of speech with which the government is uncomfortable could be deemed ‘harmful’. For example, describing “disrupting social order” as serious harm could be interpreted to stop the organization of legitimate political protests. This could certainly be used to suppress legitimate political speech that should be part of a functioning democracy.
Above all, ACMA would gain sweeping powers to require any person to appear at a time and place of its choosing to answer questions about misinformation or disinformation. These powers include infringement notices, remedial directions, injunctions and civil penalties, including fines of up to AU$550,000 (US$358,000) for individuals and AU$2.75 million for corporations. Criminal penalties, including imprisonment, may also apply in cases of alleged “extreme harm.”
The provisions found in this law proposal put the communications and lives of free-thinkers, human rights defenders, independent journalists, and ordinary citizens under constant risk. They go in direct opposition to international human rights experts’ advice that “general prohibitions on the dissemination of information based on vague and ambiguous ideas, including ‘false news’ or ‘non-objective information’, are incompatible with international standards for restrictions on freedom of expression… and should be abolished.”
It is noteworthy that the Australian Government is exempted from the proposed legislation. Hence, the content issued by the government is never to be considered ‘misinformation’ but criticisms of the government by ordinary citizens can. It is certainly ironic that views incompatible with the government’s preferred narrative could be deemed to ‘harm’ the integrity of Australia’s democracy since it would disallow speech and expressive conduct that is integral to the maintenance of democratic processes.
In its 12-page submission to the Law Council, the Victorian Bar Association explains that this proposed legislation effectively creates an “unlevel playing field between governments and other speakers” that disadvantages government critics in comparison to government supporters. “The bill’s interference with the self-fulfilment of free expression will occur primarily by the chilling self-censorship it will inevitably bring about in the individual users of the relevant services,” says the Victorian Bar.
Above all, ACMA’s enforcement of the proposed legislation will inevitably stymie discussion of controversial topics, especially if they involve criticism of government policy and actions. This scenario is likely to unfold when the impugned speech is incompatible with the government’s official narrative. Thus, the proposed legislation targets those who, merely exercising their right to free speech, critically assess the desirability of government decisions and actions.
Other concerns with the proposed ‘misinformation’ legislation include the possibility of suspending the activities of internet companies in Australia if they fail to comply with the obligations created, as well as increased criminal penalties for libel and defamation which are incompatible with international human rights standards.
As can be seen, the proposed legislation constitutes a serious attack on the democratic right of Australians to free speech. Digital platforms will be legally obliged to police commentators’ discussion of controversial topics. Under this ‘misinformation’ legislation, any honest and robust debate about government policies will be effectively outlawed.
To conclude, our freedom of political communication is under attack in Australia. If the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill is enacted, then the free expression of ideas will be basically outlawed by the Australian Government. In short, the enactment of this law proposal will spell the end of authentic democracy in Australia. Australians are basically witnessing the transformation of their system of representative government into nothing more than a less open, or more disguised, form of elective dictatorship.
Augusto Zimmermann, Professor and Head of Law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education in Australia, President of WALTA – Legal Theory Association, and former Law Reform Commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia
Horrendous Number of Eagle Deaths From Wind Farms
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | OCTOBER 1, 2023
Further devastating evidence of the toll that onshore wind turbines take on local eagle populations has emerged in Tasmania. The local Wedge-tailed eagle is thought to be down to just 1,000 individuals, but over the last 12 years at least 270 birds have been killed or injured in the vicinity of wind farms. According to a recent paper in Australian Field Ornithology, a further 49 vulnerable White-bellied sea eagles have also been killed in this period.
The scale of depredation is shocking but it could be much worse than reported. According to author Gregory Pullen, information about eagle deaths is not readily available, “nor readily made available”. His calculations arise from a number of primary sources including annual reports. He suggests that unrecorded casualties are higher since most are recorded anecdotally and are not the result of systematic survey. The Tasmanian sub-species of the Wedge-tailed eagle is listed as endangered under both federal and state threatened species legislation.
Large birds of prey such as eagles are at particular risk from giant wind turbine blades revolving at speed since they rely on air currents for sustained flight. The Daily Sceptic has covered this developing story, noting that few activists, bird conservation groups and writers seem able to rouse themselves to complain when the natural flight path of raptors stands in the way of green progress. The Australian climate journalist Jo Nova has stood out from the unquestioning crowd, noting that in Tasmania the greens are destroying nature – again. “It’s not about the environment is it,” she said. She went on to add that there are plans to build up to 10 wind turbine parks across Tasmania – “and if one tower misses, the next will get them”.
It’s not really about the environment over in California either, where America’s national bird, the bald eagle, and many other raptors face mass slaughter in the local wind farm avian graveyards. This follows the state Democrat-controlled legislature’s recent decision to relax controls on wildlife protections to allow permits to kill previously fully protected species for renewable energy and infrastructure projects. However, evidence continues to emerge that the slaughter has been going on for years. Last year, NextEra, one of America’s largest utility companies, was fined $8 million after 150 eagles were killed at its wind farms across eight states. According to the Golden Gate Audubon Society, a wind farm complex in Altamont has been killing 75-100 golden eagles every year since the 1980s.
The animal slaughter does not stop at large birds of course. A number of scientific studies have point to the destruction of millions of bats and smaller birds every year by turbine blades capable of travelling at the tip at speeds approaching 150mph.
Alas, it is not as if the deaths of these wildlife green martyrs are helping to produce much worthwhile economic activity. In the U.K., the small number of jobs being produced by green technologies is starting to be noticed. Gary Smith, the leader of Britain’s largest trade union, recently said that communities along the North Sea can see wind farms, “but they can’t point to the jobs”. Possibly exaggerating to make his point, he added that much of the green work seems to be either London-based lobbying or clearing away the animal casualties of wind farm blades. “It’s usually a man in a rowing boat, sweeping up the dead birds,” he observed.
Green activists are increasingly being caught between a rock and a hard place on these impact issues. It is becoming obvious that many of the green technology solutions proposed to replace fossil fuels come with heavy environmental costs. Whether it be open cobalt mining with child labour, or digging up vast quantities of the Earth’s crust to help construct second-rate solutions such as windmills, the terrible impact is all too obvious. At the moment the typical stance seems to be that voiced by Audubon California Policy Director Mark Lynas, who said we need renewable energy resources, and he did not want to see the eagle deaths “being used to push against clean energy”.
Another area where ecology fights are breaking out is on the east coast of America, where whales are beaching on the shores of New Jersey and New York in alarming numbers. In the first half of this year over 40 whales have died in this way. Large areas of the local ocean are being turned into industrial wind parks, with particular concern arising over 24-hour sonar soundings. The veteran environment campaigner Michael Shellenberger has said the massive offshore works are wreaking environmental damage in previously pristine waters. “It’s the biggest environmental scandal in the world,” he charges.
The waters off the U.S. east coast are important feeding and breeding grounds for large mammals such as whales and dolphins, including the rare North Atlantic right whale. Shellenberger has recently produced a documentary called Thrown to the Wind which presents evidence of whales hit by ships, and high decibel sonar that is said to separate mothers from their calves, sending them into harm’s way. The film shows environmentalists checking the sonar which is said to measure 150 dBs at sea – equivalent to about 90 dBs on land. The noise is a relentless drum beat that is said to pound across the ocean throughout the day and night. On land, the sonar noise would be equivalent to a hairdryer. For humans, prolonged noise much above 70 dBs may start to damage hearing.
The film makes the point that serious pile-driving to secure the giant turbines to the sea floor has yet to start in earnest. Once built there is a danger that the huge back wash created by the giant blades will disturb and kill off plankton, destroying the food supply for the whales.
It must be noted that many interested parties dispute the claims currently being made about wildlife in the new oceanic industrial parks springing up with generous subsidies from the Biden Administration. Both sides can marshal their arguments and evidence. But at the moment, the deck is rigged in favour of the green lobby. Fracking for oil and gas was banned in the U.K. with Friends of the Earth presenting evidence of local earthquakes similar in force to someone falling off a chair. It is more than likely that multiple eagle deaths would be enough to stop the operation of any oil and gas installation. Seemingly, it will take more than a mere rowing boat full of protected but very dead birds to stop the new Green Barons.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
MRNA vaccines must be banned once and for all
By Angus Dalgleish | TCW Defending Freedom | September 29, 2023
Those of us who knew from the beginning that the sequence of CoV-SARS-2 contained inserts which could not have possibly occurred naturally, and were similar to ones that had already been published from the Wuhan laboratory, have had to endure unbelievable scorn, scientific ostracism and the ignominy of being ‘cancelled’ by the MSM as well as by professional colleagues for nearly three years now.
In the summer of 2020 a paper I co-authored, describing the findings of an Anglo-Norwegian team of scientists who had demonstrated unique ‘fingerprints’ of laboratory manipulation in the Covid virus, was suppressed in both the US and UK. This was at the time that the World Health Organization, leading science journals and others were going to huge lengths to persuade us that Covid was a natural occurrence, and that we should spend a lot more money to fight any such future threats.
Only now does the Telegraph (uncritically) report that the US government is no longer going to fund the research it denied doing for nearly three years and the MSM sat on. Yet it has been an open secret for anyone who follows primary sources of information (the ones ignored by the MSM and the BBC specifically, reported as misinformation by Ofcom and targeted by the Orwellian Counter-Disinformation Cell of the UK government) that mRNA vaccines did not do what it says on the vial, as it were.
First the ‘vaccine’ did not stay at the site of injection as promised but travelled throughout the body and were found at post-mortems to be everywhere.
Accusations of dramatic variations in batch-to-batch variability – an absolute ‘no no’ in vaccine manufacture protocols – which could explain why side effects were more common in some batches than others were denied but were borne out by definitive Danish research reported here. These alarming concerns seem to have been brushed off by the regulators when they should have immediately begun investigating them in depth.
All the while the regulatory authorities and politicians, parroting their ‘highest standards’ assurances, have repeatedly declared the mounting disturbing UK Yellow Card and US VAERS adverse event reports to be nothing to be worried about.
Last June, whistleblowers led by the scientists Sucharit Bhakdi and Kevin McKernan raised an entirely new issue of concern – that of serious levels of DNA contamination. Once again this was ignored by the MSM. Though quite happy to report the odd side effect from the vaccines as an excuse to point out that they are extremely rare, they have never addressed the increasingly problematic official ‘safe and effective’ mantra.
Finally there was a small breakthrough. An isolated but braver branch of the MSM in the form of the Spectator Australia has finally blown the lid on serious levels of contamination of both Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid vaccines. The article describes how the genomics scientist Kevin McKernan from Boston used Pfizer and Moderna vials as controls in a study only to find that they contained highly significant DNA plasmid contamination. It reports that McKernan was alarmed to find the presence of an SV40 promoter in the Pfizer vaccine vials, a sequence that is ‘used to drive DNA into the nucleus, especially in gene therapies’ and that this is ‘something that regulatory agencies around the world have specifically said is not possible with the mRNA vaccines’. These SV40 promoters are also well recognised as being oncogenic or cancer-inducing.
Others have confirmed these findings. A German biologist whistleblower has found contamination rates of up to 354 times the recommended limit. All this has been reported to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It is highly significant.
To put it bluntly, this means that they are not vaccines at all but Genetically Modified Organisms that should have been subject to totally different regulatory conditions and certainly not be classed as vaccines. This has been recognised by the Australian version of the FDA, the TGA, which has changed the picture so much that the Premier of Victoria Dan Andrews, who was the greatest proponent of the vaccine and of its mandatory use, has resigned – though at the time of writing the vaccine has not been mentioned as the reason for his resignation. (Paula Jardine reported in these pages in December 2021 on this regulatory sleight of hand in granting vaccine Emergency Use Authorisations for what were gene therapies.)
All this data, which is slowly breaking through into the public domain, comes hard on the heels of the latest findings that booster vaccines actually increase the chance of getting infected by 3.6 times. This is according to an in-depth study published by the Cleveland Clinic, one of the largest health care organisations in the world, who monitored their staff as well as patients.
It gets worse. Supporters of this technology have claimed that it can be adapted to chase new variants. But it can’t. The results of bivalent vaccines (with components against at least two variants) are seeing the same result. Authors of the Cleveland study say that ‘there is not a single study that has shown that the Covid-19 bivalent vaccine protects against severe disease or death caused by the XBB lineages of the Omicron variant. At least one prior study has failed to find a protective effect of the bivalent vaccine against the XBB lineages of SARS-CoV-2.’
In one study, all bivalent-vaccinated mice which were challenged with Covid became ill.
This was predicted by many of us as the SARS viruses are subject to immunological imprinting: that is, once they have seen a vaccine they will make the same response to any close variant (this is also known as ‘antigenic sin‘) making further vaccines not only useless but more dangerous as they induce antibodies that enhance infection (ADE antibodies), not cross reactivity as has been claimed by the manufacturers.
This is not the end of the issues with the mRNA ‘vaccines’. Several immunology studies have shown that the boosters induce an antibody switch from neutralising subtypes to tolerising subtypes as well as inducing significant T cell suppression, all of which will encourage new infections and suppress the immune response to cancer.
At the end of last year I reported that I was seeing melanoma patients who had been stable for years relapse after their first booster (their third injection). I was told it was merely a coincidence and to keep quiet about it, but it became impossible to do so. The number of my patients affected has been rising ever since. I saw two more cases of cancer relapse post booster vaccination in my patients just this last week.
Other oncologists have contacted me from all over the world including from Australia and the US. The consensus is that it is no longer confined to melanoma but that increased incidence of lymphomas, leukaemias and kidney cancers is being seen after booster injections. Additionally my colorectal cancer colleagues report an epidemic of explosive cancers (those presenting with multiple metastatic spread in the liver and elsewhere). All these cancers are occurring (with very few exceptions) in patients who have been forced to have a Covid booster whether they were keen or not, for many so they could travel.
So why are these cancers occurring? T cell suppression was my first likely explanation given that immunotherapy is so effective in these cancers. However we must also now consider DNA plasmid and SV40 integration in promoting cancer development, a feature made even more concerning by reports that mRNA spike protein binds p53 and other cancer suppressor genes. It is very clear and very frightening that these vaccines have several elements to cause a perfect storm in cancer development in those patients lucky enough to have avoided heart attacks, clots, strokes, autoimmune diseases and other common adverse reactions to the Covid vaccines.
To advise booster vaccines, as is the current case, is no more and no less than medical incompetence; to continue to do so with the above information is medical negligence which can carry a custodial sentence.
No ifs or buts any longer. All mRNA vaccines must be halted and banned now.
Canada Launches UN Declaration Pledging Restrictions On Online “Disinformation”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 22, 2023
A “global” declaration – that only manages to garner the support of 27 out of 193 UN member countries. How dreadfully humiliating – some might say.
But rest assured, Canada’s government will find a way to spin this abysmal result of its effort to use this year’s (likely, as ever, a waste of time and taxpayer money) UN General Assembly gathering in NYC to push some of its own agenda – or the agenda it’s tasked to push.
First, what is this yet another “global declaration” – and why has it failed so spectacularly? (The answer may in fact be the same.)
According to an announcement by the Canadian government, cited by the press, the purpose of the “global” declaration is to combat “disinformation.”
“Global Declaration on Information Integrity Online,” is what it’s called, and besides the “trusty” Canadians, the Dutch were also seemingly randomly thrown (an EU country, one or the other) into drafting it.
And look who was readily on the side, to sign it: the US, the UK, Germany, Australia, Japan, Korea, etc.
There are (not many, though) more countries here, but their alignment on “issues” was never in question; and now, instead of a UN General Assembly as a place of the meeting of the minds and meaningful discussions, we have it as a showdown for a world aligning into different, this time huge and truly global blocs, to showcase their different allegiances.
How dreadful – for world peace, going forward.
Meanwhile – what does the Canadian document that only managed a meager backing at the UN have in mind?
It’s “necessary and appropriate measures, including legislation, to address information integrity and platform governance.”
If any of us tried to make the Canadian proposal more ludicrously broad-worded than this is, I’m sure we’d not succeed. But there is an attempt to narrow the “declaration” down. If suitable, “we” go back to “international human rights law.”
So – those who sign the document will do so in a way that complies “with international human rights law.” (?)
Problem: a number of full-fledged UN members are saying, the very UN founding Charter really any longer means anything – having been broken by the likes of Canada, time and time again.
There’s other usual declarative tosh as you might see from these governments’ daily briefings – the only time they ever try to narrow down or clearly define any of the “definitions” is when they mention the tech they’d like to better control – such as ChatGTP.
The Global War on Thought Crime
By David James | Brownstone Institute | September 4, 2023
Laws to ban disinformation and misinformation are being introduced across the West, with the partial exception being the US, which has the First Amendment so the techniques to censor have had to be more clandestine.
In Europe, the UK, and Australia, where free speech is not as overtly protected, governments have legislated directly. The EU Commission is now applying the ‘Digital Services Act’ (DSA), a thinly disguised censorship law.
In Australia the government is seeking to provide the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) with “new powers to hold digital platforms to account and improve efforts to combat harmful misinformation and disinformation.”
One effective response to these oppressive laws may come from a surprising source: literary criticism. The words being used, which are prefixes added to the word “information,” are a sly misdirection. Information, whether in a book, article or post is a passive artefact. It cannot do anything, so it cannot break a law. The Nazis burned books, but they didn’t arrest them and put them in jail. So when legislators seek to ban “disinformation,” they cannot mean the information itself. Rather, they are targeting the creation of meaning.
The authorities use variants of the word “information” to create the impression that what is at issue is objective truth but that is not the focus. Do these laws, for example, apply to the forecasts of economists or financial analysts, who routinely make predictions that are wrong? Of course not. Yet economic or financial forecasts, if believed, could be quite harmful to people.
The laws are instead designed to attack the intent of the writers to create meanings that are not congruent with the governments’ official position. ‘Disinformation’ is defined in dictionaries as information that is intended to mislead and to cause harm. ‘Misinformation’ has no such intent and is just an error, but even then that means determining what is in the author’s mind. ‘Mal-information’ is considered to be something that is true, but that there is an intention to cause harm.
Determining a writer’s intent is extremely problematic because we cannot get into another person’s mind; we can only speculate on the basis of their behaviour. That is largely why in literary criticism there is a notion called the Intentional Fallacy, which says that the meaning of a text cannot be limited to the intention of the author, nor is it possible to know definitively what that intention is from the work. The meanings derived from Shakespeare’s works, for example, are so multifarious that many of them cannot possibly have been in the Bard’s mind when he wrote the plays 400 years ago.
How do we know, for example, that there is no irony, double meaning, pretence or other artifice in a social media post or article? My former supervisor, a world expert on irony, used to walk around the university campus wearing a T-shirt saying: “How do you know I am being ironic?” The point was that you can never know what is actually in a person’s mind, which is why intent is so difficult to prove in a court of law.
That is the first problem. The second one is that, if the creation of meaning is the target of the proposed law – to proscribe meanings considered unacceptable by the authorities – how do we know what meaning the recipients will get? A literary theory, broadly under the umbrella term ‘deconstructionism,’ claims that there are as many meanings from a text as there are readers and that “the author is dead.”
While this is an exaggeration, it is indisputable that different readers get different meanings from the same texts. Some people reading this article, for example, might be persuaded while others might consider it evidence of a sinister agenda. As a career journalist I have always been shocked at the variability of reader’s responses to even the most simple of articles. Glance at the comments on social media posts and you will see an extreme array of views, ranging from positive to intense hostility.
To state the obvious, we all think for ourselves and inevitably form different views, and see different meanings. Anti-disinformation legislation, which is justified as protecting people from bad influences for the common good, is not merely patronising and infantilising, it treats citizens as mere machines ingesting data – robots, not humans. That is simply wrong.
Governments often make incorrect claims, and made many during Covid.
In Australia the authorities said lockdowns would only last a few weeks to “flatten the curve.” In the event they were imposed for over a year and there never was a “curve.” According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2020 and 2021 had the lowest levels of deaths from respiratory illness since records have been kept.
Governments will not apply the same standards to themselves, though, because governments always intend well (that comment may or may not be intended to be ironic; I leave it up to the reader to decide).
There is reason to think these laws will fail to achieve the desired result. The censorship regimes have a quantitative bias. They operate on the assumption that if a sufficient proportion of social media and other types of “information” is skewed towards pushing state propaganda, then the audience will inevitably be persuaded to believe the authorities.
But what is at issue is meaning, not the amount of messaging. Repetitious expressions of the government’s preferred narrative, especially ad hominem attacks like accusing anyone asking questions of being a conspiracy theorist, eventually become meaningless.
By contrast just one well-researched and well-argued post or article can permanently persuade readers to an anti-government view because it is more meaningful. I can recall reading pieces about Covid, including on Brownstone, that led inexorably to the conclusion that the authorities were lying and that something was very wrong. As a consequence the voluminous, mass media coverage supporting the government line just appeared to be meaningless noise. It was only of interest in exposing how the authorities were trying to manipulate the “narrative” – a debased word was once mainly used in a literary context – to cover their malfeasance.
In their push to cancel unapproved content, out-of-control governments are seeking to penalise what George Orwell called “thought crimes.” But they will never be able to truly stop people thinking for themselves, nor will they ever definitively know either the writer’s intent or what meaning people will ultimately derive. It is bad law, and it will eventually fail because it is, in itself, predicated on disinformation.
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Is Israel Uniquely Evil?
By Irfan Chowdhury | Palestine Chronicle | July 18, 2020
… Israel has been carrying out the longest-running military occupation in modern history and the longest-running siege in modern history. These two facts alone render Israel unique in terms of the scope of its brutality and criminality.
There are other respects in which Israel stands out from other countries in its use of terror and violence; for example, it is one of the most aggressive countries in the world, having waged wars of aggression against Lebanon in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996 and 2006, and against Gaza in 2004, 2006, 2008/9, 2012 and 2014, killing huge numbers of civilians in the process (all while issuing threats and carrying out various covert attacks against Iran, which are all in violation of the UN Charter). … continue
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