Maybe we will, but what’s the evidence? I am amazed that such profound changes in our entire societies have occurred in just nothing flat. In an instant, we are no longer a market economy where anyone who wishes to try their hand operating some enterprise can just go ahead and do it. We are no longer allowed to wander down to the shops, or walk in the park, or lie on the beach. We can be harassed by the police unless we are undertaking some officially sanctioned purpose. Our incomes are being dispensed by the government and not via the businesses that employ us.

We are less free as citizens today than anyone was during Mussolini’s Fascist state. Bookshops are closed. Libraries are closed. Newspapers and media are in the hands of the far left. Is there any likelihood the ABC will ever say an unkind word about Daniel Andrews or complain about the complete cessation of our civil liberties? We are living in a modern totalitarian socialist’s dream state. And the Deep State is continuously menacing us with how our hospitals will be soon overrun, and if not yesterday, then maybe tomorrow. We are endlessly warned about dying from a plague that virtually no one under the age of 70 is dying from, and hardly any of these either.

Dwell on this. This is the extent of civil disobedience in our world today. This is right around the corner from where I live.

MAN FINED OVER SYNAGOGUE GATHERING

Police shut down a religious gathering after a prayer meeting failed to heed social distance warnings in Ripponlea today.

Officers slapped the male organiser with a $1652 fine after he was caught disobeying a warning given to him yesterday.

Sources said at least 10 people were found at the gathering and as many as thirty may have attended.

Photos taken by the Herald Sun show police officers in protective masks entering the property on Glen Eira Rd about 11am and speaking to men in ultra-Orthodox attire.

The crackdown comes as Melbourne’s Jewish community celebrated Passover this week.

Police indicated the gathering was not at a formal Synagogue but still flouted the COVID-19 rules which ban religious gatherings.

I still assume that we are living in an opportunistic moment by the American left to undo Donald Trump. Whether they can bring it off remains to be seen but this must bring them very close. If you haven’t read Ninety Eighty-Four and absorbed its message, then perhaps you should while you can. It’s about how a party leadership with virtually total control over the flow of information runs the whole of society from the centre. Major events have no evident or necessary reality, but exist as news reports alone. Winston Smith’s job is to revise news accounts of the past so that what it says in the historical archive conforms to the political lies of the moment. Oh so farfetched. Could not happen. Yet we have seen, just to take one example, the American “news” networks rewrite before our eyes the account of when Donald Trump did or did not block planes from arriving from China. The scare stories about how our hospitals would be overwhelmed by the Corona Virus are virtually no longer even discussed, but who cares anyway?

The Democrats have all but nominated a man deep in senility and will run him for president with full-on hopes of having him in the White House. The American left will vote for him in droves, not because they want his personal leadership, but because they don’t. They are voting for a socialist Deep State to run their affairs from the top with Joe Biden as their acting Big Brother.

The farms are producing food, we will have food to eat, places to live, a more or less stationary economy that never grows but with a political leadership that will remain in place for who knows how long, with virtually all of us peasants and technicians in the return of a mediaeval society based on status and not personal and individual rights.

The economy must be opened immediately. Scott Morrison should unpack as much of these present closures as possible. He should tell us when we are going to go back the previous normal. I don’t know why there is any delay in this. The only thing dying is our freedom and prosperity. Whatever risks there may be, and they seem slight, we need a timetable to open things up placed before us. If you don’t think this can all happen even as you are experiencing it, what will it take to make you believe just how dangerous all this is?

My alma mater, the University of Toronto, has just sent me their online alumni magazine in which their feature article is Taking a Stand: As these alumni have discovered, it takes courage to speak up for what you believe in. Let us go through all eleven to see just how brave these people must have been inside a university setting, one quote from each.

Decision-makers need to appreciate how public policy will affect different communities and individuals. We can do this through a willingness to listen to as many different voices as we can – from the broadest possible spectrum of society. Only then can we get the full ‘truth’ of the potential impact of our decisions.

We all have a responsibility to protect ourselves, our friends, our families and our communities from the spread of COVID-19. Toronto still has the opportunity to slow this virus spread, but we need to work together. We all need to practice physical distancing and stay home if you can and only leave if you have to. People returning from travel from anywhere outside of Canada, including the United States, need to stay home, even if they don’t have symptoms of illness. Staying home not only protects you from this virus spread, it also protects our city’s most vulnerable residents: people who are elderly and those with a chronic health condition. Evidence shows these groups are more likely to be severely affected by COVID-19.

Much, if not almost all, of what we now call Canada is actually not Canada because the original nations on this land never gave up the right to govern themselves. This is not the truth that most Canadians have been taught, and it’s not the truth that most Canadians believe. But it’s a universal truth for Indigenous Peoples here on Turtle Island in 2020. Acknowledgment and understanding of this is the key to moving past it. It will require a fundamental rethink and reimagining of what Canada is as a country.

Cooper’s three-year investigation culminated in recommendations to create a more diverse and inclusive campus. For her, the experience also highlighted, yet again, the importance of looking at a historical episode from different points of view to create a fuller version of the “truth.”

If casting directors hire somebody with a disability to play a role they are good for instead of it having to be about the fact that they’re in a wheelchair, then that breaks down stigma. It shows: Look, we’re everyday people and we live our lives and we fall in love. Just because we move around differently doesn’t make us less capable.

Women are realizing there is an innate power in these stories – and it’s not just women; it’s any marginalized group that doesn’t have a chance to speak or change things because they’re not in power. Just saying these things is very important. Now, if doctors make excuses about why they don’t want to give anesthetics, women are not accepting that anymore. [Might just add that seven of the eleven chosen to give their views were women.]

North, the rocks are choked with millwort.
South, starlings rustle through the cedars:
brought by a man who spent his life importing
every bird in Shakespeare. New worlds
forever measured by the Old. For every measure,
an equal and opposite erasure. How, over the fire,
the family friend said, Jap, not Japanese.

One of our most dominant narratives tells us that happiness equals wealth. But this doesn’t serve us when it leads to damaging the environment beyond repair. I consider an activist to be a storyteller who disarms these destructive narratives. I try to show that we are not in competition with each other for the planet’s resources, and that we can live in a low-impact society that still meets our needs.

Shammaa also wants to put an end to the stigma surrounding steroid users. Like any addiction or body-image issue, this is a mental health concern, he says, and the people who are experiencing it are vulnerable: They do not want to admit weakness, when they are trying so desperately to appear strong.

It’s the same with climate change. I study the difference between the future where we continue to depend on fossil fuels versus the future where we transition to clean energy. And I can tell you there is a night- and-day difference. There is the future where there are significant impacts, but we can adapt to them, prepare for them and build resilience so that when they come we’re ready. Or there is the future where the changes overwhelm us far beyond our capacity to adapt.

We need investigative journalism to get to the truth. But to be meaningful, and to resonate with an audience, investigative journalism needs to do more than just find out what happened. It needs to hold people in power to account.

For these people whatever truths they think they hold will have no consequences in any hierarchy within the establishment in which they wish to rise. I find each of these people fatuous fools. None of them would know what an original thought would look like, never mind how to make one make sense to themselves if they came across it. Mis-educated and uneducated, each and every one.

George Pell was railroaded into prison by a corrupt administration of justice. The state of Victoria in which this persecution took place will forever have this judicial injustice as part of its legacy. The trial of George Pell will now join the trial of Ned Kelly in the judicial history of both Victoria and Australia. This is the statement issued by Cardinal Pell this morning.

Obviously not guilty from the start. And as sinister as the entire episode has been, possibly the most sinister part is that one’s political beliefs are an almost perfect dye marker for how one receives the decision. For the left, it is symbolism alone that matters. On the right, it is that justice has finally been done. The left will attack you for your class membership in whatever way they wish to define you. There are no individual rights nor is there individual responsibility. This is the way of the left who are totalitarian in every aspect of their lives.

The left are an evil gang of thugs who roam in packs. To the left, paedophilia is wrong, George Pell was accused of paedophilia, George Pell is a Catholic archbishop, therefore George Pell was guilty, irrespective of the virtual impossibility of his being actually guilty of the crime. It is the justice of the accusation, the Lubyanka, the show trial and the bullet to the head.

I think this hits the nail on the head: George Pell verdict: Victorian justice system is the biggest loser as convictions quashed“George Pell verdict: Victorian justice system is the biggest loser as convictions quashed”.

The Victorian justice system is the biggest loser from the High Court’s resounding vindication of Cardinal George Pell. After Victoria’s courts attempted to silence the world’s media over the cardinal’s conviction, it is now clear to all that the conviction itself should never have happened.

This state’s criminal justice system has tarnished the international reputation of Australian justice. The Pell conviction is a scandal that will rank alongside the outrageous jailing of Lindy Chamberlain for the murder of her baby – who was actually taken by a dingo.

Just like the Chamberlain case, the Pell disaster will inevitably find its way into a movie that will do no favours for a justice system that led to the jailing of a sick, old cardinal after years of frenzy that has been found to have no basis in law.r

Two of the most senior judges in Victoria – Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Court of Appeal president Chris Maxwell – have been shown to have made a fundamental error; the reliability of the state’s jury system has been left in doubt; and the wisdom of the police in effectively advertising for complaints about the cardinal has also been called into question.

It does not end there. Pell’s tormentors in the media will need to re-examine the way they engaged in a campaign of character assassination against an innocent man.

The left feels on remorse since they are sanctimonious and immoral. Yet near enough half the country automatically votes for them, believing that their political sentiments demonstrate their high moral standards when in reality it shows they are vicious and ignorant to their very core. Almost a century later there is still discussion of Sacco and Venzetti. The story of George Pell will disappear within a week.

I saw this letter to the editor the other day and have now come to agree with how important the efforts being made to protect us are. Social isolation must be absolute, no exceptions, and must last until the Corona Virus is completely eradicated, not just here but across the world. Here was the letter which I found completely compelling.

My partner and I are around 70 but due to recent health issues and underlying conditions we are in a very high risk category, to the extent that I am not prepared to risk experimenting with life as usual. Can I say that neither of us is a vegetable in a nursing home. We have lives and plans, are active with our friends, we travel and have children and grandchildren. We have many years to enjoy.

A look around the world highlights that Australia is better off than some mainly because of the tough measures we have taken, not in spite of them. To suggest the extent of the battle is to isolate the vulnerable while the rest of you go about your business is short-sighted. As a member of the vulnerable let me say I’m not prepared to take one for the team.

He describes my own situation perfectly and what else is there to say? We vulnerable members of the community are not prepared to accept such selfishness from the rest of you, from all of those younger people who wish to get on with their lives, earn an income, save for the future, pay off their mortgages and continue meeting up with their friends and relations. Do they not understand that this will put people such as myself at much greater risk? Already almost fifty Australians have died from the Corona Virus. If present trends continue, this number might well rise to over 500.

With GDP around $1.5 trillion, the loss of 10 percent of our economic growth for the coming year is a mere $150 billion, although the actual number may, of course, be even higher. But sticking with the $150 billion figure, the cost of preserving those additional 500 from an early death, will come at a cost of only $30 million dollars for each life saved. Of course, even to think of money saved at a time like this is an ethical abomination.

The country has made a moral commitment to preserve lives at all cost. With my own life in such danger, along with the lives of all of our friends who are in that same boat, it would be an eternal disgrace for the country to choose to abandon us to the possibility of an early demise, or if not exactly early, to a demise sooner than might otherwise have occurred.

Good for Daniel Andrews who has shown such leadership in ensuring that every life is seen as precious.