Category Archives: Cultural

Politics in the time of Covid

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Daniel Andrews. People in government, she says, have agendas of their own. Political “elites” could not care less about your personal welfare. Listen to it through. She explains why she will not be commanded to be vaxxed. She is “a free citizen”. No vax mandates.

There is then this worth bearing in mind: Victoria’s plan to keep unvaccinated locked up until 2023 blasted.

The revelation that unvaccinated Victorians could be locked out of key freedoms until 2023 has sparked major controversy, with one expert explaining the big issue with the plan.

While Victoria is planning on dropping almost all of its Covid restrictions when the state hits its 90 per cent double dose vaccination target, Premier Daniel Andrews has warned unvaccinated residents will be barred from extra freedoms “for the entirety of 2022”.

“Whether it’s a bookshop, a shoe shop, a pub, cafe, a restaurant, the MCG, the list goes on and on,” Mr Andrews said last month.

“You will not be able to participate like a fully vaccinated person because you’re not a fully vaccinated person.”

The 90 per cent double dose vaccination target is now expected to be reached on November 18. In comparison, unvaccinated NSW residents are set to be given the same freedoms as fully vaccinated people from December 1.

Personally, I think Andrews is still feeling the humiliation of having overseen the highest number of Covid deaths in Australia. Victoria accounts for 1134 out of 1448 covid deaths across Australia, 78.3% of the total covid death rate. And even still case numbers proliferate in Victoria where they have become near invisible everywhere else.

Andrews thinks he is always the smartest man in the room and here was the absolutely undeniable evidence that he is actually the stupidest and overwhelmingly the most incompetent political leader, certainly in Australia, possibly anywhere in the world. 

Malcolm Muggridge-the most morally courageous man of our times

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No one lives a perfect life but if I have found someone who comes close to my ideal, it is Malcolm Muggridge. Read this about a life well spent, but as all lives, it began, was lived and then ended: The Pilgrimage of Malcolm Muggeridge. Anything in particular I liked? Perhaps this.

For in spite of the traveling and the fame, Malcolm never cared about material things. He and Kitty raised four children in very straitened circumstances, yet he still gave what he could not afford to give to friends he saw in need. When he read in the paper that his first girlfriend (who was then far from young and completely on her own) had been swindled out of her savings, Malcolm anonymously arranged for her to receive the same amount. When an anti-abortion group in Canada invited him to speak at a rally but then found they could not pay his travel expenses or rent the hall, Malcolm paid for it all himself. He gave the proceeds from his Christian books to Christian charities and gave away everything else before he died. For Malcolm became more charitable, in every sense of the word, after he became a Christian. He had come to see that “humility is not just the most important virtue, but the condition of all virtue” and had begun to expect more from himself.

Oddly for me, I still think of him as the long-time editor of Punch. But as it happened, he was the editor for less than five years and those years were in the 1950s. How funny this getting old turns out to be with all of these memories of the past crowded together the way they are. This, of course, is why he is still someone of immense distinction.

For Malcolm had been raised to be a Socialist activist by a quixotic father he dearly loved. And as a fourteen-year-old boy, in 1917, Malcolm was so taken with the Russian Revolution he decided he would one day move to Russia. In 1932, he was sent there as a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, and there he and his wife, Kitty, planned to renounce their British citizenship and to take up residence in the “peoples’ paradise.”

What he saw of censorship and oppression in Stalin’s regime, however, depressed him. And he grew to hate the Soviet system, especially after slipping Moscow security (unlike any other Western correspondent at the time) and traveling by train through the Ukraine and the Caucasus. There, while American and British journalists in and out of Russia wrote about the startling agricultural success of Soviet communism, Muggeridge saw the barren land, the deserted villages, the peasants with hollow eyes and emaciated bodies, “their hands tied behind their backs, being driven into cattle trucks at gun point,” as forced collectivization (using the Red Army backed by air cover) slaughtered ten million Ukrainians and destroyed the breadbasket of Russia. There Muggeridge also saw religious persecution (orders disbanded, their possessions stolen, many of their priests shot). He wrote about such things in three articles on the Ukraine and the Caucasus, which he smuggled out in diplomatic pouches.

The leftist Guardian reluctantly printed them, though they censored the articles and criticized Muggeridge, prompting him to resign. When he returned to England, he found himself attacked in one periodical after another for “lying” about Stalinist Russia. In the next few years, he could hardly find a publisher for his work.

The only man of his entire generation to behave in this way. There is no one else I can think of, either then or since, who acted as he did.

Nathan Bedford Forrest discusses racial equality in 1875

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This is from Quora based on the question: “Did Nathan Bedford Forrest really become outspoken in favor of racial equality? If he did, then why wasn’t he ostracized by fellow Confederates like James Longstreet was?” If this is a true account, it is quite astonishing for its time. Today, he wold be condemned as not party to the Black Lives Matter, which is a modern form of racism.

“Forrest’s speech to the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association July 5, 1875.

A convention and BBQ was held by the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association at the fairgrounds of Memphis, five miles east of the city. An invitation to speak was conveyed to General Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the city’s most prominent citizens, and one of the foremost cavalry commanders in the late War Between the States. This was the first invitation granted to a white man to speak at this gathering. The invitation’s purpose, one of the leaders said, was to extend peace, joy, and union, and following a brief welcoming address a Miss Lou Lewis, daughter of an officer of the Pole-Bearers, brought forward flowers and assurances that she conveyed them as a token of good will. After Miss Lewis handed him the flowers, General Forrest responded with a short speech that, in the contemporary pages of the Memphis Appeal, evinces Forrest’s racial open-mindedness that seemed to have been growing in him.

“Ladies and Gentlemen I accept the flowers as a memento of reconciliation between the white and colored races of the southern states. I accept it more particularly as it comes from a colored lady, for if there is any one on God’s earth who loves the ladies I believe it is myself. ( Immense applause and laughter.) I came here with the jeers of some white people, who think that I am doing wrong. I believe I can exert some influence, and do much to assist the people in strengthening fraternal relations, and shall do all in my power to elevate every man to depress none. (Applause.) I want to elevate you to take positions in law offices, in stores, on farms, and wherever you are capable of going. I have not said anything about politics today. I don’t propose to say anything about politics. You have a right to elect whom you please; vote for the man you think best, and I think, when that is done, you and I are freemen. Do as you consider right and honest in electing men for office. I did not come here to make you a long speech, although invited to do so by you. I am not much of a speaker, and my business prevented me from preparing myself. I came to meet you as friends, and welcome you to the white people. I want you to come nearer to us. When I can serve you I will do so. We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment Many things have been said about me which are wrong, and which white and black persons here, who stood by me through the war, can contradict. Go to work, be industrious, live honestly and act truly, and when you are oppressed I’ll come to your relief. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for this opportunity you have afforded me to be with you, and to assure you that I am with you in heart and in hand.” (Prolonged applause.)

Whereupon N. B. Forrest again thanked Miss Lewis for the bouquet and then gave her a kiss on the cheek. Such a kiss was unheard of in the society of those days, in 1875, but it showed a token of respect and friendship between the general and the black community and did much to promote harmony among the citizens of Memphis.”

The Four Reformers

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The Four Reformers by Robert Louis Stevenson. Written in 1888. Could have been written just today, except that when this was written, the author thought these reformers were complete fools.

FOUR reformers met under a bramble bush. They were all agreed the world must be changed. “We must abolish property,” said one.

“We must abolish marriage,” said the second.

“We must abolish God,” said the third.

“I wish we could abolish work,” said the fourth.

“Do not let us get beyond practical politics,” said the first. “The first thing is to reduce men to a common level.”

“The first thing,” said the second, “is to give freedom to the sexes.”

“The first thing,” said the third, “is to find out how to do it.”

“The first step,” said the first, “is to abolish the Bible.”

“The first thing,” said the second, “is to abolish the laws.”

“The first thing,” said the third, “is to abolish mankind.”

“There is a duty to refuse” Covid-19 vaccines

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Archbishop Vigano Denounces The Coronavirus Vaccine: ‘There Is A Duty To Refuse It’, (who is Abp Vigano?), said the following.

“The Note on the morality of using some anti-Covid-19 vaccines was issued last year in the absence of complete data on both the nature of the gene serum and its components,” Vigano writes in his letter to the bishops and others, in which Vigano exposes the faulty “safety and effectiveness of the vaccines,” argues that “the experimental drugs are not vaccines in the proper sense,” and raises alarms about “side effects on pregnant mothers and nursing children.”

“In this case, the health authorities have decided to carry out experimentation on the entire world population, as an exception to the usual practice of the scientific community, international standards, and the laws of individual nations. This means that the entire population finds itself in the condition of being susceptible to suffering the adverse effects of the vaccine, at their own risk, when normally experimentation is done on a voluntary basis and carried out on a limited number of subjects, who are paid to undergo it,” Vigano writes. “…I think it is evident that there are medical treatments without adverse side-effects, even though they have been systematically boycotted by the Health Institutions – WHO, CDC, EMA – and by mainstream media.”

“Having established that the drugs sold as vaccines do not give any significant benefit and on the contrary may cause a very high percentage of deaths or grave pathologies even in subjects for whom Covid does not represent a threat, I do not think that we can conclude that there is any proportionality between the potential damages and the potential benefits. This means therefore that there is a grave moral obligation to refuse inoculation as a possible and proximate cause of permanent damages or death. In the absence of benefits, there is therefore no need to expose oneself to the risks of its administration, but on the contrary there is a duty to refuse it categorically,” Vigano writes.

There’s much more at the link. There is this as well: Abp. Viganò warns US bishops about COVID jab: The Great Reset wants ‘billions of chronically ill people’. This is the subhead for the article.

The silence of so many cardinals and bishops, along with the inconceivable promotion of the vaccination campaign by the Holy See, represents a form of unprecedented complicity that cannot continue any longer.

Not your standard-issue conspiracy theorist.

The toxic avoidance of truth on the left

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The article is titled The Ignoble Lie. It begins about the original defence of political lying going back to Socrates and Plato, but what really interested me was this part about vaxxination rates required in dealing with the pandemic.

Take Dr. Anthony Fauci, our point man on the COVID-19 epidemic. 

Fauci said he misled the country about mask-wearing during the pandemic by claiming they were of little use. But he argued that he lied in order that the public not make a run on masks, deplete the supply, and thus rob medical professionals of protective equipment. 

Fauci also told “noble” lies about the likely percentage of the public needing to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. He kept raising the bar—from 60-70 percent to 75-80 percent, to 85 percent. 

Apparently, Fauci feared a lower figure, even if accurate, might lull people into complacency about getting inoculated. 

If a 60-70 per cent vaxxination rate will do, why worry when we are well passed that rate? Unless there is some other agenda in play, of course.

Take Florida as the example the left tries to avoid talking about (like Sweden). What can the left do with this? Here is the first half of the heading: Florida now has America’s lowest COVID rate.It begins:

Which U.S. state has the lowest COVID-19 rate right now? …

The state with the fewest daily COVID cases per capita is the same one that recently had more than any other: Florida….

During the past two months, Florida’s daily average has plummeted by more than 90 percent, to about 1,700 cases, or eight for every 100,000 residents. That’s roughly half of California’s current COVID rate and less than a quarter of Vermont’s. Hawaii (with nine cases for every 100,000 residents) is the only other state in single digits.

A positive story. Not on the left, it isn’t. Here’s the second half of the heading: “Does Ron DeSantis deserve credit?”

The answer is no.

Bet you knew that was coming. And why not?

According to the New York Times’s David Leonhardt, “Covid has often followed a regular — if mysterious — cycle. In one country after another, the number of new cases has often surged for roughly two months before starting to fall.” And “the Delta variant, despite its intense contagiousness, has followed this pattern.”

Why it hasn’t happened anywhere else is neither here nor there and anyways, more people are dying which is perhaps not that surprising in a state where so many retirees end up living.

My point, though, is that you cannot get an accurate assessment anywhere. I would love to know how dangerous covid is but it is impossible to find out. I do, however, find the following chart of interest. From here.

AND THIS JUST IN: Florida Reaches Lowest Case Rate in the Nation.

“Without mandates or lockdowns, COVID-19 cases in Florida have decreased 90% since August,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “In addition to cases, hospitalizations have plummeted in our state. This has been accomplished by making monoclonal antibody treatments and vaccines widely available throughout our state while protecting Floridians from government overreach.”

 

Reckless disregard for the lives of others is unofficial government policy

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Of course, it’s only the UK so who cares? From this post which is titled: Official Data shows many more people have died due to the Covid-19 Vaccines in 8 months than people who have died of Covid-19 in 18 months. It’s just data.

What people actually ask, did I personally die from the vaxxine? If they didn’t, they just go on with nothing to complain about. And if they did, they don’t complain either.

And as anyone on the official side of the ledger will tell you, whatever harm there has been, it’s been rare. Reckless disregard for the lives of others is just how it goes in the public service.