Everyone already knows this but this is nicely put. The alternative of a “multiverse” is so absurdly improbable, and of course intrinsically unprovable, but it’s all they’ve got. This only points towards a creator but in no way attempts to prove the truth of any religion. Only that there was an act of purpose in the universe that allowed us to come into existence. To deny that shows no sense.
Whether it is Joe Biden saying that the light bulb (globe) was invented by someone with black skin, or Bruce Pascoe arguing that Aboriginals lived in settled farm communities before the arrival of Europeans, the issue is the same. The standard of excellence is the achievements of individuals of European origin. No black person in America makes it a point of personal satisfaction that some obscure presumed inventor of the light bulb was a person with black skin, and it had never occurred to me thar Thomas Edison had a while skin, although if you had mentioned it, and why would you, I would have known.
And while it is true that the phenomenal survival of Aboriginals over 40,000 years is astonishing (see Geoffrey Blainey’s Triumph of the Nomads for a brilliant re-telling of Aboriginal history), there can be no question that until Europeans arrived in Australia, the name of no single individual Aboriginal inhabitant of this continent is known to us today. The notion of an Aboriginal “history” prior to European settlement does not exist since none of it was ever recorded.
And if you would like to see Wikipedia’s entry on D Bruce Pascoe and Dark Emu, easy to find: Dark Emu (book). As for Blainey’s Triumph of the Nomads, this is what you get:
Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Ancient Australia in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings.
- You cannot create this article. You may need to log in or create an account and be autoconfirmed to start this page. Alternatively, you can use the Article Wizard, or add a request for it.
- Search for “Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Ancient Australia“ in existing articles.
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Who are these protestors out on the streets of Australia today endangering the lives of the rest of us? Police out in force as anti-lockdown protesters take to streets. Who cares about any of this – Victorians are staring into an economic abyss – when Covid-19 might shave a day and a half off the life expectancy of the average Australian.
Daniel Andrews may be a low-IQ psychopathic authoritarian thug but cometh the moment cometh the man.
So what if future generations will look back on us as the greatest collection of simpletons ever to have called themselves Australians. They will have no idea of what terror is when we have lived through a period in time when 0.0024% of the population has been carried off – or at least partly carried off since most had other co-morbidities – by this global pandemic.
Found at our ABC so it must contain some negative message I fail to see. You can see how sensible Tony is by the fact that the ABC runs him: Tony Abbott urges against coronavirus restrictions, argues ‘uncomfortable questions’ need to be asked.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has called for COVID-19 restrictions to be relaxed, arguing officials have become trapped in “crisis mode” and that governments need to consider “uncomfortable questions” about the number of deaths they are prepared to live with.
“From a health perspective, this pandemic has been serious. From an economic perspective, it’s been disastrous,” he said.
“But I suspect that it’s from an overall wellbeing perspective that it will turn out worst of all. Because this is what happens when for much more than a mere moment, we let fear of falling sick stop us from being fully alive.
“Now that each one of us has had six months to consider this pandemic, and to make our own judgements about it, surely it’s time to relax the rules so that individuals can take more personal responsibility and make more of their own decisions about the risks they’re prepared to run.”
His key points:
For the ABC Daniel Andrews is more their kind of guy.
RECALLING TONY ABBOTT’S FINEST HOUR: Which has been brought to mind by this: ‘MISOGYNIST’: FORMER PM TONY ABBOTT TORN APART BY [FEMALE PSEUDO-TORY] BRITISH POLITICIAN. Would she even know that Tony Abbott’s Chief of Staff was a woman? Or anything about his sister (see the wedding photo below)?
The moment was, of course, when he looked at his watch while Julia droned on. No one, of course, ever mentions how Kevin Rudd shoved her aside just before the 2013 election.
See Tony Abbott’s sister Christine Forster marries long-time partner Virginia Flitcroft for further details.
There were two articles in the Australian today discussing more or less the same issue. First from Adam Creighton: The COVID-19 panic is unnecessary — it is much less threatening than we think. And then from Nick Cater: Founded on risk and reward, now too scared to go out. I will just quote from Nick:
The chance of contracting COVID-19 in Victoria at the moment is less than 0.002 per cent. If Victoria were a country, it would be the 90th least dangerous place on the planet in which to shelter from the pandemic.
In the light of these reassuring facts, it seems surprising so few Victorians are protesting at their government’s gross over-reaction to the virus.
The severity of the spread in Victoria is roughly similar to Canada, which is also experiencing a second wave. Yet there are no reports of Canadians receiving six-month prison sentences for crossing a
stateprovincial border or being wrestled to the ground by police for exposing naked faces.
There is, perhaps, this one extenuating circumstance to explain our craven submission to authority, and particularly Victoria’s, that Australia was founded as a penal colony, so there may remain an overlay of a marshal-law mentality that lies very near the surface within Australian governments, with a matching tendency to submit to this authority within the community. But we were also an English colony with a legal foundation built on the English common law, so that one can still hope there is still somewhere within our national DNA a love of freedom and a hatred of dictatorial restraint.
And to provide some perspective
Not saying it definitely won’t kill you, but it is still very unlikely.
Just remember, Daniel Andrews is the kind of guy who if he gets to take your freedom from you will be very reluctant to give it back.
That’s the middle of Melbourne in the middle of the day in the middle of the week
The Covid pandemic has brought on our modern version of The Stockholm Syndrome which you will recall are: “feelings of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim towards a captor.” We now have the Melbourne Syndrome, which I come across versions of every day:
Feelings of trust or affection felt during a lockdown by its victims towards their most authoritarian political leaders.
Now why should it be the “Melbourne” syndrome? There are plenty of place similar where you find similar attitudes. In my view, I believe it should be called the “Melbourne” Syndrome because Melbourne has now implemented the hardest lockdown at the hands of one of the most far-left and incompetent political leaders in the world, a leader who nevertheless retains high approval ratings, within a state in which the corona virus issue went from benign to statistically explosive (although the death rate is still near invisible at something like 0.002% per head of population). I therefore believe Melbourne should have the “honour” of bearing the name of this widely observed form of political insanity. Others are welcome to suggest alternative places and names.
And not only do we have the hardest lockdown possibly anywhere in the world, we also have the most incompetent leadership since unlike virtually everywhere else, following the initial peak, things in Melbourne managed to get far worse whereas the norm everywhere else, including the rest of Australia, was for conditions to have improved. And let me provide a reminder of what we are being asked to endure. These were “the Stage 4 Lockdowns” that were put in place by the Victorian Government at the the start of August when out of nowhere there was a large statistical increase in the number of cases although trivially small relative to the size of the population. Melbourne by the way is the capital city of the state of Victoria.
Are people upset by these restrictions? The figures below are for Australia as a whole. Will get to Victoria in a moment.
As for the nature of the statistical collections, this is the Chief Medical Officer of Victoria specifically stating that to be classified as a Covid death only requires that the virus was present, not that it had been the actual cause of the fatality.
With this kind of approach, you could turn any common sickness into a statistical killer. Think of this as well, which is the first of the comments on the video.
I am a provider. One of my patients admitted herself into hospice d/t kidney failure and tested negative for “COVID.” When she died, they put on the death certificate death d/t “COVID.” We are in the early stages of a democide. THIS is what it feels like to have the governments force you to live in and breathe NONSENSE. War is peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength and 2+5=5.
And are the numbers in Victoria exaggerated. Here are some stats for Victoria versus the rest of Australia that were published the other day. Victoria has around a quarter of the country’s population.
New Cases Australia – 25,205
New Cases Victoria – 18,608
New Cases Outside Victoria – 6,597
Recent Deaths Australia – 156
Recent Deaths Victoria – 149
Recent Deaths Outside Victoria – 7
Total Deaths Australia – 549
Total Deaths Victoria – 462
Total Deaths Outside Victoria – 87
So this is where we are:
[The Premier] said restrictions would be in place until next year if Victorians didn’t adhere to them and case numbers didn’t decrease.
“It won’t be a 6-week strategy, it will be much longer,” he said.
“We will be into 2021 with significant lockdown in place.”
And do people resent this fantastic intrusion on their lives? Do they feel the heel of the state and wish to see it lifted? Here are the results of a poll of Victorians over whether they support the measures that have been taken:
The lockdown might be draconian, but Victorians overwhelmingly support the public health restrictions imposed to curb the second wave of coronavirus infections….
New research shows 72% of the sample backs the decision of the Victorian government to impose a curfew between 8pm and 5am, 71% supports curbs on leaving the house, while 70% endorse restrictions on business and the requirement that people travel no further than 5km from their house.
It’s the Melbourne Syndrome all right, unless someone can come up with an example even more absurd yet with the kind of wide support as we find in Melbourne, which used to be and was for many years the World’s Most Liveable City. Well we do still have very nice parks and restaurants, if only we were allowed to visit them, or our children, or our friends, or sit in a cafe, or go to the movies, or just to walk along the street or the beach more than a couple of miles from our home.
Really, is there anywhere else to compare with this? It is one of many such emails that have been sent to me from friends and family around the world who have found Melbourne mentioned in the local news. Melbourne does however stand well out from the pack.
You can therefore still see traces here in Australia’s origins as a penal colony.
New CDC report says 94% of COVID deaths had underlying conditions, only 6% died from COVID alone. Here is the entire article although you can find more data at the link.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a new report detailing how many COVID-19 deaths in America also involved other underlying health conditions.
According to the report, only 6% of the COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. list COVID-19 as the only cause of death. 94% of COVID-19 deaths involved at least one other underlying health condition, and on average involved “2.6 additional conditions or causes of death.”
The new report on the CDC’s website states:
Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups.
The CDC listed the top underlying medical conditions linked to coronavirus deaths as:
- Influenza and pneumonia
- Respiratory failure
- Hypertensive disease
- Diabetes
- Vascular and unspecified dementia
- Cardiac Arrest
- Heart failure
- Renal failure
- Intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning and other adverse events
- Other medical conditions
According to the CDC, 9,683 people have died in the United States having only COVID-19 listed on their death certificate as cause of death. At the time the CDC report was released, 161,392 deaths had been attributed to COVID-19 in the U.S.
You can also read more on this here: SHOCK REPORT: This Week CDC Quietly Updated COVID-19 Numbers – Only 9,210 Americans Died From COVID-19 Alone – Rest Had Different Other Serious Illnesses, and here: Remember that thing called the Covid Pandemic? You just won’t read it in The Age or see it mentioned on our ABC.
That’s from Johannes Leak in The Oz today, reminding me of my post on August 6: The Melbourne Syndrome. As I wrote then:
The Covid pandemic has brought on our modern version of The Stockholm Syndrome: “feelings of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim towards a captor.” We now have the Melbourne Syndrome, which I come across versions of every day:
Feelings of trust or affection felt during a lockdown by its victims towards their most authoritarian political leaders.
Since Melbourne has now implemented the hardest lockdown at the hands of the dumbest and most incompetent political leader in the world, I believe that Melbourne should have the honour of bearing the name of this widely observed form of insanity.
Was asked to leave the park today sitting in the sun with a friend. Very friendly and all, but still. And not only do we have the hardest lockdown possibly anywhere in the world, we also have the most incompetent since things have only managed to get worse and we are far and away the state with the worst record in Australia. And just a reminder of what we are being asked to endure (this may be a bit old, but if so, they have only been tightened):
Meanwhile in Sweden …
And why I mention it: Boris Johnson is turning the Rule Britannia affair into a Trump-style culture war – and the BBC is letting him get away with it.
Was actually at the Last Night of the Proms in 1973. A peak moment of my life and remember it better than yesterday. Every country has a glorious past and has a right to recall its sweetness. In Australia, of course, that moment is the bodyline test, and for Canada it’s the eighth game of the Canada-Russia series in 1972. But for myself, Canadian-born as I am, I have always shared Britain’s triumphs as part of my own personal heritage.
Met up with her as we were waiting at a red light. Quite striking.
Law of Markets 