Attempt to censor vaccine skeptic

Dr Peter McCullough, a widely recognised and prominent commentator regarding the danger of Covid vaccines, has been invited to speak in Australia alongside United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet and the former member for Hughes Craig Kelly.

‘Activists’ are campaigning against his entrance into Australia, petitioning the Minister for Immigration Andrew Giles. They want him to deny McCullough’s visa on the grounds that McCullough is ‘spreading misinformation’.

Interestingly, these activists have no interest in addressing the misinformation dished out by the government, vaccine manufacturers, the TGA, or the AMA.

Their insecurity about the safety of the vaccine, which they have no doubt taken, is being expressed in some rabid desire to silence scientific inquiry.

Reignite Democracy Australia tweeted:

‘Andrew Giles, let Peter McCullough in. He’s a world-renowned doctor who is simply sharing studies that are reputable and rational. Don’t let Australia become the type of country that denies visas to law-abiding people! In the name of free speech, don’t set a dangerous precedent.’

Craig Kelly from the United Australia Party also tweeted:

‘What a bunch of nut job, lefty hypocrites. Crazy Lefties trash Free Speech and tarnish Australia’s international standing by trying to block Dr Peter McCullough’s visit. Free speech saves lives. Censorship kills. True Aussies value free speech.’

And:

‘He’s been invited by an Australian Senator, but anti-free speech leftists, neo-fascists, and Big Pharma shills are attempting to block De Peter McCullough’s visit to Australia.’

Whether Dr Peter McCullough is right or wrong is irrelevant. The idea that Covid vaccines are so flimsy that his presence in Australia would be considered ‘dangerous’ is beyond laughable, especially with this invention called ‘the internet’ allowing Australians to listen to his point of view whenever they want.

In what way could these activists make the argument for ‘danger’? It is not as though McCullough is encouraging people to inject themselves multiple times with a rushed drug that has a history of causing heart failure and strokes.

Andrew Giles would have a difficult time justifying any denial of visa, given our former ‘dangerous anti-vaxxer number one’ Novak is not only back in the country winning tournaments, Tennis Australia has confirmed that Covid-positive players (never mind their vaccination status) are allowed to compete.

If the virus isn’t dangerous enough to stop people playing, it’s pretty hard to mount a campaign against McCullough.

Below is the email penned by Reignite Democracy sent to Andrew Giles.

Hi Andrew.

I don’t know you personally but I hope you care about this country and that’s why you became a Member of Parliament in the first place.

Even if you disagree with Dr. Peter McCullough’s data findings and talking points, please don’t make Australia the type of country that blocks visas just because you, or others, don’t agree with that person. I disagree with a LOT of people who come here to host events, but I would NEVER advocate for you to block their entry…it’s really just basic freedom of speech principles.

It will set a dangerous precedent. One that I’m sure you don’t want your children and grandchildren to have to live with in the future.

You have an opportunity to uphold freedom of speech by simply allowing a law-abiding foreigner into the country because that should be his right. Deep down, you know that to be true.

Just to clarify, Dr. Peter McCullough isn’t even ‘anti-vax’ by the way. He advocated for the COVID vaccines when the rollout began and has advocated for vaccines in the past. However, after the data started coming out about the MRNA COVID vaccines, he was brave enough to speak out against the mainstream narrative. He’s been vilified and demonised enough for simply sharing data, don’t let Australia be another bully to a man who doesn’t deserve it.

https://spectator.com.au/2023/01/dr-peter-mccullough-the-next-djokovic/

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Fossil fuel energy the foundation for thriving human life

Five children died from heatstroke after being admitted to the Adelaide Children’s Hospital at the height of the January 1939 heatwave. Staff draped wet sheets over beds to relieve the suffering of 19 more children, seven of whom were in a serious condition.

Hydrocarbons came to the rescue. The hospital took up an offer from Kelvinator Australia Ltd to install an electric airconditioner for free. Five hours later, cool air was pumping through Rose Ward. “The authorities reported that the machine noticeably benefited the children when it began to operate at 11.50pm,” The Advertiser reported.

This snatch of history serves as a corrective to the catastrophist narrative that frames most of our discussion about climate and energy. The consequences of burning fossil fuel are not all bad. Thanks to its benefits, we can spend less time worrying about the fickleness of nature and more time enjoying fulfilling lives. Before airconditioning, deaths from prostration or sunstroke were common. In the sweaty, un-airconditioned first four decades of the last century, the death rate from extreme heat was 1.3 per 100,000. From 1940-99 it was 0.2. We are safer from the extremities of climate than we ever were.

Far from making the world “unliveable”, as the eco-pessimists fear, ultra-cost-effective fossil fuel energy has transformed a harsh, unyielding and sometimes dangerous continent into an unnaturally liveable place. No other source of energy, with the exception of nuclear, is anywhere close to competing with low-cost, on-demand versatile scalable hydrocarbons. Energy from fossil fuels has empowered humans to heat and cool their homes. Industrial processes and free trade have made warm clothes so cheap our ancestors would be astounded. They would look with envy at our food.

That’s the argument put by US philosopher Alex Epstein in Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas –Not Less. He argues the surest path to human catastrophe would be to follow the advice of climate catastrophists by switching suddenly to renewable energy. No one has come close to finding a cost-effective way of powering a modern economy using sunlight, wind and biomass alone. Not only are they inherently dilute and intermittent, but it is difficult to locate them at any scale close to centres of population and industry. Renewable energy infrastructure requires enormous amounts of mining and takes up vast amounts of space that could otherwise be farmed or dedicated to wildlife. To state wind and solar are at a competitive disadvantage to fossil fuels is to put it mildly. Despite two decades of generous subsidies and mandates, renewable energy only provides 3 per cent of global energy; fossil fuels deliver 80 per cent and use is growing faster than renewables in absolute terms.

In Epstein’s view, “a total ‘green’ replacement of fossil fuels should be viewed as a total crackpot idea until definitively proved otherwise”. He confronts the engineering challenge of eliminating fossil fuels from modern life and concludes it is impossible to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050 without a catastrophic loss of life and a sharp decline in prosperity. We have nothing in our kitbag to replace the energy-dense, transportable, available and reliable resource of solid, liquid and gaseous carbon upon which modernity was built.

In the unlikely event we succeed in creating an emission-free electricity network in that time frame, we will have solved only a small part of the problem. Transport and agriculture are more challenging still. There is no viable replacement source of energy for the production of industrial fertiliser, without which we would lose our capacity to produce half the world’s food. Nuclear technology is the only other source of naturally stored, concentrated and abundant energy capable of generating relatively low-cost, extremely reliable electricity. What’s more, it emits no air pollution or CO2 and has the best safety track record of any form of energy. The outright hostility to nuclear of influential eco-advocates leads Epstein to question their true motives. He concludes today’s ecological movement is no longer content to reduce waste and pollution but is opposed to human flourishing full stop. It is opposed not just to human activity that damages the environment but any human activity. Influential US climate advocate Bill McKibben, for example, advocates a “humbler world, one where we have less impact on our environment and human happiness would be of secondary importance”.

A liveable planet in their thinking in not one that is safer and kinder to human beings but an un-impacted planet closer to the natural paradise they wrongly imagine existed before humans came along. The myth has become so deeply embedded in modern thinking that the threat to the existence of an obscure earthworm or insect can be enough to block a new mine or industrial plant that would empower and enrich human beings.

Such thinking is at odds with our history. Indigenous Australians unempowered by almost any form of energy beyond human muscle were forced to devote much of their time to protecting themselves from the dangerous forces of nature and procuring mediocre nourishment. The timing of European settlement coincided with the transition from the era of organic energy to mineral energy, which led to rapid human flourishing in Australia as it has almost everywhere in the world. The laborious, unpredictable and low-yielding farming of the early days of settlement evolved into the high-yield, efficient agriculture of the modern era using the power unleashed by fossil fuels. Czech-Canadian scientist Vaclav Smil calculates the amount of human labour needed to produce a kilogram of grain has been reduced from 10 minutes to less than two seconds in the last 200 years.

Epstein concludes: “Without fossil fuels or their equivalent, food production would collapse and today’s ‘unnaturally’ large population could not possibly survive. With more fossil fuels or their equivalent, billions more people can have the opportunity to acquire the nourishment they need in small amounts of time instead of devoting huge portions of their lives to procuring mediocre nourishment.”

Wise decisions about energy, like any other area of policy, are impossible without a proper understanding of benefits as well as costs.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/fossil-fuel-energy-the-foundation-for-thriving-human-life/news-story/1c0f6512ae99627b07fd662313085a17

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Neo-Nazi junk mail in some affluent suburbs

I did a study of neo-Nazis many years ago and at that time they got off by shocking people. But it was all bluff. It seems that they are still succeeding

Residents in two of Australia’s most affluent suburbs got a shock when checking their letterboxes recently, as a nasty Nazi flyer made the rounds.

The flyer, which notifies residents that their homes have been visited by members of the National Socialist Network (NSN), has been left in letterboxes over the last two days.

The Anti-Defamation Commission has shared its disappointment in the a pro-Nazi flyer circulating around Paddington in NSW and Auchenflower in Queensland.

According to the Commission, the NSN is led by convicted criminal Thomas Sewell, who recently made news for punching a Channel 9 security guard.

The “terrified” residents reported receiving the flyers, which feature the Nazi swastika, to the commission.

NSW Police are aware of the flyers and are investigating. Queensland Police is also looking into the incident.

In a statement, Anti-Defamation Commission chair Dvir Abramovich said the “unthinkable” act showed neo-Nazis were openly threatening and intimidating residents.

“This can’t stand,” Dr Abramovich said.

“Who could have imagined that in 2023, hardcore white supremacists would be walking our streets, without fear of consequence, actively promoting their genocidal world view in NSW and Queensland through this well-orchestrated blitz of hate that has invaded people’s homes.

“Imagine the immense pain a Holocaust survivor or his children would feel upon seeing such vile flyers.”

Dr Abramovich said this was a wake-up call that anti-Semitism was on the rise and disaffected young people were being recruited.

“Where extremists gather, promising a racial war, physical violence is usually not far behind, and each one of us is a potential target,” he said.

“We do not need a Christchurch massacre in Sydney or Brisbane to take this ticking bomb issue seriously.

“I have no doubt that the people of NSW and Queensland share our revulsion at this kind of disturbing activity, and the worst thing we can do is to downplay the clear and present danger these groups pose to our collective way of life and safety.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/unthinkable-neonazi-act-in-ritzy-nsw-qld-suburbs/news-story/d79e552d8177182ba024cced1e8c5ab5 ?

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Australia does better on economic mobility than many other countries

Australians are still more likely than people in many other developed nations to be able move upwards from the position they were born into

Treasury researchers looked at the income data of 1 million people born in the late 1970s to the early 80s and found Australians born into the lowest fifth of family incomes were much more likely to reach the top fifth of incomes than people in other developed economies, such as the United States.

Of the Australians born into the bottom fifth of incomes, 12.3 per cent end up in the top fifth of incomes, compared to 7.5 per cent in the US.

But who your parents are is still a major determinant of where you are likely to end up. More than 90 per cent of the Australians counted in the research lived in the same state they grew up in, and 70 per cent in the same local labour market as their parents.

And researchers found there was a clear persistence in wealth across generations — and that trend was more entrenched among the nation's richest and poorest.

But compared to parents born in Australia, the children of migrants to Australia were more likely to be able to improve their economic standing, which researchers said reflected their strong educational aspirations.

Researchers also found who a person's friends were also had an influence on their likely economic outcomes, being about a fifth as influential in determining future wealth as a person's parents.

The report said one of the best predictors of upward mobility was whether people had more high- or low-income connections among their Facebook friends — an indicator of where they might have grown up, or the people they were exposed to during school, for example.

Warnings of economic mobility being dampened in future
The report also warned of economic headwinds denting Australia's relative economic mobility.

It noted that Treasury researchers only assessed the data of Australians born within a small window, but data over longer periods of time showed the percentage of Australians earning more than their parents was falling.

How housing has impacted wealth inequality

High home prices are boosting inheritances, meaning your position in society increasingly owes more to which family you're born into than to talent or hard work. But there are solutions.

Two-thirds of Australians in their early 30s earn more in real terms than their parents at the same age, but that figure has fallen from 80 per cent for baby boomers.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the research was an opportunity to see how Australia was faring, and where it needed to improve.

"Every parent wants a better future for their kids and we all want to pass on a better deal for the next generation," Mr Chalmers said.

"We don't want Australians' prospects determined solely by where they're born or who their parents are. That's why mobility is important — for more life chances in our communities and more dynamism in our economy. "We're doing well but we can do better."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-13/australia-economic-mobility-good-but-weakening/101849820

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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