Michael Walsh • 04 Sep, 2020 • 6 Min Read
At this point in the global hysteria — increasingly mixed with petty bureaucratic malevolence — over Covid-19, we have seamlessly passed from tragedy to farce, as a Marxist might say. As far back as April, it was already clear that the international Left was being forced to choose between its twin apocalyptic wet dreams of global destruction via “climate change” and global destruction via the second coming of the Black Death, aka, the Dreaded Coronavirus. If we didn’t all drown from the rising oceans or fry under a burning sun, we would fall like tenpins to a virus of such deadliness that it has a kill rate of .04% and most victims don’t even know they have it.
Why the Left has such a burning psychological need to constantly fantasize about destruction is no secret: in effect, they are a monomaniacal suicide cult with the added fillip of wanting to take the rest of the world down with them. They exist fearfully in a crabbed, constricted self-prison, in which anything — a breath, a fart, a sneeze, the flick of a light switch — can unleash cataclysmic events. What the arbitrary and capricious lockdowns have taught us — in addition to the fact that the American constitution is now clinically dead, and that the Bill of Rights no longer is absolute — is to fear our fellow man and thus turn ourselves into a nation of snitches and scolds.
And so we are lectured to by children, and harried by agents of the state for the most trivial of offenses, most of which seem to be violating laws passed yesterday by thug governments criminalizing dissent from state orthodoxy. This story, concerning a pregnant woman arrested in front of her husband and children is bad enough:
“Arresting a pregnant female, it’s never going to look good. The optics of arresting someone who is pregnant is terrible,” Mr Cornelius said. “We were very keen to understand the circumstances and consider whether or not in all the circumstances that action was appropriate. And I can say to you, based on the briefings that have been provided to me and my colleague, Assistant Commissioner Cindy Millen, we’re satisfied in those circumstances the members behaved appropriately and in accordance with our policy.”
Mr Cornelius said the handcuffing of Ms Buhler was standard procedure when officers are executing a search warrant at a home but the handcuffs were removed as soon as police rendered the situation safe. “I’ve seen the footage, and you know, in my assessment, the members have conducted themselves entirely reasonably,” Mr Cornelius said.
Watch the video at the link just above and you be the judge of its “reasonableness.” And then watch this:
Once a penal colony, always a penal colony.
Still, on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend pro tempore, it’s been amusing to watch the two imaginary bugbears of “climate change” and the “Dreaded Corona” turn on each other. Not only has the virus spared us further manifestations of Greta Thunberg, last seen going sheepishly back to school in wintry Sweden, it’s also seriously damaged the “green energy” quasi-industry:
Before the coronavirus pandemic arrived this year, clean energy was one of fastest-growing sectors in the U.S. economy. But since moderate stages of recovery began, experts say the industry has struggled to find footing. Just 3,200 jobs returned to the clean energy sector in July, Labor Department data shows.
That 0.1% employment growth has left more than 500,000 workers in fields including energy efficiency, solar and wind energy and clean vehicles without a job, an industry-sponsored analysis by the BW Research Partnership shows.
Before you can say, gee, that’s too damn bad, there’s more:
The last few months have seen a major reversal of fortune for a sector that grew 70% faster than the entire economy between 2015 and 2019 and had been employing three times as many workers as real estate, banking or agriculture. At July’s growth rate, industry leaders say, it will take 15 years to replace the jobs that were wiped away by the pandemic.
The slow rebound can be blamed, they add, on a slate of pandemic-related restrictions and consequences that have combined to affect the industry.
Well… who decreed the “pandemic-related restrictions” in the first place? Which political party signifies its acquiescence to the whims of the state by wearing face masks on all possible occasions? How do the Karens of the world vote?
This is the path madness takes, once you go crazy. A central tenet of Leftist “woke” practice is 1) posit a counter-factual and, 2) act upon it as if it were real. The problem comes when the gulf between what you believe (imminent annihilation caused by driving to the supermarket to load up on groceries) and reality (the sun comes up tomorrow on pretty much the same planet it came up on when Caesar walked the earth).
Accordingly, the Left has spent — and demanded that we spend as well — billions of dollars to indulge their “climate change” fantasy: money now circling the drain in order to indulge their “Black Death” fantasy. That both fantasies are devoted to the destruction of the capitalism system in general and the U.S.A. in particular accounts for their passionate devotion to both, even though that were both true, their own destruction is equally guaranteed.
Some of the job losses have come in the energy-efficiency industry which — as long as it makes economic sense — is regrettable. Everybody wants to pass less for energy, not more, so it the more we can make our appliances better and more efficient, the more insulated our homes are, the better it is for “the planet” (if the planet cares, which it doesn’t) and our pocketbooks.
“Out of the 3.2 million people who work in the clean energy field — or did up until this year — the vast majority are in the energy efficiency field,” Bob Keefe, executive director of the non-partisan advocacy group Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), told UPI. “Those are people who go into buildings and do everything from installing insulation in the walls and ceilings to swapping out incandescent lighting for LED lighting.”
The sudden idling in the industry has brought into focus impressive growth it has experienced in recent years. By late 2018, more than 2.3 million Americans were working the field, and the growth rate was more than 5%, according to last year’s U.S. Energy and Employment Report.
Another element in the slowdown are the declining sales of such talismans as solar panels, sold to a gullible public as helping to power your own home when the sun shines but in reality simply making the sucker pay to contribute to the electric grid for others.
One theory is that homeowners are wary of strange workmen coming to their homes while the Black Death runs wild in the streets, but a more likely answer is that the customer has finally wised up to the scam.
As for the unsightly goliaths slowing spinning their alien turbines above the water line, or disfiguring the landscape from sea shore to mountain ranges, the nearly prohibitive cost of making, maintaining, and disposing of them, the less said the better.
But it’s an article of faith among the regressive Left that the way forward is backward, to the days of windmills and waterwheels. Lacking a belief in God, the feminized Left increasingly lacks a belief in Man as well, especially in his ability to adapt to changing conditions with inventions and common sense. As Camille Paglia wrote in her seminal treatise on sex and culture, Sexual Personae, “If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.”
This is the end result of a Safety First philosophy, under which any outcome that could possibly be bad is to be avoided by simply refusing to engage. No ships should cross the ocean, no wagons rolling westward ho, no rockets to infinity and beyond. Progress cannot come without death, the thinking goes, so if death cannot be tolerated, then neither can progress. Which means, in the end, that the end stage of “progressive” liberalism can only be totalitarianism: that which is not expressly allowed is forbidden, unless we whimsically decree otherwise.
Why, just this week, another embarrassing Antipodean country, New Zealand, ha suspended the shipments of one of the few things anybody wants to buy from it — cattle — after a boat bearing 6,000 moo cows capsized and sank, with a horrifying bovine death toll. Instead of finding out why the vessel sank off the coast of Japan (which doesn’t have a lot of grazing land), the reaction was… well, let the New York Times tell it:
New Zealand has suspended the export of live cattle after a ship that left its shores with 43 crew members and nearly 6,000 cows capsized off Japan this week, raising fresh questions about the safety and ethics of transporting livestock by sea.
Animals rights activists say the move did not go far enough because the transnational livestock trade is rife with abuses. “Ultimately, this is a trade that has to be banned,” said Will Appelbe, a spokesman for SAFE, an animal welfare group in New Zealand.
Of course it does, along with everything and anybody else that could go wrong. And if — like Pennywise the Clown from It, you have to live the rest of your life in a sunless subterranean lair, comrade, remember: it’s for your own safety.Michael Walsh is a journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was for 16 years the music critic and a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. His works include the novels As Time Goes By, And All the Saints, and the bestselling “Devlin” series of NSA thrillers; as well as the nonfiction bestseller, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace and its sequel, The Fiery Angel. His latest book, Last Stands, a study of military history from the Greeks to the present, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in December. Follow him on Twitter @dkahanerules
A well written piece on the reality of fear mongering to gain power. I am especially astounded at how easily and how far our Australian friends have falle n for the scams.
Not all Australians.
That’s why the armed enforcers need FaceBook snitches.
Like most Australians I think I just laughed at the IQ of the person involved, trying to incite a protest while emergency powers are in effect is only ever going to end one way and the police treated exactly the same way they treat any criminal. Then to top it off we had the spectacle of the couple hundred people trying to have a protest in Sydney and Melbourne and swimming and running away from the police. I am not sure the message they were trying to get out could ever beat the comedy of the situation. If you are stupid enough to turn up to a protest at least stay there and get arrested so the press can try and paint the police as the bad guys.
If you don’t like the lockdowns you need to organize a political movement for the next election and get the emergency powers changed. As the greens have shown if you can get just 10% of the population to join with you then politicians will begin to pander to you to woe your vote. I definitely think the powers need to be reviewed when they were drafted they were based around the idea they would be used for short time. However don’t ask me to join a protest in support I am not stupid enough to not know how that will end.
600+ M.D. “We see we have no killer virus all over the world.” (at 13.4 minutes in this 16 minutes video introduction of The COVID-19 Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee.
https://youtu.be/9qfhN5DYCRs
https://acu2020.org/international/
1st I don’t speak spanish or whatever the lady is talking in at 13.4
2nd Relevance ??????
Did you mean to respond to someone else?
ldb.. lockdowns don’t work… think Swewden and herd immunity, which until covid was seen as a viable strategy. however, since australia and New Zealand did lockdown, they’re going through the pangs of reinfection hot spots and needing to lockdown again to control it, but it didn’t work in the first place so why lockdown again – do you see a pattern? it’s like hitting a wall with your head again and again expecting different result. lockdown as a national strategy is akin to the cure being worse than the disease, at least with respect to covid.
I went on an outdoor trek to a local chasm for a couple of hours this weekend… easily 95%+ had masks on… WTH? like lockdowns, they also don’t work for general public use. The people have become sheeple – it’s just like the climate “the sky is falling” fanatics where no amount of data will suffice (assuming they even care about data).
the more people who get the whu who flu the better. it is not decimating the population of the planet, far from it, it is no worse than the seasonal flu.
Goracle. In Australia, border control and quarantine, then border closure, did work the first time in Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland; those states have not needed to go into full lockdown. Tasmania had an outbreak when the infection came in from outside; a local lockdown and border closure fixed that, and there has been no need for a full lockdown.
Two states have had big problems, Victoria and NSW, with outbreaks in quarantine hotels, aged care homes and abattoirs, which then escaped to the broader community. In Victoria this led to full lockdown and NSW closing the common border.
Why didn’t the lockdown in Victoria work the first time? The outbreaks were mainly in the dominant city, Melbourne (and
Sydney). These are the main entry points to Australia, the virus got in via cruise ships and quarantine hotels. Add confused line of command (federal v state), lack of experience at an organisational level (no-one’d ever done this before); a rushed job to get it in place fast, so no training; a desire to cut costs, so unskilled untrained contractors, and, on top of those structural issues, too many people who break the rules. (Breaking the rules caused smaller outbreaks in Sydney.).
So why use lockdown again? Because if we fix the things that failed first time round, then chances of success are much higher – as long as everyone cooperates.
Imagine where we’d be technologically if we followed your logic. Invent a basic flying machine, computer, or set up a new business. But it doesn’t work the first time, so why try again? Well, we’d still be travelling by steam train and using telegraph.
Embrace failure to build success!
I never said they did .. my comment has nothing to do with that subject.
My post was about stupids who go out to protest during emergency powers.
It’s worth noting that you promised during a particularly pathetic whinge never to comment on these types of “stupids” ever again:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/02/pseudo-science-behind-the-assault-on-hydroxychloroquine/#comment-2983633
But you did. And then you continued to “did” over and over and over again, even until today.
Now THAT means obviously, your logical fallacy is: Contradiction
And from there your moral infraction becomes: Hypocrisy
So I guess I’m commenting on the stupids who comment on the stupids who protest emergency powers during an emergency?
Tom Foley, lockdowns don’t work. Unless you’re going to stop all trucks/planes/people from going into the country or indovidual state (essentially killing your economy and hurting your govt which depends on taxes from income and a miriad of types of conomic transactions), then lockdowns are a bottomless pit until either the virus is no more or until enough people become infected (and recover) to limit the ability of the virus to propagate though society. Since wiping virus’ off the face of the earth is very rare, the next best strategy is herd immunity. Now, if we were talking ebola with a 1 in 3 chance of dying, I’m all ears. But not with a .1-.2% kill rate (@ the same as pneumonia).
Sorry Tom, but you are talking rot.
For starters not only do lockdown not work, they were never intended to work. They were intended to flatten the curve in order to protect the hospitals from collapse. The assumption was always that a very significant percentage of the population would catch it and most of them would requir intensive care. The spread needed to be delayed while thousands of respirators were acquired. One of Australia’s leading panic merchants went as far as to state that turning the ENTIRE manufacturing industry over to repirator and mask production. Despite the hard fact that manufacturing does not work like that and the growing evidence that they would never be needed this ‘expert’ stated that this plan was “A no brainer”.
Real Lift is not a textbook example. Real Life is a complex interaction which is why text books deliberately simplify their examples in order to isolate and teach a single point.
You also seem to show a poor understanding of how progress is made. If something fails, consistently, you work out why and then stop doing that. Aviation didn’t work by constantly building flapping wings. Your argument for more lockdown is tragically similar to that of more socialism.
Face it, WuFlu is, fortunately, something that is so lame the Australian government now have education reminding people that their mild COLD is probably COVID. We were promised dead on the streets back in March. That is why we agreed to wash our hands and not make eye contact. Now we get told that 94% of the panic was something else. Anyone who refuses to modify their position based on these more up to date findings is either a liar or a fool.
Hard facts. Lockdown don’t work and Lockdowns aren’t needed.
The big flaw in your argument, LdB, is that Chairman Dan issued a brand new carrot first thing Monday morning.
Not Friday, where it would have been seen by many Victorians that loving Big Brother was the correct action, but Monday morning AFTER the weekend’s protests.
The. Protests. Brought. Change.
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.” – H. L. Mencken
And much further back in time;”Such is the nature of the Tyrant, when he first appears he is a protector.”
Plato.
I agree Al, it’s a classic example of fear-mongering – painting the ‘left’ as the big bad bogey man, a monomanical suicide cult (and the rest)!
Most Australians are pretty pragmatic (compared with Americans) and tend to go along with things that make common-sense. Of course, some will disagree, but they need to be pragmatic too if they want to be effective and not get arrested by being silly.
tom Foley, common sense is that lockdowns mearly delay the spread, they don’t stop it. as soon as you open up, the virus will spread again. common sense is that herd immunity is the best strategy to fight a virus with a .1-.2% death rate. open your eyes. you must either be independently wealthy, retired, or work for the government. the majority of people who need to work for a living (and that are not being paid on the taxpayers dime) would disagree with your pragmatic view.
Wrong. The Left does the fear mongering. The Right merely points it out.
Hiya Charles! Greetings from Portland.
At least our dark fantasies require imagination–y’all on the right just have nightmares about… well, us.
Well it’s the darkness of your imaginings being so beyond normal imaginations that cause the rational man to dream of you.
Thank you, Michael, for summing up what so many are thinking!
The nihilistic death cult of Progressivism is in it’s death throes; the only question being whether it takes Western Civilization down with it! The old time Soviets like Khrushchev and Brezhnev must be rolling over in their graves at the sight of America driven to it’s knees by a moderately strong cold virus and a media campaign to instill panic from the DemoKKKrats and their ChiCom paymasters!
There is no reason for the shutdowns and mask mandates to continue; like voter-fraud-by-mail the facts show them to be not just unnecessary, but far more deadly than the Wuhan Flu! Based on the same kind of faulty modeling as the CAGW scam; the hysteria over WuFlu is likewise being used as a political opportunity to seize unlimited power while pushing the populous down to the level of serfs or peons; a heady intoxicant for our lords and masters!
The 2020 election will be a decision for the ages; the one way a new Dark Age, more repressive than the last, and the other way leaves open the possibility of restoring liberty and prosperity!
The DemoKKKrats are warning that any win by Trump will be invalid and may lead to fighting in the streets. I fear that if they are too blatant in their attempts to steal the election they will get their wish, in spades!
Unfortunately, unlike Coogar and Darke’s counter-clockwise fairground ride in Ray Bradbury’s magical novel, we cannot turn back time. The ruinous ideology of the woke liberal ignorati has already brought parts of western civilization to its knees and the snickersnee needles of Greta, the Dust Witch, has already stitched close the once open minds of our mainstream media and its middle class consumers.
We can only go forward in time, repair the damage, educate our children properly and hope that the world eventually recovers its senses. Mr Bradbury borrowed the title of his book from the three witches scene in Macbeth – “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes”. Well, that something wicked is easily identifiable and it has already arrived. We have to overcome this evil by being brave, speaking truth to the ignorant, resisting the bullies and setting an example to our peers.
This is how we defend western values and, indeed, democratic accountability. The lightning rod salesman has long departed and the moaning calliope heralds the arrival of the train of fools. It is down to each of us to step up and be counted. Ask not for whom the Coogar and Darke calliope moans – it moans for YOU.
Absolutely! We must educate our children properly … by driving OUT the proselytizing leftists embedded in our public UNIONISTA schools. Well said.
Such are there growing pangs of a modern civilization. The human psyche is full of monsters under the bed, and ghosts in the night. Unfortunately, our global collective history has a blood lust, which hasn’t quite manifested itself yet, but is boiling away just below the surface like a volcano waiting to blow its lid. I honestly hope we don’t revert to our paranoid delusions, or allow others to drag us down into the gutter with them, but it seems like a tide and all you can do is get out of the way and let it pass, or stand up and fight back. I think it best we stand up and fight back but don’t take revenge which perpetuates the cycle.
I would say President Trump, for all his minor faults, is on the side of growing civilization in the manner we have been accustomed to for the last 100 years, at least here in the West which led to the kind of general peace and prosperity that world very rarely experiences. And the rest of the world wants what we have here in the Western ‘civilized’ world and are tired of the yoke of oppression and tyranny. Either way, we are in a revolution of sorts as we advance and find our way through the darkness of ignorance and despotism.
So those of us that can vote in the USA election have a duty to investigate which political system you would rather live under. One is darkness and fear led by ignorance and subversion of our way of life as we see manifesting itself throughout our cities and institutions, and the other is a normalcy that allows free will and individualism that engages the better angels of our nature. I know what side I am on.
You sum it up very well. I’m surprised at the level of restraint that is being demonstrated by Trump and indeed by many conservatives.
This almost appears to be a global psychological operation perpetrated by the CCP with help from many others. It’s been said that no government assumes additional powers with the intention to relinquish them, at least not without a fight.
Scissor: Why be surprised at the restraint? That restraint is clearly part of a strategy to make America great again, with the winning number, the highest in the world, of cases and deaths, as of today, but well ahead of the nearest contenders (Worldometer).
America, you are exceptional, and master of your own fate. You don’t need any help from the CCP or anyone else!
Your ignorance is on full display Foley. The USA is the 3rd most populous country in the world, with almost 4 times as many people as Germany. We have no clue how many people have gotten sick or died of COVID-19 in either China or India due to lying and/or a lack of testing/reporting infrastructure. The numbers on Worldometer are based on the number of tests given and reported in each country, they are not an absolute true number of cases or deaths. Go back in your hole and wait out the pandemic. If you ever emerge you will see a very healthy USA.
Well, someone must be working in the wind industry. The part of Texas I live in is treated to a steady parade of blades moving in groups of 3 west on US hw 84/67. Just the movement employs quite a few folks as there are two escort cars (trucks?) for each blade truck, plus one in front and behind the whole shebang. Don’t know if they are continuing along 67 towards Ballenger/ Big Springs, or 84 up to the Abilene area, but it does seem that they are covering up most of west Texas. Maybe this area didn’t see the effect described in the article, but oil and gas was hit pretty hard.
As for the livestock transportation–plenty of bull wagons hauling loads also.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
Blame it on Republicans.
Even better, on Trump.
Claim more goobermint power is the only solution.
Democrat politics in US.
The other side of that is never be stupid enough to do things to allow them to use it.
A bureaucracy will MINDLESSLY enforce the laws. No matter how abhorrent the law they will enforce it. Usually with sheer brute force. They only care about their paycheck and pensions. At some point they will have to worry about getting the chance to spend it. Then they will stop.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Having taught mathematics and computer science at the university level since 1970, I have witnessed the slow deadly creep of nanny-ism on three different campuses. Of course it starts with the good intention of “in loco parentis” but ends up with many “loco” rules, and increases tuition rates with all the extra needed administration and staff for enforcement.
Starting with time-consuming paper work to document 0-accidents in the workplace to satisfy OSHA, we are now faced with even more time-consuming strategies for ensuring 0 covid cases as some students return to campus.
We are raising a generation of snowflakes.
Yeah, but with REALLY nice curtains.
And it would be a Home…not a grass hut. With four and twenty windows…And a woman’s face in every one.
And don’t go mistaking paradise for the home across the road
The left business captains want us to believe that they harvest and subsequently resell the cleanest and cheapest form of energies from infinite supply sources.
Enter energy efficiency. The necessity to spend tons of money to spare on what’s promoted as clean, dirt cheap and infinite energy.
(implicit palmface)
In praise of sheep
https://tambonthongchai.com/
Sheep is apt, but the lemming is better. Not only do they want you docile, but they want to run you off the cliff. Little different than the crusades in medieval times. They want you dead with as little trouble to themselves as possible.
The various world governments have spent a pile mitigating the economic effects of lockdowns. Even a novice in a nunnery will understand that some things can now not be afforded. My wild ass guess is that renewable energy subsidies are going the way of the dodo. The fiscal hangover from coronavirus spending is going to last a long time.
It’s not only Australia, but here in the USA, as well. I get the newsletter from my Republican Representative for the State of Florida in the US Congress, who in every newsletter goes on and on about how the Virus is so horrible and infecting children everywhere. Two rather surprising items are that he claims he had the dreaded virus at one time, and he is a medical doctor. Yet he perpetuates just about everything seen and heard from the mainstream media.
Odder still is that to this date, even here in the State of Florida which supposedly has large numbers infected with the Virus, I know no one personally that has either tested positive or has died from or with it.
“I know no one personally that has either tested positive or has died from or with it.”
You must be “hangin” with the wrong crowd.
Try an AntiFa or BLM thug-fest.. 😉
Covid is horrible except when compared to the 1918 flu.
Half of the horror is the response to Covid by science ignorant politicians misdiagnosing the problem and then applying the wrong solutions.
In the past sick people were isolated but this time healthy people were isolated, thrown out of work, and the most vulnerable elderly in nursing homes were not protected. Leave it to politicians to get everything bassackwards. They will claim to be heroes, of course, and blame Trump for everything bad that ever happened when he was president.
Perhaps 1 of 1000 infected will die. They get all the attention. But perhaps 600 of 1000 will get normal or serious flu symptoms, with a much greater percentage than a typical influenza infection needing hospitalization and sometimes the ICU. Kids are the least affected, and maybe that is the only good news.
Right on Richard Greene. I was waiting for somebody to talk common sense.
Since the Greek empire when an epidemic occurred the people, almost naturally, put the sick people into quarantine- stay at home, neighbors will get food to you, a “doctor” if we have one.
Instead the poorly educated talking heads in the CDC and HHS decided that no should die from this flu because we will keep all the healthy people home. This idea had never been really tested anywhere. Even for Ebola they quarantined individuals, houses and stricken villages, not everyone within a 30 km radius.
The folks making this decision are the first bloom of results in the changing schooling system. It has changed from learning skills to learning fanciful propaganda.
Given the population of Florida, 21.48 million, and the current number of corvid cases, just under 644,000 (6 Sept), that means about 1 person in 33 has tested positive.
Perhaps you live in a rural area where there’s a lower incidence? Or all the infected people are in isolation? And they are keeping quiet about it? Or you don’t have a big circle of friends? Then, how many people have the virus but haven’t been tested?
Perhaps you should just be very grateful that you know no-one who has been affected.
Wrong,testing positive and cases are two different animals.
Just about all “energy efficient” building puts the people in them at a much higher risk for disease. Tight air seals and recirculation through ductwork is absolutely wonderful breeding ground for microorganisms.
Now, it is possible to mitigate that effect – but at a vastly increased cost in both construction and maintenance. Neither of which is expended on the majority of efficient buildings.
(The rant about “efficient” appliances that are anything but I will save up for later.)
It’s not new. The Left has always been in a state of emotional breakdown over the end of the world. We were hearing the same kind of predictions of doom from nuclear warfare starting in the 1960s with the beatniks through to the end of the 1980s and the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Warsaw Pact. The doom-mongers had to go somewhere, and global warming was their standing catastrophe until C-19 came along and made it immediately necessary that the entire population be imprisoned in their own homes.
It should escape no one that the tactics of the modern Left are in essence identical to the fascists of the 1930s.
WRONG – The Fascists were actually opposed to Leftist hysteria. The real nutcases were the leftist Bolsheviks and Antifa, their street muscle.
1. 9/11. Good start, but we didn’t scare enough people badly enough.
2. Global Warming, excuse me, Climate Change, because it didn’t warm fast enough. We scared lots more people, but it fizzled out because the climate didn’t cooperate.
3. Covid-19. Much better, because we could panic governments into shutting down, creating economic and social chaos.
But the people behind this didn’t realize the ordinary man isn’t that stupid.
There’s an effort to restructure society from the top down. There’s a counter-effort to keep traditional values in, from the bottom up. Who will win? This is probably the single most important moment in human history.
Who are “the people” behind all this? Got any names?
Rare but I with you on this one Loydo and I would add why? The conspiracies usually come from your side about oil companies but obviously when it comes to tin foil hats there are a few needed on each side.
You really think human nature desiring power over others is a conspiracy?
Their names are those calling for power over others, antifa, BLM, and their supporters – the democratic socialist party.
“Such us the nature of the Tyrant, when he first appears he is a protector”
Plato.
Go study— the ideology of the UN, of those promoting agenda 21, of those calling for central world government, of those calling for the end of the US constitutional republic, study those who wish to ” fundamentally change” the US, which happens to be the highest ideal of individual rights over group power.
Your challenge to name them is childish ignorance touched with arrogance. Books have been written on this.
You think the US Democrat Party is responsible for 9/11, Covid and climate change. That about sums it up. Mmm… books.
I was born in the post-WW2 era, when prosperity for citizens was the main ambition of the politicians of all western countries.
They had been in a position to witness the failures of socialism, communism and totalitarianism (is that tautology?) during their lifetimes.
So what seems to happen now is that about every half-generation, the lessons of these failed governance systems are lost on the new-generation proponents of such systems.
I guess they just have to reap what they sow, and hope they don’t inflict too much misery on the following generations.
“ it was already clear that the international Left was being forced to choose between its twin apocalyptic wet dreams of global destruction via “climate change” and global destruction via the second coming of the Black Death, aka, the Dreaded Coronavirus”
Not so, or not everywhere. Some of them are having their cake and eating it too. Our masters in Canada are assuring us that the recovery from corona (which they will micro-manage with 10 disparate provinces and 3 territories “helping”) is the perfect opportunity to create a newly green economy. They will manage this (they say) by continuing to borrow barge-loads of money “because interest rates are so low”. They don’t seem to grasp that if everyone borrows money with no thought of repayment, those interest rates are going to start rising, and then things will get ugly. Even more ugly than when they continue the progressive strangulation of the oil business, which is the one sector that could help get out from under all that debt.
To address another item in Michael’s excellent article, international trade in live animals is not only unpleasant, but (IMHO) unnecessary. Growing up in the UK in the 1950s, meat wasn’t cheap, but lamb from NZ and beef from Argentina made it more affordable for those of us in the lower strata of society. It came in refrigerated (not freezer) ships and the meat was nicely aged after 3 or 6 weeks at sea*. I refuse to believe that shipping live animals is more economical than that, even if they treat them with the utmost brutality.
* – unlike today. We sometimes buy frozen lamb from NZ and it comes with instructions to thaw it out, remove the package and leave it unwrapped in your fridge for a few days, so it can lose that vaguely unpleasant smell that lamb has when it’s freshly slaughtered.
If the Japanese really want to butcher cattle in their own special way, they can bloody well send their butchers to NZ to do it (after the travel ban imposed by the Ahern government is lifted of course, which I understand is certain to happen before 2065 at the latest).
The 6,000 cows were in calf, and being sent to China, not Japan, for breeding purposes. Not much point in sending butchered meat if you want to breed from it. Don’t confuse this case with the export of live animals for halal slaughter in the country of destination. We are quite capable of slaughtering cows in New Zealand to halal requirements. But for breeding, the animals need to be alive.
Finally, my thoughts of with the families of the missing seafarers.
They chinese abatoirs don’t let anything go to waste on the slaughtered cow. They want the whole thing, not just the high quality grass fed meat.
Blood for soups, hides for leather, offal for animal food (pigs), bones and hooves for rendering.
They have the cheap labor to process all that. NZ not so much.
I should note, again, those live cattle were bound for China’s abattoirs, not Japan.
With respect to the arrest of this pregnant Australian woman, our Victorian police emulate those in totalitarian regimes, as recently see with arrests of pro-democracy citizens in Hong Kong.
This is primarily a leadership failure of the police officer’s superiors. The arresting police officers lacked training to communicate in an effective way with the young woman, and get an understanding of her reasoning for organising a rally against Victorian lock-down restrictions.
Rather, they have been trained to arrest with force. Hence, Assistant Chief Police Commissioner Cornelius needs to be held to account for his leadership failure.
But who will do that? Certainly not the current socialist Labor government in Victoria.
The citizen of Victoria are being held under the most restrictive lock-down conditions on this planet, for very little gain and their futile efforts to eradicate COVID (they want single digit daily positive cases based on modelling, knowing full well hat climate modelling is virtually useless) from Victoria.
So the cows didn’t survive the sinking. Was SAFE, the animal welfare group in NZ, planning on the cows surviving the slaughterhouse?
As I commented above, the cows were for breeding, not slaughter.
After the calves are done nursing the cows will be slaughtered for market. They certainly wouldn’t have been shipped back to New Zealand!
Why??
Just get the cows in calf again and have more calves 12 months later. That’s how cattle farming works. Cows only go to the works when they’re no longer sufficiently productive if they’re dairy cows or if they don’t get pregnant again.
Regarding the arrest of the pregnant woman in Australia, you write ‘once a penal colony, always a penal colony’. The arrest took place in Victoria which was not established as a penal colony. Victoria was built on entrepreneurial capitalism – the discovery and exploitation of gold. The population of Australia more than tripled in the 20 years after 1851 due to the gold rushes, with people arriving from all over the world (the start of Australia’s multiculturalism) including the Americas. This immigration primarily went to Victoria. The gold rushes made Victoria, its capital Melbourne, and the main gold cities Ballarat and Bendigo. In fact the arrest took place in Ballarat, the location of the Eureka Stockade in 1854, where miners rebelled against taxation (miners’ licences) without representation.
Personally, I think the arrest was a bit excessive, but the frustration of the government (and the majority of
the population) is not surprising, because the totally unnecessary spread of the virus here is due to people refusing to take precautions, and ignoring the rules. Premier Andrews still has majority support, and while support varies for the different lockdown rules, there is still 87% support for wearing masks.
I live in an area so far unaffected, but I definitely don’t want some idiot to bring it here and start another hot-spot. This is nothing to do with left-right politics. All the state premiers have taken a tough line, regardless of party affiliation.
What part of 0.04% infection fatality rate did you miss about COVID-19?
When the dust has finally settled, and the politicians that imposed them are gone, the COVID lockdowns and the imposition of excessive travel restrictions are going to go down as the most monumental blunder in Modern Times. Bar none.
.04%…mmm…that number sounds familiar from somewhere. It’s amazing that the powers that be would try and shut down the world for .04% of anything.
To Joel: Yes, covid 19 has a low fatality rate. But it seems to be quite infectious, so when infections grow exponentially, large absolute numbers of people will die even if the fatality rate is low. That’s the point of the social-distancing and lockdown rules, to keep the numbers of infections down. Then the absolute number of deaths will be kept low.
Personally, I’m happy to live in a country being supercautious over infections and so with a low number of deaths, rather than a laissez-faire approach and a high number of deaths. By hindsight, some mistakes have been made, but that was inevitable as we have learnt what we’re dealing with. Some things are very different from the flu epidemic 100 years ago – notably the speed and extent of human movement.
Yes there are serious economic ramifications; but that’s the case whatever we do – let covid 19 run wild or try to contain it. But I am optimistic that the western capitalist system will bounce back. I am quite surprised that so many people here seem to believe that covid lockdowns or communism/socialism will destroy it. Oh ye of little faith.
Covid lockdowns are socialism testing its wings.
As for herd immunity, I assume you line up for your vaccine plus booster when ordered by your government?
With greetings from Germany, this website from Switzerland perhaps will help regarding Covid 19: Swiss Policy Research – https://swprs.org/facts-about-covid-19/
In August, we had two demonstrations in Berlin with several hundreds of thousands of participants each to save our “Grundgesetz” (constitution). Police and mainstream media lie about scope and political orientation. Many of us fear totalitarianism and forced vaccination. Little difference between Left and Right any more. Main difference: those who inform themselves independently and those who consume information that is thrown at them (because someone has the money or power to do so). Like in the 1930s when men switched back and forth between SA and Red Front Fighters, but now these people who bathe in submissiveness for a greater cause, and who beat up dissidents seem to be half of the indigenous population (I hope I’m wrong about this).
It appears that the death rate in Sweden us now very low.
Tom, have you calculated the deayh rate as life expectancy years lost due to unemployment, divorce, poverty, suicide, and the affect of those events on life expectancy? Those studies exist. Consider them comorbidities.
So how will shut down societies ever get heard immunity?
Tom Foley, your assessment of the manner in which the Victorian Labor government led by Daniel Andrews has handled the COVID-19 pandemic is way off.
Have you forgotten about how they handled the cases that were in hotel quarantine and the staff employed for that task mainly base on cultural diversity rather than trained in quarantine techniques which led to the spread into the greater community, and that they rejected Commonwealth ADF assistance when they needed it. There were other escapades that these people got up to with guests in quarantine which I won’t mention in this reply.
The government never understood that staff employed within aged care/nursing home facilities were moving between those places of employment carrying COVID from one facility to next spreading the virus . A failure in health management there.
The testing arrangements to determine case affected with COVID were interminable taking many days to get results and then permitting positive cases to take outdoor exercise rather than complete isolation.
Needless to say if these positive people were living in China the doors of their homes would have been securely shut. Luckily we don’t live in China, but the restrictions and Marshall Law lock-downs and curfew arrangements Victorians have endured have been the most draconian placed on a population outside of a totalitarian society.
That video on Harold Lloyd hanging off a clock is a classic movie spoof. He was perfectly safe.
Also on the cattle boat sinking, a correction is needed:
“Gulf Livestock 1 was carrying 5,867 head of cattle from Napier, New Zealand, to Jingtang in Tangshan, China, according to New Zealand’s foreign ministry, Reuters reported.”
Another reason this winter is going to be pretty lean times for the average Chinese.
And another reason President Xi will use to start an invasion of Taiwan in late January, in order to distract from the famine in his people.
Do you want to bet on that? And what evidence do you have for that?
For the invasion in January, or the probable famine coming to Red China? The CCP is already on record as saying they will take Taiwan by force if necessary as they consider it a rogue breakaway province. And they are banking on Biden winning the election, at which point if he did, they would begin the invasion the day after the inauguration and do you think the Biden/Harris administration would do anything the first week of their administration? It would be the date I would pick if I was a Chicom, and the deal may already be made. Sleepy Joe wouldn’t even be awake by the time it was over, but he owes China anyway.
As per famine in Red China, things are not looking good for them with multiple agriculture failures due to massive floods and major swine flu in their pork industry. If just USA, Canada, Brazil decide to withhold shipments of food to China this winter, they are in big troubles. Comrade Xi is up the creek without a paddle which is why he is acting up, and even his own CCP party doesn’t like an absolute dictator. Especially one who screws up. He has do do on his face now, and they won’t keep him around for long. They are sharpening the knives for his back as we speak. Let the Chicom’s take their own garbage out.
The Chinese have been claiming that they will Taiwan by force for decades but have
failed to act. It is far more useful to them as a propaganda tool and as an excuse to maintain a large army and navy. So nothing seems to have changed in recent years.
And is there any evidence that USA, Canada and Brazil are planning on deliberating letting Chinese people starve? Do you think the same about most countries that import food? The UK would starve in a couple of weeks if the EU stopped food imports, are you worried about famine in the UK?
The Chinese already weaponize food and agriculture…look what they did to Canadian Canola just for one example. It most certainly will be agriculture product protection, come push to shove. Or if we have a partial crop failure, they are in trouble for sure.
The Chinese are already acting criminally, including kidnapping foreign citizens and holding them arbitrarily for months/years on end. And their illegal fishery in the EEZ of the South China Sea and the man made military islands. Or wiping out fish stocks on the high seas. Nobody should apologize for the CCP of how China conducts itself around the world. It is now the silk trail of tears, as it is run by the CCP in their attempted economic colonization of the world. And a lot of other stuff…This won’t end well if they continue down this path.
If Joe Biden wins the US Presidency and is set to be sworn in on January 20, 2021, it’s all but certain. Invasion on 19 January +/- a few days.
Biden is feeble, failing in executive and getting worse. And both Putin and Xi know this. Biden is the “weak man of Yalta” feeble, just like President Roosevelt was with Stalin in 1945. Stalin’s spies (Hess) in the US government informed Russian intelligence of FDRs failing mental health. Stalin took advantage of that fact the President and his advisors were trying to hide from the public FDRs mini-strokes and failing memory. Stalin got much better terms for how Europe was to be divided and how Russia would attack Japan after Europe conflict ended, giving the Kuril Islands to Russia.
Just like Biden now and he’ll be worse in 5 months. His feebleness will hand over Taiwan to China’s belligerence. Xi is banking on this if Biden wins. China military is already in preparation for this in late January.
Alger Hiss, not Hess, was the Stalin spy at Yalta.
interesting though seen on ZH about a falseflag event eiher prior or just after usa elections
sitting back and waiting
suspect its VERY likely antifa mongrels are a prelude
also see muttering re NK having sub missiles the def dept is concerned…about
and the usual but timed to match? EMP attack mentioned then shut down on info wise.
“Something Wicked This Way Comes”
What, leftys?
The totalitarian, on-world socialist/marxist/fascist agenda is a scourge on all human freedom and existence.
Those who support it are the most disgusting, evil, degenerate dregs of human sub-species.
The good news is, this conspiracy you are getting angry about, it doesn’t exist
“it doesn’t exist”
Except as quoted by nearly every one in the UN or any part of the leftist agenda….
You really should pay more attention to the people that have brain-washed you and that you grovel to like a toady..
The author used that headline to *mock* what he thinks is fearmongering and hysteria. So I thought I’d lay out a little fearmongering bait to see if any brain-washed, barking mad, luna-right, konspiracy nuts would nibble on it. And bam. Dude even though you’re filleted and in my freezer I think you’re a bit tainted so I’ll throw you out…did you see what that one word, which loosely describes half the world’s population, triggered in you? Weirdo.
Poor Loydo.. You are an empty-minded flapping mullet.
Glad to see you finally admitting that you espouse the violence and thuggery of BLM, AntiFa etc. And condone all that is wrong with extreme leftism.
You have got to stop exposing yourself, and get out of your slimy far-left marxist mind sewer.
Try joining the human race for a change…. are you even capable ???
So it would be like #exxonknew and all the junk conspiracies coming out of the climate alarmists and greentards then.
And Russian collusion, and fake impeachments..
Yes, all of it is totalitarian socialist/marxist/fascist lies and thuggery that griff worships..
He knows its wrong, evil, and anti-human, so he DENIES to himself that it even exists… even though he is part of it and it is all of him.
LDB, it is nothing like that at all. Not even remotely.
I suggest you start with some David Horowitz books about the statist left and their ideals and actions.
Neither the pandemic nor climate change has anything to do with the ‘left’, nor have responses to either been anything to do with the ‘left’.
And what US commentators call the ‘left’ is anyway all those not of the Trump wing of the Republican party.
WOW, you really are a NAIVE little muppet, aren’t you griff
griff has just announced his implicit endorsement of all the AntiFa, BLM and other rioters and vandals of the far left.
Those who cannot cope with democratic processes and think thuggish violent behaviour is a means to an end to get their own way
Well done griff.. you expose and degrade yourself with every post you make.
Rick from NZ.
These vegan Nazis are everywhere in the world, mainly in the city’s, its all part of we know better than you culture, they wont stop till you all are eating meat substitute, what are you gonna do when the commies put CO2 restrictions on Humans
China had about half a billion hogs before the swine flu cull. My guess is they have rebuilt the industry some. So sweetnsour pork is still gonna be on the menu, plus tofu hotpot and kung pao chicken. A Chinese guy can live off of pork buns for breakfast and noodle soup for lunch or dinner for, oh, a few decades. With the occasional tea-egg for a snack. Last time I was inside a big Walmart in Beijing they had what looked half of a whole roasted goat for sale at the cooked meat counter. And tanks full of swimming live fish with nets provided so a customer can catch and bag their own. Always a chuckle seeing a Chinese housewife waiting in the checkout queue holding their plastic bagged and wildly flapping fish out at arm’s length – at least to this gweilo.
China planned to start importing live cattle from Rockhampton in Queensland in Australia too. They like their meat fresh in Asia – refer the lady with the live fish. Frozen crap just doesn’t cut the mustard there.
Marxism: Find an issue that has moral high ground and take it. Make the issue worse, shout about it, shove it down peoples throats as much as possible, inflate it, create tension and discord, try to raise hatred and anger about the issue. Conflate capitalism with the opposing position. This is what they have done with CO2 and the climate, quite successfully, this is what they are trying to do with racism (BLM), with initial success, and what they have done with feminism. Lenin and Trotsky used class division as their issue. It must be resisted. It is a very real threat to western culture.
This Covid nightmare is straight out of Kafka. Franz must be rolling in his grave in Prague. I think there might be a slight smile on his face…
Another right-wing QAnon inspired conspiracy fest from someone who has no idea what a Marxist is. “Climate Change” was not produced by “The Left”. COVID-19 was not produced by “The Left”. End of story. Anyway, the definition of “The Left” from all Trump bootlickers and lickspittles is very nebulous… seems to be anyone who doesn’t regard One-Term-Trump as the saviour of humanity.
Count down the days you have remaining – they’re getting less and less, so enjoy it while you can. And then that odious, farcical, coiffured, cowardly, whining, ignorant windbag can go into the trashcan of history where he belongs.
Poor Mickey-mouse Mann.
Your far-left idiotology stinks for miles !
“Climate change™” is very much part of the leftist idiotology…. no need for your climate DENIAL.
” odious, farcical, coiffured, cowardly, whining, ignorant windbag ”
Biden, I assume you mean….. Obama is still around, in his own mind, anyway.
Biden is out of his.
Added dementia and
“COVID-19 was not produced by “The Left””
China isn’t “the left”
Ok !! …. so you are delusional.. little mann.
The left in the USA have co-opted climate change and Covid-19 as their preferred methods of the destruction of modern civilisation. No use trying to DENY that fact.
The lefties are here a lot these days……keeping an eye on things I guess.
Somehow “seminal” seems inappropriate when talking about a treatise by Camille Paglia, who wrote extensively on female sexuality. “Oocytic” perhaps, if that’s even a word?