Essay by Eric Worrall
To say tempers are running hot over climate policy related bullying and abuse of rural landowners would be an understatement.
I attended an action meeting on the 28th September in Gympie.
Katy McCallum (Kilkivan Action Group – she has featured before in WUWT) along with Jim Willmott presented disturbing footage of wholesale destruction of wilderness areas to make way for the industrial scale wind farm and solar development – vast swathes of trees cut down, corridors 10s of miles long through formerly pristine wilderness.
Wade Northausen of Billboard Battalion along with Michael Griffith of Cafe Locked Out discussed the issues they were facing in rural Victoria.
One of the most disturbing issues raised was about crowd control weapons used against EPIC freedom protestors in 2022.
The Aussie government has admitted to using LRADS, sonic weapons, to disperse the anti-vaccine mandate protest, though they claim the LRADs were not configured as weapons.
But the people I spoke to claim they were burned – burns which took weeks to heal. Sonic LRAD weapons don’t cause burns, they hurt your ears.
Perhaps something other than an LRAD was deployed. The US military developed a microwave radiation crowd dispersal weapon a decade ago, dubbed the “pain ray” in some popular press articles. The microwave weapon looks a lot like the LRAD weapon, the antenna superficially has a similar shape. The microwaves projected by the ADS weapon are not the same as your microwave oven, they are designed to be far less penetrating, to minimise the risk of injury – but they can still reportedly cause second degree burns.
I don’t know for sure what happened that day, I wasn’t there – but I was horrified at first hand accounts I listened to from protestors who claim they suffered inexplicable burns.
The meeting speakers also mentioned the need to avoid excessive organisational centralisation. I contributed a little to the discussion on this issue, I said “the one thing they can’t cope with is a brush fire”. I also pointed out the tendency of European populist leaders of centralised activist groups to have unfortunate automobile accidents, which got a round of applause from the audience. The leaders I was thinking of were Austrian politician Jörg Haider, who died in an automobile accident in 2008, after his party unexpectedly won almost a third of the vote in national elections, and Britain’s Nigel Farage, who also suffered a suspicious automobile accident while campaigning for Brexit, though thankfully Farage’s accident was not fatal.
The speakers were (thanks to Marie):
Allona Lahn – No Jab No Play
Marleen Owen – Feed the homeless
Michael Griffith – Cafe Locked Out
Wade Northausen – Billboard Battalion (Victoria)
Katy McCallum & Jim Willmott – Kilkivan Action Group
Craig McManus – My Place Gympie
All the speakers were very careful to insist that everyone should remain within the law.
My overall impression – these are ordinary people, law abiding rural folk, who are being bullied and disrespected by government backed big green, mixed in with some vaccine freedom protestors. Some fiery things were said, but nobody, not a single person I saw speaking or spoke to afterwards, advocated any form of law breaking – other than the lockdown freedom marches they participated in. Most of the speakers very explicitly advised people not to break the law or make people feel threatened, and there were also explicit warnings from speakers to respect the privacy and families of politicians and other protest targets, and not to approach the private homes of politicians, only their official offices, if people wanted to conduct any form of protest.
Leave law breaking and violence to the greens.
There was some merchandise available. I bought a hat with 8:32 written on it, full marks if you know what it means.
“‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”
Jesus
(John 8:32)
Yep
Truth is not a concept that governments recognise any more…
And the “Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6) is also ignored.
Example:
Harvard University’s original statement of purpose:
… printed in London in 1642, the very year in which the first class graduated from College.
“After God had carried us safely to New England,
and we had builded our houses,
provided necessaries for our livelihood,
reared convenient places for God’s worship,
and settled the city government;
one of the next things we longed for
and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity;
dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches,
when our present ministers shall lie in the dust. ….
(Source: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1884/10/6/harvards-founding-this-quaint-account-of/ )
Note that in the original seal below one of the books was turned face down to symbolize that humanity’s knowledge is finite, while what may be known is infinite — hubris has turned that book UP, now — now, human knowledge is all that can be known.
And (of course!), no more mention of Christ or of Church.
Some organization last week judged Harvard to be the most restrictive of free speech of all the Ivy League instituitions.
Oh, how the Mighty have fallen!
Radical leftwing politics is at the root of all of it.
Janice, I am not able to tell which book is turned face down. Would you be so kind as to tell me which one it is?
Thanks in advance.
The bottom one. Here is an example of that Harvard Seal (you are very welcome 😊):
(Source: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/05/seal-of-approval/ )
Nor the MSM.
I remember my alma mater’s motto as Libertas per Veritatem but doubt that the Latin form along with many other important notions are taught there any longer. It seems most church related schools refrain from many former standards of knowledge.
I prefer JULES in Pulp Fiction –
Ezekiel 25:17.
“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the
Inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in
The name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of
Darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost
Children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious
Anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know
My name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”
Note: Ezekiel 25:7 is: “I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I take vengeance on them.'”
The rest is NOT from the Bible.
The phrase “my brother’s keeper” is only used one time in the Bible, in Genesis 4:9 by murderer Cain, sarcastically.
God NEVER commands us to be “our brother’s keeper.” We are to love, not “keep” (as in control/supervise) our sister or brother.
It is understandable why the author of Pulp Fiction misused that phrase — MANY people do. For instance, Obama liked to toss that one out. Most socialists would — they are ALL about controlling, “keeping” their “brother.”
Janice, I was brought up in an 1864 orphanage during the fifties. Its motto was, “Do Deeds of Love”.
Aw, dear Mr. Passfield. Those who cared for you must have, indeed, been, for the most part, at least, loving: you turned out very well (my evidence for this: your comments on WUWT for the over 10 years that I’ve been around here). (Again — said this years ago, but I’m so grateful I want to repeat it — thank you, so much, for dropping that 😖😏 nickname. Much appreciated.😊)
The attacks on farming are the most chilling aspect of current global politics. They appear to be concentrated in countries that export surpluses to the rest of the world – Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Ireland. The implications are that real hunger will be felt in the importing countries. A lot of them are in sub-Saharan Africa. Is this a deliberate move to produce famine??
Wade Norhausen of Billboard Battalion thinks it’s a deliberate attack, reduced fertiliser and chemical use to drop yields. He also mentioned a concerted effort to crash water availability to farmers in rural Victoria, by large scale permanent government buybacks of water rights, and how the combination of stressors was driving some farmers to suicide.
I personally believe the problem is incompetence rather than malice – Hanlon’s razor states “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”.
If you look at history, nearly every empire which fell did so because the utter incompetence of the rulers broke something critical, like the Roman empire’s corrupt rulers imposing such heavy taxes on farmers that food production crashed. We might be in the middle of a repeat of the Roman epidemic of utter incompetence, bureaucrats and leaders with idiotic fixations on say “improving water flow”, leading attempts to right their imaginary problem with catastrophic over-regulation of farmers, and in doing so causing real problems.
“I personally believe the problem is incompetence rather than malice” So taking away their water was just a stupid mistake?
No, just stupidity.
Take the Nitrate wars for example. Government bureaucrats have decided farmers are using too much nitrate fertiliser, that they can get the same yields with a lot less, more “targeted” fertiliser use – I mean, the high nitrate level in the runoff proves they are not using nitrates efficiently, if they were all the nitrate would stay in the soil.
Never mind that nitrate is one of the most mobile, water soluble ions – if these people understood chemistry they wouldn’t be acting so stupidly in the first place.
Armed with their unfounded groupthink and fundamental ignorance, bureaucrats in Canada, Europe, Australian and New Zealand have declared war on farmers.
Except the bureaucratic fools who launched this war don’t think of it as a war, they think they are imposing better practices on ignorant landowners who refuse to listen to reason.
I mean, if the farmers need more nitrate, they should be using natural sources like manure, organic farming produces higher yields and is better for the environment.
See how this works?
My point is, you don’t need malice to arrive at some really crazy outcomes, all you need is ignorance and arrogance, and a total refusal to listen to people with different opinions.
How do you explain the Netherland debacle?
I imagine something like this :-
The farmers don’t understand what’s in their own best interests, that is why they need bureaucrats to tell them what to do. If they protest, well we can’t put up with that, they are defying regulators, acting against their own best interests.
If the new rules mean some farmers have to leave the land, well the sector is overcrowded anyway. When they leave, the next benefit will be better, more productive farms, and larger wilderness areas for higher quality nature conservation.
Seriously, most of them aren’t malicious, they’re just really stupid.
You are more generous towards these fools than I am.
Yes. As the saying goes “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
I never cease to be amazed at the ability of bureaucrats to convince themselves that they know more about how to do anything, than do the people who are actually doing it.
They know more about how to farm than do farmers.
They know more about how to run a chemical plant than do the people who run it.
They know more about how to build nuclear power plants than do the engineeers who are actually paid to build such plants.
You are forgetting that knowledge of such situations increases in direct proportion to the distance from such problems (/s)
Been going on in our area since the start of vegetation management acts in the 1990’s. The descriptive “vegetation as pristine as a recycled virginity” comes from there.
It was expressed in the UK a long time ago by a Labour politician who subsequently became a minister in the Wilson government :
“the man in Whitehall really does know best ”
(so long ago that there were no senior female civil servants in Whitehall).
When the “incompetence” continues to produce harmful results over and over, there comes a point where you must start to at least consider it isn’t actually incompetence.
When the WEF and other organizations look on humans as a scourge upon the planet, it is hard to argue that it’s all stupidity.
Most of them aren’t like that, they genuinely believe they are doing the right thing – even some of the initiators of these crazy policies. It’s just their belief is not founded on anything we would recognise as evidence or reason, it’s all groupthink – people sitting in government offices talking to each other, without consulting anyone outside the office.
And, yet… truly, distinguishing the two, while not unmeaningful, really makes little difference to the end result:
This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want.
Beware them both, and all of their degree,
but most of all beware this boy
for on his brow I see that written which is
Doom, …
Charles Dickens, Ghost of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol
The “stupid” who do such things “for the greater good” are the worst of all:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
(emphasis mine)
C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock
THANK YOU, dear Mr. Worrall, for letting us have this discussion — a foundationally important one.
Welcome Janice 🙂
Rome also cooled, which reduced agricultural output. Hannibal couldn’t march his elephants through the Alps today.
Yes, they had a lot of problems. But other, more vigorous cultures flourished while Rome faltered.
Which cultures?
In China the Northern and Southern Dynasties 420 to 589 CE is contemporary with the fall of the Western Roman Empire. This followed and was part of the Six Dynasties 220–589. A period of conflict but also progress, in arts culture and technology.
The Mayans in Mexico ca 250-900 CE. The Nazca lasted until about 500CE when ENSO events got them.
Of course the Byzantine Empire lasted from 395CE until May 29, 1453.
The Roman Empire was in perpetual conflict both internal and external, something that affects all empires. Not everyone wants to be incorporated, and there’s always somebody who wants to takeover.
““I personally believe the problem is incompetence rather than malice””
Dan Andrews.. !! 100% of both !!!
Eric, when you said: “I personally believe the problem is incompetence rather than malice…” I must agree with you.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines malice as “the wish to harm or upset other people” and stupidity as “the state of being silly or unwise“. While the Cambridge defines incompetence as “lack of ability to do something successfully or as it should be done“, I personally define incompetence as “not recognizing or admitting one’s ignorance.”
It then makes sense to restate Hanlon’s razor as “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
stupidityincompetence.”Please Enter The Boxcar Peacefully
a Tony Heller video
If you have any doubt these WEF types are literally evil, just listen to this blight upon humanity speak.
Horrible- you have to accept a “smart dictatorship” if you want grandkids.
I wish this arrogant scumbag would reduce the global population by removing himself.
The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference. The green goody-two shoes don’t really hate farmers; they just feel that farmers are ignorant, and don’t “care” enough. Greens LOVE Mother Earth. Hicks who plow it don’t care.
That’s how greens come up with the twisted logic that fertilizer doesn’t make land more fertile. Only manure does that. Of course, greens disdain “factory farms” where manure can actually be gathered and reused in significant amounts.
As for the Third Worlders and poor city folk everywhere who will suffer or starve if First World agriculture gets less efficient, Greens are indifferent. Greens “care” about Mother Earth, not people.
Yep – stupidity and groupthink. I think though they actually believe organic farming will increase yields.
Maybe a few true believers do, but, most, I believe, are just greedy “organic” schleppers essentially lying about fertilizer and about their competitors’ products (as if the biochemistry of “organic” fruit and vegetables is meaningfully different from that made using commercial fertilizer and health-promoting pesticides🙄) to sell their OVER-PRICED product.
I am an ANTI-“organic” consumer. If it says, “organic,” I refuse to buy it (except *wince* the only free range chicken I could find was also touted as “organic” (I do the free range thing because I can’t stand the thought of chickens living their entire life in a cage — yes, I realize it’s just emotional, but, I am willing to pay for it and am not demanding that non-free-range be made illegal)) because IT IS A SCAM.
Hm. You know what? I just may urge my elected representatives to amend Title 7 of the U.S. Code to make free range (in a meaningful way) the rule for all poultry farmers. It would increase the price of chicken (I am assuming, I realize, that this price would still be within the reach of the average consumer).
A society is measured by how it treats its weakest (including animals) members.
Thank you for a place to say this! 🙂
Cannibalism is a problem with free range.
Free range = feed the coyotes , coons , possums , skunks …
Yes, of course. What I meant was a specialized definition of “free range.” I just read some of those definitions and none was 100% what I would write, so, I won’t copy in any, here.
I’ll just say that I would carefully (not doing that here, obviously 😏) define “free range” to mean that the hens have enough space to walk around and a chicken house to go inside at night OR never out from under a wire “net”/cover (or even in a very large building) that protects them from predators from the air and a fence to protect from other predators.
Anyway, just enough ability to walk around and peck here and there at laymaker crumble or bugs. I am NOT advocating for the extreme “free range pasture raised” (just let them wander freely about the open “range,” vulnerable to many dangers). I do not equate chickens with people. Chickens do not need much to be content. I just don’t want them to be miserable. Just hate the thought of them sitting in a cage month after month. 😢
(my apologies for such a rambling answer….. heh, sort of appropriate, though)
Actually Janis, check out ‘Best Chicken Breeds for Free Range’ at https://www.cacklehatchery.com/best-chicken-breeds-for-free-range/. There are some breeds that are much better at surviving when free ranged.
Thanks for the info., Mr. Crawford. 🙂
Like “organically grown”, there are lots of incompatible definitions for “free range” for both egg and meat production.
Your version is reasonably close to most of them, though there are specific requirements for how many hours they can go outside, and area per bird. Anecdotally, very few birds actually go outside, but stay in the shed where they feel safe.
Meat birds are still chickens (ie juveniles) when they go to meat their maker, and are about evenly hens (well, pullets) and cockerels,
Battery cages are (or were) exclusively for laying hens. Meat birds are raised in environment controlled sheds, where they have free run of the shed.
Thank you, O. C., for that information. I also buy “free range” eggs and I was confusing the two — sloppy writing.
Say, that IS good to know about the meat birds. I didn’t know that! I assumed they had lives very similar to the layers.
I did realize that they can’t be more than a few months old or they are too tough. And that is a good thing.
Dear Bob,
Just had to come back to tell you how much it warms my heart just hearing from you, once again.
I will never forget your kindness to me a few years ago when I mentioned being sad because of what someone had said to me around here.
You (and a couple others) were so kind….
I remain gratefully yours,
Janice
I don’t know much about what they refer to as “free range” here, but, years ago, when I was visiting Guatemala, the chicken down there were absolutely delicious. They tasted as good or better than those my grandmother use to raise back when I was a kid.
Here, they have removed most of the taste from the chickens by raising them in overcrowded chicken houses, breeding them to produce the maximum meat in the minimum amount of time, and feeding them the absolute minimum feed necessary to meet marketing requirements.
When actually permitted to roam free they get plenty of exercise and have the ability to eat a natural diet of grasses, weeds and insects, none of which they can get when factory raised. They should at least taste better, more like those in Guatemala. Of course they should also be one of the Heritage breeds, not a factory breed.
P.S. They’ve done the same thing with pork and most beef.
Re: cattle. Perhaps in the USA, but in Australia (and, according to Graham) NZ cattle are grazed on pasture, with some finished in feed lots.
The greens have similar attitudes towards the wood products industries.
Some of the decision makers may be deluded ignoramuses, but some really do have malice aforethought, and feel that the population needs to be dramatically reduced.
8:32
Bible quotes for those not familiar.
As a non believer, I respect the views of others, but for me, that looks like we are asking a make believe person for a hand.
How is that different from the climate boiling block looking for the mystical powers of CO2?
I’d like to think that we could provide our truth above religion.
I know….. Here comes the religious police to condemn my heretical thoughts. If so, are you also going to support CO2 as the villain, based on the faith of others?
I think people can agree with a sentiment without buying the whole package. I liked the hat, more than any other consideration – a message only thinking people could receive.
I’m a non-believer. Some things in the bible are more philosophical than religious. Many have just become expressions by common usage. On occasion, I have said ‘thank god’.
One that understands the quote’s meaning, IMO, should not attack people’s opinions but be an example for when asked what does that hat mean. IMO, Believers should be livers and be ready to help others open the door. I too frequently have to remind myself to look in my figurative mirror before casting stones. I have faith but have little in institutions that man builds, secular or otherwise.
Can you prove that God is make believe or is that just what you want to believe?
Eng_Ian, while Jesus meant more than mere data-driven policy by “the truth,” you CAN use it for that sub-purpose 🙂:
The truth shall set you free.
It does!
(and He does, too — but, as Eric pointed out, you can ignore that aspect — the way I look at it, you can use “the truth shall set you free” as I celebrate Halloween — a complete “unbeliever” in it as a holiday except as a time for fun and candy).
I’m an atheist but have no axe to grind against religion. One has a very narrow worldview if one can’t differentiate between religious faith and the rejection of scientism (blindly following propaganda).
I’m an atheist too. While I have no issue with others who believe there is a god (whichever god(s) that may be), I really detest organised religion.
Organised religion, including (especially?) the worship of all things Green has been the cause of so much death, destruction, terror, and angst over millennia.
I think organized religion, based on the Golden Rule (treat others the way you would want to be treated), is good for people, and good for society. People need hope.
Of course, me, I need some evidence, although that doesn’t keep me from having hope, because I don’t know everything there is to know so can’t rule anything in or out.
I’m reading a good book now titled, “I Have Lived Before” The True Story of the Reincarnation of Shanti Devi. It’s stories like this that cause me not to rule things out prematurely.
The Universe is a Big Place and we are just scratching the surface with our current knowledge, so we shouldn’t rule anything in or out until we are sure.
Redge, the Greenies and organized religion are pikers when compared to communists, socialists (I repeat myself), and totalitarians of any stripe.
Same environmental battles in Germany. Greens wanted to cut down a 1000 year old 1000+ acre forest to install wind turbines. There, it did not happen; the outrage was too great. Gosselin’s NoTricksZone reported the details a while ago.
Here in Wokeachusetts, the greens want no more tree cutting for any reason. In Cambridge, I’ve been told, if you own a home and have a tree in your yard you want to be rid of, for whatever reason, since it’s your tree- you must retain 3 state certified arborists who must all agree that the tree is dead or dying- before it can be cut. If you just don’t like it- you’re out of luck.
Here in Wokeachusetts, towns, including mine, are clear-cutting forests to put in solar panel “farms.” That’s right — mature, dynamic ecosystems that support life year-round, are being obliterated, and replaced with lifeless surfaces. All to make the world “greener.”
Huh?
Maybe that’s the answer – if you want to clear a few trees, tell planners the clearance is to make room for a solar array.
Lets kill the Koalas to save the Polar Bears.
And, whilst at it, let’s also kill the whales.
Do the authorities in Australia allow similar gatherings by CAGW crowd or ANTIFA types?
Yes, except Antifa types don’t have crowd control weapons turned on them.
You dont understand the physics of those sonic crowd control weapons.
The painful part is very very high frequency and clearly heard.
They were used at Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Sydney, so thats a falsehood you are claiming
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/16/sydd-j16.html
In Queensland the police have used them since 2009.
That’s the point, the people I met said they were burned, which is why I speculated something other than sonic weapons was used on the protesters. When I showed protesters a picture of the ADS, they said “yes, that was what we saw. We thought they were loud speakers”.
Burned ?
Fantasists. It’s a form of mass hysteria.
If they don’t hear it it didn’t cause physical harm.
What makes you so sure they are fantasists?
Just down the road in Victoria Dan Andrews opened fire with rubber bullets, “non-lethal” crowd dispersal weapons far more likely to cause serious injury than the microwaves, so Aussie governments were not setting records for exercising restraint in how they dealt with protestors.
I’m not saying I know what happened that day, but the first hand accounts I heard, and the consistency of claims they were burned, certainly raises some concerns in my mind.
“If they don’t hear it it didn’t cause physical harm.”
You and Gretta can hear RF ?
😉
Unless they changed frequency the painful pain is those crowd control weapons the military developed were RF to cause the water under the skin surface to heat up and start to burn you.
If sound was added later I am not aware.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiB993EutKBAxXbjYkEHS13DxIQtwJ6BAgPEAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdmuyLIrSjxI&usg=AOvVaw1WV-fRBh1bW-cKeBsZFhQO&opi=89978449
Australia and the US military shouldn’t be giving the Russians ideas about what is now acceptable.
Irrespective of one’s opinions of what is going on in Ukraine, it is very easy for either side to use cheap lasers that easily destroy the eyesight of anybody on the receiving end.
Laser Air Defense – Solution to Drones in Ukrainehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3B28eP0DT0&t=12s
edited
Laser Air Defense – Solution to Drones in Ukraine
YIPEEEEE.. Story Tip
(2) Australians breathing a ‘sigh of relief’ after Dan Andrews’ resignation – YouTube
but, will the replacement be any better…. or will she be even worse. !!
Victoria is a mess, the majority of voters there still think Dan Andrews was on their side.
Victoria has been a dystopian mess for decades and Melbourne the armpit of Victoria.
Last time I made the Melbourne mistake the streets were filled with uncollected rubbish and beggars, graffiti filled side streets were being passed off as ‘art’ and while the street level was filled with shop fronts the upstairs were boarded up windows.
People who were outside protesting all day at mid-summer in Australia suffer 2nd degree skin burns?
Hmm.
As often at WUWT, I think the sun done it.
The protestors I spoke to were rural people, outdoors people, truckers and farmers, people who deal with sun safety every day of their working lives. Is it possible in the excitement they forgot a lifetime of safety habits? Sure. But I don’t find that possibility very convincing.
“… the antenna superficially has a similar shape… ”
Okay…
The truck in the right hand picture has superficially similar shaped wheels to the pick up on the left. Does that make them the same vehicle?
Sorry Eric, awful association.