"Elon Musk wades into US immigration debate at Texas-Mexico border” | Reuters

Kewl in Black. Click above for the story

And this is how Reuters reports Elon Musk’s trip to the open southern border, that I posted yesterday. Not a bad report, except for leaving out important things.

Like: 

(i) that the numbers are unprecedented in history, 

(ii) that it’s happened in the “last few years” (that is, since the Biden presidency) and 

(iii) that it would be “easy to fix” if the White House would listen. 

So: misinformation by omission. I was just saying to a friend the other day that most of the misinformation we get is by omission rather than by commission. Then you don’t even know the information (true or false) is even there. There’s nothing to debate, to argue over. 

Elsewhere the Left has gone crazy over Elon’s Border Trip. They don’t like it one little bit. Of course never saying exactly why, and why they can’t fix it (they don’t want to) 

Amazing stuff going on at the southern border. Amazing Elon reporting!

	Elon Musk ⁦‪@elonmusk‬⁩ Went to the Eagle Pass border crossing to see what's really going on pic.twitter.com/ADYY2XvAKT   29/9/2023, 9:16 am

And it's clear that it's due to policy. Specifically Biden administration policy.

These guys in the video say it would be easy to fix. But it's not fixed. Because. 

Because why? I don't know. Unless it's simple ideology. Or in cahoots with the cartels. IDK.

Sent from my iPad

Lab Leak Theory: Redux

Matt Taibbi is one of the very best investigative journalists around. In his latest article here, he lays it out yet again. With such powerful circumstantial evidence that the origin of the Covid-19 virus was not just a lab leak in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but that it resulted from experiments funded by Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Health. 

In short: Fauci and his NIH are the ones that would be brought to trial for the deaths of over 6 million humans, if this ever did come to court. Of course, he’s being protected. Because.

The article, which I clip below, has all the links to the relevant evidence. 

The Director of National Intelligence is at the top of the pyramid of intelligence services in the United States: that is, many agencies and hundreds of thousands of staff. The previous Director of the Centers for Disease Control, Robert Redfield, also testified to Congress that in his view the preponderance of the evidence was that Covid-19 origins were in a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

IIRC, Redfield quoted three pieces of damning evidence: (i) That the military took over control of the WIV, suddenly, in late 2019. (ii) That the WIV ordered an emergency fit-out on new HVAC equipment. (iii) That the WIV scrubbed 30,000+ items from a database of bat-coronaviruses. To that we can add (iv) That three researchers at the WIV fell sick with something that presented very similar to Covid, in late 2019; that is before it had been identified as Covid-19. 

Back to Matt and the ex Director of NI:

Testimony from Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe in April echoed the same theme.

“The challenges that I and other senior Trump Administration officials encountered while in office include legitimate concerns about the closely-held sources of our intelligence and the sensitive methods used to obtain it, as well as illegitimate roadblocks related to professional conflicts of interest and partisan politics,” Ratcliffe told Congress. 

Ratcliffe essentially claimed intelligence officials knew what happened, but weren’t willing to say what happened. “Were this a trial,” he said, “the preponderance of circumstantial evidence provided by our intelligence would compel a jury finding of guilt to an accusation that the coronavirus research in the Wuhan labs was responsible for spawning a global pandemic.” [my emphasis]

Did Anthony Fauci Impede the Investigation of the Covid-19 Pandemic?

What CNN won’t tell you

We’ve had a couple of late night .... um... conversations I guess you’d call them.. with old mates. “We” as in Jing and me. And “old mates” as in really old mates, a European and an Aussie, both living and working in Asia for many years, married to Asian women, with Eurasian kids who’ve gone to school here and are multi-lingual.

These are by any measure sophisticated guys, cosmopolitan. They own and still run businesses they themselves founded. They know what it’s like to meet a payroll. And that’s an important thing. Having to meet a payroll every month, no matter what, to make sure you meet your commitment to your staff, no matter what, that’s a truly sobering and chastening experience. I admire anyone who’s done it, as we have and as have these lads. Longterm and consistently. Good job, lads!

In both cases we ended up talking politics, mostly American politics. I think that’s partly because American politics have become the default; the politics of the whole world. They’re a way to measure yourself against others. In simplest terms it’s Trump v Biden. Though we, Jing and I, we prefer to say: we’re Independent. As a younger lad I would’ve voted Clinton and Obama and Clinton2. But I could also have voted Nixon, Reagan and Bush. Trump? That’s another story and perhaps a hill too far, although v Biden it’s the Don, for Biden is too poor of a president. 

But I’m running ahead of myself. Let’s rewind a touch.

It’s no surprise really that American politics have become the default for everyone. After all, they’re endlessly fascinating. We’ve no sooner had an election than we’re wondering about the mid-term elections. And then it’s on to the next election. And of course, with the Trump election in 2016, we had the real earthquake and now everyone is focussed on 2024. Where it’s kinda possible that the Republican candidate will be campaigning from a prison cell. I mean,, that’s box office Gold!

But our two friends, talking about all this -- and they were keen to do so -- were talking with a CNN view. We learnt this, as we learned that there were big chunks of “things that have happened” that they knew nothing about. They openly admitted that they only watched CNN, and were quite happy with that. They were busy guys, after all. They don’t have time to chase down alternatives and at least CNN is a “curated” site. It’s not some random podcast by some random guy in the basement, who has who know what crazy views. And fair enough. I understand that. 

What they didn’t know, though, because of only watching CNN, was a lot. Here’s a list, of what neither one knew:

• The Mueller Report (into the Russia Collusion theory/hoax)
• The Durham Report (into the FBI investigation of Trump; Crossfire Hurricane). What the FBI did to give credibility to the Steele Dossier, which we now know to be fraudulent. 
• The Hunter Biden Laptop story: what is on the laptop and how it implicated his father, now president Joe Biden, in bribe-taking from Ukraine, China and Romania
• The Twitter Files and what they reveal about the government censorship complex and restrictions on Free Speech 
• Hillary Clinton destruction of emails vs what happens to Trump: ie unequal treatment under the law

Each of these is major, but our friends were and (largely) remain oblivious to them. (I say “largely” because even when told of them, they showed no real interest in finding out more. As they say:“It’s easier to fool someone that it is to convince them they’ve been fooled”).

The Mueller Report, for example, concludes that there was no Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. And that they Russian mis-disinformation campaigns via Facebook did nothing to change the outcome of the 2016 election. 

The Durham Report, for another example, concludes that there was no predicate for the FBI to begin an investigation into the Trump campaign (The Crossfire Hurricane project), which it nevertheless did, on the basis of bogus information provided by Hillary Clinton and known by then president Obama and then vice president Biden. Both of these are extraordinary, breathtaking, examples of high-level corruption. But ignored by CNN. 

The Hunter Biden laptop reveals the influence peddling of the Biden family up to and including the now president. Again, ignored by CNN. Despite that fact that it’s true!

It happened that Michael Shellenberger had a sit-down with Winston Marshall just a few days after we’d had the above talks, which is handy. Because Michael lays out so much of this, in one good podcast. 

For the future, maybe they’re quite happy to keep on with just being informed by CNN. If so, fine. Though I reckon is they do, they don’t really have grounds for strong opinions on anything much in current affairs. Because the CNN view of the world is so palpably one-sided. 

But if they think they ought to look outside the bubble sometimes, and they don’t want to go social media -- because there’s so many crazies out there, and you can’t trust them -- well, fine, and maybe just look here at this blog from time to time. I do cover issue over on the right of the aisle. And I do try to include only sound observers. 

This could be like “What you don’t learn from CNN” service.

The cluelessness of Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I’ve got DeGrasse Tyson’s books. I loved them and used to respect him. But no more. His brain — his great cosmological brain —  is broke. 

Coz Woke. Even smart people can be stupid. 

Just goes to show how insidious is woke ideology. That it can scramble the brain of even a famous STEM scientist. And no, he hasn’t reached any “higher plane of learning”. He’s simply gone non-science.

Video on the trans issue with Konstantin Kisin here. (The full vid here)

Girl speaks English with 10 accents: Kewl!

	The Best ⁦‪@ThebestFigen‬⁩ This girl speaking English with 10 different accents. pic.twitter.com/fK9Fv6VZKX   26/9/2023, 3:05 am

“Aboriginal leader rejects ‘paternalistic’ approach vote for indigenous people” | SCMP

Not a bad summary in today’s South China Morning Post. 

Megan Davis’ response (bottom left above) to Warren Mundine’s fair comments (his whole speech to the National Press Club in Canberra is here), is pure ad hominem: “Trumpian misinformation”. That’s it? From Davis, the co-drafter of the “Uluru Declaration”?  Note here that both Davis and Mundine are aboriginal. Davis is a lifetime academic; Mundine has been both a politician and an activist in indigenous welfare. 

The pity is that the invectives hurled, the hatred, the contempt, the ad hominem is all from the Yes side to the No side. None that I can find from the No side to the Yes side. There must be some, just that I’ve not seen it. The vast majority of insults are from the Yes side. Which is why you don’t see yard signs with the No vote. Yes-aiders call No voters all manner of horrid stuff: “racist”, “Nazis”, “small minded”, “stupid”, “Trumpian”; if it’s an aboriginal No voter, they toss in “Uncle Tom”, “House N***”, and “coconut” for good measure. It’s all been pretty ugly. 

The other prominent aboriginal No campaigner, Senator Jacinta Nampijimpa Price, has been a particular target of hatred. 

The vote is on Saturday 14 October. This coming Saturday fortnight. The polls suggest the No vote will win. 

Wow! The incredible cleverness of humankind ! Asteroid-hunting capsule safely back on earth

The NASA-led capsule ands back, spot on, after a 1.9 BILLION km round trip to a 500-metre wide asteroid, a tiny rock, in the vastness of space, grabs a sample and comes back to earth with its mothership Osiris-REx. 

Amazing cleverness of the species known as Homo sapiens!

This species, that is, as far as we know, the most intelligent in the universe, the only one that has self awareness, the only one that is able to apprehend the full beauty, the mystery and the wonder of the universe, the one species that is perhaps the conscience of the universe itself, this one and only -- as far as we know -- that is able to explore that universe, this species, is one that the “famed naturalist” David Attneborough says is “a plague on the planet”. For that one sentence alone, I despise him. No matter he’s a near centenarian. By what mentality, by what “thinking” could a naturalist, a naturalist, demean us so? Shame on you, old, cramped, anti-human, Attenborough!

Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity

Not sure why this was foisted on me, am I stupid? But it’s sure interesting. 

There are many more stupid people than the average person assumes. 

ADDED: there’s also the “Five Laws of Stupidity” which is pretty interesting: 

And of course, as Ron White says: “You can’t fix stupid”. 

“The Voice” Referendum in Australia, October 14: Vote YES or Vote NO?

Here are the major proponents of each side, limiting to indigenous voices only. And limiting to Wikipedia, except for Anthony Dillon, who doesn’t have a WikiPage. 

Also there’s heaps of YT vids on each. 

Vote carefully. There’s plenty there to consider. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation: The Voice Referendum Explained 

YES:

• Macia Langton
• Pat Anderson
• Megan Davis
• Noel Pearson

NO:

• Jacinta Nampijimpa Price
• Warren Mundine
• Anthony Dillon

Jacinta Nampijimpa Price: Aboriginal Land Councils stop indigenous business

Click above for the video 

Something I learned from Jacinta Price’s talk above: How would-be indigenous small business owners are being stymied by the Indigenous Land Councils. That needs fixing. Doesn’t need a Voice.

Listen, too, to her story of her aunt, who disappeared 40 years ago, running away, after she’d been offered to an aged relative in marriage. Jacinta has talked of the need to LISTEN to voices to fight domestic violence in the indigenous community. Never mind the Voice. Not the mouth that’s needed. But the ears. Listen.

Jacinta wants to get away from the victimhood mentality. And the “White Saviour” complex. 

She says: a Canberra-based Voice won’t help aboriginals in rural and outback Australia. 

Especially as the Voice will be staffed by the same people who’ve overseen fifty years of failed policies. Backed by $30 billion per year. Where has it gone? Why them again? “Them” being Megan Davis, Pat Anderson, Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson. 

Noel Pearson: where has the $300 million gone that you were given for the 300 aborigines in Cape York? How was the money spent? Why no closing of their gaps? With a million a head?

Polls running 60/40 NO.

Russel Brand and the future of Free Speech

Click above for the video 

This is a very important discussion.  

Craig Jardula, Kim Iversen and Kurt Metzger go over the issues.

Batteries better used on solar houses than in electric vehicles

Kia EV9 has a 110 kWh battery which saves 2-3 Tonnes of  CO2 per year

Average Houses: That same 110 kWh would provide back up power for 6 houses and save 29 Tonnes of  CO2 per year.

There is a current shortage, predicted to get worse, of battery inputs like Lithium, Cobalt nd Nickel. Therefore there will be a shortage of batteries. 

“There will be a shortage of EV battery supplies,” said Joshua Cobb, senior auto analyst for BMI. Link

Given the expected shortage of batteries the question then is: Where best to use batteries? Houses or EVs? 

Clearly the answer houses. Because they will save up to 15 Times more CO2 than if used in EVs

But all that’s pushed is EVs. It’s the narrative. Even though the picture is even worse than that. Look at what Volkswagen says (above chart) about when an EV becomes carbon neutral vs its diesel equivalent: it’s not until 70,000 MILES. 

Or 80k miles or 90k miles (145k kilometres) or even NEVER, if the EV car is big enough,  according to a TedX talk sent by an OR. For now, the best is option for cars is hybrid. Which is kind of what I would have thought. Especially given the huge “range anxiety” that is reported by every EV driver going on a long trip: by “long” meaning anything over 300km or 200 miles. 

The Last Supper?

“Funds are sorely needed if Asia is to reduce dependency on oil” | Biman Mukherji

Conflicting statements;

• “Renewables are so cheap. They’re the cheapest form of making electricity”. 
• “Give us more money for Renewables”

Renewables are cheaper, within context: if you measure the electricity generated at peak time. But things make them not so cheap: their intermittency and the requirement for a whole new grid, electric power lines from where the solar and wind farms are to the cities. 

Their intermittency: wind and solar generate only about 20-25% of the time. Vs nearly 100% of the time for nuclear, gas and coal. So for the same amount of effective installed capacity, you need four to five times the amount of installed capacity.

Power lines: these cost around $US 1-2 million per kilometre. Thousands of km are needed because the wind and solar farms are not where the old generating plants used to be. These add billions of dollars to the cost of any major renewable facility. People along the way are not at all keen on them, authorities are finding: eg in Australia. 

China is very keen on renewables. It installs the more than anyone in the world, combined. It makes most of the world’s solar panels and turbines. Yet, even China does not install only wind and solar. Because of the factors above: the need for caseload power, the need for reliability and the need for huge amounts of land for Renewables. 

Note how the article above casually mentions “TRILLIONS” of dollars per year. That’s percentage points of world GDP, which is around 100 Trillion. That’s not small beer. 

Note too the mention of “progress is good” in converting to renewable. Then the “But”.... This is a trick. You can *always* say xxx “could have been/should have been: more, earlier, faster, harder, or still more”. It reflects never being satisfied. The fact is the world, apart from China, has been dropping  CO2 emissions. All rests with China. China. Which has 47% more  CO2 emissions than the US and the EU combined. Get on board with hammering China. Not the poor folks in the west, struggling to keep a car on the road and doesn’t want an EV,  or struggling to keep a Boiler going with natural gas. All that stuff -- changing to EVs, changing boilers -- is small beer compared with the China challenge. And good luck with that. 

dull

Because Islam originated from the Angel Gabriel passing on the Koran to Muhammad. Got it? Here

“Beijing demands consulates in Hong Kong submit data of all locally-employed staff” | HK Free Press

My comment: RECIPROCITY!

Australia, all countries: demand the same of China. 

Snip:

Monday's letter, obtained by HKFP, gave each mission a month to submit the job titles, residential addresses and identification details of all locally-employed staff. It comes a year after Beijing demanded floor plans for each consulate's property. More

Net Zero Questions (from Hong Kong)

Dear BBC,

You asked for questions. Here you are : 

1. Why does Britain commit itself to a policy, Net Zero, that will impoverish the poorest British, for a CO2 reduction of 0.00002% at most? (OBR figures). Why is such a tiny change, for such a massive price, not discussed more?

2. You, the U.K. government, are willing to see the car industry in the U.K. destroyed? For alleged "green jobs" that somehow never seem to materialise? (There are vanishingly few in solar and wind once the facilities are built.There are no EV manufacturing jobs, at least in the U.K.)

3. Why is China never mentioned? It has CO2 emissions 47% higher than the US and the EU combined. While U.K., EU and US emissions have been declining, China's are on a steep upward trajectory. Warming is a global problem. Why is it being treated, in the U.K., at a national level, ignoring the Brobdingnagian elephant in the room?

"There are no solutions, only trade offs" — Thomas Sowell. 

Net Zero is a "solution" with no trade-offs. 

It should be abandoned. 

Peter Forsythe

Hong Kong

+852 9308 0799

Sent from my iPad

“Handsome Dad” : the world’s first commercial fusion reactor?

Kuafu: Handsome Dad

They translate “Kuafu” as a gentle giant. Better is “Handsome Dad” as Kuā 夸 is handsome and Fù 父 is father. As in me. 

Either way, it’s the cute nickname of China’s latest advance in the seemingly ever-nascent fusion power. 

Now they’re saying commercial fusion is 30-50 years away. Which is further in the future that it was when they were telling us fusion is twenty years away.

We’re hoping, of course. From today’s news, “China launches ‘Kuafu’ nuclear fusion research facility”:

China has launched its largest nuclear fusion research facility – nicknamed after a mythical giant – as it continues its quest to build an “artificial sun”. 

A Xinhua report on Monday revealed for the first time the interior of the completed main building of the facility in east China’s Anhui province.

It is formally known as the Comprehensive Research Facility for Fusion Technology (CRAFT) but has been nicknamed “Kuafu” after a mythical figure who attempted to capture the sun.

The report showed some of the facility’s experimental components, including a prototype of one of eight massive orange segment-inspired pieces that come together to form a hollow doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber where the fusion experiments will take place.

Trump is losing it

I don’t love Donald Trump. I don’t hate him either. And I’m not deluded enough to believe, really believe, that he’s Hitler incarnate. 

In 2016 I thought he was a bit of a joke. When he won I thought, oh well, this is going to be interesting. And how! What I was not prepared for was the whole Russia collusion thing the full-on denial of his election legitimacy and a hatred that morphed into Trump Derangement Syndrome. A proper mental health issue. 

My wife says I’m a bit of a bellwether for independent voters. That is, how I say I’d vote is how the U.S. independents end up voting.  In the US that’s about 20% of the population. The Dems and Reps each have ~40% of core voters, the “rusted on” supporters. So they have to entice the remaining 20%. Or enough to tip the balance at the electoral college level. (We have to keep reminding ourselves, the popular vote is entirely irrelevant).

If I’d had an American vote (which, being Aussie, I don’t), I would’ve voted for both the Clintons, for Al Gore and for Obama (heaven help me), but would not have voted for Biden in 2020. There’s decent analysis that we’d be in a better place if we’d had Trump instead of Biden. Likely we’d not have had Russian war win Ukraine, saving hundreds of thousands of young men. And we’d have a better economy. But it wasn’t to be, and a big part of the reason is the stupid nonsense campaign that Trump himself ran.

I still think — we in this household, this independent household, think — that Joe Biden is making a hash of his presidency, no matter how much they’re spinning it in his side. 

But can Trump be better? Given what we know of his hash in 2020. And the emerging incompetence of him for 2024.

Going by his most recent interviews, one in Leftie MSNBC and one with right leaning Megyn Kelly, it’s a no for me. I started to watch each. And in each I had to give up after a while in disgust. At the bullshit bloviating. At the outright stupidity: saying the 2024 election will be totally rigged, but expecting your supporters, and we independents, to vote for you anyway.  Being lukewarm about early voting. I felt like yelling “what’s wrong with you, man?!”  Of course people should vote early! It was failure to do so that lost two Georgia Senate seats.

I never thought Trump as a Hitler, as the left keep calling him. Or if he is, he’s the worst Hitler. Or misunderstood him greatly. Or the left doesn’t understand Hitler. Anyway, he’s not Hitler and in four years he did nothing the least like Hitler. And yes, that includes the bogus January 6 “insurrection “. 

But now he’s looking tired amd out of touch and plain silly. That’s not a good look.

If I am indeed a bellwether for independents, it’s looking stormy for Trump. 

Never mind Hitler. How can one vote for Stupid?

Xena: Koh Samui, Thailand, racing mode, 3 June 2011

 

This taken from a commercial photo boat. We’re 14 crews. Lovely winds. Lovely islands. Lovely racing.

Amd we won our division.

Post by Caitlin Johnstone on X: re Obama and America’s destruction of Libya

	Caitlin Johnstone ⁦‪@caitoz‬⁩ Barack Obama Belongs In A Fucking Cage The Twitter account of America's 44th president just casually shared some links to organizations providing relief to the victims of the terrible flooding in Libya, which as of this writing has already killed thousands of people. And that…   16/9/2023, 8:42 pm

I remember when the war drums pounded to war on Libya. At the time I thought they must know something I didn't. They didn't. They wanted war. Pushed by Hillary. Prosecuted by Barak. 

Caitlin Johnstone is tough on Obama. Fair? Sure a lot is.

Sent from my iPad

Our White Chapel (Whitechapel) | Discovery Bay Hong Kong

 

“The write direction “ | Jason Wordie

"Elusive UN pandemic treaty points to dangerous Covid amnesia” | My letter response

Replying “Elusive UN pandemic treaty points to dangerous Covid amnesia” By David Dodwell

After bungling the H1N1 pandemic and the Ebola outbreak, the WHO bungled its handling of Covid. 

Yet David Dodwell says “let’s give it more power, more money!”

 

WHO’s bungling includes: delayed announcements of a pandemic; of Covid transmitted human-to-human; of travel restrictions. No questioning its origin. Pandering to “how well” China was doing. Shifting advice on masking. 

 

The National Library of Medicine excoriated the WHO in October 2017 for its earlier blunders. The word “mistake” appears 22 times in the paper. While the WHO reviewed each outbreak to fix the mistakes, little improved. It continued to “accept member states’ unverified claims as to how well [an] outbreak was contained”. It “actively resisted attempts to declare … a public health emergency…”. 

This is made worse by the WHO’s  “standard slow and methodical work”.  

 

To this dilatory, this mistake-prone outfit Dodwell would give “more powers … for an overseeing specialist body with the authority to crack the whip to ensure cooperation and compliance”.  

 

The WHO already has an “overseeing specialist body”, the World Health Emergency Programme, to “crack the whip". But good luck finding what it’s achieved — it is best noted for its invisibility. 

 

Dodwell’s pandemic approach is “socialist”: everything planned and coordinated from a centre somewhere in the comfort of, say, Geneva. The “capitalists”, like myself, believe the “market” of different approaches will solve things better. 

 

This worked in the United States. Every state had its own approach. We are now able to conclude how each worked and to advise on the best approach for the next pandemic. This is using the “Science”, that Dodwell is so quick to urge, but then to promptly ignore -- as he does on the question of masks, where the Cochrane Report has comprehensively proven that they offer little protection.

 

Dodwell is given to feel-good sayings like: “Management of a global health crisis can only be as strong as the world’s weakest healthcare systems”. This is clearly nonsense. We enjoy our very good health system here in HK, even as Somalians sadly suffer from the lack of theirs.

 

He says: “None of us are safe unless all of us are safe”. Patent nonsense. I’m safe here in Discovery Bay, even as those same Somalians, sadly, are not. Why do people parrot nonsense like this? It’s lazy thinking.  

 

Thus I don’t share Dodwell’s “anxiety that the World Health Assembly will be unable to deliver”. 

 

For me, that’s a relief! A supra-national whip-cracking bureaucratic behemoth will not be telling me to “Comply peasant! Tremble and Obey!”

Peter Forsythe

GB unions anti Net Zero

	Toby Young ⁦‪@toadmeister‬⁩ The leader of the GMB union, Gary Smith, has blasted Net Zero, saying: "We've cut carbon emissions by decimating working-class communities. The Left has been hoodwinked on this." dailysceptic.org/2023/09/15/wev…   15/9/2023, 4:00 pm

“A serious song” | The Canberra Choir at Cagliari, Sardinia

Sister and brother-in-law in the choir

“Advice on the use of masks in the context of COVID-19” | WHO

For the record, this is the link to WHO advice on masks 6 April 2020

/Snip: 

• “Medical masks should be reserved for health care workers”. 
• “The use of medical masks in the community may create a false sense of security...”. 
• “The use of masks made of other materials (e.g. cotton fabric)... has not been well evaluated. There is no current evidence to make a recommendation for or against their use in this setting.”. Today: we know cloth masks are of no use, per RCT reported in the Cochrane study.
• “Covid is transmitted by infectious droplets...”. Wrong. This incorrect assumption led to the wrong advice about hand washing, mask wearing, etc. 

“Pandemic amnesia” | David Dodwell

Oh boy, oh boy!

Random thoughts: [LATER: wrote a letter to the SCMP, here]

WHO comprehensively failed in handling Covid. Dodwell: “so let’s give WHO even more power!”

“None of us are safe until we’re all safe”: a feel-good trope that’s nonsensical. I’m safe here in Hong Kong, while people in Libya and Somalia are not safe. 

“We are only as strong as the weakest link”. False for the same reason.  Look at the 50 US Sates. Each did pts own thing. Each had different outcomes. Not based on the “weakest link”. In any case, which was the “weakest link”? The one with most lockdowns, or the one with least. The one with mask mandates. Or the ones without. 

Dodwell’s proposed pandemic protection solution is yet more government, yet more WHO, yet more rule by bureaucrats, yet more rules, regulations and mandates.

I say, no, no, no. Give us the information, make recommendations -- based on the science! And get out of the way. 

My comment at the  site:

Dodwell: "In short, Covid-19 remains alive and well, killing thousands of people daily". That is NOT correct.  

Worldometer: last seven days total deaths = 557 (36% BELOW the previous 7-days), or 80/day. In a world where around 200,000 die per day, Covid is under 0.04% of all deaths, 4 in 10k.  

For most who catch it, the symptoms are indistinguishable from a common cold.  Yes, we have "amnesia" about Covid and rightly so. We're done and dusted with it, no matter how much the "Covid lovers" want to keep on catastrophising.

The Plain People

Click above for the video

The Amish and Mennonites. Plain people. Wonderful folk. Wish a simple honest life. They “provide good produce and stand by it”. They forgive, even the worst offences, not because they are forgiving, but because Jesus told them to. 

Look at how they raise a Barn. They’re famous for it. Justly so: in just a week they raise a whole new, huge barn. The power of community. 

I thought to become Amish. Then I realised I’d need an American visa. And I’d be on my own. You need to be part of the family. 

This is a wonderful documentary. (“What’s a documentary?” one of he Amish says to towards the end).

Jacinta Nampijimpa Price speech to Australia National Press Club, 13 September

 

Click above for video 

Jacinta Price. Powerful speech. Persuasive. For the No campaign (in the Voice referendum).

The other day it was a speech by Marcia Langton for the Yes side. 

If I’m going to go with one or the other I go with Jacinta. Langton blotted her copybook, and the Yes campaign, by some ill-judged comments on racism and “stupidity” by the No campaign. 

Jacinta says that blaming others for problems in the indigenous community is to accept victimhood culture. Where it’s always someone else’s fault. That takes agency away from First Nations people. It’s wrong to say “you’re being opressed and no matter what you do you can’t succeed”. That’s a very negative message which only perpetuates failures in the indigenous community.

She talks of the misogyny in the indigenous community. Which has been hidden by the insistence on the racial narrative. Parliament, specifically PM Albanese, refuses to listen to issues we have in the indigenous community around domestic violence. Because they are in thrall to the indigenous victim industry. 

She says: we already have a voice. What we need is for parliament to LISTEN.

Powerful, Persuasive Price. Jacinta for PM !!

“Canadian and American pots call the Hong Kong kettle black” | Alex Lo

 

Online here

I clearly remember the invasion of our LegCo chamber by the mobs in 2019. How they trashed the chamber. 

The west and many here in Hong Kong — including many of our friends — cheered this on. A battle against the tyrants in Beijing. 

While we were thinking — this is crazy. It isn’t going to end well. And it didn’t: it gave us the National Security Law. 

Hong Kong gets hammered for jailing some of the vandals of LegCo. Jailed for some months or in some cases for a few years. Meantime the US regime cheers the jailing of January 6 protesters for 30 years. 30 years! Who did nothing more or less than the demonstrators in Hong Kong did. 

This is grossest hypocrisy. Hypocrisy: a better word for “Whataboutism”. Hypocrisy. 

So, again, I’m agreeing with Alex Lo. Weird, but there it is.

Billion dollar idea

 

No good deed goes unpunished: Starlink, Ukraine presumption, and American scapegoatism

I clearly recall how Elon Musk offered his Starlink internet service to Ukraine at the beginning of the war. He didn’t have to do it. But he did. Had he not done it he would not now be in the crosshairs of the war machine party— including its media enablers — out to blame him for the failure of Ukraine's counterattack on Crimea.

I also remember the Uber-leftie author, Stephen King, and his snarky tweet to Elon “what have you done for Ukraine?”and Elon replying “I’ve given them $250 million in internet services. What have you done?”. 

Do-nothing King will no doubt be lining up now with the pitchfork party out for Elon’s blood.

BUT… Elon: the GOAT. Not the scapegoat. Pray to the Spaghetti Monster for him to see off these petty people.

Here is David Sacks with a full-on defence of Musk:

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED: Elon Musk is the latest scapegoat for Ukraine’s failing counteroffensive.

Appearing at the @allinsummit yesterday, @elonmusk  addressed the controversy that erupted over the past week when an excerpt from @WalterIsaacson's new biography of him was released.

The excerpt alleged that Elon turned off Starlink access to Crimea in order to prevent a Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian fleet based at Sevastopol last year. Elon has clarified (and Isaacson has acknowledged) that he didn’t turn off anything. Starlink had never been activated over Crimea because of U.S. sanctions on Russia. Ukrainian officials asked Elon in a late-night call to activate it for purposes of launching a highly provocative attack on the Russian fleet. Concerned such an attack would prompt an escalatory response — perhaps even a nuclear one — from the Russians, Elon refused the request. He told us at the All-In Summit that had the request come from the White House, he would have honored it.

For this, Elon has been called “evil” by a high-level Ukrainian official, and treasonous by the usual warmongers here at home. The military blog 1945 questioned whether he was “fit to run SpaceX” and whether the company needed to be nationalized. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow claimed Elon was “intervening to try to stop Ukraine from winning the war.” CNN’s Jake Tapper called Elon a “capricious billionaire” who “effectively sabotaged a military operation by Ukraine, a U.S. ally.” He demanded to know of his interview subject, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, if there should be “repercussions” for Elon’s actions.

A wonderful woman. A caring mother. A strong indigenous voice | Jacinta Nampijimpa Price

 

Click above for video 

Jacinta Nampijimpa Price talks with John Anderson about her life. Very moving. She’s suffered domestic violence and also domestic bliss. She talks of the tragedies in aboriginal communities. And also their triumphs. And the need for “tough love”, to break out of the cycle of welfare dependency. 

She talks of how she gets smeared with racist comments (“coconut”: brown on the outside, white on the inside) when she speaks for the No campaign in the forthcoming (14 October) Voice referendum. 

I note here that the vitriol is all one way: Yes to the No. There is no smearing going from the No people to the Yes crowd. Example: Marcia Langton calls No campaigners “racist” or “stupid” (video) That tells you that the Yes campaign has nothing but ad hominem. And songs by Johnny Farnham.  

Jacinta views on the Voice::

• Indigenous people already have a voice -- in parliament and the myriad indigenous bodies
• They already get a lot of money ($A30 billion per year)
• Much of the money is misused, misallocated and wasted: 
• We have to work out why and do better with the money already there
• The Voice divides Australia by race: Australia should not be doing this
• The need is not to have a supra-parliamentary body peopled by radical activists, but to work out what’s happened to the moneys already allocated. Why have they failed, and what can be done better. 

It’s clear why the Voice proponents, especially those activist indigenous folks would find that threatening. To their influence and access to yet more money 

Jacinta is supported on the No side by Warren Mundine. E.g. video. The Voice is a “waste of millions”, he says.

The video above is not so much about the Voice, but to know the background of one who is very much involved in all matters relating to the welfare of the very people the Voice is allegedly to help. Warren Mundine also has a long history of involvement in helping his aboriginal brothers and sisters.