There’s now an instant and very cost-effective cure to all your climate woes!
In less than an hour, the documentary “Climate: The Movie” explains why there is no climate crisis. At the very least it should make you think twice whether all the climate panic around you is really justified.
According to producer Tom Nelson and director Martin Durkin, a week after launch in mid-March 2024, there were already numerous copies floating around the internet with over 1.5 million views combined. It’s great to see that more and more people are growing sceptical.
Of course, this one movie can’t address all the climate nonsense that surrounds us. For more climate relief, I highlight recommend the Climate Discussion Nexus.
It was without a doubt the interview of the year.[1] On 6 February 2024, US journalist Tucker Carlson talked with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Even more fascinating than the 2-hour conversation itself was how the media reported on this event.
Swiss peace researcher Daniele Ganser analysed how German-speaking newspapers from a range of political affiliations reported on the interview in quite a predictable way.
The more NATO-aligned the newspaper, the more negative or dismissive was the framing of the interview, whereas those newspapers which are more NATO-critical tended to simply state what was said, convey that the interview was interesting, or encourage their readers to watch the interview for themselves.
Dr. Daniele Ganser: Carlson und Putin im Mediennavigator, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_o0DnTbumA
Inspired by Ganser’s analysis, I examined how the interview was portrayed in Australia. The Australian media landscape is much smaller, and there is a lot less diversity. What I have found is that to the extent there was any coverage of the Carlson-Putin interview at all, the vast majority of it framed the interview in a negative way – not only in relation to the content of what Putin said; much of it was openly hostile towards the interviewer as well. There was no positive framing of this event in the sense that the content was interesting or that Australians should watch the full interview to form their own opinion.
Before I examine in more detail how the Australian media portrayed this interview, here are a few key points Putin made during his interview:
The NATO attack on Serbia in 1999 was illegal.
The US instigated a coup in Ukraine in 2014 which ignited the current conflict.
Ukraine is a satellite state of the US and the US are essentially fighting a proxy war in Ukraine.
UK prime minister Boris Johnson sabotaged the peace negotiations in Istanbul 18 months ago.
Putin wants to achieve de-nazification in Ukraine, and the end of the cultivation of Nazism in Ukraine was part of the Istanbul agreement.
The CIA was behind the sabotage of Germany’s Nord Stream gas pipelines
Germany’s current government is incompetent and more led by Western interests than national interests.
The Cold War was ended by Russia, and Russia expected friendly relationships with the West.
Despite promises made not to expand, NATO expanded eastwards in five waves since then.
Russia has no expansionary interests.
Russia is always willing to negotiate.
There are ongoing negotiations between the special services of the US and Russia for Wall Street Journalist Evan Gershkovich to return to the US.
Australian Financial Review (AFR)
The AFR and sister publications Sydney Morning Herald and The Age didn’t even bother to write their own articles. The AFR simply reprinted, more as an afterthought, it seems, a New York Times piece from an Anton Troianovski, and a headline which at least fairly conveyed one of the main points Putin made, namely that negotiations should take place, but the quote marks around the word ‘negotiate’ constitutes negative framing in itself.
AFR, 10-11 Feb 2024, p15
The article concluded by citing some think-tank person from the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre, who reckons Putin is using the US to pressure Ukraine into entering a peace deal that would install a Russia-friendly government there. Hugh? Speaking of the pot calling the kettle black. I wonder who is using whom in this war, starting at least in 2014, when the US orchestrated a coup to… anyway, moving on.
The Australian
The Australian had more coverage, although most of the content consisted of syndicated pieces.
One dated 9 February came from international news company Agence France Press (AFP) which for the most part simply states some of the things Putin said, but sandwiches them between the catchy but weird headline
The Australian online, 9 Feb 2024
The headline is full of negative framing, and the article ends with the commonly told story that allegedly Putin and Trump love each other, whereas Biden hates Putin, and because Biden called Putin a ‘war criminal’, you should also think that, unless you love war criminals. Something along those lines anway.
Another article from the same source loosely strung together a few Putin quotes and otherwise didn’t miss the opportunity to frame Carlson as a Trump-supporter and to criticise him for not asking tougher questions:
The Australian online, 9 February 2024
Yet another AFP article framed the interviewer as a “controversial right-wing US talk show host” and otherwise was substantially the same as the previously referenced piece:
The Australian online, 9 February 2024
A more positive and accurate framing might have been: “Putin tells West: Peace is possible through negotiation.”
The UK Times article the Australian re-published was purely about giving the UK prime minister a voice to dismiss anything Putin said in the interview. The authors then engaged in some good old-fashioned “fact checking” to steer the reader’s mind in the right direction.
The Australian online, 10 February 2024
There was also a Wall Street Journal article that dealt exclusively with the prisoner exchange part of the interview. Evan Gershkovich is a WSJ reporter held in Russia accused of espionage. The WSJ called again for the release of Gershkovich, stating emphatically that “journalism is not a crime”. Indeed. I’m sure Julian Assange, realistically facing a life sentence in the home of the free would strongly agree with that.
The Australian online, 10 February 2024
The only original contribution was by Paul Monk, who made it all about interviewer Carlson and how he, Monk, would have done a much better job. Negative framing all the way.
The Australian online, 12 February 2024
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
Rachael Hayter’s shortish ABC Listen piece, Putin blames US for war in Carlson interview, simply reported some of the main arguments Putin made during the interview, without resorting to loaded language.
In contrast, the article by European correspondents Kathryn Diss and Lucy Sweeney, Why Russian President Vladimir Putin and Tucker Carlson need each other right now, was full of negative framing. Carlson was described as a “right-wing host” (twice), as a sympathiser of Putin, and they tried to paint the Russian president as a cornered leader, something that even back in February was nothing more than wishful thinking.
They dismissed Putin’s long historical excursions as “long-winded anecdotes and lectures” and as a “sermon”. They fairly reported some of Putin’s statements but used the usual fact-checking techniques to dismiss others.
For example, they said that Putin’s argument that he’s also fighting Nazism in Ukraine was debunked by “hundreds of historians who study genocide” – the authority for which is a short article signed by many historians who seem to be primarily offended at the suggestion that there is anything like a holocaust going on in Ukraine – something I don’t think Putin is claiming in any event. The referenced article even acknowledges the neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine:
Jewish Journal, 27 February 2022, https://jewishjournal.com/news/worldwide/345515/statement-on-the-war-in-ukraine-by-scholars-of-genocide-nazism-and-world-war-ii/
The other example is Putin’s assertion that the US was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, for which they link to another ABC article that is inconclusive and does nothing more than cite various US officials who, predictably, deny the allegations.
A substantial portion of the article is dedicated to painting Carlson in a bad light. They also take issue with Carlson’s claim that Western media hadn’t bothered to give Putin a voice. I’m pretty sure that was indeed a whopper.
But, firstly, I can understand why Putin can’t be bothered to talk with Western media – he knows they will simply twist his words and spin his statements to suit their needs before publication. With Carlson he might have had some assurances about the format of an uncut interview, and that he would be allowed to talk. Also, Putin knew full well that Carlson has a huge audience, and there would be no better channel to be heard uncensored by more people in the west than ever before.
Secondly, dear ABC and all other Western journalists, if you really want to, you can hear and report on what Putin is actually saying at any time. You could translate his speeches, interviews with Russian media etc, and just listen to what he’s actually saying. One lone German journalist does this, Thomas Röper who has lived in St Petersburg for many years. Just make sure you too wear your critical thinking hat. Propaganda abounds, but that’s no different in the West.
You don’t have to like what Putin says or does, but as a leader of a big nation he must be taken seriously, and some honest reporting would be more useful than faithfully repeating the usual US narrative.
The Media Watch program dedicated a 5-minute segment to the interview. It was mainly concerned with denouncing Carlson as a “Russia apologist” and a “useful idiot”.
Host Paul Barry went on to call the event a “snooze fest”. Classical negative framing. Yes, Putin took a few detours on his history tour, but you would only find that boring if you had absolutely no interest in actually understanding how this war came about – from Putin’s point of view for a change – or if you already knew all of that.
Sure, you could argue Carlson should have asked Putin about the justification for the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. Would he have received a better answer than US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave when she justified the killing of similar numbers during the Iraq war?
I can imagine Putin would have simply laughed if he’d been asked whether he eliminated Prigozhin, who was never a serious competitor, something Putin would have been aware of.
And if Barry had asked Putin whether he was guilty of war crimes, he would have simply denied it and laughed it off in the same way every single recent US president would answer such a question – all of whom have been waging wars of aggression for decades, claiming they were under attack or saving another country or gifting democracy.
Partlett tried to argue that Putin has an expansive agenda which means the war won’t end anytime soon. He based this on an alleged statement in the interview that Putin said Russia had a claim to parts of western Ukraine. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nowhere in the interview does Putin say that, not even implicitly.
Strangely, it is ‘Russia-friend’ Carlson who falsely says in his (in my view unnecessary) introductory remarks to the interview that “Russia has a historic claim to parts of western Ukraine.” Why and how Carlson himself made that statement on the basis of this interview is a bit of a mystery, actually. The only point at which Putin even mentions the western Ukraine is in one of his historical excursions, when very early on in the interview he merely refers to the pre-World War II Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the USSR, according to which (probably pursuant to Article II of the Secret Additional Protocol) part of what is now the western Ukraine was to be given to the USSR “in the event of territorial and political rearrangement of areas belonging to the Polish state”.
So how did Partlett, who apparently studied Soviet and Russian history, spin a territorial claim out of this interview?
And Partlett completely dismisses Putin’s NATO argument, as if that didn’t or perhaps shouldn’t matter. In his view, the NATO argument is one that “plays well with Republicans” and those into conspiracy theories “who think that America has played too much of a role in trying to be the policeman of the world.” You get the framing, right? The Americans are the good guys, and don’t you forget it.
Another ABC Listen episode with Sam Hawley, ominously titled What Putin wins from Tucker Carlson’s ‘interview’ promises to “unpack” the event by subtly suggesting in the opening lines that the interview was a failure because Putin won. But that’s only the beginning of this negative framing frenzy.
The invited guest, academic Gordon Flake from the USAsia Centre at the University of Western Australia, gets stuck into negative framing right away by delegitimising Carlson, saying he is engaged in “infotainment” and pro-Donald Trump with a huge MAGA Republican following, adding the suggestion that Carlson allowed himself to be used by Putin. That might all be correct, but why this obsession with Carlson?
Hawley took it to another level when she said:
It was far less of an interview than a platform for the Russian president to say whatever he wanted to say; and it was rather bizarre in parts, wasn’t it?
Seriously? I always naively thought the purpose of an interview was to find out what the interviewee thinks. Then again, reflecting on the days when I still watched the ABC 7:30 program, it already seemed to increasingly be more about what the interviewer wanted to get across.
Also, journalists all over the world were all so very good at letting the politicians talk and not ask any pointy questions during the entire covid era.
Oh, I’m getting confused! Are you? But it gets even more confusing when Flake agrees:
In some respects, I think it probably will have backfired in the long run, just because letting someone like Vladimir Putin just ramble on for two hours straight isn’t always [chuckle] a good idea. Letting Putin be kind of be Putin undermines the broader political narrative of the Russians that it’s not their fault, right, because he makes it pretty clear what his intent is in Ukraine and that’s not a message they [the Russians] probably want out.
But that would make Carlson more like a genius, no? He managed to trick Putin into revealing his true intentions.
Putin never made a secret of what his intentions were and why he was doing what he was doing in Ukraine. In his mind, he’s playing defence.
A third into this episode Hawley steers the conversation towards what she called was Putin’s “diatribe”. Next negative framing incident: Allegedly, Putin said nothing new.
Indeed, there was much that Putin had already said in the past, only this time he had the largest audience ever. But there were also other interesting statements that the media could have literally feasted on.
At various points Putin referred to conversations he had had with US leaders, broken promises and such, although he didn’t reveal the full details. Will Carlson or any other Western journalist ask these US leaders to confirm or deny what Putin said in the interview? Hardly. The media didn’t even pick up on these points.
Flake rounds off his assessment of the interview by lamenting that it was a “clear statement of Russia’s view of the world which is inconsistent with history in fact.”
Remember, the stated intention of the interviewer was to allow Western audiences to hear Russia’s view. But naturally, only the Western view of history is correct (sarcasm intended).
Hawley proceeded to frame the interview in an even more negative light, suggesting that by listening to this interview one would show openness to the Russian perspective when she says:
So this interview shows just how open some Americans are to Russia’s perspective on the world and that they actually want to listen to its leader. They care what he says and thinks.
She may not have done this consciously, but there was a message that this interview and listening to a Russian leader in general is forbidden fruit for decent Western ears.
Flake takes it a step further by stating that the interview is another manifestation of the Russians’ desire to sabotage American society.
Personally, I don’t think that’s necessary. The Americans do a pretty good job themselves of sabotaging and dividing their own society.
All in all, analysing the Australian media coverage of Carlson vs Putin was an interesting exercise. This example demonstrated that our news channels don’t just tell us what happened. More often than not, they use framing language to tell us what to think about what happened, in strict accordance with whatever the dominant narrative is.
[1] The transcript can be found here on the Kremlin website. Your browser (or the owner of your browser) may not like it, so I’ve downloaded a PDF version which you can download below.
Food for thought: How solid is the science behind vaccines?
This article is as much about freedom as it is about science. We have all seen what happens when the former is compromised based on the latter, even when that science is completely corrupted, in other words: when science becomes a weapon for governments and authorities.
The WHO and governments are complaining louder than ever before about those annoying, misinformation spreading, tin-foil hat wearing anti-vaxxers.
Millions of dollars are being spent on research to work out those whacky brains of the vaccine hesitant and how they could be fixed, nudged to become dutiful citizens.
The Grattan Institute has just published a report urging for a policy reset to ‘close the vaccination gap’. Apparently, vaccination rates have dropped not just in relation to the covid shots.
Ironically, it is the biggest vaccination operation in history, made possible through the fastest, unquestionably most sciency science ever that has probably led to more people than ever becoming aware that maybe, just maybe, not everything is as it seems in the world of vaccine science.
Indeed, it isn’t.
But about the falling covid ‘vaccination’ rates – is it really that surprising? After all, the promises made by the manufacturers were exposed as untrue, and stories about vaccine injuries are no longer as suppressed as they once were. Most people will eventually work out they’ve been duped, especially those who only got the shots because they were coerced to take them. They might not say it out loud, but not showing up is a way of communicating distrust too.
Personally, I’ve always been somewhat sceptical about vaccines, but admittedly I was largely as ignorant as most when it came to understanding this field of science, or should we write, ‘science’?
I’ve had my share of injections in my younger years, as have my children, without ever really understanding how effective or safe or necessary they were. My research consisted of reading the government-issued pamphlets, and in the end, I suppose one tends to trust the men and women in white lab coats, who, presumably, know best.
In the throes of the panic-ridden covid days, when these new so-called vaccines were whipped seemingly out of nowhere, and my bullshit indicator already on high alert, I trusted my instincts, reinforced by experts who were criticising these new substances on perfectly reasonable grounds: They were not tested enough for anyone to know what their effects were truly going to be. And there was, as was plain to me from the outset, no dangerous pandemic going on anyway, and so there was no need for a vaccine in the first place.
I refused the covid shots. In the end, I was lucky: I didn’t lose my job, though I feared I too might have to make that impossible and unfair choice. My refusal didn’t have any consequences beyond me having to delay travelling and being a social outcast for a few months. Mind you, that was bad enough, and I will not forget that. I won’t go into details, but I look around now, and I am glad I didn’t roll up my sleeve.
Everyone who has an opinion on vaccination or who has questions about vaccination should read this book. It was written before the covid shots came on the market, but it confirmed everything I observed during the covid era.
At 500 pages it’s not a quick read, and this doesn’t include the many hundreds of references which are available only online, presumably to save some trees. It’s also not a book you should read before bedtime.
As long-winded as it can be, this book is written in plain language, and very well-structured, and, as far as I can judge, very thoroughly researched. The authors manage to explain scientific issues and concepts clearly. They state their viewpoint, but also present the arguments made by the ‘other side’, only to refute them quite convincingly.
The book is mainly concerned with vaccine safety, but necessarily also discusses efficacy. Each chapter ends with a summary, as well as questions the reader might want to ask his or her doctor.
The opening chapters explain how deficient vaccine clinical trials are: studies are purposely biased, scientific principles are disregarded in many other ways, but very often, proper science is simply not done at all. By the way, if you’d like some more reading after digesting this tome, you might be interested in Judy Wilyman’s 2015 PhD thesis, A critical analysis of the Australian government’s rationale for its vaccination policy, which I read in the early covid days when the writing was already on the wall.
The built-in deficiencies of the reporting systems are addressed, vaccination guidelines are dissected, before the authors discuss in great detail the founding myths of vaccine science: how diseases have disappeared, what’s up with herd immunity, the unsound basis for mandatory vaccination, and what’s wrong with just about every major vaccine on the menu of most countries. An entire chapter is dedicated to the mysteries of polio.
If you’re pressed for time, you might just want to read the final chapter, which essentially summarises the ten previous chapters – but you wouldn’t want to miss out on all the gory details which might convince you that this particular branch of science should be generally prefaced by the word ‘junk’.
No matter how often researchers come to the same conclusion that governments can fix vaccine hesitancy by targeted indoctrination, I think it unlikely they will succeed in winning back trust from an increasingly sceptical public any time soon. The embarrassing own goals shot during covid will be talked about for decades.
It’s been interesting to observe how climate litigation has become a hot legal topic over the last few years. There are currently close to 3,000 climate change-related litigation cases globally, most of them in the US, with 33 in Australia.
Are you a lawyer already engaged in climate litigation or considering doing so? In that case, I challenge you to do the same kind of rigorous due diligence on the topic of climate change you would do in relation to any of the other matters you take on.
This entire new branch of litigation is based on the fundamental assumption that climate change is a threat and humans are responsible for it.
You will probably think that the science is settled. Everybody says so: Al Gore, Barack Obama, António Guterres, Greta Thunberg, most politicians, practically all of the media, and of course all scientists. They all say the CO2 humans emit is the cause why the Earth’s climate is out of kilter, and unless we cut emissions fast, we are doomed.
I don’t question your good intentions. Who doesn’t want to do the right thing by the environment? But you’re a lawyer. You’re intelligent and ambitious, you wear your heart on your sleeve for whatever cause you take on. On the other hand you’re also risk-averse, and part of your trade is to dot every i and cross every t to make sure you know all the possible arguments. Not doing so could have serious consequences, for your career and your clients. So you need to understand the subject matter as best you can. That means you don’t just rely on what your client tells you, or what you read in the news. You need to look at every issue you come across from all different angles.
Can you honestly say that you’ve done that with respect to climate change?
Have you done some serious research on whether it is actually true that 97% of scientists agree that climate change is dangerous and caused by humans?
Have you checked the veracity of the claim that human-made climate change has brought ice bears and the Great Barrier Reef to the brink of extinction?
Is it true that CO2 is the control knob for the Earth’s climate system?
Are hurricanes, droughts, floods and wildfires actually becoming more frequent and more dangerous?
How accurate are temperature records and how useful are climate models really?
Are glaciers and ice caps really melting away and will they disappear by the year … sorry, what’s the latest prediction?
I grew up in Switzerland in the 1970s and 1980s. In winter, I was able to ski from the top of the hill near my home right down to our backyard at an altitude of 500 metres. By the time I was a teenager it was impossible to do that. So within my own lifetime I’ve observed how the climate has changed in that tiny part of the world.
I also recall being completely confused about the messages in the media in the early 1980s. For years, the media had been talking up the imminent next ice age – we even learnt about it in school – and then, suddenly, it was all about global warming.
The trouble with us humans is that we have very short memories, and we are easily distracted by the latest shiny new theory or idea.
Still, I had no reason to doubt the new and commonly accepted ‘inconvenient truth’ about climate change. In 2008 I scratched my head when ClimateGate happened, but that was swiftly swept under the carpet. Fast forward a few years, and I felt that something definitely wasn’t quite right. Why so much persistent scaremongering? Why were scientists being cancelled for expressing other views?
I grew suspicious and my research instincts kicked in. I put on my critical thinking hat and with an open mind I began investigating the other side of climate science. It didn’t take me long to realise that things were not as clear as they are made out to be in the mainstream media. Digging deeper, I found a plethora of uncertainties and problems with just about every aspect of the dominant climate change narrative. Therefore, in my view there is no legitimate basis for climate change litigation.
I know, I’m not a scientist, and you might not be either. But you don’t need to be one to gain a solid understanding of any scientific issue.
So I encourage you to broaden your horizon, discover, explore, listen to the arguments of all sides, and come to your own conclusions. You may or may not change your mind, but at least you can say you’ve done your due diligence.
If you’re not sure where to find good resources, those on the Climate Discussion Nexus are a great starting point.
If you are looking for a contemporary book about science that is accessible, meaning free of jargon, and full of illustrative examples, then Science Fiction by Stuart Ritchie is for you.
In eight easy to read chapters, the author explains how science works today, warts and all. He covers the replication crisis in detail, before he dedicates a chapter each on how too many scientists can be negligent, use hype, fall victim to biases, and engage in outright fraud. What may surprise and even shock many readers is how widespread these unsavoury practices truly are.
The author then digs into why science is plagued by so many problems, naming the various perverse incentives that are at play. The peer review process is deeply flawed, journals are only interested in shiny new discoveries, scientists are under constant pressure to publish or perish, and not least: plain old human nature. But as long as the existing problematic reward structures remain in place and huge issues around the funding of science persist, the future of science looks bleak. It’s hardly surprising that many consider science to be in a state of crisis.
After telling us that science is covered in warts, in the last chapter Ritchie outlines numerous sensible and workable treatment options – top down as well as bottom up solutions. Science will never be perfect, but some concrete examples indicate that a cultural shift within science has already started. In some fields, study designs need to be registered, some journals are now explicitly welcoming previously shrug-worthy replication studies and even null-studies, studies that don’t confirm the researchers’ hypothesis. Watch this space…
This book would have been even better if the author had maintained a certain level of objectivity in relation to some of today’s big scientific controversies. Of course, no one person can be across the myriad of fields of science, but his selection of examples and some statements leave no doubt that he would never dare to question vaccine science, he has an unshakable belief in the dominant climate catastrophe narrative, and he is convinced that all the covid interventions were justified and are beyond questioning. The afterword dates from May 2021, and it would be interesting to know whether he has changed his views at all in light of the emerging evidence since then.
Granted, we all have our biases, and to his credit the author acknowledges that. But considering Ritchie so brilliantly summarises the issues in science, encourages critical thinking, and advocates for science to once again be all about the noble pursuit of truth no matter what, it is disappointing that for example in relation to vaccine science, he refers in considerable detail to Andrew Wakefield’s controversial work, but fails to mention any one of the flawed studies that purportedly confirm the safety of vaccines, say Grimaldi’s 2014 Gardasil article, or the undone science in that field generally.
In my view, we can’t have the healthy and robust and honest scientific discourse the author calls for whilst simultaneously clinging on to sacred cows.
Despite these shortcomings, everyone interested in science should read this book. It’s a true eye-opener.
There can be no doubt that Australia, like many other countries, is experiencing significantly higher overall mortality since 2021.
The following graphic from the latest release of provisional mortality statistics by Australian Bureau of Statistics has its limitations – it’s as if that agency didn’t want to make it easy for the public to see the fuller picture. But what the ABS does dish up should be enough to more than just raise eyebrows.
We can speculate what might be the reasons, but it would be much better if there were some kind of transparent and fulsome inquiry into this phenomenon. Surely frank and unbiased research ought to be carried out in an effort to get to the bottom of this.
Even the media have picked up on the issue, though they steer clear of mentioning the liquid that must not be named.
Clearly, something isn’t right. On 23 March 2023, a few Australian senators, who happened to be those critical of the governments’ Covid measures, tried to launch a Senate inquiry.
Here are the contributions from Sen. Babet, Sen. Rennick, Sen. Canavan, with Sen. Pratt trying to gloss over the issue. Sen. Babet then called for the establishment of a Select Committee on Australia’s Excess Mortality.
The next day, the Senate voted on the motion. What was the outcome?
Fifty-nine of the seventy-six senators showed up to vote on what really shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Perhaps it’s still too early for many to face their Covid demons, but collectively (29 ayes to 30 noes), the Australian Senate decided it does not want to understand why death rates in this country have not stayed more or less the same over the very period during which experimental but allegedly highly effective and safe substances have been circulating through the bodies of the vast majority of Australians.
Again, we could speculate as to why a majority voted ‘no’ to a mere fact finding mission. Are they really not interested? Do they not care to see the bigger picture? Did they just toe the party line? Did they vote this way merely because the motion came from senators whose other political views they don’t agree with?
All of the ’no‘ voters wouldn’t even have been in government when the magic potion was unleashed on the public, but of course, they were just as Covid-crazed as their political enemies. And now? Perhaps they know all too well their role in this particular ‘game of mates’, and they are loathe to risk upsetting their pharmaceutical puppet masters.
And just for the record, here are these wilfully blind senators who too swore to serve the Australian people:
I’ve been diagnosed with a mental illness. But you know what? I’m actually proud of it. And I wish it was highly contagious because everyone should get infected. I admit, this particular affliction can be a little uncomfortable at times, but on another level it is also quite liberating.
The diagnosis? Critical thinking.
Will this serious disorder make it into the next version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)? It wouldn’t surprise me after watching this fascinating talk by Dr James Davis that demonstrates just how corrupt and downright ridiculous science in general and psychiatry or psychology in particular can be.
My first official diagnosis came in May 2022 when a bunch of researchers from New Zealand presented their explanation as to why some people were less than enthusiastic about getting their Covid jabs when that country’s rollout kicked off in 2021.
There sure was a perplexing mystery to be solved here. How could it possibly be that the most selfless and scrupulous pharmaceutical companies bestow upon all of humanity out of the sheer goodness of their hearts a perfect solution to save all of us from certain death (and this in record time), only for some people to refuse this heavenly gift? There was only one possible explanation: these people had to be stark raving mad.
The researchers took their ingenious hunch to a cohort of people at their disposal – people who were used to their lives being prodded and poked by scientists from time to time. And so just before the beginning of the vaccine rollout, these subjects were quizzed about their preparedness to get ‘vaccinated’ against Covid.
The hypothesis was that something must have gone wrong during the childhood of the ‘vaccine hesitant’ or those entirely unwilling to take the stuff.
This group of researchers were not the first ones to claim that vaccine hesitancy is caused by some kind of brain malfunction, for example cognitive deficits (eg Batty et al, 2021). But they felt they had something special to offer – they claimed that vaccine hesitancy was connected to early life experiences.
A solid 88% of the targeted cohort filled in a questionnaire about whether or not they would get vaccinated. Out of the 832 people, 75% were definitely or likely willing to get vaccinated, 12% were hesitant or undecided, and 13% were labeled ‘vaccine resistant’.
The study found that 25% of those who were vaccine hesitant or worse ‘followed the expected social gradient’ – they were early school dropouts and from a lower socioeconomic background, and a quarter of them left high school without a qualification. Whereas, among those willing to roll up their sleeves on command, the number was 10%. With 35% of the willing having completed university, only 15% of the refuseniks received a uni degree.
That says it all, right? Well, as Prof. Mattias Desmet suggests, and that is also my observation from three years of living in Covid Clown World: whether you believe in this whole Covid story has nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence or education.
But back to the study. The researchers make some very predictable and banal findings:
The unwilling tended to have safety concerns about the vaccines, doubts about the pandemic in general, and they didn’t believe the jabs would lead to a return to normalcy. They mistrusted institutions and influencers, and they didn’t even listen to family, friends and co-workers. Seriously? How dare these people think for themselves, have their own opinion, disagree with the mainstream view?
And then of course comes the hammer: What did they find when they compared the psychological histories of the willing versus the unwilling? Especially vaccine resistant but also vaccine hesitant people were exposed to ‘significantly more Adverse Childhood Experiences’ such as abuse, neglect, threat and deprivation. As adolescents they scored higher on negative emotionality, in other words they tended to shut down more under stress, felt alienated, felt mistreated, and were aggressive. They were also non-conformists. And to top it off, they were more likely to have experienced ‘mental health problems dating back to adolescence.’
Next, they list a plethora of symptoms such as antisocial behaviour, substance misuse, anxiety, depression, delusional beliefs, hallucinations, obsessions, compulsions – symptoms which ‘might interfere with receipt of health messaging, healthy decision-making, and resistance to conspiracy theories.’
Aha! There we have it. Why was I not surprised to find the c-word in this study?
Intellectually, the unwilling were below average readers when leaving high school, performed less well in IQ tests as children, and as adults scored lower in comprehension and processing speed tests. In other words, they are a bit, well, you know… slow.
What about the 13% of ‘unwilling’ who somehow managed to get through university and still turn out to not submit to vaccination? They scored less extremely on all these factors, and so the logical conclusion is the uneducated unwilling are on average actually even crazier than they seem.
And what do these learned researchers suggest should be done about such recalcitrant citizens?
Seeing that most of them are just plain stupid, they recommend dumbing down the public health message. They suggest that ‘clear and simple messaging tailored to a modest level of verbal complexity may reach the vaccine-hesitant.’
But… hasn’t that happened from the very beginning of these vaccine campaigns? I mean, is it possible to dumb down primitive slogans such as ‘vax to the max’, ‘we’re all in this together’, ‘do it for granny’ etc? Ah but that’s different, I see…
The study authors go on to pontificate:
‘Pro-vaccination health messaging does not operate in a vacuum, it must compete against powerful anti-vaccination messaging, which often reinforces themes of suspicion, mistrust, fear, anger, alienation, and conspiracy, sensationalises fear of rare side effects, lionises anti-establishment nonconformist, praises going against the “vaccinated herd”, and presents vaccination as a personal choice that must be exercised to preempt exploitation by the government.’
‘Lionises’… cute.
In line with their findings, the authors recommend that schools should do more to indoctrinate children with the right ‘knowledge’.
It seems the vast majority of teachers were fully on board and had no doubt done their fair share of scare mongering in the classrooms, even if it was mostly online.
This study is based on the fundamental assumption that the reasons for questioning vaccines are invalid, and that there cannot possibly be any good reasons to question the official narrative around these alleged vaccines. It is written from within a very particular narrative.
Never mind that even by the time the study was published, many doctors, health professionals and academics around the world had spoken out against the Covid fraud generally, and specifically against the foolishness (to put it mildly) of coercing the entire population into being injected with insufficiently tested, unproven, ineffective, and demonstrably problematic substances to combat a virus and a disease which is far from being as dangerous as it was portrayed.
Actually, the authors, had they not been captive to the Covid narrative, could have explored a much more interesting question when it comes to preparedness to get these Covid jabs: why do so many people simply follow orders? Why do they so readily roll up their sleeves? Why do they blindly trust governments?
On to my second diagnosis…
You see, I think that the whole climate emergency story is a huge fraud on humanity too. Once I began researching this topic in earnest some years ago, it didn’t take me long to figure out that there was something seriously wrong with the mainstream narrative. But somehow seeing behind the curtain of deceit makes me and many others dangerous ‘climate change deniers.’
The groundbreaking conclusion of this study is essentially that ‘some people reject consensus science and generate other explanations due to mistrust in climate science and uncritical faith in “alternative science”’.
How about looking at it in another way? Could it be that people like myself don’t have uncritical faith in alternative science? Instead, we are critical of mainstream science… including their study which is apparently based on an online survey with a rather low sample size.
The authors seem to suggest that US climate change denialism is connected to religious beliefs, whereas the Australian deniers have ‘faith in “alternative” or pseudo-science explanations.’
It’s amazing: that climate denialism bug is shape-shifting just like the Covid bug.
And it gets better:
‘Our further analyses suggested that mistrust in climate science and uncritical faith in “alternative science” prompted them to reject consensus science and generate other explanations.’
What a fascinatingly ground-breaking and profound explanation. It’s all clear as daylight now.
The authors make an effort to further explain why deniers are sceptical. Apparently, deniers have faith in alternative science, they believe climate change is natural and cyclical, they simply mistrust climate science, for example alleging data manipulation; they point out that predictions haven’t come true, and they question the motives of the pushers of the climate emergency agenda.
Well, could these not be perfectly reasonable observations and views? Obviously not when one is captive to climate hysteria.
And how to fix these poor mentally deranged people who just can’t see that the planet is burning up before our very eyes? The authors don’t have much to offer, apart from yet more targeted public messaging – propaganda, in other words. As if we weren’t already bombarded with enough of that already.
Alas, it’s not helping. I’m still suffering from critical thinking. Somebody rescue me, please!
I guess I’m a hopeless case…
But hang on. Very recently I heard this slightly jarring interview on the ever-objective ABC with Gabrielle Bryden from Central Queensland University. (Yes, I don’t just consume conspiracy news, I also dip into high quality official journalism from time to time!)
Dr Bryden made a ground-breaking discovery as part of her PhD thesis. She even tried really hard to bring into circulation a new term: the ‘privilege paradox.’ Her PhD findings suggest that geographic areas with the highest socio-economic advantage have the lowest rates of vaccination.
Why might that be? Well, her thesis supervisors had already done the groundwork by putting scepticism down to ‘a particular psychological and cultural orientation which often led to a reluctance to engage with the scientific evidence.’ There you have it. Pure genious.
Worse, these educated rich people embrace magical health beliefs, and to some degree holistic health, complimentary and alternative medicine. How abhorrent … inexplicably, these people don’t even want to allow their five year-olds to be jabbed against a disease which is absolutely no threat to them. How outrageously unreasonable!
In summary, what do these three valuable studies of the highest scientific integrity boil down to?
If you’re not on board with the mainstream view, there is definitely something seriously wrong with you. That’s about it.
And governments are not about to give up curing you from your critical thinking disease. The University of Western Australia has just secured a whopping $4.7 million from the Medical Research Future Fund to study the impact of Covid vaccine mandates. I can hardly wait to see the unsurprising results. Apparently, the findings will help governments ‘understand how to translate vaccine availability to health policy improvements.’ You can read between the lines here, right?
The causes for suffering from critical thinking are many and varied – being too poor or too rich, being uneducated or being highly educated. It’s a bit like the weather: if it’s too hot, it’s human-made climate change – if it’s too cold, it’s also human-made climate change. No mental gymnastics are too difficult for these grant-greedy mainstream scientists to convince everyone that they are right, and everyone else is therefore wrong. The science is settled. After all, it’s settled science that must have led to all that progress over the last few centuries, right?
I suppose I’ll just have to come to terms with the fact that I’m one of those lower or upper-class and/or highly-educated or uneducated people who don’t just blindly believe in whatever scare story happens to be the flavour of the day.
I can live with that affliction. I know I’m not alone. I just wish there were more of us. Many more.
Imagine this headline in The Guardian: ‘WHO declares pandemic of critical thinking!’
Us crazies could actually change the world for the better, using dreadful weapons such as commonsense, the scientific method, logic, diplomacy, and compassion.
I became aware of this heretical question during 2020, and I’ve followed the debate with interest ever since.
If you consume nothing but mainstream news you probably never heard there are people who actually doubt the existence of viruses, and even if you did, you would probably simply dismiss it as yet another tin-foil hat conspiracy theory.
The thing is, once upon a time most people were convinced the sun revolved around the earth and anyone who said otherwise was ridiculed or worse, much worse. Today, it would be the other way round, and not just on Twitter.
So unless we keep an open mind to big questions, unless we allow big theories to be reconsidered and questioned, unless we don’t just faithfully and blindly repeat the mindless ‘follow the science’ mantra, unless we actually follow the scientific method and engage in rigorous scientific debate instead of muting those who don’t follow the herd, we end up turning science into a religion, and we end up making fools of ourselves, or worse, at least vis-à-vis future generations.
If, say, the Big Bang theory is questioned, it’s no big deal. It’s a question that is so far removed from our daily lives, it is allowed in mainstream media. Nothing much hinges on such a debate.
However, whether or not viruses exist is a much hotter potato, especially in these Covidian times. Too many careers and livelihoods are at stake, and not just in big pharma.
I find this debate fascinating.
A very brief summary in layman’s terms: those questioning the existence of viruses generally say that the science behind virology is essentially smoke and mirrors, that the existence of viruses has never actually been proven by rigorous scientific standards, that all the alleged evidence is based on shoddy scientific methods, and that all arguments in favour of the existence of viruses are merely circular and therefore untenable.
For a long time, those believing viruses exist have simply ignored the other camp. But recently the debate has intensified. Dr Sam Bailey threw down the gauntlet by publishing the Settling the virus debate statement on 14 July 2022. She and likeminded colleagues are challenging virologists to prove the existence of viruses through properly conducted, documented and monitored scientific experiments.
In addition, German virus doubter Samuel Eckert has created the Isolate Truth Fund, offering €1,5 million for any virologist who presents scientific proof of the existence of a coronavirus.
So, watch this space…
Personally, I’m in two minds. I can understand why the doubters want rigorous scientific proof that viruses exist. I’m surprised that prominent virologists react to being challenged by dismissing or ridiculing the doubters, instead of taking on the challenge and proving them wrong. Considering they are so convinced of their theory that should be child’s play.
To my mind, the arguments of the doubters do make sense; and the burden of proof lies squarely with the virologist.
On the other hand, could virologists really fool themselves and the whole world by making up their own language, by constructing and maintaining a whole make-believe universe for decades and decades?
Let’s observe, let’s listen to the arguments from both sides. Hopefully there will be a serious, respectful, high quality scientific debate. But paradigm shifts are hard, egos are big, and the stakes are extremely high.
At the 2022 Robert Menzies Institute Oration and Gala Dinner on 13 October 2022, Lord Jonathan Sumption gave a simply brilliant half-hour speech titled A State of Fear: Covid-19 and Lockdowns.
Throughout the Covid madness, the former UK Supreme Court judge was one of few commentators who calmly and rationally criticised disproportionate and destructive government measures that caused so much damage to our liberal societies.
The full speech can be read here and watched here. For all the wise words that emanated from Lord Sumption’s lips, unsurprisingly they were almost completely ignored by the Australian media.
On 24 November, an excellent but paywalled article by Chris Merritt made reference to Lord Sumption’s speech. The article was about the inadequacies of Victorian and NSW public health legislation which is hardly worthy of a functioning democracy.
The Spectator published a freely available short article mentioning the speech.
On your ABC he only featured during an interview with Tom Switzer (at 20 minutes).
The Australian published an eloquently written column by Lord Sumption a few days before he held his speech, but it too is safely tucked away behind a paywall.
Lord Sumption also got some air time during his speaking tour on Sky News, and he addressed the National Press Club, as reported in this AFR article.
