How to normalise mass self Covid testing in 5 easy steps:
Torture an entire country for two years with Covid fear porn, lockdowns, vaccine mandates and state violence.
Tell people they are finally allowed to travel around the country at Christmas time, as long as they have injected poison.
Invent a new “variant” which runs rampant despite the vaccine.
Mandate that everybody needs a negative Covid test to cross state borders, ensuring testing infrastructure will be overwhelmed.
Offer rapid antigen test kits/self testing as a “solution”.
Yay, a victory for common sense, everybody cries:
Victoria has recorded another record high number of new COVID-19 cases as the government has announced it will be distributing millions of free rapid antigen tests…
Mr Foley said using rapid antigen tests is the way Victorians could have confidence going about their day.
He confirmed the Victorian Government had bought 34 million rapid antigen tests, which would be distributed widely for free, with the first deliveries arriving next week.
“Rapid antigen tests should be free, and we will be making them free,” he said.
“Rapid antigen tests should be widely available, and we will be making them widely available.
“That will be part of a process that has fallen to the states. We would much prefer a national approach … failing that, as per usual the states have had to step up.”
Mr Foley said the tests were not as effective as PCR tests, but were very valuable. “They’re not the gold standard, but they’re increasingly effective.”
See what they did here? They created a problem by mandating that people return negative Covid test results before crossing state borders at the busiest tourist period of the year.
This triggered a reaction. People lined up practically for days to get tested to regain the privilege of travelling interstate.
New South Wales residents hiring cars and sitting in taxis for hours to get covid tests … I honestly don't know what to say anymore 🤷🏼♀️ pic.twitter.com/eeM8F9DMKv
The results took up to a week to get back to people, ruining tens of thousands of holidays. False negative results compounded the situation. Even the vaccinated sheep could see that the system simply wasn’t coping.
In jumps the government with the solution. It will generously provide us with rapid antigen tests for free so we can test ourselves at home.
Could you imagine a situation in 2019 where people would be grateful to the government for providing them the opportunity to test themselves for the sniffles so they would be allowed to do stuff?
Having seen how practically every lockdown has been extended, every government power expanded and vaccine requirements have gone from one, to two, to boosters, let’s extrapolate where things might go from here.
Firstly, the idea that we need to test ourselves for the sniffles to do things is now normalised in Australia. There are crazy people who will likely test themselves compulsively multiple times a day.
Venues and stores will require a recent negative test result in addition to being vaccinated for entry.
The government will impose testing requirements on the unvaccinated and offer laxer testing requirements to the vaccinated as an inducement. At first they will impose these requirements for you to enjoy your “freedoms”, but they will phase in similar testing requirements to receive “benefits”, ie dole money because they won’t let you work.
Consider the trialling of a system in some Australian states where people forced into self isolation had to send a photo of themselves at their designated isolation location within 15 minutes of receiving a text message. A result from a rapid antigen test will be added to this requirement, and the time period will be dropped from 15 minutes to 10 minutes.
The vaccinated will receive free rapid antigen testing kits, the unvaccinated will have to pay for them.
Inmates at the Covid gulags will get tested every day.
There are practically dozens of nasty combinations and permutations. Put simply, the government will add the requirement for self testing to the long and ever expanding list of requirements ordinary people are required to fulfil before we are allowed to do ordinary things.
The provision of “free” rapid antigen tests to the public is not a solution. It is just one more step down the staircase to hell.
New South Wales Health Minister Brad Hazzard has said he expects everybody in the state to contract the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
Speaking at a press conference this morning, Mr Hazzard was imploring residents to book in their vaccine booster shot as a defence against the variant of concern.
“Bottom line here is that we would expect that pretty well everybody in New South Wales at some point will get Omicron,” Mr Hazzard said.
So the vaccine isn‘t going to stop you from catching the virus. That means it’s not a vaccine. At best, if you believe Hazzard, it’s like a vitamin you take to boost your immune system in case you catch a cold so your body can weather the storm.
“We’re all going to get Omicron, and if we’re all going to get Omicron, the best way to face it is when we have full vaccination including our booster.
“The challenge for us in the state is to make sure that our health system can cope with that oncoming virus that is so transmissible – it’s extremely transmissible.”
The Minister said international and state evidence showed that Omicron was not as “severe” as earlier variants, with the majority of people in ICU wards being unvaccinated.
“Fully vaccinated” in Australia is defined as follows by ATAGI:
The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) have advised that for the purposes of people returning from overseas travel, those individuals who are considered fully vaccinated against COVID- 19 are those who:
have received two doses of any Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) approved or TGA- recognised COVID-19 vaccine at least 14 days apart, and
are at least 7 days post their second dose, with the exception of the Janssen (Johnson and Johnson) COVID-19 vaccine, where they are regarded as fully vaccinated 7 days after the single dose
This definition includes homologous (two doses of the same vaccine) and heterologous (two doses of different TGA-approved or recognised vaccines) schedules.
This definition may be updated over time based on emerging evidence.
Damn right this definition may be updated over time. Several countries have already changed the definition of “fully vaccinated” to include “plus booster”.
When the government tells us the majority of people in ICU wards are unvaccinated, that could include people who have had one jab, or who have even had their second jab a few days ago. When questioned on this, the Victorian government has refused to give a breakdown of such figures.
Vox Day has received a message from a healthcare worker providing evidence that they are playing the same word games in other countries:
I’ve just had this news in from a Maidstone hospital consultant surgeon.
There are currently 45 people in Maidstone hospital with COVID. They are listed as half unvaccinated and half vaccinated. A 50/50 split.
But here is the realty of what I’ve been informed.
50% have had two jabs and the booster. The other 50% have had two jabs and no booster but have been marked down as unvaccinated!
Do not believe a word the government and their supporting corporations say. Not one person completely unvaccinated is in Maidstone hospital.
Finally, given Omicron has spread globally via air travel and only people who have had two jabs can hop on an aeroplane, it is very much a pandemic of the vaccinated.
We are all familiar with the fact that so much of the global Covid Tyranny network was planned years if not decades in advance.
Two obvious examples of this include Event 201 held in October 2019, during which globalist elites simulated decision making during a global pandemic, and Daniel Andrews’ selling out the entire state of Victoria to the Strong Cities Network in 2018, which helped to develop the system which coordinated the mass deployment of riot police throughout Melbourne to quell protests during lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.
Incredibly, the Northern Territory capital Darwin also appears to have prepared for the plandemic pre-2020.
The Chinese government’s desire to ensure social control is well known with its “social credit’ monitoring system the stuff of nightmares for those of us accustomed to personal freedom. But part of the software used by the Chinese government is now being exported and found a customer in the City of Darwin.
The City of Darwin has been looking at adopting smart city technology and has decided to implement facial recognition software and other monitoring solutions in order to detect anomalous behaviour or if a known criminal or someone banned from entering a specific area.
The software will then alert authorities who can intercede when someone traverses what the council is calling a “virtual fence”.
It all sounds like a good idea except that it will be scanning everyone’s face. And that’s a rich treasure trove of data that could be used in all sorts of ways.
Initially reported by The NT News, the council’s Innovation, Growth and Development Services general manager Josh Sattler said the system will use cameras and other sensors to monitor who is moving around and what they are using their smartphones for.
“(It will tell us) where people are using Wi-Fi, what they’re using Wi-Fi for, are they watching YouTube etc, all these bits of information we can share with businesses … we can let businesses know ‘hey, 80 per cent of people actually use Instagram within this area of the city, between these hours’.
Frankly, I find this a scary step further down the road of a surveillance state. With the city’s desire to use data from WiFi networks commercially and, potentially, other purposes, it reinforces my view that there is no safe public WiFi if you value privacy.
I have heard that Darwin is a haven for people trying to get away fro things, if you know what I mean.
Darwin. Nowhere will you find a greater hive of scum and villainy.
However, this goes byond all proportion for a city with a population of 161,481. That’s half the size of Wollongong.
There is simply no need for any of this. One explanation is that the NT government intends to turn its “jurisdiction” into a testing ground for forcing a segment of the population into gulags on the grounds of public safety, and if they can get away with it then the policy will be expanded to cover other segments of the population in other “jurisdictions”.
If you think this sounds crazy, you need to explain why a glorified country town at the top end of a desert really, really needs a sophisticated face recognition surveillance network bought from a communist dictatorship.
Exact parallels between George Orwell’s 1984 and modern Australia under Covid Tyranny keep occurring. This is because George Orwell wrote 1984 about the Communist Tyranny of the Soviet Union, and Covid Tyranny is being imposed worldwide by the ideological and genetic brethren of those who ruled the Soviet Union.
One of the Melbourne AFL fans jailed for sneaking into Western Australia via Darwin to watch the grand final has apologised for he and his friend’s “selfish and stupid decisions”.
Melbourne socialite Hayden Burbank flew back to Victoria on Monday night after three months in WA’s Hakea Prison. At the time of the breach, travel had been heavily restricted amid fears of COVID-19 cases spreading outside of Victoria.
Three months.
For crossing a border.
Within Australia.
Consider the fact that the line in the Australian National Anthem, “For we are young and free”, was altered this year by our cuck Prime Minister to “For we are one and free”. We aren’t even allowed to acknowledge the fact that we are no longer free. Instead we are supposed to pay fealty to a sanctified, marginalised minority.
This will become important shortly.
In a brief statement to media waiting at the airport in Melbourne, he apologised to WA and Northern Territory residents for sneaking into the states with financial planning friend Mark Babbage to watch their team, the Melbourne Demons, claim their first premiership in 57 years.
“I’d like to apologise to the healthcare workers Australia wide, the doctors and nurses who’ve put their lives on the line and worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic,” he said.
“We are deeply sorry for our selfish and stupid decisions we made.
“Even though we were both double vaccinated before we left Melbourne, we’d both received a negative test result in Darwin before arriving in Perth, the time in jail made us realise and understand the seriousness of our offending,”
They were told to say that.
In 1984, political prisoners declare their love for the dictator, Big Brother, upon the moment of their release. We discover (SPOILER ALERT) that they do so because they have been broken down by their jailers in prison. With their will destroyed, they are then put back in prison for good, or executed shortly after.
The die-hard Demons fans spent Christmas behind bars, locked up for three months after being convicted for bypassing WA’s hard border to watch footy history.
Travel from Victoria to WA was banned at the time due to the spread of the coronavirus in Victoria.
The duo flew from Melbourne to Darwin on September 14, using fake vehicle rental and bank documents to pass as residents.
They then entered Perth as tourists on September 22, bypassing the hard border despite only spending eight days in the Northern Territory…
Burbank and Babbage pleaded guilty in October to charges of gaining by fraud and three charges of breaching COVID laws in WA.
They’re due to settle outstanding charges in Darwin, linked to their entry into the NT, next year.
They’re not done yet. Western Australia is one thing, but the Northern Territory is governed by Captain Crazy Eyes (Michael Gunner).
The poor bastard will be hounded for years over this.
So, what’s the big deal about the Western Australian and Northern Territory borders? Why is it such a monumental crime that a couple of blokes who would have been celebrated as typical Aussie larrikins at any other time in our history have been political prisoners for three months, and will continue to be made examples of as a warning to us proles?
Western Australia and the Northern Territory have the highest concentration of aborigines In Australia. Aborigines have been deemed a high risk vulnerable group to Covid and must be protected. Thus WA and the NT have had some of the most insane border restrictions in the world. This is why Perth was able to host the VFL Grand Final, because its insane restrictions had indeed kept Covid out.
It’s all rather convenient.
But it gets bigger. Captain Crazy Eyes became infamous in recent months after he started putting aborigines in camps, and he held hysterical press conferences in which he spluttered that after decades of lecturing Australians about a supposed genocide of aborigines, what his government was doing now wasn’t actually genocide.
NT Chief Minister says “if you give comfort to or support” anyone opposed to vaccine mandates, you’re an “anti-vaxxer,” regardless of your personal vaccination status. pic.twitter.com/2QYGQJYNq9
He conducted these outrageous shows to distract from the fact that he was using aboriginal identity politics as a pawn with which to impose totalitarianism on the whole of Australia. It works like this:
Aborigines are deemed a high risk vulnerable group to Covid.
We can’t let any aborigines die of Covid because genocide or something.
The logic of this leads to tight border restrictions in WA and the NT.
When Covid inevitably gets in, further measures are required to “protect” aborigines.
This justifies forcing aborigines to quarantine at Howard Springs Gulag for their own protection.
Any hint that this looks like a genocidal policy must be vigorously condemned. Only the elites get to decide when genocide can be classified as genocide.
If they can get away with this using aborigines in the NT as guinea pigs, they will expand the policy to everybody else across the whole of Australia.
This policy of placing ordinary people in extermination camps to protect public health will then be expanded to other Western countries.
Thus we see how a couple of Aussie larrikins have found themselves at the intersection of bread and circuses, aboriginal identity politics, the centuries-long march of global communism and a plan to commit global genocide.
That’s why the hell for these two Melbourne fans is only just getting started. The globalists have to make examples of them, because 2022 is when they will start putting us all in camps.
I have already established in a previous article that popular culture has always been imposed ‘from above’ by the ruling powers to suit their chosen agendas. Historically, our ruling class consisted of the clergy and the aristocracy, our culture was rooted to the church and the crown, and so it was for the most part an organic expression of our people’s inner spirit. This was not to last, however, as the old order of Europe was gradually supplanted between the late 18th to the early 20th century by our current merchant overlords and their insatiable lust for money.
The discovery of new technologies spurred on the Industrial Revolution, which created for the first time the possibility of mass-production. This phenomenon gave birth to the modern conception of capitalism, and with it, the capitalist class. This class became so powerful, so wealthy, that they began to absorb or destroy the existing nobility to gain total power for themselves. The French Revolution saw the violent replacement of the Ancien Régime while revolutionaries forced their old rulers to the guillotine with cries of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!”, their new bourgeois masters made themselves at home. The old order was finally destroyed in the beginning of the 20th century – I do not believe it is a coincidence that the First World War ended with the dissolution of many European monarchies and the creation of corporate-controlled ‘democracies’.
Profit Motive
The new elite do not particularly care about the spirit or destiny of Europe’s people, they are motivated by one thing – profit. Culture and morality from their perspective is only a tool to produce the ideal economic unit for generating wealth. We can see this mechanical thinking in the American industrialists’ support for prohibition. Henry Ford justified his stance stating that alcohol “lowered a man’s efficiency”. Their support had nothing to do with genuine morality, it was merely part of a business strategy. Following this line of thought, it was not long before the ruling class realised that mass immigration provides an endless supply of cheap labour; traditional institutions and morality are obstacles to mass-consumerism; a population of infantile dopamine-junkies are easy to manage.
Replacing the Ruling Class
It is my belief that most wealthy individuals have no strong ideological ties, they are primarily interested in profit. The question I am interested in is this: How do we replace the current ruling class? If all they care about is profit, I do not believe we can convert a sizeable portion of them, our ideology restricts the flow of capital by its very nature. That being said, this Great Reset we keep hearing about threatens to crush many businesses through harsh regulation and the concentration of wealth in the hands of ‘responsible’ parties. It might be the case that many medium-sized businesses, and even some large can be convinced to throw their lot in with a dissident movement, if only to save their own skin. It’s probable that hospitality businesses, for instance, will start bank rolling the Anti-Covid-Tyranny movement in the coming years, similar situations may occur with companies that are deemed to be ‘unsustainable’. It is therefore important that we come to lead the existing populist energy and form a real movement from it. Other than that, I feel we should build up our own people to be the future ruling class, this would mean networking, forming and supporting businesses within the community etc. I am glad to see this is already happening with PA.
I do not claim to have any conclusive answers, however, I hope that by laying out the problem, we can begin to work on solutions. Feel free to comment any ideas you have below.
A new entry in the Associated Press’ series chronicling the purported heroism of Joseph Moore, a 10 year FBI informant who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, was publishedyesterday with an accompanying video.
Starting last July, the AP has published segments on Moore featuring FBI surveillance footage captured by informer during his time inside a Florida chapter of the KKK.
The FBI and AP hold that Moore’s actions thwarted a plot by a group of former racist prison guards to murder a black inmate. Moore served as the star witness in the case, leading to all three of the Klansmen being convicted. They are currently serving lengthy prison sentences.
During interviews, Moore — who has a history of mental illness — expresses that his life has been engulfed by paranoia over the prospect of the Klan taking revenge on him. Though currently living in the FBI’s witness protection program under a pseudonym, Moore alleges that KKK members have visited his home but does not provide any evidence for this despite the numerous cameras on his property.
Research conducted by National Justice reveals that a number of pertinent details regarding the 2014-15 murder plot centered in these stories have been omitted as a means to shading perception of Moore and the FBI in the most politically favorable light possible while simultaneously framing local police officers and court officers in Florida as murderous bigots.
The Hero
According to the AP’s first article, Moore’s first interaction with law enforcement happened after being discharged from the US Army in 2002, where he was trained as a sniper but never deployed in battle. During this incident, he entered a hospital heavily inebriated and dressed up in tactical gear while suffering from a psychotic episode. Moore was then put in a mental hospital for four months.
In 2008, Moore entered the FBI field office in Gainesville demanding that they investigate a Sheriff’s office for arresting his brother-in-law. Moore spun up an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory claiming that the police had planted drugs on his brother-in-law for unknown reasons.
During this engagement, federal agents — knowing full well that Moore was both unreliable and psychologically unstable — recruited him to work for them as an informant inside.
The informant was then sent out to join various Klan groups to spy on them. Moore’s behavior was erratic and he revealed his work to his wife, which caused the feds eventually to cut ties with him.
Years later, the FBI reached out to him again asking him to join a Klan group in Northern Florida. Members of the Ku Klux Klan have not been accused in acts of terrorism or murder for decades, yet the FBI in Florida repeatedly opened unpredicated investigations in order to spy on the group.
By 2013, Moore was able to quickly rise to the position of Grand Hawk in the chapter, where he was tasked with group security. Moore wore a fake Purple Heart and told members that he had served in the Special Forces, which won their trust.
Moore appears to have stayed in character even when he was not putting in work with the FBI, telling reporters that he lost personal friends during these years for going around claiming to be a war hero when everyone knew he was not.
As Grand Hawk, Moore would tell other Klansmen stories about all of the murders he had committed and his abilities as a hitman. A number of Klansmen were afraid of him.
The Villains
The supposed murder plot, as Moore and the FBI tell it, began in 2014, after the infiltrator had entered the group that previously was not suspected of criminal activity.
At one meeting, Moore pulled David Elliot Moran and Charles Thomas Newcomb to discuss a situation facing a young Klan member named Thomas Jordan Driver.
Moran and Newcomb were upset about the anguish Driver and his family were going through. Driver, a prison guard at a Florida prison, was jumped by a black inmate named Warren Williams, a repeat violent felon.
During the fight, Driver was bitten by Williams, and following a medical examination, was told he had contracted Hepatitis C, a serious illness that leads to liver failure.
Driver later learned that he had received a false positive. The Associated Press reported that he learned this weeks later, likely to obfuscate the vulnerability him and his friends may have been feeling when they responded positively to Moore’s tough talk.
Court documents obtained by National Justice reveal that Driver only found out he was not infected months after the FBI started pressuring the men to go along with Moore’s plot.
During the off hand chat, Moore asked Newcomb and Moran if they wanted to see the man who victimized Driver “6 feet under.” The men at first looked at each other, but ultimately responded affirmatively but did not do much else other than, at another date, take a drive with him to the area where Williams lives.
In other words, the FBI’s confidential informant suggested the idea, drove the plot forward, and planned to act alone.
Lacking sufficient evidence to connect the other Klansmen to their Hollywood-style murder plot, the feds got creative.
In March 2015, the FBI got the supposed target of the murder, Williams, to pose as dead for photos. Moore then met with Moran in a parking lot to show him.
Video from the wire Moore was wearing show Moran expressing surprise and delight at seeing the fake image of Williams dead.
Aside from footage like this, obtained through over-the-top deception, the FBI’s evidence during the trial of Newcomb and Moran relied on the honest testimony of a mentally ill snitch they paid specifically to set people up and score convictions.
Moran and Newcomb were convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2017, while Driver ended up pleading guilty and getting four years.
The Victim
According to research conducted by National Justice, the Warren Antonio Williams — the man the Associated Press portrays of a victim of white supremacist violence — is a repeat violent felon who has been arrested numerous times in the last 10 years in the St. Augustine and Jacksonville areas.
In 2012, 36-year-old Williams was charged with assaulting a police officer, Aggravated Assault with a weapon, and numerous weapon’s offenses. His attack on Driver during incarceration came after he was given a lax plea deal by prosecutors, despite his history as a fugitive.
Williams has been arrested a number of times since “surviving” the 2014-15 FBI Klan plot, including for a felony in 2016.
Williams and his mother hold that they live in fear of the Klan coming for them. The AP journalist even remarked that their town, Palatka, has a long history of Klan violence.
In what can only be called an ironic indictment of both the media’s narrative and the FBI’s investigative priorities, the only violence Williams has been subjected to has been at the hands of a black man, Izell Gadson, who in 2018 shot Williams in an attempt to rob him at a Palatka bus stop.
No FBI, No “White Supremacist” Violence
Moran and Newcomb both appealed their convictions to higher courts in Florida.
They argued that the confidential informant was the sole actor in the murder plot and that they only expressed approval his actions out of group loyalty and fear of trying to stop him.
The murder conspiracy, in other words, would have never existed without the FBI going through great lengths to insert a paid provocateur with the intent of tricking people into the conspiracy.
In a 2019 ruling, the court’s rejected their appeals. They expressed deference to state’s evidence, most of which relied on the unreliable Moore recounting and contextualizing what transpired.
Ultimately, a fair observer can ascertain that the Florida Klan case was based on FBI agents wasting their bloated $10 billion dollar counter-terrorism budget to try and will fictional portrayals of white “racists” in television and movies into reality.
The Australian Army: Lin always told her teachers her name was Amy. She grew up on a diet of rice, soy milk and McDonalds. She never told her parents about Abhey, they would have freaked….or Hameed, or Ahok, or Fergus…or Nakoro.
In her second year of Accounting at Melbourne University she got a White 1st year guy who liked her banned from the campus because he asked her where she was from.
She joined the Army Reserves because the tax-free salary could help save for a house deposit. Her parents are mortified, convinced she’ll never find a good husband.
Once she got in and had to study Australia’s military history, she was shocked to discover how many Aussies died in World War One. All she had gathered at secondary college was that Australia fought in Gallipoli and Kokoda, and were somehow responsible for the holocaust.
She found basic training too hard.
She is on the fast track to promotion, and she keeps telling herself that she deserves it.
The People’s Liberation Army: Lin comes from a medium sized town outside Kaifeng. She learned to shoot at age 5, and took her first human life at age 7. She knows Kung Fu, speaks seven languages, is a demolitions expert and has an intimate knowledge of 3000 years of Chinese history. She can fly helicopters, jets and is in training to be an astronaut. She intends to retire from the People’s Liberation Army at 22 so she can find a husband, start a family and honour her parents.
She doesn’t understand why Westerners are freaking out about eating bugs. She has lived on a diet of crickets and drain water her entire life.
She is six and a half feet tall.
Although she has never fought in a hot war she is a veteran of multiple battles. Chinese military training involves live ammunition, where machine gunners and artillery personnel are instructed to try as hard as they can to hit the other team. Basic training inflicts the kind of fatality rate which would send the US Army scurrying home from whatever third world shithole they tried to invade. For the Chinese, the Somme is Tuesday morning.
There are 30 million other Chinese women just like Lin in her battalion alone. And they have a lot of battalions.
Yeah so I am exaggerating a bit, but our situation is actually far more grim. Multiple hilarious comparisons of Western army advertisements versus Russian or Chinese recruitment advertisements already exist.
Those Western army ads are all pozzed. How’s the Turkish one though? An all-male platoon is shown in no uncertain terms what they are training to defend – their women, their children, their families. Can you imagine the scandal if they advertised the Australian Army that way?
We used to acknowledge that our Anzacs did exactly this, fighting for God, king and country. Even before Daniel Andrews tried to tell us that the Anzacs fought for tolerance and diversity, the story was watered down. I grew up being told the Anzacs fought for freedom. If Australia ever wins another war again, our soldiers will win us the freedom to be locked down in our own homes, forced to wear masks outside and restrictions placed on how far we can travel, the freedom to choose between earning a living or refusing a dangerous vaccine, the freedom to have poloce bash your door down for internet posts, and the freedom to be put in concentration camps in the name of public health.
Now, we’re not even allowed to fight for anything real anymore. Even the stories jews tell us about ourselves are based on sentimental guff. We’re presented with random multicultural bands drawn together to fight for ideals, dreams and hope.
Nobody fights for that crap. People only fight for their mates, their families, for their people and for God. Nothing else.
Which brings us back to Lin. One woman is fighting for her country. The other one is hoping to maintain a good work-life balance in a safe work environment, free of harassment and bullying, in the army a country to whom she holds the barest superficial allegiance.
I just don’t think “our” Lin is going to fight all that hard.
The Poms are getting hammered this summer. It has been over 4000 days since they won a Test match against Australia in Australia. This seems a little too convenient:
England’s troubled Ashes tour has been thrown into more turmoil after a positive COVID test in the tourists’ camp.
This morning it emerged that a family member of someone in the English touring party had tested positive to COVID-19, forcing the entire team to remain isolated awaiting test results.
About an hour before play was set to resume, England Cricket said the team was stuck in their hotel.
“The England team and management are currently at the team hotel awaiting results of [rapid antigen tests] following a positive test in the team’s family group,” the governing body tweeted.
They have since confirmed the team has been given the all clear to play.
XYZ sources at the English team’s hotel claim they have heard fast footsteps and the sounds of skidding tires and revved engines. English team members were also overheard whispering something about “Operation Suvla Bay”..
In all seriousness, these Covid scares are a farce. Australian captain Pat Cummins missed the second Test and he wasn’t even sick. Now play has been delayed at the MCG but no English player is even sick. This is just so stupid.
The real story here is that sportsmen keep dying from the death jab, but the media runs stories about Covid scares as cover.
Three professional football players died of heart attacks in the last week alone:
>Croatian Marin Cacic, 23 years old.
>Algerian Soufiane Lokar, 30 years old.
>Omani Makhlid Al Raqadi, 29 years old.
They have gone to such an extent to hide the real story that they are happy to disrupt the most high profile cricket series in the world, just as long as they can keep the heart attacks off the front pages.
WASHINGTON – Already dealing with the economic fallout from a protracted pandemic, the rapidly rising prices of food and other key commodities have many fearing that unprecedented political and social instability could be just around the corner next year.
With the clock ticking on student loan and rent debts, the price of a standard cart of food has jumped 6.4% in the past 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the cost of eating out in a restaurant similarly spiking, by 5.8% since November 2020.
The most notable change has been in the price of meat, with beef costing 26.2% more than it did last year, pork 19.2% more and chicken 14.8% more. Bacon prices have reached historic levels, and are now 36% higher than in 1980, even after adjusting for inflation. And with new animal welfare laws coming into effect soon regarding the minimum space required for pigs, some have predicted widespread shortages of bacon and a further price increase of up to 60%.
Eggs, sugar, and fresh fruit and vegetables have also hit consumers’ wallets, putting the average cost of hosting a Thanksgiving dinner at $53.31 this year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual survey. This is up from $46.90 in 2020 – a 14% increase and the most expensive it has ever been since the organization began tracking costs in 1985.
Facing unprecedented rises in costs, McDonalds announced that its prices were increasing by around 6%, while Dollar Tree has taken the decision to ditch its branding of over 30 years and roll out a 25% price increase on many of its products, meaning they will cost $1.25.
An unmerry Christmas
Food price rises are merely one aspect of a worrying overall trend, which has seen the consumer price index – a general measure of how much it costs to live an ordinary life in the U.S. – increase by 6.8%, the largest year-on-year spike since 1982. Gasoline costs 58% more than it did last year, while gas heating has increased by over 25% and home electricity costs by 6.8%.
Rising costs disproportionately impact working-class Americans. The poorest fifth of households spend far more of their income on food and groceries than the richest fifth, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). 42 million Americans rely on the SNAP program to buy food. Seeing the urgency required, the USDA increased monthly payments in October by an average of $36.
Still, the majority of Americans are already flat broke. Nearly two-thirds of the country currently lives paycheck to paycheck, and just 39% of Americans believe that they could cover a $1,000 emergency. Thus, with rising heating, transport and food costs, Christmas is likely to be particularly lean this year for hundreds of millions of people.
Before the pandemic, one in eight Americans, including one in six children, regularly went hungry. Some 30 million children rely on schools for meals, but with COVID-related closures, that source of nourishment has sporadically been lost. Facing this pressure, many Americans simply have not been able to cope. Feeding America, the nation’s largest chain of food banks, told MintPress that they have been forced to purchase 58% more food than last year to meet ever-rising demand. Katie Fitzgerald, the company’s president and COO, stated:
There are more than 38 million people, including nearly 12 million children, facing hunger in the U.S. Our food banks and partners are resilient and are doing everything they can to continue to provide food to our neighbors in need, but we cannot sustain this level of response without the continued support from the public and private sector.”
The effects have been felt across the country, but not equally. Save The Children identifies East Carroll Parish, Louisiana as the county with the highest food insecurity rate in the nation. In the far northeast of Louisiana, among the bayous and fields just west of the Mississippi River, 40% of children do not get enough food to eat; a rate comparable with Bangladesh and Peru, and higher than in sub-Saharan nations such as Mali. Those on the front lines against hunger told MintPress that rising prices have dramatically affected the amount of groceries they could purchase and distribute. Jen Toth, Executive Director of the Food Bank of Northeast Louisiana, noted:
The higher cost of food has definitely been felt by those living on very low fixed incomes or low hourly wages. Their dollars simply don’t stretch as far, and they aren’t able to buy the same amount of food compared to a year ago. Unlike rent and utilities, food is one expense that a person can control, but unfortunately that can mean in order to be able to pay other bills, a senior or a family won’t have enough money left to buy food.”
A bread-and-butter wave?
The political consequences of hunger are profound and unpredictable but could be the spark that lights a powder keg of anger and resentment that would make the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests look tame by comparison. President Joe Biden’s approval ratings are sinking, with some polls showing he is backed by only 39% of Americans. Even fewer – 31% – think the country is on the right track. Already, Republicans appear to be making the greatly increased cost of food and gasoline a major focus of their attacks against the 46th president. The hashtag “#ThanksgivingTax” trended on social media last month, as conservatives pinned the blame for the costly festivities on their political opponents.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 34 Senate seats, and many governorships and state legislative majorities will be decided in the 2022 midterm elections. Preliminary polling suggests a huge red wave of anger sweeping across the United States. As CNN recently wrote, “Pretty much every single indicator that pointed to a Democratic wave in the 2018 midterms now points to a Republican one in the 2022 midterms.”
Biden has backtracked on debt cancellation promises, while the Democrats, stymied by the stubborn recalcitrance of Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), appear to have shelved the Build Back Better agenda until at least the new year. Build Back Better includes a great deal of poverty relief that food banks and other charities have been imploring the government to pass. While the general public often pays little attention to political scandals on the hill, food and gas prices are things that tangibly affect every one of us. These bread-and-butter issues could translate into a wave of public resentment and a slump in support among the Democrats’ voter base.
However, an electoral defeat turning him into a lame duck president might be the least of Biden’s woes. Around the world, rising food prices pushing people to the brink have frequently been the catalyst for mass actions, rebellions and revolutions.
Marion Nestle, professor emerita at New York University and author of the seminal work “Food Politics,” warned:
Rising food prices are not popular and [are] viewed as a sign of poor government. They are already having political consequences in that they are viewed as a criticism of Biden administration policies, whether or not those policies are actually responsible. Hungry people, harking back to Shakespeare, are dangerous. Hunger induces desperation.”
Nestle suggested that the political ramifications of rising prices depend upon how desperate people become. “I don’t have a crystal ball. If people can’t afford to feed their families, and the shortfalls are not made up by food assistance policies, it’s hard to predict what will happen,” she observed. “But it seems to me that a basic function of government is to ensure the welfare of its citizens and that means food, among other necessities.”
Food corps bring home the bacon
Facing increased criticism, the Biden administration has placed the blame for inflated prices on “the greed of the meat conglomerates.” “When people go to the grocery store and they’re trying to buy a pound of meat, two pounds of meat, ten pounds of meat, the prices are higher,” said White House Spokesperson Jen Psaki on Tuesday. “You could call it corporate greed, sure,” she added.
While Republicans have cast this off as shifting responsibility, there is certainly some truth to Psaki’s claims. While working-class Americans have been feeling the strain, food giants have been reveling in profits. The share price of Tyson Foods (the country’s largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef and pork) has moved from $63.05 last Christmas to $86.63 today – a 37% jump. Meanwhile, PepsiCo stock has risen from $145.06 to $171.82 and Nestlé’s from $109.56 to $137.13 over the same period. (Marion Nestle is not related to the food conglomerate).
Also to blame is a worldwide shortage of nitrogen fertilizer, meaning that prices are at least 80% higher than last year. Farmers held off purchasing it in the hopes that costs would drop, but instead were left with the options of paying the greatly increased price or going without and accepting far worse crop yields for 2021– both of which translate into higher prices for the consumer.
The hot and dry summer of 2021, which caused fires across the western part of the continent and parched fields across the midwest, is also a serious factor. The USDA recently announcedthat the 2021 wheat harvest was America’s worst in 20 years. The record temperatures also destroyed Canada’s agricultural output, with wheat production dropping by 35% and canola by 24%. Higher fuel prices also greatly affected the agricultural sector.
These costs have been passed down to stores, food banks, and, ultimately, the consumer. “Supply chain disruptions, lower inventories at the retail and manufacturer level, costs for fuel, transportation and labor shortages, along with other disruptions, are affecting food banks throughout the country. Freight costs to move donated food have increased over 20%,” Fitzgerald said.
There is little good news on the horizon, as food prices are set to rise again in the near future. The USDA predicts at-home expenses will increase by 1.5% to 2.5% and restaurant prices by between 3% and 4%. It should be noted, however, that the USDA underestimated the 2021 rise considerably.
A global powder keg
If the situation is bad in the United States, it is perilous around the globe. Fully 811 million people, around one tenth of the world’s population, already regularly go hungry, according to the United Nations. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization notes that food prices globally are as high as they have been in living memory, with the cost of nourishment spiking by 37% in the past 12 months.
Much of the world is at risk of famine. The UN is warning that 28 million people in western and central Africa are at risk of starvation if nothing is done. Madagascar is also facing its worst drought in 40 years, and is in need of urgent food aid. Yet with the pandemic interfering with both harvests and global supply lines, this is no easy task.
Meanwhile, Lebanon is facing a range of crises, from an economic collapse to the massive destruction in Beirut caused by the 2020 port explosion. Currency depreciation has seen the Lebanese pound lose 90% of its value and food prices increase by 628% in the previous two years. Across the border in Syria, 12.4 million people – more than half the population – are struggling to find food. Since 2000, the Arab world has witnessed a 91% increase in hunger, to the point where one-third of the region does not get enough food, according to a new UN report. The World Food Program has estimated it needs to find nearly half a billion dollars by February to avert a humanitarian catastrophe.The best predictor of political instability – be it wars, coups, revolutions or revolts – is not GDP or unemployment; it is the price of staple foods. “If I were to pick a single indicator – economic, political, social – that I think will tell us more than any other, it would be the price of grain,” said Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute.
Few remember it today, but 11 years ago, the Arab Spring was sparked by rising food insecurity. Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit and vegetable vendor, set himself on fire in the town of Sidi Bouzid, protesting the government of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. This prompted a wave of public anger, fueled by empty stomachs. By January, 2011, the country was ablaze with revolution. Ben Ali well understood what was driving the revolt, and announced the price of basic foodstuffs would be lowered. However, it was too little, too late, and he was soon forced to flee to Saudi Arabia.
The protest quickly spread to Egypt, which had seen food prices double between 2007 and 2011. Under President Gamel Abdel Nasser (1956-1970), Egypt had been the world’s largest wheat exporter. However, then-President Mubarak embraced neoliberal globalization, allowing the country to be flooded with subsidized American grain, which caused a crash in the agricultural sector to the point where the country became the planet’s top importer of wheat. This new food insecurity was the major driver of popular anger, with Mubarak being forced out to chants of “bread, freedom and social justice,” a phrase that became the slogan of the movement. Egyptians famously attached loaves to their heads to make “bread helmets” – a symbolic gesture showing the world what the protest was about. Rising food prices also played a major factor in protests in Syria and across the Middle East.
Going further back, the Russian Revolution, one of the most momentous events of the 20th century, began as a Women’s Day protest against bread shortages. However, things soon escalated, as hundreds of thousands in St. Petersburg came out to show their anger. Barely a week later, Czar Nicholas II abdicated. This took political leaders completely by surprise. As late as January 1917, Vladimir Lenin gave a speech to other political exiles in Switzerland, where he claimed that their generation would never see revolution in their lifetimes. Only a few months later, he would become the head of state.
The short-lived provisional government that took power after the czar’s fall enjoyed widespread support at first. Yet their steadfast failure to improve the desperate situation in Russia led to their demise. By the time the provisional government fell, the crisis was so profound that cannibalism was rife in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg. With the slogan “peace, land and bread,” Lenin and the Bolsheviks rose to power and changed history forever.
Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization shows a sharp rise in the Food Price Index over the past 20 years.
The current spike in global food prices is sharper than it was in 2011. Today, food is even more expensive than it was at the beginning of the Arab Spring, and most signs point towards continued increases in 2022.
The British government has historically maintained that the United Kingdom is only ever “four meals from anarchy” – meaning that the country would descend into widespread disorder, rioting and protest if stores were to run out of food for more than a day. While there is little to no indication of that happening in the U.S., hunger is on the rise, and with it political disenchantment. What form that will take remains to be seen. Globally, however, the situation is as grave as it has been in living memory, and it seems inconceivable that there will be no political ramifications to the shortages. If so, it could make the Arab Spring look mild by comparison.
On another article Politics is not beneath us, I received a long and thoughtful comment from ScotchedEarth who basically asked:
Why do we have to fight?
Why can’t we just be left alone?
Isn’t too much politics the problem with the world as it is today?
(To read his comment go to the link above)
We have all heard the phrase ‘nature abhors a vacuum’, it is also true in politics. When the Right retreats the Left fills that vacuum. Which means that every time we say I don’t want to be involved in this issue, the Left wins. Which in turn means that our lives become less free, because we are increasingly living in their world, the world they built because they turned up.
It is also true that the future belongs to the people who turn up, which is normally said to encourage people to have families. However it also means that it belongs to those who are prepared to fight for it. If you want to keep the park at the end of your street but you never support the people who also want that, you shouldn’t be surprised when they start building houses on the site of that former park.
We have reached a stage in Liberalism where it has turned its back on some of its older ideas. Ideas like personal liberty and autonomy. Now it believes that we all must believe the same things that they do. To be fair they have always believed that, but in the past they also believed that in time everyone would agree with them. Now they have accepted that not everyone will agree with them, which means that they now need to enforce conformity, either by telling people what to believe or through fear.
The days when you could live a life with little to no interference from politics are over. Even if you submit you will still never escape their politics. Because they believe that they are near the end of their political objectives, they believe that not only are they winning but that they have won…for all time. But silly people keep getting in the way, people like you and I, people who aren’t on board with their ideas. Which means that they cannot let us rest, they must destroy the last opposition to their plans, the only small resistance to their final victory.
However that isn’t true, it is what they believe, but it isn’t true.
The truth is that they are fighting a war against reality, people are not equal, men and women are not interchangeable, men and women cannot change into the other. They are not on the verge of victory.
That does not mean that they are going to stop, or that they cannot still gain smaller victories, they can and they will.
So to answer the first two questions, we fight because we are under attack and because they will not leave us alone.
But your final question needs its own answer. Too much politics is a major problem today, it affects everyone and everything and it would be better if that was not the case, but it is. Which means that if the enemy has tanks then we need tanks, if they have aeroplanes then we need aeroplanes. Whatever weapon the enemy has we need to be able to fight it. Not fighting gives our enemies an automatic victory.
Aren’t you sick of them winning?
Originally published at Upon Hope. You can find Mark’s Subscribestar here.
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