Australia

Thousands join outcry against NSW Premier’s religion crackdown

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From Family Voice Australia:

Thousands join outcry against NSW Premier’s religion crackdown

NSW restrictions meme for website4

Pressure is building on NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to end her discriminatory COVID-19 church crackdown.

Over six thousand people have signed a petition launched by the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney on May 27.

Presently in NSW fifty people can meet at hospitality venues. But as few as eleven people are prohibited from meeting at a church.

“Churches have cooperated at every stage with the Government’s public health directives during this pandemic,” Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP said.

“We understand that the shutdown was necessary to flatten the curve, but it came at a cost – not only to the economy, but also to the spiritual and mental health of our people.

“They miss gathering for worship and praying in a sacred space. I am at a loss to explain to Catholics in Sydney why our reasonable requests to the government are not being granted. 

“Contrary to what has been said throughout this pandemic, we do not consider church attendance to be non-essential; indeed, nothing is more essential than the practice of our faith,” reads the petition.

“Catholics are not asking for special treatment, we are asking for equal treatment.

“This unequal treatment of religious worship leads us to ask whether the Government is listening to the concerns of Catholics and other people of faith or indifferent to the effect the closure of our churches is having on people during these difficult times.

“The freedom to practice faith is necessary for human flourishing and a great contributor to the common good.” 

FamilyVoice Australia National Director Peter Downie said, “Governments have been heavy-handed and unjust in their treatment of churches during the COVID-19 crisis.”

Bill Muehlenberg: We all should be alarmed

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The Rise of Statism and the Reduction of the Individual

We all should be alarmed at government overreach in the corona crisis:

“Gathering outdoors is the next freedom to be restored,” said a front-page article from the Daily Telegraph. Um, am I the only one who was shocked by that sentence – and others like it? Gosh, isn’t that swell of the State to allow us to go outside a bit. So very kind of them.

Um, since when was it the right of governments to simply take away our right to freely assemble as we decide in the first place? Am I now supposed to grovel before the State and thank them profusely if they take away my right to eat or breathe and then ever so graciously give it back – if I behave?

I have said it before and I will keep saying it (no matter how much the alarmists dislike me for doing so): The two most shocking things about the corona crisis are these: one, the absolute speed and ease in which governments have shut down and locked down entire nations; and two, the ready, eager and unquestioning acceptance of all this by the masses.

BTW, I have been saying this for several months now. However, just moments ago I saw a brand-new article by Dennis Prager in which he says this: “But the ease with which police state tactics have been employed and the equal ease with which most Americans have accepted them have been breathtaking.” Hmm, we sure seem to be on the same page here.

And all this has utterly shocked me and saddened me. Yes it really has. Worse yet, I fully realise that the only thing so many folks are worried about is when their beloved footy team will be playing again. But there actually are some things that matter a whole lot more. Like freedom. Like the individual. Like democracy. Like the rule of law. Like the ability to think for oneself and ask questions.

But far too many folks really do not seem to give a rip that so much of this is being taken away from us. The masses just do not seem to care. The sheeple could not be bothered with even raising an eyebrow here. Too many simply trust the government implicitly. ‘My country right or wrong’ has now morphed into ‘My State right or wrong.’

And even more shocking is how many Christians have fallen into line here. ‘Well the government said it, so it must be right. Who am I to question?’ And, ‘Why are you so worried about technology? What could ever go wrong?’ Hmm, why do I suspect that far too many of these naïve, apathetic and undiscerning believers would just as happily intone, ‘The State is my shepherd’?

Or as Ben Davis has recently put it:

Our Government in Canberra,
Hallowed be thy name,
Give us this day our daily support payments,
And increase our debts.
Lead us not into temptation to violate your stay at home orders,
But deliver us from COVID-19.
For the power and glory are yours,
Amen

Yes, there is a place for taking sensible precautions, for some government intervention, and for some limited restrictions on our liberties. I have been saying this from day one as well. But we seem to have gone far beyond this. If the State tells us to download a questionable app, most folks will do it. If the State tells us to snitch on our neighbours, most folks will do it. If the State tells us that we cannot leave our homes unless the State allows us to, most folks will do it.

And when Big Tech and the Big State get into bed together and fully support each other in this draconian overreach and abuse of power, then you know we really are getting to the end of freedom as we know it. I have been documenting this for quite a while now, but for too many folks it simply goes in one ear and out the next.

Let me offer just one scary case in point of what we are up against. For a few days now I – and millions of others – have shared a very important, fact-filled video of two California doctors sharing informed, balanced and evidence-filled concerns about the accepted narrative on corona.

They have dared to ask how a nation-wide lockdown makes any sense, based on all that we now know about COVID-19, how it spreads, who is really at risk, and so on. It was seen over 5.5 million times. But then YouTube decided that you – the people – are too stupid and it is too dangerous to have a video like this being seen.

So they pulled it. The head honcho said that only points of view that go along with groups like WHO will be allowed. Um, if anyone thinks that WHO has handled this whole crisis well, they need to go to the back of the class. Here is just one of many pieces on the appallingly bad way that WHO has dealt with this: thefederalist.com/2020/04/09/why-the-who-is-a-danger-to-public-health/

And see this damning expose of the head of WHO: www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/10/5-shocking-facts-about-who-chief-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus/

But the censors and mind-controllers at YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and so on have all decided that certain ideas and points of view are now verboten. The people will NOT be allowed to get a differing point of view. You will only be allowed to hear what the State thinks you should hear. But I refuse to submit, and the full 68-minute video can be seen here: newtube.app/user/anthony/GlkxUvo

Please watch it and share it. One article explains the situation with this pulled video:

Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi … decried California’s COVID-19 related lockdown in particular on medical and economic grounds. Part 1 carried the heart of the doctors’ remarks in about 50 minutes…. They focused on their own experience and widened the discussion to take in California generally. They made many of the same points we have been making here over the past month, but tied the discussion to their experience as physicians and owners in the business of treating patients in need of urgent care.

Laura Ingraham invited Dr. Erickson on for a segment of her FOX News show last night, and she got action! As events transpired, she was able to report in real time that YouTube had removed the viral part 1 video following the segment — for violating YouTube’s terms of service, of course. www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/was-it-something-he-said-4.php

Another Fox News host who has constantly been trying to sound the alarm on all this is Tucker Carlson. This short video clip is also must-viewing and must-sharing: video.foxnews.com/v/6152742822001

In it examines the collusion of Big Tech and Big Government, discusses the censored video, and then says this: “Of all the many ironies of this moment, so many of them bitter, the hardest to swallow is this one: As we fight this virus, we are becoming far more like the country that spawned it – we are becoming more like China. It’s horrifying.”

I mentioned just above a new piece by Dennis Prager. Let me speak to it a bit further. In it he offers these 4 signs of a police state:

No. 1: Draconian laws depriving citizens of elementary civil rights.
No. 2: A mass media supportive of the state’s messaging and deprivation of rights.
No. 3: Use of police.
No. 4: Snitches.

He concludes the article this way:

It is said that about 1 in every 100 East German citizens were informers for the Stasi, the East German secret police, as superbly portrayed in the film “The Lives of Others.” It would be interesting, and, I think, important, to know what percentage of New Yorkers informed on their fellow citizens. Now, again, you may think such a comparison is not morally valid, that de Blasio’s call to New Yorkers to serve a Stasi-like role was morally justified given the coronavirus pandemic. But you cannot deny it is Stasi-like or that, other than identifying spies during World War II, this is unprecedented in American history at anywhere near this level.

This past Friday night, I gathered with six others for a Shabbat dinner with friends in Santa Monica, California. On my Friday radio show, I announced I would be doing that, and if I was arrested, it would be worth it. In my most pessimistic dreams, I never imagined that in America, having dinner at a friend’s house would be an act of civil disobedience, perhaps even a criminal act. But that is precisely what happens in a police state. townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2020/04/28/our-dress-rehearsal-for-a-police-state-n2567744

Lastly, let me take that final point about snitching and share what another writer has said about it:

That is not America. In East Germany, the Communists built a collective of informants. In the Soviet Union, informing on your neighbors and even your parents proved your loyalty to the state. This behavior has no place here. We’re Americans. Our first allegiance is not to the state, but to each other. In America, treason is not a betrayal of the state, but of the rights of the individual to be free of the state. Socialists betray the individual to the state and their pandemic response reinforces that first betrayal of the individual. It is no coincidence that the 1-800-INFORM phenomenon has taken root in the blue parts of the country. The culture of informants values the collective and suppresses the individual.

To the socialist, governments never fail. The experts are always wise and the public officials all-knowing. Government only fails because individuals subvert, sabotage, and undermine its well-meaning efforts. The informant helps the authorities redirect the blame for their failures by locating individual scapegoats. A nation of informants can only arise in a socialist system where people put the state first. They scowl and plot against their neighbors, spying and informing on them for the freedom they feel in their souls. The pandemic is a threat to the body of the nation, but 1-800-INFORM threatens the soul. thewashingtonstandard.com/1-800-inform-report-your-neighbors-to-authorities-its-the-un-american-way/

There are so many things happening right now that should concern every single one of us. And what concerns me so very much is that so few people seem concerned at all!

250 Years Ago This Month…

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Likely to be overlooked in a double whammy of political correctness and the corona virus, next Wednesday will mark 250 years since Captain Cook landed at Botany Bay.

As Michael Crowley writes, Cook was one of the great figures in European history in terms of his advancement of knowledge.

The three voyages of James Cook, between 1768 and 1780, substantially increased humanity’s knowledge of the globe.

Prior to his odysseys, the Earth was divided into two separated hemispheres: the northern, which was largely but not entirely charted; and the southern, which was largely uncharted, and yet to be fully discovered by the more technologically developed world north of the equator. Cook’s voyages, his achievements in seamanship, in navigation and cartography, his relentless will to explore both hemispheres, opened the way for contact between different regions and different peoples of the world, which had hitherto been impossible.

Cook’s achievements ought to speak for themselves. He mapped more of the globe and sailed further south than anyone before him. When other mariners perished in the abyss of oceans, Cook could pinpoint his location to within a mile. He even pioneered a cure for scurvy that saved countless lives and increased the longevity of voyages.

He was also one of the very few men from the lower classes to rise to senior rank in the Royal Navy. Men followed Cook to the ends of the Earth and beyond, and his attitude to the indigenous peoples he encountered was enlightened and compassionate.

This month marks the 250th anniversary of Cook charting the east coast of Australia, then referred to as Terra Australis Incognita – the unknown land of the south. He accomplished it during the three-year voyage of the Endeavour, the first of his three great voyages that marked him out as the mariner of the Enlightenment, if not all time.

Read the full article here

Lessons From The Lock Down

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The so-called lock down in Australia has not been as draconian as in other places, at least not in law. The nightly scolding by politicians, though, keeps people in their place. And if they stray, then the police are always ready to hand out $1000+ fines.

I have learned some things about people and about myself during this time that I would not have expected.

  1. People give up their hard earned rights and freedoms with very little care. Who would have though a few months ago that we would willingly embrace the closing down of churches, pubs and restaurants? Freedom of association is a basic human right, yet we have surrendered that without any debate.
  2. Who would have thought that police would roam the streets, stopping people to ask them where they are going, and to send them back if they don’t have a reasonable excuse?
  3. I have seen disturbing signs of the contempt of the young towards the old that has come from the fact that many victims of the corona virus are elderly.
  4. No surprise, but I thought I wouldn’t see it in Australia. Politicians who take your rights away will not readily let go of their power. The “crisis” must go on longer than first expected. People will have to agitate to get their freedom back.

I have also learned some things about myself in this time. The chief thing among them is that I am not so nearly introverted as I thought.

Extroverts are people who find energy from being with other people, while introverts find energy in being alone. Extroverts like to party when they are down to help them forget, while introverts like to spend time alone to work things out and find energy to face life.

I have discovered that I love people, physically present people, people that you can touch and see their body language. Yes too much of that and I tire easily, but they are people that God loves and Jesus died for, and I love them too. I miss them.

Although I am a bit of a tech fan, and have always seen ways for computers and other devices to make life simpler, looking at people on a screen is no substitute for being in the room together. I love small groups partly because you can talk seriously with one another. But the camera and the screen put up a wall between people.

I miss worship. Yes I can worship God however and wherever I like. But corporate worship is something else. People have been live streaming their services, but that seems to me to be to worship what porn is to marriage. You can have all the same bits present but it misses the point. Worship is never about a good band and a preacher performing, while the rest of us watch on. Worship is about the gathered people of God, together expressing praise and adoration to the Lord. I don’t care what anybody says, you can’t do that by way of a screen, and whatever a live stream is it isn’t worship.

I don’t know how long this lock down will last, but I suspect that with declining deaths and declining new cases the pressure will be growing for politicians to wind back the restrictions.

As they do that we need to make sure that we end up with the full restorations of freedom and human rights.

Butterfly Paradise

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The return to good rainfall after a couple of years of drought has certainly inspired the local butterflies to get breeding. It is like being in one of those tropical butterfly farms in our garden.

Although the white ones are most prolific at the moment there are others as well. At one stage I found myself in a swarm of maybe 100 butterflies all fluttering by me.

Export the Disease, Sabotage the Cure

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The Chinese Government (not the Chinese people, not being racist) is criminally culpable in so many ways in this corona scare.

First they export the disease, then they cover it up, then they export dodgy protection equipment that could kill people. Do they care?

From the ABC via Michael Smith 

Australian Border Force seizes dodgy Chinese Coronavirus face-masks & other faulty equipment sold to us by China

Wednesday, 01 April 2020

Screen Shot 2020-04-01 at 1.50.05 pm

Authorities have begun seizing Chinese-made faulty face masks and other protective clothing that is being exported to Australia to help halt the spread of coronavirus.

Key points:

  • An official has dubbed some of the intercepted Chinese personal protective equipment “dodgy”
  • Spain, Turkey and the Netherlands have rejected Chinese-made protective equipment
  • Australia has banned face masks, gloves, gowns, goggles, alcohol wipes and hand sanitiser exports

The ABC has learnt that in recent weeks, Australian Border Force (ABF) officers have intercepted several deliveries of personal protective equipment (PPE) that have been found to be counterfeit or otherwise faulty.

One law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, estimated the ABF had already seized 800,000 masks with a combined value of more than $1.2 million on the Australian market.

“We started seeing this stuff arriving roughly three weeks ago when news of the pandemic was really taking off,” the official told the ABC.

“The dodgy material is coming via air cargo because there is a backlog of sea freight at Australian ports.”

The ABC has approached the Department of Home Affairs and the Minister for Home Affairs for comment.

The Department refused to comment and the ABC is yet to receive a response from the Minister’s office.

The Federal Government today officially banned the exporting of protective equipment such as masks, gloves and gowns from Australia during the coronavirus outbreak.

It foreshadowed the plan last week, and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and Health Minister Greg Hunt have now signed off on the new regulations.

New rules are also stopping people buying up supplies of protective equipment to then resell locally at an inflated price.

It has also sought to boost supply by opening up the nation’s emergency medical stockpile and increasing domestic production.

In Victoria, Army personnel have been deployed to manufacturer Med-Con to help double the factory’s production of face masks.

Several European governments have rejected Chinese-made equipment designed to combat the coronavirus outbreak in recent days.

Thousands of testing kits and medical masks are below standard or defective, according to authorities in Spain, Turkey and the Netherlands.

The Dutch health ministry announced it had recalled 600,000 face masks on March 28.

The equipment arrived from a Chinese manufacturer on March 21 and had already been distributed to frontline medical teams.

Dutch officials said the masks did not fit and their filters did not work as intended, even though they had a quality certificate.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying has rejected suggestions the country’s exports were faulty.

“A large number of Chinese manufacturers are working around the clock to help other countries save lives,” she said yesterday.

It Begins

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The view from across the road tonight.

For the last few months, there have been plans to upgrade the level crossing. But Roads and Maritime Services insisted that the Newell Highway be kept open, so a side track had to be constructed.

The work was ready to go in January, but got stopped by the torrential rain that flooded the site. Then they aimed for 4 am March 31, and in the meantime constructed the most expensive 4 day road I have ever seen.

We were evacuated to a motel as the work is 24 hours a day, but when we returned home this morning we discovered that there was still nothing happening as the rain yesterday again left the site too wet.

Tonight they have made a start. However RMS have expresses dissatisfaction with the signs and markings on the side track and may or may not sign off on it at 7 am tomorrow. If the RMS fail to proceed then the work is postponed until some future date.

Meanwhile if you are wondering where your bugs have gone to, we may have them here.

Soap: The Real Anti-Virus

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A bit of chemistry in this article compiled by Andrew Bolt, but wade through t to discover the big weapon in the pandemic- soap. Better than sanitisers and disinfectants:

MEET THE MAGIC WEAPON AGAINST THE CORONAVIRUS: SOAP

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun

 

Forget all those sanitisers. The humble bar of soap, plus hot water, is the potent weapon against the coronavirus. I didn’t realise how good soap was until I read about its molecular structure – and its wicked tail that cracks through the virus’s fat layers that protects the poison inside. Read this and you’ll never take soap for granted again.

Ferris Jabr:

Soap is made of pin-shaped molecules, each of which has a hydrophilic head – it readily bonds with water – and a hydrophobic tail, which shuns water and prefers to link up with oils and fats…

Some bacteria and viruses have lipid membranes that resemble double-layered micelles with two bands of hydrophobic tails sandwiched between two rings of hydrophilic heads. These membranes are studded with important proteins that allow viruses to infect cells and perform vital tasks that keep bacteria alive. Pathogens wrapped in lipid membranes include coronaviruses, HIV, the viruses that cause hepatitis B and C, herpes, Ebola, Zika, dengue, and numerous bacteria…

When you wash your hands with soap and water, you surround any microorganisms on your skin with soap molecules. The hydrophobic tails of the free-floating soap molecules attempt to evade water; in the process, they wedge themselves into the lipid envelopes of certain microbes and viruses, prying them apart.

“They act like crowbars and destabilize the whole system,” said professor Pall Thordarson, acting head of chemistry at the University of New South Wales. Essential proteins spill from the ruptured membranes into the surrounding water, killing the bacteria and rendering the viruses useless.

Read the full article here