Why has Australia gone stark raving mad?

The New Neo Posted on by

Actually, it sometimes feels as though the entire world has gone stark raving mad lately. But some places have gone more mad than others:

Case in point, Australia:

It’s hard to know exactly when Australia’s pandemic response crossed the line from tragedy into farce. But future historians could do worse than pinpoint the moment when Sydney’s chief health supremo told the city’s residents to stop being friendly to one another when they ventured out to buy essentials, lest they get themselves and others killed.

“Whilst it is in human nature to engage in conversation with others, to be friendly, unfortunately this is not the time to do that . . . don’t start up a conversation,” scolded Kerry Chant, the endlessly tut-tutting chief health officer of New South Wales, at a news conference last week. “We want to make sure as we go about our daily lives that we do not come into contact with anyone who could pose a risk.”

Never mind that you can’t even go near a shop without a mask, she said. Masks aren’t foolproof and this is, in her words, “no time for complacency.” A simple g’day, in other words, could be deadly.

Happily, most of us who live in Sydney ignored the warning.

So maybe it’s not Australia as a whole that’s gone mad, but Australia’s health officials and the politicians who support them:

Australians need permission from the federal government to leave the country—applications succeed about half the time—and Australia’s states throw up their borders against one another at the slightest hint of trouble. Residents of Sydney may leave their homes only if it is “essential,” and not stray more than six miles when they do.

This is before discussing the economic fallout from the latest lockdowns. Billions will be spent by government or lost by businesses as a result.

It’s especially ironic considering that Australia’s case and death numbers are low – but, as the article goes on to explain, that may be part of the reason the government keeps the Draconian rules in place:

So how did Australia become a hermit kingdom? Geography plays a large part. By mistaking their good luck for brilliance in being able to pull up the drawbridge to the world at the start of the pandemic, Australians quickly became trapped in an “elimination” mindset that is now officially referred to as Covid Zero…

Elected officials have allowed their judgment to be replaced by that of the new priestly class of health mandarins like Dr. Chant, on whose edicts the country hangs. Hiding behind the “health advice” of such officials has become the national sport of Australia’s politicians.

I would say “read the whole thing,” but it’s behind the Wall Street Journal paywall. That’s why the initial link in this post is to the Instapundit piece about it, which liberally quotes the article.

I agree that Australia fell into the trap of thinking it could keep COVID at bay almost entirely and almost forever, if it just did the right thing. It was easier for Australia, compared to nations with land borders, to limit the goings and comings of both foreigners and of its citizens. It committed to that, and now it doesn’t seem to be able or willing to turn back.

I’ve never been to Australia, but I heard as a child and young adult that it was a land of bold, independent people. I’m sure some Australians still fit that description; YouTuber “Ozzy Man” certainly comes to mind (an irreverant sense of humor is often part of it). But I’ve heard that in recent years – even prior to COVID – leftism, sheepish obedience, and wokism have taken over to a large extent, particularly in the big cities where the vast bulk of Australia’s population lies. When did it happen?

[ADDENDUM: Australia and the 1918-1919 flu pandemic.]

Idealized photos, idealized paintings

The New Neo Posted on by

Do photographs tell the truth? Not really, and even old photographs were often touched up. Here’s a description, with illustrations. I have cued it up to show what I consider the most interesting part:

Speaking of which, I have a treasured photo of my grandmother, circa around 1902, taken at her graduation from Normal School (teacher training school). When she first showed me the photo I was a little girl, and it utterly fascinated me. For one thing, she had on such a gorgeous dress. For another, she looked very little like the beloved but elderly person I know. And for another, I could see that she looked like me (or I suppose you might say that I looked like her), especially the expression in the eyes.

My grandmother also explained to me that the photo was touched up to make her waist smaller. She showed me a series of little marks, almost imperceptible but still visible, where the original waist had been scratched out (on a negative? I’m not sure how it worked). Her waist hadn’t been large to begin with (she was about eighteen years old in the photo). But the aesthetic of the time dictated that a bit smaller would be even better, and the photographer obliged.

Here’s the photo and a close-up, neither of which show the faint scratch marks but both of which show the slightly imperfect rendering of the curve of the new waist:

The video at the beginning of this post mentions that even before photos, paintings often rendered their subjects in a more flattering light. That reminds me of what happened between Henry VIII and his fourth wife Anne of Cleves:

The artist Hans Holbein the Younger was dispatched to Düren to paint portraits of Anne [of Cleves] and her younger sister, Amalia, each of whom Henry was considering as his fourth wife. Henry required the artist to be as accurate as possible, not to flatter the sisters…

Negotiations to arrange the marriage were in full swing by March 1539. Thomas Cromwell oversaw the talks and a marriage treaty was signed on 4 October of that year…

Anne was described by French ambassador Charles de Marillac as tall and slim, “of middling beauty and of very assured and resolute countenance.” She was fair-haired and was said to have had a lovely face. In the words of the chronicler Edward Hall, “Her hair hanging down, which was fair, yellow and long … she was apparelled after the English fashion, with a French hood, which so set forth her beauty and good visage, that every creature rejoiced to behold her.” She appeared rather solemn by English standards, and looked old for her age. Holbein painted her with a high forehead, heavy-lidded eyes and a pointed chin.

Henry met her privately on New Year’s Day 1540 at Rochester Abbey in Rochester on her journey from Dover. Henry and some of his courtiers, following a courtly-love tradition, went disguised into the room where Anne was staying…

According to the testimony of Henry’s companions, he was disappointed with Anne, feeling that she was not as described…

Most historians believe that Henry’s misgivings about the marriage were blamed on Anne’s alleged unsatisfactory appearance and her failure to inspire him to consummate the marriage. He felt that he had been misled after his advisors had praised Anne’s beauty: “She is nothing so fair as she hath been reported”, he complained. Cromwell received some blame for the Holbein portrait, which Henry believed had not been an accurate representation of Anne, and for some of the exaggerated reports of her beauty. When the king finally met Anne, he was reportedly shocked by her plain appearance, and the marriage was never consummated.

Cromwell paid dearly, but Anne consented to an annulment and lived out her life in England.

What is the risk to children from COVID?

The New Neo Posted on by

We know that the risk to children from COVID is very low, even if they get it. But we love our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren so very much that any threat to them feels terrible. I want to protect every single child from any harm that could ever come to that child, but of course that’s impossible. It would certainly help to know the real risks of COVID to children, and to know the relative risks the vaccine poses to them.

I had heard that a healthy five-year-old died from COVID. His tragic story is somewhat more complex than that, it turns out. It can be summarized by saying that a previously healthy 5-year-old boy contracted a number of infections seemingly simultaneously, and one of them was COVID. He died, and it’s not certain why he succumbed to so many infections or which was the one that killed him, if indeed there was one.

Here’s an overview of some research on children and COVID:

Dr. Marty Makary is a medical expert and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Carey Business School. His research team “worked with the nonprofit FAIR Health to analyze approximately 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed with Covid in health-insurance data from April to August 2020.”

After studying comprehensive data on thousands of children, the team “found a mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition such as leukemia.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean that no child on earth has ever died from COVID itself. But it’s also been clear from the start that the number of such children must be extremely low – which is no comfort to a family which has lost a child.

The left and January 6th

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Ray Van Dune” writes:

Biden is being told that the way to win the next election is to force the Republicans to own the January 6th “insurrection”, by maximizing the disgusting conditions of imprisonments and penalties and publicly shaming the defendants, or even better to goad the conservative patriots into another more violent incident that could be laid at Trump’s doorstep. Thus, creating national division is the Democrats’ path to victory.

I would have thought they’ve already created national division enough. But yes, the heightening of the divisions and tensions is indeed a goal of this administration. And I also agree that the government would dearly love to provoke another easily controllable incident such as January 6th to be used for maximum propaganda advantage to label the right (and Republicans) as violent terrorists who need to be suppressed in the strongest ways.

What’s more, I have come to believe that even now there probably are several groups around the country that could be described this way: anywhere between two and seven disaffected and frustrated young men sitting around talking with at least that many FBI undercover agents about some sort of violent demonstration which the agents have spearheaded, planned, and organized for them.

The resulting demonstration/riot/attack will be allowed to proceed, with the FBI providing not just the leadership but also the training, most likely only to the point where the others can either be arrested and charged (as in the Michigan Whitmer kidnapping situation) but before any destructive action has occurred or even been attempted. Alternatively, the action will be allowed to go forward to the point where something more overt will happen, as on January 6th. But even then, there will never really be much danger to anyone except the group doing the protesting, because if things get out of hand violence will be used on them.

That I have gotten to the point of believing that sort of thing is highly possible is a sad commentary on the events of the last few years. I’m not fond of far-fetched paranoid conspiracy theories, but sometimes the evidence points too strongly in a certain direction. There is little question in my mind that the groups that participated in January 6th were heavily monitored by government agencies prior to the incident, and it is clear that the Capitol police and other protective forces were not allowed to be there in the proper numbers to thwart what was about to happen. It’s also clear that the Democrats and the MSM were poised to take full propagandist advantage of January 6th from the start, and that they did. We know the results so far.

Censorship as a tool of media competition

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s come to this:

In the title of this post, I said this was done by the media as a tool of competition. That’s the case, but of course it’s not solely that, and not even primarily that. The MSM is not in the business of giving us news, except about the most simple and non-political things (although come to think of it, what’s allowed to be non-political these days?).

The “journalists” of today are in the business of propaganda in service of a cause. That cause is leftism. Those remaining journalists or pundits who are not in service of that cause, and especially ones who actively oppose it, are not considered part of the team and are fair game for any attack. Most members of the MSM don’t see Tucker Carlson or any other media figure on the right as colleagues. They see them as enemies to be smeared and silenced.

Cannabis and schizophrenia

The New Neo Posted on by

Now that cannabis is on the way to becoming legal in more and more states, let’s take a look at this:

A new study out of Denmark has found that, in the past 25 years, the number of schizophrenia cases correlated with cannabis use has increased: While only 2 percent of schizophrenia diagnoses in 1995 were associated with marijuana use, by 2010, that figure had risen to approximately 8 percent.

With the caveat that correlation is not causation, I still have no trouble believing that the potency of modern cannabis, and its widespread use, would be associated with a greater risk of schizophrenia.

“There is, unfortunately, evidence to suggest that cannabis is increasingly seen as a somewhat harmless substance. This is unfortunate, since we see links with schizophrenia, poorer cognitive function, substance use disorders,” study author and associate professor at the Copenhagen Research Center for Mental Health Carsten Hjorthøj told CNN in an email. “I think it is highly important to use both our study and other studies to highlight and emphasize that cannabis use is not harmless.”…

That cannabis users have an increased likelihood of becoming schizophrenic is well established, but researchers believe their findings show that the issue is worsening and becoming more widespread.

“Of course, our findings will have to be replicated elsewhere before firm conclusions can be drawn,” Hjorthøj said. “But I do feel fairly confident that we will see similar patterns in places where problematic use of cannabis has increased, or where the potency of cannabis has increased, since many studies suggest that high-potency cannabis is probably the driver of the association with schizophrenia.”

I don’t see that these findings will matter to cannabis users and potential cannabis users or to those spearheading the drive for decriminalization and/or legalization, though. I think that horse has left the barn.

But perhaps the term “Reefer Madness” – considered a joke because of this heavy-handed anti-marijuana propaganda film – isn’t quite so ridiculous after all?

The tangled web: more on the Whitmer kidnapping plot, the FBI, and entrapment

The New Neo Posted on by

Viva Frei sums it up for you so far:

The Michigan case is especially important because it increasingly appears similar to what may have been going on and what may still be going on with the January 6th “insurrection.”

I also noticed a few interesting details about the Michigan case in this article, such as:

Initially the group focused on discussing police abuse and fantasizing about fighting back, nurturing what an FBI agent in the case later described as ‘a grievance and hatred towards law enforcement,’ BuzzFeed reported.

They were angered by the police killing of black people such as Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner, and white people like LaVoy Finicum, a rancher killed by law enforcement during a standoff in Oregon in 2016.

Certainly not white supremacists.

More about FBI informant “Dan” and the group’s activities [emphasis mine]:

[“Dan”] first wore a wire on April 30, 2020 – when the group attended an anti COVID lockdown protest at the Michigan state Capitol, in Lansing.

The men wore ballistic body armor and held pistols and AR-15 assault rifles.

[Dan] heard chatter about storming the building, and, panicked, surreptitiously informed the FBI who were listening.

To his astonishment, the Capitol guards then stood aside to let the group inside the building, where they were photographed, fully armed, outside the offices.

At that Capitol demonstration the group met another protestor, a man named Adam Fox. They got the idea to invite him to join their group, and it was Dan (who was now second in command) who vetted Fox for the group by talking to him on the phone – from an FBI office. Fox became the most violent and militant of the plotters, and Dan was well aware of his attraction to planning violence from at least the time of that phone call. Not only that, but Dan took him under his wing against the later objections and doubts of some of the group:

One of the founding Watchman, Bellar, became convinced that Fox was out of his mind, BuzzFeed reported, and repeatedly shared those concerns with Dan, court testimony shows.

Morrison, the group’s commanding officer, also expressed reservations about Fox.

But Dan was sure to include Fox in group meetings and to develop his own personal relationship with him.

Fox began referring to Dan as his ‘brother,’ according to Fox’s former fiancé.

Dan’s role in the plot and in the recruitment and retaining of Fox is extremely disturbing.

Still more:

A few weeks later, Dan drove five Watchmen and 6,000 rounds of ammunition to Cambria, Wisconsin, for a national training exercise organized by Stephen Robeson – another person working for the FBI, who had organized in June 2020 a ‘national militia meeting’ in Dublin, Ohio.

Dan rented a Suburban for the weekend, paid for gas, and subsidized food and lodging for the group – all with money from the FBI.

Another FBI informant who was a leader and organizer of militia activities. Would these groups have remained much more loosely affiliated and disorganized had the FBI not been leading the show? I strongly think so.

Speaking of which [emphasis mine]:

By the end of July, Bellar told his fellow Watchmen he was buried in debt and leaving Michigan to move in with his father in South Carolina…

Morrison told the group that he too was temporarily stepping away from the Watchmen, owing to marital issues.

Dan was then left in charge.

The FBI then asked Dan to bring in as many people as possible to the kidnap plot.

Which he then proceeded to do, including some more informants as well.

Dan brought in two more FBI informants – ‘Red,’ a supposed explosives expert, and a man known as Mark.

The group surveilled Whitmer’s home again, with Red talking to the group about the explosives they’d need to pull off the kidnapping.

The FBI informants were the movers and shakers here.

The relevance to January 6th:

On June 15, Congressman Matt Gaetz wrote a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, asking three questions regarding the ‘extent … [to which] the three primary militia groups … [were] infiltrated by agencies of the federal government.’

He wanted to know ‘how many federal undercover agents or confidential informants were present at the Capitol or in the Capitol during the ‘siege,” and ‘how many [of the unindicted Jan. 6 co-conspirators] worked as a confidential informant or as an undercover operative for the federal government.’

He has asked for a response by August 1.

When I first read about the Michigan plot the strong possibility of entrapment occurred to me, probably because of my legal training in the 70s. Going back to what I think was the only post I wrote at the time of the Michigan arrests (October 2020; note the timing in terms of possibly influencing the 2020 election) about the kidnap plot, it’s interesting in particular to look at the comments there.

The first one was from commenter “Richard Aubrey” and it went like this (October 9):

So the fibbies got a dozen nutcases to talk big. I feel better already. Somebody tell the folks in Wauwatosa that their troubles are over.
Could have been worse; five years ago, the fibbies got two jihadis to shoot up a cartoon exhibition in Garland, Tx. It being Texas, they were both dropped on the spot.

That comment certainly has withstood the test of time. And I wrote in that same thread (October 9th):

In many of these conspiracy cases that are halted before they are carried out, an undercover operative is part of the planning stage, and there often is a question of entrapment. The agents tend to know how to get around the charge of entrapment. It’s important to make sure the ideas don’t originate with the agent.

And Richard Aubrey also had this to say at the time:

Wouldn’t be the first time the feds have made use of a mental case to beef up their arrest numbers.
Wiki on the Garland, Texas shooting has a lot on the lawsuit against the feds. It was defeated when the court decided the agent was operating within the rules. Gives you an idea about the rules.

So we can pat ourselves on the back, for what it’s worth – which isn’t very much, unfortunately.

However, the extent of the involvement of the FBI in the Whitmer kidnap plot seems to be even bigger than I suspected. And significant FBI involvement in the Capitol “insurrection” of January 6th doesn’t seem the least bit implausible at this point.

I could put up a post every day about some new evidence of Biden’s befuddlement

The New Neo Posted on by

But why bother? His state has been obvious since way before the 2020 election, and it’s even more evident now.

But if I neglect the stories, it seems like I’m ignoring them entirely. So I’ll just link to a couple of posts at other blogs that discuss some of the recent examples: see this and this.

As I’ve said before, I think Biden has been losing it for some time, but I also think he was always vacant, unintelligent, self-serving, and mendacious. I think he’s being highly influenced by other people, but he’s not so far gone that he doesn’t have at least some input, and not so far gone that he doesn’t have some very basic understanding of what’s happening. But he’s extremely far from being sharp-minded.

I find it astounding that half of the nation either doesn’t seem to know or doesn’t seem to care much if at all. I understand that they are being led to this by the intensely hypocritical MSM and Democratic Party, but it still leaves me gobsmacked. But if they really have come to believe (as they’ve been told) that Republicans and Trump are tyrannically demonic, they would probably find the present state of affairs more acceptable.