Paul Craig Roberts wades in on the Trump persecution via lawfare by the Department of Injustice. Trump, unlike Joe Biden, has committed no crime, but corrupt Democrat officials are acting to eliminate a political candidate who is otherwise likely to win the US 2024 election. It is incredible stuff, showing how a once first world nation can sink to Third World banana republic status in just a few years. Indeed, the charges resemble the Stalin purge trials of the 1930s, but with even less credibility. Thus, the latest charges relating to doubts Trump raised about the results of the 2020 election would in a sane age be regarded as a legitimate part of political debate, especially when there are grounds for thinking this. But, that then becomes a crime.

Recently there has been many disclosures from the US government of extra-terrestrial alien space ships crashing, even with bodies being found. The reports come from government insiders, who, conveniently cannot give hard evidence, which is classified, even though they are talking about this. It is odd that so-called advanced civilisations have so many crashes.

A psychology educator David Hundsness, who made a career in criticizing “conspiracy theorists,” explains that conspiracy theories appeal to segments of the population who believe that they are independent thinkers seeking the truth: “People who believe conspiracy theories believe they are in a special group of independent thinkers who know the truth. They think they have a superior knowledge while the majority of people are just sheep who are foolishly gullible and easily manipulated, and who wouldn't want to feel special. Let's start with an easy example. Imagine someone who wasn't particularly successful in school or their career. So deep down, their ego feels inferior. But if they believe the conspiracy theories, well, now they feel like they're smarter than most others, and a small group of people tell them so.”

Coming from the mainstream, naturally he proclaims that these conspiracy theorists are wrong. Yet, many conspiracy theories in recent times have turned out to be true, while initially rejected, such as the lab leak origin hypothesis of Covid. The idea that groups of powerful people work together, usually in secret, is a much more plausible theory of history, than what Eric butler called the idiot theory of history, that things just happen, with no relevant causes. That is not science at all.

I was delightfully surprised to find my very favourite Russian, Igor Chudov, commenting on the evolution of an Australia conspiracy theory. Actually, something that the mainstream at one point derided as a Right-wing conspiracy theory at one point, and a little later, the same issue was portrayed as a fact, with no retraction of the previous position. The issue in question is the Australian government moving to seek an end to cash. This idea was supposedly debunked, only to find four months later that the plan all along was for cash withdrawals will be halted or limited, banknotes removed from circulation, and bank branches will go cashless, and we should love it and thank the government on bended knee. This, of course is Australia’s move to Central Bank digital currencies (CBDC). But the example nicely illustrates how the media play with facts as it suits the globalist agenda.

https://www.igor-chudov.com/p/evolution-of-conspiracy-theories

This note needs to be read alongside Ken Grundy’s excellent piece today. There is a report that the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act, that came into effect on 1 July 2023, may be scrapped. The back story seems to be that this has given too much away about what the Voice will do, so, best not scare the punters at this stage of the game. Here is what we know at present; fingers crossed.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-06/was-wa-cultural-heritage-act-canned-after-albanese-voice-sway/102693550

Dear Editor

Here is the latest update on the Voice referendum and it is good news. It looks like, if things continue as they are, the Voice will be defeated. It is popular with the young, which is a good reason why the voting age should never have been set for teenagers. Still, if the pressure is kept up, that may not matter. The main issue is the impact social media is going to have, but again, that is a largely youth thing. But, the campaigning should not slacken off given these results as these nasty things tend to bop up at the end, like plastic waste pushed underwater.  

Professor John Mearsheimer is one of the few US academic taking an objective approach to the Ukraine war. He has given an instructive interview with Canadian writer and journalist, Aaron Maté.  In a nutshell, NATO has become obsessed with expansion, even though a previous promise was made to Russia not to do so. And, Russia’ position on the matter was dismissed. There was no attempt to get a neutrality deal for the Ukraine. So, why was this so? According to Professor Mearsheimer: “I suspect it’s a combination of stupidity, ignorance, cynicism, greed, bloody-mindedness, narcissism, sadism, contempt, misanthropy, and recklessness—in a word, depravity. Holders of high political office who prefer to send hundreds of thousands of young men to their deaths without at least trying diplomacy are simply terrible people in every respect.”

What he did not say, is the US neo cons, and Leftist Democrats really do want war with Russia, even if it goes nuclear. It is the same madness that was behind the “Russia stole the 2016” election mania.

The Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, led by epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely, in an article in the Medical Journal of Australia, has offered support for the idea that permanent masks in public in Victoria may be the best way of preventing deaths from Covid: “The net impact of mask wearing will vary according to the levels of other interventions, including vaccination rates. Nevertheless, our findings suggest that consistently higher mask wearing rates across all ages would reduce the cumulative infection and mortality burden in Victoria.” However, as critics have pointed out, the study is a computer simulation study, that was based upon the claim that cloth masks reduce transmission by 53 percent and respirators reduced it by 80 percent. But, the issue of the effectiveness of mask is controversial and there are major studies that see masks as totally ineffective for preventing Covid transmission, or that this is inconclusive. The principle here is garbage in, garbage out.

Will a new mask policy be based upon such “research”?

Australian has not got to the US level on this issue just yet, but given the cultural similarities, it will not be long. Example: a YouTuber named Kai Cenat sparked a riot when he said he would be giving away PlayStation 5 consoles in New York City’s Union Square. Thousands of youth turned up, and Mr YouTuber did not have thousands of consoles to give away. So, since we are here, why not riot, loot and smash everything up? And that is exactly what happened:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK3XwC7Z4M0

Dr David Barton “The Voice Roadshow Comes to Town,” Quadrant Special digital Edition, August 2023, has some interesting remarks about what is actually said in the Voice roadshows going on across the country. As one would predict, it is woke falling over itself:

“Langton led the charge with a potted history of Aboriginal activism since the 1960s, then moved to focus on more recent events like the Northern Territory Intervention, of which she was scathing (“harming our people”), Aboriginal deaths in custody (“institutionalised racism”), stolen generations (“attempted genocide”), child abuse (that’s “the churches”) and the usual grab-bag of victimhood complaints. Langton argued that the Voice is needed to “limit the ability of the Parliament to cause us harm”—just how precisely is that to occur? And, of course, what “harm”—the annual $36 billion spent on Aboriginal affairs? Langton also trotted out the old “terra nullius” furphy, and the audience drank it all in with rapturous applause. She also spent some time drilling into us that there is “no biological evidence whatsoever for ‘race’—it doesn’t exist”, which is highly disputed, plus the usual claims to 65,000-plus years of history, also hotly contested. Langton seemed blithely ignorant of the inherent illogicality of her own argument. If “race” does not exist, then why do we need a race-based “Voice”? She said indigenous “spirituality” and connection to the land make Aborigines special, but there’s no biological evidence of intergenerational genetic or DNA transfer of “love of land” to suggest that contemporary Aboriginal people have any greater feeling of attachment to the land than anybody else. Langton continued to bang the drum of “disadvantaged tribal Aboriginal people in Central Australia” as justification for the Voice. But these tribal people represent a minuscule fraction of the 3.4 per cent of Australians who identify as Aborigines, and much of their current situation is a direct result of their own choices. Tribal Aboriginal people have bad diets because that’s what they want to eat. White colonialists don’t make them eat unwisely. The panel made reference to the high prevalence of diabetes in Aboriginal communities, again implying it’s the whitefellas’ fault, without making any reference to tribal Aborigines’ lack of tolerance for sugar, which promotes the increased incidence of diabetes. There was more of the same about the “housing shortage”. Tribal Aborigines’ homes get trashed because so many families and individuals live in them communally because of “humbugging”. But no mention was made of that, yet Perkins and Langton would be familiar with the problem. We don’t need a “Voice’ to sort out those problems, which have been around for over five decades. We need to admit that much so-called “Aboriginal culture” is very damaging to Aboriginal people and that only by greater integration into our modern Western society will these problems be solved.”

A number of papers in the Quadrant Special Edition, August 2023, critique the idea of sacred sites, and especially the anthropology that Aboriginal tribes lived on the same land for 50,000 (it has reached 60,000 + now) years with a continuity of sacred knowledge being passed down for tens of thousands of years making this the “oldest living culture,” and therefore highly special. Hence, special treatment must be given in deference. Only a slight reflection in epistemology, the theory of the justification of knowledge claims, should give pause to this. How could this possibly be known, merely from the archaeological records which exist? The time period of 60,00 years is vast, and debates exist about what humans were doing at that time, as well as archaic human subspecies such as the Neanderthals.  Do we really know that in that time other human groups did not co-occupy this land mass?  

Peter Purcell, “The Ruse of Tradition,” shows that there has been evolution and changes even within contemporary times. As he says, what is known about the past conflicts with the romantic Leftist notions founding the Voice: “Highly romanticised and poorly informed views about traditional Aboriginal culture now prevail among the general public, including many Aboriginal Australians of mixed heritage. In most descriptions, Aboriginal culture is barely recognisable as anything resembling its traditional pre-contact forms, even allowing for normal cultural evolution. The realities of the pre-colonial Aboriginal past, with all its hardship and violence, the revenge killings and infanticide, the sexual abuse and sorcery, have been replaced with visions of a noble and idyllic society, free of the avarice and inequality deemed characteristic of contemporary capitalist Australian society. All ills are said to have been learned from the “invaders”, without whom Eden would not have been lost. These views have become the popular wisdom, are ubiquitous in the media, and are now taught as fact in schools. This pessimistic view of Australia’s founding AngloCeltic cultural heritage has been developing and deepening since the 1960s. Suffice to say here that this intellectual drift—demise might be a better term—involves a loss of faith in Western culture, religion and technology, and a turning back to nature, even a worshipping of it: what historian Geoffrey Blainey called the Great Seesaw. The idolising of nature and “native” cultures has deep roots in the Western psyche: unhappy urban intellectuals hate the “city” and bemoan the ruination of man’s inherent nobility by Western civilisation. Aboriginal people, especially those in more remote settlements, are seen to be closer to nature, with a culture that is socialistic in its sharing and caring. In this paradisial perspective, it is only a return to country and the reclaiming of culture, in the imagination if not in reality, that will restore a natural nobility to urban Aborigines and ensure a life free of burden or want. This, of course, is the age-old urban intellectual fantasy— flight from the despoiling city to the forests of his origins will restore man’s soul—but the fantasy is now pervasively spread through the broader community. Nowadays, of course, the flight is metaphorical, seeking lift from a constitutionally enshrined Voice, but with Treaty, Reconciliation and Reparation in the wings.”

This is the position of Salvatore Babones in “Democracy, Liberal Authoritarianism and the Voice,” Quadrant Special Digital Edition, August 2023. After a long argument about political theory and Trump, he says some very useful things for activists opposing the Voice as the Voice is supposed to, by definition, give a “voice” to indigenous people who at present do not have a “voice,” but  will not, being merely a road show for the elites:

https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Quadrant-202308-Aug-Online-PEindex-4-1.pdf

Keith Windschuttle in “Hiding the Voice’s Content from Voters,” Quadrant Special digital Edition, August 2023, is required reading for those wanting to know the now less than hidden agendas behind the Voice. Windschuttle has been a strong and early critic of the voice and the neo-Marxism behind the Aboriginality movement of the Left, seeing it as leading to the breakup of Australia, as detailed in his book of that name, The Break-up of Australia (Quadrant Books, 2016).  

In his paper he notes that the key document is the 2017, the Uluru Statement from the Heart which defined the Voice as a proposal to change the Australian Constitution. The Council was clear that this was a stepping stone to a treaty, as the document states:

PM Albo, who sees the Voice as the defining moment of his prime ministership, I would guess, is playing it cool on the issue of a treaty. But, as noted by Nick Cater, “The Vision of the Anointed,” Quadrant Special Digital Edition, August 2023, the treaty will be just the start. There is in fact no limit to the demands that will be made, for the world is not enough Orbis non sufficit:

https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Quadrant-202308-Aug-Online-PEindex-4-1.pdf  

“The Bumper Sticker Resistance,” by Joanna Hacckett, Quadrant Special Digital Edition, August 2023, gives some statistics that will be useful in replying to people you know from the Yes side, or at present undecided, who think not enough is being done of indigenous communities. In fact, massive amounts of monies are spent, but it does not go where it should because of usual problems of bureaucracy and posh jobs for city fellas, over where the real need is, in the bush communities:

https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Quadrant-202308-Aug-Online-PEindex-4-1.pdf  

We believe that it is a logical implication of the indigenous cultural heritage Acts, that they will effectively obliterate private property rights, and this will all be coming with the Voice. Consider, if one needs a cultural assessment to be able to dig sand from one’s property, and to have an overlord supervise every shovel full of sand dug, then how can one be said to have any right in one’s land, as traditionally understood? “Sky News host Peta Credlin says the national Cultural Heritage Act will “obliterate” private property rights which will especially affect farmers. “One of the key policies the Voice will no doubt push for if it gets up, assuming it isn’t done before then as threatened by the Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek, and that’s a national Cultural Heritage Act … that will obliterate private property rights, particularly for our farmers,” Ms Credlin said.”

https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/peta-credlin/potential-national-cultural-heritage-act-will-obliterate-private-property-rights/video/633b645397d909c70cb3eda09bcce446

The Western Australian Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2021, came into operation on July 1, 2023, and is already showing that it has teeth, if not fangs. One farmer wants to extract building sand from his property in North Dandalup, but the extraction area may be close to a historical indigenous camping ground. S, in accordance with the Act, he needs a cultural heritage assessment which could cost anything from $ 30,000 to $ 100, 000, all to be paid by the individual landowner. And, to top it off, it is also possible that a cultural representative may need to be present to examine every handful of sand take; which in effect makes the project impossible to do.

Wisely, a protest at the Western Australian parliament is planned for  next Tuesday (8 August, 2023), with farmers putting demands, including that freehold property rights extinguish any cultural heritage claim. This must be done. but, there is no chance of defeating the run of such woke laws unless the Voice is decisively defeated. The state laws show where this all will go.

Here is a sample, at state level of the sort of proposals that the Voice would get up and running if successful, only multiple it for every state, many times worse. The agreement, the “expanded settlement package” was signed by Victorian Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes with the indigenous Wotjobaluk, Jaadwa, Jadawadjali, Wergaia and Jupagulk (WJJWJ) Peoples in October 2022, and covers ten council districts, about half the size of Tasmania. The councils claim that they were not included in the negotiations, but were only told of the implications last month. While the claims are “aspirational,” rather than legal, the government claims, we know that the neo-Marxist ideology of anti-racism and white guilt, also behind the Voice, will mean that demands are most likely to not be unmet. All roads, bridges, and public structures could be renamed with indigenous names, waterways co-managed, and veto power will be given to the indigenous groups over many activities. According to one councillor, “The land council has to be consulted on everything and you’ve got to pay for that consultation … We don’t know [how much it will cost]. They might say it’s 20 bucks an hour, they might say it’s 1000 bucks an hour. We don’t know.” Why not $ 1 million per hour?

This has happened now, just under state legislative power. Just imagine what would be done with a change in the constitution, backed by the woke courts? The Voice must not just be defeated, but thrashed.

As detailed in the mainstream report below, AI is making rapid advances into medicine, with the potential to replace doctors to some degree. Now as a fierce critic of the medical profession, in many ways I do not mind this, if the AI is not totally biased towards Big Pharma, which no doubt it would be. But if there are diagnostic systems that are freer in “thought” maybe this is not all bad.