Jon Chesterson, Author at The AIM Network

Author: Jon Chesterson

Born in London, schooled in Sussex and Wales, migrated to Sydney in 1988. Career in mental health, nursing, health care management and education. Currently retired but not brain dead. Occasional writer for the AIM Network, touch of critique and sociopolitical satire, creative writing and publishing poetry. Family man with grown up daughters and grandchildren. Interests ranging from humanities and social justice to climate change, protecting the planet from reckless destruction to a more than idle lifelong fascination in astronomy and palaeontology. Found sanctuary in the Blue Mountains, a place that reminds us we have a mortal responsibility to inspire in each other good stewardship - this place is our only home in the cosmos to hand on to our children's children. Truth in the morning light we cherish, wings in the cloud that lift our courage.

Website: https://allpoetry.com/Barddylbach

Three Poems, Irony and Apology to Elephants

November 9, 2024
Written by: Jon Chesterson
149 Replies

by Jon Chesterson

‘Pity a nation that despises a passion in
its dream, yet submits in its awakening’.
‘Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed’.

I think we all need a rest and break from being bombarded every day with Trump’s negative, bullying, hate-raking, scowling, arrogant face and voice, his crowd poking fingers, lies, false news, disinformation, extreme hyperbole, grandiose delusions, egocentric temper, revenge, racism, misogyny, hostility, authoritarianism, and propaganda. I for one am sick of his intrusion into my life in all our public spaces in Australia on a daily basis for goddam years, and frankly, I think that this is primarily why he is back again – because the mere mention of his name in mainstream and social media puts him constantly in the limelight, normalising and fanning his diatribe, his abusive pathology and narcissism. He is irrelevant to the world of humanity, the arts, science, reason, culture, grace, progress, fairness, genuine democracy, freedom, leadership and integrity. He is utterly unfit to govern, taking our modern world perilously down to new lows in our global struggle for survival at an equitable, economic, ecological, human and existential level.

That said, I have heard many explanations for this resurgence, but no-one has stated what to me seems obvious, well that is apart from Bernie Saunders, but no-one listens to him, least of all mainstream and social media, and in part there’s the tragedy. You will remember while Joe Biden was latterly fiddling around in the White House, Kamala Harris was on the campaign trail declaring her roots with ‘middle-class’ America, and she made that very clear, reinforced by her education, career and background. She did a fine job in the 100 days she was given, but who on either side represented the lower social economic diaspora, hard-working, vulnerable, middle to poorer communities, first during COVID, and then the greedy unspoken corporate-driven inflationary cost of living crisis? While billionaire America was throwing money at their own kind in an ever-increasing social-economic divide, a vast swathe of American people found themselves unrepresented, and the angry or disillusioned ‘mob’ found themselves an angry vengeful leader they believe, heaven knows why or how, who’d deliver the promised land. Yes, the pompous wart on the American landscape had split the vote and sailed into harbour to hold another rampant tea party, and the masses have fallen for it with a few million dollar lotto packages up for grabs from another pompous wart, Elon Musk. And he has bought his way into the White House where he will expect his dues paid back ten-fold (like any billionaire or corporate empire) at Congress’ pleasure and the American People’s expense. Those of us on the other side of the wall, the rest of the world can see there will likely be a reckoning, as the promised land is simply not within Trump’s motive, means or grasp – just what’s in it for him and his chosen mates. Beware Australia, there is a lesson gathering in the dream, do not submit on wakening or pander to the too well fed.

But it’s time for a break from the curse of this insufferable and prolonged intrusion – My apologies to elephants who are indomitably an inspiration to life on Earth, there’s room enough. Now let the poems speak.

The Irony of Three Poems and Our Times

Founding fathers while mothers look on ~ We might be forgiven for what the founding fathers of America intended, not really that long ago. In 1776, Philadelphia, the 2nd Continental Congress declared independence of the colonies as the ‘United States of America’. Under General George Washington, it won the Revolutionary War in 1783, the Treaty of Paris established the borders of the new Republic. The Articles of Confederation established a central government, but not stability, and a convention wrote a new Constitution adopted in 1789 the same year George Washington became the first president, and a Bill of Rights followed in 1791. But there was no place or recognition for the Indigenous peoples, the Indian tribes and nations of North America, who were displaced, pillaged and murdered for over a century as colonisation continued across the continent.

233 years hence, and on the eve of the 47th president (elect), and for all its pomp, ceremony and stature we can see how rigid, vague and vulnerable the Constitution is for all its concrete, and clarity, rights and freedoms, and how easy it can be overthrown in the modern era – the Capitol Hill riots insurrection of 6 January 2020, notwithstanding the American Civil War 1861-1865 (not very civil), and in 2024/5 the legitimisation and return to power of a convicted felon and the most corrupt and corruptible, liable and libellous, salacious, misogynist, treasonable and grandiose president in US history, whom a popular majority deem to elect as their leader. One who appears to paint himself as messianic, ordained by god for dodging a bullet, not merely a humble or privileged (as the case may be) founding father, though the land of these colonies and territories had been occupied, governed and protected for thousands of years, and once again not a whisper to its roots. There was no place for black American Africans not even after the abolition of slavery in the 13th Amendment of 1865, and no right or access to vote after the 15th Amendment in 1870. There was no place for women to vote until the 19th Amendment in 1920, and it took a further 81 years before Obama was elected president, but still no woman has reached the top office in the Oval Office, not even where merit and justice would have served the nation. No migrant, even if a citizen is eligible for such office, excluded by the Natural-born citizen clause. Native Americans were excluded from voting and standing for office until as late as the the Voting Rights Act 1965, and only recognised as citizens in the Indian Citizenship Act 1924. In the State and National museums, grand halls and institutions much of the history and struggle has been suppressed even up to present day, while a white man can incite insurrection and find himself immune to the law according to the highest court in the land, if he is or has been president of the USA.

More the irony, that for more than 2 centuries the US was a crucible for migrants upon which the backbone of present day North America has been built – and now the mission is to deport millions of them back to ‘where they belong’, Mexico and Latin America under the import and insult of ‘illegals’, ‘criminals’, ‘murderers’, ‘dog eaters’ and ‘rapists’. The truth is, the vast majority are seeking asylum from poverty, political oppression, safety, drug wars and foreign wars waged and abetted by the US overseas for more than a century, eking out an existence as best they can, a life no more than what any ordinary migrant or person might seek.

Back in 1883, the Statue of Liberty was being conceived and constructed, a gift from France, soon to be inscribed at her feet ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore’.

Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) was an American-Jewish poet and activist born in New York. Inspired by the construction of the Statue of Liberty and ‘Lady of the Harbour’, she wrote a poem to welcome those who travelled from far off lands and all, to forge a new life, as they set their eyes and hopes for the first time on the new world from their Atlantic crossing. From there she would look on perpetually across the waters to welcome them.

The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus, 1883

Head of Liberty, Paris World Fair 1878

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
with conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
with silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

From Lebanon to America and back ~ Israel in Gaza and Palestine. Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) was a Lebanese-American poet and philosopher born in Bsharri, northern Lebanon, a mountain village which itself was a refuge for Maronite Christians (Native and Arab Lebanese, and descendants of the Phoenicians) fleeing Byzantine persecution as early as the 7th Century AD.

He migrated to America at the age of 12yrs with his mother and siblings, where she worked as a seamstress and he was enrolled in a school in Boston. 3 years later he returned to his native land to complete his schooling at the Collège de la Sagesse in Beirut, returning to America in 1902 upon his younger sister’s death, and his mother’s the following year. Gibran did not consider himself to be a member of any particular country, saying “the whole earth is my homeland and all men are my fellow countrymen”. His poem ‘Pity the Nation’ was published posthumously several years after his death, and now considered unlikely to be a lament of his native or adopted country, rather a warning to any nation, if not prophetic.

Khalil Gibran and his family would have been greeted on entry to his new world in 1895 by the ‘Lady of the Harbour’ in New York, she being only 9 years old herself and his junior, and perhaps even Emma’s poem if not a few years later. He may also have at some later date made his acquaintance with ‘Our Lady of Lebanon’ on later journeys back and forth before or after the Great War (WW1).

Pity the Nation, Khalil Gibran, (‘The Garden of the Prophet’, 1933)

‘Our Lady of Lebanon’, bronze statue forged in France 1907, Harissa (North of Beirut)

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years,
and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.

Pity the nation divided into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.

ارحم على الامة

ارحم على الأمة المليئة بالمعتقدات والخالية من الدين.

ارحم على الأمة التي تلبس ثوبا لا يحاك.

وتأكل خبزا لا تحصد.

أشفق على الأمة التي تعتبر المتنمر بطلاً ،

ويعتبر منتصرها رائعا.

ارحم أمة تحتقر الشغف في أحلامها

لكنه يخضع لها عندما تستيقظ.

ارحم على الأمة التي لا ترفع صوتها

إلا عندما تمشي في جنازة ،

وتفتخر فقط بين أطلالها ،

ولن تنقذ نفسها عندما توضع رقبتها

بين السيف والكتلة.

ارحم على الأمة التي فيها رجل الدولة وهو ثعلب ،

والفيلسوف مشعوذ

فنه من الترقيع والتقليد

ارحم على الأمة التي تستقبل حاكمها الجديد بصوت عالٍ ،

ويقول وداعا له بسخرية ،

فقط للترحيب بآخر من خلال الاحتفال الصاخب مرة أخرى

ارحم على أمة حكماؤها أغبياء السنين ،

وأولئك الذين لا يزال رجالهم الأقوياء في المهد.

ارحموا الأمة منقسمة ،

وكل قطعة تعتبر نفسها أمة.

خليل جبرا

Gift from France, enlightening the world ~ Twist of fate. Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021) was an American-Italian poet, painter and social activist born in New York, his mother of Portuguese Sephandic (Iberian) Jewish descent. Ferlinghetti met his wife-to-be, Selden Kirby-Smith, granddaughter of Edmund Kirby-Smith, in 1946 aboard a ship enroute to France, to study in Paris at the Sorbonne. Her father was a Confederate States Army general who oversaw the Trans-Mississippi Department (comprising Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, western Louisiana, Arizona Territory and the Indian Territory) during the American Civil War.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti served in the US Navy throughout World War 2, as the captain of a submarine chaser in the Normandy invasion, 1944. He moved to San Francisco in 1951 and founded City Lights, an independent bookstore and publisher and went on to publish many of the ‘Beat’ poets, a literary subculture movement and group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-World War 2 era. He was named San Francisco’s Poet Laureate in August 1998. On 24 March 2019, on his 100th birthday, the city of San Francisco declared it Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day.

‘If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic… You are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words’ [Poetry an Insurgent Art – I am signaling you through the flames].

Pity the Nation, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 2007 (after Khalil Gibran)

Unveiling of the Statue of Liberty – Enlightening the World (1886), Edward Moran (oil on canvas)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
and whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
whose sages are silenced
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
except to praise conquerors
and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world
with force and by torture

Pity the nation that knows
no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own

Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed

Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away

My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!

And now I do wonder what all three of our American and non-American poets would say today if they could witness the Trump MAGA insurgence – twist of fate. What would the founding fathers say having opened the doors to those who came and enlightened her shores, migrants whose descendants acclaim the bully? What about the legacy stolen from Native Americans, is their voice reflected on either side of the governing parties, did anyone ever mention them?

What will Liberty say tomorrow, will she lift her cape and be deported back to France or will she make her own way back across the Atlantic Ocean in search of enlightenment and democracy?

That said, I think we all need a break from the curse of this intrusion, with or without America, and soon I guess we will know which direction they are heading, no apologies expected. We will all live long and prosper in hope and not expect it any time too soon.

‘I lift my lamp beside the golden door’,
‘sweet land of liberty’, with less to go
around than ever there was before
and Earth had room enough.

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Bondi and mental health under attack?

April 16, 2024
Written by: Jon Chesterson
10 Replies

‘Mental health’; a broad canvas that permits a highly misinformed landscape where anything goes, particularly ignorance and social stigma. Can’t we do better than this?

I wondered how long it would take for the mainstream media to blame the public mental health system and I am very disappointed SBS is leading the charge with journalist Charis Chang and SBS Editors running the headline: ‘Bondi attack puts spotlight on ‘ramshackle’ mental health system, experts say‘.

As for the two ‘mental health’ experts cited in this article, Sydney University professor Anthony Harris and National Mental Health Consumer Alliance chair Priscilla Brice, both should join their ranks as professional opportunists gathering the limelight all too ready to once again stigmatise people with mental illness, blaming it almost entirely on the public mental health system. It may not have been their intention, but they are intelligent enough to know this is the way it will be used or interpreted by the media, and perceived by politicians and the general public, looking for someone or some organisation to blame just two days later.

The act of one man, whether they have a mental illness or not does not make the public mental health system liable inasmuch as in a court of law, someone else is not ordinarily culpable or liable for an act perpetrated by another – that is mob mentality, it is speculative at best and has no causative relationship, it is reckless.

Once again it falls to consumers and carers such as NSW resident Dorothy Cross to remind us that people with a mental illness or indeed schizophrenia are more likely to be victims of society than perpetrators. Statistically speaking the public are more at risk from people with fundamentalist religious or political beliefs, extremists, people with means, criminals, gangs, those with extreme ideological beliefs, little or no ethical, moral or social values, conscience or judgment more commonly found in the general population than people with mental illness. In fact, it is people with mental illness that will suffer as a result of this kind of insensitive, poorly nuanced, motivated and timed (though I’d like to brand here) rubbish journalism. Not what I’d expect from SBS, and certainly not prematurely from our two ‘so called’ experts.

There are a number of elephants in the room

Did it ever occur to either of the two ‘mental health’ experts that the man here who carried out this horrific and dreadful act in Bondi Junction mall was or may NOT have been a recipient of the public mental health system, and was hidden from view by private psychiatry, socially and politically backed by society itself. It would appear closer examination of the initial facts emerging, that for last 18 years he had been seeing private psychiatrist/s in Queensland, which had kept him out of the purview of the public mental health system even in his own substantive State of residence. As such you cannot then blame lack of public mental health services, access, funding, follow up, care coordination or even lack of consumer financial capacity in paying for continuing medication which might keep him well (if he is able one way or another to afford a private psychiatrist, but perhaps that too became the operant factor). Nor indeed if a private patient chooses to cease seeing their private psychiatrist and later move inter-State beneath the radar.

Where is the connection here between private psychiatry and the public mental health system? Disturbingly it is the unhealthy opportunistic if not symbiotic-parasitic relationship that private psychiatry exerts on the public mental health system, removing a ‘patient’ from the more comprehensive and effective umbrella of the public mental health system and then abandoning their responsibility when their ‘client’ no longer turns up. Where is the bridge for follow up, where is the net without someone to cast it?

Yet our two experts here, choose to jump on the bandwagon with SBS, so soon after this tragic event, and blame this on a ‘ramshackle’ public mental health system in another State – That is the headline and I see no counter argument to it in this article. I find this quite outrageous and it does a huge disservice to people with mental illness, family and carers, to mental health staff of our public mental health system (with all its faults, funding, political and institutional problems), further stigmatising mental illness, mental health and de facto, if not by poor judgment misleading the general public, strengthening the reactionary and ignorant arm of politicians and health ministers who are in fact part of the problem for legislating and creating this apartheid, enmeshed privileged and blind private – public mental health divide in our society.

While psychiatrists always come out on this misguided defence of their practice and ironically blame the public mental health system or its funding, they fail to recognise their overarching conservative institutional involvement in it and the covert private psychiatry they avariciously defend sucking the energy and capacity on elitist salaries out of our public mental health system, as well as leaving it blind. Perhaps Professor Harris should consider this as a frontline social, political and broader institutional problem alongside the impact of his voice in this article on the pliable discourse of public perception at the beckon mercy of our ill-informed and largely privately owned mainstream media (hence why I am seriously disappointed with SBS, who as an uncertain private-public broadcaster entity should nevertheless know better).

As for the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance which strongly advocates for more private sector psychologists, they are only adding to this misadventure by putting their faith in another private sector establishment and powerful institution, echoing the same blunted path, ‘business model’ and self-interest of private psychology. And the chair of this self-appointed conglomerate has her expert mental health background, self-described as ‘neurodivergent’, and graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD), an MBA in Social Impact from the University of NSW, and a substantive career in racial equity. Perhaps the chair of this organisation might do better to likewise consider the consequences of her general speculation before the facts pertinent to this event are fully known, given her expert brush with social inequality in our society.

Last but not least has any mainstream media reporting on this event considered to distinguish between mental health and mental illness, noting the repeated unchallenged reporting (of which the ABC and others have been complicit), where NSW police have frequently and exclusively referred to this man and his ‘mental health background’, note not ‘mental illness’ but ‘mental health’? Mentally healthy people do not behave this way, and while mental health is not the antithesis of ‘mental illness’, nor do people with ‘mental illness’ typically behave this way – distinct and subtle nuances not mentioned by way of balance in the cited article or any other live broadcast or ‘newsworthy’ report I have read or heard to date since this event unfolded.

We have no reliable facts of ‘substance’ here, no mention or ruling out of alcohol or substance use, character profile, personality disorder, criminal behaviour, hatred, bitterness and vengeful, institutional/social alienation, or plethora of other potential and accumulative variables, factors and reinforcers at play previously mentioned; or the impact, social consequences and risks of any of these – But as usual like sheep jumping absent fences, straight to ‘mental health’, a broad canvas that permits a highly misinformed landscape where anything goes – but particularly ignorance, social stigma, poor journalism and disappointing commentary from ‘so called’ experts.

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First city on Mars – what’s it called?

March 1, 2024
Written by: Jon Chesterson
42 Replies

Like stardust
and feathers
exploding in
perpetual flower
with unending grace
into the permeable night
we pass

2^nd Incantation (AB)

My first port of call was to think about what we know of the first cities on Earth, should we resurrect them in the name of exploration and settlement of mankind’s first off-world home – The Red Planet. The first one would need to be auspicious. About names and some contenders later, first a light flurry on naming.

City names on Mars may be named in respect to their location, founder, company or space project. Location for early settlements and particularly the first settlement or city on Mars will need natural resources such as water and fuel source for power, vital minerals and construction materials, protection from the sun’s radiation and small meteorites, and steady temperature control eg underground or near the equator:

Martian pole with access to water
Caves provide shelter from the Martian sun and surface
Martian lava tube and skylights on the flanks of Arsia Mons
Hellas Planitia is a large meteorite impact basin in the Mars southern hemisphere with some of the deepest points on Mars where there might be water
Near the equator at low altitude where there is accessible water perhaps a few meters below a regolith, protection from radiation and highest temperature up to 20c at noon, much of the planet is very cold (dry Antarctic desert)
Northern Lowlands
Phoenix landing site maybe one of the most habitable zones

Some named geological features on Mars: Tharsis (volcano), Valles Marineris (deep canyon), Hellas and Borealis (crater/impact basins), Mount Olympus (highest mountain), Phoenix (Mars explorer landing, meaning firebird) – But landing on Mars is a challenge.

Urban Architecture studio ABIBOO has revealed plans to create the first self-sustainable city on the Red Planet, which is set to be ready for residents in 2100. The city will be called Nüwa, located at Tempe Mensa on a Martian cliff. Nüwa is a mother goddess in Chinese folk religion, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. She is credited with creating humanity and repairing the Pillar of Heaven.

Why – and How – NASA Gives a Name to Every Spot It Studies on Mars – But then why should NASA have it all their way, this is the whole of humanity we are speaking of, stepping out of their comfort zone.

Map of Mars – Wikimedia

Naming the first city on Mars

Some tributes – this was fun researching:

Anthropolis, Anthropos, Tetratos, Tessares, Tetra, Tetros, Eruthros, Erithrea, Elpis.

Anthropolis Ἀνθρόπολις (‘Human city’: Invented name derived from ‘metropolis’, large city or capital, combining anthro- ‘human’ and -polis ‘city’ from ancient Greek: The Acropolis, ancient citadel on a rocky outcrop, acro- ‘high’ above the city of Athens), Anthropos ἄνθρωπος (mankind), Tetratos τέταρτος (meaning ‘fourth’ referring to first city on fourth planet from the sun) or Tessares τέσσαρες (four) and could be abbreviated just to Tetra or Tetros, Eruthros ἐρυθρός (Red, ‘red city’ erythrocyte, a living planetary red blood cell), Erithrea Ἐρυθρὰ (derived from the Greek term Sinus Erythraeus meaning Red Sea), Elpis ἐλπίς (hope, ancient Greek goddess who saved mankind from evils of the world unleashed by Pandora).

Terra Nova, Urbs, Urbs Mons, Primus, Initium, Mamart, Martis, Maris, Hominum, Rubrum.

Terra Nova (‘new land’ in latin), Urbs (latin for ‘city’), Urbs Mons (‘city mountain’ in latin after Olympus Mons largest mountain on Mars), Primus (latin: first), Initium (latin: beginning/from the, going in), Mamart (oldest recorded latin form of Mars and likely of foreign origin), Martis (of Mars in latin), Maris (derivative of Mars and Etruscan child-god), Hominum (mankind), Rubrum (red).

Çatalhöyük, Perkunos, Perkuna.

Çatalhöyük (first city/proto-city in human history in Anatolia, Turkey from 7,500 BC and translated means çatal ‘fork’ and höyük ‘tumulus’ or mound from human settlement, located close to the river Euphrates), Perkunos or Perkuna (proto-Indo-European weather god of rain invoked in times of drought).

Primera, Lejos, Casa, Sierra Marte, Casa Marte, Casaroja, Colorado.

Spanish new world – Primera (first), Lejos (far away), Casa (home or house), Sierra Marte (saw or mountain range on Mars), Casa Marte (home on Mars), Casaroja (red home), Colorado (red).

Nāgarī नगर, Mangala मङ्गल, Lohita लोहित, Pratidhi प्रतिधी, Apêksh आशा, Manvantara मन्वन्तर, Antara अन्तर, Turiya तुरीय, Aruna अरुण.

Sanskrit is commonly regarded as the first spoken human language, 5,000 BC from which all languages of the world have originated – Nāgarī नगर (City), Mangala मङ्गल (personification of Mars and name for planet Mars – also means auspicious and successful), Lohita लोहित (the red one), Pratidhi प्रतिधी (Hope), Apêksh आशा (Hope), Manvantara मन्वन्तर (Mankind), Antara अन्तर (Interior, of a body), Turiya तुरीय (meaning ‘the fourth’ and referring to first city on fourth planet from the sun, also refers to the true self (atman) beyond the three common states of consciousness (waking, dreaming, and dreamless deep sleep), Aruna अरुण (charioteer of Surya the Sun god and means ‘red’).

Tolkāppiyam தொல்காப்பியம், Akananuru அகநானூறு, Akanuru.

Tamil may be older than Sanskrit 5,000 BC – Tolkāppiyam தொல்காப்பியம் (means ‘ancient book, text or poem’ is the most ancient extant Tamil text and classical work mentioning Hindu deities including god/s and godess of Mars), Akananuru அகநானூறு or shorten it to Akanuru (‘the 400’ – oldest classical Tamil work of 400 love poems).

Eridu.

Sumerian dated 3200 BC – Eridu (oldest city in Sumer, ancient Mesopotamia and its patron god Ea (Enki) ‘lord of the sweet waters that flow under the earth), current southern Iraq.

Memphis, Menes, Thebes, Thebos, Faiyum.

Egyptian – Memphis or Menes (first city in ancient Egypt/and founder), Thebes (may be as old or older) and could vary name to Thebos which would resonate with the two Mars moons Phobos and Deimos, Faiyum (also listed as oldest city in Egypt and Africa) kind of resonates with Elysium and Initium (suggested earlier).

Madjedbebe, Uluru.

Aboriginal: DNA/genomic study has found evidence of a single human migration out of Africa and confirmed that Aboriginal Australians are the world’s oldest civilization dating back at least 75,000 years, and of course Australia is a red continent with a famous red centre, as Mars is the red planet with its famous Mount Olympus – Madjedbebe (oldest known site showing presence of humans in Australia, first occupied by humans 60,000-70,000 years ago), Uluru (red inselberg ‘island mountain’ ancient rocky outcrop at heart of Australia’s red centre)

City of Khoisan.

Africa: Long regarded the cradle of modern human civilization – City of Khoisan (modern Khoisan people are indigenous to South Africa and split from other Homo Sapiens 150,000-90,000 years ago).

Something simple – Red City (RC) or space age and Monty – RC Prime. A century or two earlier HG Wells would have had a bash, but in 1898 Martians invaded us, enter Holst.

To see the great province of houses, dim and blue through the haze of the smoke and mist, vanishing at last into the vague lower sky, to see the people walking to and fro among the flower beds on the hill, to see the sight-seers about the Martian machine that stands there still, to hear the tumult of playing children, and to recall the time when I saw it all bright and clear-cut, hard and silent, under the dawn of that ‘first’ great day…

(February 29, 2024) OMG a Leap Year, maybe we will get their sooner!

UPDATE – 3 OF NASA’S MISSIONS TO MARS

Operating on Mars’ Chryse Planitia for more than six years, Viking 1 performed the first Martian soil sample using its robotic arm and a special biological laboratory. While it found no traces of life, Viking 1 did help better characterize Mars as a cold planet with volcanic soil, a thin, dry carbon dioxide atmosphere and striking evidence for ancient river beds and vast flooding [JPL, California, Mars landing 1976].

Viking 1 (NASA), launched aboard a Titan IIIE rocket August 20, 1975 and arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976. The first month was spent in orbit and on July 20, 1976 Viking Lander 1 separated from the Orbiter and touched down at Chryse Planitia.

First Mars Landscape Panorama, Viking 1 Lander (NASA) Chryse Planitia, July 20,1976

Smart little codger preparing the way – Curiosity Rover landed on the Red Planet in Gale Crater on 5th August 2012. Mission: Has Mars ever had the right environmental conditions to support small life forms, microbes? Curiosity explored the ‘habitability’ of Mars. It found evidence of water, chemicals, minerals, nutrients and energy sources that microbes could have used, and established that Mars had regions that could have supported life in the ancient past.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at the ‘Big Sky’ site on October 6, 2015, 1,126^thMartian day (sol) of the mission, collecting it’s fifth sample of Mount Sharp. The rock drilled at this site is sandstone in the Stimson geological unit in Gale Crater.

Dingo Gap (Mars), Curiosity Rover, February 9, 2014 – Looking back at dune – NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover drove across on the 538^thMartian day (sol), three days earlier.

More than 11 years over a harsh, extremely cold and dusty, radiated landscape without company or maintenance and still roving in 2024.

Curiosity Rover’s younger cousin and later mission – Perseverance landed on 18th February, 2021, Jezero Crater, Mars. Mission: To seek signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for return to Earth. Did life take hold on the Red Planet? Perseverance takes the next step by looking for signs of past life itself. Main objectives:

Geology: Study rocks and landscape at landing site to reveal the region’s history
Astrobiology: Determine whether area of interest was suitable for life, and look for signs of ancient life itself
Sample Caching: Find and collect promising samples of Mars rock and soil that could be brought back to Earth in future missions
Prepare for Humans: Test technologies that would help sustain human presence on Mars someday

The rover has made discoveries about the volcanic history, habitability, and role of water in Jezero Crater. It has been collecting diverse, compelling samples of rock and regolith for retrieval and return to Earth. Scientists hope to advance the search for signs of past life on Mars and gain insights into the evolution of Mars.

Technology aboard Perseverance has made significant strides towards future human exploration on Mars – Small lightweight oxygen-generating technology (MOXIE) which can be scaled up, completed its final run in September 2023 and created up to 12 grams of breathable oxygen an hour from the Martian atmosphere. Continuous operation over 24 hours would be sufficient to sustain an astronaut for up to 10 hours. These studies are all programmed and conducted by remote control over huge distances.

Perseverance (NASA) Rochette, September 10, 2021

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on September 10, 2021, 198^th Martian day (sol) of the mission. Two holes are visible where the rover used its robotic arm to drill rock core samples in Jezero Crater.

Mars Ingenuity Helicopter (NASA) at Wright Brothers Field on April 6, 2021, its third day of deployment on Mars (sol 46)

(March 3, 2024)

UPDATE – Q & A

Q1 Where will we get oxygen to breathe and water to survive on Mars?

‘Technology aboard Perseverance has made significant strides towards future human exploration on Mars – Small lightweight oxygen-generating technology (MOXIE) which can be scaled up, completed its final run in September 2023 and created up to 12 grams of breathable oxygen an hour from the Martian atmosphere. Continuous operation over 24 hours would be sufficient to sustain an astronaut for up to 10 hours’.

The Martian atmosphere is 96% Carbon Dioxide, which means there is significant locked atmospheric oxygen (despite low pressure and concentration) that could be extracted through plants and bacteria cultivation in an ecologically closed environment through photosynthesis. There are plants on Earth that are able to do this night and day and have a high capacity to convert C02 to 02, and Pre-Cambrian Earth was naturally terraformed by cyanobacteria from a predominant methane atmosphere to oxygen and nitrogen, known as the great oxidation event. We don’t have the resources and technology to terraform the planet surface-atmosphere, but we can produce an artificial atmosphere in an enclosed surface structure or in subterranean environments.

Thirdly, there is evidence of substantial water, mostly in the form of ice at the poles, deep canyons and underground, which could provide recyclable water for drinking, enclosed hydroponics, irrigation and potential further source of conversion to oxygen and hydrogen for power. Mars once had abundant surface water which was stripped by the sun’s rays, weak magnetosphere and gravity, but not all water was lost from Mars, just as we find underground water on Earth and in our artesian basins. The Great Artesian Basin under the Australian Desert contains one of Earth’s biggest reservoirs protected from surface evaporation. Its waters sourced from trapped rain which fell millions of years ago has never seen light of day.

Ice and ice rock is abundant in our solar system, especially in the asteroid belt and Mars has two moons. Some moons around our gas giant planets such as Europa, Ganymede and Titan may have more water than here on Earth, and we have a family of wandering comets and meteors traversing the solar system. These reservoirs, natural resources may become more accessible and transportable than from Earth in future missions to sustain or grow that supply over longer periods.

(March 7, 2024)

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Catching Up With The Future Past – A Personal Note

July 14, 2022
Written by: Jon Chesterson
14 Replies

It is indeed possible there is advanced, complex, diverse, sentient and intelligent life elsewhere, but there might be nothing for extra-terrestrials to visit if we don’t learn to live with each other, live within nature’s means, and promote fair, just and stable societies globally for all.

As a boy I often used to follow Sir Patrick Moore’s TV series ‘Sky at Night’, who was one of the inspirations of a life time interest in astronomy with his fabulous Mitchell Beazley publication, forward by Sir Bernard Lovell in 1970, ‘Atlas of the Universe’ before the days of calculators, computers and the Internet – yes fancy! And Isaac Asimov became my preferred master of galactic fictional intrigue and stunning twists on space and time with the ‘Foundation Trilogy’ and ‘End of Eternity’.

I understand the school astronomical society I founded at Monmouth still meets today almost 50 years later. All those years ago I’d have my faithful 3-inch Greenkat refractor telescope out at night on the quad in front of School House, and the headmaster would jostle out from New beneath the stars and bellow, ‘Well George Ches, what are we looking at, any intelligent life up there tonight?’ ‘Stars but no aliens sir’ and sometimes ‘a planet’ or ‘odd comet’ I’d reply, he’d chuckle and request a peek himself.

One of the field trips I organised with our physics teacher was to the 250-foot Lovell radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, built in 1957, then the largest steerable dish in the world. Not for aliens like SETI, but to examine cosmic rays, meteoroids, pulsars, quasars and masers. It pioneered early work in gravitational lensing theorised by Albert Einstein, now used by the James Webb space telescope today, which has just begun its lifelong mission this year with a fleet of stunning pictures of the early universe in ever more detail than NASA’s 33-year-old Hubble telescope and window on time.

Giant Southern Cluster SMACS 0723: First pictures (deep field) of early universe from the new infrared James Webb Space Telescope Observatory orbiting the sun. Galaxies like dust from the beginning of time 13.8 billion years ago captured by gravitational lensing – NASA, ESA, CSA & STScI, 12.7.22

All this for me began in my earlier prep school days in East Sussex, visiting the 98-inch reflector Isaac Newton telescope built and opened in 1967 at the Old Royal Observatory in Herstmonceux, relocated 10 years earlier from Greenwich, London, where I once used to feed red squirrels on Saturday afternoons, after morning matinee, popcorn, ice cream or monkey nuts at the Odeon, all for less than a shilling. Then came the Apollo 11 landing on the moon in the summer of 1969 – Launched on 16 July and walking on the moon four days later (53 years ago this week).

I contemplate the possibilities still – Space, time from various angles, traveling among the stars, in time and of advanced, complex, diverse and intelligent life elsewhere. After all there’s an estimated 100-400 billion stars just in our own galaxy, most with exoplanets and a Goldilocks zone, and many far older than us at a mere 4.5 billion years, one third the age of our universe. There’s 100 billion other galaxies out there estimated from Hubble, that will likely double with James Webb on line. We won’t find ETs looking back in time at the early universe and other galaxies in between, too early and far away for contact or interstellar travel.

But an older solar system in the local spiral of our Milky Way (13.6 billion years old) – that is possible once we can establish after all the planetary forming hurdles of evolution, if advanced life is ubiquitous or rare. Laws of probability indicate there may be many, and far more technologically and socially advanced than us, but do they have a hyperdrive, have they found a way to travel through wormholes or bend space and time? It is only 5,000-10,000 years since we emerged from the last glacial period in hunting tribes across the planet, although a precious 4.5 billion years in the making. Already we teeter on the edge of climate change, nuclear annihilation, a rogue asteroid, mass solar ejection or just that common frailty of human civilisation – getting on with one another. What if we threw in another 4.5 billion years or two in either direction, what might we find? One thing for sure – none of us will be remotely around to know. But we can imagine with a few new and old tools at our disposal and a curious mind.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 1433, about 32 million light-years from Earth – REUTERS/ESA/Hubble/NASA

This takes me back and forth in time, a few more pieces for your pleasure:

‘Why we can’t rule out a visit from alien beings‘ by Sir Patrick Moore, BBC Sky at Night Magazine, 4 July 2022 (originally published in November 2009).
Galaxies like dust from the beginning of time 13 billion years ago captured by gravitational lensing from the new infrared James Webb Space Telescope Observatory orbiting the sun – NASA unveils first images from James Webb Space Telescope, Washington Post, 12 July 2022.
The Hubble Odyssey over 33 years – Space Odyssey: Stunning pictures for the Hubble Telescope, Reuters, 11 July 2022.
The stunning universe we live in – Two experts break down the James Webb Space Telescopes’s first images, and explain what we’ve already learnt, The Conversation, 13 July 2022.
Big Bang when space and time as we know it was created, not just gravity, energy, matter – Five questions about the Big Bang – answered! BBC Sky at Night Magazine, 28 June 2022.
A Star is born – The James Webb Space Telescope.
The Hubble Legacy – The Hubble Space Telescope. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html
Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night – Dylan Thomas, 1947 Villanelle narrated by Anthony Hopkins from the movie ‘Interstellar’:

Crossing Eternity – 2017 poem and narration by Barddylbach.
And just for the fun of it all – The Galaxy Song – Monty Python’s ‘The Meaning of Life’:

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Fly against the wind with me when you vote today

May 21, 2022
Written by: Jon Chesterson
20 Replies

What comes around once every three years and leaves us washed up in a sewer for the next three, ever since the beginning of the Howard years? The stench of old and new age Liberals gorging on their federal supper and measuring the economy by how well rich people are doing. Blame it on Labor you say, precisely!

Here we are, end of the third week of May, much ado about nothing and I bet many of us are numb, frustrated, angry and tired from all the trash our Federal Government has thrown at us in the last two months and more. The mainstream media have gone feral, not just recently, but have been playing us for fools for far too long. The Liberals think they can buy us out at election time with trickle down economics, pork-barrelling, pocket money and crumbs from the parliamentary corporate table; leave us for brain dead the next three years, and that is more a measure of their management of the nation, their intellect, the economy and epitome of their imagination. What imagination you say, precisely! Do they really think we have never heard of Modern Monetary Theory and lost our enthusiasm for humanity and the world around us.

Laura Tingle wasn’t the only witness to the abject failure of the Australian press – They let us all down, led by that pack of juvenile hounds Murdoch (News Corp), Sky and other commercial channels Seven, Nine and Ten. But make no mistake even the ABC has its planted moles with their political, social and commercial prejudices, gotchya games, trivia, bullying, rudeness, disrespect, selfish and irresponsible behaviour; all those important questions the mainstream and commercial media missed, that would have led to a more informed debate, intelligent, fair, safe and progressive democracy.

And didn’t Scomo and his band of highwaymen enjoy the ride, surfing the chaos he helped create with that smirk, avoiding our public broadcasters. Another missed opportunity!

Right up to the last day, Morrison and the Liberals botched it just like they botch everything they touch, with their bog-eyed phone-it-in last minute emergency legislation, which they weren’t going to bother with – and a hundred thousand Australians were about to be left stranded on election day, they forgot about our Constitution. What Constitution you say, precisely! Good luck with those phone calls.

The fundamental democratic right of all Australians to vote? What next a robovote debt and fine to those excluded by the State from voting to add to the insult, ‘look I can take you off the list if you give us a call beforehand and then you get out of voting’. There for the Grace of Morrison trudged we, well too many of our neighbours.

There was a hole in your pocket dear Scomo,

a hole in the bucket dear Scomo, who cares?

I wonder if the slogan master and the Liberals will storm the High Court if they don’t get their own way or lose office, or perhaps Dutton will call in the army if he loses his seat?

Life under the Liberals has become a tragic farce for this country – a bucket of lies and holes for those who want it all, no matter the cost. From the economy’s point of view, there was no bottom to that bucket – Yup One Trillion the Liberals have amassed in public debt the last 9 years, three times the national debt accumulation since WWII from 1945 to 2013, when Labor last held office. Morrison and Josh have the gall to lecture us about their superior management of the economy, their financial prowess – over and over again we are reminded of the size of their egos and penises.

And then Clive Palmer quite literally rolls in again three years later to buy his way into government and advertising space with his own cashful of porkies, and I was recently reminded of that Fawlty Towers sketch on greed – Oh what a degustation parody all played out in nauseating sublime truth and vomiting, ‘One more preference Mr Palmer, it’s wafer thin’ – Social media meme, not that the mainstream media have noticed, too busy trying to catch Albanese out on another Gotchya trivial pursuit question – public mockery and humiliation. What little mindless cooked up facts, statistics and fantasies was that you say, precisely! Then Adam sorted them all out at the National Press Club, ‘Google it mate’.

I got three phone calls at home this week. The first, an auto message from Johnny Howard, bless him, the man who should be behind bars. I put the phone down after a few colourful expletives. The second was on behalf of Marise Payne, and we all know this was because it was just too hard for Scomo to show his face here in the Blue Mountains after those 2019/20 bushfires. We didn’t see or hear from him then and we wouldn’t shake hands with him now. The third was a call from someone who claimed he wasn’t a Liberal on behalf of Sarah Richards, the Liberal candidate for Macquarie, a Liberal who wasn’t a Liberal you say, nah I couldn’t quite work it out either. Well, he got more than a few expletives and he politely thanked me for the conversation. ‘What conversation?’ I said, and then he rabbited on about the wonderful diversity of opinion in Australia and how we can debate and exchange views peacefully and politely (not that I see much of that in Parliament), and what he loved about Australia.

All the time meanwhile I am thinking is this some kind of euphemistic rodent excusal for all the corruption, lies and abuse, exploitation and rejection of climate change, refugees, aged care workers, nurses, older people, pensioners, women, aboriginal communities, the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the jobless and under employed, chronic wage stagnation, robodebt, Indue cashless welfare scam, the rorts, pork-barrelling, the French, the Chinese, Afghans, Iraq, Solomon Islands and that pesky ‘Australian Pacific back yard’. Here am I thinking and once every three years, we get the pleasure of a phone call or three from an anonymous Liberal who isn’t a Liberal who enjoys having an unsolicited conversation about how wonderful the Liberals are, how safe we are in Liberal hands, and at the first sign of disgust and disbelief from me, he murmurs ‘I don’t think this is going to be successful’ – ‘For whom’ I cried, ‘for you or me?’ What the hell, the arrogance, precisely! ‘We’ll have none of that up here in the Mountains’ I says, ‘you might get away with it in Sydney’, followed by a few more John Howard expletives and another serve for absent Scomo. Conversation, diversity of opinion, I mean wow, where do these Liberals get off with their home intrusions! Well, that was the day before yesterday, and I never mentioned all the trees cut down for brochures in my post box, almost every bloody one of them from the same desperate fund thumping party.

Garbage bin collection comes round only once every 3 years, so decreed since Federation. That is all we get for our taxes, rates and levies, and now it’s time to put out the trash.

Little plug here for the Australian Greens, Labor and a handful or more of thoughtful Independents who don’t turn towards the lying Liberals or Nationals for undercover deals. There I’ve said it. Let Murdoch and the turncoat mainstream and commercial media who banish us to their ignorant corporate TV and social media virtual off world big brother sunrise fiefdoms – eat your hearts out, let them bleed.

I don’t know about you but I have four daughters and five grandchildren, and I want them along with all the other children and younger generations of this country, to have a decent and fair world to live in a few years from now. One not ravished by climate change, Russian aggression and political oppression, where we speak kindly of our neighbours and help those in need, not demonise them as the Liberals do for sake of the economy, or abandon them as the Nationals, the Clive Palmers, Gina Rineharts, Andrew Forrests and Australian corporate oligarchs do, occasionally selectively sharing their philanthropic or charitable mercenary deeds and ill-gotten tax free wares and trinkets. We are but a shadow of those we rightly fear, beneath fear itself. I’m looking for a progressive kinder egalitarian socially intelligent neighbourly Australia, is that too French or socialist for you? Time to shake off these rusty chains.

So let’s show them Australia who’s really in charge. Bugger the polls, today we have our say.

Photo from iStock

FLY AGAINST THE WIND WITH ME

If you can spare thirteen minutes of your day

for sake of the next three years and well beyond;

If you are undecided, choked numb by smoke and mirrors

or with a moment’s hesitation have your say;

If you are not quite sure the whims and moods

of this land, who would take your money, shake your

hand, pretend to care, lie again, cheat and lose their way;

If you are angry, still standing after bushfire, flood

and virus, doubt or wonder who should lead us

beyond this crucial merry-go-round of May;

And if you want only the best for your country, your children,

not the worst we’ve seen in bogan disarray;

Listen up, yours can be a future worthy for the taking,

let’s fly against the wind together and yes, remember –

Then my friend, you are ready to cast that vital vote today.

[AB, 21 May 2022 Australian Federal Election]

PS: And if you play the videos there’s more, you’ll not be disappointed!

Smoke and Mirrors by friendlyjordies

Liberals Corruption List by friendlyjordies

The state of journalism in Australia – Brainless questions posed to their readers in the last few days by Murdoch’s lapdog press –

Courier Mail: Who do you think would become Liberal leader if the Coalition loses – Peter Dutton or Josh Frydenberg? Neither if they lose their seats and who the fuck cares?

The Mercury: Do you think those infected with Covid should be able to vote? WTF!

Daily Telegraph: Tomorrow is the big day. Do you know who you are voting for? Too bad if you don’t and a nightmare for the rest of us.

Daily Telegraph: Should parents apologise for bringing babies on flight? Does flying with a crying baby require compensation? Do journos and editors get a hard-on from asking these questions, get a seat in business class! Too bad if the wealthy business woman sitting next to you has that baby.

Daily Telegraph: Do you think wages will improve under Labor? There’s a lot Labor can do to make it happen, does it matter what their readers think?

Daily Telegraph: Should NSW legalise euthanasia? Great idea if Rupert lived in Sydney.

The Australian: Who would make a better PM, Morrison or Albanese? Depends if you are going to ignore or count the lies and corruption of the last 3 years even apart from Morrison’s abject failures, incompetence, arrogance, bullying and bragging. Ignore truth, fact, science and integrity at democracy’s peril – Maaaaaate!

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Anyone See This Mad NSW Public Health RAT-Tsunami Coming!

January 19, 2022
Written by: Jon Chesterson
14 Replies

NSW Government, Perrottet and Hazzard totally out of line bullying nurses and the people of NSW over hospital staffing, $1000 fines over RAT tests and Pharmacies buckling not booming – How the liberals in NSW, like their Federal mates have lost the plot, declare their true colours!

Straight from the ABC – Our Liberal government public broadcaster mouthpiece?

NSW NURSES PROTESTING OVER EXCESSIVE SHIFTS, WORKLOADS & DEMANDS OF NSW HEALTH – ABC reports: ‘Westmead nursing staff protest over excessive overtime – Intensive care nurses will protest this morning at Westmead Hospital in Sydney’s west due to staffing issues. The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association [NSWNMA] said the COVID-19 outbreak had put pressure on fatigued nurses to work excessive overtime. NSWNMA Acting General Secretary Shaye Candish said staff and patient safety was being compromised and called on the state government for immediate support. “The NSW government needs be up-front with the community and concede the health system is not coping,” she said’.

PUBLIC COMMENT – So all those daily briefings where Perrottet, Hazzard and Berejiklian before them, thanked and praised nurses, and told the people of NSW how well our hospitals and NSW Health are coping was all lies. Meanwhile behind the scenes, not only is NSW Health not coping but they are attacking nurses, forcing them off hard-earned planned annual leave, back to work while still COVID +ve jeopardising patient care, infection control procedures, standards and staffing, and bullying them into excessive overtime.

Hello – Now the NSW government and Health resort to excessive measures and bullying, showing their true colours. Not grateful or supportive of nurses at all, but then we knew that already since they had to repeat it every day to the press in public briefings to convince themselves with their own lies, deceit and denials. NSW Health clearly is buckling and the government resorts to further excessive force on its own long–suffering workforce. So tell us where are those tens of thousands of nurses promised by Greg Hunt yesterday from the private sector? Where are they? Don’t these Liberal governments talk to each other at all? Would that not be supportive? Is that too hard for Mr Hazzard and Perrottet?

NSW FINES OF $1000 FOR NON-DISCLOSURE OF +VE RAT TESTS – ABC reports ‘Fines for non-disclosure of positive RATs from today – From today, people who fail to register their positive rapid antigen test (RAT) will face a $1,000 fine. The mandatory reporting system introduced last week, requires all positive COVID-19 RATs be recorded on the Services NSW website or Government App. People were given a week’s grace to familiarise themselves with the system but penalties start from today. Last week, Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello recognised it would be difficult to enforce. “If we didn’t put a fine on it, then people would say you’re not taking it seriously,” he said. “At the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is get people to register so that we can quickly identify those that are at high risk and then provide them with more access to a care facility. “And that’s what we’re trying to do, it’s about looking after people.”‘

PUBLIC COMMENT – Now that’s a joke right, a revelation? People have to buy their own RAT test at inflated prices, which are unavailable; voluntarily conduct their own self-test procedure because PCR testing has now buckled and failed with excessive queues, delays and errors in reporting results; register on the government NSW Service website voluntarily or is that mandatory too? And then mandatorily report a +ve test result, and if they fail to do so face $1000 fines! – Did I get this right?

‘People were given a week’s grace to familiarise themselves with the system but penalties start from today’ – Really? Not interested, no way I am registering on the website, downloading the government App or familiarising myself with it. This simply isn’t lawful, it’s forced surveillance, it’s Orwellian!

“At the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is get people to register so that we can quickly identify those that are at high risk and then provide them with more access to a care facility. “And that’s what we’re trying to do, it’s about looking after people.” – That is bullshit, this is unlawful enforcement and coercion. Do you think the people of NSW are that stupid!

‘Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello recognised it would be difficult to enforce’ – How are you going to do it? When and who decides to do a RAT test? Who provides it? How will you determine if it’s positive or negative? How will you enforce people to register who are under no obligation to conduct a RAT test or do so in the first place? How will you determine it was +ve under such an arrangement that relies on honesty, integrity and forced compliance or are you going to send out the thought police? It’s tantamount to telling everyone to go out and buy tampons or condoms, use them and if you don’t self-report it on a website so the government can evaluate your performance they fine you if you don’t comply? Do the government and its Ministers have shares in tampons and condoms too?

NSW Government wants to ‘encourage’ or enforce voluntary compliance, now that’s a joke too right? Is this the way to get cooperation and good will? Is it even lawful? It sounds distinctly Orwellian to me, shit I’ve said that already.

“If we didn’t put a fine on it, then people would say you’re not taking it seriously” said Dominello’ – Hey, I am not taking you seriously now at all if this is how you are going about it, but then I have never taken this government and its politics seriously anyway – Read my lips.

I am, we are double or triple vaccinated, fair dinkum. Some of us have managed to find and purchase a RAT test kit which we will administer on ourselves, our bodies, as we see fit when we need to in our own time and our own home when necessary or indicated. If it is +ve we shall self isolate for 7-14 days. I am pretty much doing that right now all the time anyway, because I am damned if I will go out shopping and socialising under the current Omicron wave and put myself at risk of getting infected voluntarily and unnecessarily. I shall not register on the website or download the App, and under such circumstances of unlawful coercion and force will certainly not report it but apply my own judgment and self quarantine, although quite for what right now, when government authorities are breaking their own rules and regulations? So what are you going to do Mr Dominello, Hazzard and Perrottet, will you fine and arrest us all for thinking so. Will you send the thought, talk or freedom of speech police around to arrest us in our homes – Bloody jokers!

This is why you don’t vote Liberal because they don’t have a fucking clue how to govern, manage a pandemic or behave lawfully in accordance with our basic constitution and civil liberties. Dominello, you say you are a customer service minister – Hello I am the King of Prussia, what the hell would you know about customer service? What bloody service is this anyway? Do we even need a customer service Minister? Is this a joke too!

PHARMACIES BUCKLING UNDER LACK OF AVAILABLE RATS, VACCINE AND STAFF/WORKLOAD STRESSES – ABC reports:’Pharmacies ‘buckling’ under COVID pressure – Ninety-four per cent said they were having problems sourcing rapid antigen tests, while 33 per cent were struggling to get enough vaccines to meet demand. “We believe the system is buckling under pressure right now,” she said. “We’re incredibly concerned about how pharmacists are confronting increased workloads, stress [and] pressure.”‘

PUBLIC COMMENT – Well need I say more. No RATs available anyway because the Federal and NSW Governments and large corporations have commandeered them all, something the government doesn’t want you to know or denying. No, they want you to buy these non available items in the shops and pharmacies, and they want you to do their job for them because they appear to be unable to, and fine you if you don’t – Joke, right?

And now pharmacists are buckling too, not just RATs, but vaccine supply and staffing – This is getting so repetitive, haven’t we been here before?

Did you know NSW Government and Health stockpiled these RAT kits a long time ago, failed to make them available even to their own health care staff including nurses, and now all of a sudden there’s a rush in NSW Health to get teams and services within NSW Health to order stock in for their staff and use them, but WAIT FOR IT… with RAT kit expiry dates of only a week or two left! These kits normally have an expiry date of around 12 months, so how come they are almost expired already? And here’s the perverse contradiction, nurses and health care staff are being told by their employer (NSW Health) they are not to use them or supply them to health care staff or teams, so not only are they going to be wasted but staff are neither being effectively screened or able to check their own COVID status at work/on duty. Can you smell the stench of corporate stockpiling and profiteering here, making them rare, forcing up the price, and Morrison and Perrottet telling everyone to go out and buy them, and get infected while trying to do so, nurses and health care staff included. But not to worry because Hillsong Church Youth festival goers got theirs for free from Morrison’s Federal stockpile – No fines there for mass Public Health Order breaches of a far more serious nature. Not to worry if you don’t comply, they will fine you $1000 for non-compliance or non-disclosure, done and dusted – I wonder how many times they intend to do that? Anyone would think the NSW Government and Health is deliberately trying to get us infected with COVID and take our money, staff and patients in our hospitals included. Wasn’t it Hazzard telling us before Christmas this was inevitable, and yet he disingenuously keeps telling us all to get vaccinated, when we 95% already are, that argument is already redundant, saturated and bolted, clearly it is no longer the solution, other than politically deviant.

What Hazzard is not telling you, is that vaccination will not prevent you from becoming infected per se, it protects you from serious illness and hospitalisation. So what is all the fuss about? Go out and get infected is that what he is telling us to do without actually saying it? So what do the experts say?

Cautionary note – I strongly advise you not to! All the experts are saying it is not inevitable and it is not advisable. You cannot control the outcome of a COVID infection. You could end up with Delta not Omicron or both or in conjunction with flu. Neither vaccination nor even having had COVID will prevent you from infection or re-infection, it can strike twice – Ask Djokovic or any viral expert; and there will be other variants. You will not know how your body handles it till it happens.

Would you go out surfing or swimming if you saw a rogue wave or tidal wave rolling in off the horizon, announced over the radio or while it was crashing on the shore, hey I’ve got my golden surf board to protect me. Of course not, you’d stay at home till it has passed or head inland, as we have recently witnessed in Tonga. And when it has passed, less danger or risk, less COVID and contagion around, less likely get infected – Not inevitable at all – You keep your head down, body and family safe from harm. Unless you want to play Russian roulette, which Perrottet and Hazzard are promoting with their ‘let it rip’ and now ‘fine the masses’ campaign, and all just to protect themselves, their own interests and boost their coffers!

This is exactly what NSW Health is doing by not testing health care staff all this time and using the RATs they had; instead stockpiling them till they are almost out of date and forcing nursing staff back to work on excessive overtime despite being RAT +ve anyway; and by the way all other front line workers too. And all this time they want to fine the general public for being +ve and not reporting it, are they meant to stay at home too, what’s that about? Can anyone else see how incoherent, incompetent, negligent and desperate this rat infested NSW government and the Liberals have become?

Don’t fall for this madness, this tidal wave of government bullying, abuse and exploitation. Don’t fall for this lie and deception, and especially don’t buy it over keeping the NSW economy going, nor the bought corporate and mainstream media silence. This is not less government intrusion in our personal and private lives as the Liberals boast about, this is excessive government control and invasion into our health and homes. I suggest you do not self-report unless you want to or at least till the government comes clean and behaves responsibly in accordance with the reasonable citizenship responsibilities they expect of us; and buckle down in doing their job responsibly in return, as they are elected and obliged by law and duty to do so.

Who gives a RATS? Clearly not Perrottet or Hazzard, and not Morrison.

Source: ABC NEWS LIVE: NSW Now – 19 January 2022 – https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-19/westmead-nursing-staff-protest-over-excessive-overtime/100763994

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Our Man on the Moon

December 14, 2021
Written by: Jon Chesterson
4 Replies

By our Space correspondent: Jon Chesterson

MORRISON’S INVISIBLE OMICRON-READY MAGIC SPACESUIT WITH FLY-PROOF SCREEN, SECURITY MESH AND OXY-GENE VARIANT IN NEED OF A 5-6 MONTH UPGRADE.

Yup, I was in a pathology clinic waiting room today and a gentleman sat down beside me without a mask and muttered indifferently into empty space in the middle of the waiting room, ‘I’m not contagious’, as if we were all deaf mute, invisible androids with autoimmune nanobots in our bloodstream, or just mostly stunned… and then we carried on.

People are partying downtown in night club central in CBD sector’s Rigel and Betelgeuse, while the Omicron special forces squad are knocking down the doors with their electric toothbrushes and aerosol software updates on stealth technology and asteroids. Allegedly reported to be doubling up their tactical invasions every 2-3 days in UK, but Dutton is still fixated on the China wars. If we start with 1 case of Omicron (ground zero) in Aus, after 1 calendar month we are looking at somewhere between 1,000-30,000 active cases (invasions). The dark lunar forces of Omicron are upon us.

Except we had 3 confirmed cases reported yesterday from just one event on the glitzy HMAS Flagship Casino NSW – no less a party cruise in Sydney harbour on 3 December, 10 days ago followed by the Albion hotel in Parramatta and the Cult night club in Potts Point. OMG! Cruise ships, the razzmatazz dazzle opening up of international borders and inter-state outposts on screwed up or non-existent quarantine facilities, blind Freddie all over again on the incredibly dim-witted penal space colony of NSW!

84 Covid-19 cases have been reported from one event on HMAS Newcastle-Hunter at the Argyle club last week, of which NSW Health expect in their spectacular MoC algorithm predictions, will include a few undercover Omicron operatives already, not just one. But psychohistorian Hazzard was off world and not available for superficial or intelligent comment.

We are 10/30 days in on that algorithm already and people everywhere are ditching their bras and pants, throwing precautions to the solar winds, gathering and partying, wearing their nearly 6-month-old invisible vaccination spacesuits (version 1.0) without nanobots and sniff my arse Morrison space academy badges stapled proudly on their golden space boobs. But you need your digital certificates to get past the bouncers wherever you go.

And what’s Prime Regent Morrison telling us now, announcing every day – We are 80% (of eligible age groups, so not 80% at all but another false algorithm) vaccinated and in NSW 90% (not whole of population obviously, same modelling). As if the Omicron Darth Vader gives a shit about Morrison’s PR and invisible magic spacesuit, or the colour of his arse, public LNP slogans and curiously engineered tourist ABC satellite broadcasts.

And what else is Morrison boasting about on the under-funded public broadcaster’s Planet ABC, the Sky Corporation and News Corp H2S04 – we’ve got 150 million doses of Covid vaccine in the country, so what are you all worried about? Of which only Pfizer and Moderna are approved for rocket booster fuel. But wait, only 24 million people over the age of 5 who can have it, and 2.4 million (5-12yrs) won’t even start the roll out till January, when the other ‘rubbery bouncing cryogenic space kangarood’ 80-90% of the virtual population will have up to 50% jolly roger wear and tear in their ‘invisible’ double-vaxed cosmic armoury. I wouldn’t be rushing out in the vacuum of space, under probing pulsars and into psychedelic nightclubs with my visa up and osmotic holes all over my starry torso, singing dancing queen and hugging Venus cocktails, nightclub suckers! Barely any safer docking at the nearest suburban hypermarket dodging trolleys and space shuttles in Barnaby’s barking dog suits – check out the special offers aisle, half price space gums for happy chewers and spaced out unchilled dead fish water fountain bottles from the extinct Murray-Darling, again don’t worry, it’s been through the corporate sanitiser and re-packaged!

So what happens to the other 100+ million vaccines we’ve ordered and paid for? Those which could have gone directly to poorer countries without space stations, where mining colonies hurt real bad, and the next generation Omicron 1.2s and 1.3s special squads are busy working up their new intercellular flight shuttles on QANTAS Cosmos and VIRGIN Galactic – free entry permits for fee paying corporates. Bugger the Australian Space Agency (ASA), actually delete that thought, a little too close for comfort without that interplanetary ICAC. No turn backs here, every squad’s a cheap worker and here’s what you can do for your economy!

Morrison’s not too hot on numbers, bushfires, climate change, the pandemic, jobs, economy, crosswords or anagrams, in point of fact not much good at anything at all – Go figure ‘Omicron’. Not too hot on magic spacesuits either, but here’s an idea not a million light years from home, far far away… and plenty of it.

Anyway, blood’s taken. Tried booking my booster shot when I got home, nearest appointment on Morrison’s latest ‘get your booster shot now campaign’ is at least 5 weeks away and NSW Health are uncontactable. Seen the government adverts, got the mail today, yes it’s moonshit from our man on the moon – His hologram left the building middle of last week for Prime Regency summer holidays on Hawaii Alpha, but I can still hear his carcinogenic voice every day on screen and in my head, get that hand shake away from me.

5 weeks and the invasion is already here exploiting the gap, just like climate change and there are no magic vaccinations and Aussie space suits for that, just coal bunkers and more almighty cosmic bloopers!

Reference: NSW Health reports on new exposure venues to Omicron cases (10 December 2021) https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/news/Pages/20211210_01.aspx

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Fella Down Under – Birthright Born to Rule: Balmoral, Where the Bloody Hell Are Ya?

October 19, 2021
Written by: Jon Chesterson
16 Replies

To our persistent, unrelenting shame and misfortune, he has nothing to offer on climate change, but another great tour, scheme to unravel (yet to be announced) and photo opportunity with an Australian general election coming up. Hotter than heaven here on earth and hell hath no fury than a great Aussie bushfire fanned by a climate chameleon Così fan tutte.

Yup, Morrison did Cornwall in June and now he’s going to Glasgow, to proclaim perhaps his fifth great-grandfather on the other side of the family was a Jacobite.

Watch out Scotland Morrison’s on his way to tour your country and claim his Scottish birthright!

‘More than two centuries after his ancestor was cast out of Cornwall for stealing and sent to Australia with hundreds of other convicts, Scott Morrison returned to the area on Friday as prime minister of Australia’.

‘“It’s a long time since one of my family was in Cornwall,” Mr. Morrison said in a speech in Perth on Wednesday before traveling to meet with other world leaders at the Group of 7 conference’.

‘Mr. Morrison said Mr. Roberts was his “fifth great-grandfather.”’ (NY Times).

Thanks to the New York Times PM exposé in Cornwall in June, where the roots of heritage and birthright are only a stone’s throw over the Atlantic:

“He stole some yarn in Cornwall, and the rest is history,” Mr. Morrison said. “More than 200 years of it, so it’ll be interesting to be going back there.”

He’s been stealing and spreading yarns ever since and while he was director of the New Zealand Office of Tourism and Sport, Liberal Party of Australia (NSW division) and Tourism Australia. It runs in the blood and now he’s our Prime Minister, the worst and saddest yarn in our political history, corrupt as a blood sucking Aussie blow fly on the boil of Ned Kelly’s arse. But I doubt it will stop him wanting to plonk his own sorry butt before the Scottish throne if only for another minute of demigoddery. But he might have to kneel and squeal before the Queen for that little pearl of destiny. We’ve warned the Queen about it before and we have good reason to believe she’s been listening this time, which is more than we can say for Morrison and his Aussie salute to women.

Message for the wee folks in Scotland we love you, so you might want to deport and detain him indefinitely on St Kilda, we don’t want him back and the French don’t like him either!

Ask Greta Thunberg, she has a bone or two to pick with him and it’s not about the JokeKeeper billboard in Times Square.

Wouldn’t we all love to see Greta throw him a question in Glasgow now. Gloves off, I bet he’ll leave by the back door in a limousine bound for a famous distillery on a photo shoot and chat up, shake hands with the natives. From Jamaica Inn to Dumgoyne, my grand old Aunt Matilda who stole some malt – One for the Washington Post or perhaps we can dig up an opera house or nursery rhyme for the family treasure chest. That’s about as close as he’ll ever get to the Pearly Gates. ‘Don’t tell me’ says St Peter satirically rolling his eyes to the Kingdom, ‘Come to visit Mr Roberts I presume and bugger the whisky!’

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Road map to Bondi – fresh air is the safest place to be, Hazzard easing outdoor restrictions

September 12, 2021
Written by: Jon Chesterson
8 Replies

Yes, we have a ‘roadmap’ all the way out of Covid NSW and Health Minister Hazzard is sprouting thought bubbles just like Morrison, now that we won’t be listening to him and Gladys every day – Less bags of wind and heaps more sun and fresh air. That will sort everything out all the way to Christmas. Hell let’s not wait till mid-October, we can start opening up right now – Hunger games are just getting started.

Boofhead Hazzard wants to open up Sydney and NSW at the peak of NSW and Australia’s pandemic (announced yesterday in the Sydney Morning Herald); Despite 1,599 cases reported in NSW, over 2,000 nationwide and before we are anywhere near 70% vaccinated (44.5% to be exact – not even half of the adult population). Hey boofhead how about more surfers and beach-goers on Bondi tomorrow where it all began, there were not nearly enough flouting the rules yesterday, police caught with their pants down and not a bad word said about it. Yeah, let’s roll it with seaside fanfare and beach ball, and bugger it let’s have a festival to celebrate, just as long as we keep Southwest Sydney, Western Sydney and few other unimportant regional and rural suburbs locked down out of sight.

Since the start of the Delta outbreak, there have now been 42,000 COVID-19 cases. A total of 1,164 people are in hospital with the virus, 221 in intensive care and 94 being kept alive on ventilators. Eight people died today taking the total dead for NSW to somewhere around 150 since the Delta outbreak began, can’t be absolutely sure on that one because it’s hard to find the figures on the NSW Health and government websites and they are not going to be updating us every day now.

Asked if he was concerned people will flock to the beach in Sydney amid temperatures pushing 30c, Boofhead Hazzard said “no”. Can you believe this guy? So let’s all have a party down on Bondi because boofhead isn’t going to let anyone in the Blue Mountains or rural NSW, where we have all followed the rules and haven’t seen a live case in our district since the Delta outbreak began. But hey, let it all hang out on Bondi because they are all so damn special in Liberal fields of downtown suburbia, where the sun, sea and surf meet to play with angels (the ones with wings not fins).

There are now 14,536 active cases in NSW and about 441 of them are in Eastern Suburbs. But boofhead said, “The most important thing is to stay alive” he said, “Please, please, please, do not run the risk of dying.” So let’s all party down in the fresh air, where it is safest, down by the sea. “Perhaps you’d like to swim with a few sharks on Bondi,” he said at the press conference, “because it would be a whole lot safer than standing around here with me every day at 11 O’clock in the morning”, he said with a wry smile. Nah I’m joking, he didn’t say that but I am certainly thinking it. But heads up, if you see boofhead in a coffee shop in Manly or The Rocks, don’t mention the Ruby Princess, he’s likely to let it rip.

Brad Hazzard press conference

As we enter the hardest phase of the current outbreak on Friday, the Premier announced the daily 11:00am COVID-19 press conferences would cease from Monday and that she and the Health Minister would only address the public on a “needs basis.” So all good here, no worries, don’t call us we’ll call you, needs not urgent we are told. NSW Health system is expected to see a surge in hospital cases and need for ICU beds and ventilators over the next few weeks, but don’t worry boofhead Health Minister and Premier have it all under control, confident nurses and doctors will cope, slave it away in their PPE to the dulcet tones and pep talks from 2GB radio and Sky News. So boofhead Hazzard says let’s get on down and boogie on the fresh air in Bondi. Sorry guys, Hawaii just a little too far away right now, and Sydney revellers not welcome on the Gold Coast or anywhere else inter-State right now.

Boofhead Hazzard acknowledged there was a supply problem with Pfizer that could delay the vaccination uptake for those under 18, bugger everyone else though from 18-40, especially if you are in Newcastle, Hunter, Wollongong or rural NSW, you’ll have to wait till Christmas before you get fully vaccinated, first appointments are running well into November and early December. Your allocations have all come down here to Sydney so the party down here can continue.

Just wondering though, is boofhead looking for an Australian nomination from Morrison for best NSW Health Minister ever or perhaps for his performance rebuffing and de-railing the Parliamentary enquiry last month speaking to the Public Accountability Committee into the NSW Government’s management of the Covid pandemic? Did you see his Oscar winning star performance, his spat, his magnificent temper tantrum before the Parliamentary Committee – If not you can see it here. Apparently the Chief Health Officer, Dr Kerry Chant works 18 hours a day and so, as her boss he admits to overwhelming and working her into the ground, what a misogynistic spotty nosed hyena! She couldn’t get a word in edgeways, in fact from where I was sitting it looked to me like she had been served with a NSW Health and Government Non-Disclosure Agreement, because he sure didn’t want her to answer any questions.

But whatever you do, whether you hang out on Bondi, sing the national anthem or hymns on a park bench or beach in Wakehurst with your hands high on a hill far away, tongues wagging with Morrison, don’t mention the Ruby Princess, because that will make boofhead real mad; and for heaven’s sake make sure you are wearing a mask.

NSW Health’s Jeremy McAnulty said the bulk of new infections were still emerging in Sydney’s west and south west, in particular the suburbs of Auburn, Greenacre, Merrylands, Liverpool, Punchbowl, Granville, Bankstown and Guilford. So they’ll be keeping them well locked down and policed and as far away way from the parties on the beaches of NSW. We’ve been told they are sending in food parcels, but nothing like Menulog or Uber Eats, God no, can’t have the private sector supply chain entangled and compromised from the leper colonies in the west, regardless of where it came from.

In response to news that former Prime Minister Tony Abbott was fined yesterday for not wearing a mask in public, boofhead Hazzard said the rules were for everyone, with no exceptions, well unless you are the current Prime Minister, an Olympic athlete or mining magnate, and of course a few exceptions apply to the Berejiklian Government surely, but Abbott wasn’t really a local hero, was he? “It does not matter who you are, whatever station you have in life, there are orders. Nobody likes to have these orders but it is to keep everybody safe and I hope people will comply with the orders,” said boofhead Hazzard. NSW Police said Mr Abbott was fined $500 for breaching the public health orders at the Manly Beach promenade after he was photographed by a bystander, who probably wasn’t his best friend. But Tony Abbott, just smiled in his boxer pants, shrugged his shoulders and said, “what the hell for the price of a few cups of coffee and a little more misogyny.” Nah I don’t think it was a police woman and he probably didn’t quite say that either.

So there you have it, all the news as it happens and a wide open road map to Bondi – Let the sharks out to join us in the public swimming pool. “Make NSW great again” said boofhead, “if only you’d let me finish… yes you I’m talking to you, you clown. I’m a busy man and I can’t stay here all day talking to you”. No, he didn’t say that, well yes, he did, but not yesterday, I mean ‘making NSW great again’, he didn’t say that… What was that you mentioned again, ‘The Ruby Princess?’ – No mate that is not part of the roadmap out of lockdown, that was something to do with Hillsong as I recall, nothing to do with us, we let them out a long time ago, talk to the PM on that one.

References

‘Fresh air is the safest place to be’: Hazzard raises easing more outdoor restrictions – Sydney Morning Herald, 11 September 2021 https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/fresh-air-is-the-safest-place-to-be-hazzard-raises-easing-more-outdoor-restrictions-20210911-p58qsr.html

NSW Covid crisis: Brad Hazzard defends end to daily press conferences as cases and death toll worsen – The Guardian Australia, 11 September 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/11/nsw-covid-crisis-brad-hazzard-defends-end-to-daily-press-conferences-as-cases-and-death-toll-worsen

Roadmap to freedom unveiled for the fully vaccinated – The Premier, Deputy Premier, NSW Government, 9 September 2021 https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/roadmap-to-freedom-unveiled-for-fully-vaccinated

Brad Hazzard throws temper tantrum for six minutes straight – Remix Matrix, YouTube, 12 August 2021 https://youtu.be/SlZgvY-zHIc

Ruby Princess inquiry blames NSW health officials for debacle – The Conversation, 14 August 2020 https://theconversation.com/ruby-princess-inquiry-blames-nsw-health-officials-for-debacle-144512

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GG Picking his Spots Oblivious to the Crisis in His Own Backyard – These Common Threads of Office

July 26, 2021
Written by: Jon Chesterson
9 Replies

The GG Buffoon is a do-nothing Liberal backer and military general hand-picked by the Prime Minister, and unlike a predecessor 46 years ago who turned on Gough Whitlam for far, far less – then, there was no crisis in the population, no monoliths of government corruption, no gross government incompetence, and no threat to the people they governed, but a progressive and popular Labor government.

Today we have all these serious constitutional transgressions and existential threats and this GG buffoon sits on his arse installing more corrupt politicians like cowboy beetroot water-rort Barnaby Joyce and sports-rort lying cowgirl Bridget McKenzie.

Meanwhile Delta spreads due to poor and negligent border management, quarantine, vaccine supply, botched rollout and absence of public service infrastructure putting our entire population at risk, all courtesy of the Liberals and Nationals in Federal Office and the one NSW State that has been responsible for both major national outbreaks last year (cruise ships border farce) and this year’s Delta variant (flight crew transfer/hotel quarantine and delayed/ambivalent lockdown).

The two arrogant recalcitrant corrupt LNP governments in Australia (NSW and Federal) are destroying the Australian way of life, our freedoms, our health and our economy and totally clueless, authoritarian and hypocritical when it comes to management of the pandemic, public health, lockdowns, civil freedoms, quarantine, vaccination choice, supply and rollout – blaming anyone that moves other than themselves.

Both these governments should have long since been turned over to the people for early general elections with strict electoral and media information protocols, guidelines, donation caps and public declarations that cannot be manipulated and interfered with by the gutter corporate press monopoly, particularly News Corp, Sky News and extreme right wing bully boy radio shock jocks with their snap liberal bum-licking ministerial interviews.

The Bulletin: Australia’s Defining Moments, Digital Classroom, National Museum Australia – https://digital-classroom.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/bulletin-established

But no, the GG is too busy minding his own business picking his spots oblivious to the crisis in his own backyard, and has anyone even heard of the unbeknown NSW Governor in hiding? And why, because he was hand-picked by the Prime Minister to do as he was told, not by the people and unlike a controversial predecessor 46 years ago, sits at home protecting only his own arse and government during lockdown, while Australia burns and chokes again, this time in its veins and arteries.

Alas what can a common (silent) juror do other than be directed by the judge? It took a rebellion of the troops in 1808 to send the only governor of NSW packing, Captain William Bligh… aye remember him! But now we get our governors, generals, judges and premiers all mixed up in the same palette, fancy that!

And these common threads of office – No heavy national bushfire fighting equipment and infrastructure – still; no national climate change policy – still; no national quarantine infrastructure, no coordinated national pandemic plan – still; no fundamental public service administration and expertise to defend and coordinate a national public crisis response; and effectively no vaccine (failed national supply and rollout) – The true plague behind these life threatening existential crises are the Liberals – still. After all these years so little changes, their spotty nosed bum-picked ideologies, pathologies, entitlements, arrogance, incompetence and corruption; and of course, our appointed judges and generals… Governors, no Freudian slips here.

If you are not for the people, you are against them – But you can man the stills with a ration of rum!

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Can I Gladys at 11 O’Clock

July 14, 2021
Written by: Jon Chesterson
4 Replies

An hour a day keeps the doctor away!

‘First of all can I… can I say in my defence…’ as we announce the numbers on the NSW bingo scorecard, here’s what we can do today (complete with behind the scenes extrusive thoughts).

‘Hello everyone (Gladys glances around with a poodle grin and lollipop eyes, followed by an anticipatory heavy pause). Sorry no Pfizer this week (gotchya moment). So please please stay at home unless you have an elite get out of jail free card – But please be aware we only issue them to uniform on horseback (momentary pause for private thought bubble of a few Liberal cabinet ministers floats off and bursts backstage), and yes we will be covering the surrounding regional areas outside metropolitan Sydney, where I can confirm the good news, they have no signs of outbreak yet, but we love locking them up too (FFS if Sydney goes down, so will the neighbours, think big, big bubble, other States too, but we will hide that thought from view). We have a very mobile population you know and that is why we are asking everyone to stay at home. More good news, we are extending the lockdown to the 30^th (can’t believe I said that) for two more weeks to keep you safe and I and the treasurer have fought so hard for these very generous business packages (fake subscript: Josh and Scotty, so very hard to do a deal with, hidden smirk of sarcasm, even when there are no Labor Premiers in the room, elephants included with a snip of random association to paint the picture blue) – Treat yourselves, see it as a holiday, our gift to you’, says Gladys.

‘Can I say, thank you to all you suckers, we have your backs, the Commissioner and I (lollipop Gladys, now stop that! This isn’t helping). We have the best horse riders in the country, the best men and women in uniform, best roads for them to ride on (not to mention those wonderful tolls inner city, out west and southwest on the King’s Highway, along with stamp duty and land tax), and the very best boots and batons to chase you down (private thought passes, hmm.. this is getting a little confusing). Let’s be clear, we have the best doctors, health advice and business recovery packages a loyalist Liberal can buy, and we are the premier State, premier State (repeat that thought) for getting a vaccine into your arm sometime soon, so please please stay at home, breathe easy and we will get through this together. I cannot stress how important it is for you to stay glued to your commercial TV (we love adverts, campaigns too) with your microwave popcorn, so we can continue our show live – The very best show the world can offer (Foxtel shaking in its boots, Sky News and 2GB spitting on over cooked chips to silent listeners on empty rim of the Pacific Ocean). We are the best at this, locking people up (not down, which I meant to say) without vaccination is our business, we’ve been doing it since the arrival of Captain Cook (fuck, that was Morrison’s line). Can I assure you we know what is best for you, your home is the safest place and we are deeply deeply grateful for all you fabulous listeners out there (turds high in the sky), this is our best defence (image of a major general stepping out of a cigar box, or was it a commander from an Austro-French submarine, hell it looks like my ex-boyfriend… you really can’t make up this shite, please leave my accent out of this)’, thinks Gladys.

… and the questions keep coming from the media crowd, the journalists with their box office ring seats and soulless questions, to fill the hour with hot unending government advice and wisdom. Ping to the left, pong to the right, ping pong (is there anyone out there who hasn’t asked a question yet, did I just think that), ‘I’ll take one last question’ (and add for good measure) ‘And can I… can I say based on the very best medical and heath advice in the world today…’ Health Minister nods passively against the background wallpaper of the Waratah flower, ‘an hour a day, what a treat, can I say keeps the doctor away… so please be patient, thank you all for coming’ (pesky little mongrels). And that’s where we will leave you except for all our Sydney viewers (‘cos we’d love to go over it all again and again), from the ABC.

Back stage – Gladys turns to Arthur, flutters her eyelids in dark tones of mascara and a shy but very private smile, ‘Is this enough to get us through to the next election?’ (Champagne sounds nice) ‘Shall we do lunch?’ But the reply was coy and compliant, silent as a pimple on a judge’s cheek.

‘There’s a bug in my microphone,’ claims an anonymous reporter from News Corp, ‘God must be on her side since she ditched the last one.’ (News Corp subscript: Morrison’s lines are highly infectious, but we have a few more thought bubbles and announcements to report, and a cure for that one in our entertaining puns, slogans and sensational headlines, just to steer everyone off the scent, which we do so well). Well let’s face it, we hear nothing from NSW Labor anyway (fancy that, we love their scandals). Seems like the mainstream media and god have stitched that one up too (just like the cruise ships). ‘Shut the fuck up’, says the Health Minister with an irritable swagger uninvited (I’ll get my own lunch then).

City Bay, Bondi Daily lookout there’s a turd in my eye and the Willoughby Courier beat the pants off the Daily Telegraph and Australian for our virtual reality show, satire, fascination, insight and entertaining value added, prefabricated news (Trump’s never heard of us). And let’s be clear, we need to ensure our young Liberal supporters are safe and have had the very best jab money can buy from our government muzzled like a dead public anchovy NSW Health Service; because everyone else under 40, the best thing you can do, if you don’t have symptoms is stay at home (anchovies included). ‘I cannot stress how important it is to stay at home, that is the recommendation, do not go out unless you really have to’ (but I can’t remember if Gladys said that or the Health Minister in answer to the one and only question he stepped up to the microphone for and removed his free NSW Health mask the police have been handing out in the streets of Fairfield and Southwest Sydney… Yes I hear you, that was without the penalty notice of course – Go home). ‘And I just want to say, if you have any more questions, please go to Service NSW (to get all that wonderful information and a whole heap more, Gladys did float that one for sure) – Camera, lights, curtains.

Do not be fooled – Behind the scenes, behind that lollipop face of hers you can be sure is another Liberal triple test vaccine ice cream rant and can I at 11 o’clock – Coming to you live tomorrow from the ABC and any other channel you believe in (if you want to watch the mighty riveting band-aid advert and masterly performance of breathless woman in a public hospital 101 times – Did that come with subtitles in a foreign language for the people of Southwest Sydney?)… (Got it) she replies in dutiful belligerent thought (I can).

An hour a day keeps the doctor away, and the exposure piss poor is better than none at all. Berejiklian’s name in fading purple lights on the 2023 ballot paper (yes that long hence), take note for all of Morrison’s lies, gaslighting and turds in the sky, ‘Can I… can I say, I think this one’s a wrap in wholesome gospel brown Christmas paper’ (I wish) says a voice in the crowd (which way?)

‘Okay, so what’s Dan thinking right now, Gladys? (Fly on the wall, flies undone, bugger the lies and hypocrisy, that stream of consciousness burns a hole right through them. Shame so many Sydney voters won’t notice despite her predictable bombshells and eyelashes hanging from their living room walls)… ‘Incoming at 11 o’clock!’

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Turning fibs into gold, everything he touches – you do have a choice right now, choose your vaccine wisely

July 4, 2021
Written by: Jon Chesterson
13 Replies

UPDATE – AstraZeneca or Pfizer? Clots, serious illness, hospitalisation and the waiting game. Consider a vaccine mix or go for broke, if the Federal government ever comes to the party with a real choice for all.

People of all ages allegedly who have had no serious blood clotting symptoms of dubious or unknown origin (past or present), not tested positive for, had no past family history of TTS (Thrombocytopenia with Thrombosis Syndrome) or underlying rare autoimmune clotting disorder, may be advised to consider AstraZeneca in the absence of availability or access to Pfizer, than face the highly infectious Delta variant if it is not successfully contained in the community in Australia. The health risks are more prevalent from COVID-19 than AZ itself, we have been clearly told. The difference is of course, avoidance of AZ extinguishes the rare clotting risk altogether from AZ (the choice), but not from the same clotting risks and very serious illness which are far harder to avoid unvaccinated from direct exposure to the Delta variant, if it spreads (an important caveat). In such a scenario, waiting until adequate supplies of Pfizer are available towards the end of the year is a calculated risk. Clearly Pfizer would be a safer and more effective option allegedly for all ages if you had a genuine choice, the TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) though sticking with under 60. But if you have been diagnosed with, vulnerable to or troubled by TTS and/or an underlying rare autoimmune clotting disorder, there is little doubt surely, you would be best prioritised for Pfizer regardless of age. So why the Federal government and TGA don’t get this when a GP, specialist haematologist and immunologist do, beggars belief.

People under 60 have been told they now have a choice of AstraZeneca or Pfizer, in truth people under 50 always did. The TGA and Federal Government’s messaging was always ‘preference for Pfizer’ (the wording here is both critical and deceptive). If that was not the case because of how the rollout was organised, then that messaging was a lie. Pfizer is in short supply because the Morrison government failed to order and procure an adequate supply last year, that’s a fact, and now we face the consequences till September when we are ‘promised’ it in ‘more abundance’. It is a promise from Morrison, take it and believe it as you see fit, he has a history of announcements and no delivery.

It is suggested that younger people are more at risk of blood clots from AZ, the figure we are given is 3.1/100,000 for <50yrs compared with 1.8/100,000 for 70+ and 1.4/100,000 for 60-70 or 2.7/100,00 for 50-59. This appears to be based on statistics not causation or medical science.

Examine carefully, not a lot of difference, there is only a 0.4-1.7 people/100,000 variance by age, that’s not even statistically significant. Hardly a reason to be making age the reason for the Federal government splitting AZ and Pfizer at 60yrs or indeed ‘preferencing’ and ‘forcing people down two separate pathways. Good for younger people who are at minimal risk of serious illness or death from Covid-19 maybe, but just so marginal. The TGA’s decision was based on this almost insignificantly small statistic of clotting against the far higher risk of older people to serious illness and/or death if left unvaccinated and exposed to Covid-19. The younger you are the less risk of serious illness and hospitalisation, it is this latter age-related reason that is one of two operant factors here, thus priority of vaccination was always the real issue by age, not which vaccine and/or clotting, the lie. It became an issue only because the Morrison government failed to procure adequate supply of alternative vaccines, putting all our eggs in one basket. It is argued they were not to know at the time last year, but no other OECD country has made this blunder with such blatant disregard to the obvious, hence the cautionary proverb over ‘eggs’ and not the only one ‘faced’ by the Morrison government – It’s basic common sense, risk mediation and planning. Given these facts, there is no doubt in my mind that the TGA’s second operant factor in their decision (not clearly publicly disclosed and little to do with medical science) rather it was about dodgy interpretation of statistics and supply and demand of vaccines, emphasis on supply, specifically the scarcity of imported Pfizer and abundance to be of home-produced AstraZeneca; and they knew this. But the Morrison government, this maladministration has done its level best to suppress this fact over time as ‘gold digger’ Morrison puts out his own unending bluffs and arbitrary advice. The Morrison government has in part mythologised and utterly obfuscated age, clots, health risk and vaccination to the point that too was a bag of lies that sent us all in different directions.

The Morrison government also initially declared that the ‘preferred vaccine’ for people over 50, later changed to 60 was AstraZeneca, the converse of the ‘Pfizer preference’ for under 50. Again, older people were denied access by the government online App and phone booking system to Pfizer by locking them out of the private vaccination centres (hubs) which the government contracted out, but not to GPs or the Public Health system. GPs only had access to AZ and the rollout to GPs was a farce. State Health departments had both, but were directed, coerced or chose to select their limited supplies of Pfizer for health care and frontline staff in group 1A. But why would they do that if both vaccines were equally safe and effective other than the interval period between doses?

People over 70 in Aged Care (group 1A or was it 1B?) were managed also by private companies contracted by the Federal government initially for Pfizer, and look what a mess they made of that. Many still are not vaccinated and now, quietly they get AstraZeneca not Pfizer, no announcement changes over that. So go figure – this messaging of ‘preferencing’ was grand lie to the whole population (under 60 and over). It was a mandated operation carried out in an autocratic almost military fashion; and make no mistake there is a reason why senior military personnel have been involved in the rollout. Draw your own conclusions of course, but I suggest it was to soften the public to military involvement in public affairs now and in the future. There are too few public servants and infrastructure remaining thanks to neoliberal ideology, privatisation, public sector extinction and avoidance of using all but the States’ public health system which they would have banished also if they could have. Involving senior military personnel helped them save face politically, saving the Morrison government’s electoral and collective arses. The rollout bungle was morphed into a rescue effort through the perceived efficiency of a military mission, hence also the operational names being assigned to components and phases of the national rollout, mostly mere thought bubbles – Ad hoc or planned, who knows but certainly not ordained by God or tinkering military generals well beyond their expertise and station?

So back to the beginning, where to from here? Everyone has a legitimate choice and they need to weigh up the risks and waiting times for their preference. Consult your GP of course but do not rely on what the Morrison government or Morrison and Hunt are individually telling you, and few in the mainstream media will give you a true and honest picture, grinding their own axes too – Apart from the ABC’s Dr Norman Swan, he is practically the only sensible one among them; even the AMA (Australian Medical Association) and a bevy of specialists have been all over the shop, probably protecting their institutional research grants and reputations.

It should be noted that the first dose of AstraZeneca and Pfizer provide about 33% protection from the Delta variant according to latest data analysis. But the difference comes in the protection afforded by the 2^nd dose. For AZ you will have to wait 3 months between doses with 33% protection and after your 2^nd dose you will emerge with around 60% protection. For Pfizer you wait 3 weeks following which you can expect 88% protection from the Delta variant and no comparable rare risk of clots whatever figure we choose to run with 1.4-3.1/100,000 (by age separation) or closer to 3-4 in the general population according to Nordic countries, and not so long ago we were told it was far less and rarer… Hmmm!

But this is a statistical phenomenon, we don’t know the true science behind it yet. Now if I were a scientist or betting man, or just an ordinary person who critically examines the evidence and asks relevant questions, my hypothesis would be that the clotting issue is more to do with how the virus and AZ vaccine interact with those who have a predisposition to rare autoimmune clotting disorders and TTS, and less if anything to do with the blunt and deviant crux and instruments of age. The real age factor here is the consequence of exposure to the virus itself, serious illness and hospitalisation, and an ageing or compromised immune system which might deliver the same consequence as those who carry the risk of TTS and related syndromes; not to be confused with more common clotting problems associated with trauma, ischaemia, surgery, pregnancy or contraceptive pill.

Mix and Match or Go for Broke

There is another consideration and option the Morrison government and TGA have not yet floated. In Germany, Canada, Spain and South Korea, and from current research out of the UK, if you have had or choose to go with AZ now rather than wait (there are clear undisputable benefits individually and to the community), choosing Pfizer or Moderna 4-12 weeks later for your second dose, affords almost as much protection from the Delta variant as double vaccination with Pfizer (around 88% cf 60% with AZ alone) and with minimal adverse risk outcomes, and a much better result for the community. At least four countries have already implemented this strategy, alas not Australia and I suspect many more will follow as alternative vaccines become more readily available and/or affordable.

If I were over 70, had significant comorbidities or carried risks of TTS whatever age I be, I’d seriously be considering and advocating this path. If I were young, I’d consider it too – gets me on the ladder earlier like now and mediate the best outcome later on my 2^nd dose. But if you are over 60 and seriously troubled by TTS, then you could go for broke – That is to magically assume let’s say the age of 59 to get past the government App, and if that doesn’t work I fancy a little younger maybe at 49 (I am not sure if they have adjusted the age guillotine yet) – A momentary lapse of memory, a typo perhaps, which you can correct by entering your true date of birth later once you are through to the other side – The Pfizer side; I’m sure we can all remember that!

A younger person with TTS or indeed of any age should in my view be given priority access to an mRNA vaccine like Pfizer and bugger the age guillotine altogether – Simply not relevant in the face of Covid-19 and Delta variant on either safety or efficacy. And of course, these life-saving individual medical considerations should be decided by GPs and patients, not politicians, insensitive policies and IT Apps, the TGA and/or consequence of gross government error, incompetence or negligence – outside your jurisdiction and scope of practice.

Ask yourself what would Morrison have done if he weren’t Prime Minister and don’t be fooled by what he imagines Jesus would say? How old is Morrison anyway? The answer is 53, so how come he got past the door to Pfizer in March, 4 months ago when <50yrs was the magical age we were all told by divine decree we could access Pfizer? Do as I do not as I say.

Whatever people decide right now, whether you are over 60 at higher risk of serious illness from the Delta variant or any age with a ‘very rare’ un/diagnosed autoimmune blood clotting disorder (and you can have blood tests for these) or other potential comorbidities, Pfizer clearly delivers the best protection with least risk, as do other alternatives such as Moderna and Novavax when they become more widely available. The real issue is when will that be and what are the risks in the meantime? For many however AstraZeneca now and a mix and match option later is worth considering. Talk it over with your GP and if still you are not satisfied go for broke.

Transparency, facts and truth are not a hallmark of the Liberals or the Morrison government, and Morrison fudges and lies about everything he touches. The king of tourism and economic geography turning fibs into gold, for himself of course. The pandemic like quarantine, border control, refugees, robodebt, the Indue cashless welfare card, bushfires and global climate change are among the many critical topics in his coal bunker of precious lies. Even other Liberal bimbos like Simon Birmingham, Minister for Finance insist in having their say on public record outside of their ministerial portfolio, blowing off at Labor State premiers on this pandemic and public health, politicising anything that moves, and like Morrison, what the fuck would he know about it!

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Dog’s Breakfast No Dogs Barking – Quarantine and Vaccine Rollout

June 5, 2021
Written by: Jon Chesterson
10 Replies

DOG’S BREAKFAST NO DOGS BARKING (POLITICAL ANALYSIS) – Quarantine and vaccine rollout. Not just Victorians shouldering the risk and blame but older Australians too, while the Liberals ‘get away with murder’.

‘Victoria is now battling COVID on multiple fronts. Here are four things to watch‘ – ABC News (5 June headline). But what about things ‘to watch’ the ABC is not covering or telling, and neither is anyone else in the mainstream media?

Two Indian variants in Melbourne. The Kappa variant has been traced back to a breach in Adelaide hotel quarantine, South Australia. The Delta variant (source upstream) is currently unknown but it could have been acquired from New South Wales, South Coast where a Melbourne family visited, falling within an incubation and infectious time frame of 14 days.

So why is Morrison and his Ministry, the Federal Government once again trying to lay blame on Victorians and attempting to punish them fiscally, over which he and Frydenberg (A Victorian himself) have now had to retreat from one week later?

And how can Morrison and his Ministry, the Federal Government continue to justify excluding people over 50 from access to Pfizer vaccine on medical, health safety and civil grounds when scientific evidence coming out of UK studies are clearly showing AstraZeneca is up to 50% less effective against these variants – 60% cf 88% for Pfizer? Aside from the increased risk and exposure of older vulnerable Australians with significant medical conditions to potentially ‘very rare’ (so they keep saying) lethal blood clotting disorders, shouldering all the risk for a significantly less effective vaccine over which they are denied a medical or civil choice.

If there is shorter supply of Pfizer, how come Morrison and his Ministry, the Federal Government can roll it out through privately contracted vaccine hubs to everyone under 50 (currently 40-49) regardless of their health status and less likely to be severely affected than older people, if exposed? These private contractors are the mechanism or vehicle by which Australians are being conned in the rollout and older Australians policed and excluded from vaccination and vaccination hubs, while being paid millions out of tax payer’s money. Apart from being screened out of the system and excluded on-line, have any Australians over 50 been turned away?

Surely this is enough – It’s time to mount a legal challenge in the Federal Courts on behalf of all Australians (particularly over 50) against Morrison and his Ministry, the TGA, Federal Government and private contractors rolling out the vaccine for refusing to offer Australians over 50 the same choice as everyone else, amidst the gross negligence and incompetence of the Federal Government to manage the source, quarantine and treatment, vaccine rollout – Both of course Morrison has covertly (more so blatantly) privatised. This is a serious breach of medical/civil rights and responsibility, it is a gross injustice and insult to every Australian over 50, which this government has been met deviously getting away with. What law allows Morrison and his Ministry to discriminate against half the population this way? Isn’t it simply a case of government policy on the run vs every Australian’s legal, civil, medical, personal and public health, and Constitutional right? Why has Public Health been politicised and placed in the hands of private enterprise everywhere we look, when we have a national State-run Public Health system specifically designed for all Australians and populational health? Even our State public health systems have been coerced into this political dilemma of denying and refusing vaccine access to people over 50 and the wider general population, and dependant on Commonwealth procurement and supply. Dependant on the Federal Government’s policy settings, political agenda, manipulation, prejudices, incompetence and lies.

So where is the mainstream media on any of these issues? Nowhere to be heard of course. Shouldn’t that too be raising alarm bells – No dogs barking?

What a dog’s breakfast! What a fiasco this Government’s private vaccine rollout is. Add to this the current primary source of our miserable complaint – the hotel quarantine breaches which now appear to implicate two other States (both with Liberal State governments), not Victoria of course which gets the blame. And like the vaccine rollout, a Federal Government responsibility, Morrison and his Ministry, quite clearly, ultimately, the Federal Government’s responsibility.

Reference: Victoria is now battling COVID on multiple fronts. Here are four things to watch – ABC News, 5 June 2021.

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“Blowing Smoke Up Your Arse”

May 23, 2021
Written by: Jon Chesterson
11 Replies

A factual archive as true today as in the middle of the 18th century to explain the state of science, scientific enquiry and dogma through the minds of some of our most bogan political, public, corporate and academic institutions.

This is a colonial period ‘Tobacco Smoke Enema Kit’ from the 1750s. It was used to blow tobacco smoke into a patient’s rectum to resuscitate drowning victims. Doubts about its credibility led to the popular phrase ‘blowing smoke up your arse’.

Tobacco resuscitation kits consisting of a pair of bellows and a tube were provided by the Royal Humane Society of London and placed at various points along the Thames. European physicians furthermore employed these enemas for a range of ailments.

Tobacco was believed by Europeans to be medicinal soon after it was first imported from the New World, and tobacco smoke was used by western medical practitioners as a tool against cold and drowsiness. During the early 19th century, the practice fell into decline, when it was discovered that the principal active agent in tobacco smoke, nicotine, was poisonous and much later carcinogenic.

It is not clearly understood how one breathes through one’s rectum, but we do know the rectum is a primary organ for the absorption of nutrients and anything else it is capable of collecting subject to the knowledge and desires of its host.

This tool is still used by Politicians and Ministers, the Liberals, the Nationals, our Prime Minister and his mates, the Federal Government, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), Commonwealth chief medical advisers and most of the mainstream media oligopoly in Australia – News Corp, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, most of the commercial TV channels and even by a few universities including UniSA, University of Adelaide, UNSW and UTS. Even the AMA found a use for it recently.

So if you want to try out your skills of resuscitation on the Australian population, have a go, the institutions, authorities and experts above seem to get a great deal of enjoyment, satisfaction and profit out of it.

It is probably as true to say, what you see, hear and eat may be just as toxic as what comes out the other end, not just what you blow into it, whichever end you want to treat or in between. Beware of many things, but if you don’t want to die from drowning in a sea of government and corporate misinformation, data and devices, it may not be a good idea to invest in one of these or donate it to your local surf lifesaving club.

Beware of your information choice and sources, the distance between promotional advertising and propaganda is shorter than between the mouth and bowel. Science is a complex animal and social intelligence is never guaranteed, we are far more easily manipulated before we even open our mouths or start to think.

Surprising in this day and age don’t you think, more than 250 years later – what science and history can teach us!

Once you’ve mastered this one, keep an eye out for the next instalment on the phrase, ‘Big bag of wind’.

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Government warning, the image of the product you now see on your screens may not exist

April 10, 2021
Written by: Jon Chesterson
43 Replies

NOT BLOODY LIKELY – Berejeklian yesterday afternoon said in a beguiling and coercive press conference to the people of NSW, after Morrison’s overnight on morning declarations and U-turn in this divining declining vaccine comedy, she said there are 2.5 million people over 50yrs in NSW, and if they all come forward for the AstraZeneca jab… she implied with feeble obligation or why say otherwise?

In the light of dwindling public trust and accountability in the Government and the Liberals (and this has always been as much about NSW as Federal), the duality of government business and political interests, Berejiklian now plays barking dog again to Morrison’s thoroughly politicised and failing campaign in these ‘vaccine wars’, which he initiated last year.

Oh yes, the Liberals are now banking on the excess supply of just one, not right now because there is no supply, but from next month onwards when all that CSL home produce of the AstraZeneca vaccine comes on line. And of course, not another vaccine in sight for the next 6 months, apart from a dwindling supply of Pfizer (1 million doses now mostly administered).

Arithmetic: 20+20=40, we can count even though we are over 50 and yes we are up to date on the news announcements; but 39 million Pfizer doses are up there in the clouds, not down here on earth for the next 6 months!

Now don’t get me wrong, as I have been accused of being an anti-vaxer, mind you only by one person so far. But if you examine everything I have ever said on the subject that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I have advocated for a choice of vaccines (supply and prescription – not just one soon to be redundant in plentiful supply) based on sound clinical and ethical guidelines, but where are these guidelines and where are these choices? Shouldn’t this be up to GPs, doctors and nurses when, what and how we get this critical vaccine and shouldn’t it be with informed consent? Shouldn’t it be based on best available evidence, research and practice, not that we have an enormous amount to go on in one year, or worse confused and obfuscated by the politicisation of our health care system, public health messaging and gross multiple government mismanagement?

It is our lives we are risking when we decide and our leaders can choose whichever vaccine they want to, as indeed they have. People over 50 have higher prevalence than any other age group of heart, hypertension, circulatory and blood disorders including blood clotting (and not just rare blood clotting disorders per se), and not so rare as you might imagine when you consider the number of people who have strokes and heart attacks each year. All those people on a vast range of heart and blood management medications – imagine all those unresearched drug interactions and a vaccine with a ‘very rare’ blood clotting disorder history. Isn’t heart disease one of the biggest killers? Forgive me for asking, we are over 50 and some seem to think we are clueless or have forgotten what we are told, worse still that any of us indeed are qualified to say so. No we are just speaking out of turn and making it worse because so many people out there don’t read what we write and misrepresent what we think or say.

No I am not anti-vaccination, I am pro-vaccination, informed consent, pro-choice of which vaccine based on a person’s medical history and vulnerabilities. I seek the truth about vaccinations and what lies behind the political, business deals, investments, alliances, lies and cover ups we are not being told about by people in power. I speak as one of those 2.5 million people over 50 and why we are one of the few countries in the OECD who are even having this conversation? Berejiklian says people over 50 in NSW please come forward and have your AstraZeneca jab!

These ecclesiastical pronouncements, even Berejiklian’s have become tiresome as clearly they are no longer in the public interest, nor based on sound independent clinical or ethical judgment and certainly not for the health of 2.5 million people over 50yrs in NSW. Since when do politicians use such powers coercively to tell a particular and potentially vulnerable group, which vaccine they should be taking, the one and only because the Federal and NSW government ‘fucked up’ on supply issues, and when clearly this particular vaccine is now deemed not good enough for people under 50 years? Is it something to do with our age that we are taken for mugs?

So forgive me for dropping into satire, but you leave me no choice, you are not qualified, you are not listening and you are pushing your own political agenda Berejiklian. So when I raise the question will my AstraZeneca jab come with paint stripper or blood thinner? Perhaps that will get the 2.5 million people message across to the decorative and incidental world you consign us. Government warning, the image of the product you now see on your screens may not exist – let us hope you have read this far for fear you might go out looking for it.

I have one thing to say to Berejiklian, “Zoooooom, there I go, not bloody likely!”

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Government warning, the image of the product you now see on your screens may not exist