It is over 250 years since Captain Cook's discovery of the east coast of Australia and it's worth asking ... what was Cook doing here?
He certainly wasn't looking for Australia (or New Holland as it was then known) as Europeans had known it existed since the 1500's.
Like many other Europeans before him, Cook was searching for the fabled land of Terra Australis.
Read more: Captain Cook - a history of the inevitable colonisation of Australia
Among many surprising developments during this pandemic, the most stunning has been the questioning of naturally acquired immunity after a person has had the Covid disease.
We have understood natural immunity since at least the Athenian Plague in 430 BC. Here is Thucydides:
‘Yet it was with those who had recovered from the disease that the sick and the dying found most compassion. These knew what it was from experience and had no fear for themselves; for the same man was never attacked twice—never at least fatally.’ – Thucydides
Read more: Hospitals Should Hire, Not Fire, Nurses with Natural Immunity
I have never had a tattoo. Nor am I likely to. I hate pain and am rather partial to my skin colour without feeling the need to change its colour or use it as a canvas for artistic expression.
It seems somehow foreign to me. I am rather appreciative of myself and what I look like and, though I may not be as I wish I appeared to others, I am what I am as Popeye used to say.
Read more: Tattoos - are they telling us something about the clotshots?
Last night, I went down memory lane and stumbled on a long forgotten holiday when I ate scones and home made apricot jam and drank freshly brewed coffee in a stone cafe in Central Otago.
It was a typical holiday. Redhead and I headed off for a 5 day jaunt around a small region of the South Island of New Zealand.
To my younger readers: There was a time when people had things called " holidays. " They were when you could go where ever you wanted and travel and explore new and interesting places. We didn't have facemasks back then. We didn't have vaccine passports and all citizens could travel and mingle and meet and eat and greet. It was known as ": fun " and the amazing thing was that, in those days, it was none of the government's business what we did and who we did it with.
I wake up every morning and, instead of feeling a sense of hope and expectation, I feel a sense of dread. I turn on my computer and catch the overnight news and see nothing but covid, vaccine, mandate, restriction and fear. All the buzz words in the current woke vocabulary.
How I miss the days when I used to wake up and think about going to the bakery to buy some doughnuts and head down to Redhead's place and dine in the delights of a creamy strawberry jam filled pastry treat that would give us both a few moments of pleasure on the lips and a lifetime on the hips. As the saying goes.
This feature length production is an astounding effort from creator political commentator, filmmaker, and human rights activist Topher Field. It seeks to tell the story of human rights activists, protest organisers, business owners, workers, and ordinary everyday people who have taken extraordinary risks in the fight for freedom.
As Gandhi said “ Disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless & corrupt”
Please watch this honest and sometimes heartbreaking documentary on something that is of global concern
“Totalitarian leaders often create ‘enemies of the state’ to blame for things that go wrong. Frequently these enemies are members of religious or ethnic groups. Often these groups are easily identified and are subjected to campaigns of terror and violence. They may be forced to live in certain areas or are subjected to rules that apply only to them”
Creating an enemy of the state requires othering: a process of dehumanizing through marginalizing a group of humans as something different, less than, and other. Such othered groups become an easy target to scapegoat, unfairly bearing the blame for a society’s ills.
Read more: Othering Unvaccinated Persons - Creating an enemy of the state
When I’ve talked in the past about the patchwork tyranny post Covid-9/11, I had more mundane things in mind than the fate of a major tennis star.
Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia on Sunday after his appeal to reinstate his visa failed. And it failed not for health reasons but for political ones.
To me, the kinds of terrible rules put in place for ‘public safety’ always conjure up images of casual oppression. Endless videos of pathetic public servants intimidating priests in churches or police arresting pub owners for serving willing patrons.
I sit here today, typing an obituary to Australia. The country I have loved for most of my life.
I see her lying in a bed, alone, gasping for air and trying so desperately to stay alive. Alas. I feel that she is gone. I can hear her sad attempts to keep alive and stay with us. But her mask is stifling her.
It is sad to see her dying. She has been a good mother and grandmother.
She lies immobile and unable to speak because she is silenced by the hospital staff who have gagged her and choked her in order to keep her " safe."
Read more: Australia RIP Day is approaching. The death of our beloved Nation is at hand
I am the first to admit I know somewhere between nothing and less than nothing about bitcoin. It is up there with my knowledge of volcanic eruptions. When you put the two together and come up with bitcoin mining from volcanoes, my head starts to spin and I reach for my too hard basket.
However, I have had to try and get my head around these two things working in unison when I add a dose of Tonga and El Salvador to the mix. And a bit of Kazakhstan.
So come with me on a journey that makes for an interesting ride.
Read more: Bitcoin, Volcanoes and Tonga - and how about a bit of Kazakhstan and China on the side?
The Kingdom of Tonga doesn’t often attract global attention, but a violent eruption of an underwater volcano on January 15 has spread shock waves, quite literally, around half the world.
Read more: Why the Volcanic Eruption in Tonga Was So Violent, and What to Expect Next
Barefoot in the Grass: The Last Lesson My Father Taught Me My father passed away…
4 hits
Thomas Pritchard, Australia's last "Rat of Tobruk" passed away at the age of 102 on…
162 hits
From immigration policy to identity politics, energy to ideology - the erosion of Western society…
235 hits
Twenty-Five Teenagers. One Mother. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? When I was about twelve years…
222 hits
Swish, Swish... Off With Their Heads When I was a young lass, I was a…
227 hits
Mystery Deepens: Who Are the Chookhouse Four? By Roderick (Whiskers ) McNibble, Chief Investigative Correspondent,…
219 hits
The sea doesn’t warn you. It doesn’t care who you are, what rank you hold,…
267 hits
The Census Came for the Quiet Ones I have just finished the Australian Census. Had…
2631 hits
In a fast-changing Australia, where new cultures and identities weave fresh threads into our ever…
291 hits
“Every tyrant must begin by claiming to have what his victims respect and to give…
315 hits
At nine years old, I felt the silence of the lambs, long before I knew…
283 hits
While the new aces argue about the runway, the old crew still knows how to…
327 hits
Howling into the Abyss of Settler-Colonial Absurdism A Decolonial Reading of "The Werewolves of Dusty…
277 hits
RATTY NEWS SPECIAL INVESTIGATION THE WEREWOLVES OF DUSTY GULCH Project Howl, the Hacked Rolling Pin,…
359 hits
The Ghost Returns The first thing he noticed was the silence. Not the silence of…
329 hits
A Dream Needs a Driver: Sir William Hamilton, the Jet Boat, and the Men Who…
356 hits
When I tell people I’m a beek, inevitably the first thing they say is, “Yes,…
369 hits
He stood on top of the world - literally. But Sir Edmund Hillary never saw…
351 hits
The Basement at Yekaterinburg When People Become Symbols, History Takes a Dark Turn On the…
381 hits
In many Western countries today, we often speak of multiculturalism as though traditions no longer…
361 hits
RATTY NEWS EXCLUSIVE THE DUCKS WHO KNEW TOO MUCH How the Mysterious Death of the…
334 hits
In a world that seems determined to teach us to hate our countries, I remember…
416 hits
When the Bush Is No Longer Enough Just days after Sam Neill's passing on 13…
439 hits
Why Churchill Still Matters in Australia: Blunt Voices, Shared Goals, and the Fight for a…
426 hits
Bastille Day, Artificial Intelligence, and the New Reign of Terror The guillotine has gone digital.…
420 hits
How a turned head, a washing machine, and a handful of extraordinary coincidences made me…
400 hits
RATTY NEWS FILM REVIEW Dracula the Emu No Stakes... No Steaks... No Hope. Reviewed by…
442 hits
A 94-year-old’s heartfelt plea about cruelty to animals, the neglect of children and the elderly,…
412 hits
No, Sire. It Is a Revolution. It's easy to forget, but revolutions don't just fall…
413 hits
RATTY NEWS EXCLUSIVE The Great Sausage Tax Scandal and the Return of Laughing Jack McKooka…
439 hits
When ideology excuses everything and responsibility belongs to no one. I recently picked up Crime…
464 hits