 For 14 weeks in a row, NSW Health said that the unvaccinated are significantly overrepresented in hospital with Covid. “The minority of the overall population who have not been vaccinated are significantly overrepresented among patients in hospitals and ICUs with COVID-19.” But NSW Health’s own data from the same period shows the exact opposite. Are they trolling us???  SOURCE Let’s look at the raw numbers for these 14 reported weeks (28 May - 27 August 2022). 13/9213 or 0.14% of all general hospitalisations were recorded as unvaccinated (0 dose).     SOURCE Check out the week in green text, where they removed the qualifier ‘more’ to soften the propaganda statement to, …”people who are not vaccinated remain likely to suffer severe Covid-19.” This semantic fiddle was necessary because, in that week, there were ZERO unvaccinated people in hospital with Covid.  SOURCE The disconnect between what the NSW Health bureaucrats say about their data and the actual data that they are publishing has become so ludicrous, it’s hard to take in.     1
NSW total population vaccination statistics via this interactive report pulled from Covidbase.com.au 2 NSW 16+ vaccination statistics via Health.gov.au Dystopian Down Under is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
0 Comments
 By : Rebekah Barnett The Fair Work Commission has decided in favour of five unvaccinated Sydney train drivers who were wrongly stood down for failing to comply with the Covid vaccination policy of their employer, Sydney Trains. Sydney Trains must now backpay the five employees, which includes not just forfeited wages, but also restoration of leave entitlements used because of being stood down.   A spokesperson for Red Union says that although the case only involves a small number of Applicants, it sets an important precedent:
“It’s an important case. It’s a decision from fair work stating that where employers cannot demonstrate reasonableness of a jab policy, the ‘no work as directed, no pay’ rule won’t apply. In this case, the train drivers were able to successfully argue that the employer could not demonstrate that the jab policy was reasonable.” The significance of the Fair Work Commission making such a decision based on what is “reasonable” cannot be understated in the context of disciplinary measures still being undertaken all over the country for failure to comply with the (unreasonable) direction to submit to Covid vaccination (see: QLD teachers and WA police). Human rights lawyer Peter Fam (Sydney) said of the decision: ”I have been warning employers for years now not to fall into the trap of arguing that their Work Health and Safety duty to reduce risk as far as reasonably practicable involves things that they have no knowledge or expertise in, like virology. Many have only caught onto the folly of this approach recently. Some are still digging.” Congratulations to Stephen Taylor, Kristen Tripp, Ueligitone Aiono, Nellanisiara Cambridge, and Joseph Galea for standing your ground and setting this precedent.   From aggressive lockdowns, to banning early treatments, masking protocols and vaccine mandates, the Australian and UK governments stayed fairly well in lockstep throughout the Covid pandemic response (though the convict colony Down Under was more extreme on some counts). Throwing agreed pandemic protocols out the window, our governments inexplicably threw everything they had at a new, untested approach. Many warned of the impending carnage. They were ignored. However, the data doesn’t lie, and nearly three years in, the pitfalls are bearing out. So just how wrong were they? Breathtakingly incompetent. Woefully off-base. Dead wrong. Dystopian Down Under (Australia) and The Stark Naked Brief (UK) have teamed up to count the ways. Over the coming weeks we will be deep diving into the details, issue by issue. This post will be updated with links to the more in-depth topical posts as we go along. What is the point of this exercise? People are sick of hearing about Covid, and sifting through the minutia can be as excruciating as it is vindicating. Yet, to simply move on without taking stock of the mistakes, the harms and the ongoing damage would be foolish. History is a great teacher. An inventory must be taken, learnings must be noted and actions must be taken to ensure that we never stumble down this path again. To readers who may be wondering what we’re talking about - was it really that bad? Yes, it was. Really bad. An independent review1 published last month found Australia’s Covid response to be excessive, particularly in regard to school closures, lockdowns and border closures. A cost benefit analysis2 by think tank Institute of Public Affairs found that 37 x more life years were lost than were saved as a result of lockdowns, and that thus far, Australia’s Covid response has cost almost 1 trillion dollars. Another cost benefit analysis,3 by UNSW economist Gigi Foster, found that the costs of Australia’s Covid lockdowns have been at least 68 x greater than the benefits they delivered. An official government enquiry into the UK Covid response is underway, but it is yet to examine administrative governance and decision-making. The HART group4 called the UK lockdowns, “the greatest policy failure in modern history,” finding that the costs of lockdowns exceeded any plausible estimate of the benefits many times over. UK news site The Daily Mail produced their own cost benefit audit of lockdowns. Their research team estimated that, for every day that Britain remained in lockdown, the national debt rose by £1 billion. In short, not only did the Covid responses of the Australian and UK governments not work as hoped, they caused damage of epic proportion: economic, social, and to the health and wellbeing of individual citizens. During the past two and a half years, the mainstream media have gushed effusively over the efforts taken by our respective governments. Journalists have reported uncritically for the most part, as though their job was to reprint government press releases, always appended with a plea to get vaccinated (the sole solution to a circulating respiratory virus). They have sought to justify government overreach and to excuse the failures, whilst remaining silent on the harms. They have perpetuated the use of the misnomer “anti-vax”, weaponising it as a pejorative to tar and feather dissidents and to shut down democratic debate. Taken in entirety, this behaviour from marquee outlets signals a complete abandonment of the Fourth Estate mandate, which is to hold truth to power so that the people may be protected from their government.5 Such dereliction of duty on the part of the media leaves it to independent journalists, niche publications and citizen bloggers to perform a hard task with limited resources and reach. The task is to provide the balance of what is not reported in the mainstream media. To give voice to those who are silenced and suppressed. To sift through the flow of information to determine what needs to be added to the agenda that has been set by the main instruments of the propaganda machine. To apply a critical lens to said propaganda. To hold truth to power. So here is the truth of the Covid response. This list will be updated as new information comes to light. 1 / They were wrong to flout the ethical primacy of valid consent, coercing the population into a medical experiment. 2 / They were wrong to force vaccine mandates on the public – for a vaccine that does not prevent infection or transmission. 3 / They were wrong to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on rushed vaccines, PPE and tests, then throw astronomical amounts away. In fact, the cost of the Covid response as a whole was obscene and wasteful beyond belief… 4 / They were wrong to spend so much money for so little gain, when those resources could have been diverted towards saving and improving far more lives than they did. 5 / They were wrong to push vaccination on the younger population, who were never at serious risk from Covid and who stood the greater risk of harm from the Covid vaccines. 6 / They were wrong to say that myocarditis is mild and temporary. 7 / They were wrong to mask school children, which failed to stop the virus, but succeeded in causing developmental delays, health concerns and social anxiety. 8 / They were wrong to close schools, businesses, gyms and other places of gathering, confining people to their homes for week and months on end. 9 / They were wrong to divert policing resources away from important duties, and towards petty enforcement of absurd and draconian Covid rules. 10 / They were wrong to divert important healthcare funding and resourcing to endless testing and associated activities for a virus with a >99.5% survival rate6, causing important surgeries and health screenings to be cancelled. 11 / They were wrong to dismiss valid concerns over vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially in light of the fact that mRNA vaccines had never before been (provisionally) approved and rolled out to the population at large, and in the absence of medium or long term safety studies. 12 / They were wrong to use alarmist modelling as basis for their extreme Covid response measures. 13 / They were wrong to enforce vaccination passports, which did not stop the spread and which only served to hamper businesses, infringe on civil rights, and marginalise people for their health choices. 14 / They were wrong to isolate the old and infirm, leaving many to die alone while their anguished loved ones begged to be allowed inside, to no avail. 15 / They were wrong to assure pregnant and lactating women of the safety of the vaccines, when the appropriate research had not been conducted for this cohort. 16 / They were wrong to ban or limit access to early treatments, instead pushing vaccination as the single magic bullet solution. 17 / They were wrong to engage nudge units to manipulate the population into receiving an experimental medical procedure. 18 / They were wrong to suspend the right to protest. 19 / They were wrong to make obtaining compensation for vaccine injury so difficult and delayed. 20 / They were wrong when they said that the mRNA products are not experimental, that the mRNA clears the body within a few days, and that it cannot affect the recipient’s DNA. 21 / They were wrong to marginalise and demonise a small, principled minority of constituents, stoking division and hate.  They were wrong. They caused immense harm. They owe the public heartfelt apologies and restitution.
Children learn, at a young age, that when you harm others you must apologise and make amends. It doesn’t matter whether you meant to cause harm, the fact is that you did, and that you simply must say sorry, and try never to do that again. Shifting blame is juvenile. We do not allow 5 year olds to get away with it. We demand of our leaders that they do better than 5 year olds. The apologies should be forthcoming, sincere, and detailed. Our leaders should demonstrate that they appreciate the depth and depravity of the harm that they have inflicted upon us. They should tell us how they intend to do better, and they should take action to make sure they never do this to us again. An amnesty will not do. Cries of, ‘we just did what we could with the information at hand’ are unacceptable. You simply cannot be that wrong, that many times without there being serious error in the culture, thinking and processes of our political elite and institutions. Regardless, no matter what doom the alarmist modelling broadcast, no matter what promises The Science™️ foretold of magic bullet solutions, there was never an acceptable argument for enacting such harsh, authoritarian measures at the expense of the civic rights of citizens, and of the most foundational principles on which our purportedly democratic societies are built. It starts with sorry. Then, a reckoning. Those who apologise early, with sincerity, may find the reckoning to be less painful.  By: Robyn Chuter In Part 1 of this series, I introduced the Mercury Project and contrasted its stated aims – to improve COVID-related health outcomes in 17 countries (16 of them low and middle-income) by combating “heath mis- and disinformation” that had dissuaded people from accepting a COVID-19 injection – with the reality on the ground. That reality is simply that the countries with the highest uptake of COVID jabs generally have the highest COVID-attributed death rates and the highest excess mortality, and conversely those countries whose populations largely rejected the jabs are doing the best on both counts. Given that the entire raison d’etre of the Mercury Project is self-evidently fallacious, you may be asking yourself how, and why, it has managed to attract over US$30 million in funding, and snare some big-name researchers including Angela Duckworth of Grit fame and Katy Milkman, host of the behavioural economics podcast ‘Choiceology’ and author of several popular books on behaviour change. (You’ll be pleased to know that these celebrity researchers are going to lend their talents to persuading more Americans to accept boosters that have negative efficacy – that is, they increase the risk of infection – against the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. Nice work!)  To answer those ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions, we need to delve into the history of the organisations behind the Mercury Project. As you’ll remember from Part 1, the project was initiated by the Social Science Research Council, with seed funding by the Rockefeller Foundation ($7.5 million), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ($2 million), Craig Newmark Philanthropies ($500K), followed by a $250K grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and US$20 million from the National Science Foundation.
In this post, we’ll delve into the Social Science Research Council and the Rockefeller Foundation. Part 3 will examine the remaining foundations. The Social Science Research CouncilThis is how the Social Science Research Council describes its history and mission: “The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is an independent, international, nonprofit organization founded in 1923. It fosters innovative research, nurtures new generations of social scientists, deepens how inquiry is practiced within and across disciplines, and mobilizes necessary knowledge on important public issues… For nearly 100 years the Social Science Research Council has coordinated the research, policy, and philanthropic communities in the pursuit of evidence-based policies to promote human well-being, emerging as both a pivotal force in the academy and a respected contributor to the public good. The SSRC is guided by the belief that justice, prosperity, and democracy all require better understanding of complex social, cultural, economic, and political processes. We work with practitioners, policymakers, and academic researchers in the social sciences, natural sciences, humanities, and related professions. We build interdisciplinary and international networks, working with partners around the world to link research to practice and policy, strengthen individual and institutional capacities for learning, and enhance public access to information.” But the real story is rather more complicated – and much less benign. In reality, the SSRC itself was established by tax exempt foundations, for the purpose of steering the development of the social sciences – that is, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, history and statistics – in a direction which supported the financial, social and political objectives of the robber barons who established them. The 1915 report of the Walsh Commission on Industrial Relations had excoriated the tax exempt foundations, particularly the Rockefeller Foundation, for using its vast wealth to mould public policy to its founders’ financial interests, whilst being “subject to no public control”: “The entrance of the foundations into the field of industrial relations, through the creation of a special division by the Rockefeller Foundation, constitutes a menace to the national welfare to which the attention not only of Congress but of the entire country should be directed. Backed by the $100,000,000 of the Rockefeller Foundation, this movement has the power to influence the entire country in the determination of its most vital policy… The so-called ‘investigation of industrial relations’ has not, as is claimed, either a scientific or a social basis, but originated to promote the industrial interests of Mr. Rockefeller.” Final Report of the Commission on Industrial Relations, p. 121 As a consequence, the foundations established “academic holding companies” such as the SSRC and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), in order to launder their agenda-shaping research funding through ostensibly independent bodies which were, in reality, anything but: “The ACLS and SSRC were formed in 1919 and 1923 respectively, and between 1925 and 1960 the former organization received US$20 million from foundations (60 per cent of which came from the big three [the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford Foundations]), and from 1925 to 1960 the SSRC received US$28 million (95 percent of which was funnelled to them by the big three).” Progressive Social Change in the ‘Ivory Tower’? A Critical Reflection on the Evolution of Activist Orientated Research in US Universities The agenda of the SSRC was laid bare by Norman Dodd, in his 1954 report to the Special Committee of the House of Representatives to Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations, which became known as the Reece Committee. Referring to the complex web of associations, societies and councils established and maintained by the largesse of the tax exempt foundations, Dodd concluded: “The broad study which called our attention to the activities of these organizations has revealed not only their support by Foundations but has disclosed a degree of cooperation between them which they have referred to as ‘an interlock’, thus indicating a concentration of influence and power. By this phrase they indicate they are bound by a common interest rather than a dependency upon a single source for capital funds. It is difficult to study their relationship without confirming this. Likewise, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that their common interest has led them to cooperate closely with one another and that this common interest lies in the planning and control of certain aspects of American life through a combination of the Federal Government and education. This may explain why the Foundations have played such an active role in the promotion of the social sciences, why they have favored so strongly the employment of social scientists by the Federal Government and why they seem to have used their influence to transform education into an instrument for social change… In summary, our study of these entities and their relationship to each other seems to warrant the inference that they constitute a highly efficient, functioning whole. Its product is apparently an educational curriculum designed to indoctrinate the American student from matriculation to the consummation of his education. It contrasts sharply with the freedom of the individual as the cornerstone of our social structure. For this freedom, it seems to substitute the group, the will of the majority, and a centralized power to enforce this will—presumably in the interest of all. Its development and production seems to have been largely the work of those organizations engaged in research, such as the Social Science Research Council and the National Research Council.” Dodd Report to the Reece Committee on Foundations, pp. 10-11 You can watch G. Edward Griffin’s interview with Norman Dodd on his investigation of the tax exempt foundations, and his disturbing conclusions, here: Get vaxxed baby! and other puerile propaganda messages from the annals of pandemania Down Under11/1/2022  By : Rebekah Barnett Is anyone going to call Kyle Sandilands out for spreading misinformation? No? ...Me then, I will. This is the tenor of the garbage spewed forth from mainstream media last year in Australia. Witness, radio personality Kyle Sandilands rapping Get Vaxxed Baby with the questionable message that getting double jabbed would “handle” Covid.     The binary thinking that the only way out of lockdown was to jab everyone twice was the problem, not the virus. It was clear to sane and thinking people at this time (July 2021) that the vax could not prevent infection or transmission to an extent that would be required to ‘stop the spread’. We also knew from decades of epidemiological and public health canon that locking people down was not an effective way to deal with a respiratory virus. And then there was the troublesome proposition that removing people’s civil rights was justified because governments just had to buy time in order to prepare the hospitals. All of this was bogus and unjustifiable in a fair debate. If Sandilands was being fed the wrong information, then that indicates that the misinformation came from the top. The media was the mouthpiece of an either misinformed or wilfully manipulative government apparatus. The revelation that NSW Gov engaged in ‘nudge' tactics to manipulate the public into acquiescing to lockdowns suggests the latter in the case of NSW (and possibly other states as well). NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said that Sandiland’s cringe rap was, “the light of my life.” Prime Minister at the time, Scott Morrison, publicly thanked Sandilands for his efforts in the mass propaganda campaign. In the press limelight following release of his prop-rap (a new genre, propaganda rap), Sandilands said, "These people are actual doctors and scientists – get the vaccine. Don’t be one of those anti-vaxxing losers.” This is the rhetoric employed by primary school bullies to get the other kids to play with them. The response of commenters on the Youtube post of the rap were more based in reality:   Why on God’s green earth was a radio jock giving health advice on pharmaceutical interventions anyway? He should also apologise to Vanilla Ice for the hack job. BTW I’m not being overly harsh on Sandilands - this was not a one-off error. In September of the same year, Sandilands outed the private medical status of his producer, Pedro Vitola, on live radio, calling him a “stupid prick” for not being jabbed.  In August 2022, Sandilands and his cohost Jackie O pranked Vitolo by announcing that the station was sending him to see the soccer World Cup as reward for his hard work. He cried in gratitude. The punch line was that vaccination is a requirement to go. (To be fair, this style of prank is standard fare for Sandilands and O, and everyone related to the show is pranked regularly and harshly, not least the hosts). Vitolo stuck to his guns and refused the ticket. Shock jocks like Sandilands were not the only ones pushing the false binary of ‘get the shot or lockdown forever.’ Check out Channel 9’s ‘Our time to get a shot’ campaign of June 2021.  These are high profile media personalities and news journalists. Did no one consider that there was more to this conversation than, ‘submit to an experimental gene therapy injection with no long term safety data OR stay in your house foreverrrrrrrr’? Is this degree of myopia just the natural result of being surrounded by bureaucratic Experts and Yes Men, such that you are never seriously challenged on anything that you think? Have government and corporate institutions been so focused on diversity of gender, sexual orientation and skin colour that they entirely overlooked diversity of thought as a pivotal concern? Here is national treasure Magda Szubanksi in a Vic Gov sponsored ad, telling Australians, “it’s not the lockdown that’s the enemy, it’s the virus,” and that this could all be over if we just obeyed the rules.  But actually, it was government overreach that kept us in excessive and harsh lockdowns for longer than necessary, not the virus. Though this was overwhelmingly obvious to some of us, it has now been confirmed via several independent reviews1, which, via various methods and on different sides of the political aisle, have arrived at similar conclusions: that Australia's pandemic response was over the top, and that lockdowns were excessive, ineffective, and ultimately harmful. Chris Kenny wrote a very good wrap-up of the Fault Lines review a couple of weeks ago for The Australian, in which he declared the pandemic overreach a “national scandal” and called for a royal commission to clean up the mess.  Pandemic overreach finally exposed as a national scandal, The Australian, 21 October 2022 Intentionally or not, Australian media personalities were key agents in the spread of misinformation propaganda on a matter of national concern. They covered for government, excusing the inexcusable. They used their platforms to apply undue pressure to a beleaguered populace, bullying anyone who dissented or expressed hesitancy. Maybe they didn’t know what they were doing. Maybe the misinformation came from ‘The Experts’ that they, too, trusted. Maybe they genuinely did not know that they were a cog in the propaganda machine. If these media personalities come to the realisation of the part they played in manufacturing consent, publicly acknowledge it, apologise and try to correct the error, I’m sure they will be forgiven. Aseem Malhotra is example of the good a public personality can do upon realising their error and correcting course. And what of those who don’t acknowledge their mistakes and adjust course? Who would like us all to ‘move on’, to overlook the carnage that they contributed to, forgive and forget without any accountability or recourse? Emily Oster, font of misinformation and cheerleader of inappropriate pandemic measures, floated the idea in her latest article for The Atlantic, LET’S DECLARE A PANDEMIC AMNESTY, in which she essentially says, ‘oops, we were all doing our best with the information at hand, let’s just forgive and forget ok?’ Twitter fire rained down in response. Have a scroll of the comments in the thread linked below.  It’s a hard NO, Emily. You do not get to declare an amnesty without first saying sorry. Listen. Demonstrate that you understand how you got it wrong. Promise you will never behave that way again. Then we can talk. Head to my instagram for my curated selection of responses to Emily’s ill-advised post.
Circling back to Australia, I’ve posted three videos that contain misinformation, lack context, and promote misleading messages. Big tech routinely bans or removes content for these reasons. Yet all three videos posted above, though patently in breach of ‘community guidelines’ as enforced over the past several years, remain up on multiple platforms. What’s with that? These are the kind of questions that keep conspiracy theorists awake at night. |
AuthorOur articles and rebuttal pieces are written by our writers on our volunteer team Archives
April 2023
Categories |
RSS Feed
