cowvat

No one group has done more to damage our global agriculture and food quality than the Rockefeller Foundation. They began in the early 1950s after the War to fund two Harvard Business School professors to develop vertical integration which they named “Agribusiness.” The farmer became the least important. They then created the fraudulent Green Revolution in Mexico and India in the 1960s and later the pro-GMO Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa since 2006. Money from the Rockefeller Foundation literally created the disastrous GMO genetically altered plants with their toxic glyphosate pesticides. Now again, the foundation is engaged in a major policy change in global food and agriculture and it’s not good. 

fudge

People who present fake vaccination certificates in an attempt to enter a cafe or pub could be fined under an amendment to NSW’s public health order signed by Health Minister Brad Hazzard last night.

The new rule reads: “A person must not provide, display or produce to another person information or evidence, including vaccination evidence, purporting to show the person is a fully vaccinated person, unless the information or evidence is true and accurate.”

The maximum penalty for breach of a public health order in NSW is $11,000 or six months imprisonment.

Security experts have raised concern about a rising number of people selling fake vaccination certificates online.

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jens

One of the things one finds constantly amazing is the ability of western politicians, or political figures, to describe the world in a way that is unrecognisable to the averagely informed citizen. A classic illustration of this point was recently evident in an interview given by NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg to the London Financial Times (China is Coming Closer to the United States. Financial Times 19 October 2021.)

An illustration of NATO’s complete absence of relevant historical memory is reflected in Stoltenberg’s discussion with the Financial Times. He seems completely unaware of, or chooses not to remember, the assurance given to then Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev by then United States secretary of state James Baker when seeking the reunification of Germany that NATO would not expand “one inch” to the East.

leunig

Cartoonist Michael Leunig, sometimes referred to as Australia’s “living national treasure,” has revealed that he was forced out of his position on the editorial page of The Age daily newspaper after publishing a political cartoon criticizing the government’s push for mandatory vaccination.

zero

There’s a major greenwashing event taking place in Australia. After decades of attacking the climate movement, the Liberal Party and the Murdoch press have—so they tell us—finally seen the light, jumped aboard a newly minted “green and gold” bandwagon, and set course for “net zero by 2050”.

by Anneke Demanuele, James Plested

pitt

A key aim in the appointment is for the Nationals to have a senior minister who is across the detail of the climate policy to make sure the party secures the safeguards it is being promised to prevent climate measures hurting regional communities.

The Nationals are confident of gaining changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation to ease what they see as “green tape” on farmers and miners, sparking a likely fight in Parliament over the scale of the changes when Labor and the Greens want stronger checks on new projects.

More infrastructure spending will also be part of the final package, including support for an extension of the inland rail project being built from Melbourne to Brisbane.

turgidity...

I’m impressed with federal Education Minister Alan Tudge’s contribution to the national curriculum debate (“Tudge push on history ‘plays politics with children’,” October 23-24). The minister’s farcical statement: “Our society is the wealthiest, most liberal, most egalitarian and most tolerant society that has ever existed in all of humankind” is so facile and biased I suggest it has a place as a discussion proposition in upcoming HSC history exams. This would provide a broad platform for students to discuss their understanding of nuance, perspective and complexity when analysing the impacts of significant events in Australian history.

- Adrian Brown, Cammeray

gnats

Consistency, persistence and stubbornness. They can be tremendous virtues, so long as you are sure you are right.

And, if you're not, then as economist John Maynard Keynes is said to have stated: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"

National Party leader Barnaby Joyce and his key lieutenants may finally have capitulated after months of internal bickering over whether to endorse a carbon emissions reduction target at the upcoming climate summit in Glasgow.

The last-minute deal was short on detail, with vague mentions of regional jobs and uranium but nothing on renewables.

wheel

The integration of the global supply chain has served the world well for years. However, it’s now under pressure just as the economy recovers.

By Shane Wright and Nick Bonyhady

Before a new bicycle hits the road or a mountain trail, it has usually already travelled thousands of kilometres.

malcolm...

The country’s Parliament chose Sandra Mason, the governor general, to assume the symbolic title, a decisive move to distance itself from Barbados’s colonial past.

The island nation of Barbados has elected a female former jurist to become its next head of state, a symbolic position held since the 1950s by Queen Elizabeth II, as the country takes another step toward casting off its colonial past.

orstraya

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the rest of the world usually pays very little attention to Australia.

Sometimes we're mixed up with Austria. Sometimes, the US president appears to momentarily forget the prime minister's name. 

new cars

If you ask Scott Morrison about electric vehicles he throws poor, and inaccurate, marketing lines at you, such as they will “end the weekend”, they “won’t tow your trailer – it’s not going to tow your boat”, as he did when former Labor leader Bill Shorten backed fairly modest objectives concerning the electrification of our vehicle fleet in the run-up to the last election.

Our nation drifts further and further behind the world on electric vehicles, or as Volkswagen puts it, Australia is becoming “an automotive Third World”.

merdier

The European Union has postponed the next round of free trade talks with Australia for a second time amid simmering anger over Canberra's decision to cancel a $90 billion submarine contract with France.

rich

At a recent IMF event on recovering nations from the coronavirus pandemic, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that the COVID-19 coronavirus plunged over 100 million people into poverty, with over 4 billion people with little or no social support. 

rat...

Matt Canavan’s attempt to force the government to release the modelling on its net-zero plan was a transparent attempt to further scorn the emissions cuts he abhors.

The government’s refusal to do so, defying a Senate order, capped off another unedifying week for accountability and openness in government.

The week-long charade of the Nationals’ ham-fisted negotiations over net zero was what dominated headlines, with both Coalition parties extracting what they wanted from the drawn-out drama.

But it was some complicated parliamentary parlour games that eminent barrister and anti-corruption advocate Geoffrey Watson described as having “trashed integrity” and “a new low”.