planet

Ada Palmer is a professor of European history at the University of Chicago. Her four-volume science fiction series, Terra Ignota, was inspired by 18th-century philosophers such as Voltaire and Diderot.

“I wanted to write a story that Voltaire might have written if Voltaire had been able to read the last 70 years’ worth of science fiction and have all of those tools at his disposal,” Palmer says in Episode 495 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

balls-up

Novak Djokovic is back on court in Melbourne, training ahead of the Australian Open despite ongoing uncertainty over whether he can remain in the country.

Follow today's events as they happen. 

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-14/novak-djokovic-updates-blog-visa-decision-alex-hawke/100755958

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

idiot

Australia's journey through Omicron is like the bus tour from hell. Steering awry, seat belts forgotten or not working, and the driver's patter wearing thin with stressed passengers.

Eventually we'll see the back of the boggy ground on this outback track. But in worse shape and at higher cost than the Morrison government was suggesting only weeks ago.

"Omicron is a gear change and we have to push through," Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday. "You have two choices here: you can push through or you can lock down. We're for pushing through."

brennan

"Nowhere are the stakes higher for our national security than in the field of biotechnology," Brennan stated. "Recent advances in genome editing that offer great potential for breakthroughs in public health are also a cause for concern because the same methods can be used to create genetically engineered biological warfare agents."

In April [2016], the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Health Affairs Acting Director Aaron Firoved testified in Congress that synthetic biology and gene editing offer terrorist organizations potential to modify organisms for malicious purposes such as manmade pathogens that can rapidly cause disease outbreaks.

diplomacy

The Western empire-builders are weakened and exposed in the eyes of their own populations and thus are disarmed politically to pursue confrontation. 

Author and commentator Alex Krainer explains in the following interview why Russia is now strong enough to take a definitive stand against the United States and its Western empire-builders. This is the wider historical context for high-level negotiations being conducted this week between Russia and the U.S. and NATO in which Moscow has asserted red lines for its national security.

fart

The warning to Scott Morrison about a crisis in virus testing was made very clear last year after the Prime Minister told Australians to prepare for a world where they would emerge from lockdowns and live with the coronavirus.

The warning was so loud it was almost impossible to ignore. Almost. Now, only a few months later, voters can see the way Morrison has lost the race to bring in huge supplies of rapid antigen tests when people needed them most.

The government’s twin talents, arrogance and complacency, have been at work again in an astonishing repeat of the slow supply of vaccines last year.

 gov

The editorial of the SCIENCE magazine (11 Jan 2022) is forcefully telling a relative truth, but somewhat in a hypocritical manner. 

 

The catch line is: "Because science benefits from dissent within the scientific community to sharpen ideas and thinking, scientists’ ability to freely voice legitimate disagreement should not be constrained."

 

empire cookiesWashington pursues RAND’s plan in Kazakhstan, then in Transnistria

 

by Thierry Meyssan 

The events that have been unfolding for the past week in Kazakhstan are the fifth part of a plan by the RAND Corporation, the sixth of which will take place in Transnistria. The four previous episodes took place over the last two years in Ukraine, Syria, Belarus and Nagorno-Karabakh. The aim is to weaken Russia by forcing it to over-deploy.

 

document

Project Veritas also reported having obtained a second report written to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense, by U.S. Marine Maj. Joseph Murphy, who is also a former fellow at DARPA.

“Major Murphy’s report goes on to detail great concern over the COVID-19 gain of function program, the concealment of documents, the suppression of potential curatives, like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, and the mRNA vaccines,” Project Veritas wrote.

aspiA private citizen has debunked a think-tank’s claims of Uyghur forced labour. Media, human rights organisations and universities were MIA. Why?

 

pork

At first glance, it seemed the Morrison government in a peculiar way admitted its multibillion-dollar Community Development Grant racket was corrupt.

Sure, there was an $11 million gift to a billion-dollar private company in a marginal LNP seat last year – I’ll come back to that – but could the government have been shamed into “doing the right thing” overall?

After The New Daily and Michael West Media back in 2020 exposed the blatant rorting of CDGs to favour Coalition MPs and “seats of interest”, the bare summary of CDG allocations published last year actually shows more money going to Labor-held electorates than the Coalition – $177.7 million to $169.3 million.

lies...

Americans have never been sicker. Life expectancy in the United States continues to fall. An increasing number of people are anxious and depressed. And before you blame Covid-19 and lockdowns, it’s important to note that these problems existed long before a deadly pandemic brought the country and the world in general to a screeching halt.

 

joker

The decision to allow world No.1 Novak Djokovic to contest the Australian Open has won support from the peak men’s tennis body, who described the saga as “damaging on all fronts”.

The statement from the ATP came as Immigration Minister Alex Hawke was considering on Tuesday whether there were still grounds to cancel the Serb’s visa, after Monday’s court ruling.

It also followed the Djokovic family calling an abrupt end to a media briefing to celebrate his court win when they were grilled about the star’s actions in the days following his positive COVID test in December.

 

The ATP issued a statement on Tuesday that welcomed the court ruling that quashed the decision to block Djokovic’s entry into Australia.

stupid

It's been described by an expert as a lockdown in NSW without public health orders.

Although the country's most populous state has few COVID-19 restrictions in place, businesses around NSW have been forced to close due to virus-induced staff absences.

Spending data analysed by ANZ last week indicated economic activity plummeting to levels lower than any other time during the pandemic.

aggression

On Thursday, talks will continue in the broader format of the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which includes the US as well as Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet states.

The European Union, too, is determined not to be left out. EU defense and foreign ministers will meet in the French town of Brest on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. As with all the other planned conferences, the main topic on the agenda will be Russian demands for security guarantees and possible reactions to an escalation by Putin in Ukraine.