[Note alternative video URL is https://youtu.be/ZtwpzqAJMBo.]Chris Hedges discusses with Craig Murray, a former British Ambassador, the hearing underway in London to extradite Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, to the United States. Murray’s exhaustive reporting, which can be found at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/, has become one of the few sources of reliable information about a hearing that has become notoriously difficult to cover because of court restrictions imposed on the alternative press, and which is being ignored for political reasons by most mainstream news organizations. If you wonder why there is no video-coverage available of the Assange mistrial, it is because (a) Human Rights NGOs, which were promised video-access, had this cut off after the first day and (b) despite access being available to most corporate and government media, mysteriously, none has availed themself of it. That is the reason that you and I are not able to monitor this mistrial, and that is possibly the reason it has been able to continue. The public gallery is virtually empty. This is really a secret trial. Only five family members of Assange have been allowed, with Craig Murray having the title of uncle, to Assange. Craig Murray's coverage of the trial is apparently under a shadow ban from the major internet platforms; his readership has dwindled to something like 10 per cent, despite his coverage providing a unique and valuable public window, where almost none exist, into this dark political tower that the Old Bailey has become.
Excerpt from Craig Murray's report for Hearing Day 21
Your Man in the Public Gallery: Assange Hearing Day 21
October 1, 2020
I really do not know how to report Wednesday’s events. Stunning evidence, of extreme quality and interest, was banged out in precis by the lawyers as unnoticed as bags of frozen chips coming off a production line.
The court that had listened to Clair Dobbin spend four hours cross-examining Carey Shenkman on individual phrases of first instance court decisions in tangentially relevant cases, spent four minutes as Noam Chomsky’s brilliant exegesis of the political import of this extradition case was rapidly fired into the court record, without examination, question or placing into the context of the legal arguments about political extradition.
Twenty minutes sufficed for the reading of the “gist” of the astonishing testimony of two witnesses, their identity protected as their lives may be in danger, who stated that the CIA, operating through Sheldon Adelson, planned to kidnap or poison Assange, bugged not only him but his lawyers, and burgled the offices of his Spanish lawyers Baltazar Garzon. This evidence went unchallenged and untested.
The rich and detailed evidence of Patrick Cockburn on Iraq and of Andy Worthington on Afghanistan was, in each case, well worthy of a full day of exposition. I should love at least to have seen both of them in the witness box explaining what to them were the salient points, and adding their personal insights. Instead we got perhaps a sixth of their words read rapidly into the court record. There was much more.
I have noted before, and I hope you have marked my disapproval, that some of the evidence is being edited to remove elements which the US government wish to challenge, and then entered into the court record as uncontested, with just a “gist” read out in court. The witness then does not appear in person. This reduces the process from one of evidence testing in public view to something very different. Wednesday confirmed the acceptance that this “Hearing” is now devolved to an entirely paper exercise. [...] Read more at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/10/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-21/.
[English translation of video-dialogue below the video.] In this very interesting video, Frederic Taddei of Interdit d'interdire (Forbidden to censure) states, at the beginning, that he has no intention of evaluating the value of hydroxycloroquine and azithromycine, because he lacks the medical knowledge to do so. He states his intention in inviting his guests (Olivier Berruyer, economist and statistician, and Raphaël Liogier, sociologist and philosopher) is to find out why there is so much controversy over Professor Didier Raoult and his promotion of COVID-19 treatment using hydroxychloroquine. [Note that this unpolished translation took hours out of several days. Both debaters spoke emotionally and with multiple redundancies, also different versions of the word hydroxychloroquine.] Among other things, the participants' discussion of the politics seemed to boil down to the ambiguity of testing drugs in a pandemic situation where big-pharma, other commercial competition, and fraud, loom. I thought that the main argument could be summarized as: (Olivier Berruyer) 'The effectiveness claimed by Didier Raoult for hydroxychloroquine could only be proven through randomised double-blind trials, but these have never been successfully completed due to a series of mishaps', and 'There is no way anyone could scientifically reproduce Raoult's method because he keeps changing it', versus (Raphael Liogier) 'Pending a perfect cure for COVID-19, Didier Raoult is doing the best he can as he treats people in a personalised manner, monitoring their responses, with drugs he believes to be effective'. I would add that, as the translator, and as an evolutionary sociologist, my own feeling about the reasons for such controversy is that it is related to the way apes behave over a tasty food supply or some other big event (good or bad) that concerns them. It is natural for everyone in the community to get involved in something important - in this case a pandemic. We seize whatever handle, whatever fact or factoid we can get hold of, and we run with it, to the best of our ability and enthusiasm. Apes with alpha-pretensions get up in trees and shout loudly about what they've got, competing for audiences and power. So, I invite the reader to keep in mind ape-ethology when he/she reads the translated dialogue below. {See also the notes at the end, on hyrdoxychloroquine trials and prescription of this drug and the law in France.)
FREDERIC TADDEI (Host of Interdit d'Interdire): But the controversy around Professor Raoult goes beyond all that. For four months the lines have been drawn between those who believe in Raoult and those who don't believe in him. It has become a real war of religion. So, although we cannot debate the existence of god, or faith, or miracles - you either believe in them or you don't - we can debate the sacred literature. That's what we are going to do, with a pro- and an anti-Raoult, since France has been divided into pro- and anti-Raoult. My two guests are not medical doctors, but they have looked into what Didier Raoult says. The first guest is Raphael Liogier. He is a philosopher and sociologist, professor at the institute of political studies in Aix en Provence.
FREDERIC TADDEI [Addressing Liogier]: You are the author of Sacred medicine, history and future of a sanctuary of thinking, with Jean Bauberot, and of the Horror of emptiness, a critique of industrialist thinking, which will come out at the beginning of the school year, [...] and which will talk about, notably, the politics surrounding Didier Raoult. I will add that you are a member of the ethics committee at Didier Raoult's Marseille IHU [IHU = Instituts Hospitalo-Universitaires], and that you took part in the editing of the report at the request of Professor Raoult, on how to articulate research and care, in a time of pandemic. This report is expected to be available soon, and everyone will rush to read it. So, for you, who defend the work of Professor Raoult, what is the meaning of all this controversy, in two words, RapHael Liogier?
Interdit d'interdire - L'affaire Didier Raoult
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: Over and above, the polemics, it's much deeper. We are looking at a loss of credibility in science and a transformation of the major scientific paradigms. Whilst we are talking about things like randomised double blind trials, we are talking about a method that is supposed to be able to find a pure and absolute drug. Then, on the other side, we have Didier Raoult's methodology which is, in fact, a methodology more of feeling one's way; it's more relativist: one seeks, one looks at what works and what does not work. There isn't that background, paradoxically, that is almost religious, in fact, where the religious are not on the side you would expect. They are more given over to positivism and rationalism. The philosopher, Hegel, said that everything real is rational. My feeling is that the anti-Raoults are like Hegeliens who defend a kind of industrialist ideal of controls, research, truth, perfect drug, etc. This whilst, in a way, society has largely gone past that. And that's the quarrel, the meaning of the quarrel, in the most profound meaning of the term. I think that's it. We are looking at two different conceptual approaches, two different scientific paradigms, clashing.
Now we go to Olivier Berruyer, founder of the Les-Crises site which specialises in deconstructing propaganda; Olivier Berruyer, who wrote a study that was very critical of Didier Raoult's work, based on Raoult's publications and his assertions. For you, Olivier, what underlies this controversy?
OLIVIER BERRUYER: I would not put myself in an anti-Raoult camp. Raoult was one of the only ones to do a very interesting piece of work on sequelae, scanning infected people [...], so I'm not anti-Raoult, in fact. I am pro-the fundamental principles of science; that's true. I would say that underlying this controversy is that we are becoming a conflict-oriented society. Everyone tries to get a position against something, much more than they do to be for something. This is really quite interesting. The major media push for this, in order to create some buzz, clicks, to sell more paper, but, in the end, one notices that this pushes people to not use their critical faculties to try to find the truth, or at least to come together to create situations where they can discuss it together, but can cause a fairly large number of people to become fanatical, using their critical faculties to confirm their biases, rather than doubting - and science is made up of doubting, and Russell said, "Never be certain of anything." In any case, have reasonable doubts, don't over-doubt, because that will also prevent you from reaching the truth. For me, it's really that: this story of strange passions, when instead one could discuss the subject peacefully. I do hope we will enter reality and leave this sort of Orwellian truth potion, where each person invents their own reality. When we live in different realities, we can no longer communicate.
FREDERIC TADDEI: Let's start then by what you don't like, Olivier, in Professor Raoult's work, since you have said that you are not an 'anti-Raoul', and that you admire him for a certain number of things. But, nonetheless, you have been very very severe about his publications and his assertions concerning COVID-19.
OLIVIER BERRUYEY: [...] I disapprove of his having ceased to do science and medicine in order to do politics. He has politicised a subject that should have remained scientific. In order to prove that he was right, he abandoned the fundamental principles of medicine at a time when we needed them the most. He transformed the IHU Marseille institute into a lobbying centre for chloroquine. [Berruyey disagrees that Raoult's had a method of 'feeling one's way', describing it as] simply Raoult dedicated to proving that he was right, bit by bit. Systematically deconstructing any study that contradicted his assertions. Staying silent about a number of studies that showed certain dangers of the treatment, but carrying on about some extremely pedestrian studies, such as Professor Peron's, which was then withdrawn a few days later, and no-one talked about it anymore; and hiding the truth from people so as to make believe that chloroquin works. So, I demonstrated this in referring to scientific publications. I can do it here - it would take a bit of time - but people can look [for themselves]. I can cite a couple of little examples, which started off this chloroquin story. At the beginning of February, Raoul said, 'We have to listen to the Chinese. They are really the kings of virology. The Chinese use Chloroquin'. Terrific. So we must use chloroquin. After a month he said, 'We have to use hydroxychloroquine'. Hydroxychloroquine is close, but it isn't the same thing. The Chinese do not use hydroxychloroquine. Then he says, 'We're going to add an antibiotic, because that works better'. The Chinese guidelines say, 'If you use hydroxychloroquine, above all, don't use antibiotics because it is dangerous. And so, after a while, we find that Raoult says we should listen to the Chinese, but does the opposite. And, I will cite a second example which, to me, epitomises the problem: There was a study that showed that chloroquin seemed a little dangerous. Raoult said, no, it wasn't, and produced a small paper in response, drawing the reader's attention to a third study, which said chloroquine was not dangerous. Very good. However, after a comma following that statement, it said that, if you added an antibiotic - Raoult's protocol - it was very dangerous. It raised mortality. It's really pretty odd to have under your nose a study that says your protocol is dangerous, in order to convince people that your protocol is not dangerous. That's Raoult's method, in fact. It is perfectly understandable, because it's no longer science. There isn't any debate because 90% of scientists can see very well that it doesn't work, that there is a big methodological problem. But, obviously, there is a media problem as well, which tries to give the impression that if they look into it, that will be divisive. Scientists are not very divided. Someone with a doctorate in virologie, in biochemistry, who knows science, can see very well that there is a big problem. That's true overseas too. All the fake-science hunters have demolished this work.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: I would really like to... The first thing is that to really look at it. In a way, my interlocuteur has validated what I said at the beginning. I said that Raoult works by feeling his way. Initially he said we have to follow the Chinese, then he changed his dosages, he changed the very nature of the product, going from chloroquine to hydrochlorothiazide. [sic] So, exactly - Raoul works pragmatically. And science has always been pragmatic; medical science especially. Medicine isn't physics theory. I have myself studied a little of the epistemology of medicine, and it isn't physics theory, it is, in fact, an almost artisan practice, where one goes from caring for patients to research, and from research to caring for patients. And Raoul functions within that paradigm. It is for that reason that he favours what he calls "observational studies" on the one hand, and going back and forth between them and caring for patients, on the other. It is in this way that he has progressively developed his treatment, which proves, in fact, that he is not maintaining a monological posture, only talking to himself and not with his team. No, he has progressively developed in his work whilst caring for patients - and I would remind you that the largest number of people tested in France proportionate to inhabitants is Marseille. He therefore had an enormous living lab for his practical studies, and he developed, little by little, coming to a point where he had the most efficient treatment possible. But I want to say a second thing, a second thing which is that what Didier Raoult was proposing cannot be limited to hydrochloroquine [sic], and I think that here, we are trying - it's a bit like the tree that hides the forest - we are trying to hide a certain number of errors. I think these are political errors. It's not a question of conspiracy theory, but of political errors by politicians. That's what took Didier Raoult well beyond the question of hydrochloroquine. [sic] Systematically testing everyone - and that's what was done in Marseille. You can reproach him what you will, but I assure you, it was what he could do in Marseille, as much as he could do with the means that he possessed - systematically everyone, and then to put to one side, that is, to put into quarantine, individuals who tested positive - and only them, only them. Then, after that, look after them, no matter the degree of their illness, and this with every precaution - meaning even when they were asymptomatic, and with every precaution - the precautions that are possible whilst using the drug hydrochloroquine mixed with azithromycine - but, as you said, my interlocuteur, doing scans, doing everything necessary, including systematically doing electrocardiograms. I went there, so I had an electrocardiogram. Everyone had an electrocardiogram. I was asymptomatic. So, taking every precaution. So, it was a methodology with everything together, of crisis management, second point. And the third point with which I would be in agreement, I think, and not completely with my interlocuteur, the third point, is that where there has been politicisation - but I am not sure that it came from Raoult. I think that there was politicisation from outside. Because, the only thing that Raoult did, if you listened, apart from his cheeky humour, his mind, his character [which was] a little direct. He might allow himself to say that it was a little bit of flu, etc. I'm not talking about that. Because, from a scientific point of view, he was a very serious person. I want to say that he was politicised precisely because what he was proposing was not just hydrochloroquine, it was a comprehensive strategy, opposed, in fact, to systematic quarantine. We don't know today if general quarantine was good. We don't even know if it saved lives or if, to the contrary, it caused lives to be sacrificed, when we look at societies like the Korean society, which did not practice systematic confinement, but which practised, as was proposed as a general method by Didier Raoult, systematic testing and quarantining of those who tested, and the act of caring for them, but which effectively reduced the circulation of the virus. Therefore, I believe, something quite rational and very pragmatic. But without that conceptual approach of seeking the perfect drug, because, whilst looking for the perfect drug, one finishes up sacrificing lives, on the pretext of claiming a kind of pure vision of what would have happened by the [indecipherable]. Medicine has only very rarely worked that way in the field of viruses and bacteriology. It didn't function that way with AIDS, which was frightening, and much more frightening in terms of numbers of deaths, of lethality, than the coronavirus. Why have we become obsessed with this today? Why has it entered into debate? I don't believe it's Didier Raoult who should be questioned. The question should be, why has Didier Raoult been the pretext of this, of these politicisations?
OLIVIER BERRUYEY: There is a lot to say. Amusing... We know that the people of Marseille were not put into quarantine at all, contrary to your [Raphael's] statement. Obviously, to stop an epidemic in the way that Korea did, is a very good example. You have to test to the maximum, from the beginning. We [the French] did not test to the maximum from the start, no more at Marseille than anywhere else because, at the time that we should have started testing, Raoult was saying everywhere that there would be fewer deaths [than from] scooters, and that all that was nothing particularly serious, that it was funny, really, and there was nothing to do, that [only three Chinese had died? - (indistinct)]. And so it was: when we needed to do something, we didn't do it. In effect, it's more problematic, when you finish up with millions of people infected, to do it. You can't dream of treating them. But, with respect to what Raphael Liogier said, would it be possible for us to agree on the fact that, today, we lack sufficient proof to say that there is clinical effectiveness and sufficient safety of use of hydroxychloroquine, not hydrochloroquine as you term it, with regard to managing COVID? Can we say today, at least, we don't know if it works?
FREDERIC TADDEI (INTERVIEWER): Raphael, Olivier has put a question to you.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: So, I have three things to say about that. The first is that there was no quarantine in Marseille, but there were systematic tests, for the good reason that Didier Raoult does not have the police force at his service and does not have the powers of a state, in order to declare a quarantine and impose a quarantine on people. He is only able to look after them according to his ability, which is only a medical ability. So, that's a first thing. Evidently a quarantine required a political decision. That's precisely what I am criticising - on people who had tested positive, of course. On the dangers of the product. There is a difference between danger and effectiveness. I think that the proof of effectiveness, of absolute effectiveness of the product are not yet there. It's true that the only way to have formal proof of the effectiveness of the product would be to have randomised double-blind studies, etc etc. On the other hand, the proof we have today, with the backing away from this drug, which had been in free circulation for years, is that it is not dangerous if one takes a certain number of precautions - precautions which were taken. That's the first point. The second point is that, once again, the practical studies and the studies that were undertaken at the IHU institute on thousands of patients, show that there is a reduction in the viral load. I know that after it was said, "Yes, but there is other stuff." There is perhaps other stuff, but, whilst waiting for it, we have a death-rate that does not exist. And, not certainty, but an approximation of a treatment that reduces the viral load and which allows, at least at the start of the illness, avoiding passing on to the next stage. It seems to me that the statistics - although I know that you won't agree - since today this is the subject of controversy - but the statistics today in terms of mortality of infected people, seem less than in Marseille, at least in the people who have been treated at Didier Raoult's service - the 3 or 4 thousand people who went there, [compared] with the rest of France. [...] Therefore, for the moment, these statistics are effectively subject to caution, but I think that Didier Raoult was right to take that risk, for the good reason that he knew that by taking precautions, at least he was not causing the people he was caring for medically to run a risk. And thus, that the only possible risk, the only measurable one, might be to his advantage, according to what he knew. I believe that the matter is proven enough from that perspective.
OLIVIER BERRUYEY: What's proven is that Pharmacovigilance pointed to seven deaths and two hundred very grave side effects with chloroquine. In any case, it is not because you say so ... there is strictly not the slightest proof that the medication saves lives, nor that it reduces the viral load. The phrase that I cited before, saying that there is no demonstrated clinical effectiveness, was a phrase from Sanofi [Multinational Pharmaceutical Company and manufacturer of hydroxychlorquine] which was broadcast about 15 days ago, to every Belgian doctor. I repeat: To this day there sufficient clinical proof does not exist from which to be able to draw any conclusion about the effectiveness or safety of use of hydroxychloroquine in the management of COVID - that the manufacturer of hydroxychloroquine is telling you that it doesn't know if it works and if it causes damage. I find it amazing that we have succeeded in creating in France a world center for chloroquine lobbying, which manages to be far more extreme than its own manufacturer's. Furthermore, using techniques that even the worst laboratories would not use to promote their drugs. That's the problem. And, with reference to what you say, [...] The people of Marseilles are not macaque monkeys, nor things, on which, hey, let's look at this powder and see if it works, sniff this, gee, it's killing them. Lets test it a while to see and if there aren't too many deaths, maybe we can test it on animals. I mean, there were tests done on monkeys three weeks ago. Chloroquine with antibiotics, without antibiotics, at the beginning, before, after, the disease. It is ineffective for monkeys to date. It's all that. There's no 'feeling one's way'. Raoult's only subtlety is that chloroquine has to be given at 8am, or at midday. Should you give 600mg or 550mg? He's not asking, does [unclear] work or does plasma work or does interferon work? It's not respecting fundamental principles. It's taking a health risk, because it's not at all a [unclear] medicine. Hydroxychloroquine attacks the heart, somewhat, and so does COVID. When you add azithromycine, that also attacks the heart. A lot. That's why there are people who die of that treatment. As noted by Pharmacovigilance. These aren't things made to cause trouble or administrative regulations designed to prevent people being cared for. You said it very well yourself, Mr Liogier, the best thing is to have randomised double blind trials. To do a clinical trial you need a month. It's not something that takes eight and a half years. And, in fact, actually, the English did it; they didn't see any effectiveness, they just stopped testing hydroxycholoroquine, to go and concentrate on something else, other drugs. Because, when you say there aren't negative effects - if the greatest precautions are taken and one does echocardiograms every day, there probably aren't too many serious effects, I agree, but, in the whole story, over and above having attacked fundamental medical principles - and, I repeat, there is more need - listen, we lose time this way! Because, in the end, we have a raft of evidence - and I hope we will find the solution soon - I don't care - I hope it will work - chloroquine. I don't care, I am neither for nor against, but today there is a whole raft which demonstrates that it probably doesn't work because pharmacokinetics tells us that the dosage does not reach a sufficient level in the body to work. It has been tested on monkeys; it doesn't work. It has even been tested on the English; it doesn't work. And the tests on the people of Marseille, in terms of methodology, are ridiculous; there was never a control group, so one could not know if it works or does not work. We are losing time. If there is a second wave in autumn, we will attack it just as we did the first. There is no treatment. We have not tested interferon, we haven't tested lopinavir. Look, there are 50 molecules tested by [? unclear]; we have only talked about one. We have put all our eggs in the same basket. We must have had half the clinical tests in the world on that particular molecule. It's pretty staggering! There's no security for patients and it's not gone to the heart of the matter. I don't want -
FREDERIC TADDEI: Raphael Liogier has the floor. We have four minutes before the break.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: Olivier, you know that today, most trials are not focused on chloroquine. They are focused on the others - It [chloroquine] is taking nothing from them. It's taking nothing from [trials] done elsewhere. I don't see why controlled use of Chloroquine in certain contexts would cost time. Why? I don't see the logic in what you are saying to me.
OLIVIER BERRUYEY: [Much crosstalking.] I will answer you, Mr Liogier. [...] All the media has said, for weeks, chloroquine is wonderful! Well, allow discovery to people. Come on, let us test Remdesevir on you. People said, 'No, I don't want any! I want chloroquine, and I don't want a placebo'. You have prevented recruitments [to other drug trials]. Stacks of media articles have described the problem very well.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: I think it's a lot more complicated than that, what happened with the Discovery trials.[1] You are simplifying what happened with the Discovery trials. Furthermore, there was a series of trials undertaken using doses that were more than double those that were used at the Marseilles IHU. Responding to what you said about Sanofi - because you said a lot of things I need to respond to. On Sanofi - the fact that it wasn't conclusive, yes, I agree with Sanofi, as I said at the start. However, with regard to what you said about safety, you said there were seven deaths, until proof to the contrary, there is no certainty at all that death was due to any direct effect of chloroquine! And, moreover, the only effects that were able to be observed were relatively weak, and they can be controlled, they can be controlled, actually, by dosage, and they can be controlled, in fact, by - in certain extreme cases - by not using chloroquine - obviously. It's a medication which has effects, strong effects, and since those effects are strong, a certain number of precautions need to be taken - precautions that were taken. So, I say to you, you say, what was done in Marseille, it's vague, it's not serious, etc. All the same, thousands of people have passed through the IHU; hundreds have been cared for at the IHU, of which we have access to, whatever you say, we have access, I mean, through observation, to the progress of those patients- one can compare them statistically with what happened in other hospitals. We don't have - it's not yet conclusive, but it seems to me that it goes in the direction of the protocol that was used in Marseille. So, afterwards, one can say what one wants, regarding what Sanofi has said. You know very well that it doesn't constitute a proof. A laboratory can say whatever it likes; they are not scientific, even if they pay scientists. Besides, other interests could be involved, since Sanofi makes other medications, and it wouldn't be so profitable for Sanofi to sell hydrochloroquine, [sic] which is a drug that costs 30, 40, 50, 60 times less than all the others that are [unclear] proposed. So, I don't want to enter into conspiracy theories, but I don't think that your argument on 'the laboratory that says that... etc.' is a good argument.
[PROGRAM BREAK]
FREDERIC TADDEI: [summarises and asks Olivier Berruyey a question]: Olivier you said, in effect, that Didier Raoult failed to conduct a 'serious' trial in this area, randomised, double-blind etc. etc. He could have done it, you say. It takes a month. But, at the same time, we can see that no-one else did it either. In France no-one conducted that trial. Each time that we were told, 'Yes, someone is conducting a trial', either we never heard the results, or we discovered that it didn't have exactly the same protocol as Didier Raoult's. All that helped to strengthen the idea that there was a conspiracy against Raoult, against his treatment. Then some saw the reason that Rhaphael Liogier evoked, that it was a low cost treatment, and therefore undesirable, in the face of a preference for a very very costly hypothetical treatment that would present one day. But, for you, why hasn't anyone done serious clinical trials in France on this treatment?
OLIVIER BERRUYEY: Very quickly, very quickly, in effect, Didier Raoult did not conduct serious clinical trials, and I believe that he did not even conduct a legal trial, because there were problems with the legality of what he did, related to the primitive nature of those clinical trials, which are criminally punishable and [unclear] is dealing with this at the moment. We can see that the authorities have been completely lax on this issue. Why he didn't do it is very simple, because, when you do a trial, you have proof as to whether something works or does not work. In fact, what Raoult did, was to reject the method which would have subjected his assertions to a test of proof ... he knows very well ... but it's been a century that chloroquine, or quinine, from which it derives. People [?advocated] it as a treatment for flu; it wasn't. Every new era refers again to this resource. So, Didier Raoult, I understand very well, because he isn't doing science, he's doing politics. So, he wasn't going to do something that potentially would show him to be wrong. Why wasn't it done elsewhere? Yes. It is being done. The Discovery Trial in Europe, but its going very badly, because it is having difficulty recruiting, for the reasons I mentioned before. Look at the media coverage. There are many articles that explain that people wanted chloroquine and nothing else. The intention was to work out once and for all what was happening in France, but others said, let's involve other European countries. Let's do a European thing, with the Germans, with the Italians, with Spain. It will be wonderful! -- Finally only Luxembourg joined the study. I think they only had 10 patients, what's more. So, the thing was completely ridiculous. Macron promised us the results for the 13th of May, so, ride the tiger, it won't be long. On the other hand, however, maybe due to Brexit, the English did manage to test it. Their test showed that a double dose of chloroquine was ineffective. It is therefore very strange that Liogier again took up that argument. 'Look, people tested it at double the dose. That's the reason it didn't work'. It's beyond ridiculous.
FREDERIC TADDEI: There was a review planned by the Angers CHU [Centre Hospitalier Universitaire], wasn't there?[2] I said to myself, we can tell people about it during this program. We will know the answer then. It won't be necessary after to have friction between believers and unbelievers; between for and against Raoulters. We'll just [unclear - refer to?] the Anger results. What happened to it?
OLIVIER BERRUYEY: It was a lamentable government mistake. We agree. There was no pilot. That business was in the image of -
[Both talking over each other so Unclear.]
FREDERIC TADDEI: Why, in that case, would [French President] Macron go and visit Raoult? Was it because he doesn't want to cut himself off from all the French who believe in Raoult? Is this demagogy?
OLIVIER BERRUYEY: I don't know. Because Macron is anti-system, as he says. And there will be anti-system people there. And, with all these anti-system people, they will argue between themselves. [Laughs.] It's lamentable. Truly lamentable.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: Well, to begin with, I don't know why it would be a ridiculous argument to say that one doubled the dose. You must know what the medical word, 'pharmacon' means? In Greek, it means what? It means something that both poisons and treats. So, that means that dosage, in medicine, until otherwise proven, is a fundamental variable. Therefore, an absolutely fundamental variable. It's not a detail. It's not at all funny. To have given a double dose - that could be totally counter-productive. Therefore -
OLIVIER BERRUYER: [Shouts and makes exaggerated feeling with hands out motions:] He's feeling his way! Feeling his way! He's feeling his way. He's looking.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: Don't get excited. Calm down.
FREDERIC TADDEI: [Laughing silently at the spectacle.]
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: You know perfectly well, that if you take aspirin, even aspirin, you can kill someone by increasing the dosage. Even more so with [? azithromycine]. You know very well that dosage is actually important. Especially a double dose. You yourself have argued as if it's a medication that should be handled delicately. To double the dose, I believe, is a major [unclear]. Secondly, I find the argument interesting, what you are trying to do here: That Didier Raoult is politicking. I don't see in what way Didier Raoult is doing politics. I think this is a way of attributing a kind of conspiracy theory. If Didier Raoult has not done double-blind randomized etc studies, this would not be because we are in a crisis, and an emergency, would it? You look after people before you do controlled experiments, don't you? It wouldn't be for that reason, as I believe it is? There's crisis, a time of crisis, and there's a time for research, at another rhythm. And I am in agreement that the two may work without excluding one from the other. But, instead of thinking this way, people project onto Raoult some kind of malign intention, since you say, 'He wouldn't have, because that would have proven that ...' So, why has he become so attached to hydroxychloroquine? Why, when it doesn't work? Because he is absolutely bent on proving that it does, so he had a malign intention? He makes the people he looks after take a risk - and his patients' opinion, I mean patients he has taken care of, whose opinion is important, until proven otherwise - after all, no legal suite has been launched against him to date, and I don't think that every doctor in France and Navarre could say as much. There is no legal matter against Didier Raoult in Marseille today. It's not because the people of Marseille are more stupid than others; it's because they feel looked after; those who were touched have felt it in the first degree. As for me, I cannot understand what can be Didier's interest - what is the conspiracy theory that supposes that Raoult's obstinacy is politically motivated? That is, hydroxychloroquine as a political weapon for Didier Raoult. Why? In order to become mayor of Marseilles? To be elected President of the Republic? To get the Nobel Prize? But he won't get the Nobel Prize, of course. You say that you are sure that ultra-serious trials will prove that it doesn't work. Then he is sure, at that moment, to hit the wall and not win the Nobel Prize. So, what he is, you are saying is - conspiracy theory - intentionality, and, furthermore, he is stupid, because, as it will be revealed, he will fall on his face. Which one is it? Either he's an extremely intelligent bloke, in a conspiracy theory, or he's completely stupid. You want both at once. It's contradictory. You can't have both at once. So, I don't understand your relentless desire to politicise Raoult's discourse, when he is just behaving like a doctor in a time of crisis, in an emergency situation. And, until there is proof to the contrary, the patients he takes care of, who are massive in number, well, I believe they are quite satisfied. That's not bad. He hasn't killed anyone.
OLIVIER BERRUYER: At the IHU there are 75 places. Is that right? There are 75 beds?
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: [Nods.]
OLIVIER BERRUYER: You aren't contradicting me? There were 36 deaths.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: Yes. Exactly, 75 beds. - No, no! [in response to the 36 deaths statement]
OLIVIER BERRUYER: Raoult finished up saying it at the [?United Nations/United States]. That's all I'm saying. There were 36 deaths and 85 beds. Already it seems to me that they weren't very happy. There, you see. Second point:
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: No! No! 75 beds, I agree, but -
FREDERIC TADDEI: Let Raphael Liogier speak. He is a member of the Ethics Committee, after all ...
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: 75 beds reserved for urgent cases who must enter those beds according to very specific conditions, you know, because they are very expensive - there are very particular hygiene conditions, in order to manage a patient in a bed at IHU. Therefore, the patients stay a very short time, then move on - the next kind of care occurs in the main part of the AP-HM [Hôpitaux Universitaires de Marseille], in the [?], sometimes even in other hospitals, or sometimes people go back home. The 75 beds are a place of transit, in fact, thousands of people have been through them, since the beginning of the crisis. 75 beds, it's just a place of transit and for - how can I say it - extreme cases, exactly.
OLIVIER BERRUYER: Okay. It's not a place of transit. Most people who are treated - there are more than 3000 - have not been hospitalised. Those people were ambulatory, they were not - at any rate, there was nothing wrong with them when they were examined for symptoms. And even asymptomatic. There were 36 deaths. So, then, give us the number of hospitalisations that occurred before there were 36 deaths. That interests us. Do the ratio. You like ratios; you are a statistician. So, little statistical manipulations; [? one can't do too many of them.]
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: I am not a statistician! I don't know the exact numbers. But I know that up until then, and until proof contrary, there have been no complaints, individuals who were displeased with the treatment, and the deaths to this point which have been accounted for - I'm not a doctor, but we will see - [?unclear] were not deaths, until proof to the contrary, due to treatment there, but due to what is called co-morbidity - a whole series of things. What counts - since you are a statistician - what counts - and, in the end, it's that which we will look at - is the number of persons treated, not just hospitalised, in the IHU - because, to be precise, they pass through the emergency part, intensive, because they are in crisis, and, after that, their place becomes available for someone else. What is important to know is, on the total of people treated, who may or may not have been hospitalised - if the illness did not require hospitalisation - to know what the statistical ratios are in terms of mortality, aggravations, or people who left. It's that alone that will give us the data, and we will have it. We will have it, necessarily. I believe that the [ratios] are to the advantage of the IHU, for the moment.
FREDERIC TADDEI: It was believed that we had that data when the Lancet, the prestigious scientific review, published a study that tended to agree with your critical work, Olivier Berruyer, since it was said that, looking retrospectively, several tens of thousands of patients, who had been treated just about everywhere in the world, once could conclude - and that is what this study concluded - published in the Lancet - conclude, not only that this treatment was ineffective, but moreover, it was dangerous; it added to the mortality. And, it was, besides, following that publication, that the WHO [World Health Organisation] said that it would be better not to use hydroxychloroquine anymore, and, in France, its use was forbidden, therefore, as treatment. And then, boom boom, the next day, or the day after that, the Lancet itself backpedaled and warned against what it had published the day before. And we noticed, and we were told, that data had been falsified, etc etc. How do you explain that, Olivier Berruyer, because you must have read it, this study, you must have thought it backed you up and then, the day after, that it didn't.
OLIVIER BERRUYER: No, no. Not at all. At no moment did I take a position on chloroquine. I don't know if it works. There is only one way to find out if a medication works - you need to do a double blind randomised trial. And then you will know if it works or not. I have never said on my site whether it works or does not work. There are studies that say it works, when it's not true. So, that's the Raoult problem. I don't say that hydroxychloroquine doesn't work. I say that, when Raoult says it works - and he said it from February, in February, he said, it's good, we've found the remedy and COVID will be the easiest respiratory infection to treat. I repeat his words, and 400,000 people are dead. Perhaps we will not have a remedy and that's something that people are not about to accept. There may never be a medical treatment, because generally viral illnesses don't have treatments. There's no treatment against measles, against rubella, against flu. It doesn't exist, so, there's no obvious treatment. Simply, when I saw the Lancet - to go back to the subject, the conclusions went in the same direction of five or six preceding studies; it wasn't a revelation. In effect, its statistical power was interesting, for having a beginning of an answer. [The study] in the Lancetconcluded by saying, 'Now, it's not sure, we need to do a randomised double-blind trial'. It was not categorical on this point. Anyway, globally, that the Lancetgot caught up in all these politics was quite astonishing. It's proof that there is fraud in science, of course. That's the reason we have [? unclear] ethical; that's why we have fraud-hunters. I'm not against Raoult. I'm against bad science. It's just as disgusting what Mehra [presumably Dr Mandeep R.Mehra, the leader of said study that was withdrawn] did, as what the Lancet did. Them and Raoult's bad science. So, we really have to organise ourselves, we surely need to do major reforms, on pharmaceutical laboratories so that there will be less lobbying at that level, on public research, and on the publication of data, umm... I'm not going to elaborate further here, but there are lots of things to do.
FREDERIC TADDEI: After the final rebound on the study in the Lancet, against which the Lancet itself has warned us, what conclusion have you drawn, a part from the fact that we are always in the shadow of belief, aren't we? Whether we are for or against, Didier Raoult. It's passion and it's blind.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: There, yes. We are testing, but we are blind, in fact. We have blind conclusions. [Laughs.] Even if, in effect, the Lancet article, as the New England Journal of Medicine, which are two big medical journals that published the same information, are not entirely conclusive. For me, what I find fascinating - and I agree with my interlocuteur - is the politicization that has taken place, a politicization - and I imagine that you would agree with me saying, how is it that reaction to the only article in a serious publication (putting aside the standard of the article itself) has been an almost immediate reaction by the WHO and the French government? This is irresponsible on the part of Raoult's critics, who call him inopportune, but I think that what they did was inopportune, in the real sense of the word, meaning, 'ill-timed'. I mean that it was extremely rapid, as if an immediate reaction was needed. That's the first point, because there, the politicization is very real. And, the second point: These scandals make it seem - because it's over and above the question of chloroquine, over and above the political question of Raoult, for or against, and all those things - make it seem as if, today, research in medicine particularly - there are problems today in medical research - how should I say it? In the financial links of laboratories - because we know that it is partly linked to that - the [unclear]. I mean financed in order to go faster, in order to impress - since we are talking about statistics - impressing by having extremely wide statistical samples, using artificial intelligence to process them, via a start-up - we don't really know that start-up is serious, if it exists, if it even exists, for as long as it has done what it has done, how it did it. We discovered, little by little, that even Australian hospitals had not given the figures that they were presented [in the study] as having been received. There were even errors where an Asian hospital was counted among Australian ones. To sum up, it was - Imagine, imagine the other way round, just for a second, what would have happened - we saw what happened there - Imagine what would have happened if such a mistake - I mean such a scandal - had occurred in the setting of the emergency management choices that Didier Raoult might have made in his IHU. He would have been literally crucified! Because truly, the article - I mean it's almost never happened - [...] I had never seen, at any case, in the Lancet [...] even the head director of the Lancet had already criticised his publication editorially in certain articles - but, to such an extent? It had never happened. A questioning of the actual credibility of the most prestigious scientific medical journal in the world, the one that is supposed to represent the greatest guaranties, I tell you, followed by the New England Journal of Medicine. It is truly extraordinary! Truly extraordinary!
FREDERIC TADDEI: We need to be clear that there have been previous retractions by great journals like the Lancet. And, as Olivier Berruyer said before, more and more falsification. I remember two books on that problem, which increases every year because researchers are obliged to publish in order to justify the money they ask for, therefore publishing takes place at greater and greater speeds, and sometimes the data is a bit manipulated to make it fit one's case. All the same, a retraction -
[two people talking at once]
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: In science it impacts even more, because it isn't only publishing in order to publish, like us in political science, it's because it is necessary to publish immediately, because [the research] was financed by a laboratory that wants immediate results, so as to be able to proceed more quickly towards commercialisation of its drug. I think that's it, really. It's undeniable; I'm not slinging stones at anyone. There are direct links between finance, pharmaceutical laboratories, and what is called 'basic research'. It's undeniable.
FREDERIC TADDEI: Olivier Berruyer, given that this has been a recurring accusation during the entire Raoult business, this accusation against big pharma, the pharmaceutical industry, and its links with a number of doctors who would then be anti-Raoult ...
OLIVIER BERRUYER: I feel that it's a rather sad business. Obviously there's a basic problem, and I'm not pro-big pharma. I think that we should nationalise Sanofi because it isn't right that we lack a public laboratory for the production of medications. I think that we should forbid remuneration of doctors by laboratories. I think we absolutely need a public organisation for publications. Okay, that's all true, but there are also problems with the public system. For instance at the IHU of Marseille, where Raoult started signing 150-200 studies a year, when a quality researcher only publishes about 100 in his lifetime, normally. This makes Americans laugh, knowing that each time colleagues who have organised themselves at Marseille, publish in a review, it means that 600 euros go to the AP-HM, to the detriment of other hospitals in France, for which there is also a big problem with public finance and that method of finance, which has been very strongly criticised by the Court of Accounts [French supreme auditing institution]. I dare to hope that the government will act on this point. Yes, there is a problem, and it needs to be treated. Now I find it regrettable that side of things that consists of saying, 'Yes, but any doctor in a situation of conflict of interest is an untrustworthy creep, a low-life, whom you should not listen to.' I repeat, I don't like this system, but you should not conclude that just because there is a financial conflict, that shows that you should look more closely at the case against that person, just because they have a conflict of interest. It doesn't mean that what they say is false. And conflicts of interest are not only financial. There is also the Marseille IHU conflict of interest. It's obvious. Mr Raphael Liogier is trying to tell me that there would be no problem if Raoult were to say, 'Hey, I made a mistake. I've just treated 3000 Marseille people for nothing. Chloroquine doesn't work at all.' It's true that it is going to be very interesting in a few months, alas, if scientific truth concludes this. [...] To conclude, as Mr Liogier does, that when Sanofi says that chloroquine doesn't work, it's possibly -
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: [Interjects]
OLIVIER BERRUYER: [Laughing and waving finger] Yes, yes, I think you did say that. You said that, even when the laboratory says its own drug doesn't work, to try to get out of it - when normal logic would [conclude that the drug] doesn't work - [by saying], 'But no, perhaps they are hiding another drug, which they can sell for a higher price.' Meaning that those involved prefer that we die without treatment. That's it. This is dirty reasoning. And that a philosopher could think that, could introduce that idea to the population - and we know that the population will easily react to such a shocking kind of thing
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: [Softly] No, no, no, no.
OLIVIER BERRUYER: I find it very shocking. We can go over that bit in the recording. I'm not fussed. That's exactly what you said.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: Fine, we'll go over that bit in the recording. I'm not fussed either.
OLIVIER BERRUYER: But it's the little refrain that
[Liogier and Burruyer talk over each other.]
OLIVIER BERRUYER: Yes. Okay, I'll take that on. It's of little importance.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: Don't say it's of little importance.
OLIVIER BERRUYER: But what importance does it have?
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: Don't say it's unimportant. It is important. I think what you said is important.
OLIVIER BERRUYER: You have to find the sweet spot. Of course, you have to doubt, of course there are conflicts of interest, of course you have to be careful, but afterwards you find yourself in a world where you imagine that everyone is surrounded by untrustworthy creeps who aren't telling the truth and who... Hey, when I think of the number of doctors who have bust their guts throughout France [and] there's an attempt to make us believe that Raoult is fighting a war for medicine ... but all doctors have tried it - Even the Salpetriere [major teaching hospital in Paris] used it from the outset, since the Chinese used it. I've talked to doctors at the Salpetriere, and it's not the only thing, Raoult is not the only one doing it - all the doctors are busting their guts; you have 15-20% of the medical corps who have caught COVID. That's too many. To try to make them all out to be low-lifes and sell-outs, all of them - it's too many - to cultivate that sort of - I don't like the word, 'populism', that sort of [?bitter opinion] to conduct polls-
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: [Interjects] I didn't say that -
OLIVIER BERRUYER: But many have said it. You didn't say it, but many have in that fringe-thinking. I find that - I don't see how we can construct a decent world if one thinks that way and, if, furthermore, one has different realities. One can no longer agree on basic facts, when Science normally allows us to do that.
FREDERIC TADDEI: Raphael.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: Okay. Firstly, on Sanofi, I absolutely did not say that they were low-lifes, that they wanted to sacrifice peoples' lives to profit etc. I'm only saying that, when you give as an argument [that] chloroquine doesn't work - the proof you say is that Sanofi says so - is not at all an argument, a laboratory that says something works or does not work, even if the same laboratory manufactures that particular medicine. That's what I wanted to say. Because I am not at all into conspiracy theory and I'm not at all inclined to the idea that the world is full of low-lifes. I believe there are interests, but multiple and variable interests: we have an interest is being cared for, an interest in being happy, an interest sometimes in earning money, and all that is very complex and multiple. I don't believe in an intentional malignity. So, it wasn't a perverse argument. It was just to say that there is no proof for [the argument] you have advanced -
OLIVIER BERRUYER: Yes, yes.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: - that it's because of what Sanofi said.
OLIVIER BERRUYER: Of course. There is only blind clinical testing, that's the only proof.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: That is true. I am even in agreement with you on that. But I believe, on the other hand, that practical international studies in crisis situations, in pandemic situations, over a long time - over a short time! - excuse me! - are not at all incompatible with tests in [unclear] and, contrary to what you say, do not slow down research. But, as far as the number of important articles by Didier Raoult is concerned, I'm letting you know that this also happens in America, but I am an invited researcher at Columbia University, which has a very, very, very big medical school - of medical research - and I assure you that the [?unclear] there, the really big researchers, well, they also put their names on many massively published articles. Then, money doesn't go to the AP-HM, it goes to the IHU Foundation - yes, it's not the AP-HM.
OLIVIER BERRUYER: It goes to the AP-HM, it goes to the AP-HM.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: Nooo...
OLIVIER BERRUYER: No, no, not directly. Into the pockets of -
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: It doesn't go into Raoult's pockets...
[They continue to contradict eachother for a little while]
OLIVIER BERRUYER: At any rate you haven't published the accounts. You haven't published anything on your figures on your internet site, therefore ... It would be good, besides, if you would do that.
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: Wait! Wait, just a second! I am not a representative for the IHU! I don't know the IHU's [financial] curves, I am a university professor in political sciences, and I am a member of the Committee of ethical supervision, and my position stops there. And no more than that.
FREDERIC TADDEI: This show is about to end. I propose that you each conclude with a few words - if it's possible to conclude anything in this business, when there will certainly be comebacks. Olivier Berruyer, on this business of Didier Raoult:
OLIVIER BERRUYER: It's a rather special business because usually you can have doctors who try to fool other doctors and scientists. Here we have someone who has come out and who is more preoccupied with what other scientists think of his work, in order to get opinion to support his side. He has succeeded rather well in this. [unclear] Raoult's method; Raoult's refusal of the scientific method is nothing new. It has happened before. It is Moliere's vaccine. Hey, here comes COVID, blood-letting for everyone! Let's test, but, above all, don't separate the group into those that are bled and those that are not. In any case, we've been bleeding people for 200 years so, if it didn't work, we'd know it. It's exactly that, this method that rejects science. It's a method that rejects proof and it refuses respect for the patient, who is not a guinea-pig.
FREDERIC TADDEI: Raphael Liogier's response?
RAPHAEL LIOGIER: Well, it's funny, because I find that it's exactly, in a sense, symmetrically the opposite. It's symmetrically the opposite, meaning, to offer a patient a strategy that does not pretend to be unfalsifiable, is pragmatic. It's rational and pragmatic. Pragmatic because rational. And, if there were, in fact, problems, well then, it would stop. If there were [problems] then [the treatment] would stop. That would happen through observation of the patient by the doctor. When one is operating on a scale of thousands of patients, the problem is inverted. The problem of randomised trials is that theyseek a pure, an absolute, medication, which you have said yourself may never be found. Well, it's through waiting, as long as the perfect medication, the unfalsifiable medication, has not been found, in some way, then you are sacrificing the population. Sacrificing the population, in a way, by calling on a kind of positivist theology of ideas that it is absolutely necessary to find the corresponding medication, but without going as far as Moliere, because that's a false criticism, because, in that era, it was more or less magic. It is in fact - euh - medicine is not a science like the others. It is a science which supposes what is called the unique dialogue, which means a special relationship with the patient, which therefore evolves. This is, in effect what Didier Raoult practices, without this implying any opposition to basic science.
This interdiction was modified in July 2020, so that Plaquenil (brand-name for hydroxychloroquine) could again be prescribed. However, the French national health scheme would not reimburse prescriptions for its use outside traditional indications, like malaria, lupus and arthritis. It could still be used and prescribed for other purposes, including COVID-19 treatment, as long as this was stated on the script, but in such cases, the government would not reimburse the script. See
>Non, l'hydroxychloroquine n’a pas été "réautorisée en douce par le gouvernement Castex". See quotes below in English and French:
"However, it states that Plaquénil may be prescribed outside its marketing authorisation, as provided for in the Public Health Code, provided that "this is justified by scientific knowledge and that the patient is clearly informed". "In this case, it must be mentioned on the order and it will not be reimbursed", noted the DGS stressing that "in case of problem, the civil, criminal or ordinal liability of the doctor can be engaged." (Translation from: "Elle précise toutefois que le Plaquénil peut être prescrit hors de son autorisation de mise sur le marché, comme prévu par le code de la Santé publique, à condition que "cela soit justifié par les connaissances scientifiques et que le patient en soit clairement informé". "Dans ce cas, cela doit être mentionné sur l'ordonnance et elle ne sera pas remboursée", a relevé la DGS soulignant qu'"en cas de problème, la responsabilité civile, pénale ou ordinale du médecin peut être engagée."
Daily, lively and dedicated coverage at https://defend.wikileaks.org/liveblog/ from what is closest to the horse's mouth, from https://defend.wikileaks.org/. There is plenty to read about, including a defense whereby Julian Assange is located on the autism spectrum and strong precedents where England refused US request for extradition in very similar cases, which took into consideration the harshness of US prison conditions and the likelihood of suicide.
In the cases of Lauri Love and Gary McKinnon, the U.S. government was blocked from extraditing them because the United Kingdom High Court of Justice (Love) and the British Home Secretary (McKinnon) recognized their Asperger’s syndrome would result in degrading or inhuman treatment that violated human rights. Source: https://shadowproof.com/2020/09/23/doctor-assange-aspergers-prison-extradition-trial/.
The video below is of an international peoples' forum on Assange's predicament, dated 21 September 2020.
The Australian Museum has published the first ever field guide to the land snails of Lord Howe Island, by Australian Museum (AM) scientists, Dr. Isabel Hyman and Dr. Frank Köehler. Featuring over 80 species, with detailed colour photos, the guide showcases how these small unique and beautiful gastropods play a vital role in the health of an ecosystem.
Dr. Köehler said that LHI has Australia’s highest diversity of land snails, with around 65 species not found anywhere else.
“Lord Howe Island is well-known for its many unique animals, such as the Lord Howe Island Woodhen and the Lord Howe Island Phasmid, Less well-known are the many different species of endemic land snails.” Köehler said.
“The field guide reveals the stunning snail biodiversity of LHI, and through the imagery and maps, makes it very easy for both the novice and expert to identify them,” Lead author Hyman said.
Having studied these snails since the AM expedition to LHI and Balls Pyramid in 2017, Hyman and Köehler said that many of the snails have suffered badly from predation by introduced rats since 1918.
“Five species have declined so drastically that they are considered Endangered or Critically Endangered. But following an island-wide rodent eradication program undertaken in 2019, we are hoping to see an increase in the populations of these rare creatures,” Hyman said.
Köehler said that after the rat eradication, they were originally expecting a slow recovery in the snail populations, maybe visible only after two or three years.
The Australian ABC has repeatedly reported on the expulsion of two Australian journalists from China this week, and the torture and disappearance of Chinese journalists. Yet it has said nothing about our own Julian Assange, who currently faces a rigged trial, accused of breaking the laws of a country he has never entered, whilst held in prison in a country which has ignored his refugee status and tolerates US use of information obtained illegally through spying. British journalist, Afshin Rattansi, is an exception in the anglosphere media world in his continued efforts (see video below) to show the world how Britain, Australia, and the United States, are treating the man who exposed US war-crimes.
This episode of Going Underground, begins with a montage of some of its most prominent guests who have come out in support of Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange, who now faces his US extradition trial, including Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Oliver Stone, Roger Waters, Slavoj Zizek, Benjamin Zephaniah and many more. Next, Going Underground’s Social Media Producer Farhaan Ahmed heads down to the Old Bailey where Julian Assange is facing his US extradition trial and speaks to Wikileaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, legendary journalist and filmmaker John Pilger and fashion icon Vivienne Westwood who all attended the pro-Assange protests outside the court. Finally, Going Underground speaks to Dr. Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park 5, who were wrongfully convicted of the rape and assault of a white female jogger in Manhattan’s Central Park. He discusses what it was like to serve out his sentence in a supermax prison, despite knowing he was innocent, the racist overtones of the media and criminal justice system that wrongfully prosecuted him and 4 others, the intervention of Donald Trump and Pat Buchanan in the case calling for their deaths, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) uprising in the United States and what this means for the police, criminal justice system and the racist history of the United States and much more!
Residents were already very concerned about FCC's proposal regarding Seaford Foreshore Activation last year. We were assured by local councillors that this would not lead to development of inappropriate hard surfaces and infrastructure on the Seaford Foreshore, yet this is exactly what is being proposed.
A letter sent to all Frankston Councillors regarding proposed development on Seaford Foreshore:
Dear Councillors,
Residents were already very concerned about FCC's proposal regarding Seaford Foreshore Activation last year. We were assured by local councillors that this would not lead to development of inappropriate hard surfaces and infrastructure on the Seaford Foreshore, yet this is exactly what is being proposed.
As it stands, to get natural walks through Tea Tree and Banksia along the beach like we have at Seaford you must go as far as Wilson's Promontory National Park. People flock to that park to experience those walks, yet we are fortunate enough in Seaford to have such walks on our very own foreshore. However, in recent years Council has been actively undermining the natural beauty of these walks. These are not improvement works as claimed in the Council's letter to residents, but rather vandalism of a unique, natural foreshore environment.
I ask what is behind this? This creeping infrastructure and development on the Seaford Foreshore is not only ruining it, it makes no sense. Where is the push for these developments coming from? Certainly not the community. One can only assume this is a plan being pushed by Council staff.
I am certainly opposed to this proposed development. We have already lost some of our natural tracks along the creek with the rail trail, and in general the level of hard surfacing and development in Seaford is already greatly increased with the rail crossing project. Furthermore, Seaford Foreshore has already been subjected to the installation of a number of hard paths and unnatural lighting.
Can Council please provide a justification for this proposed development that indicates that this not just another project imposed on the community by Frankston Council and/or DELWP?
With COVID-19, we should not just be looking at deaths. Deaths may actually be a poor indicator of the damage this virus may do. We should be looking at a continuum, as in: If the proportion of people who contract COVID-19, and who are over 80, die, what happens to those (of any age) who live? Given the ability of this disease (unlike flu) to cause clotting problems all over the body, affecting organs which affect other organs, we should be expecting that a proportion of survivors will have various rates of blood clots and organ damage. What proportion of these will clear, improve, or become chronic and dangerous? How long will how many survivors survive? Check out the following videos by doctors regarding clotting and organ-damage.
[Candobetter Ed: This article was developed from an extract from another, in order to highlight these concepts.]
"More long-term damage caused by COVID-19 than expected | COVID-19 Special" (August 26, 2020)
The above video has many comments of interest, from people who have suffered lingering damage from the virus.
"An NYC Cardiologist Explains the Long Term Effects of COVID-19."
The cardiologist in the above video points out that, even if you are young and fit when you catch COVID-19, you still may not be able to do what you used to do, after you recover. He also says that people should present early for treatment because then treatment can be started to reduce the damage to organs, thus perhaps reducing the severity of chronic conditions that may linger and prevent full recovery. He also says that four years after the 1918 Great Flu epidemic, many survivors still had debilitating symptoms.
"Long-term health effects of COVID-19" (Lung specialist talks about pulmonary fibrosis, which may lead to need for lung transplants.)
Most important to factor in, among all these continuum possibilities, is the incredibly infectious nature of COVID-19, far more than the flu. Cummins does not appear to think much about this.
Perhaps it would be more useful and educative to describe COVID-19 as a clotting disease, than as a respiratory one.
Ivor Cummins is a health writer and biochemical engineer, who calls himself The Fat Emperor. He has drafted a letter for people to send to politicians and the press, querying the seriousness of COVID-19. He calls it the "Corona Basic Realities Letter," and writes, advocating 'herd immunity', as one of his 'indisputable facts', that: "Sweden, who were vilified for their approach, has had a very similar death rate to other countries." But Sweden actually has had a much higher death rate than its neighbours, although it did practice social distancing and other hygiene measures, whilst leaving businesses open etc.
The virus killed more than 5800 people in the relevant period, giving Sweden one of the world’s highest per capita mortality rates.
To compare those figures with other Scandinavian countries, Denmark has recorded 621 deaths, Finland has recorded 334 deaths, and Norway 262." [Sweden has about twice the population of the other Nordic countries, but the number of deaths is still very high in comparison.]
"The study, carried out by the country’s Public Health Agency, found that just 6.1 per cent of the country’s population had developed coronavirus antibodies by late May. This figure falls far short of Dr Tegnell’s prediction.
Cummins compares South American countries, Peru vs Brazil - lockdown vs none - claiming death rates are similar and assuming this proves lockdown does not help. But he should take into account other factors, such as dirty water, crowding, poor hygiene, undocumented workers, poor health system, which would make lockdowns and or treatment ineffective. See https://www.kunc.org/2020-08-31/peru-grapples-with-the-pandemic-despite-an-early-and-tough-lockdown.
Cummins criticises (Ferguson's epidemiological model> (an early influential British coronavirus epidemiological simulation that contributed - among others - to lockdown decisions), for Sweden vs 'actual' data. Strangely, Cummins does not appear to take into account the effect on the death rate of measures taken against the virus in Sweden, albeit lesser measures than in neighbouring countries (which had much lower death rates). This virus is so infective that, without any infection control measures, much higher contagion would be expected. This seems to be a common error in criticisms of quarantines and lockdowns. See this article for a thorough explanation of what the Ferguson model purported to do.
Ivor Cummings does not talk about Italy, which is an example of an entire country crippled by COVID-19, with a high severe illness and death rate that overwhelmed the hospital and funeral system. Three well-known factors operated there: The first was a mass infection that took place in a crowded football match; the second was that the government treated COVID-19 as if it were no more serious than the flu; the third was that Italy had such a high proportion of elderly people. The situation was made worse by the government failing to give financial support to its citizens, whilst ordering them into lockdown.
Victoria, Australia, is still experiencing in September 2020 what most of the world would see as a comparatively minor outbreak of COVID-19 in the community – certainly in contrast to Italy. The state initially locked down the most affected suburbs, but expanded lockdown quickly to the rest of the metropolis, and some affected regions. Contiguous states locked their borders against Victoria. Known new infections only reached 684 at their current peak, against a background of total known infections of 19,688 total, yet contagion reduced hospital and nursing-home staff, by quarantine and illness, to the extent that other states had to send in relief. What would have happened if there had been no lockdown? The virus would have spread to all other states and the hospitals would quickly have been overwhelmed. If, bizarrely, staff had continued to work in them without being tested themselves, without isolating if asymptomatic, patients presenting to hospitals with other illnesses would have run high risk of acquiring COVID-19 in addition to their presenting illnesses. Knowing this was a risk, even with quarantine, people avoided hospitals. Victoria is not out of the woods yet, and a small number of infections have escaped beyond the state, but the health system has coped to this point.
Cummins seems to be championing the idea of herd immunity, without thinking it through. Herd immunity needs definition. Many definitions disagree. The requirement, in herd immunity, for a much higher number of cases to establish, than usually allowed through strict quarantine, would mean potentially far more suffering. The virus would not go away, but would remain in the community to affect upcoming aging or otherwise vulnerable cohorts; thus a lurking endemic nasty. The capacity for COVID-19 to reinfect, and the ability of the virus to change rapidly, calls into question the very possibility of widespread immunity.
Not just deaths
Cummins should not just be looking at deaths, and neither should we. Deaths may actually be a poor indicator of the damage this virus may do. We should be looking at a continuum, as in: If the proportion of people who contract COVID-19, and who are over 80, die, what happens to those (of any age) who live? Given the ability of this disease (unlike flu) to cause clotting problems all over the body, affecting organs which affect other organs, we should be expecting that a proportion of survivors will have various rates of blood clots and organ damage. What proportion of these will clear, improve, or become chronic and dangerous? How long will how many survivors survive? Check out the following videos by doctors regarding clotting and organ-damage.
"More long-term damage caused by COVID-19 than expected | COVID-19 Special" (August 26, 2020)
The above video has many comments of interest, from people who have suffered lingering damage from the virus.
"An NYC Cardiologist Explains the Long Term Effects of COVID-19."
The cardiologist in the above video points out that, even if you are young and fit when you catch COVID-19, you still may not be able to do what you used to do, after you recover. He also says that people should present early for treatment because then treatment can be started to reduce the damage to organs, thus perhaps reducing the severity of chronic conditions that may linger and prevent full recovery. He also says that four years after the 1918 Great Flu epidemic, many survivors still had debilitating symptoms.
"Long-term health effects of COVID-19" (Lung specialist talks about pulmonary fibrosis, which may lead to need for lung transplants.)
Most important to factor in, among all these continuum possibilities, is the incredibly infectious nature of COVID-19, far more than the flu. Cummins does not appear to think much about this.
Ivor Cummins' letter suggests that recent rises (second waves) of corona virus are the result of countries conducting more tests, or the effects of seasonality. There seems to be little evidence of seasonality, however.
He speaks confidently of vaccines to help the susceptible, but there is no certainty of any effective vaccines arriving.
Innes Willox, the Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group or AIGroup, aims to bolster the economy by resurrecting the discredited mass-immigration agenda. His group has been described as: A leading organisation representing business in a broad range of sectors including manufacturing, defence, ICT and labour hire, by the Australian Advanced Manufacturing Council (accessed 1 September 2020), which lists him, among other positions, as “Board Member of Migration Council of Australia,” and notes that he “was Chief of Staff to the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, from 2004 to 2006.”
To appreciate the agenda, in the article, Migration, tax reform a key to revival, (Geoff Chambers, The Australian, 24 August 2020). Chambers wrote that the Australian Industry Group was calling for “a long-term, systematic shake-up of the tax system focused upon the removal of the worst taxes.”
But the overriding aspect of AIGroup’s push requires the Federal government to achieve,“An increase of the migration cap.”
Innes Willox, repeats his decades-long mantra:
“Restore the migration cap to 190,000 places a year and [furthermore] move to [implement] a growth rate target for annual permanent migration [levels, because] migration was critical to Australian prosperity.”
Willox and, indeed, that coterie of like-minded Big Australia cohorts, construe that merely importing copious numbers of immigrants will bolster ‘demand’. Therefore, the sacrosanct supply and demand factors which economic-rationalists embrace, will summarily kick-in - and boost economic growth. It all seems so straightforward and logical.
There’s nothing there about what might happen when these immigrant groups become so large that they could use their numbers to establish political entities to organise for their own benefit and possibly against Australia’s!
Of course, this disaster already seems obvious to many. Rancour inside the major parties shows it. In Victoria an Indian woman in the Liberal Party has established a ‘religious Right’ faction based on certain migrant groups. In South Australia a Chinese woman and upper-house MP is openly advocating for China and Chinese migrants. Are we surprised?
Without doubt, Innes Willox and Co would gloat about this scenario, as being culturally diverse and enriching. When, in fact, what it really is cultural separatism; if not downright divisive. And this is evident in that, outside workplace requirements, many in the array of ethnocultural groups in Australia, rarely interact with those outside of their cultural-bubbles. Except, perhaps, as Clive Hamilton, in Silent Invasion: China's Influence in Australia, argues, they seek to flatter and influence people holding political and business positions.
At any rate, Australia’s Prime Minister has reacted, introducing legislation requiring Federal oversight of any agreements with foreign powers/investments: “The government will introduce legislation next week empowering the foreign affairs minister to review and cancel agreements – such as Victoria’s decision to sign up to China’s belt and road initiative – if the commonwealth judges the arrangement adversely affects Australia’s foreign relations.” See, Victorian premier defends China deal as PM pushes to override state pacts with foreign nations. On the other side of the coin, many Australians continue to worry about Australia’s role as an international deputy to the United States war machine. (See, for instance, The Independent and Peaceful Australian Network, “Don’t buy into war.”). Most of us can probably agree that we would rather be independent and sovereign.
In past times, advocates of open-door immigration programs claimed this would enrich Australia. Alas, what has transpired is that immigrants had arrived in such droves, over the past decade, that they have rapidly displaced established Anglo-Celtic-European ethnicities from scores of suburbs in Sydney and Melbourne. The end result more closely resembles a collection of peoples, with diverse national or ethnic allegiances, rather than those of what once-was, termed ‘mainstream Australia’.
Further, over the past few months, we’ve seen the Big Australia advocates, like Willox and the AiGroup, calling for the government to fast-track international students in Australia from temporary migrants to permanent residents, as the stepping stone to fill job requirements. The effect of this would be to counter the drop in immigrant numbers which has followed from COVID-19 closing the borders to foreigners. What manner of gross-insanity exists here, with them demanding international students fill the void, when unemployment presently stands at 14% and underemployment is at a comparable percentage?
Willox reportedly purports that
”Immigration was critical to Australian prosperity and the pandemic has necessarily constrained inward immigration, but Australia would need to think long and hard before any decision [was made] to sustain lower levels over a longer term and the reduction in permanent migration visas had contributed to a reliance on temporary migration flows, dominated by students and backpackers. (”Coronavirus: migration, tax reform ‘key to recovery’”.)
Clearly, what Willox and AiGroup’s long-term migration strategy entails is summed up in the following two statements:
“[Australia’s future prosperity] would be enhanced by moving to an annual growth rate target for annual permanent migration that is linked to [the] national labour market growth, instead of a fixed quota number.”
“The changed outlook for immigration has huge implications for many industries, especially of immigration in housing and construction, which have been fueled by high levels both permanent and temporary levels.”[Emphasis added]
Well, taking into account that immigration intakes into Australia between January 2014 until June 2019 were, comparatively, 2.25 times higher than that of the US, prompts these queries:
If, as Willox and his cohorts claim mass-immigration makes Australia richer, then how come we are the most indebted society in the world? Surely, if the theory espoused by Willox and all of the Big Australia Brigadistâs is correct then prices/costs should, at the very least, be stagnant? Unlike as over these past 75 months during an era of huge immigration levels - since the LNP won office in September 2013 - house prices have increased by 60%, but wages only rose 15%?
Clearly, in spite of the relentless-claims made by the Big Australia Brigade, open-door immigration into Australia, hasn’t made us wealthier at all. These policies have actually encumbered the country with the exact opposite scenario. Alas, in spite of this situation being indisputable, we yet again find lobbyists like Willox calling for the government to resurrect those failed schemes.
But Willox is so concerned about the decline in building, if immigration is not increased, talking of:
“[…]The huge implications for many industries, particularly housing and construction.”
And it is the housing/construction sector interests that expose precisely what the whole Big Australia agenda is built upon. Excessive numbers of highly compliant immigrants will fall for the con-trick of borrowing big sums of money to buy a property. This will sustain the huge Ponzi-scheme.
Australia is now wallowing in crisis but those with the money are pushing for a new round of lunacy in furthering the disaster dumped upon Australians.
The extension of State of Emergency in the other five states does not need legislation, unlike Victoria. Here's information on the relevant laws for comparison, plus actions taken under similar legislation for COVID-19 in states outside Victoria. We have also now received a Report to Parliament on States of emergency - jurisdictional comparison, which shows clearly what the Victorian Premier is up against.
WA s56 Emergency Management Act 2005
2) The Minister must not make a declaration under this section unless the Minister —
(a) has considered the advice of the State Emergency Coordinator; and
(b) is satisfied that an emergency has occurred, is occurring or is imminent; and
(c) is satisfied that extraordinary measures are required to prevent or minimise —
(i) loss of life, prejudice to the safety, or harm to the health, of persons or animals; or
(ii) destruction of, or damage to, property; or
(iii) destruction of, or damage to, any part of the environment.
(4) The making of a state of emergency declaration does not prevent the making of further state of emergency declarations in relation to the same or a different emergency.
South Australia Public Health Act 2011
87—Public health emergencies
(1) If it appears to the Chief Executive that an emergency has occurred, is occurring or is about to occur, the Chief Executive may, with the approval of the Minister, declare the emergency to be a public health emergency (whether or not the emergency has previously been declared to be a public health incident under section 86). (
2) A declaration under this section— (a) must be in writing and published in a manner and form determined by the Minister; and (b) remains in force for a period specified in the declaration (which must not exceed 14 days) and for such further periods (which may be of any length) as may be approved by the Governor. (3) The Chief Executive may, at any time, revoke a declaration under this section.
TASMANIA: Emergency Management Act 2006
s42
(3) A declaration of a state of emergency may not be made so as to have effect –
(a) for a period exceeding 12 weeks in the case of an emergency relating to disease in humans or animals; or
(b) for a period exceeding 2 weeks in any other case.
(4) The Premier may extend a declaration of a state of emergency for one or more further periods, each of which does not exceed the relevant period specified in subsection (3) , if satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to do so.
(5) The Premier may amend or revoke a declaration of a state of emergency at any time.
Different states use different terminology
WA
On 20 August the State of Emergency was extended to September 3
SA
On 22 August, the State of Emergency was extended for 28 days
NSW - Public Health Emergency in Place
To deal with the public health risk of COVID-19 and its possible consequences, the Minister for Health and Medical Research has made a number of Orders, under section 7 of the Public Health Act 2010.
The Public Health (COVID-19 Restrictions on Gathering and Movement) Order (No 4) 2020 contains directions on gatherings, the use of non-residential and residential premises and community sporting activities. The Order lists premises requiring a COVID-19 safety plan . Generally the number of people allowed on premises will be determined by the ‘one person per 4 square metre rule’. Limits apply to weddings and funerals on residential premises.
People can participate in outdoor public gatherings of not more than 20 people. There is a 20 person limit on visitors to a home. The Order directs employers to allow employees to work from home if this is reasonably practical. The Order commenced on 1 July 2020.
TAS
On 8th of July the State of Emergency was extended to 31 August
QLD
Public Health Emergency extended to 2 October - The Public Health Act 2005 (Qld) does not provide for the declaration of a state of emergency in response to a public health emergency, however emergency measures may be enacted following a public health emergency declaration.
Dan Andrews’ attempt to extend Victoria’s State of Emergency in order to manage COVID-19 has been portrayed by some in parliament as a power grab and as an attack on human rights. But Victoria is the only state in Australia where you have to apply to parliament to extend the state of emergency. Enforcing laws about masks, geographical limits to movement, and curfews could not be done under normal health legislation. That is why, without a state of emergency, State Premiers only ask people to take these precautions. We have obtained information about laws in other states and their history of using these for COVID-19, which you can read at "Law & history on State of Emergency other five states - COVID-19 & Andrews stouch".
According to The Age:
"The Premier has said an extension would also bring Victoria into line with other states. “Other states are able to extend and extend and extend further. They don’t have any limits. We, under these arrangements, will simply continue the existing set of tools, if you like.”
Each state and territory has different periods of time that a state of emergency can operate for but no limits on how many times it can be extended." (The Age, What is the state of emergency and why is there controversy over extending it?)
For me, Dan Andrews' explanation of why he is seeking to extend Victoria's state of emergency seems reasonable, in light of the grave threat I see in COVID-19. I have assumed that enforcing laws about masks, geographical limits to movement, and curfews could not be done under normal health legislation. That that is why, without a state of emergency, State Premiers only ask people to take these precautions. We have obtained information about laws in other states and their history of using these for COVID-19, which you can read at "Law & history on State of Emergency other five states - COVID-19 & Andrews stouch"
The perspective of a power-grab conspiracy has received a lot of media coverage and fits into a big-business, ‘conservative’ or ‘right-wing’ view that the dangers of COVID-19 are vastly overestimated. Obviously that also suits their immediate bottom-line.
To be convincing, they would have to prove that there really is no virus, no related chronic health impairment, no cascade of hospital admissions, infected staff, or deaths, to logically persuade that a state of emergency was purely a grab for power, in the presence of a world-wide conspiracy to hoodwink the public.
In the absence of a convincing argument, it would remain that, although a state of emergency prolongation might conceal a naked grab for power, in the circumstances, in Victoria, it seems to have an infection control basis. And we will find that all the other states will be happy for any measures to contain Victorian contagion. And we cannot blame them.
The ‘conservative’ power-grab accusation also partly dovetails into a more ‘progressive’ legalistic human-rights point of view about freedom denied. This view, while sometimes conceding that the virus may be quite dangerous, nonetheless insists that it can be dealt with in a softer way, that people can be trusted to wash their hands, wear masks and keep social distance.
This perspective has been proved wrong, however, in the state in question. Victoria has had widespread community sourced infection, most of it where the source has not been tracked down, and these infections only started to decline after Stage 4 lockdown.
Lockdowns are the only effective way to pinpoint and freeze infection sources. You can lock down activity to 5km, as Victoria has done, then follow it up by contact and genome tracing. It is impossible to follow up large dispersed outbreaks via contact tracing and genetic linage. They spread too quickly and widely.
Although 'most' (we don't really know how many) may abide by recommendations, it only takes one (and there are many more as we see by the number of infringements) to spread a highly infectious disease. Industry will and does flout every safety-regulation and law and so we need powers to prevent that.
That leaves the problem that if the demands for ‘freedom’ were granted, that would take away the rights of people who want strong infection control, which cannot be achieved without state administration.
New South Wales and all other states closed their borders to Victoria, but then New South Wales acquired infection from Victoria, where a severe outbreak erupted. After that, other states closed their borders to New South Wales. Now there is an outbreak in Queensland. West Australia, Tasmania, and South Australia, are COVID-19 free, due to maintaining hard borders against the other states.
In the arguments against extension of state emergency powers of lockdown about human rights to freedom or the power-grab scenario, are Western Australians, Tasmanians, and South Australians, enslaved? They maintain restrictions on freedom of movement in order to protect their populations and their populations want this to continue, because – it protects them! Other states want Victoria to maintain lockdowns for as long as is needed.
There is nothing free about being stalked by a virus. Lockdown is a result of the virus, not politics.
We have to choose our battles. If we let the virus infect the bulk of the population, and remain among us, we would have a long term lowering of life expectancy and much suffering, with quite a lot of immediate death, and our hospital system would suffer long-term. Several things would contribute to lowering of general life expectancy: One would be the increased vulnerability to any illness among people who have suffered chronic damage, particularly to heart and lungs, from COVID-19. Those people can have had apparently mild forms of the illness. (See German study finds heart inflammation in large percentage of mild COVID-19 cases.) Another would be that, if more young people became infected, a larger proportion of them would die or be long-term affected. The fact that it seems true that you can get COVID-19 more than once, and get sicker each time, increases the potential severity of the problem. Risk would also increase due to people moving up into the aging cohorts, thus becoming more vulnerable to COVID-19. Hospitals would become centres of infection, rather than beneficial, their knowledge base and function would deplete as staff succumbed to death, chronic illness, and fear. Their services would no longer be available to surgical and medical cases unrelated to COVID-19.
This medical research arises from the pandemic problem of fructose in our processed food, which is the major cause of Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which accompanies the terrible scale of modern obesity. This hepatitis-related obesity carries high risks of dementia, cirrhosis, and cancer. The effects are similar to those of alcoholism, but awareness of risks is even lower. This study identifies fructose as doing its damage by causing changes to the barrier function of the intestine, which is a new understanding of how the liver-disease starts. The study proposes the idea that a genetic intervention might, at some time in the future, prevent these changes to some degree, in people very seriously affected. It points to genetic interventions in mice made ill by high fructose-induced diets. The authors of the study note that it would, of course, be better not to ingest the fructose. We have also embedded a video about fructose from the U of California.
[Candobetter Ed: NAMES FOR FRUCTOSE: Fructose is a component of sugar (sucrose). The following ingredients all contain fructose: Brown sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, lactose, malt syrup, maltose, molasses, raw sugar and sucrose.]
A team of international researchers including Monash University academics has discovered that, contrary to previous belief, fructose causes liver toxicity by changing the barrier function of the intestine.
The new study, published today (August 25th) in Nature Metabolism, shows that fructose affects the liver only after it causes intestinal barrier disruption, therefore treatments that prevent barrier disruption could protect the liver from fructose-induced diseases including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), fibrosis and cancer.
Fructose is a simple sugar which can be found in high quantities in soft drinks, sauces and fast foods. With the advent of modern biochemistry and metabolic analysis, in recent times scientists have discovered that fructose is up to three times more potent than glucose in increasing liver fat.
Excessive fructose consumption has been linked to the recent surge in Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) - one of the most common metabolic disorders - and its associated co-morbidities, which include liver failure, cirrhosis, and cancer.
Australian metabolic disease expert, Professor Mark Febbraio from Monash’s Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, was part of the international team of researchers led by Professor Michael Karin from The University of California San Diego, School of Medicine.
Professor Febbraio says:
“The findings from this study make it clear that fructose does its damage in the intestine and if intestinal barrier deterioration is prevented, the fructose does little harm to the liver.”
The intestine is an organ that makes up part of the gastrointestinal system (more commonly known as the gut). In recent years it’s become evident that excessive fructose metabolism in the gut reduces the production of proteins that maintain the gut barrier, which can lead to a chronic inflammation condition called endotoxemia, as documented in animal studies and paediatric NAFLD patients.
The international team of researchers found that by adding a cell signalling protein called ‘tumor necrosis factor’ (TNF) to hepatocytes stimulates the metabolism of fructose and increases the production of the enzymes that convert the molecule ‘acetyl CoA’ to fatty acids.
“A large increase in the expression of these enzymes was also detected in livers of fructose-fed mice,” says Professor Febbraio. “Conversely, genetic modification that reduced TNF production was found to protect mice from fructose-provoked NAFLD, which is a very exciting step forward for the treatment of diseases which can evolve from this all too common liver disorder.”
Although education and increased awareness are the best solutions to the problem of fructose-induce liver disease, for those individuals who progress to the severe form of NAFLD, known as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), the findings described in this study offer some hope of a future therapy based on gut barrier restoration.
This study clearly demonstrates that maintaining gut barrier integrity is a therapeutic target to treat liver disease associated with high fructose consumption.
The researchers will now focus on screening drug candidates that target key proteins in the maintenance of gut barrier integrity.
The full study can be found at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-020-0261-2
Larry Schlesinger, in the Financial Review (May 26, 2020) wrote a article entitled “Rental market rocked by insane student exodus.” It pertained to the “grave” concerns that a clique of high-profile property developers in Melbourne have with the cessation of massive international student migration, due to COVID 19. Property sector denizens mentioned in it were, third on the Fin Review’s “Young Rich List”, Tim Gurner; Caroline Viney, previously of Grocon, currently the chief development officer of Vicinity Centres; and Shane Quinn, a partner with the commercial property group, Quintessential Equity. The Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Sally Capp, who was until recently the Victorian Executive Direct for the Property Council of Australia, added her angst.
Tim Gurner apparently described the treatment of foreign students as, “The most insane thing,” he had ever seen in his career.
The article reports that:
“An exodus of students drove a tripling of residential vacancy rates in the inner city of Melbourne in April.”
Tim Gurner is quoted, saying,
“The rental market has taken a massive hit. It’s my biggest concern.”
We are also informed that these circumstances have led to rents falling between 10 to 30 per cent which, if sustained, would affect residential values.
Gurner related that his firm just completed a building with 140 apartments with 100 of them in the letting pool.
“We normally lease them all in two hours with one inspection. Tragically we’ve leased only half of them in six weeks. Clearly, that is a gross disparity.”
The Lord Mayor of Melbourne then gets a run, saying,
“The city is the place where people come together. Our economy is based upon the city being a meeting and gathering place.”
Such partisans of ‘growth’ have cooperated over the past decade, but particularly so since 2014, with making the international student sector a prime aspect of Victoria’s economy. The foreign student population has ballooned in the CBD of Melbourne, in recent years, as part of the supposed $40 billion bonanza to Australia’s economy.
Quite simply, these increasing numbers of international students, flooding into the CBD over the past few years, haven’t, as some like to imagine, created a cultural and material nirvana. Foreign students and Australians have all suffered from the resulting rise in rents and associated costs. And now COVID-19 has placed students in shocking situations, without employment, not qualifying for welfare payments, and often unable to return home to their families.
Maybe the property development sector should give them all free accommodation, since it has been the primary driver and beneficiary of the situation that led to this disaster.
The covert cooperation of politicians and property developers has culminated in a mass migration program that has enriched a small group of focused beneficiaries, but, in the process, has caused the world’s highest property and rental prices, with utilities, energy, and education, following suit. These skyrocketing basic costs affect employees and employers, reducing profit margins and placing pressure on salaries, whilst enriching corporate mortgage-lenders. Furthermore, this situation has made COVID-19 so much more costly than it ever needed to be. Government has had to provide income support to cover extortionate property prices, often costing the taxpayer-funded welfare sector more in rental support than in income payments, ironically whilst compensating the property industry that caused the problem in the first place.
It would be fitting if the property development sector were required to give free accommodation to Australia's homeless and unemployed.
Developer desire to profit, combined with population pressure, has also compromised planning laws and courts, permitting high rise slum prototypes in the urban areas, and mean little lots in new rural slums, as people accept ever lower standards of accommodation.
So, predictably, we have Tim Gurner, Caroline Viney, Shane Quinn, and Sally Capp, along with the collective of property groups (like the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce and the Australian Business Council), vigorously attempting to re-establish affairs as they were, prior to COVID 19 undermining their game. They want the rental demand in the CBD of Melbourne once more from foreign students; who will occupy the real estate that they control.
How in the world did Victoria end up with being dependent upon selling education and renting property to foreigners as its most important revenue source?
Why have all of the State governments colluded with the Federal government to implement this agenda to make educating foreigners, not just Victoria’s largest export industry, but the country’s too?
The international student sector is touted as a great economic boon for Australia, when, in reality, it has put Australians in competition with high-fee-paying foreign students, for higher education - a precious national resource, with limited capacity. The crass monetisation of this sector has depressed academic standards in order to lower the admission bar, and more and more of us, foreign and locally-born, are becoming slum-dwellers. How much lower can the property sector drag us?
NOTES
*This article was developed around an edited comment from "Mary" - who did not leave her contact details, so we could not get in touch with her. We now know her as Mary Defoe.
The girls needed a break. The university term had just finished and so had "lock-down". Students, Isla and her two housemates, Chloe and Emily, were anxious to escape Melbourne. Emily's friend Olivia who was studying at Adelaide University had been trying, for more than a year, to entice Emily over for a visit, and this seemed the opportunity. Of course all three girls would go over together and, as they all yearned for a seaside experience, after spending so much time in their rented inner suburban house, they booked into an apartment for five nights in Glenelg, not far from Emily. It would be great! They could go for walks along the beach every morning!
It was a very dull, cold, day when they left for Adelaide. They all felt both relaxed and excited. It had been a long term of study, and the first lock-down had been very stressful. University social life had been virtually non-existent since before Easter, with "social distancing", and then, for Isla, episodes of self-isolation, when travelling from Melbourne to her family in Hobart and back.
It was marvellous to get away and be on the open road! It felt almost as though normality was settling over the pandemic-stricken state. They stopped in Ballarat for a coffee, not sitting down in the cafe, as they would normally have done, but taking their drinks in disposable cups, each with a treat from the bakery, to a nearby park. Isla was in high spirits and, as the apricot filling of her danish pastry registered on her taste buds, she had an allover feeling that things would be OK.
They arrived in Adelaide the same day, just on sunset. Their GPS took them through the now lit up streets of Adelaide, to their accommodation in Glenelg. The accommodation was somewhat bizarre, in that it looked quite conventional as part of an old but well maintained brick house, but there was only one rather minimal sofa and low rafters in various inconvenient places, so they had to bend over to make their way from the living room to the kitchen and to their bedrooms. The establishment was run by an elderly couple who had a ten year old daughter. Unsolicited, the woman, who was probably in her mid sixties, gave them a long explanation of her in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment at an advanced age, resulting in a degree of fame and a much yearned-for daughter. She even showed them an ancient magazine featuring an article about this event! After such a long drive, the girls actually longed to unpack and relax, so were grateful when Samantha finally said good night, leaving six slices of bread for their morning toast.
That first evening, the girls took it in turns to lie on the sofa in front of the television, with legs dangling over the edge. The other two lay on the floor, on sleeping bags they had brought, in case they needed to sleep in the car. Such is the lottery of booking accomodation on the Internet!
The next morning they met Olivia, a third-year architecture student who, it was clear, had very much missed her former Bendigo school mate, Emily
In Adelaide it was possible to do far more than one could in Melbourne, where galleries, theatres, cinemas, and many restaurants, were closed, but in Adelaide there was some theatre and they took the opportunity of seeing The Book of Mormon as well as visiting wineries and galleries.
They had not been taking much notice of the news, as they were on holiday, and did not want the be continually brought back to reality. One day, though, their leisurely breakfast was interrupted by a knock on the door. It was Samantha, with her daughter Ellen by her side. Samantha was prone to histrionics and, in overly dramatic terms, conveyed to the girls that Melbourne was going into a second lock-down! The girls greeted this news almost with amusement, but Samantha was frantic. She was under the illusion that the girls had to return to Melbourne before it was locked down, or they would not be able to return at all! Isla reassured Samantha that they had the situation in hand and would still probably be leaving on the allocated day.
After Samantha and Ellen left, the girls started making plans. This lock-down did change things, but they knew they were not locked out of Melbourne. In fact, this was their opportunity to escape being locked in!
Did anyone want to return to Melbourne? Definitely not! Isla decided on the spot to return to Hobart and continue the next term of her course online, until Melbourne was unlocked. After all, she would be doing the course online, anyway, if she were in Melbourne. The year had been so disrupted, with cancelled placements and very few physical meetings with her fellow students and lecturers. She went online and booked a flight from Adelaide to Hobart, on the day they would have returned to Melbourne. Emily would return to Bendigo and Chloe would return to Shepparton. They had come over in Emily's car and Emily would drive Chloe home to Shepparton, before returning home.
They made the most of their last few days in Adelaide. On the day of their departure, Emily drove Isla to the airport, and then continued with Chloe back to Victoria. The parting at the airport was quite emotional, as none of them knew when they would return to the house that, together, they had called home all year.
Isla had a three hour wait for her flight, but once she was in the departure lounge, she relaxed with a course-related book she happened to have brought with her on important minerals in root vegetables. Her phone was charged so she was entertained. Two hours after takeoff, Isla was collecting her luggage from the carousel at Hobart Airport. Her sister, Bea, was waiting for her, and she was overcome with relief She had not realised how stressed she had been over the past few months, but now she was back to normality. It was was as though she had come from a different country!
They pulled into the driveway of their suburban Hobart home, overlooking the Derwent River. As one of her relatives once said, "You don't live in Hobart unless it's in a house with a view!" This had seemed a terribly privileged and amusing thing to say at the time, but now she appreciated the somewhat isolated privilege enjoyed by Tasmanians. She raced inside to be greeted enthusiastically by Terence the sheepdog. They both rolled on the carpet in delight at seeing one another. She and Bea debriefed for the rest of the afternoon until their mother, Kate came home from work.
The rules in Tasmania for a person returning from interstate were self-isolation for 2 weeks. Isla was resigned to this, and she did not really care, as she knew at the end of those two weeks, that she would be free. The Tasmanian Government had kept its population safe, and for this she was forever grateful.
When the two weeks were up, Isla stepped outside and headed towards the yacht club. Solitarily, she strolled along the beach. Never before had the water looked clearer, the sky such a pure blue, and the quiet of the morning enveloped her, at the same time seeming to give her space to expand her consciousness.
Epilogue:
This is Australia in 2020. The quality of life is different in each state and bad luck for you if you are in the wrong state. Isla was lucky to escape Victoria, as there are now few freedoms for its inhabitants, due to the Covid 19 virus raging through the state. Other states had all but eliminated the virus, but things went badly wrong in Victoria, and this has put other states in jeopardy. It will be a long time before the people of Victoria can actually fully occupy and enjoy their own state and their own country.
Jennifer was enjoying life, despite some milestone disappointments. Her 25 year marriage to Richard had foundered just after they moved away from the sea to a regional city in Victoria. Richard did not transplant well and he descended into a sombre depression. He became distant and eventually they separated. At 65 Jennifer embarked on a new life as a single woman. She had had plenty of practice, as she and Richard had not married until she was 36 and he 42. They had not had any children and, although Jennifer was disappointed about this, she had somehow overcome it, by nursing the strangely comforting thought that the looming situation with environmental decline and overpopulation would have been a burden on any children she may have had. A further disappointment was that her family had fallen away after the deaths of her parents and, although she made supreme efforts with cousins, she had only a sparse, although valuable, array of family still in touch.
Jennifer had made her will a number of times, and with business affairs amicably settled between herself and Richard, he no longer figured in this confronting document. It had become a matter of dispersing her not insignificant assets. She had been left a considerable fortune by a favourite aunt in 2010 and so she needed do this with care and to revise it every few years.
One day she had a call from a friend in another state, who had come across an elderly nursing home resident, whom she believed was related to Jennifer. The name fitted in but Jennifer had never heard of this particular person. Her friend suggested that she write a letter to the resident at the nursing home. Jennifer did this, being very interested, since she already knew a lot about this branch of her family and thought she had already completed the picture.
About three weeks went by, with no word from this possible relative, Being in a nursing home, he was probably not capable of getting together the requirements for a letter, and getting it posted. Jennifer did not think much more about this. It had been worth a try, but it hadn't worked, and she was quite busy with her life in bustling Ballarat.
One day, Jennifer received a phone call from a woman called Deborah, who said she was the daughter of the man in the nursing home, and she was responding to the letter on behalf of her father. Jennifer and Deborah were second cousins, but they had never met! They knew the same people, they understood where they each fitted into the family, and they were born the same year - Jennifer three months earlier. As a child, Jennifer had spent many school holidays with her grandparents in Perth, and had met many cousins, but they were all about ten years older- actually her mother's first cousins. There was no-one her own age At this late stage of her life, finding Deborah was thrilling and joyous. Jennifer looked forward to a meeting the next time she was in Perth. They vowed to keep in touch and they immediately exchanged family photos and documents to fill in the picture for each other.
Deborah had been equally pleased about this new connection. Although she had a husband, children, and grand children, a sister and a brother, so was replete with family, she welcomed the opening of this new door, looked forward to many interesting exchanges, and to possibly solving the mystery of why they had not hitherto met. One night, Deborah and her husband Ben were relaxing in front of television when the subject of Jennifer came up.
Ben warned that there must be an ulterior motive for a cousin to turn up, after virtually a whole lifetime, and to contact Deborah's elderly father in a nursing home. People only befriend elderly people in nursing homes in order to influence and exploit them, Ben proposed to Deborah. Deborah took this in, having not considered such a devious act on the part of Jennifer, who actually sounded warm, friendly, genuine, and uncomplicated. But, of course, Ben was right. It all made sense. Deborah would not contact Jennifer again, even though she had received an email from her the day before. The decision was made. It was not worth the risk!
Jennifer was surprised not to hear back from Deborah. She had been hoping to catch up on so much, to learn about this cousin's parallel childhood in Perth, played out during those school holidays when Jennifer was close by so many times. About two weeks after not hearing back, Jennifer rang Deborah, to thank her for documents she had sent and for which she had already thanked her in her last email. The voice on the other end of the phone was harsh and cold. It was as though Jennifer's call was an unsolicited intrusion from a call centre! Jennifer retreated quickly but politely, surprised at the about-face in the new relationship.
Deborah had felt almost panic stricken when she heard Jennifer's voice on the phone. It was now the voice of the enemy, threatening her financial future. She knew what Jennifer was up to. Good riddance! She told Ben that she would have no more to do with Jennifer. This resolution brought their marital relations back into a tenuous workable harmony.
Originally, Jennifer had only ever expected to have a few words with the old man, and possibly find out why she had never met him. She knew he was a much younger brother of one of her mother's first cousins, whom she remembered very well, but she had never known that she had a younger brother. She was bewildered but philosophically she reflected that she was never going to find out why Deborah had turned on her. At least she had some interesting family history from the brief exchange, and hopefully she had filled in some gaps for Deborah.
A few weeks later, Jennifer was about to embark on a six week trip to Russia and, as usual when travelling, she felt a sense of doom. The plane could well crash, and she may never see her kitchen or her cat again! Her heart was in her mouth, as she accumulated all her travel documents, all the time with a sense of having forgotten something. Finally, all that was left to do was revising her will. This must be done since she could be dead soon!
The Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) is encouraged by recent statements by the Foreign Affairs Minister, the Hon. Marise Payne, following the Australia-U.S. Ministerial (AUSMIN) talks in Washington, where the Minister indicated that Australia has no intention to injure our important relationship with China but instead seeks to ‘make our own decisions, our own judgments in the Australian national interest’. [To better situate the area in question, Candobetter has included a 2014 video about the disputed islands in the South China Sea.]
***IPAN says:
- No to U.S. pressure for Australia to sail provocatively inside the 12 nautical mile territorial limits around islands in the South China Sea claimed by China
- No to U.S. military fuel and munitions build-ups in NT
- No to an increase in U.S. marine deployment to the NT***
IPAN seeks clarity as to whether the Minister’s comments mean that Australia will resist fully the recent pressure from the U.S. to join them in provocatively sailing naval vessels inside the 12 nautical mile territorial zone around Islands in the South China Sea claimed by China.
IPAN spokesperson Mr Richard Broinowski, former Ambassador, urges the Australian Government to indeed make its own decisions for the benefit of the Australian people and seeks formal confirmation that Australia will refuse to take part in such provocative actions which could lead to incidents which escalate into hostilities.
“The so-called freedom of navigation exercises being carried out by the U.S. and Australia is a furphy, as neither China nor any other countries in the region have threatened interference with the shipping lanes in the South China Sea – and blocking such trade lanes would actually disadvantage China due to its heavy reliance on them for import/export trade”, stated Mr Broinowski.
“Furthermore, taking an independent stance is in the interests of peace and our economy which is very dependent on Chinese trade”, he continued.
IPAN urges the Federal Government to develop a truly independent foreign policy which would clearly involve making ‘our own judgements in the Australian national interest’ and not simply following the political direction of a foreign country.
“Reports indicate that the AUSMIN 2020 talks may commit Australia to accepting a military build-up in the Northern Territory with fuel, munitions and spare parts dumps and possibly long range missiles being established by the U.S. military,” stated Mr Broinowski.
“These AUSMIN talks set the objective of larger deployments of U.S. marines to Darwin and increased war exercises with the Australian Defence Force (ADF). In addition, such activity is tantamount to preparation for war. A war aimed at China would be disastrous for the Australian people and the people of our region”, stated Mr Broinowski.
IPAN urges the Australian Government to pursue an independent foreign policy in the interests of peace in our region and stability for our economy already under stress from the COVID-19 health crisis. Such a policy will resist attempts by the United States to force the Australian Navy into provocative actions in the South China Sea and will reject U.S. military build-ups in the NT, whether fuel and munitions dumps or deployment of U.S. Marines to Darwin.
On Australian ABC's Q & A, 28 July 2020, "Fight of our lives," Bill Bowtell[1] alone seemed able to conceptualise the biological restructuring of our economic environment, although Gigi Foster, economist, NSW, seemed to know instinctively what she needed to combat in order to keep the global, privatised economy going. She advocated allowing people to die from COVID-19, Swedish-style, in order to maintain business more or less as usual. However, when it was put to her that this would make everything less predictable and also incapacitate our health-care system, with no end in sight for the virus, she could draw a logical conclusion, which was, "[...] If we keep our borders closed, until there is a vaccine, we have to restructure the industrial mix in Australia." But this conclusion, anathema to her ideology, seemed ridiculous to her.
Not so to Bill Bowtell, Adjunct Professor, UNSW and Strategic Health Policy Adviser, who has a history of success in policy-making and promotion in the HIV-AIDS pandemic. He said, "The greatest enemy here is nostalgia and looking backwards. The Australian economy, the 30 years of the boom, have gone. They have disappeared. They were the product of a plan that came in in the 1980s, the Hawke-Keating government and the subsequent reforms. That's gone. The assumptions that underlie that plan have evaporated. The globalisation, the international economy functioning as we used to know it. So now we need Plan 3. The third plan since the war. And that will take all of the intellectual capacity that we have in Australia, the committment of the Australian people - they've got to buy into it - and the economy that will be born now will be very different than the economy that we have been used to. We can do it. We can make a better economy. The question of borders - Look, in the world, the Coronavirus caseload is going up like a rocket. There will be no opening up of international borders, as people seem to think there will be. We saw, in the last few days in Europe, where they opened up the southern borders in Spain, and then they had to shut them down again, because, guess what, the virus kept going up. Now, we have problems also with the Australian borders. I cannot see the outlying states opening up to a situation where we have Coronavirus cases at the level we have in Victoria and New South Wales. I don't see Western Australia doing that. The Federal Government is in court at the moment trying to force the West Australian Government [to open (?) interruption by compere, saying time running out and gives opportunity to another panelist to make final comment.]"
Karen Soo, Executive Officer at the Haymarket Chamber of Commerce, said, "I think this is a time for universal pause enables us as a society to really review what's important, and I think, as all people, I think it's really created a lot of equity and parity. So, everybody's now looking at the homeless, it's looking at multicultural societies, it's looking at everybody to say, 'How do we work together? How do we move forward? And how do we ensure that everyone can have a future together? And I think, it's going to hopefully be - I am quite optimistic - I think it's an opportunity that businesses will review and innovate and work together - local communities will be very market-driven until the borders are open once we are safe enough to function in a new way. Like, there's going to be a new way to operate in business."
NOTES
"Bio:
Mr Bill Bowtell AO, Executive Director, Pacific Friends of the Global Fund. Bill is a strategic policy adviser, with particular interest in national and international health policy structures and reform. He trained as a diplomat, with postings in Portugal, Papua New Guinea and Zimbabwe. As senior adviser to the Australian health minister, Bill Bowtell played a significant role in the introduction of the Medicare health insurance system in 1984. He was an architect of Australia’s successful and well-regarded response to HIV/AIDS. Between 1994 and 1996, Bill Bowtell was senior political adviser to the Prime Minister of Australia. He maintains a close interest in the potential impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the other communicable diseases, on the social, economic and political development of the Asia-Pacific region. Since 2005, Bill was Director of the HIV/AIDS Project at the Lowy Institute for International Policy and, since 2009, the Executive Director of Pacific Friends of the Global Fund. Pacific Friends is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In these positions, he has sought to increase knowledge and awareness of the challenges posed globally, and to the Pacific region, by the three diseases. He has written and broadcast extensively on these subjects and participated in many international and Australian conferences and seminars especially in relation to HIV/AIDS." Source: https://kirby.unsw.edu.au/event/kirby-seminar-mr-bill-bowtell-international-and-australian-perspectives-three-decades-hivaids.
It was a stifling summer night with the usual crowd at the jazz venue Jonathan had frequented regularly for the previous few years. On this particular night he was introduced to Ruth, a rather earnest, slim, dark haired lady, in her early thirties. Jonathan, although somewhat lonely following the recent acrimonious break-up of his marriage to Danielle, and consequent distancing from his young son David, was not seeking a new partner. He felt the need to sort out his feelings and his finances before taking steps in that direction. He and Danielle had sold the family home in North Caulfield, and now he had to find another house with only half the funds, while house prices were sky-rocketing. He really needed to get away by himself to think about his future.
Ruth edged her way from the other side of the table to where his group were seated and suddenly she was sitting next to him. A cold and distant manner came naturally to Jonathan and he found himself using it, despite her insistent, tipsy, approaches. He needed something stronger than beer, but resisted the urge. He felt danger and knew he had to remain sober. In any case, he had to drive home shortly.
As he got up to leave, Ruth jumped up, asking for a lift home. She grafted herself onto his left hand side, walking out with him and waving gaily to the others. Jonathan stiffly agreed to take Ruth home, even though it was out of his way. They passed the Temple Beth Israel synagogue, whereupon Ruth announced she was often part of the congregation there. Jonathan was silent, not wanting to reveal his habits. They arrived at her modest flat in Balaclava, where she almost insisted on a kiss goodnight and an exchange of addresses.
Jonathan felt fleeced by this overbearing woman, but consoled himself that he was not obliged to contact her, even though he had found himself saying that he would! Uneasily, he drove back to his serviced apartment in St. Kilda Road, opened his computer, and lost himself in esoteric electronic musical programs and exchanges with people in Seattle, Avignon, and Brighton, UK. Needless to say, although Jonathan did not contact Ruth, she was sending him SMSs before his head hit the pillow. By 9.00 a.m.the next day she had actually rung him, trying to persuade him to attend the synagogue with her that morning. She insisted, in fact, and Jonathan found himself standing in the lower hall of the Temple Beth Isreal Synagogue, witnessing a Bar Mitzvah of a child who was a complete stranger to him! He felt trapped, and wanted desperately to go home and finish the program he was writing for a musical score about the Holocaust.
His day, however, had been planned for him, and it finished beneath the orderly covers of Ruth's queen sized bed. Looking out the high window of her bedroom, he saw a brick wall, and knew he was in a new prison. Ruth saw him looking up, not sensing his sadness, nor caring really about how he might feel. She remarked how lovely it was to see something as neat as a wall of bricks with no irritating uncontrollable vegetation spoiling the perfection.
In due course, Jonathan bought a small house in a respectable area, next door to an almost identical house built at the same time some ninety years earlier. About a week after moving into the new house, he received a welcoming note of introduction from his next door neighbour, Carole, who had lived there for the previous twenty years.
About three weeks later, when Carole was gardening in the front, Jonathan, from the street, introduced himself and Ruth to Carole. After that and for the next decade, Jonathan kept to himself, and rarely spoke to Carole, or even glanced in her direction, if they were both outside. He once came to her front door to tell her he had been burgled and she, knowing it was a common occurrence, commiserated in a heartfelt way.
About a decade later, Carole noticed that Ruth was present next door a lot more and discussing "issues" with her as though she had taken over the job of attending to anything to do with Jonathan's house. Carole found Ruth rather unsettling as a personality. She would complain about something like too many cars in the narrow street and then she would couch this concern in terms of her global concern that nobody come to any harm. The concern became over-dramatised. Ruth gave the appearance of having befriended Carole, frequently discussing matters concerning the immediate environment. She was what one might once have called a busybody and a gossip.
Inside the small house, Jonathan hardly had a moment of peace. Ruth had moved in, and he knew that if they ever separated, he would lose half of this house, and his wealth would be effectively divided by four, from where it was before he and Danielle separated. He was worried that, ultimately, he would have little to leave his son, David. But it was too late. Ruth had taken over. She changed the decor of all the rooms, having everything painted a glaring white, covering the subtle pastels and dusty mid-tones that Jonathan had hardly noticed, but which he realised later had a soothing effect on him. Ruth moved his desk, so that he was sitting opposite his neighbour's window, facing straight into her lounge room. These windows, facing one another had until now been treated with the utmost respect by the inhabitants of both houses. Jonathan was uncomfortable, and always looked down, but this was the only place left for him to work, following Ruth's re-arrangements. Ruth was out of control, and he could do nothing about it.
Jonathan retreated from the situation, submerged in arcane electronic and theoretical musical propositions. He no longer knew what was going on outside this constructed virtual world he inhabited.
Ruth was not on medication and her need to order her environment increased with each control she put on the exterior and interior of the house. Jonathan became almost an irrelevance to her. She enclosed the back yard with high fences, and an inordinate amount of wooden lattice on top on two sides. The next task was to block out their neighbour to the south, Carole.
At a dinner party one night, where the conversation centred around property values and activities conducive to increasing the value of the domicile, a young lawyer mentioned the shade cloth method of forcing a neighbour to one's will, with respect to fences. He explained to Ruth and the other enthralled dinner guests, that if one attached shade cloth on top of the existing fence, then the fence height was extended legally by this measure. This would leave the neighbour with no choice but to agree to whatever you want, and to be henceforth in fear of this being done again and again, to any height. The neighbour would be powerless to do anything. Ruth was overjoyed, as this was free legal advice, and she could establish to Carole that she knew her rights, and Carole would be powerless.
Ruth got onto her task right away, bringing in a tradesman to erect half a metre of dark green shade cloth on top of the fence between the two houses. Carole came home from bowls one day, to find that there was a dark green band across all her treasured north-facing leadlight windows. Sunlight had been blocked! This also affected her sunroom a little further away from the fence, with an artificial green glow visible behind her plants. The dappled light and shadows of the varied foliage by the fence had been obliterated.
All Ruth had to do now was to wait for Carole to capitulate and beg her for a high fence and another metre of trellis on top. After all Carole was on her own with no obvious male support, and she would never be able to stand up to this. The council would never intervene, Ruth mused.
Several weeks passed. Carole was mystified about this acton on the part of her neighbour, and made many despairing but fruitless calls to the local council. She had to steel herself each time she made an approach, as the information she gleaned was minimal, and she remained confused and ignorant as to her legal rights. She was certain of her moral rights, but her neighbour seemed equally certain of her legal rights, asserting that she could do what she wanted on her side of the fence! She also told Carole to "go away," when Carole tried to ascertain what was going on.
One day Ruth was patrolling the tiny perimeter of her domain when she saw an errant twig with two leaves and a perfect, very pale camellia, smiling at her over the bottle green shade cloth, just out of reach. She marched to the shed for her secateurs and a ladder. Normally she would throw any of Carole's leaves and branches back over the fence for Carole to dispose of. This time though, she decided to put this specimen in a vase. She climbed up on the rickety ladder but still could not quite reach. Rather unsteadily, she put one foot up on the next rung and reached towards the intruder. The ladder rocked back and forth a few times, and then crashed to the ground with Ruth aboard. Ruth was aware of a chiily breeze seemingly in her mouth. She put her hand to her face and saw that it was covered in blood. She had caught her cheek on a nail protruding from the stake that held up part of the shade cloth! She screamed but her voice did not sound like her.
Next door, Carole turned off the vacuum cleaner, as she finished her lounge room. She became aware of the noise from next door. She did not dare go near the fence but she went outside. The screaming and crying were much louder now. She could not see over the shade cloth without a ladder so she raced back through her house to her neighbours' front door.
Jonathan answered the door after less than half a minute. "Something has happened in your back yard. I can hear screaming. You need to investigate!" Jonathan thanked her and raced to the the back door. He had been listening with headphones to a version of his latest composition called "Covid Nineteen, where had you been?" and had been completely absorbed for at least two hours.
He looked around the garden and, there to his left, he saw the ladder lying horizontal, with Ruth's legs tangled in its rungs. Blood was pouring from her face. There was a huge cut right through her left cheek, through which he could see her teeth, as the flap of her cheek folded open.
Jonathan called an ambulance. He couldn't imagine being able to drive, with Ruth in this state sitting next to him in the car and, besides, he wanted to get back to his composition
After Ruth had woken up from her emergency plastic surgery, Jonathan arrived at the hospital. In his hand was a solitary pink camellia in a plastic bag.
Ruth had bandages covering most of her head and all of the left side of her face. She was in significant pain. Jonathan did not stay long but left the camellia by her bedside in a small vase supplied by a friendly woman in a blue uniform.
Ruth was discharged from hospital after three days, but still with her bandages. Her first check up with the surgeon was two weeks later, when she was allowed to see her face. To her horror, her left side was not at all like the right side, and she looked very asymmetrical. There was a large purple scar cutting diagonally across her left cheek and the whole area was swollen with a crimson hue. The nurses changed her dressings and a further appointment was made for three weeks time.
Back home, Jonathan seemed even more remote than before. All Ruth seemed to talk about was her scar, for which she blamed Carole, for having an inconsiderate tree that grew towards the light, in defiance of her shade cloth boundary. Jonathan didn't quite get this logic, and shrugged as he shuffled back to his office to review his composition.
Three months later, Ruth's scar had healed but her face was still noticeably lop sided. The surgeon said that at the the twelve month mark what she would see would probably be the best that her face would ever be. Ruth could go out, but she was grateful for the compulsory face mask dictum from the government to slow the spread of the virus raging in her city. Jonathan and Ruth could not visit friends and nor could they have anyone over. These were the rules. Jonathan felt irritated with Ruth. "She used to put her energies into making fences and blocking out neighbours, but now she comes to me all the time for reassurance about her face. I need a rest," he sighed.
One day, later that year, Carole saw a moving van outside Jonathan and Ruth's house. Carole was surprised as she had not known the house was on the market. By the end of that day, Carole had a new neighbour, Beth, and that is another story!
Carole had heard nothing from Ruth and Jonathan from the time she rang their doorbell to let Jonathan know of what turned out to be Ruth's plight.
One crisp morning a few weeks after Jonathan and Ruth moved, Carole, a masked, rather frail figure, emerged from the front gate for a walk, in the tiny quota of winter sun before a hailstorm expected later that day. Her neighbour on the other side of Ruth and Jonathan's house greeted her in a cloth-y voice through a Donald Duck face mask. Jane told Carole that Ruth and Jonathan had separated after "the accident", and Jonathan had to sell up in order to pay Ruth out her share of the house, and that she and her husband were in the process of negotiating with Beth, the removal of the trellis extension of their boundary fence.
Carole felt a lightness and something almost akin, as she remembered, to happiness. The neighbours' properties would now be free of barriers blocking their views to the sky. This was a kind of freedom, so welcome after many months of the pandemic restrictions weighing on them so heavily, and looming over the minutiae of every ordinary daily activity!
Early this year, as the COVID-19 virus gained a toehold in Australia, the message from governments, via the media, was that the aim was to "flatten the curve" so that case numbers would be such that our hospital systems would not be overwhelmed. It was not to eliminate the virus altogether.
Why would governments not want to flatten the curve right down to the x axis and eliminate the virus from our population?
After the first National Cabinet of Premiers and the Prime Minister in mid March this year, the State Premiers, it seemed, comprehended the danger of the virus to their populations and immediately acted to protect them by introducing lock-down measures to prevent the spread of the virus.
Tasmania and the Australian mainland are both islands!
Tasmania locked its sea border by not allowing people in from the mainland without quarantine. The conversation on the ABC was that Tasmania was lucky, as it is an island. My immediate thought was that the mainland of Australia is also an island! We have a chance here to stop this virus in its tracks, and safeguard our population - all 25. 5 million of them!
But it was never the aim of governments to eliminate this virus, newly introduced to our shores. They had to protect the economy and say the appropriate things to be reported in the media. Eliminating the virus would mean an inconvenient slowing down or stopping of migration long-term, with off-putting lengthy quarantine measures, which would dissuade any overseas tourism at all. Imagine if all overseas skilled workers (previously arriving in their hundreds of thousands) had to self isolate in hotels for two weeks before starting work. Who would pay for this? It would actually be economically irrational!
Governments opting to risk people for Big Business?
Instead, governments have opted to run the risk of continuous virus outbreaks, and second and third waves, in order to appease the voracious appetites of Big Business. This is not stated overtly, but when a leader waves a white flag and says that elimination is not possible in a country, which this time last year was completely free of this virus, then it seems clear to me that their hands are tied. Note that Tasmania has not had a new case of COVID-19 for over 60 days. In other words, it seems that elimination is possible, and that this has been demonstrated.
Using the island principle within Australia: West Australia and Queensland
The Premier of Western Australia closed the WA border to the rest of the country and so that it behaved like an island. This has worked. Cases of COVID-19 there are now only present in returning citizens in quarantine. Queensland's border was closed to all other states, which has ensured the health of that population. It has also earned Queensland the honour and responsibility of becoming home to, and host of, Melbourne AFL football teams and their families. This will be quite good for their economy, as the Queensland government salivates over the possibility of hosting the AFL grand final, an event previously firmly associated with the Melbourne's MCG.
With Victoria in a parlous state of lock-down, grappling with increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases every day, this football history-making break with tradition seems very likely to happen for that very reason.
Why is Victoria different?
Victoria is the basket-case in all this - but why? At the beginning, the Premier sent largely the right messages, with respect to the severity of the situation, as we went into the first lockdown. I was surprised and pleased that he seemed to get it and to give it the priority it deserved. The first lock-down was put in place. For many weeks, unless people lived in the same house, or could meet outside at a distance, they did not see their friends and families. Every night on the ABC, we would see grand parents and grand children greeting one another via this medium, highlighting the sadness felt and the sacrifices made. Childhood is fleeting, as is old age, and the lost times together cannot be regained. This is only one example of the broken ties that the first lockdown entailed.
But it did not work in controlling the virus in Victoria.
How did Victoria become the basket case?
Eventually, the first lock-down eased and Victorians regained a degree of normality and freedom. Last month we Victorians could visit one another, as long as there were no more than five people in the one house. I dined one night with three other people, in a friend's house. Our places at the large table were judiciously distanced, but it was pleasantly reminiscent of pre-COVID times.
Unfortunately this relaxation of isolation was short-lived. In recent weeks, increasing numbers of new cases of COVID-19 were being identified in Melbourne, and it came to light that there had been breaches of the hotel quarantine system for people returning from overseas. This debacle is the subject of an enquiry, but rumours abound of security guards getting into bed with the returnees, ad hoc staffing with SMS messages to friends, offering them a gig at a hotel, guards "moonlighting" and doing two jobs at once (actually absent from their posts.) Although these are rumours, it is clear that this important job was not taken seriously by those who organised it, by those assigned the task, nor by the returnees, who had they any respect for their fellow citizens, would have acted in a more trustworthy manner.
As a result of this and other breaches, including reported large family celebrations, Victoria now has a daily rising number of cases. Yesterday, July 17th, 425 new cases were reported, and Melbourne is back in lockdown, the rules of which are somewhat vague around the edges, with punitive fines seemingly at the discretion of police.
Still not aiming at eliminating the virus from Australia
Yet we are still not aiming at eliminating the virus in our population. If Victorians knew that the aim was to eliminate the virus from the population, it might maintain their motivation. It could also be successful but a series of relapses, accompanied by disturbing news of our hospitals struggling to cope, is ultra dispiriting. If our health system collapses what do we have?
Australia must adopt an elimination strategy for COVID-19
Australia must adopt an elimination strategy and send this message clearly to its population. if we don't eliminate COVID-19, we will never be free again. We have a large, beautiful country, but we can't move around in it. Soon, in Melbourne, we may not be able to move from our own post code. This would be bearable if we knew we were aiming to be free again but, at present, all we can see, is a recurring and chronic situation of restrictions, which are eased and then reimposed, but never lifted.
The NSW Environment Protection Authority has today issued Forestry Corporation of NSW with a Stop Work Order to cease tree harvesting at Wild Cattle Creek State Forest inland from Coffs Harbour because at least two protected giant trees have been felled. No mention has so far been made of the always present danger of releasing new zoonoses into the human population when habitat is destroyed.
EPA Executive Director Regulatory Operations Carmen Dwyer said EPA investigations into operations in Compartments 32, 33 and 34 of the forest had revealed serious alleged breaches of the rules that govern native forestry operations, set out in the Coastal Integrated Forestry Operations Approval (IFOA), in relation to the protection of trees that must not be felled.
“To maintain biodiversity in the forest, the Coastal IFOA rules require loggers to identify giant trees (over 140cm stump diameter) and ensure they are protected and not logged. The EPA alleges that during an inspection on 9 July 2020 EPA officers observed two giant trees which had been felled.
“Any trees except Blackbutt and Alpine Ash with a diameter of more than 140cm are defined as giant trees and must be retained under the Coastal IFOA,” Ms Dwyer said.
“As a result, the EPA has issued a Stop Work Order under the Biodiversity Conservation Act to stop Forestry Corporation logging in the forest. The order ensures that no further tree harvesting takes place in the area where the trees were felled for 40 days, or until the EPA is confident that Forestry Corporation can meet its obligations to comply with the Coastal IFOA conditions to protect giant trees.”
This is the first time the EPA has issued Forestry Corporation with a Stop Work Order under new laws which came into effect in 2018.
“These two old, giant trees have provided significant habitat and biodiversity value and are irreplaceable. Their removal points to serious failures in the planning and identification of trees that must be retained in the forest.
“These are serious allegations and strong action is required to prevent any further harm to giant or other protected trees which help maintain biodiversity and provide habitat for threatened species like koalas.”
This action follows the recent issue of two Penalty Notices totalling $2,200 to Forestry Corporation for non-compliances associated with an alleged failure to correctly identify protection zones for trees around streams and for felling four trees within those protected zones in Orara East State Forest near Coffs Harbour. The penalties were issued under previous rules when the penalties were lower.
“The EPA continues to closely monitor forestry operations despite the current COVID-19 restrictions, to ensure compliance with the regulations,” Ms Dwyer said.
“The community can be confident that any alleged non-compliance during forestry operations will be investigated by the EPA and action taken if the evidence confirms a breach.”
Stop Work Orders and penalty notices are examples of a number of tools the EPA can use to achieve environmental compliance including formal warnings, official cautions, licence conditions, notices and directions and prosecutions. A recipient can appeal and elect to have the matter determined by a court.
Editor: If you can see a bit white space where the video should be, that means that you have to watch this show in a Firefox browser because Chrome times it out. Obvious web-censorship, unfortunately. Same problem with the website. We have now uploaded a photo of the video as a header to this article, but we suggest you copy the link below into a Firefox browser, to watch the actual interview, or go to the website itself at https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/494739-australia-crimes-against-indigenous-people/.
The eloquent Robert Eggington, Director of Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation, denounces to the world, in fluent detail and with fury, exactly what Rio Tinto, on 24 May 2020, blew up forever in the 46,000-year-old Aboriginal Juukan Gorge caves in Pilbara, Western Australia, which dated back to the last Ice Age.
Going Underground: Is Australia committing crimes against humanity against indigenous people?
"We speak to the director of the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation, Robert Eggington, who discusses the recent revelations on the level of involvement of Buckingham Palace on the dismissal of Australian PM Gough Whitlam and whether his ouster made any difference to Aboriginal Australians, the extreme societal problems faced by Aboriginal Australians such as mass incarceration, third-world levels of poverty and high suicide rates, how the development of the Australian state has coincided with the destruction of Aboriginal people and culture, the role of mining companies in this destruction of indigenous people and culture, the perceived unfairness of Australia’s judicial system and more! Finally, we speak to Marco Sánchez Cantillo, director of ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World’ 2020 report of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. He discusses the rising levels of hunger and how almost 9% of the world’s population face hunger, how coronavirus is expected to rapidly increase food insecurity and world hunger, how protectionism and trade blocs such as the EU are making it harder for people in poorer countries to afford a healthy diet, the progress of China in poverty reduction and much more!" (Source: Afshin Rattansi's 15 July 2020 show on RT, "Going Underground" at https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/494739-australia-crimes-against-indigenous-people/.)
This video is from Dr Mike Hansen's excellent medical channel, June 16, 2020. Dr Hansen works in Emergency Medicine as a pulmonary specialist and has made a number of highly informative videos on the subject of covid 19.
Transcript for the above video, originally entitled, "Does Blood Type Matter for Coronavirus (COVID-19)?."
People have either blood type A, B, AB, or O.
Are people with blood type O less prone to suffer from COVID-19? And does blood type A make people more prone to COVID-19?
Let me first start out by saying that people of all blood types can get COVID. And people with all blood types can possibly die of COVID if they get the infection.
But, based on several different studies, it looks like people with blood type O have less a chance of getting COVID-19, and people with type A might have a higher chance of getting the infection.
Data from China was the first to show the ABO blood group association with COVID-19 infections.
The researcher Zhao and others compared ABO blood groups of controls from the general population with over 2100 COVID patients from three hospitals in Wuhan.
Across all three hospitals, blood group A was associated with a higher risk for COVID compared with non-A blood groups, whereas blood group O was associated with a significantly lower risk for infection compared with non-O blood groups.
There was another observational study on data from the New York-Presbyterian hospital system, which happens to be where I did my fellowship training. So there, over 1500 people tested for COVID, and they had similar results with blood types.
There was another study done by Andre Franke in Italy and Spain.
In this study, they looked at DNA samples from 1,980 COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized for respiratory failure. And the study produced similar results.
But what about the severity of illness?
Does having blood type O, make someone less likely to have a severe illness from COVID, compared to type B, type AB, and type A?
Well, Zhao and others looked at the case fatality rate, and blood group A was linked to higher mortality risk compared to blood group O.
Interestingly, the association of blood type is not explainable by other risk factors, like obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure.
Recently, there was a study published by the personal genetics company 23andMe regarding evidence that blood type plays a role in COVID-19.
So if you don’t know, 23andMe is a company that sends out personal genetics testing kits to individuals who are interested in finding out their genetic history and or their predisposition to certain genetically transmitted diseases.
According to their website, they did a study based on over 750,000 people.
Their preliminary results suggest that O blood type appears to be slightly less susceptible to contracting the virus.
But the big question is why?
No one really knows, but there are a lot of hypotheses.
BLOOD TYPE is determined by genetics, and the genes determine the specific proteins on the surface of the cell. These proteins, then have specific sugar molecules that are added to them. They exist in our blood cells and other cell types.
People who are blood type A carry A-sugar-antigens
People who are blood type B carry B-sugar-antigens
People with O blood type have neither A nor B-sugar antigens.
What is the significance of this?
This means that the immune systems of people with type A blood develop antibodies for B antigens.
People with type B blood type have antibodies for A antigens.
People with type O blood have antibodies for both A and B antigens.
People with AB blood type will have neither anti-A nor anti-B antibodies.
And here is an interesting fact we knew before COVID.
There are studies showing that people with type O blood have lower levels of proteins that promote blood clotting.
More specifically, people with blood group O have about 25% lower levels of von Willebrand factor (VWF) than those with types A, B, or AB. This is due to increased clearance of VWF from the circulation.
VWF is always involved in the development of clots, so if there is less VWF, there’s likely to be less clotting. So this might explain why Type O blood type means fewer blood clots, and this might at least partially explain why people with Type O overall have less severe disease. Because as you probably know already, lots of people with COVID pneumonia also have blood clots. Also, we know that the SARS-CoV-2 can replicate in cells that express blood type antigens. Such as the cells that form the lining of our lungs, and the cells that form our tiny little air sacs, the alveoli. And the cells that line the inside of our mouth and nasal passageways. This means that when an infected person coughs or sneezes, there's a possibility that they release viral particles that are coated with their blood type antigens. So this is at least a theory from some scientists.
In Melbourne last Saturday nine public housing towers with 3,000 residents were shut down for at least five days, due to a large cluster of identified cases of COVID-19 within their walls. Since then, of course, the whole of Melbourne has been locked down for about six weeks. And this is a Melbourne burgeoning with high-rises. It seems a lifetime ago, but it is only about five months since the cruise ship, Diamond Princess, with identified cases of COVID-19 was unable to disembark in Yokohama, Japan. Her hapless passengers were confined to their cabins, in an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus aboard the ship and on land. Predictably however, the virus spread through the ship and by early March there were six casualties.
Those of us who see the downside of "storing" people in high-rise buildings and advocate against this trend in Australia, immediately saw high rise towers as vertical cruise ships. This obvious comparison has become a widespread notion, and many of us are trembling observers of this latest selective lock-down of the towers in North Melbourne and Flemington.
It is difficult to conceive of what the Victorian Government could have done differently in the situation and constructive criticism is equally difficult.
It is, however, easy to criticise the rapid trend towards increasing living density, both in Australian cities, and in most of the world. Beginning with the extreme: high rise, such as the public housing tower blocks, which have been there for many decades, but are being replicated in form all over our cities - this is not a sustainable way of living for humans. It is suitable for a few nights in a hotel when visiting a large capital city, but as a long term arrangement it is anathema to what most humans need. People may choose to live in an apartment out of economic necessity. In some cases, apartment-living may be seen as convenient and labour efficient for the resident, not requiring maintenance of gardens and fences, for instance. It is also secure for those who travel a lot. These reasons make sense for the solo person making his/her way, in a globalised business world, for example, but for those less peripatetic in their work habits, the advantages over a house and garden are dubious.
The COVID-19 crisis has, over the last few months,brought the problems of apartment-living into sharp focus, particularly with this latest lock-down.
COVID-19 has thrown us all back on our own resources in 2020, and those with more resources have suffered less. People who have gardens are in a better position than those who do not, because they can be outside, yet remain safe from infection by others. At present, people in Victoria, including people in apartments, cannot easily travel outside that state. Many of us are yearning to exchange winter in Melbourne for two weeks near the beach in Queensland, or even the milder climate of southern New South Wales, options that were so available to us before the current health crisis. But these are minor frustrations compared with the constraints under which the residents of the public housing towers are being held right now.
For years, some of us have seen the undesirability of normalising high-rise living in Australia's large cities, and we noted the helplessness of people in towers in the face of dangers like flammable cladding, or major plumbing issues that required evacuation. This is not to say that a house cannot catch fire or flood due to a plumbing problem, but the impacts of such crises are massively multiplied in towers with hundreds of residents, where the effects of being locked in or out are very serious. Residents in towers are at the mercy of the buildings' private or government owners. The high rise arrangement may be workable when all the complex functions of a large city are operational, but this cannot be guaranteed.
Population growth, engineered by governments and planners, is hypocritically given by them as an excuse for the transition in Australia's capital cities, especially Melbourne and Sydney, to ever increasing density. Increased population within a given area does not serve us well. It advantages those who make money from high volume sales - from the sandwich bar near a block of offices, with an imperative to meet its high rent, to those who own our toll roads and transport systems. Surely, we, as a society, have to admit defeat with respect to the notion of ongoing high volume being the commercial panacea for all transactions? We cannot "socially distance" in a crowded restaurant, in a capacity crowd at a football stadium, cinema, orchestral concert, ballet or theatre. Fortunately for the toll road owners, heavy traffic is not an immediate COVID-19 health risk, but if our roads are the only place we can now gather then one might hesitate to call the resulting human accumulation in cities any sort of society.
The problems encountered in tower blocks in recent years are the indicators that we have hit the wall with respect to density of human habitation. We have had several warnings with the current one being loud and clear. Wrong way! Go back, or at least go in a different direction!
This superb documentary, Libya's Forbidden Deserts, is remarkable archaeologically and anthropologically. Because it was made in 2001, however, we can see how functional Libya was under Gadaffi, who was so cruelly killed and defamed by treasure-seeking western powers. Once the richest African country in the modern world, that Libya is now a lost civilisation, as precious and unattainable as the ancient civilisations explored in this film. This film is a testimony to the terrible injustice, corruption,cruelty and wanton destructiveness of US-NATO.
It's not an easy life described within the covers of Donna Ward's semi-autobiography, She I dare not name: A spinster’s meditations on life, Allen and Unwin, NSW, 2020. In a vocabulary measured with precision but rich with imagery, Ward evaluates her experiences as an unmarried woman who achieved this status without wanting it at all. The book is very honest in its descriptions of how this came about and the importance that it has in defining the course of Donna’s life. The term "spinster," is initially called up like some daemonic creature. It is something she almost dare not name! As we read on, we realise that spinsters are not gothic inventions, but human like their married counterparts, probably equally defined by hazard.
It seems to be a case of pot luck that brought Donna to the point of which she writes, in a book finished in her sixty-seventh year.
Donna describes early years rich in experience of nature and travel, warm relationships with larger-than-life parents, and the birth of a young sister in her early childhood. This was however an event notified by her father, only one day prior, with something like sexual shame.
“He said this as if he barely understood anything about it , as if it was something Camille and Mum had cooked up between themselves that very day , something so shameful he’d had to fly all the way home to sort it out, though I didn’t think he was doing a good job of it.”
Mostly, however, her account of her childhood reads almost like a comforting and exciting slide show with non-sequential images and vignettes, depicting mostly carefree recollections. One senses though, that Donna’s parents are involved with each other more than they are with Donna, and that their relationship with her has conditions attached. In primary school, Donna experiences a “desperate relationship with spelling and arithmetic,” to the extent that she is sent to a psychiatrist. No-one can determine whether she is “brilliant or dumb.” Her mother cannot hide her shame from Donna. By the time Donna is ten, though, she is a good student.
It's in adulthood that the going gets really tough. Donna also indicates that she has a very poor relationship with her sister. Where she might have expected to benefit socially in many ways, from an introduction into her parents' well-connected circle in WA mining world, instead, having chosen to do social-work, she is marked as an outsider.
Ward moves from Perth, Western Australia, to Melbourne, Victoria, as a young woman, and predictably has to make her own way in the big city. She shares houses but mostly lives alone. She goes to university and gains her degree. She lands her ‘dream job’ but loses it to a male in the ‘recession we had to have’, as it was termed by the then Federal Treasurer Paul Keating, in 1990.
This job-loss was probably a defining point in Donna’s personal development. Where professional status might have compensated an early lack of unconditional love and brought her earning capacity and social rank up to something recognisable to her former peers, her job-loss plunges her into indeterminate socio-economic status. In parallel with other isolated social and economic victims of economic rationalism, she must individually craft a new survival path. She achieves this with difficulty, an exotic traveller in the new age, finally emerging as a neo-classical philosopher on non-marriage.
Descriptions of her social encounters give the reader a sense of her tumbling around in a sea of strangers interspersed with special friends and lovers poetically anonymised for publication as archetypes or as characters in Ancient Greek tales. Our heroine or protagonist does her best with what she encounters. The life she grapples with is one that has no markers or guideposts and she feels herself to be at the mercy of the preferences of the males she becomes involved with, or the narrative they see for their lives, with respect to other female players. Then again, it was she who decided not to go through with marriage to a Japanese fiancé. In her chapter, ‘The Weight of a child’, we glimpse another of life’s cul-de-sacs as she briefly recollects terminating a pregnancy that resulted from rape.
“I could not have that child, the conception had been so rude. The way his father pushed me onto the couch, held me at the throat, tore my panties and took his revenge, took what I had denied him years before. […] In the autumn of 1977, when the jacarandas were yellowing and the plum trees sapping their leaves, I let that child go, lest I be tied to his father for the rest of my life. I believed another child would come along. (Ward, Donna. She I Dare Not Name: A spinster's meditations on life (pp. 248-249.)
No-one seems to be looking out for Donna, our heroine. She just has to take it on the chin. Is this a failing of her character or is it due to the milieu and time she finds herself in? We found her a very likeable character. In many ways we were reminded of our own photogenic childhoods with happy pictorial vignettes bathed in yellow light, freedom, and cosiness, along with similar struggles in adulthood.
This narrative raises the question: How does a young woman in a big city, away from her parents and her natal community, find love, or find that suitable person with whom to form a family? It is clear from Ward's writing that that her drive to ‘nest’, to be part of a couple (duo), and to have a child, is very strong. It seems both hormonal and social. She wants to be part of the world of couples, to alleviate loneliness, to find security, and to change her status. In the face of disappointment, she soldiers on courageously, but her essentially solitary situation – despite friends and jobs - makes her vulnerable to predatory or incompetent approaches.
She mentions serial recoveries from the emotional hurt of broken relationships. Is life really meant to be so hurtful and stressful? Many women and men would relate to the bruising nature of the relationship-seeking process in the 20th and 21st century urban social environment.
The author describes her experiences, starting in the 1970s until the present. Dating is one way we do this in the West. Both parties do a series of interviews over dinner and this process can go on for years. There are more casual opportunities in which to evaluate potential partners, such as clubs with shared activities, like tennis, bushwalking, or Meetups; churches, political groups, universities, and work. A friend of mine met her life-partner and husband through an ad in a ‘singles magazine’ in the 1980s. These days she might have found him via internet dating services.
The quest for a mate is not a level playing field between men and women if they want children, as the woman is almost invariably up against time constraints. These constraints become increasingly urgent as she moves from her twenties to her thirties. A woman has a brief period in her life from about age sixteen to twenty-five, when she is most sought after by men her own age as well as those considerably older. In terms of sexual attractiveness, she has the odds in her favour then, more than she will have at any time in the future.
If she misses this opportunity to light on the ideal partner, or at least a suitable one, she has her work cut out. It will dawn on her gradually, as she approaches thirty, that really there is not much time and there is a decreasing number of men to choose from.
The finishing post in this ‘race’ is usually considered to be forty, after which a woman will not necessarily expect to ever conceive. If she wants to and she does, it will be a bonus in any permanent partnership she manages to secure.
The woman is, as was Donna Ward, expected, under this pressure, to make a wise assessment of the men who cross her path, to get to know them better than superficially, and to try not to get hurt. Whether she will have descendants depends on how she negotiates this situation. Adding to the difficulty of the task, in her most propitious years, she is necessarily young and inexperienced.
How could our society better provide a benign environment for young marriageable people to meet in relative safety? Should mothers give guidelines to their daughters as to how to as to how to negotiate the situations they will face? Did most mothers also have to just find their way through the minefield? Did they think, "Well I had to do it, and my daughter now faces the same challenge!"
Do most of us leave this all-important decision to complete chance? The writers' parent’s generation, reaching adulthood in the 1940s, were more connected, and their parents more so. They did not often travel far or without introductions. They grew up in more predictable communities with pathways to identifiable milestones (rites of passage) and traditions, and relatives and connections, for negotiating these. At the same time, in the Anglosphere and Europe, in the 1950s and 60s, a burgeoning manufacturing industry meant plentiful jobs. An explosion in energy resources and transport allowed people to commute by car to work, from affordable housing in new estates on land once out of reach. That meant more people could move out of home, get a job, and get married. It was called the Baby Boom. Unfortunately, the explosion just kept magnifying and accelerating globally until mass transport and travel broke time-worn connections, dispersing people, at ever increasing speed to the four winds, far away from the familiar pathways, milestones and traditions.
Thus, our heroine dispersed like a dandelion seed and landed in Melbourne, apparently without any significant connections, in a city with diminishing social capital.
Did most women of her generation negotiate the getting hitched and having children part successfully - if not forever or until ‘death us do part’ - at least for long enough to have a child or two? Why did some, like our heroine miss out, or was the experience more common than we may think? Good luck finding statistics on how many women die without having children. As you can see from the graph, the unmarried proportion of the population has been steadily increasing since the 1970s oil-shock.
Maybe those who did not partner for long enough to have at least one child lacked the connections to find a suitable partner. This seems to be the case with Ms Ward. Many of her encounters with men seem accidental, lacking formal introduction or context, and so she lacks essential information. In assuming reciprocally honest interactions, she is fooled, more than once, by men who are thus easily able to conceal the fact that they are already partnered. Positive tit-for-tat, where good deeds and bad deeds are quickly reciprocated is only possible in viscous societies, where people stay close to where they originate from. Melbourne’s population is close to thirty-five per cent diaspora. Another way of saying this is that people can get away with breaking trust in an anonymous or constantly changing population, unless they belong to a stable enclave within it. Donna didn’t.
A major part of Ms Ward's serial emotional recoveries from serial romantic disappointments come from the blow to her self-esteem, because she mistakenly believes that there must be some flaw in herself, invisible to her, but which these men can see.
A more informed perspective might explain, however, that Ms Ward is a stranger trying to make her way in foreign territory, where her pedigree is unknown, where she has little or no personal status. She does not read the signs accurately or speak the local social language fluently. She is proceeding using signs she learned in West Australia for a small network there, which has probably gone extinct. She did not avail herself of that network when she was in West Australia because she had different values from her parents. This was because she came from a different generation at a time when values were changing rapidly. In her case, Aboriginal rights and Germaine Greer were (by her account) two contemporary changes that obviously influenced her and helped to separate her from her origins. The first affected her relationship with her mining father, and the second affected her relationship with men more generally.
Apparently, she did not want to be part of the money and status oriented, environmentally exploitative, mining crowd her parents belonged to. So, she migrated from West Australia to Sydney, then Melbourne. She acquired some social credentials and connections from universities there, but they were not enough to establish her as a local candidate for the kind of marriage she wanted. She found a good job, but the 2008 recession removed that job, so what were her prospects? We don't know. Having a house is certainly a plus, if you want to attract a mate, but, although she seems to have a house, we do not know how big her mortgage is. She would have needed to be careful not to marry someone with lesser prospects, for fear of being impoverished by divorce, and that would rule out a large and growing demographic.
Ms Ward seems to assume that marriage must have its basis in love. Most people want to marry up and for love, and most who marry say they did marry for love, but how many really do? Is the number of divorces an indication?
Since Ms Ward seemed to have limited opportunities, for one reason or another, perhaps she could have ranked her priorities differently. Reading closely, her real priorities might have been marital status, children, and companionship. Unfortunately, she seemed to put love up at the top. Love is a western ideal but, unless you are very lucky, that is a musical chair game that leaves many more standing than seated, and childless if they persist as the stakes go up. It might be better to look for respect and kindness. Love might come later, and, if it doesn't, affairs within marriage are the tried and true solution.
It is easier to understand the problem of partnership in the west, if you imagine that you are arranging a marriage for someone in 19th century England or in 20th century India, where your parents work out early where you are situated with regard to income expectations and earning, education, charm, and physical attributes. Although your parents might use marriage brokers, it is still likely that they will employ those brokers to find someone within their circle, or at least within a similar circle. When they find a candidate, each set of parents checks the other out for compatibility. After that they decide whether or not to let the children meet.
Given that parents do not generally perform this role as explicitly in contemporary Western society, many young women have to fend for themselves. Perhaps a way women (and men) could try to look after their own interests better could be by cultivating a perspective as if they were their own in loco parentis. Such a perspective would indicate a major change in the concept of marriage in Australia.
Did you know that YouTube has removed Michael Moore's massive environmental film, "Planet of the Humans"? The reason appears to be a purported infringement of copyright, which its producer vehemently denies. They didn't like the message, he argues in this rivetting and educational interview. Michael Moore joins Rolling Stone's "Useful Idiots" show to discuss the removal of Planet of the Humans from YouTube, and addresses criticism he and the film have received. This fascinating interview has nearly as much to offer on the environmental movement and its problems - notably with corporate interference - as the film itself.
During the lock-down, the only outlet for many, possibly most people, has been a daily walk in the local park. These areas became, and still are, life savers for a population denied their normal physical and sporting outlets. The following letter was sent to The Age letters editor on April 29th but not published. It appears on the Protectors of Public Lands Face Book page.
The current health crisis in Australia as observed in Victoria has highlighted the essential nature of our parks and gardens for the health of our population, both physical and psychological. Melbourne's forefathers, particularly Governor La Trobe who gave us Royal Park had great vision in setting aside open space for nature and recreation, accessible to all.
It must be emphasised that it is the uncluttered open areas and nature which are of vital benefit to us with the current restrictions. All installed equipment such as playground, sporting and exercise equipment has been taped off and is out of bounds.
Moving through various parks at different times of the day in the last few weeks it can be seen that the space available in Melbourne for the present population is absolutely minimal to requirements. It is not possible to walk in many parks without coming too close to another person. Paths are full of pedestrian and in some cases cycle traffic. Joggers run past walkers almost physically coming in contact when in fact a greater distance is required when you are exercising more vigorously!
It is clear that our parks are at capacity. In normal times, there will not be the same heavy usage of these areas as people are at work, exercising in gyms or playing other sports but now that we have a crisis , our gratitude must go to people from the century before last and to those who in the meantime have defended these territories for our universal benefit.
Protectors of Public Lands, Victoria hopes that from now these areas will be even more highly valued by all authorities and that formal approaches to their responsibilities will in future more fully reflect this.
Jill Quirk
Protectors of Public Lands, Victoria
P.O. Box 197 Parkville 3152
Friday 29th May 630pm: Prof Clinton Fernandes is the guest speaker at one of Avid Reader bookshop online events. Co-hosted by Independent & Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) and Just Peace Qld. The topic “Australian foreign policy after Coronavirus: navigating the US-China rivalry.” This is a great opportunity to hear from one of Australia's best foreign policy analysts. Having Vince Scappatura MC will make this event one not to be missed!
Clinton's book Island off the Coast of Asia will be available for purchase at the event. YOU NEED TO REGISTER:
Clinton Fernandes is a former Australian Army officer who served in the Australian Intelligence Corps. Today he is Professor of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales. His research focus is on 'Securing Australia's place in a changing world'
Vince Scappatura teaches politics and International Relations at Macquarie University. He published 'The US Lobby and Australian Defence Policy' in 2019
In the interests of an independent Foreign policy based on peaceful resolution of conflict
Annette Brownlie
IPAN CC
[English translation of video-dialogue below the video.] In this very interesting video, Frederic Taddei of Interdit d'interdire (Forbidden to censure) states, at the beginning, that he has no intention of evaluating the value of hydroxycloroquine and azithromycine, because he lacks the medical knowledge to do so. He states his intention in inviting his guests (Olivier Berruyer, economist and statistician, and Raphaël Liogier, sociologist and philosopher) is to find out why there is so much controversy over Professor Didier Raoult and his promotion of COVID-19 treatment using hydroxychloroquine. [Note that this unpolished translation took hours out of several days. Both debaters spoke emotionally and with multiple redundancies, also different versions of the word hydroxychloroquine.] Among other things, the participants' discussion of the politics seemed to boil down to the ambiguity of testing drugs in a pandemic situation where big-pharma, other commercial competition, and fraud, loom. I thought that the main argument could be summarized as: (Olivier Berruyer) 'The effectiveness claimed by Didier Raoult for hydroxychloroquine could only be proven through randomised double-blind trials, but these have never been successfully completed due to a series of mishaps', and 'There is no way anyone could scientifically reproduce Raoult's method because he keeps changing it', versus (Raphael Liogier) 'Pending a perfect cure for COVID-19, Didier Raoult is doing the best he can as he treats people in a personalised manner, monitoring their responses, with drugs he believes to be effective'. I would add that, as the translator, and as an evolutionary sociologist, my own feeling about the reasons for such controversy is that it is related to the way apes behave over a tasty food supply or some other big event (good or bad) that concerns them. It is natural for everyone in the community to get involved in something important - in this case a pandemic. We seize whatever handle, whatever fact or factoid we can get hold of, and we run with it, to the best of our ability and enthusiasm. Apes with alpha-pretensions get up in trees and shout loudly about what they've got, competing for audiences and power. So, I invite the reader to keep in mind ape-ethology when he/she reads the translated dialogue below. {See also the notes at the end, on hyrdoxychloroquine trials and prescription of this drug and the law in France.)
Daily, lively and dedicated coverage at 
The Australian Museum has published the first ever field guide to the land snails of Lord Howe Island, by Australian Museum (AM) scientists, Dr. Isabel Hyman and Dr. Frank Köehler. Featuring over 80 species, with detailed colour photos, the guide showcases how these small unique and beautiful gastropods play a vital role in the health of an ecosystem.
The Australian ABC has repeatedly reported on the expulsion of two Australian journalists from China this week, and the torture and disappearance of Chinese journalists. Yet it has said nothing about our own Julian Assange, who currently faces a rigged trial, accused of breaking the laws of a country he has never entered, whilst held in prison in a country which has ignored his refugee status and tolerates US use of information obtained illegally through spying. British journalist, Afshin Rattansi, is an exception in the anglosphere media world in his continued efforts (see video below) to show the world how Britain, Australia, and the United States, are treating the man who exposed US war-crimes.
Residents were already very concerned about FCC's proposal regarding Seaford Foreshore Activation last year. We were assured by local councillors that this would not lead to development of inappropriate hard surfaces and infrastructure on the Seaford Foreshore, yet this is exactly what is being proposed. 
With COVID-19, we should not just be looking at deaths. Deaths may actually be a poor indicator of the damage this virus may do. We should be looking at a continuum, as in: If the proportion of people who contract COVID-19, and who are over 80, die, what happens to those (of any age) who live? Given the ability of this disease (unlike flu) to cause clotting problems all over the body, affecting organs which affect other organs, we should be expecting that a proportion of survivors will have various rates of blood clots and organ damage. What proportion of these will clear, improve, or become chronic and dangerous? How long will how many survivors survive? Check out the following videos by doctors regarding clotting and organ-damage. 
Ivor Cummins is a health writer and biochemical engineer, who calls himself The Fat Emperor. He has drafted 
Innes Willox, the Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group or 
The extension of State of Emergency in the other five states does not need legislation, unlike Victoria. Here's information on the relevant laws for comparison, plus actions taken under similar legislation for COVID-19 in states outside Victoria. We have also now received a 
Dan Andrews’ attempt to extend Victoria’s State of Emergency in order to manage COVID-19 has been portrayed by some in parliament as a power grab and as an attack on human rights. But Victoria is the only state in Australia where you have to apply to parliament to extend the state of emergency. Enforcing laws about masks, geographical limits to movement, and curfews could not be done under normal health legislation. That is why, without a state of emergency, State Premiers only ask people to take these precautions. We have obtained information about laws in other states and their history of using these for COVID-19, which you can read at 
This medical research arises from the pandemic problem of fructose in our processed food, which is the major cause of Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which accompanies the terrible scale of modern obesity. This hepatitis-related obesity carries high risks of 
[Candobetter Ed: NAMES FOR FRUCTOSE: Fructose is a component of sugar (sucrose). The following ingredients all contain fructose: Brown sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, lactose, malt syrup, maltose, molasses, raw sugar and sucrose.]
Larry Schlesinger, in the Financial Review (May 26, 2020) wrote a article entitled “Rental market rocked by insane student exodus.” It pertained to the “grave” concerns that a clique of high-profile property developers in Melbourne have with the cessation of massive international student migration, due to COVID 19. Property sector denizens mentioned in it were, third on the Fin Review’s “Young Rich List”, Tim Gurner; Caroline Viney, previously of Grocon, currently the chief development officer of Vicinity Centres; and Shane Quinn, a partner with the commercial property group, Quintessential Equity. The Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Sally Capp, who was until recently the Victorian Executive Direct for the Property Council of Australia, added her angst.
The girls needed a break. The university term had just finished and so had "lock-down". Students, Isla and her two housemates, Chloe and Emily, were anxious to escape Melbourne. Emily's friend Olivia who was studying at Adelaide University had been trying, for more than a year, to entice Emily over for a visit, and this seemed the opportunity. Of course all three girls would go over together and, as they all yearned for a seaside experience, after spending so much time in their rented inner suburban house, they booked into an apartment for five nights in Glenelg, not far from Emily. It would be great! They could go for walks along the beach every morning!
Jennifer was enjoying life, despite some milestone disappointments. Her 25 year marriage to Richard had foundered just after they moved away from the sea to a regional city in Victoria. Richard did not transplant well and he descended into a sombre depression. He became distant and eventually they separated. At 65 Jennifer embarked on a new life as a single woman. She had had plenty of practice, as she and Richard had not married until she was 36 and he 42. They had not had any children and, although Jennifer was disappointed about this, she had somehow overcome it, by nursing the strangely comforting thought that the looming situation with environmental decline and overpopulation would have been a burden on any children she may have had. A further disappointment was that her family had fallen away after the deaths of her parents and, although she made supreme efforts with cousins, she had only a sparse, although valuable, array of family still in touch. 
The Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) is encouraged by recent statements by the Foreign Affairs Minister, the Hon. Marise Payne, following the Australia-U.S. Ministerial (AUSMIN) talks in Washington, where the Minister indicated that Australia has no intention to injure our important relationship with China but instead seeks to ‘make our own decisions, our own judgments in the Australian national interest’. [To better situate the area in question, Candobetter has included a 2014 video about the disputed islands in the South China Sea.]
It was a stifling summer night with the usual crowd at the jazz venue Jonathan had frequented regularly for the previous few years. On this particular night he was introduced to Ruth, a rather earnest, slim, dark haired lady, in her early thirties. Jonathan, although somewhat lonely following the recent acrimonious break-up of his marriage to Danielle, and consequent distancing from his young son David, was not seeking a new partner. He felt the need to sort out his feelings and his finances before taking steps in that direction. He and Danielle had sold the family home in North Caulfield, and now he had to find another house with only half the funds, while house prices were sky-rocketing. He really needed to get away by himself to think about his future.
Early this year, as the COVID-19 virus gained a toehold in Australia, the message from governments, via the media, was that the aim was to "flatten the curve" so that case numbers would be such that our hospital systems would not be overwhelmed. It was not to eliminate the virus altogether. 
The NSW Environment Protection Authority has today issued Forestry Corporation of NSW with a Stop Work Order to cease tree harvesting at Wild Cattle Creek State Forest inland from Coffs Harbour because at least two protected giant trees have been felled. No mention has so far been made of the always present danger of releasing new zoonoses into the human population when habitat is destroyed.
Editor: If you can see a bit white space where the video should be, that means that you have to watch this show in a Firefox browser because Chrome times it out. Obvious web-censorship, unfortunately. Same problem with the website. We have now uploaded a photo of the video as a header to this article, but we suggest you copy the link below into a Firefox browser, to watch the actual interview, or go to the website itself at 
In Melbourne last Saturday nine public housing towers with 3,000 residents were shut down for at least five days, due to a large cluster of identified cases of COVID-19 within their walls. Since then, of course, the whole of Melbourne has been locked down for about six weeks. And this is a Melbourne burgeoning with high-rises. It seems a lifetime ago, but it is only about five months since the cruise ship, Diamond Princess, with identified cases of COVID-19 was unable to disembark in Yokohama, Japan. Her hapless passengers were confined to their cabins, in an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus aboard the ship and on land. Predictably however, the virus spread through the ship and by early March there were six casualties.
It's not an easy life described within the covers of Donna Ward's semi-autobiography, She I dare not name: A spinster’s meditations on life, Allen and Unwin, NSW, 2020. In a vocabulary measured with precision but rich with imagery, Ward evaluates her experiences as an unmarried woman who achieved this status without wanting it at all. The book is very honest in its descriptions of how this came about and the importance that it has in defining the course of Donna’s life. The term "spinster," is initially called up like some daemonic creature. It is something she almost dare not name! As we read on, we realise that spinsters are not gothic inventions, but human like their married counterparts, probably equally defined by hazard.
During the lock-down, the only outlet for many, possibly most people, has been a daily walk in the local park. These areas became, and still are, life savers for a population denied their normal physical and sporting outlets. The following letter was sent to The Age letters editor on April 29th but not published. It appears on the 
Friday 29th May 630pm: Prof Clinton Fernandes is the guest speaker at one of Avid Reader bookshop online events. Co-hosted by Independent & Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) and Just Peace Qld. The topic “Australian foreign policy after Coronavirus: navigating the US-China rivalry.” This is a great opportunity to hear from one of Australia's best foreign policy analysts. Having Vince Scappatura MC will make this event one not to be missed!
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