“One cannot be both a tyrant and a counsellor.” Tolkien

Paleontological evidence suggests that reflexive consciousness (the idea of self and self-reflection) is only 60,000 years old. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1468-5914.2003.00223.x

The latest report from the Grattan Institute is pushing mass vaccination, by misleading the public about the risks and benefits. Some people “trust their doctor”, which is a euphemism for “I trust the pharmaceutical cartel, the banking cartel, mass media, the government and the military”, and this option should certainly be recommended to them as an act of faith. For anyone else, not a single vaccine currently on the recommended schedule was tested for long term health outcomes via saline placebo randomised trials in a previously unvaccinated (with any vaccine) population. There is no such thing as a perfectly pure vaccine; all vaccines are contaminated by non-target antigens (animal and plant proteins from the manufacturing process). The effect of this contamination in injectable vaccines is immunity and/or acquired intolerance to these proteins. Many of the contaminants are within 2 amino acid difference from human proteins, which falls within the margin of cross-immunity and can therefore cause various autoimmune conditions. These are often not diagnosed but can be collectively debilitating. Every vaccine causes lifelong harm, on top of any temporary, protective effect. https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/A-fair-shot-How-to-close-the-vaccination-gap-Grattan-Institute-Report.pdf

The issue of housing affordability in Australia is actually not about housing but about land. Houses cost what they cost to build, determined by the prices of labour and materials, but land values are not determined by any material factors or labour, but simply by the policies that encourage land-hoarding and speculation on the value of land. The alleged housing bubble is actually a land investment bubble.

There is a useful practical insight in the saying that ‘a tyrant cannot be trusted as a counsellor’. The government act like a tyrant whenever they have the upper hand, but as soon as the tables turn and they need your vote or your consent, they want to be your counsellor, they want to patronisingly assure you about the merits of some project or policy, how there is nothing to worry about and it is all for the better. At this point it is imperative not to regard them as a counsellor, but to persevere in your own judgement, based purely on the merits of the case to your interest. The key is to deliberate on equal footing, not allow them to become a counsellor, which automatically puts them in a privileged, morally superior position. Their very pretence to being a counsellor after being a tyrant is a slap in your face, an act of bad faith.

✊Interest rates are just too damn low!✊ I propose 100% p.a. official interest rate on all credit/mortgage debt. It is likely the easiest solution to the banking crisis. 100% official interest rate would compel people to borrow only saved funds from one another, either privately or via peer networks, at more reasonable rates of interests. Private lending, unlike bank “loans”, would involve a ‘perfect transfer of purchasing power’ from the lender to the borrower and thus not inflate the money supply. The banks would then have no choice but to follow suit and start practicing honest banking, lending only their capital. Money creation by means of “bank credit” is a licensed form of counterfeiting, expropriating wealth from the entire economy.

Another dumpster fire on a train wreck challenge to vaccine mandates. This addition to the cringe series in industrial relations inspired modern art was produced by a Reignite Democracy lawyer with help from some other advocate of ‘medical freedom’.

There are already legal precedents for gaining financial compensation from employers who dismissed staff for non-compliance with government vaccination mandates. These tribunals do not (and could not) rule on whether vaccine mandates are illegal, but adjudicate only on procedural compliance. In short, all employers who enforced vaccine mandates are liable for harm caused by the mandates irrespective of whether vaccine mandates are legal. One can infer that the same scope of liability would apply if the coerced employee died from the vaccine, which is known to happen to a percentage of the vaccinated. https://www.lawyersalliance.com.au/opinion/psychological-injury-claims-after-employer-implemented-vaccine-mandates CASES cited: 1. https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/nsw/NSWPIC/2022/611.html 2. https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/nsw/NSWPIC/2022/715.html

Morality must be perfectly rational/logical or it would be nonsensical, and it would be impossible to determine who is right in cases of moral disagreement. Moral intuition or moral conscience can be explained as sensitivities derived over many generations by rational observation of the consequences of actions. It may be that there exists an intrinsic sense of what is moral, deeper than cultural conditioning, but even then it is necessary to rationally justify what is right in cases of moral disagreement.

The true Basic Norm of legality is not “the Constitution” but the logical structure of rational consciousness, which is comprised of two interdependent facts: 1) the value of rational agency above all else, which is affirmed by every rational agent whenever they choose to act on a reason or value anything for a reason; 2) self-consciousness being conditional on reflexive relating with conscious others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_norm

Everyone thinks they are rational in their choices at the time of choosing, otherwise they would not make those choices. The implication that most people are unaware of is that by making a choice they commit themselves to suffer the consequences of their choice if it is not rational. When the attitude of certainty clashes with the unexpected consequences, rationality asserts itself without words.

Some religious persecution is beneficial to religious understanding. Religions that remain unchallenged become obtuse, indulgent, compulsive and conceited. Religious persecution disrupts the mindless repetition of rituals and compels the religious to justify their purpose, to examine and re-interpret their understanding in rational terms.

The value of religious scripture can be determined by considering whether the same teaching would still be compelling if it were not religious, if the stories contained within it were only parables rather than historical facts. It is the wisdom of the content that can make a text sacred; the presumption of sacredness cannot make the text wise.

God should be able to make more rational arguments than any man, and if the holy scripture is short on argument, deficient in reasoning but merely commands you to go and kill some other tribe, or to make sacrifices, or to wash your feet on Tuesdays, then it is either a work of human corruption or a clever test of moral conscience. Wise teachings may be mixed with distortions and ancient confabulations, so that uncritical obedience will surely lead one astray. One must be discerning, take the treasure but not the dirt. The scripture challenges us to stay clean by washing oneself with dirty water.

The UN pretends to be the good guy, but it has endorsed the same kind of crimes in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan... The almost theatrical, sadistic, murderous excesses of the Israeli military still pale in comparison with the crime against humanity committed by every fascist government (including Hamas) in the last three years: the vaccine mandates. I wonder whether the present cycle of war porn is intended to merely distract from that bigger crime, committed by all, with the blessing of the UN Human Rights Watch.