26 July, 2021
Dear Reader,
We proudly publish as our lead article this piece by Emeritus Professor Ramesh Thakur, Senior Research Fellow in the Australian National University’s Toda Peace Institute:
THE ‘WAR’ ON CORONA IS AS MISGUIDED AS THE IRAQ WAR
As Western forces beat a hasty retreat from Afghanistan, all exit and no strategy, it’s worth highlighting uncomfortable parallels between the coronavirus policies using military metaphors and the 2003 Iraq War.
First, threat inflation. Yes, Covid is one of the world’s top killers but it’s not the worst health threat confronting the world. It’s way down the list of Australia’s killer diseases. Government propaganda has created a mostly mythical beast. Catastrophist epidemiological modelling has played the same role as Tony Blair’s notorious ‘dodgy dossier’ that warned Saddam Hussein could launch WMDs in 45 minutes. The immediacy, gravity and magnitude of the coronavirus threat had to be made similarly apocalyptic to rally public support for unprecedent state control of peoples’ private lives and the nations’ economic activities. This was done by comparing it to the Spanish Flu of 1918–19, that infected 500 million people and killed 50 million. Scaled to current world population, that’s equivalent to 220-250 million dead today. Covid ain’t no Spanish Flu.
Second, thin evidence. The infamous Downing Street Memo of 23 July 2002 showed how ‘intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy’. Similarly, instead of evidence-based policy, governments have used policy-based evidence to impose repeated lockdowns, trotting out serially-discredited modelling forecasts as evidence and determinedly ignoring 18 months of hard data that show the ineffectiveness of lockdowns – why would we need several rounds if they did work.
Third, denigration of critics. Those who questioned the lack of evidence to invade Iraq were demonised as apologists for the Butcher of Baghdad. Those who ask for evidence to justify the biggest expansion of state power in Western political history are shamed as granny-killers.
Fourth, the dismissal of grave collateral harms to lives, livelihoods and society as exaggerated, speculative, without evidence, motivated, etc.
Fifth, the lack of an exit strategy. Instead of a quick victory in Iraq followed by consolidated democratic regimes in a stable region and an orderly withdrawal, the US found itself in a quagmire and eventually went back home an exhausted and vanquished conqueror. Almost all lockdown governments are now struggling with public justifications to declare victory and lift the lockdown.
Sixth, mission creep. One big reason for the self-created exit trap is that the original mission of flattening the curve in three weeks, so the health system could cope with a slowed spread of the virus, has morphed into the mission impossible goal of eliminating the virus. Good luck and good night.
Finally, like the US media in 2003, most mainstream media have abandoned critical inquisitiveness to become cheerleaders for the ‘war on corona’.
Ramesh Thakur
POLICE IN COVID PROTEST
The Pandemic has presented police with the special challenge of having to enforce unpopular laws. This remarkable protest gives an insight into conflicted thinking among serving officers.
Amongst all the nonsense being broadcast by government the piece that takes the biscuit for me is the good-looking young doctor (I can say that because, hypocritically, he is not wearing a mask) who finishes his spiel by saying: ‘and remember, we’re not safe till we’re all safe!’ Where is the sense, where the logic, in that empty soundbite?
J K ROWLING IN THE GUN
Sometimes even we have to issue trigger warnings! This piece by Brendan O’Neill includes some pretty foul language drawn from abusive tweets and messages sent to the distinguished author. O’Neill complains of the cowardice of public figures, from Boris Johnson downwards, who have remained silent. But equally contemptible is the cowardice of twitterati and others who hunt in packs and write filth under the cloak of anonymity.
THE CONNECTEDNESS OF HISTORY
I was impressed by this speech by UK education minister Nick Gibbs. There is some political dross, but the defence of knowledge-rich education is sound and a few gems stand out:
Ensuring young people are equipped with knowledge is ever more important with the rise of social media, where false narratives, based on fake news, are drawing people in – especially the young – with the starkness of their message and the simplicity of their solutions.
FREEDOM LIVES IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA!
The WA State Government recently cancelled bookings of State facilities by the Australian Christian Lobby apparently on the basis that its views are not consistent with those of the government. This decision was reversed following intense criticism and a threat of legal action. This is good news all round: we are still a democracy, and governments do react to public protests. You can sign a petition for the protection of religious freedom here.
With best wishes to all our readers,
David Daintree
SUMMER SCHOOLS 2022
10-14 January – Medieval and Ecclesiastical Latin – a one-week intensive reading course for people with some Latin, or a willingness to undertake some self-instruction or brush up beforehand. Guided readings of pieces from the Bible, Saints Ambrose, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, as well as poetry both sacred and secular, and good Latin narrative prose. This will be the Hobart Latin Summer School’s 30th year!
17-21 January – Western Civilisation – an Overview. This is a pilot venture. We shall cover five major areas: History (Greece, Rome, the emergence of the modern world), Literature (Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare), Philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, the Scholastics, ethical theories), Theology (the person of Christ, Scripture, Sacraments) and Art (painting, Sculpture, architecture, music). Lectures by Xavier Young, Dr David Moltow, David Daintree.
Write for further details about either of these short courses.
A beginners’ course in New Testament Greek will be offered from 24 January if there is sufficient interest.