Qanon - Second Global Revolution by WE THE PEOPLE

A lot of data been dropped ahead of disclosure.  Also we discover that the day Durham was appointed is the day Q arrived with the above image in which the Durham boat figures.  As I have posted, we are in the middle of a secret WAR that is characterized as the Second American Revolution.


I also assert that this revolution by WE THE PEOPLE is spreading globally and will plausibly succeed.  USA Military presence is global and can provide protection for a WAR of Confrontation.

The almost easy political shift can be the rise of an elected president for all of Europe that includes both Russia and Turkey.  Such an elected president and today Putin comes to mind would be empowered to call into existence a constitutional conference along with a border commission as well with the capacity to establish specific cities as Nation States in order to separate ethnicity from land and economic management.

Declaring this intent and electing the key leader is available to WE THE PEOPLE everywhere including CHINA.  Thus we easily have a GLOBAL blueprint for constitutional reform under WE THE PEOPLE.


Maybe the Americas can elect TRUMP to this task after his second term is up?

Q reminds us that we are still step by step cleaning house as well.









Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: 533c63 No.7968579
Jan 30 2020 15:54:37 (EST) NEWDluiFK6UcAAxf6n.jpg

Today is January [30].
Coincidences are fun!
Thanks, DOJ.
Q


Jan 30 2020 3813 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: 43b2d1 No.7967013
Jan 30 2020 13:53:12 (EST) NEW
https://twitter.com/BOOMER4K/status/1221471163785805826
Worth remembering.
Q

3812 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: 43b2d1 No.7966781
Jan 30 2020 13:42:54 (EST) NEW
Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: 43b2d1 No.7966693
Jan 30 2020 13:39:55 (EST) NEW
https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1222947515387072514
Q


>>7966693
https://twitter.com/paulsperry_/status/1222666659892207616
https://twitter.com/paulsperry_/status/1222637173889011712
Remember these names.
Q

3811 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: 43b2d1 No.7966693
Jan 30 2020 13:39:55 (EST) NEW
https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1222947515387072514
Q

3810 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: 43b2d1 No.7966643
Jan 30 2020 13:38:17 (EST) NEW
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-relents-says-it-would-be-okay-with-probation-for-michael-flynn
Q

3809 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: ccc325 No.7966134
Jan 30 2020 13:10:06 (EST) NEW
Anonymous ID: 6f4c1a No.7965951
Jan 30 2020 13:00:41 (EST) NEW
>>7965933
Pelosi claims Trump 'violated the constitution' in weekly press briefing
27,810 views•Streamed live 89 minutes ago

Speaker Pelosi holds her weekly press briefing.

https://youtu.be/ltdHdxOu76g

>>7965951
SC to hear case re: legality of impeachment Articles drafted by House? [clean record]
Failed to support [Constitution] 'Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors'?
Partisan politics.
Q

3808 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: ccc325 No.7965971
Jan 30 2020 13:01:52 (EST) NEW
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sessions-justice-department-has-27-investigations-into-epidemic-of-leaks
Worth remembering.
[Whistleblower - source 1 & 2 NSC]
Q

3807 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: ccc325 No.7965818
Jan 30 2020 12:52:43 (EST) NEW EPjB0kGWoAElJe2.jpg 

 

These people are stupid.
Q

3806 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: ccc325 No.7965632
Jan 30 2020 12:37:19 (EST) NEW
https://twitter.com/KarluskaP/status/1222922986262495232
Impeachment end.
[Attempts to send new Article(s) to Senate to delay?]
State of the Union.
Boomerang.
“And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.”
Q


Jan 28 2020 3805 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: 61fadf No.7949075
Jan 28 2020 21:10:53 (EST)
https://twitter.com/PatriotsDontSlp/status/1222337763984510977
THE BEST IS YET TO COME!
Q

3804 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: e8a64a No.7946899
Jan 28 2020 18:50:51 (EST)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2qIXXafxCQ&feature=youtu.be
Q

3803 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: 2cfc1a No.7944883
Jan 28 2020 16:18:05 (EST)
Anonymous ID: 18a5dd No.7944877
Jan 28 2020 16:17:25 (EST) ClipboardImage.png
>>7944852

>>7944877
3802 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: 2cfc1a No.7944852
Jan 28 2020 16:16:03 (EST)
https://twitter.com/jonrobweb/status/1222263326043987968
Confirmed.
Q

3801 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: e6ce6c No.7943948
Jan 28 2020 15:20:07 (EST)
https://twitter.com/elenochle/status/1210799795075350533
Do you believe in coincidences?
Where is the rally held tonight?
Enjoy the show!
Q

3800 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: e6ce6c No.7943347
Jan 28 2020 14:46:22 (EST) DurhamBoat.jpg

 


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durham_boat
Anons found the subtle hint dropped in the beginning.
Think Durham start.
Think 'Q' start.
You have more than you know.
Q


3799 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: 2c0dfd No.7943219
Jan 28 2020 14:39:33 (EST)
You didn't think we highlighted 'Epstein' for no reason did you?
Those who were once protected are no longer.
Timing is EVERYTHING.
Hunters become PREY.
Q

3798 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: 2c0dfd No.7942926
Jan 28 2020 14:26:18 (EST)
Anonymous ID: 529254 No.7942819
Jan 28 2020 14:21:45 (EST)
>>7942766
I'll have fun when things start happening in OUR favor!!

>>7942819
Play a game of 'Where Are They Now?'.
Think CEOs.
Think FBI.
Think DOJ.
Think WH.
Think State.
Think C_A.
Think [F] intel.
………..
Think Judge install.
Think SC install.
Think DOJ install.
Think FBI install.
Think C_A install.
Think PM UK install.
Think!
THE BEST IS YET TO COME.
Q

3797 Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: 2c0dfd No.7942766
Jan 28 2020 14:19:51 (EST)
Anonymous ID: fe92aa No.7942692
Jan 28 2020 14:14:48 (EST) IMG_5197.jpg

    

IMG_5196.jpg 

 

[0]
CST
>>7942692
Having fun yet?

Trump is Right: Afghanistan is a ‘Loser War’

There is a simple rule. Entering a conflict changes things.   Exiting does as well.  You may not like either process and the outcome of either is unpredictable at least.  So it is important to accept that.


What is always a loser is staying in play at all in a military situation except to provide security.  Thus the Godawful decision to disband the Iraqi army led directly to the continuing loss of security there and the continuing need of a USA presence.

In Afghanistan we have a puppet government protecting the opium trade that lacks the ability to provide security for the Pathans.  They need a  state based solution at this point and it needs to start in Afghanistan.  That leads directly to a stable government for the rest.

Providing local security is a problem for all governments.  And the USA has little to teach there.. .

Trump is Right: Afghanistan is a ‘Loser War’


The president's comments reported by the Washington Post have enraged the Blob, but his only sin was telling the truth.

President Donald J. Trump speaks with reporters during a briefing with military leadership members Wednesday, December 26, 2018, at the Al-Asad Airbase in Iraq. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)


January 23, 2020|

12:01 am Doug Bandow 

 

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-is-right-afghanistan-is-a-loser-war/

After three years of the Trump presidency, the Washington Post is breathlessly reporting that Donald Trump is a boor who insults everyone, including generals used to respect and even veneration. He’s had the impertinence to ask critical questions of his military briefers. For shame!

President Trump’s limitations have been long evident. The Post’s discussion, adapted by Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker from their upcoming book, A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America, adds color, not substance, to this concern. It seems that in the summer of 2017, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and others were concerned about the president’s international ignorance and organized a briefing at the Pentagon to enlighten him.

Was that a worthwhile mission? Sure. Everyone in the policy world marvels at the president’s lack of curiosity, absent knowledge, bizarre assumptions, and perverse conclusions. He doesn’t get trade, bizarrely celebrates dictatorship, fixates on Iran, doesn’t understand agreements, acts on impulse, and exudes absolute certainty. Yet he also captures the essence of issues and shares a set of inchoate beliefs held by millions of Americans, especially those who feel ignored, insulted, disparaged, and dismissed. Most important, he was elected with a mandate to move policy away from the bipartisan globalist conventional wisdom.

The latter was evidently the main concern of these briefers. The presentation as described by the article exuded condescension. That attitude very likely was evident to Trump. The briefing was intended to inform, but even more so to establish his aides’ control over him. While they bridled at Trump’s manners, they were even more opposed to his substantive opinions. And that made the briefing sound like a carefully choreographed attack on his worldview.

For instance, Mattis used charts with lots of dollar signs “to impress upon [the president] the value of U.S. investments abroad. [Mattis] sought to explain why U.S. troops were deployed in so many regions and why America’s safety hinged on a complex web of trade deals, alliances, and bases across the globe.” Notably, Mattis “then gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe.”

No doubt Secretary Mattis sincerely believed all that. However, it was an argument more appropriately made in 1950 or 1960. The world has since changed dramatically.

Of course, this is also the position of the Blob, Ben Rhodes’ wonderful label for the Washington foreign policymaking community. What has ever been must ever be, is the Blob’s informal mantra. America’s lot in life, no matter how many average folks must die, is to litter the globe with bases, ships, planes, and troops to fight endless wars, some big, some small, to make the world safe for democracy, sometimes, and autocracy, otherwise. If America ever stops fulfilling what seems to be the modern equivalent of Rudyard Kipling’s infamous “white man’s burden,” order will collapse, authoritarianism will advance, trade will disappear, conflict will multiply, countries will be conquered, friends will become enemies, allies will defect, terrorists will strike, liberal values will be discarded, all that is good and wonderful will disappear, and a new dark age will envelope the earth.

Trump is remarkably ignorant of the facts, but he does possess a commonsensical skepticism of the utter nonsense that gets promoted as unchallengeable conventional wisdom. As a result, he understood that this weltanschauung, a word he would never use, was an absolute fantasy. And he showed it by the questions he asked.

For instance, he challenged the defense guarantee for South Korea. “We should charge them rent,” he blurted out. “We should make them pay for our soldiers.” Although treating American military personnel like mercenaries is the wrong approach, he is right that there is no need to protect the Republic of Korea. The Korean War ended 67 years ago. The South has twice the population and, by the latest estimate, 54 times the economy of the North. Why is Seoul still dependent on America?

If the Blob has its way, the U.S. will pay to defend the ROK forever. Analysts speak of the need for Americans to stick around even after reunification. It seems there is no circumstance under which they imagine Washington not garrisoning the peninsula. Why is America, born of revolution, now acting like an imperial power that must impose its military might everywhere?

Even more forcefully, it appeared, did Trump express his hostile views of Europe and NATO. Sure, he appeared to mistakenly believe that there was an alliance budget that European governments had failed to fund. But World War II ended 70 years ago. The Europeans recovered, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Eastern Europeans joined NATO. Why is Washington expected to subsidize a continent with a larger population than, and economy equivalent to, America’s, and far larger than Russia’s? Mattis apparently offered the standard bromides, such as “This is what keeps us safe.”

How? Does he imagine that without Washington’s European presence, Russia would roll its tanks and march to the Atlantic Ocean? And from there launch a global pincer movement to invade North America? How does adding such behemoths as Montenegro keep the U.S. “safe”? What does initiating a military confrontation with Moscow over Ukraine, historically part of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, have to do with keeping Americans “safe”? The argument is self-evidently not just false but ridiculous.

Justifying endless wars is even tougher. Rucker and Leonnig do not report what the president said about Syria, which apparently was part of Mattis’s brief. However, Trump’s skepticism is evident from his later policy gyrations. Why would any sane Washington policymaker insist that America intervene militarily in a multi-sided civil war in a country of no significant security interest to the U.S. on the side of jihadists and affiliates of al-Qaeda? And stick around illegally as the conflict wound down? 

To call this policy stupid is too polite.

Even more explosive was the question of Afghanistan, to which the president did speak, apparently quite dismissively. Unsurprisingly, he asked why the U.S. had not won after 16 years—which is longer than the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean War combined. He also termed Afghanistan a “loser war.” By Rucker’s and Leonnig’s telling, this did not go over well: “That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief’s commands, and here he was calling the way they had been fighting a loser war.”

But it was and is true. Indeed, when I visited Afghanistan back when U.S. troop levels were near their highest, “off camera,” so to speak, military folks were quite skeptical of the war. So were Afghans, who had little good to say about their Washington-created and -supported government unless they were collecting a paycheck from it. An incoming president could be forgiven for suspecting that his predecessor had poured more troops into the conflict only to put off its failure until after he’d left office.

The fault does not belong to combat personnel, but to political leaders and complicit generals, who have misled if not lied in presenting a fairy tale perspective on the conflict’s progress and prognosis. And for what? Central Asia is not and never will be a vital issue of American security. Afghanistan has nothing to do with terrorism other than its having hosting al-Qaeda two decades ago. Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan. In recent years, it’s Yemen that’s hosted the most dangerous national affiliate of al-Qaeda. So why are U.S. troops still in Afghanistan?

Accounts like that from Rucker and Leonnig are beloved by the Blob. America’s role is to dominate the globe, irrespective of cost. Those officials pursuing this objective, no matter how poorly, are lauded. Any politician challenging Washington’s global mission is derided.

President Trump has done much wrong. However, he deserves credit for challenging a failed foreign policy that’s been paid for by so many while benefiting so few. It is “crazy” and “stupid,” as he reportedly said. Why should Americans keep dying for causes that their leaders cannot adequately explain, let alone justify? Let us hope that one day Americans elect a president who will act and not just talk.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire.

Why Religion Is Not Going Away and Science Will Not Destroy It

Religion exists because of the physical reality of the presence of Spirit in our day to day lives.  It may well be a light touch, but its presence is derived from the  reality of a networked system of super computers present with every single cell.  This is constructed from Dark Matter and scaled at the level of an electron.

For a long time science has simply rejected this physical reality to produce the separation MEME.  That is rapidly falling apart, not least with the burgeoning literature on out of body experiences and their like.  Put simply, the Other Side is providing ample evidence to go with their direction.

Most of us, including most scholars do a poor job of reading ancient scriptures and too readily allow our own baggage to control the interpretation.  We all must work to get past that.

.  .   

.

Why Religion Is Not Going Away and Science Will Not Destroy It

Social scientists predicted that belief in the supernatural would drift away as modern science advanced. They were wrong.

Aeon |

• Peter Harrison

 https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-religion-is-not-going-away-and-science-will-not-destroy-it

In 1966, just over 50 years ago, the distinguished Canadian-born anthropologist Anthony Wallace confidently predicted the global demise of religion at the hands of an advancing science: ‘belief in supernatural powers is doomed to die out, all over the world, as a result of the increasing adequacy and diffusion of scientific knowledge’. Wallace’s vision was not exceptional. On the contrary, the modern social sciences, which took shape in 19th-century western Europe, took their own recent historical experience of secularisation as a universal model. An assumption lay at the core of the social sciences, either presuming or sometimes predicting that all cultures would eventually converge on something roughly approximating secular, Western, liberal democracy. Then something closer to the opposite happened. 

Not only has secularism failed to continue its steady global march but countries as varied as Iran, India, Israel, Algeria and Turkey have either had their secular governments replaced by religious ones, or have seen the rise of influential religious nationalist movements. Secularisation, as predicted by the social sciences, has failed. 

To be sure, this failure is not unqualified. Many Western countries continue to witness decline in religious belief and practice. Census data released in Australia, for example, shows that 30 per cent of the population identify as having ‘no religion’, and that this percentage is increasing. International surveys confirm comparatively low levels of religious commitment in western Europe and Australasia. Even the United States, a long-time source of embarrassment for the secularisation thesis, has seen a rise in unbelief. The percentage of atheists in the US in 2017 was at an all-time high (if ‘high’ is the right word) of around 3 per cent. Yet, for all that, globally, the total number of people who consider themselves to be religious remains high, and demographic trends suggest that the overall pattern for the immediate future will be one of religious growth. But this isn’t the only failure of the secularisation thesis. 

Scientists, intellectuals and social scientists expected that the spread of modern science would drive secularisation – that science would be a secularising force. But that simply hasn’t been the case. If we look at those societies where religion remains vibrant, their key common features are less to do with science, and more to do with feelings of existential security and protection from some of the basic uncertainties of life in the form of public goods. A social safety net might be correlated with scientific advances but only loosely, and again the case of the US is instructive. The US is arguably the most scientifically and technologically advanced society in the world, and yet at the same time the most religious of Western societies. As the British sociologist David Martin concluded in The Future of Christianity (2011): ‘There is no consistent relation between the degree of scientific advance and a reduced profile of religious influence, belief and practice.’ 

The story of science and secularisation becomes even more intriguing when we consider those societies that have witnessed significant reactions against secularist agendas. India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru championed secular and scientific ideals, and enlisted scientific education in the project of modernisation. Nehru was confident that Hindu visions of a Vedic past and Muslim dreams of an Islamic theocracy would both succumb to the inexorable historical march of secularisation. ‘There is only one-way traffic in Time,’ he declared. But as the subsequent rise of Hindu and Islamic fundamentalism adequately attests, Nehru was wrong. Moreover, the association of science with a secularising agenda has backfired, with science becoming a collateral casualty of resistance to secularism. 

Turkey provides an even more revealing case. Like most pioneering nationalists, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish republic, was a committed secularist. Atatürk believed that science was destined to displace religion. In order to make sure that Turkey was on the right side of history, he gave science, in particular evolutionary biology, a central place in the state education system of the fledgling Turkish republic. As a result, evolution came to be associated with Atatürk’s entire political programme, including secularism. Islamist parties in Turkey, seeking to counter the secularist ideals of the nation’s founders, have also attacked the teaching of evolution. For them, evolution is associated with secular materialism. This sentiment culminated in the decision this June to remove the teaching of evolution from the high-school classroom. Again, science has become a victim of guilt by association. 

The US represents a different cultural context, where it might seem that the key issue is a conflict between literal readings of Genesis and key features of evolutionary history. But in fact, much of the creationist discourse centres on moral values. In the US case too, we see anti-evolutionism motivated at least in part by the assumption that evolutionary theory is a stalking horse for secular materialism and its attendant moral commitments. As in India and Turkey, secularism is actually hurting science.

In brief, global secularisation is not inevitable and, when it does happen, it is not caused by science. Further, when the attempt is made to use science to advance secularism, the results can damage science. The thesis that ‘science causes secularisation’ simply fails the empirical test, and enlisting science as an instrument of secularisation turns out to be poor strategy. The science and secularism pairing is so awkward that it raises the question: why did anyone think otherwise? 

***

Historically, two related sources advanced the idea that science would displace religion. First, 19th-century progressivist conceptions of history, particularly associated with the French philosopher Auguste Comte, held to a theory of history in which societies pass through three stages – religious, metaphysical and scientific (or ‘positive’). Comte coined the term ‘sociology’ and he wanted to diminish the social influence of religion and replace it with a new science of society. Comte’s influence extended to the ‘young Turks’ and Atatürk. 

The 19th century also witnessed the inception of the ‘conflict model’ of science and religion. This was the view that history can be understood in terms of a ‘conflict between two epochs in the evolution of human thought – the theological and the scientific’. This description comes from Andrew Dickson White’s influential A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896), the title of which nicely encapsulates its author’s general theory. White’s work, as well as John William Draper’s earlier History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874), firmly established the conflict thesis as the default way of thinking about the historical relations between science and religion. Both works were translated into multiple languages. Draper’s History went through more than 50 printings in the US alone, was translated into 20 languages and, notably, became a bestseller in the late Ottoman empire, where it informed Atatürk’s understanding that progress meant science superseding religion. 

Today, people are less confident that history moves through a series of set stages toward a single destination. Nor, despite its popular persistence, do most historians of science support the idea of an enduring conflict between science and religion. Renowned collisions, such as the Galileo affair, turned on politics and personalities, not just science and religion. Darwin had significant religious supporters and scientific detractors, as well as vice versa. Many other alleged instances of science-religion conflict have now been exposed as pure inventions. In fact, contrary to conflict, the historical norm has more often been one of mutual support between science and religion. In its formative years in the 17th century, modern science relied on religious legitimation. During the 18th and 19th centuries, natural theology helped to popularise science. 

The conflict model of science and religion offered a mistaken view of the past and, when combined with expectations of secularisation, led to a flawed vision of the future. Secularisation theory failed at both description and prediction. The real question is why we continue to encounter proponents of science-religion conflict. Many are prominent scientists. It would be superfluous to rehearse Richard Dawkins’s musings on this topic, but he is by no means a solitary voice. Stephen Hawking thinks that ‘science will win because it works’; Sam Harris has declared that ‘science must destroy religion’; Stephen Weinberg thinks that science has weakened religious certitude; Colin Blakemore predicts that science will eventually make religion unnecessary. Historical evidence simply does not support such contentions. Indeed, it suggests that they are misguided. 

So why do they persist? The answers are political. Leaving aside any lingering fondness for quaint 19th-century understandings of history, we must look to the fear of Islamic fundamentalism, exasperation with creationism, an aversion to alliances between the religious Right and climate-change denial, and worries about the erosion of scientific authority. While we might be sympathetic to these concerns, there is no disguising the fact that they arise out of an unhelpful intrusion of normative commitments into the discussion. Wishful thinking – hoping that science will vanquish religion – is no substitute for a sober assessment of present realities. Continuing with this advocacy is likely to have an effect opposite to that intended. 

Religion is not going away any time soon, and science will not destroy it. If anything, it is science that is subject to increasing threats to its authority and social legitimacy. Given this, science needs all the friends it can get. Its advocates would be well advised to stop fabricating an enemy out of religion, or insisting that the only path to a secure future lies in a marriage of science and secularism.

Futurists Ray Kurzweil and Elon Musk Could Have Last Laugh Over Barrons

Thirty years folks.  That is what is left to reach what has been described as the singularity.   That is not a long time.  What is critical though is that the next twenty years will deliver the full weight of the human population essentially able to apply scince easily.

 

We will certainly have Dark Matter energy using the Tesla Modulator since we already have that.  Throw in gravity control as well and getting a load into space and off to Mars is no trick at all.  So yes a condo on Mars is a real prospect.

 

What is the Singularity?  I also expect to master Wormholes.  This allows us to operate backwards in time as well.  Actual movement outside this gravity well may need a distant station at least with low Solar gravity to work with.  either way we suddenly know everything mankind has ever known and have access to it all built into our brains as well.

 

There is no reason that i should not be able to enter the meditative state to bring up an action screen to manage my physical body.  This then becomes our new normal.  After that we will all be tasked to manage our part in optimizing the Terra-forming of Terra.  And yes governance will be through the Rule of Twelve as i have posted often.

We also get to live on Terra as long as we wish as well.  The interesting part will be during the early stages.  I also know from the other side that i will be here then.  Quite a trip.  If not then i will not care anyway.

 

 

Futurists Ray Kurzweil and Elon Musk Could Have Last Laugh Over Barrons

Brian Wang | January 9, 2020


https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2020/01/futurists-ray-kurzweil-and-elon-musk-could-have-last-laugh-over-barrons.html


Jack Hough wrote an article mocking the Kurzweil prediction of the Technological Singularity and Elon Musk stating that there is a 70% chance he will move to Mars.

Ray Kurzweil gives his predictions a 10-15 year grace period. This means Ray would consider himself correct if the Technological Singularity occurred between 2031 and 2059. This is padding around Ray’s prediction timing of 2045. There is tens of billions of dollars each year going to develop artificial intelligence and if AI were to become dominant in cloud computing and IT then it could grow into a trillion industry. A lot of very interesting AI capabilities might happen in the 2040-2059 timeframes that Ray has open for the realization of a Technological Singularity.

Jack is mocking Elon Musk, when Elon Musk owns a vast chunk of SpaceX. SpaceX has over 60% of commercial launch and should complete 10-12 more launches of Starlink satellites by the middle of 2020 for a minimally operational mega constellation. A fairly robust coverage of the northern hemisphere should be ready by the end of 2020. Elon Musk is 48 years old.












Elon is now worth about $30 billion and has moved up to become the 33rd richest person in the world. Tesla and SpaceX have seen valuation surges and could easily double in the next 12-18 months. This would put Elon Musk in the top ten in wealth. The Starlink constellation could drive SpaceX value up to $200-400 billion by 2025. This would make Elon Musk the wealthiest person in the world and if SpaceX could match the $40 billion revenue of Direct TV, then it would have about twice the budget of NASA.

SpaceX will have its fully reusable Super Heavy Starship with 1 to 5 years.

Putin Calls For A New System Guided By UN Charter... But Is It Possible?

.

 

 

The good news is that he has opened an important conversation.  we have worked under the international dispensation created after WWII and that is now a full 75 years ago.  Everything has changed and changed again.

More importantly, Putin has restored Russia, and he has restored the CHURCH as well.

It is now high time to restore Europe and CHRISTIANDOM as well.

It is my contention that it is also time to eliminate GLOBAL POVERTY by way of the NATURAL COMMUNITY and the RULE OF TWELVE.

The next five years will see the full restoration of the USA and globally the emergence of WE THE PEOPLE.  All this demands a new dispensation in regards to institutions.

Putin Calls For A New System Guided By UN Charter... But Is It Possible?


Fri, 01/24/2020 - 02:00


Authored by Matthew Ehret


https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/putin-calls-new-system-guided-un-charter-it-possible


Anyone looking with sober eyes upon today’s world and the feeble economic and geopolitical underpinnings holding the system together must accept the fact that a new system WILL be created.


This is not an opinion, but a fact. We are moving towards eight billion lives on this globe and the means of productive powers to sustain that growing population (at least in the west) has been permitted to decay terribly over the recent half century while monetary values have grown like a hyperinflationary cancer to unimaginable proportions. Derivatives speculation alone under the deregulated “too big to fail” banking system has resulted in over $1.5 quadrillion in nominal values which have ZERO connection to the real world (GDP globally barely accounts for $80 trillion). Over the past 5 months $415 billion of QE bailouts have been released into the bankrupt banks to prevent a collapse. So, economically it’s foundation of sand.



Militarily, the west has followed the earlier Roman empire of yesteryear by overextending itself beyond capacity creating situations of global turmoil, death and unbounded resentment at the dominant Anglo American powers controlling NATO and the Military industrial complex. The recent near-war with Iran at the start of 2020 put the world on a fast track towards a nuclear war with Iran’s allies Russia and China.



Culturally, the disconnection from the traditional values that gave western civilization it’s moral fitness to survive and grow has resulted in a post-truth age now spanning over three generations (from the baby boomers to today’s young adults) who have become the most confused class of people in modern history losing all discrimination of “needs” vs “wants”, “right” vs “wrong”, “beauty” vs “ugliness” or even “male” and “female”.



Without ranting on anymore, it suffices to say that this thing is not sustainable.

So the question is not “will we get a new system?” but rather “whom will this new system serve?”

Will this new system serve an oligarchical agenda at the expense of the nations and people of the earth or will it serve the interests of the nations and people of the earth at the expense of the oligarchy?

Putin Revives a Forgotten Vision


President Putin’s January 15 State of the Union was a breath of fresh air for this reason, as the world leader who has closely allied his nation’s destiny to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, laid out a call for a new system to be created by the five largest nuclear powers as common allies under a multi-polar paradigm.



After speaking about Russia’s vision for internal improvements, Putin shifted towards the international arena saying:



“I am convinced that it is high time for a serious and direct discussion about the basic principles of a stable world order and the most acute problems that humanity is facing. It is necessary to show political will, wisdom and courage. The time demands an awareness of our shared responsibility and real actions.”




Calling for Russia, the USA, UK, China and France to organize a new architecture that goes far beyond merely military affairs, Putin stated:



“The founding countries of the United Nations should set an example. It is the five nuclear powers that bear a special responsibility for the conservation and sustainable development of humankind. These five nations should first of all start with measures to remove the prerequisites for a global war and develop updated approaches to ensuring stability on the planet that would fully take into account the political, economic and military aspects of modern international relations.”



Putin’s emphasis that “the United Nations should set an example” is not naïve fantasy, nor “crypto globalist rhetoric” as some of his critics have stated.



Putin knows that the UN has been misused by anti-nation state ideologues for a very long time. He also knows his history better than his critics and is aware that the original mandate of the United Nations was premised upon the defense of the sovereign nation state. Article 2.1 of the charter clearly says: “The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.”



For readers who are perhaps rightfully cynical that such organizations as the UN could ever play a truly positive role in world affairs, it is important to recall that the UN was never intended to have any unilateral authority over nation states, or military power unto itself when was created in 1945. Its purpose was intended to provide a platform for dialogue where sovereign nation states could harmonize their policies and overcome misunderstanding with the aim of protecting the general welfare of the people of the earth. Articles 1.3-4 state clearly that the UN’s is designed “to achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion and to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.”



If the United Nations principles as enunciated in its pre-amble and core articles were to ever be followed (just like America’s own admirable constitution): then wars of aggression and regime change would not be possible. Article 2.4 directly addresses this saying: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.



These principles stand in stark contrast to the earlier 1919 Round Table/RIIA-orchestrated attempt at a post-national world order under the failed League of Nations which was rightfully put out of its misery by nationalists of the 1920s. FDR’s 1944 vision, as Putin is well aware, was based not on “world government”, but rather upon the concept of a community of sovereign nations collaborating on vast development and infrastructure projects which were intended to be the effect of an “internationalization” of the New Deal that transformed America in the years following the Great Depression. The closest approximation to this spirit in practice in our modern age is found in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.


Thousands of Asian, African and South American engineers and statesmen were invited to visit the USA during the 1930s and early 1940s to study the Tennessee Valley Authority and other great New Deal water, agriculture and energy projects in order to bring those ideas back to their countries as a driver to break out of the shackles of colonialism both politically, culturally and economically. In opposition to FDR, Churchill the unrepentant racist was okay with offering political independence, but never the cultural or economic means to achieve it.



Although the world devolved into an Anglo-American alliance with FDR’s death in 1945, the other Bretton Woods Institutions which were meant to provide international productive credit to those large scale infrastructure projects to end colonialism were taken over by FDR’s enemies who purged the IMF and World Bank of all loyalists to FDR’s international New Deal vision throughout the years of the red scare. Whether these corrupt financing institutions can be brought back to their original intention or whether they must simply be replaced with new lending mechanisms such as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, BRICS New Development Bank or Silk Road Investment Fund remains to be seen.



What is vital to keep in mind is that Putin (just like FDR before him) knows that neither Britain nor Britain’s Deep State loyalists in America can be trusted. Yet, in spite of their mistrust, they both knew that a durable world order could only be accomplished if these forces were reined in under a higher law imposed by the authority of truly sovereign nations, and this is why FDR’s post-war plans involved a USA-Russia-China-UK partnership to provide the impetus to global development initiatives and achieve the goals of the Atlantic Charter. This partnership was sabotaged over FDR’s dead body as the Cold War and Truman Doctrine broke that alliance. The goal of ending colonialism had to wait another 80 years.



At the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Putin had already laid his insight into history clearly on the table when he said:


“This universal, indivisible character of security is expressed as the basic principle that “security for one is security for all”. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the first few days that the Second World War was breaking out: “When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger… I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world. And this is not only because if there was individual leadership in today’s – and precisely in today’s – world, then the military, political and economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilisation.”



Putin is not naïve to call for the United Nations charter to serve as the guiding light of a new military, political, economic architecture. Nor is he naïve to think that such untrustworthy nations as the USA, UK and France should serve in partnership with Russia and China since Putin knows that it will be Russia and China shaping the terms of the new system and not the collapsing basket-cases of the west whose excess bluff and bluster betrays a losing hand, which is why certain forces have been so desperate to overthrow the poker table over the past few years. The fact that Putin, Xi and their growing allies have not permitted this chaos agenda to unfold has not only driven “end of history” imperialists into rage fits but also gives FDR’s vision for a community of sovereign nation states a second chance at life.

NJ Vaccine Bill To End Religious Exemptions Collapses: Is The Tide Turning?

Quite possibly.  We are seeing increasingly desperate attempts to use the law to force vaccination, and the public blow-back is rapidly climbing.

The science is also now spiraling out of control as autism is steadily emerging as a pandemic while the actual met stats are directing attention onto all forms of vaccination.

Obviously with the massive ramp up of multi vaccines, the suppression of statistical evidence becomes impossible.  Recall forty years ago, Peanut allergy was rare as was autism.  The low enough stats could be suppressed. - nothing to see here.  Forty years before neither barely existed and never existed forty years before that.  This is an assertion that i would welcome someone able to say different..

The assault on Amish rights is of course outrageous and truly the canary in the coal mine.  How stupid are these politicians and vaccine peddlers?.

NJ Vaccine Bill To End Religious Exemptions Collapses: Is The Tide Turning?

By Richard Enos

January 23, 2020

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/01/no_author/nj-vaccine-bill-to-end-religious-exemptions-collapses-is-the-tide-turning/

The battleground is now set. On one side are those who continue to claim “the science is settled” on vaccine safety and want to eliminate all vaccine exemptions, essentially forcing all children to get vaccines whether their parents agree or not. On the other side are those who believe that the science is far from settled, and believe that parents should have the right to choose what gets injected into their children’s bodies without fear of punishment.

The latest skirmish of this battle was on Monday in Trenton, NJ, where a bill proposing one of the nation’s broadest bans on religious exemptions to childhood vaccines did not have enough support in the Democrat-controlled State Senate to be put up for a vote. The bill would have ended a policy that allows parents in New Jersey to cite religious beliefs as the reason their children have not been immunized, without affecting the child’s ability to be enrolled in school.

Weeks of sustained and boisterous protests outside the State Legislature by those opposed to forced vaccination are being touted as the main reason the bill did not go through. The intensity of the prolonged protest was unlike anything in Trenton in over a decade, many longtime lawmakers and 

The protesters took it to be a monumental victory for their cause, and some advocates are seeing this as a tipping point in the battle, going into 2020 with great optimism. Vaccine safety advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got clamorous cheers as he spoke to the protesters about the legislators pushing this bill. According to him:

They are not working for you, they are not working for me, and they are definitely not working for our children. And you being here today is the way that we finish that. That we make sure that they start working for us.

You guys are heroes! Because this state is known as the medicine cabinet state, this is the headquarters of all those [pharmaceutical] companies, they own these people in the state legislature. And guess what? You beat them here! You beat them in December, when they first came out, and now they’re coming back and they’re trying to do it again. And we’re going to beat them this week too! (source)

Mainstream: “The Science Is Settled”

Mainstream media had a predictably different tone on the matter, In a New York Times article on the subject, the familiar vaccine safety mantras are cited in authoritative parlance from legislators:

“It’s going to get done…They can bang on their drums and their sirens and their truck horns…This is a real public health emergency.”–Senate president Stephen M. Sweeney

“The science is settled on this,”–Senator Loretta Weinberg, a sponsor of the legislation

“Vaccines are safe, and we in public health need to say that repeatedly.”–Assemblyman Dr. Herb Conaway

The article also notes that ‘States that have limited or revoked religion-based vaccination exemptions include California, Mississippi, Maine and New York, which was at the epicenter of a measles outbreak last year.’

The notion that a potential measles outbreak is ‘a real public health emergency’ is starting to wear thin on an awakening public. The only lasting effect of the measles outbreak cited above in New York is that those that were infected now have true lifetime immunity from the measles. The outbreak did not cause a single death. But this shouldn’t be a surprise, since according to the CDC, there were no deaths from measles in the U.S. over a whole decade studied (2004 to 2015), and none have been reported since then either. During that same ten-year period, the government’s own Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reported 108 deaths from measles vaccines (source). And remember, this only represents children whose parents challenged other diagnoses such as SIDS and SUD and were successful in convincing the VAERS court of the culpability of the vaccine. This is likely a very small fraction of actual cases.

I think Assemblyman Dr. Herb Conaway summed up lawmakers’ strategy perfectly when he said that proponents of mandatory vaccination need to say repeatedly that vaccines are safe; the reason is because if they instead directed the public to the statistical evidence, that evidence may prove the opposite.

WHO Miffed By Waning Vaccine Confidence

The Global Vaccine Safety Summit organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) in early December, covered in-depth in this recent CE article, revealed that public confidence about the safety of vaccines is declining. Activism challenging the safety and proper testing of vaccines, like the New Jersey protests described above, seems to be having an impact on this. But not only has the public started to question vaccines in larger numbers, public health officials are losing confidence as well. Professor Heidi Larson, Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project, sums up the dire situation at the summit as follows:

The other thing that’s a trend, and an issue, is not just confidence in providers but confidence of health care providers. We have a very wobbly health professional frontline that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. That’s a huge problem, because to this day any study I’ve seen–and we’re constantly looking on any studies in this space–still, the most trusted person on any study I’ve seen globally is the health care provider. And if we lose that, we’re in trouble.

If you watch the video of the meeting that has been made public on the WHO website, you might be struck by the nature of the concerns of speaker after speaker. While this is supposed to be a vaccine safety summit, virtually none of the speakers voiced a straightforward concern for the safety of vaccines with regards to the health and safety of the world’s children. One might think that if this was really about safety, that the death of one child from vaccination should be enough for the government, in collaboration with the manufacturers, to suspend the particular vaccine in question until testing could be done to certify the safety of that vaccine to everyone’s satisfaction.

Instead, all the concerns at the summit revolved around what the WHO and its affiliates can do to ward off vaccine hesitancy and enforce vaccine compliance. In the face of rising evidence of the damage linked to vaccines, the mandate of the people in attendance does not include actually questioning whether a child should get a particular vaccine or whether current vaccine scheduling is unsafe. We get a clue as to why this is the case in examining who actually gets invited to have a seat at this summit:

Global Vaccine Safety Summit is meant for vaccine safety stakeholders from around the world, including current and former members of the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety, immunisation programme managers, national regulatory authorities, pharmacovigilance staff from all WHO regions, and representatives of UN agencies, academic institutions, umbrella organizations of pharmaceutical companies, technical partners, industry representatives and funding agencies. (source)

Note the phrase ‘vaccine safety stakeholders.’ In other words, these people all have a STAKE (financial, professional) in the safety of vaccines, or more precisely, they have a stake in the perception that vaccines are safe, so that the pharmaceutical business can keep galloping along. Those who would try to look at the evidence of vaccine safety objectively and suggest significant changes in the vaccine schedule would have long been vetted out and would never have been invited to the meeting.

And certainly no parents of vaccine-injured children, those who have first-hand knowledge about vaccine safety concerns, would ever be given a voice at this summit. That doesn’t mean their voices are not being heard. In a recent episode of Del Bigtree’s Highwire below, where I first saw footage of the vaccine safety summit, Del does a rather masterful job of parsing through some of the statements made at the meeting and giving us a greater context that certainly gives rise to the feeling that the tide in this battle is turning:

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The Takeaway

Conscious, non-violent activism, where people stand up together and say that they don’t consent to something being brought forth by our authority, is an important catalyst of our collective awakening. In the bigger picture we can understand how even the most maligned authority figures on the planet are people, just like us, and even if their actions are unacceptable, such actions are compelling us to take on the arduous process of challenging and even stepping away from authority altogether as we slowly gain a greater sense of our innate sovereignty.

Yes, College Professors Are Almost All Left-Wing

 

 Fortunately for us, STEM directed students simply do not get exposed to any of this.   On the other hand, only 18 percent of granted degrees are STEM.  That clearly means that we have another small sub section involved in what we know as the classic liberal arts of English, languages and History in particular.  All those are ultimately directed toward teaching.  Then we also have another minority taste in the form of archeology, anthropology, economics et al which have become steadily more rigorous.

These are all honors programs at the least and end markets for these skills are traditionally weak.
None of these encourage socialist studies, nor should they.    Yet the teachers cannot help but be powerfully influenced by colleagues peddling a socialist curricula in the rest of the student body itself which is likely two thirds of al undergrad enrollees. 

It is very hard to get the best out of our students, but we actually need to. Allowing the production of a large body of  students not able to complete an honors program is actually a bad idea in practice.  At the least, all general programs should automatically include an  education elective or alternately a two year trade apprenticeship all with the possibility to upgrade to an honors program.  Sooner or later most honors students will be mature students with real trade and or teaching skills and highly valuable to the employment market.

Obviously the whole Progressive cum Socialist cum Marxist MEME for dummies now been peddled actually needs to be shut down forever.

..

Yes, College Professors Are Almost All Left-Wing

01/21/2020

 Jeff Deist

 https://mises.org/power-market/yes-college-professors-are-almost-all-left-wing?

Sean Stevens of Heterodox Academy and Professor Mitchell Langbert of Brooklyn College have a new article published by the National Association of Scholars. They examined professors' self-identified political views, party affiliation, voter registrations, and FEC (Federal Election Commission) records of political donations. Their research appears to confirm that college professors in fact skew overwhelmingly left-wing in their political views, even more than many of us thought. If they are even mostly correct, the (left) liberal professor stereotype is absolutely grounded in reality rather than caricature.

Professor Langbert writes:

Sean Stevens and I have been working on a study of 12,372 professors in the two leading private and two leading public colleges in 31 states (incl. DC) that make registration public (mostly closed-primary states).  The National Association of Scholars has posted our initial findings on their blog. We cross-checked the registration against the political donations.  For party registration, we find a D:R ratio of 8.5:1, which varies by rank of institution and region.  For federal donations (from the FEC data base) we find a D:R ratio of 95:1, with only 22 Republican donors (compared to 2,081 Democratic donors) out of 12,372 professors.  Federal donations among all categories of party registration, including Republican, favor the Democrats: D:R donation ratios for Democratic-registered professors are 251:1; for Republican-registered professors 4.6:1; for minor-party-registered professors 10:0; for unaffiliated professors 50:1; for non-registered professors 105:1. We include a school-by-school table that facilitates comparisons.

These ongoing revelations about the reality of higher education in the US should give pause to every parent writing big checks for elite school tuition so Johnny or Jenny can fulfill their dreams. Think twice before blindly sending your children (or yourself) to ideological indoctrination centers. A university education may well be worthwhile, but only if students and parents alike have their eyes wide open.

The Firefighter Whose Denunciation of Australia’s Prime Minister Made Him a Folk Hero

Obviously this politician is on his way to winning the tone deaf award of the year.  Tens of thousands are out there fighting for their livelihoods at the least.  In this government must be seen maximizing support of all kinds.

Again the lack of predatory fire suppression is inexcusable. That is why we have now a massive Koala die off.  All our forests and wild lands need  active management and yes direct husbandry.  Environmentalism is caught up in the MEME of non intervention as a good and that is so long.  

Getting it right is difficult enough, without going out and willfully getting it wrong.

These wild-lands need two things applied.  They certainly need season specific burns to clear surplus brush as often as reasonable.  We do that as much as possible with our interior forests.  the second thing that needs to happen is the use of mob grazing with throughout these lands to produce a freshly grown surface in which the surface debris has been mixed directly in by the animals.

Plenty more can be done as well toward grooming the forest directly, but these are not labor intensive or demanding of changes in land titles...  .

.

The Firefighter Whose Denunciation of Australia’s Prime Minister Made Him a Folk Hero

By Amanda Schaffer

6:00 A.M.

In Australia, since September, millions of acres of land have burned, thousands of people have lost their homes and businesses, and at least twenty-eight have perished because of bushfires.

Photograph by Saeed Khan / AFP / Getty

 

 

https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told-to/the-firefighter-whose-denunciation-of-australias-prime-minister-made-him-a-folk-hero

Until a few days ago, Paul Parker was a volunteer firefighter in Nelligen, a small village on the coast of New South Wales, in Australia—an area that has been devastated by the bushfires currently sweeping the country. A week ago, Parker was defending homes in his community against a spreading inferno. The sky was red and burnt orange, he said. Embers were everywhere. Flames shot as high as forty feet. “I’ve fought a few bushfires in my time, but nothing like that,” Parker told me. “It’s the worst I’ve ever experienced.”

As Parker raced from one fire to another, on the brink of exhaustion, he encountered a local television crew and erupted in rage. In the video the crew shot, Parker is seen leaning out of a fire truck, giving a sarcastic thumbs-up, and launching a stream of expletives at the right-wing Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison. “Tell the Prime Minister to go and get fucked, from Nelligen,” Parker shouts. He then challenges Morrison to meet him face-to-face. “I’ve lost seven houses in Nelligan. I’m not going to lose any more,” he says. “Tell the P.M. to come and meet me. Paul Parker, in Nelligan. Meet you any day, pal.” The video instantly turned Parker into something of a folk hero.


In Parker’s community, and elsewhere, the crisis has provoked intense anger toward Morrison, who was on vacation in Hawaii when two firefighters died in December. Morrison returned to Australia, but his response to the wildfires has been widely condemned as slow and ineffective. Since September, millions of acres of land have burned, thousands of people have lost their homes and businesses, and at least twenty-eight have perished. Morrison’s history of skepticism toward climate change and the government’s record of inaction have infuriated Australians who understand that record-breaking heat and dryness, symptomatic of a warming planet, are fuelling the crisis. On Sunday, Morrison announced an inquiry into the country’s fire response, nodding to the role of climate change but failing to support policies to decrease fossil-fuel use or promote renewable energy.

Parker spoke with me twice by phone, from Australia, about the catastrophic fires and about how he and others in Nelligen have responded. His account, which begins on New Year’s Eve, has been edited and condensed.

“We knew the fire was coming. In the late afternoon, we could see the glow coming out of the mountains to the southwest, and we knew. At about ten o’clock, we went to bed, and at around ten-thirty we were back up again. It was coming through the trees, and we stayed awake until it impacted us, at about one-thirty in the morning. The fire had crowned, which means it was on the ground and in the treetops. It was just a massive wall of flame. I tried to tame it with buckets of water and by driving over the flames. It was horrific. The absolute intensity of it.

“As soon as I knew my home was relatively safe, I hooked up with a couple of other brigade members in one of the local Nelligen fire trucks. Just trying to survive was the main issue, and trying to save as many properties as we could. It was horrendous. Some people were at home, trying to defend their homes with rakes and shovels and garden hoses. Some houses we could save, some we couldn’t, and there was only so much we could do at each property before we had to move on and help others. We lost seven or eight properties in Nelligen.

“Most of the population was down at the river. They were just taking shelter and grouping together for comfort, I suppose. They were there all day on New Year’s Day, and most people were at the water’s edge on January 2nd as well. I stayed where the fire was active. I worked probably thirty-six hours. I had a couple of hours sleep and then I was back out again. The fire was flaring up every day.


“On January 4th, there was a huge flare-up, and three houses on the eastern side of the river were under major fire. Myself and another volunteer went up and down the best we could. The flames were massive. We could barely breathe, because when buildings go up there’s a lot of toxic materials, plastics and rubber and mattresses. A couple of residents were there trying to defend their own homes, but at one point we had to get them out. They were totally exhausted. It was the middle of the day, but the smoke was so thick you would have thought it was nighttime—that’s how dark the sky was. We got some aerial support from big helicopters dropping water bombs, and we did manage to save the three homes.

“Then the wind changed, so the flames were fully involved across the road, and we had to drive the truck through the fire front to get ourselves out. We were driving to stop the fire from going into the village, and we saw a TV-news team down on one of the access roads. It just was a boiling point for me. I said, ‘Are you from the media? Tell the Prime Minister to go and get fucked, from Nelligen. . . . We really enjoy doing this shit.’

“A couple of weeks earlier, the Prime Minister commented that Rural Fire Service members enjoy going out and fighting fires. He’s just got no understanding of what it’s all about. We don’t enjoy fighting bushfires and saving people’s homes. We do it because we have to. He’s got no understanding of what real people in Australia go through. And he doesn’t care anyway. Any real man would never have left the country while his country was in turmoil.

“Another part is that our government has been hamstrung over hazard-reduction burns. It’s all too political, what the Rural Fire Service can do. If hazard-reduction burns had been done over the last couple of years, the fuel loads in our forests wouldn’t be as high and the fires wouldn’t have been as severe.

“Climate change is also a real thing. It’s not something that can be fixed overnight, and the government’s got to make a stand at some stage. Scott Morrison doesn’t even believe in climate change. I don’t think he even considers that we are going through climate change. I don’t know the answers. I’m not a scientist. I don’t know how society as a whole is going to reduce emissions. We can’t just turn off fossil fuels, because if we do we’ll go back to the caveman days. These problems are complex—I understand that. But something needs to be done now, for our future generation, or there won’t be a future.

“Today, the 13th, is the first day I’ve been back at work. At the moment, I work for an air-conditioning company. Basically, from New Year’s Eve until today, I haven’t stopped. I’ve been defending homes and in between I’ve been working on my own property. We had no water, and the house was covered in black ash and soot. I had to wash it down, so, when we did get some rain, the soot wouldn’t contaminate it. I was also trying to get generators operating, get electricity, get refrigeration. Basically, I was just trying to reëstablish the services we need to live.