The LNP’s battle against the Coronavirus is also a battle for the hearts and minds of Australians. If the Prime Minister fails in winning the latter, his ability to fight and win the former will be significantly compromised. It’s evident to most that Scott Morrison is doing everything a good leader can to win this war, but as goes the law of unintended consequences, Morrison is on the cusp of losing the battle for Australia’s hearts and minds, because of the absence of reassuring battle cries.

There’s no doubt that Sunday’s late press conference revealed a Prime Minister working hard on our behalf. He worked on a Sunday, negotiated with some hard-line Labor premiers, took questions from journalists and fronted the nation. The obvious wear and tear of his schedule was more than enough reason to reject myopic claims that Morrison “bullied” the ABC’s Andrew Probyn, when Probyn attempted to dominate (and therefore bully other reporters of) the press galley. By forcing Probyn to social distance himself, so that other reporters could have a chance to do jobs. Morrison answered a bully, he wasn’t being one. It was late. Morrison was short. Probyn copped a time out, it’s time to move on.

War-time crises require war-time speeches, as much as it requires determined, and resolute, war time leaders. If the Prime Minister wants Australians to unite behind him in this war, he’ll have to do a whole lot better in communicating to Australians about why they should fight, why they need to fight, and how his plan is more than up to the fight, than he has.

Scott Morrison has the logistics right and an effective battle plan, but he needs to improve his monologues. Standard public relations speeches, based on information and procedural text-types won’t work; neither will polished, over written approval ratings twaddle. We can get all that from Government websites. What we need is more of ‘fight on the beaches’, and less of ‘stop going to the beaches’. If Morrison doesn’t do this, as was witnessed late Sunday night, he’ll come across as fighting against, rather than for Australians, and as a result he will lose the proverbial war at home.

Scott Morrison’s big mistake on Sunday, was failing to mention how the war cabinet would be going about to protect freedom. If we are indeed fighting a war, imported from Communist China, the Prime Minister’s approach in this latest news conference won’t inspire people to unite and fight against it with him. I get that the Prime Minister was probably tired. Anyone who’s been in board room meetings can sympathize, they can be mentally, morally and emotionally taxing. This is just for the meetings that succeed. Multiply this by 10 for meetings that don’t.

For all the Prime Minister has been doing, and doing very well, last night saw an unintentional emptying of more air from the already deflating national morale. The absence of any reassurance to Australians that the government will be doing everything it can, in order to protect freedoms under threat by the necessities he has already outlined, and those he said may yet need to be implemented, wasn’t a shot in the arm to the Australian public. For many, it was a right hook to the head.

To be fair, Morrison’s job isn’t easy. As has been made evident by the actions of Victorian Labor Premier, Daniel Andrews, who appears to have pulled a Benedict Arnold, agreeing to keep schools open, only today, to contradict himself and close them, in a direct rejection of the Prime Minister’s plan, including rejecting the advice from Australia’s Chief Medical officer, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy who has said that ‘the consensus view of all of the chief health officers is schools should stay open because the risk to schoolchildren from the virus was very low.’

Making the Prime Minister’s battle for Australia’s hearts and minds more difficult, are all the social media show ponies lecturing us and the Government on why keeping schools open is wrong. Some rants, I know for a fact, come from folks who don’t really care about the issues, or the kids. This is another quick opportunity to attack the P.M.

Let’s be honest, if a Labor Prime Minister had done the same as Morrison in regard to schools, the wolves howling at Morrison, would all singing his or her praises. Few on the left blinked an eyelid when Kevin07 splashed cash from tax-payers coffers on empty halls and fancy balls. It seems that as long as the situation provides an opportunity to drool for, and spill LNP blood, who cares about national unity in a time of crisis?

For the rest of us, the Prime Minister’s school plan was solid. First, it’s an optional extra for parents. Kids need stability in a time of crisis. Routine helps. Keeping the schools open – as an optional extra – when the current health advice (around the world) says it’s reasonable to do so, provides this necessary framework. Closing schools will mean that a child’s routine is disrupted, resulting in an instability in the child’s life that will need to be countered-balanced.

Arguing otherwise, without sufficient reasons to do so, only fosters more fear, more anxiety, more hysteria and harms, rather than helps Australians. Show dissent. Question the new normal, but don’t be obnoxious in doing so.

I say this as an advocate for homeschooling. Something I think Australians can do, and do well. Even without government support. Even with direct hostility from political activist groups on the left, and with having to always look down the barrel of public misconceptions about socialization. Although I support the idea of homeschooling where you can, when you can, if you can, the fact is not all parents are able to homeschool and provide the necessary stability to do so.

The idea scares the hell out of some parents. Many of whom have succumbed to arguments from anti-homeschooling teachers, who regard parents as being intellectually incapable of educating their kids at home. Never mind the fact that many of those allegedly “intellectually incapable” parents were, or may have been, schooled by those very same teachers.

The Prime Minister has a mandate from the Australian people to fight on their behalf. This includes bringing Premier’s, who may be a little too friendly with the Communist Chinese Regime, into line with the Constitution. Not letting this crisis become a means for slimy political manoeuvring.

While the war against the Coronavirus is of the highest importance, Scott Morrison must also recognize that the fight for national morale, for the hearts and minds of the Australian people, is as equally important.

Now that the Prime Minister needs Australians to step up, he must adjust his approach. He can’t just tell hundreds of thousands of Australians that they’re going to be out of work for six months, but here’s some compensation.

War-time crises require war-time speeches.

Morrison needs to rally Australians to the cause, recalling some of the adages that inspired the Anzacs to push back against the dark shroud of totalitarianism that embraced the 20^th Century.

I am confident in the Prime Minister’s ability. I am confident in Australia’s ability to unite, and fight; overcome and adapt. We’ve kept calm and carried on before, we can do so again.

First published on Caldron Pool, 24th March, 2020.

Photo by Jonathan Cooper on Unsplash

© Rod Lampard, 2020

Inciting people to rage against their neighbour in the name of the environment, or because of concerns about the climate, has been a constant part of human society’s obsession with who’s to blame for acts of God, or natural disasters.

In the pagan tribal cultures of the Americas, a bad crop meant another child sacrifice. Described by Cortez as ‘the most horrid and abominable custom; where many girls and boys and even adults, and in the presence of these idols they open their chests while they are still alive and take out their hearts and entrails and burn them before the idols, offering the smoke as sacrifice.’

In the 2^nd Century, the formidable, North African theologian, Tertullian, noted that the causes of public evils were maliciously blamed on Christians:

“…If Tiber overflows, and Nile does not; if heaven stands still and withholds its rain, and the earth quakes ; if famine or pestilence take their marches through the country, the word is, Away with these Christians to the lion!” (Apology, Chapter XL)

To which Tertullian asks where were the Christians when Pompeii was consumed by Vesuvius, or when Hannibal threatened Rome?:

“Plato tells of a tract of land bigger than Asia and Africa
together, devoured by the Atlantic Ocean. Besides, an earthquake drank up the Corinthian Sea, and an impetuous force of water tore off Lucania from Italy, and banished it into an island, which goes now by the name of Sicily. Now these devastations of whole countries I hardly believe you will deny to be public calamities…

We have not a word of complaint against the Christians from Tuscany or Campania, when Heaven shot his flames upon Volsinium, and Vesuvius discharged his upon Pompeium. Was there any worshipper of the true God at Rome when Hannibal made such havoc of the Romans at Cannae, and computed the numbers of the slaughtered gentry by bushels of rings picked up after the battle?” (Apology, Chapter XL)

Today, the darker corners of the internet bubble and hiss with the hideous use of the term “deniers”, an emotionally charged term nefariously employed as newspeak, in order to lay blame for the alleged “climate change holocaust” on anyone critical of the prevailing apocalyptic climate change hypothesis.

Add on to this the equally grotesque blame game which claims that Jews are in control of the weather.

Then there are extreme anti-Chemtrail advocates who, according to the BBC, view chemical trails in the sky as evidence of ‘a massive, secret government conspiracy to control the weather; that secret powerful groups are spraying us with chemicals to make us pliant and easy to control.’

Connected to this group are those who propose a much more plausible theory about how Governmental use of cloud seeding is affecting natural weather patterns. They’re openly questioning how much of what we’re told about anthropogenic global warming (unnatural levels greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) and man-made climate change (the suspected result of those unnatural levels), is in fact, humans trying to manipulate the climate? Or the side effects of said manipulation?

The evidence to justify such questioning isn’t hard to find. In a 2015 article for the Sydney Morning Herald, Scott Hannaford wrote about the dubious practice of cloud seeding, stating that:

“While little evidence exists to support the conspiracy theories of the Americans investing in the practice during the Cold War, the US did use cloud seeding for military purposes during the Vietnam War, according to The New York Times. In July 1972 legendary journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the US had been conducting a highly classified cloud-seeding program known as Operation Popeye on a massive scale over North Vietnam, Laos and South Vietnam to increase and control rainfall. By dumping silver iodide and lead iodide into clouds, the Americans were reportedly able to extend the monsoon season by more than a month over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, softening roads to cause disruption to military trucks using the area.”

In 2016 Business Insider reported on the much talked about Chinese Government’s use of cloud seeding to manipulate the weather in order for the Beijing Olympics to take place free of rain. Worth noting, the Communist Government has a growing Weather Modification Office, whose department, according to The Independent, ‘employs nearly 40,000 people, 3,000 of whom work with an arsenal of 7,000 cannon, 4,687 rocket launchers, and have a budget of around £50m…’

Cloud seeding involves the use of ‘rockets full of chemicals (such as silver iodide), which are launched into clouds accelerating the creation of ice crystals that eventually become rain.’ QZ.com also described the process as a ‘meteorological enema’ that can make it rain, “clearout” pollution, as well as stop rain from falling.

The ability to control where and when it rains, and when and where it doesn’t rain, raises a lot questions about climate modification’s relationship to alleged man-made climate change.

Any possible connection between chemical manipulation of rainfall via cloud seeding, and the prevailing apocalyptic climate change hypothesis seem to be dismissed by most activists. NSW Greens senator, M.P. Dr. Mehreen Faruqi typifies the general blasé response from Climate Change activists. In her appraisal of Australia’s use of cloud seeding over the Snowy Mountains, Faruqi’s main concern was for the animal food chain and how those chemicals may impact endangered species. This is despite Faruqi acknowledging that the possible dangers of cloud seeding could be catastrophic, stating ‘we don’t know the long term impacts, but we do have the lessons learnt from DDT, asbestos, CFCs and their impact.’

One would think that the launching, or adding of more chemicals into the atmosphere, when there are raging concerns about unnatural levels of chemicals in the atmosphere, is counter-intuitive.

More so when the impact of making it rain in once place, is likely to mean it won’t rain in another. Thus, any unnatural disruption of natural rainfall patterns, would have a dire impact on the environment, and forge an anthropogenic adjustment of the climate.

Ignoring the possible contribution of cloud seeding to “climate change”, and conflating climate change with global warming (by calling it a climate change emergency) is irresponsible, and dishonest. It leaves out questions about the negative impact chemical modification of the weather has on the overall climate.

It also means that political opportunists are deliberately scaring children and the vulnerable in order to impose change via the reigning hypothesis. This criticism is further buttressed by an historical pattern of blaming humans for acts of God or natural disasters, and the questionable practice of cloud seeding; to be more precise, deliberate chemical modification of the weather.

If the “doomers” are correct and apocalyptic climate change is as bad as they have prophesied, than perhaps man-made climate change is a direct result of man’s attempt to control the climate?

I agree that there’s a socio-political, geo-political, economic and environmental need to address our dependency on fossil fuels, and unnatural levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, the answer rests in a calm response, which looks to horticulture – planting trees; water storage/management, new technology and improving our understanding and use of nuclear, which, as books on climate science admit, is far more powerful (and much more cleaner) than coal.

The way forward would also include a thorough critique of the practice of cloud seeding, and its negative impact on rainfall patterns and the climate.

First published on Caldron Pool, 7th Decemeber, 2019.

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

©Rod Lampard, 2019.

Scottish Pastor, Richard Cameron, was suspended by church officials this week, until further notice, after “heckling” openly socialist, U.K. Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn, who has the potential of becoming the U.K’s next Prime Minister in the December election, was day two into his campaign trail in Glasgow, when according to The Scottish Sun, Cameron, a 60 year old Church of Scotland minister, approached the Labour leader.

Referring to Corbyn’s tartan scarf and his criticism of the United States actions against the late ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Cameron stated,

“I thought you’d be wearing an Islamic jihad scarf. Do you think the man that’s going to be prime minister of this country should be a terrorist sympathiser? Who’s going to be the first terrorist to be invited to the House of Commons when you’re prime minister?” (The Times)

Short video footage of the incident shows Corbyn surrounded by staffers, with Richard Cameron calmly approaching the Labour leader. After hearing the nature of Cameron’s questions, a clearly indifferent Corbyn and his entourage dismissed the Pastor. Turned their backs on him and walked in the opposite direction. In response, as reported by The Scottish Sun, Cameron then allegedly tells the now shuffling huddle of retreating Labour members, “Aye, you’re running away.’

Not long after the event, screenshots from Cameron’s Twitter account were spammed over the social media platform, quickly denouncing the minister as a troll, homophobic, Islamophobic, and bigoted.

Some of the tweets in question show Cameron voicing support for Israel Folau, promoting the Bible’s view on marriage, homosexuality and idolatry.

The BBC, joining the chorus of hate and manufactured rage against the pastor, falsely accused Cameron of “shouting at Corbyn.” They also appear to have scoured the minister’s posts, and replies on Twitter for alleged abuses. Digging as far back as 2016 in an attempt to further the claim that Cameron’s views were both “homophobic and Islamophobic.”

Cameron has also been relieved of duties at a local primary school, with one facilitator stating that, “Cameron doesn’t belong in the pulpit and that he’s glad Cameron will no longer be providing moral guidance to kids.”

Cameron’s questioning of Corbyn triggered a soft-doxxing of the Pastor by outraged Leftists, effectively forcing his suspension and a Church of Scotland internal investigation. Church officials have stated that Cameron’s suspension will ‘allow them to carry out an enquiry in relation to the incident which took place earlier this week and the subsequent complaints about his social media use.’

Leftists love a firebrand, as long as that firebrand is singing the Leftist’s tune. For evidence of this simply compare the open arms celebrity treatment of Leftist, activist, and Anglican Minister Rod Bower, who remains in his lofty position even after publically falsely labeling LNP M.P, Peter Dutton,  “a sodomite”  (et.al)

Cameron’s suspension and the justifications for it make a mockery of freedom, and the Scottish people.

If Cameron’s Twitter feed is any indication, Cameron seems to epitomize the fiery, blunt, straight-talking Scotsman. To punish him for doing his job as a Pastor; for being true to his vocation, isn’t just to place a gag order on the Bible, it bogs down freedom of speech, and squashes part of a cultural attribute long associated with what it means to be Scottish.

The suspension is a farce. It was led by a lynch mob on social media, and triggered by Jeremy Corbyn’s apparent inability to face uncomfortable questions from a member of the discerning public.

Cameron should be reinstated on the grounds that the actions taken against him unfairly give advantage to manipulators. It gives power to dishonest critics who turn the term “hate speech” into a weapon, and abuse others from behind a wall of anonymity, and pompous self-righteousness.

As Franklin Littell warned in 1962, anti-Christian ‘movements are the product of persecuting or corrupt, self-indulgent establishments. Soft religiosity is more of a threat to the Gospel than hard opposition.’ [i]

Cameron may need to tweak his approach to others on social media, but his example raises questions about what happens when those who are led into all truth, by the Holy Spirit (John 16:13), are by consequence, entering into direct opposition to those being led by the spirit of the age.

References:

[i] From State Church to Pluralism, p.32

First published on Caldron Pool 28th November, 2019.

Photo by Ye Jinghan on Unsplash

©Rod Lampard, 2019