Is COVID communism the New State Religion?

December 9, 2021 — Leave a comment

I am not an “anti-vaxxer.”

These five words should be a sufficient answer to any would-be accuser who states that questioning the COVID vaccines is a betrayal of medical science.

No one I know is anti-vaxxer proper.

Only a small portion of whom I’ve discussed COVID-19 vaccinations with are against vaccines.

100 percent of those people, however, are 100 percent against mandatory vaccinations of the vaccine hesitant.

Like me, they are dissenters.

Whether it be a vaccine, euthanasia, or aborting life in the womb, I am opposed to forced or coerced medical procedures.

Bar perhaps NOVAVAX, I also question all rushed, experimental COVID-19 vaccines.

I question the removal of safe-guards.

I question the offer of indemnity to big pharma, and doctors willing to jab-for-applause without consequence or compensation for malpractice.

I question the professionalism and dedication of medical professionals, who, out of fear, don’t fight a system which threatens to cancel them if they utter the words “safe and effective prophylaxis” alongside “Ivermectin,” or “HCQ and Zinc.”

Unfortunately – and somewhat ironically – facts don’t matter to a “believe the science” society with COVID-19 on the brain.

Medical bullying is becoming an acceptable social norm.

Though, I doubt, even if I surrendered doctor patient privileged information the rabid COVID collective would be satisfied.

What they want is a sacrifice. An offering. A violent initiation into their socio-pseudo-religious club.

Nothing shy of total, unquestioning commitment to their new rites and rituals will suffice.

The truth is forfeit if I don’t surrender to my abusive COVID crazy detractors.

All of whom want me to hand over to them private medical information so as to prove my allegiance to their god, before I can travel, buy, sell or earn.

Let’s call this what it is.

COVID communism.

Groupthink and conditioning via platitude propaganda are this new State religion’s liturgy and dogma.

Bad logic, based entirely on false assumptions are used by design to try and force people into complying with its dogma.

This is why those who choose to go against the stream are hit with reckless labels, vis a vis misplaced and vulgar fallacies.

The “vaccine hesitant” have good reasons for being cautious.

For starters, discernment in personal decision making is disallowed.

Secondly, due process is suspended, if not dead or on life support. For example, if you’re labelled an “anti-vaxxer,” you are what they say you are.

Thirdly, (and I’m now repeating myself) informed consent is thrown out the window.

Fourth, no one is allowed a second, independent medical opinion.

This is just the ethical reasoning for caution.

This doesn’t include medical questions about unknown long term side effects.

It doesn’t include the aggressive censorship addressed by myself and Caldron Pool in articles since governments turned the war against the virus, into a war against the people.

Another aspect are the political reasons for caution.

In 2020, Newsweek accused Democrats of “bolstering anti-vax groups.”

Newsweek described how (now disgraced) New York governor, Andew Cuomo, said he wasn’t going to trust anything from the Trump administration.

Cuomo stated,

“Frankly, I’m not going to trust the federal government’s opinion and I wouldn’t recommend to New Yorkers based on the federal government’s opinion.”

The New York Times ran a piece discussing how scientists feared compromising “rigorous regulation” in favour of “speed.”   

The NYT implied that Trump was demanding short cuts with the vaccine in order to win the 2020 election, asserting, “The longer that vaccines are tested before being released, the likelier they are to be safe and effective.”

Notwithstanding head U.S Democrat, Nancy Pelosi claiming to be COVID “vaccinated”, Pelosi is on record saying that rushed vaccines are dangerous.

The Hill noted in August, 2020 that Pelosi was critical of Donald Trump’s “rush” to towards a COVID-19 vaccine.

Pelosi accused Trump of “jeopardizing the health and well-being of the American people.”

In her defence, Leftist funded “Fact Checkers” smooth over Pelosi’s words to say they were a rejection of Donald Trump, not the vaccine.

However, when coupled with Democrat vaccine hesitancy, and leftist legacy media’s own pre-Biden presidency hesitancy, Pelosi’s “vaccine hesitancy” is self-evident.

Jump forward four months.

Post Joe Biden’s coronation, Pelosi, who has had COVID-19, is suddenly pro-COVAX.

The House Speaker isn’t beyond using the “vaccine” as a political weapon against “vaccine hesitant” Republicans.

Taking into account the ethical, medical and political reasons for vaccine hesitancy, it’s a stretch call the “vaccine hesitant”, “anti-vaxxers.”

Only a populace drugged into cheering on the deceptive socio-political oppression of Communism would stoop this low.

This new State religion is COVID communism.

Proven by the rush to implement a questionable vax, while suspending, then undermining, and denying civil liberties long guaranteed by the highest law in the land – the Constitution.

Add to this, aggressive – government sanctioned turning of neighbour against neighbour – inconsistency from politicians such as the American Democrats, and Australians like, Pat Cash hater, Peter Fitzsimmons.

Questioning the COVID “vaccines” doesn’t make me, or anyone else who shares my concerns an “anti-vaxxer.”

I’ve never been a bandwagon – jump on the latest trend to be one of the “cool kids” – kind of person.

Like others in my position, I see red flags and want to apply the scientific method to them.

I’m not against vaccinations or the vaccinated.

I’m against the bullying of others because they

a) practice more discernment in their decision making;

b) uphold informed consent;

c) see the wounded and sigh with them;

d) are COVAX hesitant for good reasons, that are falsely labelled as “anti-vaxx.”

The false labels, and double standards from those calling their “vaccine hesitant” neighbours “selfish” do so with emotion, not scientific reasoning.

Those accusing their “vaccine hesitant” neighbours of being “anti-science” better fit that description.

It’s this, juxtaposed with a lack of concern for consent, reasoned based evidence, and contempt for discernment that constantly pushes my B.S meter into the red.

What’s more, register the inconsistencies.

The very same people who scream “don’t force your religion on me,” are content to force this new State religion onto others.

If that’s isn’t the definition of selfishness and hypocrisy, what is?

First published on Caldron Pool, 31st August 2021.

©Rod Lampard; Caldron Pool.

In Australian History, Author's Note, Caldron Pool, Political Theology, Politics , , , , , , , ,
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National Day of Prayer & Repentance for Australia: Saturday 11th December 2021

December 8, 2021 — Leave a comment

Where repentance stops, inhumanity begins.

The vaccinated and unvaccinated will join together in a ‘Day of Prayer and Repentance for Australia’ on Saturday 11th December.

The Zoom event, hosted by The Canberra Declaration, is planned to kick off at 9am and finish around 6pm (AEDT).

Organisers said that despite the ‘short notice, they believe the situation is urgent.”

They add, “as such, we extend this invitation to all who are available to join in prayer for our nation.”

People can join at any time between 9am and 6pm on Saturday via the Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/776881184.

Those who cannot make the Zoom event, are encouraged to ‘pray on the day in whatever way they can, whether individually or by organising or joining a corporate event’ of their own.

The event is a call to prayer and repentance. This is a request for the ‘gift of repentance’, lamenting the downgrade of freedoms in Australia, including the erosion of values, particularly those which aim to affirm life.

Australia is fast becoming a nation of socio-political excess.

Daddy government is replacing Father God.

The termination of both the dying and the unborn is being embraced as “healthcare.”

Abortion up to birth is not just legal, but celebrated. Euthanasia is encouraged over against palliative care.  

Vicious “vaccine” mandates, excessive lockdowns and the indefensible creation of a two-tier society between the “vaccinated” and unvaccinated are symptoms of nation on the precipice of the Abyss.

Add onto this the one-eyed ideological totalitarian takeover of the academy, clergy and bureaucracy; corruption and nepotism in university, church and government.

As Jeremiah, the prophet proclaimed,

“They bend their tongue like a bow; falsehood and not truth has grown strong in the land; Everyone deceives his neighbour, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they weary themselves committing iniquity. Heaping oppression upon oppression, and deceit upon deceit, they refuse to know me, declares the Lord.” (9:3-9, ESV)

John Calvin’s admonishment of the condition of Israel in Jeremiah’s day reminds us that ‘false gods were counted as fathers and authors of salvation by the people.”

Some of the practical benefits to come from a National Day of Prayer and Repentance is unity, solidarity and equality; the putting of both citizen and Ceasar before the Lordship of Christ the King, not above it.

In his 1938 sermon, Theologian, Helmut Gollwitzer responded to the horror of Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) with a call to repentance.

He declared,

“Those who cannot admit their guilt before God can no longer do so before men and women.”

Gollwitzer then stated,

“Thus begins the insanity of persecution that seeks to make the other person into the devil in order to make themselves into a god.”

Leaving the best for last, Gollwitzer admonished the German people, saying,

“Where repentance stops, inhumanity begins; there all common bonds shatter even while one tries to strengthen them through tenacious self-justification and self-pardon.” [i]

There is no greater act of freedom and responsibility than life-changing repentance.

To be raised from a place of brokenness where we tell the world that it does not own us, because in Jesus Christ, God has graciously liberated us from the World’s false claim upon us.

The good book summons us in Proverbs 3:7-8, to live:

 ‘Not wise in our own eyes, [but] to fear [trust] the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh, and refreshment to your bones’

In the words of Jewish liturgical lyricist, R. Yehudah ha-Levi of Spain wrote in the 12th Century,

“Extract us from sin, He Who dwells in the heavens.
As the sun sets, call to those who pass through fire and water.
Next Year in Jerusalem.”

Specific Bible verses for this Saturday’s National Day of Prayer and Repentance are Numbers 14:17-19; Acts 5:31 and 2 Chronicles 7:14.

The event will coincide with, but is not connected to national #Reclaimtheline protests planned for the 12th at 11am.

People are encouraged to join The Canberra Declaration and prayer networks around Australia, for the National Day of Prayer and Repentance, any time between 9am and 6pm on Saturday via the Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/776881184.

An A4 downloadable poster has also been provided FREE for anyone interested in promoting the day, and the Zoom gathering: An Appeal to Heaven.

References:

[i] Gollwitzer, H. 1938 in Stroud, D. (ed.) 2013 Preaching in Hitler’s shadow: Sermons of resistance, Wm.B Eerdmans Publishing p.120

First published on Caldron Pool, 7th December 2021.

©Rod Lampard; Caldron Pool

In Australia, Australian History, Political Theology, Politics , , , ,
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The Physicians Declaration Vs. COVID cultism: “The political takeover of medicine & the patient/doctor relationship must end.”

December 8, 2021 — Leave a comment

A video shared by mRNA inventor, and relentless CCP-19 truther, Dr. Robert Malone, presents a major pushback against the politicisation of medicine, and healthcare, from within the medical professional community.

The original 5-minute video is watermarked with the International Covid Summit logo, and shows the outspoken doctor/scientist presenting a list of statements declaring independence from COVID-era political influences.

The yet to be published, September 12th ‘Physicians Declaration’ stated,

‘We, the physicians of the world, united and loyal to the Hippocratic Oath, recognising the profession of medicine as we know it is at a crossroad, are compelled to declare the following.’

What follows is a list of acknowledgements targeting government overreach, and the breach of the Doctor/Patient relationship.

Such as,

‘Whereas, it is our utmost responsibility and duty to uphold and restore dignity, integrity, art and science to medicine;

‘Whereas, there is an unprecedented assault on our ability to care for our patients;’

‘Whereas, public policy has chosen to ignore fundamental concepts of science, health and wellness, instead embracing a “one size fits all” treatment strategy which has led to more illness, and death than the individualised, personalised approach to health care […]’

‘Whereas, physicians are increasingly being discouraged from engaging in open professional discourse and the exchange of ideas […]’

‘Whereas, thousands of physicians are being denied the right to provide treatment to their patients, as a result of barriers […] advising their patients to simply go home and return when their disease worsens.’

‘Whereas, the above is not medicine. It is not care. We cannot sit idly while patients are forced to go home and sicken in place. These policies may actually constitute crimes against humanity.’

The declaration then takes the form of a list of resolutions, beginning with,

‘Now therefore, it is, resolved, that that physician-patient relationship must be restored […] that political intrusion into that relationship and the practice of medicine must end […] that physicians must defend their right to prescribe treatment, observing the tenet, “First, do no harm.” […]

The declaration concludes with a resolve to protect the integrity and objectivity of medical science from corruption. Then finishes with invitations to patients, physicians and scientists to join the written protest.

For clarity. Dr. Malone refers to the document as the ‘Physicians Declaration’; an apparent reference to what others are calling the ‘San Juan Declaration.’

Malone’s introduction stating that the document was formulated by physicians in Puerto Rico backs this correlation.

Whereas, his Twitter post referred to the document as the ‘Rome Declaration,’ simply because, I assume, it was presented in Rome at the International COVID Summit (Sept.12-14, 2021).

This isn’t to be confused with a declaration signed in Rome earlier this month between G20 health ministers.

G20 Health Ministers gathered in Italy early September to reaffirm a unified response to COVID-19.

In sum, the verbose G20 declaration restates each country’s determination to move from a global “COVID economy” to a global “vaccinated economy.”

The document rehashes the words “safe and effective” ad nauseum, and dedicates long paragraphs discussing buzzwords like “invest”, “coordinate” and “enhance.”

By all appearances, judging on the location, the ‘Physicians Declaration’ is every bit the medical community’s counter-punch to the G20 declaration which appears to share the same “Rome Declaration” name.

Hence the need to clarify which declaration and from whom.

The Physicians Declaration (or San Juan Dec?) isn’t the first move by medical professionals concerned about medical coercion, the hijacking of informed consent, and the irrational political takeover of the physician/patient relationship.

The Great Barrington Declaration, issued in October 2020, is a standing apolitical rejection of government heavy-handedness and government overreach.

Of particular concern is the “one size fits all,” socialist blanket* suffocating people in the name of public health. (*my terminology, not theirs).

The GBD states,

 ‘Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health…’

They add,

‘The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.’ 

With what we know about COVID-19, the GBD declares,

‘Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold.’

The GBD was authored by three Ivy League graduate Doctors, is co-signed by 43 other medical professionals, and has over 860,000 signatures.

The Caldron Pool facilitated Ezekiel Declaration aligns with both the Physician’s Declaration and the much earlier Great Barrington Declaration.

To dismiss one as extremist, is to dismiss all three with the same reactionary brush stroke.

Critics continuing to slander the recent Ezekiel Declaration as “extremist” should take note of how poorly criticisms thrown at the GBD have aged.

Alongside this, note how closely related criticisms of the Great Barrington Declaration are to those used to undermine the E.D.

Most notably is The Conversation’s ‘5 Flaws of the GDB.’

It’s author, Professor Stephen L. Archer, claimed that the GBD was wrong for suggesting that governments would be perpetually locking down citizens.

In another jab, Archer claimed that the GBD’s “rhetoric gave oxygen to fringe groups.”

He then stated that the GBD creators (all Physicians) were sacrificing the greater good on the altar of hyper-individualism.

And, the big kicker, the GBD – was supported by Donald Trump, ergo, Archer says, it is ‘naïve and dangerous’ (aka “right-wing extremism”).

Archer finishes by stating that ‘physicians and scientists must be responsible in our pronouncements and not sow mistrust of effective public health measures.’

Those plugged into the controversy over The Ezekial Declaration, won’t miss how Archer’s criticism of the Great Barrington Declaration, reads like a script for the E.Ds own dishonest critics.

Dr. Malone’s ‘Physicians Declaration’ is bound to receive similar criticisms, from the same people, playing the same tune.

WATCH:

First published on Caldron Pool, 22nd September 2021.

©Rod Lampard; Caldron Pool

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The Ongoing, Unjust Detention of Coptic Christian Activist, Ramy Kamel, is a Warning to the West

December 7, 2021 — Leave a comment

Coptic Christian and activist, Ramy Kamel is still incarcerated in an Egyptian prison.

Coptic Solidarity provided an update on Instagram early September stating,

 “Ramy Kamel’s detention was just extended 45 days. Attorney says the purpose for solitary confinement for NEARLY 2 YRS, is to break his mind, cause mental health issues, depression, disease, & ultimately suicide.”

Kamel’s case is amongst the most notable examples of Islamist persecution in the once secular state.

Over the past few decades, the Muslim Brotherhood has successfully deployed a form of lawfare against the Egyptian Christian community.

This has made Copts, who are approximately 10% of Egypt’s population, the equivalent of second-class citizens.

Caldron Pool reported on the plight of Kamel in early December 2020.

This was alongside a September piece called “Jihad of the womb” highlighting the ancient North African Christian community’s struggle for rights under the “convert, pay a tax or die”, cold shadow of Shar’ia law.

Kamel was arrested without a warrant in 2019 on what Middle East Monitor termed as “false charges.”

It’s believed that Kamel’s arrest was related to his outspoken opposition to the widespread persecution and systemic discrimination of Egyptian Christians.

21Wilberforce.org explained, ‘Kamel has been imprisoned and tortured by the Egyptian government simply because he is a religious freedom leader.’

They add,

‘On November 23, 2019, Mr. Kamel was arrested under the cover of dark, around 1:30AM. He was beaten and interrogated without legal representation at the Supreme State Security Prosecution in Cairo’s Fifth Settlement neighbourhood.

‘Just 18 days earlier, he was arrested, transferred in an armoured vehicle to National Security headquarters in Nasr City, and severely beaten and tortured. He was interrogated without legal representation in an effort to compel him to reveal his research sources, and likely to intimidate him prior to participating at the UN Forum.’

Dublin based human rights organisation, Front Line Defenders, confirmed the extension of his incarceration.

The September 6th extension is one of a least two 45-day extensions this year, ordered by Cairo criminal court.

Kamel is charged with “funding a terrorist organisation,” “defamation” and “misuse of social media.”

Front Line Defenders listed government human rights violations against Ramy Kamel as judicial harassment, arbitrary detention, raid, break-in, theft, threats and intimidation.

In a statement on their website, the organisation also affirmed a deep concern ‘regarding the continued detention and health deterioration of Kamel.’

‘We believe,’ they said, ‘he is being solely detained in relation to his peaceful and legitimate human rights activities.’

In June, Coptic Solidarity called Kamel’s continued detention and denial of fair judiciary process, ‘unjust.’

The group reasserted their support, demanding his immediate release along with the ‘dropping of all fallacious charges against him, as stated in [Coptic Solidarity’s] joint letter to Joe Biden.’

This new extension dampens earlier optimism amongst Kamel and his supporters. Many of whom are working towards ending his 20-month imprisonment, much of which has been in solitary confinement.

Although Ramy Kamel is an ocean away, his story should resonate with Westerners facing serious downgrades to their own freedoms.

Particularly in Australia, where, under COVID-19 fiats known as “public health orders”, rogue Premiers, (all seemingly enabled by a weak Prime Minister) are deploying unjust mandates, alongside anti-terrorism laws, and tactics, to sure up their power by waring against Australian citizens.

Such as the unprovoked and violent attacks against unarmed, non-violent, pro-liberty and pro-informed consent protesters in Melbourne this week, by a well-armed, militarised police force.

Another point of relevance is the pending removal of civil rights and civil liberties from the vaccine hesitant – pejoratively referred to by the “vaccinated” as “selfish” and “anti-vaxxers.”

Also noteworthy was U.S President Joe Biden and Victorian Labor leader Daniel Andrews, recent attempts to conflate the virus with the unvaccinated, forgetting the origins of the Wuhan Coronavirus, and falsely calling the crisis, “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

The “domestic terrorism” and “misuse of social media” charges against Ramy Kamel, are proof that these labels can be an easily used by abusive governments, ecclesial, and civic leaders, to squash dissent, in order to avoid accountability, reasoned opposition, and the truth.

This happened in Australia this week when political leaders (and their enablers in legacy media) employed a blatant misinformation campaign in order to twist construction workers opposing medical conscription, into “thugs,” “neo-Nazis” and “right-wing extremists.”

It won’t be long until conscientious objectors to the current COVID-19 “vaccines” are falsely labelled the same.

#FREERAMYKAMEL

#FREEAUSTRALIA

First published on Caldron Pool, 25th September 2021.

©Rod Lampard; Caldron Pool

In Political Theology, Politics , , , , , , ,
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Australian Senator’s advocacy for the wounded shames those refusing to sigh with the wounded.

November 29, 2021 — Leave a comment

If COVID-19 were a test for the Australian people, and their governments, many would have failed.

It is my working thesis that this failure is due to a conditioned contempt for, and a lack a basic knowledge about civics and biblical theology.

COVID-19 has exposed how much Australians don’t know, value, cherish or understand the liberties these fundamental foundations of a classical education not only provide, but also secure.

On the whole, responses and reactions to COVID-19 have exposed the jaw-dropping chasm between those who know the core tenets of civil liberties, constitutional rights and protections, and those who don’t.

The medical crisis, as much as the politically manufactured crisis has shown discerning voters the dire cost of ditching civics and biblical theology from educational curriculums.

What’s left is a people who prefer to be entertained, rather than educated. Many of these people have been conditioned (perhaps deceptively so) to prefer having their ears tickled, rather than taught.

When a real crisis hits, instead of the people first turning to God, the government, through a violation of vocation makes itself God, and the people turn to it.

This is why we have neighbour ready to betray neighbour at the drop of a hat, when and where big government, by way of big media, aligned with big business and big tech, tell them to do so.

Australian governments are, in general, rejecting Lex Rex.

Society is being regressed back into a system of governing where the law is an instrument of a king. His whim is law. This is moving Australians away from Magna Carta, where according to the medieval system a king – held accountable under the same laws – is an instrument of the law, not a law unto himself.

As a society we’re seeing parts of the roof cave-in. The sinister slow erasure of the foundations is the proverbial slow homicide of the frog in the pot.

COVID-19 has also been a test of Australia’s political system.

Observe how the management and mismanagement of COVID-19 has exposed areas where the Australian constitution fails to protect the governed from those in government.

Areas where the constitution failures to protect is not news to those in power. They know the gaps.

These are easy areas of manipulation via loose interpretation, and COVID-19, has evidenced that those doing the governing are not beyond exploiting it as a weapon against the governed.

Unchecked power is power corrupted.

It’s good news then that the ranks of Australian MPs and Senators taking a stand against government overreach isn’t as thin as we’ve been led to believe.

One of those is the straight talking LNP Senator for Queensland, Gerard Rennick.

In his 2019, maiden speech, Rennick called for constitutional reform stating,

‘Our constitution was designed to hold government to account by the people, yet 120 years of compromise has rendered it ineffective. It is time for COAG to hold a constitutional convention to clearly define and separate these responsibilities, with proposed changes put to a referendum. The blame game needs to end. Australians deserve accountability.’

Speaking with the Senator, he appears to share as much passion and awareness about the problems with Australia’s political system as Constitutional expert, Dr. Augusto Zimmermann.

Senator Rennick told Caldron Pool that he is “pro-quality assurance.” Constitutional reform is a pathway towards achieving better government, and a better way of governing.

However, he said, “reform wasn’t likely to happen under Scott Morrison, because the current Prime Minister isn’t interested.”

Like George Christensen, Craig Kelly, Tanya Davies, Malcom Roberts, and a growing list of others, Rennick is passionate about keeping Government in the realm of governing for the people, of the people, by the people.

Risking his political career, Rennick has proven himself to be a staunch advocate of those wounded by the COVID-19 “vaccines.”

When asked about his reasons for doing so, the Senator’s blunt reply was, “I can’t walk by the victims.”

He then discussed nonsense of State mandates, saying that “risk, when it comes to COVID-19 has never been properly defined, or debated.” Instead, we’re faced with gag orders for doctors, censorship of debate, and a one-eyed political narrative that cannot be questioned.

For an LNP party member, Rennick was refreshingly open about his views on Scott Morrison’s National Cabinet. He inferred agreement with the view that the NC was a usurpation of representative democracy. This is because decisions have been made, and are being made that exclude proper parliamentary processes.

No policy or procedure decided upon within the National Cabinet is passed onto federally elected representatives to be rigorously debated, or voted on.

With these examples in mind, COVID-19 as a test for the Australian people, and their governments, has exposed areas of significant weakness both in Australian society and politics.

The implications are a warning, as much as a condemnation of those from the leftist dominated academy, bureaucracy, right up to the cosy cloistered existence of much of Australia’s leftist oriented clergy.

Many of those in the latter category are following COVID culture. Like Australians who have been all to nauseatingly keen to embrace medical apartheid, some clergy have chosen to self-promote instead of walk with the victims of the COVID-19 “vaccines”.

Senator Rennick’s unapologetic advocacy for the wounded, shames those who, so far, have refused to sigh, or even walk with the wounded.

The next step for Australians and the Australian governments elected to govern on their behalf should be a return to civics, and civility; a back to basics return to biblical theology.

The Prime Minister must begin by putting his alleged Christian faith into action.

End the mandates, end the National Cabinet’s rule by decree, get back to constitutional democracy, and reunite the nation.

First published on Caldron Pool, 29th November, 2021.

©Rod Lampard; Caldron Pool.

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Douglas Wilson: “This isn’t about disease control, it’s about people control.”

November 24, 2021 — Leave a comment

Douglas Wilson’s latest vlog entry criticises current and pending CCP-19 mandates from overreaching governments.

The author, Pastor and theologian, gives a four-point roadmap for response.

First, people must understand that “Ceasar is not in charge of what constitutes a valid religious exemption.”

Wilson stated, “We are being led around by the nose. We are being lied to all the time.”

Hypothetically, “if a think outside the box scientist working for the CDC discovered that COVID could be treated effectively by putting Mentholaid on your upper lip. Then ran down the hallways at the CDC yelling it was over…does anybody seriously think that the people managing this pandemic would let it end like that?”

Additionally, “the chances of you ever finding out about such a treatment would be very low.”

That’s because, Wilson asserts, “this isn’t about disease control, but rather people control.”

Secondly, “since it’s becoming apparent that our ruling elites are neither one; not know how to rule and not being at all elite – it’s time for us to acknowledge the obvious, fill up the streets and just say “no.”

He offers the Berlin Wall as an anecdotal example,

“The bad guys would build a bit and wait to see what happened. Nothing happened. So, a little more went up.”

Wilson’s father-in-law who served in Germany observed, “We could have saved ourselves a whole lot of grief if we’d have just sent bulldozers in at the very first sign of a wall.”

That didn’t happen. They waited and people paid the price for not acting when it counted.

“If you wait until the wall is built; with all the guards posted, then there is now way to send in the bulldozers without starting a war.”

Third, “make a scene.” Citing Hillel, Reagan and Kennedy, Wilson asks “if not us, who? If not now, when?”

Sending a shot across the bow of ridiculous levels of censorship, overtly secretive governments, and lack of governmental transparency on COVID, Wilson argues,

“If the Aussies are starting to kick [protest], it must be pretty bad…”

Wilson added, “How many times do they get to lie and still maintain credibility? The current health establishment is about as realistic as professional wrestling is.”

For example, PCR tests not being able to differentiate between COVID and the flu (which is unprecedently almost non-existent).

Fourth, understand that numbers are the bureaucrat’s love language.

Christians may seek an exemption appealing to religious alignment.

There may be strong arguments for this, but having a strong argument “isn’t the same thing as having an argument that can get through to a bureaucrat.”

What will win is “a sufficient amount of people making this kind of argument”: “I.am.not.your.slave!”

“We ought,” said Wilson, “resist” by proclaiming “the liberties that pertain to us as free men. In Christ, we are free men.”

“Jesus is Lord, not Ceasar.”

This means, Wilson declared, “Ceasar does not get to determine what Christ has decided to give us.”

 “Ceasar is not the source of our liberties, Christ is.”

Wilson concludes: “Today’s Ceasars don’t know what to do with a comprehensive faith like the Christian that shapes and moulds slaves into free men.”

It’s genuinely bewildering that the only time some individuals and community leaders have spoken up during a time of crushing, unprecedented government overreach, is to protest against those protesting crushing, unprecedented government overreach.

Their opportunism is see-through; their selective outrage is being noted.

They need to repent and sigh with the wounded – walk with the bruised worker with as much solidarity as they afford to those hospitalised.

I’m flabbergasted, that pastors are among those manipulating people into early adoption of a medical treatment, without question. Accompanied by peer pressure, emotional manipulation and a complete disregard for conscience, and informed consent.

If your loyalty to a leader is intact, and only intact because that leader claims to be a Christian, it’s time to rethink your Christianity.

Character and substance will forever trump appearances and reputation.

This isn’t smugness. It’s fair criticism. Not only of elected and unelected leaders abusing their office, but of banal believers who confuse loyalty to Christ, with loyalty to an ideology or Caesar. 

Augustine wrote,

‘If things which are of themselves good and right ‘lose lustre’ because of general disfavour, then the love of human praise itself should be ashamed, and yield place to the love of truth.’ (City of God 5:14)

And so, I say to Christian leaders denouncing the freedom protests:

Sigh with the wounded. Ditch the self-promotion.

Jesus’ ministry involved both exorcism and healing.

Walk with worker unable to pay their bills, as much as the COVID patient stuck on a ventilator.

To quote Wilson, “Jesus is Lord, not Ceasar.”

WATCH:

First published on Caldron Pool, 30th July, 2021.

©CaldronPool; Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Australian History, Political Theology , , ,
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International Men’s Day 19th November 2021: “Better relations between men and women.” 

November 22, 2021 — Leave a comment

To paraphrase, Anti-Nazi Swiss theologian, and flawed father of five, Karl Barth,

‘Only weak men and rebellious women reject man’s God-given responsibility towards woman.’

He added,

‘‘Man can only be genuinely human with woman […]’ (CD. 3:4:166)

Refuting the radical feminism of his day, Barth painstakingly explained how the ‘strong man is not a tyrannical man’.

The ‘distinctive characteristic of the tyrannical as opposed to the strong man,’ Barth writes, ‘is that he does not serve the order of fellowship between man and woman, but makes the order serve himself.’

The tyrannical man is self-centred. He breaks with woman, betraying the order of this fellowship.

The strong man, on the other hand, is a servant-leader. He is strong because he understands his ‘masculine responsibility’ towards woman, and ‘is vigilant for the interests of both sexes.’

Man is to be a man in his relationship to woman; as woman is to be a woman in her relationship to man.

Woman is not expected ‘to make herself his slave or property.’

Albeit somewhat shaded, Barth says, this is the intent behind what was once known as chivalry.

He calls this other-centeredness the foundation of man’s life-partnership with woman. Man is for woman; woman is for man.

There should never be an exploitation of this relational order, where man is placed over against woman, or woman placed over against man.

Us with them, must never become Us vs. them.

Barth’s order of fellowship helps to explain the importance of this year’s theme for International Men’s Day.

On November 19 the world is encouraged to celebrate the beauty of man for woman and woman for man.

Recognising the importance of man’s responsibility towards woman, and woman’s responsibility towards man, sums up one of the six pillars of International Men’s Day. 

This year we focus on promoting “Better relations between men and women.” 

The goal is to ‘improve gender relations and promote gender equality not only for men but for women too.’

To paraphrase mother, and feminist Jean Bethke Elshtain’s assertion in her political tome criticising the militant mutations of feminist theory:

‘Family man and social man predates political man…the life-partnership of man for woman, woman for man, is essential in establishing the minimal foundation of human, social existence.’

The high rate of divorce illustrates how man and woman are far from perfect in resolving their differences.

This is not helped by systems that favour one over against the other.

In some cases, there is too little togetherness, and too much self-centredness.

The result is a shattered partnership where men and women become another dehumanised, cold statistic.

This goes against how man is to be for woman, woman is to be for man.

The order of fellowship frees them to be free of each other. Not free to hate each other. The richness of this fellowship liberates both man and woman.

Hence the importance of this year’s International Men’s Day theme celebrating the age-old life-giving potential of the man with woman life-partnership.

Us with them, must never become Us vs. them.

The order of fellowship, as viewed by Elshtain, and explained by Karl Barth, humanises humanity.

The strong man and reciprocating woman, as opposed to the overbearing tyrant, and his resentful victim.

Help us get the word out this coming week to support International Men’s Day!


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First published on Caldron Pool,  17th November 2021. A subsequent version was also published on Dads 4 Kids, and The Canberra Declaration. 

©Dads4kids; Rod Lampard, 2021

 

In Jean Bethke Elshtain, Karl Barth, Political Theology , , ,
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“NO pledge, NO play”: South African Cricketers told to kneel before Black Lives Matter, or else!

November 11, 2021 — Leave a comment

South African cricketers have been told by Cricket South Africa to kneel before Black Lives Matter, or face being removed from any and all future games this season.

The Associated Press reported the “NO pledge, NO play” policy, stating, CSA had ‘ordered [players to] take a knee before matches in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.’

In an official media statement issued on the 26th October, CSA declared that board members had ‘unanimously agreed to issue a directive,’ adopting what is essentially a “NO pledge, No play” policy for their ‘remaining World Cup matches.’

CSA said the decision was made after ‘concerns were raised’ about players having different views (‘postures’) ‘in support of the BLM initiative.’

This ‘created,’ they said, ‘an unintended perception of disparity or lack of support for the initiative.’

Bizarrely, after giving these reasons CSA concluded the press-release with platitudes about ‘embracing the diversity with which SA has been blessed;’ adding, CSA ‘believes this will build a new innings based on the pillars of inclusivity, access and excellence.’

Sizing up their reasoning, CSA added,

“After considering all relevant issues, including the position of the players, the Board felt that it was imperative for the team to be seen taking a united and consistent stand against racism, especially given SA’s history.”

The International Cricket Council (ICC) supported the “NO pledge, NO play” policy, stating, ‘after some teams expressed the desire to make a gesture against racism, the ICC offered all teams the opportunity to do so if they wished.”

I acknowledge a need to address past injustices and remember past injuries through a Christ-centred forgiveness – especially in South Africa’s context – but it is naïve of institutions to accommodate, appease and adopt a one-eyed, human-centred response to the sin of racism.

The CSA’s “gesture against racism” should be read as demanding players (of all shades of melanin) fall in line with Black Lives Matter Incorporated’s Marxist groupthink.

CSA’s ‘directive’ requiring players to think the same, and fight racism in the same way, contradicts their assertions about being “for diversity.”

What’s further, “NO pledge, NO play,” is fascism and socialism proper.

There is no room for dissent, creative solutions, and informed consent – only total obedience to the cult and its narrative.

This was perfectly illustrated by the pressure put on former Captain, South African cricket star Quinton de Kock, who immediately refused to comply with the mandate.

CSA said in response,

“The Board’s view was that while diversity can and should find expression in many facets of daily lives, this did not apply when it came to taking a stand against racism.”

De Kock later back-peddled after the Cancel Culture brigade and left-wing global media coverage shamed the cricketer into capitulating.

Note the “NO jab, NO job” connection, “NO pledge, NO play” share.

CSA’s bizarre decision sits in the same sphere as Australia’s forced medical procedure mandates.

I’m referring here to Scott Morrison’s questionably unconstitutional, National Cabinets’ “NO jab, NO job,” obsession with – what can rightly be called – the virtue signal vax.

Regardless of how harmless the ‘gesture’ looks, CSA’s decision to force its players to genuflect to Black Lives Matter, whilst contextually understandable, is not anti-racism, it is straight-up idolatry.

“NO jab, NO job” is Cancel Culture on steroids, the same applies to “NO pledge, NO play.”

First published on Caldron Pool, 5th November 2021.

©Caldron Pool, Rod Lampard, 2021

In Political Theology, Politics , , , , , , ,
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Courage Culture (Literal Hat Tip)

November 10, 2021 — Leave a comment

Literal hat tip to Courage Culture, Dr. Stephen Chavura (whose surname I mispronounce on a regular basis.) and Renee. Grab yours from https://courageculture.square.site/

RELATED READING:

Australian Academics Take Aim At Cancel Culture

Cancel Culture Can Only Be Stopped By Courage Culture

Karl Marx’s Promethean Monstrosity Is a Mass Murderer

In Caldron Pool, Political Theology, Politics , , , ,
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11.11.18 #2021

November 10, 2021 — Leave a comment
In Australia, Australian History
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EU Representatives expose Culture of Silence on Vaccines, Big Pharma Deals & Vaccine Mandates

November 9, 2021 — Leave a comment

There were encouraging signs from Europe last week when at least four Members of the European Parliament (MEP) went rogue and publicly rebuked the European Union’s COVID-19 passports.

Speaking for the group, at a news conference in Strasbourg, Romanian MEP Cristian Terheș said,

“We were elected by the people, but we should not forget that we are elected here for the people…”

Terhes, a member of European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECRG), admonished EU parliamentarians for claiming to be a beacon of the Democratic process and procedure, whilst it failed to uphold informed consent, be transparent about “vaccine” mandates, and reveal important information regarding “vaccine” deals made with big pharma.

“Have you told these people in the parliament when you decided to strip their fundamental rights why you have done it? You see we have all this treaty – as my colleague said – no medical treatment should be imposed on you, unless you decide about it, freely, and under informed consent.”

He called the “vaccine” passports (known as Green Certificates) “a violation of freedom.”

The people, Terhes argued, have no informed consent, they don’t get to choose “what they want to be vaccinated with or tested with.”

“There’s another aspect to this,” he continued. “The question that is addressed not only to you in the parliament, but to every European citizen. Ask your own government, were you properly informed about what is going on?”

The rebel MEP Romanian said,

“We had a lot of debates at the beginning of this year in the parliament where we demanded full access to the contracts signed between these companies that produce the vaccines and the European union.”

What they got in return, Terhes explained, was “redacted format, after the [pharma] company agreed to open the contract to scrutiny.” (According to Terhes this was only after the company was pressed hard on the matter.)

Terhes then applied the heat to the puzzling Big Pharma response.

“So, you’re imposing a medical product on the European citizens without them knowing what’s in this contract? Not only them knowing, but we don’t know [either].”

Holding up the redacted report, which had sentences, and some pages completed blacked-out, he said,

“You tell me if this is okay for the European citizens to be exposed to? This situation, where they cannot come to work. They cannot enter a store. They cannot go with their kids to schools; where they cannot freely move from one country to another [un]less [someone] is vaccinated with one of these products.” 

He added, “You call this transparency? […] Why aren’t they open with the people and full transparent, so we all know what is going on?”

It’s pertinent that a Romanian representative is one of the few speaking out against the infringement on human rights.

Romanians, like all Eastern European countries, who lived like slaves under the Marxist heel of the Soviet Socialist Empire, have first-hand experience with organised state thuggery, and its inhumane, elitist despotism.

Speaking from this context, Terhes stated, 

“The difference between tyranny and democracy is very simple. When the government knows everything about you, that’s tyranny. When you know everything about your government that’s democracy. I know how it is to live in tyranny.”

On behalf of the breakaway dissenters opposing “vaccine” passports, and “vaccine” mandates, he asserted,

“We are here for you and we will fight for you. I know many of you are struggling all across Europe, and many of you working for the European institutions are struggling right now, but look, as a former U.S. president said, ‘freedom liberty is one generation away from extinction.’ We live that type of time right now. It’s our duty, and our call to fight for liberty.”

The press conference was downplayed by Reuters in a Fact Check.

They took more effort in telling the world that only a “small” number of MEPs voiced opposition to “Green certificates” (a digital COVID certificate), than reporting on what was actually said, and why the members said it.

It’s of little wonder legacy media press, seemed unimpressed.

Loud and proud, VICE has labelled Cristian Terhes a “homophobic conspiracy theorist.”

In 2019, the leftist rag called him ‘one of the most dangerous new MEPs in the European parliament’, after his election in 2019.

VICE’s big problem with Terhes is that he’s a Christian, a politically conservative social reformist, and a (‘non-leftist’) Social Democrat, who openly opposed to the 2SLGBTQAAI+ ideology, particularly same-sex “marriage.”

Terhes is also a member of the centre-right, Christian Democratic National Peasants’ Party, re-founded after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.

Marking the event, he posted on Twitter, “EU citizens’ rights are severely violated by the Digital Certificate. We will fight for your right to freedom, which has to be restored in the EU!”

In an October 22nd press release, Terhes called on Europeans to stand up to “any government trying to take away freedom, civil rights and liberties!”

He condemned the misuse of “vaccine” passports, stating,

“What we have seen in this crisis is that civil rights and liberties have been transformed from fundamental rights to privileges that governments grant or revoke as they see fit.”

Terhes, and those who stand with him, understand that civil liberties are being replaced with “prisoner privileges.”

The government is using the threat of losing those privileges to force compliance with a “fall-in, line-up, goose-step in unison and salute, or else,” Globalist prison.

Like Communist China, privileges will be issued on the basis of someone’s social credit score. Rights will be rationed out by degrees of loyalty to the regime, and its ideology.  

One recent example of this is a push from The Greens in Australia to replace free speech, with what they call “fair speech.”

This all sounds “nice,” until you read the fine print. They get to decide what’s fair and what’s not.

Governed by the fickle whim of the ruler, not the rule of common law, compliance will win the public lesser restrictions, not more freedoms.

Cristian Terhes speaks for a growing number of people who see how important it is to distinguish between doing the “right thing” and doing what’s “nice.”

Popularity, as AW Tozer once wrote, does not always equate with excellence. Being good is often not the same as being nice.

If honest, common-sense politicians, along with a strong majority fail to seize the day and oppose these mandates, the propaganda, and the nonsense Public Health Orders, history, when it recalls this era, will tremble at the sound of that silence.

Just as we do, when we recall Winston Churchill’s reprimand of those, who with blind obedience, assisted in the rise of stoppable tyranny.

In his “Iron Curtain Speech” Churchill stated, there never was a war easier to prevent than World War Two,

“I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention […] no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool. We surely must not let that happen again.”

Once this corrupt political hegemony is through with those of us standing against the gathering storm, they’ll come for the cosy, middle class privileged lifestyle that the silence of many is trying to protect.

To repurpose Churchill’s words,

“Our difficulties and dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to them. They will not be removed by mere waiting to see what happens; nor will they be removed by a policy of appeasement.”

WATCH:

First published on Caldron Pool, 2nd November 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Political Theology, Politics , , , , , ,
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Professor of Public Ethics: The vaccine hesitant are as evil as Climate Change “Deniers”

November 3, 2021 — Leave a comment

In the strong chance you’re not keeping up to date with mad Leftists and their steady game of pin the tail on the oppressor, there’s a new kid on the chopping block.

As trendy as “right-wing extremism” or “white supremacism” was, threats to national security now include anyone who chooses to question, think through the science, practice informed consent, and make their own health decisions.

The vaccine hesitant are inching closer and closer to the cancel culture guillotine.

Both groups, Hamilton explained, are “science deniers.”

Cheering on the deaths of COVID-19 victims who weren’t vaccinated, Hamilton pins his hopes on the vaccinated politicising the suffering of others as examples that would force “COVID and Climate change science deniers wake-up.”

Hamilton repeatedly labels the vaccine hesitant as “anti-vaxxers”, writing,

“Climate change deniers make comparable claims to “anti-vaxxers.” Prone to “conspiracist ideation”, many anti-vaccination activists appear to believe Covid-19 is a hoax.”

A bizarre claim considering that many of those who are vaccine hesitant, are not traditional “anti-vaxxers.”

(Many of them, much like myself and my family are all up to date with tried, tested and common-sense vaccines.)

The vaccine hesitant simply choose to practice more discernment in their decision making.

They also see-through government sanctioned propaganda, and as such, are less likely to respond to any conditioned reflexes built into subsequent groupthink.

They see a growing chasm between fact and fiction, due in large part to the inconsistency, conflict, and censorship, all of which hinders an honest presentation, and reading of the scientific data.

Rather than winning out against the vaccine hesitant, Hamilton reinforces reasons for being so.

For example, if his use of logical fallacies weren’t enough, falsely accusing ‘COVID and Climate deniers’ of evasion tipped the bucket.

He argued that they resort to saying they’re only asking questions when they’re ‘cornered.’

The prized insight within Hamilton’s piece is found in what it reveals.

When we’re told to “shut-up” and “follow the science,” what we’re really being told is, “fall in line with ideological propaganda, or else!”

Asking questions is a crucial part of applying the scientific method.

What Hamilton does is inadvertently admit there is no room for dissent.

He appears to be guilty of denying the science, while accusing others of doing the same.

For instance, on the basis of risk, he conflates women taking the “pill” with the COVID vaccines.

This is without concern for qualifying how the two are vastly different.

Which is tantamount to saying that humans are related to Chimpanzees by a 98.6% correlation, without stating that the 1.4% differences in the hit into the double-digit millions.

Here are five observable reasons why Hamilton’s “pill”/COVID vax equivalence is misleading:

First, informed consent. No woman is forced to take the pill, on threat of losing their job.

Second, the long-term data is in on the “pill.” Assessing long term data on the global COVID ‘vaccine trial’ is still a work-in-progress.

Third, there are confirmed deaths, unconfirmed deaths, and a consistent pattern of health problems associated with the vaccines. Such as heart inflammation, balls palsy, and blood clotting.

Fourth, if women were having the same reactions to the pill, as some people are experiencing with the vaccines, the pill would have been pulled from the market.

Fifth, the pill is specific, targeted and measured out proportionally. A stark contrast to the ham-fisted, arrogant rush associated with the COVID vaccines.

Forcing a vaccine onto healthy people, many of whom have a 0.003% chance risk of dying from COVID-19 is non compos mentis.

Lastly, Astra Zeneca admits the potential for long-term negative health problems, and has sort to indemnify their company against long term adverse effects.

In July, Reuters reported that ‘AstraZeneca had been granted protection from future product liability claims related to its COVID-19 vaccine’ by countries AZ has signed distribution deals with.

Almirall board member, and Astra Zeneca EVP Ruud Dobber, was quoted as saying,

 “This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in … four years the vaccine is showing side effects.” 

Add onto this the Australian National Cabinet (as opposed to the suspended elected representative parliament) implementing a “no-fault indemnity scheme for GPs to administer AZ.

It doesn’t take a genius to quickly identify Hamilton’s bias and reveal the poor quality of Hamilton’s argument.

After taking shots at Tony Abott, and Craig Kelly, he then refers to freedom rally demonstrators as ‘far-right anti-vaxx and anti-lockdown’ protesters; and caps this with a clear contempt for The Australian and ‘Murdoch Media.’

Hamilton’s hysterics taint his attempt to criticise vaccine hesitancy.

What we’re left with is a rant, not a reasoned argument.

For all the vitriolic claims about ‘anti-vaxxer and climate change deniers’ all being nut-cases and conspiracy theorists, Hamilton is guilty of his own tin-foil hat nonsense.

His theory – which isn’t backed by anything other than ‘it’s been widely documented’ – claims that Republicans, and fossil fuel industries have been working together to undermine ‘climate science since the 1990s.’

Hamilton states, ‘operatives developed arguments and political strategies,’ so as to ‘cast doubt on climate science.’

This, he asserted, created a culture of doubt, which has, ‘since 2010, taken root in right-wing political culture.’

Hamilton’s “hate speech” doesn’t serve science, it’s typical cancel culture, agitprop nonsense.

One would think that a Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University would carry himself, and his argument a whole lot better.

I suspect Hamilton would fully embrace both Joe Biden, and Daniel Andrews’ “pandemic of the unvaccinated” propaganda, welcoming it as an excuse is to paint people as the virus, advocating for their eradication.

Based on his reckless use of the word “denier,” that’s a fair assessment.

Hamilton demonises an entire group of people, in order to defend his belief in the COVID and Climate Catastrophising cultism.

The bitter irony of his callous Holocaust reference appears to go over his head.

Hamilton and others would do well to heed recent comments made ‘Outsiders’ host Rowan Dean,

“Once the authorities have decreed that there are two classes of people in Australia, the good, and the bad; that one class is superior to another and gets special privileges while the other class is shunned, locked out, vilified and loses their employment you have, by definition created an inferior class.”

“For which the Germans,” Dean adds, “once coined as Untermensch (under/inferior person). If that word brings a chill of horror to your hearts, so it should!”

One of the great benefits of the internet age is that any halfwit with access to the internet, and reliable sources can see straight through the delusion tacked onto COVIDism.

I have to back-handily thank Clive Hamilton and the Guardian for doing a great job of reminding me, why myself, and many others, will continue to resist the vitriolic COVID cultism of climate change catastrophisers.

It would seem that now New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian has stopped her COVID crisis press conferences, legacy media are back to their regular programming.

The political narrative appears to matter more to them than the science.

All vaccines should be chosen by individuals on merit, not the power of their apparent virtue, threats or coercion.

Substance will always, ALWAYS trump appearances.

It’s not “anti-vaxx,” Clive. It’s common sense.

In case you missed it, “Anti-vaxxer” is the new “that’s racist.“

First published on Caldron Pool, 15th September, 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Political Theology, Politics , , , , ,
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Popular Australian cartoonist axed for criticising mandatory vax

November 2, 2021 — Leave a comment

Michael Leunig, poet, satirist and artist, has been axed by Australian left-wing newspaper, The Age, after violating the sanctity of COVID cultism.

Leunig’s chief crimes were doggedly questioning the use of force to impose unwanted – and based on COVID’s 99.9%+ survivability rates for the majority, unnecessary – medical procedures on Australians.

One viral violation consisted of him portraying protesters opposing the rape of medical autonomy by government authoritarianism with the sole protester who opposed the 1989 convoy of PLA tanks, used by the Chinese Communist Party to squash pro-freedom rally protests in Tiananmen Square.

Michael Smith News cited Leunig telling The Australian’s Media Diary, ‘Purge is a word that comes to mind […] Apparently, I’m out of touch with the readership.’

Smith said, Leunig defended the cartoon, arguing,

“The Tiananmen Square image is often used in cartoons around the world as a Charlie Chaplin-like metaphor for overwhelming force meeting the innocent powerless individual. In my view, it is a fair enough issue to raise in the most locked-down city in the world.”

The Daily Mail explained the image in question was first posted to Leunig’s Instagram page in September, after it had been rejected by editor, Gay Alcorn.

Criticisms of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews also feed into the ersatz blasphemy charge.

Leunig’s support for life, light and liberty have broken taboos on criticising the church of COVID and its corrupt cultic priesthood.

According to Smith, Leunig said he’s had “12 cartoons censored this year, “all about Covid and/or Dan Andrews, with next to no explanation.”

Rebel News gave examples, stating, ‘When the cartoon emerged, it caused a storm of controversy on Twitter where the #IStandWithDan hashtag filled with condemnation.’

One smack-talking Twitter user whined,

“This Leunig cartoon is grotesquely offensive. To compare the plight of anti-vaxxers to that of a man whose fate remains unknown, 30 years on, is just appalling.”

With another user flapping,

‘Leunig is no longer being published in @theage because his anti-vaxxing views could not be tolerated in the middle of a pandemic – even by The Age which says a lot. It does make me happy though that Leunig seems to believe the #IStandWithDan crowd are the reason he’s been booted.’

News.com confirmed that Leunig has been axed for questioning the mandatory vax.

“Leunig has been taken off the newspaper’s prized Monday editorial page position — not long after his Tiananmen Square cartoon emerged and stoked outrage from Daniel Andrews fans.”

Michael Leunig is an Australian icon. He’s been ‘declared a national living treasure by the National Trust and awarded honorary degrees from La Trobe and Griffith universities and the Australian Catholic University for his unique contribution to Australian culture.’ (Biography)

Leunig was a darling of the Left when he opposed the post-9/11 “war on terror” invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

In true leftist style, it would seem that the artist has been dropped by the Left, for applying the same loveable sharp-eye of accountability to those on the Left.

This is yet another remarkable testimony to the insidious power of cancel culture, and the danger it poses.

When the only allowable opposition is what the Left approves as opposition, we are no longer dealing with reasoned debate, but a manufactured narrative, and its badly constructed religion.

To quote Albert Camus,

‘Facts are facts. Whoever says that the sky is blue when it is grey is prostituting words and preparing for tyranny […] There is room for nothing in Stalinist culture except for edifying sermons, colourless life, and the catechism of propaganda.’ (Essays)

First published on Caldron Pool, 27th October 2021

© Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Art, Australia, Australian History, Political Theology, Politics , , , , , , ,
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Pro-surfer health nut, Kelly Slater Labelled an Anti-vaxxer for Defending Informed Consent

October 28, 2021 — Leave a comment

Another pro-health professional athlete has been defamed as an “anti-vaxxer” after defending informed consent.

The latest tussle occurred on Instagram when pro-surfer Kelly Slater  defended Australian surf life-saving legend, Trevor Hendy who had voiced opposition to “vaccine” mandates on a “get vaxxed” promotion posted by Summer of Surf.

Slater responded to an analogy used by Australian Ironman champion Matt Poole, who criticised Hendy by comparing not being “vaccinated” with jumping into rip-tides.

Slater told Poole his ‘analogy made no sense’, arguing,

‘If I know the risks (informed consent) and I judge the choice to be one that benefits/hurts me based on the stats and info, and my ability (health), I can choose accordingly. If something happens to me, it’s on me, not on anyone else. Your argument is false equivalence. Apples and oranges.’

Making a distinction between health and medicine, Slater added,

‘This is clearly a disease of the obese, unhealthy, and elderly. If you study the official statistics. And for people saying listen to the doctors, I’m positive I know more about being healthy than 99% of doctors. Most of my COVID info comes from directly doctor friends, many of them in disagreement with the official ‘science.’

The 49-year-old American world surfing champion talked about friends who’d had horrible reactions to the vaccines, writing that his mum was one of those ‘underreported stats.’

Despite a large number of comments from social media users thanking Slater for speaking out, legacy media coverage only drew attention to pats on the back for Poole’s pro-CCP-19 vax evangelism.

Fox Sports (apparently more dazzled by Poole’s girlfriend Tammy Hembrow, than COVID facts) labelled Slater’s comments a “bizarre vaccine rant,” painting the surfing legend as “coming from nowhere to continue to promote his so-called pro-choice agenda.”

RT news wasn’t much different. They band wagoned the “anti-vaxxer rant” tune, but to their credit, RT at least gave Slater a fair hearing.

7News was more subdued, but mocked Slater, ripping the context out of his comments by failing to first acknowledge Slater’s reasoned argument. Secondly by failing to uphold his distinction between knowledge about health, and knowledge about medicine.

Yahoo Sport joined them calling Slater’s reply to Poole, “slightly ridiculous,” while accusing him of “pushing Coronavirus misinformation.”

Far-left political activists, “Right-Wing Watch” added Kelly to their list of “anti-vaxxer” ‘worst offenders,’ telling Kelly to line-up, goosestep in unison and salute, ‘instead of adding to the polarisation of the vaccine debate.’

Of the many who agreed with Slater, one user said, ‘Informed consent, not coercion.’

Another wrote, ‘I liked it better when we weren’t forced to take an experimental drug to do normal, everyday things. It’s a shame everywhere I look I’m being bullied to do something I don’t want to do; and [I’m] a little upset I’m seeing it here too.’

In response, Summer of Surf clarified “not forcing, just asking for everyone’s help.”

Slater’s replies received no legacy media love, so here’s a sampling to good not to be shared:

This isn’t the first clash Slater’s had with his peers or the COVID priesthood in the media.

The Daily Mail claimed in June that Slater was forced to defend himself when users reacted to a comment on an unrelated CCP-19 article about a ‘father who was proud after stinking up a toilet,’ on Australian satire site The Betoota Advocate.

Slater simply wrote, “Dads have no shame.”

As DM recounted, this was enough for one man to write,

‘’Aren’t you the fella who shares anti-vax nonsense on social media? Seems like you have no shame either.”

Slater fired back,

‘Why does this account always end up with these triggered, b***y people who can’t take a joke? And second, I’m not anti vax. I’m anti mandating medical procedures.’

He then said,

‘It hasn’t been studied long enough to know long term cons. A friend’s dad also died a couple days after getting it from blood clots, so there’s that. Think I’ll wait for the antibodies naturally if I get covid.’

This tripped a pack attack with haters rolling in to mock, smear and ridicule the surfing legend, because “science.”

Key findings about COVID published by Sydney University in June, appear to back Slater’s defence of informed choice.

‘Overall population-wide risk of death after the diagnosis of a COVID-19 infection was 4 percent.’

In other words, a 96% likelihood a person will survive, with a 4% chance of dying.

Additionally,

‘COVID-19 mortality risk was 40 percent for the elderly (90+), 10 times the population-wide risk.

  • 32 percent COVID-19 mortality risk for people in their 80s
  • 14 percent COVID-19 mortality risk for people in their 70s
  • 3 percent COVID-19 mortality risk for people in their 60s
  • Less than 1 percent COVID-19 mortality risk for people in their 50s or younger.’

What’s the point of forcing a medical procedure onto the public?

This data raises a number of questions about the purpose of “no jab, no job,” alongside lockdowns and segregating the population along a vaxxed, unvaxxed line.

This suggests that inept governments, acting on the “health” advice of bureaucratic “health advisors,” are deliberately making us unhealthy in the name of protecting public health.

The facts do not support the fantasy or the fear porn.

Public health orders, are creating a public health crisis.

Original exchange:

POOLE:

SLATER:

Related reading:

Australian Tennis Legend: “Government Doctors Are on the Payroll, Be Wary of What They Preach”

©Rod Lampard, 2021

In Political Theology, Politics , , , , , , , ,
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Polish MPs Blast Australian Governments for Breaches of Human Rights

October 27, 2021 — Leave a comment

A 14-minute video circulating social media shows Polish MPs protesting outside the Australian embassy in Warsaw, labelling COVID-19 Australia a quasi-Democratic nation.

Lead protester, and former president of Classical Liberal group, KoLiber, M.P. Jakub Kulesza stated,

“What is happening in Australia cannot be called democratic. Australia has contracted COVID madness. Australian police oppress, harass and attack peaceful citizens depriving them of their fundamental freedoms.”

He asserted that “continued heavy lockdowns were totalitarianism,” arguing that “these drastic measures have led to record increases in infections, showing that drastic restrictions do not make sense.”

Kulesza provided a long list of examples, including curfews, 5km limits, “stay-at-home” orders, medical conscription, and the promise of some freedoms being restored on October 11th, for citizens who’ve complied by taking the COVID vaccines, stating,

“This will divide citizens between better and worse. This is how totalitarianism is born. These are not conspiracy theories […] How much freedom has been lost in Australia can be seen in how the police, with great brutality suppress protests, and aggression against citizens.”

He continued,

“We want to warn the people of Poland, and prevent it from happening here. [We don’t want to see] our government follow the example of Australian authorities, and here [in front of] the Australian embassy we are protesting against such behaviour.”

Another M.P. stepped up to add,

“People aren’t protesting because they’re bored. It would be absurd to not protest having their freedoms taken away […] In terms of lockdowns were are dealing with the manipulation of data and the manipulation of the number of tests done. The more lockdown laws were introduced, the less effective it was.”

One M.P. asked,

 “What is happening in Australia? […] “We cannot sleep. It maybe on the other side of the world, but we should nevertheless realise that if we don’t protest now; if we don’t publicise the disturbing situations, perhaps we will have these sorts of situations in Poland. Where you can be jailed at home, and so we expose this murderous style [of governance] growing in Australia.”

He then said, “Here I hope that our leadership decides to condemn what has happened [in Australia]. We will not be replicating what is happening there, here in Poland.”

A third M.P demanded, “we do not want Melbourne in Warsaw. Do not try to bring that totalitarianism here to Poland. We demand that Australia stop these practices immediately, with an immediate return to Human Rights and civility.”

He asserted,

“Australia has unsubscribed herself from the International Community; the community of civilised nations. We therefore demand that the Warsaw Government condemn what is happening in Australia. We are also ready to rush help and legal aid to organise the evacuation of Polish dual citizens, as refugees from the People’s Republic of Melbourne.”

One of the few to report on it so far, Harry Richardson, editor of Australian Libertarian online news site The Richardson Post, described the potentially viral video as ‘rather crudely translated.’

‘But,’ he added, ‘the level of disgust these Polish MPs share for the totalitarian bastardry being shown by the Victorian police in particular, is crystal clear.’

Unsurprisingly, Australian Legacy media appear aloof, and uninterested in politicians from the former Communist bloc nation, warning about Australia’s downgrade of civil liberties, and civil rights, particularly in Victoria.

WATCH:

First published on Caldron Pool, 3rd October 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Political Theology , , , , , ,
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COVID-19 required a scalpel, government used an axe

October 26, 2021 — Leave a comment

Like many Australians, my wife and eldest daughter are being forced to get “vaxxed” in order to keep their jobs and successfully finish two years of study.

They are victims of totalitarianism, and I’m as mad as hell about it.

By forcing our hand, the Government has turned my family’s strong opposition to totalitarian anti-covid measures, into a fight for survival.

The Government is forcing our hand because like a large number of Australians without land of their own, we can’t refuse the vax, then “live off the land”.

Additionally, sacrificing jobs for the “cause” would mean no reimbursement for holidays or long-service owed, no chance of future employment.

It would also mean being held back from receiving government support, because they are deemed “able to work, but unwilling to do so.”

We lean hard on our faith, and could live on beans, rice and fickle charity, but we’d be living without shelter while doing so.

We could lean on family, if we had family that we could lean on without being a burden to them.

For me, being force out of a job means being forced back into the abusive generational welfare cycle I’ve spent my entire working life trying to liberate my family from.

This would be a soul-crushing move back into total government dependency.

Even then any fall-back onto the Australian taxpayer would until the pre-requisite for Centrelink became “no jab, no pay” (a policy implemented by the “the vax is voluntary” hypocrites in the current government back in 2016. One that very well could be extended to the COVID-19 “vaccines”).

In effect, my family would have been forced out of work. Only to find ourselves being forced into getting “vaccinated.” In order to keep welfare payments, we were forced to become dependent on.

Unlike the majority, my family are being forced to be “vaccinated” not so that we can maintain a lifestyle, but so that we can stay out of the welfare cycle. 

Since August, when the subjective Education decrees were issued, we’ve agonised over our response to the current regime’s abuse of power.

After the New South Wales Supreme Court loss last Friday, we were hit with the urgency of having to redraw the line in the sand.

We were forced to establish a new frontline.

It was either do this, or face becoming totally dependent on an authoritarian government, who are already walking all over us, with their blitzkrieg fanatical takeover of medical autonomy.

My wife and daughter have no choice.

As Bob Cotton’s recent Caldron Pool piece spectacularly illustrated, there is zero informed consent at play here. The government, with the support of big media, and a gullible public, have made it so.

There is no way to maintain the same level of resistance. So, our non-compliant approach has to change.

Non-compliance is not new to us. It began for me in resisting an abusive father and the generational welfare cycle – one which is not much different to the authoritarianism we’re seeing today.

I was the first in my family and extended family to finish high school and attain the Higher School Certificate, and latter a college degree.

This divergence from the dysfunctional norm culminated in the revolution of baptism.  It manifested in getting married young, staying married and having five kids.

This non-compliance made me few friends, when managing a Christian bookshop for over a decade, I preferred to recommend customers buy Keith Green, not Joel Osteen.

This lifestyle of non-compliance resonates throughout my family’s 12-years of homeschooling.

My point is, for those in the same position as my family, there are many tones, shapes and paths to non-compliance.

In the current climate, every vaxxed, forced-to-be-vaxxed, unvaxxed and never-will-be-vaxxed, “Hell, no!” to the current authoritarianism matters.

There’s little chance of victory if the unvaxxed are discouraging and demoralising those who are forced to get vaxxed into not participating in both prayer and protest, because the unvaxxed entertained the sin of self-righteous posturing.

We can’t play the same segregation game. If we do all is lost. Faith in the face of oppression involves sighing with the wounded, not self-promotion.

In other words, people shouldn’t be forced ti drop-out and give-up because some drop-kick told you that being “vaxxed”, “unvaxxed”, or being forced into getting the “vaxx” somehow disqualified them from participating in pro-freedom prayer and protest.

Every “hell, no!” matters.

The rape of medical autonomy by an authoritarian power who has no checks or balances, doesn’t bode well for ALL Australians.

Nothing’s changed in regards to me and my family’s convictions.

I’ve given my all to this fight, and I’ve been doing so since at least March last year via Caldron Pool. (See my piece dated March 2020: ‘Are oppressive totalitarian measures necessary in order to fight against coronavirus?’)

I’d much prefer being in a better position to oppose this madness. Despite how much we’ve prayed, asking God to power alternatives, we’re not able to continue resisting responsibly.

I’ve made and continue to make sacrifices, turning up, even if, and when haters attack, or people simply just don’t tune in.

Another household family member is currently without work because she’s not “vaccinated”.

COVID-19 required a scalpel, government used an axe!

I take no pride in the “vaccines” or being forced down this pathway. I detest the slimy smiles from politicians, who, accompanied by TV Doctors, boast about their smoke and mirror schemes.

The Australian Prime Minister is the worst of the lot. Scott Morrison had the chance to be a statesman, he chose middle-management instead.

To quote Pauline Hanson’s astute summary,

‘Scott Morrison is impotent…He’s too gutless to admit the Constitution forbids the Commonwealth from authorising civil conscription with respect to medical services, so he lets the states and territories trample all over our right to choose, take away our jobs, separate our families and isolate our communities.’

One of the greatest lies imposed on the Australian people by Scott Morrison is his assertions that the Covid-19 vaccines are voluntary.

My family and I had every hope that the NSW supreme court would reject the vaccine mandates and uphold the Australian constitution’s ban on medical conscription. When the aloof, government appointed, Justice dismissed the cases, we had to respond with plan B.

While some of us are being forced into getting the “vaccination,” we don’t do so quietly. By sticking with a policy of responsible resistance we are still acting in a way that honours God.

This means acknowledging, as I have above, our limitations, and fighting back within our means.

Thus, being capable of fiercer non-compliance because we’ve regrouped and closed a few fronts we were no longer capable of fighting on.

We do this in the full knowledge that for those living under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, what looks like defeat, can be the birth of a greater victory.

First published on Caldron Pool, 26th October 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Family, Political Theology , , , , , , ,
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Parenting in the “Apocalypse”: Why Kids matter more than their Carbon Footprint

October 25, 2021 — Leave a comment

Emily Holleman a writer for The Cut, – part of New York Magazine’s ‘One Great Story’ section – recently condemned bearing children in the age of the “apocalypse,” selfish.

Holleman’s reflection on anxiety and personal loss in a time of uncertainty is the better part of what becomes an environmentalist “sermon”.

An autobiographical piece, the article describes a grieving, displaced woman, who sees her ‘pandemic pregnancy’ as another nail piercing in an unwanted cross. Her self-indulgent rant against parenthood, is bent into a twisted concoction of hope, and hopelessness – life and death.

The illustrative sermon deploys the dogma of the Green social gospel.

“Catastrophic climate change,” drags down an otherwise thought-provoking story of pregnancy, and married life.

For her,

‘Having a child in a developed nation is among the most environmentally unsound decisions you can make — a baby born in the United States adds another 58.6 tons of carbon to the atmosphere per year.’

Presumably, to avoid the charge of racism, it appears that for Holleman, having a child in an undeveloped nation is perfectly acceptable. The hint of contradiction, self-hatred and contempt for her own nation, and its people wafts like a pungent smell from here on out.

Her anti-carbon drivel descends even further, with the proclamation,

‘The decision to have children has always struck me as an essentially selfish one: You choose, out of a desire for fulfillment or self-betterment or curiosity or boredom or baby-mania or peer pressure, to bring a new human into this world. And it has never seemed more selfish than today.’

She rides the pessimistic narrative of falling skies, and “rising temperatures” in a world that worships climate-control.

(A world oblivious to the acclimatisation of air-conditioned comfort, because it’s too focused on self-aggrandising posturing, and panic inducing “climate crisis” headlines.)

If we are faced with “catastrophic climate change” it would be better to ditch fossil fuelled artificial climates in homes, business and transport, not reproduction, families and the life that both carries.

Even here, one has to ask Holleman what she means by Climate Change. Which climate is facing catastrophic decline? Is it temperate, mild, dry, tropical or polar?

Where does the sun and solar activity play a role? Could it be that the sun is a bigger contributor to any warming climate, than the carbon footprint of children, including her own son?

Holleman’s article is a cross between anti-parenting, anti-carbon and anti-people. There is a stark absence of balance, especially given the basics: Carbon is plant food and without it, life on earth ends.

I acknowledge Holleman is writing from hindsight. She’s writing about becoming a mum for the first time, in trying times.

Holleman is in a foreign place. She’s greeted with one bitter disaster after another.

A pregnant woman, facing a difficult childbirth. A grieving sister – and general fish out of water – having relocated from the congested New York to California’s wide-open spaces.

Yet, her situation is compounded by the presence of wild fires, panic on the TV, COVID-19, and (as my wife put it after reading the piece) all the hormonal trimmings attached to having a baby on the way.

A soon to be mother, Holleman argues existence with non-existence with emotional reasoning.

She confesses to feeling selfish. Then supposes that the answer to a “climate catastrophe” is for the people of the developed world to stop having children.

The hope of a better world Holleman finds in the embrace of her new born son, is morbidly smothered by a lament at what a child’s carbon footprint is.

Twistedly Holleman infers children are a great evil, but they’re a useful distraction.

For her, kids are a “blessing” to have around, because they provide ‘small moments of joy.’ A welcome distraction from ‘cataclysmic changes to the climate [and other] inequities it exacerbates.’

Holleman lives in a world which views children as either an accessory, or an inconvenience.

A world that also equates conceiving a child, with contracting an STD.

What’s also striking is the use of eschatological terminology: “End Times.” Indicative of the religious environmentalism – or cultism – which pervades her Green ideological evangelism.

In the broader context of Holleman’s experience, it’s not easy write to this off as rhetorical.

Holleman believes we’re all doomed, stating, ‘we are living in a real way on borrowed time, under the shadow of carbon.’

The takeaway conclusion: “Carbon is the great Satan. Humans are carbon. Ergo, humans are a great evil.”

One thing Holleman can be applauded for is repeatedly referring to her [then] unborn son as a baby, not a “clump of cells”.

Another is the depth to which she writes about the clash between her grief, her beliefs, and the hope beaming from the new life she holds in her hands.

Having kids, Holleman concludes, provides a semblance of comfort and reassurance about the future, and that makes the future worth fighting for.

I support her positive conclusion, but 80% of what Holleman writes is straight-up tripe.

There’s nothing more selfless than having kids.

You’re constantly giving, serving and saying “no” to yourself, in order to say “yes” to life.

Out of 21 years of fatherhood, there is no greater example who testifies to this than my wife.

She conceived six times. (We miscarried badly on the first.)

With the five who followed I witnessed her battle a war with uncontrollable nausea.

A condition known as Hyperemesis Gravidarum (an extreme, rare form of morning sickness that went on for months).

Over the space of ten years, with pauses in between, she was hospitalised for severe dehydration five times.

After diagnosis, even when offered to abort our children, she refused.

Doing so with the full knowledge that this new pregnancy will likely mean another round of constant vomiting and lengthy stays in bed.

Not only did my wife choose to fight for life, instead of embrace destruction, we did it together.

We often did so without the support of family, church or friends. Many of whom misunderstood her decision, as much as they misunderstood her condition.

Contra to Emily Holleman’s anti-kid “climate change” tirades, there’s nothing more selfless than having kids.

There’s nothing selfish in saying “no” to yourself, in order to care for the young, through the joyful embrace of saying “yes” to life.

To quote the oft quoted, Theodore Roosevelt,

‘The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt.’

(A slightly revised version of this article was first published on Dads 4 Kids, under the title: Our Children are the Answer, Not the Problem to Our Environmental Challenges; also published on Caldron Pool, 22nd October 2021).

©Dads4kids; Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Creation, Parenting, Political Theology , , , , ,
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NSW Premier who implemented a two-tier society: “I don’t want a two-tier society.”

October 19, 2021 — Leave a comment

Peak political hypocrisy.

In Australian History, Politics , , , , , ,
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Daddy government does not equal Father God: The NSW Premier must ditch vaccine mandates & passports

October 19, 2021 — Leave a comment

It appears that some think Philippians 4:19 reads: “My government will supply all my needs according to its riches and glory.”

What it actually says is: “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

There’s a big difference.

Daddy government does not equal Father God.

The New South Wales Premier, Dominic Perrottet would no doubt agree with this observation.

In a 14-minute interview with SkyNews host Alan Jones, the Premier declared,

“As a [classical] Liberal, the less government intervention the better.”

Posed as a question, Jones reminded the Premier of support he’d given over a decade ago for Winston Churchill’s position opposing

‘The socialist model [as] the equal distribution of poverty not wealth. [As well as opposing] plans for more social engineering more welfare handouts and the continual obsession with our rights at the expense of our responsibilities.’

The new Premier acknowledged how “most people don’t want to live off the state,” and how “they want freedom to succeed. Freedom to prosper.”

 “These are fundamental values that I believe in,” he said. 

Perrottet then qualified this by signalling how Government intervention in times of crisis, such as COVID-19, are the exception.

He asserted,

“There will always be a role for the state to support those who are vulnerable, so that no one slips through the gaps, and that’s where the state intervention should be.”

Perrottet repeatedly said he advocates opening up New South Wales “as quickly, and as safely as possible.”

The Premier also congratulated the State for getting “vaccinated”. He failed to acknowledge how his government’s dogged totalitarian obsession with “no jab, no job” mandates met “vaccination” quotas.

He alluded to who was behind the latter, stating his government did “what the health teams asked [them] to do, and followed that advice.”

The current roadmap, Perrottet said, was designed by ex-Deputy Premier, (and Berejiklian chief CCP-19 head-kicker) John Barilaro on the advice of government health officials.

In other words, a greater easing of restrictions in NSW will come when forced “vaccinations” push the current stat up over the 80% quota set by unelected health bureaucrats.

Nodding at a strong commitment to opening the State, Perrottet noted 20 months’ worth of “sacrifices” made by the people of NSW; reasserting, “as I’ve said before, people born in this nation are born free.”

While there’s a lot to like about the new Premier, the people of New South Wales would be well justified in showing extreme caution.

For example, this week he presided over New South Wales becoming the first state in Australia to enforce segregation, demand employers fire staff on medical grounds, and discriminate against those they provide services to.  

On a personal note.

My daughter was given three working days to get vaccinated or face unemployment.

Another family member faces being forced into unemployment and denied the right to her qualification after years of hard work trying to attain it.

In addition, another close relative was told this morning that his regular meeting with a mental health professional would have to be suspended until the 1st of December. The date some of the “public health” mandates are alleged to expire.

(He may also face setbacks in his battle with mental health problems. All in the name of “public health orders.”)

Another faces the “convert or die” dilemma before being fired for non-compliance.

Why? Because, contrary to the data showing that the age group they belong to is more likely to be hit by lightning than it is of being hospitalised or dying of COVID-19, they land in the “unvaccinated” class.

Regardless of what the propaganda slogans preach, none of these people have a choice.

“Get the vax or face the axe” decrees are the equivalent of being told to do the slave master’s bidding, or face the slave master’s whip.

Where there is no freedom to say “no,” choice does not exist.

To be fair, Dominic Perrottet inherited a regime governed by policies dominated by unelected health bureaucrats, not the voice of the people.

The new Premier is undoubtedly stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Perrottet inherited a government obsessed with appeasing anti-freedom, and pro-lockdown worm tongues, both from the Left and within their “COVID crisis” media hungry, health bureaucrat team. 

The big Perrottet plus, is, that by all appearances he’s a far-sight better than Victoria’s Dictator of Doom, Daniel Andrews.

Reasserting governance of, by and for, the people, Perrottet made the right move in sideling government health advisor Dr. Kerry Chant.

Outside this, for now, his words only exist as nice, empty gestures.

Nice words and reassuring platitudes are welcome, but the NSW Premier needs to act on them.

Only a fool would think the words temporary government program are not an oxymoron.

For instance, while the NSW State of Emergency expires on 25th March 2022, contrary to the December 1st “freedom for everyone” party-line, current public health orders do not have an official expiry date.

Parnell McGuinness in the SMH explained,

‘Legally, this never has to end. As long as the state and territory chief health officers who compose the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee deem COVID-19 an “unacceptable risk to public health” the emergency powers under which Australia is living can go on indefinitely.’ 

In sum, PHO legislation was changed last year. Meaning that PHOs have no provisional boundaries, checks or balances. This hands unelected bureaucrats, like Chief Health Officer’s the absolute power to enforce PHO’s indefinitely. (See section 2.16, p.25 Subsection 2B)

Perrottet has the chance to be a Ron DeSantis. To follow or borrow his example, leading, not only NSW, but also Australia away from its COVID communist trajectory.

In order to do this Perrottet must end both vaccine mandates and vaccine passports.

Perrottet should ditch the mad, then follow the few, on behalf of the brave.

#recalaimtheline #FREEAUSTRALIA

WATCH:

First published on Caldron Pool, 19th October 2021.

Artwork: Ben Davis.

© Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Political Theology , , , , ,
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Beware of those sowing the seeds of full-blown socialism

October 18, 2021 — Leave a comment

Last week, one of the The Ezekiel Declaration’s three co-authors, Pastor Matthew Littlefield, spoke with Bill Muehlenberg explaining the purpose, alongside answering some high-profile criticisms of the declaration.

Littlefield told CultureWatch Radio,

“Few were speaking up, and so we felt we needed to say something…Australia, for a long time now, has considered itself to be the kind of country which doesn’t coerce people’s consent. we’ve actually dropped the ball on this at different points in history.”

He explained,

 “People will remember, we put Germans, Italians and Japanese people into internment camps, and that is something, when people find out about, they’re shocked and quite ashamed of; the stolen generations, [for example] other times when our society has dropped the ball.”

Littlefield added,

“Almost one-hundred percent of the time when that happens, we look back on it with national shame, and we don’t always live up to ideals of giving people freedom to make their choices in this country.”

“I really feel like this [issue] is one of those situations, where in the midst of a crisis, in the midst of a very difficult time, and people are going way too far.”

This is because people are afraid, being pressured, threatened or just desperate in “wanting to get back to normal.”

Looking for a reply to Tim Costello’s criticisms, published by Eternity News where he accused the declaration of “sowing the seeds of vaccine hesitancy,” CultureWatch Radio co-host, Andrew Smith, asked, “aside from [Tim Costello’s] unthinking use a euphemism for people not buying into the panic, what is he missing here?”

Littlefield answered, 

 “To say we’re sowing the seeds of vaccine hesitancy when we (including the media and government) clearly know” that the “vaccines” are questionable is “quite hilarious.”

“What we are doing is speaking up and saying, we’re not going to stand by and allow the Church to say to people you cannot come in without a vaccine – and we’re also speaking up for businesses and other people out there, who don’t want to see that happen.”

“We cannot allow,” Littlefield said, “a two-tier society to happen, especially not without saying something” against it.

On the issue of vaccination, he replied:

“We’re not trying to tell anyone either way. What we are saying is there are people with genuine concerns and we need to speak up for them, and we need to give them a voice, to make sure that people know there are others defending their freedom to not be coerced” into taking the COVID “vaccines.”

In his conclusion, Littlefield discussed the importance of the separation of powers as promoted by John Locke, and who they were instituted by authorities in Australia, before, during and after Federation in 1901.

He rightly argued that the separation of powers kept Australians free, and well-governed by holding governments accountable to the people.

“To see this being abridged in this time of crisis” Littlefield lamented, “is really concerning.”

Bill Muehlenberg commented at the start of the podcast that the pastors were “brave,” and said he was “thrilled” there has been an open move against government overreach from clergy, when so many seem so silent.

As I wrote last week, mandatory vaccinations are contra Imago Dei.

The Ezekiel Declaration is the Church wielding the Gospel, reminding the State wielding the Sword, that it must radically reverse any and all policies that serve to enslave and harm, rather than liberate and heal.

To quote Just Thinking’s Darrell B. Harrison and Virgil Walker,

“Socialism says: “No, it’s going to be decided by the collective, by the government entity, by the state.”

Vaccine passports and “no jab, no job” are the cold, dark, bony-fingered hands of socialism proper reaching for the throats of Australians.

Sowing the seeds of full-blown – poverty inducing – socialism in Australia, should be of greater concern for the church in general, than the tone, nuance and fear of dissidents “sowing seeds of vaccine hesitancy.”

There’s already talk of food shortages come Christmas.

Australians applauding and welcoming socialist fanaticism, shouldn’t be surprised if they get what comes with socialist fanaticism.

The Ezekiel Declaration is an open letter to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison from three Australian pastors opposing vaccine passports, and the other constitutionally questionable policies related to it, such as mandatory COVID “vaccinations”.

Since publication the declaration has been signed by 3,019 Church leaders and 23,463 members and attendees.

First published on Caldron Pool, 14th September 2021.

© Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Political Theology, Politics , , , , , ,
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Posts, updates and all that.

October 18, 2021 — Leave a comment

I apologise for my tardiness in keeping the blog up to date. In between posts you can still catch my weekly article for Dads 4 Kids here, and my almost daily articles for Caldron Pool here.

Financial support for this blog, and my work in general, can be made through PayPal here.

The recent mandates in Australia have made life somewhat intense since August, my aim is to post new content this week sometime, as time permits.

In the meantime, check out the Bill Muehlenberg Culture Watch podcast I recently joined, together with my CP colleague Evelyn Rae, discussing all things Caldron Pool.

In Caldron Pool, Podcast, Political Theology , ,
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Mandatory Vaccinations turn the State into Masters & Citizens into Slaves

September 15, 2021 — Leave a comment

Medical conscription is a product of chattel slavery, it turns people into the property of the state.

It’s for this reason that the forced medical conscription of civilians is banned by constitutions and human rights codes.

Pro-mandatory vaccinators and those who launched a recent attack on The Ezekiel Declaration overlook this fact.

They also miss how forced medical procedures are contra to Imago Dei.

The Imago Dei mandates that the State, corporations, individuals and institutions have no right of claim to ownership of another person or their body.

Biblical injunctions against chattel slavery, and rules concerning indentured service emphasise the importance of this mandate.

Man and woman are made in the image of God. Not in the image of the State, superstitions, imaginations, idols, ideas or ideologies that seek to shape and control them.

Ergo, domestic vaccine passports (which really only are a euphemism for mandatory vaccinations) are a vile, inhumane, ironic negation of humanity.

“No jab, no job” is another way of saying “convert, or starve”.

A “choice” between the slave master swinging the whip, or doing the slave master’s bidding.

Forced medical procedures are the weapons of tyrants.

The problem isn’t just an arbitrary division between the unvaxxed and “vaxxed”, it’s the divide widened between those deemed “essential” and those “unessential.”

In blunt term: life worthy of life vs. ‘life unworthy of life.”

The cruelty this will spawn has no limits.

The door that allows Government to get away with mandating medical procedures under threat of losing your livelihood, gives them the power to mandate the theft of your land, your house, your savings, your kids, and your property.

Such is the dehumanising embrace of an arbitrary Us vs. Them -oppressor vs. oppressed – false dichotomy.

Look at the self-righteous “tone” in the opposition to Caldron Pool’s efforts to speak truth in love; to promote the Gospel’s liberating power to uphold life, light and liberty.

It’s shameful that some church leaders seem professionally threatened by other Christians, and not the outlaw governments telling them that they’re not essential.

It’s just as equally shameful that mandatory vaccination “Christians” are backing Government policies that will hurt families, under the guise of “loving your neighbour.”

Who are the selfish ones?

The ones pushing for the protection of civil liberties, or those happy to undermine them on a narrative that demands we all “fall in, line up, goosestep in unison, and salute, or else!?

I can tell you, it’s not the individual being bullied into leaping before they look.

Neither is it the family being told they’re selfish and ungodly if they “don’t follow the fear and give-in to the government without question.”

Christians are called to lead by example in separating truth from falsehood.

It’s not “selfish” to question manipulative propaganda.

It’s not “selfish” to communicate strong concerns, when medical science is being censored in favour of an approved political narrative.

This was illustrated by Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, who has claimed that COVID-19 will become a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

This is despite the science showing that the vaccinated still carry and transmit COVID. That COVID is at its worst in those over 70, and those with comorbidities.

This is despite scientists stating that we should only vaccinate the vulnerable because mass vaccinations will create worse mutations.

Niceness and nuance are not an effective answer to manipulative propaganda.

Any Pastor who manipulates others into playing Russian roulette with a questionable “vaccine” is a disgrace to their office.

Anyone who argues that it’s “selfish” to pray, wait on the Lord, or practice the gift of discernment (aka informed consent), is preaching a doctrine of demons.

Anyone claiming that opposition to medical conscription is opposition to medicine is manipulating you.

As are those who scream “get the vaxx.” Don’t think. Don’t wait. Just do.

This isn’t faith. Nor is it loving.

Faith is a work of Christ. It is prayerfully minded action, worked out in us vis a vis the light of God’s wisdom (see 1 Timothy 3:16-17).

Anyone who doesn’t encourage you to wait, to pray and then act, are preaching a false gospel. (See King David’s list in Psalm 37, Psalm 91, and Psalm 27).

Faith seeks understanding. We’re to operate alongside, on and in the wisdom of God, not the wisdom of the World.

This means informed choice, not forced compliance.

This means prayerfully seeking out the absolute best medical options provided by providence through the vocation of proper medical professionals.

The alternative to never ending booster shots, and totalitarian “health” measures must be sought out.

As Dr. Robert Malone and Peter Navarro argued in a recent article entitled ‘Sorry Facebook, forced universal vaccinations are not the answer.’

Vaccines are likely to produce stronger mutations, making the vaccine-mutation-vaccine cycle the stuff of Sisyphus.

In sum, covaxes are becoming as ridiculous as excessive lockdowns.

They’ve been tried, they’re not stopping the virus.

Surely securing a treatment and preventative, alongside better vaccines, is the better option?

For The Ezekeial Declaration’s critics, their energy would be better spent fighting against the virus, instead of fighting against those trying to stop corrupt leaders turning their citizens into the virus.

While some Christian leaders – who’ve long since sold out to Leftism – applaud the tiring oppressive nonsense of increasingly bad governance, there are others who see the precipice of this Abyss and are taking a stand against bad leaders dragged us all into it.

Daring to sigh with the wounded is an outworking of sacrificial love.

Risking livelihoods by rejecting medical conscription/chattel slavery is an outworking of sacrificial love.

Rejecting a theology of glory – which places Government on the same level as God – and choosing instead to live out the theology of the cross, is far from misrepresenting the Gospel.

The Ezekiel Declaration’s rejection of medical conscription is a definitive “yes” to Imago Dei, and by extension a stern “Nein” to chattel slavery.

This is the Church wielding the Gospel, reminding the State wielding the Sword, that it must radically reverse any and all policies that serve to enslave and harm, rather than liberate and heal.

Hated by both sides of the political divide for not surrendering truth to falsehood, martyred Latin American Priest, Oscar Romero wrote,

“What kind of Gospel does not disturb? What kind of Word of God does not rankle, a Word of God that does not touch the concrete sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed? What kind of church does not disturb people’s consciences and provoke a crisis, but instead issues nice, pious considerations that bother nobody? – what kind of Gospel is that?” (paraphrased)

It’s on the grounds expressed above that The Ezekiel Declaration has my full support.

People are not property.

As the 20th century shows: it’s best to draw a line in the sand, then bury our heads in it.

References:

Romero, O. 2018. ‘The Scandal of Redemption: When God Liberates the Poor, Saves sinners, and Heals Nations’, Plough Publishing (p.55)

First published on Caldron Pool, 7th September 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Political Theology, Politics , , , ,
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The Wisdom of Holy Fear Trumps the Vanity of Worldly Fear

September 9, 2021 — 2 Comments

Spurgeon described holy fear as an act that extends itself to happiness.

Holy fear, the Victorian preacher wrote, is the fear of God – ‘a quite grace which leads a man along a choice road, of which it is written, “No lion shall be there, neither shall any ravenous beast go up thereon.”

The fear of God is the beginning of ALL wisdom. Not worldly wisdom, which lends itself to vanity, but God’s wisdom which lends itself to the preservation of life, light and liberty.

Faith operates, not on a debilitating insecurity of the unknown, but on the certainty of the Word of God, grounded in God’s self-revealing.

God’s wisdom vs. Worldly wisdom.

The latter finds its home in tyranny, the former in the hearts of those who reject it.

Holy fear vs. Worldly fear is the choice between true wisdom and vanity.

God’s wisdom is the gift of true liberation. If, at the end of Holy Fear, man finds happiness, it’s because he’s granted freedom.

Holy fear isn’t a crushing fear. It’s a liberating essential that sets us free from a world demanding that we dumb ourselves down in order to fit in – that we package everything into a safe space, then fear everything, this includes fearing the fear of God.

We are faced with a clear choice between the fear of God, and the fear of man. We either embrace His ‘quiet grace’ and be led by it, or we embrace a self-righteous theology of glory and suffer the consequences for ditching wisdom in favour of vanity. Virtue signalling and self-promotion have no home in Holy Fear.

The old preacher when penning his own reflection on this referred to Proverbs, ‘Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity.’ (Proverbs 28:14)

The prior verse states, ‘Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.’

Followed by verse 15, which reads, ‘Like a roaring lion or a charging bear is a wicked ruler over a poor people.’

The wicked ruler demands to be feared, is stubborn, hardened, controlled by appetite and arrogance.

Proverbs states that though the wicked ruler stamps up and down, true wisdom will win the day. For from it springs true freedom.

It’s the wicked ruler who uses crushing fear, not God. It’s the wicked ruler, not God, who is stuck in his ways, and its the wicked ruler, not God, who crushes freedom.

We’re often given the image of God being a long bearded, grey, grumpy old man with a big stick at the ready, keen to slap people down.

Reconsider the stereotype.

Holy fear liberates. Worldly fear incarcerates. Wisdom governs the former. Vanity the latter.

©Rod Lampard, 2021

In Charles Spurgeon, Political Theology , , , ,
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Superstition Replaces Reason, as Lockdown Activists posing as Experts War Against Freedom

September 7, 2021 — Leave a comment

What the past 18 months has revealed to the world is this:

In the post-modern era there’s an extremely thin line between an “expert” and an activist.

I’m in agreement with Peter Hitchens, “these past 18 months have been a major turn back towards what looks like superstition.”

Discussing mask mandates, and “mantras,” Hitchens told TalkRadio’s Mike Graham, “I wish more people would pay attention to the evidence.”

“The way in which people wear masks [for example], flapping around their chin, gaps in either side, putting masks in pockets, and taking them back out again…Anybody who knows anything about hospital mask wearing knows, you mustn’t touch them. As soon as you take them off the mask has to be replaced.”

For masks to be affective, “they have to be tightly fitted to the face, quite uncomfortably,” Hitchens explained.

 “It’s a simple point: even people who understand this must know these tokens people are wearing can’t do much good.”

Despite claims, “we know that there’s no proof masks protect from infection. If an infection can get in through a mask, why shouldn’t it be able to get out?”

Hitchen’s, paraphrasing Graham Brady, concludes, “masks are much more of a political symbol than an actual protection; people wear them as a sign of compliance with the new regime.”

Asked for his thoughts on the lifting of all COVID restrictions in Britain, on what was styled as “Freedom Day,” Hitchens replied, “it doesn’t feel all that different.”

Hinting at the lax attitude towards reason, in favour of a narrative, Hitchens stated,

“Nobody examines COVID statistics in a particularly rational of forensic fashion, because there’s this huge desire, both from the COVID Zero lobby, the people who want us permanently under control, and parts of the public living in fear.”

This fear, Hitchens asserts, “has gone in so deep; but fear is irrational, it’s completely immune to reason.”

For instance, offer any reasoned opposition, and “very rapidly the response turns to anger because the mob is safer in their certainty and fear than they would be in a reasoning world.”

Hitchens adds, “That’s what we’ve come to. Damage has been done to reason in politics, public life, broadcasting, universities, and elsewhere – which were already quite badly damaged.”

This is why, he argued, July 19 (aka ‘Freedom Day’) will attract attention from a lot of “COVID Zero people and the rest of the militants who want to permanently control [us] for “health reasons.” They’re waiting for their opportunity to say opening up on the 19th was wrong.”

They’ll “use figures obtained from tests looking for COVID numbers, that don’t necessarily indicate any actual illness. Then they’ll point to hospital admissions.”

Hospitalisation numbers are problematic.

Hitchens explained: “The last time I tried to look up the numbers of admissions, it showed people connected with COVID, had tested positive, but you couldn’t state that’s simply why they were in hospital, when they had been in hospital with something completely different.” 

Addressing the controversy over Dominic Cummings breaking his own lockdown rules, Hitchen quipped, “The people who devised these policies don’t believe their own propaganda. They don’t behave the way they tell us to behave!”

In June, Cummings, who is the former aid to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, alleged the Ministry of Health’s bureaucratic ineptitude had hindered Britain’s early COVID response.

Cummings also laid blame on Boris Johnson’s reluctance to buy into COVID hysteria. Accusing the Prime Minister of not acting early enough to lockdown Britain.

Hitchens recognises the importance of “really strong precautions.”

Precautions should be weighed and measured by sober-minded experts, not pathos driven activists posing as professionals.  

Left in the hands of the latter Western society will be set further adrift. Even if capable, it will not be able to reconnect with its moorings.  

Such as Thomas Sowell illustrated in his 2004 Empirical study of Affirmative Action,

‘Any “temporary” policy whose duration is defined by the goal of achieving something that has never been achieved before, anywhere in the world, could be more fittingly characterised as eternal.’

WATCH:

First published on Caldron Pool, 7th September 2021

©Rod Lampard, 2021

In Political Theology, Politics , , , ,
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“Papers Please” Passports are a portal towards a COVax Caste System

September 3, 2021 — 3 Comments

Vaccine passports serve a purpose for international travel. There’s little use or need for them on a domestic level.

Certification between countries where tried, time-tested, scientifically indisputable safe and effective vaccines are necessary for pragmatic tourism.

Abstracted from this context those passports are arguably problematic.

A “papers please” police state is built on a culture of suspicion. There is no due process. No mercy. No habeas corpus.

Domestic papers which grant permission for movement and privilege are also the substance of caste systems.

When discussing India’s Affirmative Action programs, Thomas Sowell explains that although India is the ‘world’s largest multi-ethnic society, it’s the most socially fragmented.’

There’s a hierarchy. The lowest are the “backward classes”. Such as ‘tribal groups outside the mainstream, and the “untouchables” (Dalits).’

India’s Dalits ‘constitute about 16% of the country’s total population, and members of the backward tribes another 8%.”

Sowell adds, ‘these two very poor and historically outcast groups are greatly outnumbered by members of the “other backward classes, who constitute 52% of all Indians.’

He continues, the “untouchables” have been outcastes in the literal sense of not being one of the four broad categories of castes recognised by the Hindu religion.’

Consequently, ‘they could not draw water from the same well used by caste Hindus – and, in some places, still could not in practice, decades after they had the legal right to do so.’

Dalits face restrictions and ostracization.

For instance, in the 1930s,

 ‘…discrimination against harijans (untouchables) extended to restrictions on entry into cafes and “eating houses,” access to village amenities like wells and cemeteries, and on the clothes they wore – their right to wear shoes was a frequent point of contention.’

Social stigma encourages social fragmentation.

Violence against outcastes, Sowell states, has been widespread.

Citing an article from 2001, in India’s The Hindu, ‘attacks on Dalits (most often orchestrated by collectives representing upper caste interests) and even massacres of men, women and children are indeed a regular feature in most parts of the country.’

Though these ‘horrors are in retreat’; affirmative action programs such as a quota system benefiting the “backward classes” has ‘eliminated what goodwill the upper castes had for the lower castes.’

‘Partly,’ Sowell writes, ‘because of an overestimation of the effectiveness of preferential policies’, which only end up benefited a very small amount of those they’re designed to help.

Sowell’s conclusion: preferential policies create ‘poisonous intergroup relations and [are] real dangers to the fabric of society.’

When it comes to advocates of the COVax domestic passport, two points of relevance exist.

First, the non-COVax are already being treated like they’re part of a “backward class.” Dismissed as “anti-vaxx”; “anti-science” troglodytes.

Why would anyone jump onto the same boat as a bully, who’s also happy for you to be oppressed, until you do as they do?

Secondly, pro-COVax privileges are preferential policies. This is affirmative action. In the words of believers: ‘positive discrimination.’

Why would any sane person support as system that divides the people, and feeds bad government?

Many in Australia’s media are vying for the very things that in any other context, that same media would be crying out against.

A caste system isn’t going to end COVID or the widespread COVID madness attached to it.

Such as India’s Hindu scheduled class structure. Where Dalits and the “backward classes” face (and have faced) restrictions and ostracization.

Is it religion or science that justifies this?

An apartheid between the COVaxxed and un-COVaxxed will carve a caste system in the fabric of Australian life.

This isn’t something to celebrate or welcome. It’s something to resist because precedent matters.

Informed consent should be respected. Any erosion of civil liberties, rejected. This isn’t hard to add up.

It’s one thing to encourage the COVax. It’s another to demonise others, and beg the Government to take away rights because other people have chosen to show more discernment in their decision making.

The media in Australia are choosing militant medical tyranny, over a duty of care to make sure “democracy doesn’t die in darkness.”

India has the longest running affirmative action programs in the world. These programs had a use-by date, and yet they’ve been extended and expanded time and time again.

Remember, when discussing the issue of mandatory COVax and certification, we’re talking domestic “papers please” police state oppression, not pragmatic tourism.

The former we have no choice over. The latter we do.

Give the government an inch on this, and they’ll run a mile.

If that happens, Democracy’s death certificate will read: cause of death, a complicit and compliant media re: COVID-19.

First published on Caldron Pool, 3rd August 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Political Theology, Politics , , , , ,
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Domestic Vaccine Passports Exalt the Ignorant & Enslave the Free

September 3, 2021 — Leave a comment

Threats of medical segregation via vaccine passports have exposed a critical societal weakness.

Medical segregation is a consequence of a greater segregation between those conscious of their rights, and those ambivalent towards, or unaware of those rights.

There is a divide between those who know what and where their rights come from, and those who’ve never been taught the basics.

This illiteracy separates civic minded citizens from those who either choose to ignore, or are taught to ignore civics and theology.

In this context, medical segregation is a lot less concerning than the divide between those who know their rights and those who don’t.

The greatest tool to subdue a once politically savvy, theologically literate population is to encourage a culture that prides itself on leaving politics to the politicians, and throwing theology into the dustbin of history.

Australians learn very little about the history and contemporary application of civics and theology.

From accounts about Australia’s newly proposed curriculum, we’re set to learn even less.

Corrupt bureaucrats benefit from this ignorance.

A poor understanding about civics and theology, or no interest at all in them, makes for a bloated bureaucracy.

It fills the ranks with educated elitists controlling a docile public, while you pay them well for the privilege.

A people ambivalent towards politics and religion are a people easy to hide corruption from.

A public ignorant of their roots, nation, and the richness of their heritage are easily abused. 

A people unaware of their rights, and where those rights come from, are easier to control.

They’re also easier to influence, and easier to govern.

It’s no surprise then, that brothels, liquor stores and fast-food restaurants remain open despite lockdowns.

An intoxicated, overweight polis is no threat to the sword, should the State choose to wield it against its own people.

A people uninterested in politics and religion will be governed outside their interests.

Consequently, a people left uneducated by an over-educated elite, are fodder for whatever sinister desires fat cat career politicians want to impose on an otherwise free people.

A corrupted bureaucracy benefits from a people who avoid talking about politics and religion as if doing so was a civic duty; even obedience to God.

There’s no need for me to run-on about how many times Romans 13 has been employed to justify ungodly compliant subservience, instead of Godly servanthood leadership.

With what’s currently unfolding in Afghanistan largely thanks to Joe Biden’s horrifying example of bad leadership teaches:

Governments will not govern in our interests if we don’t take an interest in how they govern.

Governments will not govern well, if we don’t care who, or why they are governing.

Governments will govern outside the law, if we don’t know or care about what freedoms exist that allow those being governed the right to hold bad governments accountable.

They serve the people; the people do not serve them.

Society, liberty and individual responsibility cannot thrive on a “we only know what’s best for you” – and we in the bureaucracy get to determine this – basis.

One consequence of a people either uninterested, or uneducated enough (if at all) in their rights and responsibilities, has been the quick formation of a COVID “vaccinated” class and their separation from the “vaccine” hesitant.

No sane, loving person chooses to embrace segregation.

No sane, loving person chooses to embrace oppression.

No sane, loving person welcomes their neighbour’s executioner.

Yet there seems to be those in society who want to do all three.

On this side sits life-destroying lockdown advocates.

On one other side, those who understand lockdowns, but choose to stand for life, light and liberty.

There is a divide in society.

This divide isn’t between the haves and have nots, it’s between those who know their rights, and those who don’t.

It may sound cliché, but the answer is education.

Regardless of melanin, minority or material wealth, Australians should be raising the next generation of ANZACs: mindful of civics and theology; God, Queen and country.

Mum’s and dads educating their kids as far as they possibly can, wherever, and whenever it is in their power and ability to do so.

This should happen long before parents march their kids off to an industrial education complex, where they are less exposed to education, and more, and more exposed to Ceasar’s vacuous, mind-killing indoctrination.

We should be raising ANZACs who run towards self-sufficiency for themselves and their families, and away from the cold, bony fingers of Government.

We should be raising ANZACs who are prepared, if necessary, to run towards the fight for life, light, and liberty, not away from it.

We should be raising ANZACs who are well informed enough to turn away from ungodly, unchristian, and anti-Western governance.

We should be raising ANZACs who will see through falsehoods, and walk towards truth without regard to how dampened their spirit is, or despondent, and demoralised they are.

The greatest tools used to subjugate a people are fear and ignorance.

Civics and theological illiteracy, is a pox on the West.

This plague separates a free people from those who’d rather the false promises of government dependency.

For them it’s easier to bury their head in the sand than draw a line in it.

They do this because they’ve either never been taught why, where, when or how to draw it; or because they’ve been conditioned to show no interest in doing so.

This is a detriment to our society, its future and the children who will inherit it.

First published on Caldron Pool, 19th August, 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Political Theology, Politics , , , , ,
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MacArthur: “The greatest threat to truth and virtue in this country is the government.”

August 30, 2021 — Leave a comment

Any sane, fed-up, liberty loving citizen will benefit from John MacArthur’s June 13 sermon, ‘When Government Rewards Evil and Punishes Good,’

Time constraints meant I couldn’t get to it after a friend dropped me the link mid last week.

The recent rash, health hazard lockdown in New South Wales seemed to provide an opportune time to tune in.

I call these excessive lockdowns a health hazard because in all frankness that’s exactly what they are.

They’re an illogical way to fight COVID-19.

It makes no sense for public health experts to issue public health orders that hurt healthy people.

The same goes for public health orders that hinder unhealthy people who need to get healthy.

Pinning them to their couch, fast food and Netflix – among other mind-numbing, life sucking drugs and devices we’ve allowed into our lives – isn’t a logical, holistic health strategy.

The excessive use of lockdowns will kill.

I’ve already argued how CCP-19 medical tyrants are harming cancer research.

We also published a piece in February pointing to the World Health Organisation’s regional director for Europe who warned that,

‘Coronavirus measures will have a ‘catastrophic’ impact on hundreds of thousands of cancer patients who’ve had appointments cancelled and screenings delayed during the pandemic.’

Additionally, information provided by Caldron Pool on Monday strongly backs the conclusion that public health orders are creating a public health crisis.

Christian’s ought to be on the frontline fighting this on behalf of the poor, the wounded and the vulnerable.

While some are. Many aren’t.

Instead, they post selfies of themselves getting “vaccinated.” Usually accompanied by a manipulative comment like “man up”, “be a big boy,” or “do your duty and help us get out of this mess.”

Some lurk on social media smugly calling those who choose to practice more discernment, “anti-vaxxers.”

Rather than stand with the vulnerable and encourage the gift of discernment, they call the “vaccine hesitant” and those who are more civic-aware “selfish.”

Any Christian who would rather self-promote, than sigh with the wounded stands on extremely thin ice.

It’s this trend that MacArthur’s sermon smacks up the side of the head.

“The true church,” MacArthur asserted, “follows Christ, not the government.”

The power of government is not its own. God gives it, and God can take it away.

Though people in power can become lawless, there is no such thing as a Lordless power.

Their power is on loan to them through the office of vocation, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Consequently, God will hold government accountable for how that power is used.

Speaking from Romans 13, MacArthur explains,

“The role of the government is to restrain evil; and when it functions to restrain evil, it is fulfilling its God-ordained purpose…It is designed as a necessary restraint in a world of sinners.”

He adds,

“This is God’s design for government. The problem is, when government ceases to function by God’s design, it yields up its authority.”

“When government turns the divine design on its head and protects those who do evil and makes those who do good afraid, it forfeits its divine purpose.”

MacArthur then lists how today “In our world rulers are designing a culture that protects the immoral.” 

First, “it desires to protect criminals, and makes those who do good afraid.”

Second, “criminals are unrestrained because they don’t fear the consequences, but the police are restrained because they fear the consequences of stopping criminals.”

Third, by propagating lies, protecting liars and persecuting those who speak the truth, “it praises the evil and persecutes the good.”

The conclusion being that “God’s design for government has been entirely corrupted.”

A corrupted government turns everything upside down, “like putting [Canadian] Pastor James Coates in prison for preaching but letting rioters go free.”

For him,

“The greatest threat to truth and virtue in this country is the government because they have totally prostituted their God-ordained design. All through history, government is the ultimate persecutor of people. Satan has to get ahold of government; and that’s where he operates—always work through government…Satan always works through evil rulers to persecute the people of God.”

COVID era government attacks on civil rights aren’t new.

For example,

“Look, in Acts chapter 4, the Jewish leaders said to the apostles, “Stop preaching!” In Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzar said, “Stop worshiping!” Again, in Daniel 6—we didn’t read it—the rulers said, “Stop praying, or we’re going to throw you into”—what?—“the lions’ den.”

MacArthur continues,

‘So we are beginning to see persecution from government. This is the most formidable persecution: COVID, LGBTQ, transgender, social justice—all these new ideologies are now going to become the only acceptable moral standards. And if you don’t accept them, you’re going to be the enemy of the government. Truth, the Bible, Scripture is going to be cancelled. The government’s taking control; they want to take control of absolutely everything. The church has become the main enemy of the government—nothing new.”

He closes with prayer, but not without first reminding us that Romans 13, when removed from the context of Christ’s Lordship, has been used to justify “horrendous abuses of individual human rights”:

“Hitler’s Holocaust, racism in the apartheid of South Africa, both the Jews in Germany and blacks in South Africa were viewed as a threat to public health and national security… “‘Trust us,’ said government…‘we truly have your best interests at heart. All we want to do is help . . . keep you safe.’”

Preaching from Romans and Revelation, MacArthur acknowledges the battle lines between the World (Kosmos), Satan and Parousia (physical return of Christus Rex – Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords).

The Lamb wins. The Lamb has already won. The Lamb will overcome.

We can vent at government abuse, and vent we should.

Be Ephesians 4:26 angry. Fervent in prayer as James the brother of Jesus instructs (James 5:16).

Likewise, James in 4:7, restrained righteous anger stops the triumph of evil.

This reflects where I think MacArthur’s main points land.

As I wrote last week, Government as God is a government gone wrong.

The full transcript of MacArthur’s sermon can be accessed here.

WATCH:

First published on Caldron Pool, 18th August 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Political Theology, Politics, Theological Reflection , , , ,
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Those in Office Now Need to Remember that They are accountable to a power much higher than the Office on loan to them

August 26, 2021 — Leave a comment

The world is worse off for not having leaders like Reagan, Churchill, etc. who understood that they were accountable to a power far greater than the office on loan to them.

I miss them.

Kyrie Eleison.

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Government as God, is a Government Gone Wrong

August 26, 2021 — Leave a comment

Beware the totalitarian, welfare state.

Government should play a subsidiary role, not a substitutionary role in our lives.

A government which substitutes itself for God, is a government gone wrong.

“We do not need,” Joseph Ratzinger once said, “a State which regulates and controls everything.”

We need instead, “a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need.”

Subsidiary comes from the Latin subsidium, which means ‘help, assistance.’

A government which plays a subsidiary role, is a government that promotes life-saving, life-giving self-sufficiency.

This is the essence of Rev. Dr. Edmund Aku’s work, ‘Solidarity, Subsidiarity and Common Good.’

Social cohesion is forged by solidarity and subsidiarity. The burdens of community are voluntarily shared.

Good government is never above that community, but part of it.

Compatibility, says Aku, isn’t a prerequisite.

Solidarity will draw the incompatible together through empathy and sympathy.

It’s a theme I tried to explore in 2019 when writing, ‘The solidarity of suffering: From racism to empathy.’

Intersectional oppressor/oppressed cognitive distortions are not reconcilable with subsidiarity and solidarity.

If your melanin, social, medical, or material wealth status doesn’t tick all the politically correct intersectional boxes, then person, pain and story are rejected.

For example, the social construct of Critical Race Theory tells me that my lighter shade of melanin automatically negates any need for justice over oppression in my life.

CRT disqualifies my personhood because of my skin tone.

“Lived experience” be damned.

According to the ideology, I am no longer a person, I am an oppressor.

Regardless of how painful, poor, abused, beaten, abandoned, welfare dependent – oppressed I am or was – “white privilege” praxis states that none of the suffering I’ve gone through in life matters.

“White privilege” determines that I have no rights to sympathy and empathy, chiefly because it falsely assumes that my shade of melanin makes me incapable of giving sympathy and empathy.

So declares the collectivists drunk on the groupthink of woketivism: “All white people are racist.” “All heterosexuals are heteronormative homophobes.” (etc.)

Ergo, I have no right to belong to the community.

This segregation is social distancing. It is violent. It destroys solidarity and subsidiarity by substituting itself for God.

Therefore, Intersectionality can only ever be a form of bad government.

In Augustine’s words, a people governed by falsehoods are a people governed by the delusion of demons.

‘Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals…’ – (City of God, IV:5)

The strong are not allowed to protect the weak. The weak are not allowed to be protected by the strong.

This denial of communal care ruptures relationship.

Dr. Edmund Aku argues,

“The moral responsibility prompted by the spirit of solidarity calls for empathy with the other, so that oneness is seen beyond literal sameness. In this way a sort of equilibrium is lived out where the weak find protection in the strong, and the strong gain fulfillment in this service to the weak.”

For CRT purists, forgiveness, reconciliation and sacrifice are the antithesis of Marx’s self-serving never-ending revolution.

This means that the Lordship of Jesus Christ will be an affront to a world governed by would-be overlords; a world governed by the delusion of demons.

The government who plays a substitutionary role are anti-christ – alternative messiahs – incapable of solidarity and subsidiarity.

Consequently, a people who give governments the role of God, are a people no longer governed by sympathy and empathy.

This is proven by the blood spilt during China’s Communist Cultural Revolution, the Soviet Gulags, socialist killing fields in Cambodia, and the gas chambers of National Socialism.

Governments substituting for God will “want you broke, isolated, jobless, depressed, childless, medicated, and entirely dependent on them for your entire existence.”


The popularity of lockdowns, mask mandates, mass censorship of professionals, and ease at which governments are bypassing constitutional guarantees, in favour of rule by bureaucratic decree, are symptoms of a greater problem.

When government dethrones God, it disqualifies its right to govern.

Such a government will only have a surface interest in your health, and the health of the community.

It should never be forgotten that “the Nazi group in charge of the actual killing in the gas chambers were called the General Welfare Foundation for Institutional Care…’ [i]

Augustine said,

‘Let them acknowledge the facts, even if it goes against the grain; and let them stop destroying themselves by crazy insults against God, and refrain from deceiving the ignorant.’ – City of God 5:24

Once a good government slides from solidarity and subsidiarity into a substitutionary role, that government inevitably goes bad.

As Evelyn Rae notes,

“Stop being a simp for the government. They do not love you. They do not know your name or your circumstances and they certainly will not remember you. They make for a terrible parent and an even worse god – have them as neither.”

References:

[i] Dean Stroud, 2013 ‘Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance’ Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing pp.132 & 136

First published on Caldron Pool, 14th August 2021

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Australia, Australian History, Political Theology , , , ,
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There’s Something Rotten in a Society When Caring for Others Makes Me No Better than the Taliban

August 23, 2021 — Leave a comment

I’ve had some weird encounters with hostile people over the years.

I’m not just talking about the arrogant online troll, who comments on every social media post correcting gramma, or misconstruing every word to argue a point the post was never actually making.

Sure, they exist.

The online world is packed with people whose mental health issues are enabled by anonymity, non-face-to-face interaction, and the ability harass without any real-world consequences.

Like the person who repeatedly calls me an “anti-vaxxer” for articles written supporting censored medical professionals, savvy politicians, discernment, and informed consent on COVID-19 related medical procedures.

Then there’s the odd fellow who likes to tear down others in order to make a name for himself.

This gentleman persistently harasses me with slurs, and accusations.

Rarely does he argue the point, instead of arguing the man.

Very rarely does he have a kind word to say, or an actual argument that isn’t tainted by ad hominem or confirmation bias.

On the best of days, I have little patience for intellectual pissing contests, or those described by Roger Scruton as ‘intellectual masturbaters.”

Yesterday, he picked the wrong day to peacock his self-righteous hubris on my Facebook page.

Apparently, encouraging people to look after their health because of unhealthy public health orders makes me an extremist.

In this man’s view, I’m no better than the Taliban.

There’s a thin line between just criticism and abusive dishonesty.

The confronting reality for Australians is that he’s probably not alone in this view.

There are plenty of Christians and Christian leaders encouraging unchristian policies that harm people in the name of “helping” them.

They’re so driven to deny Christ over culture that they’re happy to submit Christ to the culture.

COVID culture has given rise to mentally unwell neighbours, who are plugged into the propaganda matrix.

They have become the government’s eyes, ears and subsequent accuser.

It’s so twisted that “loving God and loving their neighbour” has come to mean throwing their neighbour under the bus.

That’s a long-winded way of saying, I get it.

On Friday, I visited my mother to drop off food cooked by two of my daughters.

All the advised precautions were adhered too.

I social distanced, wore a mask the entire time and stayed outside for the duration of my brief visit.

This didn’t stop my mother’s unmasked, late 50s, neighbour from the house next door bursting out of her front door to interrogate my mother and me.

The neighbour was a complete stranger. This didn’t stop her from pouncing on us as I was getting ready to leave.

Defending my mother forced me to stay longer than I’d intended.

From her small veranda this person demanded to know whether or not I had permission to visit, and if I lived in the area.

I asked her why.

She replied, “I’m protecting myself.”

I politely told her to mind her own business.

The interrogation continued, so I pointed out to her how what she was doing was what’s wrong with Australia today.

As politely – and as best I could manage through a cloth mask – I reminded her that the ANZACs didn’t die for what she was doing.

They didn’t die for a culture where people lived in constant fear, and where neighbour saw it as their civic duty to denounce neighbour.

She was smug, smiling and not swayed.

The viciousness obviously brought her some kind of twisted sense of euphoric hold on power.

Fed up, I told her: call the authorities, or go back inside, close the door and hide under the bed.

Guaranteed protection.

She then went inside got her phone and “began recording me” (quote unquote), goading me to keep on talking.

My mother’s neighbour then persisted on lecturing me about how what I was doing was illegal.

I argued that there was nothing illegal or wrong about loving my neighbour.

Not deterred, this woman continued to maintain that I was breaking public health orders.

I said those orders are creating a public health crisis.

Then I asked her, if she agreed that looking after my mother’s emotional and psychological well-being was an important part of healthcare?

To which she said, “still breaking the law.”

Frustrated, I told her to stop being a communist; a covid Nazi and reminded her of the “zero covid” status in our regional area. (a correct statement at the time).

My mother is in her late 60s. She has had major anxiety issues and has wrestled with depression off and on in life.

Lockdowns are not a healthy prescription for her.

Care packages are a small relief. Especially from her grandkids.

Not one bit of my reasoning swayed this next-door neighbour.

I then said to her that she was buying the ABC’s propaganda.

To which she laughed and said “oh, ah, I get it now. You’re one of those religious conspiracy theorists.”

She pointed her finger at me and repeated the words, “Religious conspiracy theorist. Religious conspiracy theorist.”

To her, I was a criminal. Like my internet hater, I am no better than the Taliban.

In other words, loving on my mum – caring about her overall well-being – made me the equivalent of a “domestic terrorist.”

My adherence to COVID-safe protocols didn’t matter, even when I pointed this compliance out.

The whole nasty and unnecessary conflict ended with me pushing back on her straw man accusations, telling her that the name calling proved she knew I was in the right.

With her still recording, I got in my car and left.

Some may rightly say that this neighbour was acting out because she’s been driven to live in fear.

I would agree, if it wasn’t for how premeditated her attack on me seemed to be.

It was clear to me that government sanctioned suspicion and hatred for neighbour empowered her smug false sense of self-importance.

Just as my internet hater peacocked his false sense of superiority later that same day, this neighbour tried to bully and intimidate my mother into submission.

I’m not writing in order to ridicule this poor deluded woman.

I’m writing in order to point out how situations like it are the consequence of reckless policy making by an out of control and dangerous bureaucratic elite.

The “we’re all in this together” crowd appear unconcerned with how their requests for neighbour to police neighbour cause paranoia, division and hatred.

Giving the public a blank cheque to denounce each other was always going to be a problem.

What’s mindboggling about it all, is how few politicians there are willing to acknowledge just how debilitating and problematic; how deleterious this power and permission is.

These kinds of permission are ripe for abuse.

They were always going to end up as a weapon in the hands of abusive people, more than they were a tool for genuinely concerned citizens.

To borrow from former atheist and victim of Communism, Richard Wurmbrand,

‘I will never forget my first encounter with a Russian prisoner, an engineer. I asked him if he believed in God. He lifted his eyes toward me and said, “I have no such military order to believe. If I have an order I will believe.”

Wurmbrand added,

‘He was a brainwashed tool in the hands of the Communists, ready to believe or not on an order. He could not think anymore on his own. This was a typical Russian after all these years of Communist domination!’ (Tortured For Christ, 1967. pp.26-27)

Ronald Reagan once said, ‘let our friends and those who may wish us ill take note, [we have an obligation to each and the world] never to let those who would destroy freedom dictate the future course of life on this planet.”

May it be so.

#JesusisVictor!

First published on Caldron Pool, 22nd August, 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Personal News, Political Theology, Politics, Testimony , , , ,
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Rand Paul’s Revolt: ‘We will make our own health choices!”

August 13, 2021 — Leave a comment

Rand Paul just served up one of the best, liberty loving, pro-individual responsibility speeches of 2021.

In an open letter to Americans, elected an unelected bureaucrat, the Republican senator for Kentucky, stated,

“It’s time for us to resist. They can’t arrest all of us. They can’t keep all of your kids home from school. They can’t keep every government building closed. Although I’ve got a long list of ones that we outa keep closed.”

Paul adds,

“We don’t have to accept the mandates; the lockdowns and the harmful policies of the petty tyrants and bureaucrats. We can simply say “no, not again.”

He then moved his words towards Nancy Pelosi telling the long over-due for retirement double-standard Democrat:

“We will make out own health choices.”

“You will not arrest, or stop me or anyone of my staff for doing our jobs. We have either had COVID, had the vaccine, or been offered the vaccine.”

This was preceded by Paul rejecting vaccine passports,

“We will not show you a passport. We will not wear a mask. We will not be forced into random screenings and testings so you can continue your drunk with power reign” over Washington D.C.

The trained doctor, turned senator, also rejected Biden’s mandates, stating,

“President Biden, we will not accept your agencies mandates, or your reported moves towards a lockdown. No one should follow the CDC’s anti-science mask mandates.”

Anticipating greater “bureaucratic power grabs” under the cover of COVID, Paul said that if Biden were to shut down government agencies again – some of whom aren’t even back to work yet – he’ll “stop every bill coming to the senate with an amendment to cut their funding if they don’t come back to work in person.”

Speaking defiantly in defence of children, Paul who is the father of three boys, warned union bosses and local bureaucrats that he’ll push to defund any who pledge allegiance to corrupt COVID politics, stating,

“We will not allow you to do more harm to our children again this year. Children are not at any more risk of COVID than they are from the seasonal flu. Every adult who works in schools has either had the vaccine or had their chance to get vaccinated.”

There is “no reason,” Paul states, “for mask mandates, part time schools, or any lockdown measures. Children are falling behind and are being harmed physically and psychologically” by government sanctioned COVID “tactics”.

‘If it sounds like I’m fed up, it’s because I am,” Paul added; “I’m not a career politician. I practiced medicine for 33 years. I’ve worked in emergency rooms. I’ve studied immunology and virology, and ultimately chose to become an ophthalmologist.”

Following on from this, Paul says, “I’ve been telling everyone for a year now, that Doctor Fauci, and other public health bureaucrats were NOT following the science; and I’ve been proven right time and time again.”

He concludes,

‘We are at a moment of truth at a crossroads. Will we allow these people to use fear and propaganda to do further harm to our society, economy and children? Or will we stand together and say, “absolutely not. Not this time. I choose freedom.”

Rand Paul was elected to office in 2010. He’s been married for 24 years and follows Christ.

As far as senators go, Rand Paul – who is COVaxxed – is one of the few who’ve sought to keep Anthony Fauci accountable to the American people.

Consequently, Paul’s been one of the few elected representatives to publicly oppose Faucism, the COVID cultists, and subsequent bureaucratic COVIDiocy.

At the risk of repeating myself, Barack Obama’s birthday bash backs Rand Paul’s revolt.

His bold proclamation for freedom over Faucism isn’t fringe lunacy.

With lockdowns, and proposals for unconstitutional medical conscription, being the favourite go to of Australia’s bureaucrats and big media, the relevance of Paul’s words reach beyond the borders of the United States.

Our elected representatives need to put an end the tyranny of one-eyed solutions, and the totalitarianism of COVID mad bureaucrats.

https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1424399282447298563

First published on Caldron Pool, 10th August 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Political Theology, Politics, Theological Reflection , , ,
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Freedom from the Fear of failing: New Fathers & Navy Seals

August 13, 2021 — Leave a comment

“You’re just like your father.” This was the fictional narrative of my formative years.

Instead of using my name when things got heated between us, my family would refer to me as my father.

Regardless of how well-intentioned, the shame was as real as the control it induced.

There was nothing I hated more. There was nothing I feared more than the idea that I might become him, or be like him.

Once I was legally able to, I added my step-father’s surname.

The rationale was as simple as it was naive. A name change would mean the end to the name calling. A different name, meant a different person.

I had manufactured a way to navigate the whip statements. A way around being shamed into submission. A way to neutralise psychological abuse.

A way to honour both my mother and my estranged father.

My late father had his moments. He was complex. A proud man who struggled with his past. He was a man who had opportunities to move beyond the abuse in his own childhood. Unfortunately, he chose a life of victimhood instead.

His failures were chilling and the effects of his flaws wide-reaching. His dysfunctional life had impacted mine.

Parental abuse had conditioned me to fail as a father.

I remember my first days as a new dad. They were days full of uncertainty and questions. A concoction of fear, self-doubt, joy, insecurity, and love.

Would my father’s failures become mine? How would I deal with the inevitable mistakes I was going to make? How can I not make the same mistakes that he’d made? What if I fail too?

Like the trauma from a Nazgul blade tormenting the Hobbit Frodo Baggins. If permitted, the past can hinder the present.

21 years later, self-hatred and self-doubt still creep in.

They’re after the leftovers. The scars from dysfunction.

Neil T. Anderson wrote in ‘The Bondage Breaker’,

‘Two favourite moves of the devil are temptation and accusation. He uses them to pin us down and defeat us…those who give in to his accusations end up being robbed of the freedom that God intends His people to enjoy.’

There’s a reason John’s Revelation refers to Satan as ‘the accuser…’ (Rev. 12:10).

Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome, chapter 8 begins with these words, ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’

Skip to verse 15, Paul states, ‘For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

We are well equipped to succeed where others have failed.

By this standard we walk upright, as sons whose inherited darkness has been replaced with the mantle, children of light.

The truth, Jesus said, sets us free.

John 14:6 identifies truth as this Jesus – the objective Word of God made flesh.

In his autobiography, ‘Transformed‘, Remi Adeleke outlines the Navy Seal’s four pillars of tough-mindedness.

  1. Positive self-talk.
  2. Visualisation.
  3. Goal setting.
  4. Self-control.

Adeleke is a former Seal. He overcame the odds. He received no special treatment. He simply did the best with what he was given.

The Seal’s list is adaptable to fatherhood.

Speak life. Preach truth. Aim accordingly. Don’t quit.

Put your trust in God, your best foot forward, and let Him take care of the rest.

Remind yourself that what was, does not have to determine what will be.

The past does not have to define the future.

I no longer have the hyphenated name I adopted out of fear.

I am my father’s son; I am not my father’s sin.

The cycle of abuse stops with me.

I first published this on Dads 4 Kids. It’s republished here with permission.

In Personal News, Testimony, Theological Reflection
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Weekly contributor @ Dads 4 Kids

August 13, 2021 — Leave a comment

I’ve been writing a weekly column for Dads 4 Kids for over a month now, and thought I’d make a formal announcement about it.


Like Caldron Pool, D4K is a good fit for where I’ve come from, to what I’m doing now.


I’m still writing for CP, and remain 100% committed to producing the kind of quality work the team provides the political and theological arena.


To put it simply, my work at D4K will help support my contributions to Caldron Pool.


Thank you all for your ongoing support, prayer, and encouragement.

LINKS:

CP: https://caldronpool.com/author/rodlampard/

D4K: https://dads4kids.org.au/author/rod-lampard/

 

In Personal News , ,
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Brave New World: Prepare Defend Lead Podcast w/Rod Lampard

July 14, 2021 — Leave a comment

YouTube have censored the American based PDL podcast I was a guest on last week. Their reasoning is false. No medical advice was given, or prescribed.

Joe Prim and I talked about Big Tech censorship, the inconsistency and double standards of leaders, lockdowns; as well as a range of other related topics.

Access the censored podcast here:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0HD3lrfZheMbwryFq9oDdh?si=Pq_2GSh-RcSzipeY8nB33Q&dl_branch=1

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-brave-new-world-w-rod-lampard/id1533603164?i=1000528563586

Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/prepare-defend-lead

https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/0HD3lrfZheMbwryFq9oDdh?theme=0

In Political Theology, Politics ,
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COVID-19 Measures are Killing cancer Research

May 30, 2021 — Leave a comment

Heavy handed COVID restrictions, in conjunction with a reassignment of medical resources, has stalled Australia’s cancer research, which, according to Medical Republic, runs the risk of sending cancer research backwards.

Paul Mirabelle, chairman of the grants committee at Tour de Cure, told M.R that ‘cancer researchers around the country were struggling.’

The causes were the direct results of a lockdown fuelled funding freefall.

Mirabelle said, the potentially fatal halt in momentum was due in part to The Australian Government’s counter-lockdown COVID welfare program, JobKeeper, not being extended to include ‘university employees.’

This is despite, the Australian Government’s Cancer Australia grants programs, and extensive taxpayer supported funding, including a recent commitment by the LNP, allocating ‘$100.4 million for improvements to cervical and breast cancer screening programs which will help detect these life-threatening cancers earlier, improving survival rates.’

Along with ‘$6.6 million for Breast Cancer Network Australia to operate its helpline, rural and regional information forums and extending its consumer representative training program.’

Other contributing factors cited by Mirabelle, were the ‘drop in income from the loss of international students,’ and COVID restrictions affecting fundraising events.

Door to door, morning teas, researchers and patient trials have been scaled back in the interest of practitioner/patient safety.

The pandemic’s negative, and I believe, wide ranging, long term, impacts on Cancer research aren’t isolated to Australian scientists.

Research organisations in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States also report a significant drop in personnel, and funding.

An article from May last year appearing in The Toronto Star, claimed that ‘up to 15,000 medical research staff faced layoffs as the fell through the cracks of aid programs’ offered by the Canadian government.

The only researchers who qualified for aid were those working with, on, and because of COVID-19.

The Star pointed out: ‘Clinical and research trials that were unrelated to the coronavirus were suspended or cancelled by order of the [Canadian] federal government as the country went into lockdown in mid-March, including more than 600 cancer research trials.’

In the U.K., University of Oxford professor of cancer medicine, oncologist David Kerr called the pause in clinical cancer research, a ‘knee-jerk reaction,’ made worse by the uncertain nature of COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic, and the transfer of ‘nurses and doctors from the research frontline to the clinical frontline.’

Kerr told online medico news site, Medscape, that Cancer Research UK, one of the biggest cancer charities in the world, ‘has projected an annual loss of income of roughly 200 million pounds, down from 450 million. For the Canadian Cancer society, a drop of $100 million, and in America, a drop of $200 million.’

All of it, said Kerr, is because of lockdowns. The impact of which, ‘will be enormous and will echo forward for many years.’

The National Breast Cancer Foundation of Australia’s report card, while crediting the global partnerships of researchers singularly focused on battling the COVID-19 virus, also attributed the halt in cancer research to ‘working restrictions and lockdowns.’

NBCF’s snapshot asserted that ‘9 out of 10 respondents anticipate their research program will take over 12 months to recover from the impact of COVID-19.’

NBCF’s launches it’s annual ‘GOPINK’ campaign in June to back its goal for “Zero deaths from breast cancer in 2030.”

The silver lining, if there is one, is that the collaborative precedent set by the urgency of restraining COVID-19 sets the standard for a similar, singular focus on better treating, diagnosing, and eliminating the cancer pandemic that kills more people each year than COVID-19 ever has.

The down-side to this silver lining is this: if cancer research can be halted, and risk being sent backwards, for a virus that’s become more about politics than healthcare, it can be halted for other political reasons.

This should concern all stakeholders.

Organisations are being increasingly pressured to become “WOKE” compliant, and that means surrendering to the far-Left’s ever darkening rejection of binary facts and biological science.

Based on current trends, it’s not long until the LGBTQAAI+ “WOKE” lobby boycotts breast cancer research, appealing to their belief that using the colour “Pink” and the terms women and men, are “heteronormative oppression” that foster a “hateful and negative space” for those who identify as LGBT.

Ridiculously claiming, as perhaps they no doubt one day will, that organisations like the National Breast Cancer Foundation are reinforcing “harmful” gender stereotypes.

Not kowtowing to the new cultural norms, and using gender neutral language, or gender-neutral colours, imposed and approved by the radical left, the NBCF will face accusations from its fanatical adherents that they want “LGBT people to die.”

All of this will resemble the overzealous bureaucrats wielding the lockdown sword, who suffocated essential services like cancer treatment, patient care, and research, without giving much thought to the long-term consequences.

In this sense, the diagnosis doesn’t look good.

Unless there’s a stop to the funding freefall, and lockdowns that are negatively impacting cancer research, it could be that the numbers of deaths from, and with covid will be outnumbered in the long run by treatable non-Covid related diseases.

Largely because these essential services were ignored by politicians whose reckless decisions were backed by big tech censorship, healthcare providers with time on their hands to choreograph dances for TikTok, and a lust for the political capital that COVID cult fanaticism keeps on delivering.

In sum, lockdowns, through killing livelihoods, may very well end up killing more people than a deadly virus, that governments said justified such terrible totalitarian measures.

First published on Caldron Pool, 24th May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Australia, Australian History, Political Theology, Politics , , , , ,
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Five bizarre COVID vaccine sales pitches

May 29, 2021 — Leave a comment

Here’s five bizarre COVID vaccine sales pitches that suggest COVID Vaccine passports are nothing more than COVID compliance cards.

  1. FREE admission to “Dracula’s” castle.

The Romanian castle long associated with the 14th Century tyrant, Vlad the Impaler, and Vampirism, is once again a top spot for bureaucrats looking to impale their citizens, albeit more humanely.

Throughout May anyone can turn up without an appointment and receive free admission to Bran Castle, as well view ‘it’s exhibit of 52 medieval torture instruments.’

The catch? Visitors have to get a COVID vaccination upon arrival.

The “two-for-one” deal was an initiative supported by the Romanian Government. The idea, said Reuters, is to help boost tourism, and spark interest amongst the majority of Romanians, who’ve shown little appetite for a COVID vaccine.

2. Burgers and FREE Fries!

New York City’s Mayor Bill de Blasio appeared in a clumsy video using fast food to sell the vaccine.

The Democrat leader held up a burger and fries, mumbling as he ate, “is it too early in the morning to eat a burger? This could be breakfast.”

Adding, “Mmmm … vaccination. I’m getting a very good feeling about vaccination right at this moment.”

The cringe burger bribe was part of a wider incentive program to push the benefits of getting vaccinated. According to New York Daily News, the program included a ‘Shack Shack gift card, with promises of free fries for anyone who gets vaccinated, and free passes to music festivals.’

Apparently, Democrats think there’s no contradiction in using fast food to promote health initiatives.

3.Would you like some free Serbian Roast Ox with that shot?

Serbian Restaurateur Stavro Raskovic is offering a ‘plate of spit-roast ox or wild game goulash for free’ for the COVID vaccinated.

Raskovic said to Reuters, that the catering industry has been hit hard by lockdowns, and if ‘this (vaccination) is the way out, then we wanted to contribute.’

Serbian health authorities set up at the location, and gave people the choice between ‘Pfizer/BioNtech (PFE.N), and China’s Sinopharm (1099.HK).’

Only one-third of Serbia’s 7 million people have received the shot, with 694,476 infected, and 6,456 having died, with, from, or of, COVID.

4. Forbes’ FREE stuff a COVID compliant card can get you!

Celebrating COVID mania, Forbes published a tribute to Krispy Kreme, and its free donut for vaccine subscribers.

The offer only applies to those who’ve been vaccinated, on the proviso that the COVID free donut lover, can ‘provide proof that they’ve gotten the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine or at least one dose of the Moderna or Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine.’

Excited by the enticements, Forbes adds, that COVID compliant card holders can also get up to 50% off at some restaurants, and even ‘marijuana stores are joining in on the fun’, offering the drug in its edible form free.

Of importance, Forbes also points out that the ‘vaccine isn’t perfect,’ and advocates the vaccinated still wear a mask, and still social distance.

5. Joe Biden’s “get the vaccine” or wear a mask until you do Tweet.

Biden’s dictatorial fiat on masks was on the same trajectory as proposals being entertained by Australian politicians, whereby only those carrying Communist COVID compliance cards have the right to freedom of movement.

Biden’s tweet: “The rule is simple: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do. The choice is yours,” was a reassertion of his more presidential Rose Garden speech.

In it, the 2020 Deus Ex Machina President reassuringly told Americans, in essence, that under his administration, those who don’t get the shot, won’t be shot.

Included in his get America vaccinated efforts, Biden also talked up the failing U.S economy, the success of his government in job creation – as unemployment figures proved otherwise -, and repeated the Democrat self-serving lullaby, “we’re all in this together.”

What all this “free stuff”, and the promise of freedoms being returned attest to is that “We’re all in this together” is only valid for those who can prove they’re COVID compliant.

Notably the four hours extra pay being offered by American Aldi, and Trader Joes, for employees who take the COVID compliance jab.

A closer look at most of the current run of “freebies” for the vaccinated, are from companies hardest hit by government lockdowns, and whose fast foods rank low on the “recommended by your Doctor” scale.

Is the vaccine really about healthcare?

While free stuff is a better option than mandatory vaccinations, it shouldn’t be an either/or option.

Especially when it’s camera loving overzealous bureaucrats, Government lockdowns, and not the virus that’s delivered the pandemic impact of the Spanish Flu, and equivalent.

COVID compliant cards open a pandora’s box exposing society to a caste system that segregates the haves from the have-nots; those who’ve been vaccinated, and those who haven’t; the clean from the unclean; the righteous, from those deemed less than.

In other words, the eligible and the ineligible. Those who are allowed back their freedoms, and those who aren’t.

It’s a lunacy that threatens the lucid. Emotion trumping reason. A downgrade of life, light and liberty, that’s set to intensify demands that do not liberate, but rather subjugate, under the premise of protecting people.

CP editor-in-chief, Ben Davis, was right to state:

‘Every single person I’ve spoken to who’s said they’re going to get the vaccine has told me it’s because they want to travel again. It’s not about their health concerns. It’s not about protection against the virus. It’s not about saving grandma. It’s about “returning to normalcy.” To many, the vaccine is just a necessary hoop we have to jump through to appease our rulers for the promised carrot. Is this about protection or subjection?’

Covid-19 is now as much an ideological worldview, and commodity, as it is a deadly virus.

COVID compliance cards are an addition to COVID compliance wardens, who share the same political designation as Soviet and Maoist political officers inserted into a community to scare, intimidate, and ensure total ideological conformity.

Bribes may work to pull in business. Threats to take or restore civil liberties may work to sell the vaccine, but they bolster a blame and shame game that confuses the virus with people, turns people into pawns, and allows governments who’ve abused their power to get away with it scott-free.

First published on Caldron Pool, 20th May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

 

In Political Theology, Politics , , , , ,
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Mass Anti-Israel Protests Celebrated, While Pastors are arrested for holding Church services

May 28, 2021 — Leave a comment

Legacy media headlines should really read:

“Hamas’ assault on Israel enters its 7th day.”

They won’t because just like the false “Jan. 6th insurrection at the Capitol” narrative, there’s a dishonest agenda at work, which is proven to exist by the attacks on honest people who call it out.

To back this up, carefully pay attention to how legacy media – post Biden’s coronation as leftist lord and saviour – have dropped the word “insurrection” for “riot.”

Look at Eternity News’ two hit pieces falsely claiming that the rhetoric from Caldron Pool and others, incited violence. (That piece was later retracted).

Not willing to leave it there, Eternity News’ second hit piece, targeted a piece I’d written weighing up election interference claims, as Eternity News squeezed Caldron Pool in with “Trumpism,” “Christian nationalism,” and “outrage media.”

There was no apology for misrepresenting Caldron Pool, just what appeared to be a justification for the defamatory article they had to retract.

In an age of deceit, honest people are viewed as dangerous.

In an age of blurred distinctions and corrupted definitions, well-meaning people are easily misled.

Eternity News was right about reckless rhetoric, but spectacularly wrong in who they accused of being guilty of using it.

The same legacy media who used the buzz-word “insurrection,” later replacing it with the less dramatic, but far more accurate term “riot,” are the same people demonising Israel’s restrained self-defence as horribly evil.

Examine the vast majority of hate expressed towards a person who brings a reasoned perspective to the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Perspective is usually lost in the fury of race-baiters using “us vs. them” distortions, with Israel marked as the oppressor class, and the Palestinian people, the oppressed.

The choice isn’t Israel or Palestine, it’s coexistence or no existence.

Palestinian leaders have rejected the former for decades, to the determent of their own people. Blaming Israel for the failures of Palestinian leadership, only perpetuates the victimisation of the Palestinian people.

The Washington Post seems to disagree, and have thrown their “mates’ rates” power over the Whitehouse into overdrive.

Taking aim at the U.S. funded Iron Dome interception system, it’s not Hamas’ anti-Israel rocket diplomacy, but Israel’s successful defence against Hamas rockets that is ‘helping to perpetuate the Gaza-Israel conflict.’

According to them the Iron Dome defence shield, allows Israel not to care about civilian life, and ‘gives Israel less incentive to find a political solution to its conflict with Gaza.’

What’s telling here is the language.

WaPo or their readers shouldn’t need to be reminded that a defensive shield is for the defence of civilians against a hostile and aggressive force.

The WaPo piece frames the argument in such a way as to demonise Israel, while pulling the proverbial wool over their readers eyes. Ironic for a newspaper with the mantra: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

It is traitorous hypocrisy, but it sells newspapers, and for politicians, earns them camera time.

Australian Greens Senator, Mehreen Faruqi exemplifies this kind of opportunism.

The majority of Australians couldn’t have ANZAC Day, many can’t sing in, or attend Church, “because of COVID-19.”

Pastors are being arrested in Canada for holding Church services, because pastoral care, although an essential service, isn’t considered under COVID Communist fiats, to be one.

People can’t do Church. They can join a mass protest to hate on Israel, because it’s part of the approved narrative – COVID rules need not apply. “We’re all in this together” and “diversity is our strength” become the twisted meaningless equivalents of “war is peace.”

Faruqi, and many protesting that Israel is the belligerent in this new escalation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, do not hold vigils, protest, nor celebrate protests, on behalf of the countless number of Christians being slaughtered by Islamists on the African continent; West Papuans suffering under the occupation of the largely Muslim Indonesian government; and the persecution of Christians in Egypt, and ASIA.

On balance, Faruqi has been an outspoken critic of the severity of the COVID lockdowns, backing mass Black Lives Matter [Inc.] protests, while criticising sports events, and with good cause for concern about how lockdowns inhibit civil liberties.

Also, blatantly absent from her criticisms is support for remembrance services on ANZAC Day, and support for Christians practicing their faith without recriminations from overzealous COVID bureaucrats.

Both are the heart of Australian national identity. It’s a curious thing that Faruqi, an Australian senator, who benefits from the ideals founded under that national identity, can raise up a protest for some, but deny that same support to others.

This suggests that Faruqi, and The Greens are only fans of lockdowns if there’s political capital to be mined from them.

Such as, a misguided mob protesting for the annihilation of Israel, under the seemingly harmless slogan “Free Palestine;” a slogan the Greens senator, joining many on the Left, along with some white nationalists, are applauding without a care for Israel, or the genocide that it infers.

Before I’m ad hominem dismissed as a Zionist by white nationalists, or racist, by “Woke” Leftists, on some notion that I’m “worshipping the Jews”, or trying to tie Faruqi’s worth as an Australian with her loyalty to ANZAC Day, it’s neither racist towards Muslims, hatred towards Palestinians, or xenophobic towards non-Jews to critique an apparent biased agenda, and its pattern of double-standards.

The absence of protest is as revealing as the narrative changes, and, the language used by legacy media to herd, and indoctrinate, rather than inform and educate.

It’s not a hard sum.

Israel may have to revisit its imperfect border policies, but the only ones denying the right for Palestinian existence are Palestinian leaders, and their sycophants seeking to annihilate the existence of Israelis.

Hamas has entered its 7th day of attacks on Israel.

To argue the reverse, is to entertain a zero-sum game, built on an either/or fallacy, padded by reckless rhetoric, and propagated by big media’s love affair with disaster porn, and the abuse of language.

Beware the auctioneers.

First published on Caldron Pool, 17th May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Political Theology, Politics , , ,
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Virtue Signalling Budget Blowouts Sell Off Australians to the Cult of “Wokeness”

May 27, 2021 — Leave a comment

For all the good Australia’s Budget 2021 promises, it’s ultimately an “if you don’t vote for this, you’re a misogynist” manifesto.

Before dismissing this as an overreaction, digest these words from The Australian’s Glenda Korporaal,

‘After months of heated discussion about the Morrison government’s attitude towards women, the 2021 budget will go down in history as the first time that women have been so heavily identified in such a key economic statement in Australia.’

Korporaal added, ‘it’s not just the 81-page Women’s Budget Statement that puts a ‘gender lens’ on everything, it’s the explicit identification of women’s role in the economy.’

This is a sign, noted Korporaal, that the Morrison led Liberal National Coalition, are ‘taking responsibility for women’s economic and personal security.’

The budget rhetoric, wrote Korporaal, ‘expands the areas of perceived government responsibility into women’s safety.’

For the cynic, she said, it looks like the LNP are ‘trying to repair their image on women’s issues.’

I’m one of those cynics.

What the LNP are communicating is partiality.

So much for government neutrality, and with it, gender equality.

My cynicism isn’t unwarranted.

The party aggressively portrayed by its Leftist opponents, and fencing sitting opportunistic enemies, as being a party against women, are now the party for women.

If justifying my cynicism with the witch’s brew context the budget was boiled in, isn’t enough, note that I’m not the only one.

Author and veteran, ABC journalist, Quintan Dempster quoted ABC Insiders in a Tweet on the 9th of May, writing, ‘according to The Guardian Australia, the Prime Minister’s approval rating with Australian women has taken a “massive hit.”

Dempster then asked, ‘Will Tuesday’s budget will be a counter misogyny masterpiece then?’

Regardless of what you think of me or my fact-based opinions, Korporaal, and Dempster aren’t lightweights.

Read together, The Australian and the ABC agree.

This is a virtue signalling budget that will reap an ill wind for the LNP, because no matter how “woke” the LNP try to be, it’ll never be enough for the patriarchy hating Leftist vandals, who a large portion of this budget appears to appease.

In essence the 2021 LNP budget is payment for applause from the LNP haters who gaslighted them into splashing dollars they don’t have, on a rush to satiate the anti-woman propaganda, pinned on the LNP by radical adherents of, as Morrison said last week, the ‘moral corrosiveness of identity politics and cancel culture.’

Fair criticism of the Canberra bubble’s poor history in its treatment of women aside, is the national budget the appropriate place to go to war on behalf of its victims?

Sending the country broke for the sake of appearing “woke” is a dodgy gamble with other people’s money.

The only authentically clap-able decision in the budget’s women’s only cash splash, is the $1.1 billion dollars directed towards Domestic Violence services, some of which will go towards helping Indigenous Australian women.

That’s a positive. As are some of the budget’s more sober applications, such as funding opportunities through new apprenticeships, expanding manufacturing, bigger focus on defence, infrastructure, and healthcare.

The instant political win for Morrison is that budget did what it appears to have been designed to do: send the LNP’s political opponents into an unrecoverable flat-spin.

For example, Labor’s anti-women narrative is disarmed, and even the Radical Left Greens Party are struggling with how to respond.

The Greens seem stuck between celebrating the LNP’s new found partiality towards radical feminism, and the LNP not paying enough towards Ponzi schemes that support the Green’s mythos of “climate justice,” or their Ponzi operators whose ‘apocalyptic climate change’ scaremongering is shoved like a rushed vaccine down the throats of children, and the elderly, “for our greater good.”

The budget deficit isn’t a win for the Australian people.

Lower taxation looks great on the surface, but even that’s weighed down by an increase in superannuation from 9.5% to 10% after July 2021, increasing to 12% in 2025.

What this means is that those in Government, along with millionaires like Kevin Rudd, and Paul Keating, who bleat on about raising that compulsory contribution amount to 12%; railing, as they have, against proposals to allow workers access superannuation for use on a first home, benefit from the dollars they, and the unions they serve, can skim off the top.

It comes down to this: more of your hard-earned money for them, and the unions, less of it for you.

The Morrison budget was about government empowerment, not the self-empowerment of women.

It means more social workers, and more money to man-haters in women’s refuges, meddling in the lives of families, who don’t need the help, instead of putting social workers where the help is needed most.

This one-sided nonsense doesn’t help balance the family court system, which often pushes men into a corner through its own vicious partiality.

Why not add new funding to support Dads in Distress, and men’s shed projects as well?

Either the 2021 budget shows that Scott Morrison’s prowess in outplaying leftists is pure genius; or he’s a sell-out, playing quiet Australians for all their worth.

I bounce between the two, but lean towards the latter. Simply because getting in debt to satiate identity politics is plain stupid.

It’s not a good look. The same PM who rejected identity politics last week, has embraced it this week.

What’s more, as a Christian, identity – brokenness – sin – all the trash, whether self-inflicted or inflicted on us by others, is to be grounded and held accountable in Jesus Christ.

‘God’s grace in the flesh’ is where society, if both man and woman are to thrive and survive together, has to find its core identity.

There is no greater common denominator, or battlefield neutraliser than Jesus Christ.

That Biblical instruction which separates humans from machines at the mercy of bean counters, which, long before Darwin’s and Marx’s twisted religions came on the scene, asserted that men and women are not economic units to be solely identified with the almighty dollar, but are Divinely created beings made in the image of almighty God.

Such is the importance between living vs. earning a living preached by Solomon in Proverbs 27, where lives are put before livelihoods.

Solomon’s advice, in sum? Don’t be so caught up earning a living, that you forget how to live.

Plenty of people still adhere to this, it’s just the ones who see Government as god, and seek to use government as a god, who spell hell for the rest of us.

Without the same ‘Deus ex-Machina’ spike that magically coronated Joe Biden as President of the United States, Morrison’s “wokeness” gamble is a reckless one.

Inserting identity politics into the budget sets a precedent for entitlement through a “woke” woman over man, standard, that will divide Australia, not unite it.

First published on Caldron Pool, 14th May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Australia, Australian History, Feminism, Political Theology, Politics , , , ,
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4,000+ Join March for Life Queensland in a Stand for Good Government against Lethal Legislation

May 26, 2021 — Leave a comment

Queensland March for Life’s annual walk in Brisbane on the weekend showed a strong sense solidarity for the right to life.

The Cherish Life Queensland sponsored event, drew a 4,000+ strong crowd, was accompanied by Queensland police and ended with brief speeches from Senators Matt Canavan, Amanda Stoker, and George Christensen, at Speaker’s Corner outside Queensland’s Parliament House.

In what the Courier Mail snidely called an “anti-abortion protest” attracting a ‘swarm of self-proclaimed “champions of life,” right to life supporters rallied for:

  1. An end to ‘Queensland’s 2018 abortion-to-birth laws, which have resulted in a 58% increase in abortions.’
  2. ‘The Federal Government to allow a vote on the Children born Alive Protection Human Rights bill in 2021.’
  3. ‘An increase in state funding for palliative care, against legalising euthanasia’ (“assisted suicide”) in Queensland.
  4. An end to ‘sex-selective abortions taking place in the state.’        

A minute silence in memory of the 26,583 baby’s lives taken in 2019, was also observed.

Queensland’s celebrated new radical abortion laws allow ‘the “right” to terminate a baby’s life for any reason, even up to birth.’

Reporting on the event, the Brisbane Times’ Felicity Caldwell fell in line with the “abortion is healthcare” legacy media backed false doctrine, making a point of reminding readers that Amanda Stoker is ‘Scott Morrison’s Assistant Minister for Women.’

Caldwell’s not-so-subtle “you’re-anti-women” jab at Stoker was to insinuate some “insidious” conflict of interest, implying that Stoker’s position on terminating a life was incongruent with her position as Assistant Minister for Women.   

That pettiness was added to with Caldwell’s smug reference to Stoker ‘losing her fight against James McGrath for the coveted first place on the LNP Senate ticket.’

While Queensland’s abortion laws are now some of the most radical in the world, the State faces another round of debates over euthanasia, which, as Caldwell noted could see Queensland follow Victoria, Western Australia, and South Australia in the legalising “assisted suicide” under the same banner of “healthcare” as abortion.

Quoting, David Muir, chair of Clem Jones Trust, the Brisbane Times said that the push for euthanasia was about “choice”; arguing that “the only people who have a choice are those opposed to voluntary assisted dying” (Muir’s sugar-coated euphemism for “assisted suicide”).

He said, “it’s also about compassion and humanity. This is not a choice between life and death. Terminal illness is already a prescribed death. Euthanasia means the person chooses when they die.”

Using a survey carried out by Clem Jones Trust, Muir claimed his views had the majority of support from Queenslanders; saying that supporters also believed in palliative care, and that palliative care needed more funding, but it’s not a one-size fits all answer.

There’s nothing creepy or anti-women about opposing government overreach through activists demanding lethal legislation.

What is creepy, is reducing conceiving a child to the equivalent of contracting an STD, and treating a human life as though it were a virus; a life unworthy of life.

Murder isn’t healthcare.

Each year, Right to life advocates are essentially marching in time to the Australian Prime Minister’s speech last week, where he called out cancel culture for its moral corrosiveness, saying that humanity’s “inherent dignity” must be preserved.

In essence the Prime Minister told his Jewish audience that they would know well how important it is to remember that as image bearers of God, we recall that life, no matter how small, or how faded, is a gift to be cherished, not cancelled.

On this firm basis, good government should push to emphasise curing disease, not killing people.

Good government should seek to ease their suffering, not erase their humanity, nor the humanity of genuine healthcare providers.

Good government would follow anti-Nazi theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s assertion that ‘even in suffering, we should aim to affirm life,’ not surrender breath, and a heartbeat to a clinical, inhuman, and indifferent, culture of death masquerading as “healthcare” or a culture of “choice.”

To donate to towards March For Life, please click here

First published on Caldron Pool, 10th May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Abortion, Political Theology, Politics , , ,
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“Hate Whitey” is Racism

May 25, 2021 — Leave a comment

Anyone who’s lived it will tell you that growing up in a housing commission neighbourhood isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s where I cut my teeth as a kid, and where I warred against my dysfunctional home as a teenager.

The stereotype of public housing mightn’t suit the bureaucrats who prefer softer tones, accompanied as they are by candy-coated success stories, but the stereotype isn’t that far removed from reality.

Our housing commission estate wasn’t a ghetto.

Even so, while opportunity promoted some tenants to greater things, there were many others who remained chained to the cycle of government dependency, and with it, welfare despondency – complete with stale cigarette-stained walls, drawn curtains darkened by brokenness, and the smell of cheap beer fermenting in the carpet.

This was the stigma that sometimes reflected the truth behind welfare dependency. It’s why those higher up on the socio-economic ladder found reasons to keep “people like me” at arm’s length.

I was in the too hard, too much baggage, basket.

“People like me” included those who lived next to me.

From the time my family moved in, until I moved out, our next-door neighbours were Indigenous Australians. I remember them, and they remember me.

The closest our families ever came to a joust, it was more sporting, than hostile.

My late father, an army reservist, had installed a make-shift flagpole on the far end of the veranda.  One Australia Day, he raised the Australian flag, and our neighbours responded by putting the Aboriginal flag on their roof. There was no hostility. Just a warm exchange of support; a smile, a wave; understanding and respect. 

It was no utopia, but never a bad word was spoken.

The shade of our melanin didn’t matter.

I recognise that my context could be discounted as an anomaly, but my observations of the broader public housing community’s shared difficulties would question that conclusion.

On the whole, it wasn’t the shade of our melanin that defined us, it was similar circumstances and the government programs we lived under.

“People like me” translated, meant that both black and white shared common ground.

This isn’t to say that racism didn’t exist. The point here is to put my experiences up against Critical Race Theory’s assumptions that say I’m racist, because I exist.

For instance, I once asked an American academic, who subscribes to CRT, what my broken home life, the abuse, neglect, fatherlessness, pain, public housing welfare dependent, and dysfunctional upbringing meant for her claims about “white privilege.”

She answered that regardless of how broken my heart was, or how badly my life was affected by powerful external abuse, which I had no control over, I was still considered privileged because I had white skin.

Apparently, my pain, and problems didn’t matter. My lighter shade of melanin meant that my “white privilege” cancelled the legitimacy of my pain, and problems.

I had not right to call myself oppressed, or a victim of oppression. No justification for complaint, grief, nor any ability to empathise with those who didn’t share my shade of melanin, even if they share a similar lived abusive context.

In the world of Critical Race Theory, “people like me” now means racists. I’m measured, not by the content of my character, nor my response to overwhelmingly broken circumstances, but by the colour of my skin.

“People like me” is now defined by the “sin of whiteness,” by way of what Janet Albrechtsen called ‘collective shaming.’

Where, said Albrechtsen, ‘white skin and male chromosomes’ are ‘prima facie signs of wickedness.’

For example, in April, ‘a female youth worker from the Kingston Council conducted a session with Year 11 students at Parkdale Secondary College to discuss privilege, pronouns, and intersectionality.’

The youth worker, ‘asked the teenage boys present to stand up if they were white, male and Christian.’ Then told them that ‘they were responsible for being privileged and oppressors.’

This wasn’t a one off. Brauer College in Warrnambool, allegedly made male students ‘stand up at an assembly and told them to apologise to their female classmates for offensive behaviour on behalf of their sex.’

Albrechtsen noted that the first public tar and feathering by Critical Race Theory fanatics was ‘under investigation’, and the second had ‘been apologised for.’ (Not without a huge outcry from parents).

This, she rightly added, was a ‘new form of racism and discrimination.’

Jump over to the Daily Telegraph’s recently published a piece called ‘Terror Hit Probable’.

In it, Finn McHugh wrote that while ASIO’s (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation), ‘biggest concern about terrorism remained Sunni extremist groups, particularly Islamic State, the threat from nationalist and racist groups was escalating rapidly.’

ASIO secretary is quoted as saying, ‘young Australians are being snared in racist supremacist and misogynistic ideologies in a way that is deeply concerning.’

He called this, ‘Right Wing extremism’, saying that ‘it now accounted for 40% of ASIO’s onshore counter-terrorism workload.’

Nothing was said about Left Wing Extremism, under the banner of Antifa, or even Critical Race Theory fanaticism.

If ASIO is correct, and not just vomiting Leftist agitprop, or working with “woke” groups as the CIA, and FBI do, and did against President Donald Trump, marginalising young white men, in the name of anti-racism is no antidote.

Communal shaming is like adding gasoline to a smouldering fire. There is (to quote Albrechtsen) ‘no justice in shaming innocent white boys.’

David Horowitz observed in 1999 (Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes) that:

“Ideological hatred of whites is now an expanding industry.”

He cites as examples,

‘Noel Ignatiev’s “Whiteness Studies,” an academic field promoting the idea that “whiteness” is a “social construct” that it is oppressive and must be “abolished.”

And, The magazine Race Traitor, who Horowitz names as

‘the theoretical organ of this academic cult, emblazoned with the motto: “Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity.”

I know from my public housing welfare despondent upbringing that we felt the impact of ‘you are what we say you are.’

Some were able to broke free of it, others didn’t.

A sure-fire way to create white supremacists is to embarrass, and humiliate, young, white impressionable men by telling them that their skin colour makes them white supremacists.

Many on the Left are that so far up their own version of racial purity, and “moral superiority”, that they can’t grasp the fact that they are creating the very thing their anti-white racism fears the most.

Then again, perhaps that’s the plan? Manufacture an enemy, and exaggerate the threat, in order to maintain political power, and social relevance?

Either way, if you support the current racist political manoeuvring by from the Left, you’re complicit in the consequences, and are as big of an idiot, as they are.

The answer to the alleged resurgence of racist Right-Wing Extremism might simply be restraining the equally vicious, domestic violence inflicted on society by “Hate Whitey” racist Left-Wing radicalism.

First published on Caldron Pool, 7th May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Political Theology, Politics , , ,
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Clive Palmer Signs Israel Folau, Speaks out against Christian’s Being Persecuted in Sport: “Religious Freedom is a fundamental right.”

May 24, 2021 — Leave a comment

Australian businessman, Clive Palmer has signed Israel Folau to the Gold Coast’s Southport Tigers through his company Minerology.

Palmer played for the club in the 1970s, and is a key sponsor.

In a press conference breaking the news, the many faceted, adventure driven billionaire said he’s been a supporter for over 50 years.

Palmer told journalists that the Bronco’s (Folau’s last team) has cleared the decision.  

When asked if he agreed with Israel’s “views” around homosexuality, Palmer offered this sharp response,

“Look, I don’t know what his views are to be honest. All I know is he’s placed on the Twitter or something a quote from the Bible. And I know that the Bible’s used every day; quoted in Churches across Australia for millions of Australians.”

He then added,

 “I know when we go to Parliament, many parliamentarians refer to texts of the Bible, and they pray every day. I know that when you go to court and you swore in for evidence you put the hand on the Bible. So, to me it’s nothing extraordinary that someone makes a quote from the Bible.”

Palmer then took the media to task for blowing Folau’s 2019 social media post out of proportion stating, “I’d just say from the media it’s grown out of all proportions. It certainly shouldn’t affect a person’s livelihood, how he can support his children, or what he can do.”

The Southport Tigers alumni made it clear that he wants the club to lead in being open to religious diversity, saying, he didn’t want to bring a persecution of people for their religious beliefs into sport.       

Answering questions about the legality of signing Israel, Palmer said there is no legal prohibition on his participation in the sport, adding, ‘religious freedom in this country is a fundamental right.’

Asked whether Queensland Rugby League will be putting legal restrictions on him, Folau said he’d have to talk with Palmer, who was quick to address it, saying there is no legal prohibition on what Folau can and can’t say.

With this came the reminder that the Rugby Australia paid Israel for damages for doing exactly that, which Palmer said was an admittance by the RA of wrongdoing on their part.

His comments preceded a warning to Folau’s haters looking to cause new drama through litigation, ‘I’ve got some resources, and if it got down to a legal battle, I’m sure anyone opposing someone on the basis of religious persecution would go down very seriously, and they’d have to pay a lot of damages.’

Critics are already laughing off the “partnership,” in true compliance with the false narratives built up around both Australian celebrities by the largely leftist legacy media, who’ve painted Palmer as a mad, loose cannon, and conditioned people in the false belief that Folau as an anachronistic, homophobic “happy clapping gay basher.”

The Herald Sun, citing a February 2021 black flip from St George Illawarra Dragons on signing Israel, supported LGBTQAAI+ lobbyist and widespread legacy media accusations of “gay hate,” stating in its report that NRL has no jurisdiction over the QRL, and that the QRL will have to decide whether or not to let the “controversial anti-gay former Wallabies star” play.

ESPN didn’t follow the Herald’s lead. The sports magazine highlighted Folau’s talent, respectfully handled the controversy, and pointed out the Australia Christian Lobby’s ‘recent online petition, which garnered 12,000 signatures demanding Folau be allowed to play in the NRL.’

Super charging the Southport Tigers, Folau will be joining two of his brothers on the field in a first for the A-grade Queensland Rugby League team.

Folau said it’s a step in the right direction, and credited ‘his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’ for the opportunity.

First published on Caldron Pool, 21st May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Australia, Australian History, Political Theology, Politics , , , , ,
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Chief CCP Propagandist Tells Mao’s Misguided Children to “Bomb Australia”

May 24, 2021 — Leave a comment

For the second time in six months, Communist Chinese propaganda bullhorn, the Global Times, has published false accusations about Australia’s military involvement in Afghanistan.

The Maoist-state-affiliated organisation published a poster alongside a defamatory editorial, claiming Australian soldiers committed ‘sanctioned massacres’, were part of ‘cover-ups’, had ‘a kill list’, and photoshopped enemy activity to mask” ADF evils.

In the same month, the Marxist mouthpiece used selective comments from Australia’s Home Affairs Secretary Michael Pezzullo,  who the CCP rag accused of “sabre-rattling,” for warning against belligerency in his 2021, ANZAC Day speech,

“Today, as free nations again hear the beating drums and watch worryingly the militarisation of issues that we had, until recent years, thought unlikely to be catalysts for war, let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war.” 

Pezzullo doesn’t mention China, but The Global Times (along with the Australian Labor Party) responded to his speech as an attack on Communist China’s position on Taiwan.

CCP propagandists then falsely used Pezzullo as an example of Australian politicians exhibiting a ‘high zeal for war.’

The CCP’s manipulation of facts are its primary ingredient in their ramped-up belligerency against Australia.

There’s a clear, discernible pattern.

Take for instance, the bannable by Twitter standards, actions of Chinese Communist Party official, Zhao Lijian, who, in a Twitter post in November last year depicted photoshopped images of Australian soldiers beheading Afghan children. (The post inciting violence against Australians was reported, but Twitter neither blocked Lijian, or booted his account).

This follows The Global Times’ Beijing Bettys penning articles telling Australia to ditch the United States and embrace the CCP’s debt slave, ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, or else!

This includes the CCP’s incursion into Australian society, via money hungry Australian Universities, abuse of trade relations, and the bullying of Australian citizens, such as Australian swimmer Horton Mack.

Let’s not forget the unscheduled visit in June 2019 of three Chinese Warships who entered Sydney harbour unannounced, with sailors dressed in full combat gear.

This list doesn’t include cyber-attacks, the potential biological warfare origins of the Communist COVID virus, or the tariff war triggered by China’s Communist leaders, who view Australia as a puppet of the United States in need of some good ole’ Red Guard, gulag Marxist “liberatin’ lovin.”

Examine The Global Times’ latest song and dance routine.

Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of The Global Times, said Beijing should bomb Australia, if the Oceanic island continent decided to back a U.S lead defence of Tawain.

Affirming China’s ‘love for peace’, Xijin stated that ‘retaliatory punishment should include long-range strikes on the military facilities and relevant key facilities on Australian soil.’ 

Before reading Xijin’s military strategy, I said to my wife last week that I wouldn’t be surprised if the Communist Chinese Party did something like nuke a part of Australia in order to coerce submission through a show of force.

Although the CCP claim to adhere to a “no-first-use of nuclear weapons policy,” they’d appeal to Hiroshima and Nagasaki as examples; making out that our new “benevolent” and “glorious” Marxist rulers wanted to avoid bloodshed, or direct military confrontation.

America’s new Commander in Chief is weak. So is the jihadist leftist narcissistic party he serves.

Like the blind bats most of them in that category are, many on the Left would surrender and celebrate.

Biden would ramble out a few sentences through his mandatory mask, something like “that’s not nice, don’t do it again,” while the CCP laughs in his face, then maybe sinks a carrier battle group or two; as BLM, and PRIDE parades break out across America in celebration of the Communist destruction of the “racist and homophobic” West.

Think about it. There’s plenty of desert the CCP could use to scare the hell out of (paralysed by political correctness) fence sitting Aussies.

This kind of approach would also allow the CCP to encourage their Leftist sycophants in Australia to blame “warmongering right-wing extremists,” “racism” etc.; gaslighting Australians by saying: “you brought this on yourself; because of your “whiteness” warmongering. You only have yourselves to blame.”

Would it mean war? Not necessarily.

Australia would simply capitulate, ditching ANZUS, as quickly as Australia is ditched by the Pro-CCP Whitehouse Democrats. The surrender would be unconditional, with Australia’s leftist legacy media leading the charge – especially the ABC, and perhaps Eternity News – doing everything in their power to make that happen.

Led, as they would be, by former “glorious” leader Kim Il-Kevin07, or another power hungry wanna-be from the Left at the helm.

The U.N would applaud the smashing of “Sinophobia, the patriarchy, racism, and homophobia.”

Anyone who still stood in their way would be punished under puppet state rules established by the Communist Chinese Party.

I’ll stop there. You get the point.

If you think this is a stretch.

Precedence would beg to differ.

Founding member of the anti-Vietnam war movement in the United States, David Horowitz, now an ex-Marxist, stated in a 1985 piece marking the 10th anniversary of the fall of Saigon:

‘Let this be perfectly clear. Those of us who inspired and then led the antiwar movement did not want to just stop the killing, as so many [antiwar protesters from back then] now claim. We wanted the Communists to win.’

Horowitz adds, we operated from a double standard, holding America to account, while ignoring the crimes of those America was fighting against.

Some of us, says Horowitz, ‘like Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, provided a protective propaganda shield for Hanoi’s Communist regime while it tortured American war-prisoners; others engaged in violent sabotage against the war effort.’ (“My Vietnam Lessons”)

He concludes, ‘my experience has convinced me that historical ignorance and moral blindness are endemic to the American [and Australian] left.’

Horowitz couldn’t have described the response from the Leftist elite in Australia to the increasing belligerence of the Communists in China, more accurately.

In April, Australian Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong aligned with the CCP in openly criticising Pezzullo’s ANZAC address.

Wong, according to the Sydney Morning Herald rebutted Pezzello by accusing him of not using ‘sober and cautious language.’

Labor responded in kind to Australia’s Defence Minister, Peter Dutton’s well publicised concerns for the Taiwanese people, and Australian sovereignty.

Fast forward to this week.

Australian Labor’s Shadow Trade Minister, Madeleine King, demanded LNP member George Christensen be ‘sacked.’

As Wong did with Pezzullo, King took Christensen’s’ words out of context, then accused him of being an ‘unhinged’ warmongerer, for pointing out Communist Chinese warmongering.

Christensen is right.

Contra to King, honest observers would acknowledge that it’s China, not Australia, who’s militarising the South China Sea, and its maritime navigation lanes.

Likewise, as much as the majority of Australians don’t like how it enslaves the Chinese people, Australia isn’t infiltrating Moa’s dystopian society by way of the wolf diplomacy, intimidation, or belligerency.

Australia isn’t invading Taiwanese airspace, or practising chest-beating invasion drills. Neither is Australia seeking militant global dominance.

More to the point, unlike China, Australia isn’t a nuclear power, with unelected bureaucrats encouraging its bureaucratic caste to bomb another country!

Despite the CCP’s claims to the contrary, – including criticisms from self-hating, clueless Leftists who have a distaste for ANZUS, The QUAD, Five-Eyes, and America’s close relationship with Australia – accusations from China’s Communist propaganda arm best fit the ‘sabre rattling’ of the Chinese Communist Party, not Australia.

With help from blind bats in the Australian Labor Party, Beijing Betty from the CCP’s cut and piece propaganda department is projecting.

No Australian wants a war with the Communist Chinese Party or its indoctrinated Marxist minions, but it’s treasonous to advocate we walk around ignorant of the drums of war.

Far better to draw a line in the sand, than bury our heads in it.

As I argued in May last year:

Appeasement of the Chinese Communist Party is treason.

First published on Caldron Pool, 12th May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Australia, Australian History, Political Theology, Politics , , , , , , ,
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Finland Christian Leaders Face 6 Years In Gaol for Quoting the Bible on Homosexuality

May 24, 2021 — Leave a comment

Christians in Finland are experiencing set-backs to their civil right to exercise their civil liberties.

Family Research Council reported on Monday that ‘Finland’s former Interior Minister and leader of the Christian Democrats, has been criminally charged for posting a picture of the Bible, opened to Romans 1:24-27.’ 

The Twitter post was a criticism of the ‘(ELFC) Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland joining an LGBTQAAI+ Pride parade.’

It triggered a two-year investigation, and could land the former Finish member of parliament in prison for up to two years, unless she recants.

Prosecutors are arguing that the post citing the Apostle Paul’s words verbatim, ‘violated the equality and dignity of homosexuals.’   

One report from Finland added that ‘the charges were filed on three separate issues’, pertaining to Räsänen’s staunch Christian conservative views on marriage, that she’s expressed publicly in writings, and on social media.

Another report cited Räsänen’s 2004 booklet, ‘“Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual relationships challenge the Christian concept of humanity” as the real centre of the charges.

In it, Räsänen respectfully argues that homosexuality is a ‘sexual anomaly;’ asserts the prudence of the age-old, man for woman, woman for man union; critiques cultural acceptance of “born that way” self-justifications for Same-Sex marriage, and outlines the danger posed by passing oppressive pro-LGBT laws based upon arbitrary propositions.

Such as, said Räsänen, ‘the Swedish act of 2003 concerning the right to teach the portions of Scripture dealing with homosexuality. Those who disseminate statements alleging homosexuality to be a sin can be sentenced up to two years in prison for incitement against a group of people. If the offence were considered minor or if suspects agreed to withdraw their statements, they might get by with only fines or parole.’

In addition, Räsänen writes of the hypocrisy from Same-Sex marriage advocates, stating,

“When the registered same-sex relationships were equated with marriage, a development was started which was difficult to halt. During the processing of this Act, it was affirmed to the Church, and to Christians concerned about the consequences, that the Church could retain its own values and views on homosexuality. Shortly after the Act was passed, a warning was issued to the Church about discriminating against its employees who intended to form homosexual partnerships. This was based on their fundamental rights against discrimination.”

In other words, the promise from Same-Sex marriage advocates that civil rights and civil liberties would be protected for all, not just some, was a blatant lie.

Instead of protecting civil liberties, Same-sex marriage laws created an untouchable, protected political class.

As a result, according to FRC’s Tony Perkins, former M.P. Päivi Räsänen has been charged for “hate speech.”

Räsänen has rejected the charge, telling prosecutors, “I do not see how I would have in any way defamed homosexuals whose human dignity and human rights I have constantly said to respect and defend.”

FRC recounted that Räsänen was determined to see that freedom of speech and religion, ‘both of which are guaranteed in international agreements and in [Finland’s] constitution, are respected.’

With the characteristic PRIDE flair for the melodramatic, Finnish Bishop Elect, Rev. Dr. Juhana Pohjola, has also been charged.

Prosecutors allege that Pohjola, editor-in-chief of Luther Foundation Finland’s publications, is guilty of incitement against a group of people, due to his continuing to support of traditional marriage, and Räsänen’s publication.

Lutheran International said that the 2019 investigation follows, ‘an Helsinki Police investigation which concluded no laws had been broken.’

Finland made Same-Sex marriage legal in 2017, whilst the book was published in 2004.

The Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland (ELMDF) was created as a move away from the State Church – Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland -, due to the ELCF’s distancing of itself from the Bible and the Lutheran Confession.

Rev. Juhana Pohjola was defrocked in 2014 by the ELCF for helping found the ELMDF, which seeks to maintain its Biblical roots due to concerns that about the continuing theological decline of the ELCF.

As a founding member of the ELMDF, Rev. Juhana Pohjola’s conviction, and potential prison time would bolster his opponents in the ELCF. It’s not a stretch to see how they could benefit politically from such a conviction of one of Finland’s high profile Christian leaders.

All of this is eerily similar to 1930s Germany.

The ELMDF appear to be the equivalent of the Confessing Church, which was founded on similar grounds. The Confessing Church was an ecclesiastical protest against nominalist German Christians surrendering Christian theology into the hands, and service of National Socialist ideology.

In its response to the charges against, Räsänen and Pohjola, the International Lutheran Council said,

‘“The implications of the decision to charge Juhana Pohjola and Päivi Räsänen are clear: if the authorities are willing to do this to a respected pastor, reverend doctor, and Bishop Elect, as well as a Member of Parliament and former Minister of the Interior, then that sends a message of fear and intimidation to everyone in Finland who follows the Scripture’s teaching on human sexuality.”

The ILC called on “Christians to demonstrate solidarity with their suffering Finnish Lutheran brothers and sisters.”

In the same response the ILC asserted that Christians,

 “We must not be silent but express righteous indignation at the actions of the Finnish authorities and demand an end to the persecution of those who adhere to historic Christian teaching on sexuality. I encourage Christians around the world to pray for Juhana and Päivi, and to follow the example and command of Jesus: ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (Matthew 5:44).”

What can be drawn from all this is that Same-Sex marriage advocates acted deceptively.

Rather than reaffirm the legitimacy of their arguments, I’m more convinced than ever that “love is love”, was, and still is a lie. Their goal was domination, not “equality.”

Where civil rights are exalted over civil liberties, hell on earth is sure to follow.

First published on Caldron Pool, 7th May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Leadership, Political Theology, Politics , , , , ,
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Yale Academic Claims Christian Home Schooling Is Breeding “White Supremacy”

May 24, 2021 — Leave a comment

Hatred, or more generously put, disdain for Christian homeschoolers rears its pernicious, snarky head every year in one way, or another.

The main combatants are from the Left. They fire vitriolic salvos over the walls of their sheltered cloisters of higher learning into an area of education they view to be harmful.

They view it as harmful because the general curriculum used by most Christian homeschoolers is classically based, which is generally speaking, loathed by the Leftist hegemony.

The essential Christian Homeschooler’s curriculum would include a holistic embrace of subjects across a spectrum of genres that have built, informed, and sustained Western civilisation throughout the good and the bad.

If done right, Christian homeschooling gives students the best of Biblical Theology, antiquity, Shakespearean, Victorian, literary, and Philosophical classics, as well as age-appropriate exposure to multi-ethnic biography, art, community, logic, civics, General science, Math, grammar, English, language, and History.

Of course, not all Christian homeschoolers aim high. Neither do some schools.

This flaw doesn’t warrant vilification, such as Yale University Professor, Phillip Gorski’s claim on Twitter that ‘Christian homeschooling was -and is – often – if not always – a major vector of White Christian Nationalism.’

Gorski, according to a Campus Reform article, accused Christian homeschoolers of advocating a ‘fusion of Christianity with American civic life,’ which he says, ‘carries assumptions about nativism, white supremacy, authoritarianism, patriarchy, and militarism.’

What Gorski means by ‘fusion’ is the belief in American exceptionalism, or ‘manifest destiny.’

His concern is that homeschooled students are being taught that America is a Christian nation, founded by white Europeans, which for better and worse, is one of the greatest Constitutionally Democratic nations to ever have existed.

In other words, they’re being taught the truth, not a revised history ordained by the Critical Theorist Marxists of the New Left.

While Gorski’s concern about ‘manifest destiny’ is to be recognised, it’s not evident that this, errant natural theology doctrine, is the be all and end all of Christian home-schooling curriculum.

I’ve never seen it present in the American Curriculum our family uses, and has used in 11 years of home-schooling.

To be fair, Gorski does admit that ‘not all Christians homeschool, and not all Christian homeschoolers learn Christian nationalism,’ but it’s banal for Gorski to make claims insinuating that ‘manifest destiny’ is the benchmark of Christian home education, when his definition of Christian nationalism is skewed to begin with.

As part of the Leftist academic apparatus, Gorski’s operating from his own assumptions, and learned bias.

To state it simply, for Leftists, Western Civilisation is white supremacism.

This is a fundamental belief among Leftists, evidenced by the irrational MAGA hat hatred in the United States, and here in Australia by loud, Leftist opposition to the Ramsey Centre For Western Civilisation.

Academics are protesting the presence of the Ramsey Centre on University campuses through agitprop op-eds, and a dedicated website, by which they accuse the philanthropic organisation of being narrow, Anglo-centric, Sinophobic, racist and patriarchal.

Never mind that they’re tenured positions of privilege only exist because Western Civ. grounded on Biblical Christian evangelical ethics, makes such positions and privilege achievable.

Simply teaching about Western Civilisation and its achievements is, to the majority on the Left, teaching racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, xenophobia, and the long list of thought cancelling nouns goes on and on.

This includes the assumption that students not being taught from Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Black Lives Matter, or LGBT programs, within or over-against the ABCs, and 1,2,3, are being taught wrong.

By wrong: Children are being taught at home, not force fed from the Unionised conveyor belts of the predominately Leftist education indoctrination complexes.

Though the Left does influence home education indirectly through the tragic history of the radical Left bludgeoning its way through the 20th Century, they have no control over what those children are taught, which translates into having no control over the adults those children become.

As is displayed by the way the Left farms racism and fear of catastrophic man-made climate change for political profit. Leftists, and some liberals, don’t want citizens, they want subjects.

I’m not advocating that “cancelling” CRT or QT, I’m saying – as I already do – like Islamism, Nazism, and Communism, teach about them, just don’t teach from them.

Teach from the Bible in one hand, the newspaper in the other (Karl Barth).

In the end the contempt for Christian homeschoolers isn’t about people, it’s about politics, sex, and power.

The Left’s blind contempt for Western Civilisation merges with a learned prejudice against Christian homeschoolers.

The hate for Church and State informs the radical Left’s willingness to pervert, then vilify Christian home education on malicious grounds.

This fits in well with recent comments from Gene Veith, who wrote that “President” Joe Biden’s “American Families Plan,” was reminiscent of ‘Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, in which Government also breeds, reproduces (via in vitro hatcheries), and indoctrinates children in massive “nurseries.”

‘State Conditioning Centres’ took over the mum and dad role of raising children, and the curriculum, said Veith, taught “woke” ‘Elementary Class Consciousness.’

Brave New World analogies may seem overused, but we’d be fools to discount the loudness of its message here because, as Veith states, it ‘sounds disturbingly non-fictional.’

A.W. Tozer once said that ‘the complacency of Christians is the scandal of Christianity.’

If we allow the Leftist hegemony to dictate curriculum, on the sole basis of their own self-serving, misconstrued and false notions of Western Civilisation, we’re not just guilty of contributing to that scandal, (which in Biblical terms is scandalon; sin), we’re, as Tozer also said, ‘lacking in a moral wisdom that future historians will record as an Achilles heel, because though we had the intelligence to create a great civilisation, we lacked the moral wisdom preserve it.’

First published on Caldron Pool, 5th May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Homeschool, Political Theology, Politics , , , ,
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CRT is Racism

May 13, 2021 — Leave a comment

Seconded.

Critical Race Theory is racism.

—-> https://caldronpool.com/hate-whitey-is-racism/


—-> https://caldronpool.com/critical-race-theory-is-culturally-accepted-racism/

Mum challenges a school who wants to infuse Critical Race Theory’s false doctrines into the curriculum.

She’s right. Black Lives Matter Inc. and the whole CRT, “hate whitey”, money making industry has more in common with the Nation of Islam, and Malcom X, than it does Martin Luther King Jnr.

CRT is a rejection of the early civil rights movement. It does what David Horowitz has accused “Black Power” thugs of doing: keeping African-Americans chained to poverty through as politics of grievance, and bitter sense of entitlement.

Source.

In Politics , ,
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The Gospel According to Kevin Rudd

May 6, 2021 — Leave a comment

Criticisms from former Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, aimed at Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison’s Christian faith, are asinine, petty, and hypocritical.

In response to Scott Morrison’s speech at an Australian Christian Churches conference in April, Rudd told the ABC’s 7:30 Report,

“The idea that anyone leading a political party could believe that it is ‘God on our side,’ is just the stuff of real danger in my view.”

Rudd’s problem with Morrison is largely manufactured outrage.

Morrison never said or alluded to the absolutizing of the Church through the State by way of hyper-nationalism.

In ripping apart Morrison’s testimony concerning answered prayer, Rudd twisted what Prime Minister said, and skewed the message to serve his own ends.

No where in the speech – which was transcribed by Crikey  – does Scott Morrison say about the 2019 election that “God was on our side,” nor did Morrison suggest that Australia should become a theocracy.

The Prime Minister spoke of being the image bearers of God. A key part of healthy Biblical theology, and a major part of the fabric from which Western Civilisation was formed.

Contrary to Rudd’s self-centred accusations, Morrison asked those gathered to be what they are called to be: a landmark; a beacon of hope under the 24/7/365 Lordship of Jesus Christ.

In essence, Morrison was calling the Church to be image bearers of the self-revealing God in a sea of poisoned politics, societal division, ideological extremism, and the subsequent surge of political turbulence.

There’s nothing Morrison said that justifies Kevin Rudd’s venomous anti-Church and State tantrum.

Granted, his concerns about the excesses of Pentecostalism weren’t all that off the mark. I’ve seen some dumb stuff done in the name of the Holy Spirit.

While criticism of certain aspects of the Christian denomination are necessary, the more appropriate platform for such criticism is theological analysis, not trial by media.

Certainly not trial by ex-Prime Minister, who from his political pulpit, appears to be saying that the Christian faith should be constrained to four walls on a Sunday, and read through the lens of Das Kapital.

Rudd’s bourgeois leftist social justice Christianity, is as concerning as cultural Christians who keep Jesus in his Sunday box, bringing Him out for a cameo at Christmas, and Easter. Only apply if necessary. Particularly if there’s an election on, and the mood feels right.

By using Morrison’s Christian faith, to shove his own bigoted bourgeois leftist, Marxist Jesus of “Social Justice,” down the throats of Australians, Rudd appears to be completely unaware that his self-righteous chest-beating negates proclamations about his own Christian faith.

For example, Rudd, in his article for the Guardian placed his own “garden-variety theology” (whatever that is) against what he alleges is Morrison’s “radical political theology.”

His juvenile outbidding of Morrison should be read as it appears to have been written: “Morrison isn’t a real Christian. I know, because I’ve always been one.”

It’s not the first time.

In a quarterly essay discussing faith and politics, Chris Uhlmann explained how Rudd “compared his faith, with that of John Howard, and [did so] to find his opponent wanting.”

Could Rudd’s hypocrisy be any more blatant?

He condemns Scott Morrison for bringing “religion” into politics, but was not averse to using God in his 2006-2007 election campaign.

In a 2006 essay for the Monthly, Rudd appealed to the strength of German Evangelical (Lutheran) theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Rudd appears to have used Bonhoeffer’s Christian opposition against the Nazi state, to inadvertently portray the Liberal National Party as Nazis, and the Australian Labor Party as anti-Nazis, for the goal of winning the 2007 election.

Spot the irony. Kevin Rudd, a “Christian Socialist” employed an ecclesiastically Conservative Christian theologian, who stood up against National Socialism, to promote Christian Socialism.

Bonhoeffer wasn’t a fan of the all-consuming, and never satisfied, economic leviathan, stating, (and I’m quoting him verbatim): ‘a lack of obedience to Scripture is characteristic for the teaching of the social gospel.’ (DBW 12, Memorandum, p.242)

Around the time of the 2007 election, when it came to roles played in society by both the Church and State, Kevin Rudd was all for it, writing,

‘The function of the church in all these areas of social, economic and security policy is to speak directly to the state: to give power to the powerless, voice to those who have none, and to point to the great silences in our national discourse where otherwise there are no natural advocates.’

Adding to this, he then asks secular politicians not to reject the Christian perspective:

‘A Christian perspective, informed by a social gospel or Christian socialist tradition, should not be rejected contemptuously by secular politicians as if these views are an unwelcome intrusion into the political sphere. If the churches are barred from participating in the great debates about the values that ultimately underpin our society, our economy and our polity, then we have reached a very strange place indeed.’

It’s telling. Kevin Rudd is okay with the Christian perspective in politics, as long as it’s the Leftist authorised version.

A deceptive, flowery version informed for the most part, by false doctrines that submit the Lordship of Jesus Christ to the tyrannical lordship of Karl Marx.

It’s not Morrison’s faith in politics that needs a health check-up, it’s Kevin Rudd’s.

‘Socialism’s real error’, said Christian, ex-Marxist and French scholar, Jacques Ellul, is ‘the one that lies behind all the rest, is that it ended up formulating a new religion, setting up gods: history, proletariat, socialism, revolution.’ (Jesus & Marx, 1988. p.139)

As Simone Weil asserted: ‘Marxism is a badly constructed religion.’

Rudd’s hypocrisy and its utterly self-important nonsense beg the question, why is #kevin07 still being taken seriously?

The former populist P. M has discredited himself by letting his lust for media attention assuage his narcissistic opportunism.

Watching Kevin Rudd’s responses to Leigh Sales on the 7:30 report was like watching a sketch from the Comedy Company.  

The election of Kevin Rudd ignited over a decade of destabilisation in Australian politics. Him calling the Prime Minister “wacky” is genuinely laughable.

To be in Christ, is to be in the Church.

Crucially, and perhaps most importantly, is that Rudd’s criticism of Morrison, not only misconstrues the role of church and state, it neglects vocation.

Vocation is God’s sovereign grace working through human hands, where, says, Lutheran scholar, Gene Veith, ‘His Word extends into the world.’

Through vocation the spirituality of the cross is lived out in ‘parenting, farming, labouring, soldiers, doctors, judges or retailers.’

It’s impossible for a genuine Christian to be separated from Jesus Christ.

The distinction between church and state is not to be understood as a separation between the secular and sacred.

A Christian defined by their church attendance record, melanin, ethnicity, or loyalty to a political ideology – is not a Christian.

Jesus is bigger than Sundays.

First published on Caldron Pool, 3rd May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Australia, Australian History, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Political Theology, Politics , , ,
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NEW Redbubble T-shirt Design: “Cancel Cancel Culture”

May 6, 2021 — Leave a comment

Happy Thursday readers! For those interested, I’ve uploaded a new t-shirt design to my Redbubble “store.”

Link below.

Link: https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Cancel-Cancel-Culture-by-gravitaslumen/77828685.FB110?fbclid=IwAR3QioTXcCdbgs2_pRX3y_jGRC_QEpZFajokMNj0VVhyvuV0VQzzAp8nsPA

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Art, Art and Theology
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Australia’s Prime Minister Cautions Against Identity Politics, & Cancel Culture: “they are the work of the Evil one”

May 5, 2021 — Leave a comment

Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison has rejected identity politics and cancel culture in a speech delivered to the United Israel Appeal Dinner, in Randwick, NSW.

Morrison’s April 29th address wasn’t a thunderous “no,” but it was an encouraging reiteration of comments he’d originally made during an informal speech at the Australian Christian Churches conference held on the Gold Coast the previous weekend.

One that inadvertently triggered a meltdown amongst the radical leftist vanguard because a) he seemingly didn’t ask their permission, b) didn’t officially schedule it on his Prime Ministerial calendar, and c) a Christian Prime Minister giving a speech at a Christian conference, was a bridge too far for the “Australia is supposed to be a secular country” blusteringly bigoted, anti-Christian belligerents.

The essence of his speech reinforces a commitment from the 3rd highest office in the land, after God and Governor-General, that Australia won’t be led by extremists on the left, who are demanding total conformity to their divisive ideological agenda.

This all sounds promising, but there is a caveat. Morrison’s words are dimmed by the Liberal National Party appearing to follow the direction of Australian Labor’s virtue signalling vote grab, by implementing gender quotas.

With this in tow, we’d be fools to not ask whether the Prime Minister was fully committed to his convictions?

If the Prime Minister’s commitment to tackling the toxins of identity politics and cancel culture is an authentic “hell no – full stop!”, we are seeing a watershed moment in Australian politics.

Morrison’s boldness wasn’t a Menzies sonic boom, heard when the Liberal founder, and Prime Minister, stood in the gap for all Australians with ‘The Forgotten People,’ and his perceptive, if not over-the-top-at-times, consistent defence of Australia’s [Classical] Liberal Democracy, against the totalitarianism of Communism at the height of its insidious power.

This said, Morrison’s address was, in many ways, a Menzies moment.

Scott Morrison, drove home the message of community, and individual responsibility; of offering grace towards our neighbours through the Biblical Christian emphasis on an ‘inherent dignity’ handed to humanity by way of the being made in the image of God (Imago Dei).

Liberty, the Prime Minister said, ‘is not borne of the state but rests with the individual, for whom morality must be a personal responsibility.’

He adds,

‘This is not about state power. This is not about market power. This is about morality and personal responsibility…That is the moral responsibility and covenant, I would argue, of citizenship. Not to think we can leave it to someone else. ‘

‘Community begins with the individual, not the state, not the marketplace…to realise true community we must first appreciate each individual human being matters.

Then Morrison qualifies his meaning stating that,

‘In this context, we must protect against the social and moral corrosion caused by the misuse of social media, & tendency to commodify human beings through identity politics.’

‘We must never surrender the truth that the experience and value of every human being is unique and personal. You are more, we are more, individually, more than the things others try to identify us by, you by, in this age of identity politics.’

‘You are more than your gender, you are more than your race, you are more than your sexuality, you are more than your ethnicity, you are more than your religion, your language group, your age.’

Finally, and with justification, Morrison solemnly nails the fascist nature of identity politics, cancel culture, and by extension Critical Race Theory/Queer theory, asserting:

‘Throughout history, we’ve seen what happens when people are defined solely by the group they belong to, or an attribute they have, or an identity they possess. The Jewish community understands that better than any in the world.’

Cancel culture and identity politics are birthed from same DNA found in Communism, Nazism, and Islamism. They are totalitarianism proper.

That Australians have a Prime Minister publicly moving against this new authoritarianism, is, to lean on the sentiment expressed by CDP leader, Lyle Shelton, a gift.

This, Shelton said, ‘has been Morrison’s finest hour as PM. For a politician who is known more for his pragmatism, this is a welcome and necessary shift.’

I’m a little more cautious. At the moment Morrison’s words are just that, words.

They come from the same Prime Minister whose Communist Chinese inspired anti-COVID counter measures hurt civil liberties, and came without any promise of preserving those liberties, hand-in-hand with his Government’s fight against the Communist COVID virus.

They also come from a P.M. who entertains the hysterical dogma of apocalyptic climate change catastrophisers.

Hopefully, Morrison’s new speech suggests a new direction.

Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister that no one seems to be able to box in, pin down, or label, no matter how hard they try, has gone into bat, shouldering his fair share of the burden for the sake of our civil liberties.

As such, Morrison has delivered one of the best speeches of his time in office, and is to be commended for it.

WATCH.

First published on Caldron Pool, 5th May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Australia, Australian History, Political Theology, Politics, Theological Reflection , ,
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Racist Tender Stopped After Senator Amanda Stoker Confronts Australian Human Rights Commission

May 5, 2021 — Leave a comment

Australian Senator, Amanda Stoker, has, according to reports from The Australian, directly criticised a plan to infuse an antiracism campaign by The Australian Human Rights Commission, with Critical Race Theory.

Linking the two, The Australian said that AHRC has now held back from a committing $140,000 tender to align Critical Race Theory with the “Racism: its stops with me” (RISWM) campaign.

The intention of the “addition” was to move the ‘focus of the campaign beyond the level of interpersonal racism towards a critical look at forms of structural/systemic and institutional racism, as well as unconscious bias.’

The $140,000 ideological alignment tender’s purpose was to ‘increase understanding about these concepts,’ along with ‘mobilise supporters and potential supporters into action to address them.’

Amanda Stoker is quoted as saying that after learning of the project, she ‘immediately called AHRC president to express concern that it was fostering racial division.’ Racism, Stoker said, ‘is completely unacceptable in modern Australia, but ideas like Critical Race Theory, only lead to greater racial division.’

AHRC president, Rosalind Croucher, said that the call with Amanda took place, but denied that Stoker’s criticism had any influence on the decision to put the project on the back-burner.

Defending the $140,000 tender, Croucher said, crucially, it was an idea that sought to include CRT, ‘not replace the current focus on individual behaviour and building social cohesion.’

The Australian said that Croucher rebuked Stoker, telling her that ‘while open communication is valuable, it is not for an assistant attorney to give direction to an independent agency head.’

IPA director, Bella d’Abrera backed Amanda Stoker, ‘accusing the AHRC of using radical race theory to divide Australians, while notorious Twitter race baiter, Greens Senator, Mehreen Faruqi backed the AHRC infusing CRT into its RISWM campaign.

The debate over CRT as a basis for education is raging in the United States. Donald Trump restrained CRT because of its far-left wing toxicity, but Joe Biden backs it.

Some States, however, are following the Trump lead, and seeking to limit the radical Left-wing ideology’s reach, by banning the teaching of CRT in schools.

In other words, these states are seeking to restrain maddening radical left-wing dogmas such as: ‘systemic racism, white privilege, “whiteness”, and gender bias issues.’

Stoker’s concerns are valid.        

The minute the Australian Human Rights Commission starts preaching from the “woke gospel” of Critical Race Theory, and it’s sibling, Queer theory, it’s no longer an organisation advocating human rights, but reinforcing the protection of an emerging oppressive political class, and its false doctrines.

Ex-hard-line Communist, and veteran of the New Left, David Horowitz, in ‘Hating Whitey & Other Progressive Causes’ described what we now know to be Critical Race Theory, as an academic movement of ‘radical left anti-white hatred’, calling it ‘a by-product of anti-Americanism.’

Horowitz, once an avid supporter of the Black Panthers, noted,

“Ideological hatred of whites is now an expanding industry. [See] Noel Ignatiev’s “Whiteness Studies,” an academic field promoting the idea that “whiteness” is a “social construct” that is oppressive and must be “abolished.” [Also] The magazine Race Traitor, the theoretical organ of this academic cult, emblazoned with the motto: “Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity.”

He wrote this in 1999.

His comments pre-date – and perhaps predict – the rise of Black Lives Matter, popularity of CRT, Democrat race baiting, and the “all white people are racist” stereotyping.

Horowitz, an agnostic, is hated by the Left.

It’s easy to see why Amanda Stocker is now on their ridiculous “religious right-wing” watch – them because we hate them – list.

Thankfully, Amanda isn’t alone.

Recall what Kemi Badenoch, a Conservative MP from the U.K., said in October last year:

CRT as an “an ideology that sees blackness as victimhood and whiteness as oppression. We do not want to see teachers teaching their white pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt…What we are against is the teaching of contested political ideas as if they are accepted facts.”

If the AHRC is as passionate about antiracism as they claim, surely the AHRC’s hierarchy will recognise this, and look to a broader range of voices, than those identified by Horowitz.

Critical Theory praxis is designed to discredit. CRT and Queer theory are its weapons. Manipulative thought cancelling platforms used to censure a person based on the lightness of their melanin, convictions about biology, faith, and the man for woman, woman for man, union.

Critical Theory, and its offshoots, Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory, are not what they appear to be.

In the end, Rosalind Croucher, the AHRC president, is to be commended for halting the $140,000 tender, for the simple fact that ultimately, ‘Critical Race Theory is culturally accepted racism.’ – Virgil Walker

First published on Caldron Pool, 30th April 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

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“Pro-Freedom of Speech” Facebook Cancels Australian M.P. Craig Kelly

May 5, 2021 — Leave a comment

Silicon Valley is yet again proving that they’re an anti-democratic monopoly, willing to ban, block, boot, and blunt the voice of Democratically elected representatives.

Craig Kelly is their latest victim.

Facebook has banned the Australian Member of Parliament for breaching their COVID rules.

One of those posts in question was Kelly’s proposed bill to ‘Ban Domestic Passports’ within Australia.

ACL director Martyn Iles called the targeted ban, “big tech censorship”, noting that one of his “The Truth of It” videos have been censored, and that when it comes to Facebook “he, himself, is on borrowed time.”

Iles has good reason for thinking this way. Radical Leftist Jihadists spurred on by the collaborative cancellation of President Donald Trump, appear to love a book burning.

For instance, as Iles noted, Amazon’s ‘recent ban on one of the most carefully written scholarly books on transgenderism, by Dr Ryan T Anderson.’

In addition, Tik Tok ‘(without explanation) permanently banned PragerU’s Amala Ekpunobi, a young, African American, conservative woman whose content tends to be nothing short of excellent.’

The ACL director declared: they censor because they’re scared of ‘truth. Truth is exposed by analysis. Truth has the power to persuade people. It is hard to fight fair against truth.’

He then pointed out that ‘the woke worldview is built on a foundation of lies, which must be protected at all costs – especially the most fragile ones. Censorship is the only tool they have to fight truth. They dare not let it free, or argue with it.’

I’m going to add that the kings and queens of the information age seem determined to exert political power, where political power hasn’t been granted to them.

The technocratic Tower of Babel bubble, that is Facebook, and Twitter (et.al) are how people do business.

There is no opt-out clause. Ours is now truly a technological society.

Technocrats don’t seem to just want the world, they want to run it, and they’re on their way to owning you.

Many businesses use their platforms to communicate with employees, passing on vital information that affects the livelihoods of everyday people, living everyday lives.

The technocracy in California thrives on this co-dependent relationship. They are rulers of the governed, without the consent of the governed.

It’s an abusive relationship, trademarked by Big Tech’s collaborative effort to interfere in the 2020 United States election, when they punished customers on their platforms for objecting to conscription into Silicon Valley’s predominantly Leftist groupthink paradigm.

The way they wield power through their sheltered, centralised hub betrays an arrogance not dissimilar to what Democrat Senator, J. William Fulbright, in 1966 called, ‘power confusing itself with virtue.’

Fulbright was lamenting his vote supporting the Democrat led push to increase America’s involvement in Vietnam. He saw the ‘organised slaughter’ as an outworking of the ‘arrogance of power.’

The relevance is simple. For Fulbright, this was ‘welfare imperialism’; a big nation dictating their terms of existence onto a smaller nation.

In today’s geopolitical vernacular, it’s Communist China vs. the Free People of Hong Kong. Likewise, Communist China vs. the Republic of China (Taiwan). 

By banning criticism, Big Tech follows the road of ‘exaggerated power’, where it ‘can admit no wrong-doing,’ because it’s too invested in an agreed upon consensus, that demands ‘unquestioning support.’ (ibid)

Their COVID-19 wall of silence that bans alternative opinions from “unapproved” professionals, and its vetting system that ensures loyalty to the agreed upon narrative is an expression of this ‘arrogance of power.’

This overthrow of elected representatives raises some important questions about where do we go from here.

One possible way that Big Tech can work around their concerns about “fake news” content is by extending grace to the official accounts of our elected representatives.

Could something akin to parliamentary privilege be extended to elected representatives using social media?

I’m convinced it could. If Big Tech is serious about civil liberties, primarily freedom of expression and speech, such an extension is not only an appropriate application of grace towards elected representatives, but its fast becoming a necessity.

The voice of the people, for the people should be protected.

Parliamentary privilege empowers this; it ‘refers to an immunity from the ordinary law, which is recognised by the law as a right of the houses and their members.’

As such, ‘parliamentary privilege exists for the purpose of enabling the houses of the Parliament to carry out effectively their functions.’

For example: ‘the primary functions of the (upper-senate; lower-representatives) houses are to inquire, to debate and to legislate.’

The sad reality is that, for all the bluster about being platforms for freedom of speech, Big Tech aren’t all that interested in being platforms for freedom of speech.

There can be, said Fulbright, ‘no solution to a problem until it is first acknowledged that there is a problem.’

It’s doubtful that the technocratic kings and queens of this new aristocracy are aware that the fault, as well as the remedy for it, lies with them.

References:

J.W Fulbright, 1966. The Arrogance of Power Random House Publishing Group.

First published on Caldron Pool, 28th April, 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

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