COVIDIOCY Adam Creighton’s column in The Australian today — continuing his admirable commitment to changing almost nothing about his content since snapping up the plum role of the Oz‘s US correspondent — talks about the phenomenon of “COVID dumb”, the idea that otherwise smart people become hysterical dullards on the subject of COVID-19. Whatever we think of that take, his choice of example in this case is… interesting:
Brilliant American lawyer Alan Dershowitz recently claimed that COVID-19 was ‘worse than smallpox’. Not as bad, not almost as bad — worse.
The distinguished professor is an intellectually honest, courageous man, given he endured excoriation by fellow Democrats after arguing Donald Trump had not incited violence on any reasonable reading of the law.
To read Creighton’s article, one would think Dershowitz was a pariah among liberals for merely accepting a role on Trump’s defence team. It fails to mention that Dershowitz is the kind of guy who expends that intellectual courage arguing the age of consent ought to be younger. Then there’s the allegations — vehemently denied by him — that he was involved in sex trafficking alongside buddy Jeffrey Epstein. But yes, I suppose the real issue is his overstating the severity of COVID.
The “Great” Escape We’re not sure exactly what comment we want to make about the following image — Craig Kelly, on “Day two of solitary confinement in Canberra”, sitting in a garden beneath the Red Ensign (a version of the flag usually reserved for merchant vessels), wearing a leather jacket and looking every bit as baffled about what’s going on as we are. We just need you to see it too:
Compare the pair COVID has given us what ought to be a paradox — a recession where corporate profits have skyrocketed. Here’s an example of where the burden is falling, and why:
More than 60 publicly listed businesses have disclosed receiving JobKeeper and other government handouts, recording combined profits worth more than $8.6 billion over the past 18 months.
Those companies funnelled over $3.6 billion in dividends to investors since JobKeeper payments began flowing in April. As a whole, they have agreed to pay back just $72 million.
Guardian Australia, August 10, 2021:
The federal government has sent more than 11,000 people Centrelink debt letters worth a total of $32 million claiming they were overpaid due to JobKeeper, while resisting calls to claw back money from businesses who got the wage subsidy and then made a profit.
Services Australia has told Senate estimates 11,771 people have had a debt raised “after the completion of a review of their income support payments and the JobKeeper income that was paid to them by their employer”.
A bit steep Some of Australia’s good fortune at the Tokyo Olympics can be traced to financial support from mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, who covered athletes’ living costs. But there’s no gold for Rinehart in her day-to-day business of resource exploitation. Over the weekend her Hancock Prospecting was blocked from developing a coking coalmine in Canada’s scenic Rocky Mountains in the pro-coal province of Alberta. Indeed, it wasn’t the provincial government but the federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that said no, citing what it said would be significant environmental damage.
“The government of Canada has determined those effects are not justified in the circumstances and therefore the project cannot proceed,” Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said.
Canadian national energy regulators last month said the Grassy Mountain mine proposed by Hancock would not be in the public interest. There is already an appeal in the works. Given the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest update on global warming (which is taken far more seriously in Canada than in Australia — although the Alberta government is in the Joel Fitzgibbon/Matt Canavan school of climate science), it is hard to see Rinehart’s appeal succeeding.
Kelly : “Where are they? I had all my marbles right here in my hand, not 20 seconds ago.”
At least he is with all his friends, Inspector.
I’ll bet he stacked that too.
This flag would not fit in anyone’s belly-button. Should be ‘Naval’, perhaps? The important matters being addressed by Crikey should not be allowed to override the constant (high-school level) errors in spelling that appear in their articles. Crikey is subtley changing the lexicon. Do they realise this and is no-one checking?
Huh?
Navel gazing?
IKEA pays no tax in Australia despite surging sales in the pandemic. IKEA versus Nick Scali. Both sell furniture, only one pays tax.
Both profited from JobKeeper Allan.
Hardly Normal received government multi million dollar handout yet announced record profits over the period. Let’s get the little guy to repay!
“Hardly Moral”?
The red ensign seems to be some conspiracy theory/far-right thing about under what flag australians ‘really died/fought’. a few of them at lockdown protests
We fought in W W 1 under the Union Jack and in W W 2 under the red ensign. The Blue now is a Menzies era stunt, deliberately to identify conservatism with liberal party colours.
Let’s make it green.
In actual fact in WWII we fought initially under the British flag and then later under the Stars & Sripes
Can you provide some references and sources for your claim that I can check myself?
The Australian Red Ensign resulted from the Commonwealth Government’s 1901 Federal Flag Design Competition which required two entries: a flag for official Commonwealth Government use and another for the merchant navy. The winning design was based on the traditional British Red Ensign and featured the Southern Cross and Commonwealth Star.
Horse’s mouth: https://pmc.gov.au/government/australian-national-flag
Per making it green: since the 1998 change to the flags act of 1953, it looks as though that might require a referendum. (Which doesn’t make it impossible: the recent NZ flag design competition and vote had the one with the silver fern and laser-eyed kiwi up near the top, until parliament decided to just stick with the existing one…)