Free Republic

Australia is currently suffering the largest rise in Covid-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths across the country since the pandemic struck in March 2020, despite adopting strict Draconian policies that only allow the vaccinated to participate in society because authorities are wrongly labelling the unvaccinated a danger to public health.But according to official New South Wales Government data, it isn’t the unvaccinated population who are to blame, instead Australia is very much experiencing a pandemic of the vaccinated, with 9 in every 10 cases, and 8 in every 10 hospitalisations and deaths since November 26th 2021 recorded as being among the...

Fifteen kilometres from Darwin CBD, there's a plot of mud and dirt that is about to become a $270 million asset for the United States defence force. By September 2023, the East Arm fuel storage facility is expected to be able to store 300 million litres of military jet fuel to support American defence activities in the Northern Territory and Indo-Pacific region. Crowley Solutions, a Florida-based logistics company, won the construction tender for the project in September 2021. Vice-president Sean Thomas said it would eventually service defence bases across the Top End. "This facility is going to be a forward-deployed...

I recently wrote to my United States senator, a Republican NeverTrump, respectfully asking why the January 6 detainees are still in jail, with many still in solitary and not arraigned for what was essentially trespassing on public property (forgetting for the moment the role of FBI instigators). (Incidentally, we should all be writing.) His reply saddened me profoundly. I received back a two-page harangue of how horrible January 6 was and how it imperiled our democracy. Buried within that harangue were unexpected admissions about the unconstitutional conditions in which far more prisoners are held than most people realize. Surprisingly enough,...

The national drug regulator has given the green light to the Novavax vaccine, along with two oral treatments for patients currently suffering from COVID-19.The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) on Thursday approved the Novavax vaccine, also called Nuvaxovid, for adults aged 18 years and over, making it the first protein-based COVID-19 vaccine in the country’s arsenal.It is advised to be used as a primary vaccine only as studies into using Novavax as a booster shot are still in progress.Health Minister Greg Hunt on Thursday said he hoped the new jab would increase the nation’s vaccination rates.“We know that some people have...

QuantBioRes is working on a treatment not a vaccine, but CEO says tennis star is ‘not anti-vax’ Novak Djokovic is the controlling shareholder in a Danish biotech firm aiming to develop a treatment for Covid-19 that does not involve vaccination, it has emerged. The world No 1, who was deported from Australia this week after the government cancelled his visa in a dispute over a medical exemption relating to his unvaccinated status, bought an 80% stake in QuantBioRes in 2020. Ivan Loncarevic, the company’s chief executive, confirmed the investment to Reuters. He subsequently told the Financial Times that he had...

Last year saw Australians install rooftop solar like never before, with 40% more installed in 2021 than in 2020. Solar system installations now make up 7% of the energy going into the national electricity grid. Alongside the greater uptake of utility-scale solar (such as solar farms), this means cheaper and cleaner electricity is fast becoming a reality, putting the country on track to meet international climate targets. But such a dramatic surge in solar output also poses challenges for Australia's power system for two main reasons. It results in increased periods of large oversupply when weather conditions favor solar energy....

Surfing icon Kelly Slater will be banned from competing in Australia if he refuses to get the Covid jab, the Sports Minister Richard Colbeck has warned. The 11-time world surfing champion, 49, has is yet to reveal his vaccination status but has made waves online railing against jab mandates and posting anti-vax rhetoric to his social media pages during the pandemic. Mr Colbeck said the American will face a wipeout similar to world No. 1 tennis star Novak Djokovic who was sensationally booted from the country on the eve of the Australian Open, if he fails to prove he's vaccinated.

PARIS -- Should people be denied the right to earn a living because their job suddenly requires them to inject a substance into their body that is still technically in clinical trials and whose known efficiency and impact is literally evolving in real time? When faced with that question, most developed countries came down on the side of politics rather than pure science - at least until a court rules otherwise, as was recently the case with the U.S Supreme Court and Joe Biden's vaccine mandates for private employers. In other words, the political impetus to be seen to be...

Defending Australian Open Champion Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia, the day before commencement of 2022 tournament play. He entered the country on a visa including a medical exemption based on recent Covid infection. Due to public outry over “special treatment,” his visa was revoked upon arrival in the country, only to be reinstated by a court. It was later revoked by an immigration minister, whose decision was upheld by another court, sending Djokovic packing — potentially for three years. This draconian act puts Djokovic at a serious disadvantage in his Grand Slam rivalry with Rafael Nadal, who is competing...

It’s tempting to look at any major city in this country and think, “This is horrible, these corrupt politicians need to fix this.” It would also be wrong to do. Because no matter how huge parts of bad Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Los Angeles, etc., get, it is important to remember that the people who live there voted for the moronic politicians who did it to them. The same goes for Australia, France, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, etc. Citizens voted for the totalitarian boobs arresting them or promising to “piss them off” if they don’t comply with every...

On Saturday, the volcano at Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai erupted, sending ash plumes 30 kilometres into the atmosphere, kicking off a tsunami in Tonga that reached as far away as Alaska, and destroying a volcanic cone that connected the uninhabited islands of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha’apai. The volcano is around 65 kilometres northwest of Tongan capital, Nuku’alofa, with experts saying it was one of the most powerful eruptions since the 1990s. “The sea level gauge at Nuku’alofa, Tonga, recorded a tsunami wave of 1.19 metres before it stopped reporting,” Dr Hannah Power of the University of Newcastle said. “Waves of...

Scientists are struggling to monitor an active volcano that erupted off the South Pacific island of Tonga at the weekend, after the explosion destroyed its sea-level crater and drowned its mass, obscuring it from satellites. The eruption of Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano, which sits on the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire, sent tsunami waves across the Pacific Ocean and was heard some 2,300 kms (1,430 miles) away in New Zealand. “The concern at the moment is how little information we have and that’s scary,” said Janine Krippner, a New Zealand-based volcanologist with the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program. “When the vent is...

A British woman who went missing after a huge undersea volcanic eruption rocked Tonga has been found dead, her family said, in the first reported fatality in the Pacific island nation. The brother of Angela Glover, who ran an animal rescue center, said the 50-year-old died after being swept away by a wave. Nick Eleini said his sister's body had been found and that her husband James survived, the BBC reported. "I understand that this terrible accident came about as they tried to rescue their dogs," Eleini said in a video statement posted by Sky News.

The eruption of Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai volcano, which sits on the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire, sent tsunami waves across the Pacific Ocean and was heard some 2,300 kms (1,430 miles) away in New Zealand. [O]n-site instruments were likely destroyed in the eruption and the volcanology community was pooling together the best available data and expertise to review the explosion and predict anticipated future activity. Saturday's eruption was so powerful that space satellites captured not only huge clouds of ash but also an atmospheric shockwave that radiated out from the volcano at close to the speed of sound. Photographs and videos...

AAP/Japan Meteorology Agency Why the volcanic eruption in Tonga was so violent, and what to expect next January 15, 2022 3.04pm EST Shane Cronin, University of Auckland Author Shane Cronin Professor of Earth Sciences, University of Auckland The Kingdom of Tonga doesn’t often attract global attention, but a violent eruption of an underwater volcano on January 15 has spread shock waves, quite literally, around half the world. The volcano is usually not much to look at. It consists of two small uninhabited islands, Hunga-Ha’apai and Hunga-Tonga, poking about 100m above sea level 65km north of Tonga’s capital Nuku‘alofa. But hiding...

Pedro Martinez & Federico Delbonis have rushed to the aid of a ball kid who collapsed at the Australian Open. pic.twitter.com/ED8ti6QoYq — The Juggernaut (@TheJuggernaut88) January 17, 2022 https://twitter.com/TheJuggernaut88/status/1483018659732029440 Another coincidence involving the Vaccine and physical exertion.

Monica is a quiete conservative. So were the Serb supporters of Novak Djokovic outside the Federal Court in Melbourne, Australia, last Sunday. They danced and sung national songs to take their stand for freedom. Among them Monica blossomed.

Majority want unvaxxed locked in their homes, close to half want people jailed for questioning jabs. A national poll has found that forty-five percent of likely Democratic voters would be ok with the government “requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.” The figure was registered by Rasmussen Reports and the Heartland Institute, which also found that a MAJORITY “Fifty-nine percent of Democratic voters would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19...

Lockdowns helped Australian life expectancy increase more than any other country throughout 2020 and make it "one of the safest places in the world", a new study has found. Researchers found life expectancy increased by 0.7 years for both males and females in Australia between 2019 and 2020. That compares with an average increase year-to-year of between 0.09 and 0.14 years between 2015 and 2019. The Australian National University also found this was the largest increase of any country featured in its study by some distance. Denmark and Norway were closest, experiencing 0.1 and 0.2-year increases for females and males...

NBC News had a curious analysis of the COVID situation in Australia yesterday, literally describing the nation’s current approach to the Omicron surge as a “let COVID rip” policy. We’ll address how accurate that description might be in a moment, but the numbers being produced in the land down under are similar to those in many other countries currently watching the Omicron variant spread like wildfire. After an extended period where Australians were locked down as if they were in a gulag, they finally hit their vaccination targets late last year and all but one of the Australian states largely...