Tag: Iran

Hoarding, Free Vaccines, Panic Buying

Hoarding-vaccines-panic-buying
Image of COVID-19 by iXimus from Pixabay

Life goes on, amid news reports of panic buying and hoarding, as reporting of the coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to terrify the masses. We have seen manifestations of this terror in the past fortnight with an (ongoing) share market correction, led by the US and blindly followed by investors in Australia and elsewhere. So far it is no more dire than the corrections during the GFC. The popular theory is that global share market investors fear the effect the coronavirus could have on business, imports and exports and the ever-valuable tourism market.

The seven-day share market correction was followed at home by reports of panic buying of non-perishable groceries. Shelves were cleared in supermarkets, amid assurances by retailers that their supply chains were solid. Hand sanitiser is at the top of a curious list.

Toilet paper was one of the items bought in bulk, prompting one Australian supermarket chain to limit sales of dunny rolls to one four-pack per person. Social media gurus have been busy making memes of Aussies swathed in dunny paper, speculating about what sorts of things one needs to hoard, assuming the worst (global contagion, financial mayhem, collapse of law and order).

I looked but could not find references to food or toilet paper in this list from a survivalist website. There are lots of solid tips about water filtration, fire-lighting, charging batteries (with solar), emergency lighting, fishing equipment and a multi-use gadget called a Spork. Oh, and they list a variety of weapons for hunting and self-defence including a crossbow.

By happenstance, last week I picked up a battered copy of The First Horseman by John Case from a public library sale.

The plot involves a virologist (and a journalist), who is trying to locate and exhume five miners who died of Spanish Flu in 1918 while working in the Arctic. The bodies are buried in ice, so the plan is to harvest the hopefully preserved Spanish Flu virus and develop a vaccine. You guessed it, there’s a bad guy; a megalomaniacal cult leader who thinks there are too many people in the world.

As I continued to read The First Horseman, cases of coronavirus increased world-wide. As of 1st of March, there were just fewer than 80,000 cases in China (3.5% death rate) and some 7,000 cases in other countries, with a death rate of 1.4%). In Australia, the number of reported cases rose to 41. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has previously said the mortality rate of coronavirus varies from 0.7% to 4%, depending on the quality of healthcare and the urgency of the response in affected countries. This week the WHO upgraded the mortality rate to 3.4%, which brings us back to comparisons with the Spanish Flu which had a mortality rate of 2% to 3%, although it afflicted some 500 million people around the world. Author John M Barry put it in perspective when he said in his book The Great Influenza that the flu killed more people in 24 weeks than HIV/AIDS did in 24 years.

A major study done by Chinese researchers said that 80.9% of people diagnosed with Coronavirus exhibited mild symptoms and recovered. Only 13.8% of cases were described as severe and only 4.7% as critical. The highest fatality rate is for people aged 80 and older, at 14.8%. The majority of people who died suffered pneumonia-like symptoms.

Pneumonia is a lung inflammation caused by bacterial or viral infection. (Have you had lunch yet?).The air sacs fill with pus and may become solid. Inflammation can affect both lungs.

Patients usually spend a few days in hospital hooked up to intravenous antibiotics and oxygen/nebulisers to help them breathe. Some forms of pneumonia are contagious. You didn’t know that? Yes, it spreads the same way as the common cold and other viruses.

Pneumonia in the elderly happens fast and the prognosis is poor. The elderly are more susceptible to severe pneumonia, which has a mortality rate as high as 20%. Of the 2.6 million pneumonia deaths in 2017, 1.13 million were aged 70 or older.

Egad! Now where did I file that letter from the medical centre – the one offering (free) immunization for pneumonia? Yes, it’s true; there are advantages to crawling over the peak of the hill, past the 69 sign. I am eligible for a bone density scan ($125), a shingles vaccine ($217) and a vaccine against catching pneumonia ($133), free of charge.

I recommend this reliable website to track the escalation of coronavirus. Of the 52 Australians diagnosed with the virus, 22 have recovered, two have died and six (including health workers in aged care facilities), are the only patients who did not have a recent history of travel to high-risk countries.

It’s not so easy tracking the health of the global share market.Global investors are second-guessing themselves, ignoring Tuesday’s rally (after a seven-day selloff which hacked 11% off the value of the market). On Wednesday, the all ordinaries index was down 113 points after Tuesday’s Reserve Bank interest rate cut. It bounced back again on Thursday by a similar amount and yes, down 111 points on Friday morning.

The volatility is a finger in the air to the world’s central banks, which seemingly colluded in a co-ordinated campaign to cut rates. The conundrum for investors is this: invest in term deposits or bonds and let inflation erode your capital, or trust the share market to claw back value, restore confidence and keep paying dividends.

Despite the clear fact that losses on a share portfolio are paper losses unless physically sold, a major market correction triggers certain events.

The young and brave who hold ‘geared’ share portfolios probably faced a ‘margin call’ last week. Gearing means borrowing money from a financial institution to buy listed shares.

The main catch with borrowing money to buy shares is this: if your portfolio (valued say at $100k), drops in value to $85k, you, the borrower will have to find $15,000 in cash to cover the lender’s risk.

A major study of investors carried out by the Australian Stock Exchange concluded, inter alia, that only 5% borrow to buy shares. Nonetheless, in a survey asking investors this very question, up to 60% of those aged between 25 and 44 seemed keen on the idea.

The other event triggered by a share market collapse is that those retirees receiving part pensions from the government have to report what Centrelink describes as a ‘change in your circumstances’.

So if your part-pension is calculated on assets, you duly report a 10%-12% decrease in the (paper) value of your share portfolio. This should increase your part-pension proportionately. As usual, if you don’t sell, nothing changes apart from the balance on a spreadsheet.

So, of these two global contagions, which will first be healed?

As the ABC’s Alan Kohler pointed out, despite the correction, Australian shares are still over-valued. My take on the share market volatility is to say that when a market is down 200 one day and up 120 the next, day traders are making a killing.

But market volatility is a risk in itself as the fear contagion wafts down to Mums and Dads investors, who all may decide to hide it under the mattress.

As for the coronavirus, senior citizens’ organisations are taking modest steps to ensure their constituents (the age group most at risk) follow simple but effective rules to avoid spreading viruses.

I actually think this set of rules ought to apply in general, adding: “If you are sick, stay home until you are not.” (To which the bolshie Ed aka SWPT adds, that’s one of the many problems of a casualised workforce- even if you’re sick, you can’t afford to stay home – ‘do you want germs with that?’)

We’ll need a huge crowd to stop war against Iran

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Image: A Stop Adani rally, courtesy of https://www.facebook.com/stopadani/

I’m not good with crowds – not since the early days of journalism in Toowoomba when I under-reported numbers at the annual Carnival of Flowers parade. “Next time check with the police,” I was told and mostly continued to do so, on occasions when crowds gathered for newsworthy events.

It is not always a given that members of the constabulary will give you an accurate-enough figure of crowds. Police under-estimated by 50% or so the size of street marches in Australia’s capital cities in 2003, protesting John Howard’s involvement in George Bush Jnr’s unjustifiable war with Iraq.

Oh, we remember that! Mr and Mrs Outraged Parents of One joined 99,998 others on February 16, 2003, marching from Roma Street, along Adelaide Street and down Edward Street to the Botanic Gardens. It was a steamy Brisbane day and there were concerns for the health and hydration of toddlers and the elderly.

On the same day, rallies in Adelaide, Darwin and Sydney attracted 200,000 people while two days earlier, 150,000 marched in Melbourne. This was part of a co-ordinated global protest on the same day, when, according to the BBC, between six and 11 million people were involved in more than 60 countries. Rome broke a world record for the biggest single-city anti-war protest, with three million participants.

It might say something about the relative futility of protest in that the ill-advised invasion of Iraq in March 2003 led to ongoing conflict until the withdrawal of 170,000 US troops in 2011. Although their tenure is uncertain, there are 5,200 US troops in Iraq as part of a security agreement with the Iraq government. Along with US-employed contractors, this brings the ‘friendly fire’ equation into any strike on neighbouring Iran.

It seems you need really big protest numbers to get governments to back off even a little bit. An estimated 2 million people thronged Hong Kong’s streets this month.

When a quarter of the population protests, you can understand city authorities putting an unpopular plan on the back-burner. Protesters feared that Hong Kong’s economy and society would be irretrievably damaged by a proposed extradition law (allowing visitors and residents to be sent for trial in China). Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam was forced to suspend the draft legislation. You may recall mass protests and sit-ins in Hong Kong circa 2014 as residents took part in the ‘Umbrella Movement’, to complain about China deciding who will govern the city.

Meanwhile civil disobedience (نافرمانی مدنی) is ramping up in Iran, despite a brutal crackdown by the State’s security police. Prior to 2017, years passed between bouts of people marching in Iran’s capital, Tehran. Nevertheless, people took to the streets of Tehran for three days in a row in 2017, protesting largely about economic hardship and alleged corruption within government. Protests continued in 2018 amid what Amnesty International called “a year of shame”.

Thousands were arrested as authorities sought to crush dissent, as protests continued against poverty, corruption and authoritarianism. Amnesty International said more than 7,000 people were arrested, many arbitrarily. Protestors included students, journalists, environmental activists, workers and human rights defenders.

“Hundreds were sentenced to prison terms or flogging and at least 26 protesters were killed. Nine people arrested in connection with protest died in custody under suspicious circumstances.” 

Amnesty director Philip Luther said the scale of arrests, imprisonments and flogging sentences revealed the extreme lengths the authorities have gone to in order to suppress peaceful dissent.

And while Australian journalists wax indignant about the Australian Federal Police raids on the national broadcaster, this is what can happen to scribes reporting the facts in Iran.

In Australia, attempts at repression are mostly left to conservative politicians and like-minded social media commentators. Last week, two Extinction Rebellion protestors glued themselves to a zebra crossing in Queen Street during a Stop Adani rally, prompting Federal MP Ken O’Dowd to post on Facebook. He cited a Courier-Mail article which quoted Police inspector Geoff Acreman as saying: “The stunt was a ridiculous waste of resources.”

“I’m sure we will all agree,” said O’Dowd, to which 98 people responded with comments like ‘‘make them a speed bump’’, ‘‘leave them there overnight’’, or ‘‘take away their dole money’’. Discourse cuts both ways, thankfully, and this post also attracted comments from people who see the folly of ignoring the climate crisis.

While glueing yourself to a public road does seem an extreme form of dissidence, it is important to remember that Australia does not have a national charter of rights.

While Victoria, the ACT and Queensland have each introduced a State-based charter of rights, in other States, the pendulum is swinging the other way.

Human Rights Law Centre executive director Hugh de Kretser writes that there have been attempts by State governments in Tasmania, New South Wales and Western Australia to curb the power of protests. Mooted changes to State laws include severe penalties, excessive police powers and the creation of ‘broad, vague offences’.

Mr de Kretser says protest has defined a number of key social advances and environmental saves in this country. Without protests we might not have the eight-hour day, women’s right to vote, protection of the Franklin and Daintree rivers and advancement of Aboriginal land rights. Protest also stopped our involvement in the Vietnam War and ended the criminalisation of homosexuality.

He says these issues will come into sharper focus in coming years, with increased attention on climate change, workplace disruption and the implementation of the Uluru Statement.

When, we wonder, will Americans start to push back against the hawk-like Trump administration that has taken the world too close for comfort to an armed conflict with Iran?

For now, President Trump appears to favour increased sanctions against Iran, but experts on armed conflicts say these are parlous times.

South China Morning Post opinion writer Rob York asks the question: where are the mass protests in the US about President Donald Trump first threatening North Korea and now coming close to armed conflict with Iran?

York recounts the nervous days in 2017 when Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong-un played a high stakes game of chicken. This was thankfully hosed down by conciliatory summits in 2018. Now York asks why there are no mass demonstrations about a potential strike against Iran by the US.

“Since June 9, the world has watched Hong Kong’s protest movement closely. The mood of Americans in my social circle turned from dread to relief and then to awe as Hongkongers took to the streets, making it difficult for a government they feel no longer represents them to function.

But Americans are hesitant to do the same. So what if their country sleepwalks into a wholly unnecessary conflagration?”

As commentators have pointed out, Trump has a lot to lose if the US stumbles into a war with Iran, not the least a pre-election promise to the contrary.

As always, Trump’s habit of tweeting in the early hours of the morning comes back to haunt him. Thanks to Mr Shiraz for unearthing this.

“Don’t let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war to get elected – be careful Republicans” – The Real Donald Trump on Twitter, October 23, 2012.

The last word goes to David Bowie’s chillingly appropriate song, used in the credits to the 2016 TV drama, Berlin Station. It’s an earworm.

 

If it doesn’t rain soon, mate

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Baroon Pocket Dam March 8, 2017 (Photos by Bob & Laurel Wilson)

Conversations in the street of any Australian town often involve the weather, which over the past four months has been bereft of rain or “dry” (pronounced “droy.”

Tim: “How’s things, Harold?

Harold: “Droy, mate!”

Tim: “Got 10 points last night – hardly worth measurin’.”

Harold: “How’re dams holdin?”

Tim: “Nothin’ but mud and mosquitos.”

Mrs Harold: “If it doesn’t rain soon, mate, we’re gonna move back to the town.”

The latter is the narrator’s refrain from one of my songs; the laconic farmer, chin up as usual, watching the ABC. He’s being harassed by the banks, making do with pumpkin scones and home brew and tells the wife that if she must pay bills, pay the one with the lawyer’s letter – today.

Australian farmers are well-used to Continue reading “If it doesn’t rain soon, mate”

Blogging and human rights

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Protest in Iran photo by Christopher Rose https://flic.kr/p/7CJsu7

In case you were curious, the word blog in Farsi looks like this – وبلاگ. Iranians who didn’t like the way things were going in their country started وبلاگ’ing (blogging) like crazy after the 2000 crackdown on Iranian media. Iranians who interact with the internet are by definition risk-takers.

As recently as late 2016, five Iranians were sentenced to prison terms for writing and posting images on fashion blogs. The content was decreed to ‘encourage prostitution’.

The Independent quoted lawyer Mahmoud Taravat via state news agency Ilna that the eight women and four men he represented received jail time of between five months to six years. He was planning to appeal the sentences handed down by a Shiraz court on charges including ‘encouraging prostitution’ and ‘promoting corruption’.

The immediacy of blogging appeals to those who live under oppressive regimes. They use the online diary to inform the world of the injustices in their country as and when they happen. I cited Iran (Persia) as just one example of a country where expressing strong opinions contrary to the agenda of the ruling government is extremely risky business.

The founder of Iran’s blogging movement, Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian blogger, spent six years in prison (the original sentence was 19 and a half years), before being pardoned by Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Derakhshan also helped promote podcasting in Iran and appears to have been the catalyst that spawned some 64,000 Persian language blogs (2004 survey). Clearly there is/was a level of dissent among people who think the right to free speech is worth the risk of incarceration or worse.

Blogging can be a lot of things in Australia, but risky it rarely is, so long as you are mindful of the laws regarding defamation and contempt of court. Not so for bloggers or citizen journalists of oppressed countries who try to get the facts out.

It is no coincidence that most of the countries guilty of supressing free speech are among the 22 countries named by Amnesty International as having committed war crimes. They include Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan and, closer to home, Myanmar, where persecution and discrimination persists against the Rohingya. Amnesty’s national director Claire Mallinson told ABC’s The World Today that not only are people being persecuted where they live, 36 countries (including Australia) sent people back into danger after attempts to find refuge.

Amnesty’s Human Rights report for 2015-2016 does not spare Australia from criticism, particularly our treatment of children in custody, with Aboriginal children 24 times more likely to be separated from their families and communities. We are also complacent when it comes to tackling world leaders and politicians accused of creating division and fear.

Still, at least if you live in Australia you can openly criticise something the government is doing (or not doing), apropos this week’s Q&A and the Centrelink debt debate.

According to literary types who seem to have warmed to my turn of phrase, FOMM is not a blog as such, but an example of ‘creative nonfiction’ which I am told is not only a genre, but also something taught at universities.

I never knew that.

Bloggers in comfortable democracies like ours use blogs to write about cats, dogs, goldfish, cake recipes, fashion, yoga, raising babies, travel adventures and produce how-to manuals about anything you care to name.

The definition of a blog is ‘a regularly updated public website or web page, typically run by an individual or small group, written in an informal or conversational style.’

Scottish comedian and slam poem Elvis McGonagall, who you met last week, satirises the blog format with this entry.

Monday:

Woke up. Had a thought. Dismissed it. Had another. Dismissed that. Stared at the cows. The cows stared back. Scratched arse. Shouted at telly. Threw heavy object at telly. Had a wee drink. Had another. Went to bed.

Tuesday to Sunday – repeat as above

The definitive blog is an online daily diary, kept by people while travelling, carrying out some stated mission like preparing for an art exhibition, producing an independent album, dieting or training for a triathlon. Most of these literary exercises are abandoned at journey’s end, or on completion of the mission. A fine example of this is folksinger John Thompson’s marathon effort to post an Australian folk song each day for a year. He did this from Australia Day 2011 to January 26, 2012.

Some of the tunes have ended up on albums by Cloudstreet, Thompson’s musical collaboration with Nicole Murray and Emma Nixon.

The social worth of a blog, though, is when an oppressed human being writes a real time account of what atrocity or infringement of human rights is happening in their third-world village, right now.

There are millions of blogs circulating on the worldwide web, many of which are concerned with marketing, selling, promoting and luring readers into subscribing to the bloggers’ products and/or clicking on sponsors’ links. It is nigh-on impossible to find a list of blogs independently assessed on quality, although some have tried.

The Australian Writers Centre held a competition in 2014 to find Australia’s best blogs, dividing entries into genres like Personal & Parenting, Lifestyle/Hobby, Food, Travel, Business, Commentary and Words/Writing. The competition attracted hundreds of entries which were whittled down to 31 finalists.

The AWC told FOMM it has since switched its focus to fiction competitions but has not dismissed the popularity of blogging. Even so, continuity is an ever-present issue.

The 2014 winner, Christina Sung, combined travel and cooking, two topics which spawn thousands of blogs worldwide, into The Hungry Australian. But as happens with blogs, the author has somewhat moved on since then. As Christina last posted in September 2016: ‘Hello, dear readers! Apologies for my lengthy absence but I’ve been working on a few writing projects lately.’

Likewise, the author of The Kooriwoman, the Commentary winner for a blog about life as an urban Aboriginal in Australia, has not posted since January 2016.

It is not uncommon for finely-written blogs like those mentioned to have a hiatus or disappear without notice, for a myriad of reasons linked to other demands and distractions in the authors’ lives.

The few lists of Australian blogs you can find tend to rank them on popularity (numbers of followers or clickers). The top 10 blogs in this list are all about food or travel.

Hands-down winner Not Quite Nigella is a daily blog curated by Lorraine Elliott who according to blogmetrics has 28,523 monthly visitors. It’s not hard to see why – the blog is constantly updated with recipes, restaurant reviews, travel adventures and the like, featuring mouth-watering photos and a chatty prose style.

So there are those like Lorraine who make a living from blogging and those who start with a skyrocket burst of enthusiasm and fall to ground like the burnt-out stick.

Whatever your absorbing passion in life happens to be – cross-dressing, wood-carving, wine-making, writing haikus, collecting Toby jugs, quilt-making, proofreading or growing (medicinal) marijuana, you can bet someone out there has created a blog.

Just yesterday for no reason other than a bit of light relief after months of heatwave conditions, I searched for ‘grumpy spouse blog’ and got 22 hits. Have a look at this one – it’s choice.