Hmmm....

Victorians could go to prison for up to five years for hate speech under new anti-vilification laws proposed by the Victorian Government.

Under the proposed laws, it would be an offence to “incite hatred against, serious contempt for, revulsion towards or severe ridicule” of a person or group based on their sex, gender identity, or race.

It would also be illegal to “threaten physical harm or property damage on the ground of a protected attribute.”

The new laws would lower the legal threshold for prosecuting people for vilification and would add gender identity, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, and disability to the list of protected attributes alongside race and religion, which are already protected.

Online, these laws will apply to anyone, anywhere who vilifies a person in Victoria, although the government acknowledges that this may be difficult to enforce.

Offline, these laws will apply to both public and private interactions.

Americans are now being forced to think through the first fake conviction in the history of presidential politics.

As an historian, I am really bothered when I hear lawyers on television describe these proceedings as though they were somehow related to the rule of law and the normal legal process.

It is clear that what happened to President Donald J. Trump in Judge Juan Merchan’s court was not a legitimate conviction. Nearly every element of the prosecution was false. Therefore, the outcome is false.

To say President Trump is now a convicted felon – as the left and its propaganda media allies are practically singing – is to legitimize the most corrupt judicial event in American presidential history.

The burden of proof is not on President Trump. He remains an innocent citizen framed by an astonishingly corrupt district attorney, judge, and Biden Justice Department.

Don’t take my word for it alone. Consider what a host of experts have to say.

It would be easier to ignore the World Health Assembly’s (WHA) deliberations in Geneva this week, but the opening address of the Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, deserves a response. Both the WHO and its director are completely divorcing themselves from reality, illustrating how dangerous and unfit for purpose the WHO has become. There is clearly no way that any vote should proceed on anything of importance that the WHO may be required to implement in the coming week of WHA deliberations.

Tedros’s emphasis was on pandemics, and the faltering agreements intended to address their risk, the new Pandemic Agreement, and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR). While these are watered down and the Pandemic Agreement may not even get to a vote, his continued justification for centering greater coordination and power at the WHO speaks volumes about the problem we face.

In Australia, conservatives and libertarians tend to get along.   

Neither has sympathy for the woke, neither declares their pronouns, chooses their gender, or seeks to cancel those with whom they disagree. They both believe in things such as equality before the law, the presumption of innocence, parental responsibility, religious freedom and democracy. Indeed, some conservatives tend to think that libertarianism is merely conservatism under another name. 

That is not the case though; libertarianism and conservatism originate from quite different places.

It is worth understanding those places so that when they do diverge, it is not unexpected. It also helps those who are unsure of their own position.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently put up a defense of its violation of its own legal requirements by submitting draft amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) for a vote at the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA) this May.

This was in response to various concerns raised in parliaments and civil society. This matters because (i) in ignoring legal requirements and rushing a vote the WHO is putting global health and economies at risk, and (ii) the WHO is acting like a spoiled child, which suggests the organization is no longer fit for its mandate.

A Rush Without Reason