On surveillance

Posted on 17/10/2022 by Jon Garvey

Most days over the last few months there has been, in The Hump web-stats, a single hit from Kyiv. There’s been occasional interest from other cities in Western Ukraine, as well as the odd hit from Donbas or the Crimea, but this “fan” was a regular. Until last week, that is, since the first Russian air-strikes, when he seems to have stopped. By this I conclude that I was being monitored by the SBU, whose HQ was one of those buildings taken down by the strikes.

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Posted in Politics and sociology | Leave a comment

The speed of science

Posted on 15/10/2022 by Jon Garvey

I hope you clocked the questioning of Janine Small, president of international developed markets at Pfizer and apparently forty years in that corporation, about the question of whether they had tested their COVID vaccine for prevention of transmission before rolling it out.

You’ll also remember that the entire superstructure of coercion, vaccination of the not-at-risk, vaccine passports and so on depended – and still depends – on that prevention of transmission, now belatedly proven to be non-existent.

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Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | 3 Comments

War, peace and the gospel

Posted on 11/10/2022 by Jon Garvey

There is a strong anti-empire theme in the book of Revelation, which my church is studying at the moment – and very appropriately too, given the imperial war in which the Western US Empire is engaged, more and more openly (without parliamentary or popular vote) and not just using Ukraine as a proxy. Jeremiah 51:1-14 is worth reflecting on as to the nature of our current situation, I feel.

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Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | Leave a comment

Climate alarm as a paradigm for universal deception

Posted on 06/10/2022 by Jon Garvey

The Daily Sceptic has a piece linking to this article today. In essence, Worddata.info, one of those sites assembling publicly available data, has produced regional temperature trend graphs using only data from stations in continuous operation since their chosen start date, 1950. As one can easily see, this is scientifically a lot more valid than trying to extrapolate back from the readings of newer stations, and so on. The graphs are below the fold. Before reading on, have a look and see what the charts tell you.

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Tearfund’s climate transformationism

Posted on 03/10/2022 by Jon Garvey

Tearfund (originally “The Evangelical Alliance Relief Fund”) is running a new campaign to mobilise Christians against the “climate crisis,” hubristically modestly called “Let’s Change the Climate.” Oh, do let’s!

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Posted in Politics and sociology, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | Leave a comment

Help me out here

Posted on 29/09/2022 by Jon Garvey

These points were agreed by a number of friends, in a single conversation yesterday:

  • You can’t trust the mainstream news – it’s all propaganda.
  • We know Putin is evil incarnate, and it would be a good thing if God, or some good people, “took him out.”
  • Everything we know about Putin comes from the mainstream news, and we haven’t tried to read other sources, or listened to Putin explain himself.

Tell me, how do those ideas actually fit together in people’s minds?

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology | 5 Comments

The bureaucratisation of virtue

Posted on 28/09/2022 by Jon Garvey

From one viewpoint, the whole woke movement can be seen as an attempt to produce virtue through bureaucracy. Forget for a moment the political undercurrents at play, and the resulting redefinition of virtues into novel categories like “transphobia”: let us charitably suppose that the less ideological people at PayPal and so on, cancelling organisations and individuals’ accounts, are genuinely aiming to “stop hate” by preventing its expression.

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Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Theology | Leave a comment

How the West undermines Christian mission

Posted on 26/09/2022 by Jon Garvey

Most Christians are not absolute pacifists, though they see war as an evil. There are exceptions, of course, including Mennonites like Merv Bitkofer, who used to be an author on The Hump, and even more famously Quakers, who went into captivity in the World Wars rather than take up arms. But without having a theoretical grasp of Just War theory, most ordinary believers will accept the sad necessity for fighting to defend one’s own nation (and family, of course) against foreign aggression.

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Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 1 Comment

The selfish greed of the poor

Posted on 24/09/2022 by Jon Garvey

Quite a few people now have compared the hatred of humanity (“parasites on the earth” etc) evident in much environmentalism with original sin in Christianity. Gaia is dying, or in some renditions biting back, because of the rapacity of mankind, much as in theology creation is said to be fallen and yielding thorns and thistles because of Adam’s sin.

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Posted in Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Come back moth and rust – all is forgiven

Posted on 22/09/2022 by Jon Garvey

Toby Young, writing in the Daily Sceptic yesterday, revealed how the Paypal accounts of the Sceptic itself, Young’s Free Speech Union with around 9,000 members, and even his personal, seldom used account, have been closed without. An e-mail in my inbox this morning shows that the same has happened to UsForThem, an organisation set up to campaign on behalf of children, particularly as victims of misguided COVID policies.

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Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments