Welcome to Grappy's Soap Box - a platform for insightful commentary on politics, media, free speech, climate change, and more, focusing on Australia, the USA, and global perspectives.
Sometimes a story breaks that forces you to stop and ask:
How on earth was this allowed to happen?
We now know that the FDA is considering a black-box warning — the strongest warning it can impose — for mRNA COVID vaccines given to children and teens. Why? Because the agency has finally acknowledged multiple child deaths linked to the shots, with experts warning the real number may be higher .
Let that sink in.
These vaccines were mandated for schoolchildren. Kids were expelled for refusing them. Parents were ridiculed for hesitating. Scientists who raised concerns were smeared, silenced, or de-platformed. And now — four years later — the truth is surfacing.
This wasn’t a mistake.
It was a systemic failure of transparency, accountability, and basic morality.
While credible physicians warned of myocarditis risks in teens, especially boys, the public was told it was “rare,” “mild,” or “misinformation.” Even cases of serious harm within vaccine trials were quietly excluded from the results. Instead of open debate, we got censorship, political pressure, and a media more interested in enforcing a narrative than protecting children.
Megyn Kelly was attacked as an “anti-vaxxer” for questioning the safety of these shots in kids.
Turns out she — and others — were right to ask.
But those who pushed the mandates?
Those who insisted it was “safe and effective” for children without long-term data?
Those who mocked, shamed, and silenced dissenting voices?
They now fall silent.
No apology.
No accountability.
No explanation.
And the media?
Complicit.
They amplified the official line, demonised sceptics, and ignored emerging evidence until it became impossible to hide. They helped create the climate where debate was forbidden, and parents were kept in the dark.
In a healthy democracy, truth is tested through open discussion — not crushed because it’s inconvenient. Yet throughout COVID, we allowed governments, tech companies, and health bureaucrats to decide which facts we were permitted to hear.
Today’s black-box warning discussion is not just a medical story.
It is a moral indictment of the institutions that failed our children.
We must demand answers.
We must insist on transparency.
And above all, we must never again allow fear, politics, and censorship to trump truth and child safety.
Parents deserved honesty.
Children deserved protection.
They got neither.
Australia has finally reached the moment where reality smashes into ideology. The Opposition has dumped its previous Net Zero commitment — and rightly so. That decision must not just be defended; it must be prosecuted with absolute conviction.
Because Net Zero, as currently pursued by Labor and the Greens, is not a climate policy.
It is a national economic suicide note.
The arguments against Net Zero are overwhelming, practical, and already visible across Europe — where the experiment is collapsing in real time.
And Australia is marching straight down the same path unless someone has the courage to pull the handbrake.
Below are the clear, undeniable reasons Net Zero must be abandoned — not politely questioned, not gently “rebalanced,” but rejected as the destructive, unworkable fantasy it is.
🔹 1. Net Zero Destroys Energy Security
Europe went all-in on wind and solar — and the result has been catastrophic:
Intermittent renewables left the grid exposed to weeks-long energy shortfalls (“Dunkelflaute”)
Australia is copying the same blueprint.
Labor is shutting down our coal stations without any proven replacement, gutting our energy security and placing us in permanent dependence on foreign gas imports and batteries that do not yet exist at industrial scale.
This isn’t strategy.
It’s delusion.
🔹 2. Renewable Intermittency Can’t Run a Modern Nation
Renewables are “unreliables” — entirely dependent on backup baseload power they do not provide themselves .
Batteries?
Today’s best large-scale batteries store 6–8 hours, while low-wind periods can last two weeks.
Australia is betting its national grid on a storage technology that:
does not exist
cannot exist at the required scale
and is nowhere near cost-viable
This is not “transition.”
This is ideological gambling with the nation’s power supply.
🔹 3. Net Zero Causes Massive Electricity Price Increases
This is not theory. It’s now lived reality.
Europe’s electricity prices exploded — industrial prices up 5–7 times those of the US and China .
Germany and the UK — once industrial powerhouses — are now cautionary tales.
Businesses fleeing to the US where energy is cheap
Entire supply chains hollowed out
Marshall warns that Europe is “wiping out its industrial base” in the name of Net Zero .
Australia is smaller, more vulnerable, and more exposed.
We won’t just lose manufacturing — we’ll lose:
mining
refining
smelting
heavy industry
food processing
agriculture
regional towns built around energy-intensive work
This is unilateral economic disarmament.
🔹 5. Net Zero Devastates Landscapes and Wildlife
Labor and the Greens constantly invoke environmentalism while pushing the greatest environmental destruction in Australian history:
T
housands of kilometres of transmission lines bulldozed through farmland, forests and heritage land
Wind turbines plastered across rural Australia
Solar farms consuming entire regions of arable land
Whale populations disrupted by offshore wind
Birds and wildlife killed by turbines
Europe is already recognising this disaster.
Australia is simply arriving late to the bonfire.
🔹 6. Net Zero Makes No Global Difference
This is the most important truth of all:
Australia could disappear tomorrow and global emissions would not change.
China builds two new coal plants per week.
India adds two per month.
Both have Net Zero deadlines so far in the future they can be safely ignored for decades.
Neither intends to cripple itself the way Europe has.
Yet Labor wants Australia — a 1.2% emitter — to commit economic suicide to impress nations who laugh at the idea.
🔹 7. Renewables Need Fossil Fuels to Exist
Every wind turbine, solar panel, and battery requires:
massive mining
diesel machinery
fossil-fuel-based metals and chemicals
shipping across the world
gas or coal backup during downtime
“Clean energy” cannot exist without “dirty energy.”
The irony is inescapable.
🔹 8. Net Zero Punishes the Poor Most
Marshall is right: Net Zero is a policy that immiserates the poor .
Higher electricity prices
Higher food prices
Higher rent and mortgages
Lost jobs
Lower wages
Higher cost of living everywhere
Rich elites cope.
Ordinary Australians pay the price.
🔹 9. Australia Risks Becoming Europe 2.0
Europe tried to “lead the world.”
Nobody followed.
Now Europe is scrambling back to coal, reopening gas fields, and begging the US for LNG.
Australia is still pretending this model works.
Labor is pushing us into the same catastrophe — but with even fewer industrial strengths to lose.
🔹 10. A Sensible Energy Policy Is Possible
Australia can embrace
Clean, affordable next-gen nuclear
High-efficiency, low-emission coal
Domestic gas
Hydropower
Renewables only where economically justified
Technology-driven emissions reduction, not ideology-driven deadlines
This is not “anti-environment.”
It is pro-reality.
The LNP Must Hold the Line — No Backsliding
Net Zero is collapsing everywhere it has been tried.
It is not “the future.”
It is a failed experiment.
The LNP must argue forcefully, unapologetically, and with total clarity:
Net Zero destroys jobs.
Net Zero raises prices.
Net Zero weakens the nation.
Net Zero does nothing for the climate.
Australia cannot afford another decade of this fantasy.
The Opposition has finally stepped away from a policy that never made sense.
Now it must go further:
Expose it.
Discredit it.
And bury it for good.
Before Labor buries the country along with it.
Please watch Paul Marshall's presentation at this year's ARC conference in February. I have used his arguments in the above blog.
Every now and then, someone from the mainstream breaks ranks and says what everyone else can see but few in public life dare acknowledge. Erin Molan — long a familiar face in Australian media — is one of those voices. Her recent long-form interview with PragerU lays bare a set of uncomfortable truths: about mass immigration, media dishonesty, the decline of Western confidence, and the cultural void young people are falling into. The whole conversation is well worth watching, but here are the key themes that stood out.
From Sports Desk to Security and Politics — and Why She Had to Leave
Molan didn’t start out as a political lightning rod. Her entry into the national conversation was through sport — hosting football and tennis, and becoming the first woman to hold several major roles. But, as she explains, sport was the last genuinely apolitical part of the media landscape.
Once she moved to Sky News, she found herself confronting the very permission structure of mainstream media: conservative opinions were taboo, even where facts supported them; left-wing narratives were simply assumed as truth.
After October 7, that tension became unmanageable. What should have been a clear moral line — condemning a terrorist massacre — became “controversial.” The absurdity of this pushed her out of the strained “neutral by morning, opinionated by night” existence.
The Collapse of Media Integrity
One of Molan’s most cutting observations is what’s happened to journalism itself. Legacy media, she argues, has moved from reporting facts to laundering activist talking points.
Public broadcasters in Australia even reported terrorist propaganda as fact — with no accountability, no consequences, no retractions anyone would ever see. Accuracy is optional; narrative is supreme.
Meanwhile, young people — who’ve abandoned legacy outlets entirely — are turning to influencers, independent journalists, and alternative media for the truth. It’s a shift America experienced earlier; Australia is only just waking up to it.
The Moral Vacuum Among Young Men
Molan also speaks frankly about a crisis afflicting young men. Not a crisis of strength, but of identity. Boys are told masculinity is toxic, leadership is oppressive, and the traditional roles men once inhabited are inherently suspect.
The predictable result? They seek purpose from all the wrong places. Online extremists, pseudo-macho influencers, and nihilistic forums become their surrogate mentors.
It is not that masculinity has become dangerous — it’s that society has pathologised it. And now it wonders why so many young men are lost.
Mass Immigration Without Shared Values
Perhaps the most explosive portion of the interview concerns immigration.
Not immigration itself, but the complete abandonment of integration.
Molan points out the glaring reality: Australia is bringing in large numbers of migrants from countries where extremist ideologies are widespread, where hatred of the West is taught in schools, and where liberal democratic values are alien concepts. There is almost no vetting. No expectation to assimilate. No cultural guardrails at all. And the results — post–October 7 — have shocked even those who thought they were paying attention.
She contrasts this with her own upbringing in Indonesia, where her family respected local customs, adapted, learned the language, and understood they were guests. Today’s model is the complete opposite: host countries are expected to transform themselves to fit the migrant, not the other way around.
Western leaders, Molan argues, have forgotten the basic principle that built cohesive multicultural societies: shared values matter more than shared geography.
The Rise of Intolerance — and Leaders Too Weak to Confront It
The Opera House chants of “Gas the Jews” were a turning point for many Australians. For Molan, the scandal wasn't just that the chants happened — but that there were no consequences.
Weak leadership doesn’t neutralise intolerance; it rewards it.
When extremists see that nothing happens after such acts, they push further.
Australia, Molan says, is at risk of following the UK’s path: losing confidence in its own identity to the point where immigrants with stronger cultural convictions simply replace the weakened norm.
China’s Influence and the West’s Strategic Blindness
One of Molan’s most intriguing points is her view on China.
She believes Beijing actively fuels Western wokeness because division weakens competitors. China would never tolerate this ideology on its own soil — but it is delighted to see it tear the West apart.
Meanwhile, China buys up Australian infrastructure, expands its influence through proxies, and prepares for an increasingly unstable world. All while Western leaders are distracted, scolding their own citizens instead of addressing real threats.
A Broader Warning: The West Is Losing Its Confidence
In the end, the interview is more than a critique — it’s a diagnosis. The West is suffering from a crisis of confidence.
Our media lies to us.
Our leaders refuse to defend our values.
Our institutions are paralysed by fear of being called names.
And our borders are open to the very ideologies that despise the freedoms we take for granted.
Molan’s message is simple: if we want our civilization to survive, we have to fight for it. That means honest media. Sensible immigration policies. Cultural self-respect. And leaders who are willing to tell the truth, not just the comforting lie.
For anyone concerned about the future of Australia — and the broader Western world — this interview is essential viewing.
Every so often, a medical story emerges that should spark intense global interest — but instead slips into silence.
The recent case-series on fenbendazole, published in Cancer Reports (Karger), is precisely that kind of story.
Fenbendazole is a cheap, widely used anti-parasitic drug — primarily for animals — that has been around for decades. Yet in this published case-series, late-stage cancer patients who had exhausted all conventional options experienced remarkable improvements after beginning fenbendazole. Tumour markers dropped, scans improved, pain lessened, and survival extended well beyond what oncologists had anticipated.
These weren’t mild, ambiguous shifts.
These were significant clinical changes in people who were already written off by the system.
And still… almost no reaction from the medical establishment.
Dr John Campbell recently covered the paper, outlining the extraordinary nature of the findings. I also touched on this issue in my post “When Low-Cost Cures Are Left to Die.” But the more you look at this story, the more troubling it becomes — not because fenbendazole is guaranteed to work, but because of the institutional indifference to even finding out.
If Fenbendazole Were a $10,000 Pill, It Would Be a Global Headline
Let’s be honest:
The problem here isn’t the science — it’s the economics.
Fenbendazole is:
off-patent
cheap
widely available
not owned by any pharmaceutical giant
impossible to turn into a blockbuster drug
In our current system, that is the kiss of death.
If a new biotech company had produced the same clinical outcomes with a $100,000-a-year therapy, it would already be hailed as a breakthrough. Trials would be green-lit overnight. Investors would be lining up. Oncologists would be fighting to participate.
Instead, because the drug costs a few dollars, nobody with institutional power seems interested.
This is not how genuine science works.
This is how profit-driven gatekeeping works.
The Data Doesn’t Claim Miracles — It Claims Promise
The Karger paper does not say fenbendazole is a cure for cancer.
It does not promise universal benefit.
It does not offer sweeping conclusions.
What it does provide is something incredibly valuable:
a series of late-stage cancer cases showing meaningful clinical improvement after starting a low-cost drug.
That alone should trigger:
urgent clinical trials
mechanistic studies
replication attempts
open scientific discussion
Instead, we get an eerie lack of curiosity.
And that’s the real scandal here.
Patients Deserve Answers — Not Silence
No one is saying fenbendazole is the answer.
But the idea that such striking results can be shrugged off because the drug isn’t profitable is morally indefensible.
A responsible medical system investigates promising leads — especially when they are safe, cheap and widely accessible.
But our system does the opposite:
It fast-tracks expensive treatments and quietly ignores low-cost ones.
It rewards profit, not potential.
It prioritises patents over patients.
And fenbendazole may now be the clearest example of that dysfunction.
Final Thought
If the medical community truly believes in evidence, then it must follow the evidence — even when the evidence points to a drug with no financial value. The fenbendazole case-series doesn’t prove a miracle cure, but it absolutely proves the need for serious, immediate investigation.
Science advances by curiosity.
Medicine advances by courage.
And right now, both seem to be in short supply.
Until we confront this uncomfortable reality, we will continue to miss — or ignore — low-cost breakthroughs hiding in plain sight.
Here is Dr Campbell's video covering these case studies.
It is hard to know whether to laugh or despair when Australia’s Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen, alongside the PM Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers, repeats the same tired mantra:
“Renewables are the lowest cost form of energy generation.”
This line has become the centrepiece of Labor’s energy strategy — a strategy currently producing the highest electricity prices in Australian history, and now helping push inflation back up to 3.8%, with a staggering 37% rise in electricity prices in just 12 months.
If renewables are “the cheapest,” someone forgot to tell reality.
And as Bjørn Lomborg explained in a devastating interview with Dave Rubin, Bowen’s claim is not just misleading — it is fundamentally dishonest. The trick lies in what they don’t say.
The Insidious Half-Truth
Lomborg puts it bluntly:
People say wind and solar are cheap — and technically that can be true when the sun shines and the wind blows. Under perfect conditions, the cost of generating electricity is low.
But reality is not perfect.
And outside those ideal conditions, Lomborg says, renewables instantly become “the most expensive power on the planet — because you simply can’t get it.”
This is the part Bowen never mentions.
Electricity is not optional. Hospitals, refrigeration, manufacturing, traffic lights, water pumping, telecommunications — the entire modern economy — need power 24 hours a day, not just when the weather cooperates.
So the real question isn’t:
“Is solar cheap at noon on a sunny day?”
It’s: “What does it cost to run a whole society on energy that only shows up part-time?”
And here the renewable fairytale collapses.
The More Renewables You Have, the Higher Your Bills Go
Lomborg cites global data showing a simple, uncomfortable truth:
Countries with very little wind and solar have cheap electricity.
Countries with lots of wind and solar have expensive electricity.
He explains the pattern clearly:
“You have China and India down here… the US a little higher… the EU all the way up there. There are no countries that have lots of solar and wind and cheap power.”
None.
This is not a coincidence. It is the unavoidable economic reality of intermittent energy:
When sunshine and breezes become the backbone of your grid, reliability disappears and backup becomes the dominant cost.
Which brings us to the heart of the problem.
The Battery Fantasy
Bowen and Albanese constantly talk about “firmed renewables” — wind and solar allegedly backed up by batteries.
But here’s the truth they will never say aloud.
To run the United States on solar alone, you would need batteries capable of storing three months of electricity — enough to get through cloudy weather, seasonal variation and multi-day lulls. Right now, the US has ten minutes of national battery storage.
Lomborg calculates the cost of batteries to fill that gap: Around one-third of the entire US GDP — every year — just to maintain them.
This does not include the cost of the solar panels themselves, or the grid infrastructure. Just the batteries.
Bowen’s “cheap renewables” claim falls apart on this point alone.
You can have cheap solar at lunchtime.
Or you can have electricity at night.
But you cannot have “cheap renewables 24/7” — not with today’s technology, and not with anything on the horizon.
Anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or dangerous.
Australia’s Crisis: The Results Are Already Here
Labor insists we must replace coal with wind and solar at breakneck speed.
The result?
37% increase in electricity costs in a year
Industries shutting down because energy prices make them uncompetitive
Predictable blackouts and emergency interventions
Inflation rising again, driven partly by energy costs
Households under financial stress while being told to “save the planet”
Meanwhile, Bowen looks straight at the camera and assures us:
“Renewables are the cheapest form of power.”
Only a politician could deliver a line so confidently while the evidence burns behind him.
What Bowen NEVER Tells You
Renewables are cheap only when they work.
They require massive backup — batteries, gas or coal — that doubles or triples system cost.
No country has ever run a reliable grid on wind and solar alone.
The more renewables a country installs, the higher electricity prices go.
Australia is repeating Europe’s mistakes — on purpose.
This is not “the lowest cost energy system.”
It is the most expensive experiment ever attempted in Australian history.
What Australia Should Actually Do
Lomborg’s answer is simple and sane:
Expand gas — cheap, abundant, low-emissions, reliable.
Fast-track next-generation nuclear, as the advanced economies are doing.
Keep some coal capacity until genuine alternatives exist.
Invest modestly in R&D for future breakthroughs.
Stop pretending batteries can replace baseload power.
Australia once had some of the cheapest electricity on earth.
Under Bowen and Albanese, we now have some of the fastest-rising prices in the developed world.
The cause is not mysterious.
It is not climate.
It is not Putin.
It is not the weather.
It is policy.
And the lie at the centre of that policy — that renewables are “the cheapest form of energy” — has now crippled our economy and hammered our cost of living.
The sooner we reject it, the sooner Australia can get back to being prosperous, competitive and sane.
The immigration debate in Western countries has become strangely narrow. Governments talk endlessly about how many migrants should be admitted each year, as though any number is acceptable as long as the spreadsheet balances. What almost never gets discussed — and what truly matters — is who we are bringing in, and whether they actually integrate into the society that welcomes them.
Denmark has just offered the world something rare in today’s climate: honesty.
A recent breakdown of Danish data by country of origin — covering crime, fiscal contribution, education and employment — shows a truth that Western political elites refuse to confront. Migration outcomes differ dramatically depending on where people come from. And the differences aren’t subtle.
Migrants from Europe, East Asia and other advanced economies tend to integrate well: high employment, strong educational outcomes, minimal crime, and often a positive fiscal contribution. But migrants from Africa and the Middle East show persistently higher crime rates, lower employment, poorer educational attainment, and long-term negative effects on public finances. Even second-generation outcomes lag substantially.
These are not opinions. They are data.
And ignoring them doesn’t make them go away.
The following table shows "Violent Crime Conviction Rate in Denmark by Nation of Origin, 2010-2021". The red and orange bars show Middle Eastern and Other African migrants, highlightinh the significantly greater crime rate for these migrant groups.
The problem is not migration itself — it is the type of migration Western governments choose to pursue. We pretend all migrants are interchangeable, that backgrounds don’t matter, that culture is irrelevant, and that “assimilation” is an outdated concept. Meanwhile, the evidence shows that assimilation isn’t just desirable — it is essential. Without it, we don’t get multicultural harmony. We get parallel societies, rising welfare costs, entrenched disadvantage, and growing public resentment.
A serious country would look at this and ask hard questions:
Are certain migrant groups thriving, or consistently struggling?
Are the newcomers integrating into the host culture, or forming separate enclaves?
Are they contributing economically — or relying disproportionately on welfare?
Are crime rates rising or falling with each intake wave?
Are we strengthening social cohesion — or eroding it?
These are not “racist” questions.
They are the basic due-diligence questions any nation should ask when deciding who gets to join its society.
Denmark at least has the courage to look.
Other countries should do the same.
Migration can be one of the greatest strengths of a nation — but only when it is selective, thoughtful, and grounded in reality rather than wishful thinking. A country has every right to prefer migrants who are likely to integrate, contribute and embrace civic values. And it has every right — indeed, every responsibility — to limit or reform migration flows that repeatedly produce negative outcomes.
Pretending all migration is equal doesn’t make us kinder. It makes us foolish.
If we want migration to work, to genuinely enrich society rather than divide it, then we need to have the discussion our leaders keep avoiding: Who is succeeding? Who is struggling? And why are we ignoring the difference?
Until we confront those questions honestly, we will continue importing problems we cannot solve — and exporting the social cohesion we once took for granted.
Pauline Hanson walked into the Senate wearing a burqa — and was promptly banned from the chamber.
Fine. Agree or disagree with her stunt, that’s politics. But what happened next says far more about Australia in 2025 than it does about Hanson.
Because apparently, we’re now at the point where the issue itself can’t even be discussed.
Let me be clear: my concern here isn’t whether the burqa should be banned (though I personally think it should).
My concern is that the debate is being banned.
Avi Yemini captured the moment perfectly: outside the political media bubble, most people weren’t outraged by Hanson — they were laughing at the senators clutching their pearls. These are the same politicians who routinely use parliament as a stage for their own divisive props and lectures. Yet the moment they get a taste of their own medicine, suddenly they cry “unconstitutional!” and demand silence.
Unconstitutional?
For wearing a burqa?
If anything, the implied right to political communication protects exactly this kind of protest. The argument was so backwards it almost sounded like they were the ones wanting the burqa banned.
And here lies the hypocrisy:
The Senate had just shut down Hanson’s bill — the very bill that would have made her stunt illegal. In other words, they want the right to use parliament for their own theatrics, but they want to block others from making their point in the same way.
This isn’t about respect.
It isn’t about religion.
It isn’t even about Pauline Hanson.
It’s about the slow creep of cancel culture into the halls of parliament — a growing belief that certain topics simply cannot be discussed because the public might think the “wrong” thing if they’re allowed to hear the arguments.
A mature democracy debates ideas.
A fragile one bans them.
And judging by this episode, we’re heading in the wrong direction.
Every generation likes to imagine it lives at a turning point, but the next decade genuinely looks set to reshape our world — for better and for worse. Given we are entering the AI age, I thought I would ask AI to predict the trends that will most affect our lives in the coming decade. I asked for predictions of beneficial changes and 5 predictions of harmful changes.
Below is a concise list of predictions generated by ChatGPT, based on current global trends, technological progress and historical patterns.
These aren’t prophecies, nor guarantees — simply informed forecasts from an AI model trained on vast global data.
Make of them what you will.
🔵 ChatGPT's Five Predictions That Will Benefit Society
1. AI-Driven Medical Breakthroughs
AI will outperform doctors in early detection of many diseases, catching cancers and heart problems long before symptoms appear.
Healthcare becomes faster, cheaper and more preventative.
2. Gene Therapy and Targeted Treatments Go Mainstream
mRNA and gene-editing tools move from experimental to widely accessible, offering genuine cures for inherited and chronic diseases.
3. Clean, Reliable Energy Becomes Cheaper
Advances in battery storage, solar efficiency and small modular reactors will reduce energy costs and stabilise power grids.
4. Personal AI Will Transform Productivity
Most professions will use personal AI assistants to automate admin, research and communication, boosting individual productivity dramatically.
5. Education Becomes Personalised and Universal
AI tutors will give every student access to near one-on-one learning, reducing educational inequality and helping people retrain throughout life.
🔴 ChatGPT's Five Predictions That Will Harm Society
1. Greater Social Fragmentation
Algorithmic personalisation will deepen ideological bubbles. Shared national narratives weaken, and public debate becomes even more polarised.
2. Mass Job Displacement
Automation and AI will replace millions of routine jobs faster than governments can design reskilling systems.
A large “left-behind” class emerges unless action is taken.
3. Escalating Government Censorship
Many Western governments will expand speech control under the banners of “safety” and “misinformation.”
Digital freedoms shrink.
4. AI-Powered Cybercrime Surge
Deepfakes, voice clones and automated scams become widespread, eroding trust in online communication and making fraud harder to detect.
5. Declining Birth Rates Trigger Instability
Falling fertility across the West leads to demographic stress, labour shortages, pension crises and political battles over immigration.
Final Thought
These predictions, generated by ChatGPT, offer a glimpse of the crossroads ahead: a decade of remarkable opportunity — and equally significant risk.
Which path we take depends, as always, on the choices we make today.
In a recent debate in Norway, Konstantin Kisin delivered one of the clearest, sharpest diagnoses of the West’s current malaise that I’ve heard in years. It was part warning, part wake-up call, and very much grounded in the perspective of someone who has lived both inside and outside Western civilisation.
Below is a summary of the key points he made. I’ll also include the full video for anyone who wants to watch the talk in its entirety — and trust me, it’s worth the time.
A Man Who Has Seen Decline Before
Kisin begins by framing his vantage point: born in the Soviet Union, raised in early-1990s Russia, and now living in the UK. He calls himself both an insider and an outsider — someone who recognises the signs of societal unraveling because he has seen it first-hand.
His early warning is blunt: Western societies are heating up like the proverbial boiling frog — and many people don’t even notice.
The West Is in Decline — But Not Because It Must Be
Kisin rejects the comforting narrative that talk of “Western decline” is overblown. Instead, he notes that:
Many in our own intellectual and media classes want the West to be in decline, because it validates an ideological narrative of Western guilt and historical sin.
This worldview has become so internalised that societies are questioning their own right to survive and flourish.
But decline is not inevitable. It is a choice — or perhaps more accurately, the result of a lack of choice, a refusal to act.
How We Know Western Civilization Is Still the Best Game in Town
Kisin points out a simple, powerful metric: Where do people risk their lives to go?
Millions of people are trying to get into Western nations. Almost no one is trying to get out.
Australia, the US, Britain — all see a one-way flow of migration. Whatever our flaws, the world is voting with its feet.
Courage Lost — The Beginning of Decline
Drawing on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s famous 1978 Harvard speech, Kisin argues that:
The West is suffering a collapse of courage — especially among its elites.
Political and intellectual leaders:
avoid confrontation with powerful adversaries,
but enforce rigid ideological compliance on their own populations,
and increasingly pretend that weakness is a moral virtue.
This, he warns, is historically the first step toward decline.
The Economic Reality: We’re Getting Poorer
Kisin highlights a stark fact that many politicians conveniently ignore:
GDP per capita (the measure that matters to ordinary people)
has stagnated or declined across much of the West since 2007.
Countries like Britain, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Greece and many others are seeing:
lower real incomes,
shrinking opportunity,
and worsening public services.
A key driver?
Governments chase GDP growth by importing more people, not by boosting productivity or innovation.
The result is “fake growth” that masks social strain and declining living standards.
Demography: The Decline No One Wants to Face
Western fertility rates are collapsing.
In Britain, the average woman now has fewer than 1.6 children — well below replacement.
The same is true across Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand.
Kisin points out the uncomfortable truth:
A society that doesn’t reproduce will inevitably rely on mass immigration.
Without a shared identity and a common purpose, this becomes destabilising rather than enriching.
He stresses that low birth rates are cultural, economic, and spiritual issues rolled together — and ignoring them is not a viable strategy.
Loss of Shared Identity and Fear of Speaking Honestly
Kisin laments that Western societies are fragmenting into micro-identities:
ethnic,
religious,
gender-based,
sexual,
political.
Instead of being Norwegian, British, American or Australian first, people increasingly define themselves as something else first and foremost.
And when it comes to difficult topics such as immigration, crime, integration or cultural cohesion, Kisin argues that:
ordinary people are afraid to speak,
the police are sometimes deployed against speech,
and elites prefer to pretend everything is normal.
Without honesty, decline accelerates.
This Isn’t a War — It’s Something Much Harder
Kisin makes a striking point:
If the West were attacked like Ukraine or Israel, millions would rally to defend it.
But our current crisis is not a war — it is a slow, creeping malaise.
There is no enemy army to fight, no single event to galvanise the population.
That is precisely why it is so dangerous.
The People Get the Policies They Demand
Kisin argues that politicians are not the only ones at fault.
Western voters themselves:
demand bigger governments,
higher taxes,
and more state control,
while punishing any leader who proposes entrepreneurial reform.
Meanwhile, countries like Argentina (under Milei) and the US (under deregulation-focused administrations) show that people will rally around leaders who promise growth, ambition and bold change.
Europe, by comparison, prefers managerialism.
Rediscovering Who We Are
Kisin closes with a challenge:
The West became great not by bureaucracy or entitlement, but by daring, building, creating and dreaming big.
As he puts it:
“We’re supposed to reach for the stars, not into our neighbours’ pockets.”
Until we decide — consciously — to become a civilization that wants to succeed again, decline will continue.
Final Thought
Kisin’s message isn’t one of doom.
It’s a call to action — to recover confidence, ambition, honesty and courage.
The full video is below.
Whether you agree with him or not, it’s one of the clearest articulations of the West’s challenges you’ll hear this year.
Something remarkable — and disturbing — is happening across the Western world.
One after another, left-leaning governments have begun tightening their grip on speech. Not hate speech, not threats, not incitement — but speech, plain and simple. Opinions. Posts. Criticism.
In the past, censorship was something we associated with authoritarian regimes. Today it’s coming from governments that loudly celebrate “democracy,” “openness,” and “tolerance”… while quietly rewriting laws to decide which opinions citizens are allowed to express.
And it’s not just happening in one country. A pattern is emerging — Australia, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and the EU — all moving in the same direction, all insisting it’s “for your safety.”
Someone needs protecting, that’s for sure — but it’s not the public. It’s the governments.
The UK: Jail Time for Tweets
The UK has some of the most aggressive speech-restriction laws in the Western world. Under the Communications Act and the Public Order Act, people have already been arrested, charged, and in some cases jailed for:
Posting “offensive” jokes
Misgendering someone
Uploading song lyrics
Sharing political criticism judged to cause “distress”
Police even warned citizens that “being offensive is an offence.” (Yes, that really happened.)
The new Online Safety Act goes even further — social media platforms must remove “harmful but legal” content or face massive fines. In other words: speech that is legal may still be banned. And if the platforms don’t throttle it, the government punishes them.
This is no longer about policing crime.
This is policing ideas.
Australia: The eSafety Commissioner and the Expanding Censorship Machine
Australia now finds itself at the centre of a free-speech storm thanks to eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant — a bureaucrat with extraordinary powers to order global companies to take down posts she considers “harmful.” Not illegal, not criminal — just “harmful,” defined by her.
Recently, she imposed takedown demands on social media companies, at one point ordering them to blanket-block worldwide content because she believed Australians shouldn’t see it. When the platforms resisted, she escalated.
And now, ironically, it’s the United States stepping in to tell Australia to stop censoring Americans.
A recent Sky News discussion captures the tension perfectly. Here’s a key excerpt from aAndrew Bolt in his recent critique, (the full video is reproduced below.):
“…the only people who could save us from this insanity would be the Americans and that it would be the Trump administration who would ride to our rescue…
the Trump administration will not tolerate its allies… trampling all over Americans’ free speech, the First Amendment. They made it crystal clear.”
The discussion goes on to describe the chaos surrounding Australia’s incoming under-16 social-media ban, which even the government cannot explain, and which the eSafety Commissioner herself cannot defend under Senate questioning.
This is the hallmark of censorship regimes: sweeping powers, vague rules, and bureaucrats who can’t explain what they’re enforcing.
Canada: Trudeau’s War on Online Speech
Canada’s Bill C-11 and C-18 were the first warning shots — empowering regulators to control what Canadians see online and forcing platforms to boost government-approved content.
But what came next was worse: Bill C-63, the “Online Harms Act,” which creates:
A digital “speech regulator”
Criminal penalties for “hate” defined so broadly it can include political criticism
Pre-crime speech laws — yes, Canadians can be punished for speech they might commit
Even lifelong Liberal supporters have warned that the bill transforms Canada into a “soft authoritarian” state.
New Zealand: Regulating Wrongthink
Under Ardern, NZ pushed the “Christchurch Call,” urging global censorship of “extremist content.” But like all these initiatives, “extremist” soon expanded to mean “content the government doesn’t like.”
The government now works directly with platforms to remove posts considered “harmful” — another subjective definition that conveniently includes criticism of the government.
Why Is This Happening?
It’s no mystery.
Left-leaning governments worldwide are adopting the same mindset:
Criticism is destabilising.
Social media spreads criticism quickly.
Therefore, social media must be controlled.
They rarely say this out loud. Instead, they invoke:
“Safety”
“Disinformation”
“Community harm”
“Extremism”
“Misinformation”
These words are the Trojan horses of censorship.
The goal is not to protect democracy — it’s to protect those in power from democratic scrutiny.
And the more unpopular their policies become, the more aggressively they try to control the conversation.
The United States Throws a Lifeline
Ironically, the country many progressives love to scold — the U.S. — is now acting as the last major bulwark against global censorship.
Why?
Because unlike Australia, the UK, NZ, or Canada, the U.S. has the First Amendment — a constitutional brick wall preventing government control of political speech.
The incoming Trump administration has already warned allies, including Australia and the EU, that they must not censor Americans online. U.S. officials have made it “crystal clear” that they will not tolerate it.
This pressure is now the only meaningful obstacle slowing the spread of censorship laws worldwide.
Thank goodness for that.
Conclusion: Democracy Cannot Survive Without Dissent
Censorship doesn’t appear all at once — it creeps.
First “extremism,” then “disinformation,” then “harm,” then “offence.”
Soon, simply disagreeing with the government becomes dangerous.
That’s the direction much of the Western world is now heading — and it should alarm anyone who values open society.
But there is hope. Pushback is growing, and for the first time in years, the world’s most powerful defender of free speech — the United States — is applying pressure in the right direction.
And not a moment too soon.
Here is Andrew Bolt's recent video covering the US attempt at protecting the free speech of Americans from actions by Australia's eSafety Commissioner.
It looks like what began as a simple piece of media criticism has now morphed into a full-blown feud. Chris Kenny from Sky News has been on the ABC’s radar for years, but this latest episode has the distinct flavour of something personal. And judging by the ABC’s response, they aren’t backing down. In fact, they seem determined to dig in deeper.
The spark this time came from overseas.
Two BBC employees were fired after it was discovered that they had doctored Donald Trump’s comments during the Capitol events — selectively editing his speech to make it appear as though he was inciting violence. The BBC acted swiftly and decisively, recognising that once trust is lost, a news organisation has little left to stand on.
Chris Kenny reported on this and, quite reasonably, pointed out that the ABC had done something strikingly similar with Trump’s remarks during its own coverage in 2021. Their edit removed his explicit call for protesters to remain peaceful, subtly but significantly reframing his speech to fit the “incitement” narrative. The ABC’s clip, once uploaded, was widely shared, further entrenching the misrepresentation.
Yet, unlike the BBC, the ABC took no corrective action.
No staff suspended, no internal review announced, no apology issued.
Instead, they doubled down.
The ABC’s official line?
That their edit was “contextually appropriate” and did not mislead viewers.
In other words: Nothing to see here, move along.
Kenny, unsurprisingly, didn’t let that go. And here’s where the feud flares into the open. As soon as he highlighted the ABC’s inconsistency — and compared it to the BBC’s willingness to clean house — the ABC responded not with introspection, but with hostility. Kenny was accused of “attacking journalists”, “undermining trust in public broadcasting”, and of course, the familiar fallback: “right-wing outrage”.
But the core issue is not left vs right.
It’s not even Kenny vs the ABC.
It is accountability.
The BBC recognised that editing a politician’s speech in a way that alters its meaning is not journalism — it’s activism. And activism masquerading as news corrodes trust faster than any partisan commentator ever could.
The ABC, however, seems determined to cling to the belief that because it is the ABC — taxpayer-funded, self-anointed, institutionally righteous — it cannot possibly be guilty of the same sins it routinely condemns in others. This reflexive defensiveness reveals something deeper: the national broadcaster has become unable to admit error, even when the evidence is plain.
And that, ironically, proves Kenny’s point better than any Sky News segment ever could.
The ABC’s feud with Kenny is no longer about Trump, or an edited clip, or even a matter of professional standards. It has become a test — a mirror held up to the ABC’s claim of impartiality. And instead of facing what it sees, the ABC is choosing to attack the person holding the mirror.
If the BBC can sack staff for misleading editing, why can’t the ABC even acknowledge it happened?
Why is media accountability applauded when imposed on foreign broadcasters, but treated as an attack when applied at home?
These are uncomfortable questions for Aunty — and perhaps that’s why she’s so eager to shoot the messenger.
In the end, this story isn’t about Chris Kenny at all.
It’s about an institution that has grown so insulated, so convinced of its own virtue, that criticism no longer prompts reflection — only retaliation.
And that, sadly, is far more alarming than any Trump clip could ever be.
Mark Levin’s “Affordability, Anybody?” segment made a provocative claim: the states complaining most about the cost of living are often those run by Democrats, and indeed, many of the highest-cost states are governed by Democrats. In his video (see below) Mark highlighted a number of states and compared some components of the cost of living. I was curious to see whether his claim was true when examining all 50 states.
Below is a 50-state cost-of-living bar chart (normalised so the lowest COLI state = 100). The chart is sorted with the lowest relative COLI at the top (Mississippi) and the highest at the bottom (Hawaii). The bars are colour-coded blue for Democrat-governor states and Red for Republican-governor states.
Confirming Levin's claim, there are certainly more Red states at the top of the table and Blue states at the bottom.
The bar chart was produced from the following table, that shows the states in Alphabetical Order. Notes are provided below to explain the source of the data.
The “Relative Index” is calculated by taking each state's COLI, dividing by the lowest COLI state (Mississippi, COLI = 83.3) and multiplying by 100. That means Mississippi is set as 100, and every other state shows how much more expensive it is relative to Mississippi.
The “Party” column uses the party of the current state governor (as of 2025) as a rough proxy for which party is “running” the state. (Wikipedia)
Using the governor’s party is not a perfect measure of political control (doesn’t account for legislature or local regulation), but it’s a commonly used shorthand.
In conclusion
No doubt, Democrats would be able to present some quite reasonable arguments against the simple conclusion that Blue states have a higher cost of living. But the evidence is certainly striking.
It is hard for Democrats to use the cost-of-living to beat up Republicans when it is predominantly their states that are suffering the most. It means that perhaps instead of complaining, they should look at what they could do to lower costs in their own states
One of the great successes of modern medicine is the system that encourages pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs. Big Pharma invests billions in the hope of discovering a breakthrough — and if they succeed, the reward is patent protection. For around 15 years they enjoy exclusive rights to sell the drug, recoup their investment, and make the profits that fund the next round of innovation.
It’s an arrangement that has delivered extraordinary benefits to society. But it also has a serious, structural flaw that no one seems prepared to confront.
The Problem: No One Has an Incentive to Study Off-Patent Drugs
What happens when a cheap, long-existing medicine is found to have a new therapeutic effect? Nothing. And that’s precisely the problem.
Once a drug is off-patent, there is no financial incentive for any pharmaceutical company to spend hundreds of millions of dollars running new clinical trials. Even if those trials proved the drug could save lives, the company would have no way to recover the cost. Anyone could manufacture it. Anyone could sell it.
So promising treatments are simply left on the shelf — not because they don’t work, but because nobody stands to profit from proving that they do.
This isn’t a theoretical issue. We are surrounded by real-world examples.
COVID and the War on Repurposed Drugs
We saw a stark demonstration during COVID.
Drugs like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine — long proven safe, widely used, inexpensive — showed early promise in lab studies and real-world data. Instead of curiosity or scientific urgency, the response from much of the medical establishment was hostility, dismissal, even censorship.
It is now impossible to ignore the fact that these medications posed a threat — not to public health, but to the pharmaceutical industry’s commercial interests. You can’t make billions selling a cheap generic. And if you have an expensive antiviral or mRNA platform in the pipeline, the last thing you want is competition from a repurposed drug you don’t own.
We all lived through the result: suppression, vilification, and a frantic insistence that only patented, high-priced solutions were acceptable.
Fenbendazole and Cancer — A Case Study in Missed Opportunities
Dr John Campbell's recent titled "Fenben and Cancer, your reports" (see below) is filled with heartfelt comments from real patients, carers, pharmacists, and doctors describing shocking outcomes: stage-four cancers reversing; terminal patients returning to work; aggressive tumors disappearing or shrinking dramatically.
Are these anecdotes? Yes.
Are they proof? Of course not.
But when you see hundreds of consistent accounts — and the only barrier to testing is money — the moral failure becomes obvious.
Fenbendazole is off-patent, cheap, and sold for animals. No pharma company will ever fund the large-scale trials needed to evaluate its efficacy in humans. So we’re stuck in limbo — with potentially life-saving treatments swirling in the fog of “unproven,” not because they’ve failed trials, but because no one will run the trials.
As Campbell says “People are dying while governments twiddle their thumbs.”
Lithium Orotate and Alzheimer’s — The Same Story, Again
The groundbreaking research showing the effects of low-dose Lithium Orotate on Alzheimer’s has rightly received attention. The results are astonishing — and could change millions of lives.
But it is an over-the-counter supplement.
No patent.
No billion-dollar profits.
So Big Pharma won’t touch it. Clinical trials — if they happen at all — rely on university labs, philanthropy, or visionary researchers willing to push against the economic grain.
The result?
Patients and families, who have nothing to lose, are quietly trying it themselves — while official medical systems wait, shrug, and do nothing.
Natural Remedies: The Evidence Doctors Never Hear
Another layer to this problem is how effective natural compounds receive almost no attention in mainstream medicine.
In many cases it performs on par with conventional anti-inflammatory medications — yet most doctors are barely aware of the findings. Pharma companies will never promote it; it competes with products that actually make money. So patients simply never hear about it.
The System Is Broken — And People Pay the Price
This is not an anti-pharma rant. We need pharmaceutical innovation. We need strong companies pushing the boundaries of science.
But we also need a health system that doesn’t ignore treatments simply because they’re unprofitable.
Today, society has no mechanism to:
fund clinical trials for off-patent drugs
independently evaluate low-cost alternatives
investigate promising repurposed medicines
compare natural remedies to pharmaceuticals
capture real-world treatment data from patients
The result is a distorted system where the most effective and most affordable treatments are often the least researched, least promoted, and least available.
This is unacceptable.
We Need Reform — And a New Model for Evidence
If the goal of healthcare is to improve health — not corporate profit — then society must create a public pathway for evaluating low-cost and off-patent treatments.
This could take the form of:
a publicly funded clinical research fund
a global registry of patient-reported outcomes
independent trials run by universities
AI-assisted analysis of real-world treatment data
government incentives for repurposed drug research
Because in a sane system, a drug’s price should not determine whether its potential is studied.
Here is Dr Campbell's video that prompted this post.
