One of the organisers of a recent anti-lockdown protest in Sydney has been sentenced to a maximum of eight months in prison for helping to plan an “unauthorised” demonstration and for breaking other lockdown-related rules. He will serve a minimum of three months in prison. The Guardian has the story.
Anthony Khallouf, 29, one of the organisers of last month’s anti-lockdown protests and a key figurehead in the broader movement surrounding it, was arrested by police in Sydney on Thursday after travelling from Queensland in breach of public health orders.
Khallouf appeared in Hornsby local court on Friday, charged with breaches of public health orders, including travelling from Queensland to Sydney and his involvement in planning an unauthorised protest for this weekend.
He pleaded guilty to four counts of not complying with a direction relating to Covid, encouraging the commission of crimes, and false representation resulting in a police investigation.
New South Wales police said in a statement on Friday afternoon that he was sentenced to a maximum of eight months in prison, with a non-parole period of three months.
Khallouf is the founder of Australians vs The Agenda, one of the larger anti-lockdown groups with more than 12,000 followers on Telegram. Originally from Victoria, last year he was charged with incitement for allegedly helping to organise a protest in Melbourne.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Damien Cave writes in the New York Times on Australia’s reliance on quarantine infrastructure as a long-term answer to Covid.
The problem… is that even humane quarantine amounts to a forced retreat. The decisions made by governments about who poses a risk are rarely politics-free, and frequently go beyond medicine to fears shaped by emotions and biases.
Also worth reading in full.
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Gosh! How similar to the way China treats Hong Kong dissidents.
But doesn’t the Australian regime get all hot and bothered about that? I imagine the next time there’s some pontification from the Australians about China locking up some Hong Kong dissident, they’ll get this thrown back in their faces, and rightly so.
But the concern for us in the US sphere should be the degree to which the coronapanic has highlighted that very thing – the way our elites now look to totalitarian China for inspiration and example. Funny how all their grand-standing and virtue signalling about foreign abuses hasn’t prevented that development.
Australia has in effect surrendered to China, who can browbeat them in any way it likes. The same applies, if not more so, to New Zealand. Covid is now the catch-all excuse and cover-up for any number of infamous doings, all over the world, and these people will just brazen it out. Concern for democracies is a handy tap, that can be turned off and on at will.
We need to fight like the FRENCH
LIVE: Protests against health pass continue in Paris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTyKS1ESPXo
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow anti lockdown freedom lovers, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
(also Wednesdays from 2pm)
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
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Why is it necesary to repeat everything twice, ad nauseum, on every post you make..We get it, you stand in a park in Bracknell every Sunday.
Ricky, while I respect your view I don’t think it should upset you unduly that LS signs himself off each time as he sees fit. It is a reminder to all current and new readers that there is a gathering in Bracknell every Sunday. For the record I don’t know LS and couldn’t live further away. Have a great weekend.
Spellcheck error! Richy……..sorry.
I was merely pointing out that a message is far more effective if used sparingly and not repetitive.
Frankly, whenever I see that formatting I skip straight over it, regardless of the actual post. The repetitive nature of posting, usually at least twice on each thread comes across as fanatical rather than constructive. Not somebody I would want to spend time in park in Bracknell with.
Repetitive, boring and in bold
Nothing against Stand in the Park, but we’ve had enough of hearing about it
Like your posts, hate your sign-off
Couldn’t disagree more. LS is just drumming home the importance of local resistance. Irritated as you might be it is very important to meet with like minded people where we can coordinate and organise ideas like leafleting, local protests and even transport to/from larger protests. But most importantly to make sure we don’t feel alone and isolated. You never know they might even have saved a few lives. I know my local SITP has certainly been one of the things that has kept me sane. As well as Lockdown Sceptics (now this oracle) of course.
So as far as I’m concerned carry on LS with your Advertising at least people are taking notice!!!
Actually, China has already thrown it back in the face of the Australians. I read somewhere this week that the Chinese foreign minister made some type of sarcastic comment about Australia’s response.
There are NO ‘dissidents’ in HK…….just hired hands of the CIA.
Brilliant article by Douglas Murray in The Spectator about Afghanistan, distinct parallels between the incompetent totalitarianist response of so many governments to covid and the equally incompetent concurrent chaos of withdrawal from Afghanistan:
‘…the people most capable of making their peace with the use of force are the most suspicious about using force to spread human rights or state build in far off countries. While the people who are most in favour of doing these things are the people most squeamish about the use of force.’
‘It’s not just Biden who’s kidding himself’ Douglas Murray, The Spectator
Much feeble wringing of hands, wearing of (black!) masks, ‘We will get you all home (no, we won’t)’
The Good Intentions Paving Company has been doing a lot of business recently but the auditors are closing in.
Don’t have a Spec subscription these days, but a quick look a the latest contents suggests that if Murray is making the apologia for interventionism (despite the title “The flaw at the heart of humanitarian intervention”) your comment seems to suggest, he’s not having it all his way even there:
Saqib Qureshi
Defence contractors were the real winners in Afghanistan
Rodric Braithwaite
A perilous state / We should never have tried to nation-build in Afghanistan
Rod Liddle
Lily Cole, the burka and why we were right to leave Afghanistan
Julian Assange
The goal is not to completely subjugate Afghanistan, the goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and European countries, through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a trans-national security elite.
Mr Murray is not, I believe, a supporter of interventionism per se.
‘A flaw that it took me ten years to recognize and helped make me slink away from encouraging any such projects in the future.’
‘…truth, in warfare, is a highly elusive concept’
And I am not suggesting that he is.
What I am suggesting is that the same politicians now wringing their hands regarding events overseas in Kabul are demonstrably the same people inflicting totalitarian sanctions on their own people at home.
Masks on one side of the house of commons, few on the other, cannot hide the fact that the biggest majority of all in that place are the hand wringing totalitarians on both sides who willed interventionism without willing the means, and without the stomach to do what was necessary, or the stomach to do (often far better) nothing at all.
In other words the house of commons is ‘The Good Intentions Paving Company’. It has created hell both at home and now overseas and should be held accountable, preferably sooner rather than later.
“Mr Murray is not, I believe, a supporter of interventionism per se.
‘A flaw that it took me ten years to recognize and helped make me slink away from encouraging any such projects in the future.’
‘…truth, in warfare, is a highly elusive concept”
Fair enough, my misunderstanding, and due respect to Mr Murray.
“Masks on one side of the house of commons, few on the other, cannot hide the fact that the biggest majority of all in that place are the hand wringing totalitarians on both sides who willed interventionism without willing the means, and without the stomach to do what was necessary, or the stomach to do (often far better) nothing at all.
In other words the house of commons is ‘The Good Intentions Paving Company’. It has created hell both at home and now overseas and should be held accountable, preferably sooner rather than later.“
Yes, that seems correct, and I think we are broadly in agreement on these political aspects, domestically at least.
There is some good stuff here on Afghanistan:
‘….speaking as an American, as an adoptive Kandahari, and as a former senior U.S. government official….’
‘I and too many other people to count spent years of our lives trying to convince U.S. decision-makers that Afghans could not be expected to take risks on behalf of a government that was as hostile to their interests as the Taliban were. Note: it took me a while, and plenty of my own mistakes, to come to that realization. But I did.
For two decades, American leadership on the ground and in Washington proved unable to take in this simple message. I finally stopped trying to get it across when, in 2011, an interagency process reached the decision that the U.S. would not address corruption in Afghanistan. It was now explicit policy to ignore one of the two factors that would determine the fate of all our efforts. That’s when I knew today was inevitable.’
‘By 2011, my boss, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Taliban were a “virtual arm of the ISI (Pakistani military intelligence agency).’
‘….the two primary problems identified above — corruption and Pakistan — are civilian issues. They are not problems men and women in uniform can solve. But faced with calls to do so, no top civilian decision-maker was willing to take either of these problems on. The political risk, for them, was too high.’
https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/the-ides-of-august
Well ok, but there were reasons corruption and Pakistan weren’t addressed (and good, or at any rate, powerful) reasons at that).
Corruption was all that kept many of the occupation’s key assets – both in the region and in Washington, onside. And Pakistan is a vital strategic asset ultimately far more disastrous if it were to be destabilised than Afghanistan. Pakistani support for the Taliban was never superficial, and was deeply entangled in the balance of power there
As far as the intervention’s failure is concerned, these are more like excuses. It was a bad idea and plenty of people knew that and said so at the beginning. As I recounted here the other day, I and a couple of other guys spent a few days nearly 20 years ago, after the Taliban had established their refusal to fade away, saying to some Republicans: you either make a deal with the Taliban now or you waste some money, time and lives and then make a deal with them. Either way, the Taliban will be in charge when you leave.
They preferred for their government to spend some blood and money to try to prove us wrong. Not their own, obviously.
Difficult to understand, certainly from a military perspective, why activities continued in Afghanistan after the successful completion of Operation Anaconda 02 March 2002 – 18 March 2002
‘…Anaconda. Its mission was to destroy or capture al Qaeda and Taliban forces in mountain positions located in the Shahi-Kot Valley and Arma Mountains southeast of the city of Zurmat’
‘Lessons Learned: Operation Anaconda’ Military Medicine 169 2004
The lessons of history were clear regarding Afghanistan.
But great powers suffer from hubris, and nation building by the U.S. has some similarities with late Victorian Britain’s imperial evangelicalism; just as misguided.
‘Some missionaries were aware that their task was not merely to convert to Christianity but also to convert to Western culture.’
‘‘Take up the White Man’s burden –
Send forth the best ye breed –
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need’
‘The White Mans Burden’ Rudyard Kipling
https://www.britishempire.co.uk/article/evangelicalempire.htm
The US doesn’t address corruption – it seeks it and promotes it. Their bought-and-paid-for placemen in the target country can be as corrupt and dictatorial as they like, as long as US corporates get first dibs on looting the country’s resources. As soon as the placemen goes off message, they are suddenly found to be ‘corrupt and dictatorial’ requiring US ‘freedom and democracy’ invention via the USAAF. Another placeman is then installed.
John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hitman is a useful window on the process. Once exposed, the CIA playbook can be seen perating time and time again.
Ronald Barnard’s interviews regarding his details with the western financial/banking system offer harrowing insights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAqwP_vOjPE
There was a telegraph article too, aout why folks in Afghanistan who appeared to have cared about liberty, democracy, women’s education and human rights are now supporting the Taliban regime. Looks to me like the same psychological segment of the population who’d have supported lockdowns if they were in a lockdownist country, and like lockdownists over here would be the types only too happy to fo along with it and stone to death anyone who spoke out if the taliban took power in the UK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXtwuO-ZUR0
This is a classic takedown.
Australians who wish to put pressure on their government need to stop behaving as though they were dealing with a normal democracy. They are not. They are dealing with a violent authoritarian regime which behaves exactly like China and other such regimes. They will need to adopt a different approach. I suggest:
Take every possible measure to avoid identification. Masks/motorcycle helmets/sunglasses for the head and clothing deliberately selected without logos.
Leave your phone at home; you may hope to record police brutality, but it will be ignored by courts and will enable the authorities to prove you were at the demonstration by using mobile data records. If you are going to demonstrate, give your phone to someone else to carry around for the day to help establish that you were elsewhere.
Look at what the police are wearing – you will benefit from protective body armour/helmets too.
Fines in Australia are eye-watering. Crowd funding by supporters is one way to overcome this.
They should also consider tactics aimed at weakening regime power rather than the usual “show of disagreement” which a normal protest aims for. Things like busting that 29 year old hero out of incarceration, or digging up roads all around major police HQs so thug vehicles cannot drive out to roam elsewhere in the city…
Exactly. Traditional demonstration ‘shows of disagreement’ are obsolete if police play by authoritarian rules. Sabotage in the manner you suggest would be effective, and people also know where the police live.
In Portugal some Roma people are committing small crimes. None of the 3 police forces do a thing; otherwise their own car or house will be destroyed/vandalised. Roma are very unite and all information necessary is passed between them.
‘A normal democracy’? Are there any left?
Yes Squire Western, you are absolutely correct; and in 1968 Germany they knew very well how to do this. This is a picture of a brave Joschka Fischer (black helmet) going head to head with a better armed policeman. You can see that Fischer has done his best to balance what are very unfair odds if you turn up without protection.
Fischer later became the German foreign minister (1998-2005).
Yeah – the only reason for holding back in the way we protest is the danger of giving the government the excuse to implement martial law. As the Australian government has already effectively implemented martial law there is no need to hold back. I would hope some Aussies might take it up a notch or two.
There’s also the effect on public opinion of any violent resistance, filtered though a systematically hostile and dishonest media. Resistance portrayed as violent allows them to get away with more brutal repression. Heads they win, tails we lose, but who said life is supposed to be fair?
It’s a kind of game of chicken. How far are they willing to push and how far are we willing to push back.
The US Democrats are actively looking to use the full power of the security “antiterrorist” apparatus against dissenting conservatives (“racists”), Christians (“bigots”) and traditionalists (“homophobes”), and won’t hesitate to include covid dissidents in that, given a pretext. I’m sure much the same is true here and in Australia.
When the situation becomes effectively a war opinion counts for nothing, the state will repress in any way it can and doesn’t really need to portray protesters as violent to find an excuse to do so. When things get to Australia level bad there is no reason not to resist however hard is necessary.
France is in a similar position, they too haven’t much to hold back now that the government is banning them from shops without an ID pass. In parts of the world where the tyranny isn’t that bad yet, sure hold back and try normal means of visible protest, loud protest, but in the likes of Australia and France the people have nothing to lose.
Nothing like creating martyrs for a cause who can become very symbolic in the future. I hope Antony Khallouf takes the Australian authorities to the cleaners when this house of cards collapses.
What’s the betting that he will succumb to the Epstein Syndrome, or possibly simply ‘covid’ (with well-known famous last words in that case!), whilst in prison, though?
I strongly recommend this video: “The Road to Perdition is Paved with Good Intentions”.
It is based on a speech by the philosopher Alan Watts. I had never heard of him until last week and he died half a century ago. But many of his speeches are very helpful in these evil times.
Applicable to Covidism, Wokism, Climatism and also to failed Western nation building Interventionism.
https://youtu.be/cegl1BZ-0tI
Well, yes, except I don’t see any sign of Good Intentions in any of those.
Good point.
They THINK they have good intentions, just the way that Hitler’s Nazis and Stalin’s communists thought they were doing good. Even among the most evil people very few will admit to themselves that what they are doing is wrong, however clearly the facts may disagree with their internal moral model.
A good summary of the essential conservative anti-radical position – rather ironic from an old hippy like Watts. Wisdom presumably acquired from the fatalist aspects of eastern religions and cultures he studied.
And a good early description of what we now term “virtue signalling”, that plagues us everywhere, from antiracist bigots to interventionist dupes.
“More dabolical things are done in the name of righteousness”
Similarly: There is no more certain way of raising Hell than to try too hard to create Heaven on Earth.
The leftist/radical error is the idea that we can make things better by changing the world at large, when in reality we are as likely to make things worse as better when we interfere in a radical way with others’ lives, politically, and we really make things better by behaving better ourselves, looking after those close to us (including, where appropriate, those we see in need of charity), fulfilling our responsibilities to ourselves and those close to us, and setting a good example by doing rather than saying or telling.
Still wearing those outdated ‘left/right’ bifocals, I see. They do make you look past it
Says the man still fighting the battle that was over in the 1980s (and on the wrong side, what’s more)…..
What you have been unable to perceive was the underlying timeless truth in the left/right divide (see the comment to which you were replying and the radical/conservative distinction). The parties and the contexts change, but that divide remains.
Most likely because you have been obsessed with the Marxism-based error that the fundamental thing in politics is economics, and the pre-1980s obsession with ownership of businesses. Though that’s speculation, obviously, because most of your contributions on the topic here are playground personal abuse.
One can comment on left vs right, people do still exist who fit either viewpoint, but left vs right is only an argument on high-profit/low welfare vs high-tax/high welfare. So long as we can get over our left-right views for now and focus on the real battle that counts, standing for freedom against safetyism, it is fine to acknowledge that such differences may exist.
I hope that one day soon, real justice will set him free. Why is any criminal law allowed to be used in this way?
Criminal law administered by criminals
VIDEO – Stew Peters interviews Royal Australian Air Force veteran Alan Hennessy about children who died during Australia’s recent vaccine drive for kids. Also begins with clip showing the outrageous and dismissive behaviour of Australian Health Minister Brad Hazzard.
Nothing on MSM about these kids. Australia is being used as a test case for accelerated fascist takeover.
Absolutely …
Says “it ” all – when the “by consent” Police visibly drop the pretence of being impartial or demonstrate their fundamental lack of moral vertebrae – we have been in a mess for a long time the visible manifestation of which has risen to the surface. We are in a world of shit for sure.
Hmmm, consider this….
in 18 months of this ‘terrifying pandemic’ that only 978 Australians and 26 Kiwis (all probably very old and frail) have been taken by this ‘astonishingly virulent’ virus?
So, it is possible that broad-spread herd immunity existed in both countries – just like there is in SE Asia?
I’d say that it is entirely possible – yet rather than test for T-cell immunity, the Australian and NZ governments would rather shut down the economy, trample over freedoms and create a police state….thereby betraying their democratic heritage.
The reason that they have gone so far over the top with troops, bullying police and hysterical jab hype is because they know that previously acquired immunity is responsible for the low death rate NOT the lockdowns.
It’s all propaganda, the police state reinforces that state intervention achieved low deaths, and means that they will mandate jabs.
Missing the point.
We are in the middle of the Reset. C1984 is simply the cover for the implementation of a totalitarian, technocratic state.
The Ozzy politicians are probably pissed at how poor their covid base is but nevertheless delighted at how they have cowed their people on the flimsiest of “evidence.”
Someone here, iirc, did comment that he thought most Australians probably had it in their preceding flu season, which he said had been a bad one.
It is difficult to know how to respond to this.
What a criminally desperate apology for sanity and decency have these politicians become.
Nothing about fictional C1984 warrants such a vicious reaction.
The politicians everywhere who are implementing such measures are criminals and traitors. I don’t know which comes first.
What appallingly dark, sad and satanic times we are living in.
We need to impose the death penalty for these politicians – its treason!
Not the death penalty, just a bad thing to have on the books at any time, puts too much power in state hands. Instead give the lockdownist traitors some poetic justice, sentence them to eternal lockdown, and to make it even more grating constantly remind them that they are suffering that way to protect them from something that even they admit won’t harm them.
Really? And who is going to put them on trial? Who is going to execute them?
FFS – they are the ones with the nooses.
We need to fight like the FRENCH
LIVE: Protests against health pass continue in Paris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTyKS1ESPXo
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow anti lockdown freedom lovers, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
(also Wednesdays from 2pm)
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
So, basically, this citizen of Australia was arrested and imprisoned for the crimes of “traveling” in his own country and for organizing a protest. Or: For the crime of “not complying” with guidance/orders.
And lots of people in the world actually think they live in free societies.
Welcomes to the so called ‘rules-based order’ beloved of the globalists.
He who makes the rules ….
We all enjoy “freedom under the law”. But it’s the law that’s the problem!
Great interview
ATTY TOM RENZ AND MIKE ADAMS – ALARMING INTERVIEW
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Csy5Zss56HpP/
This is happening precisely because faced with irrefutable evidence of totalitarian government, the people….do nothing.
The western governments of the world know their populations don’t have the stomach to fight to defend their freedom. Modern populations don’t really care about freedom. They care about being comfortable, about downloading apps that promise to make their lives easier, about convenient forms of entertainment, and about having enough to get by. Not about freedom.
When the young people of Hong Kong were fighting for their freedom, populations of the west just watched and said and did nothing. No protests to show sympathy, no demands that their governments retaliate against China. Nothing.
Instead whatever energy we have for defending moral causes is spent on ridiculous, vacuous, self loathing causes like BLM, LGBT movements, discrimination against women (in the west where women have equal rights, not in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan where women are actually discriminated against) and global climate control.
We have become a flaccid, morally hollow society, incapable of recognising the disintegration of our civilisation.
When the young people of Hong Kong were fighting for their freedom, populations of the west just watched and said and did nothing. No protests to show sympathy, no demands that their governments retaliate against China.”
The Hong Kong protests were taken over by CIA-led regime change artists. The ‘young leaders’ of the movement were directly instructed by US STate Department staff. The protests were going nowhere, and the Covid conveniently came along. The top most ‘young leader’ gained a place at Harvard just before China was locked down. The protests then became less useful than the covid scam.
John Perkins’ Confressions of an Economic Hitman lays out the CIA playbook.
It was most recently tried in Belarus, following Lukashenko’s decison not to take the IMF bribe to go along with the globalist lockdown scam. The regime changers has plans to assassinate him, as did the orchestrators of the Ukraine Maidan (samme playbook). In both cases, the leaders were saved by hints from Russian intelligence for Lukashenko and physical extraction to safety for Yanukovich
The Australian state of Victoria under the ALP ‘s Dan Andrews is as close as you get in the anglosphere to a totalitarian state. Today we saw rubber bullets and pepper spray used against outdoor protests , we also saw all children from the age of 5 up forced to wear facial coverings. The media in particular the ABC and the Melbourne Age act as apropaganda service for the state.
And I saw a comment by the Oz police reported somewhere to the effect that some of the protesters were peaceful but that most came with violent intent. Mind-readers now, recalling, with things reversed, how the BLM protests have frequently described as being ‘mostly peaceful’ despite some rather nasty violence!
I noticed that too, reported by the BBC on Saturday night. Our own police use it when they want to excuse the behaviour of over enthusiastic cops. Presumably the Aussie cops are just the same.
“In the last week, we’ve been reminded how tiny our domestic concerns actually are. They’re neuroses born of narcissism. A Chinese flu virus? Please. That’s hardly the scariest thing going on in the world right now. Not even close.”
Tucker Carlson Tonight’ host says Biden’s allies in government and media are starting to turn against him.
Tucker Carlson absolutely on a roll, discussing the huge political impact of the fallout from the Afghan debacle for the US regime. Basically, it’s rendered Biden’s senility undeniable even for the shameless reality deniers of the political left, and made it necessary for the Democrats to switch horses now. And they know Kamala Harris is incompetent and a political disaster. Presumably there’s chaos and infighting going on behind the scenes, but what we see is the institutions that covered for Biden in order to ensure Trump was defeated, no longer doing so. As Carlson points out, the neocons and the liberals (leftists) have both dropped him, and his own spokesmen and regime department apparatchiks are confused about what to say to avoid contradicting his senile lies.
“Afghanistan is hardly Biden’s first disaster. As of tonight, our southern border has collapsed, the murder rate is spiking in our cities, the Covid vaccines do not work, inflation’s out of control, and the country’s entire population of school children hasn’t been educated in more than a year. All of that’s been going on. None of that seemed to bother CNN in the slightest.”
“These are literally the people who got Biden elected“
Is the destruction of the west and the super power going as planned?
FIGHT. BACK. BETTER. Updated information, resources and links: https://www.LCAHub.org/
New World Order coming to a city near you..
Well, the liberty-loving, larrikin Australia took another beating yesterday at the nationwide protests. The jailing of the Sydney protest organiser had been matched the day before the rallies by knocks on the doors by police to serve ‘suspects’ with ‘Public Safety Orders’ prohibiting them from entering the centre of Sydney, and areas within a five-kilometre radius, on the Saturday of the protests, with a penalty of five years jail if they do. These Public Safety Orders are reserved for terrorists and criminal gangs – but I suppose that is how the Corona State views people who think lockdowns and masks don’t work and that what we put in our bodies should be our choice.
Dan’s Cops in Victoria opted for the Iron Fist – 218 arrests, 236 fines ($5,452 each for breaching the Chief Health Officer’s directions) with pepper-ball rounds, pepper spray and OC foam canisters used against peaceful protesters (including any children present).
Here in Adelaide, it was all Velvet Glove (and no Iron Fist) from our constabulary because we are not, technically, in lockdown (though we have restrictions and masks up to our our eyeballs) so we were ‘allowed’ (how I hate that word as much as ‘safe’) to protest and march (I estimate around 6,000 which, as a seasoned old leftie veteran of more protests that you’ve probably had hot dinners) was just shy of the Iraq War protests and easily matching the climate change protests.
Adelaide’s anti-lockdown/anti-compulsory Covid-vaxx protest was a real shot in the arm (in a good way!). The mood was upbeat, optimistic, noisy, fervent as we were escorted by police on our way through the CBD. Hopefully some of the muzzlie onlookers on the footpath will now go n to dream of the steppe after viewing our oasis of muzzle-free normality, and handshakes, and hugs.
The pre and post-march rallies were rousing. Plenty of incorrigibly normal people concerned about job loss, small business closures, compulsory jabs, the masking of children, the death of democracy in Australia, etc. One chap with an upside down US flag and a sign saying ‘Trump won!’ did a roaring trade in thumbs-ups and smiles.
The ‘left’, on the other hand, were noticeably absent. This is a ‘left’ which caricatures the Freedom Rallies as “Australia-flag-waving racist neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, anti-vaxxers, anti-testers, members of the religious right, people flying the Eureka flag, people who don’t think COVID-19 is real (and other conspiracy theories) and self-proclaimed ‘libertarians’ exploiting the pain and anger of some plain angry, stressed out folk worrying more about their dire economic situation than concern about infecting their family or community”.
No, this ‘left’ was otherwise engaged with preparing a (socially-distanced, fully-masked) ‘vigil for Afghanistan’ that evening. Hey, guys, there is an assault on freedom and civil liberties right on your doorstep being waged by lockdown fundamentalists, ‘vaccine’-pushers and democracy-deniers with 700 military patrolling the restive ‘burbs of Sydney and Melbourne police firing ‘non-lethal’ ordnance into demonstrators against a failed government policy of lockdown whilst compelling people to cover their faces on pain of arrest and financial penalty. No surprise really because the slogans of ‘What do we want? Lockdown! When do we want it? Forever!’, or ‘Zero Covid Now!’, or ‘Jabs for All!’ would have struck a jarring note. I did, however, strike up an interesting conversation with a lass sporting a ‘Socialist Distancing – Keep away from Socialists!’ T-shirt who was delighted to grant me an exemption!
Phil
South Australia
Still doesn’t appear to apply to the rich and famous
The concept of “approved” protests is the mark of an authoritarian regime. You can protest against government as long as the government controls the protest. It is anathema to free speech.
As for jailing dissidents…
Does the world have it’s first covid martyr?
Where are the protests here for the aussies?
Oh that’s right there isn’t any virtue points in it.