There’s a good piece in the Atlantic by Conor Friedersdorf, a staff writer, asking at what point Australia will have to stop calling itself as a liberal democracy and acknowledge that it has become a police state. Here is an extract:
Up to now one of Earth’s freest societies, Australia has become a hermit continent. How long can a country maintain emergency restrictions on its citizens’ lives while still calling itself a liberal democracy?
Australia has been testing the limits.
Before 2020, the idea of Australia all but forbidding its citizens from leaving the country, a restriction associated with Communist regimes, was unthinkable. Today, it is a widely accepted policy. “Australia’s borders are currently closed and international travel from Australia remains strictly controlled to help prevent the spread of COVID-19,” a government website declares. “International travel from Australia is only available if you are exempt or you have been granted an individual exemption.” The rule is enforced despite assurances on another government website, dedicated to setting forth Australia’s human-rights-treaty obligations, that the freedom to leave a country “cannot be made dependent on establishing a purpose or reason for leaving.”
The nation’s high court struck down a challenge to the country’s COVID-19 restrictions. “It may be accepted that the travel restrictions are harsh. It may also be accepted that they intrude upon individual rights,” it ruled. “But Parliament was aware of that.” Until last month, Australians who are residents of foreign countries were exempt from the rule so they could return to their residence. But the government tightened the restrictions further, trapping many of them in the country too.
Intrastate travel within Australia is also severely restricted. And the government of South Australia, one of the country’s six states, developed and is now testing an app as Orwellian as any in the free world to enforce its quarantine rules. Returning travelers quarantining at home will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”
Pretty proud? It’s beyond parody.
Worth reading in full.
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No. Next Question: Can we? – Useful information, links and resources: https://www.LCAHub.org/
Australia has fallen to tyranny and we much fight it as hard as we can.
Governments to demand constant surveillance of your blood, body fluids and medication compliance
https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-09-03-governments-to-demand-constant-surveillance-of-your-blood-body-fluids-and-medication-compliance.html
Next Peaceful & Friendly events: Bracknell, Henley-on-Thames & Wokingham
– let’s join in with Worldwide backlash before it’s too late
5pm Monday 6th September
Roundabout (County Lane/Jigs Lane N)
Outside Tesco Superstore
17 County Ln,
Warfield,
Bracknell Berks RG42 3JP
4pm Tuesday 7th September
Henley Bridge/White Hill,
Henley-on-Thames RG9 2LP
– Probably best to park in Town Centre Car Park
Wednesday 8th September – to be confirmed
5pm Friday 10th September
Loddon Bridge, (Winnersh Garden Centre/Showcase Cinema)
Reading Rd, Winnersh,
Wokingham Berks RG41 5HG
12pm September 11th Hold The Line Event
(We stand and hold the line along the road like the Baltic countries in 1989 )
A329 – B3408 London Road, Wokingham-Bracknell.
Start location to be confirmed
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell –
Sundays from 10am & Wednesdays from 2pm
Make friends – keep sane
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Of course, the British government are showing solidarity by sending a consignment of Pfizer vaccines – our governments will act just as badly as they are allowed.
Can Australia still call itself a liberal democracy?…….under a picture of five coppers trying to force a mask onto some poor bloke! Whole place seems to have turned into a totalitarian shithole!
Australia to change its national flag to more accurately reflect the current political climate there …
It’s important for all Australian people to rise up and take their country back by whatever means necessary.
There’s never a good article in The Atlantic….
They seem to be waking up (or at least pretending to). There is a recent article about perils of cancel culture, although it of course contains half-assed apologetics such as that “it is not a left or right phenomenon”.
Is the article correct? Yes or no?
Indeed, although it can help one be aware of the current twisted preoccupations of the authoritarian left.
Can any country still describe itself as a liberal democracy?
Possibly Sweden? Can’t think of any other that comes near.
Certainly not Britain. Sturgeon has been angling for a one party state for a long time and has now got it. Drakeford uses lockdowns like sweets to cow the population and johnson is determined to force passports, restrictions, masks on us for the foreseeable future and even beyond that. Teenagers who are hardly at r9isk from this virus are being led down the road of having to be vaccinated “to protect others”. No, this is immoral. We all need to resist this creeping totalitarianism. Would you put it past Johnson to enforce another lockdown this autumn or winter? What we need is a leader of stature to blow Johnson out of the water. But who has the guts t stand up for us?
For those who don’t know how these vaxxines work this link explains
https://www.marktaliano.net/sucharit-bhakdi-covid-19-vaccination-is-greatest-threat-humanity-ever-faced/
“It may be accepted that the travel restrictions are harsh. It may also be accepted that they intrude upon individual rights,” it ruled. “But Parliament was aware of that.”
Is there no separation of powers in Australia? This ruling appears to say that their Parliament can never do wrong.
Parliament is sovereign. Not the people.
Same as in Britain, I guess.
I suppose it took this crisis for people to realise the true nature of their political systems and that in fact the only thing holding back totalitarian rule was the restraint of the elected rulers.
But as Ferguson pointed out in his interview, Italian lockdowns showed that the population would accept totalitarian rule. And boy did our governments act on that information, and quickly…
Wrong it’s the People who are Sovereign. The people lend their sovereignty to their elected representatives. Therefore it is up to the People to remove it!
Only if we claim it.
Fat chance of the sheeple doing that.
But the population is supine. They are fed a diet of s*ite on media platforms, from “Love Island” to “Celebrity Juice”, etc. They are fed non-stop televised sport. They eat highly processed ‘food’ and get limited schooling. They are too comfortable in their petting zoo like existence to really complain about anything. The last 18 months proved the point.
Too many sheeples to start a revolution. Maybe. What we need is a leader of stature and conviction. None of our main politicians have the guts and I don’t know who has. Very depressing.
I don’t understand the logic of that statement. Just because Parliament knew it was infringing on individual rights doesn’t mean it was right, and shouldn’t be legal, any more than it should be legal in this country.
They’re still behaving like it’s a deadly plague when it’s not.
“They’re still behaving like it’s a deadly plague when it’s not.”
Governments seem to assume we have no connection to the outside world, and that we’ve no idea what’s going on in Sweden/Denmark/South Dakota/Florida.
Let alone Israel.
Liberal Demos?…or is the Chinese Communist Party calling in the loans and favours.
‘Can Australia Still Describe Itself as a Liberal Democracy?’
Yes – in the LibDem sense.
Pushback! Weirdly no comments….
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9942045/Silent-protests-erupt-government-buildings-Australia.html
The Mail calls the protests “creepy”. The creepy Mail do not want to publish the global support for the courageous Australian people.
They didn’t allow comment on the demo outside the MHRA yesterday either. I suppose Toby is honoured that they shunt him into some back column occasionally.
I am taken aback at the way the Australian people have reacted to the impositions enforced upon them. Having known a few Aussies, their reaction is definitely out of character. People worldwide have been submitted to a phenomenal level of psy-ops and appear initially spellbound by it. Who would believe the Aussies would allow their children to be herded into one place and stabbed with the sinister jab, only for (according to some reports) a number of these very same, previously healthy children who were so resistant to covid, to die. Let’s hope the Aussies rise up against this tyranny with the robust measures one would expect of them.
Some Aussies have been out protesting. Hundreds have been arrested.
What can their citizens do about it? Is it time to start shooting at police vehicles and sabotaging things?
Neither. The peaceful approach to dealing with dictatorships is to pretend to play by their rules while drastically lowering work efficiency. Go on strike – work slower or not at all. If your customer is part of the regime, discriminate against them like they discriminate against you. Be generally uncooperative, passively lazy and difficult to work with. When the dictatorship’s money starts running out, they will either increase direct coercion and violence (leading to their own deposition sooner or later – unless powerful external allies prop them up) or they will become meeker (because not even a dictator likes when everything’s gone to shit in their country).
The current problem is that reportedly 85% of people supports this dictatorship (although as in any dictatorship, it is very likely a fake number).
Yours is a good plan. I would advocate that route first before shooting.
Would the French Farmers’ approach be worthwhile, i.e. dumping tractor-loads of manure on strategic town hall steps?
No. Let it be dumped on the private property of politicians.
I don’t believe all the police agree with what is going on. Plus any violent reaction would be counterproductive. People need to refuse to comply and reach out to others who have discerned what is afoot. Every legal recourse there is musr be taken to fight these outrages.
Many police are not happy about being used to enforce government edicts. They’re in the same situation as doctors and health professionals – speaking out risks their livelihood.
I’m waiting for the story – it will probably rate a postage stamp-sized mention on page 15 – that police are resigning in large numbers.
No way will cops resign in large numbers. Not in Australia. Not in the UK. If they were that principled they wouldn’t join up in the first place.
They might not agree but they carry out the government’s dirty work regardless!
Buy a gun seems to be top of the list.
The government did a gun buy-back several years ago. Now we know why. Ditto the UK. When the ordinary people have no weapons, the state can do as it pleases to them.
Any violent opposition (or threat thereof) only makes dictatorship stronger because average people will rationally side with the state (the bigger and more reliable bully) to oppose terrorism (which is a direct threat to anyone’s business or life). If you want violent opposition, you must be a state actor yourself or military wishing to stage a coup (and you know what penalty is if that doesn’t work).
The gun buy back took in about a million firearms. Which even the anti-gun cheer squad admits was about a quarter to a third of the total. I daresay many of those weapons turned in were old and in poor condition – and the money handed over by the government used to buy better replacements.
someone with a VAST amount of independent wealth needs to mount an advertising campaign spelling out what is being done to people in the name of a virus – that the virus is just cover and that people are being harmed by the government policies – that is the only way to get the vast supine majority to begin to wake up and start thinking – a sort of reverse fear to what the governments have used against their populations
NO!
(Duh)
Do you like J P Sears? Enjoy!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N1LAyEO1zGI&feature=youtu.be
Oh, dear Lord. Reading about the South Australians and the facial recognition/ geolocation app…..I could hardly believe it. If, two years ago, someone had told me about this, and all the other rubbish we have had to endure both here and in Oz, I would never have believed it.
Now, I think it is as if all our countries have been occupied by a hostile power, and all that’s left is resistance, like the French Resistance in WW2. Whatever that may be.
Australia appears to have regressed back into a penal colony…
At least the convicts had a release date.
not even an open prison – when people are being locked in their homes
Right now it feels like a battlefield. Small pockets of conflict here and there, wins for one side and then for the other.
Our side has had a couple of wins this week.
In Victoria, Dan Tha Man’s blockade of playgrounds has been relaxed. Some idiotic conditions (QR codes???) are in place, but the kids are allowed back in.
https://www.kidspot.com.au/news/playgrounds-opening-in-melbourne-under-stringent-new-rules/news-story/d7e96025ddf71ef450b4ce5fdadb5d89
And the federal government’s move to crush the smaller political parties has had unforeseen consequences.
The Party Registration Integrity Bill was passed with Labor’s support in late August. Under this legislation party minimum membership has been raised to 1,500 members. Guess what?
The United Australia Party has expanded its membership by 30,000 in less than two weeks, becoming the fastest growing political party in Australian history,
https://www.unitedaustraliaparty.org.au/fastest-growing-political-party-in-australian-history/
I would assume that the Liberal Democrats and One Nation have experienced their own rise in numbers.
And Masky Mark McGowan, High Pontiff Of The West, got a little tarnish on his golden helm during the week when an unknown source revealed that his nickname during his early days in the Labor Party was ‘Sneakers’. As in, he’s such a brown-nose that all you can see of him are…
“Is Australia still a liberal democracy?’
Well, let’s see now – eighteen months of continually extended government ‘emergency powers’ providing a democracy bypass; soldiers patrolling the streets of Sydney’s restive, disobedient ‘burbs; soldiers manning Checkpoint-Charlies demanding PCR-test/vaccination/exemption papers for interstate movement; No-Jab-No-Job spreading like a noxious weed; Army brass (Lieutenant General John Frewen) in charge of the mandatory-in-all-but-name ‘vaccine’ rollout (delightfully named ‘Operation COVID Shield’); restrictions on human movement (curfews, closed borders, 2.5 km operational zones for shopping/exercise for those allowed temporary release from house arrest); political prisoners (Monica Smit, founder of Reignite Democracy Australia, an anti-lockdown, anti-mandatory-Covid-jab political movement, is in isolation in prison charged with ‘incitement’); Chief Health/Medical Officers (do not talk to neighbours [NSW], do not watch a sunset [Victoria], do not touch the football at an AFL game [SA]) all deified whilst a gutless media laps up their every word against a background of nodding-dog politicians; cop raids on public transport to fine people not attired correctly in masks; dobbers, scolds and snitches informing the authorities on Covid dissidents; the NSW Police Commissioner deciding to increase on-the-spot fines for health disobedience from $1,000 to $5,000; anti-lockdown protests ‘allowed’ or banned at the whim of police (‘the time to protest lockdowns is after lockdowns have ended’, says Gladys Berejiklian, NSW premier and all-round Covid prat) ….. so the answer to “Is Australia still a liberal democracy?’ would be a NO, then.
And, yet, Australians, seduced by the apparent success of lockdowns and border closures in keeping Australia’s Covid stats internationally low (when it was Australia initially getting the Covids during the southern hemisphere’s spring/summer which did all the virus-suppressing work) have flocked to support the governments which have taken all the credit. Even Mad Dan Andrews, Victoria’s premier, with over 200 days of hard lockdown to his name (the world record), has 56% support for his ‘handling of the pandemic’. Australians are cowering in fear of the plague – the one that kills all in its path … well 0.2% of them anyway, and are begging our caring but tough leaders to ‘keep us safe’.
As other BTL commentators have noted, however, the disaffected are growing and the rebellious (including truckies and their blockades) are more active and boisterous whilst a profusion of social media websites are providing an informed and hopping-mad counter-narrative. Something is coming to a head, hence all the pollies learning to mouth the uncomfortable phrase ‘learning to live with the virus’ rather than ‘Zero Covid forever’. The liberal democracy’ of the Before Times hasn’t yet been fully cremated..
Phil, South Australia
I left five years ago – thank god. I would most likely be in prison now if I had not. I feel for you Phil and can only watch in amazement as most of my ‘highly educated’ artist / muso friends in Melbourne are under mass hypnosis- sucking in Covid cult govt PR rags like The Guardian, no less. There are about five or six who have always been and remain sceptical – and they are in hiding. i was recently told by a close mate there that they all think I have gone down a rabbit hole – etc. Bore fest. I can not be bothered trying to reason with most of them – and realise how weak and fearful people really are. Fear of dying is one thing – maybe I could get that – but fear of dying from a relatively mild flu (for the vast majority of people) which can be treated fairly easily and for which most Aussies would have T cell immunity (many corona viruses there and big Chinese pop means early C 19 entry)… is another – tbh I think quite a few of them are also doubtful but are mindful of their ‘reputation’ and being side lined. Well fuck me, Integrity sure is rare. Good luck Phil – stay sane and on top of the bullshit.
Many thanks for your words of comfort, Ruth.
When I retired a few years ago, I was looking forward to a tranquil retirement and expanding on the three chords I can play on bass guitar (one of them is still a bit hit-and-miss) and then the Covid bollocks happened and serenity has become a vanishing dream. My closest friends (all dutiful Guardian/ABC types) from old uni days have all gone stark-staring Covid bonkers and are under the same spell as frightening numbers of Australians are. I sometimes think I have woken up and found myself on Planet Zog.
Alas, it’s too late for me to become a much happier ex-pat (no one can leave the country under closed borders), well shot of the madness down south, like yourself.
Cheers
Phil
The fact the question has to be asked…..
I have Australian relatives. On the whole they are lapping up the authoritarian measures. They cannot understand my complete opposition to lockdowns and the vaccination programme. You can take a horse to water…
Australia shows the world visually how grotesque a government power and police force can get…
how easily Psychopaths took charge o fetch Fearful sheep aided & abetted by these other brainwashed officials who had a barbaric gene in them, living amongst us.
Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”
Proud?? Thoroughly ashamed more like! This is totalitarianism.
Governments know more about this virus than they are letting on.
All of them have facilities like Porten Down. What do you think they are doing there, knitting socks?
They understand precisely what threat the Wuflu represents and they are panicking because they have all been developing this type of bio weapon themselves.
So far, one demographic has been targeted, the elderly, perhaps that was a coincidence, or perhaps it was a trial run. How can a natural virus possibly be so specific in its target?
If someone develops a virus in a laboratory, it’s not for fun, it’s not for the benefit of medical science or humanity, it’s for use as a bio weapon.
If the target this time is the elderly, could a ‘variant’ target those of combat age in the next round?
Why the rush to ‘vaccinate’ children from 12 years, who will be the next generation of Armed Forces recruits in 6 years, and only one year if they are 17 now.
If the UK and other governments told their populous there really was something to worry about they would expose their own culpability in developing these Bio Weapons. Instead, they promote fear by stealth, ‘just in case’ you understand.
Just in case my giddy aunt, they know the potential of this man made virus. The vaccines are a hit and hope effort, that’s clear now government has overridden science by allowing 12 year olds to be jabbed.
Any scientist or medic who allowed mass inoculation of a country with a drug that has no safety data would have been immediately jailed in the very recent past. Any government official who allowed it would have been considered entirely unfit to remain in post and his mental ability questioned.
What changed?
This seemingly ‘harmless’ virus is what changed. Our governments understand the sinister potential of it and refuse to be identified with it, despite their prior knowledge.