It’s been over two years since waves of ever tightening restrictions, including wholesale house arrests, began to be placed on healthy citizens who had committed no crime. One by one, the world’s democracies buckled to the herd panic about the Covid pandemic sweeping the world and their governments increasingly took on hues of totalitarian regimes in telling people when, where, how far, how long and with whom and how many they could go out or even sleep with; what businesses could operate and under what conditions; what medications doctors could and could not prescribe irrespective of their own professional judgement and knowledge of their patients; and mandatory mask and vaccine requirements for an array of social and professional interactions.
Many directives lacked scientific basis and some were downright wacky – there really is no better word for it. The apotheosis of executive overreach came in Canada with the truckers’ Freedom Convoy in Ottawa and in the Australian state of Victoria. In both, MPs betrayed the people, the country and the constitution by putting their own careers first, the party second and the country last. The unchecked growth of the administrative state and centralisation of authority, power and decision-making in prime ministers’ and premiers’ offices fused seamlessly into the rise of the biofascist state. Complicity by the media in propagating fear porn, social media censorship of alternative voices and threats of disciplinary proceedings including dismissal and deregistration by professional governing bodies ensured there’s been a stifling conformism.
The biggest surprise for me was the ease with which freeborn citizens fell into unquestioning compliance. Human rights commissions went MIA just when most needed. The ACT (Canberra: my jurisdiction until this year) Human Rights Commission, for example, resorted to vague generalities: “Restrictions on rights should only stay in place for as long as they are necessary, and they should not limit rights more severely than they need to.” It promised it was “monitoring the restrictions”. This was in December.
The biggest disappointment was the speed with which institutional bulwarks against executive tyranny – parliament, media, human rights commissions and lobby groups – buckled in the biggest onslaught on freedoms and liberties in history. The most profoundly disappointing was the abdication of the courts to keep a check on the descent into de facto if temporary tyranny, notwithstanding constitutional safeguards like the Charter of Rights in Canada. Courts mostly deferred to the executive.
Thus several legal challenges to the growing array of U.K. restrictions in the name of public health simply fizzled out. In a series of decisions in 2020-21, Australian courts upheld the validity of COVID-19 restrictions, including Palmer v Western Australia (2021), Loielo v Giles (2020), Gerner v State of Victoria (2020) and Cotterill v Romanes (2021). Victoria’s Supreme Court dismissed challenges to public health orders because the test of proportionality had to be applied to the package of measures taken as a whole, which had helped to mitigate the pandemic risk. On vaccine mandates, on November 3rd a federal judge ruled that Victoria could fire nurses who refused Covid vaccines. On December 8th, the New South Wales Supreme Court ruled against a crowd-funded legal challenge to vaccine mandates for teachers, health and age care workers and some construction workers that was first rejected in a court in October and then appealed. Most consequentially of all, in February 2021 the High Court, Australia’s top court, upheld Western Australia’s border closure. Law professor James Allan has argued that had PM Scott Morrison not chickened out of supporting mining magnate Clive Palmer’s challenge, he would likely have won.
Maybe, just maybe, the courts are starting to bestir themselves to restore balance and normality. Last October, an Ontario labour arbitrator ruled employees cannot be disciplined or terminated for refusing vaccination. In March, an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that a mother doesn’t have to vaccinate her children just because this is encouraged by the Government. In January, South Africa’s employment tribunal held an employee’s dismissal for refusing vaccination was unfair. On February 25th, the New Zealand High Court upheld a challenge to vaccination mandates for police and defence personnel. In February, Austria’s powerful 14-member Constitutional Court sought detailed data from the health ministry on hospitalisations, masks and vaccines to justify strict COVID-19 measures. The compulsory vaccination law was passed in January and took effect in February, making Austria the first EU country to go down that route, with fines of up to €3,600 for dissenters from mid-March. Just a month later, however, the Government abandoned the effort because the “encroachment of fundamental rights” could no longer be justified as the Omicron variant was less severe than earlier variants. The court’s questions likely nudged the Government into pulling back. Last month, Sicily’s Court of Administrative Justice held vaccine mandates to be unconstitutional because mRNA vaccines had been shown to cause “serious or fatal side effects”. Even if fatalities are rare, even a single death was enough to invalidate the mandate. The case will now proceed to Italy’s Constitutional Court.
Because of the compliance pull that the U.S. Supreme Court exercises globally, its decision on January 13th to vacate the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test mandate for large employers, with limited mandate for healthcare workers in facilities receiving federal money, was momentous. The ruling by Florida’s federal judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle on April 18th, struck down mask mandates in public transport. Hers was a legal decision, not a political or scientific one: the CDC had exceeded its lawful authority. The ruling was met with spontaneous cheers and celebrations from crew and passengers alike after mid-flight announcements. The tone-deaf administration decided to appeal and the ever-reliable Anthony Fauci questioned the authority of courts to overrule health bureaucrats. Having earlier dismissed any criticism directed at him as attacking science itself, he now wants to place the CDC and National Institute of Health above the rule of law.
The decision from the Supreme Court of India on May 2nd is especially noteworthy. Firstly, because it’s the top court in the land, covering the entire country in its writ and including educational institutions and private organisations. Second, it affects 1.3 billion people. And third, because of its longevity, stature and robust independence that has often crossed into outright judicial activism, its opinions are influential in shaping discussions in other countries’ legal proceedings. The Court held that the central Government has the right to put restrictions on people’s rights as a public health safety measure. However, owing to “bodily integrity and personal autonomy”, under Article 21 of the Constitution no individual can be forced to get vaccinated. Most importantly, the Court based its decision on “emerging scientific opinion [that] appears to indicate that the risk of transmission of the virus from unvaccinated individuals is almost on par with that from vaccinated persons”. Therefore, vaccine mandates are not “proportionate”. In a further twist that will bring joy to Covid vaccine sceptics everywhere, the Court directed the Government to facilitate the reporting of suspected adverse effects on a publicly accessible platform.
If no other institution or forum will rigorously scrutinise the science and data behind public health orders that affect entire populations, then the courts are our last remaining hope in which to test the substance of the health advice and government decisions. That is the key significance of the Indian Supreme Court’s decision.
Ramesh Thakur is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy and a former UN Assistant Secretary-General.
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Bloke!
That’s what I thought when I saw the picture somewhere earlier, without knowing what the story was about.
One would be hard pressed to identify the person in that picture as anything other than male.
Absolutely, obviously and definitely a bloke!
Imagine needing the Supreme Court to determine the definition of what a woman is? Yes the de-feminization/de-masculinization of society continues at pace. This is undoubtedly an attack on female sex-based rights and anyone who says otherwise is in denial and not on the right side of justice. I shared this news the other day but this is a different source;
”Judges at the Supreme Court are considering how women are defined in law in a landmark case brought by Scottish campaigners.
It is the culmination of a long-running legal dispute which started with a relatively niche piece of legislation at the Scottish Parliament, but which could have big UK-wide implications.
It will set out exactly how the law is meant to treat trans people, and what it really means to go through the gender recognition process.
And it could have implications for the running of single-sex spaces and services, and how measures aimed at tackling discrimination will operate in future.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgv8v5ge37o
Nice to know that if you pay a fiver for a gender recognition certificate you too can strip search women despite being an actual man with a fetish/perversion/mental health diagnosis;
https://x.com/NotFarLeftAtAll/status/1860359961781354950
Seriously tragic what vulnerable people are doing to themselves because they’ve been captured by the cult. This is neither male nor female, just very, very messed up;
https://x.com/NotFarLeftAtAll/status/1860985617254936900
Bloody hell Mogs that last link needs a viewers discretion warning.
Yes it’s harrowing, what’s happening. I’ve cared for women who’ve had mastectomies due to cancer, some with reconstruction and some without, and I always think how horrified these ladies must be knowing there’s basically a ‘trend’ nowadays of teenage girls and women getting their perfectly healthy breasts removed. All courtesy of this seriously twisted and dangerous gender identity cult though. It’s basically mental illness manifesting as this extreme self-abuse. Well, via medical professionals, anyway. People encouraging and affirming this need locked up.
As do the doctors who do the ops.
Primum non nuocere.
Holy jesus.
Things that make you hummm
Is that bloke in the picture supposed to be a woman…?
I mean… are they taking the Mickey?
I bet he’s in full possession of something more than football here.
See the link of him receiving the award below. The worst part for me? All of the women clapping and cheering. As a female I can honestly say that this is the worst betrayal, to be stabbed in the back, essentially, and have our rights as women trampled all over by fellow women. You always expect a degree of flack or hostility from certain men but when the full-on assault is from members of your own sex the betrayal cuts deeper. So women really haven’t got a hope in hell of ever overcoming the direct attacks on us courtesy of the woketards via the trans agenda because, once again, the enemy lies within. What of young girls who are talented at sports and have the potential to progress to a higher level? What will they think seeing this?
To my mind, these women are no better than the German citizens who acted as informers for the Nazis and would snitch on any neighbours they knew were hiding Jews. Literal traitors. I can only hope that there are more of us than them and it continues to be so;
https://x.com/HoodedClaw1974/status/1861439987830407320
BBC being BBC.
(It’s obviously a bloke, a handsome lad, and a bloke)
The man is a Total, Shameless Fraud, grinning with “Duping Delight” like any manipulative psychopath.
MAD T.V. Season 3 (2/2) Eyewitness Report From Ms. Swan (1997)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4EH0RtVlgE
Bit like that Boxer Bloke then !
I have observed how sports people with DSD ( Disorders of Sexual Development ) are never Caucasian. By far and away black, actually. Would be interesting to see the breakdown across ethnicities…
Would it be unfair to suggest that the BBC only exists now to extort money with menaces in order to pay both the untalented politically correct and David Attenborough‘s extraordinarily high airfare bill as he jets around the globe to find examples of why we should all live in 15 minute cities and forego foreign travel so as to save the planet.
He is a man. He is not a woman and never will be. And especially as he is black- high T levels anyway. This communist mental illness has to stop. When are we going ro get our Trump. MEGA – Make Englanf Great Again
Yes, when President Trump blocks msm reporters from the WH daily briefings, it will be one more nail in the coffin for msm, including the guardian
Cheat.
I think this psychologist clarifies this issue: “These men are very likely a new breed of psychopath.
I call them Trans-Type Psychopaths (TTPs).
They have no empathy.
Other people are not ‘real’ to them. They will destroy everything and everyone in their path in order to get their deviant emotional ‘needs’ met.
Don’t be fooled by the ingratiating smiles, the make-up, the hair, the head tilts and the ‘woe is me’ sob stories.
TTPs are more dangerous than Ted Bundy or BTK or the Green River Killer, or any ‘typical’ psychopath.
Although they don’t leave a trail of dead women behind them, these men’s ability to bring about the systematic destruction of women’s rights and safeties makes them far, far more dangerous than even the most prolific serial killer.
We need to reframe our psychological understanding of the modern ‘Transw***n’.
They are not helpless victims of unbearable inner anguish who can only achieve mental respite by being their ‘authentic’ selves.
They are not even simple, self-serving opportunists making hay whilst the sun is shining.
No.
They are stone-cold, manipulative, ruthless psychopaths.
The sole guiding ‘principle’ which governs all of their
actions is self indulgence and personal gratification.
Absolutely nothing else matters.
We pander to them at our deep peril.” https://x.com/Psychgirl211/status/1861352959583387857