We’re publishing another of Steve Waterson’s peerless rants today. Waterson is the Commercial Editor of the Australian and one of the country’s finest columnists. This one’s a humdinger.
It’s tedious for the youngsters, I know, but we of more advanced years love to reminisce about the olden days, when nobody was permitted to shirk from home and we had to try a little harder to get ahead. You’d put in the hours and a dab of sycophancy to climb the corporate ladder; even career criminals had to work their way up from petty crime to probation to a spell in prison.
We have it much easier these days: just ask Trong Duc Nguyen, the 31 year-old Cabramatta man who has gone straight to jail for two months after committing the hitherto unknown crime of travelling by train and bus from Sydney to Tenterfield. Small mercies, though; at least he didn’t travel the other way then write a mawkish song about it in New York.
Trong’s punishment this week for breaching a public health order was entirely reasonable, according to police, who said “it indicates the level of seriousness of the matter”. Lucky for Trong he didn’t have the virus. I may be mistaken, but I think that might carry the death penalty up Armidale way.
Enjoy this taste of what awaits us as the police state tightens its grip on our liberties. To drive home the seriousness of “doing the wrong thing”, the NSW Police Commissioner decided on-the-spot fines for health disobedience needed to be bumped up to $5,000.
My sense is that $1,000 was already enough to put people off going without their masks, but I suppose if you’re on $649,500 a year it does seem like a trifling sum. Doing the wrong thing isn’t a problem for his officers, however. “We have to shape the behaviour of people,” he told them in a recent video. “If you write a ticket and get it wrong,” he added, “I won’t hold you to account for that.”
Two weeks ago I watched people having their behaviour shaped at Bondi, as two mounted police rode their large horses south along the middle of the beach, stopping at the towels of two young mothers and their four toddlers, tiny beside the horses’ hoofs, to order them to pack up buckets and spades and leave the beach. Thanks for keeping us safe.
The madness toggles between sinister and comical. Especially hilarious are the comedy stylings of the bullying dolt who is turning Victoria into a post-apocalyptic wasteland: it’s acceptable to remove your useless mask to drink coffee on the street, he declares, but an offence to do so to drink alcohol. It must be excruciating for black-clad Melburnians, paralysed indecision warming their espresso martinis.
Victoria’s Health Minister, not to be outdone as a stand-up comedian, alerted citizens to a prostitute’s positive test. “If you have employed a sex worker in the St Kilda area,” he said on Wednesday, “you need to come forward and get tested.” Employed? What, to do some gardening? Imagine the negotiation: “I don’t mind mowing, but it’ll be an extra $50 if you want full weeding.”
NSW, once a dim glimmer of common sense, has fully embraced the lunacy, the Premier’s magical crystal ball (remember, the one that promised our two-week confinement would end on July 9th) now recalibrating its predictions to say we’ll be freed on September 30th. Oh, and let’s throw in an added curfew for the troublesome, recalcitrant westies; and an outdoor mask mandate to make sure everyone in the state, from Broken Hill to Ballina, Bourke to Bega, feels stupid and miserable (and coincidentally can be recognised as a renegade at long range by the fine-happy police).
Evidence worldwide shows the lockdown rules are nonsensical; curfews even more so, despite the Victorian Premier’s insistence that their value is “simply not up for debate”, which is presumably what he considers a more sophisticated version of “because I say so”.
Then he, his interstate counterparts and their bloated public sector cheer squads seek to dignify their incoherent ramblings with words like “strategy” and “policy”, picked up in some Management for Dummies handbook.
Sure, a few more weeks of lockdown is bearable if you have a secure job, a pretty garden, a good library and a well-stocked wine cellar; but it’s a very different experience if you’re on the 10th floor of a grim apartment block with three young kids and have just lost your weekly pay cheque.
Perhaps we could equalise the pain with what we might call “personal lockdown”. When I’m trapped in my house I have no idea what my neighbours across the road are up to, and I’m protected from their disease-ridden lungs because they’re not allowed to enter my home, cough over my food or wipe their runny noses on my handkerchief.
By the same token, it doesn’t affect me if they’re blithely eating from share plates in a restaurant or getting drunk with dodgy new friends in a crowded bar. More fool them if they want to risk infection.
So if you genuinely believe lockdown is the best way to ensure you live to relish another moody Scandinavian crime drama, don’t feel threatened by the idea of the country opening up. You are at perfect liberty to design and pitilessly enforce a bespoke lockdown for yourself and your dependants; set your imagination free and make it the most watertight since Alcatraz. Put the appropriate warning signs on your home – arm yourself if necessary – and your withdrawal from society would be respected, even welcomed. But leave the rest of us out of it.
Instead, we’re punished as though we were still in the classroom (unlike our schoolchildren), all in detention because one of the naughty pupils broke the rules; or worse, thanked and praised for “doing the right thing”, as though these idiots are capable of determining the difference between right and wrong. Just because they or their intellectually challenged health bureaucrats say something’s true, or (even less credibly) morally correct, doesn’t make it so.
Where do these buffoons find the audacity to tell us they’re “angry”, “disgusted” or “disappointed” with the citizens of their state, or country? If you think, premiers, that it’s appropriate to address your paymasters with that kind of supercilious, patronising language you have a profoundly flawed understanding of your relationship to the electorate.
We’re urged to get vaccinated as the only way out of this nightmare, as though the restrictions were imposed by some external enemy, while what’s really happening is that our leaders create this misery, steal our freedoms, then command us to obey their orders in order to regain them. We used to call this blackmail. Let’s get vaccinated if we are satisfied it will protect us from severe disease, but understand that’s the main reason for doing so, not to gratify and exculpate these petty dictators. It appears you will still be able to catch and transmit the virus, so leave the unvaccinated to their own devices.
Set a firm date for opening and make sure everyone who wants one can get the injection.
The amount of mental and physical energy wasted so far on this 18-month exercise is astounding, not to mention the truly astonishing financial cost, $350 billion (that we know of) and counting, and nothing to show for it.
A baby born here today picks up a $30,000 tab as a joining fee. Welcome to Australia, kid!
Many of us are witnessing the mental distress and deterioration of young adults, robbed now of almost two of the best years of their lives. The unalloyed joy of Friday and Saturday nights in your early 20s, the ridiculous, stimulating, fleeting friendships, the parties, adventures and triumphs; the first tentative steps towards a career, learning how to work with and appreciate colleagues; the lessons and mistakes that prepare you for the bigger challenges of the wide world; all are stripped from these fledgling lives in service of a vain, inane quest to master nature and eliminate a “deadly” virus that spares more than 99% of its victims (and that’s making the preposterous assumption that the number of asymptomatic “cases” isn’t far higher than we know).
In China, the man in the street still knows nothing about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and we haughtily condemn the Communist government for that evil cover-up; but our own governments are consulting the same playbook. We are not trusted to know what health advice or other research informs the decisions (I use the term as loosely as possible) our leaders make; everything is “cabinet in confidence”, even the minutes of the “national cabinet”, which isn’t a cabinet at all.
We have been leaked some of the figures, cynically suppressed by government, that quantify this mental-health disaster; and beside it the loss of a fairly small number of sick, elderly people is sad but insignificant. The increase in children’s depression, the growth of suicidal thoughts and acts, the self-harm, the eating disorders, the retreat into isolation and despair, the loneliness imposed on those who should be operating at maximum gregariousness and engagement, is wicked. There are many youthful rites of passage that you can’t just repeat a couple of years later: miss the school formal, the gap year, the overseas university exchange and they’re gone for ever.
Even more destructive, but less visible, is the impact on those who should have started school, but have missed the first couple of years of learning how to get along with their peers, particularly those not blessed with parents who acknowledge the value of education.
Unsocialised and unlettered, will they be accommodated when school returns, or abandoned? We thought child sacrifices died out with the Aztecs, but apparently not. Let’s hope they bring good rains, if not an end to the pandemic.
Towards the far outpost of life’s journey, we all know old people whose main treasure and delight in life is their family, and the precious contact they have previously taken for granted, as have all the generations before them. They’re not able to distract themselves with an hour’s vigorous exercise, and there’s little consolation when your hand’s on the exit door to be told things will be back to normal in a year or so. Some don’t have that year up their sleeve, and it’s an act of unspeakable cruelty to prevent them from spending their last days exactly as they want.
It may not be our governments’ intention to cause this damage, but it might as well be; just as it may not be their intention to destroy small business and impoverish one of the most productive sectors of society. It will be interesting to see if desperate protesters resurface this weekend to hurl themselves against the “wave of blue” the NSW Police Minister has smugly promised will meet them; there will surely come a point when people robbed of their livelihoods will have literally nothing left to lose.
So here we are, worse off than when all the hysteria began, a risible counterweight to the return to normality spreading all over the world, slumped into a manufactured psychosis. Australians are being deliberately and methodically terrified, while enforced isolation weakens our resilience.
It renders us more susceptible to the howls of panic, unchallenged by normal debate and conversation, forbidden to meet, discuss or express our disagreement.
We are turning on each other like medieval city states, while our basic human decency dissolves into brawls over toilet paper.
In 1653 Oliver Cromwell dismissed England’s corrupt and incompetent Rump Parliament with the words: “In the name of God, go!” A pity he’s not around today to remove the arses who polish the benches of our own parliaments.
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the question remains however, “what are you going to do about it? Where is your red line?”
Here in the UK, this is the question we must be posing now to everyone we engage with. If we visualise a red line, it is likely the slow bleed psyops won’t work. Australia is coming to a street near you if we don’t.
Zero compliance.
Zero compliance doesn’t work when the police are handing out ruinous fines. Until the publicare prepared to treat the police force and politicians as an enemy army and treat them accordingly then the government will continue to get away with this.
Only a handful of the numerous fines given out here were paid, they cannot be held up in court as the government found out.
Are you talking about the U.K. or Australia. I know the fines were largely overturned by courts here if challenged, but I don’t know the situation in Australia.
That is the crucial issue. The police are the enemy within, the paid goons of oppressive government. Blackshirts in clown cars. They are not your friends.
Oz is a proving ground for the crude psyops being carried out by psychopaths, ostensibly in the name of the elusive Sars-Cov-2 virus, which unsurprisingly can only be found lurking inside a WHO computer.
The insanities, imposed by state and other governments, are there to coerce and cajole the simple minded into being injected with life shortening gene altering agents that are clearly only masquerading as vaccines. All this for an illusory respiratory infection we used to call flu.
Once the vaxxed targets are reached they will round up the refuseniks, who will disappear for good and for the good of others. Likely then the restrictions will then be eased by the government agents of death, while the “vaccines” and “boosters” get on with their real job, which is almost certainly the near total extermination of the masses.
Remember what Australia does today, will be coming to a place near you in the not too distant future. The choice is very stark for all of us, either resist the tyranny now, or there is nothing.
I cannot fathom how we got here. That democratically elected governments in common law nations can lockup their citizens and fine and in prison them for acting in accord with their natural rights. To fight a virus who has always had a narrow death profile and which is survived by 99.8% of all infected. How did we get here? It took Mao decades of revolution and millions dead to impose the system that 70 years later invented this “health measure.” How quickly and easily it came to the West.
Myopia is the disease that kills most. When you focus on one problem so narrowly you miss the great harm your fixative creates, and become inured to cries of those so harmed. The past 18 months we have seen that fearful politicians have the highest level of this self-enforced vision affliction. But what one cannot understand is why, after having case study after case study from other nations over the futility of lockdowns, outdoor masks and the rest, the good natured people of Australia enter the next level of lockdown hell. I’d say it’s a bad dream but there doesn’t pear any waking up from this, not until some wise person finally shines a light and democratically ousts these despots.
I would suggest asking 10 people whether lockdowns are a totalitarian assault on our freedoms that invite more totalitarian control measures, or they are a necessary and effective measure for the control of coronavirus.
I fear the result of such a poll will explain exactly how we got here.
I have yet to see convincing evidence that your analysis is wrong.
Watching any population crawl on its belly isn’t a pretty sight, but untangling the knotted causes isn’t simple. Despite a long-standing sceptical frame of reference, I didn’t see it coming, and still, with hindsight, don’t fully comprehend the ease with which members of the human race were turned into lemmings.
Yes, I think something like 8 or 9 people in that poll would say the measures were necessary. I think hardcore sceptics are probably no more than 10-15% of the population.
Judging by Australian responses I have read in newspapers, I fear you are right.
Australia and most other places. Some simple measures are the % of unvaxxed, % of those not wearing masks while it was mandatory to do so
Exactly the same here- politicians are behaving exactly as I’ve always maintained they would given half a chance, people are as sheep like as I’ve always said they are and yet even I was surprised by the sheer level of compliance and acceptance of this insanity. ‘We have to lockdown again’ is often heard amongst family and friends, as if this is now the only possible response to any threat to public health and most still happily mask up to go into shops and cafes and simply will not listen to any argument against such nonsense. It’s as if no one can remember life before March 2020.
I agree.
In most of human history, the German speaking region of Europe was possibly the most liberal place you could live in. Most of the comments that get made about alleged underlying militarism and so forth are ex post rationalisations that could apply to this country and many other places in the nineteenth century.
Yet, we know what happened there in the 1930s. A population got scared of certain groups and the fear was channelled by politicians into hatred. The people themselves thought they were behaving virtuously. They did not think they were carrying out evil.
My fear is that similar forces have been unleashed by this Covid overreaction.
Germany was not a wonderful place to live during the Thirty Years War either. That was in the 17th Century.
You have also overlooked the German invasion of France in the Franco-Prussian war in the 1870’s and the Hohenzollern/Hapsburg alliance which initiated World War 1.
Not to mention the Huns/Ostrogoths/Vandals and Visigoths who caused mayhem in the 5th Century.
I think the general view is that German culture was pretty liberal relative to traditional human norms, at least, until the more authoritarian Prussian culture took over. Such a generalisation is always going to have exceptions, of course.
You and me both.
What a wonderfully written, hopping-mad essay by Steve Waterson from the hated Murdoch media empire (all, or at least some [remember the Iraq WMD War!], is forgiven, Rupert!). “So here we are, worse off than when all the hysteria began, a risible counterweight to the return to normality spreading all over the world, slumped into a manufactured psychosis … Australians are being deliberately and methodically terrified” into accepting “a vain, inane quest to master nature and eliminate a ‘deadly’ virus that spares more than 99% of its victims”.
Perhaps not all is gloom, however. A big chunk of Aussies are nowhere near as keen on the lockdown route to Zero Covid as our political and health Covid autocrats are. The Centre for Independent Studies has just polled over a thousand adult Australians (Attitudes to a Post-Covid Australia) and found that a stonking 62% believe that Zero Covid is unattainable whilst 37% want all restrictions ended immediately and a further 34% want them ended when ‘vaccine’ thresholds are met (which are 70% of adults vaxxed for an end to blanket lockdowns, 80% for borders to re-open).
Less cheering news, however, is the 55-60% support for ‘vaccine passports’, the half the population who support vaccination being made mandatory under law, the 39% who want tougher punishment of restriction violations and the 43% who want to clamp down on civil liberties. We may be falling out of love with Zero Covid but we are still a land of tut-tutting ‘Karens’. The propaganda has done its job in these areas. Abandoning fanciful Zero Covid may well come at a huge ethical and health cost.
Phil
South Australia
“I cannot fathom how we got here.”
Well, if you’d told me the story in 2019 I would not have believed it possible, but with hindsight it’s not that hard to see the long term trends that have led us to where we are – a safer life leading to the desire for more safety, belief in God replaced by belief in technology and the consequent rise of technocrats and the elevation of doctors and scientists to saintly status, the internet meaning we can do a lot without leaving our homes, mass global communication making it easier to push messages to the masses, death being hidden away, erosion of freedom of speech, dominance of Big Tech, political lobbying power of Big Pharma, the rise of the CCP, economic prosperity and money printing enabling furlough, collectivisation of healthcare and the idea that the state is responsible for everyone’s health.
In a way, it’s amazing no-one thought of it before. Create fear using propaganda – endless power from the “war” against an invisible enemy.
What is surprising is the extent to which so many have been taken in, including supposedly intelligent people, and the extent to which world governments and other institutions have marched in lockstep despite their supposedly different political philosophies and situations. Freedom and democracy are fragile and there are plenty of precedents for prolonged periods of mass hysteria and tyranny, just none that were so global. But we’re living in a more global world.
I can’t see us exiting quickly because the rot set in decades ago. Covid was an accelerant, not an aberration.
“if you’d told me the story in 2019 I would not have believed it possible“
The measure of just how extreme these events have been.
“ belief in God replaced by belief in technology”
That I don’t see – rather the same authoritarian impulse being used. ‘God’ was always a stand-in for totalitarian power, and the established churches have been enforcers of the doctrine.
Whilst there’s a dependence on technology, there’s certainly no belief in science. Palpably.
Well, yes, I take your point. People like to believe in something, and that belief always will be abused by some. Perhaps belief in God makes people a little more stoical – a quality sadly lacking, which could have helped guard against the panic. I do think that technology is worshipped, and that has enabled the technocrats to seize power. But I suppose hundreds of year ago the established churches might have used a plague, real or imagined, to do the same. I’m well aware of the negative aspects of established religions, though also think there are positive aspects. I’m not religious myself.
People believe in what they think is science, but if they ever knew they now seem to have forgotten what it is, and what it is not.
When Church leaders respond to a relatively minor health risk by locking their doors and hiding away, one may be fairly certain that their proclaimed belief in the life of the world to come is just a sham.
There are no Christians among today’s church leaders. None.
There are sone Christians in the lower ranks, and in the pews(or wherever the Nazi bishops have shoved them).
The really intelligent independent people haven’t been taken in. They have seen through it from the beginning. Those who pretend to be taken in are those with agendas to.fillow or pockets to line.
I know lots of intelligent people who have been taken in. The usefulness of their intelligence is limited by their gullibility.
My best friend is very intelligent, a real problem solver and fully accepts risk in business, yet he is also 100% accepting of any and all laws and supports all sorts of rules and regulations no matter how absurd they seem- he simply accepts that they have to be followed. He has complied fully with all the various lockdowns, curfews, etc. and is very critical of any who dissent, putting the blame for any surges squarely at the feet of these reckless idiots who won’t or can’t follow rules. Go figure.
These are the jobs to no one will give credit for a century:
Scientist, Specialist, Investigator, Operational, Operational Assistent, Specialist of the Speciality, Doctor, Journalist, Policeman.
Of course, politicians have being, for millenia, classified as liars and thiefs.
Absolutely. I fear the left have won their long war against our freedoms and values- just ask any young person. Most can quote Marx but very few have even heard of the like of Goethe or Nietzsche. I’m not saying they should agree with or follow either, just that they simply aren’t mentioned- most teachers don’t even know about them. Everything taught today seems to have socialism and climate change at heart- the new religions.
One of the main factors guaranteeing the furtherance of all this fake bullshit is peoples’ total inability to analyse evidence rationally. This was the main feature of 9/11 and 7/7, it is a main feature of chemtrails and geo-engineering (this programme is nowhere near as aggressive as it was say a decade ago and this is now admitted to in the MSM), as two examples of clear-cut government crimes committed in broad daylight with tonnes of evidence to back up the alternative view which routinely gets shot down by the masses at the mere mention of “conspiracy”.
You can get people to happily admit that things are very corrupt but they can’t analyse and conclude any further – they will admit there is a problem but then bury it and ignore it. The rolling news cycle inputs new thoughts and the doubts become nothing but distant memories which were never given the level of thought they deserved. Deep down the masses know something is wrong. The story of Jimmy Savile tells them all they need to know and many know what corruption went on there. It is undeniable, involving the BBC, the entire establishment, the Royal Family. Kids being raped and I believe killed on an industrial scale, all covered up by the police and the security services and Sir Jimmy Savile got knighted when they knew full well the kind of man he was. The CPS chose not to investigate Savile when Keir Starmer was head of it, now he’s SIR KEIR STARMER – another piece of human filth, corrupt and disgusting to the core, paraded as a leader and twisting the minds of the population with his lies and dishonesty. A truly repulsive man.
Savile was best friends with Prince Charles and had access to Buckingham Palace as if he was one of the family. This is common knowledge, and any populace with a moral compass and a backbone would have overthrown and expelled this family so entrenched in paedophilia, what with the revelations that Andrew was best mates with Jeffrey Esptein. How can you have Royals so involved with the world’s most notorious paedophiles and it not be a problem and no action be taken?
Same reason they’re getting away with this and got away with spraying the skies with chemicals and pulling off false flag operations like 9/11 and embarking on illegal immoral wars as a result. People don’t object. The authorities know that if they tell the masses that 2+2=5 via their corrupt media organisations, the masses will suck it up like fools. This is the chain that needs to be broken. People need to know they are being taken for a ride by criminals and they need to stop putting their faith in these scumbags.
Following informs from the Secret Services, Judas was yet referenced.
Good post, but it’s credibility is seriously reduced by your apparent belief in ‘chemtrails’, which I know categorically, do not exist.
Even the Guardian admits it these days:
‘Dimming the sun’: $100m geoengineering research programme proposed
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/25/top-us-scientists-back-100m-geoengineering-research-proposal
Reminded me of this …
I first went to Australia in 1990, and between then and 2017, I must have made 20 trips to five states and one territory.
I love the place, and I like the people – until we play each other at sport.
What has happened in the past 18 months is a tremendous shock, but not entirely unexpected…….in about 2010, Sydney and Melbourne became infected with the same woke shite that has engulfed London, Bristol, Oxford and most university towns. The young have betrayed the sacrifices of the war (and austerity) generations, and have stifled freedom of speech.
‘Speech stiflers’ are cousins of ‘personal freedom stiflers’……..just as it is ‘unsafe’ to hear certain words and ideas, it is also ‘unsafe’ to engage in certain conduct.
For the ‘public good’, they believe that it is now imperative that in addition to ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crimes’, they are taking it upon themselves to keep people safe from ‘hate actions’.
‘Hate actions’ are basically ANY action that they believe carries a risk to public safety. Of course, we know that ‘failing to wear a face-mask’ and ‘failing to get jabbed’ constitute ‘hate actions’ of equivalent ‘hate speech’ magnitude as the ’N-word’; and ‘hate crime’ equivalent of telling a tranny, “You got a cock, so get out of the female changing-room’.
Australia has embraced all of this irrational nonsense, and its officials are engaged in full public protection mode…….”We truly believe that it’s too dangerous to live a normal life, so we are suspending it in order go save you”.
Australian cops and soldiers need to start considering if the orders they’re being given are lawful.
Stupid people
I’ve got family there and have noticed exactly the same. They also seem hell bent on destroying their energy sector.
Quite the opposite. They are extremely rational. Their purpose is to create the conditions necessary so that the population is not just prepared to take an untested, unapproved, experimental jab but actively begs for it.
EDITED THIS……GOT INTO RANT MODE…….BUT THE SYSTEM EXPIRED ON ME – SO IT APPEARS TWICE.
I first went to Australia in 1990, and between then and 2017, I must have made 20 trips to five states and one territory.
I love the place, and I like the people – until we play each other at sport.
What has happened in the past 18 months is a tremendous shock, but not entirely unexpected…….in about 2010, Sydney and Melbourne became infected with the same woke shite that has engulfed London, Bristol, Oxford and most university towns.
It’s all predicated on ‘caring’ and ‘doing what’s best for the community’. In other words, it’s socialism/communism by stealth. The West is too prosperous and decadent to have spotted it – weak souls feel guilty for their comfortable lives, and take it all onboard in order to salve their consciences and to ostentatiously demonstrate their underlying virtue.
The problem is that now these donations to charities, random acts of kindness and regular voluntary work have morphed into behavioural traits that have become compulsory. Doesn’t matter if you aren’t proactive, but you must support all such initiatives, and always demand that if the government CAN do something, it MUST do something.
A unified approach in the community is imperative – you have to be pro-unlimited immigration, anti-Brexit; pro-Green, anti-nuclear; pro-charity, anti-banker; anti-freedom, pro-lockdown.
Aided and abetted by woke prophets in schools, and desperate to get ‘likes’ on social media, the young have lapped it up uncritically……..in so doing they have betrayed the sacrifices of the war (and austerity) generations; conservative behaviour, restrained emotion, moderation, minimum state intervention and freedoms of thought and speech are passé.
‘Speech stiflers’ are cousins of ‘personal freedom stiflers’……..just as it is ‘unsafe’ to hear certain words and ideas, it is also ‘unsafe’ to engage in certain conduct.
For the ‘public good’, they believe that it is now imperative that in addition to ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crimes’, they are taking it upon themselves to keep people safe from ‘hate actions’.
‘Hate actions’ are basically ANY action that they believe carries a risk to public safety. Of course, we know that ‘failing to wear a face-mask’ and ‘failing to get jabbed’ constitute ‘hate actions’ of equivalent ‘hate speech’ magnitude as the ’N-word’; and ‘hate crime’ equivalent of telling a tranny, “You got a cock, so get out of the female changing-room’.
Getting back to Australia, well, it has embraced all this irrational nonsense just as fervently – if with a 4-5 year lag. If the government CAN do something it MUST – and Aussie officials are engaged in full public protection mode…..”We truly believe that it’s too dangerous for citizens to live a normal life, so we are suspending it in order to save you”.
Logically, the next step – in all Western countries – is to gradually extend newly-acquired state control, and dictate ‘behavioural expectations’ over everything. These people are zealots, they’re on a roll and are NOT decelerating.
Cops and soldiers everywhere need to start considering if the orders they’re being given are lawful.
you have to be pro-unlimited immigration, anti-Brexit; pro-Green, anti-nuclear; pro-charity, anti-banker; anti-freedom, pro-lockdown.
I am sorry but I think you have created an imaginary, or at least very limited, foe. These views tend to go together but they are by no means always found together and they come in many shades. For example, there are plenty of left-wing anti-lockdown campaigners. Taking myself as an example, I am pro-limited immigration, anti-Brexit but recognise the EU needed reform; pro-Green but in partnership with industry, pro-nuclear; pro- some charities, neutral on bankers; pro-freedom, uncertain about lockdowns (precisely what is locked down, how long, under what circumstances). Most of my “liberal” friends have similar mixed and nuanced opinions, as do my (rather smaller) circle of “conservative” friends.
This seems to be my campaign of the moment: stop this destructive tribalism – which seems to stem from the incredibly divided politics of the USA – accept that the world is complex and uncertain.
You decry “destructive tribalism”, but your kind were nowhere to be seen when the “destructive tribalism” began pushing and pushing and pushing, in the mid-late C20th.
Now there begins to be some pushback against the huge amount of travel we have made in the directions desired by the zealots, suddenly it’s those who seek to resist and push back who are “destructive tribalists”.
Blaming the victim.
There are, there were, and there will be many stupid people. A curse on humanity.
I’m neither left or right wing – although these labels seem to have different meanings to different people. I’m pro getting on with life without interference from interfering types – caveated by not to do to others that wouldn’t want done to me (Confucius) and not filling the land, sea and air full of plastics and other pollutants. I have no problem with the free movement of people we had in EU but with sensible controls, although i was/am pro brexit because i don’t believe the EU can be reformed. Nuclear fusion will be producing all our energy within 2 or 3 decades and carbon capture technology solves the alleged emissions issues in the interim without the unnecessary BS. I believe symptomatic peeps should stay at home until they are well, and vulnerable peeps should lock themselves down if they chose and be supported. But I don’t have your faith in the novel gene therapy technology other than for the very vulnerable if they chose and have been honestly informed with the available spin free evidence
OK. So we disagree on some issues but agree on others. The point being that there aren’t two tribes but lots of opinions.
your focus is praiseworthy but myopic.
tribalism is a feature of the progressive state, the MSM and fascist coporatists who follow them.
The “tribalism” you identify comes in two flavours; one that is based on natural laws and freedoms that Libertarians embrace which are currently being trampled upon by the second flavour; that purports to be “inclusive” but hides it’s deep rooted fascism in plain sight and goads those watching to believe them or their own lyin’ eyes.
Base your way of life upon the foundational elements of natural human laws, then work upwards. Progressivism is wholly unnatural.
tribalism is a feature of the progressive state, the MSM and fascist coporatists who follow them.
I guess it is a feature of tribalism is that always seems like the other lot who are the ones who are tribal while your own lot are just rational.
Tribalism is not the same as taking a stand on important issues like freedom of speech and personal liberty.
If you’re uncertain about lockdowns then you do not stand with me and I do not stand with you. What are your uncertainties?
Tribalism is not the same as taking a stand on important issues like freedom of speech and personal liberty.
Agreed – tribalism is assuming that the world is divided into two or more tribes, that all the members of each tribe has the same set of beliefs/values, and that your tribe’s beliefs/values are the correct ones.
I don’t anyone who is against free speech and liberty. The hard bit comes deciding what that means in practice – should we literally be free to say or do anything however much harm it might do? Of course not, that would be anarchy. So then we come to the detail – where do we draw the line? what constraints? under what conditions?
If you’re uncertain about lockdowns then you do not stand with me and I do not stand with you. What are your uncertainties?
Why do you write “stand” rather than “agree”? I am not campaigning or fighting a war on this issue. I want to understand better
Right now, I don’t know the answer to any of these.
“ should we literally be free to say or do anything however much harm it might do? Of course not, that would be anarchy. ” Of course we should, that would be freedom of speech, something you evidently don’t believe in.
If you’re not opposed to lockdowns then as far as I am concerned you are part of the problem, not the solution. It’s one thing to disagree with someone about whether income tax should be 35 or 36p in the pound, or whether we should be in the EU or not. It’s quite another to be complicit in the removal of MY freedom, the freedom of my family, the destruction of my country and of Western civilisation, because of a Big Lie. Some issues are more important than others, and this one directly affects me and mine. So I do not stand with you, and you do not stand with me. There are some other fundamental issues that would cause me to draw such a red line, but not many. I’m pretty tolerant in general. But I’m not tolerant of people who do not oppose lockdowns.
And yes, this is a war, not some fascinating philosophical debate. It’s not an “issue”, it’s the most comprehensive global assault on truth and freedom that we have witnessed in all of recorded history.
Strong words – more comprehensive than 1930s fascism or communism?
Getting close in some countries, not all
But more comprehensive in its global reach
You are quite extreme if you think anyone should be free to say anything. Suppose your next door neighbour reports you to the police as a paedophile with no justification? Or those people who make false calls to the emergency services? Or at its crudest you shout “Bomb” in a crowded cinema and thus cause many deaths in the crush? Are all these permissible?
You may strongly oppose my views on lockdowns but that doesn’t mean I am part of the pro-unlimited immigration, anti-Brexit; pro-Green, anti-nuclear; pro-charity, anti-banker; anti-freedom, pro-lockdown “them” that jingleballix identified.
The trouble is, once the state is allowed to legislate on one form of speech or behaviour, it doesn’t stop there- it never stops, just a little more, just another ‘tweak’. Obey speed limits the locals say, (for instance), but the limit was reduced from 60 to 50 overnight, now they’re pushing for 40 with no justification other than ‘it’s safer’. The fact is, most times you can’t do more than 30-40 because there’s always someone dawdling along. You can do what you like at 2 in the morning when it’s quiet but the locals want cameras nicking everyone who does more than 40 at all times. What then? 30? 20? Do we still all just obey? If someone reports their neighbour as a paedophile with no justification, then surely this in itself is a crime. A rational police force, (ha!), would ask why and on what grounds the report were being made and if no evidence was forthcoming charges should be brought- especially for such a serious accusation. I know some would still do it as they probably already do, but legislating what is acceptable speech/ behaviour is a very slippery slope ending somewhere like East Germany as we have clearly seen.
So you accept that falsely reporting someone as a paedophile should be illegal. What about writing an article in the local newspaper to the same effect?
Yes it is a slippery slope – but can’t totally get off it – we have to decide where to draw the barrier.
I don’t get the point about speed limits. As far as I am aware, it is not a controversial issue at the national level. If you don’t like the local policy why not contact the council?
My point about speed limits is that the people that push for more are never satisfied- and do you really think the council would listen if I said it should be raised to 60? I could just as easily have used smoking, alcohol, food, all these are constant targets and subject to ever more regulation. You are either free to choose or you are not and we are not. Free speech should mean just that- if you report your neighbour for a crime they didn’t commit that is a completely different matter and is, (or should be), an offence, whilst saying it in private – how can you stop something like that or even prove it without very intrusive powers?
I agree that the trend is toward more regulation but I wouldn’t identify that with any particular group – different groups have their own pet regulations. Planning regulations are popular with wealthy Tories in their period homes in idyllic countryside (at least until they want to build themselves). Many of the people on this forum are up in arms about a perceived inadequacy of regulations on vaccine safety. Employment regulations are beloved of trade unions.
Perhaps your speed limit problems are the result of over-officious residents with too much time on their hands? Surely if enough people write to the council and say they are too much it is very likely to have an effect – you are all voters.
There are slander and libel laws, and probably other laws covering false calls to the emergency services. You’re far too intelligent to think that’s what either of us are talking about.
I never made any assumptions or statements about your views on any other subject.
My point is that there is no obvious dividing line between slander and say, at the other extreme, the German laws forbidding denial of the holocaust. They are both making it illegal to say something false which may cause harm to others. I think the German law goes too far, but I can’t think of an obvious principle for drawing the line.
When I suggested you couldn’t seriously mean that we should literally be free to say or do anything, however much harm it might do, you confirmed that is exactly what you meant – so that would include slander and all the examples I quoted. If you don’t want to include the examples I gave – where do you want to draw the line?
I think in the UK at least there are well established legal precedents for what constitutes slander and libel. I’d leave it there, plus sundry stuff for dealing with hoax calls or whatever.
And I have slightly different views – I think it is immoral and should be illegal to publish (in a broad sense of publish) malignant information about someone or some group without evidence and good reason. It is so easy to ruin someone’s life these days. It is a hard law to articulate. But the broader point is that “standing up for freedom of speech” is far too simple and supresses essential discussion of a complicated issue.
No he hasn’t – he describes the Australia I see when I visit family there.
The problem has always been that the left is largely a tribe- they all believe exactly the same things, have the same aims, hate the same people, love chaos and disrupting life for everyone else. On the other hand, most people on here are not tribal but largely individual with differing views on most things and are unlikely to attend protests or form activist groups. We are also generally more tolerant of opposing views and those that hold them. This has been our undoing. Ayn Rand pointed out in the late 60s that although the left had largely failed they had not been defeated ideologically and they would infect generations with their ideals. She was right.
The thing is most of my liberal friends would say very similar things about the right.
I don’t consider myself to be ‘on the right’ particularly- just want to be left alone to get on with my own life which these days seems to make me a Nazi in some people’s eyes. I honestly don’t know anyone who holds right wing views that thinks their beliefs give them the right to impose them on others by any means they see fit.
We seem to have two issues going simultaneously.
A To what extent is there a left or right wing “tribe” where a tribe is a group that pretty much holds the same views and this is a matter of loyalty and identity rather than reason and evidence?
B To what extent is it reasonable for the state to impose on freedom of speech and other liberties?
This response is about (A) .
Although the vast majority of people in the UK have diverse and shifting views when an issue becomes contentious, albeit Brexit or Lockdowns, there is a strong tendency to become tribal and adopt views based on loyalty and identity, rather reason and evidence, particularly in on-line and in group contexts. Not surprisingly, if you are in a tribe then it seems that your views are based on the evidence and reason while the other guys are being tribal! I am trying to move beyond this, perhaps naively, and suggest there is scope for compromise, complexity and uncertainty.
You seem to think that tribalism doesn’t apply to the members of this forum.
most people on here are not tribal but largely individual with differing views on most things and are unlikely to attend protests or form activist groups.
But it seems to me almost everyone who comments here has the same views on pcr tests, masks, lockdowns, Covid vaccines (all of them!), Ivermectin, virus isolation, Covid death statistics, main stream media, Bill Gates etc. Also I regularly see comments encouraging people to go to protests and rallies and celebrating the large turnouts.
We are also generally more tolerant of opposing views and those that hold them.
I am not at all concerned by it, but the level of personal abuse that I get for presenting alternative views here is extraordinary even by internet standards. I regularly get told to fuck off or similar with no further argument or evidence.
I expect something similar happens on pro-lockdown discussion groups – if such things exist. I just have this hope that it is possible to move beyond it.
I’ve never told you to fuck off, but I don’t think it’s extraordinary by internet standards. People tell eachother to fuck off about which tennis player is the GOAT. Don’t be surprised if people here are hostile to someone who doesn’t oppose the taking away of their freedoms and wrecking of their lives for a Big Lie.
No – you have been polite – thank you – but I can put together a long list of personal abuse and obscenities if you don’t believe me (it would be quite a lot of work so I would prefer not to).
I don’t support taking away their freedoms and wrecking of their lives – I have never expressed support for mandatory lockdowns – the point being many people assumed I did because of other opinions such as that the vaccines are safe and effective is strong and the specificity of PCR testing is in the high 90s.
You seem to think it is understandable to abuse someone who doesn’t oppose the taking away of their freedoms and wrecking of their lives for a Big Lie i.e. for not expressing an opinion. Can I not just be silent about an issue?
I don’t disbelieve you – my point is that abuse on the internet is pretty common and often for much more trivial reasons
I think this is an issue you need to take sides on. The Nazi troops are marching into your town – you can either cheer them on, try to blow them up or remain silent. Remaining silent will result in them taking over your town. As a minimum, if you don’t believe there is compelling evidence that lockdowns work you should oppose them on the basis that they do evident harm – though I am against them as a matter of principle.
But what ought I do if I think
?
I think Australia is well in front of us now in the Woke league.
Australia is over. It is now a Police State, shut off from the world with Martial Law.
And Australia citizens deserve it. They have allowed their country to become North Korea. We were planning to visit family this year. We will never go there again, ever. The country is lost.
The the five-eye Kabal GloboCap govts, those all in league with the BUILD BACK BETTER BOLLOX agenda are all lost causes.
Unless their entrapped masses rise up pre the winter – isn’t gonna happen with a compliant jibby-jabbed boomer generation that and as to the millennials? They’re mostly ADHD, hyper-distraction, serotonin dulled obsessives…. i.e. an easy win crushed cause – no pushback at all coming there.
Austin-Fitts once more delivers what’s going down.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/mkGx4e3iLwwX/
Time is running out folks, to ever see ever again what was termed the pre 2020 old normal:
>We thought child sacrifices died out with the Aztecs,
There’s strong hints establishment types have a thing for Moloch.
The longer the Australian regime hangs on, the better for the rest of us. Someone needs to try to push too far and take a hard fall for it.
I’d have thought that all the US sphere regimes had pushed too far already, but it turned out we were collectively an awful lot meeker and more gullible, compliant and submissive than I had hoped. It’s looking as though our own regime in the UK has largely gotten away with their disastrous power grab, covered as they were by a political “opposition” who pushed in the wrong direction. The risk, unless they push further again this winter, is that the aftermath will fade away into squabbling about details while the elites cover for themselves and the guilty walk away without real consequence, much as the Iraq War aftermath. They will admit to trivial or misleading “mistakes” in execution, to deflect from the huge misfeasances they really fear being accused of.
The hope for pushing too far seems at the moment to rest with the zero covid morons in the Australian and NZ regimes, or with the French or Americans, where coronapanic has collided more destructively with ongoing culture war and political dysfunction.
I agree entirely.
I trace this breakdown in humanity, and that is what it is, to 9/11, which funnily enough was 20 years ago next month. It was not a cliché to say the world changed that day, but it didn’t change the way people thought. The key word was security. After 9/11, everything was about security. Feeling secure. I remember the stupid Australian TV breakfast presenter paid insane money at the time to make an ad telling Aussies to be Alert but not Alarmed. In other words: it’s time to completely freak out. And so Australia began freaking out, about everything. ‘Terror’ is just a placeholder word for anything that is a challenge to feeling safe and secure. From there we went to ‘safe spaces’, and next, painting police cars gay. After 9/11 the most important thing was to feel absolutely terrified of the world, then codify that into behaviour. Now the children born in September 2001 are about to turn 20, and as they have grown up, the world has become one giant soft safe space. Then along comes this nothing-burger of a virus. And the result: predictable panic across the mindspace. There is no cure. There is no fix. The fear has gone too deep. Australia is what happens when you listen to the paid advice to be Alert but not Alarmed. Or to put it another way: be Terrified, but carry on shopping, for now. Australia has completely lost the plot, but don’t gloat. We are all Australians. We are all waking up to the morning after 9/11, twenty years later. Afghanistan is imploding at the same time, no co-incidence. Humanity, welcome to the end game.
Perhaps you could draw up a timeline of a world descending (being manipulated) into ever greater panic over ever more absurd dangers.
Starting out with religious evils – the Devil. For believers, an absolute and total threat to every individual’s eternity. The kind of threat that absolutely justifies fear.
Then socialist revolution, communism and the Soviet Union. A real threat to basic social order, and later of massive military invasion, subversion and nuclear annihilation. Pretty real, albeit the details could be and were exaggerated.
Then we start the real descent into farce, with the threat of “terrorism”. In reality, not really much of a threat at all, unless you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, even in the worst cases fantasised by the security bedwetters. But nevertheless used to change everything about the relationship between the individual and the state in our societies (in order to protect what was really important to the elites -their ability to interfere murderously (albeit for noble “humanitarian” goals) in other countries)..
Finally we reach the latest level of abject pathetic bedwettery. The entire world, more or less, scared into totalitarian submission by a jumped up flu.
The modern decline and fall of man, in summary.
If you take the Devil as a convenient symbol for the dangers of giving in to human weaknesses, then the threat is very real.
Antonin Scalia said he believed the Devil was a real entity, and I suppose a lot of people do/did. Not sure how many modern Christians in the UK believe in the Devil as a real person, even the ones that actually believe in God.
A person? With horns and wings? No.
A force utterly opposed to everything that is good, which can recruit human beings as tools to subvert and destroy the good – yes, most certainly.
The eventual victor? Certainly not.
“I trace this breakdown in humanity, and that is what it is, to 9/11”
Yet another bit of simplistic reductionism. There’s no end to the tattered old ideological knickers being stuffed into the suitcase of explanation. The tendency to do so is part of the crisis of knee-jerkery and no-think that we are suffering.
The important point is that, in essence, this manipulation isn’t new, or ‘modern’. Only the extent and congruence of the situation is novel. Like the emergent ‘Alien’, the central failure, has been with us as a sometimes manifest threat forever. Perhaps the new component is the comprehensive and dominant power of media and its control. Previously, such manipulation has only been possible on a local scale.
One thing is for sure amongst all the partisan wittering – the constitutional defences that were thought to be the guard against such events getting out of the coffin were proved as rotten and useless as some of the explanatory simplicities being advanced.
You sound like you have a wet sock in your mouth. Pardon me for effusing such reductionist poppycock into your breakfast pontifications. Your theory is so much better. Grander. Much more eloquent and erudite. The emergent Alien that has been with us forever. Yes, that makes so much more sense. Nothing simplistic or reductionist about that, gosh no. Thank you for stooping down to my level and correcting me, and especially for clarifying what is important. I think I will have another crumpet thank you.
A very reasonable response to the utter nonsense dribbled out over the cornflakes by Rick H.
It would appear he is reaching for levels of eloquence beyond the grades he has currently achieved.
I thought his points were pretty valid and uncontroversial myself. Certainly mass hysteria and the propensity of elites to want more power if they can get away with it are not exactly new.
What didn’t you think made sense, of what he wrote?
You mean he writes decent English and has something to say? If you do, I agree with you. If not, not.
There is.something to that. Previously it seemed as if governments would generally seek to downplay dangers and keep people calm.
It changed with 9/11. Governments started actively scaring people with the terrorism bogeyman.
Those of us who lived in London during the 90s will remember security alerts and having to get off the tube and people trudging off annoyed at the disruption more than anything else. And it’s not as if bombs didn’t go off from time to time. But we shrugged it off with a heavy dose.of perspective.
Now it’s as if people are in a competition to outdo each other at being freaked out.
9/11 could well have been when attitudes changed
9/11 was only a revelation to Americans who had suffered no serious mainland violence by a hostile foreign power since 1812. The British had experienced vicious IRA bombing campaigns from the 1930s right into the 1990s so terror was not such a new idea for us.
Don’t comply. Ditch the masks. – FIGHT BACK BETTER – Updated information, resources and links: https://www.LCAHub.org/
I don’t know, I sometimes wonder if humanity is going to split into three distinct types. Morlocks, Eloi and pre-C19 natural humans…
DePiffle is beginning to visually resemble a Morlock.
‘It may not be our governments’ intention to cause this damage, but it might as well be; just as it may not be their intention to destroy small business and impoverish one of the most productive sectors of society’. I believe it is, or they would stop it. The cure is much much worse than the disease
Back a few decades some of our more high minded intellectuals lamented the fact that Australia had achieved self-government by peaceful means. What we needed, according to these pointy-heads, was a baptism of blood. Fighting in the streets. Families torn apart. No quarter given and none asked.
Their vision may be in the process of being achieved.
Why are we not seeing the emergence of political parties opposing the madness – there needs to be an alternative at the ballot box.
Because big tech will censor them, the facist media will persecute them and the banking institutions will make it impossible for them to collect money?
Absolutely, Reform UK is trying. Ok they backed vaccines but don’t back them for young people or support makung them mandatory. But they are having life made very difficult, the bank closed their business account the other week without giving notice or a reason.
https://www.reignitedemocracyaustralia.com.au/
https://www.ldp.org.au/
https://australiaoneparty.com/
https://www.onenation.org.au/
Heritage, Reform, Reclaim, Freedom Alliance in the UK. To an extent the SDP. Hard for smaller parties to emerge. UKIP was an exception, and the Greens I suppose. Their positions probably had more ready-made support.
I’ve been thinking about this and I have made this point before but I think it needs airing again. I believe that one of the only ways for this to be resolved is for the people to engage directly with the military and police. We need representatives such as Anna De Buisseret to take the truth to these authorities and challenge them with the facts. They need to be served notices of liability. Surely they don’t want to destroy their own countries? Surely they don’t want to destroy their own kids’ futures?
The politicians are pure scum, they have no value and on a spiritual level, they detract from and poison our world. The politicians who have enabled this…….I can’t even write what they deserve to happen to them. But the point is they are a complete waste of time and oxygen, so now the people must engage directly with those whose wages they pay. We must plead with these institutions to represent their fellow man, not the criminal establishment they are wedded to.
Cromwell, Churchill, Thatcher?
ANY BLOODY BODY WHO CAN “GET A GRIP”!!!!
It looks like numbers in New Zealand are starting to go the same way as in Australia. Could be interesting to see how they respond over the next week or two if the rise continues. Are they as supine as their Australian neighbours?
.”…Employed? What, to do some gardening? Imagine the negotiation: “I don’t mind mowing, but it’ll be an extra $50 if you want full weeding.””
Love it, made me laugh out loud, which doesn’t happen so much anymore. Thank you
Reminded me of the old joke about the Yorkshireman visiting a hooker who is offering introductory offers: ‘I’ll do anything for just £10’. The bloke knocks on her door and as she answers he hands over a tenner and says, ‘Please paint my sitting room’.
Or the one where the bloke said ” I’ve only got a pound”, to which the lady of the night replied “That’s all right, I’ve got plenty of change”.
Tucker Carlson spells it out well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnda6VZpv0Q
Oh, thank goodness! I was wondering whether all Australians had been thoroughly brainwashed. Clearly not. This is exactly what I’d expect to hear from people who have had their freedom so pointlessly ripped away.
I hope the good people down under come up with a way to reclaim their lives. It might have to be ugly.
How any society that behaves like this feels it has a moral right to criticise the Taliban is beyond me.
Excellently written article. Reading through it I laughed out loud, before feeling sad and angry in equal measures. Every so-called leader, law enforcer, health official, education provider etc should be forced to read this and explain their crimes against humanity (backed up by peer reviewed evidence to support what they’ve done, which of course doesn’t exist). When did these people become gods? When did the populace start treating them that way, and forget they are just men and women?
Nuremberg 2 needs to happen – They are now going after the kids (as planned) Please support: COVID19 Assembly take legal action against MHRA to halt child vaccinations – https://www.LCAHub.org/
What a beautiful and moving piece. The chance of a Cromwell today, however, is zero.
Cromwell was able to dismiss parliament because he had the army behind him. I fear that most countries’ generals are of the same ilk as the politicians. They’re going to back the deception since the alternative is unthinkable.
Where are all the men?
“If you have employed a sex worker in the St Kilda area,” !?
Doesn’t he know that StKilda was evacuated years ago as an impracticable place to live, out beyond the Scottish Hebrides? I don’t think a sex worker would make much of a living unless the sheep are customers!
Now here’s an idea ; that island would be ideal for the likes of Dan Andrews. He could strut about commanding the seabirds and the tides & weather, causing no one any trouble.