This is direct from Instapundit in the US. Dan Andrews is as thick and dumb as anyone I have ever seen in politics, but you would hope that there might be others in his government who see the massive damage the Victorian Government is inflicting on the State and on Australia’s good standing among the nations of the world and would do something.
SHOCK VIDEOS: What’s happening to Australia?
The Aussie government insisted afterward that the rioters were the aggressors, even scolding them for urinating on Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance. Is that the truth or just part of the state’s PR effort to keep the balance of popular opinion on the side of lockdowns by demonizing those who resist them?
The most disturbing video circulating today has no violence in it. It’s this scene of police officers in another part of the country interrogating a man in the interest of “public safety” about whether he knows of any protests coming up. I can’t tell if that’s because they’re worried about a riot in their jurisdiction too or if they’re really willing to go this far to prevent people from congregating in public for fear that they’ll spread the virus. Australia has lost very few people to COVID thanks to their lockdown strategy, but they’ve lost other important things in the process.
All the more reason in America to: Thank God for Rednecks.Who else could keep us from turning into Australia?
As bad as things are getting here in the States, we can’t fathom how much worse things would be without these down-home heroes. Sure, they might carry their paranoid anti-government theories a little too far. But their paranoia is far from unfounded, and even if they sometimes over-react, they keep America from falling into the opposite extreme: creeping tyranny, Aussie style. You can’t boil a frogs if he flips out every time you reach for the knob.
Like them, I’d prefer the burdens of liberty to a warm, sterile despotism. And that seems like an old-fashioned, all-American instinct to me. I can’t see Davey Crockett “sheltering in place” because the Department of Public Health asked him to. I can’t see Teddy Roosevelt triple-masking. I can’t see Johnny Cash stanning Dr. Fauci.
So, my apologies to those anti-maskers in Virginia. I rushed to judge you last summer, and that was wrong. May you continue to resist any whiff of conformism with righteous fury. May you give no quarter to the elite “consensus” of elite “institutions.” And may you never stop being pissed off. It just might save this republic.
Except for certain quarters: College campuses are becoming insane COVID-19 security dystopias.
Steve Kates:
Wouldn’t we all?
However, I feel the latter is just a more scenic walk to the concentration camps and the mass graves. Depots cannot understand the limits to their authority.
I’m waiting for all those civil libertarians to come to the party.
Meanwhile I don’t wear a mask. I’ve sent my medals back to the Governor General with a terse note about him letting the country down. I don’t comply with the 5k rule. I am like a handsome, whiter Ghandi.
When push does come to shove the fascists might find that some of us coffin dodgers are full of piss and vinegar. Once it was just vinegar.
Alas, this is what you get when you live in a country which has never undergone a revolution, or had to fight a war of liberation.
All those years, and all those millions of dollars building up Australia as a tourism destination, and now what?
yep – generations of easy going has made us blind to the privileged life we lead.
It is not surprising that many of the protests are being spearheaded by ozzies of Lebanese and Croatian background.
That’s because there aren’t any.
And yet still not photo of urination on the Shrine. You think if the MSM wouldn’t play that with confected outrage if they didn’t have it in hand? Was prepared to accept that it may have happened but we are now getting to nearly 1 week later and not one photo. File in things that didn’t happen.
Interesting that you think Dan is thick and dumb, rather than that all he does is deliberate and DESIGNED to destroy the economic and democratic nature of Victoria (and, by extension, Australia).
He oversaw the ruination of the Health Department before becoming Premier and signed up to China’s Belt and Road.
None of this was accidental.
He is a hard left socialist and his aim is to undermine all aspects of our society (hence, also, the extreme abortion laws, euthanasia laws, indoctrination of schoolchildren, attacks on Christianity etc etc).
Until you understand this, he will always win.
Why some Australians are done with Covid vaccination rules
If a bunch of unvaccinated people want to gather together, surely that is a matter for them, writes James Campbell.
The mob that rampaged through the streets of Melbourne for several days last week might have been made up of the bad and sad with deluded views about vaccination which are unbacked by science.
But on one point they are right to be angry.
Australia’s leaders promised us the country’s vaccination program would be voluntary.
Last month Scott Morrison was asked about this and he gave a clear and unambiguous statement which is worth quoting at length.
“The vaccination program in Australia is free and it is not mandatory,” the Prime Minister said.
“That is a very important principle. We are not going to seek to impose a mandatory vaccination program by the Government, by stealth. That is not what we’re going to do” before going on to say: “it is important that Australians know that we are not going to seek to impose a mandatory vaccination program in this country by some other means. There have been some isolated cases which have already been identified – quarantine workers and aged care workers. They are the only areas that any states or territories or the Commonwealth has suggested that we’re providing some statutory or a public health order enforcement of such a mandating.”
A month later Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton shut the lunchrooms on Victoria’s building sites and ordered that every worker have at least one jab before being allowed to work.
Now you could argue that wasn’t this wasn’t the Prime Minister’s fault, after all, Sutton does what he likes barely any reference to the Victorian Government, let alone Canberra.
But the fact is that every state and territory and leader who has sat in national cabinet has connived at creating the impression that barring a few industries that dealt with the vulnerable, the rest of us would be given a choice about whether we want to get vaccinated.
And it turns out this is a lie.
In NSW from next month when the double vaxxed rate hits 70 per cent of the eligible population over 16 only those who have vaccinated will be able to go to the pub, eat out, attend public events.
These pleasures will continue to be forbidden to the unvaccinated.
But as I said, it’s hard to square Gladys’s unvaxxed home visit ban and Dan’s no-jab no-start diktat with the statement from Scott Morrison I quoted earlier.
You also have to ask whether it’s really wise.
All the polling shows the overwhelming majority of us are going to get jabbed if we haven’t been already.
But there is also a substantial minority – almost 10 per cent according to the Melbourne Institute – who have no intention of doing so.
Are we really prepared for a society in which 10 per cent of the adult population are effectively excluded from the economy?
What are the chances this will increase the number of them who hold other, ahem, more problematic views?
Moreover, while according to all the polls a majority of the population backs privileges for the vaccinated, the size of the minorities ought to be giving our rulers pause for thought.
According to the Melbourne Institute’s findings – backed up by a recent YouGov poll – it would seem around one-in-five people are against being made to provide evidence they’re vaccinated to enter bars, restaurants and sporting venues.
After the week that we’ve just been through here in Melbourne, this strikes me as a recipe for trouble.
Still, you can see how we got here.
For the past 18 months public health across Australia have been shutting down our societies at the stroke of a pen, cheered on by their epidemiologist friends sitting in their institute offices.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/why-some-australians-are-done-with-covid-vaccination-rules/news-story/d97b74d438152d52049a2dcaacbe93a6
Newspoll: Morrison government trailing as key states drift away
The decline has been led by a loss of support among part-time and blue-collar workers and low to middle-income earners, according to the quarterly analysis of Newspoll surveys conducted between July and September.
In Mr Morrison’s home state of NSW, the Coalition has suffered an averaged three-point swing against it in the current quarter compared to the April to June quarter, with popular support falling to 39 per cent.
Labor now leads in NSW by 52/48 on a two-party preferred basis, marking an almost four-point turnaround since the election in a state that the Coalition would need to win seats in rather than simply retain those it has, if it is to remain in office after the next election.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/newspoll-morrison-government-trailing-as-key-states-drift-away/news-story/47f2965caf63f624a155d52402f72f69
The Jab That Broke The Camel’s Back: Thousands Protest in Tel Aviv Over Israel’s Vaccine Passport That Now Requires Citizens to Take Booster Shot to Be Considered “Fully Vaccinated” – (Video)
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison Brags About Human Rights During U.N. Speech, While State Police Violently Beat Citizens in The Streets Protesting to Support Human Rights
A remarkable contrast video shows the words the Australian Prime Minister delivered during the United Nations General Assembly, while contrasting the brutality that Morrison’s various police units are unleashing in the streets all around Australia.
The original version of this video is being throttled by Google [SEE HERE]. However, a Rumble Version has been uploaded. The video used to overlay the speech is actual news footage from the past five days in Australia.
In virtually every large metropolitan area in the country, State Police, Riot Squads and jackboots can be found beating citizens who leave their homes or refuse to show their approved transit papers. Australians, who attempt to protest the COVID lockdowns and forced vaccinations, are subject to being shot, beaten, arrested and in come cases of female victims, sexually assaulted by police officers. Australia has descended into totalitarianism, and is not easily the most dystopian state in the former free democratic world.
The Taliban in Afghanistan are mild compared to the police units operating in many cities including Melbourne and Sydney. Checkpoints are commonplace everywhere, and quarantine camps for the non-compliant have been established. It is beyond absurd.
“He is a hard left socialist and his aim is to undermine all aspects of our society (hence, also, the extreme abortion laws, euthanasia laws, indoctrination of schoolchildren, attacks on Christianity etc etc).”
*******
All absolutely true, but not at all inconsistent with him being thick and dumb.
My impression is that he’s a nasty, petty little man with an uneasy feeling that everyone knows his only talents and accomplishments are brown-nosing and backstabbing his way to positions of power and then using vicious sociopathic thuggery to get his own way, and the surly, belligerent attitude stems from that deep down knowledge of his own inadequacies.
My point was that dismissing him as stupid tends to mean people don’t take him seriously and tend to believe that what he does is by accident.
You could say that ” a nasty, petty little man with an uneasy feeling that everyone knows his only talents and accomplishments are brown-nosing and backstabbing his way to positions of power and then using vicious sociopathic thuggery to get his own way, and the surly, belligerent attitude stems from that deep down knowledge of his own inadequacies.” is a good description of Hitler or Stalin or any dictator you care to name. Didn’t make them any less dangerous or successful at what they did or mean that they weren’t well aware of what they were doing.
Australian PM Defends Strict Lockdown Measures When Asked ‘Do you Think Less Liberty is Medically Necessary’
During his lengthy Sunday appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was asked about a host of issues. He was briefly asked by host Margaret Brennan about his country’s strict lockdowns in the face of the Wuhan coronavirus, which he defended.
As Brennan reminded the prime minister, “Australia is one of the few Western democracies that has really put in place some very, very strict COVID protocols. You shut down your borders 18 months ago,” before going on to ask him “when will they reopen? Are you going to have vaccine passports? When will Australians be able to leave?”
Prime Minister Morrison offered that “we will see our international borders, particularly for Australians to leave and return, and Australians who are overseas who have been vaccinated to return and that will occur before the end of the year, and it could happen well before that.”
Other than that timeframe, the prime minister didn’t provide many specifics. He touted his country’s vaccination rates, but it was more so a matter of “and we’ll be able to open up those borders” and that “it is getting us to a place where we’ll be able to open again.”
Despite having been fully vaccinated for months, Prime Minister Morrison confirmed to Brennan he will quarantine upon returning to Australia.
The Guardian staff put together a comprehensive and chilly explanation of what’s allowed and what’s not. Residents can only leave their home for a very limited amount of reasons, and can only travel up to 15km away, or about 9 miles. If up five people want to meet for “personal training” reasons outside, they must all be vaccinated. Masks must be worn indoors and outdoors, except when it comes to people being in their own homes.
Complete lockdowns have occurred in Australia over a matter of a single case.
I will bet those instances have not even been hospitalised.
The statistics are generating the fear, even though what they supposedly measure are quite benign.
Dictator For Life Dan is not so much “thick and dumb” as he is willfully malevolent and crooked as a dog’s hind leg.
It is especially terrifying that he is in a position of almost untrammeled power.
Even Morrison is bluffed by him.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely – Lord Acton