Guest essay by Eric Worrall
As some Republicans discuss possible sanctions against Australia over police brutality towards Covid lockdown protestors, New Zealand has just arrested occupants of a car with a trunk full of lockdown contraband KFC chicken meals.
US Republicans want to sanction Australia – because of the brutality against protests
20 Sep. 2021 21:36
The world’s sharpest lockdown and the massive intervention of the police against protests over the corona measures in Australia have now led to US Republicans wanting to resort to a means that is otherwise reserved for political opponents of the US: sanctions.
American Republicans urged the United States to impose sanctions on Australia this week in response to several cases where Australian police officers violently attacked “unauthorized protests”.
On Sunday said in an article Ben Kew – the English editor of the Florida Conservative magazine El American – That the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison “has to pay for such shameless human rights violations”, which happened against protesters as well as against other Australians through the strict COVID-19 lockdown measures.
…
Read more: https://then24.com/2021/09/20/us-republicans-want-to-sanction-australia-because-of-the-brutality-against-protests/
Tweet from Republican Ben Kew;
A video of the protests.
The protests occurred after members of the construction industry refused mandatory vaccination. The Victorian premier retaliated by ordering a two week lockdown, an apparent attempt to starve the construction workers into submission. Construction workers immediately joined in a mass protest in Melbourne. So far there has been substantial use of rubber bullets and violent clashes with police.
Victoria Covid update: police arrest 44 people and fire rubber pellets during Melbourne construction protests
State health minister says closure of industry necessary to prevent spread of Covid and protests a ‘deplorable’ insult to Victorians
Caitlin Cassidy
Tue 21 Sep 2021 17.53 AESTThousands of protesters have gathered in Melbourne for a second day, clashing with police and blocking traffic on the West Gate Freeway, after authorities announced the forced closure of the construction industry for a fortnight due to ongoing concerns with “poor compliance” with health orders.
The Victorian health minister, Martin Foley, said there were 403 direct cases linked to construction across 186 sites with “multiple cases” having seeded to the regions.
Foley said the decision to close down the industry – estimated to cost more than $6bn – was due to a “combination of factors” but the protests were a “deplorable … insult to Victorians” that risked being super-spreader events.
“As a result of these figures, the public health team was left with no choice but to hit the pause button and continue working with the sector over these next two weeks to improve compliance … and slow the spread of the virus,” he said.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/21/victoria-covid-update-rubber-bullets-fired-on-second-day-of-construction-protests-which-block-freeway
New Zealand has presented a stiff challenge to Victoria’s Covid insanity, with the news that eating KFC in New Zealand is now a serious felony, warranting a police chase and a hard stop.
New Zealand Covid: Men caught smuggling KFC into lockdown-hit Auckland
NZ police have made a bizarre arrest after a pair of alleged gang associates were caught trying to enter Auckland with a boot full of KFC chicken and tens of thousands of dollars.
The men were charged with breaching the country’s tough Covid-19 rules.
Under Auckland’s strict Level 4 lockdown, all restaurants, including take-away services, remain closed.
Police said the men, aged 23 and 30, had travelled from Hamilton, about 75 miles south of Auckland.
A police spokesperson told the BBC that officers made the arrest after they noticed a suspicious looking vehicle travelling on a gravel road on the outskirts of the city.
“Upon seeing the police car, the vehicle did a u-turn and sped off trying to evade police,” they said. “The vehicle was searched and police located the cash, alongside empty ounce bags and a large amount of takeaways.”
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-58638752
Regardless of where you stand on Covid lockdowns, what is happening in Victoria and New Zealand is not just wrong, but seriously Orwellian. I really wish politicians would look themselves in the mirror, and ask themselves how we got to the point where smuggling KFC is treated as a serious felony, while in Victoria, people attempting to execute their democratic right to free assembly are met with a hail of rubber bullets, rather than someone prepared to listen to their grievances.
Ever wake up and wonder what happened to the world we grew up in? The Babylon Bee, a political satire site, had to start a sister site Not the Bee, which is dedicated to reporting real life weirdness, because political parody which stands out from every day life is a real challenge in today’s world.
Update (EW): h/t CTM – Woman being arrested in Melbourne Sydney for the crime of wearing a placard protesting government policy.
Update (EW): James Delingpole has written a brilliant article on Breitbart, detailing some of the horrific injuries being suffered by unarmed Melbourne lockdown protestors.
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The Australian media paints these protestors as some kind of rightwing extremists. It’s beyond a joke. People who get to keep their high paying jobs having a dig at a very diverse crowd (some wearing their Sikh headdress) who don’t want to be forced from their jobs.
They protested against the The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, so the (Victorian Labor) government closed down the construction industry for two weeks to punish the protestors. The union leader threatened to make those who protested pick fruit for a living.
I kind of thought that the union was there to protect valuable workers, not to dish out a privilege at their, egotistical, pleasure.
What a “let them pick fruit” blight on our history.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/john-setka-the-man-who-left-his-union-a-smouldering-ruin-20210809-p58h5p.html
Setka stands with Danistan as a result of being threatened by any rank and file unionists-
Building worker sacked, allegedly under union pressure, for attending protest (msn.com)
People need to push back at politicians trying to reverse a centuries old duty of care. I have no duty to make you feel safe. If you are afraid of any diseases I MIGHT have … by all means stay home. Wear a plastic suit for all I care. Locking up and isolating uninfected citizens is a government overreach that no one should put up with … particularly using the present pretense of a “pandemic”.
With a purported covid death toll of 1003 in a population of ~25 million their response constitutes the greatest over reaction in human history. It is a DEAD certainty that the death toll from their prevention measures is many times greater than from the infection, one that natural immunity will either end or it won’t. The “vaccine” is a pointless exercise in futility.
Perspective : Look Up Your Risk of Dying of COVID-19
Thank you for the tables … every bit of info is useful, but I don’t have a great deal of faith in statistics these days. Almost exactly 6 years ago I was diagnosed with late stage 4 sacral carcinoma. I was given a couple of months to live. With radiation and chemo, perhaps a year. 6 months later immune therapy was offered to me as a ‘hail Mary’ treatment I wasn’t expected to respond but they needed candidates at the “low end” of the curve. Almost immediately the tumors began to shrink. For the next 6 months each scan showed the dozen or so tumors to have shrunk by half. Less than a year following the first treatment the scans showed no lesions at all.
My risk of death was 100% within 3 months of diagnosis (Oct. 2015). I’m thinking I have a far greater risk from adverse covid therapy (‘vaccine’) side effects than from the disease. I have faith in my natural immunity and no faith at all in the “vaccines”.
look up Mebendazole for cancer just for info.e.med repurposed drugs for cancer
Why would I do that?
After you have faced death staring you in the face, you feel much more relaxed about living the life you have. I was told I had a neuroendocrine tumor that turned out to be a treatable chronic condition.
To quote one of my favourite intellects, Samuel Johnson: ‘Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’
When I visited Melbourne a few years ago, I understood. This is what they want the rest of us to become. Mass transit in every type and flavor, bike lanes. The whole schmeer.
And so Melbourners lived happily ever after. Isn’t that nice.
It is infuriating to see ostensibly democratic countries behaving tyrannically and arresting people simply for peacefully protesting the tyranny. They have lost all sense of perspective. The lethality of COVID-19 is similar to the 1957 Asian Flu and the 1968 Hong Kong Flu, extraordinary but not unprecedented. It has had vastly less impact than the 1918 Spanish Flu to which it is frequently compared but which was 19 times worse than the Asian, Hong Kong, and Wuhan epidemics.
But this tyranny should be no surprise. Australia and New Zealand, like the United Kingdom, have no constitutional protections of speech or the right to protest. The U.S. First Amendment is unique. Only a handful of other countries have similar protections. OZ, NZ, and the UK aren’t in that group.
The US first amendment is certainly unique for the USA – it was necessary to have something like that as the country started with a blank slate regarding laws and rights. In the UK it isn’t needed as we have centuries of laws enshrining both the rights and responsibilities of the citizen towards other members of society regarding freedom of speech and expression. To say we have nothing in the UK is a rather stupid and ignorant statement.
Say rather it wasn’t needed. I’ve read some alarming stories about what you can be convicted and jailed for saying in Britain these days.
I’ve seen how many more people are imprisoned in the USA than in the UK. Different countries, different approaches. I’ve also heard similar alarming stories about what you can be jailed for saying in the USA these days – but stories and exaggerations are what most of them are, not facts.
What’s happening here in Australia is disgusting. A 70 year old grandmother bashed to the floor and pepper sprayed by two police officers. Disgusting. Won’t see that in the MSM though. Laws, acts and the constitution breached. Employers mandating vaccines.
Did you notice the pig spraying her was wearing a mask as a chin strap.
Yes I did notice that. In fact many police in Australia “enforcing” CHO “CODID-19” orders breach said COVID orders. It is beyond madness.
govt pushing mandating vax ONTO companies as they have ZERO legal ability to do so.
yet they did exactly that with kids
Exactly right, but people are putting up with it.
I wonder when KFC are going to put a mask on their logo of Colonel Sanders?
Im waiting for chicken to be in the product;-)))
Do you understand the significance of ounce bags in the NZstory? They were drug trafficking
From what I gathered, the bags were empty. An ounce bag is for personal use, some people would blow that overnight with some friends. Of course, I never inhaled.
I am not a druggie or a smoker but the best cannabis I ever smoked was in NZ.
Reactions to epidemics of infectious diseases often include authoritarian measures to control or eliminate social gatherings which are thought to spread the diseases, as well as attempts to control personal behavior.
The ever virginal Doris Day chastely flirting with the restrained Rock Hudson has a provenance in the siege of Naples in 1494-5, 500 years earlier. As does the banning of theatre under Cromwell, and perhaps Savanarola’s Florence and Calvin’s Geneva. The syphilis plagues cast a long shadow.
It varies from country to country. So we see that the UK and most of the EU is relaxing and approaching the stance that we have to live with Covid, whereas Australia and NZ appear to have adopted the goal of total elimination, and whatever measures are necessary to deliver that. Scotland is interestingly becoming more authoritarian as the crisis in healthcare worsens there.
The greater the changes necessary, the more authoritarian and sweeping the measures have to be. The attempt to enforce nationwide chastity, for instance, if its to be successful requires truly draconian control of social life. As seen in some Islamic countries.
Not a lot was going to happen between Doris Day and Rock Hudson. He was gay. Although most of us didn’t know at the time.
Indeed yes. But the point I was making, the motion picture code enforced the public pretence of there being universally accepted extreme limits on sexual activity, and the climate of opinion that led to this public pretence was due to the long shadow cast by the syphilis epidemic over the centuries following the siege of Naples.
Led also to the more draconian episodes mentioned.
It is sort of rational up to a point, given the point of view, just as the Australia and NZ reactions are sort of rational. If you really believe that its possible and justifiable to try to eliminate Covid, then willing the end, you also will the means, and these are draconian and authoritarian.
I’ve never quite understood the epidemiological rationale of Oz and NZ’s elimination strategy. Is the idea to set an example and then send missionaries to eliminate it all round the world (a bit like Boris Johnson’s climate strategy), or is it to isolate themselves altogether from the contaminated world until colonists from some other nation arrive and wipe a population that has lost all immunity?
It can’t surely be to put their trust in the vaccinations, knowing they can’t eliminate anything except the people who get blood clots or myocarditis.
But there must *be* a withdrawal strategy, because no government would trap themselves in a cycle of lockdowns, mask mandates and totalitarian powers without one… well, forget France, UK, USA, Israel…
So we see that the UK and most of the EU is relaxing and approaching the stance that we have to live with Covid, whereas Australia and NZ appear to have adopted the goal of total elimination, and whatever measures are necessary to deliver that.
With strong quarantine regimens when covid first hit we did what most countries did trying to stop the spread but we got lucky being islands that we virtually eliminated it subject to quarantining new arrivals. A bit of a hiccup with a cruise liner but here we were pretty much covid free.
What that meant was there was no rush to try the new vaccines and indeed we were naturally low priority for the world racing to get them. But the luck ran out when Delta escaped and couldn’t be controlled and here we were with minimal vaccinations so the answer is more lockdowns until vax rates hit 70-80% is the new wisdom. In other words back to square one where the world was initially.
The Govt had wisely arranged for local AZ manufacture and there’s been plenty of that for some time but a few statistical deaths spooked the horses with vax hesitancy and many waiting for Pfizer and now Moderna coming in. So late to vaccinate but now the roadmap out like the other countries awaits vaccination penetration with a population tired of lockdowns and the economic costs and hence the street anger boiling over.
That naturally becomes a freedom issue now and don’t get the media offside with that-
“We have to be able to see. We have to be able to show the public what is happening. We’re not a police state. It’s very unprecedented and it’s very uncomfortable the decision that has been made.”
Victoria Police granted ‘no fly zone’ over Melbourne’s CBD (msn.com)
The faith in Gummint to solve every problem is beginning to wear thin and they’ve been told there’s a new paradigm of living with covid so the tension that creates is obvious.
I tried Ctrl+F and didn’t find anything so presumably it’s not here already…
From the Utoob
Headline:“You’re gunna get F@CKING GASSED – MELBOURNE HOTEL POLICE QUARANTINE”
No real surprises – its what you get when you repeatedly set out to frighten and scare people (e.g. with Climate, Ozone, CO2, Covid, Terrorism)
Is what happens when you scare people who are constantly on the edge of quite extreme mental instability = People Who Eat Sugar.
And the cops are just as affected as the robbers if not more so as their controllers are folks like BoJo and JoJo = folks full of Good Intentions, High Ideals and Virtue
No, not an Orwellian 1984, a German 1930’s
The UK did the same thing just very recently except with a little more subtly but no less brutality…
Quote:”What is the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Court Bill?Kill the Bill refers to the 307-page Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which will hand police and the home secretary greater powers to crack down on protests.
The Government claims the bill will allow the police to take a “more proactive approach” to intervening in “highly disruptive” protests deemed to be a public disturbance”
That was from here but all you need to know is the name of the monster, highlighted above
And all this for a fake pandemic. At the end of this is a link to the original study in a peer-reviewed medical journal.
https://colleenhuber.substack.com/p/there-was-no-pandemic-in-2020
thanks for the link really enjoyed her items like a lot of the substack ive found recently VERY good articles
The madness of alarmism.
The costs of this covid alarmism and government responses are huge. However, I wonder if these costs compared to climate alarmism responses are going to be tiny, that is if we allow our governments to impose total climate tyranny.
we have the co2 warmongers ramping up on top of the already fearful paranoia from the covid scaremongers;-)
and they wonder why the young are depressed and suicidal?
Brutal police repression?
That’s not the ‘correct’ interpretation.
The police were protecting the public from the ANTIFA!
Just yesterday I sat down and reviewed all the available evidence in the UK, and my assessment is that the data since July is not behaving as I would expect if the cause were one variant (as we are told) or even several epidemics from different variants. As such, the only scenario that seems to be compatible with the data is that A.D.E. is developing. As a result I have outlined the implications on a website: http://cv19.uk/jml/index.php/48-antibody-dependent-enhancement (it’s depressing).
Baldrick.
And I agree. Plus pathogenic priming, the term I prefer, was predicted by multiple experts in virology of coronaviruses who were completely ignored by the authorities and their warnings were actively censored from social media.
But what you have to show is that the daily data is consistent with the hypothesis. The thing is to derive some predictions from it, then see if they are confirmed or falsified by the data we have.
I agree that its a worthwhile hypothesis, and that the data that is coming in is not completely consistent with the view that vaccination should produce herd immunity.
But I cannot see that it supports Mike’s view or even that its consistent with it.
If Mike is right, deaths should be mainly and preferentially occurring in people who are vaccinated. Also, numbers of cases should be rising rapidly rather than stabilizing. Hospitalizations as a percent of cases should be rising. Severity of illness and therefore length of hospital stay should be high and rising. Also deaths should be occurring preferentially among the old who were vaccinated first.
None of this is happening.
good read and enjoyed , commented, and bookmarked your page thanks
I agree that its not going quite as one would have expected given the proportion of people vaccinated. The number of cases is high at 30-40k a day, and its remaining high.
However your hypothesis seems to be that vaccination is both increasing susceptibility rather than protecting, and also increasing severity of infection.
I can’t see any evidence for this. The number in hospital is around 8,000, so those that go in are going in for relatively short stays. This is inconsistent with greater severity of infection. The number of infections is high, but its not increasing, and those infected are ending up in hospital far less than in the earlier wave last winter.
The reports I read are that deaths are currently among, and almost only among, those in very poor health from other causes.
There are something like 90% of adults in the UK now with a full course of vaccination, mostly but not all with the AZ vaccine.
It doesn’t seem to me the picture of actual results is consistent with your hypothesis. Although, I have to admit, the number of cases is higher than I would have expected with this level of vaccination.
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
Do these policemen realize that just like Nazi camp guards, they are responsible for their actions and cannot use the defense that they were just following orders? If the Socialist/Communist leaders of the “free world” continue with their current course, there will be rioting and maybe even revolution. There is a surprising amount of resistance to COVID-19 measures and with energy prices skyrocketing, there will be many very unhappy people.
The rubber bullets and tear gas are for your health.
Now that Trudeau has been reelected I expect the same oppression to begin in Canada. When he called the election they let up for a while. The day after the election the Government of Manitoba announced they would be giving lists of the unvaccinated to doctors, pharmacists and other “specially trained individuals” who will go into the communities where the unvaxxed live. Each unvaxxed person will receive direct one to one counselling to relieve their unwarranted fears of the “safe and effective vaccine.” I fully expect forced removal of the unvaxxed from their homes “to protect them” until they come to their senses and accept the jab is coming next. There is a lot of talk about banning the unvaxxed from participating even in essential activities and cutting off their access to health care.
Meanwhile in Ontario new data shows 1/1000 who get the jab develop cardiac complications.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.13.21262182v1.full
I think it is easy to knee jerk a response on Australia’s current COVID lockdown. Australia ain’t America. They are in he midst of a cold war with China indicated by the decades long arms race and Australia’s massive advancement of their submarine fleet. This has been going on for a decade or more. Australia bought 40 submarines 8 years ago and are buying more. Tensions are high between China and Australia. And Australia has been super pissed off about the COVID pandemic and the likely lab origins. I have no way of knowing for sure what their position is….but if they see the pandemic as possible foreign aggression, then they would be worried about waves of destabilizing illnesses and would take a far more aggressive approach to combat it because something worse maybe on the way. Right now, Australia has very little COVID and they want to keep it that way, while of the major industrialized nations, US, Britain, India lead the world during the current COVID variant/mutant(???) spike. The other explanation: ‘they’re just freakin nutto leftist AGW believers who devalue freedom and dignity’ doesn’t float for me.
You actually think any of that excuses nearly a year of total lock downs, forced medical treatments and shooting into crowds of protesters?
The sickest part of this isn’t the overbearing reaction of the government: it’s all the people who are rabidly cheering it on, saying how wonderful it is that the government is doing it, and calling for more. And the people in the U.S. saying how we need to be more like that.
If 16pc Extra Crispy Buckets with cole slaw and mashed potatoes are outlawed, only outlaws will have 16pc Extra Crispy Buckets with cole slaw and mashed potatoes.
And it is working. Look at this: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2021/09/22/ive-got-some-bad-news-for-you-sunshine/
Spam mods
Could block any post with that domain…
Monte I’ve been noticing that they’re all edited – I wonder if they post, then edit to add the URL, to get past that sort of filter.
Actually I think I figured it out.
I see a bunch of posts from the spammers containing a single word: “Great”
I bet that’s what they’re doing. Post “Great” to get past moderation, then edit the post to the spam text.
Interesting read about the COV-19 origin in The Lancet, PCR Test Drosten is involved in the first two open letters claiming natural origin of the virus.
Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19
The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),
and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife,
as have so many other emerging pathogens.
Science, not speculation, is essential to determine how SARS-CoV-2 reached humans
Recently, many of us have individually received inquiries asking whether we still support what we said in early 2020.
The answer is clear: we reaffirm our expression of solidarity with those in China who confronted the outbreak then, and the many health professionals around the world who have since worked to exhaustion, and at personal risk, in the relentless and continuing battle against this virus. Our respect and gratitude have only grown with time.
The second intent of our original Correspondence was to express our working view that SARS-CoV-2 most likely originated in nature and not in a laboratory, on the basis of early genetic analysis of the new virus and well established evidence from previous emerging infectious diseases, including the coronaviruses that cause the common cold as well as the original SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV.
The Lancet know reacts:
An appeal for an objective, open, and transparent scientific debate about the origin of SARS-CoV-2
There is so far no scientifically validated evidence that directly supports a natural origin. Among the references cited in the two letters by Calisher and colleagues,
all but one simply show that SARS-CoV-2 is phylogenetically related to other betacoronaviruses. The fact that the causative agent of COVID-19 descends from a natural virus is widely accepted, but this does not explain how it came to infect humans. The question of the proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2—ie, the final virus and host before passage to humans—was expressly addressed in only one highly cited opinion piece, which supports the natural origin hypothesis,
but suffers from a logical fallacy:
it opposes two hypotheses—laboratory engineering versus zoonosis—wrongly implying that there are no other possible scenarios.
You seem to be unaware that a major organize and signer of the letter you quote has been found to be one of the supporters of “gain of function” virus research in China. Further developments have validated the view that a laboratory origin of SARS CoV-2 cannot be ruled out. You rely on stuff published in The Lancet at your peril. Despite it being one of the oldest and most prestigious medical journals, the editors of The Lancet went ahead and published a study about hydroxychloroquine and the treatment of Covid19 that turned out to be completely fraudulent. They had to withdraw the paper after two weeks, when numerous knowledgeable doctors protested it.
You seem to be unaware that a major organize and signer of the letter you quote has been found to be one of the supporters of “gain of function” virus research in China
One of the first 2 letters ? One of these researchers seem to be inter alter Drosten.
The third quote is a rebuttal of the 2 first claiming natural origin.
And yes, the HCQ story I know.
I will forewarn you that this is a lengthy letter. However, it only represents a fraction of the information that I would like to be able to share with you. I have found it necessary to write this so you can fully understand my perspective. With my life and that of my family, many friends and treasured colleagues being destroyed under your watch, I figure the least you can do is read and consider this very carefully. It is incredible to note that many, if not most, of my on-campus detractors have judged me without reading any of my scientific arguments or talking to me about them.
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH
Speak up now or you won’t get a chance to speak up at all in the near future. All the dopes who were for masks and lockdowns were just that…. dopes… easily fooled but the “experts”. As for vaccines, turns out they’re highly like causing ADE… this was so freaking predictable because it was all about power, money, and control…if you have eyes, the SEE… if you have ears, then LISTEN.. if you have a voice, the nSPEAK…
The Police are now the enemy of the people!
As an Australian, I despise the police action in Victoria. However, before US Republicans sound off, it would be very useful if they remembered (if they ever knew) that Australia was partly modelled on the US and it is state governments that can decide what happens within states. Scott Morrison, as our Prime Minister, has about the same amount of power as president Joe Biden has towards the states where they disagree with him. He cannot enforce federal law where the Australian Constitution protects states rights. We are unfortunately stuck with fools for many of our state premiers (sort of equivalent to state governors). But we have only 8 of them compared to the US’s 50 States.