Every single day, seemingly without end, more than five million people in Melbourne are suffering through the harshest lockdowns in the world.
Metropolitan Melbourne residents may only leave their homes for a “valid” reason and must comply with a curfew between the hours of 9 pm and 5 am.
All Victorians must wear a face covering when they leave home, no matter where they live.
For three weekends in a row there have been wild scenes as police carpet the city in increasingly violent suppression of protesters, including police chasing down protesters on horseback.
Against a backdrop of extreme tactics, amidst multiple claims of police brutality and striking scenes of riot police throwing protesters to the ground, the Covid story itself, the justification for this insane brutality, has disappeared.
The Covid story has already unraveled for a government which shamelessly sowed panic and confusion into the general public for their own purposes.
Senior epidemiologists around the world now say that Covid-19 is no worse than the common flu and the lockdowns and concomitant societal destruction have all been in vain; at best misguided, at worst a wanton and deliberate destruction of the old order. The quadrupling of the national debt, the shutting of borders, the destruction of the Federation, the crashing of industries, the introduction of what is tantamount to martial law, that all of it was for nothing.
Despite numerous stories and considerable visual evidence, including one man who ended up in hospital in a coma, Premier Daniel Andrews has claimed there is no culture problem within Victorian Police.
That sounds about as sincere as his claim that he hadn’t watched the video footage, which has been viewed millions of people around the world, of a pregnant woman being arrested in her own, in front of her children, for making a Facebook post.
Or when asked by a reporter what his response to being called “Dictator” by The Washington Post. His response? He doesn’t read The Washington Post.
The media hunt in packs. And the pack has turned.
Every night for months Sky News has been pounding on about the insanities of lockdowns, conveniently sheeting home blame to State Labor Premiers rather than the Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who allowed it all to happen.
Conservative firebrand Alan Jones is now calling for a national advertising campaign to inform the public that they have been lied to.
The chattering classes find it easy to dismiss Sky News as being right wing, a creature of the conservatives.
Which is why the significance of mainstream, left-leaning journalist Chris Uhlmann, coming out opposing lockdowns in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, should not be underestimated.
Uhlmann writes: “The Victorian solution punishes the many for the few. It preferences the very old over the young, mortgaging the future of the entire school and working age population. It is hard to imagine how you could design a policy that is more profoundly unfair or damaging to a society.
“Nowhere in this often-opaque democracy has a less transparent court system, bureaucracy, police force or government than Victoria. The people there have been badly served, even as some revelled in the servitude. Its systems of power have combined to deliver the wanton destruction of its vibrant society. Its government has condemned its people to a poorer future, to higher unemployment, more poverty and less opportunity.”
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There have been numerous developments over the past week, not least of which was the very public resignation of Treasury official Sanjeev Sabhlok.
I served your government as an economist till 10 September 2020 but have resigned to protest your Police State. I did not come to Australia to be a slave of whimsical government. There comes a time in life when you need to take a stand based on your principles. I did not come here to live in a socialist society. I came to live in a free society.
On Sunday protesters, facing almost certain arrest, sang a classic song by Australian singer Johnny Farnham:
We’re all someone’s daughter
We’re all someone’s son
How long can we look at each other
Down the barrel of a gun?
We’re not gonna sit in silence
We’re not gonna live with fear
Behind him is a hapless Federal Government desperately trying to escape the odium of their Covid fiasco, now being called “the biggest mistake in history”.
What happens next?
Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, is on the face of it an out of control regional despot making a fool of himself on the international stage, while destroying the lives of millions.
What happens when millions of people realise that they have been utterly, completely, totally lied to?
“You dictators are ruining the country,” one protester said as he was being arrested. “This is not Victoria,” one clearly angry woman said as she fronted police. Others screamed as they were being shackled.
That people are being viciously attacked for exercising their democratic right to protest is making demonstrates to everybody that a once largely peaceful country has been destroyed in a matter of months.
What happens when they realise that Covid-19, as epidemiologists around the world are now saying, is no more deadly than the common flu?
What happens when they realise that their livelihoods, their businesses, their jobs have been destroyed by a megalomaniacal push to control every aspect of Victorian lives?
Photograph: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images.
What happens when the public realises that the truly staggering multiple incompetencies of Australia’s political class has destroyed not just their own lives and futures, but the lives and futures of their children?
That in the cruelest and most vicious way possible Covid-19 has been blatantly used by Australia’s ruling classes to feather their own nests, while at the same time grotesquely expanding the power of the state.
Revolution. Rioting in the streets. A city, a state, a country, burnt to the ground.
September 21, 2020 at 6:52 am
Until channels 7 & 9 start telling the true facts, nothing will change in the minds of those who believe covid 19 is deadly to everyone.
Great to see that the age and Sydney herald sun are starting to do investigative journalism.
Great article.
September 21, 2020 at 7:05 am
The politicians were slow to react to this virus. We knew it was a serious matter as early as mid Jan. But the governments did not mobilise medical PPE or start planning extra beds until too late in mid March. They panicked and saw the Imperial college modeling that took the worse case scenarios and put deaths at 10’s of millions. So to be seen to be doing something they locked down their countries. In Australia Scotty really panicked thought he would be seen as a fumbling idiot after suffering poor polls over the summer fires. He announced a nation lock down international border closure and federal funded increased job keeper and seeker. What he did not realise was he did not fully run the country. The power was in the hand of the state premiers who are mostly labour and are not funding the 100’s billion dollar job keeper. They reacted to please the media hysteria driven armchair mums and pops who thought they were all about to die. The result is the chaos we have now. WA and Queensland locked down to give good polls to their soon elections. An victorian premier desperate to cover up for his gov fuck up of the quarantine and chief medical officer who is tunnel visioned and not seeking or looking at any other matter other than the virus. They have sent themselves up a alley way policy and cannot do a U turn without being trashed by an electorate that might ask why did you lock us down. So until Daniel Andrew’s can eradicate all virus cases and brilliantly release Melbournites from their lockdown to their cheers and praise you will stay locked down. The problem is Australian federal and state governments have with the media made this virus so scary that the population think it can and should be eradicated. We should have followed the original plans to learn to live with the virus and protect the vulnerable. That’s what Sweden tried. They did not do such a good job with the vulnerable aged but they got to 10 to 20% infection with less economic damage and are probably past the worse depending on what northern hemisphere winter brings. Poor Australia will stay in locked island and mini state island state possibly years until a vaccine comes. I fear the vaccine won’t be any more effective than a flu jab which at best is 50%. And if anything like flu jabs won’t protect the most vulnerable the aged. Lockdowns are as effective in longterm management of this virus as sticking a paper bag over your head when the nuclear bomb drops. But guess what that was the standard advice from government in the 50’s because there was fuck all else you could do when the bomb drop and it made the people feel safe. Lockdowns are to make the population feel safe and show that the leaders are doing something when the truth was we could not do anything except accept its spread and the fatalities just like we do with other virus or killers… mosquitoes kill millions a year.