Paul Collits: The Freedoms Project
While it is difficult to know exactly what is going on in the Northern Territory, there is enough news emerging about which to be very worried. With yet another mini-me dictator at the helm intent on pushing people around, absent any kind of serious crisis.
This article was originally written for a British readership, who, with the grotesque manipulation of Australia’s mainstream media continuing at a pace, probably know more about this situation than most locals.
Australia’s Northern Territory has always held a certain grim notoriety for non-Australians. For our Kiwi cousins, it is merely the epicentre of creepy creatures that kill you, New Zealand being totally without spiders, scorpions, dingoes, crocodiles and snakes.
For Europeans, the Territory is simply a place to go to be murdered, either fictionally (Wolf Creek) and for real (Peter Falconio, and other sundry backpackers). If you survive the creatures of death from the animal kingdom, you might just be cornered by a serial killer.
For Australians, it is simply “the Outback”, but often carrying a vague sense of unease due to its climate, desert landscape, remoteness and isolation. You wouldn’t venture far off the main highways.
The Territory is also a focal point for the culture wars in view of its large Indigenous population, who generally live in remote communities often an affront to Australia’s kempt middle classes.
Despite a record of two centuries of policy failure there has been little evidence of new policy thinking emanating from the centres of power. And, given the poor health generally – putting it very mildly – of the resident Aborigines, and their seeming caution in taking the Covid jab, it is a powder keg. Until this week, a disaster waiting to happen.
Now a story has emerged that links the two issues of Aboriginal affairs and Covid elimination. It is not pretty, and it comes in the same week that Europe is awash with Covid developments that are, not to put too fine a point on it, redolent of the Third Reich. Jonathan Sumption has touched on these “dangerous precedents” as the “first symptom of totalitarianism”:
Across Europe, basic norms of civilised society are giving way to panic. The unvaccinated are being excluded from an ever-wider range of basic rights. Austria has criminalised them. Italy has stopped them doing their jobs. The Dutch police have fired on anti-lockdown demonstrators, seriously injuring some of them. We are witnessing the ultimate folly of frightened politicians who cannot accept that they are impotent in the face of some natural phenomena.
If lockdowns, forced closures of businesses and other brutal countermeasures work, then why are these countries on their fifth wave of the pandemic and their third or fourth lockdown? How long must this go on before we recognise that these measures simply push infections into the period after they are lifted?
Or, as C J Hopkins has it, describing what he styles “pathologised totalitarianism”:
So, GloboCap has crossed the Rubicon. The final phase of its transformation of society into a pathologized-totalitarian dystopia, where mandatory genetic-therapy injections and digital compliance papers are commonplace, is now officially underway.
With the lockdown of the unvaccinated now policy, at least for a time, in Hitler’s home country, Germany is experiencing great unease and a fresh wave of policy madness, and with angry riots across the major Covid hot spots of Europe, there is a broad sense that something is about to give. So, not a good week to be caught shipping the unvaccinated off to a Covid camp down-under.
Let us, for the moment, set aside the legitimate fears of many who write in the alternate media and who are routinely described in the Australian corporate media as nutters (aka The Cairns News, Zero Hedge, TOTT News, and Rebel News, among others). And, therefore, not refer to Australia’s prime quarantine station for Covid carriers and non-carriers as a “concentration camp”.
A recent meme parodying Auschwitz’s infamous welcome gate message, and replacing “Arbeit” with “Vaccines” in “Arbeit Mach Frei” (“work will set you free”), was suggested on social media to be “monumentally stupid”.
The Covid class still don’t get it, it seems, in a country that has been mostly locked up for eighteen months. There is still an extremely broad section of the community, clearly, who regard “anti-vaxxers” as simply beyond the pale.
No, this is a story delivered not just by the fringe media but right from the mouth of the Territory’s Chief Minister, the eponymous (perhaps) Michael Gunner. As reported by Tyler Durden:
The Australian army has begun forcibly removing residents in the Northern Territory to the Howard Springs quarantine camp located in Darwin, after nine new Covid-19 cases were identified in the community of Binjari. The move comes after hard lockdowns were instituted in the communities of both Binjari and nearby Rockhole on Saturday night.
“Residents of Binjari and Rockhole no longer have the five reasons to leave their homes,” said Northern Territory chief minister, Michael Gunner, referring to the country’s five allowable reasons to avoid lockdown (buying food and supplies, exercising for up to two hours, care or caregiving, work or education if it can’t be done from home, and to get vaccinated at the nearest possible location).
“They can only leave for medical treatment, in an emergency, or as required by law.”
“It’s highly likely that more residents will be transferred to Howard Springs today, either as positive cases or close contacts,” he continued, adding “We have already identified 38 close contacts from Binjari but that number will go up. Those 38 are being transferred now.”
There is Howard Springs in the news again. And, inevitably, not in a good way.
This is a truly astonishing development, even by bizarre Covid policy standards. It, perhaps, has just (just) enough plausible deniability for ministers and health bureaucrats to be able to get away with it, on “keeping them safe” grounds. It can be played off as an example of the work of the Good Intentions Paving Company, as the renowned essayist Joseph Epstein and others have described actions that might be well-intentioned but still are bound to be utterly disastrous.
The current Chief Minister – the Territory not being a state, it doesn’t have a “premier” – is from the Australian Labor Party, and perhaps more interestingly, is the very first chief minister to be a fair dinkum Territorian, born and bred. He is clearly, or at least he clearly feels, under enormous pressure over Covid, despite the very few cases to have occurred on his patch since March 2020 and the Territory’s virus-unfriendly climate. And the latest piece of policy overreach is in response merely to “close contacts”. We do not yet know whether any of those first locked up, then removed, are even sick.
Gunner’s now infamous rant against the anti-vaxxers is another matter. It is, though, world class among elected politicians. Delivering it, he even looks a little like Daniel Andrews.
Just as his enforced removal of the unvaccinated to a holding camp is a global first, as far as I am aware. Australia continues to break new ground. (And yes, more penal colony memes are inevitable, especially with the arrival of the Barmy Army on these shores merely weeks away).
As a Labor man, The Gunner is a partisan brother of the Premiers of Queensland, Western Australia and of Victoria. The Premier of Victoria needs little introduction. Not a lot more can be said of the Victorian Covid regime, it would seem, that hasn’t already been said and that could possibly add to the public’s understanding of the raving lunatic down south. Daniel “there is nothing he will not do” Andrews renders the phrase “jumping the shark” redundant. Western Australia decided long ago to, in effect, secede and to impose border closures and lockdowns on less than a whim. WA is ruled by an almost one party state – the Australian Labor Party has 53 members of the Lower House, the Opposition 6 – following a landslide election in which yet another Premier described by one observer as “drunk on quarantine powers” was rewarded handsomely by a low-caring electorate.
Of Queensland, it has recently been observed that there is NO Covid crisis yet there are bizarre plans for imminent vaccine passports to be introduced in high summer (17 December, to be precise), following on from months of inexplicable, hard border closures.
Then there is the recent and chilling development of a contract being awarded to build Queensland’s second dedicated Covid quarantine camp, at the Pinkenba “Damascus” Army Barracks right next door to Brisbane Airport. One observer (literally) has wondered why this seemingly above-board, dual-government-backed “facility” would require double electric fencing, and whether its purposes might one day include accommodation for the removed-and-unvaccinated as well as for incoming travellers slated for more routine and short-term stays. As I often (increasingly) think, when considering the likelihood of hidden, evil agendas on the part of tyrannical but democratically elected governments, if the plausible hypothesis fits the facts as we know them …
The Far North seems to go in for Covid holding camps.
One of our favourite “Aussies” – indeed a proud Queenslander – Andrew Winter (of Selling Houses Australia fame), has been in the news for his recent experiences trying to get across the border and to his home. And he isn’t alone.
Also in the recent news, alternate and mainstream, is the descent upon the far north outback Queensland town of Charter Towers by the military police, who are now apparently stopping travellers and locals and demanding their papers.
Armed Military Police and Queensland police could have started their vaxx passport warm-up exercises with road blocks in Charters Towers (west of Townsville) today stopping vehicles and checking driver’s licences and doing breath analysis tests.
Here is a video of an indigenous women, illustrating fully the immense fear and distress the government is creating in these people’s lives, all in the name of keeping the community safe.
Nothing to see here, will be the official response to any unease among the locals. Why would anyone, now routinely checked everywhere they go in Australia for their vaccine papers, believe this?
Perhaps just another happy coincidence, like the alt-news’ reports of the Australian Army, with no published explanation, booking out hotel chains (the Novotel) for the summer on the Gold Coast. (This story has no independent corroboration to date).
There have also been unconfirmed reports of the Army mass-booking Gold Coast hotels over December and into early 2022, suggesting another round of house to house “vaccine marketing” as occurred in Western Sydney under Berejiklian [the now departed former NSW Premier].
It was then of little surprise that the head of the Australian Medical Association in Queensland had this to say:
Life will be miserable without being vaccinated. You won’t be able to hide. There will be no employment. We will be tracking you. You won’t be able to go anywhere.
Can anyone see a pattern emerging here? Decidedly, Queensland is to be considered a Covid-tyranny-of-concern in the deep Australian north.
But back to the Territory and its current travails. Just like the unvaccinated Queenslanders, the First Australians in the Territory certainly have no place to hide, it seems, however remote they might be.
There is no confirmed understanding yet of whether any force accompanied the removal of unvaccinated First Australians from the two communities, and what sort of force was involved. But one of the Darwin Aboriginal elders has a strong view on what has just occurred:
Northern Territory Aborigines are being dragged out of their communities by the army and police, taken to health centres and forcibly inoculated with a deadly vaccine according to Larrakeya elder(video) Judy Mills who claims it is “genocide of blackfellas.”
An agitated Judy Mills has called the NT Labor, Chief Administrator Michael Gunner a “coward who is deceiving and killing our people.”
“It’s a program of elimination,” a distressed Ms Mills said.
“I have heard stories about people getting knocked down in a community apparently by the army and forcibly vaccinated.
“Where’s our army? We just can’t lie down and let these come. They’re genociding everybody.
“They’re about eliminating blackfellas.”
Here is another report from a community member:
“We’re in a state of emergency. This is a crisis situation here in the Territory – an act of war against our people,” a community woman posted in a video on social media.
She said food supplies were also being withheld from families and Territory child welfare services were “waiting like vultures” to grab the children because of this situation. “So the government has got all these angles stitched up, but the bottom line is that they are vaccinating our people against their will.” She added there were reports of police at Port Keats rounding up people, taking them to the clinic and forcibly vaccinating them.
She said the government had also taken control of communications from these remote communities and it was difficult to confirm information. “There’s a state of emergency here. I’m putting out a cry for help to the world,” she said.
There are also scenes reminiscent of Steve McQueen and The Great Escape. This from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:
NT Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker said the four people who escaped hard lockdown in Binjari were found in a public housing block along the highway with seven others this morning. As a result,11 people have now been listed as close contacts and were on their way to the Centre for National Resilience.
Or Casablanca, perhaps – “round up the usual suspects”.
TOTT News summarises thus:
Entry to region blocked off, Gunner announces a 100% first-dose rate, woman escapes and is hunted by contact tracers, sovereign tribal peoples put out international plea.
These are very powerful, indeed, incendiary, claims, claims which should and would, on any normal view, garner a shedload of attention from, at the very least, the bien pensants across the cultured classes. From an activist with links to the communities involved here, David Cole, much pilloried by Gunner and his ilk (the Chief Minister has accused Cole of misinformation – what else – and, of course, of putting lives at risk), we can learn that the move has been thought-through, coordinated, and part of a concerted push to bring the vaccine-as-silver-bullet message to those communities in Australia that are the remotest and the least likely to be avid, early adopters of the magic jab. The use of the Army in these cases is always alarming, whatever its seemingly legitimate logistics-related merits. This is especially the case for excluded peoples.
To call this a brazen move by the Northern Territory Government would be to understate considerably the utter gall of the latest push. Messing with Territory Aborigines is normally a no-go area, with every move on the part of politicians needing to be backed by visible community buy-in, painstakingly sought and obtained. Just think of the imposition of “dry” (alcohol-free) communities. That this can be done – with, apparently, not only the knowledge of our perpetually slithering Prime Minister but also with his blessing and, indeed, his resources – is a measure of how far we in Australia have travelled down the road towards totalitarian control.
And totalitarian control that has, by-and-large, received a pass from the citizenry. There is, now, precious little second-guessing of the political class and its more rampant actions in relation to the virus by that middle go-along-to-get-along group that sits between the rabid Covid class and we-the-non-conforming Covid dissidents and outcasts. This is the group, probably quite substantial, that was unkindly but not inaccurately described by a retired Federal Court Judge as being satisfied so long as they have “Netflix, a full belly and a warm place to defecate”. Concern for the gutted rights of fellow Australians, including now, Indigenous fellow Australians is not likely to be a priority.
It would be interesting to see the reactions of white Australians, especially those on the left who are forever championing the interest of remote communities. I say “would” as I am yet to find this story even mentioned in the mainstream media, either public or corporate. Or on the search engines. No, this will be more of a story overseas than in Australia. It already is. The take on this will be both out-there and unpleasant.
To be fair to the great swathe of low-information Australian voters, what they do not even know about, they cannot really have a view on. This week is a bit like Covid’s unreported deaths-following-vaccination (now over 600) and multiple adverse reactions. TOTT News reports:
Since this news broke, many Australians have expressed outrage and concern over the events, while establishment outlets attempt to paint the discussion as a ‘wild conspiracy’.
Nothing new here.
As hundreds of thousands of Australians now demonstrate on the streets each and every weekend, the authorities can scream disinformation as much as they like. They are the ones who have lost control of the narrative, birthing and empowering new kinds of media and politics. They are the ones who are imposing blankets of secrecy and refusing to justify their actions in either medical or social terms.
If they don’t want hostile and outraged coverage from around the world, perhaps they should go back to the drawing board. Or respect the wishes of a sovereign people; who, as they repeatedly point out, have never ceded control of their lands.
Given that Indigenous affairs are a core issue in the culture wars and an obsession in the left-of-centre media, the absence of comment to date is both noteworthy and odd. I am guessing they just don’t know what to think or to say about this. Many, no doubt, would be (quietly) cheering if the Caucasian unvaccinated were marched off for re-education and solitude, a “safe” distance from the vaccinated. No one has quite said it in public, yet.
Without irony, one might even term this awful affair the Covid Stolen Generation, a term that will have deep and significant resonance for those with an interest in the recent history of the Indigenous in Australia. Another international alt-media group has, rather sharply, called it “ethnic cleansing”. Not yet, but who would know? It all takes us right back to Central Europe and the Auschwitz meme. Lord Sumption is correct. These are, indeed, highly dangerous times.
