The West has taken an extreme stance against Russia over its invasion in Ukraine. This reaction exposes a high degree of hypocrisy considering that US-led wars abroad never received the punitive response they deserved.
If the current events in Ukraine have proven anything, it’s that the United States and its transatlantic partners are able to run roughshod across a shell-shocked planet – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, to name a few of the hotspots – with almost total impunity. Meanwhile, Russia and Vladimir Putin are being portrayed in nearly every mainstream media publication today as the second coming of Nazi Germany for their actions in Ukraine.
First, let’s be clear about something. Hypocrisy and double standards alone do not provide justification for the opening of hostilities by any country. In other words, just because NATO-bloc countries have been tearing a path of wanton destruction around the globe since 2001 without serious consequences, this does not give Russia, or any country, moral license to behave in a similar manner. There must be a convincing reason for a country to authorize the use of force, thereby committing itself to what could be considered ‘a just war’. Thus, the question: Can Russia’s actions today be considered ‘just’ or, at the very least, understandable? I will leave that answer up to the reader’s better judgment, but it would be idle not to consider some important details.
Only to the consumers of mainstream media fast food would it come as a surprise that Moscow has been warning on NATO expansion for well over a decade. In his now-famous speech to the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Vladimir Putin poignantly asked the assembled global powerbrokers point blank,“why is it necessary to put military infrastructure on our borders during this [NATO] expansion? Can someone answer this question?” Later in the speech, he said that expanding military assets smack up to the Russian border “is not connected in any way with the democratic choices of individual states.”
Not only were the Russian leader’s concerns met with the predictable amount of disregard amid the deafening sound of crickets, NATO has gone on to bestow membership on four more countries since that day (Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia). As a thought experiment that even a dolt could conduct, imagine Washington’s reaction if Moscow were building a continuously expanding military bloc in South America, for example.
The real cause for Moscow’s alarm, however, came when the US and NATO began flooding neighboring Ukraine with a dazzling array of sophisticated weaponry amid calls for membership in the military bloc. What on earth could go wrong? In Moscow’s mind, Ukraine was beginning to pose an existential threat to Russia.
In December, Moscow, quickly nearing the end of its patience, delivered draft treaties to the US and NATO, demanding they halt any further military expansion eastwards, including by the accession of Ukraine or any other states. It included the explicit statement that NATO “shall not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine or other states of Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia.” Once again, Russia’s proposals were met with arrogance and indifference by Western leaders.
While people will have varying opinions as to the shocking actions that Moscow took next, nobody can say they were not warned. After all, it’s not like Russia woke up on February 24 and suddenly decided it was a wonderful day to start a military operation on the territory of Ukraine. So yes, an argument could be made that Russia had concern for its own security as a justification for its actions. Unfortunately, the same thing may be more difficult to say for the United States and its NATO minions with regards to their belligerent behavior over the course of the last two decades.
Consider the most notorious example, the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This disastrous war, which the Western media hacks have chalked up as an unfortunate ‘intelligence failure’, represents one of the most egregious acts of unprovoked aggression in recent memory. Without delving too deep into the murky details, the United States, having just suffered the [false flag] attacks of 9/11, accused Saddam Hussein of Iraq of harboring weapons of mass destruction. Yet, instead of working in close cooperation with the UN weapons inspectors, who were on the ground in Iraq attempting to verify the claims, the US, together with the UK, Australia, and Poland, launched a ‘shock-and-awe’ bombing campaign against Iraq on March 19, 2003. In a flash, over a million innocent Iraqis suffered death, injury, or displacement by this flagrant violation of international law.
The Center for Public Integrity reported that the Bush administration, in its effort to bolster public support for the impending carnage, made over 900 false statements between 2001 and 2003 about Iraq’s alleged threat to the US and its allies. Yet somehow the Western media, which has become the most rabid proliferator for military aggression bar none, failed to find any flaw in the argument for war – that is, until after the boots and blood were on the ground, of course.
It might be expected, in a more perfect world, that the US and its allies were subjected to some stiff sanctions in the wake of this protracted eight-year ‘mistake’ against innocents. In fact, there were sanctions, just not against the United States. Ironically, the only sanctions that resulted from this crazy military adventure were against France, a NATO member that had declined the invitation, together with Germany, to participate in the Iraqi bloodbath. The global hyper-power is not used to such rejection, especially from its purported friends.
American politicians, self-assured in their Godlike exceptionalism, demanded a boycott of French wine and bottled water due to the French government’s “ungrateful” opposition to war in Iraq. Other agitators for war betrayed their lack of seriousness by insisting that the popular menu item known as ‘French Fries’ be substituted with the name ‘Freedom Fries’ instead. So the lack of French Bordeaux, together with the tedious redrafting of restaurant menus, seems to have been the only real inconveniences the US and NATO suffered for indiscriminately destroying millions of lives.
Now compare this kid gloves approach to the US and its allies to the current situation involving Ukraine, where the scales of justice are clearly weighed down against Russia, and despite its not unreasonable warnings that it was feeling threatened by NATO advances. Whatever a person may think about the conflict now raging between Russia and Ukraine, it cannot be denied that the hypocrisy and double standards being leveled against Russia by its perennial detractors is as shocking as it is predictable.
Aside from the severe sanctioning of Russian individuals and the Russian economy, perhaps best summed up by the French economy minister, who said his country is committed to waging “a total economic and financial war on Russia,” there has been a deeply disturbing effort to silence news and information coming from those Russian sources that might give the Western public the option of seeing Moscow’s motivations. On Tuesday, March 1, YouTube decided to block the channels of RT and Sputnik for all European users, thereby allowing the Western world to seize another chunk of the global narrative.
Considering the way that Russia has been vilified in the ‘empire of lies’, as Vladimir Putin dubbed the land of his politically motivated persecutors, some may believe that Russia deserves the non-stop threats it is now receiving. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. This sort of global grandstanding, which resembles some sort of mindless virtue-signaling campaign now so popular in liberal capitals, aside from unnecessarily inflaming an already volatile situation, assumes that Russia is totally wrong, period.
Such a reckless approach, which leaves no room for debate, no room for discussion, no room for seeing Russia’s side in this extremely complex situation, only guarantees further standoffs, if not full-blown global war, further down the road. Unless the West is actively seeking the outbreak of World War III, it would be advisable to stop the hideous hypocrisy and double standards against Russia and patiently listen to its opinions and version of events (even ones presented by foreign media). It’s not as unbelievable as some people may wish to believe.
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.
Australia’s satellite operator, Foxtel, has notified RT on Saturday that it is suspending the channel’s broadcast distribution in Australia as part of its services “in view of concern about the situation in Ukraine.” The operator will then further “consider” its rights under the channel license agreement, it added, without elaborating on any potential additional measures.
Foxtel is a satellite operator covering all of Australia’s territory and has its own over-the-top (OTT) server allowing media services to be offered to the audience directly via the internet. It has around 3.8 million clients.
On Thursday, Poland removed RT, along with some other Russian broadcasters, from its cable and satellite networks as well as internet platforms.
Every time a government or a certain organization calls for RT to be taken off air or bans its broadcast it only demonstrates “the fallacy of media freedoms” in the nation it represents, RT’s deputy editor-in-chief, Anna Belkina, said in a statement on Saturday, responding to the latest decisions by Australia and Poland.
“RT journalists tirelessly work to bring valuable facts and views to an audience of millions around the world,” she said, adding that “if ever there were a time to recognize the importance of all fact-gathering news … it is now.”
Even before the start of the Russian military operation, London had asked the regulator Ofcom to reconsider RT’s license to operate in the UK, accusing the company of being part of a “global disinformation campaign.” At that time, Belkina said that Ofcom had for a long time endorsed the channel as a license holder.
RT has been facing pressure for quite some time. European satellite TV operator Eutelsat took RT’s German-language channel RT DE off the air shortly after it was launched in December last year under pressure from the German regional media regulator MABB.
In early February, Germany’s top media regulator also sided with MABB and upheld a ban on RT DE’s broadcast in the country, citing an absence of a locally-issued license. The channel previously obtained a valid pan-European permit in Serbia but the German regulators declared it void. RT DE now plans to appeal the decision in court.
In response to “unfriendly actions” against RT DE, Moscow announced it would halt operations of German state-owned broadcaster Deutsche Welle in Russia.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has previously warned that bans on RT broadcasting in foreign nations would be met with reciprocal measures in Russia. The ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, specifically said on February 23 that “if the UK follows on its threats against the Russian media, a response will not be long in coming.”
While all eyes have been on Canada, there also have been massive Freedom Convoys, and joyous multitudes applauding them, and turning out to help them, all around the world. We’re seeing it (despite the usual blackout by the quisling media) in Australia, where 1.4 million vehicles, and between one and two million protestors, have taken over Canberra, Australia’s capital, the people calling for an end to all restrictions, and the ouster of that once-free country’s quisling politicians. There, too, the biggest protest in that nation’s history has been just as peaceful as it is diverse—a wondrous mass display of solidarity, to re-assert our fundamental human rights, spontaneously led by many thousands of real workers.
So where’s “the left”? Australia’s “left” is on the other side—just like “the left” in the United States and Canada, there being no diversity among them, as they’re all one in their boiling hatred of that mass resistance, and in fanatical support of the state/corporate juggernaut coercing universal “vaccination.” So, on this unprecedented global confrontation, there is no disagreement whatsoever between US “leftists” like Noam Chomsky (the first public figure to propose detention of the “unvaccinated), Amy Goodman, Michael Moore (“Get off my fucking bridge!”), Chris Hedges, Thom Hartmann, the Trotskyites at WSWS, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Stalinist noisemaker Bob Avakian, the liberals at MoveOn, and many of the “woke” contributors to Truthout, Nation of Change, Truthdig, Counterpunch, Portside, the Progressive and The Nation. Nor, on this working-class resistance to the bio-fascist order, is the fearfully like-minded US “left” in any disagreement with its counterpart in Canada, typified by Naomi Klein (who deems the Great Reset a “boring” topic), Henry A. Giroux (who says the truckers are attempting to destroy democracy), “woke” neo-Nazi Justin Trudeau (whose government trained Ukraine’s feral National Guard), and the sanctimonious rabble of Canada’s “left” parties (and let’s throw Neil Young in there, too); so that “the left” throughout all North America is absolutely unified against the workers.
And so is the Australian “left,” as the doggedly Marxist Red Fire demonstrates in “Straw Man: ‘Fascism’ in the Freedom Movement,” a devastating piece out just today, nailing the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), Socialist Alternative (SAlt), Solidarity, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the Trostkyist Platform (TP), the Communist Workers Party of Australia (CWPA), the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and the Socialist Alliance (SA) for their hostility to the assembly in Canberra—a multitude “largely middle-aged and Anglo-European,” as SA’s Green Left Weekly airily (and inaccurately) sneers. While it’s hard to picture Julian Assange condemning the protesters in his country (what they’ve done to him is what they also plan to do, eventually, to every COVID dissident), it’s even harder to hear Caitlin Johnstone’s voice amid the protest in Australia—since she’s written nothing on what’s happening in her country (though she lives in Melbourne, right under Dan Andrews’ iron heel).
Red Fire admirably nails what’s happening everywhere:
Despite the largest political movement in modern history consistently mobilising against government repression which is a clear move to replace liberal democracy with fascism, the Covid left (formerly the lockdown left) have instead decided to double and triple down on their abject betrayal of the working class. As we have previously argued, the treachery of the ostensible left parties on Covid surpasses that of August 4, 1914. At that time, virtually all “socialist” parties the world over backed “their own” ruling class and marched into the slaughter of the first World War.[6] Today the Covid left, from the very start of the civil war launched by big finance capital, have aggressively sided with “their own” imperialism while having the temerity to lambaste millions of working and oppressed people as “far-right” or “fascist” for mobilising against Covid fascism.
Thus “the left” has finally moved beyond the fatal splintering tendency that paralyzed the (real) left from the days of Marx and Engels through the Sixties and Seventies (when such splintering was deftly aggravated by the FBI and CIA and their affiliates worldwide). Whereas such total solidarity was once envisioned as the surest means of liberating all the “workers of the world,” this “left” has come to it at last by squaring off against the working class— and so against the rest of us as well.
And so it’s time now for the rest of us to recognize that this “left” is itself the enemy it used to warn against—a “left” that hates the working class, and wants to see its independence smashed, its peaceful protests halted everywhere, whatever that may take, so that those “far right” truckers stop insisting on their “freedom,” get their boosters and go back to work, delivering the goods that “leftists” need from Amazon. Thus this “left” is on exactly the same page as John D. Rockefeller when he had the miners massacred in Ludlow, Colorado in 1914, and as Leon Trotsky when his troops crushed the Kronstadt insurrection in 1921. To put the case in a more timely way, this “left” wants to see the working class throughout the West controlled as tightly as it is in China, where there are no strikes or labor unions, guns are not allowed, everyone is always under absolute surveillance, and dissidence is likely to be punished with financial strangulation, as Justin Trudeau is now trying to starve the truckers into silence, in collusion with GoFundMe and the banks—a fascist combination that this fascist “left” applauds, to its eternal shame.
So let’s agree that this “left” has to go, along with all the predatory players that it now serves with such unprecedented unity and livid zeal. And as we call it out for what it really is, let’s also stop dividing We the People into “left” and “right,” because those terms are finally meaningless in this apocalyptic fight, in which you’re either on the side of right, or in the wrong.
Senior Hamas official Hisham Qasem has condemned Australia’s intention to designate his Movement as a terror group as “a reflection of blatant bias in favor of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.”
In press remarks to Quds Press, Qasem said that “the Israeli occupation regime sees every opponent as a terrorist party, although it practices organized state terrorism day and night against the Palestinian people at home and abroad.”
“Hamas has never been hostile to any country of the world and only resisted the occupation inside the occupied Palestinian territory, which makes any terror designation by Australia ‘a step against logical reasoning’ and ‘without foundation.’ It is rather complete adoption of the occupation’s aggressive narrative,” the Hamas official underlined.
“The Australian step against the Movement will not change its conviction about upholding its path of resisting the occupation until it achieves its final goal of liberation and return,” he said, stressing that Hamas would never deviate from this path.
Flouting the fact that Hamas is a national liberation movement that resists an occupying power in accordance with international laws and resolutions, the Australian government has declared its intent to add the Hamas Movement to its list of terror groups.
Australia had previously listed the armed wing of Hamas, al-Qassam Brigades, as a terror group in 2003, but the new designation, which will come into effect in April, will blacklist the Movement in its entirety.
What had been a remarkably successful policing operation, handling the one million protestors who showed up in Canberra to protest two years of government overreach during the Covid era, turned sour in the final hours.
Until that point there had been no reports of violence, rapes, vandalism or all the other behaviours one might fairly expect with such a wildly diverse and yes, angry crowd.
Although the crowd was unmasked, and certainly weren’t lining up to QR code in, the authoritarian derangement and violent police excesses the nation has become accustomed to were nowhere to be seen.
Australians are extremely slow to protest; but with millions having lost their jobs, their businesses, even contact with their families amidst deep social divisions created by being daily threatened or ostracised if they do not take “the jab”, they are silent no more.
The hands off policing which had characterised both the protest and the handling of the 200,000 campers at Camp Epic, only one of a number of campsites, were largely peaceful because the police did not seek confrontation.
That all ended on the 14th of February, 2022, two days after a million people marched on Parliament House in jubilant unity.
The putative and publicly squabbling leadership of the movement at Camp Epic did nothing to dispel tensions. And all of them disappeared on the penultimate day, leading to yet more fear and confusion amongst the thousands who remained on the site itself, including many with children who had no jobs and no homes to return to.
All the rhetoric from various members of the movement that they were there “until the job is done”, or “until this is over”, proved as substantial as smoke.
The social chaos and personal crises wrought by the blizzard of government diktats and authoritarian overreach of the past two years is now clearly evident.
Camp Epic was already rapidly emptying on the final day when police moved in and aggressively moved every last protestor off the site.
In the inflammatory leadup, sowing yet more tension and confusion, protestors were initially told that they would have to move on by midnight. One woman with two young children said people had come to her tent early in the evening and told her she would be bashed and arrested if she did not move on.
The woman did not have a car and had no way of complying.
The next rumour in this evolving drama was that campers had until 8am to comply.
As it turned out the police arrived in force at around 11am, repeatedly broadcasting the message: “Leave Now. You are trespassing. Leave immediately. If you do not leave you will be arrested.”
Police, tolerating no resistance, worked their way through from the showgrounds from the top camping ground until every last protestor had been evicted.
The irony of police aggressively moving demonstrators from the nation’s capital, ostensibly the heart of Australian democracy, was lost on nobody.
As more than 98% percent of protestors had already left, and of the holdouts most were already packing up to leave, it was a largely pointless show of force.
In one of those all too human moments, one protestor pleaded with the police: “Don’t vax your kids.”
One sign, emblematic of the passionate sincerity of protestors, read: “Touch Our Kids & It’s War.”
While from a policing point of view the dissolving of Camp Freedom may well be deemed a success and end up as a textbook model for policing in highly volatile situations, it has also left many questions over its inhumanity and deceptive nature.
Every last protestor moved on yesterday has one message in their head: “The government is my enemy.”
Campers were told multiple conflicting stories. They could move to a large holiday camp an hour outside of town; that they could move to another Council controlled camping ground Camp Cotter at Cotter Creek half an hour away; or that they would be safe and welcome to stay on Ground Seven, at the top of the Epic showgrounds.
In the dramatic unravelling, none of these stories, or deliberate falsehoods, turned out to be true.
The hundreds of people who moved up to Ground Seven on the understanding that as it was private property they would be safe to stay were easily kettled, or corralled, given no choice but to leave after more than 50 police entered the grounds with backup forces clearly evident behind them. While many wore the standard uniforms of local police, there were other heavily armed special operatives wearing masks and holding leashed dogs, adding to the fear and panic already spreading through the crowd.
Amid these surreal and frightening scenes, it was obvious that a few of the officers were enjoying their role perhaps “a little too much”; but that many were unhappy about the duties they were being asked to perform.
In the midst of this chaos, some of the younger officers in particular, were exceptionally polite, thanking the protestors for their cooperation.
Many protestors moved to Cotter Creek Campground, a council run venue, on the assurance that they would be safe and welcome there.
That also proved false, with police aggressively moving protestors on, despite the fact that they had already made bookings and paid for their visit.
Another suggestion that protestors could move to a large conference and adventure centre Caloola Farm, an hour outside of Canberra, provided free of charge by the sympathetic owner, also proved false.
Police blockaded the roads and refused to let protestors enter.
Owner Ralph Hurst-Meyers, well known for his community generosity, said: “After consultation with the authorities, Caloola Farm and the Hurst-Meyers Charity Limited will allow vulnerable people affected by recent events such as the elderly, the disabled, and the indigenous community, single mothers with children, vulnerable families with children to temporarily stay at Caloola Farm free of charge while they make preparations to return home.
The problem with that, of course, is that many of the remaining protestors have no home to return to.
As one of the many passionate people involved in the weeks events observed: “Everyone here is on the verge of losing everything.”
A million people on their doorstep has upset the smug disdain displayed towards the largely working class protestors by Canberra’s insular, well paid public servants and their political overlords.
But as the many Australians who are refusing to accede to the government’s vaccine mandates burn through their savings and resources, the social chaos inflicted on Australia’s working and middle classes by the Canberra elites can only intensify.
The authorities may have succeeded in moving the protestors on this time around, but this story is going nowhere.
Battleground Melbourne tells the story of the Fall of the World’s Most Liveable City, through the eyes of those who risked everything to save it.
We’ve been called every name you can imagine, the media, politicians, and the ‘I stand with Dan’ crowd have used every baseless slur you can imagine, and probably many you can’t, to try and shame us and shut us down.
And Victoria Police went on an 18 month rampage of repression, unlawful arrests, and widespread intimidation in order to silence us.
So who are we? And given all we were up against, how did we grow from just 70 people in April 2020, to hundreds of thousands in the biggest political events in Australian history in November 2021?
This is our story, told through our eyes. Battleground Melbourne is our reply to the lies, half truths, slurs, and lazy attacks that we have endured for the last 2 years.
This is our story. The story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things and taking extreme risks to stand for what we believe in.
You may not agree with us, you may not even like us, but you can’t claim to know who we are until you’ve watched Battleground Melbourne.
Unvaccinated parents in Western Australia will not be able to visit their own sick children in hospital, with news anchors discussing the rule celebrating it as an excellent way of forcing the unvaxxed to ‘change their philosophy’.
From yesterday onwards, parents who haven’t received at least two doses of the vaccine will be barred from visiting their own kids, unless on compassionate ‘end of life’ grounds.
In other words, their child has to literally be on its deathbed for unvaxxed parents to be allowed into hospitals in Western Australia.
Almost as odious as the rule itself was how this new level of inhumane tyranny was vehemently welcomed by a host and her two guests on the Sunrise television news show.
Western Australia bans unvaccinated parents from seeing their sick children in hospital. The media applauds exploiting desperate parents in their darkest hour. pic.twitter.com/bVQjoUYGQX
One male reporter called the rule “the ultimate test” for unvaccinated parents, asking, “Could that be the trigger to make you change your mind and I guess that’s the force at play here.”
“Would it make you change your philosophy? Maybe it would and maybe that’s what the government are banking on,” he added.
Journalist Susie O’Brien cracked a smile before announcing, “I’m all for this, this is not about the rights of parents, this is about the rights of the sick kids…to stay as safe as possible.”
Yes, because I’m sure children who are sick and alone in hospital will surely love exercising the “right” not to be able to see their own parents.
“If you are unvaccinated without a good reason, without a valid exemption, then you are gonna find your movements curtailed,” O’Brien smugly stated, adding that the government was right to “shock” and “challenge” people into “changing their philosophy, changing their action and get vaccinated.”
“People have had time, I mean really,” the news anchor sardonically stated as she ended the segment.
“The cruelty is the point,” remarked Mike Cernovich.
Rebel News journalist Avi Yemini is having to defend himself after deciding not to remove an online video the police in Australia’s state of Victoria want taken down.
Yemini revealed that he had a letter, signed by a Victoria Police Crime Squad detective sergeant, sent to his home, threatening that unless he complied and deleted the video, he could end up serving two years in prison.
The journalist published photos of the letter, which notified him of committing an “apparent” breach of the Surveillance Devices Act.
The letter asserts that information protected under this act appeared in a video Yemini uploaded to his YouTube channel in September, under the title, “Police bodycam proves the mainstream media is HIDING the truth.”
The police letter further states that knowingly publishing information obtained from police bodycams is an offense, and demands that he immediately remove the video from all public forums, or face charges.
If found guilty, Yemini could be sent to prison for two years maximum, be forced to pay a fine, defined as “240 penalty units maximum” – or both.
But Yemini, who says he has previously been arrested, assaulted, and intimidated by the police for his work, has decided to fight back, as another letter, this one penned by his legal representative, shows. It reads that under a subsection of the act the police refer to as being violated, the footage used in the report was already in the public domain.
“In a free country, that would be the end of it. In fact, in a genuinely free country, I never would have received that threat letter from the police in the first place,” Yemini writes.
But the journalist doesn’t expect this outcome, and is instead ready to engage in a legal battle with the Victoria police, whom he says have “unlimited resources to bully anyone who doesn’t submit to them.”
“We’ve never lost a case yet, and I’ve never removed a story, even when a gangland lawyer tried to sue me. With your help, I promise not to cower in 2022 either,” Yemini concludes.
Now that Covid restrictions are being rolled back, various commentators are declaring victory over the miserable virus. Lockdowns, we are told, worked. Only a fool could argue otherwise.
Devi Sridhar, the Chair of Global Public Health at Edinburgh University, who was formerly an exponent of the Zero Covid strategy of completely eradicating the virus, has recently announced in the Guardianthat “delaying and preventing infection as much as possible through this pandemic was a worthwhile strategy. In early 2020, there were few treatments, limited testing and no vaccines. The costs of those lockdowns were big, but the effort to buy time paid off”.
At the other end of the political spectrum, Tom Harwood of GB News says much the same. Lockdown sceptics, he writes in CapX, are “bizarrely claiming victory now that restrictions are coming to an end”. The sceptics, Harwood asserts, ignore the success of vaccines. “There is a blindingly obvious distinction between the need for non-pharmaceutical interventions amongst a non-immune population, verses [sic] one with incredibly high levels of immunity.” He points to a lower death toll from the Omicron variant which appeared after the “stupendously successful vaccine rollout”. In conclusion, Harwood writes that to “deny lockdowns worked to reduce spread is to deny logic”.
Let’s examine the logic. If lockdowns bought time for the rollout of vaccines, then we would expect fewer Covid deaths in places that locked down early and fast. That is the case in Australia and New Zealand, which early in the pandemic sealed their borders against the virus. But the trouble with this policy, as our Antipodean friends are discovering, is the difficulty of exiting. Their policy of national self-isolation has lasted nearly two years, and continues in large measure even after most of their population has been vaccinated.
By contrast, in Europe there is no evidence that lockdowns significantly reduced Covid deaths. Sweden, which never locked down, has the same number of deaths per million as Austria, which did (see chart below). It’s true that Swedish deaths ran higher somewhat earlier than Austria, but this ‘bought-time’ doesn’t appear to have changed the final tally.
The evidence from the United States points to a similar conclusion: the Covid death rate (as a share of the population) in Florida, which largely avoided lockdowns, is slightly below the U.S. national average and far below that of New York, which had (and continues to impose) relatively tough restrictions.
It’s true that mass vaccination has reduced the risk of hospitalisation and death from Covid. But lockdown exponents imply that vaccines alone are responsible for the decline in the infection fatality rate. The evidence from South Africa, whose vaccination rate is around a quarter of the European average (49 doses per 100 people versus 180, or 27%), suggests otherwise.
It appears that either Covid has evolved to become less virulent, as the South African doctors suggested back in December, or South Africa’s population has built up strong natural immunity from prior infection – a possibility overlooked by most commentators. It seems likely that both factors have played a role in reducing the virulence of the disease. Even if lockdowns had succeeded in reducing Covid deaths until the vaccine rollout that wouldn’t necessarily justify their imposition. From the start, lockdown sceptics were concerned about the collateral damage caused by closing down the economy, shuttering schools, neglecting conventional health care and forcing people to isolate in their homes for months on end. They railed in vain against the cruelty of lockdowns: mothers giving birth alone, old people dying alone or left for months without visitors in nursing homes, the damage to children’s education, funerals unattended, small businesses crushed and so forth. Finally, the public appears to be waking up to these cruelties. Hence, the fury at the hypocrisy of Downing Street officials who imposed harsh rules for the nation which they didn’t scrupulously follow themselves.
Then there are lockdown’s immense financial costs. At the time, these could be ignored since governments financed them with interest-free loans from central banks. But all that money-printing is now fuelling inflation that will lead to further immiseration in the coming years. The sceptics argued that lockdowns were never subject to a proper cost-benefit analysis which took social and economic costs into account. That remains the case. Thus, not only has there been no ‘victory’ in the war on Covid – on the contrary, the highly contagious Omicron variant appears to be overcoming all attempts to constrain it – but the argument over lockdowns has yet to be decisively won by either side, so that lockdowns are either accepted as a tool of sound public health policy or roundly condemned as a colossal mistake. The sceptics’ work continues.
Tennis star Novak Djokovic is being deported from Australia, after losing his final appeal the WTA’s top-ranked player will not be allowed to defend his Australian Open title.
It was reported this morning that an Australian court had refused Djokovic’s appeal against the cancellation of his visa, and as such he’s being put on a plane and flown out of the country.
To be clear: This is all because he’s not “vaccinated” against Covid19, and vocally speaks out against the practice. The government have clearly and publicly admitted as much…but we’ll get to that.
The rejection of Djokovic’s medical exemption and subsequent deportation has been accompanied by a wave of vitriol in the press the likes of which we have rarely seen.
One Australian sports presenter was “accidentally” recorded calling him a “lying, sneaky arsehole” in a video that was later “leaked” to the press.
The Spectator has one piece which is nothing more than a slew of ad hominem and mockery, against not just Djokovic but all “anti-vaxxers” and “conspiracy theorists”, calling the Serbian a “conspiracy super-spreader”. They have another blaming his “arrogance for his downfall”.
The Guardian‘s Australian Political Correspondent Sarah Martin defends the decision and jokingly refers to it as a “no dickheads” immigration policy, attacking Djokovic’s “anti-science god complex” and calling him an “all-round jerk”.
The childish name-calling just doesn’t end. Even his fellow players are sticking the boot in.
Stefanos Tsitsipas attacked Djokovic for attempting to “play by his own rules”, adding “A very small minority chose to follow their own way. It makes the majority look like they are all fools”, which is at least true, but not in the way he means it.
Spanish star Rafael Nadal said Djokovic should just follow the rules like everyone else, perhaps flashing the kind of attitude which allowed a fascist dictator to stay in power in his country for 40 years.
Some players, at least, have come to Djokovic’s defense, including Australia’s own Nick Kyrgios, who has said he is “ashamed” of the way Australia has handled the situation and chastised other players for not showing solidarity with Djokovic.
But why is this happening? Why are they trying to punish such a public figure, and why now?
Well, firstly, I’m not sure it is about punishing Djokovic, and not just because getting to leave Australia is an odd thing to be considered any kind of punishment these days.
Rather, it’s about the performance of punishing him. It’s about making an example of him. Not so much preventing him from playing, as much as denying him a platform.
The Australian government basically admits that in their legal justification for cancelling the visa.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Djokovic had been barred from entry for “breaching the rules…it’s as simple as that.” But he is either mistaken or lying, as he directly contradicts the case presented to the appeal court by the government.
Yes, the visa was first cancelled on a technicality about incorrect information but, a judge overruled that decision, allowing Djokovic to enter the country.
Under this (worryingly vague) legislation, the Immigration Minister is granted the power to cancel any visa at all, if:
the Minister is satisfied that it would be in the public interest to cancel the visa.
This was the argument put to the appeals court, that the minister can expel anyone, for anything, if he believes it to be in the best interests of the public.
That’s public interest, NOT public health.
Hawke admits in his written statement that Djokovic presents a “negligible risk of Covid19 infection” to those around him. So it’s nothing to do with protecting people from infection or stopping the spread of the virus.
Public statements from officials suggest that they consider any “anti-vaxxer” to be a threat to the public interest by undermining the vaccination programme. Thus they can justify barring entry to Djokovic (or, it should be said, any other “anti-vaxxer”) under the guise of “public interest”.
It’s about control, it almost always is.
In short, the government are scared that Djokovic’s very presence in the country is a threat to their neo-fascist lockdown.
If you look closely at the media messaging, there’s more than a little fear behind the wall of abuse and mockery.
Article after article is at pains to point out that “the majority of normal Australians want the Joker gone”, or some variation on that sentiment. Somewhat desperately selling the line that nobody agrees with, or supports, Djokovic’s position.
A statement which is given the lie by the regular huge protests taking place all across Australia’s major cities (like this one, just this weekend, in Sydney).
The Australian government are worried they’ve turned their country into a powder keg of public resentment, and that the slightest social spark could set it off. Increasing the size of the (already huge) protests against the lockdowns and vaccine mandates, maybe even tipping the country into full-blown chaos.
One of the Spectator articles mentions that Australians have been living in a “police state” for two years, and then vaguely references the subsequent public anger, even whilst attempting to downplay it, misrepresent its cause, and turn it against the unvaccinated.
Australia has fallen. Peace, prosperity and freedom have been sacrificed on the altar of “safety”, and Covid “vaccination” has become a quasi-religious rite in their country, even more so than the rest of the world.
As such, the unvaccinated are slandered, punished, threatened and othered at every turn. Locked down, locked up and locked out.
Can you only imagine what could happen if people found out it was all for nothing? Or that the heaven-sent vaccines aren’t the magical solution to all that ails us?
In this kind of political climate they simply can’t afford to have an “anti-vaxxer” on national television, healthy and athletic and winning championships against a field of vaccinated rivals.
Before anyone accuses me of a surfeit of cynicism, let’s review the actual words of Alex Hawke from the appeal procedure [our emphasis]:
I consider that Mr Djokovic’s ongoing presence in Australia may lead to an increase in anti-vaccination sentiment generated in the Australian community, potentially leading to an increase in civil unrest of the kind previously experienced in Australia
Elsewhere Djokovic is described as a “talisman of a community of anti-vaccine sentiment”.
This kind of brutal treatment of publicly unvaccinated famous faces will likely only intensify. It’s already spreading from country to country, with France announcing Djokovic will not be allowed to defend his French Open title unless he gets vaccinated.
It seems pretty clear that the public shaming of Djokovic is a power-play to secure what they perceive as their own tenuous grip on the narrative, one that could have far-reaching consequences moving forward.
Consider, Djokovic is not barred from entry just for being unvaccinated, but also because he has publicly spoken out against vaccination.
Australia is now not only requiring you be “fully vaccinated” to enter the country, but has barred someone for even expressing anti-vaccine sentiment.
It’s no longer enough to conform by action, you must now conform by speech.
Next is thought, but even they would never try to legislate against that… right?
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails… In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques. … continue
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