Australia has never seen anything like it.
And somehow we’re all fine with it.
This extremely distressing footage of yet another pregnant woman being violently and aggressively arrested in Melbourne went viral within hours yesterday and is likely to be seen by as many millions of people as saw the now infamous footage of a woman in her pajamas being arrested in her own home in front of her children for a Facebook post.
To state the obvious: This is not just bad for the individuals involved, but for the country as a whole. And extremely bad for the nation’s once happy-go-lucky reputation.
“We’re getting used to seeing footage like this around here,” says Rebekah Spelman, who has been following the lockdown demonstrations closely and is running for her local council in Melbourne on an anti-lockdown platform.
“One person in the video can be heard saying, ‘she’s bleeding, she’s bleeding’. It looks to me from what I can see that this is true.
“We’re seeing so much unnecessary police aggression against ordinary people living their lives. We’re not criminals. None of these people are criminals
“We just want our freedoms. It is about human rights, and our human rights are being trampled and our freedoms stolen.
“To protest under these circumstances requires courage, and foolhardiness perhaps. But certainly courage.”
Ms Spelman has her own experience of being aggressively arrested as a peaceful protester.
“We all know how poorly the police are acting through this, and it’s a disgusting disgrace how they seem to be reveling in their ‘authority’.
“As a law abiding citizen, I should not have to be fearful of being arrested and charged for breaking no laws, or of earning myself a criminal record that will affect the rest of my life – but here we ALL are.
“I was at a protest in Melbourne. The riot squad appeared all of a sudden and together with the horse squad, they surrounded a small group of about 15 of us. One young riot squad rookie was so gung-ho that he started shoving the man right next to me, unprovoked, and screaming at him to move. This act alone could have started a big fight that would have ended very badly if the man he pushed was aggressive.
“Thankfully he was not; he ignored the young officer until a more senior officer next to him told him to stop.
“After being surrounded, the riot officers walked at us in groups of 5 and one by one, dragged us out of the circle where regular officers cuffed us, made us stand around for awhile, then checked our ID and issued a fine for being more than five kilometres from home, and set us free.
“I was detained by an aggressive little female cop who clearly had plenty to prove. She was rude and loving it, and when she went through my backpack to find my ID, I asked her to be careful not to let the photograph that I keep in my wallet fall out and blow away. Her response was sarcastic: ‘Is there anything else you’d like me to do?’
“They seemed to enjoy the show that they put on, arresting this pack of ‘violent lawbreakers’ for the whole nation to marvel over.”
In the early months of the Covid panic Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison preened himself daily in front of the cameras as some kind of latter-day saviour of the nation.
Now he is missing in action, watching from on high as his country crumbles.
And while pregnant women are arrested.
Having ignored the advice of leading epidemiologists from around the world that lockdowns don’t work, Morrison has destroyed the working lives of millions of Australians and as a result of his tragically misguided policies destroyed tens of thousands of businesses for no good reason.
As Oxford University graduate and esteemed journalist Steve Waterson put it in The Australian: “We’ve handed control of our lives to a clown car packed with idiots who have wasted billions trying to defeat this virus. They will never admit it was all for nothing.”
The latest outrages in terms of policy is that while many thousands of ordinary Australians remain stranded overseas, the rich are being rolled out the red carpet. Holders of business innovation and investment visas are allowed to enter Australia without having to apply for a Covid-19 entry exemption. Meanwhile Australians on average incomes can neither enter nor leave.
But in the end, what does it matter?
Australia’s governing class has one modus operandi: Rob the Poor. Give to the Rich.
The kleptocracy, the plutocracy parading as a democracy that was Australia, is now exposed for all to see.
Here is another piece of footage of police brutalising a young woman:
The face of the Corona Virus in Australia is Daniel Andrews, the foppish, supremely arrogant Premier of Victoria whose daily press conferences, now more than 60 in a row, have attracted a cult following because they are so patently absurd.
Acting as Daniel Andrews’ private henchmen, enacting what is essentially martial law under the guise of public health decrees, the black-shirted Victorian police have brought the entire nation’s police forces into disrepute.
The Victorian Police have famously done everything from arrest a pregnant woman in front of her children to smashing car windows and dragging screaming women from their cars.
Their extremely heavy crackdowns on anti-lockdown protesters has made international news, while at home his Twitter mob howl for Daniel Andrews to go harder, harder.
A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced upon his throne.
HANNAH ARENDT
As Ms Spelman recalled of a subsequent encounter: “I just went through a police checkpoint. I told the officer that they have lost so much respect from the people and that once this is over, it’s not going to just come back. I asked her if she was fine with the way things are right now, and she replied cheerily: “Yes I’m fine with it”.
Yes I’m fine with it.
VICTORIAN POLICE OFFICER
As one of the Twentieth Century’s preeminent intellects Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism, the fickleness of the mob is legendary and it is no better to be ruled by the mob than it is by a dictator.
“While the people in all great revolutions fight for true representation, the mob always will shout for the ‘strong man’, the ‘great leader’. For the mob hates society from which it is excluded, as well as Parliament where it is not represented.
“For there is no denying that this evil has befallen us with the full complicity of the people itself . . . The people is not God. Anyone could have foreseen that this new divinity would someday topple to his fall.”
Street gangs have been replaced by Twitter mobs.
In Australia today there is no freedom of expression. No right to protest. No honour. No dignity of belief.
If you don’t agree with the dictates of Australia’s multiple federal, state and local governments you face, as citizens are now facing in Victoria, arrest, handcuffing or brutally and aggressively being slammed to the ground. For doing what you sincerely believe to be right.
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