A lot has changed for Victorians since the lockdowns started. Our lifestyles. Our waist sizes. The kinds of things we see as normal.
And a lot has changed in Victoria itself since we’ve been in lockdown as well. For example, have you seen our police lately?
If memory serves, they used to look something like this:
But now we’re seeing police that look like this:
Scene from a war zone???
Modern day Melbourne. pic.twitter.com/MJJ8SpQiDD— Craig Scott (@Craig97640805) September 23, 2021
And this:
What type of Police is this?@Voice4Victoria pic.twitter.com/BtrECrUYMe
— Mitch (@Mitchyball) September 22, 2021
They’re also riding around on armored military vehicles called Bearcats, like this:
https://twitter.com/skkboz/status/1440899464298786823
And they’re acting differently too. They’re firing on protesters with rubber bullets and other projectile weapons with alarming frequency in order to end demonstrations against government shutdowns, lockdowns and vaccine mandates, frequently for no other reason than because the demonstrators are disobeying them.
Use of force by Victorian police is officially required to be “reasonable, necessary and proportionate to the threat posed by an incident.” When you see a video clip of Melbourne protesters just standing around the Remembrance Shrine begin fleeing to escape harm and being fired upon with less-lethal weapons as they retreat, for example, does that seem “reasonable, necessary and proportionate to the threat posed by an incident” to you?
Raw footage of the final two minutes of the protest at the Shrine of Remembrance. 22.09.21 pic.twitter.com/9m8JT24fW1
— Rukshan Fernando (@therealrukshan) September 22, 2021
“But Caitlin!” you may object. “Those people they’re firing on are Bad People! They’re right-wingers and anti-vaxxers! And they’re protesting without permission!”
Okay, if you don’t want to oppose police brutality on principle without making it about the supposed ideological positions of its victims then that’s your right. But surely you don’t think the normalization of this kind of violence is something that’s only going to affect people you disagree with politically going forward, do you? Surely you’re not naive and narcissistic enough to believe the many dramatic deviations from normal policing protocol we’ve been experiencing during these protests will be rolled back when you personally no longer deem them necessary?
Because that would be a very silly thing to believe. The way police are dealing with protesters today is the way they’re going to deal with them from now on, unless we do something. And in order for that something to be done we’re going to first have to collectively ask ourselves, is this the kind of country we want to live in from now on?
Do we want to live in a country where protesters are fired upon by dangerous projectile weapons if the police decide it’s time for them to leave? Where protests are violently quashed if the government (the only so-called democracy in the world without any kind of statute or bill of rights, mind you) decides they don’t have permission to protest? Where armored stormtroopers patrol the streets? Where people are apprehended simply for filming police? Where police show up at your doorstep to interrogate you on whether you’re planning to attend any protests or know of anyone who is?
I understand that lockdowns and vaccine passports are still fairly popular ideas here, but at what point do we say no? At what point do we say enough is enough? If those policies have literal soldiers patrolling Australian streets and enforcing state borders, if they have sectors of the populace so upset that heavily armed riot police are exercising abuses that will certainly be used on racial and environmental justice demonstrators in the future the moment their demonstrations are deemed unauthorised, is it really worth holding that hard line? How much of our soul is Australia willing to trade in order to enforce strict Covid regulations?
How far is too far? Looking at the footage that’s been circulating these past few days, I would say that too far is in our rearview mirror right now. Time to hit reverse and start saying no.
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14 responses to “Australians Need To Decide If This Is The Kind Of Country We Want To Live In From Now On”
Some random thoughts i had , while reading this:
– In a conflict between security and civil liberties, why do civil liberties have to lose every sngle time?
– You always have to fight for the rights of those you disagree with, otherwise your fight is only egoism
– “There are only two positions on freedom of speech” – Chomsky
– “If you agree with punching down, you are a chump of the highest order, always punch up!” – Jimmy Dore
– Do you notice how in the first two pictures the “modern” policemen are no longer recongnizable as human beings? Do you think being one of them and seeing yourself among this armed and armored mass changes your perception? Do you imagine this is by chance?
Who says lockdowns and vaccine passports are a popular idea? The fact that the vast majority of Australians have refused the “vaccine” (that isn’t a vaccine) would say otherwise.
Regardless, our Constitution prohibits conscripted medical treatments, especially experimental ones, as does the UN “Right to Health” and the Nuremberg Code.
There is absolutely no excuse for the behavior of those police in Melbourne, and if this is the way Australia is going, I’m outta here. We ae sovereign beings with God given rights … we are not grated those by government, who serve at our pleasure. Get the dynamic right folks.
Listen, folks, this is really simple. If you want to stay safe from Covid all you have to do is get the Covid vaccine. And when they tell you to get the booster, you get the booster. When they tell you to show your Vaccine Passport, you show your Vaccine Passport. When they tell you to report your unvaxxed neighbors, you report your unvaxxed neighbors. When they tell you to get into the boxcar, you get into the fucking boxcar. Why in the hell is this so difficult to understand, people?!
You had me worried there for a while …
Are you wankers glad you gave up your guns so willingly! Bet you wish you had them now!
Yes, I regret it, and yes I would like to have them now; however, I cannot see myself behaving like those uncivilised thugs in Melbourne who need to be exported to a desert isle where they can brutalise each other for fun.
Caitlin, I think your point is valid. The very existence of such heavily militarized police is a threat to civilized society. I am a U.S. citizen. I have read some of your comments regarding the subservience to U.S. diktats which Australia has accepted, an occurrence which is all too common for a lot of countries which have accepted the “offer they cannot refuse” from the biggest thug in the world. In the final analysis, these developments have little to do with the issues immediately at hand, e.g. masking. The greater issue is whether the police will behave as they have in our more civilized past as a support group for the people or become, as they have, a Stasi stye authority, inclined, and trained, to regard us, the people, as the “problem”.
There is no logical reason why so many members of the public should be so distrusting of the authorities in charge of the Covid programs. I think that the reason for the distrust is the complete corruption of the entire electoral/political system. That is certainly true in the U.S. We have a system which I call “Whores For Hire”, meaning that the corrupt people who purport to represent the people in our nominal “representative” form of government actually represent whichever special interest group bribes them with the largest amount of money. That is a fact. The system has been blessed by a totally corrupt U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. has, as you have cogently written about, in turn, extorted from Australia compliance with its diktats, as recently exhibited by the godfather type order to cancel the submarine deal with France and put in place the new corrupt deal with U.S. war companies. And the move toward authoritarianism moves forward. Police as soldiers. Suppress any dissent. An ignorant people hardly noticing.
That’s what you get when you hire ex-military. Sure, lots of cops come in as fresh recruits who want to help people but power corrupts and working with ex-military guys cannot be a positive.. And now they seem to relish hurting people. I am ashamed to say I am an Australian.
This is what covid-19 has been about all along. Now becoming more visible. Are most people still narcotized? We’ll find out.
Media in Australia have been a disgrace throughout this now 18 month long assault on our rights. History shows that police NEVER relinquish new powers once granted,it’s fight or forever live under the yoke.
I’ve seen this happen in the US over the last 20 years. It keeps expanding and expanding. The laws on the books literally make fascism legal for just suspicion of the nebulous concept of “terrorism”, an undefined action, from undefined people in an undefined place. The occupy wall street protests saw 30 year penalties for just gathering. The US police force ranks as one of the largest militarys in the world. No matter how outrageous and obscene each new level of legal fascism became, nobody was able to stop it. Also the way the media is manipulated, it didn’t even appear as if anyone objected.
The vast majority of the propagandized state of human conditioning comes forward ten fold now that the media has become international and controlled by the very same few that created WWII in their longing to kill off Germanys independence form The International world consortium of the FED…World Bank, International Monetary fund, and sanctions that cripple the vassage of human dignity… For all those that really know how the chosen ones chose to cripple Germany and the intelligentsia of the same introspective force of being tribe on the doorstep of eternity’s door that now represents the grander state of policing under the guise of criminal Gestapo communistic altered Marist Fascist pseudo religious imperialism that was founded under the anti christian Jewish Rabbinic Babylonian Talmudic oral precepts of universal slavery to bondage to the few that now control almost all the media… Good luck my sheep of propaganda conditioning. Your police state is just as bad as the American nightmare called freedom!!!!
Yes indeed.
It is very sad to hear that lockdowns and vaccine mandates are popular in Australia. You folks need to wake up!