The Growing Tide of Fascism
They spoke in whispers. Be silent. Save yourself. They spoke in the movement of crowds. In the patterns of panicked animals.
That same haunting phrase came back from the beginning days of the so-called "Pandemic": "They're culling us"; or "They're trying to cull us".
Everywhere was discontent. Everywhere was brutal oppression. The so-called National Cabinet, the same authoritarian idiots who had done so much harm to the country, reinforced to everyone that the fools were still running the asylum.
Rain bombs. Vile weather. A freezing winter. A country destroying itself.
Hospitals were overrun. "Elective" surgery was being postponed. The news led with the story of a family whose heart surgery on their three-year-old had been postponed five times.
They were importing nurses from Fiji.
At the same time it was claimed that the unemployment rate was at 3.5%, the lowest in a very long time.
They whispered through the voices of others, through children, and he leant down to hear them.
Perhaps it was clear: Be silent. Save yourself.
But was that the role of a scribe?
That winter was so cold partly because the power bills were soaring; and few could afford to leave their heaters on for very long.
The long term destruction of the country was coming to a peak; the insanely inefficient ideologies, the inversions of truth, the contempt for ordinary humans.
He once again ran across the lines from a TOTT story:
"The transhuman promise of ‘superhuman’ abilities will be reserved for the ‘chosen class’, while the masses merge with technology designed for a constant state of surveillance and control.
"In attempt to give themselves godlike abilities, the technocratic elites are moving towards a transhumanist future powered by their own ‘intelligent design’, in an attempt to rewrite human rights as we know them.
"Through gene-editing, synthetic biology, and the merger of humans and technology, governments and corporations are fundamentally altering what it means to be human."
Now it was all becoming all too true.
What was science fiction five minutes ago was science fiction no longer. Those waves of panic passed through the herd. The gods reaped.
Just like the intelligence agencies who now, unfortunately, he had their full attention, just as there was good and bad in everybody, well perhaps that was naïve, but he did understand there was no consistent messaging.
The panicked herd. The collapse of civil society. The failure of multiple governments.
The new Prime Minister's reputation was plummeting faster than a falling stone; as the public woke up to the fact they had just replaced one monster with another.
Perhaps it was the National Cabinet that made that all too clear.
Perhaps it was the endless grandstanding on the world stage of Albanese and his ministers.
Perhaps it was just the lengthening queues at hospitals, the insanely bad weather, the floods, the circling jackals or the flying vultures, perhaps it was the never ending pandemic, perhaps it was the blatant dishonesty of the legacy media, perhaps it was all combined; sold a lie; as cases surged, bodies mounted, as calls to reintroduce what was essentially a totalitarian state intensified, beyond mere authoritarianism, beyond herd behaviour, somewhere in the realm of the mashed entities, the group consciousness, of which men were capable.
There was one parallel world, one parallel rhyme; there was an intensity of feeling and a disgust at the species.
And he remembered another notion: The idea that men can control the algorithms they created may soon become as farcical as the idea that men can control the gods.
We were entering a different realm. A different time. He watched the waves of panicked animals. He saw the ripples of their surface fear. And he knew what they were capable of, in their cruelty to each other.
He knew the blindness of the deliberately blind. And he knew the nature of that panicked fear, as winter crunched all around them; and the nation, this nation, reached its own turning point.
As elsewhere America, and capitalism, reached its logical conclusion.
MAINSTREAM NEWS
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Debate rages over return of COVID-19 mandates | Coronavirus | 9 News Australia
A debate is raging between Australia's top doctors, business and industry leaders over how to deal with the nation's growing COVID-19 Omicron wave, as the World Health Organisation calls for a return of mask mandates. Subscribe and 🔔: http://9Soci.al/KM6e50GjSK9 | Get more breaking news at 9News.com.au: http://9Soci.al/iyCO50GjSK6 0:00 Dr Nick Coatsworth 4:45 Epidemiologist, Professor Catherine Bennett 8:11 Dr Roderick McRae, AMA Victoria President 12:20 Tim Piper, Victorian Head, Australian Industry Group
SKY
Quiet Australians are being forced to ‘keep even quieter’
11 hours ago
Sky News host Chris Smith says quiet Australians are being forced to “keep even quieter”, following the release of a new report from Mainstreet Insights which shows this “campaign of censorship is starting to take a toll”.
Mr Smith said according to the ‘Cancel Culture and Acceptance in Australia’ report, almost one in four Australians say they’re now “scared to share their views”.
“So much for free speech, it’s been frowned upon, and we’ve become intimidated,” Mr Smith said.
“And it looks like the younger generations have been the most affected.”
Australia is selling its economic freedom to the ‘most powerful dictatorship’ in history
8 hours ago
Sky News host Andrew Bolt says Australia is selling its economic freedom to the “most powerful dictatorship in history”.
Mr Bolt said while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is at the Pacific Islands Forum in Fiji, “China is already busy right here stripping Australia of our energy independence”.
“We now have a government – backed by the Greens – that is saying no, we can’t use our mountains of coal, our mountains of uranium, our oceans of gas and oil to make our electricity. To make cheap electricity. Lots of electricity,” Mr Bolt said.
“We must instead switch to wind and solar to reach the Albanese government’s target of net zero emissions by 2050, using tech that’s mostly made in China.
“So under Labor, we will need six times more wind power when China dominates much of the lithium-ion battery sector that is crucial in making wind turbines.
“We will also need six times more solar panels, when China already makes 80 per cent of the world’s solar cells, and by 2025 will make 95 per cent of them, the International Energy Agency warned just this week.
“That means we are going to give China a crucial say, a stranglehold really, on our future electricity production. So, there’s Albanese thinking he’s fighting China on the beaches of Fiji, when China is in fact busy right here, threatening our future right now.”
THE NEW DAILY
The federal government is under fire for its response to Australia’s latest COVID wave – with one senator blasting the push to work from home, while unions demand the return of pandemic leave payments.
With COVID cases topping 40,000 across the country again on Wednesday, and hospitals buckling under a rising wave of patients, the government has defended its decision to scrap pandemic leave payments and free rapid tests for concession card-holders.
Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers said both mechanisms were designed to end at some point.
“To restart them would cost a considerable cost of money,” he said in Brisbane on Wednesday.
“We have tried to be upfront with people and say that some of these important programs that have existed in the recent past, which are designed to end in the near future, we can’t afford to extend all of them.”
But Australian Manufacturing Workers‘ Union National Secretary Steve Murphy accused the Albanese government of failing to protect essential workers.
“This Labor government said to essential workers that it had our backs. We need those words turned into deeds and not simply allow the cost of the pandemic to be pushed on to workers,” he said.
“Workers need access to free rapid antigen tests, paid pandemic leave and consistent messaging on the use of face masks.”
GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
Almost 100 aged care residents are dying from Covid each week with active cases linked to the more than 700 current outbreaks in facilities reaching near-record levels for 2022, data shows.
An analysis of government data on Covid in aged care shows a worrying surge in the weekly number of deaths, number of active outbreaks, and cases among residents.
The industry fears that two-thirds of aged care homes across Australia may be grappling with outbreaks in the next six weeks.
It comes as the federal health minister, Mark Butler, warned millions of Australians faced infection with the virus in coming weeks.
The last available data showed 91 deaths were reported by aged care providers in the week ending 8 July, up from 58 the week prior, and well above the weekly average of 69 since the beginning of March, when the last Omicron wave ended.
Almost 3,000 aged care residents have now died this year alone, dwarfing the death tolls of 686 and 231 from 2020 and 2021 respectively.
A further 110 active outbreaks were reported by providers in the last week on record, up from 627 to 737. The number of cases associated with those outbreaks is now 8,633, the worst on record since mid-February, the peak of the summer wave.
Both the sector and advocates for older Australians are warning that the current Covid wave through aged care is causing “great concern”.
THE SPECTATOR
In Western Australia, a state government minister has been accused of allegedly preferencing political donors for border entry during the G2G passes approval process within the Covid pandemic.
As reported by Duncan Murray on news.com.au, the claims emerged last week during an unfair dismissal hearing by the Public Service Appeal Board of WA:
Former electorate officer for Deputy Premier Roger Cook, Sanja Spasojevic, claimed she was instructed by the then Health Minister to fast track entry applications for members of the Labor Business Roundtable.
Roundtable members pay thousands of dollars for access to senior members of the government including Premier Mark McGowan.
‘Further to the allegations being made in court under oath by a former staff member of the Labor government I have written to the crime and corruption commissioner, John McKechnie, QC today,’ WA opposition leader Mia Davies said on Friday. ‘If found to be true, it would be a gross misuse of power and raises questions about the influence of donors and ministers in the McGowan Government.’
WA imposed Australia’s strictest border lockdown during the pandemic requiring a G2G pass to enter the state.
Readers may recall how at one stage that Premier McGowan went so far as to bar people from entering WA on compassionate grounds while AFL players could come and go as they pleased for approved games. It was a move that enraged the public who had ‘played by the rules’.