Australia - Human Rights

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Maybe none of that applies to Australia, but it's on my mind.

I would watch my own mayor go through his daily press conference and think that, push comes to shove, our small little nobody city would be unable to successfully go street to street (door to door is too confrontation) and carry out any civic-minded activity.

[noddy]

oh, all that times ten.

I could fill 10 pages of the forum with all the lack of civic smarts, incompetence and outright insanities.

federal vs state politics turning toxic and an openly hostile media that only publishes "hot takes" and clickbait inflammation, its a failure on all levels.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

yeah, there have been too many times during this pandemic where our mayor didn't have access to certain information which would've been useful locally because it was being held up in whatever reindeer games were being played at a state level; and who knows what the federal level was withholding from the state?

The mayor is a nice enough guy not totally detached from our mundane little territory, and same goes for the city council, but they are almost all bubbled up in whatever little world they inhabit or have eyes on a sinecure in Hartford, or maybe with fingers crossed, D.C. These are the people actually on the ground, and they can't hold the territory so to speak.

Some of it I totally get; we've said it before but I'll say it again, this is a problem that needs large-scale coordination.

But there are very simple, little things that seem to have been done 60 years ago that don't even come to mind today.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

[noddy]

Even that map over states it

The red areas only problem is its border locked to the green area sometimes.

Only the blue area has lockdowns, and then the area with media covered protests is a dot too small for this scale of map.

Plenty of media considers LA and NY to be america aswell, so its all about expected i spose

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

The red areas only problem is its border locked to the green area sometimes.

"We only occasionally severe one of the states from the union."

Only the blue area has lockdowns, and then the area with media covered protests is a dot too small for this scale of map.

Plenty of media considers LA and NY to be america aswell, so its all about expected i spose

#AustraliaHasFallen

[noddy]

"We only occasionally severe one of the states from the union."

Our successionist movement has rarely been less then 30% and several times has been over 50%.

10% of the population, provides 13% of the GDP and only gets 8% of the federal tax spending.

you might be surprised how little we care.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

hey, I'm impressed. We can't close nothing.

meanwhile you lot are like, "Oh, it's Tuesday, better wall off the city before lunch time."

[noddy]

oh, plenty of people take that angle, "we are one nation, open movement is an absolute right" - hundreds of bleeding heart articles on it, social media posts on it, much abuse about "cave dwelling" fools trying to hide from the pandemic

the problem is thats all folks who want to leave the zombie hell holes they live in and go back to an open free society with pubs and no masks.

i suspect 99.999% would want the door closed behind them, after *they* arrived.

[noddy]

as for how we can do it.

the next closest city to us is Adelaide and thats 2,700km away - 1700 miles - and their are only a handful of roads, so we put police on them.

we might aswell be a seperate country, in most ways we are.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

oh, plenty of people take that angle, "we are one nation, open movement is an absolute right" - hundreds of bleeding heart articles on it, social media posts on it, much abuse about "cave dwelling" fools trying to hide from the pandemic

the problem is thats all folks who want to leave the zombie hell holes they live in and go back to an open free society with pubs and no masks.

i suspect 99.999% would want the door closed behind them, after *they* arrived.

Free movement of goods and people, free labor/capital; the very bedrock of the liberal order...

what do you have against order?

[noddy]

well, i must admit to being less than perfect in my neoliberal credentials on the rush to lower my wages and living conditions to the global average.

their have been some accusations on the local social medias that this is also fueling many to be anti vax, the logic being that if the borders get reopened at 80% vax, then its in your interest to keep it under that figure.

If that is actually i true, i admire the simplicity of the thinking however I cant really see it being closed for much longer in reality.

the foundations of our system are built on houses getting more expensive and the world never running out of middle class that wants them

everything else is secondary, the local peasants are just a nuisance against the fresh meat, with bulging bank accounts.

[noddy]

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavir ... bdd62a8cd5

The leader of America’s third-largest state, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has blasted Australia’s coronavirus restrictions, accusing us of going “off the rails” and comparing us to authoritarian China.

Mr DeSantis, who has been a vocal opponent of lockdowns, mandates and vaccine passports in the United States, brought up Australia’s Covid policies during remarks to the International Boatbuilders Exhibition in Tampa.

“Look what’s going on in Australia right now. They’re enforcing, after a year-and-a-half, lockdowns by the military,” the Republican said.

“That’s not a free country. It’s not a free country at all.

“In fact, I wonder why we would still have the same diplomatic relations when they’re doing that.

never have the differences between the two countries been so apparent.

I wouldnt even argue too much with the assesment , but then again, it is Melbourne, which is the socialist, middle class, risk averse entitled city.

you get what you get when live there.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

That's one way of looking at it.

Yet there is something else there:

The imagined threat to Australian freedom has so distressed American conservatives, they are a few months from wanting to liberate it.

Imagine what the reaction would be if it were China actually threatening Australia?

[noddy]

He touched on that.

“In fact, I wonder why we would still have the same diplomatic relations when they’re doing that."

Its hard for me to get the analogies right - but i roughly believe Melbourne to be a san francisco, portland equivilant in american terms - greenies, lefty luvvies.

would conservative america save them from themselves ?

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

He touched on that.

“In fact, I wonder why we would still have the same diplomatic relations when they’re doing that."

Its hard for me to get the analogies right - but i roughly believe Melbourne to be a san francisco, portland equivilant in american terms - greenies, lefty luvvies.

would conservative america save them from themselves ?

That Australians are doing it to themselves is just not registering yet, conservative media frames it as an unpopular imposition; Governor DeSantis knows it, and its a very...umm...interesting strategy to turn against a Pacific ally.

Let's call it the "Crap on France" strategy....Australia as the new, smelly Frenchmen.....

[noddy]

on average, Australians would be a lot more socialist and less freedom orientated than a Frenchman - those buggers riot on the regular and have quite a robust attitude to government over reach.

bravely sacrificing your health for the economy wouldnt even cross the mind of most here - thats why you need to import desperate migrants , they think like that and keep all the cheap services going.

with the exception of melbourne, which has had way too much lockdown and a service based economy, all i can see is us hitting our vax targets, opening all restrictions, and avoiding all the death and chaos everyone else got.

it will be very mundane, the year that the upper middle class didnt get their european holidays, the horror.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

on average, Australians would be a lot more socialist and less freedom orientated than a Frenchman - those buggers riot on the regular and have quite a robust attitude to government over reach.

bravely sacrificing your health for the economy wouldnt even cross the mind of most here - thats why you need to import desperate migrants , they think like that and keep all the cheap services going.

with the exception of melbourne, which has had way too much lockdown and a service based economy, all i can see is us hitting our vax targets, opening all restrictions, and avoiding all the death and chaos everyone else got.

it will be very mundane, the year that the upper middle class didnt get their european holidays, the horror.

A government which claims legitimacy upon health, safety and the environment is one capable of everything yet incapable of achieving anything.

[noddy]

yeh, I cant really parse that.

[noddy]

we need our borders locked because our health system was running at 100% capacity BEFORE covid hit, their is no fat in the system to scale up.

this is well known, their is no "legitimacy upon health, safety" their is just the fact that neither I, nor many others, wanted to pay more for healthcare insurance for the last 100 years, just in case their was a pandemic.


now we need to backfill, and adjust the situation for the new reality - so thats a heavy vaccine rollout and more healthcare funding.

its not being imposed on anyone, in my country this is normal tax payer funded services, our government isnt a hostile 3rd party, its a thing we give taxes too and then demand services back - all the squabbling is over which services get which funding

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

we need our borders locked because our health system was running at 100% capacity BEFORE covid hit, their is no fat in the system to scale up.

this is well known, their is no "legitimacy upon health, safety" their is just the fact that neither I, nor many others, wanted to pay more for healthcare insurance for the last 100 years, just in case their was a pandemic.


now we need to backfill, and adjust the situation for the new reality - so thats a heavy vaccine rollout and more healthcare funding.

its not being imposed on anyone, in my country this is normal tax payer funded services, our government isnt a hostile 3rd party, its a thing we give taxes too and then demand services back - all the squabbling is over which services get which funding

There is no legitimacy based upon "health, safety and the environment" then we move to "it's the government function for us to squabble over"

That being said, I got the quote wrong (bolded below):

Ecology isn’t just the logic of total economy, it’s also the new morality of Capital.
The system’s state of internal crisis and the rigorous selection going on are such
that we will need a new criteria to operate such sorting with. From one era to the
next, the idea of virtue was never more than an invention of vice. Without ecology,
how could we have today the existence of two different food channels, one “healthy
and organic” for the rich and their children, and the other notoriously toxic for the
plebes and their offspring, damned to obesity. The planetary hyper-bourgeoisie
couldn’t make their ordinary lifestyle look respectable if its latest caprices weren’t so
scrupulously “respectful of the environment.” Without ecology, no one would have
enough authority anymore to shut up any and all objections to the exorbitant
progress of control.
Tracking, transparency, certification, eco-taxes, environmental excellence, water
police, all give us an idea of the coming state of ecological emergency. Everything
is permitted to a power structure that authorizes itself to act as the representative of
Nature, health, and well-being.
“Once the new economic and behavioral culture has passed into common morality,
coercive measures will doubtless fall into disuse of their own accord.” You’d have to
have all the ridiculous aplomb of a television adventure show host to have such a
frozen perspective and at the same time to call upon us to feel “sorry for the planet”
enough to get mobilized about it and yet remain sufficiently anesthetized to watch
the whole thing with restraint and civility. The new eco-asceticism is precisely that
self-control that is required of us all to negotiate the rescue operation for what the
system itself has taken hostage. In the name of ecology, we must all now tighten
our belts, as yesterday we did so in the name of the economy. The roads could
certainly be transformed into bicycle paths, we ourselves could perhaps within a
certain scope be one day gratified with a guaranteed income, but only at the price of
an entirely therapeutic existence. Those who claim that generalized self-control will
spare us from an environmental dictatorship are lying: the one will make the other’s
bed, and we’ll have both.

[noddy]

Nothing new about it.

Sin taxes on grog and smokes, bans on drugs, public funded healthcare.

Roles of government all over the world my entire life.

Rolling the new wokeling environment stuff into that seems disengenious.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

we need our borders locked because our health system was running at 100% capacity BEFORE covid hit, their is no fat in the system to scale up.

this is well known, their is no "legitimacy upon health, safety" their is just the fact that neither I, nor many others, wanted to pay more for healthcare insurance for the last 100 years, just in case their was a pandemic.


now we need to backfill, and adjust the situation for the new reality - so thats a heavy vaccine rollout and more healthcare funding.

its not being imposed on anyone, in my country this is normal tax payer funded services, our government isnt a hostile 3rd party, its a thing we give taxes too and then demand services back - all the squabbling is over which services get which funding

I don't know how I can make this clearer, in all seriousness:

I have zero qualms with anything Australia is doing (as a whole).

I have no opinion about what is going on in Victoria either.

We can keep going in circles about how okay Australia is going to be.

I believe it, fully. I believe locking down your borders was the right move and you guys have saved tens of thousands of lives that way.

And I have no opinion about your health care system-- things like that are way beyond my judgement or interest.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Nothing new about it.

Sin taxes on grog and smokes, bans on drugs, public funded healthcare.

Roles of government all over the world my entire life.

Rolling the new wokeling environment stuff into that seems disengenious.

My point (and what I read from the text) was that broadly, it's the only thing left to any of these governments. To what degree is where it differs.

At the same time we are in need of uniformity, and so we (and I mean we as in the US) have some bizarre tantrums to go with tv scolds...

...like I said the other day, unable to go about it communally.

============================

Even the sin taxes though are now immediately in the health category...no longer sins and not even culturally verboten either. We are free, as long as we understand that health is our obligation and shall be enforced come hell or highwater.

but for me, this is sort of compartmentalized with the pressing concern of a novel airborne virus.

The situation is between a rock and a hard place.

[noddy]

Aah yes , sorry, as i said i couldnt parse it and it smelt a bit bumper stickery freedom (tm)

The chaotic multi cultural, government is an imposed hostile force thing leaves the basics of community impossible for things beyond the scope of friends and family. Everyone else is an 'other'


It has its upsides, most of the time we dont need a coherant community, so these issues dont show up.


But for my perspective, no point in playing the mountain man card, while living in urbanity.

As for the rise of the corporate government save the world thing.
I have an uncomfortable relationship with the environmental mandates.

My solution and perception is not politically viable, which leaves me incoherant