“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."
Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950
Harry S. Truman
Image by jorono from Pixabay
News from the former (and now again) prison colony.
When I suggested to a (Australian expat) friend about legal measures,
he answered with these links:
The high court has unanimously rejected the constitutional challenge against Victoria’s lockdown.
The case, brought by the hotelier Julian Gerner, unsuccessfully sought to argue that the Australian constitution contains an implied freedom of movement for any reason.
Supreme court rejects Victorian anti-lockdown protester’s legal challenge
A legal challenge to Covid-19 stay-at-home orders brought by a woman who protested against Victoria’s second wave lockdown has been dismissed.
On Tuesday the Victorian supreme court rejected Kerry Cotterill’s case, finding neither the orders nor the Public Health and Wellbeing Act breached the implied freedom of political communication.
Australian court upholds ban on most international travel
An Australian court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to the federal government’s draconian power to prevent most citizens from leaving the country so that they don’t bring COVID-19 home.
Australia is alone among developed democracies in preventing its citizens and permanent residents from leaving the country except in “exceptional circumstances” where they can demonstrate a “compelling reason.”
Most Australians have been stranded in their island nation since March 2020 under a government emergency order made under the powerful Biosecurity Act.
“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”
Karl Marx
Image by Nika Akin from Pixabay
“There are so many different forms of silence: the silence that tyrannical states force on their citizens, stealing their memories, rewriting their histories, and imposing on them a state-sanctioned identity. Or the silence of witnesses who choose to ignore or not speak the truth, and of victims who at times become complicit in the crimes committed against them. Then there are the silences we indulge in about ourselves, our personal mythologies, the stories we impose upon our real lives.”
Azar Nafisi
should you not be on the blockchain, or have no upvote power, or this post is already older than 7 days, you can always just buy me a coffee.
