[Note: This column was initially published by Renew America]
If you haven’t been paying attention to the COVID lockdown restrictions being inflicted upon the citizens of Victoria, Australia (largest city, Melbourne), it’s time to start.
As of September 3, 2020, Victoria (population 6.5 million) had recorded a grand total of 591 deaths allegedly from COVID-19. That’s 9/1000 of one percent of the population.
On August 2, in response to the nearly infinitesimal odds that COVID might prove fatal for his countrymen, the Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, declared a State of Disaster, placing rigid restrictions on citizens’ activities and setting in motion domestic policing and surveillance operations so suffocating as to rival those carried out by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party).
In addition to mandatory masking and social distancing regulations, residents of Melbourne are now required to stray no further than 5 kilometers (just over 3 miles) from their homes, and a strict curfew has been put in place forbidding them to leave their homes at all between the hours of 8 pm and 5 am unless doing so for work, to receive medical care, or to serve as a caregiver.
As part of the declaration, playgrounds, various parks, as well as golf and tennis facilities have been closed, and people are no longer allowed to exercise outdoors in groups larger than two, and that includes members of the same family living in the same household.
As reported by The Guardian:
The state of disaster declaration will empower the police minister, Lisa Neville, to appoint police as authorised officers. This means when doing spot checks on people’s homes, if the residents did not give permission for them to enter, police will be authorised to enter without a warrant.
Reports of police doing random house-to-house checks, knocking on doors to verify that no one has broken curfew, have been widely circulated, with violators subject to a fine of $1,652.
As an indication of just how serious Victorian authorities are about enforcing the lockdown, the police are about to launch a drone surveillance program that will enable them to identify and track down violators.
According to 7 News Australia, the drones will be equipped with infrared cameras that are able to read license plates from as far away as five football fields, with the aim of catching those who might dare to venture beyond the allowable 5-kilometer travel zone.
The drones will also be employed to make certain that places like skate parks and playgrounds remain empty and, of course, to seek out, apprehend and punish the unmasked.
If all of this isn’t breathtaking enough (no pun intended), consider the story of Zoe Buhler, a pregnant 28-year-old mother of two, who was recently handcuffed and taken from her home by police simply for posting a “Freedom Day” event on Facebook in protest against Victoria’s brutal lockdown measures.
Difficult though it is to watch, a video of Buhler’s arrest can be seen in the following report from 9 News Melbourne. Please, do yourself a favor and take a look.
As you watched this magnificent abuse of authority, were you sickened at the very real possibility that this exact sort of thing could happen to you and your family? If not, you should have been, but we’ll return to Buhler’s story momentarily.
The crackdown in Victoria is so entirely disproportionate to the alleged danger it supposes to address that it is perfectly clear that there is far more to this situation than just another regional government gone wild.
Indeed, Daniel Andrews is no ordinary provincial politician.
As the Premier of an Australian state, Andrews is roughly the equivalent of a governor in the United States. Given his aggressive promotion of “social policy wokeness; the politicization of the police; abortion and euthanasia; the tilt to the green-left and its associated climate activism” (Paul Collits, Quadrant Magazine, January 2020), he is perhaps most comparable, from both an authoritative and ideological standpoint, to Andrew Cuomo of New York. The two men also happen to share a dubious claim to membership in the Catholic Church.
With regard to their despotic response to COVID-19, however, Andrews leaves Cuomo in the dust.
In early May, when Victoria Health and Human Services were reporting that less than 20 persons in the entire state were hospitalized with COVID, and only about a dozen or so persons had died (allegedly) from the disease, the measures undertaken by Andrews made international headlines. As reported by MSN:
The Victorian government has “just done what China’s done” by locking up 3,000 people in housing commission towers in order to get on top of the state’s COVID-19 outbreak, according to Liberal Senator James McGrath.
Police moved in, on Saturday, to secure the nine public housing towers placed into a five-day mandatory lockdown by the Victorian government amid the state’s second major outbreak of COVID-19.
From ordering the police to enforce the sequestration of healthy citizens back in May, to the lockdown and surveillance operation presently underway, Andrews gives every appearance of a Western leader who is, as Senator James McGrath suggested, if not firmly in the pocket of the Communist Chinese, at the very least quite pleased to follow their lead.
For those who have been paying attention, this perhaps comes as little surprise. One of Andrews’ first orders of business upon being elected to his initial term in 2014 was to ingratiate himself with the People’s Republic of China. As stated on his Wikipedia page:
Upon his election, Andrews fast-tracked Victoria’s ties with the PRC. Firstly, he led a group of prominent Victorians to China on his first overseas trip, and promised to send his entire cabinet there during his first term.
At the start of his second term in office, Andrews “signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Chinese government under the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ in October 2018, but kept its details secret until he released it five weeks later. The MoU involves cooperation on facilities connectivity, unimpeded trade, finance, people-to-people bond[s], and the ‘Digital Silkroad.’” (ibid)
The Belt and Road Initiative is a $1.5 trillion development strategy, instituted by Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping in 2013, in order to entice various nations to participate in trans-continental infrastructure projects – including the construction of railways, roadways, communications and energy pipelines, etc. – that are aimed at ensuring China’s global economic dominance. Many nations, including the US, have voiced concerns about the initiative, which is targeted for completion in 2049, inasmuch as it would provide China with unprecedented leverage in matters of trade and diplomacy.
Daniel Andrews’ move to commit Victoria to Belt and Road was highly unusual as such matters, which weigh so heavily on foreign policy and national security, are typically handled on the federal level. In fact, Andrews has placed his state at odds with the Australian federal government, which thus far has refused to join the initiative.
While Belt and Road is ordered toward the promotion of China’s nationalistic aims, it would be a mistake to discount the initiative’s well-calculated contribution to the cause of globalism; in particular as it is enshrined in the United Nations manifesto, Agenda 2030. As noted by experts in Asia-Pacific geo-political trends:
The optimism of neoliberalism has been challenged by rising concerns about China playing a more active role in the United Nations (UN) and its specialized agencies. Currently, four of the 15 UN specialized agencies are headed by Chinese nationals, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDP), and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). And with its contribution rising to 12 percent of the UN regular budget, passing Japan at 8.5 percent, China is currently the second-largest monetary contributor to the UN.
China’s greater leadership role [in the United Nations] has triggered the suspicion that it might take advantage to transform the organizations in ways that fit its interests. The suspicion about China’s expanding role in the UN has solid foundations, as Beijing has been assimilating its grand geopolitical agenda, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), into the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), silencing the critics of its human rights record, providing monetary incentives to secure the support of other member states, and bringing more of its nationals into the UN. (Dr. Alan H. Yang and Tung Cheng-Chia of the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation, The Diplomat, April 2020 issue)
Enter COVID-19.
Early on, it appeared rather obvious to me and to many others that the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 is being leveraged by ambitious politicians and powerful globalists, with the aid of countless useful idiots, as a golden opportunity to bring entire nations and their economies to heel in service to the cause of globalism and the advent of a New World Order and One World Government.
In other words, it is my firm conviction that the primary motivation behind the implementation of lockdowns, masking mandates, social distancing regulations and civilian surveillance operations, etc. is not so much the protection and preservation of public health as it is to leverage their use in a real-world experiment, one that allows the globalists to refine their social control tools and techniques, while simultaneously revealing the degree to which those of us who live in a largely free society are willing to submit.
This brings us back to Australia.
Under the leadership of Sino-sympathizer, Daniel Andrews, the Chinese Communist Party and the United Nations have evidently been granted permission to use the State of Victoria as a sandbox for testing their social control methods. Paradoxically, these operations are increasing in severity even as the threat represented by COVID-19 continues to wane, which suggests that the globalists realize that the window of opportunity is closing and time, therefore, is of the essence.
The operations taking place in Victoria are being conducted in preparation for the day when it is considered opportune to foist similar social control initiatives upon other Western nations, with the United States being the biggest prize of all.
As Daniel Andrews (as well as any number of American mayors and governors) is proving, all it takes is a cooperative local health minister and complicit governor to get the ball rolling. That said, in order for the globalist cause to truly flourish, heads-of-state will also have to play along.
On this note, it’s becoming increasingly evident that Joe Biden, who has promised to push for a national mask mandate if elected, is the CCP’s candidate of choice in the upcoming US Presidential election.
According to Matthew Whitaker, the former Acting Attorney General of the United States, writing for Townhall:
It’s becoming increasingly evident that Joe Biden is China’s preferred candidate in the 2020 presidential election.
Several Chinese state-owned media outlets, including China Daily and the China Global Television Network (CGTN), have now expressed support for the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, a group of disaffected “NeverTrump” Republicans.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) affinity for Biden should not come as a great shock. The former vice president has been a great ally to China throughout his decades-long political career. As a senator, Biden voted to approve Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China back in 2000, granting China unprecedented access to America’s markets despite its abysmal record on human rights and brazen violation of international trade rules.
At this, recall the story of Zoe Buhler, the pregnant 28-year-old mother of two who was taken from her home in handcuffs by Victoria police over an anti-lockdown Facebook post.
So, tell me, have you considered the very real possibility that this exact sort of thing could happen to you and your family?
No way! This can’t happen in the US no matter who gets elected president! said the guy putting a suffocating facemask on his two-year old child.
Like Hell it can’t.
On August 15, several women in Costa Mesa, CA – right here in good Ol’ God Bless America – dared to enter a grocery store without a facemask. The store manager locked them inside and called the police.
Now, one might think that the police would have more important business with which to attend, but lo and behold, more than half-a-dozen uniformed officers descended upon the crime scene and promptly arrested the women, handcuffed them, and took them away in a paddy wagon. The events that unfolded outside of the store were captured on cellphone video HERE for those who may wish to see for themselves.
And this, my friends, is just one of many examples of US law enforcement officers grossly overreacting to COVID regulation violators. Still skeptical? Conduct a simple internet search and you’ll find plenty of evidence, if you dare.
In conclusion, I will end this cautionary column where it began:
If you haven’t been paying attention to the events unfolding in Victoria, Australia, it’s high time to start.
