The Will of the People has been replaced with a Rule by the Bureaucratic Class.
The Bureaucratic class dress themselves in fake charity — to help women and children, minorities, and trees, but these are the lies they tell themselves while they oppress the poor, raze the trees and use sexist, racist policies to line their pockets.
It’s a trend occurring all over the West. But nowhere was it more obvious when the people elected Donald Trump, and the all-knowing Bureaucrats did everything in their power to extinguish the people’s votes.
“I have witnessed the death of democracy” says Michael Pack, the man Donald Trump put in charge of the $850 million dollar institution called the U.S. Agency for Global Media which reaches 350 million people each week in 70 languages. Pack was selected two months after Trump took office, but the Democrats and bureaucrats stalled his appointment for three long years. Pack finally took office in June 2020. His experience exemplifies the control of the faceless Blob of Bureaucracy.
The Death of Democracy
In a sense, we all witnessed it. From the moment Donald Trump was elected president until the day he left office, government officials refused to follow his orders that conflicted with their own views, in spite of their obligation to serve whoever is president. The permanent bureaucracy felt they knew better. After all, they were experts, while the president, in their estimation, was an ignoramus, or worse, unfit for office.
My goal, my only goal, was to return the news services to their legally mandated mission: to report news that is “accurate, objective, and comprehensive” (in the words of the VOA charter, which is U.S. law), and to promote American ideals like democracy and human rights around the world. In this modest, nonpartisan goal, I was doomed from the start. The USAGM permanent bureaucracy was ready to undermine every move of my administration, with the help of their allies in the media, Congress, and the courts, as well as pro bono lawyers. After all, they had been preparing for years while my nomination languished.
The Voice of America ran a repackaged advert for Joe Biden during an election year, with no context, as if it were reporting.
Everyone knew this violated the VOA charter, which is U.S. law that we all are required to uphold, and possibly other campaign and broadcasting laws. When we called this to the VOA’s attention, they took it down, though reluctantly. A week later, we discovered an audio version was still available. As CEO, I decided to launch an investigation to determine who was responsible …
When is the law, not the law. Whenever it suits the bureaucracy:
However, never before I became CEO had there been any consequences for breaking the law. My inquiry was a shock to the system, but I felt I had to uphold the law.
My actions were immediately attacked by the legacy media and by concerned congressmen, all in touch with the people I had fired. They charged that I was interfering with journalists and, once again, trying to turn the VOA into Trump TV.
Lies go unpunished:
One reporter mocked me for saying that the VOA spot was targeted at getting out the Muslim vote in Michigan for Biden, citing how few Urdu speakers there are in Michigan. But the VOA spot was in English, as he well knew, and he also knew that his readers would not know this.
Those who show no respect for taxpayers, voters or the President are promoted to spend more taxpayer dollars to show less respect…
The most senior person responsible was Kelu Chao, then the head of VOA language services. In her case, I merely gave her a verbal reprimand that did not appear in her personnel file. She, too, immediately signed on to a suit against us, alleging a violation of her first amendment rights. Today, she has been rewarded by the Biden administration and is the acting CEO of USAGM, my old position. All others involved in this scandalous misuse of taxpayer funds have been rehired and many promoted.
This is only one of a long list of similar stories. In short, there was no way for me, a Senate-confirmed agency head, to assume authority over this mid-sized agency. The permanent bureaucracy and their allies simply would not permit it. Bad as it was for me, it is so much worse at bigger agencies like the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the intelligence agencies. No matter that Donald Trump was the duly elected president of the United States, federal bureaucrats did not accept that. After all, they knew better how to run the country, so that is what they did. This is tyranny, pure and simple — government by unelected bureaucrats, subverting the will of the majority.
Pack does not think the two most obvious plans to claw back standards or balance can succeed:
The first group says the problem is that Donald Trump did not get enough qualified, experienced, government professionals in key political appointments soon enough. Next time, we need to have a government in waiting, ready to serve. Surely, this is a good idea, but far from sufficient. In my agency of 4,000 people, I could bring in about 10 political appointees. We were outnumbered 400-to-1.
Pretty much all mid and senior level bureaucrats are partisan open political agents.
Even immediate mass firings are unlikely to work:
I highly doubt that this ambitious objective could be achieved, given the size and nature of the modern federal bureaucracy. Government bureaucrats have powerful civil service protections. In eight months, I could not fire a handful of people whom career adjudicators recommended terminating for cause, such as gross mismanagement leading to security lapses. I put them on administrative leave with pay and then started the process of removal. All have been brought back.
Even if the new administration could institute a 30% across-the-board cut, the wrong people would likely be fired. The best at scheming, the most committed ideologues, are the most skilled in surviving reductions in force.
Many of these institutions are beyond saving, and need razing and rebuilding. But when any part of the Bureaucratic Blob is attacked, all parts of the blob fight back. Cancel one institution and the rest will march in the streets, fearing they will be next.
That doesn’t mean we can’t split the hydra, setting up new institutions in parallel — ones with good people, clear focus, to hire good people. But we need to think carefully about the incentives. All organizations funded by Big Government will always and inevitably become tools to promote Big Government. Perhaps they all need a limited span, an end date. Perhaps Government jobs need a term limit and the Head of a national Health Body shouldn’t be allowed 30 years to build an empire? Just for starters…
Even better, without hunting for more rules on top of rules, what we all really want is just Real Media. With better mass media, we’d get better politicians and get rid of cheating Department Heads, who served themselves.
Think about how we make that happen. We know it could be a smashing ratings success.
The People still outnumber the Rulers:
So, what can be done? The good news is that about half of Americans know, in their gut, that the government no longer represents the will of the people. They need to rise up and demand an end to this tyranny. We did it before, in 1776. This time, we have a constitution and a rule of law, so we don’t need an armed revolution, but we do need an unarmed one, a peaceful democratic revolution. If a large majority of the people forcefully demand change and reflect this at the ballot box in a clear mandate, then and only then reform can come. Democracy will then return, and we will once again have a government of, for, and by the people. Many gave their lives for this. Now, it is our turn.
People need to stop hoping they can vote for one knight in shining armor to save them. No one man can defeat the Green-blob, the Bureaucrat Web, — whatever we want to call them, on his own. The March through the Institutions took decades and a concerted effort by a million footsoldiers. It takes a movement. But a movement is just a few percent of the population who are very very determined and who believe it can be done.
h/t to David E who also adds this ancient bit of television. Art in it’s purest form. The series Yes Minister never mentioned “Labour” or “Conservative” because it was not about one party versus the other but about the Bureaucrats versus the Politicians. That’s part of the shell game. The People are taught to see one or other Party as the enemy, when the real adversary rules from behind the curtain.
Errata: Apologies. Michael Peck corrected to Michael Pack.
The ABC here in Australia exemplifies this situation, with the “staff collective” there basically putting out a distorted Leftist and false view of the world in the “reporting”.
At one stage I pressured the ABC over its appalling and one sided “climate change” reporting, and, in writing, got an admission that they would NEVER run any stories that were counter to “the consensus of science”, which the ABC obviously interprets to be the alarmist view.
What disgusts me is that after some assistance in actually getting responses from the ABC my Federal member, Stuart Robert, then proceeded to do absolutely nothing with this clear breach of the ABC Charter, set up to ensure independence and lack of bias. The problem is not just the Left, its the fact that so many “conservatives” simply will not fight and call a spade a spade.
On the shocking covid response we see across this country we see virtually no conservatives speaking out about values they supposedly hold dear; Freedom of speech, human rights, right of free movement & commerce, small business etc.
No, the problem here is just as much conservatives who will not fight, will not stand up and will not take any risk at all as the appalling Left.
The issue here is that unless WE say enough is enough and actually do something, there is nobody else who will do it for us.
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“The problem is not just the Left, its the fact that so many “conservatives” simply will not fight and call a spade a spade….No, the problem here is just as much conservatives who will not fight, will not stand up and will not take any risk at all as the appalling Left.”
It’s a Uni-party. Republicans, Democrats, Labor, Liberals, Greens, blues, reds, and so forth is just window dressing. And the Uni-party represents the respective administrative states, not the citizens.
During the 2012 USA elections this became painfully clear as it became apparent that Mitt Romney’s policy agenda would have been no different than Obama’s in practice. When Trump pulled the US out of Paris, Romney echoed Hillary Clinton as being “so irresponsible.” The exact same language.
At the Biden inauguration George Bush put his arm around Biden and said in “Thank’s for getting rid of Trump.” When the Late Rush Limbaugh reported on this conversation in one of his final broadcasts, I just shook my head in disgust.
Then Liz Cheney showed her true disgraceful (yellow) colors. Wyoming Republicans just kicked Liz out of the party, so she can now represent the Uni-party with at pretenses.
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At the Biden inauguration George Bush put his arm around Biden and said in effect:
so she can now represent the Uni-party without pretenses.
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Without honest elections, politicians and bureaucrats are not accountable to anybody.
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Yes, but even with honest elections, politicians and bureaucrats are not accountable to anybody.
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Police?
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Be a better troll. Somewhere else.
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Really! You want to go there? Police where I come form are employees of the local municipality. The are accountable to local elected leaders and in turn to me as a resident.
Are you hinting at support of no police and are you prepared to back that ideation up with solid evidence that we on average will be safer without “police”?
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As truth states in 1.1.3, the media is the key.
An independent media provides the oversight necessary to keep politicians, bureaucrats and other public servants (somewhat) honest.
A subservient, controlled or complicit media allows unchecked corruption at every level of society.
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But many of those calling themselves conservatives..in the US and here are not conservatives at all but RINOs there and LINOs here …..they want to be seen as part of the Left’s bogus noble pose and ‘progressive’ tag…the instant glow of being seen as ‘on the side of the angels’…and the modernizers….but they also want to benefit from the reality of the policy that stands the test of time but gets little instant credit….is often sneered at as ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘stuck in the 50s’…the conservative economic and family-preserving policies that have traditionally kept America and Australia strong democratic and people-friendly.
But what’s always a constant with these fence-sitters…is that it’s all about them….all about ensuring that their own personal fragile psyches are salved by the certainty that they’ll be depicted by their Leftist media enablers and handlers as ‘compassionate’.
I’ve said it thousands of times…ad nauseam…the media is the absolute key.
With the rise in status of the Social Sciences came the quickening of the Long March of the Left through the Institutions that anyone who has studied the influences in US and Australian education over the last four decades and its origins in the Frankfurt School of Germany…and also in Brazil’s Paolo Freire…has long watched…worried and railed about… as the juggernaut relentlessly continues on its evil path.
With the Long March everywhere, came the infestation [as I see it] of Marxism into the universities and along with it the Left’s determination to move teacher education [K-12] and journalism into the universities where the Marxists could more easily indoctrinate and recruit to the Marxist cause every new wave of entrants into those two core professions….numbers of whom also end up in the bureaucracies….completing the set.
Anything that can be done to restore the system to a democratic one has to somehow solve the problem of the enormous overarching power …power to elevate or annihilate democratically-elected leaders according to their own whim…….that’s now been placed in the hands of the very often narrowly-informed…amoral and shallow gossip/gotcha class of ‘journalist’ …especially those attaining television talking head status …who are paid huge money to titillate, misinform and activate…while casually destroying lives.
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Fabulous, fabulous, “Truth”! Yes – during their March through the institutions they have caused incredible division & damage to education and media studies. Both of these were significant targets for them – since they are incubators of thought and principles.
Sad to say, we did not put up a fight of any distinction. I can say from personal experience that the hostility, insolence and lack of principles of the Marxists was shocking to behold & very u settling. If you think that sounds “prissy” I can assure you that I am not. Some of us put up a good resistance and delayed their success. But clearly the fight was lost by others.
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I’ve said it thousands of times…ad nauseam…the media is the absolute key.”
Perhaps the media may be changing.
Fox News boss Rupert Murdoch has said Donald Trump should stop focusing “on the past” in a rare public rebuke of the former US president.
On Wednesday addressing the annual meeting of stockholders for News Corp Murdoch said: “The current American political debate is profound, whether about education or welfare or economic opportunity.
“It is crucial that conservatives play an active, forceful role in that debate, but that will not happen if President Trump stays focused on the past. The past is the past, and the country is now in a contest to define the future.”
Murdoch, who is also co-chair of Fox news parent Fox Corporation, has made few public comments about Trump, whose presidency was championed by most of Fox’s biggest commentators. Since his defeat Trump has continued to push unfounded conspiracy theories that the election was “stolen” by Joe Biden, who beat Trump by a margin of more than 7m votes.
Until now the 90-year-old media mogul has publicly stayed out of the fray and not commented on the election. But according to Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff in private he has called Trump “a king idiot”.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/nov/17/rupert-murdoch-donald-trump-stop-focusing-on-the-past
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What you now have faith in an old guy?
Fauchi/Murdoch Same story and both older than Trump. Why don’t you support the younger leaders?
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By the way Ian, a strategic lesson for you: If you dare to call Trump “idiot” you are now branding yourself as, well, oblivious for starters. After that I get moderated.
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I specified the almost all Leftist journalists…but not quite all journalists are of the Left…not yet anyway.
You seem to be hoping for that to happen though.
How can you consider yourself a serious person with any values of fairness…democracy…freedom of the individual etc …and wish the present situation to become even more unbalanced and irrational?
The ABC for instance…do you truly think it’s right that the ABC is permitted to break the law year after year by using [and demanding more]…taxpayers’ money to shut out from employment there the approximately half or more of that taxpaying population that pays their exorbitant salaries….who happen to be conservatives…to ban those wanting to put forward the conservative assessment of the CAGW issue from their publications like The Conversation…for ‘our’ ABC to campaign for all the issues of the Left and actively work to damage the
LNP and anyone connected to them…to get Labor elected?
Unlike you apparently…I don’t think Rupert Murdoch is infallible….far far from it.
He did fall into Wendy Deng’s trap after all.
Maybe he’s not interested in Americans being able to be confident that their election system isn’t rorted and elections stolen by the Far Left Democrats and their Deep State and BigTech mercenaries.
Maybe Murdoch won’t mind if America moves closer to civil war because half the population feels there’s no other recourse since powerful people are not prepared to protect the electoral system and democracy.
I would hate to think it …but many business leaders in the past have facilitated totalitarian regimes and Fascism has the behemoths of big business at its core.
In BidenInc’s America full-on Fascism seems to be on an unstoppable roll.
Hopefully, Murdoch’s not assisting the juggernaut.
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So long as the Left wing ‘journalists’ retain and increase their power…no insanity will be beyond them…and nothing will stand in their way.
Brendan Nelson tried valiantly to return Australian education to its former rating as one of… if not THE… best in the world…by eliminating the post-modern claptrap and providing the fundamental basis in maths and literacy for higher education ….but the unions …bureaucrats and LW journalists including some who now pretend to be conservatives….wouldn’t allow it.
Ian…maybe you can explain to a conservative how the far Left mind works…and how it justifies the mayhem and atrocities its ideology foments…before it moves on to the next indulgence…because out of the Frankfurt School Marxist ideology came the Bader-Meinhof murderous terrorists and the sinister Kinderladen Movement that promoted the madness that children should be sexualized from birth …and so within that movement children were made available to all kinds of deranged adults including pedophiles…and prominent in the movement were German Green Left politicians.
The Kinderladen Movement wasn’t shut down until the late 1980s and at least one politician involved… who proudly published a book about his personal sexual experiences with toddlers in the movement…. is pontificating about everything else with authority on the German media to this day…unfettered apparently by any questions about his judgement and morality….let alone by the law.
So long as the Media is in the grip of the Left….your children are never safe…one way or another the Left is always coming for them.
A Left wing media that has the overarching power and thereby wields the sword that can annihilate any innocent person …even a Prime Minister or President …at its whim….always allows monsters free rein.
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Ian, you paint Rupert Murdoch as some sort of James Bond type supervillain in the mould of Elliot Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies – the character was almost certainly based on Murdoch.
Yet you assiduously ignore the vast array of left wing leaning media arrayed against Murdoch’s empire eg CNN, MSNBC, BBC, ABC, The Guardian, The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Fairfax – the list is endless.
While Murdoch may have pioneered by slanting media coverage towards the conservative view, pretty the entirety of the remaining outlets reacted in kind by slanting their viewpoint to the left. Both sides have become increasingly polarised but the dominance of the left is such that they don’t even pretend to provide any opportunity for conservatives to present their views. Any time conservatives appear on left wing television in interviews or discussion panels, they get cut off, ignored and gaslighted.
In contrast, the much maligned flagship conservative Fox presenter, Tucker Carlson, while heavily conservative in his editorial, openly invites the left to present their reasoning. That they invariably make fools of themselves while trying to justify their contorted logic isn’t his fault.
Ultimately, the clearest information is now presented via the alternate media, especially publishers on substack. The very obvious leftist bias in the MSM can be seen by the number of left leaning journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Bari Weiss who abandoned lucrative MSM careers to write independently and who’s articles are almost universally critical of the mainstream left.
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“Nothing to see there. Just Move along”.
For the full “past” details on how the 2020 election was stolen see:
https://peternavarro.com/the-navarro-report/
For full context of that “past” which Murdoch and all his Globalist plutocrat tycoonidiot chronies would like to hide & have us all forget, click here to Look Inside and/or buy Navarro’s recent book:
“In Trump Time”
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The problem with speaking out against this erosion of our freedom is getting a PLATFORM. I have been writing letters to a national newspaper for a good 30 years now & have had many many published on various issues. Of late, since I have been expressing dissent against the vaccination mandates, very few are now accepted. So, except for social media, such as represented by this amazing blog of Jo’s, it is nigh impossible to reach a wider audience than one’s immediate family, friends and workmates. The dissenting organisations which are springing up must be joined, despite their limitations, if we are to have a voice. All of us should also contribute to the expensive law suits that are currently challenging the violations of basic rights.
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[Off topic]AD
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[Off topic]AD
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We have the same problem in Australia, the democratically elected government has been overthrown by the public service. Now, all senior positions in the Department of Governance/Governing are occupied by public service appointees (ScoMo, Frydenberg, Birmingham et al.).
You only have to see the risk averse, indecisive way they govern with no conviction on anything to see that our government has very few politicians left in it and is mostly just public servants. This will only get worse with time as they now appoint their colleagues to their MP positions when they retire.
It is the same for both major parties.
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Much the same in Australia because the Left follow the same rule book.
Here is a nice rant by James Morrow about how Aussies no longer support freedom, or do they? (6 mins)
https://youtu.be/vS8ciHV6tIk
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An example of the Australian bureaucracy working something 99% of Aussies would be unaware of and probably a very high percentage would not be happy with.
https://www.nutritruth.org/single-post/australia-s-national-action-planfor-health-security2019-2023
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yes and probably had no oversight from our ‘elected representatives’ now redefined as “useless eaters” a term apparently coined at the WEF, no not the World Enlightenment for Freedom organisation but our so called betters at the world economic forum. I keep saying to my dwindling group of critical thinkers that we have lived through the best of times but now its up to the younger ones to fight on which they must do for their children’ futures.
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The right wing in Australia run the risk of being named Nazi.
‘Far-right protester charged amid talk of killing Victorian Premier.
‘Some neo-Nazi figures are seeking not only to attend rallies, but to organise, recruit and radicalise other protesters.’ (SMH)
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Standard operating procedure of pop culture and the media. Conservatives are openly labelled as white supremists in America now.
For many years now skeptical scientists have been labelled as consp1rcy thoery-ists. It is double speak, of course. Climategate was a consp1rcy fact.
Liz Cheney openly labels any of those who question the integrity of elections, or the authority of the bureaucracy, as consp1rcy thoery-ists.
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The Marxist takeover of the institutions is happening in all developed economies and unfortunately it’s now in its completion phase. Trumps unexpected election to power in 2016 caused a great panic as it threatened to derail their agenda. Their response was to get Trump removed from office by impeachment with a fake dossier and when that failed they released COVID as an act of biological warfare to manage the electoral outcome. The deaths of millions of people was the collateral damage but it worked and they have now secured power. I have always been of the opinion that the last free and fair election in the USA was in 2016 and the Marxists will now control every election going forward by manipulating votes. You can see how they reacted to attempts by the GOP to get voter ID laws passed, which was a big giveaway to their game plan of using mail-in ballots to boost numbers next election. The other parts of their plan are to open the border to millions of illegals and allow them to vote and also to kill the economy and create a large group of people dependent of welfare handouts. We see both of these strategies being played out right now.
People need to understand that the Marxists play dirty and will venture well below the gutter to do what it takes to gain power. They have now infiltrated all sides of government as we see in Britain and even down here with the likes of Turnbull and Kean. The only way to defeat this disease is by removing the infection in the institutions, which includes schools, universities, government departments and the state media. The problem is that this infection has been growing for over 30 years and it’s now impossible to stop the full blown disease phase. Basically we need to hope that enough people rebel and rise up from the ashes of the poverty and misery that follows and also hope that we don’t get overtaken by China when we hit bottom in a few years.
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Serge, you are right in every aspect. Many of us have been watching this happen for a generation and some of us attempted push-back. I can tell you from experience that it was not a pleasant experience. The Marxists are committed, formidable opponents. They are right through the public service and, as a result, have their hands on some pretty important levers. MPs, including Ministers, may think they are in control. They are not.
The very principles and scruples that conservatives and mid right Left have, work against them against them in the struggle to maintain the primacy of accepted ideals of our heritage.
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They can afford to be … they don’t have real jobs.
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Here in Australia the Bureaucrats are led from the Top
Sicktoria
An Expression of Contempt for the Electorate
16th November 2021
Among the many consequences of the making of a pandemic order is that, at the Premier’s command, any individual in Victoria will be at risk of being detained, having his or her movements restricted, and being moved from place to place. The Premier will have power to prohibit gatherings, whether public or private, in a pandemic management area. The Premier will also have power to compel the provision of information (including about the identity of any person) and documents or to require the keeping of records, and any individual will risk detention for a refusal or failure to undergo a medical examination or a medical test. The proposed new regime can be extended for as long as the Premier forms the requisite state of mind and infringements of it attract extremely harsh penalties.
It seems an odds-on certainty that very few Victorians will have read (or are ever likely to read) the Statement of Compatibility with the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (the Charter) prepared in accordance with section 28 of the Charter and which was tabled in the Legislative Assembly on 26 October immediately prior to the introduction of the Pandemic Management Bill.
If its website is a reliable guide, the the Victorian Equal Opportunities and Human Rights Commission appears so far not to have expressed any concerns about the scope of the Bill. The likely explanation (or part of it) is the little-noticed fact that a pandemic order may apply to, differentiate between or vary in its application to persons or classes of person identified by their characteristics, or by an “attribute” not limited to the meaning of that discriminatory measure as used in the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act 2010. Nowadays, in the context of identity politics ideology, the word “privilege” is a term of abuse. However, in substance, if the Bill passes into law its treatment of persons by reason of attributes and characteristics will be capable of operating in a manner inconsistent with the rule of law.
If, as its supporters must assert, the Bill as passed unamended in the lower house is fully compatible with the Charter, Victorians will be entitled to conclude that the Charter is worse than useless.
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Bureaucrats at Work in Sicktoria
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The Republic died on Jan 20, 2021, the inauguration of Joe Biden.
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It died the day that SCOTUS refused to hear the arguments or examine the evidence about the fraudulent election. That made the inauguration a done deal.
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And all the other courts that refused to properly examine evidence of the fraudulent election.
Plus the propagandists of the media who said claims of fraud had no basis.
If the Dems, courts and media thought there was no fraud, they wouldn’t have feared a proper examination of the election results.
And SCOTUS in particular violated one of its most fundamental duties of maintaining the integrity of elections. They should have examined the evidence and not formed a conclusion of no fraud.
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Compliance and enforcement
If you suspect non-compliance in relation to therapeutic goods, you can report illegal or questionable practices online to the TGA.
The TGA also encourages the reporting of suspected non-compliant advertising.
If you have concerns about health practitioners, please notify the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency(link is external) (AHPRA).
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Capture the Great Reset.
Reset the election process to community controlled pencil & paper.
Reset the term limits to 2 x 2 year terms.
Reset to where our elected representatives are compensated not remunerated.
Reset to where Parties are not funded out of the public purse.
The deep state controls the Parliament by pre-selecting a conga-line of suck holes to a station above their pay grade to do a job of self promotion not representation.
Representation is a community service not a career!
A simple reset. Hanson, Newman or Kelly could easily stand on this ticket and win over a majority of Australians.
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There was a time back when Joe Hockey was Federal Australian Treasurer that a line was crossed. There was a stat produced that showed more than 50 % of Australian households were receiving some form of government assistance. So pensions, unemployment benefits would be the bulk of that. Now throw in all the people who work for government in society. Local, state and federal. There is a huge “blob” of people reliant on government either as direct salary or benefits. Hence, the reaction to any major event like COVID – the “government should do something about it”, is the usual reply. This blob love big government. Its why so many people actually liked COVID lockdowns. For starters most pensioners probably didn’t see any great change to their lifestyles. Public servants love working from home. I’m not sure we are ever going to get all of them back to an office. When we elect politicians like Campbell Newman or Jeff Kennett/ Ted Baillieu to rationalise the public service (eg. TAFE) we vote them out. So, the bureaucrats ,with the help of politicians keep hiring more public servants. But, not extra workers in health- where we probably need them the most!! Then worse still, they get salary increases during COVID. Its been a slow creep- a blob. Somehow we need to find a way to creep it back. Not sure how.
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There are far more net wealth consumers than net wealth producers in Australia.
I think the statistic is something like only about 20% of Australians are net wealth producers. Maybe not even that.
Take away all those who are too young or too old to work, who are public serpents or who are welfare recipients and it doesn’t leave many people to work, produce net wealth and pay taxes to support everyone else.
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Indeed Aussies love government handouts. We really are quite socialist at the core. Even my mother, who is an ardent old aussie social conservative, loves the part pension she gets. She even sacrifices passive potential income so she can get it.
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Let’s go, Brandon!
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It has taken a pandemic to really reveal the power of the bureaucracy in western governments – perhaps best illustrated in Australia, of all places.
“ The Health advice” has been the mantra of the most serious attack on personal liberty in this country in generations. There is no area of knowledge and expertise that should not be open to criticism and analysis. Yet there has been NONE that was permitted during this pandemic.
Worse still, the media, our so-called guardians of information, were complicit in the closing down of debate.
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It comes back to the universities …..now that journalism is taught by Marxists in the universities, the impressionable youngsters who have been fed mush by the Marxist teachers at high school, are having their brains filled with indoctrinated babble and become intellectually lobotomised.
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The state-run propaganda broadcaster here introduced a batch of newbies mid-p!andemic, fresh out of Indoctrination School, or I.S. for short. The masculine wimmin all speak ‘fry’, as in croaky, raspy voices, while the emasculated boysss all have lisps (lithpth) and/or sound like excitable 12-year-old girls… or they’re English, Irish, Scottish, Chinese, Pasifika, etc., who speak beautiful, fluent Te Reo Maori yet mangle and butcher New Zealanglish to the point of being indecipherable… but maybe that’s the purpose: babble-on Babylon.
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Vicki – unfortunately behind paywall but Daily Telegraph
Australia Covid travel guide: Where you can and can’t go these Christmas holidays
Whether travelling in NSW or interstate, find out where you can go and what restrictions you’ll face with our ultimate summer travel guide.
Why would anyone bother trying to travel in NSW let alone Australia based on all the roadblocks outlined in the article
Encapsulated by the Comment
It appears that Australia is now made up of separate countries where to cross into another state you need a pass . How ridiculous when greater than90 % of people in NSW are double vaccinated . It is just as easy to travel O/S with the current restrictions
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Peck says “so we don’t need an armed revolution, but we do need an unarmed one, a peaceful democratic revolution.”
He is advocating the same old, same old. The Marxist thugs run the streets in the US (and to a smaller extent here) and no amount of “peaceful protesting” shall make a skerrick of difference to the our inexorable decline.
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How the people easily forget that the representatives we elect are not “RULERS”. Nor are they the ruling class. They are elected to uphold an already functioning governing system. Their job is the oversight and regulation of businesses and infrastructure that are confined within our national borders. It is their “JOB”, like any other. To perform to the best interests of the citizens, who elected them.
But what has happened over time is donating corporate bodies have had more influence in policy making in the way it benefits profits over people. Engaging in hostile wars for resources in other countries to feed the illusionary need for demand. These wars have driven up the cost of living and displaced millions of people globally creating the current issues now overburdening our underfunded, poorly managed infrastructure.
A minority of them, but not all of these corporate bodies, pay tax. Nor contribute to the wealth of its people. You all already know this! And this is a problem. Panama Papers & Pandora Papers. All heavily redacted by our own elected representatives. This is a crime.
What we have here in Australian Politics are some SYCOPHANTS who prey on our naivety, our good nature. Always Virtue Signaling pretentiously, whilst gorging a mass of wealth for themselves. Just look up, where retiring politicians are working now. Most of them are working for their previous and ongoing party donators and lobbyists.
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🙂
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If there is to be a solution, it probably lies in nullification.
In the states, our large states are fully the size of countries,
and very capable of operating in many areas without federal help.
In the natural state of affairs, the US government will face some interesting choices;
at 2-3 % interest rates the debt service interest will be about the same size as the
defense budget. One might save some money by axing completely, say, the department of
education…after all, each of the 50 states has a fully capable one, and in a choice
forced by limited funds such a thing might be possible…..not by the feds deleting the agency,
by a majority of states refusing to work with it ( possible, if one doesn’t take the funding).
Similarly the federal Highway folks, who actually build no highways.
An administration that funded defense, and refused to raise taxes, might have to make choices…..
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I was going to say that it’s an American problem, not ours, but since we a wholly-owned poodle of the US, I suppose it is our problem as well.
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Five Eyes… to see you better with. Or is it Six?
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This was written in 1946 by George Orwell (in response to James Burnham):
The difference with Trump is not that all of these things suddenly happened … but that Trump pulled back the cloak and made it all so OBVIOUS that it was happening.
What Orwell describes is fairly close to the definition of “Technocracy”.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/technocracy.asp
Thing is, the presumption was that some kind of merit based selection process would identify the “aristocracy of talent” … presumably based on who is genuinely good at doing their job. What keeps getting overlooked is that ultimately the people in leadership positions quite often do have great skill, but their main skill is in obtaining and holding that position, not in using their leadership to achieve any positive outcome.
If you are going to be able to identify talent, you must first have a process for deciding what kind of real world achievements would be regarded as proof that this person is talented. Take a look at our Prime Minister right now, what has he ever built with his hands? His entire career has been hanging around government and self-promotion to get into an ascending staircase of key positions. Now check out the opposition leader Anthony Albanese and his career is equally devoted to hanging around government looking for the most comfy chairs to sit his bum on.
What we have is only an “aristocracy of talent” to the extent that the talent is getting plum placements in government, not where “talent” means really doing anything. That’s why we have selected for ourselves the most hopeless bunch of leaders, only suited to arguing over whether the Comcar fleet should be white or dark grey … but of no use whatsoever in an emergency situation where difficult decisions must be made.
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Orwell was incredibly prescient. One of the amazing predictions he made was what he called the abolition of private property, without the socialist acquisition of that property, which did sound paradoxical.
What is already happening – and watch this – is the construction of apartment buildings (& in some cases housing estates) by large residential development companies. In the past, these were developed for sale, but what is starting to happen is that these will be FOR RENT. This will transfer home owners into renters. The continual escalation of house prices will ensure this transformation.
The stuff of fiction? Watch it happen & it has already started.
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You can return to democracy perhaps, but that won’t do you any good either. Demographic change and brainwashing of generations via the education system has that taken care of as well.
11 year olds are quite prepared to eat factory food, lab meat, microorganism milk, because they have zero interest in food and think it’s better to have wild nature than farms in order to save the world. Greens will soon campaign AGAINST natural foods.
Its not about democracy based on reason anymore. 50 years of leftist education is just about to mature. Democracy will be delivered, once its guaranteed to turn out how Sir Humphrey wants it to. And you will have to applaud it as it is pure democracy and democracy produces the best outcome. As we saw in 1984, even the hero ended up cheering on the rulers.
Perhaps the only way out of this sticky spot is taking control of the education system and work away over multiple generations? It’s what they did.
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It’s a good start, Philip. You are absolutely right.
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” … Government jobs need a term limit and the Head of a national Health Body shouldn’t be allowed 30 years to build an empire …”
Hear, Hear.
Not only government jobs, but the rules these bureaucrats make. Even laws should come with automatic expiry date and if they are to be re-enacted by the legislature, need to be fully debated and not just rubber stamped. In fact it should be harder to enact laws then to get rid of.
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The bureaucrats do not work for themselves but for their political masters. Most are leftists indoctrinated into the belief of “for the greater good” as a service to mankind.
But most if not all do not realize they are but useful idiots or tools in the service of the globalist elite who allow them to think that it is all for humanity and liberty when it is obviously all about the exact opposite.
Talk to some of the young ones 25-35 tyrs and their political idealism oozes out drowning the naivety hidden below as the mantras flood out. Catching them while young is foundational to islam, communism and jesuits and substituting mantras for thought works well for over 90%.
Mass indoctrination of children and youth is THE crime and those behind it should be summarily removed.
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old ozzie quote:
“If you suspect non-compliance in relation to therapeutic goods, you can report illegal or questionable practices online to the TGA.
The TGA also encourages the reporting of suspected non-compliant advertising.
If you have concerns about health practitioners, please notify the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency(link is external) (AHPRA).”
The TGA and AHPRA are politically left and run by their masters. This was expected by those with a clue as now they apply the double standard in the latter and make pertinent effective medication impossible in the former (viz. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine). They are both politically corrupt and I would not be surprised to see witches and druids to be recognised any day by AHPRA.
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Yes, Minister… Margaret Thatcher’s favourite TV programme.
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This time, we have a constitution and a rule of law, so we don’t need an armed revolution, but we do need an unarmed one
This is true; but only where there is something like the Second Amendment will the bureaucrats be frightened enough to obey.
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A good theme and discussion.
The word that describes it well is Deep State. When I use that word I get sneered at but it is a good descriptor. In UK the term The Establishment has been used for many years, it has much the same meaning.
Deep State is growing in size and power. The problem is attributed to communists, Alinski, Gramesci, etc but the real blame lies with conservatives.
It is the conservatives who think that they can run institutions, governments, and nations better than the left. Better in performance, fairness, equity, justice and economy. They may be right but the situation is not stable, it has to grow. Growth is the driver, other measures fall aside.
The cure is simple, at least to start- reduce the role of government down to essentials. Example, in Australia, the ABC, it is impossible to reform, it would be a mistake to sell it off as the structure and ethos remain, abolish it, sell the equipment and building, abolish the jobs. Education is another, do not try to reform, abolish all public sector Tertiary education.
.. and so on ..
Now the heading complains about the loss of democracy, but democracy causes the problem described, civilization needs a renewal of the ideas of individual human rights, liberties and freedoms.
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