Showing posts with label anti-vaxxers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anti-vaxxers. Show all posts

Saturday, 26 March 2022

Cartoons of the Week


Cathy Wilcox


Alan Moir


John Shakespeare

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Sunday, 21 November 2021

Prime Minister Scott Morrison appears to view the very real danger that Australia is heading towards political violence from extremist mobs as all just part of the game to keep him in power


IMAGES: ABC NEWS & Herald Sun


The Monthly, 18 November 2021:


 Scott Morrison is, if nothing else, painfully predictable. As many (including myself) anticipated on Tuesday, the prime minister’s belated condemnation of the threatening mob outside the Victorian Parliament was always going to come with a “but” – a dog whistle to the protesters, an endorsement of their cause, a swipe at overbearing state governments. Today, following the disturbing news that a right-wing extremist had been charged over threats to kill the Victorian premier, and reports that neo-Nazis, seeking to radicalise other protesters, had infiltrated rallies against the state’s pandemic bill (not to mention anti-vaxxers’ rape and death threats forcing the shutdown of the WA premier’s office), Morrison did exactly as expected.


Asked this morning for his response to the violence being incited against politicians, the PM said that threats and intimidation had no place in Australia. But after a few cursory sentences about “civil society” and “respect” (just enough for many media outlets to report it as a rebuke), Morrison pivoted to justification and understanding. “There are many people who are feeling frustrated,” he said, arguing that it was time for governments to stop “telling Australians what to do”. “Australians have done an amazing job when it comes to leading us through this pandemic, but now it’s time for governments to step back. And for Australians to take their lives back,” he added ominously.


Morrison’s sympathy for the “frustrated” protesters has more than a minor whiff of Donald Trump’s “very fine people” comments after the deadly Charlottesville riots, not to mention the “I know how you feel” video during the also-deadly January 6 Capitol insurrection. While some media outlets declared that Morrison had “hit out” at the protesters, there’s little doubt that, as with Trump’s comments, the dog whistle was louder than the denunciation.


Eighty per cent of the PM’s answer, in fact, was focused on the protestors’ justified frustrations and state government overreach, with an added pushback against mandates and restrictions for the unvaccinated (policies to which, as Niki Savva notes, he owes the impressive vaccination rates he loves to crow about). People should be able to get a coffee in Brisbane, added Morrison, regardless of whether they’re vaccinated – a swipe at the Queensland government’s newly announced restrictions. (The state government has since labelled Morrison’s comments a “reckless” undermining of its vaccination efforts.) There’s little doubt that Morrison is trying to appease some of his own senators, who are still vowing to withhold their votes unless he pushes back against mandates. But he’s also indulging the “frustrated” protesters, with little concern for the dangerous levels of misinformation flying about......


Guy knows that the Victorian government needs some sort of bill to be able to manage the pandemic – which is very much ongoing – beyond December, and as supporting crossbencher MP Fiona Patten noted on RN Breakfast, the alternative (state of emergency legislation) “is far more draconian than the legislation we were trying to put through”. But once again, the facts don’t really matter to the PM – all that matters is that the very “frustrated” people know he’s in their corner, even if it means encouraging extremists and continuing to confuse those they are seeking to influence.


This is all getting very real and very dangerous, and many fear that we are on a dark path to the kinds of political violence increasingly being seen in the US and the UK. But to Scott Morrison, it is just another game.


Read the full article here.


IMAGE: news.com.au

 

 


7 News, 17 November 2021:

WA Premier Mark McGowan’s electoral office has been closed due to ongoing security risks.

In a doorstop interview on Wednesday, McGowan revealed that his Rockingham office had been the target of death threats and bomb threats ever since the state government announced mandatory vaccination for much of the state’s workforce.

A week after an armoured tank rolled up outside his electoral office, McGowan has confirmed that his staffers had even been subjected to rape threats.


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Thursday, 23 September 2021

Union movement rejects claims CFMEU was behind the violent , anti-Covid-19 public health order mob on the streets of Melbourne over the last few days


The Age, 21 September 2021:


Australians are facing an organised campaign by anti-vax and far-right activists to undermine confidence in life-saving medicines and a public health response which continues to save lives every day.


That’s not hindsight. On August 25, I tweeted that unions were feeling the impact of organised, extremist, anti-vax and far-right campaigns. We were witnessing fringe interests attempting to infiltrate unions – not to help workers in any way – but for their own selfish political gains.


What happened on Monday in Melbourne was the continued organised assault by these groups on our unions who are working to protect members, save jobs, keep workplaces safe, and protect our health system.


The union currently under attack, the CFMEU, has worked tirelessly to keep its industry open for the benefit of workers and the Victorian economy. It has developed COVID-safe plans, run advertising to encourage members to vaccinate and put resources into testing on sites.


The attack on the union orchestrated by the far right should be a warning to all political leaders about the challenges we face in rebuilding our nation after this pandemic.


The union movement is not the only organisation subject to this co-ordinated and dangerous attack from extremists. We have anti-vax politicians in our state and federal parliaments.


A billionaire mining magnate is funding an ex-Liberal parliamentarian to send anti-vax texts to millions of Australians.


An upper house member of the Victorian Parliament attended Monday’s protest and gave vocal support to the extremists, a federal Senator tweeted his approval of the violence.


A billionaire mining magnate is funding an ex-Liberal parliamentarian to send anti-vax texts to millions of Australians.


An upper house member of the Victorian Parliament attended Monday’s protest and gave vocal support to the extremists, a federal Senator tweeted his approval of the violence.


That our unions are seeing this fear and anxiety should not surprise anyone. But anyone who cares about social cohesion and ensuring we get through this pandemic should know that left unchecked these groups will continue in their attempts to undermine confidence in the response to the virus……



How Twitter saw Melbourne riots over the last four days



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Friday, 30 July 2021

News Corp in Australia is hedging its bets when it comes to 'anti-vaxx' sentiment now the NSW Delta Variant Outbreak really starts to bite

 

The Guardian, 29 July 2021:


The Daily Telegraph has ended Alan Jones’s regular column amid controversy about his Covid-19 commentary, including calling the NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant a village idiot on his Sky News program.


There has been apparent tension inside News Corp Australia between the anti-lockdown Sky After Dark commentators like Jones and Andrew Bolt and the Holt Street newspapers, which have been promoting vaccination and criticising the “freedom” protest in Sydney.


The Daily Telegraph editor Ben English told Jones he was dropping his column because it didn’t “resonate” with readers.


Jones, 80, says he doesn’t believe his columns don’t resonate with readers.


“If the argument has been it’s not resonating, I don’t have to defend myself,” Jones told The Sydney Morning Herald.


“Have a look at Sky News YouTube, Sky News Facebook and Alan Jones Facebook and you can see. The same column that I write for the Tele goes up on my Facebook page.


“The public can check it for themselves. 35 years at top of the radio - and I don’t resonate with the public? Honestly.”


Asked about Jones’s attacks on Chant, the NSW health minister Brad Hazzard told reporters at a press conference that a lot of people “don’t base their decisions in science, or evidence”.


“All I will say is we are in a one-in-100-year pandemic,” he said. “The community need to understand the decisions are taken as best as possible on the basis of evidence and science to keep us safe.”


Jones’s final Telegraph column last week criticised Australia’s response to Covid-19, which he argues is no worse than the flu for healthy people.


On Monday on Sky News, Jones launched an attack on Chant, calling her “dumb” and “out of touch”. “How many villages are missing their idiot?” he said.


The former 2GB broadcaster also defended the Sydney protesters…..


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Friday, 28 August 2020

As if the NSW Northern Rivers doesn't have enough on its plate, here's Pete!



IMAGE: realestate.com.au
TV chef and wannabe social media 'influencer' Pete Evans has his two-level Malabar home (left) on the market again.

 Word is that he is making his ten hectare Round Mountain Farm, near Pottsville, home base as he prepares to open a healing clinic in Byron Bay now that Channel 7 has apparently tired of his antics.

 That's right readers, your eyes didn't deceive you, the man who peddled glorified light shows as preventatives against COVID-19 and was fined more than $25,000 by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) over false claims he made about the "BioCharger", wants to run an alternative healing business in The Habitat, Byron’s new commercial precinct which has reportedly attracted health and beauty outlets.

 The same man who without any scientific or medical training gave alarmingly bad advice to osteoporosis sufferers and was publicly slammed by the Australian Medical Association.

 Who promotes 'anti-vaxxer' sites as well as the debunked "Plandemic: Indoctrination" conspiracy film on social media and, suggests putting doTERRA essential oils in your chicken broth - regardless of the fact that these oils are rarely advised to be taken internally.

 Finally, this is the man who thinks 'fat shaming' a woman is a fun thing to do on Facebook.

It seems that Evans may have sensed a vacancy, since former tennis coach and "esoteric healer" Serge Benhayon removed himself from the local spotlight after he spectacularly lost a defamation case in 2018 to the tune of an estimated $1.2 million payout to the respondent and then Universal Medicine was stripped of its Lismore Business Awards after a review by the Lismore Chamber of Commerce.

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