I received this email today concerning the communist state of Victoria in Australia. ‘Last night, something happened in the Victorian Parliament which affects all Australians.
The Andrews’ Labor Government successfully passed its so-called Change and Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill.
The bill purports to ban so-called “gay conversion therapy”, both in secular and faith-based settings.
“Conversion therapy” conjures up images of violence and harm – something no one supports – but is really a smokescreen by which to attack freedom of religion and belief.
This shocking legislation will ban any “practice or conduct” towards a person, even if undertaken with the person’s consent, aimed at “changing or suppressing the sexual orientation or gender identity of the person”.
BUT, people would still be permitted to participate in any practice that “supportive of or affirms a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation”. This includes conduct aimed at supporting gender transitions and expression of “gender identity”.
Parents should be alarmed. Any attempt to even counsel or pray with their own children over matters of their sexuality or gender could see them charged with an offence.
And churches and faith organisations are specifically targeted. Aside from secular services such as psychiatric therapy, the bill prohibits “carrying out a religious practice, including but not limited to, a prayer based practice, a deliverance practice or an exorcism.”
The penalties for breaching the legislation are serious.
For more serious offences, individuals face up to 10 years’ jail, a fine of up to $198,264, or both. For organisations, the fine rises to a maximum of $991,320.
Every single amendment moved last night – including one to exempt family discussions – was defeated.
The bill was ultimately passed 27 votes to 9.
This is shocking enough for Victorians – especially Victorian parents – but how is it relevant for those in other states and territories?
Firstly, the Victorian bill recognises no borders. Anyone who engages with a Victorian (either within or outside of Victorian borders) for the purpose of “changing or suppressing” will potentially be engaging in a criminal act.
Secondly, Victoria has in recent times been a “first mover” in terms of extreme social legislation. Consider its euthanasia and assisted suicide laws. Or its radical abortion-to-birth laws, carried way back in 2008.
If the Victorian Government feels confident enough to so drastically intrude into the private sexual lives of individuals, the prayer and counselling of churches and medical professionals, and even into the very family home, all Australians should be alarmed at the precedent this poses.
On a practical note, then: what is to be done?
For a start, those in other states and territories must be alert to any attempt to imitate this draconian and intrusive legislation.
And, as we’ve seen on a range of issues, having the best argument or even making the most noise is irrelevant if its fall on deaf ears. In that sense, we need better people in our parliaments.
Nothing much has changed since the 4th century BC, when Plato rightly said:
“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
I am old enough to remember Amos and Andy, the Honeymooners and Red Skelton. I thought they were funny but would they get a laugh today or be hauled off to court?
‘Republicans vote on Tuesday, Democrats vote on Wednesday, is this a crime now?
There’s a reason the Soviet Union, East Germany, China and North Korea never produced a Jerry Seinfeld – much less a Lenny Bruce or Sam Kinison.
Humor was a crime in those places.
America is becoming such a place – because the Left doesn’t think it’s funny to mock anything the Left considers serious – and intends to make sure that message gets out.
As in the case of Douglass Mackey – a wise-acre who faces ten years in federal prison for posting unfunny (to the feds, now the sic ‘em troops of the Left) memes designed to annoy Leftists, including supporters of Hillary Clinton.
Mackey created an African Americans for Hillarymock-up that encouraged people to “avoid the line” and “vote from home” by texting “Hillary” to “599925.” When they did, they got a reply from the actual Clinton campaign hipping them to the fact that they’d been punked.
Whether this is funny or obnoxious depends on your sense of humor; but is it criminal? Deserving of a decade behind bars?
The feds say yes.
Mackey has been charged with serious felonies, as in conspiring to “injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate persons in the free exercise of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution” – notwithstanding the obvious fact that no threat was leveled at anyone, nor was anyone oppressed – except perhaps according to the Leftist definition of “oppression,” which amounts to having their feelings hurt.
This is becoming an actionable offense in Joe Biden’s Woke America.
“The defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one of the most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution: the right to vote,” said Nicholas L. McQuaid, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
Except he did no such thing. He made and published a visual. No one was prevented from voting or threatened if they did.
Mackey’s memes – he made several others – are the Internet era’s equivalent of the prank phone call, perhaps. Good thing the Jerky Boys are retired.
It’s the filling out of magazine subscription cards and the ordering of a dozen pizzas or late-night taxis, sent to the home of a person who who didn’t order them, as a gag.
Actually, they are not even that as no one got the bill for anything – or got something they didn’t want delivered to their home.
They saw a meme on their Twitter or Facebook feed.
This constitutes “depriving individuals of their constitutional right to vote”?
So says the indictment.
One could make a stronger case that weaponized hysteria over “the virus” did more to actually deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote” – by terrorizing them to not vote, something Mackey never did.
But don’t expect Fauci or the Scarf Lady to be indicted.
Once upon a time, humor was not only funny – it made you think. George Carlin, for instance. His most famous rant had to do with who owns you – and what these owners want, which is – as Carlin put it –obedient workers. People who don’t question and who are kept from asking questions about their owners by being kept ignorant and busy working constantly to just barely keep their heads above water.
This sort of comedic analysis resonated with the Left, once upon a time – when the Left at least pretended to be concerned about the plight of the working man.
As opposed to the endlessly offended feelings of the woking man.
If it’s okay to say man.
Comedians like Sam Kineson were famous for saying it – part of Sam’s iconic stand-up act. One of his most unwoke routines revolved around starvation in Africa and the Left’s efforts to ameliorate it by sending food. Sam would pace the stage and then scream: “It’s a desert! Nothing grows there!! Just sand! Move to where the food is!“
It was as hilarious as it is unspeakable . . . today.
Lenny Bruce – who was considered a liberal in his day – would be prosecuted by the Left today.
Bruce actually was prosecuted – for “obscenity” – and was defended by the Left. But that was 1964 and the Left defended free speech back then. Today, free speech, including speech that makes you laugh, is actionable, if the punchline involves gays or women or men who “identify” as women; anything the Left decides isn’t funny.
If the punchline is Donald Trump – or the meme his severed head,a la Kathy Griffin – then it’s hilarious.
Which isn’t very funny.
Which brings up Seinfeld, who is – very.
Or rather, was. Jerry no longer does stand-up because the crowds are too Woke. They can’t take a joke and – worse – can’t laugh at themselves anymore.
Australia’s Sky News’ Outsiders had Andy Ngo on recently where he was in London having to escape the good ole USA for his own safety. Andy knows full well ‘Antifa is the muscle, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other non-profits help pick the targets, and anyone who points out their totalitarian intolerance is called a fascist, promptly canceled, or burned in effigy. That’s the crazy Leftist triangulation playing out these days on the streets of Portland and in many other riot-prone American cities. Journalist Andy Ngo knows this all too well.
The angry red communist comrades of antifa and BLM have tried to cancel the Portland-based journalist but Ngo told PJ Media that it obviously hasn’t worked out too well for them. Antifa “protesters” beat him senseless and sent him to the hospital with brain damage in 2019, engaged in a sustained smear campaign against him due to his coverage of the group, and basically put out a hit on him, but Andy Ngo’s still standing. And thriving.
The world detests Christians and Jews and it is openly displayed in the UN and NY under Cuomo. ‘Like Black Lives Matter riots, Muslim mobs don’t spread the virus.
Every year, Shiite Muslims in Flushing, Queens conduct the Arbaeen, a procession in honor of Mohammed’s grandson whose death at the hands of a Sunni caliph marked the pivotal break between Shiites and Sunnis, slapping their faces and chests for their beheaded Imam Hussein.
Queens, once the borough that gave birth to President Trump and David Horowitz, now has a large Muslim population, and the fall processions of wailing crowds are a regular event.
The coronavirus didn’t change that.
In early October 2020, videos show a huge knot of Muslim men packed closely together in circles, not wearing masks or with masks down, chanting and furiously beating their chests in memory of Hussein’s martyrdom. Some are shirtless in the traditional fashion. The slaps are meant to be hard enough to cause real pain and there’s plenty of reddened skin on display.
The Shiite procession marches down Flushing’s Main Street, past rows of Chinese stores without a police officer in sight. The media also doesn’t stop by to document the event.
It’s one of a number of Shiite mass gatherings in New York and New Jersey, including more mourning events for Imam Hussein on Manhattan’s Park Avenue in August, where few of the participants wear masks, and another in Kensington, Brooklyn around the same time.
Unlike the Orthodox Jewish prayers of the High Holy Days and the Sukkot celebrations, these Shiite Muslim gatherings were not written up by the New York Post, the New York Daily News, or the New York Times as a public threat. Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio did not blame Muslims for the spread of the virus or declare a crackdown that would close mosques.
The Ashura Jaloos event took place in late August in the Kensington 11218 zip code which is listed on the “orange zone” on De Blasio’s coronavirus watchlist. The Queens procession took place in another watchlist neighborhood where coronavirus rates have been rising.
At the end of August, Governor Cuomo threatened to crack down on Orthodox Jewish weddings and blamed the “Jewish community” and the “Catholic community” for spreading the coronavirus, but made no mention of any action against Muslim events like the one in Manhattan that had taken place a few days before his threats against Orthodox Jews.
On October 4th, the Queens procession took place. A day later, Cuomo held his infamous antisemitic press conference in which he threatened, “I have to say to the Orthodox community tomorrow, ‘If you’re not willing to live with these rules, then I’m going to close the synagogues.’”
To bolster his argument that Chassidic Jews were to blame for the spread of the virus, Cuomo used a photo of a funeral from 2006. Once again, he made no reference to Muslim mass gatherings taking place even right before the release of the new data and his press conference.
The media widely and wrongly claimed that the outbreaks were only taking place in zip codes with large Orthodox Jewish communities. This was false, especially when it came to Queens.
There are plenty of mosques to be found in the targeted zip codes in Brooklyn and Queens, in the red, the orange, and the yellow areas, on De Blasio’s watchlist. Some are quite large and in the red zone, but Orthodox Jews made a good target. Muslims make a politically incorrect one.
No Democrat would be caught dead threatening Muslims or shutting down mosques.
And the same papers that scold, sneer, and mock at men in fur hats would never dream of ridiculing shirtless Muslim men slapping their chests in public. That would be racist.
Like the Black Lives Matter riots and the Sharpton 50,000 rally in Washington D.C., Islamic religious rituals somehow don’t spread the virus. Not even when they’re taking place in areas on the watchlist. Orthodox Jewish prayers, like Trump rallies, are blamed for spreading it.
The same hypocritical doublethink extended not only to the rituals, but to the reactions.
When a group of Chassidic Jews protested the discriminatory restrictions by Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, by burning masks and waving Trump flags, the media was furious.
“Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jews burn masks in violent protests as New York cracks down on rising cases,” a Washington Post headline blared. That’s the same paper which has repeatedly described Black Lives Matter riots that wrecked entire cities as being “mostly peaceful”.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who had falsely claimed that Antifa violence was a myth, and expressed support for Black Lives Matter, despite the repeated riots, demanded that, “those responsible must be held to account for such violence” and expressed support for Cuomo’s crackdown.
Nadler also tweeted a petition of support for Cuomo and De Blasio’s crackdown on Jews from “300 Rabbis” representing something called the New York Jewish Agenda which had been created earlier this year to fight for “social justice.”
The letter was headed by Sharon Kleinbaum of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, a gay temple, much of whose membership defected when it decided to pray for Hamas terrorists.
“Recent events have demonstrated that CBST is far more committed to a progressive political agenda than to the Jewish people,” Bryan Bridges, a former board member, wrote. “I couldn’t imagine raising a child in this congregation, and have that child hear, just before we recite Kaddish, the names of people who are trying to kill her grandparents.”
But, to give Sharon Kleinbaum credit, she doesn’t limit her antisemitism to Jews in Israel.
Kleinbaum supported providing space to Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, but is quite happy to see apartheid implemented by her Democrat political allies against Orthodox Jews in America.
The differing treatment meted out to Orthodox Jewish and Shiite Muslim religious gatherings is a troubling demonstration of how antisemitism is baked into the intersectionality of the Left.
It’s not about Israel. And it never was.
Pierre Leroux, who coined the term ‘Socialism’, wrote, “Every government having regard to good morals ought to repress the Jews”. This was a century before the rebirth of the modern State of Israel. It wasn’t Zionism that the founder of Socialism was objecting to, but Judaism.
Is it any wonder that Leroux’s socialist successors like Bill de Blasio are taking him at his word?
There is no systemic racism in America. But there’s no question that when you look at the very different treatment for Black Lives Matter rallies, Shiite Muslim gatherings, and Orthodox Jewish events, that systemic antisemitism is alive and well. Especially among New York Democrats.
“My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed,” Bill de Blasio had tweeted in April.
There was no such warning for Muslims who, unlike the Chassidic Jews of Brooklyn, were not harassed or threatened in any way. They went on conducting Islamic events with no interference. The New York Post did not spy on their weddings, the New York Daily News did not ridicule their religion, and the mayor and governor did not threaten to come after them.
Cuomo threatened to close synagogues. He did not threaten to close mosques. Nor did he display any pictures, like the one above, of mass Muslim religious gatherings. Instead, he found a photo of a Jewish funeral from 2006 to suggest that Jews were spreading the coronavirus.
I am old enough to remember Johnson’s war on poverty and later Australia’s Bob Hawke saying that if he was elected there would be no child in poverty! These politicians have the gall to continue to show their face even after their rhetoric has been proven to be another political lie. So, let us ‘Fast-forward to the 21st Century and let’s assess how the continuing war on poverty is tracking.
The United States, in 2012, spent $688 billion to fund 26 separate anti-poverty programs. State and local governments added another $284 billion, bringing total anti-poverty spending to nearly $1 trillion. That amounts to $20,610 for every poor person in America, or $61,830 per poor family of three. Since the mid-1960s, $23trillion has been spent.
In Australia, we have the big Aboriginal social welfare industry. It is great for working in, but useless at fixing anything. Government largess towards Aboriginal Australians has done little to fix poverty and has simply perpetuated it. For every disadvantaged Aboriginal or poor person, there is an abundance of persons on the government payroll who live off them.
Current welfare spending in the United States per year equals four times the amount of cash required to eliminate poverty. However, the poverty rate is much higher now than when the war on poverty began in the 1960s. The United States waged a relentless war on poverty with trillions and poverty won.
Economist Thomas Sowell has written that the number of black American lives damaged or destroyed by social welfare policies would exceed the dreams of any Klansman. The social welfare industry is a colossal empire. It is a deep bureaucracy. It sends out hollow promises. There are many city enclaves where voters simply vote on what new promises have been made and the cycle perpetuates itself.
The social welfare advocates say nothing about the pathologies that fuel it. They say nothing about fatherless homes for example. There is a multitude of programs that simply are about making poverty more comfortable. Welfare programs also heavily subsidize out of wedlock birth and incentivize divorce. Social welfare and the dependence that it generates amongst the recipient has become a gentler form of slavery.
The legacy of the welfare state has been the breakup of low-income families, the explosion of out of wedlock births, systemic poverty, higher crime and rates of incarceration, a substantial decrease in the number of low-income households headed by someone who works.
The huge rate of welfare programs penalizes marriage and the fear of losing benefits discourages marriage. The family unit throughout the developed West has imploded.
The Deep State in the United States is a big unelected bureaucracy and showcases all the dangers of big government. In Australia when people depend on big government for welfare, our democracy simply transitions into a powerful administrative state, and the bigger it grows, the power of the vote is far less effective, and the more the individual is disenfranchised. The monster of government ventures always engulfs an entire society. The erosion of self-sufficiency is giving way to tyranny.
The principle of self-reliance holds that each person has the ability to succeed in life without interference from the government. If you uttered those words at a university today or in a public forum you will be attacked. The progressive-left wants everyone on the government teat. Personal responsibility is often inimical to them and they want everyone to become dependent on and beholden to big government.
Eventually, the Western nations will have to make a choice. To either embrace utopian statism with ideological principles such as egalitarianism, redistribution of wealth and the monster of social justice, or a system based on democratically elected representatives and personal responsibility. We cannot have both.
We can have a system where government serves a common purpose in protecting freedoms, rule of law, private property, and so on, or we have social justice idealogues where everything falls under the control of the state: your thoughts, education, health, property, and children. The belief that people are entitled to what others have produced is at the heart of the social degradation we see in Australia today. Everyone now has a right but no one has a responsibility.
The chaos in the developed Western world has followed a similar pattern. The foundations and principles which built the West are being destroyed. The family has been destroyed. Toxic masculinity and feminism are being promoted.
The education system has gotten worse. At Universities Marxist professors are teaching leftism to the youth. We see critical race theory taught to children as part of a divide and conquer tactic.
Self-reliance has been undermined and more are dependent on government. People are now more subservient than ever and embracing welfare, more are unwilling to take care of themselves.
The recent manifestations of Black Lives Matter and Antifa are what happens when society has a whole generation of spoilt brats. They offer nothing and contribute nothing other than destruction. They live off victims they actually produce. Black Lives Matter is actually against things that would improve the plight of black lives such as building stable families, work, education, and self-reliance.
Antifa and Black Lives Matter will only bring about more poverty and crime. History tells us that the poorer can be called upon for revolution and to be the shock troops. Black suffering is a prop. White guilt is becoming a largely unchallenged dogma.
Acts 5:28 …Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name?
‘A street preacher has been issued with an COVID-19 enforcement notice and told by police to stop preaching in Taunton town centre under the new coronavirus legislation.
Michael Overd, who has been preaching in the town centre for 11 years, was at his usual place on Fore Street near Market House when police took him away.
He was given a warning last Saturday (March 28) and police formally cautioned him and removed him from the street yesterday.
Mr Overd was issued with a notice for ‘failure to comply with an instruction’ under the new Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) England, Regulations 2020.
Avon and Somerset Police have the power to issue these fixed penalty notices if an individual or business refuses to comply with lockdown measures.
But Mr Overd said he will refuse to pay any fine.
He said he was eating his lunch alone at around 2.15pm, having been preaching with a colleague, when police approached him.
Mr Overd told them he was a “religious worker” before adding: “I told them it was my place of work. This is my job – I’m a street preacher.
“We had a very good day, giving out Bibles and praying with people. People were stopping, and we were keeping the two metres distance, as best we could.
“There was one dear Christian lady who was so upset that her church was shut, and I prayed with her.”
On Saturday, the police told him they would seek legal advice, but he claimed they told him they had not yet received it.
He continued: “They said in the meantime you are to go home, and I said ‘No, sir’, in the meantime, I will carry on preaching’.
“They didn’t have the relevant paperwork with them, so we had to wait for a colleague to bring it. That was a farce in itself.”
After Mr Overd was issued the notice, police officers packed away his loudspeaker gear and scripture boards. When he still refused to leave, they escorted him to the police car.
Have you ever heard ‘Where’s the Police when you need them?’ In Victoria Australia the answer is ‘they are down at the beach arresting a woman.’ ‘Victoria Police became involved in an altercation with beach-goers during an arrest of a woman who was allegedly breaking the Victorian’s Chief Health Officer’s health orders imposed to stop the spread of the CCP virus.
Authorities on patrol at Altona beach, Melbourne on Oct. 3 confronted a group of women and children who allegedly were not wearing masks.
In a police statement to The Epoch Times, the Victorian police alleged members of the group became aggressive upon being questioned with one female refusing to provide her name and address.
Due to this non-compliance, police had reason to arrest her under section 189 of the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (State of Emergency and Other Matters) Bill.
Video captured of the incident showed that the woman’s children looked on while a crowd formed around the five officers detaining the woman on the ground.
Another woman remonstrating with an officer—identified in the video clip as the first woman’s sister—who allegedly was pregnant, was blocked and pushed away by an officer.
Victoria Police noted, the first woman who was arrested was later identified and found to be in breach of the five-kilometre travel restriction.
For violating the health directions, she was issued with three infringement notices and released while several others also received fines.
“Police will be conducting follow up investigations in relation to the incident and other activity at the beach yesterday to ensure any further breaches of the Chief Health Officer are appropriately dealt with,” a statement said.
“Victoria Police will continue to proactively patrol public spaces and will not hesitate to fine those who clearly and blatantly breach the directions of the Chief Health Officer.”
According to daily COVID-19 crime statistics, 186 infringements were issued over the weekend. Due to sunny weather in Melbourne, several of these fines were for people travelling beyond 5km to go to the beach.
The arrest on Altona beach comes as the Victorian government imposed a new fine against unlawful gatherings. Recently released crime statistics find COVID-19 penalties as the second-highest crime with over 6,000 Pubic Health and Safety offences being recorded.
Premier Daniel Andrews has been asked about COVID-19 infringements more frequently in daily press conferences following many incidents circulating social media and protests.
At a COVID update on Oct. 5, Andrews said he would prefer fines didn’t exist but are needed to maintain order.
Now, it is a known fact that families of Afghan descent can break the rules but Dan Andrews’ government only wants the ‘data’ from them. No arrests, no fines but instead the Afghan community receives an apology from the government medical doctor! Hmm! Wonder what 2021 will bring?!!!
What is going on in the wide circle of Baptist churches? It is unbelievable there are so many pastors within the independent and denominational Baptist churches that are abusing girls and boys! One perhaps was thinking Jack Schaapp was hopefully the last but that was not to be.
‘Stephen Bratton, former pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church in the Houston, Texas area was arrested for molesting a child over a period of five years.’
This man sexually abused a girl from 2013 – 2018. There is a LOT of talk about restoration for these men who have been caught out but one wonders if it is not regeneration from above that they need!
2Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
Are you ready to move to Seattle? I know, Seattle has had its problems but now you will find things much better for ‘The city of Seattle has hired a Black Lives Matter activist and convicted ex-pimp to be its “Street Czar,” paying him $12,500 a month for a year to come up with “alternatives to policing.
What are the details?
Andrè Taylor was once sentenced to more than five years in prison for illegally working as an escort hustler in Las Vegas (he ended up only serving one year) and was featured in the 2000 documentary, “American Pimp.” He also came to Seattle in 2016 vowing to “go to war” after his brother, Che Taylor, was killed by police.
‘“ICE is set to deport dozens of individuals from my district to Somalia, risking the spread of COVID. ICE’s actions will not only put these individuals at risk, but could have far-reaching consequences for Somalia.”
What about the “far-reaching consequences” for Americans of keeping in the country 39 people “accused of various crimes including murder, rape, domestic violence, sexual assault, drug trafficking and conspiring with foreign terrorists”? About that, Ilhan Omar was apparently silent.
“ICE Deports Dozens Of Somali Nationals Convicted Of Rape, Murder, Other Charges,” by Brianna Lyman, Daily Caller, September 19, 2020:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported 39 Somali nationals this week, including 36 with criminal histories, despite Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar claiming that the deportations would put people at risk.
ICE announced the deportations in a letter to Omar Friday, saying the agency should be applauded for removing the 39 individuals accused of various crimes including murder, rape, domestic violence, sexual assault, drug trafficking and conspiring with foreign terrorists, per the letter….
“ICE is set to deport dozens of individuals from my district to Somalia, risking the spread of COVID. ICE’s actions will not only put these individuals at risk, but could have far-reaching consequences for Somalia,” she said.
Omar, who was born in Somalia, has called for the abolishment of ICE and was one of 14 Democrats who called for ICE to stop deportations in March due to the coronavirus, claiming it was dangerous to send the individuals back to their country of origin.
“For detainees who are immunocompromised or otherwise susceptible to the worst consequences of contracting COVID-19, holding them in detention may be literally a matter of life and death,” the Democrats wrote in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf.
“Deporting people who may have been exposed to coronavirus to either countries that have few or no cases or to continue with weak health care infrastructure is an unacceptable risk to take,” the letter continued. “Many countries, including the United States, are implementing strict border controls during this pandemic, and we should make no exception for ICE Air and deportations.”
whatyareckon 