The first thing I learned this morning is that Candace Owens wants us to invade Australia. You might be curious about what prompted this bellicose idea: it’s because they are managing the pandemic better than we are.
“When do we deploy troops to Australia?” she said before the Victoria lockdown was eased. “When do we invade Australia and free an oppressed people who are suffering under a totalitarian regime?
“When do we spend trillions of dollars to spread democracy in Australia?” she added. “Australia currently, make no mistake, is a tyrannical police state. Its citizens are quite literally being imprisoned against their will. So when do we deploy?”
It seems she’s just following the lead of Ted Cruz.
Owens’ comments follow a similar swipe against Australian authorities made last week by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) who tweeted: “The Covid tyranny of their current government is disgraceful and sad,” before adding: “Individual liberty matters.”
It’s embarrassing. Don’t worry, Australia, these are just the stupid Republicans that are currently afflicting our country, they don’t speak for us. With any luck, they’ll be dying off thanks to their own mismanagement of our health policy.
If you felt like turning around and invading us to liberate our country from a totalitarian, insane political party, I wouldn’t object. I’d be grateful.
The Texas of the Pacific ,jebus on a bike .
Notably, Australia ranks as freer than the USA
(https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freest-countries)
I, for one, welcome our new Drop Bear overlords.
Pass the Vegemite, mate.
Over here in the UK we are desperately trying to convince our idiot Tory overlords to impose new lockdown measures (or, at least, bring back sensible restrictions on social gatherings and mandate mask wearing in public again).
The chief scientists of the NHS (among others) have spoken decisively on what they think we need, and the government ministers have rejected it out of hand. Not with jingoistic blather about “freedoms” and “tyranny” and the like (we don’t really go in for that stuff over here), but with dithery nothingness about how their “understanding of the data doesn’t support these measures”.
We’ll end up getting these things eventually of course, weeks or months too late like last time and the time before. In some ways it would almost be better to have spittle-flecked ideologues in charge, rather than incompetent, unreflective careerists like we do. It’s depressing that we suffer not because of enthusiastic evil but because of apathetic disinterest.
She is calling for the “liberty” to spread a deadly virus.
Is this again some rhetorical sniping about Afghanistan? Like, another instance of We Have Always Opposed Land Wars In Eurasia.
There are already American troops in Australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_deployments#East_Asia,_Southeast_Asia,_and_Pacific_Ocean
Sadly Australia has more than it’s fair share of anti-vaxxers and Trumpian morons fighting against masks and lockdowns but the government is also corrupt in it’s management of the problem. In NSW where the virus entered the country the latest outbreak occured in the northern suburbs of Sydney, the government s heartland. Almost no restrictions were placed on movement there bur when it reached the non-government electorates in the southern and western suburbs they saw massive police and military presence with substantial fines issued, police helicopters harassing people walking in parks and mandatory testing every three days for essential workers. Meanwhile it was party time in the northern suburbs with beaches and parks full, no social distancing and enforcing mask mandates and very little police presence. When the vaccine rollout started priority was given to government electorates to the point of setting up clinics to vaccinate students and teachers at two exclusive private schools well before schoolchildren were considered a priority for vaccination elsewhere. The latest figures on fines for breach of restriction and they can amount to several thousand dollars is about 16500 in the southern and western suburbs and 3 in the worst offending suburbs where the government gets most of it’s votes.
These people are unhinged.
@4 Like you I have the misfortune to live in the UK ,wish I didn’t .
I still think that twat faced twat johnson is going to have to inflect another lockdown on us before xmas .
Anyone had a look at the comments left on the Newsweek article ?
This one is a doozy .
“When you’re a young woman sitting in an Australian Park, reading a newspaper and drinking a cup of tea in protest to the curfews and mandates, and then are suddenly tackled by 9 officers and 3 more with guns drawn, only to have one of them yell stop resisting, then you’re beaten to death.
That’s been a running story for the past week, and evil like that does not need to exist. Draconian law can die with the liberals.”
Of course no mention of where it is supposed to have happened .
I met a strange lady
She made me nervous
She spoke to me
and made me senseless
She said
“Let’s invade a land down under
Where masks are worn
And vaccines plunder
Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder
You better run, you better take cover.” Neowwwwwww…
A couple of things to remember about Candace Owens.
[1] She elevates conservative stupidity to a cosmic level. I’m not sure how distanced from reality you have to be to ask the US, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate, to invade a country with literally a quarter the incarceration rate, to free prisoners.
[2] The shooter who killed 51 and injured 40 people in Christchurch identified Candace Owens as the commentator who had most inspired him to go on his rampage but that he was not prepared to go as far as she would. From his manifesto:
“Is there a particular person that radicalized you the most? Yes, the person that has influenced me above all was Candace Owens. Each time she spoke I was stunned by her insights and her own views helped push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness. Though I will have to disavow some of her beliefs, the extreme actions she calls for me are too much, even for my tastes.”
Why does this confirmed terrorist enabler still have a TV show?
If I were President Australia I’d be reading the writing on the wall for when these guys get in power again and decide to start invading places to spread plague, and start making alliances with the rest of the world to…”manage” America.
As someone living in Australia, specifically one of the parts of Australia where we haven’t had a significant outbreak, because our local State government responded swiftly to any incursions, which means while we do have the occasional lockdown, it’s for usually less than a week so the contact tracers can do their work, so the only reason I’ve worn a mask recently is because I caught an actual cold and wore a mask to protect others.
While it doesn’t protect us fully from having idiots in power, we still have better democracy than the USA, with preferential voting and it is the duty of all citizens to turn up to vote (or send in mail vote) at State and Federal levels. You can choose to spoil your vote if you like, or if you really feel strongly enough about not doing your duty then you can be fined, but it is every citizen’s responsibility to participate in their country’s government in at least this small way.
When idiots like this talk about ‘freedom’ what they mean is ‘freedom from the consequences of their own actions’
@14 What’s President Australia? We don’t have one of those.
@16 You have Prime Ministers ,don’t ya .
They do speak for you – they are elected representatives of U.S citizens.
These are people given voice and power by the U.S population, they are you.
This was featured in Australia’s national broadcaster:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-23/joe-rogan-ted-cruz-and-fox-new-criticise-australian-covid-policy/100553548
Would PZ like us to send spiders?
Or we could send some musos… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayksa5Lna4k
I am in Australia in a city of 2.1 million. Since April 2020, we haven’t had masks since June, no capacity/density limits, no working or education from home, 12 days in lockdown, and only three lots of community transmission in that time, all dealt with in less than a week. The restrictions we have are: no international travel, no travel to domestic hotspots, and QR code check-ins.
And we’ve had 9 deaths. No, not yesterday, or in the last week, or past month, or past year. In the entire pandemic.
But please, Candace, Joe and Ted, tell me more about our tyranny.
Ariaflame@15
This is like reading news from a parallel universe. Santa Clara County looked close to getting cases down far enough in May 2020 that contact tracing would be feasible. Then there was a big push to “reopen” (led by homicidal attorneys bent on undermining California’s public health policy). After that, forget it. Why bother? It’s unclear whether contact tracing would have ever been feasible given that so much of the US had no interest in controlling the pandemic, but I have moved the entire idea into fantasyland in my head. I was so hopeful too at the time.
California is still doing OK on a per capita basis, but only by the shitty standards set in the rest of the US. I give up.
We don’t have any oil, so we’re safe from invasion.
I read that Ted Cruz described Australia as the Texas of the Southern Hemisphere, or something similar.
I’m trying not to think of this as an insult.
without the oil I am sure texas would be a different place.
cartomancer@4
Not to forget an astonishing level of incompetence in the cabinet, from the PM on down. Or at least that’s how it seems to me.
@26 It would still be full of batsshitcrazy barking mad wackaloon RWNJ’s .
Maybe Candace Owens wants to send ‘Quigley Down Under’? (I am really dating myself)
davidc1@28 I agree. Different, not better. Texas has a few good things going for it like its state universities. Without the oil money, it wouldn’t have that either.
Strangely our tyranny is one of the people standing over government.
Our fearless leader Scott Morrisson was all for a ‘let her rip’ approach and the population said no.
We still work, play, go to cafes and buy TV sets like everyone else but our death toll and disruption from covid has been nothing much.
DanDare@31 I have to admit I don’t have a handle on Australian politics or cultural attitudes. Maybe I am too influenced by the existence of Rupert Murdoch, Ken Ham, and Mel Gibson (who I guess is technically American according to Wikipedia). You guys seem to export a lot of rightwingers over here. Paul Hogan was Australia to Americans in the 80s, and he doesn’t seem the most enlightened fellow either.
On the other hand, the Australians I’ve worked with or met online seem nothing like this. So I wonder if Australia is just as divided culturally as the US.
PaulBC:
Um, more like rightwingers over here feel yearn for the USA, so they go to the happy hunting grounds.
(Which is to say, it’s not that we export them, it’s that you import them)
@31 Yeah ,and the twat faced twat johnson said let the bodies pile high .
I still say the England will have another lockdown before xmas .