Defend Civil Rights! Open the State Borders!
30-05-2020: The Corona crisis is not caused by a virus. The deliberate destruction of the economy, the lockdown of healthy people inside their homes, the sacking of millions of workers, the decimation of small and medium sized businesses, the months long delay in vital medical treatment deemed “elective”, the abolition of basic civil and democratic rights – all of this and more was inflicted by politicians. In reality, behind them stands big capital, which stands to make a killing from the swallowing up of small and medium sized capital, enlarging what is already an effective monopoly. Whether they be Labor or Liberal, state Premiers or the Prime Minister, Australian politicians chose to inflict mass human suffering on innocent people. They must be stopped and stopped now.
Lockdowns have not saved a single life
There is not a shred of evidence which can confirm the brutal and inhumane lockdowns, absurd and logic defying “social-distancing” rules, and the sacking of around a million workers has saved even one human life. In fact, it stands to reason that the lockdowns and economic shutdowns themselves are taking lives.[1] Many of those who have lost their jobs are now in dire straits, despite Federal government emergency assistance. If workers are not allowed to work, understandably they cannot earn money to pay the rent, or even feed their families. Condescendingly, whole sections of the workforce have been labelled “non-essential”, and presumably therefore, expendable. This is a malicious lie – every worker is a vital part of the economy who contributes to the production and re-production of social life. Without workers going to work each day, capitalism collapses.
The elite politicians who are ordering fascistic lockdowns are on a power trip, and are seemingly deriving perverse pleasure from seeing just how far they can go. Queensland Labor Premier Anastacia Palaszczuk has taken the cake, vowing to keep the state borders closed until September. In a classic case of passing the buck, Palaszczuk claims that this is not her decision, but is based on the best health advice!![2] Is that the health advice from arch-bureaucrat “Chief Medical Officer” Jeanette Young, who admitted in an interview that the closing of Queensland schools was not done for any scientific reason, but to “send a message”[3] about how supposedly serious Covid-19 was? These overpaid politicians and health bureaucrats – as opposed to genuine healthcare workers – have bullet-proof job security, and very comfortable retirements laid out for them, regardless of how many men, women and children are thrown into poverty and despair by their actions.
What is more, the closing of the state borders is an open and blatant violation of the Australian Constitution. Section 92 of the Constitution states that “intercourse among the states…shall be absolutely free”.[4] While well paid lawyers and academics claim that there are exceptions that can be made to the strict wording of the constitution for things like the protection of public health, it would stretch extreme limits of credibility to claim that closing state borders does this. For one thing, restricting the circulation of people prevents natural or herd immunity from being reached while it is in place – which reduces the health of everyone, rather than protecting it. For hundreds of thousands of years, natural or herd immunity is the way that humanity have dealt with viruses that are potentially harmful. There is no vaccine for Covid-19, it may be impossible to manufacture, and there is no guarantee that it would be effective anyway. More than this, many workers depend for their livelihood on businesses that need the flow of traffic across state borders. Border shutdowns endanger the physical health of people and imperils them economically.
Basic Civil Rights have been removed
Using the threadbare justification of the presence of one new coronavirus (in a family of 39!), which is allegedly the new Black Plague, elementary human, civil and political rights have been extinguished – without remorse. Although some lockdown measures are beginning to be lifted slowly, Orwellian social-distancing rules are still being enforced by police state measures. Social-distancing weakens immune systems for one thing and is only serving the other agenda behind the pre-manufactured Covid-19 crisis. This agenda is extreme ideological and political control, as well as the near total suppression of political activity of working people. In our view, this sets the stage for the possible launching of imperialist war by the Anglo/EURO/US Empire against Russia, China, Iran and others. A socially distanced, isolated, and house arrested population can scarcely oppose “their own” government waging what could be a civilisation ending conflagration.
Workers in the West assumed that they had achieved the basic rights of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association. Centuries of preceding political struggle had in fact only achieved implied rights. Even in the USA, where there was at one time a revolutionary struggle which produced a Bill of Rights, working people are discovering that state and federal governments are openly violating the black and white terms of the Bill of Rights. In the same way, the Australian state governments defile the very Constitution they claim to uphold. The forcible Covid-19 attack on working people has once and forever demonstrated that freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of association can be abolished any time that big capital senses it has little political opposition.
The prime culprit for the appalling political situation of virtually no left-wing opposition to the government rests with the mind-bogglingly conservative Union officialdom (as opposed to rank and file Union members), which has backed the government to the hilt in its Coronavirus hysteria. Trailing on their coattails have been all manner of “left” organisations, from self-described socialists to anarchists to liberals. This “left” is of course nothing of the sort. What is required is a united front of all forces across society demanding the ending of the lockdowns, the re-opening of the state borders, and the restoration of all civil and political rights. Out of this movement must emerge a Marxist vanguard party, which can help lead the charge for the removal of tyranny via a general uprising.
WORKERS LEAGUE
E: workersleague@redfireonline.com
PO Box 66 NUNDAH QLD 4012
[1] https://www.globalresearch.ca/corona-tyranny-death-famine/5711942 (23-05-2020)
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-18/coronavirus-queensland-borders-closed-to-september-palaszczuk/2 (23-05-2020)
[3] https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/jeannette-young-who-is-the-woman-leading-queensland-s-fight-against-covid-19-20200406-p54hmd.html (23-05-2020)
[4] http://www.cefa.org.au/ccf/can-australian-states-lock-out-residents-other-states (23-05-2020)
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