A FOI search by Senator Alex Antic has revealed that the government colluded with Big Tech to suppress and censor over 4,000 posts during the Covid Terror. (The Aussie Wire)

Here are some ideas for new discussion topics:

* The sun is hot!
* The rain is wet!
* The winter wind is cold!
* Snakes and sharks bite!
* Life is a terminal illness!
...

So good morning, yes, governments oppress the people within their reach - isn't that their very nature? Isn't that their raison d'etre?

Yuyutsu

Your sarcasm is unbecoming. In my lifetime, governments did not censor Australians. Censorship was not a part of what used to be a good and free country; it is relatively new, and Australia is no longer a good and free country.

Having achieved same sex marriage; now blatant championing of sexual dysphoria, official agreement that people, including young children, can be something that they are obviously not, and go as far as subjecting themselves to surgical mutilation to 'achieve' what is a complete fantasy,some really bad people are now using censorship and fear to finish us off - with the help of a Prime Minister who proudly advised that he was going to change the country. In the short 12 months he has been in power, he has already well into doing so.

Covid was the perfect opportunity to test how much we valued our freedoms. We failed the test. We chose the fantasy of 'safety' over our freedoms. So, we let them get away with it - all but a few brave people, who were treated abominably, and still are being treated abominably, by the Fascist liaison of Big Business, Big Tech and Big Government.

The 4,123 Covid posts were lumped in with almost 9,000 terrorist related posts. Unbelievable in Australia? Well, not any more.

'Government' is an amorphous lump of elected drones, government departments and public servants; now assisted by virtue-signalling corporations, and sporting codes - who think that they know better than we do: at the moment how we should vote on the apartheid referendum.

It seems that the 'elected drones' are now the junior partners.

The separation of powers has gone down the drain, with a serving judge emailing an elected member of parliament, and haranguing the MP for speaking against the Voice!

Albanese said that he wanted to "change Australia". There are a lot of people who want to help him out - even if it is not the way he envisaged, nor a way he would approve of.

A governing body is necessary for our society, and we choose its members.
If they are of poor standard, that is our fault, and no one else's.
We need to apply greater diligence to the way we assess them, prior to voting?
I don't see that our present government unduly suppresses freedom of speech.
Instead, they exert a kind of censorship, so that inflammatory material is not thrown out in to the public arena.
There are some amongst us who are far too easily 'incensed' by such material.
We don't want those less than stable persons mounting uncalled for attacks on the instruments of our society?
Look at what happened in the good old US of A.

Dear Ttbn,

«Your sarcasm is unbecoming. In my lifetime, governments did not censor Australians.»

So? They just used other methods to harass the people - didn't they, for example, have conscription in your days and sent people forcibly to Vietnam? or didn't they demand much higher tax-rates than today? And am I wrong to assume that former governments sent your ancestors to Australia as slave convicts?

Governments are here to harm and persecute us, to make us suffer, only their methods can change!

Before the internet they had too many physical envelopes to open (and then repair) if they wanted to censor communications, it's not that they didn't want to, it was just more difficult then - I bet they didn't think of opening your physical letters even during COVID, so you could still have hidden your messages there, but really, if you want to avoid censorship, why not encrypt your E-mails?

Its a measure of how far we've fallen since over the past few years that news of this type just gets a shrug.

When the Twitter Files were released it seemed unlikely that the Australian arm of the medical SS would have been able to resist the chance to silence dissent. But little came out since the journalists looking at the debacle were USians and there was so much mayhem on that side that there was little interest or time to look at other jurisdictions.

But now we find that the bureaucracy was working to silence those who opposed government policy and doing it as a matter of regular policy. More than 4000 requests to suppress commentary were made to Twitter. Some of the stuff that was considered at that time to be so beyond the pale that it needed to be suppressed, is now considered fact eg the WuFlu was man-made.

So the government was working quietly behind the scenes to stop the population from seeing alternate views!! In what sense do we continue to claim to be a democracy?

All this was being done by a unit of the DHS called the "Social Cohesion Division". Let that sink in - the government has people dedicated to enforcing social cohesion which in layman's terms means adherence to government dictates.

Remember this was being done while we had a Liberal government (though not a liberal government). But one wonders how much the actual political class knew of this and whether it was simply undertaken by an increasingly independent bureaucracy.

2020 was a watershed year where Australian's agreed to trade freedom for safety....and got neither.

Yuyutsu

The things you mention from the past have no relevance to the topic of suppression of free speech.

I am a South Australian. We were all free settlers. There were no convicts in South Australia.

If you want to talk about every other thing that governments do, apart from suppression of free speech, start a thread. You are one of the parasitic non-performers here who rely on the few who start threads so that you can let fly - usually with little or no reference to the topic.

Mhaze

Your observation that: "Its a measure of how far we've fallen since over the past few years that news of this type just gets a shrug" is right on the mark. Governments get away with all sorts of things because people shrug them off. People definitely get the governments that deserve.

One of the latest outrages is the A.C.T government's attack on Christianity and in particular, the Catholics, is their threat to take over the Calvary hospital there. There is too much religious influence, the Leftist mob howls. I think they are talking mainly about the hospital's refusal to perform abortions.

A big shrug to that, I would think: few Australians who would be against the move - probably more than those who approve - will do the simple thing of signing the online petition that is available. Nothing to do with them, they think. They will still whine when other people say or think the same thing about something that happens to them.

Australians do not deserve democracy. They don’t use democracy. Take the non-stop whinger, Yuyutsu: rubbishes everything, but does sweet FA about it.

While we can still influence politicians with more care about how we vote; writing and emailing to our local members; speaking up against woke rubbish; rejecting the lies about the Voice and other top-down divisive ideas, we should all do so. Democracy has not been the natural state of things over the ages, and we are now losing it - because we do just shrug.

The mainstream media - government's little helpers - also suppress information, the latest being the fact that Donald Trump has just been completely cleared of the Russia conspiracy that the same media bruited about with gusto for months. There won't be a retraction or an apology from the Four Corners left-wing activist, Sarah Ferguson, who made a real feast of the lie - the 'story of the century'.

How about a doctor who has not been able to work and support his young family for 5 years because a SINGLE ANONYMOUS person made a complaint to the medical Gestapo about a comment he made on Facebook about Covid.

The mainstream will not let you hear anything that they don't want you to hear. You need to make the effort to get the truth - from alternative sources, like ADH.TV, the Aussie Wire, Rebel News, etc.

That's if you don't want Australia to eventually be like Communist China or Russia; and you can ignore ignorant boofheads calling you names. You can do it privately, anyway, and make your feelings known directly to the politicians you pay to serve you.

A lot of the "shrugging off" is caused by ignorance and lack of ability to look for the truth.

Statistics show that almost half Australians adults are in the 1-2 group of reading ability: primary school level. They might just be able to read a newspaper, but not the books and essays in which alternative and learned information is available. Some of these characters are actually proud of the fact that they don't read.

Dear Ttbn,

«The things you mention from the past have no relevance to the topic of suppression of free speech.»

The relevance is that this evil organisation (government) is not our friend, it is a predator and it would do whatever it can to prevent us from gaining control of our own lives.

Within our own times, before the internet, government used to allow free speech because:

1) our communications could only reach a few people, thus governments didn't fear that we could use words to revolt against them.
2) we communicated using physical letters, usually in envelopes, and it was just too difficult for governments to open that many envelopes (and then transparently reseal them).

Don't delude yourself that they ever allowed us free speech due to their good heart - their hearts were always black as coal, they just didn't feel their authority threatened by our communications... until COVID.

"If they are of poor standard, that is our fault, and no one else's."

That's what they would have you believe.
- But the game is rigged.
The people are propagandised from Grade 1
Go against the narrative and be cancelled or attacked.
- Get called 'racist' (criticise immigrants) or 'bigot' or 'xenophobe' (criticise gays) or 'transphobic' (criticise trans)
i.e hate speech
- Don't dare oppose the climate agenda.
Anti science, climate denier

Accept the international agenda or get a target on your back.
Meanwhile the important stuff has all been decided already, like support for US wars and parties are bipartisan, meaning people don't have any choice at all.
- Democracy is an illusion.

They fooled you into thinking we chose it.

"If you want to talk about every other thing that governments do, apart from suppression of free speech, start a thread. You are one of the parasitic non-performers here who rely on the few who start threads so that you can let fly - usually with little or no reference to the topic."

I don't often start threads, it's not because I don't want to
- But that I feel like if I do I'll have to respond to everyone's opinions like a thread minder.

AC

You don't 'have to respond to everyone's opinions just because you start a thread. I don't.

I start threads if there is something I want people to know. If people don't want to know, that's fine. If they do read it, but don't say anything, that's fine. If they respond with a negative opinion, that's fine. If they add something I like, I might address them directly. If they say something I don't like, so be it, but I don't feel any obligation to argue with them unless it suits me. There is not much point in arguing with people who disagree with you.

Think about the more 'professional' opinions that are submitted to the front section of OLO. Not many of those contributors (what they write are just opinions like ours, no matter how grand they consider themselves to be) ever respond to our comments, positive or negative.

OLO is one of the very few places where ordinary people like us get to say what we want to say. We need more people to start more threads.

Yes, if I were to start a thread in the general-discussion area then I would feel obliged to relate to all posts in there, whether they interest me or otherwise.

Gutless people will always have excuses for not doing their bit for democracy; but 'feeling obliged to 'relate' to all posts' has to be the weakest.

OLO give us all the opportunity to have a say on what affects us. We don't have to 'relate' to anyone. Some people simply cannot be related to. For instance, there is no way that I can relate to Paul 1405, SteeleRedux, or Aidan and, now, clearly, Yuyutsu.

There will be people who can't relate to me. Do I care? I do not. Am I going to sit back and not have a say when I want to? I am not.

People who don't take an active part in democracy, particularly when there is nothing and nobody stopping them, don't deserve democracy.

Dear Ttbn,

Indeed I would feel no obligation to relate to anyone - that would truly not be any of my business.

My only obligation, should I start a new thread, would be to relate to the materials presented in the posts, not to their authors!

I see that a not-fit-for PM purpose has chosen to call people who intend to vote NO against his outrageous Voice, 'chicken littles'.

Chicken littles is a good name for people who sit back and let a few posters start all the threads, then seem to have truck loads of opinions themselves.

Thanks for your response to my comments about starting threads ttbn
I'll keep it in mind and give it some consideration.

"Think about the more 'professional' opinions that are submitted to the front section of OLO. Not many of those contributors (what they write are just opinions like ours, no matter how grand they consider themselves to be) ever respond to our comments, positive or negative."

They don't often engage with anyone.
But it's funny you know ttbn, I don't think I've EVER seen a single one of those 'professionals' engage with us over here in the general forums.
Maybe there has been instances where they have but I haven't seen it, and I've been here 8 or 9 years now.

I'm curious, what does it say or mean, about those 'professional' people?

AC

A couple of them have tried to belittle me. Can't remember which ones. But no. They don't as a rule, because they think that they are right, and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Not a bad way to be if you think about it.

Kudos ttbn and Armchair Critic for your commitment in both posts and threads. I've been a bit concerned that threads older than about a week are being locked presumably by GY- but I'm sure he has his reasons- maybe there are other ways to reach his objective.
Sadly my time is limited so I am less able to contribute at times.

Very concerning is the apparent genocidal open slather of Albanese to Indian students in Australia. He is perhaps trying to protect his communist mates at universities who are suffering from numbers.

India needs to take more responsibility for it's massive population and it's threat on neighbours. I'm sure that they were always aware of the threat but they claim plausible deniability. Step 1- create massive population- Step 2- the population wants to migrate from the crush they have created- Step 3- the diaspora takes over some other nations land. Step 4- Communists and anti-whites achieve goal of cultural disposession and genocide.

A lot has been done for fairness policies in The West- if these aren't used to create fairness in nations such as China and India then it will probably cause a power imbalance where Western goodness becomes a disadvantage.

Australia will be destroyed if it allows unfettered access of 1.4 billion people to 25 million people.

However I support the localist Hindu policies of Modi over globalist multicultural ones.

It's interesting that totalitarian governments seem to attack self defense then attack personal opinion and communication capabilities of the community so that they can control the population action and thought.