Look, I know this is going to be a deeply controversial and unpopular statement to make, and it is based on my observations, rather than significant tangible "evidence", but...
You all know what has been going on in Australia. You know how shit it is. However I thought I would share a... Bit of an anecdote, to support that.
Yesterday I went to a national football (in this case, not the round ball type) finals match, in my home state. I don't want to give too many details, for obvious reasons, but this was in a fairly conservative regional city, so not somewhere I would consider overly "liberal", by Australian standards...
So, here's what went down: to get into the match, we had to "check in" on thr government app. No smartphone to "check in" - no entry. Simple as that. The app allows the government to track you, and to see wherever you have been, outside your house. It uses QR codes, and it's mandated, everywhere here. This is in addition to only allowing pre-purchased tickets. You couldn't buy any at the ground, and, of course, you have to supply your address and confact details when you buy those tix...
You then get patted down, security guards literally CHECK your phone screen to see that you checked in "properly", bags are checked, and then?
Well, we only THEN were told we had to wear a mask. In a state where there hasn't been a single case in the community in 15 months or so, and no deaths in near 18. In this state, there hasn't ever really been a mask mandate at all, and I literally went to the football a few months back, with the pandemic in full swing, with no one even recommended to wear masks, in the same fucking venue...
So yeah... Shit then spiralled from there, and I saw security guards bash a man, and then have the cops drag him out, for not wes Aring his mask, and for "cheering too loud"...
Lots of other bad shit happened, and I videoed some of it, but it warrants a separate post, to go into details...
Suffice to say, after the bashing of the man near me, I was then verbally abused by a cop myself, and decided to give as good as I got straight back. But I wasn't arrested, so there's that. However I did have security guards stand near me to "keep an eye on me" for the rest of the match... Beyond that, though, it scares me to have paid $70 for the privilege of this "bread and circuses" bullshit, only to find the crowd around me so scared of the authorities that they didn't even fucking stop to talk to one another, while standing up, lest they be warned by the police, because that was made illegal within the stadium...
Now, to Russia: this morning I watched the final of the Beach Soccer World Cup, on the TV, live from Moscow.
Now look, I know this is a fairly obscure sport (in the Anglosphere, at least), and a small sample size of sports fans, but... The atmosphere was quite literally the exact opposite of what I experienced the day before. Partying, cheering, Mexican waves, Viking claps, fireworks, (presumably) drinking, and almost NO ONE was wearing a mask. Even the official party weren't.
Families were there. There was music and dancing. People were HAVING FUN. And fans had come from fucking Japan (they were playing vs the hosts), Switzerland, Africa and elsewhere in the world, to watch.
Gianni Infantino (head of FIFA) even "man-hugged" some of the players, and had a photo with them. All smiles.
And you know what the biggest thing was, for me? Everyone there was fucking smiling, and laughing/crying with jubilitation, which is the polar opposite of how Russians are stereotyped, in our media. People looked genuinely happy, and genuinely glad for one another's company...
This is in direct contrast to what I saw, and experienced, in supposedly the currently most "free" state in Aus...
And look, I hate FIFA. I know Russia has its issues, and I know... Things will be different, in the reality outside that stadium. I don't want to go with the line that "Russia is right". But... Seeing all that, and experiencing what I have, it made me realise that, in many ways, at least in terms of COVID restrictions, Russia is more free than Australia. Which is... Bizzare to think of, and also rather scary, when you consider that the media down here goes out of its way to say the exact opposite, especially the so-called "trusted" or "legitimate" media outlets...
I've hung out with some random Russians for a few hours a couple times and chatted with a few others occasionally. If Russians are being presented as miserable people in your media (or I guess in the American media too), then well that's just false. They are pretty fun and friendly in my experience. I'm still planning to do the Moscow-St. Petersburg trip in 2023 at this point. I wouldn't be shocked if that's my next overseas trip. The thing about their government is while there's some corruption and it's not a model democracy, etc. Putin does actually want to do what's best for Russia. My understanding of modern Russia it in reality it's generally as free for the average Russian citizen as most Westerners in their own countries. With a few exceptions, like public marketing of faggotry.
A lot of that life is still around in America too, I went to a baseball game a few weeks ago in Texas and really the only notable difference I saw to the experience is they've gone away from cash. I mean there was a small handful wearing masks, but we're talking about 5% at most. Totally by their own choice and if they'd decided to be mask Karen they were in the super minority. Tickets are mostly online, but I think you can just show up and buy if they are available. It's really two worlds in America right now as I tried to go to a store in a leftist county this weekend and it was April 2020 all over again. They had their mask bouncer at the door and all. That was my first attempt in one of those areas in a year and despite having driven a good bit out of my way to get there, I just left.
I do hope Aussies can figure it out. I really think your best bet is closer to what the French do and get some creative disobedience, but I'm not convinced that plan will work in Australia anyway. The government seems to have not even a slight problem turning the enforcers on the people there.
A lefty techy acquaintance of mine recently went to the country for a couple days. He would regularly post in a Discord room how people around him were having fun and he couldn't help but have a little fun as well.
When they were driving back to the city they wrote something like "You know you're returning to sanity when you start seeing people wearing masks around you again." And all his lefty techy friends applauded.
Re the video, yeah I... Have held off posting it, because, you know, identifying information and that...
But I'll look over it again and see how... Comfortable I feel, posting it.
Or if there is a PM facility on/within this site, would be happy to send it to you personally.
In some sense, while I... Worry somewhat that posting it will make tracking me down easier, maybe it would be good to have a digital record, for the event that I do eventually find myself arrested, and my phone confiscated... Because I seriously do fear that day may not be far off...
Re the yelling and screaming - yeah, what I saw and experienced made me really fucking angry, so when they were dragging him out, I fucking booed my lungs out and swore at the dumb cunts, ha. And I wasn't the only one, either! That's one thing that is probably on the video. Normally I would ALSO be yelling and screaming at the sportsball game, but in this case I was so... Mortified, by what I was seeing, and so riled up by being abused, myself, by these fat fucking cops, that I, umm, probably didn't invest in the actual scoreline as much as I might have normally/otherwise, lol...
One tradition I do like, in Aus, that I certainly didn't see in Russia this morning, though, is that we always, without fail, boo the umpires as they walk off. Was most pleased to see the mask-wearing crowd of numpties still do that, at the end of the game, ha. Tradition is to call them "white maggots", too, although they wear flouro yellow, now, so that doesn't quite work so well anymore, except in cricket, ahaha...
But yeah, fuck umpires. Always. Though at least they don't drag fans out by the kneecaps, admittedly, ahaha...
Yeah I live on the fringe of those type of suburbs. I haven't had a business or a person mention a mask to me since March I think. The first place I stop in leftist city and there it is. I was planning to go a few different places, figured after that it wasn't worth the trouble. I didn't even have a mask to wear it had gotten so far out of mind.
Mice Utopia was always a thing.
Yeah, the city I went to the game in (regional centre) is much, much less oppressive than the city nearest to where I live (capital city of state. Very liberal. Like Austin or something), but yet... What I described above still happened there. So I can only imagine how bad it would have been if the game had happened in the capital...
We don't seem to have quite the same thing with the suburbs vs cities, here... Though I will say that inner suburbs have been much, much more vocal in their support of lockdowns than outer suburbs, which sounds a bit more like what you describe...
The same patterns exist here. I just don't think they're quite as pronounced, perhaps.
Though Australia in general is much more... Collectivist, and leftist, than the US, like I said in my other comment, so.... Eh, I dunno. Almost anything here is going to be on the extreme end of what you see in even your most liberal states over there. That's the problem... :-/
Give it to me straight: which is worse, the wildlife or the government? I've always heard that your wildlife is almost as bad as China's.
Thanks. I've been wondering how a prison island could end up like this, and I guess I can dismiss the vector of nature trying to kill you more than normal.
Man, I have heard so much stuff about bears that I really don't know what to believe. Play dead, climb trees, walk backwards - not eager to verify. At least we have decent weapons if we wanna go deep wild camping.
I've actually traveled to some of my nearest swamplands to sightsee for gators, but they proved hard to find. You can find them in your yard (swamp family claims this) if you live in rural swampy areas, that shit's scary if you're just outside doing chores.
I suppose urbanization is a sufficient force to protect humanity from wildlife.
I hope you're keeping fit, shit's looking bad on the human level.
To compare to my personal experience, Australia reminds me of Canada. I generally like Canadians but even more rural places I've been away from the big city areas like eastern BC or New Brunswick, etc. you still get this feel that even though they are not city people there's a very collectivist personality to them. I've lived in the Southern US all my life, and Texas in particular has a very noticeable pride taken in personal independence. Although it's dying fast anywhere near a city due to all the immigration from California, Chicago, and New York. I have zero faith in the independent nature sticking around long term.
Have some faith. Austin just voted to outlaw homeless camping by a 2:1 margin. It was hilarious watching all the leftists on r/Austin seething over how "Austin wasn't as progressive as they thought it was."
Down at the farms the only people wearing masks have been those working for a big chain that required it. And this is since April of 2020. Hell when I was down there back then other than kids being home from school you'd never know anything was different.
Up here it's been mixed. St. Louis County had a Doctor become county exec after the elected official got hauled off by the FBI for taking bribes. So he's been all about masks. Go 5 miles to Franklin or St. Charles County and no masks for most of the past year. So when we went out to eat it was go to St. Charles. And they were packed. Drive across the river to St. Louis County and see all the restaurants closed while things were thriving just a mile or two away. Fortunately this summer when Dr. Page wanted to enact more mask mandates the County Council stepped in and stopped him thanks to a new law in Missouri.
It has been pretty stark the differences just a couple miles make...
Yeah...
Re your last sentence - this has been a thing at sport matches here for a while now (like, prior to the pandemic), but each stadium here has a text line, for major events, where you can "anonymously" report "antisocial behaviour" to the authorities...
Essentially, it's a snitch line. Someone says or does something you don't like? Text that number, along with the seat number of the "party of interest", and the cops will come to their seat and drag them out by their cuff, or by their legs, as was the case yesterday, that I saw...
Somehow I find that even scarier than most of the rest of what I saw. They are relying on patrons to snitch ON THEIR neighbours, not just their literal neighbours at home, but other people sitting near them at the fucking football... And then it becomes a case of hearsay, "he said she said", and guilty until proven innocent...
That's what happened yesterday. Of course, it's really just a modern evolution of lynchings and "kangaroo courts" (oh the irony, given that is an American term, but is being brought back here, in the land of the fucking roo...), but shh, don't tell anyone. It's digital, and "anonymous", so it's totally all modern and cool, like... :-(
Also, pretty much all stadiums here, now, are totally cashless. Even for basic shit, like vendors who walk around selling match day programs. Every transaction is tracked. We were heading that way before the "pandemic", but it is way, way more blatant now... And Australia in general is MUCH further along the "cashless dystopia" pipeline than the US, and it took us much less time than Sweden to get there...
Deposit and withdrawal slips literally don't exist here anymore, and checques aren't far off being made "illegal", except in select circumstances, such as prizes... ATMS are becoming almost as rare as hen's teeth, and in towns of less than say, 10000, there isn't even a fucking ATM in the town, let alone an actual BRANCH of the/a bank...
It's no coincidence, I would say, that all of this crazy shit down here has coincided with society becoming almost fully "cashless", in addition to the mandatory carrying of smartphones with a QR code reader enabled. This shit has been in the works for literally years, which... Honestly blackpills me beyond almost anything else. How they fucking KNEW this was coming? Well, that's too much for even me to "speculate", but let's just say... Australia is far too close to China, politically, for my comfort, and I am increasingly unsurprised at the path we have gone down, even if I am horrified and appalled by it.
Sports places the only ones I know of that are totally cashless here. They have these machines that will take cash and give you a card for it. I don't think you have to fill out your name but I'm sure there's a camera or something in it. So if they want to track you they can. You're right too, it was all already going this way, they just accelerated all that.
I've never heard of such of a text line to get the cops to escort people out. That's insane.
Haha it is insane, but that's... Australia, for you.
There are many things which are "normal", or at least "normalised" here (and increasingly in NZ) that I reckon you guys would find insane...
We're a very... Odd place, for somewhere purporting to be a "free and liberal democracy". But then again, once a prison colony, always a prison colony, amirite?
Bear in mind that this is a country that named an animal (kangaroo) after a word probably meaning "I don't know", because the redcoats were too stupid to actually listen properly to the Aboriginal they asked, before they shot him dead, lol... So... Our stupidity and arrogance started early, ahaha. Perhaps we've just come full circle, now?
It's funny how people overseas blame the "convict mentality" for how fucked up shit here has become, and our slavish obedience to bullshit rules, without recognising that you can't have convicts without jailers, and honestly? It's the ideological descendants of those redcoats who are the ones inventing and enforcing all this shit. Not the ones descended from the fucking convicts. Because why the fuck would we WANT to continue to live like fucking prisoners?
Anyway, yeah. I'm always disappointed in how my fellow Australians behave. And I find the textline thing just as jarring as you do. I guess I'm just... Used to it. Generally just roll my eyes when I see the PSA roll over the big screens at the venue.
"Report antisocial behaviour, text 04_____ ____", etc.
Another good one down here is "If you see something [suspicious], say something", which, again, is encouraging you to snitch on your neighbours. That's generally on the TV, and has been ever since this "War on Terror" shit started...
Side note: I'm probably going to be arrested for treason, eventually, for telling you guys all this, so... Make it worth it, ahaha.
That ramped up a lot here after the whole January 6th show. If you're familiar with automated billboards (like giant TV screens on side of road) the put up a bunch of these FBI ads on those wanting you to snitch on people who might have been there.
Yep, we have those too, fren... We're not that arse-backward (at least in that regard)! :-P
I believe Sydney actually has the largest billboard in the world (or did, at one point), on the side of the Glebe Island silos... Dunno if they've automated it yet, tho!
Oddly, then, what you describe is almost literally exactly the same, here, then...
Except we didn't have an equivalent Capitol riot/insurrection/uprising/whatever. The closest would be ads telling people to "dob" on anyone they know who attended recent anti-lockdown protests, I guess... Though those advertise for the state police, more so than our equivalent to the FBI (effectively the AFP + ASIS), or the NSA (that one is called the "Australian Signals Directorate", more or less), because, well, our equivalent agencies are MUCH less well-known than yours, ha...
But yeah, trust me, we're... Not that dissimilar, in that regard, ha. We just, uhh, don't have the guns to fight back or even resist. Or the will, even, seemingly. :-(
The difference between a nationalist leader and a leader who will simply do and say what he is told.
Russia is openly oligarchic. But the current rulers are pro-Russian and want the country to succeed... That's better than "elected" collectivist-globalists with occult goals, for liberty at an individual level.
Seems natchy. Weakness breeds slavery.
Say what you will about Putin, but at least he doesn't tolerate the globohomo agenda pushed by the Rainbow Reich. And for that, he has my respect.
I think its telling that both Russia and China ban the rainbow degeneracy in their countries.
Russian leadership doesn’t want to destroy Russian identity and will flaunt that fact when their enemies run hit pieces. Does Russia have corruption issues? Of course, but you won’t find Putin mass importing third world citizens.
If you're not an obsessive LGBT weirdo, Russia is freer than most of America right now. Australia? You're living in one of the least free places on Earth in 2021 lol
Reading your post makes me want to move to Russia. Seriously. I am an American. So far no restrictions where I live except work requiring us to wear the mask and recently flipping the absolute FUCK out when I came back to work after being out sick for two days with a mild cold and didn't get tested for covid. But I see Australia as a possible future here in the U.S.
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/putin-opposes-mandatory-jabs-says-people-should-get-vaccinated-without-coercion
Welcome to the Upside Down.
So. I assume Mad Max is becoming closer to reality back there?
Australians are no longer be allowed to travel overseas or interstate, when this was announced, I remembered Jimmy Carter making fun of the visiting communist leader for not letting their citizens travel (I'm that old). Well fuck me.
Makes you think now doesn't it?
Americans dealt with blatant lying over and over since 2016 on how much of a monster Trump was even though people who actually attended his rallies saw a different reality.
It's almost like MSM only shows you what they want you to see.
You now have to stop for a moment and ask yourself how long they've been lying about everything.
Yes, a lot of what the media says are just blatant lies.
We live in the same city, shits fucked here. Odd co-incidence I also have a russian friend who says the same.
Were you cheering for the Western Bulldogs or Essendon?
Ok boomer
Man, I know this will sound a bit... Evil, but that... Suits me just fine, then. Like, no joke, I get that it would fucking suck to be gay in Russia and all that, but... For me at least, and on the other hand... I would probably be happy to live in a country that hasn't given itself over to degenerate faggotry, and rampant "intersectional" feminism...
Because Australia is a lost cause, on those fronts, and I'm honestly... Not seeing many "Western", "developed" countries West of the iron curtain, or that don't speak Spanish/Portuguese, that aren't, lol... So maybe Russia is almost... Preferable, at least in that sense (if you're straight)..?
Funny that.
It's not evil, faggots are evil.
This. I don't care if gays want to get married and be miserable like normal people but that shit opened the floodgates of subhuman degeneracy and now child rape and bestiality are "accepted."
Russia has gays. Even has gay bars. You're just not allowed to wave your dick in the face of children in Russia. Which is oppressive, I know: How will the gays live without public sodomy in front of child audiences?
On the whole, the lack of marriage rights can be circumvented with a co-partnership incorporated entity. They have less GAY rights in Russia, but do they have less rights overall? They're allowed to go outside. They can speak with other people near them. Last I checked they can even choose to not own a smartphone at their own expense, if they so wish.
Net amount of freedom, I think gays may have more in Russia, just because of the poor baseline of fascist Australia.
The West is more free unless you want to exclusively live around your own kind. Or don't think diversity is our greatest strength. Or don't want to wear a mask over your face.
Is there a society where absolutely no one is ostracized for their preferences or behavior? Perhaps some island with literally one person living on it, and even then he may feel guilt about certain things he does.