‘Freedom Day’…what a joke that was…

Was anyone seriously expecting ‘Freedom Day’ to be anything other than an utter con? We certainly weren’t. Nor were the thousands of protesters who gathered around Parliament Square and Whitehall today (19.7) to let the government know that vaccine passports and other coercive measures would not be tolerated. This protest started in the morning but by the end of the afternoon it was dispersing/being dispersed. So when the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, dropped his bombshell at around 5pm, there were few people left on the streets to react to it. The bombshell in question being the imposition of compulsory Covid vaccination certificates for ‘crowded venues’ from the end of September onwards: Covid vaccine certificates to be compulsory for crowded venues in England.

For various reasons, healthy scepticism about an experimental medical injection being one of them, young people are not flocking in their droves to get ‘jabbed’. The announcement of this measure is a blatant attempt to coerce people into getting both ‘jabs’ in order to have a life. If you think this is just going to end at clubs and other crowded venues, could you a) please give your head a wobble and b) take a look at what’s going on in the rest of the world regarding coercion to get both ‘jabs’ (and quite possibly boosters for ever afterwards) in order to get you a vaccine certificate that you’ll need just for the basics such as food shopping.

Over in France, President Macron announced that without proof of a double Covid vaccination, people would find it difficult to even be able to go about their daily lives: President Macron says only the immune can go to French bars and restaurants, makes Covid jabs compulsory for care workers and warns the country’s fourth wave has ALREADY begun in dramatic national address. Unsurprisingly, that did not go down well with many French people and there is an ongoing response to this out on the streets: France rises up against the new fascism. It may have been the booing and abuse from the crowds as he stood in an open top vehicle going down the Champs-Élysées on Bastille Day. It could have been the French people taking to the streets in their hundreds of thousands in towns and cities across France to protest against this draconian proposal. It was probably a combination both. For the moment, Macron is trying to convey the impression that he has backtracked a little: President Emmanuel Macron’s volte-face on mandatory vaccination puts French human rights on par with Saudi Arabia. It’s nothing more than illusion and presentation – this sly little shit can never be trusted. At this point, we sincerely hope that the French street doesn’t back down but instead, escalates to cast this technocratic wannabe Bonaparte and his poxy regime into the dustbin of history.

This week, the Republic of Cyprus introduced a ‘safe pass’ allowing only those vaccinated for Covid to enter supermarkets, malls, restaurants and other businesses. This was met with forceful opposition by the people: Protesters in Cyprus attack Sigma TV over Covid measures and vaccines. In Greece, the government has banned anyone who hasn’t been vaccinated from indoor public spaces – again, this was met with opposition from the public: WATCH mass protests erupt in Greece after government bans unvaccinated from indoor public spaces & allows teens to receive jab. This is happening in many other locations around the world – governments announcing measures that mean you have to have proof of two Covid vaccinations otherwise life will be very difficult followed by protests from people who aren’t going to accept this level of coercion. The fact that governments around the world are pushing through these draconian measures in lockstep with each other really ought to be raising alarm bells.

Returning to the situation here in England, we’re sure some people will say as this is just for clubs and other ‘crowded’ venues, surely, it’s just a ‘sensible precaution’ we should accept. It’s not acceptable – it’s coercion. When you look at what Macron tried with making it mandatory to have a vaccine passport to do everyday things we take for granted such as going to a cafe or the supermarket, we wouldn’t be surprised if the government tried it on over here. Look at the graphic at the top of the page and you’ll see just how worthless the promises politicians make are.

If anyone thinks that this stops with vaccine passports, again, they need to give their head a bit of a wobble. It’s all too easy for a digital vaccine passport to morph into a more general form of digital identity: The looming disaster of immunity passports and digital identity. When you look at this in conjunction with the accelerating trend towards a cashless economy and society, things start to gt a bit scary. More and more of what we’re allowed and not allowed to do and spend will be dependent on our digital identity and financial status. A digital identity effectively becomes a movement licence. Step out of line in any way – even if it’s just an online post criticisng the government – and in a cashless future where all the information about who we are and what we do is digitised, all it will take is the press of a button and hey presto, you can’t even buy the food you need to survive.

When we heard about Johnson’s announcement on vaccine passports for ‘crowded venues’, we weren’t surprised. It’s symptomatic of the way the government has been gaslighting us ever since March 2020. However, we were angry. Really angry because for over a year, we’ve been trying to warn people that this is the direction we’re getting railroaded in as part of the ‘great reset’. Angry because we’ve been branded as ‘conspiracy theorists’ more times than we care to remember yet, when those ‘conspiracy theories’ turn out to be pretty accurate, those doing the branding don’t have the decency to acknowledge that we were right, let alone offer an apology.

The next couple of months are crucial. If we don’t force vaccine passports off the agenda for good we’re on the slippery slope towards digital identity and worse than that, to really keep us plebs under control, some form of social credit. If we lose this one, we won’t be living – we’ll be merely existing in fear that one step out of place will see us cast out into a situation where it will be very hard to survive.

This is taken from the next printed edition of The Estuary Stirrer which will be getting handed out at the next freedom protest in London this coming Saturday (24.7):

“We don’t want to come over as hyperbolic but we’re at a turning point in history. As old political certainties dissolve and new realities emerge, things are going to be messy and confused. You only have to look back at history to see that’s always been the case. New alliances are forming as people work out who they can trust in the fight against the imposition of a techno-fascist dystopia. Doing that means being willing to shed a fair bit of political baggage – we hope we’ve been able to do that.

Whatever our differences may have been in the past and regardless of the different perspectives we still have, we need each other in this fight for our basic freedoms. This is the fight of our lives and isn’t one we can walk away from because we’ll lose everything if we do. If we stick together and fight off the divide and rule merchants, there’s everything to gain…”

A PDF of this placard artwork can be downloaded from here

4 Comments

  1. You say ” for the moment, Macron has backtracked a little”. Not at all – you misread the article you linked to. His volte face was in relation to a previous thing he said about vaccination: “The health pass will never be a right of access that differentiates the French. It should not be compulsory to access places of everyday life such as restaurants, theaters and cinemas, or to visit friends.”

    I posted the following about these demos here (https://dialectical-delinquents.com/covid1984-latest/2021-2/july-2021-covid1984/) :

    17/7/21:

    France: clashes on demos against “health passport” in Metz & Strasbourg (https://www.francetvinfo.fr/sante/maladie/coronavirus/pass-sanitaire/manifestations-contre-le-pass-sanitaire-quelques-milliers-de-personnes-ont-manifeste-samedi-matin-dans-plusieurs-villes-de-france_4706091.html ) …and Lyon (https://berthoalain.com/2021/07/18/pass-sanitaire-affrontements-a-lyon-17-juillet-2021/)

    The media use their classical manipulative stereotyping of the demos as being “anti-vax” when it included some who’ve been vaccinated (but are opposed to such a tyrannical forcing of vaccination) and many – probably the majority – who are not anti-vaccination as such. It should be pointed out that many “revolutionaries” also use this term in order to block themselves against seeing and thinking and acting critically. Official figures say that 18,000 demonstrated in Paris (https://www.bfmtv.com/paris/18-000-personnes-ont-manifeste-contre-le-pass-sanitaire-a-paris-ce-samedi_VN-202107170236.html). A lawyer demonstrating there said that there were more like 350,000. Who knows? There was one placard with a photo of the gates of Auschwitz and the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” changed to “Vaccins Macht Frei”. Of course one can be pedantic and say this totalitarian development is not at all like classic fascism or Nazism, which is true (for one thing, passive demos were not allowed under fascism) . However, this intellectual precision misses the emotional point: people are aware that these authoritarian developments are moving more and more towards the eradication of even bourgeois freedoms for increasing amounts of people.

    Videos of demos (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1416390043262926856.html )…Photo report of Montpellier in English (https://winteroak.org.uk/2021/07/18/france-rises-up-against-the-new-fascism/)

    …Isere: vaccination centre vandalised and tagged (https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/auvergne-rhone-alpes/isere/anti-vaccins-deux-batiments-publics-vandalises-sur-le-plateau-du-vercors-en-isere-2182990.html )

    Significant riot in Martinique (overseas territory of France) (https://la1ere.francetvinfo.fr/martinique/1-policier-blesse-et-5-interpellations-apres-les-heurts-a-fort-de-france-ou-des-bijouteries-ont-ete-la-cible-de-casseurs-1060987.html )

    “During this night of confrontations between the forces of order and anti-curfew demonstrators, others took advantage of it to attack in particular jewellery shops in Fort-de-France…A jeweller’s shop in the rue Lamartine was stormed shortly after 10pm. It was opened, emptied and set on fire at around 2am on Sunday, according to our journalists on the spot. …Later, at around 4am, a group of at least four people tried to break into another jeweller’s shop on Rue Lamartine but the security system resisted…By retreating far from the prefecture, small groups who intended to fight with the forces of order caused fires that the fire brigade was able to extinguish under the protection of police and gendarmes.

    ♦Bin fire in Victor Sévère street

    ♦Car set on fire on boulevard du Général de Gaulle

    ♦Fire in the jewellery shop on rue Lamartine, (mentioned above)

    ♦Bin fire in rue Perrinon

    ♦Car set on fire in Victor Sévère street

    ♦Fire in the hall of the Edf building in Place François Mitterrand

    ♦Bin fire in Place François Mitterrand

    ♦Brush fire on the Savane
    Several barricades still smoking on the boulevard at 6am on Sunday morning …In addition, some videos posted on social networks show an attempt to burn down the courthouse. People can be seen in possession of incendiary devices…”

    16/7/21:

    France: opposition to totalitarian “health passport” in 14th July Bastille Day demos throughout France (https://winteroak.org.uk/2021/07/15/liberte-resistance-a-photo-report-from-france/) …More here (https://twitter.com/hashtag/Manif14juillet?src=hashtag_click), here (https://twitter.com/search?q=%23PassSanitaire&src=trend_click&vertical=trends) and  here (https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/occitanie/haute-garonne/toulouse/occitanie-des-milliers-de-personnes-dans-la-rue-contre-le-pass-sanitaire-a-toulouse-montpellier-et-perpignan-2179876.html)…Martinique (overseas territory) (https://la1ere.francetvinfo.fr/martinique/quelques-affrontements-marquent-la-fin-de-la-manifestation-contre-les-nouvelles-mesures-sanitaires-devant-la-prefecture-1058494.html )

    “On the margins of the demonstration of several hundred people last night (13 to 14 July 2021), around the prefecture in Fort-de-France, slight clashes pitted a group of people against the forces of order… a dozen people threw empty bottles at police officers in front of the Fort-de-France prefecture. The police immediately retaliated by throwing tear gas, which dispersed the crowd. …Despite this intervention by the police, the people continued to throw bottles before moving away. As they withdrew, they burnt some bins in the centre of Fort-de-France. ..Many people had responded to the call launched on social networks against the new health measures. Several hundred of them gathered in front of the gates of the prefecture on Tuesday evening (13 July 2021) under the theme “Freedom – we are not guinea pigs!”.

    Montpellier (https://www.midilibre.fr/2021/07/14/montpellier-une-manifestation-contre-le-pass-sanitaire-reunit-plusieurs-milliers-de-personnes-sur-la-comedie-9671190.php)
    Not that you’d know it from the link, but the station was occupied for at least 20 minutes, and the main shopping centre near the main square was closed for fear of an invasion of demonstrators.

    Lyon (https://actu.fr/auvergne-rhone-alpes/lyon_69123/video-bus-et-voitures-incendies-nouvelle-nuit-de-violences-dans-la-metropole-de-lyon_43457829.html)
    “Buses and cars set on fire..Cars were also set on fire during the evening and night, as here in Vaulx-en-Velin.”

    …Annecy (https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/auvergne-rhone-alpes/haute-savoie/annecy/video-annecy-un-millier-de-personnes-manifestent-devant-la-prefecture-contre-les-nouvelles-mesures-sanitaires-2179948.html)
    “In the early afternoon, a thousand people gathered in front of the Haute-Savoie prefecture. This unexpected mobilisation had not been declared to the authorities. The call for the rally was spread directly on social networks. In the crowd, many signs denounced the deprivation of individual freedoms. The demonstrators chanted “Macron resign” and “No to the health pass”… the entrance gates of the prefecture were broken. About 200 demonstrators entered the courtyard and occupied the staircase, without going inside the building. ..At around 4.30pm, the crowd moved towards Annecy town hall, blocking for a long time the traffic between the prefecture, the Bonlieu centre and the town hall. “

    Given that Macron announced this compulsory “health passport” some 38 hours before the demos, these demos have been organised pretty spontaneously. Nevertheless, these  obviously involve a massive mix of people, including conspiracy theorists, right-wingers and anti-semites, but also anarchists, ultra-leftists, etc. Whilst purism remains aloof from any possible gropings towards some contestation, and cedes the terrain to the right, participation that’s indifferent to these significant contradictions is also dangerous (remember that in Weimar Germany, the Communists and the Nazis sometimes joined together against the cops and Social Democrats – and with what result ultimately?).

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