First, they butchered (possibly willfully and with sinister intent) the investigation into the assassination of their very own leader, Colin Winchester.

Second, they engaged in a campaign of vilification against the falsely accused David Eastman for the same crime – which cost the taxpayer $7m and, hideously, Eastman nearly twenty years of his life.

DISREPUTE

Third, they bequeathed Simon Overland and, far worse, Graeme Ashton, to Victoria Police. 

Between them, the latter two have brought VicPol into such disrepute that it may never recover.

Simply to say the names George Pell and Nicola Gobbo is to invite either derision or alarm or both.

VicPol, on the watch of these two giants of men, Overland and Ashton, came to be associated with vendettas and corruption.

Add to the mix the wokery of Christine Nixon, who hailed not unexpectedly from Human Resources (in Sydney), and who sent Victorian policemen and women off a-marching in gay parades, and you have borderline farce, keystone coppery and, inevitably, the nomenclature of “Ashton’s Circus”.

Not so farcical, however, has been the take up by VicPol of COVID thuggery at the behest of Gauleiter Andrews.

That VicPol was gifted a $400m brand new glass tower in spite of (perhaps because of?) all of its manifest crimes says all you need to know about the state of policing in Australia’s Police State.

Back to the AFP. Australians should be deeply alarmed at the most recent developments on the beat in Canberra.

Not only do we have ASIO ripping into the mum and dad “terrorists” seen on the very same streets of Canberra these past weeks, now we have the increasingly politicised police of the nation’s capital getting in on the act. The AFP is “on alert”. Crikey.

The Guardian’s headline reads: Commissioner warns disinformation may incite violence and threatens “integrity of our institutions and the election itself”.

DISINFORMATION

And from Cameron Stewart in The Australian: “In his opening remarks to Senate Estimates on Monday night, Mr Kershaw pledged that the AFP would exercise its full powers to crack down on disinformation during the coming election campaign.

Seriously? Now, peaceful democratic acts engaged in by citizens without the remotest mal-intent cause conniptions among the top brass of the Federal Police.

The “full force” of the AFP’s armory is at the ready, and here is the scary bit, “ahead of the election”.

Astonishing it is that the words “disinformation” and “election” are used in the same sentence.

Who’da thought that there could ever be disinformation involved in an election? And we have three in Australia this year.

Some very busy policing is coming our way. Especially as there are, apparently, “a growing number of disinformation campaigns”.

Once upon a time this was called debate, disagreement, dissidence. And a core part of democracy.

Stewart, a loyal Murdoch employee, inevitably turns the conversation towards you-know-who: “However, his warning comes amid a growing prevalence of online campaigns containing disinformation promoted by various interest groups, including anti-vaxxer and anti-vax-mandate protesters. Other disinformation campaigns have spread false rumours about State and federal politicians designed to undermine their chances of re-election (emphasis added)”.

Lying about politicians?  Whoever did that during an election?

Irony heaped upon irony. I’m guessing that many of the hundreds of thousands of protesters who proved to be so annoying for Canberra locals, including The Canberra Times – “you have had your say, now go home” – were there precisely because of all the disinformation dished up to them by lying, cheating, totalitarian governments across this wide brown land, these past two long years.

LYING

Yes, it is lying if you know you speak untruths. Just turn on free-to-air television – if you absolutely must – and you will see, night after night, lies about vaccines, their efficacy and their lack of danger.

You have a straight-faced Prime Minister, fresh from a round of margarita swilling and ukulele playing, actually saying to a reporter (who, strangely for Australian legacy journos, asked a good question) that Australians were free to choose to have a vaccine, were responsible for their own health decisions, and so pharmaceutical companies should not expect push-back when children die from the shot. He actually said this.

And his AFP is concerned about disinformation and elections. You have ministers day after day giving out hospital numbers that are inflated by orders of magnitude in order to scare people into further submission.

You have the silencing of truthful, expert voices and their dismissal as “dodgy internet cranks” by social media platforms that are yet to get a single rebuke from government for so doing.

In fact, the governments probably pay them to keep the censorship going. You have Big Pharma seeking and obtaining indemnity against prosecution over the vaccines.

You have politicians lying by omission over vaccine related deaths – over 700 to date in Australia and counting.

You have little lies and big lies. Remember “three weeks to flatten the curve”?  Ever heard a politician say, “we must learn to live with the virus”, just before announcing some new imposition?

Enough disinformation right there to be going on with. Let the arrest of politicians begin!  Oops, I forgot, a retired copper in Geraldton has been charged with inciting others to seek the arrest of Mark McGowan for crimes against humanity. So we had better not suggest that.

The chief of the AFP, one Reece Kershaw, is worried about “the integrity of our institutions”. What, like politicians abandoning sittings of parliament?

BOGUS

Seeking to extend bogus states of emergency for years into the future without reference to the Parliament?

Brad Hazzard sought to do precisely this. Using delegated legislation to enforce lockdowns, curfews and the like?

Using police to bully citizens, actually to shoot them with rubber bullets, to squirt them with pepper spray, to arrest pregnant women for social media posts, to declare legal protests illegal?

Using Commonwealth funded facilities in the Northern Territory to round up Aborigines against their will and cart them off to be vaccinated and detained? 

The commissioner said police were alert to heightened security risks, including domestic protests, as well as the risks of foreign interference and disinformation that incited violence.

He said the objective was “protecting our community, high-office holders, our democratic institutions and democratic values”.

Democratic values? Is this guy for real? It was said in evidence before a Parliamentary Committee, so he must believe it.

Our democratic values have been shot to pieces these past two years. We don’t have a democracy left.

I did not consent to these COVID laws. No one did. We do not have a Commonwealth worthy of the name left, since premier-dictators now run the joint.

We do not have truth-telling, independent bureaucrats any more. Oh yes, Reece, I agree we should be concerned about the state of our institutions. Just don’t point your gun at me.

When asked to explain how the AFP responded to threats to the personal safety of parliamentarians and their staff, Kershaw said it “sadly will probably be a growth part of our business”.

“We’re very concerned,” Kershaw told the committee.

“We have seen that during the COVID times a lot of people are online now, there is a lot of hate unfortunately and racial slur and discrimination and attacks personally on people, and often you don’t even know where it’s coming from.”

RUINING

Now I wonder why anger against politicians online might have increased over the past two years. 

Perhaps because politicians have been ruining all of our lives over a middling virus.

Perhaps because they have destroyed our nation, not letting us leave the country and not letting us cross State borders.

Not letting us farewell our dying loved ones. Cancelling marriages. Cancelling graduations. Cancelling family gatherings. Crashing careers through the “ever creeping” vaccine mandates, as Kathy Gyngell of the UK’s The Conservative Woman site terms them.

Saying things like, “we will exclude you from the economy”, or “life will be very difficult for the unvaccinated”, or “COVID measures will be in place for years”.

Saying this to over 20 per cent of the adult population still to receive two jabs. Turning a blind eye to official bullying and abuse of your citizens.

Making us wear muzzles, for nothing. Causing mental health issues. Causing suicides. Increasing domestic violence. Delaying critical cancer diagnoses. Sending health systems out on strike.

All to save their political skin.  And the corporate media, on the rare occasions when anyone mentions it, normally uses weasel words like “overreach”. Overreach? Try fascism.