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The new measures involve a lockdown on borders and wide powers to arrest people in the streets who are deemed a virus threat. It also includes new po… - Neil Faulkner
" "The new measures involve a lockdown on borders and wide powers to arrest people in the streets who are deemed a virus threat. It also includes new powers against "terrorism" and "subversion", giving it the right to detain people without trial for an unlimited period. The government is going to propose that their new law lasts for a two-year period. The closest parallels are powers in the United States in the and the 1967 Terrorism Act in apartheid South Africa. Section 6 of that Act allowed someone suspected of involvement in "terrorism" — defined as any opposition to the system which might "endanger the maintenance of " — to be detained for a 60-day period (which could be renewed) without trial on the authority of a senior police officer. Since there was no requirement to release information on who was being held, people subject to the act tended to disappear, and of course many of them were tortured and murdered. Why would they want such a draconian law at this time? Until now, the government has come under repeated and sustained attack because of its herd immunity strategy, its staggering incompetence and negligence and its kowtowing to big business at the expense of working people and public health. But things are set to get much worse on several fronts. As the world financial system comes tumbling down and bankruptcies and redundancies begin to sweep the world, we are almost certainly heading for mass unemployment on the scale of the 1930s.
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About Neil Faulkner
Neil Faulkner FSA (22 January 1958 – 4 February 2022) was a British archaeologist, historian, writer, lecturer, broadcaster, and political activist.
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Additional quotes by Neil Faulkner
Callousness, incompetence, and cynicism — the 's response to the coronavirus has demonstrated all three. Despite the public outcry against the inhuman "herd immunity" strategy and the resulting changes in government policy, major threats to public health, , and s remain. We have a continuing refusal to institute mass testing; an economic package that prioritises profits over workers' ; insane policies that deny proper protection to health workers; and a new law to restrict democratic rights. All this reveals a government and economic system incapable of defending ordinary people and forever prioritising profit. As well, the Tories are absolutely mendacious in their empty and meaningless promises to "do everything necessary".
Without mass testing, tracing, and isolating, you cannot contain. So everything else — the ban on mass gatherings, the school closures, the lockdown measures — all of it, of course, too late — amount to only half a strategy. In fact, all the signs are that they haven't really let go of their callous notion that people with "underlying" health conditions should be treated as expendable. But that is not just a few old people. About 43% of adults are reckoned to have at least one long-term health condition — disproportionately, of course, poorer people.
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We need to be absolutely clear. We will not be dictated to by the rich, the Tories, and the police. We will not have our health workers put at risk. We will not have our loved ones killed to protect big business. We will not tolerate their lies, cover-ups and negligence. We will not let them use this crisis to smash democracy so they can continue to siphon wealth to the top. The time has come to put an end to neoliberalism. This crisis is a radical opportunity. Another system is possible. Another system is a necessity.
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