The Story of Fascism

Take one hour out of your day today. And watch this. Posting it here for posterity. And myself. 

Tis the season.

The weather in Australia continues to surprise me. Its as if someone is closely monitoring the calendar. It’s the start of September, and presto ! winter is gone. The cold, harsh sub 10 degree nights have now changed to 17 degrees. Daytime tops 20. That can only mean one thing: spring is here. Warm days abound. Had to switch the heater to ac mode.

The change of seasons here is truly amazing. Looking forward to warmer days.

 

Milestones

 

The pandemic and lockdown have slowed things down. But time does flow. Its that time of the year again, time to lookback at those milestones.

Is it bad out there? Definitely.

But days like today give you things to reflect upon. And I dodged a bullet today.

I am grateful for my circumstances. Most grateful to the people in my family.

Hey blogger

Hey blogger, just wanted to tell you.  The new interface sucks.

A stitch in time.

Victoria is right now in its 4^th week of its stage 4 restrictions, which was enforced starting August 2^nd. This is more of a curfew than a simple restriction and is far stricter and fine grained than the earlier restrictions. And it seems to be working. Take a look at the graph of new cases being reported in the state of Victoria.

The 2^nd of August is right in the middle of this graph, when the number of cases being reported was at its peak. And then the counts go down gradually, as soon as the curfew hits the city, and later the state completely. It is a familiar pattern, the number of infections decrease as soon as the primary vector, humans ,are immobilised. Everyone is staying locked in , until 13^th September, the date these restrictions are scheduled to end.

Simply put, a stitch in time saves nine.

It is not , and was never, that easy to ask Victorians to stay in. Aussies are an outdoorsy folk, the live outside, under the sun and in the rain. They could maybe stay in a few weeks, but definitely not in months. All through this period, there have been conspiracy theorists and plain idiots calling for a boycott of the curfews, asserting falsely, that it violates their ‘freedom of movement’, whatever that means. There were also calls from small business owners to re-open in a controlled way, in order to bring back much needed business. Add to this the bunch the virus deniers and anti-vaxxers, you have a gathering of monsters to control. Having never experience a war first hand, and not used to being ruled under a regime, people here take their own personal freedom for granted, and not  a privilege. The only thing the country had going for it was the small population. At 25 million people, there are more people in the state of Kerala in India than the total population of Australia and New Zealand combined ! So some police presence on the road, and the new of Australian Defence Forces patrolling the streets was enough to herd in the dissenters. And of course, the heavy fines 😊.

So verdict ? It seems to be working. One can only hope the course will hold steady until the counts come down to 0. And hopefully, this will the last time this lesson need to be learnt. This is our second time doing this, remember ?

Can’t go back. There can not be a third wave.