The PR Blog

Last night, I went down memory lane and stumbled on a long forgotten holiday when I ate scones and home made apricot jam and drank freshly brewed coffee in a stone cafe in Central Otago.

It was a typical holiday. Redhead and I headed off for a 5 day jaunt around a small region of the South Island of New Zealand.

To my younger readers: There was a time when people had things called " holidays. " They were when you could go where ever you wanted and travel and explore new and interesting places. We didn't have facemasks back then. We didn't have vaccine passports and all citizens could travel and mingle and meet and eat and greet. It was known as ": fun " and the amazing thing was that, in those days, it was none of the government's business what we did and who we did it with. 

I wake up every morning and, instead of feeling a sense of hope and expectation, I feel a sense of dread. I turn on my computer and catch the overnight news and see nothing but covid, vaccine, mandate, restriction and fear. All the buzz words in the current woke vocabulary. 

How I miss the days when I used to wake up and think about going to the bakery to buy some doughnuts and head down to Redhead's place and dine in the delights of a creamy strawberry jam filled pastry treat that would give us both a few moments of pleasure on the lips and a lifetime on the hips. As the saying goes.

This feature length production is an astounding effort from creator political commentator, filmmaker, and human rights activist Topher Field. It seeks to tell the story of human rights activists, protest organisers, business owners, workers, and ordinary everyday people who have taken extraordinary risks in the fight for freedom.

As Gandhi said “ Disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless & corrupt”

Please watch this honest and sometimes heartbreaking documentary on something that is of global concern

“Totalitarian leaders often create ‘enemies of the state’ to blame for things that go wrong. Frequently these enemies are members of religious or ethnic groups. Often these groups are easily identified and are subjected to campaigns of terror and violence. They may be forced to live in certain areas or are subjected to rules that apply only to them”

Creating an enemy of the state requires othering: a process of dehumanizing through marginalizing a group of humans as something different, less than, and other. Such othered groups become an easy target to scapegoat, unfairly bearing the blame for a society’s ills.

When I’ve talked in the past about the patchwork tyranny post Covid-9/11, I had more mundane things in mind than the fate of a major tennis star.

Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia on Sunday after his appeal to reinstate his visa failed. And it failed not for health reasons but for political ones.

To me, the kinds of terrible rules put in place for ‘public safety’ always conjure up images of casual oppression. Endless videos of pathetic public servants intimidating priests in churches or police arresting pub owners for serving willing patrons.

I sit here today, typing an obituary to Australia. The country I have loved for most of my life. 

I see her lying in a bed, alone, gasping for air and trying so desperately to stay alive. Alas. I feel that she is gone. I can hear her sad attempts to keep alive and stay with us. But her mask is stifling her. 

It is sad to see her dying. She has been a good mother and grandmother. 

She lies immobile and unable to speak because she is silenced by the hospital staff who have gagged her and choked her in order to keep her " safe."