A Sydney lawyer who went viral for telling Melbourne residents they did not need to wear masks is trying to take his battle against health orders to the High Court - but he wants you to pay for it.

Nathan Buckley has launched a GoFundMe campaign, seeking to raise $1 million so he can sue the nation's governments and "remove all lockdown restrictions immediately".

Mr Buckley named border restrictions against Victorians, mandatory quarantine for Queenslanders who visit a coronavirus hot spot, and guidelines around visiting aged-care facilities as just some of the rules he wanted to put an end to before taking aim at more specific health measures.

"People are being fired from their jobs for refusing to have a flu vaccination," he wrote.

"People are being told to wear masks when all the evidence clearly states that masks are useless. Masks represent oppression.

"Enough is enough. The purpose of this campaign is to raise enough money to challenge the states, territories and the Federal Government in the High Court of Australia. The challenge is to remove all lockdown restrictions immediately. We will end the lockdown laws."

Mr Buckley said his campaign would get millions of people back into work and "save Australia from the depths of despair of a deep recession".

"Like all Australians, I will forever be grateful to all contributors who free Australia from the chains of the Government's lockdown restrictions," he wrote.

Wearing masks or face coverings across Melbourne has become mandatory as the state of Victoria is gripped by a second wave of COVID-19. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

The lawyer, who says he is admitted to the roll of practitioners on the High Court of Australia, has already raised more than $12,500 towards his campaign, but if he does not raise enough money, he claims he will refund or redistribute the money to his other campaigns.

Mr Buckley's other campaigns include a $10 million bid to change laws in Australia around mandatory flu vaccinations for visits to aged care homes and some workplaces - which has since been updated to include a challenge to a health order in Victoria mandating masks be worn in public.

In the description, he explains the target is so high as to ensure he can pay in the event he loses in court and is ordered to pay costs.

Another fundraiser has been launched to fight the No Jab No Play laws in South Australia, which has raised nearly a quarter of its $200,000 target.

On July 24, Mr Buckley told supporters he was in discussions with "several high net-worth individuals" to try and get their financial support.

"I am positive that this will get off the ground," he wrote.

Nathan Buckley has also launched a $10 million bid against mandatory vaccinations for health workers. Picture: GoFundMe

Mr Buckley went viral earlier this month for telling Victorians: "Don't wear a mask."

"Get a $200 fine then elect to have it determined in court," he wrote on Facebook.

"Every single one of you 6.359 million Victorians can challenge the fines in court. The Victorian Government won't fight you in court. It is far too expensive for them to do so."

Mr Buckley has since taken the post down, noting on one of his GoFundMe accounts he acted "at the request of the NSW Law Society".

In June, he advised Victorians to avoid the lockdown, and the lawyer has also provided legal letters to healthcare workers who do not want a flu vaccination.

NCA NewsWire sent several questions to Mr Buckley about when his lawsuits might proceed, refunding the money if they didn't, who would be running the multiple High Court challenges, and what he believed was an acceptable alternative to the current health orders.

Mr Buckley said he was "not engaging with media" and declined to comment.

Originally published as Lawyer's bold bid to end the lockdown

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Lawyer's bold bid to end the lockdown - Chronicle

Anger and concern over SAs R70bn IMF loan. Picture: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

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Saftu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said on Wednesday that the federation notes with deep concern and anger that the IMF issued communication confirming that it had lent South Africa $4.3 billion (R70 billion) following the acceptance by government of all conditions stipulated by the IMF.

In terms of alternative solutions to IMF funds, Saftu had looked at the possibility of quantitative easing, higher taxes on corporations and the rich, tighter exchange controls, a crackdown on illicit financial flows and other strategies to address the debt load.

Vavi said the IMF conditions were based mainly on so-called fiscal consolidation made in the supplementary budget in June 2020, including expenditure cuts of R230 billion over the next two years, a commitment to freeze public sector wages for 2020/21, and a plan to put an artificial ceiling on the debt-to-GDP ratio.

These were policies that the union federation had already rejected, he said, adding that this policy platform is exactly what has landed us where the country is today, at an economy that moves from years of stagnation to recession and now directly into a depression.

He said this included a record-breaking unemployment rate for any industrial society; shockingly high levels of poverty; a society that has become the most unequal in the whole world; structured racial and gender oppression; and ecologically catastrophic policies.

Vavi said those who celebrated the IMF loan and conditions were the beneficiaries of the status quo.

READ:G20 may now look beyond initial debt relief for poorest nations

They will not be affected by the massive cuts in state expenditure as they long ago contracted out of the chronically understaffed and underresourced public healthcare system, public education, public transport and even public policing, given that they have their own private security arrangements.

They will certainly be directly and indirectly affected though because deindustrialisation, rising social anger and declining state sovereignty will heighten this countrys contradictions between classes, races and genders. If some right-wingers believe that the IMF will sort out this country via shrinking the state then this is a very short-term, self-destructive way of thinking.

He also said that governments economic stimulus package was wholly inadequate from the beginning. Government claimed that it had made available a R500 billion stimulus package when in reality it had only released R170 billion in new money, which Vavi says was a pathetic 3.4% of GDP.

The rest of the funding will come at the expense of other service delivery priorities, as well as deep cuts in state workers salaries. We have argued that government must at least put aside 15% of the GDP to intervene, which would be more than R1 trillion, Vavi said.

He said that government was advised against the policies adopted by even the most conservative governments including the UK and US.

Today government is unable to protect industries such as liquor, tobacco and tourism which had to be closed down to curb the spread of the virus as it simply has no resources to protect jobs and firms.

He cited the appalling and unprecedented economic and human catastrophe exposed by the Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey.

Vavi said the report, which was published on July 15, revealed a net loss of 3 million jobs between February and April.

One in three income earners in February did not earn an income in April, which translated into almost immediate job loss when lockdown was declared. 47% of respondents reported that their household ran out of money to buy food in April, the survey said.

Vavi said the IMF loan would not reverse but exacerbate the catastrophe.

Saftu called for full transparency regarding all the loans provided by international financial institutions.

We do not understand the rationale for hard-currency borrowing, which in 2020 is expected to total $7.5 billion from international financial institutions, including the World Bank, the New Development Bank and the African Development Bank.

The economy has achieved a current account surplus [it is usually 4%+ of GDP in deficit] thanks to the crash of imports and lack of profits flowing back to multinational corporations, Vavi said.

He said the $52 billion in current SA Reserve Bank foreign reserves suggested that South Africa was not short of dollars.

In other words, it is bizarre fiction for the IMF to argue that it must make this loan to South Africa to meet the urgent balance of payment needs stemming from the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic when even the top Treasury official responsible for international finance admitted to Goldman Sachs in a conference call [on April 26] that finding additional funding is not urgent.

He said the cost of a dollar loan was much higher than locally sourced credit from liquid financial markets since South Africa must repay the loan in dollars even though we can expect the rand to continue its decline in coming months and years, thus making the loan much more expensive in real terms.

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Anger and concern over SA's R70bn IMF loan | Citypress - News24

Twenty years ago, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquistnot generally thought of as a radical liberalsaid: We can think of no better example of the police power, which the Founders denied the National Government and reposed in the States, than the suppression of violent crime and vindication of its victims. Last week Attorney General William Barr went full interventionist, telling the press that he was deploying federal law-enforcement officers to Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico (this coming after the previous weeks deployment to Portland), to combat violent criminal activity. President Trump said much the same thing as he rattled off cities his administration was eyeing for future interventionChicago, Philadelphia, Detroitbecause of gun violence and drugs.

How greatly have traditional conservative values of federalism and limited government been transformed. Today, a sitting Republican president invokes the power of the federal government to send militarized Department of Homeland Security agents (equipped with military-grade weapons, body armor, tear gas, and camouflage, like armed forces entering a war zone) to swarm American city streets under unwritten rules of engagement. If video evidence now circulating is to be credited, these agents are not merely protecting federal property; they have detained citizens who arent violating any law and used the power of their presence to chill civil protests and disobedience.

This is a complete corruption of conservative ideals. There is nothing conservative about unconstitutional police activity, and there is nothing conservative about unilateral federal intervention in state affairs. Those are the acts of an authoritarian.

Anne Applebaum: Trump is putting on a show in Portland

The consequences of this radical expansion of federal law-enforcement authority are enormousand none of them are likely to be good. This is what is keeping both of us awake at night. We are conservatives who are united in our love of the Constitution, the limited rule of law, effective government, individual rights, and civil discourse. We believe in checks and balances and the separation of powers.

And we are watching all of this crumble before our eyes, as the executive branch deploys unchecked power.

For starters, the events now unfolding will make Americas reckoning with the challenges in its criminal-justice and policing system even more difficult. After George Floyds killing, law enforcements tenuous role once again took center stage in Americas communities, particularly for communities of color and those in poverty. Now whatever progress might have been made through reforms at the state and local levels will be subsumed under the weight of federal intervention. If repairing the relationship between law enforcement and the communities they protect was difficult before, the presidents unilateral intervention into local affairs has made it impossible.

Of equal importance, the presidents actions have undermined the Constitution and transgressed norms of acceptable presidential behavior. Deploying a federal strike force when the local government does not want it is, as former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told The Washington Post, legally questionable. And Tom Ridge, who served as the first homeland-security secretary, under President George W. Bush, echoed that concern: DHS was not established to be the presidents personal militia. One of us, Paul Rosenzweig, served as the deputy assistant secretary for policy at DHS during the George W. Bush administration. But the reality is that a department created to protect the American people from external threats has now been transformed into a force against the very people it is supposed to serve.

How, then, can the nation repair the damage? We can think of several ways.

First, and most obvious, the other branches of government need to oppose and prevent this warlike activity. Specifically, for too long congressional oversight has atrophied. The Founders never imagined a supine Senate, willing to allow the president to exercise nearly limitless power in violation of every tenet of federalism.

Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: Nothing can justify the attack in Portland

Now is the time for Congress to respond. Most immediate, the appropriations bill for Homeland Security is due for consideration on the floor of the House later this week. The representatives will be derelict in their duty if they do not adopt some type of funding limitations that restrict the ability of DHS to be deployed as the presidents personal militia. And the courts, while limited by the doctrines of standing and jurisdiction, should block these breaches of Americas most basic values and norms whenever a case is properly presented.

Second, America must address the original grievance that has prompted these demonstrations in the first place, and which has only been exacerbated by Trumps use of federal force. State and local governments must renew their efforts to reform local policing. When law enforcement is perceived as acting arbitrarily or oppressively, it loses a valuable tool in the cooperation and respect of the community. But it also gambles with something essential to police in a democracylegitimacy and the peoples consent to law enforcements use of force on their behalf. America is closer than most people realize to whole communities simply rejecting the idea that police departments (at least as currently conceived) have any legitimate role to play in securing their communities. This is why police officers themselves should welcome reforms that can help heal divisions between them and communities of color. The legitimacy of the exercise of authority in a democratic republic is always a fragile thing, and Americas current approach to policing poor and minority communities is straining it to the breaking point.

Resolving these differences starts by focusing on three Ts: training, transparency, and transforming police culture. Police training should move away from its current stress model, drawn from the military, which disproportionately focuses on weapons, tactics, investigations, and paperwork. Instead, training should be longer (most law-enforcement training programs last just a few months) and include more academic elements focused on constitutional norms, mental-health and addiction awareness, and de-escalation. Reforming transparency means changing rules, contracts, and laws that prevent the public from meaningful oversight of police. This includes rules that prohibit decertification of police who are found guilty or liable for serious breaches of use-of-force policies. Additional states and municipalities must establish review boards with significant civilian membership that have the power to investigate, compel testimony, and make findings. Both of these categories of reform flow into and are important elements of the third: transforming police culture.

Culture is the product of training, tactics, oversight, and internal procedures. It is shaped by such seemingly trivial matters as uniformsofficers feel different, and interacts with those around them differently, if they are wearing police blues and not battle dress uniforms and body armorand by such important factors as reducing the flow of cast-off military-grade equipment from the Pentagon to local police departments, which makes the local police look and, more important, act like an occupying force. Ultimately, the goal is to instill in police a sense that they are part of a profession, like medicine or law, that is marked by minimum entry requirements, continuing education, high professional standards, and external and internal accountability mechanisms.

Police cannot be alien to the communities in which they operate. The effective exercise of force in a democracy depends on the consent of the policed. Without that consent, the alternatives are oppression or anarchy, or both.

Tracey L. Meares and Tom R. Tyler: The first step is figuring out what police are for

Finally, and most important from our perspective, civil society must recognize and reaffirm the fundamental conservative values that animated much of the countrys constitutional structure. As conservatives, we find it somewhat ironic that todays defenders of state and local authority are frequent advocates for federal mandates. Meanwhile, those defending federal deployments today were supposedly devout federalists just a few years ago.

For ourselves, we prefer consistency. There is a reason that the federal government is one of limited powers. There is a reason that the Constitution identifies only three federal crimes. And there is a reason that, even today, federal criminal law is narrow and jurisdictionally constrained.

The Founders understood that policing authority should be closer to the citizenry and more directly responsive to local control. As James Madison put it in Federalist No. 45: The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State. [They are] numerous and indefinite. By contrast, in order to prevent unaccountable authority from growing without limit, Madison assured us that the powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.

Perhaps Madisons predictions have not proved completely accurate. But those concerns that animated him more than 200 years ago remain the same today. And that is why Americans should be gravely concerned with how President Trump has transformed federal authority. Forty years ago, President Ronald Reagan said that the nine most terrifying words in English language were Im from the government, and Im here to help.

Today he might revise that statement to, Were from the government, and were in chargeof everything.

This story is part of the project The Battle for the Constitution, in partnership with the National Constitution Center.

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There Is Nothing Conservative About What Trump Is Doing in Portland - Defense One

An international NGO Alliance for Persecuted People Worldwide (APPWW) recently organised a panel discussion on Oppression of Pakistans Indigenous People. The discussion was held in the backdrop of COVID-19 pandemic. Eminent persons representing the many oppressed regions of Pakistan and their people through various political parties, organisations and institutions were invited to speak in the discussion. The views give a deep insight into the very critical state of affairs within Pakistan as aggravated by the COVID-19 crisis.

The situation in Gilgit-Baltistan was explained by Senge Hasnan Sering, Director of Institute of Gilgit-Baltistan Studies and an international activist for the cause of freedom of his people from occupation and oppression by Pakistan. He said that since Gilgit-Baltistan is not a constitutional part of Pakistan there is a deeply embedded mindset of treating it as a colony. Now, the colonisation process has become two fold with China also getting involved in exploitation of the natural resources and the people of the region.

The situation created by the COVID-19 pandemic has given an opportunity to the exploitative forces to go for massive land grab. There has been a huge movement of troops in the region at a time when people need medicines and yet armed forces are being sent in. In fact, COVID-19 quarantine centres for Pakistan Army personnel have been set up in Gilgit-Baltistan to keep them away from the media glare in Punjab, and these facilities are not open to the locals.

As it is, the region is short of medical facilities like hospitals and medical institutions and is now grappling with critical shortage in supply of medicines. For cash strapped Pakistan, Gilgit-Baltistan holds no priority whatsoever, hence, the feeble infrastructure has been stretched to breaking point. Spread of Coronavirus through China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is also overwhelming the people. The Pakistan government is mulling over the feasibility of opening the region to tourists which will further enhance the risk factor. Senge Sering concluded with a demand for the justified amalgamation of the region with India.

The situation in Balochistan, another province forcefully amalgamated into Pakistan and witnessing a violent independence struggle as a consequence, was explained by Nabi Baksh Baloch, US Representative of the Baloch National Movement (BNM). He particularly emphasised the distressing lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for the doctors which leaves them very vulnerable to infection. Those from within the medical fraternity who agitated for PPE were jailed by the authorities. This insensitive act by the authorities is the only instance of its kind in the world where a government is arresting and harassing doctors during a medical emergency of such huge proportions.

As in the case of Gilgit-Baltistan, in Balochistan also, the Pakistan Army is leveraging the situation to strengthen its occupation of the region and suppress the legitimate aspirations of the people.

Zafar Sahito, representing Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaz (JSMM) spoke of the historical significance of Sindh in the context of overall Indian civilisation. In this ageless region the famed and legendary Saraswati River once flowed and the Vedas were written. It finds mention in both Ramayana and Mahabharta. In the modern context, Sindh was the first province to financially uplift Pakistan with its industrial and commercial expertise. Now the proud and civilised people of Sindh have been made subservient to the Pakistans Punjabi elite which has no regard for their economic potential or civilisational roots.

Rehan Ibadat, central organiser of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) a Sindh-based political party that represents the Mohajirs (Muslims from India who opted to go to Pakistan) said that his people are facing lack of education opportunities, lack of job opportunities and are being persecuted. Quite emotionally he said, this is not what the Mohajirs came to Pakistan for.

With regards to the COVID-19 situation both emphasised that the federal government has not shown any keenness to impose a lockdown on the cash cow region of the country which led to a rapid spread of the pandemic. Ultimately, it fell upon the provincial government to put its foot down and impose the lockdown. By then a lot of damage had been done; thousands of cases with a huge spike in deaths in the region have gone unreported.

Tarek Fatah, a Canada-based senior journalist of Pakistani origin opined in the webinar that Pakistan died as a nation in 1971 when 60% of its population and the complete eastern segment chose to seek independence, leading to the creation of Bangladesh. What is now left of Pakistan had nothing to do with the movement that led to the partition of the country, North-West Frontier Province, Sindh, Balochistan, and territories of Pakistan-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir did not make any demands for a separate Muslim nation. The concept was thrust upon them by the partition. The aforementioned provinces do not subscribe to the concept even today and are agitating to break the shackles of West Punjab imposed over them through blatant use of military might.

The second catastrophe, according to Tarek Fatah, was the imposition of Urdu as an official language of the new country. The language came from central India and to an extent from Punjab, the remainder of so-called Pakistan has no affinity with the language. It has over time created a cultural schism in the entire region. Tarek Fatah concluded by saying that internal contradictions in Pakistan are so intense that a breakup of the so-called nation is inevitable; it is only a question of time.

The world has changed manifold but the problems in Pakistan do not change. It is so because all provinces of Pakistan should be separate nations in their own right but are being forcefully subjugated and exploited by the Punjabi rulers. Sadly, until the breakup foretold by Tarek Fatah does not become reality inhumane suppression accompanied by gross human rights violations will continue. The world leaders should step in to help free the people from the shackles of de-facto military rule, supported by terrorists and fundamentalist militant warlords.

Jaibans Singh is a Geo-Political Analyst, Columnist and Author. He is also associated with the Centre for Socio-Cultural Study, Punjab

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