FED UP: Italian Civil Disobedience Signals New Wave Of Lockdown Protests
Updated
By Jefferey Jaxen
“More cases.”
“New variants.”
“Not enough people taking the experimental vaccine.”
The reasons for continued rolling lockdowns by global governments appear to be endless. People have had enough. The frustration and historical, worldwide protests against highly questionable lockdown edicts are morphing into organized civil disobedience.
From U.K.’s Sunday Express: Italy on brink of ‘civil disobedience’ as public defies ‘absurd’ coronavirus rules. Over the weekend, Italy was ground zero for what was being called the #IoApro (translated: #IOpen) actions. Starting Friday and through the weekend, 50,000 restaurants were expected to band together to open up against Covid restrictions.
Italy adopted a three-tier system of restrictions and has since been changing up lockdown levels regionally based upon on the latest coronavirus infection rate data.
The weekend’s civil disobedience ignited following Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte Friday decision to extend restrictions, which were originally implemented in November and set to expire.
The PM imposed a nationwide 10pm to 5am curfew until March, ending travel between Italy’s 20 regions until February 15. The decree also extends a ban on movement between regions, with people allowed to travel only for reasons of work, health or other emergencies.
The regional bans are being driven solely upon infection rates as determined by PCR testing. Yet this protocol has already been shown to be useless when it comes to delivering accurate test-results of real significance in an ongoing pandemic.
At this time, the number of participants remains unclear. Too many corporate media mouthpieces have either ignored the nonviolent acts of civil disobedience or characteristically underreported their numbers.
Yet people are telling their own stories through social media. Countless videos show Italian restaurants filled with happy patrons laughing, singing and drinking.
Friday night, a viral video showed police attempting to enter an Italian pub—before being rejected at the door by chanting customers.
Along the same spirit, anti-lockdown protests in Amsterdam were attempted to be quelled by the preferred public health measures of police officers in riot gear and water cannons reported the NY Times. While thousands also marched in opposition of lockdowns in Vienna, Austria.
Have the lockdowns been justified? In late November TalkRadio host Juila Hartley-Brewer hammered U.K. Labour MP and shadow Health & Social Care Secretary Jonathan Ashworth live on-air for not producing a cost-benefit analysis to justify lockdown measures.
A peer-reviewed study published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation looked at the effects mandatory lockdowns (stay-at-home orders) and business closure had on the spread of COVID‐19. The study authors found “no clear, significant beneficial effect” resulting from the restrictive interventions on case growth in any of the 10 countries – England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, and the USA.
Governments around the world are walking dangerously close to experiencing similar, creative mass civil disobedience from populations who have grown weary of restrictions, and their devastating effects, without clear ends.
Covering the civil disobedience in Italy was popular architect and film producer Robin Monotti:
“The problem with lockdown advocates is not simply that they believe in a theoretical measure that is not evidence based, it’s that they believe they have the right to impose their belief system onto others through threats of fines, arrest, imprisonment, business closures…”
In the first week of 2021, U.S. unemployment claims surged to nearly one million, as business closures and layoffs from the poorly thought out and unscientific lockdowns continued from the previous year.
Forbes writes: “Thursday’s data is the highest weekly total since August—a worrying sign that the labor market’s initial rebound after the disaster in the early days of the pandemic is now moving in the wrong direction.”
After a greater than 25% economic fall in 2020’s first two months of lockdown put the U.K. in a rapid recession, unemployment in the country is currently worse than officials figures of 4.9% suggest.
The U.K. clamped back down in early January with promises to its people that the new reopening target would be mid-February. But headlines began stifling people’s hope almost immediately. UK Hopes to Ease Lockdown From March: Minister reported Reuters.
But readers of U.K. foreign secretary Dominic Raab’s recent comments tell a different story.
Raab said the government hoped to ease the lockdown restrictions in March. “When we get to a situation in the early spring, perhaps March, if we succeed in hitting those targets…we can start to think about the phased transition out of the national lockdown.”
What targets are those you ask? The “targets,” or “roadmap,” as Raab calls it will be as follows:
“The plan is to get the first 15 million most vulnerable people vaccinated with the first dose by the middle of February,” he said. “We then want to get, by early spring, another 17 million. At that point we’ll have 99% of those most at risk of dying of coronavirus administered their first jab, and then the entire adult population [will be] offered a first jab by September.”
A similar push is planned in the U.S., as Joe Biden has signaled an immediate expansion to all people 65 and older to get the vaccine.
Meanwhile at the street level, another op is unfolding. Major retail pharmacies in the U.S., such as Kroger and CVS, will no longer ask for identification before vaccinating. This move goes in opposition the U.S. Centers For Disease Control’s current phase 1A designation which called for only frontline workers and those in longterm care facilities.
There is zero question that the lockdowns have destroyed both society as a whole along with individual communities and families. Main street has been decimated. Now we’re asked to trust the very same leaders who tore it all down. Characters like Neil Ferguson, Bill Gates and shadowy unaccountable SAGE groups…all of whom have used flimsy (at best!) data and analysis to shut down the world.
So what is the new government proposing? To ‘build back better’ and ‘reimagine’ another society. Universal basic income, entangling recipients into a burgeoning social credit score system and rapidly increasing censorship of a growing list of topics including medicine choice and informed consent. With, of course, accompanying immunity passports to move about the earth cabin.
Which world do you want to see built back better because it’s happening as we speak. Get involved!