Covidistan Annals IV: Rising Protests, Exhausted Police, and the régime's Policy Failures Increase, too

Covidistan's Committee of Public Safety has painted itself into a corner--after all its policies failed so far, the régime hopes for a Christmas miracle

I’m a bit behind the curve on this one, but here’s a consolidated wrap-up of what happened in Covidistan last weekend: in short—more protests on both Saturday and Sunday, more condescension by the régime, and on Monday, the house arrest for the ‘vaccinated’ came to an end.

These are the themes and topics, let’s go and have a look.

More and bigger protests are engulfing Covidistan

The first thing to know is that the Committee of Public Safety is a weak one, and while I cannot vouch for their awareness thereof, it is imperative to mention. Once you take in how fundamentally weak the position of these putschists is, the below account might make more sense.

Now, why would I claim that the régime is weak and brittle?

First of all, the sustained number of protests that’s sweeping the country is, frankly, unprecedented in recent (that is, post-1945) history. There has never been anything like it, and whatever you’d like to think about these expressions of dissent, I don’t see them ending before too long. If anything, I predict that these protests will grow larger after the Christmas break, with the most significant catalyst being, of course, the régime’s vaxx mandate.

Second, the Committee has only a very narrow support base among the populace, and while the pre-Covidistan version of parliamentary democracy was an abomination, the chancellorships of Werner Faymann (2008-16) and especially of Sebastian Kurz at the helm of the ship of state (2017-19, 2020-21) may be considered a turning point: both had to deal with the profound dislocations wrought by the ‘Great Recession’ and the successive ‘Euro Crisis’.

Both events provided successive governments the ‘excuses’ to avoid governing, and the systemic corruption that’s engulfing Covidistan, in particular the overly cosy and government-funded media arose in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. In this sense, Kurz was continuing a way of shaping public perception via ‘media support’ (Medienförderung), i.e., cabinet ministers paid for positive coverage.

While there is nothing new under the sun here, keep in mind the following numbers and facts before we continue further down the particular rabbit hole of Covidistan’s descent into becoming a failed state: in 2020, the government paid the astonishing sum of 67m € to a number of daily newspapers. The three biggest beneficiaries of these funds (by far) were Kronen Zeitung (8.4m €), Österreich and the oe24.at group (5.2m €), and the tabloid Heute (5.5m €), which means that the tabloid, or yellow press segment accounted for more than half of the government’s advertising expenditures.

Yes, there’s more information on this in the above-linked piece by investigative online platform zackzack.at, but the main point is this: 95% of all government media spending originated in ÖVP-led ministries. In other words, the main governing party, the Austrian People’s Party is flooding the media with cash.

Furthermore, here are some quite representative quotes from leading politicians about this swamp, courtesy of the same zackzack.at daily (which, by the way, was founded by a former MP of the Greens who dissented and left the party—some say he was purged for disobedience—before putting together an independent daily without gov’t support):

Well, you know the deal, yes, there’s a quid pro quo for advertisement spending, isn’t it? Wolfgang Sobotka (ÖVP), currently the president of parliament

Theoretically, it’s illegal to use the public’s money to finance personalised adverts, but here’s Daniel Varro, chief-of-staff to former Finance Minister Gernot Blümel:

My aim…is to make…the citizens think that today there is the best budget/tax law/capital market law, the best Finance Ministry, and the best Minister of Finance they have ever seen.

I could go on, but I think you get the point; these quotes are part and parcel of why Sebastian Kurz resigned in October, after police executed an unprecedented search warrant in the Federal Chancellery and the ÖVP’s party HQ in summer. While initially Kurz intended a comeback, he withdrew from politics in late November, which also caused Schallenberg and Blümel to eventually resign. Honi qui mal y pense.

(For a bit more background, see my three-part series, entitled ‘Limping Towards Catharsis’, part 1, part 2, and part 3; and now on to the main course.)

The anti-régime protests last weekend

The main event took place on Saturday, 11 Dec. 2021, in front of the Chancellery, the President’s Office, and the (temporary) Parliament in Heroes Square (Heldenplatz). It was organized by the Freedom Party whose less-than-charismatic chairman, Herbert Kickl, gave a so-so speech, but at least he spoke out forcefully against the Committee of Public Safety’s envisioned vaxx mandate.

Again, there were comparatively large protests last weekend, and much like in previous weeks (see here and here), régime and self-identifying as ‘free-and-adversarial’ media outlets continue to gaslight.

As see earlier, the manipulative bullshitting of these media outlets is there for everyone to see: by 2:16 p.m. on 11 Dec., Flora Mory writing for the daily Der Standard suggested that there were ’20,000 protestors’, citing police sources. By 3:41 p.m., state broadcaster ORF had corrected the number of protesters again upwards, speaking of ‘some 44,000 protestors’. By 4:07 p.m.—that is: less than two hours after her initial posting—Ms. Mory acknowledged that larger number, speaking herself of ‘some 44,000 protesters’ in downtown Vienna. Flora Mory’s post was accompanied by the below picture, which gives away her (paper’s) game here:

I could go on about how Covidistan media misrepresents (‘lies’) this and that, but here’s what I consider the much bigger issues at hand:

First, the régime is desperate to show that these protesters are insidious and, yes, less-than-human (as any cursory glance into, e.g., Der Standard’s comments section underneath their daily Covid-related live-postings reveals instantly; if there’s any doubt about the decay of European civilisation and the wide-spread, if largely illusionary, ‘Judeo-Christian values’ of the present moment, do check out that feed). Hence, we see state media ORF ‘report’ like the below quotation and link to a Vienna Police tweet (my emphasis):

According to police, charges were filed for the use of pyrotechnics [illegal in Covidistan] and widespread disregard for the mask mandates among protestors. In addition, arrests were reported, among other things, based on the Verbotsgesetz [a 1947 act, subsequently amended, that bans Nazi ideology, neo-Nazi activities, and criminalises Holcaust Denial] or for alleged attempts to resist law enforcement. By late afternoon, the tally stood at a total of four arrests, police declared in response to [media] requests. Disruptors and provocateurs were singled out, apprehended, and ID checks were performed.

Translation of the tweet (again, my emphasis):

At the head of the rally, media people have just been pelted with snowballs or ice chunks. One journalist fell the victim of an attempted assault. Police reinforced personnel deployed at the head of the protest march. Attackers were stopped.

You see: the desperation, while in place well before as media briefings after earlier protests have shown, is rising. There’s hardly any violence on part of the protestors, and I remain hesitant (doh) to call the throwing of snowballs on less-than-sympathetic ‘journalists’ an attack or aggravated assault as defined by the Criminal Code.

Second, the number of protestors isn’t decreasing, which is partially why the régime is unhappy. Even if we take authorities and media reports literally, see for yourself:

• 20 Nov.: 15,000 were actually 35,000 protestors (see here)

• 4 Dec.: ‘some 10,000’ were actually 40,000 protestors (see here)

• 11 Dec.: ‘20,000’ were actually 44,000 protestors (scroll up for sources)

Official numbers—and their media lackeys masquerading as journalists—are typically ‘not entirely correct’ (lies), hence if we play with these numbers for a moment, it’s obvious to notice the following items:

1. They grow bigger every weekend there is a big protest.

2. At first, police and media lowball these estimates by somewhere between 133-400%.

3. Police are instrumental in trying to prevent people from joining.

4. In the evening, police and media admit to much higher numbers.

Now, both régime and non-Covidistan media reported that the 20 Nov. protests exceeded 100,000 protestors. Hence, if the number of protestors who attended the demonstrations on 4 and 11 Dec. was admittedly larger than the earlier protest, it’s fair, if not outright plausible, to assume that the true number of protestors was higher as well.

In an earlier posting, I settled for the ‘realistic’ (i.e., half-way) estimate of some 70,000 protestors on 20 Nov. (police claimed up to 40,000, the organisers claimed 100,000, I went for the middle ground here). If we think about the discrepancy between the 133-400% differential in the same way, then there were some 110,000 people on the streets of Vienna on 4 Dec., by the same ‘method’ there were some 120,000 people on the streets of Vienna.

Let’s not get bogged down here, but the bottom line is: people are out and about, in the freezing rain, protesting the putschists and hoping for the best.

I do think the Committee, in ending restrictions on the ‘vaccinated’ two days ago, is hoping that this move will placate the restless populace. My estimate is that the government hopes for the protests to dissipate over (during) the Christmas break.

Here’s why I think they are wrong.

The road ahead for the Covid Puppets

There were still more protests since the last weekend, among them a protest in Vienna (which police dispersed) while a larger protest is planned for Wednesday in Covidistan’s second-largest city, Graz. This is quite ‘new’, sustained efforts during the week, but then again, so is the planned vaxx mandate.

Speaking of which, how is the ‘incentive’ of high fines and imprisonment from 1 Feb. 2022 working out? (See here for a first take on the proposed ‘legislation’.)

The ‘house arrest for the unvaccinated’, which quietly continues since the vaxxed-only re-opening on 13 Dec., was a policy failure, as I pointed out in late November already: few ‘unvaccinated’ were coerced into the pseudo-medical intervention masquerading as ‘vaccination’ against Covid-19.

To this policy failure we may now add the madness masquerading as ‘vaccination drive’. Fully espoused by Covidistan’s Committee of Public Safety, even régime-friendly media reports its failure (in so many, i.e., few, words). Here’s Der Standard on this, just earlier today (my emphases):

Without children getting jabbed, the recent decline in first-time vaccinations would have been even more pronounced. After a brief increase in daily first-time jabs to 19,000 [unclear which date, all of the past seven days saw first jabs well below that number], the seven-day average has dropped significantly, as reported by the APA. Most recently, only 8,800 people per day were vaccinated for the first time. Overall, almost 73 percent of the population in Austria have been vaccinated at least once, and 69 percent have been vaccinated for the time being, i.e., they have a valid vaccination certificate.

As to the (unfounded) claims of 19,000 first jabs, a brief look at the official Covid Vaccination Dashboard shows that the following images:

The highest amount of first jabs in the past seven days were 13,590 on 10 Dec.

Let’s leave these issues aside and focus on something else that’s quite moronic in and of itself: from 12 Dec. 2021 onwards, the red ‘attention’ section informs that Covid-19 vaxx certificates will be uniformly valid for 270 after the first jab.

Hence, those who won’t get jabbed continuously will eventually re-join the ranks of the still-lockdowned ‘unvaccinated’.

If ‘house arrest’ proved to be a blunder, wait for the ranks of the ‘unvaccinated’ to grow slowly but steadily. Imagine the country was open to you—until your Covid Passport expired.

Dissent and anti-régime sentiment will not dissipate after Christmas; I expect it to grow, as more and more parts of the draft legislation is leaking out and more and more people learn about the abominations the putschists have in mind.

Furthermore, there are numerous media reports that police is almost broken. Here’s the new Interior Minister Gerald Karner, claiming that police is at the ready—which the same piece also citing police union representatives as follows (my emphasis):

[We’ve reached] our limits, criticised the police union, adding that the tasks ordered by health authorities are increasing ever more, hence workload and/or sick leave rise in lockstep.

Finally, here’s Der Standard again, mentioning a number of items, such as 1m extra hours since spring 2020 (my emphases):

[Social Democratic] police union speaker Hermann Greylinger: ‘According to various surveys and studies, we already had 10-15 percent of colleagues at risk of burnout before the pandemic. In our line of work, where one handles weapons, this is insane.’ Moreover, it can’t be a coincidence that the psychological service within the police is ‘totally overrun and crying out for more staff’.

Furthermore, as I mentioned frequently, police is also not fully committed to the regime:

On November 20 and at the demonstration last Saturday [4 Dc.], people marched along carrying a banner with the inscription ‘Enough is enough. We police officers stand with you for basic rights and freedoms’. At a press conference on 21 Nov., Vienna’s deputy police commissioner, Franz Eigner, said it was still unclear whether they were really police officers. More than two weeks later, this still seems to be unclear.

By now, private TV station ServusTV confirmed that off-duty police were among the protesters. This is why the media outlet is now targeted by the régime’s regulatory agency for providing non-conformist coverage (on which more another time).

Bottom lines

We’re in for a very tense January.

Support for the Committee’s ‘policies’ (I’m generous here) is limited; protests and anti-régime sentiments are increasing. Police are overworked and only partially reliable.

For days now, my spouse adds that there won’t be ‘change’ without violence.

I agree, and I think the most likely incident is a young, disaffected, and exhausted officer will open fire.