You Must Be Djoking?
by John Kendall Hawkins
A funny thing happened to the world's number 1-ranked male tennis player Novak Djokovic on his way to the 2022 Australian Open to compete for his 21st grand slam win that would break a tie he shares with Pete Sampras and Roger Federer. He contracted Covid-19 -- for the second time -- in mid-December 2021. By all accounts, he followed the isolation protocols, and at the end of timeout tested negative for the virus. He was then faced with a choice as he readied to go Down Under: (a) procure a vaccination certificate or b) seek an exemption to that requirement. He went with (b).
On January 6, when he arrived in Melbourne on an Emirates airline flight from Dubai, federal Australian Border Guards refused to accept the exemption certificate issued by the Victorian state government and his visa was revoked, meaning he'd soon be deported. According to Australian public broadcaster ABC, "the Border Force policy changed while Djokovic was on flight." Prior to January 6, people arriving with the same certification as Djokovic had been allowed in, the ABC said. They go on,
As explained by former deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration Abul Rizvi on the 7.30 program, "Until and including the fifth of January, the policy was that Border Force would accept exemption medical certificates from state governments, such as the Victorian state government, at face value " [on] the sixth of January the policy changed."
You must be sh*tting me? would have the expression on the Jokerman's face.
Calling on expensive local lawyers, he fought the decision in court and it was overturned. And Djovak went to work training for the competition. Things had returned to normal. But then someone woke the Immigration Minister, Alex Hawke, and urged him to override the court's decision, which he did, and, the next thing you know, Djokovic was oarless up sh*t's creek again. His visa re-revoked, and he was invited to leave ASAP, as the Minister's decision, though open to a judicial appeal, was virtually impossible to overrule because of the discretionary language used for the decision.
So, the Joker (or is it Jokee?) was deported out of Australia, and the controversy raged -- if for no other reason than that Australia had expelled the world number 1, and probably the biggest draw to the Aussie Open. So, yeah. shock and awe, and then outrage and demands for "please explain," as the resilient Aussie ultra-nationalist Pauline Hanson might have put it. Righteousness erupted.
It was when Hawke finally got around to releasing an official explanation for his decision that the high pitches could be heard (and felt) at 12 O'clock high. Hawke ordered Djkovic's visa canceled because he decided that the Joker's previous public comments somewhat disparaging getting a vaccination, combined with his decision to enter Australia without one, added up to what locals could regard as "hoon" behavior, i.e., deliberately reckless. And, therefore, because of Djokovic's
"high-profile status and position as a role model" while arguing that his "ongoing presence in Australia may foster" disregard for the precautionary requirements following receipt of a positive Covid-19 test" said Hawke as he defended his decision to cancel the visa,
as RT News puts it, in a succinct piece, as if to tweak Western news outlets with its clarity and dispassion.
And the overturning court was even more weighty in supporting Hawke, stated in its published reasons for upholding Hawke's decision, as reported by the ABC,
The central proposition of Mr Djokovic's argument was that the Minister lacked any evidence and cited none that his presence may 'foster anti-vaccination sentiment'...It was not irrational for the Minister to be concerned that the asserted support of some anti-vaccination groups for Mr Djokovic's apparent position on vaccination may encourage rallies and protests that may lead to heightened community transmission. [my emphasis]
In other words, the hoon was probably a recidivist who, having previously scoffed at the law, might just do it again -- especially encouraging Aussie youngsters, who might then prove unruly and spankable -- and they'll not have rebels against the Cause in this cliffside community of emperors with no clothes!
(Rumors are circulating Oz -- well, flatulating -- that basketball star Kyrie Irving won't be allowed into the country because of his flat Earth views and how they might be perceived by vulnerable Aussie children. In October 2018 he told ESPN he was sorry for expressing his suspicion, as he "didn't realize the effect" it might have om kids. Of course, another concern would be: Why are we handing a round object to a flat earther who just pounds the motherf*cker against the flat ground repeatedly, as if to break the dear paradigm altogether and, surely, us with it.)
Two things to note in response to their reasoning, such as it was, is that, as the BBC reports, (1) disparaging comments that the Joker expressed against vaccination were back in April 2020, well before Covid vaccines were available or even a sparkler in Donald Trump's October Surprise eyes; and, (2) Hawke's citing of Jokerman's "disregard" in 2021 following a positive testing for Covid-19, after which, according to a NYT piece, led him to expose "photo shoot" staff and, at a separate event, an award ceremony with children, to the Covid virus. The Joker acknowledged this "error in judgment" later. But the Times calls him on his honesty. Writer Yan Zhuang notes,
While Mr. Djokovic said in his statement on Wednesday that he "had not received the notification of a positive PCR result" until Dec. 17 after the event involving children documents he provided to Australian officials as he tried to enter the country said that the result had been returned the day before.
Presumably, he had seen the result, and went ahead anyway, is the implication.
Now, if you were the line judge on this matter, how would you be scoring this episode in hijinks at this point? Me, thanks for asking, I got the April 2020 comment by the Joker tossed out -- a let -- as there were no vaccines, his worry was merely hypothetical, and even the NYT was reporting around that time that history showed that no vaccine for a virus had ever been developed (i.e., fully tested before foisting it on the public) in less than four years. The piece lays it out clean for the clown show administration in DC at the time (You Know Who):
The grim truth behind this rosy forecast is that a vaccine probably won't arrive any time soon. Clinical trials almost never succeed. We've never released a coronavirus vaccine for humans before. Our record for developing an entirely new vaccine is at least four years more time than the public or the economy can tolerate social-distancing orders.
Jesus, this comes after the Joker's mild skepticism, and seems to fully support it. I dunno, but this line judge says Point goes to Joker on this one, which is to say Hawke's "rationale" is reversed.
Next up, the NYT (and, by modus ponens, or is it pollens?, Alex Hawke) raises the apparent fact (I'm keeping my options open in this Live-and-Let-Die "ever-changing world we live") that the Joker mingled with kids after his positive result, and thus, risked their health unnecessarily. The funny guy seems to have owned up to this, so we have to give him small applause for his mea culpa ability. Further, the NYT itself had meddled with children -- journalistically-speaking -- in an unrelated, but technically significant report when they intentionally published inflated hospitalization numbers back in October 2021, says a mocking righty Minnesota's Western Journal piece in "New York Times Forced to Admit It Inflated Number of Children Hospitalized by COVID to 14 Times Higher Than Reality," that provides links to support their jocularity. So, I dunno, had to replay on this, and my thinking is another let, as the Joker's laxity with exposing kids to the virus strikes me as on a par with the NYT exposing readers with viral statistics about kids that infect adult reader's perceptions and politics. Cancel out.
The net result is that the Aussies let the Joker, after changing the rules in mid-flight. But the initial rejection by the Border Guard did not reflect the discrepancy described above but merely a new policy to reject state certifications. Nothing to with the Joker at all. And Hawke doesn't specifically say that someone handed him the gosh-darn NYT piece that calls the Joker out as an applicant liar. Nevertheless, the Left and assorted agitprop types mobilized and the Right took off its gloves and cream puff pies were thrown in a flurry of peppersnippellry for a while. But Hawke let a kind of genie out of the bottle with his reasoning, and some folks felt that such reasoning was riddled with bimbamboomerangin' Look at me, I'm a God, see, pretenses. (A former Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, said, back in 2008, that Godliness came with the turf.) Essentially, Hawke was making a character judgment when he presumed that Djokovic, in his modeling role as as role model, might waywardly stir the heart of youngsters.
Well, the controversial Glenn Greenwald (the most eco-friendly name of all time, I reckon) was having none of it. In a broadcast from his virtual digs at YouTube alternative Rumble (moneypennied by new sugar daddy Peter Thiel), Greenwald excoriated Hawke's decision in a "scathing" takedown of his power and glory. Nor would he stand for the "blithe" acceptance by the Aussie public of the predatory Hawke decision. He says, in this Rumble snippet uploaded to YouTube (because OEN won't allow Rumble embeds)
The Australian people seem to really crave extreme forms of freedom deprivation in the name of COVID. They've watched the same video of camps and hard quarantines that we've all seen, and they're happy with it. They're grateful. Even Australian leftists and liberals I've seen expressing gratitude to the center-right government and specifically the hard line immigration minister for quote, keeping them safe.
Dig it, Glenn's positing that the Left here in Australia is as reactionary as the Right on this matter. Can you believe it? I can. (And it's not just Covid thing.) But let's stick to the matter at hand.
Greenwald has been busy lately defending the First Amendment, essentially the right to think freely and to then express one's (hopefully) processed public utterances based on those internally worked out thoughts. (In fact, Greenwald literally says, at one point in his vlog, "It's just a matter of free thought.") And he sees the Joker's deportation in these terms:
So there you go: So there you go, Djokovic.
Hawke's utterances open up fissures of contradiction, starting with the national presumption to judge incoming foreigners seeking residency on their "character." There's even a test for it (that many natural borns would likely fail, by their own admission). It is, as ABC journalist Andrew Fowler told me last year in an interview regarding Julian Assange's status in Belmarsh and beyond, a "conservative country." However it is not, just yet, conservative in the American style, so much of which seems built upon partisan reactionary politics that have been around since the Civil War and a Reconstruction that moved slavery from the cotton fields to credit card debt. Australia has no legacy of slavers and, at times, you might think the only Jew here is Robert Manne. Nice guy though. So, the blues sung here, except for variations on convict chanteys, aren't necessarily based on diaspora humor and blues that white Americans have come to enjoy and co-opt, but borrowed from English traditions; it's a white man's diaspora here in this land of far flung ex-convicts. (Just kidding.)
Alex Hawke is an Australian in the conservative mold. He's opened the Pandora's vase on "character" and "role models." How unfortunate, cookie. For, at least one radiohead, Alan Jones, himself of dubious merit, regards Hawke as corrupt for his gerrymander-esque ways and "a cancer on the New South Wales Liberal [i.e., conservative] party." His views can be construed as somewhat controversial. According to his link-supported Wikipedia entry, Hawke told the Sydney Morning Herald that
Australia will move increasingly towards an American model of conservatism and that "The two greatest forces for good in human history are capitalism and Christianity, and when they're blended it's a very powerful duo.
There are many many people I know who would regard the one-two punch of Christianity and Capitalism as two of the greatest evils to afflict human history.
Further, the Wikipedia entry goes on,
In 2018, Hawke said he strongly supported new rules to allow religious schools to expel students who are gay, bisexual or transgender, warning that people of faith were under attack in Australia.
This was not well-received by the LGBTQA community. In addition, despite a 2016 plebiscite that led to the passage of gay marriage legislation, opposes the enactment and would roll it back. Plus former Liberal prime minister dual citizen (think: Union Jack) Tony Abbott Liked Hawke. Ouch. Tell you what, I wouldn't want Hawke as a role model for my children, although I would never try to prevent him from entering the US -- where instead of the winky amoral bond of mateship, Americans enjoy a Bill of Rights (that some say makes us the crazies that we are, but a beautiful people, all in all).
And you wouldn't want to hear what Aussie investigative journalist John Pilger has to say about some national values. In his doco Utopia (2013), Pilger scourged his "mates." The description says it all:
It is his fourth film about Indigenous Australia, the oldest, most enduring human presence on Earth. Released in 2013 and filmed over two years, Utopia breaks what amounts to a recurring national silence about the brutalising of Indigenous people"The point is made that little has changed for many of those excluded from white Australia's wealth, regardless of an official apology for 'wrongs past and present'.
Unlike Julian Assange, who did great anti-Empire work with Wikileaks, making sure the American MIC ate crow often and gluttonously, Pilger, in addition to that portfolio, has been unafraid of shaming Australian policies for their hypocrisy. But, by and large, they don't give a sh*t. [Watch the film (and others) at his site: http://johnpilger.com/videos/utopia
In a sideshow incident, the news has recently reported that patrons attending the Aussie Open have been told that they cannot enter the premises wearing or bearing political or commercial slogans. Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has disappeared since she made sexual harassment allegations against a high-ranking Chinese official. But in "Tennis Australia defends decision to confiscate 'Where is Peng Shuai?' T-shirt, banner at Australian Open" more of the widespread zeal for authoritarianism rears its ugly head. After all, it's untrue that folks are allowed into the Rod Laver arena wearing tees that bear commercial or political statements. Would they ban icon Che tees? (Please do.) Would they god forbid Obama Hope tees that only seem now to deride our gullibility? Would thay have Nike wearers take a hikey?
Americans would be shocked at such limitations imposed on their freedom of expression. Abbie Hoffman would have been pilloried here, the Left and the Right throwing rotten cliches at his street theatre shtick. And there's been talk that should Assange be tried and found guilty in the US on Espionage charges, that only ever applied to American citizens, that he be allowed to serve his sentence in Oz, but, if he were allowed to do so, it would almost certainly be under a gag order.
Probably, the sometimes insufferable Greenwald is on to something -- again -- when he sees the Joker incident as part of a larger piece about growing global authoritarianism. This is not a new thing -- it's one of Noam Chomsky's much-publicized pet worries, after Nuclear War and Climate Change. He began his vlog piece with a reference to the growing trend toward squeezed expression, and that might be good place to leave it. He said:
Now, in order to understand what happened here, because there are a lot of misconceptions, I see huge numbers of people, especially people thrilled to watch Novak Djokovic be sent packing because they want to see people who are unvaccinated, punished and humiliated for reasons. Having a lot to do with psychology, a lot to do with in-group behaviour, very little to do with science or public health for the people who are cheering what was done.
This is so true. In a bizarre reversal of fortune, just as we are about to enter the Singularity Age, we are returning to the Dark Age hocus pocus of superstition and giving up on science and responsible representative government -- either out of species exhaustion or a second Fall that leads to eternal damnation.
(Did you see what I did there? Just kidding.)
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