Being paid to "protest"

  This was apparently posted to the Airtasker site. I cannot verify it but someone else who had something on Airtasker assures me she saw it there. It has since been posted on "X" as well.

Whether it was a genuine posting - that is the person was intending to pay others to protest because of their own inability to attend - is something I very much doubt. I am told it would be easy to get  young people along and then claim they did not do what was asked of them. I am also told this could be done for multiple groups of young people looking for a few easy dollars to spend on a night out. It quite possibly did not cost the person who posted the "task" anything other than whatever it costs to post on the site. Did that person use their real name? It is also unlikely.

There is money somewhere behind these "protests".  Out "security and intelligence organisation" will know something about it. I have no doubt at all they ate keeping a very close watch on the protests and who attends them.  (Yes, they keep an eye on me too. I am not being "paranoid". It is for my own safety.) 

I suspect one of the reasons the so-called pro-Palestinian protests  have been allowed to continue as long as they have is because it is easier to keep a watch on some of what is going on. The crowds will have been scrutinised each week - for agitators and trouble makers.

One person they will be monitoring closely is Josh Lees. He is the leader of these and many other protests. He is a professional agitator. He makes his living out of protesting. Where his money is coming from I do not know. It is unlikely to be Centrelink. He spends too much time organising protests and more to be spending the required number of hours searching for work. It seems he was once employed as a tutor at a university. He has a degree of some sort or other. Lees has a "man bun" and often wears a keffiyeh. It marks him out. Standing on a platform above a crowd rallying people to protest louder and harder is the way he "works". He does not give interviews.

Yes, that is the interesting thing. He does not give interviews. Other leaders of other protests seem more than happy to give interviews. They will actually seek them out. Interviews and the media coverage these give them, whether positive or negative are generally more than welcome. 

Lees avoids interviews. Why? It's an interesting question. I have my own theories about the reasons for this. Is he a dangerous man? Yes. I believe he is. I also believe the people behind him may be even more dangerous. For now he is being allowed to continue apparently unchecked because, on balance, those who know more than the rest of us have decided it is safer that way. 

Did anyone receive that $100? I doubt it.