JESUITS, JIHADIS AND THE CRUSHING OF SMALL TOWN LIFE

Lightning Ridge, NSW, Australia.

They murmured in the background, censorious or supportive. At the Tables of Knowledge, there was little discussion but the excesses of bureaucracy. Suddenly depressed, for it all seemed to be going nowhere, the endless carping, the standing up to be counted, the shimmering little skeletal figures against white backdrops fringed along the horizon, the countless pounding of the police and the politicians, he didn't believe them anymore, nobody believed them anymore.

And in the lack of a national ethic, or continuity, in the fragmented and destroyed place that had once been in Australia, a place which once, as a child, seemed as large as the world itself, he looked down on shattering circumstance and knew no peace. 

Why did no one speak up as the country moved step by step towards Stasi Germany. 

Because almost no one ever spoke up, against injustice, against the thuggery of the mob, against the group think that was enslaving the population. He had once belonged, he belonged no more. He could hear them thinking, and stirred restless, plotting their routes, the Gwyder Highway, talking of their holidays. Sometimes their cosy sliding together n the long nights, as fevered, they flew and bounced and waged war.

The country was more on edge, more at war with itself, than it had ever been.

The head of ASIO Duncan Lewis, paid something like a million dollars a year, had set off a storm, declaring there was no evidence of a link between refugees and the rise of the terrorist threat. 

Bureaucrats saw no threat to anything, unless it was their pay packets.

They treated the population, disturbed by the overrunning of their country with strangers,  with contempt. 

It might be a natural instinct to want to protect their homeland; but their homeland had been sold down the river, to foreign interests, and to the creed of high immigration rates and multiculturalism.

The traditional culture of the country was being deliberately crushed. 

You saw it everywhere, and most particularly in these small towns.

The Newsagent in Lightning Ridge burnt down the day before he arrived.

Electrical fault, they swore. 

Just up the road, the Butcher was already closed.

The Baker had almost gone, being only intermittently open.

The largest building in town was Centrelink. Nextdoor, another government agency, JOBLINKS Plus.

In the main street, Food For Families, a welfare service, adjoined BY "SUREWAY: Pathways to Work."

What exactly all this work consists of, no one quite seems to know.


THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.adnews.com.au/news/media-s-role-in-the-politics-of-fear-a-look-inside-one-nation-and-the-alt-right


Media's role in the politics of fear; a look inside One Nation and the alt-right

That moment on Q&A when a stunned Pauline Hanson asked Labor politician Sam Dastyari 'Are you Muslim?'.

The emergence of the global alternative right movement that helped the Brexit vote get over the line and saw Donald Trump become US president has also laid a marker in Australia.

In recent years, the movement has manifested into the rise of nationalist extremist groups, such as like Reclaim Australia and the United Patriots Front, while One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has enjoyed a sudden revival in federal politics.

While many people dismiss these movements and their policies as racist, xenophobic and only representing of a fringe minority, the makeup of their audiences and how savvy they are at marketing their brand will surprise.

Last week at the Sydney Writer’s Festival, one of Australia’s leading journalists, David Marr, and one of its best documentary makers and author, John Safran, offered a fascinating insight into what makes these groups tick, their appeal and how they attract people, including ordinary Australian families, to their cause.

Branding the alt-right

Safran spent many months attending nationalist rallies, hanging out with the leaders of alt-right groups and getting to know ISIS sympathisers and other extremists for his book Depends What You Mean By Extremists.

Perhaps the most high-profile of leaders of the alt-right movement in Australia, is United Patriots Front leader Blair Cotterill, who was recently in court for beheading a dummy outside Bendigo Council offices as part of an anti-Islam video.

Safran said he had spent some time getting to know Cotterill personally and describes him as the “Today Tonight of anti-Islam”, adding “it's like something you can get away with”.

Read more at http://www.adnews.com.au/news/media-s-role-in-the-politics-of-fear-a-look-inside-one-nation-and-the-alt-right#wZxd1PZxVRv0I9x5.99







http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/robert-gottliebsen/are-australians-being-miseled-over-the-real-cost-of-the-f35-joint-strike-fighter/news-story/84959f679258706536efcfcb25439614?login=1

One of the world top independent defence experts has conduced an incredibly exhaustive examination of the real cost of the Joint Strike Fighter (F-35) to those countries that are buying it.

The expert, Paris-based Giovanni de Briganti, of Defence-Aerospace, estimates that the average unit cost of Lockheed Martin JSF in the ninth low-rate initial production run is $US206.3 million.

The Australian parliament has been told by Defence Minister Marise Payne and Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne that the cost of our Joint Strike Fighters will be in the vicinity of $US90 million.

Such a huge variation means that either Giovanni de Briganti has completely got his calculations wrong when applied to Australia, or Pyne and Payne may have misled parliament.

I do not have the ability to decide which of the alternatives are correct but there is a good chance that the Pyne/Payne $90 million vicinity estimate leaves out essential costs.

• READ MORE
• F-35 fighter deal doesn’t fly

Giovanni de Briganti believes the aircraft’s engine is one of the costs they leave out.

Let me explain what I think has happened.

Defence officials for over a decade have been hoodwinking politicians on both sides by conveniently leaving out the massive expenditures required to get the JSF aircraft into service. At least in the past that has included leaving out the cost of the engine.

LIKEREPLY

Mike Ryan3 HOURS AGO

Defence and Security receive a lot of taxpayer's cash but lack oversight - cloaked in the assorted security or non disclosure double-speak. These folks are as insular and isolated as are politicians who thrive in the Canberra bubble. Always at taxpayer expense. This must change now.

RECOMMENDED READING:

http://asenseofplaceblog.com/storyteller-a-foreign-correspondents-memoir-by-zoe-daniel/\

NEW SOUTH WALES POLICE STATE

Lightning Ridge Neighbourhood Centre Photograph John Stapleton

The world had been gripped by a collective madness. Bombs rained down in the Middle East, families ran terrified from a stadium in Manchester.
Politicians preached. 
The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull pontificated about the evils of terrorism, as he himself, the man responsible for the 50, sometimes more than 100 bombs Australia was dropping on Iraq and Syria each month, grew more compromised by the hour. 
It showed in his narrowing face, greyed-out hair, in the blows to his normally bullying swagger.
In the cesspit which Sydney had become, and in which his type thrived, he wanted everyone to know he was rich, successful, his house worth more than $50 million a year.
Now he was a loser, down in the polls, his long standing success curdling in his veins, the people disillusioned, exasperated, praying as they themselves were preyed upon..
In his short stint as Prime Minister he had become one of the most unpopular people in the country. 
Like others before him, the man who had dreamt of becoming Prime Minister all his life had botched the job when he got there, failed to represent the people who had put him there; and now there was nothing to do but flail in an increasingly frustrated quagmire, sad, discontent, a sloven slave to intellectual fashion and bureaucratic bullying.
The thug at the top of a pile of thugs.
Old Alex had woken up muttering, "thermonuclear device".
Did Islamic State have one? Were they prepared to use it? 
Was Armageddon really upon us?
The bombs rained down, the stinking smell of burnt flesh.
What were they fighting for? What was there left to save? 
The primary subject of conversation at the dwindling Tables of Knowledge in the once rollicking town was the excessive zealotry of the police, in this town without a traffic light, in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
It was emblematic of what was happening to the country as a whole, the burden of regulation confronting everyone, urging reform on all the darkest horses emerging from the swamps. 
Just days before, the police had set up a mobile drug testing van, ensuring that the streets were particularly quiet that day, as word spread rapidly.
They had managed, in any case, he was told, to catch 32 people out for having smoked a joint.
More than 50 years after the 60s.
Almost three dozen people's lives destroyed in a single day. Excellent work chaps.
Australia was a backward looking country going rapidly backward, and the signs were everywhere. 
He was told, although he had heard it all before, of the police arresting people for leaving their windows wound down, in 50C heat, for leaving their shopping on the backseat, unsecured load.
And, new one on him, for having too much mud on their mud caps, in a place where dirt tracks riddled out across hundreds, ultimately thousands of square kilometres. 
It was an insanity.
In the short drive from the camp where he was staying outside Lightning Ridge he saw two police vehicles, in a distance of perhaps 1.5 kilometres. 
Exasperated, he looked up and begged: leave us alone. 
But in the totalitarian state that was now Australia, the ferociousness of the government control strung across a collapsing civic culture, that was never going to happen. 


THE BIGGER STORY:



http://www.iraqinews.com/iraq-war/coalition-airstrike-kills-dozens-islamic-state-members-west-anbar/

Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Dozens of Islamic State members were killed in an airstrike launched by the U.S.-led coalition, west of Anbar, a military source in the province said.

“The coalition jets shelled the IS tunnels and weapon stashes in Houran valley, west of Rutba town,” the source told AlSumaria News.

“The strikes left the tunnels and stashes destroyed and dozens of IS militants killed,” the source, who preferred anonymity, added.

Rutba is controlled by security troops, however, the town faces IS militants attacks every now and then that are being encountered by security.

Last week, an offensive was launched in the desert of Anbar leaving 34 militants killed. According to the War Media Cell, the operation was launched through thee axes including north of Qadisiya lake toward Rawa city, south of Euphrates River toward Rihana and Annah cities and another axis toward Makhazin Haditha and Valley of Houran.

Anbar’s western towns of Annah, Qaim and Rawa have been held by the extremist group since 2014, when it emerged to proclaim a self-styled Islamic Caliphate.

Fighter jets from the Iraqi army and the international coalition have also regularly pounded IS locations in the province. The Iraqi government is expected to aim at those strongholds once the Mosul battle is concluded.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/returned-jihadis-roaming-free-in-sydney-not-enough-evidence-to-have-them-jailed/news-story/06453ce90efca3fd1290cb510e71a339

ISLAMIC extremists returning from fighting in Iraq and Syria are roaming our streets as free men because frustrated authorities do not have enough evidence to put them behind bars.

Counter-terrorism experts have revealed authorities have used laws to prosecute returning foreign fighters on just two occasions. This is despite more than 40 people returning from war zones to Australia in the past five years.

The government has been thwarted in the war against terror because it is so hard to obtain evidence from Syrian and Iraqi authorities.

It comes as revelations about Manchester bomber Salman Abedi’s links to Syria continue to unfold — including information he had trained as a fighter in the country after visiting family in Libya.

Attorney-General George Brandis is refusing to say how many extremists have been prosecuted under returning foreign fighter legislation.

But Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Counter Terrorism Policy Centre head Jacinta Carroll said only two returning extremists have been prosecuted. One of them was charged with fighting with al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra at the end of last year.

“A second person was prosecuted in December 22 (last year). The only other use of the foreign fighters legislation was Hamdi Alqudsi’s prosecution for recruitment, but he didn’t leave Australia,” Ms Carroll said.

THE AGENCIES AT WAR

These are early online drafts for the upcoming novel Dark, Dark Policing.
They should not be taken literally.

The agencies are at war.

The message came through loud and clear as he stirred from excessive sleep.

For weeks, perhaps it was months, a pterodactyl sat hunched high on ancient cliffs, rarely stirring, rustling down ever further into the alcove.

Normally highly intelligent and well awake, instead it was in a kind of dreaming, hibernating, dormant state, rarely even moving. 

An occasional disgruntled squawk, an occasional attempt to hide even further inside the stone alcove, that was it. 

The previous season'at summer's chicks were gone, and the creature was alone, surveying the lengthy valley below.

It did not move from its aerie. 

Below the heated air currents were more malignant than it had ever known them, thick with a kind of spiritual treachery. Such were its antennae, its unique psychic abilities, that it could see the danger visible on warm winds.

Perilous.

The world had become a very dangerous place. 

It wasn't kind. 

It wasn't the welcoming, remarkably fecund place where they had originally landed.

High in those cliffs, looking down across once drowned valleys, it was impossible not to notice the changes.

Step by terrible step.

Back on Planet Earth, well back in the future where Old Alex was now anchored, he continued to give the Watchers on the Watch the benefit of his views.

Bored, frustrated, fed up, much maligned, everything had changed since the death, or was it killing, of Bill Leak.

Was Bill Leak killed showed up as a Google prompt.

He wasn't the only one wondering.

Under the alleged protection of the Australian Federal Police, there was no coroner's report, no inquest, no details of his final hours.

Short and sweet: heart attack.

For years now, ever since the fetid heat of Bangkok, he had heard the malicious operatives within the agencies whispering: heart attack, heart attack. 

Auto-suggestion.

They hoped it worked. Save them the murky difficulties of a kill.

"Surveillance is harassment," Old Alex repeated over and over. "And I have been very, very, very badly harassed."

And occasionally: "Think how much money you could have saved with a little cooperation. Journalists are all the same. They just want stories. I am not above trading information."

But they didn't care about the money. It wasn't theirs. 

Some sucker taxpayer had gone to work to support the secret bureaucratic edifices of the agencies. 

And they would never know just how ineptly their money was being squandered.

Just how poor the oversight.

Just how truly, profoundly incompetent the agencies were.

But the time had passed, in the deep delinquencies and contradictions of surveillance. 

It was nothing but bullying.

And bullying didn't work. 

In yet another striking move in a failing democracy, the Australian government had set out to deliberately target and harass journalists, passing outlandishly oppressive legislation aimed at the Fourth Estate.

The bureaucratic instinct to control everything, to dictate everything, to control what people did at every point in their lives, at every passing moment, what they thought, how they worked, how they interacted, how best they could serve the state, was backfiring in spectacular fashion, causing them considerable grief.

Old Alex kept up the chants, all the more to annoy them.

Incompetent and oppressive legislation which turning journalists into POIs, Persons of Interest, under AS  IO legislation, had already created considerable grief for the government, and would continue to do so.

The worst totalitarian instincts of the government were in play when the legislation was in play.

And the oxymoronically titled Liberal Party was there at the helm, waving sticks they did not understand.

Everything the Australian government touched turned to disaster, and the oppressive legislation targeting journalists was no exception.

And the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was no exception.

"We've done a great job of exposing the corruption and incompetence within the agencies," Old Alex told the microphone in the car. "Congratulations to everyone involved." 

Photo, on the occasion of Mother's Day, which coincided with her 88th birthday, 14 May, 2017.

Sandwiched between my brother Doug and son Sam. Mother Nola and daughter Henrietta at front. Also L-R, nephews Ashely, Carey, his wife Janelle, Doug's wife Lee.