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| East Coast, Australia. |
"I used to think people were well intentioned," he said to his son, as he looked out on the drizzling sea and the bobbing yachts. "I don't anymore."
They laughed, a mutual moment of recognition, as they related the various perfidies of those around them.
Time is not on your side. Heart attack heart attack. We have to make sure we get a good shot. Make sure he's in the frame.
He had always wondered why the old gods had been so cruel.
Fanatical.
Now he knew.
Outside the camp, the enemy, those who had not already been killed, were staked to the ground, their gasping, hallucinatory dementia in the relentless sun bleeding through to the present day, into their consciousnesses. Their tortured dreams, their escaping souls, would add to the strength of the gods their camp had chosen to follow. As if there was any choice. Subjugation. Believe or die. We will infest every corner of your life, we will see your every thought, we will know if you have not surrendered.
The Dark Lords.
The monotheistic faiths.
Everything was magic to the unevolved. They attacked the religious, those who did not believe as they believed. Those who dared to question, why, why?
Submit or die.
Their fevered dreams.
And so it was, terror, and thereby Islam, dominated the news bulletins, dominated every conversation, and enhanced, step by terrible step, the power of the state.
Terror, terror, terror. The justification for everything, for the ever growing power of the state, for the ever diminishing personal freedoms, for a contracting national story, for death, power, dementia, cruelty; for a country which had gone insane.
Existential threat served the government, be it climate change or terror, and this lunar right government had seized on every opportunity to expand its own power, to rob the people, to ignore the rights of their citizens, to demean those who did not work for them, or who did not agree.
A feature of the Stasis was that everyone dobbed in everybody. Now it was a feature of Australia.
He stopped at a house, along the edge of Illawarra Lake which, unusually, in an era which had destroyed the natural human instinct for trade and entrepreneurship, was advertising $10 haircuts.
The first thing out of the woman's mouth, she had been a child in the area some 60 years before, was how a neighbour had complained to the council about them.
And he agreed, as he looked out on the lyrical, once sacred lake: The country had become a nation of dogs and dobbers.
In days of old, as descendants of convicts, the last thing an Australian would do was dob in someone.
Now, they could barely wait to get to the phone. Dogs and dobbers, the lot of them. It was not just the underclass which had collapsed. It was the culture as a whole.
They had betrayed the citizenry, and were destroying a country purportedly in order to save it.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/malcolm-turnbull-to-stamp-authority-on-national-security/news-story/d4daf86d5d850af87c3465d32d94bb12
AUSTRALIANS must be prepared to give up some rights to keep most of the population safe, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will say today in a speech that stamps his authority on national security.
Mr Turnbull will use the national security update in Federal Parliament to shift the focus away from former prime minister Tony Abbott and climate change, and lay the foundation for tougher laws that try to insulate the country from terror attacks.
The move comes as security fences have been erected around Parliament House after protracted meetings and negotiations with key MPs and security agencies.
The Courier-Mail can exclusively reveal intelligence agencies were worried about visitors and school groups being attacked by extremists.
http://theconversation.com/turnbull-and-shorten-urge-need-to-curb-terrorists-opportunities-on-the-internet-79311
Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten will both home in on the importance of tackling cyber issues as part of the fight against terrorism, in parliamentary speeches on Tuesday.
In a security update on the threats facing Australia at home and abroad, Turnbull will say that an “online civil society is as achievable as an offline one.”
“The privacy and security of a terrorist can never be more important than public safety”, he says in notes released ahead of the address. “The rights and protections of the vast overwhelming majority of Australians must outweigh the rights of those who will do them harm.
"That is truly what balancing the priority of community safety with individual liberties and our way of life is about.”
The government would not take an ‘if it ain’t broke we won’t fix it’ mentality, Turnbull says - rather, Australia is at the forefront of efforts to address future threats.
Attorney-General George Brandis will visit Canada this month to meet his “Five Eyes” security counterparts – the others are from Britain, the United States, New Zealand as well as Canada - and discuss what more can be done by like-minded nations and with the communications and technology industry “to ensure terrorists and organised criminals are not able to operate with impunity within ungoverned digital spaces online”.
Shorten in his address, an extract of which has been released, will say: “We need to recognise this is a 21st century conflict – being fought online as well as in the streets. Terrorists are using sophisticated online strategies as well as crude weapons of violence.”
http://www.news.com.au/national/malcolm-turnbull-takes-tougher-line-on-australian-citizenship-to-battle-extremism/news-story/72f71d1529b0f982ddff04b2aee6ebf1
THE most senior terrorist Australia has ever produced is gaining thousands of viewers on YouTube each week with his jihadi Q&A sessions, leading to calls for the internet giant to get tougher on extremists.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will today issue a joint call for digital companies to crackdown on threatening figures who lurk online.
Mostafa Mahamed, also known as al-Qaeda member Abu Sulayman, has appeared on Q&A-style YouTube videos in a month-long series for an English language news site, The Australian reports.
In his most recent video, the 33-year-old terrorist — who grew up in Sydney’s southern suburbs — says the cancellation of his Australian passport was part of the reason he joined the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.
“It wasn’t possible just to pick up and leave,” Mahamed says in the video.
He then goes on to say he was given an opportunity to perform an obligation he believes is “extremely important to realise for every Muslim” by the “head honchos” of the Syrian branch, who assured him they did not kill innocent civilians.
Mr Turnbull will also tell parliament Australia is not immune from the global impact of the conflicts in the Middle East and instability around the world.
“But we should also be reassured — our law-enforcement agencies, intelligence services and Australian Defence Force are among the best in the world,” he will say.
“We lead our Australian way of life on our terms. We will not buckle or be cowed by this scourge of Islamist terrorism.”
The Prime Minister will announce that the Attorney-General, George Brandis, will work with his counterparts in the Five Eyes intelligence network on a way to tackle the issue of terror in digital spaces.
OPINION: Time for Google and other web giants to act against terror
Meanwhile, Mr Shorten will call for Facebook and Twitter, as well as the developers of encrypted communications apps, to do more in the counter-terrorism space.
“Facebook has created new dedicated teams and employed thousands of people specifically to monitor its Facebook Live stream and remove offensive content,” he will say.
“But we need more — and these companies have the resources and the capacity to do more. “
“Terrorists don’t self-police, so we cannot rely on a self-policing system.”
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