Soaring Across the Sludge

More money for driver reviver schemes.
Hundreds of millions more into indigenous health programs.
Hundreds of millions more for so-called family violence, to add to the billions consumed by the taxpayer funded industry. Next year, of course, there will be demands for yet further money amidst claims of an epidemic of male violence. 
People go to work to fund multi-billion programs for which there is no evidence they work. 
The Guardian was wall to wall climate change. Even the film reviews seemed to manage to fit in the subject. It suited the government, the promotion of existential fear for which the plebs would have to seek outside help, that is the help of the government.
A problem they could not solve themselves.
Flat Earth News. 
Governments find what they fund for, and fund what they want to find. 
To the tune of billions.
The debilitated state of journalism meant that they got away with it. 
They embraced their own destruction; democracy slipped to totalitarianism just like that. 
In half a dozen short years Anzac Day had gone from a national celebration to a national security threat, from a singing triumph of human courage and selflessness against overwhelming odds to a dark invasion of Muslim lands. 
There was an almost audible sigh of relief from the security agencies when another Anzac Day passed without the much feared massacre. 
A massacre which would rip the veil off all the garbage inflicted upon the country. 
Invite in the world and you invite in the world's problems. The overcrowding, the falling standards of living, the increasing destruction of national identity was only part of it all.
Expanding security agencies. Free speech anachronistic.
The vast costs of surveillance. 
The suspect contracts. Wouldn't you like to blow that little boondoggle apart?
The utter and complete duplicity of our political leaders.
He just wanted out.
Just as did so many others.

THE BIGGER STORY: 




Turkish authorities say they have arrested a suspected Islamic State member believed to have been planning a terror attack on the Anzac Day service at Gallipoli.
A Syrian man was detained in Tekirdag, a northwest province close to the Gallipoli peninsula, a police spokesman said on Wednesday night.
Turkish police say the threat was serious but gave no details of the nature of the proposed attack.
The local Demiroren news agency said the man was believed to have been preparing an attack by bombing or driving into crowds in retaliation for the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand in March.
Turkish security sources told the ABC that the planned attack on Gallipoli was in retaliation for the Christchurch mosque attacks.
The Gallipoli site was evacuated as security forces searched for bombs and other threats.
Turkish nationals were earlier banned from attending the dawn service, which Chief of the Defence Force Angus Campbell is due to attend amid heightened security.
Despite the threat, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs maintained the Gallipoli dawn service would go ahead as planned from 12:30pm (Australian time).

After the gruesome Easter Sunday blasts in Sri Lanka, the plot took a major twist after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the ghastly attack. In another major turn of horrific events, Fatima Ibrahim, the wife of millionaire-turned-suicide bomber Inshaf Ahmed Ibrahim, blew herself with her unborn baby and three kids after the police raided their residence. Three policemen were also killed in the incident.
Inshaf, 33, along with his brother Ilham Ahmed Ibrahim, 31, were behind the blasts at churches and hotels in the island nation which killed 359 people and injuring many more on April 21.
Fatima detonated the bomb fearing that she might be arrested by the police for her involvement in the terror outfit. She blew herself in the 3 storeyed luxury home at Dematagoda along with her kids.
Inshaf owned a manufacturing plant, Colossus Copper in Colombo, which according to the investigators was used for making the suicide bomb vests used in the attack. On Sunday, nine workers of the factory were arrested along with the manager.
The Sri Lankan defence ministry has stated that the terror attacks were carried out as a retaliation against the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand.

AUSTRALIAN ELECTION: 

 

A phone app used to mobilise voters to support Donald Trump, the Brexit movement in the UK, the anti-abortion campaign in Ireland and the National Rifle Association in the United States is being deployed in Australia's federal election campaign.
Key points:
Users earn points by watching videos, donating and sharing content and political messages with contacts via the app
Right-leaning Australian Taxpayers Alliance says it creates a "safe space" for its supporters
Privacy experts warn users to check what permissions they give apps
The right-leaning Australian Taxpayers Alliance (ATA), which describes itself as a non-partisan grassroots activist group, formally launched its app featuring the "Stop Shorten" slogan this week.

Built by US app developer uCampaign, the platform gamifies political activism — encouraging users to share ATA social media posts and invite friends to earn points.
Near identical versions of the app are also used by the Australian Conservatives and the Australian Christian Lobby, while anti-gay marriage group Marriage Alliance rolled out the tool during the marriage equality plebiscite.

The Victorian electorate of Bendigo is set for a showdown between two rival elements of Australia’s political far-right when Australia votes next month.
Senator Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party candidate for the marginal Labor seat is Julie Hoskin, a former Bendigo councillor who led an unsuccessful legal objection to a mosque all the way to the High Court, where she was refused leave to appeal and later went bankrupt, unable to pay the costs of the case.
Her One Nation opponent will be local businessman Vaughan Williams who is running on a platform of "Australian values, sane immigration policies, protecting farmers" and preventing Australia "heading down a road controlled by a non-elected United Nations and their global policies".

Amid all the argy-bargy of the election campaign the latest inflation growth figures from the bureau of statistics show that the economy is in serious trouble and that both major political parties and the Reserve Bank have got their settings massively wrong.

The government’s major claim of the budget earlier this month was that a surplus would be delivered next financial year. In a indicator of their willingness during the election campaign to play fast with the truth, the Liberal party also decided to treat the future tense as the past and proclaimed that they had delivered a surplus (back in black, don’t ya know!).
There is no demand in the economy pushing up prices, and right now the fiscal policy argument being played out across the election campaign is pretending everything is sweet and dandy.
It is not.