A Soldier Adrift
If you come to
Heaven's Torrents
Heaven's Wells,
Heaven's Prisons,
Heaven's Traps
Heaven's Cracks:
Quit such places
With all speed.
Sun Tzu. The Art of War.
He was plunged 47 floors to the planet surface. Into profane circumstance. Into their realm.
Just like that. He was sore from the jolt for days to come.
He did the same thing he always did. He visited the old haunts.
He visited the same beach he had walked along as a schoolboy, crying and waiting to die after swallowing a bottle of aspirin.
"Fifty four years ago," he told his old school friend. "And I'm still here."
He didn't know it wouldn't kill him, just leave him with a sore stomach for years to come.
The prosaic, the profane.
"I saved you then, I will save you now."
They visited the house where he had grown up; the block his father had bought for 50 quid back in the 1950s.
The house was in 2021 trading well in the millions and had been completely remodeled inside and out.
The siren call. The call of the prophet.
Appear near when you are far. Appear far when you are near.
They were making progress in this reclamation of self, regaining of ground, perhaps. Once, he would have thought of it as being deserted from above.
Now those red lights blinked slowly.
Now those intelligent machines gathered on the horizon.
Now we walked through the valley of the shadow, and would permit no evil.
Cruised by the intelligence agencies, he saw nothing but a drying pond of eels, all sliming over each other in a desperate attempt to survive. Would these people lie to protect their own reputations? Of course. Would they throw him under a bus the instant it suited them? Of course.
He was glad when the head honchos left.
Sometimes he was walking through that pond of black eels. Sometimes he was swimming through it. Sometimes he just looked afar, and waited for them to leave.
His head was so full of voices he had no idea who to trust.
The currents were very dangerous indeed.
And their manipulation and control of the public narrative, despite all their tech wizardry and high IQs, was also very very dangerous; for they knew not what they did.
There was power; and power again.
He went down to the little park at the back of Elizabeth Bay, where the carp he remembered as a youth, or at least their descendants, still swam through the water feature.
He didn't like being old. Older.
He didn't like his forlorn flesh.
He didn't like the traps that surrounded him.
Much preferable to be a delinquent child seeking shelter; with their youth and their life ahead of them.
Australia, those areas he had seen in recent days at least, remained in a false twilight. The rich went about their lives much as always; nice restaurants, cars, houses, certainty of belief. Gossip filled the airwaves.
Old Alex, like those old carp, rose to the surface for oxygen; swam indifferent to the surrounding swarm.
Impending events. It was very complicated. It could not be ruined by betrayal or early revelation.
So he swam through a hostile pond or revisited old haunts or avoided old traps; and in the end we all became humus on the forest floor, the culture's floor.
There was revelation. There was a way to change everything. It was darkest before the dawn.
The rich drank their fancy beers and displayed their wealth as if it was an honour.
Their well-creamed faces, their well laundered, stylish clothes.
We are chameleons. We adopt the local patina. We come at nighttime and in the dawn. We are reluctant to appear at such crisis ridden crossroads, with deception everywhere.
We can disappear. We can plunge into the moment.
He rose to walk, and could see no more.
Let us sing then, let us sing, the idiot songs of an idiot savant, the languishing, anguished if you will attempts to save a population, a country, a dream of subsistence and self reliance; a dream of comradeship and community.
While a silence, a frightening silence, gripped all their lives.
HEADLINES:
Australia’s troops ‘feel betrayed’ by our leaders and ‘so they should’: McGregor
16/04/2021|11min
For too many of Australia’s troops have “lost confidence” and feel “deeply betrayed” by our leaders, and “so they should,” according to Sky News host Catherine McGregor. “To me – as a veteran – I felt a strange sense of emptiness at the announcement that our longest war was finally drawing to a close,” Ms McGregor said. “An obviously emotional Prime Minister read the names of the 41 Australian soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan. I do not doubt his sincerity, but the time for tears has come and gone – actions speak louder than words”. “If the Government really has our backs – as we are being assured – then drop all the prosecutions for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan and pardon former military lawyer David McBride.” Ms McGregor said it is “one thing to withdraw from Afghanistan” but “another thing entirely to bring our troops home if it doesn’t really feel like home anymore”. “I have repeatedly called for our complete withdrawal on this network in recent years … it was obvious to me while I was a serving officer of the Australian Army – as far back as 2007, that our strategy in Afghanistan was deeply and fatally flawed,” she said. Ms McGregor said our “political class from both sides of politics” had only “one strategic objective in Afghanistan”: to plant our flag in the sand and be seen as “reliable allies to the United States”. “But the use of the SASR to conduct conventional infantry missions demoralised our infantry and physically and mentally exhausted our Special Forces,” she said. “The role of the SAS Regiment had always been covert insertion and surveillance and reconnaissance in small five man patrols … the effect on these men – who were deployed multiple times - over time was to numb their moral sensibilities and to psychologically scar them, and it inculcated a body count measure of success that was endorsed at the very highest levels”. “Those who sent those men to kill every designated individual on the so-called Joint Prioritised Effects List are now demanding exclusive moral culpability for the absence of any coherent strategy upon a handful of junior soldiers from one regiment.” Ms McGregor said this is “absolutely sickening” and the quiet Australians are “enraged by it”. “This week I felt utter disgust at the theatrical posturing of a millionaire CEO resplendent in white crying about being sacked over Cartier watches. I’ll give you the big tip: the Taliban didn’t need watches, because they had time on their side,” she said. “Welcome to Australia in 2021. A nation that is now so lacking moral ballast that we believe Christine Holgate and Magda Szubanski are ‘brave’ while we vilify men who have faced a deadly enemy in extreme conditions – toxic masculinity apparently”. “To the families who lost sons, brothers or husbands – and to every fellow veteran I want to pay sincere and genuine respect.”
Woman’s blood clot death ‘likely’ linked to AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine
The death of a NSW woman is “likely” linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine, after the woman developed a blood clot just days after getting the jab.
The death of a 48-year-old woman who developed blood clots just days after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine was “likely” linked to the jab, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has revealed.
“The TGA’s Vaccine Safety Investigation Group (VSIG) met late today and concluded that a recently reported case of thrombosis (blood clots in the arteries and veins) with thrombocytopenia (low platelet count) is likely to be linked to vaccination,” the TGA said in a statement.
“VSIG reviewed a report about a 48-year-old woman who was vaccinated in New South Wales and admitted to hospital with an extensive thromboembolic event and thrombocytopenia (TTS) four days after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine.
“Sadly, this person died in hospital and we extend our sincerest condolences to her family.”
Covid jabs: Dutton’s call for quarantine-free travel met with caution
The defence minister says restrictions for vaccinated Australians should be lifted ‘sooner rather than later’ but Labor and the states want everyone protected first
Fri 16 Apr 2021 16.17 AEST
20
The defence minister, Peter Dutton, has called for hotel quarantine-free international travel for fully vaccinated Australians “sooner rather than later” but Labor and several states have warned that shouldn’t be considered before the entire population is protected.
Dutton supported on Friday a proposal by the prime minister, Scott Morrison, who has asked health authorities to plan for allowing Australians who have had both vaccine doses to travel overseas and return without having to go into hotel quarantine for two weeks.
Morrison’s suggestion comes after he convened twice-weekly national cabinet meetings to prepare for mass vaccinations by mid-year. That’s prompted an angry reaction from states which said they would need more information about vaccine supply first.
The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, said on Tuesday that “vaccination alone is no guarantee you can open up” – prompting concern from the more than 40,000 Australians stranded overseas.