AMORAL AND IMMORAL

Flanked by grubs. Somebody had to go to work in a factory to support these bastards.

Every bomb had a target. Every bomb was aimed to kill.

Killing had become the single biggest industry of the 21st Century, and the Australian government was right on board. 

Amoral. Immoral. 

The grub s grabbed the money and slung the rest of us in the wind. 

And targeted those who dared not to believe. 

"Worst government in Australian history," he would sometimes say, at random, as was his want. 

Soliciting a response when nobody knew they were being solicited. 

There had been enough hiding.

Flight and fright. 

Old Alex had been a victim of a failed PsyOp operation, mismanaged, as they mismanaged everything. Secret forces who held the populace in contempt. Don't get angry get even was a cliche lost in layers of contempt, the wings that flapped dark over that landscape, the secret forces that amalgamated for attack. 

Back in the Blue Mountains, once again visiting a surveillance expert who had become a character in previous books, the nonsense started. 

The technology changed everything. 

With Facebook, everybody became start of their own platform. 

With Twitch everybody could become star of their own television program. 

Or stories that should be told, could be told. Out into the ether. Into a saturated world. 

The fringe elements of vigilante groups colluded, or were used by corrupt elements within the agencies, and corrupt elements within the police. 

In this case, once again, having learnt nothing, these illiterate virtual gangs began their banging noise, chaotic shouts, angles of alarm, meant to trigger a fright and flight response, meant to create a heightened sense of alarm, to erode away at any concept of individuality or choice. Thrown from the herd. Ridiculed on the fringes. These manipulated morons. 

"What do you think?" Glen asked. "This hasn't happened in two years." 

The chaotic shouts and ridicule continued from a neighbouring property. 

"Great stream, guys," in a hyper-connected world.

"I think it's astonishing that humans only have 4% Neanderthal DNA," he replied. 

But he could have said what he was really thinking: That the racket was a leftover from collusion between corrupt elements of the Thai Police, and the Australian Federal Police, working or manipulating the vigilantes, with a dose of lunar fringe Christian sects thrown somewhere in the mix. 

God will answer everything. The Lord will have his way. I pray everyday. 

Now they had exposed themselves. And would be hung out to dry. One by one on a virtual line. Whipped by a cold wind. Sacked. All of them.

"They will never bother me again," Old Alex said. 

"Why do you think that?"

"I just do."

He couldn't say that he had seen them, literally, hung out to dry. That they had exposed themselves. That it was obvious there was collusion to target a journalist in this manner, and that amidst all the competing factions it could not be allowed to continue.

The corruption was too obvious, too blatant, too misguided.

The situation, not just his but the nation's, was out of control, unpredictable. 

Flanked by two of the worst figures of his government, Marise Payne, Defense Minister, one of the worst Defense Ministers in the country's history, and Christopher Pyne, one of the wettest most sold his soul politicians out there on the walk, moist dear moist, between those thundering thighs, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a $3.8 billion fund to boost the country's arm sales industries. 

Not content with having followed America into the immoral debacle of the Middle East, of having been accused of war crimes, of targeting and assisting in the killing not just of civilians, but of Australian citizens who had gone to fight on the other side, here they were promoting the world's biggest industry: killing.

Every bomb had a target. 
Every bomb was designed to kill. 
Australia had been integrally involved in bombing and killing Muslims in the medieval streets of the Middle East. 

Now they were prepared to export their amorality to the world. 

The Central Government collapsed in 2047.

Already the chaos that gripped the country in the preceding years, the killing, the gangs, the vicious dark that swept the land, was seeping through into the present day. 

Few historians of the future would have the resources to determine where it all began.

It began here. 

The Turnbull government will establish a $3.8 billion fund that will offer loans to local arms manufacturers in a push to rapidly grow Australia's defence export industry. The prime minister said the government aimed for Australia to become one of the world's top 10 exporters of weapons within a decade. Australia currently is ranked 20th in arms exports with a 0.3 percent share of the global market, according to a widely-cited 2017 report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Israel is currently ranked tenth with 2.3 percent of the market. "Given the size of our defence budget, we should be a lot higher up the scale," Mr Turnbull told reporters at a press conference on Monday, with Australian-made armoured vehicles in the background. "The goal is to get into the top 10. That is the ambition," the prime minister said. The loans program, named the Defence Export Facility, will aim to help companies access overseas markets. Defence industry minister Christopher Pyne said the scheme could create "tens of thousands" of jobs for Australian manufacturers. The government's push on arms sales will also see a special exports division created within the Department of Defence.

The Greens have accused the Turnbull government of “acting like warlords”, slamming a $3.8bn bid to drive arms sales as a “disgusting announcement”, and urging Labor to “stop walking both sides of the fence” on the issue.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull this morning unveiled a global defence strategy aimed at catapulting Australia into the ranks of the world’s top 10 arms exporters, announcing a $3.8bn fund to back the plan amid a growing military build-up in the Asia-Pacific region.

Senator Di Natale said Australia should instead be aiming to export its intelligence, innovation expertise and skills via clean energy and health technology and education services “rather than through guns and killing machines.”

“The Australian government has to stop acting like warlords, and start acting like good global citizens,” Senator Di Natale said.

“That’s what a smart, clever country does. It acknowledges that the only pathway forward that is going to allow us to live on this earth, the almost 10 billion that we expect on this earth this century, is to do it peacefully, to make sure we’ve got sustainable technologies, we’ve got technologies that support life here on this fragile planet of ours, rather than killing machines.”