CROSS-CULTURAL CONFUSION

Mitta Mitta River Picture by Gilbert Atkin 

But was it true? Was it even possible? That there was reason in the morass, that some of the Watchers on the Watch could actually be friends; that they, too, were constrained by their own circumstances, their own bosses, and would have actually reached out, liked to be friends, would have liked to sit down and discuss everything, explain what had happened, put the accusations that had been handed to them to him, let him answer for himself.

"What do you want to say? What do you want to tell me?" he asked in the predawn, when they were all freest to communicate. "I don't trust anyone. I've been very very badly harassed for a very long time. Everyone is on a payroll. Everyone has a master to serve, nests to feather, career ladders to climb. No one wishes well."

But he had said it so often now that even he was tired of stating the obvious.

"You're exactly right in what you think," came the answer, "Except that things are far worse than you imagine. Far worse."

And in an instant, as if they were living things, he saw the elaborate edifices of the Australian bureaucracies, all the intricate lines of power, the suspensions of disbelief, the obedience to state creeds, the mundane intelligences which festered in air conditioned offices, covering their own asses before they covered anything else, without integrity, without good motive. 

He had made the same mistake before, presuming that what had happened to him had been a simple bureaucratic slip or a misunderstanding, that higher up the food chain there would be commonsense, rationality, responsibility.

"Am I safe?" he asked. 

"They're not going to try and kill you now, you're too closely watched."

Well, well, Dark Dark Policing. 

The legislation targeting journalists allowed 21 government departments access to his data, his emails, websites, personal information, everything.

In other words, one giant cluster fuck. Everything the Australian government touched turned into a fiasco, mismanagement at every level, everywhere; and in the end, as the country took one step after another towards the abyss, as the worst Recession in the nation's history gathered storm, as the country's original stories disappeared into the early pages of its history, as the social engineers remade the social, cultural and demographic makeup of the country, everyone who could looked the other way, out of some sort of fear of being different, or out of some wan hope that the situation wasn't really as bad as they feared.

Summer had arrived, and the anodyne levels of public debate stepped into an over-heated, slippery summer of vacation and the smell of coconut oil, of the pleasures of vitality and hopeful life, of peace and pleasure and bright sunshine, In the Middle East bombs paid for by Australian taxpayers rained down on the mujaheddin, a war rarely mentioned in the media, Those lyrical, peaceful moments were bought at a price; vacuity. 

THE BIGGER STORY:

Hundreds of protesters have gathered outside Cairo's largest Coptic cathedral demanding revenge for the bombing which killed 25 people on Sunday (local time), in the deadliest attack on Egypt's Christian minority in years.
The bombing at the cathedral in Egypt also left 49 wounded, many of them women and children attending Sunday mass.
Scuffles broke out with police after they arrived at the scene with armoured vehicles.
Security sources told Reuters the explosion was caused by a device containing at least 12 kilograms of TNT, with the blast detonating on the side of the church normally used by women.
The attack, which took place on a Muslim holiday marking the Prophet Mohammad's birthday, came as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi fought battles on several fronts.
His economic reforms have angered the poor, a bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood has seen thousands jailed, whilst an insurgency rages in Northern Sinai led by the Egyptian branch of Islamic State (IS).
The militant group has also carried out deadly attacks in Cairo and has urged its supporters to launch attacks around the world in recent weeks as it goes on the defensive in its Iraqi and Syrian strongholds.
IS supporters celebrated on social media.

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