Crying Out For Love Between the Darkness and the Hour
Flocks of birds, shrieking loudly, came swirling down. The sentinels awoke. "The country's gone bad," he said at his local café. "The world's gone bad," the owner replied.
All those voices, they could ride the wing, born aloft on those cold ocean winds which chilled the area now bereft of trees. He had heard the names of so many of the people he had worked with over the years, people who had moved on to work for the agencies, their minds and resources picked for their media expertise and their contacts, for what they were.
Some liked him and thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Some hated, maybe despised would be a better word him for having dared to disagree with the uber feminist advocacy of his era.
One in particular, you could sum up her entire oeuvre in once sentence: "All men are bastards".
Some moved to protect; or to dismantle the systems that had been built around him.
Who knew the difference between a paranoiac fantasy and reality?
He wasn't meant to know. He was meant to be deliberately confused.
Why would anybody bother? Nothing they did would alter their fate, or the fate of history. Amor fati, love your fate. Or as another voice had repeatedly told him in recent days: "Accept your fate". As in: "Accept your destiny."
Not to step into the limelight, for nothing could be more destructive, but to work. To a higher good. Benighted, cursed times. And all the rabbit holes ended in one place: "Pure Evil". That was the explanation that frequently came back for the massive destruction that was being wreaked upon the world by the uber rich; by bastards with too much money, preening their own intelligence, thinking themselves so much better, so much smarter, than everybody else.
Well, they were richer than everybody else. But they were also evil. What other explanation could there be for what had happened, what was happening, all around?
Unleash chaos. Thrive in the aftermath. Blessed art thou. The spinning disks of an alien culture beheaded them in an instant, formless, ancient gods ran their spectral fingers across his enemy's throats, and those bastards, those absolute, time honoured bastards, were setting out to destroy the ancient whale migration route.
It took a lot to stir the ancient gods, those great lovers of beauty, non-human in every sense, but that was one thing they could not, would not tolerate.
The Wind Farms That Ate Australia. It was a great title for a book. The enemy of my enemy is a friend. It could even, for once, make a profit.
He was coming alive. He worked quietly but was not quiet.
What was so strange, so distressing, so moving, was the depths to which he had sunk, the time he had wasted, and this extraordinary beauty, this depth of reach, this astounding thing before all things.
It was the oddest of feelings, to be eves dropping on this period of Australian history, to see how it was done, to understand how little the people had fought against their own destruction and the destruction of the country, to be here, now, and see for himself, or themselves, how blindly they were led, how the blind led the blinded, how the rampant environmental destruction of this beautiful country was executed.
And how, at last, the people rose up to fight the rampant greed of the world's ugliest, greediest oligarchs.
It was a privilege to serve.
AUSTRALIAN MAINSTREAM NEWS SITES
SKY NEWS
Anthony Albanese says he is confident support for the Yes vote will gain momentum in the final three weeks to the Voice referendum.
The Prime Minister pointed to Australian singer Kamahl's decision to backflip on his No vote after he admitted he did not understand what the proposed constitutional change would entail.
While campaigning at West Ryde shopping centre in Sydney's north-west on Saturday morning, Mr Albanese said he was positive "Kamahl-mentum" would pick up steam ahead of the referendum.
"Kamahl-mentum, that’s a new thing that has arisen today," he told reporters.
“Something I get great heart from is the decision of Kamahl, a very courageous decision.
“He’s someone who came out and said no and went away, spoke to people, read what it is about, read the question and decided that he would come out and declare his support for Yes, and to say why would anyone oppose this?"
THE NEW DAILY
The Albanese government is facing increasing pressure to widen the scope of a COVID-19 inquiry to include actions taken by state and territory governments as well as the impact of school closures on children.
The inquiry announced on Thursday excludes an investigation of any “unilateral” state and territory decisions.
This means state-imposed lockdowns, school closures and mask mandates are not expected to fall under the spotlight.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has claimed Labor premiers are being shielded from scrutiny, saying the inquiry should be able to compel states and territories to participate.
Speaking at the Victorian Liberal Party’s state council meeting on Saturday, he said the Albanese government was running a “protection racket” for Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
“That the Prime Minister of our country would side with Daniel Andrews and Annastacia Palaszczuk over the people of Victoria, or indeed the people of our country, is a shameful act,” he said.
“If there is to be a pandemic into the future, we should and we deserve to know the answers as to what went right and what went wrong.”
GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
The first time I laid eyes on Cate was at a freshers’ party in 2012, but I hadn’t transitioned at that point. She was very popular at college, and I wasn’t. We said an awkward hello and all I registered was that someone beautiful had just walked past me.
I met Cate again years later at work: we were doing a project together. I was out as trans by then and a bit less self-conscious. She invited me round to her house because we both loved skincare and she said she would give me a facial. We tried to convince ourselves we were just close friends.
I remember I lay down with my head in her lap, and she touched my face, and it was so tender. She was wearing shorts and I reached out and stroked her leg. I looked up at her, right in the eye, and said: “I’m going to have to bite your leg now.” And then I bit her on the thigh. She has the silkiest skin of any human on this planet."
SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA
In this referendum, No means no to two specific things: ‘No to a race-based change to our constitution’ and ‘No to an unelected indigenous bureaucracy with unspecified legal powers’. That’s it.
No does not mean, and should never mean: ‘If you vote No, you’ll get a second referendum anyway’, to paraphrase opposition leader Peter Dutton. Nor should No mean: ‘If you vote No, you’ll still get a treaty, in fact you’ll get a whole bunch of treaties, and we’ll throw in a change to the date of Australia Day as well,’ to paraphrase No campaigner Nyunggai Warren Mundine. Both those propositions, sadly, can only be described as own goals in this hard-fought campaign.
Peter Dutton was clearly bamboozled by backroom strategists (of the bedwetting variety) still fantasising that they can win Teal seats by moving the party ever-leftwards.
RUPERT RETIRES
Our companies are in robust health, as am I. Our opportunities far exceed our commercial challenges. We have every reason to be optimistic about the coming years – I certainly am, and plan to be here to participate in them. But the battle for the freedom of speech and, ultimately, the freedom of thought, has never been more intense.
My father firmly believed in freedom, and Lachlan is absolutely committed to the cause. Self-serving bureaucracies are seeking to silence those who would question their provenance and purpose. Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.
In my new role, I can guarantee you that I will be involved every day in the contest of ideas. Our companies are communities, and I will be an active member of our community. I will be watching our broadcasts with a critical eye, reading our newspapers and websites and books with much interest, and reaching out to you with thoughts, ideas, and advice. When I visit your countries and companies, you can expect to see me in the office late on a Friday afternoon.