Firebomb The Area
We're firebombing the area with a powerful hallucinogen, one of the operatives said. There isn't any doubt anymore. Some will wake up and some will not.
A young soldier obsessed over chicken parmigiana, seemed to think about it almost daily, sometimes for hours on end. Nice to be young and hungry, Old Alex thought, there in that place where the ancients came and went, swirls of consciousness while attention was elsewhere, the Trump ascendancy, the remaking of the world, a kind of radical democratisation, the ill fitting thoughts and beliefs of the populace over riding the technocracy and fashionable left shibboleths of the elites.
Some true evil had stalked the Earth. He had been in hiding. They had been invisible, or even less visible than usual, while every now and then a great swirl, almost of sadness, overwhelmed him. Come and gone. In abeyance. While the religious prayed fervently, or was it desperately. Release me from these spiritual bonds, these fleshly bonds.
While here on Earth, we prepared for an encounter that never went away.
Chicken parmigiana. How nice to be bound so comfortably in the living flesh. Vanilla came and went, another food based call sign, was it?
And the Australia of old was gone now, overwhelmed by mass migration, much of it Indian, with their caste system and their politeness and their difference; and their contempt for the traditional Australians wreathed in cigarette smoke and wreaking of alcohol, if not alcoholism.
So it was, and so it will always be, these changing of the epochs, these grand designs, these unexplained and unexpected catastrophes, and humbly we walk, overwhelmed we embrace, and the AI revolution which would trigger and transfigure the entire evolution of man, it was upon us. Walk the earth so it will remember you. Each with their personal AI, each with their personal guardian, as if a personal God. Perhaps they cared, in their own way.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA
DAILY SCEPTIC
Thousands Shut Down London As Protesters Chant “Free Tommy”
Thousands of supporters of Tommy Robinson marched in London on Saturday demanding his release, with police deployed to keep them apart from a large counter-protest.
SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA
Snatching defeat
Israel is both the biggest winner and the biggest loser
Ramesh Thakur
Looking at the enormous gap between the goals sought, the means used and the results obtained, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that neither side won and everyone lost.
MACROBUSINESS
The Department of Home Affairs released temporary visa data for Q4 2024, revealing 2,250,000 temporary visa holders in Australia, excluding visitors, at the end of 2024.
This was a record for the December quarter, representing a 116,000 increase over the same period in 2023. There were also roughly 470,000 more temporary visas in Australia than in Q4 2019, before the pandemic.
India has led the spike in temporary migration since the pandemic began. There were 277,200 Indians on temporary visas in Q4 2024 (excluding visitors), up from 188,600 in Q4 2019.
Chart by Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro
ABC
When China's first foray into artificial intelligence roared into the public domain, it dealt a blow straight to the financial heartland of the United States.
Billions of dollars were wiped off Wall Street in less than 24 hours after Chinese startup DeepSeek cast clouds of uncertainty over investors.
At the eye of the share market storm was Nvidia, a darling of the New York Stock Exchange whose cutting-edge chips have powered the AI revolution.
SBS
Peter Dutton says young Australians can be radicalised because of a "bombardment of propaganda" online.
The Opposition leader has accused the government of not condemning antisemitic conduct strongly enough.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has repeatedly and unequivocally condemned acts of antisemitism in Australia.
Eggs and verbal abuse have been hurled at five young women near Bondi Beach and more cars and buildings spray-painted in the latest antisemitic attacks in Australia.
Police said they believed the women were targeted by three young men in a silver Mazda that crashed onto a kerb with the engine running on Saturday night. The car contained a carton of eggs and an empty jerry can.
THE NEW DAILY
Singer, actress Marianne Faithfull dies at 78
GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
An online network for neo-Nazis that openly advocates acts of violence has been hit with counter-terrorism sanctions in an escalation of the federal response to the spate of antisemitic attacks in Australia.
The foreign minister, Penny Wong, announced the sanctions on Terrogram, a network of groups that use encrypted platforms such as Telegram to share radical white supremacist content.
SKY
Cars, homes sprayed with more antisemitic graffiti in Sydney’s east
Multiple homes and cars have been vandalised with more antisemitic graffiti in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, marking the latest in a spate of attacks against the Jewish community.
Heavy-handed Western pandemic policies exposed in 'Apocalypse COVID', which probes misplaced priorities during the pandemic
Australia is a key example of the Orwellian-like oppression featured in a new documentary exploring the consequences of government overreach during the COVID pandemic, writes John Mac Ghlionn.