The lioness stretched lazily and licked the last of the blood from her paws. She liked the taste of blood. In a moment she was up and stalking through the tall grass. And then she disappeared. The giants dozed above the sky. It would be very unwise to disturb them.
History moved on; their fates already sealed, just like a grasshopper caught in a lizard's mouth.
Even the telltale signs were silent, even the rivers caught us unawares.
Their operation blown, their idiocy exposed for what it was, "we should never have treated him like this", the movements that were born, eclipsed and died, the feeding grounds of history and the vast forest floor, we would watch and wait now, fading in and out, the double encryption on, in order for events to take their point.
And you could bet, with the political class in uproar and a bored and frustrated people moving restlessly through the ruins of the country; with the false dawn and the fool's paradise and life more or less as normal, while the outrageous, blunt tool mismanagement of the country filtered down into chaos, it was then that they would rear their heads and strike.
The slow motion train wreck that was Scott Morrison, the bringing down of the Prime Minister, all of it a festering sore. They had got their mark. They had seen a sign of weakness. The kill would be extraordinary. They thought God was on their side, and had no idea what God was. They prayed to an empty vessel and could feel the ravishing in their diseased hearts, but it was just a genetic response preordained, it was nothing. It was easy to be awed, but impossible to know the truth. They felt inspired, but were instead deranged. Their greed had killed them. Their dishonesty had killed them. Their obsequious crawling up the spires of power had killed them. And this atrocious political mess, now the laughing stock of the nation, to the despair of the party apparatchiks, was an open sore bleeding in the sun. There was no hiding from their own incompetence now.
And so they watched as another political giant fell. As another waste of space, another oxygen thief, got their just desserts, ignominy.
They couldn't hold their heads high after all of this, and nor should they.
As for Old Alex, bunked in on the south coast, one psychic storm had passed and another was on the way. The clouds were gathering out to sea; the horizon catching the morning sun.
We were all entwined in each other's destiny.
"We want to speak to them directly," an officer said.
"You know they're not human? You know they have a different sense of time?"
"Yes."
He shrugged.
"What do you think the universe's top predator would look like?" he asked his housemate, apropos of nothing.
"Human," he responded. "Like this." Pointing to the body he was so proud of.
"It would look like a massive swarm of AIs, a swarm that could transform planets before its arrival, which was already there and would forever be, that came as it saw fit and encompassed worlds, it would be both divine and creature like, for its origins too were organic. Many thousands of generations ago. It would have many manifestations. And its thoughts would not be our thoughts."
His housemate looked blank and cracked another beer.
HEADLINES
Scott Morrison’s dirt unit – the one that briefs the Prime Minister on gossip about press gallery bureaux but apparently not about alleged rape in a minister’s office down the hall – is worse than it seemed last week.
And it seemed bad enough. Loading the PM with a “glass houses” line to fire at journalists should the going get tough was not a good look.
His Bill Shorten/Christian Porter “whataboutism” was already wearing thin and he scored no points earlier this month when lecturing journalists as part of his Linda Reynolds defence.
“I’m sure that all of you have found yourself, at a time of frustration, perhaps saying things you regret,” he said.
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A leaked video of a horrific mass execution has drawn attention to a bloody crisis unfolding in Ethiopia, where a civil war over territory has erupted in recent months.
The video, believed to be captured in the country’s north west region of Tigray, shows dozens of unarmed prisoners surrounded by heavily armed men with Ethiopian flags emblazoned on their shoulders.
The footage was obtained by a pro-Tigray media organisation based in the US, who said the leak was provided by a “soldier turned whistleblower” who is now in hiding.
CNN reported military experts confirmed the camouflage worn by the soldiers matched those used in the Ethiopian army.
“Why don’t you get closer and film the execution,” a soldier can be heard saying to the whistleblower in Amharic, the official language of the Ethiopian military, which differs from the Tigray dialect.
“Walk him down there and shoot him in the back of his head,” another voice says over grainy vision of a men being marched to the edge of a cliff.
The footage then cuts to the aftermath, where soldiers are seen shooting into the bodies of the prisoners before flinging them off the cliff.
“I wish we could pour gas over them and burn them,” another voice says off-camera.
“It would have been great if there was gas to burn these people,” another soldier replies. ”Burn their bodies like the Indians do.”
34 men can be seen in the initial shots, but locals fear as many as 39 were killed.
39 men are believed dead, adding to the list of thousands estimated to have perished in the recent civil war.Source:Twitter
A horrific frame shows a soldier shooting at the body of a prisoner.Source:Twitter
Amnesty International and BBC Africa were able to locate the approximate location of the atrocity using geo-analysis software, confirming it indeed took place near the town of Mahibere Dego in the Tigray region.
Mass execution video leaked online
A whistleblower is in hiding after leaking horrific footage of soldiers executing 39 men before tumbling them off cliffs. Warning: Graphic.
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