If You Want To Leave Don't Breathe

There was, then, a terrible moment. The human part of him was acting like an abused child; although he hadn't been an abused child for well over half a century. The temperature was rising. The geo-spatial dislocation was causing no end of trouble. The streets were eerie mad. Almost everyone was wearing their masks, those who listened to the government scare mongering on the propaganda channel the ABC, the abandonment of all responsibility by the media, by the professional castes, by everyone who should have done the right thing, who should have spoken up, and were too scared, too timid, too weak minded and weak of will to risk it. 

So they stayed quiet and clung to their public service salaries. And now he was quiet, reverting to that old game he had played as a child, how many days could he go without talking? 

Usually he'd get yet another belting by day four. 

These things played through to the present not because he had the worst childhood on record, not because the agony of the present could not be far worse, or that the zombie dead in the cattle yards did not face instant execution, but because it was not possible to link this disturbed human to other time zones; well it was, and it wasn't. 

They came crawling through the spaces whether we liked it or not. 

"We've crowded him again," one of the Watchers on the Watch observed, and that was true, too, although he had repeatedly declared his willingness to cooperate under the right circumstances. 

The right circumstances had dissolved in a circumstance gone wrong, and all the while the oblivion seekers ate at the edges, hollow laughter in tree tops, as if this reality, these already haunted streets and the true pomposity of the newly woke, woke to the myriad injustices their own kind had inflicted on themselves, the academics braying about climate change while the right to protest was abolished, and various forms of martial law were introduced by health diktat. Shameless what had happened, yet it sometimes felt as if he was the only one crying abuse of process, the only one spitting outrage at the destruction of the country. 

You were all crying for nothing. There was nothing to be done. That air of defeatism was everywhere now, "We just have to learn to do as we're told" morphing into "it is what it is" or "there's nothing we can do about it".

Your forces are mustering. The cruel history of the race was something else to manage. 

This species which had thought they were central to God.

Out of all this risk, all this time wasted, out of a substance that could not be banned, out of a cry poor dislocation which covered no strength, allowed no deviation, a place where we could muster in the blinking light, a place when your histories went from good to grace and the planet, this beautiful planet, breathed free of the hostages and the acolytes.

Was it true that only the adepts could hear? 

We came to see a people conquered. We came to see a madness grip the world.

Was there nothing to be done? 

THE HEADLINES  


47 Australian Open players forced into quarantine after COVID-19 cases detected on flights

SOURCE:ABC NEWS/TOPIC:HEALTH

Mother wakes from coma to find baby was stillborn after being given 10 times prescribed morphine dose

SOURCE:ABC NEWS/TOPIC:HEALTH

Has Donald Trump led America to the end of its 'myth'?

SOURCE:ABC NEWS/TOPIC:GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Coronavirus: Australia in ‘negotiations’ for more vaccines, but Pfizer doses out of reach

Australia is in negotiations with “a dozen” COVID vaccine manufacturers in hopes of securing more effective doses like the Moderna candidate, but health experts are stressing that our current stocks are already good enough to save many lives.

The government was forced into damage control on Wednesday after several doctors questioned the commitment to the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has been shown in initial tests to have a lower efficacy rate than other leading candidates.

The nation’s chief medical officer Paul Kelly said officials were now “worried” about vaccine hesitancy among Australians, and are moving to reassure citizens that jabs will be safe and effective.

“It will save lives. By using this vaccine, we’ll be able to protect a large proportion of the population in Australia,” Professor Kelly said of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Wednesday.

“I am worried about the selective use of the data that we have, those interim results from particular studies back in November.”

Michael Pascoe: Government’s peak corruption scheme scores $400 million in 2020

The federal government’s corrupt Community Development Grants reached another milestone last year – some $400 million dished out in political bribes, nudging the CDG total close to $3 billion since the racket was started by the Abbott government in 2014.

At the current rate of rorting, CDG spending will pass $5 billion on its present timetable of running until 2026, by when it will have played a role in buying votes in four federal elections – assuming a Coalition win in the next one and that it doesn’t further inflate its slush fund of choice if it feels the need.

The CDG scandal is already nearly 30 times bigger than the notorious #sportsrorts pork barrel, on its way to 50 times.

And CDG spending is even more blatantly skewed towards Coalition seats and marginal seats of interest than Mr Morrison’s and Senator McKenzie’s #sportsrorts.
Pro-Trump supporters switch to Gab after Twitter bans, Parler removal

The Service NSW app could be used as a vaccine passport under a plan to introduce "positive ways" to encourage vaccinations. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian says she does not want to punish people who don't receive the jab. "We have through Service NSW the ability to have people have a tick on their phone .. as evidence they've got the vaccine," she said. "I there's positive ways we can incentivise people to take the vaccine".