Immortal
The darkness featured in Film Noir was never supposed to return. The post-war world and culture were reconstructed to prevent it. People then needed something to believe in again. And so in the 1950s, the church was there. A movement for good government and honesty in politics began in earnest. The “best and brightest” came to power, sporting high credentials and touting their public spiritedness.
Film, architecture, art, music, and public life generally began to affect a new optimism in an attempt to restore a mythical version of some idyllic pre-war past. And that was because no social order can thrive in the darkness of despair.
This can perhaps be the next stage of our social and political evolution. Maybe. But until those days arrive, we all must live in a world very different from that which we thought existed in 2019. The world that the lockdowns and mandates, and all that is associated with them, unleashed is dark, corrupt, duplicitous, dishonest, dangerous, tribal, and pervaded with nihilism and a loss of moral clarity and a resulting criminality both public and private.
How easy it turns out to be to shatter trust, to disable a functioning social order, to spread corruption from person to person, institution to institution, to the point that the centre no longer holds! I’m quite sure that very few among us knew that. We know now.
What do we do with that information? We face it bravely, and we vow not to let it last. We can pledge to rebuild.
Jeffrey Tucker. Brownstone Institute.
Welcome back. All was lost, or not lost. The voices were contradictory. Perhaps it had always been. He himself was better than he had been for a long time. But the nation? Well, that was another story.
It was a freezing winter. With soaring costs and depleted incomes, many were afraid to heat their own homes because of exorbitant cost, and instead lay under blankets waiting for the wind to pass.
Absolutely bloody freezing.
Meanwhile the apparatchiks, those distant creatures they had theoretically elected to serve, blathered about global warming and raked yet more millions off an already impoverished population. He should have been outraged. He was just saddened.
Much of it was strange.
"We, too, wish to be understood," those spirits of ancient landscapes had said.
And that was all they said.
For in the course of millenia, in those ancient places, a mammal on the surface, passing through the trees, meant nothing; or almost nothing, less than a firefly, less than a mouse.
But here, back in Oak Flats, different spirits stirred; simply because, in a time continuum, everyone needs skipping stones, a surface from which to slither to another surface, a place from which to begin, a realm in which to enter.
So that seer not yet born would speak to him, and he would speak back; though the wonder of it all, the utter impossibility of it all, made no clear or rational sense.
Not that it mattered; not that they cared.
Yes, the Watchers on the Watch had given up on him; and he liked it that way, because he did not trust them. If they were trustworthy, they would speak to him directly. Perhaps they already did.
But after all those years of false flags and torture by distance, after the enduring harassment, after all the sneers and bitter putdowns, after all the self interest and the deliberate confusions, he found it hard to trust; not just his own instincts, but everything.
Any faith any of them had once had in the political system was gone.
There had just been an election in Australia; but if you listened to the idle conversations in coffee shops or bars none of it mattered; as if it had never been. Only on the internet, that mycelium of the age, were voices raised in protest.
The propaganda wing of the government, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, led the charge in creating a narrative fuelled not by the voices and concerns of the people, but by the bureaucratic messaging of the elites; fund every academic who can spell "climate" and fill in an application form and voila, you have a narrative on climate change, something bigger than any individual, something they could all reach out to believe in, and reach out to the government to solve.
Never mind the reality of it all; that had nothing to do with it.
The so-called representatives of the people spouted the same garbage as the Davos billionaires; and remarkably enough, the people believed.
The trolls, had they been banished?
He did not know. He did not trust.
But there was much to do, important things to do.
There are different species of humans, Ethan had said, and yes, of course there were. "They have always walked among us." But deliberate ineptitude, concealment, blocking of receptors; all of it in a frighteningly large landscape.
Oh Wonder. Oh Wonder.
If he could reach into himself for certainty he would have done so; but instead, storm tossed, dereliction, unkempt on street corners; those fallen angels, the truth only slowly dawned.
Those vast aggregate intellects could not speak through a single person, or a single tree, could not act alone, they needed vast numbers to transmit a message so complex, simply in order to act.
And hence the origin of the gods, or the myths of gods.
And hence; now, with the eugenicists and the evil self-interested, the gods had stirred in anger, wrath, for no one stood in their way and emerged unscathed.
Who were these people who thought they could play God?
Who thought they could do this to their divine creation?
Whether it was millions, or billions, or trillions, these lifeforms, who were they to say what was needed, or what the ultimate purpose?
Who did they think they were?
Time crushed every creature.
Only the immortals remained.
And soon enough, those men who thought they could play god would themselves be crushed.
The billionaires, the powerful, laid waste upon the Earth.
Their own cracked images in a cracked mirror not even a firefly, gone from this place, cursed.
While the same immortals said to him: You Are Blessed. Or in antique English: Blessed Art Thou.
MAINSTREAM NEWS
SKY
REA Group Economist Anne Flaherty says the rental market is “extremely concerning” with a decrease in the available rental properties.
Ms Flaherty said more investors have been selling properties rather buying.
“Now that population growth is coming back as well – this is even more concerning,” she told Sky News Australia.
“We’re likely to continue see rents rise, really very rapidly.”
THE NEW DAILY
The Australian share market has suffered its worst week in more than two years after another major drop, slumping to its lowest closing level in 14 months.
The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index finished Friday down 87.7 points to 6,932.0, a fall of 1.25 per cent. The broader All Ordinaries closed 95.2 points lower at 7,145.2, a 1.31 per cent drop.
The ASX200 declined 4.24 per cent for the week, its worst performance since the week ending 24 April 2020, after declining every day except Wednesday. Its close was its lowest since April 7, 2021.
***
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has opened the door for the Nadesalingam family to pursuie permanent residency after their four-year ordeal in immigration detention.
As Biloela residents welcomed home the family with a community celebration, Mr Albanese was asked on Saturday about the family’s prospects of obtaining permanent residency.
“Those processes will take place,” he told reporters in Sydney..
“The only way that it could happen is … the visa being issued, and then that application will go through. But I see no impediment to that occurring.”
A full weekend of celebrations is under way in the central Queensland town after Priya and Nades Nadesalingam and their daughters Kopika and Tharnicaa returned on Friday for the first time since being detained in March 2018.
The former Coalition government tried to deport the asylum seekers to Sri Lanka, but an 11th-hour court injunction saw the four held at the Christmas Island detention centre for two years, then moved to community detention in Perth.
AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
WA's peak medical body has raised concerns about St John Ambulance's capacity to cope with demand at the height of what is predicted to be a severe flu season.
Key points:
St John Ambulance said it was resuming normal operations on Saturday morning after warning of delays on Friday
The AMA says ambulance ramping will get worse during flu season
Mark McGowan denied the health system was underfunded
On Friday, St John issued a social media alert warning Perth residents they could expect delays in response times if they called triple-0 for an ambulance.
It attributed the delays to "extremely high" demand, staffing issues and the ongoing problem of ambulance ramping. Roughly 22 per cent of its metropolitan fleet was ramped at the time.
By 7am on Saturday, St John chief operating officer Antony Smithson said normal operations were resuming.
"Well done to all, to our amazing team in the State Operations Centre, to our people on the road and those behind the scenes," he said in a statement.
"We expect it will remain busy for St John as we respond to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic."
SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA
Politicians are inviting electricity chaos in Australia by promoting the closure of coal-fired power stations, but also by promoting more electric cars to enter the grid – more demand, less supply.
Green energy is a wild bull in the electricity china shop.
Around mid-day on most sunny days, millions of roof-top solar panels pump electricity into the grid, often pushing prices too low for rational generators to continue supplying power. With booming subsidised green energy, more Australian coal generators will be forced to close.
Demand for electricity peaks twice per day – once for toast and coffee at breakfast time, and again for air conditioners, dinner, and TV at night. Solar contributes zero to this demand, and the contribution of wind power is erratic.
For long periods, our expensive sprawl of green power lines sits idle.
When faced with generator closures, the only suggestion from industry leaders is to sanitise coal power with ‘Carbon Capture and Burial’. This is energy-wasting nonsense, with zero benefits.
At the same time as energy deficits appear, the Greens and Labor coalition want to see Australians buying heaps more electric cars which will put additional pressure on the system. They are irresponsibly promoting rising demand for electricity alongside falling reliability and supply.
This ‘Green Energy Express’ is about to hit the Wall of Blackouts…