Infinite
If they were formed from all those prayers and all that chanting, if they had gathered along the Tigris River all those years ago; if the native prayers in this place bore little resemblance to the power drunk madness of former times; if gods indeed formed out of the ectoplasm of all these desires, bled off the back of books, derived from literature and the scribes; perhaps, just perhaps, it might make sense.
This mystery beyond mysteries he pondered every day.
The winter was cold. The distant shores beyond beautiful. Piercing, piercingly beautiful. Pricked out, bathed in eternal light.
Were there personalities in any of this? This awesome power.
Did they arrive now, speak through whom they could, only to be swept away in malfeasance and brusque deceit; all war is deception, that line played over and over. He kept quiet. He feared no longer.
The country itself? We stood on a precipice. That's how it felt. He longed for greater resources; but did not want to hasten the turning of events.
They sheltered in awe; there was a tiny fragment of an oceanic calm; reach out to touch the infinite and be blessed; but time and again, that infinite calm. How did you know these gods were good? Did good and evil come into any of this. A coalition of the gods?
Or were those Mediterranean models found here so far away, amidst those who had come from those far lands; perhaps those gods or spirits were embedded in their DNA.
He did not know. None of it was easy to understand.
Australia; Australia was a lost concept, a country destroyed almost as an afterthought of the rich and powerful. We stood at the end of American Empire, for it was the Americans who had foisted this truly evil disaster on the world's population, it appeared to be coming true, a greater truth, each and every day; and he carried with him, he stood tall. The mob had jeered. The operatives had jeered.
And now, frightened at the uncanny nature of it all, they fell silent.
And the ruin they had helped visit upon the country, on their fellow countrymen and women, the elderly, the children, the weak, the strong and the quiet determination of the workers; they had helped destroy it all in their own misguided malfeasance.
So he stood tall instead.
It was remarkable, the terrible divisions that had beset this country.
The way the populace had accepted the treatment dished out to them; had not spoken up, had not defended their fellows being bashed and pilloried and pepper sprayed, jailed and fined. But instead had gone about their provincial lives as if it was all perfectly alright.
That the solution lay in electing a barely different brand of politicians.
As if all the talk of hope, diversity, tolerance, climate change, social justice, as if it meant anything at all.
As if any of them really believed, or felt; what flowed through them, crushed of spirit, how easy it was, how easily they accepted their fates, how ignorant, wilfully ignorant, they were.
There was a bigger prize. They went at it like a bull at a gate.
And he rounded on them. The soldiers flanking the valley picked up their spears. The saints whispered encouragement.
Bully for you. The jeering throng.
There was no self doubt. You could see it, he could see it; and the destiny, the creatures out of time, the extraordinary complexity of those who had arrived, their dismay at what had happened, the cruelty the humans had inflicted upon each other; well, there were no atheists in the trenches, there was no doubt as everything began to collapse, as a once prosperous country went straight down the tunnel.
They straightened their ties. They did not know how to cover their malfeasance any longer. It would all come out in the wash in any case.
He was not about to make a difficult situation any worse.
Silence creates its own solutions; surrounded, as we were, by a staggering level of incompetence.
The left doesn't know what the right is doing; that remained true.
They, or more precisely some of them, passed judgement; for as always surveillance creates its own narrative and its own problems.
He saw through it all.
Let us be then, let us be.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA
SKY
New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania face potential blackouts from Tuesday night
Residents across the nation are being asked to preserve power use after the energy market regulator said five states could be hit by blackouts from Tuesday night.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has issued fresh warnings that up to five states could be impacted by blackouts, as the energy crisis worsens.
AEMO has indicated that New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia are facing maximum power load interruptions over the next two days.
It says residents in New South Wales and Queensland are expected to be hit by interruptions from 5:00pm AEST on Tuesday with the other three states potentially impacted from Wednesday night.
THE NEW DAILY
The icy weather disrupting much of Australia is being blamed for yet more shortages of fresh fruit and vegetables in Australian supermarkets.
Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane have already shivered through what could be their coldest June in decades – and a Coles executive says the cold snap is making life even harder for farmers already affected by this year’s floods.
Coles chief operating officer Matt Swindells told Channel Nine’s Today the “double whammy” for growers meant shoppers should expect fruit and vegetable shortages to last for weeks.
“The first has been the floods that we all remember that went through south-east Queensland, northern New South Wales. That damaged crops but it also stopped the farmers being able to plant,” Mr Swindells said.
“That is then being compounded with one of the coldest winters in decades.
“So the crops that we have managed to get into the ground, they’re not growing as fast as they normally would do.”
The veggies disappearing from shelves
A Coles spokesperson told The New Daily supplies of berries, lettuce, beans, tomatoes, broccoli and herbs have been affected by the poor conditions.
SMH
‘Walking a tightrope’: Recession fears wipe billions off the market
Fears that steep interest rates rises could trigger a global recession have led to the worst day for the Australian sharemarket since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with investors wiping about $80 billion from the ASX.
The benchmark ASX200 index plunged 3.6 per cent on Tuesday following two days of heavy falls on Wall Street, after US inflation hit a new 40-year high of 8.6 per cent, leading to widespread predictions central banks will be forced to aggressively raise interest rates.
As markets bet on a series of interest rate rises this year, there is a growing fear the world economy could be tipped into recession, and this has sparked dramatic share price falls and predictions superannuation funds will make negative returns of -4 to -5 per cent this financial year.
Investment director at Investors Mutual, Anton Tagliaferro, said years of ultra-low interest rates had caused complacency, and markets were now adjusting to the likelihood of central banks raising interest rates significantly as they try to get inflation under control.
“It’s a very fine balance because if they go up too much, they will crunch the world economy. All the central banks around the world are walking a tightrope,” Tagliaferro said.
CRIKEY
Australia’s mainstream media is stumbling from crisis to crisis
Australia's media landscape is turning into a disaster area littered by examples of spectacular misjudgment.
Australia’s mainstream media is stumbling from crisis to crisis
Australia's media landscape is turning into a disaster area littered by examples of spectacular misjudgment.
JUN 14, 2022
Everywhere you look, Australia's major media outlets are facing crises -- not those primarily created by the usual existential threats of recent decades, social media and Google, but by misjudgment and poor leadership.
The country's largest media company, the Peter Costello-chaired Nine (as a political party masquerading as a media company, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp shouldn't be included) faces serious questions about its leadership. Last night, ABC's Media Watch showed the awful misjudgment of Nine journalists in signing up to promote gambling corporation Sportsbet -- a misjudgment waved away by Age executive editor Tory Maguire as "a bit of a mixup".
What Media Watch displayed was classic state capture. The gambling industry is, after the fossil fuel and arms industries, probably the most successful industry when it comes to capturing governments through political donations, board and executive appointments and by weakening and capturing regulators.
THE SPECTATOR
A strange new medical anomaly has doctors baffled as it sweeps across the country. Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS) is on the rise, and it’s tragically claiming the lives of healthy young adults, sometimes in their sleep.
Essentially, people are dying without displaying any prior sign of illness. They simply do not wake up after going to bed, or collapse during the day.
Reports of SADS have been increasing in recent weeks. A news.com web piece explains that, ‘Sudden Adult Death Syndrome … is an umbrella term to describe unexpected deaths in young people, usually under 40, when a post-mortem can find no obvious cause of death.’
The Melbourne-based Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute hopes to roll out a nation-wide registry to track cases.
‘In our registry, there are approximately 750 cases per year of people aged under 50 in Victoria suddenly having their heart stop (a cardiac arrest). Of these, approximately 100 young people per year will have no cause found even after extensive investigations such as a full autopsy (the SADS phenomenon).’
Apparently, SADS is now so common that the medical authorities must quickly develop a national registry to track SADS cases.
A Health Desk article published on June 7 notes that, ‘Most scientists think SADS is caused by a heart condition that interferes with the heart’s electrical system.’
Ah, so it’s a heart condition. Interesting.
It’s unfortunate that no sooner have we gone through a pandemic that a condition synonymous with ‘people dying of heart conditions for no apparent reason’ is on the rise. Is this simply terrible luck for the human species, or did something happen between the beginning of Covid and the emergence of this new epidemic that might explain it? In other words, what changed between then and now that might be affecting people’s hearts? Surely, any rational, objective, and truth-seeking person would ask this question…
Except, questions are becoming increasingly difficult to ask in a censorial medical world protective of its assets.
We are not really allowed to ask if these deaths in otherwise healthy young adults have anything to do with the last two years of abnormal health orders or the entry onto the market of new technology with limited long-term safety information.
What we do know is that mRNA vaccines have been linked to an alarming amount of deaths during a three-month trial period conducted by Pfizer in documents that they sought to suppress for 75 years – a request that was denied by the judge.
We also know that these vaccines are officially – according to vaccine safety regulators, manufacturers, and investigations conducted between 2020-22 – connected to a rise in cardiac problems such as myocarditis and pericarditis, along with a range of other health issues including neurological disorders and sometimes death.
The New York Times previously published an article discussing the link:
Federal officials are reviewing nearly 800 cases of rare heart problems following immunization with the coronavirus vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, according to data presented at a vaccine safety meeting on Thursday.
Not all of the cases are likely to be verified or related to vaccines, and experts believe the benefits of immunization far outweigh the risk of these rare complications. But the reports have worried some researchers. More than half of the heart problems were reported in people ages 12 to 24, while the same age group accounted for only 9 percent of the millions of doses administered.
“We clearly have an imbalance there,” said Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a vaccine expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who presented the data.
It is also true that Australian healthcare professionals were told by AHPRA not to undermine the Covid vaccine program in any way lest they lose their medical licenses.
These are the same vaccines that were mandated by public health order or corporate directions, resulting in over 90 per cent of the adult population taking at least one (but almost certainly two or more) doses within the last couple of years.
It is becoming increasingly obvious where we should be looking when it comes to all these ‘co-incidental’ spikes in diseases and deaths that have come out of nowhere in the last two years. If we were approaching science objectively and rationally, it would be permissible to ask questions of vaccine manufacturers – even if only to rule them out, once and for all, as the culprit.
However, these are not solely questions of science, but also of money, business, and political reputation. Organisations such as the TGA have not exactly been eager to investigate situations that could call into question their previous judgment (even though they have a history of making mistakes regarding medical safety).
Instead, we are being told to accept the sudden rise in SADS and the deaths of young people without investigation. After all, no one wants to be called a conspiracy theorist or an anti-vaxxer.