MULTIPLE INCOMPETENCIES: MALICIOUS INSIDERS

Joshua J Smith

He shut his eyes and was immediately in the sky.
Below lava flows, ice on a frigid surface, treachery everywhere.
They were back.
"It's far worse than you know," they told him constantly. 
He already knew it was bad.
"Far worse."
"Name one thing in this country that works," an old contact queried, voice dripping with exasperated, almost amused irony. He had made his millions. He was safe in the hills. Old Alex was not. "Name one thing this government is doing right."
The country had the most expensive electricity in the world. The slowest, most expensive internet. Standards of living were falling. The cost of everything was rising. Wages, where there was work, were static.
Best in the world, best in the world, the Prime Minister blathered. For now there was nothing but blather everywhere. 
The NSW police killed a man at Central Station in Sydney, mimicking their American counterparts, who were notorious f***ups.
The Americans were offering training programs across the security realm; perhaps they had trained this lot. 
The truth was met in a prevailing cynicism, the blizzard storms at the end of time. 
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation grew worse, the public more detached. 
They wanted him out of here, his not-so-benign pursuers. 
In all their blather and bluster, he knew from personal experience just how truly incompetent they were. 
Here in a darkening clime. The wheels falling off. A truck tilting sideways as it slid off the highway, the driver slung free, but seriously winded. 
Australia, Australia. Land of the free. 
"It's democracy," he heard them whisper in wonder. "Free speech."
But there was no free speech. There was chronic, gross manipulation of content. There was an anodyne fairy tale at the bottom of the garden. There was extinguishing hope. There were even darker forces at play than the greatest conspiracy theorist could imagine. They had been betrayed more completely than even the greatest skeptic could imagine.
In an instant realm. Where the protecting sheaves had come down. The ring of fire doused. The mechanical arms of heaven creaking aside. They would reveal much. 
We want to talk to you, but cannot. There was disarray. No course of action but accreted bureaucratic insanity. 
"It's political. It's political."
Of course it's political.
Everyone has been betrayed.
The most striking feature of Stasi Germany, the greatest example of The Surveillance State: Everybody Spied On Everybody. Cousins on cousins.  Brothers on brothers. Neighbours on neighbours. 
"That's a good analogy," one of the Watchers whispered.
What were they looking for, the authorities? 
Incorrect thought. Betrayal of the state. 
Already, blasphemy laws were being introduced. 
Man, ultimately malleable, fell straight into line. 
Until it all collapsed. 
They had destroyed the country in order to save it, or so they believed, those in power, rewritten its past and its future, destroyed the present, thumped down on a once freewheeling culture. 
They were remaking the country. 
In a twinkling Australia had become one of the most oppressive and dispiriting places on Earth. All in the name of diversity, intolerance ruled.
Stasi Australia. Is that how the future would see the present?

THE BIGGER STORY:

26 July 2017 – Witnessing “complete devastation” in districts of Mosul, a senior United Nations relief official visiting Iraq lauded the massive humanitarian effort under way while indicating that the crisis is “far from over,” including for millions of Iraqis displaced throughout the country.

“I commend the achievements of the humanitarian operation in Iraq and wish to highlight the impressive national response,” said Ursula Mueller, Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator in a press statement.

“One of the things that impressed me the most was the exceptional level of cooperation between national counterparts, UN agencies and front-line NGOs [non-governmental organizations],” she added.

From 24 and 26 July, Ms. Mueller met with senior officials and ministers from the Iraqi Government and the Kurdistan Regional Government, as well as members of the international and humanitarian communities.

She saw first-hand the complete devastation of districts in western Mosul's old city. “I saw homes and entire neighbourhoods destroyed; no doubt, countless tragedies remain untold among the rubble,” she explained.

With almost one million people fleeing Mosul, humanitarians' “worst-case” estimates were surpassed.

THE man who attacked a Sydney florist outside Central station on Wednesday night and was then shot dead by police has been named as Danukul Mokmool.

He was 30 years old and understood to have been a Thai national.

The half-brother of Mookmol said his sibling was suffering paranoid delusions before he left their western Sydney home last night, reported the Daily Telegraph.

His half-brother Charlie Huynh, 19, said Mr Mokmool had battled illicit drugs and the law for many years.

Four hours before his death Mr Mokmool left his home in Green Valley, fearing his family wanted to harm him.