PROPHET, SAID I, THING OF EVIL
He finished reading Hillbilly Elegy and one thing was clear:
When the old compact, work hard and you will get ahead, falls apart, the country falls apart.
Increasingly it played in a place where there own wages were ordinary, while bloated taxpayer funded ticks hauled in massive incomes for doing little but stuffing up the country.
In the end, the working class see no point in working and become, as has happened across Australia, the working class which doesn't work.
None of their stories are played back to them in the national media.
In the relentless brainwashing of identity politics and identity media, the stories of the host population remain entirely untold.
Their gripes, their dissatisfactions, their triumphs. Their struggles to survive.
When they see fiascos like the NBN, its boss walking off with $13 million in payments after five years doing a terrible job at the top of a terrible tree.
No one was responsible. All was a lie.
When they see politicians and bureaucrats paid ten times the average wage for a damn sight less work than your average tradie, the compact broke down.
When they saw insanely negligent governments blowing tens of billions of dollars on everything from failed broadband networks to outlandishly slack defence contracts, the compact was broken. While fat cat public servants swanned from meeting to meeting achieving bugger all.
And as in his case, when they used government money to pursue, harass, survey and intimidate journalists, the compact was lost.
There was no democracy.
"The world is not what we think it is," Old Alex said to Miller as he left the Lake View. Apropos of nothing.
"No, it's not," he replied, in one of those flashes of recognition.
Miller was intelligent and did his best to conceal it. Intelligence was never trusted. That much about Australia hadn't changed.
We're all laughing, here in the slime coated walls. What were they, those things pasted onto the wall, like mollusks or sea animals of some kind, breathing their last breath out of water. Why were they crying, when everything else was a laugh?
"How are you?"
"I'm in some sort of time dilation. Every hour seems like a century."
Another week. Another day of the dismal Turnbull era. When the compact was broken at the highest level. When lie after bullshit lie came pouring from the mouths of their ostensible leaders.
IS IT really over for Malcolm Turnbull?
Speculation about a leadership challenge appears to be growing but it could be a fake crisis of the Prime Minister’s own doing, after he used the 30 Newspolls milestone to topple former leader Tony Abbott.
Mr Turnbull’s own deadline will be reached on Monday, when the poll is delivered.
Some believe this artificial deadline will come and go without incidence.
But Fairfax political editor Peter Hartcher suggested in a column on the weekend that while “nothing dramatic” will happen the milestone will “signal open season on Turnbull”.
“Quietly, the Liberals’ expectation now is that Turnbull will not be leading them to the next election,” Hartcher wrote. “They will focus increasingly on their post-Turnbull prospects as the year wears on.” Today, when asked in central Queensland whether he was confident of his colleagues’ support, Mr Turnbull said: “Very.” Is support building for a challenge? Charis Chang, News, 5 April, 2018.
The rituals had become more insistent. The commentary. I come to bury you, more in sorrow than in malice. The ritual denials. Peter Dutton forcibly declaring his loyalty. Others declaring their loyalty. Nobody believed any of it. For those paying attention, an increasingly tiny minority of the Australian population, it was an expensive and pointless circus. Another break in the contract, where the preening idiots who called themselves politicians were meant to serve the public, and didn't.
Their idea of an ordinary person was a public servant.
With no ideas of their own, they accepted those of the bureaucratic elites. And they were wrong, deeply, entirely wrong.
The lie was over a long time ago. It was just that their advisers forgot to tell them. And if it was Turnbull, he wouldn't have listened anyway. He was, after all, the smartest person in the room.
Addicted to the stab of publicity, the rush of fame and self-importance, his own image reflected at him a thousand times a day, he was the man who broke the compact with the Australian public.
But it was the public who would pay the price.
"Prophet", said I, "thing of evil Prophet still, if a bird or devil By that heaven that bends above us By that God we both ignore Tell this soul with sorrow laden Willful and destructive intent Tell me, tell me how had lapsed a pure Heart lady to the greediest of needs? Sweaty arrogant dickless liar Who has ascribed to nothing higher Than a jab from a prick to a needle Straight to betrayal and disgrace A conscience showing not a trace?" "Be that word, our sign of parting Bird or fiend," I yelled upstarting "Get thee back into the tempest And the smoke filled bottle's shore Leave no black plume as a token Of the slime thy soul has spoken Leave my loneliness unbroken Quit as those have quit before Take the talon from my heart And see that I can care no more Whatever matter came before I vanish with the dead Lenore."
The Raven. Adapted by Lou Reed from Edgar Alan Poe.
THE BIGGER STORY:
“This nation [Muslims] should know that it was […] created to spread Allah’s religion and lead the nations, and this could only be achieved by Jihad for the sake of Allah!”
These words were not said somewhere in the war ravaged Middle East by a supporter of ISIS or other extremist groups. They were not whispered in a dark room, hidden from public sight. This call for holy war, or jihad, was voiced loud and clear to a large crowd in a Sydney mosque just a few months ago.
My investigation has found that an extreme terrorist-supporting group of preachers has been operating inside Australia’s major cities for two decades, spreading hate, open antisemitism, anti-Western sentiments and separatism, potentially inciting new generations of terrorists. All this is done out in the open, and in public – and the nature and activities of this dangerous group must be well known to Australian authorities.
The organisation referred to is called “Ahl As-Sunnah wal-Jama’ah” ( أهل السنة والجماعة , The family of the way of the Prophet, the Sunnah, and his Companions), or ASWJ. It is regarded as the most radical Muslim group in Australia, and is an Australian branch of an international fundamentalist Salafi organisation. It was launched in 1985 by Jordanian-born Melbourne resident Sheikh Mohammed Omran (whose work was the subject of a previous AIR expose titled “Jihad in the suburbs” by Naomi Peled in 2005). According to ASWJ’s religious views, all Muslims must adhere to the ways practised in the 7th century by the Prophet Muhammad and his followers – as they interpret them.
The aim of the organisation is to preach in mosques, spread its message online and through books and texts sold in its bookshops, and to actively convert Muslims to follow its version of Islam. Through its centres in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia, ASWJ offers lectures, social support, charities, annual trips to the holy city of Mecca to perform the Haj pilgrimage and more. ASWJ preachers teach in several Muslim academic institutes in Australia and are popular guest speakers, with their lectures recorded and shared with thousands of people online and on social media.
ASWJ states on its website that it has “gained a lot of trust and respect from the community due to its firm adherence to the principles of Islam and its freedom from external political interference. It is an independent body free from any governmental influence both financially and ideologically. It is this ‘no strings attached’ policy that has allowed the Sheikhs of ASWJ to speak with a sense of freedom not shared by many other organizations.” As will be shown through this investigation, that freedom is often used by ASWJ to advance hate, undermine social harmony and incite terror.