Sacrifice

The entire country had been sacrificed on the altar of a madness. 

Those who cared were few, at least in the beginning. But an errant, arrogant administration had bought themselves a well of pain, had made the country the laughing stock of the world, had turned the island into a prison, with millions of its inhabitants locked inside their own homes; destroyed their own credibility, and set field fires which might not go out for centuries. 

The spaceport, and those visions over which he had little control, were only just beginning to build, yet everybody could feel it. 

That there was an arrival.

In some metronomic sense, there was a countdown. It had absolutely nothing to do with compassion, kindness, their motives were not our motives, our sense of self, although Alex, basically, had none, was not theirs.

And just when he thought they would be alarmed, they did the opposite. 

Just when he thought that once again the birds would be wheeling in the sky, eagles, falcons, bright shining birds, whatever they signified, their beady mechanical eyes not just picking up every miniscule movement in that geosocial area now in the process of being defined, but seeing backwards and forwards in time, ex tempore, out of time, or outside of time, instead they just ruffled their feathers and settled into watch, there along the perimeters of what man had understood to be possible. 

The lioness cuffed him affectionately, as would she her cub. 

And they remained, he could feel it, in the right place at the right time; a feeling unknown to him throughout the brief lifespan of a human, this human, their infinitesimally brief and oh so wonderful journeys and struggles imprinted, as it were, on some universal map. 

There had been so many charlatans in this roadmap. 

And those who weren't, he had refused to engage; drunk, stoned, quashed, all the reaching screaming preaching and beseeching of normal men and entire indifference. 

His only instructions were: gird your loins. As in for battle. The ancient image of battlefields of yore, where if God, or more precisely the gods, or even more precisely what the humans thought of as gods, appropriate, although he did not understand how. 

And to cooperate. 

For the first time, in those latter months of that pivotal time, when they had found what they were looking for on the other side of the fence, he was ordered to cooperate. 

He had said it before and would say it again: none of us could truly comprehend what was happening, or what was about to happen. 

The mysteries of yore in a hi-tech dream; except it was all too real, and the consequences all too dire. 

Which is how this place, and this point in time, were set adrift. 

And how this place became not just sacred, beyond the native spirits which had protected the natives for millennia. 

The links were clear. The changes were unfolding. All you had to do was listen. 

NEWS

Zoe Daniel: Our leaders are using COVID to divide us, let’s not keep taking the bait

While most Australians will soon be vaccinated, that won’t mark either an end to the pandemic, or the divisive politics that goes with it.


Our leaders have used a pandemic to divide us, and we have taken the bait.

Public health is now a pawn on a political chessboard as Australia’s major parties seek to wedge each other over whose fault it is that much of the eastern seaboard remains locked down and under-vaccinated, and whose strategy is better.

The timing of the forthcoming federal election is entirely linked to COVID, and whether there will be enough vaccine in arms to allow liberty to return before Christmas, or whether the Festive Season will come with a huge spike in hospital admissions.


That would be bad optics.

Meanwhile as our politicians, with an eye to saving their political lives, gaze into a hazy crystal ball, the community is divided, confused and in some cases, frightened.

As accusations fly about whether vaccine has been unequally distributed under the table it is state versus state and mate against mate. There will be no winners.
Political gaslighting

“This is not about politics. This is about putting the lives of Australians first, no matter where they live,” Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt wrote here on Thursday.

So, we’re now being subjected to gaslighting as well.

And it’s not just the federal government. State premiers are taking the opportunity to grandstand like there’s no tomorrow.

This conflict has come about due to politically driven rhetoric about lockdowns, a botched vaccine rollout followed by lack of transparency and the inability (or refusal) to agree on a planned route out.

After a year and a half of uncertainty, this is making an exhausted populace anxious. Trust is in short supply.


America is like a collection of different countries under one flag.

Roughly drawn, the New England, Northeast, South, Deep South, Florida, Texas, the desert states, California, the Pacific Northwest, the Rockies, the mid-West, and the Appalachia have different favourite foods, accents, cultural make up and political and social attitudes.

Geography and class have been increasingly politically weaponised.

That’s happened here, too, over the years, to a lesser degree, but living there, I saw the level of division as a key difference between our two countries.

Perhaps that was naïve.

I grew up in Tasmania where north-south parochialism ran deep, but other than some friendly interstate rivalries and a few attempts by independents to mobilise the fringe I wouldn’t have described Australia as a ‘divided nation’.

Yet here we are.

Particularly on social media, frustration and worry has spilt over into anger at each other. This will reach boiling point as states that are riddled with COVID begin to re-open against the wishes of governments in those that are virtually COVID free.

All of this will form the backdrop to a forthcoming federal election.
The Trump experience

Having recently emerged from the experience of covering the Trump administration, the deployment of division as a political tool should not be a revelation.

Trump expertly mobilised division pitting Americans against each other using a gamut of themes, including immigration, race, gender, social and political views, economic status, and COVID.

He also expertly manipulated information to stoke anger and fear. We know how that ended in January of this year, if it did end, which of course it didn’t.

Once stoked, anger and division tend to simmer.

And while most Australians will soon be vaccinated, that won’t mark either an end to the pandemic or the divisive politics that goes with it.

Let’s not keep taking the bait.

Zoe Daniel is a three-time foreign correspondent and former ABC News United States Bureau Chief. She was based in Washington, DC from 2015 to 2019, was the ABC’s Southeast Asia correspondent from 2009 to 2013 and Africa correspondent from 2005 to 2007.

 Victorian schools will become pop-up jab centres as 392 COVID cases recorded

A series of pop-up vaccination hubs will be set up across Victoria, with the first five slated for COVID-ravaged areas.

As the state reported 392 new locally acquired COVID-19 cases on Sunday, Premier Daniel Andrews said the 100 pop-up vaccination hubs will be established across 100 “priority postcodes”.

“Postcodes where there are case numbers, postcodes where there are perhaps not enough people through the vaccination program,” he told reporters.

“This will be done in stages. The first of those are five community-based pop-ups.

“They will be in areas that need the most. So in the outbreak areas where cases are potentially growing in Hume, Dandenong and Casey.”

Schools added to vax sites

The first of the pop-up hubs will open within days and demand will determine how long they remain before moving on.

The initiative has been incorporated into the state government’s push to get all 12-year-old and up students vaccinated by the end of the school year.

Some 70 schools will become pop-up sites, with the first eight in Dandenong, Point Cook, Werribee, Gladstone Park, Caroline Springs, Brunswick and Tarneit.

“These pop-ups are all about removing another barrier, taking the vaccination program to you,” Mr Andrews said.

“You can come and be part of that, get your first and second dose, play your part, get the lockdowns off and protect yourself against becoming seriously ill.”

Of the new cases announced on Sunday, 255 were from the city’s north and another 89 came from the western suburbs.

Another five infections were detected in regional Victoria, including one in Greater Geelong, one in Mildura, two in Gippsland and one related to V/Line.

It comes as all of Victoria’s regional train services were suspended on Sunday after more than 180 drivers and operational staff were placed in isolation following four positive coronavirus tests among workers.

“Out of an abundance of caution we are suspending all trains on Sunday to limit the spread and to keep everyone safe,” the Department of Transport said in a statement.

Youth is no protection

The health department on Sunday confirmed 107 cases were linked to known outbreaks, with the source of the still 285 under investigation.

It brings the total number of active cases in the state to 3112, with all but four locally acquired.

Mr Andrews said 85 per cent of active cases are under the age of 50.

“This is not just something for the frail aged,” he said.

“That is the nature of a pandemic of the unvaccinated. That group is still too big for us to be able to open up.”

The state has 147 people in hospital with COVID-19, up four from Saturday, with 34 of those people in intensive care units and 28 of them on a ventilator.

Of the cases in hospital, only one was fully vaccinated and isn’t believed to be on a ventilator.

In the 24 hours to Sunday morning, 48,063 tests were processed and 36,534 Victorians received a vaccine dose at a state-run hub.

-AAP