THE MORAL CHOICES OF HIGH OFFICE

The London Fire 2017

Mosul was falling. Western bombs rained down in narrow streets.
The last of the romance, although it was not so.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, already extensively disliked, was responsible for killing more people than any other Australian leader in the nation's history.
Vietnam, Afghanistan, the earlier Iraq conflicts, all of them paled into insignificance in contrast to the present day bastardy.
They hollowed out their own hearts.
The dead sheltered in gaunt eye sockets. 
They ran rings around the living. 
Since Turnbull came to power in 2015, assuming the position he had so long, so greedily coveted, had dropped more than 1200 bombs, some on Syria, mostly on Iraq.
Sovereign countries on the other side of the world.
We were there because America was there.
In the face, despite having trampled across the rights and independent nature of the people, of still considerable opposition. 
If anybody thought about it at all; these non-transparent, more or less secret wars.
There was no pride. They were not defending the homeland. They were holding faith to multi-billion dollar military contracts, to compliance with a worldwide evil, to a madness which had gripped the political class. They thought they had got away with it, in their swirling whiffs of self-importance as they entered their chauffeur driven vehicles, the white so-called "Com Cars", issued instructions, were polite, friendly, as they had seen in the movies to their staffers, and swirled through yet more papers and smart phone communications, their self-importance growing as they travelled through cold streets.
No one could know the dangers, the difficult decisions, the moral choices of high office.
If they had any morals, it might just have been believable. Instead, in the basest, most ruthless, most amoral manner possible, they drummed up terror as an existential threat in order to expand their own powers, and to subjugate the people. 
Turnbull had outdone his war mongering predecessor Tony Abbott, who so unwisely led the country back into war in the Middle East in September of 2014. Abbott had dropped only a little over 600 bombs before being banished from office for his bumbling ways.
Turnbull's paper heart had blown out through cold corridors and arid light, had settled in fright in the institutional walls of parliament, for the dead were here as much as they were there. 
The mujaheddin were dying in the narrow streets, gifting their souls to God, or Allah if you will, while the cowards on the other side of the world went home to their multi-million dollar mansions.
But already the dead were festooning across the skin and through the dreams of their tormentors, their killers, the killers of their wives, their children, their elderly. The high-tech bombs might succeed in extinguishing in the physical plane their desperate, transcendent love of God; but the flesh was just a cloak, easily burnt off.
Secrecy, a soft definition of civilian casualties, the blinding, deliberately engineered ignorance of the populace, these self-important bantam roosters thought they had escaped, got away with it. 
Instead, in a crippling darkness of their own making, in the absence of conscience, in the face of the bleeding obvious, their own paths, greedy, self-interested, conscience free paths, met the dead in derelict buildings, the ramshackle remnants of decency.


QUOTE DIRTY SECRETS: OUR ASIO FILES

FROM THE EDITOR MEREDITH BURMANN:

There is some evidence that ASIO embarked on harassment.

If the nation decides that it needs a secret intelligence organisation, then that organisation should employ clever, skilled and astute agents, and have powerful and well resourced oversight and an appropriate appeals mechanism.

In reading these chapters one can see that ASIO's behaviour is at various times improper, incompetent, irrelevant, inappropriate and intrusive. It is clear that Australia's secret police have been used from time to time for party political objectives rather than national security concerns.

In some of the chapters in this book there are examples of the conservative political leadership using ASIO as an extension of their political agenda rather than as a neutral agency.

That the agencies early brief was to keep tabs on something as vague as 'subversion'  was a particular problem.

Can a leopard really change it's spots? Given a long history of incompetence, can we really trust it to protect us today? At a time of considerable expansion of its resources and powers, do we simply ignore the history and cross our fingers about the future? When does dissent become subversion and when is spying on citizens the legitimate role of government?

THE BIGGER STORY:

THE LONDON FIRE:

FAMILY and friends of up to 600 people that may have been trapped inside the Grenfell Tower block have been searching desperately for their loved ones after their homes turned into a blazing inferno.

Fire ripped through the 24-storey block early Wednesday morning killing at least twelve and injuring at least 74. Friends and family of those who lived there have flooded makeshift evacuation centres and social media with appeals for their loved ones.

Family of Jessica Urbano, 12, have been desperately pleading for information about the 12-year-old on social media.

Aunt Sandra Ruiz said she phoned her mum at 1.29am and at 1.39am before the call cut out with no explanation.