WAITING FOR THE WORLD TO END

This is the ancient story of the Milky Way and the Seven Sisters (Pleiades). This Dreaming was inherited by Gabriella from her mother, handed down to her from her paternal grandmother, Long Rose, given to Gabriella by her father.

"Worst internet in the world," he muttered as he worked. 
Like so many other people in the country, stuck with endless frustrations over broadband which barely worked. Thanks to a startling level of government incompetence. 
On the radio they broadcast the parliamentary proceedings, so bad they might want to keep them secret. So the people would not lose faith. But the people had lost faith. 
A ripe old story. 
Sack the Senate. 
Kill them in their sleep. 
But these were not Ancient Roman times when such things could happen. In the dead of the night. 
"Once Charles get's hold of him..."
"Our Father..."
Their dreams were tossed or borderline. Tranquil. They fell asleep because nobody wanted to be awake. A fabulous start. A dark art. A place they could not be found.
As if waiting.
For the massacre. For the blood to flow. For the country to finally wake up and face its own ruination. For revolution. 
We are tempted to go online and help him. 
They spoke of love and abandonment, mostly love in their own sparse lives. Everyone settled for zero. They rose across waves and fell short of all its implications. Communications had broken down. Not all was a peak experience, and it was these sleeping souls, the possibility of peace, held out like an elusive offer, a hand at the end of a stone corridor, that had enveloped the place. 
"The selection criteria are idiocy," a Watcher on the Watch suggested. 
Old Alex shrugged, because nothing was certain. Contract contract. But no contract ever came. Not for him. 
"I have this theory of why the agencies are like they are," he told an old spook. "Because they employ from the military. The ADF, Australian Defence Force. And they have no understanding of civilians. They don't understand why they won't comply. They don't understand why they object to being put under 24 hour surveillance. After all, when they were in the army, ever move they made was watched."
The old spook agreed: "Recreational drug use. They won't hire anybody with even a trace."
To which Old Alex replied: "One of the ironies of drug education that it is often the most intelligent and adventurous who are tempted to push the boundaries. You have automatically ruled out some of the most talented people in the population."
"And once you're there, you can get as drunk as you like."
"And snort as much coke as you like. This government has passed laws which mean they can no longer be charged with illegal conduct."
Well, these were subjects for another day, perhaps. 

A teeanger chared with murder and accused of expressing admiration for Islamic State was allegedly captured on CCTV dipping his fingers into his victim's blood before writing "IS" on a wall.Minutes earlier the same youth is seen in the footage chasing his victim around a petrol station at Queanbeyan, stabbing him repeatedly while his accomplice, 15, takes the cash register from behind the counter... Mr Akbar turns around and tries to flee from his attacker as the figure chases him down the length of the shop, repeatedly stabbing him even after he collapses to the ground in a pool of blood.After taking cigarettes from behind the counter, the pari walk towards the automatic door, where the figure identified by the police as the older boy dabs his fingers in a pool of blood and appears to write something on a wall off off camera. Police allege he wrote IS. Sarah Crawford, Bloody scene of IS hate at home, The Daily Telegraph, 7 February, 2018.

This really was like waiting for the world to end.  
They stood around in a virtual world, cigarettes arched. 
And waited for the killing to start. 

THE BIGGER STORY:

The watchdog overseeing the nation’s spy agencies says proposed changes to security laws would allow an attorney-general to order “diversionary” inquiries to prevent proper scrutiny of intelligence services.

The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security, Margaret Stone, said the Home Affairs and Integrity Agencies Amendment Bill threatened her independence.

Under current rules, only the prime minister can direct the inspector to make a particular inquiry. Otherwise, the agency makes its own decisions on which inquiries to undertake, and when to conduct them.

The proposed amendment would also give the attorney-general — who is required to authorise warrants requested by ASIO — the power to order the inspector to undertake an inquiry.

She told parliament’s joint committee on intelligence and security that such a direction would be a mandatory requirement, and could divert the agency’s resources from its own inquiries.

“I’m not assuming bad faith, but the test for independence is to look at the worst-case scenarios,” Ms Stone told the committee.

“And so an attorney-general who was concerned about an aspect of ASIO’s activities that we were looking at, say in relation to warrants, and his or her authorisation of those warrants, might be tempted to find a diversionary tactic: ‘I require you to look at this’. Something quite different.”

She said her office would be unable to put on more staff to deal with such requests, as security vetting for the agency’s officers was currently running about 18 months to two years.

When Malcolm Turnbull sits down in the White House later this month for his first substantive discussion with Donald Trump on American soil, Afghanistan will almost certainly be part of the conversation.
Whatever is said — and agreed — about that conflict, neither the Americans nor the Australians have much cause for satisfaction over progress in efforts to stabilise that country.
As 2017 gave way to a new year, the news from Afghanistan for the NATO-led effort to counter the Taliban, and other militant groups, was mostly bad.
Terrorist attacks in Kabul and other cities, which killed more than 100 people and wounded dozens in the first weeks of 2018, underscored the lack of progress in establishing a stable environment.
Afghanis are losing confidence in the ability of US-backed Afghan security forces to hold insurgents at bay.
This lessening certainty in an Afghan administration, propped up by America and its allies, including Australia, has serious implications for the future of the country and the conduct of what is now America's longest war.
The Afghan conflict has cost the American taxpayer getting on for a trillion dollars — or a lot more, according to some estimates — with no end in sight.
More than 2,000 Americans have been killed.
Australia has spent an estimated $8 billion on its Afghan engagement, including civil and military assistance. Forty-one service personnel have been killed and 261 wounded.