WE SANK BENEATH THE WAVES

A vile Prime Minister threw his Deputy under the bus. 
Almost literally. 
Inept. Unnecessary. So it was. 
Nothing could save this government. 
A slight bump in the polls after Christmas was being attributed to good management, to a government recovering its standing with the electorate. It was nothing of the kind. It was an aberration as a result of people not paying attention over the Christmas break. 
Dutton strutted his stuff and barely garnered a headline.
He could have made every front page in the country with one simple declaration, he was cutting immigration to pre-Howard levels, that is to 70,000 a year. 
As it was, the hugely unpopular immigration rates, foisted on the country by the oligarchy, was, as Howard and his successors had been so frequently warned, placing enormous pressure on the country. The cities didn't have the infrastructure to cope. The traditional nature of the country was being destroyed. Anti-immigration or at least anti-multicultural sentiment was on the rise. Politics was fracturing as assuredly as the country itself. 
The White Flight was now a reality. 
The traditional Anglos were being reduced to poor cousins in their own country. The hillbillies. 
The indigenous were just forgotten, farmed out on reservations. Open air zoos, if you wanted to be that cruel. Their fate of no consequence to the greed ridden inhabitants of the suburbs, thrusting to survive. 
The Chinese marched into the professions. The Indians, from a grasping culture where they would die in the ditch over a rupee, spread their business acumen. Tentacles of avarice. It was everywhere.
Demography is death. 
And so it was. 
Far above, the worst Prime Minister in Australian history peddled his garbage.
Australia was the most successful multicultural society on Earth.
Bullshit it was. 
Ridden, riven, a country which could not take care of its own, much less the hordes it now welcomed on a daily basis. 
There is no popular support for an increase in immigration rates, former Finance Minister Nick Minchin had warned way back at the turn of the millenium, when the the rate had been 70,000. It would place unnecessary stress on infrastructure and the environment. It would destroy social cohesion. 
Howard, supported by the Big End of Town, which sells more cornflakes and houses with a higher population, ignored all the warnings and quadrupled the rate to almost 300,000. The Australian Chamber of Commerce was the only major body to applaud.
At the same time Howard was masquerading to the public as a anti-immigration Stop the Boats Protect the Borders politician. A typical double blind. You never listened to a word the man said. You watched what he did.
And now the country lived in the future of decisions made by incompetent, self-serving populations who would rather feather their own nest and ingratiate themselves with rich friends than take care of their constituents. 
Governments lie. 
Governments feed on the naivety of the people. 
The future had arrived.
Old Alex waited for the First Mass Casualty event. Which never came. 
Perhaps Islamic preacher Musa Cerantonio was right. The jihadists of Australia had got together and decided to ignore the calls of Islamic State. They were making such excellent progress already a mass casualty event would only be counterproductive. 
Fear drove the people towards God. Fear Allah. But opportunism, gratification, personal safety, burgeoning families, group identity, a place in the world, these things, too, herded people into the protective wings of the Lord of the All the Worlds.

People who are watched or harassed act like prey, people who are gifted the power to watch and harass act like predators.
If you want my view much of the solution lies in having a freer and more open society to which people feel loyal and in which they are active participants, that quaint old thing a participatory democracy, not the absurd tendencies to totalitarianism now being displayed.
I hear it now takes six months to get a permit to light a wood fire.
One of the fascinating things about Graeme Wood's Among the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State, was his critique that the West has wasted billions of dollars on failed military actions while utterly failing to understand the nature of their enemy, and the religious nature of Islamic State.
He caused a furore when he declared that unlike all the white bread politicians dismissing them as not representing the "religion of peace", a term dreamed up by George Bush, Islamic State was in fact very Islamic.
Surely understanding your enemy should be step one of any conflict.
He was surprisingly close to and interviewed extensively Musa Cerantonio, the chap the authorities so wisely prevented from taking a boat to Syria via Indonesia via Cairns.
As one of the best articulators of Islamic State theology in the West, his persecution by the authorities and his incarceration will no doubt inspire his followers within and without the prison system, where he will resume preaching as soon as possible.
His many sermons remain readily available on YouTube.
The single most fascinating thing to come out of Wood's extensive interviews with Musa was that the jihadists in Australia were generally in agreement that a mass casualty event here would be counterproductive, particularly seeing as they are making such great strides in every other area, including changing laws, adopting sharia, building mosques and Islamic schools, and conquest by rapid population growth.
Because of the heavy level of surveillance, they could not openly argue with Islamic State leaders that their call to attack infidels wherever they were by whatever means possible would be counterproductive in Australia, so they made their own decision not to heed Baghdadi's call.
I suspect, far from the crowing over the excellence of the AFP and ASIO and our national security agencies, the best in the world as Turnbull keeps telling us, this is the only reason we are yet to see a mass casualty event here.
Particularly considering the many thousands of Muslims in the Middle East we have so actively, as the second lead in the Coalition, helped to kill. John Stapleton. Private Correspondence. 

And so, we sank beneath the waves. 
What was worth saving?
What was worth standing and dying for? 
As the rich paraded their muskets. And their contempt. He felt sick to the gut. 

THE BIGGER STORY: 

Barnaby Joyce has vowed to fight fresh allegations of sexual harassment against him, saying “if it is going to be before the courts, it is going to be before the courts”.
Amid intense pressure for him to quit, Mr Joyce said on Friday afternoon he would resign as Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader, nearly 24 hours after the National Party confirmed he was the subject of a sexual harassment claim.
“With the last allegation that was in the paper today, I have asked that that be referred to the police,” he told a press conference in Armidale.
“I’ve asked for the right of the person who’s made the allegation and I’ve asked for my right of defence that that be referred to the police.
“But it’s quite evident that you can’t go to the despatch box while issues like that surrounding you.

Mr Joyce said he was standing down in order to create “clear air” for the National Party to fight for regional people, who he described as those “living in the weatherboard and iron”.
“To give these people in the weatherboard and iron, in those regional and small towns, the best opportunity, then this current cacophony of issues has to be put aside,” he said.