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| Sapa in North Vietnam, Picture by John Stapleton |
There was a biometric study. There was a picture on a wall. He could hear the police changing shift in the early hours of the morning. He could sense everything. Sydney drenched and cold in the middle of summer. "Bring back global warming," he would say, apropos of nothing, a stupid joke which always fell flat, testing, testing, one two three. But no, the perfect religion for the modern age, all you had to say was you believe to make you a progressive, caring person, remained as strong as ever. "I saw a documentary the other day," the man at the cafe said, and proceded to tell a story about shrinking ice. There were just as many stories about expanding ice, but he didn't bother to argue. "The truth is, neither of us really know," he said, and took his coffee.
"I suspect we're not being told everything that's going on," the coffee maker said, his cafe empty as they looked out on the unseasonal cold, the ceaseless rain. There had only been a few days hinting at summer, and that was that.
Australian politics dissolved into ever more pointless hysteria. A father drove the bodies of his children and himself off a pier in South Australia, that wild, lonely, infinite coast.
The taxpayer funded women's organisations were all on holiday; and were yet to make hay out of the misery of families; but no doubt they would. They always did. Although men and women killed their children in approximately equal numbers, it was the men who were monsters and the women who were victims, the ceaseless infantilising of the population, the ceaseless, destructive dogma of the half-educated, or the over-educated, take your pick.
A minister resigned after making a clumsy pass at a female employee of DFAT while out on a drunken evening in Hong Kong, another junket at taxpayers expense. The scandal rippled out, the ceaseless cries of the deliberately outraged. If the situation had been reversed, or gender reversed, there would have been no consequence, freedom of expression.
A woman at the doctor's called him "darling"; he was not outraged. "Respect for women", the chant went, while respect for men was an absurdity none of them could harbour.
It was no wonder that men were withdrawing from the public debate, unwilling to be ridiculed at every turn.
While the Middle East ran out of control, daily out of control. Saudi Arabia, a country with which Australia was in military alliance, executed 47 people in a single day, including a Shia cleric, turning the already vexed quagmire into a powder keg without precedent. Iran accused the Saudis of funding Islamist groups worldwide. Common knowledge.
In Australia the tensions spread, papered increasingly thin.
The bureaucrats had a new frontman, in the form of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, far happier to give the official, so-called "progressive" line.
While his bombs, the bombs for which he was responsible, rained down on the Middle East; killing people for their religious beliefs, no matter how extreme those religious beliefs might appear to be; and with every bomb creating new enemies, a new line of the dead, harvested souls to haunt the coming apocalypse.
There was uniform delight, just as there had been uniform distaste for his predecessor Tony Abbott. The most dangerous Prime Minister Australia had ever had; the man who took the country back to war, and in doing so, imperilled the population.
He heard the police changing shifts in the early dawn; "he's harmless" he heard someone say.
"Well, we'll see about that," he thought. They had been in hiding all these years, another lifeform trying to survive in a hostile environment.
"We'll see about that."
There was no point hiding, here at The End of Days.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-05/islamic-state-video-sign-desperation-says-david-cameron/7067406
Intelligence officials will use voice recognition to help identify a masked man in a newly released video by the Islamic State militant group which purports to show five British spies being shot dead.
Key points:
Latest video by IS purports to show five British spies being executed
The grandfather of the boy believed to be in the video says he is being used as a shield
UK authorities are searching through names and details of Britons known to have travelled to Syria and Iraq
The 10 minute video, which could not be independently verified, shows a young boy, who appears to be about four to five years old, in military fatigues and an older masked militant, who both spoke with British accents.
The masked man in the video waves a gun at the camera while criticizing British prime minister David Cameron and calling him an imbecile.
"This is a message to David Cameron, O slave of the White House, O mule of the Jews," the man said in the 10-minute video, which was released on Sunday.
"One would have thought you'd have learned the lessons of your pathetic master in Washington and his failed campaign against the Islamic State," the man said.
He threatens the British PM and vows that Islamic State will one day occupy Britain before shooting one of the alleged spies in the head.
Mr Cameron said the video was a sign of the group's desperation.
He said the group is losing territory and the video should be seen as a propaganda tool.
"It's desperate stuff from an organisation that really does do the most utterly despicable and ghastly acts and people can see that again today," Mr Cameron said.
"This is an organisation that's losing territory, it's losing ground and it's increasingly losing anybody's sympathy.
"It may take a very long time but they will be defeated."
UK man says child his grandson
British security officials are studying the footage for clues about the identity of a masked IS militant.
The footage revived memories of Jihadi John, a British Islamic State member who appeared in several videos in which hostages were killed before his own death was reported in an air strike late last year.
The United States said in November it had killed Mohammed Emwazi, who had become a symbol of IS.
He doesn't like it over there. It's propaganda. They are just using a small boy. He doesn't know anything. They are just using him as a shield.
Grandfather of boy believed to be in IS video
Intelligence agencies used voice recognition to identify him.
Authorities are searching through the names and details of hundreds of Britons known to have travelled to Syria and Iraq.
They are also expected to utilise information from the Muslim community in London to establish who is behind the video.
A spokeswoman for Cameron declined to comment on whether the executed men shown had been spies, but said the group's past propaganda had not all been true.
Some British media speculated the militant might be Siddhartha Dhar, who is also known as Abu Rumaysah, a convert from Hinduism and a high-profile Islamist, although security experts were divided on whether it was him.
Dhar left Britain with his family to travel to Syria, despite being on police bail after being arrested in late 2014 on suspicion of being a member of a banned organisation.
His sister has spoken to the media and said she initially thought it was her brother but was unsure when she saw the rest of the video.
In the original video the child, who was not masked, was clearly identifiable.
The father of Grace Dare, a woman from London who left Britain to join Islamic State and marry a militant, said he believed the boy in the video was her son.
"It's my grandson. I can't disown him," Sunday Dare told Channel 4 News.
"He doesn't like it over there. It's propaganda. They are just using a small boy. He doesn't know anything. They are just using him as a shield."
Dr Afzal Ashraf, a fellow with the Royal United Services Institute in London, said the odds are against IS.
"They have no courage to confront the West, they have no capability to confront the West," Dr Ashraf said.
"It takes no courage to kill a man whose hands are bound and shoot him in the back of the head."
In November, British officials said that up to 800 Britons had travelled to Iraq and Syria, some to join Islamic State.
Islamic State militants have lost some ground in Syria and Iraq but experts have said it would be wrong to believe they were not capable of encouraging followers to launch terror attacks on the west.
Counter-terrorism expert Rashad Ali, a senior fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, denied IS were on the "back foot".
"They may have lost certain areas but they are retaking other areas thanks largely to the Russian bombardment of opposition groups," Mr Ali said.
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