WISER ANGELS

He slept deeply, away from the idiots who were always trying to contact him; as if he was some experiment, a live rat to be tortured, a curiosity to be examined. He had been able to hear all too much; and spent as much time pretending not to hear them as he did listening to the poisonous fronds of thought emerging from surrounding houses. For he did not know who he could trust.

And now he was away from suburbia, as the denizens of Lightning Ridge called Australia's cities with a shudder of dislike. 

Those who could cope with suburbia were a different species altogether. 

Much of what he had heard through that long, interminable, bitterly cold winter had been harmless. Lasagna for dinner. Medical concerns. Television programs and the endless drivel of government propaganda from the radio. 

Sometimes he would hear one of the operatives lying to new recruits amongst the Watchers on the Watch, expressing their distaste for him; and inflamed dislike which would never have been there in the first place if they had not mounted their prolonged surveillance campaigns, and attempted, time and time and time again, to encourage him to have a heart attack or to take his own life; to do their job for them, to relieve the world of his disturbing presence.

Old Alex was determined not to let them destroy him. 

The reasons for their being, for he did not regard himself as a singular, or ordinary person, the reasons why he, or they, with their image infested consciousnesses and trails of memory and wisdom and sadness from other lives, were beyond the ken of any of them, including himself. He could no more explain why he had been cast into this unhappy place, forced to listen to the tendrils of malicious thought which would whisper and curl through the long nights, then he could explain the meaning of life.

The frontiers of science were realigning the evolution of the species, and what seemed like magic, or like the voices of the Gods, was in fact an evolution of themselves, or people like themselves, cast forward, cast back. He, like hundreds of others, had volunteered for the sacrifice in an instant, as if it meant nothing; as if it would be an easy assignment, and he had never thought, in that defining instant which would confine him to this planet for so many years, through so many lives, of what it would be like to be so profoundly trapped for such a very long time.

The mistakes that had been made would not be made again.

As he lay away and listened to the occasionally supportive, mostly disparaging, voices of the Watchers on the Watch.

"I told you this guy could hear us."
"I told you he was extraordinary."
"Pigs might fly."

They no more understood a cluster soul, or cluster intelligence, than they understood their own confined fates, or their adopted, inherited Gods and belief systems.

Old Alex listened to the garbage of persistence, for they were on government or military contracts and had nothing to do but watch and wait, for abandonment or indiscretion or proof he was not what he said he was, while his own mind searched through the tedious fog for a friend, a sympathiser, someone of like mind, someone who understood. On the rare occasion when he found them, they were invariably hidden, and did not want their comrades to know. 

He kept his secrets of a different style of consciousness; as the Watchers on the Watch spilled their secrets; told him stories of the bureaucratic fiascoes and blind incompetence of government, and most of all, like workers everywhere, of the peculiarity, bastardry and arrogant blindness of their grotesquely overpaid bosses.

It had worked, those strange curses. "You will spend the rest of your life dedicated to exposing what you have learnt."

That is, the dark shapes and intent of government functioning, the ways the machinery set out to destroy their targets, the problem being, those targets were simply citizens who refused to comply with the government narrative of the day, and who not only had every ,right to express their views and to think in an independent manner, but whose very suppression was poisoning the society as a whole. The culture was being destroyed by the very people who thought they were transforming it into something better. They thought, or hoped, a natural idealistic impulse, that they were leaving the world a better place, that they were doing good. 

Instead they had come out looking like grubs.

He had stated the theory frequently in his work. That the suppression of debate, the derision of those who did not accept the tertiary acquired theories of tolerance and diversity, who dared to disagree with the government narrative, was leading to a lurch to the right; and straight into the arms of extremist views.

It was a bureaucratic tendency, to quash that which did not fit their narrative, their belief system. But as they worked for their enlightenment, executed the theories they had acquired at the knees of their professors, they destroyed the very culture they wished to save; as they worked for the betterment of mankind, they stirred its darkest forces. The thuggery of group think became the norm. 

And in a more mundane sense, as they probed him for a response, there in those long nights, he built his defences. 

And so sat last, they finally left. And as his mind wandered across the empty desert; he could finally relax. 

They probed him and he resisted. They watched him and he curled into a ball. Hazing only works if the target is vulnerable. He had been very vulnerable. He had clung to old beliefs that humans were essentially good. He had never truly understood, despite all those multiple lives, the base nature of the species in which he had been landed. Crude, barbaric, self-interested, they had no adherence to the truth, that curse, or trait, which had made his own life so difficult.

"Why didn't you allow me the chance for happiness?" he asked of a relationship possibility he himself had killed.

"Because we didn't want you to be happy. You would never have written that book."

All he knew was relief, that the final mustering was taking shape, packing their bags, moving on, afraid of the internal reviews of other bureaucrats with too much money, time and power; bureaucrats who would seize the opportunity to expand their own power and hopefully, in the end, to fix that which was wrong, to ensure that no other journalist would endure the prolonged harassment and intimidation which had been his terrible fate. 

Winter was over, and the heat of the Outback soaked through his bones.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Russel Kiefel pic by Brendan Read

 













Former Neighbours star Russell Kiefel died over the weekend after being taken ill during a theatre performance.
The actor played Russell - the abusive father of the Brennan brothers - for a brief stint in the soap last year. He passed away last night after becoming unwell while performing in the play And I'm the Queen of Sheba at Brown's Mart Theatre in Australia.
The theatre has cancelled the rest of the season out of respect for Kiefel, with executive director Sean Pardy calling it a tragic and emotional time for the actor's family and everyone involved in the production.
Kiefel's co-stars - both old and new - have all rallied round to pay tribute to him, with Neighbours actress Colette Mann leading the way with an emotional Instagram post.

Colette Mann, who plays Sheila Canning, on the soap said: “I am very very sad to say that the wonderful actor, Russell Kiefel who played Russell Brennan in 2015 on @neighbours passed away yesterday.

INSTAGRAM

Kiefel's former Neighbours co-star Colette Mann paid tribute to the actor on Instagram

The late Russell Kiefel in rehearsal for Belvoir's The Blind Giant is Dancing (2016). Photo by Brett Boardman.

Russell Kiefel, whose career included roles in such landmark Australian films as Breaker Morant and Radiance, as well as work with many of Australia’s most significant theatre companies, has died.

He passed away on Sunday after falling ill backstage during a performance at Darwin’s Brown’s Mart Theatre on Friday night.

Born in 1951, Kiefel graduated from NIDA in 1974. His screen debut was Gillian Armstrong’s 52 minute film, The Singer and the Dancer, made in 1977 with Ruth Cracknell and Elisabeth Crosby in the key roles. He went on to appear in numerous other films including Neil Armfield’s Twelfth Night, telemovie The Leaving of Liverpool, and Children of the Revolution.

He joined Home and Away in 1993, and stayed in television through Heartbreak High, A Difficult Woman, Wildside, Water Rats, Blue Heelers, Stingers and Something in the Air. More recently he appeared in television productions Tricky Business, Neighbours, Childhood’s End and Secret City.

Kiefel also performed regularly on stage for many years, working with the likes of Belvoir, Sydney Theatre Company, Bell Shakespeare, Griffin Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre Company, and State Theatre Company of South Australia.

Colleagues remembered him as a versatile and truthful actor, and a warm and generous friend.  

Belvoir’s Artistic Director, Eamon Flack, said, ‘Russell’s theatre home was Belvoir. He is one of our legends, and his rough beauty as an actor and a person has inscribed itself in the ethos of the company.’

Kiefel performed in numerous Belvoir productions over three decades, including Ray’s Tempest, Stuff Happens, The Alchemist, The Tempest, Hamlet, The Power of Yes, The Spook, and Run Rabbit Run.

‘Russell’s last performance for us was in The Blind Giant is Dancing earlier this year, a play he performed in three times over three decades. The original production of that play at Lighthouse in 1983 pulled together the artists and ethos that later formed the foundations of Company B. Russell was part of that production, and of the legendary 1996 revival,’ said Flack.

‘He was one of the true stalwarts of our company and our profession. He is a great loss.’

FEATURED BOOK:

WISER ANGELS

He slept deeply, away from the idiots who were always trying to contact him; as if he was some experiment, a live rat to be tortured, a curiosity to be examined. He had been able to hear all too much; and spent as much time pretending not to hear them as he did listening to the poisonous fronds of thought emerging from surrounding houses. For he did not know who he could trust.

And now he was away from suburbia, as the denizens of Lightning Ridge called Australia's cities with a shudder of dislike. 

Those who could cope with suburbia were a different species altogether. 

Much of what he had heard through that long, interminable, bitterly cold winter had been harmless. Lasagna for dinner. Medical concerns. Television programs and the endless drivel of government propaganda from the radio. 

Sometimes he would hear one of the operatives lying to new recruits amongst the Watchers on the Watch, expressing their distaste for him; and inflamed dislike which would never have been there in the first place if they had not mounted their prolonged surveillance campaigns, and attempted, time and time and time again, to encourage him to have a heart attack or to take his own life; to do their job for them, to relieve the world of his disturbing presence.

Old Alex was determined not to let them destroy him. 

The reasons for their being, for he did not regard himself as a singular, or ordinary person, the reasons why he, or they, with their image infested consciousnesses and trails of memory and wisdom and sadness from other lives, were beyond the ken of any of them, including himself. He could no more explain why he had been cast into this unhappy place, forced to listen to the tendrils of malicious thought which would whisper and curl through the long nights, then he could explain the meaning of life.

The frontiers of science were realigning the evolution of the species, and what seemed like magic, or like the voices of the Gods, was in fact an evolution of themselves, or people like themselves, cast forward, cast back. He, like hundreds of others, had volunteered for the sacrifice in an instant, as if it meant nothing; as if it would be an easy assignment, and he had never thought, in that defining instant which would confine him to this planet for so many years, through so many lives, of what it would be like to be so profoundly trapped for such a very long time.

The mistakes that had been made would not be made again.

As he lay away and listened to the occasionally supportive, mostly disparaging, voices of the Watchers on the Watch.

"I told you this guy could hear us."
"I told you he was extraordinary."
"Pigs might fly."

They no more understood a cluster soul, or cluster intelligence, than they understood their own confined fates, or their adopted, inherited Gods and belief systems.

Old Alex listened to the garbage of persistence, for they were on government or military contracts and had nothing to do but watch and wait, for abandonment or indiscretion or proof he was not what he said he was, while his own mind searched through the tedious fog for a friend, a sympathiser, someone of like mind, someone who understood. On the rare occasion when he found them, they were invariably hidden, and did not want their comrades to know. 

He kept his secrets of a different style of consciousness; as the Watchers on the Watch spilled their secrets; told him stories of the bureaucratic fiascoes and blind incompetence of government, and most of all, like workers everywhere, of the peculiarity, bastardry and arrogant blindness of their grotesquely overpaid bosses.

It had worked, those strange curses. "You will spend the rest of your life dedicated to exposing what you have learnt."

That is, the dark shapes and intent of government functioning, the ways the machinery set out to destroy their targets, the problem being, those targets were simply citizens who refused to comply with the government narrative of the day, and who not only had every ,right to express their views and to think in an independent manner, but whose very suppression was poisoning the society as a whole. The culture was being destroyed by the very people who thought they were transforming it into something better. They thought, or hoped, a natural idealistic impulse, that they were leaving the world a better place, that they were doing good. 

Instead they had come out looking like grubs.

He had stated the theory frequently in his work. That the suppression of debate, the derision of those who did not accept the tertiary acquired theories of tolerance and diversity, who dared to disagree with the government narrative, was leading to a lurch to the right; and straight into the arms of extremist views.

It was a bureaucratic tendency, to quash that which did not fit their narrative, their belief system. But as they worked for their enlightenment, executed the theories they had acquired at the knees of their professors, they destroyed the very culture they wished to save; as they worked for the betterment of mankind, they stirred its darkest forces. The thuggery of group think became the norm. 

And in a more mundane sense, as they probed him for a response, there in those long nights, he built his defences. 

And so sat last, they finally left. And as his mind wandered across the empty desert; he could finally relax. 

They probed him and he resisted. They watched him and he curled into a ball. Hazing only works if the target is vulnerable. He had been very vulnerable. He had clung to old beliefs that humans were essentially good. He had never truly understood, despite all those multiple lives, the base nature of the species in which he had been landed. Crude, barbaric, self-interested, they had no adherence to the truth, that curse, or trait, which had made his own life so difficult.

"Why didn't you allow me the chance for happiness?" he asked of a relationship possibility he himself had killed.

"Because we didn't want you to be happy. You would never have written that book."

All he knew was relief, that the final mustering was taking shape, packing their bags, moving on, afraid of the internal reviews of other bureaucrats with too much money, time and power; bureaucrats who would seize the opportunity to expand their own power and hopefully, in the end, to fix that which was wrong, to ensure that no other journalist would endure the prolonged harassment and intimidation which had been his terrible fate. 

Winter was over, and the heat of the Outback soaked through his bones.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Russel Kiefel pic by Brendan Read

 













Former Neighbours star Russell Kiefel died over the weekend after being taken ill during a theatre performance.
The actor played Russell - the abusive father of the Brennan brothers - for a brief stint in the soap last year. He passed away last night after becoming unwell while performing in the play And I'm the Queen of Sheba at Brown's Mart Theatre in Australia.
The theatre has cancelled the rest of the season out of respect for Kiefel, with executive director Sean Pardy calling it a tragic and emotional time for the actor's family and everyone involved in the production.
Kiefel's co-stars - both old and new - have all rallied round to pay tribute to him, with Neighbours actress Colette Mann leading the way with an emotional Instagram post.

Colette Mann, who plays Sheila Canning, on the soap said: “I am very very sad to say that the wonderful actor, Russell Kiefel who played Russell Brennan in 2015 on @neighbours passed away yesterday.

INSTAGRAM

Kiefel's former Neighbours co-star Colette Mann paid tribute to the actor on Instagram

The late Russell Kiefel in rehearsal for Belvoir's The Blind Giant is Dancing (2016). Photo by Brett Boardman.

Russell Kiefel, whose career included roles in such landmark Australian films as Breaker Morant and Radiance, as well as work with many of Australia’s most significant theatre companies, has died.

He passed away on Sunday after falling ill backstage during a performance at Darwin’s Brown’s Mart Theatre on Friday night.

Born in 1951, Kiefel graduated from NIDA in 1974. His screen debut was Gillian Armstrong’s 52 minute film, The Singer and the Dancer, made in 1977 with Ruth Cracknell and Elisabeth Crosby in the key roles. He went on to appear in numerous other films including Neil Armfield’s Twelfth Night, telemovie The Leaving of Liverpool, and Children of the Revolution.

He joined Home and Away in 1993, and stayed in television through Heartbreak High, A Difficult Woman, Wildside, Water Rats, Blue Heelers, Stingers and Something in the Air. More recently he appeared in television productions Tricky Business, Neighbours, Childhood’s End and Secret City.

Kiefel also performed regularly on stage for many years, working with the likes of Belvoir, Sydney Theatre Company, Bell Shakespeare, Griffin Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre Company, and State Theatre Company of South Australia.

Colleagues remembered him as a versatile and truthful actor, and a warm and generous friend.  

Belvoir’s Artistic Director, Eamon Flack, said, ‘Russell’s theatre home was Belvoir. He is one of our legends, and his rough beauty as an actor and a person has inscribed itself in the ethos of the company.’

Kiefel performed in numerous Belvoir productions over three decades, including Ray’s Tempest, Stuff Happens, The Alchemist, The Tempest, Hamlet, The Power of Yes, The Spook, and Run Rabbit Run.

‘Russell’s last performance for us was in The Blind Giant is Dancing earlier this year, a play he performed in three times over three decades. The original production of that play at Lighthouse in 1983 pulled together the artists and ethos that later formed the foundations of Company B. Russell was part of that production, and of the legendary 1996 revival,’ said Flack.

‘He was one of the true stalwarts of our company and our profession. He is a great loss.’

FEATURED BOOK:

A SURPRISE AWAITS

Peter Rae The Suipermoon Clovelly Cemetery 

He had been harassed for so long, day in day out, month in month out, that in the end his head began to build narrative structures focused around extreme, sustained and taxpayer funded abuse. The surveillance was meant to produce its own madness, erratic and defiant behaviour, the chilling effect, and was left in the hands of uncompromising bullies. He had begun to act like any animal under surveillance, cringing, frightened, desperate to escape. 

Nobody, not one person, had the decency to talk to him directly. And so the narrative structures streamed half formed through his head, and he longed for escape. Forty days and forty nights. Seers throughout time had sought their time in the desert, where the voices of the spirits were clearer and sharper, where the spewing, crawling mass of thoughts that filled the villages could be escaped, where common self-interest was dispensed with, where they could find in the feeding deserts some respite.

It wasn't meant to be thus. He was instead meant to kill himself; that's what "they" would most have liked, the authorities so desperate to shuffle him off the mortal coil.

For his own case, as he had told them it would, lit up the chains of malfeasance and abuse otherwise hidden, and it became evident for any genuine inquiry where the devil lay. 

He was tired of it, tired of them, often angry, thrashing as he attempted to escape, the parsimonious rectitude, their extreme dishonesty, their frequent abuse of the power granted to them. Surveillance was a blunt instrument. It was meant to destroy. "How often did they encourage him to commit suicide?"asked one of the more recently recruited Watchers on the Watch.

"One hundred and sixty two times that we've counted," came the response. 

"More than that," Old Alex thought. 

And so his head swirled through the dry reaches, the tide had reached its full height, the seven years were up; and as he thought back across the social circumstances, the hotel rooms, the apartments, the various fleeting homes he had tried to establish, and the ceaseless government sponsored ridicule and abuse which had followed him everywhere; he thought, it was meant to be. He was meant to write a book called Dark Dark Policing, for no one should be exposed to the extra-judicial bastardry which had been so viciously used against him. 

These people, brutal, bullies by instinct, should not have the power to pursue journalists in the way they had pursued him. They should not, on contract, be allowed to intimidate, threaten and bully a citizen of the country. He was a far greater patriot than any of them; they acted out of self-interest, to climb their bureaucracies, collect their pay checks, gain the approval of the packs in which they hunted; he acted because he wanted to make the country a better place, people freer to express their views, a place where those who were different would not be hunted and bullied as he had been.

He longed, ever more feverishly, for a world where it was impossible to lie.

For in that transformational instant those who had so deliberately made his life a misery would be forced to recant. Or disappear. He didn't much care. He had no sympathy left, not for them. It was not by accident the ancient Gods had been so violent in their protection of the favoured ones. And so in the desert he could hear the stars feeding and the insect load scurrying under the trees, and he could feel, at last, the wheels changing direction. The Seven Years were up.

THE BIGGER STORY:

VALE DES BALL:

Des Ball at the entrance to the controversial Pine Gap facility 1984

Des Ball was a lovely man; and always helpful to journalists such as myself.

Desmond John Ball, born May 20 1947; died October 12, 2016.
Des Ball arrived at the Australian National University in February 1965, as a 16-year-old fresh from Timboon in country Victoria. He was a scholarship boy who had earlier topped his home state in three matriculation subjects. Before long, Des was making his mark on ANU, academically and socially.
An early example was his arrest for "offensive behaviour" at an anti-Vietnam War rally. Des, while still a member of the ANU Company of the Sydney University Regiment, became implacably opposed to military conscription. He considered it antithetical to the values of freedom for which Australians were supposedly fighting in south-east Asia. Journalists loved the contrast: they never failed to call Des a "prize-winning economics student" when they reported his "offensive behaviour" charge. He eventually defeated the prosecution case, setting a precedent still often taught in Australian law schools.
In his student years, and beyond, Des remained a "person of security interest" to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. In one five-page briefing, the then director-general of ASIO, writing to the secretary of the Department of Defence, clusters Des with a group of academics "the majority of whom have radical tendencies". When Des began publishing material about the joint intelligence facility at Pine Gap alongside Robert Cooksey, an ANU international relations lecturer and one of Des's mentors, ASIO paid close attention.
Des, for his part, long disputed many of the inaccuracies in the security intelligence files, some of which he claimed were the result of confused identification with other long-haired young men. When asked in recent years about the ASIO surveillance, Des said he was surprised by "the extent of the resources that they had devoted to me. I think that ASIO had lost the plot by then."
After finishing his undergraduate degree with a whirlwind of academic prizes, Des made quick progress towards the completion of his ANU PhD, awarded in 1972.
It was that work, along with his studies of American intelligence facilities in Australia, and particularly A Suitable Piece of Real Estate published in 1980, which first made Des famous. Some of his great collaborations also began back then, including with Jol Langtry, with whom Des shared his many research trips to northern Australia. They measured rivers, mountains and beaches to determine how the vast Australian continent could be defended against invasion.

Professor Desmond Ball, academic, military strategist and author of more than 40 books on military intelligence, died today at 3:35pm Australian time.

Des work was impressive. He spent time inside US top secret nuclear and command centres, advising the CIA, the White House and the Pentagon, where he persuaded them that a limited nuclear war was impossible.

Former US President Jimmy Carter, in a recent book credited Des as the man who saved the world and said, “Desmond Ball’s counsel and cautionary advice based on deep research made a great difference to our collective goal of avoiding nuclear war”.

In recent years Des, despite battling cancer, never lost his love or focus for the ethnic people of Burma. For the last 20 years Des spent much of his time amongst Burma’s ethnic people and armed groups. Des Ball was a harsh critic of the generals who used the Burma’s military to trample on the peoples’ human rights. He used his acclaimed position as an accepted and acknowledged ‘expert’ to speak out against the oppression of Burma’s military dictators.

Major General Isaac Po of the Karen National Liberation Army acknowledged the help that Des had given the Karen and other ethnic groups over the years when he said in an interview with Karen News that “Des Ball has been a good friend to the Karen for many years. Des shared his knowledge and skills with us and we appreciate what he did for us.”

FEATURED BOOK:

A SURPRISE AWAITS

Peter Rae The Suipermoon Clovelly Cemetery 

He had been harassed for so long, day in day out, month in month out, that in the end his head began to build narrative structures focused around extreme, sustained and taxpayer funded abuse. The surveillance was meant to produce its own madness, erratic and defiant behaviour, the chilling effect, and was left in the hands of uncompromising bullies. He had begun to act like any animal under surveillance, cringing, frightened, desperate to escape. 

Nobody, not one person, had the decency to talk to him directly. And so the narrative structures streamed half formed through his head, and he longed for escape. Forty days and forty nights. Seers throughout time had sought their time in the desert, where the voices of the spirits were clearer and sharper, where the spewing, crawling mass of thoughts that filled the villages could be escaped, where common self-interest was dispensed with, where they could find in the feeding deserts some respite.

It wasn't meant to be thus. He was instead meant to kill himself; that's what "they" would most have liked, the authorities so desperate to shuffle him off the mortal coil.

For his own case, as he had told them it would, lit up the chains of malfeasance and abuse otherwise hidden, and it became evident for any genuine inquiry where the devil lay. 

He was tired of it, tired of them, often angry, thrashing as he attempted to escape, the parsimonious rectitude, their extreme dishonesty, their frequent abuse of the power granted to them. Surveillance was a blunt instrument. It was meant to destroy. "How often did they encourage him to commit suicide?"asked one of the more recently recruited Watchers on the Watch.

"One hundred and sixty two times that we've counted," came the response. 

"More than that," Old Alex thought. 

And so his head swirled through the dry reaches, the tide had reached its full height, the seven years were up; and as he thought back across the social circumstances, the hotel rooms, the apartments, the various fleeting homes he had tried to establish, and the ceaseless government sponsored ridicule and abuse which had followed him everywhere; he thought, it was meant to be. He was meant to write a book called Dark Dark Policing, for no one should be exposed to the extra-judicial bastardry which had been so viciously used against him. 

These people, brutal, bullies by instinct, should not have the power to pursue journalists in the way they had pursued him. They should not, on contract, be allowed to intimidate, threaten and bully a citizen of the country. He was a far greater patriot than any of them; they acted out of self-interest, to climb their bureaucracies, collect their pay checks, gain the approval of the packs in which they hunted; he acted because he wanted to make the country a better place, people freer to express their views, a place where those who were different would not be hunted and bullied as he had been.

He longed, ever more feverishly, for a world where it was impossible to lie.

For in that transformational instant those who had so deliberately made his life a misery would be forced to recant. Or disappear. He didn't much care. He had no sympathy left, not for them. It was not by accident the ancient Gods had been so violent in their protection of the favoured ones. And so in the desert he could hear the stars feeding and the insect load scurrying under the trees, and he could feel, at last, the wheels changing direction. The Seven Years were up.

THE BIGGER STORY:

VALE DES BALL:

Des Ball at the entrance to the controversial Pine Gap facility 1984

Des Ball was a lovely man; and always helpful to journalists such as myself.

Desmond John Ball, born May 20 1947; died October 12, 2016.
Des Ball arrived at the Australian National University in February 1965, as a 16-year-old fresh from Timboon in country Victoria. He was a scholarship boy who had earlier topped his home state in three matriculation subjects. Before long, Des was making his mark on ANU, academically and socially.
An early example was his arrest for "offensive behaviour" at an anti-Vietnam War rally. Des, while still a member of the ANU Company of the Sydney University Regiment, became implacably opposed to military conscription. He considered it antithetical to the values of freedom for which Australians were supposedly fighting in south-east Asia. Journalists loved the contrast: they never failed to call Des a "prize-winning economics student" when they reported his "offensive behaviour" charge. He eventually defeated the prosecution case, setting a precedent still often taught in Australian law schools.
In his student years, and beyond, Des remained a "person of security interest" to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. In one five-page briefing, the then director-general of ASIO, writing to the secretary of the Department of Defence, clusters Des with a group of academics "the majority of whom have radical tendencies". When Des began publishing material about the joint intelligence facility at Pine Gap alongside Robert Cooksey, an ANU international relations lecturer and one of Des's mentors, ASIO paid close attention.
Des, for his part, long disputed many of the inaccuracies in the security intelligence files, some of which he claimed were the result of confused identification with other long-haired young men. When asked in recent years about the ASIO surveillance, Des said he was surprised by "the extent of the resources that they had devoted to me. I think that ASIO had lost the plot by then."
After finishing his undergraduate degree with a whirlwind of academic prizes, Des made quick progress towards the completion of his ANU PhD, awarded in 1972.
It was that work, along with his studies of American intelligence facilities in Australia, and particularly A Suitable Piece of Real Estate published in 1980, which first made Des famous. Some of his great collaborations also began back then, including with Jol Langtry, with whom Des shared his many research trips to northern Australia. They measured rivers, mountains and beaches to determine how the vast Australian continent could be defended against invasion.

Professor Desmond Ball, academic, military strategist and author of more than 40 books on military intelligence, died today at 3:35pm Australian time.

Des work was impressive. He spent time inside US top secret nuclear and command centres, advising the CIA, the White House and the Pentagon, where he persuaded them that a limited nuclear war was impossible.

Former US President Jimmy Carter, in a recent book credited Des as the man who saved the world and said, “Desmond Ball’s counsel and cautionary advice based on deep research made a great difference to our collective goal of avoiding nuclear war”.

In recent years Des, despite battling cancer, never lost his love or focus for the ethnic people of Burma. For the last 20 years Des spent much of his time amongst Burma’s ethnic people and armed groups. Des Ball was a harsh critic of the generals who used the Burma’s military to trample on the peoples’ human rights. He used his acclaimed position as an accepted and acknowledged ‘expert’ to speak out against the oppression of Burma’s military dictators.

Major General Isaac Po of the Karen National Liberation Army acknowledged the help that Des had given the Karen and other ethnic groups over the years when he said in an interview with Karen News that “Des Ball has been a good friend to the Karen for many years. Des shared his knowledge and skills with us and we appreciate what he did for us.”

FEATURED BOOK:

MOON STRUCK

Louis Herbier

There were steel buildings plunging upwards out of the sea. There were protective spirits clustering around him. In the great Dreaming of the Outback, there was the largest moon since 1948, that is, in his lifetime.

It was as if all the tension and outrage which had propelled him in the  preceding months came swelling over him like frothy surf; and he physically collapsed.

The long term stress had taken its physical toll, as had the crushing levels of surveillance and harassment.

He could feel sometimes, as the night swept across the empty opal mines, as if the healing might be about to begin.

In dreams great walls appeared out of desert sands.

In the wider narrative, in a world which needed exposing, the government gifted hundreds of millions of dollars to clandestine agencies able to conduct prolonged campaigns against any target they wished.

It was extra-judicial, had no checks and balances, and the weaponry thus amassed, secrecy, surveillance technology, hundreds of overpaid staff, legislation which made them almost impossible to prosecute, could easily be misused by any senior bureaucrat or politician with a vendetta.

People were always prepared to believe the worst, particularly those who failed to conform to the latest group think; the prevailing mob mentalities of the 21st Century.

Then the natural bureaucratic tendency to expend vast amounts of time and effort covering up mistakes took hold.

That, he was convinced, was what had happened to him.

In the background the sonorous tones of Radio National announcers continued to "unpack meaning", "explore diversity" and "empathise with difference".

Meanwhile the future of intelligence was breaking through into the present; his own self-destructive tendencies, his ability to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory, to act the loser when actually the winner, all of it was being rewritten; long overdue. Last Will and Testament. The Future was being Foretold. And the future was a brilliant one.


THE BIGGER STORY:






While Hongkongers should be used to looking up to the night sky and not seeing a blanket of stars, our clear weather does mean that we're in for a very rare treat this very evening. You might not notice it immediately, but the sky tonight will be lit by a 'supermoon' – in other words, the moon will be 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than it has been at any time since 1948. You won't want to miss it, either, because the next time the moon will be this big will be in 2034.

Intense air strikes have hit several rebel-held areas in Aleppo for the first time in more than two weeks, signalling the start of a major government offensive in Syria's northern city.

The ferocious bombardment of eastern Aleppo on Tuesday came as Russian armed forces also announced the launch of a large-scale operation against opposition targets in Syria.

FEATURED BOOK:

MOON STRUCK

Louis Herbier

There were steel buildings plunging upwards out of the sea. There were protective spirits clustering around him. In the great Dreaming of the Outback, there was the largest moon since 1948, that is, in his lifetime.

It was as if all the tension and outrage which had propelled him in the  preceding months came swelling over him like frothy surf; and he physically collapsed.

The long term stress had taken its physical toll, as had the crushing levels of surveillance and harassment.

He could feel sometimes, as the night swept across the empty opal mines, as if the healing might be about to begin.

In dreams great walls appeared out of desert sands.

In the wider narrative, in a world which needed exposing, the government gifted hundreds of millions of dollars to clandestine agencies able to conduct prolonged campaigns against any target they wished.

It was extra-judicial, had no checks and balances, and the weaponry thus amassed, secrecy, surveillance technology, hundreds of overpaid staff, legislation which made them almost impossible to prosecute, could easily be misused by any senior bureaucrat or politician with a vendetta.

People were always prepared to believe the worst, particularly those who failed to conform to the latest group think; the prevailing mob mentalities of the 21st Century.

Then the natural bureaucratic tendency to expend vast amounts of time and effort covering up mistakes took hold.

That, he was convinced, was what had happened to him.

In the background the sonorous tones of Radio National announcers continued to "unpack meaning", "explore diversity" and "empathise with difference".

Meanwhile the future of intelligence was breaking through into the present; his own self-destructive tendencies, his ability to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory, to act the loser when actually the winner, all of it was being rewritten; long overdue. Last Will and Testament. The Future was being Foretold. And the future was a brilliant one.


THE BIGGER STORY:






While Hongkongers should be used to looking up to the night sky and not seeing a blanket of stars, our clear weather does mean that we're in for a very rare treat this very evening. You might not notice it immediately, but the sky tonight will be lit by a 'supermoon' – in other words, the moon will be 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than it has been at any time since 1948. You won't want to miss it, either, because the next time the moon will be this big will be in 2034.

Intense air strikes have hit several rebel-held areas in Aleppo for the first time in more than two weeks, signalling the start of a major government offensive in Syria's northern city.

The ferocious bombardment of eastern Aleppo on Tuesday came as Russian armed forces also announced the launch of a large-scale operation against opposition targets in Syria.

FEATURED BOOK:

T.I. TARGETED

Robert Monaghan

The leaves shimmered ever more frantically, the mica light cutting shards through his peculiar headache. Treachery was everywhere. Dishonesty everywhere.
"I want to write a book called Dark Dark Policing," Old Alex said to Glen. "That's something you would know about."
"Don't know what you're talking," came the response.
These people hid within their own artifices.
"Bullshit," he responded.
Glen was easily within the top percentiles for human intelligence. But he lied to his bosses, he lied to his targets, he lied to the flash crowds he manipulated, and he held truthsayers in contempt.
In the end it wasn't so damn smart.
The surveillance, harassment which had gone on month in month out, year in year out, produced its own madness.
"Go harass somebody whose actually guilty of something," he told the microphone in the car, in between unhelpfully abusing them for incompetence and dishonesty.
He was angry, at the prolonged abuse he had endured, but it was an anger which led nowhere, its own rabbit hole.
Sometimes he even sought reconciliation.
"Apologies all round. Let's reset to zero. Let's start again."
But there were so many different agencies, so many different agendas, the goal posts shifted so constantly, that it no longer seemed possible.
In the Outback he listened to the Flat Earth News that was Radio National, with the Prime Minister making great play of a deal with America to take the refugees on Manus Island.
It was combined with a media blitz, including pictures of the Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull, the ultimate face of Australia's moneyed class, parading for the media on various naval battle ships.
It was as an offensive abuse of power and manipulation of the media as it got; a dog whistle to the anti-immigrant lobby over a few hundred refugees; the deal being so widely broadcast and so unquestionably championed by the media highly unlikely to produce any tangible results.
Meanwhile the powers that be were selling off the country's basic infrastructure, farmland, ports and prize real estate to foreign interests willy nilly, while running legal immigration to anyone who could afford to pay at historically high and unsustainable levels; thereby creating massive social dislocation and enormous resentment over rising housing costs and high unemployment.
They were selling the country to the highest bidder, and using the misfortune of a few refugees to hide their real actions. 
It was an evil sleight of hand.
And as Turnbull strutted the HMAS Canberra, he thought he'd got away with it.

THE BIGGER STORY:


 



Islamic State militants have forced 1,500 Iraqi families to march to Mosul from the village of Hammam al-Alil, where advancing soldiers have found a mass grave feared to contain dozens of bodies.
As Isis loses control of areas, summary executions and forced marches of civilians have become a grim feature of the military campaign to oust the militants from their last major stronghold in Iraq, now stretching into its fourth week.
Nearly 300 former members of the security forces and 30 sheikhs, or local leaders, had reportedly disappeared from other villages around Mosul, a senior United Nations official said.
Col Khalid Jaburi, a representative of the Iraqi council of ministers for rescuing Iraqis fleeing the fighting, said Isis had taken former police officers, former soldiers and civilians as they withdrew from Hammam al-Alil.

MALCOLM Turnbull ordered the largest ever maritime and air surveillance patrols off the Australian coast after concerns a deal to resettle refugees in the United States could be used as a marketing tool to ignite the people smuggling trade.

US President Barack Obama agreed to take hundreds of refugees stranded in Nauru and Manus Island during a meeting with Mr Turnbull in September but the announcement was delayed to allow Australia to increase its border patrols.

FEATURED BOOK:


 .
100% MUST WATCH:

LEONARD COHEN TRIBUTE I'M YOUR MAN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFnZjrqV1Ds

T.I. TARGETED

Robert Monaghan

The leaves shimmered ever more frantically, the mica light cutting shards through his peculiar headache. Treachery was everywhere. Dishonesty everywhere.
"I want to write a book called Dark Dark Policing," Old Alex said to Glen. "That's something you would know about."
"Don't know what you're talking," came the response.
These people hid within their own artifices.
"Bullshit," he responded.
Glen was easily within the top percentiles for human intelligence. But he lied to his bosses, he lied to his targets, he lied to the flash crowds he manipulated, and he held truthsayers in contempt.
In the end it wasn't so damn smart.
The surveillance, harassment which had gone on month in month out, year in year out, produced its own madness.
"Go harass somebody whose actually guilty of something," he told the microphone in the car, in between unhelpfully abusing them for incompetence and dishonesty.
He was angry, at the prolonged abuse he had endured, but it was an anger which led nowhere, its own rabbit hole.
Sometimes he even sought reconciliation.
"Apologies all round. Let's reset to zero. Let's start again."
But there were so many different agencies, so many different agendas, the goal posts shifted so constantly, that it no longer seemed possible.
In the Outback he listened to the Flat Earth News that was Radio National, with the Prime Minister making great play of a deal with America to take the refugees on Manus Island.
It was combined with a media blitz, including pictures of the Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull, the ultimate face of Australia's moneyed class, parading for the media on various naval battle ships.
It was as an offensive abuse of power and manipulation of the media as it got; a dog whistle to the anti-immigrant lobby over a few hundred refugees; the deal being so widely broadcast and so unquestionably championed by the media highly unlikely to produce any tangible results.
Meanwhile the powers that be were selling off the country's basic infrastructure, farmland, ports and prize real estate to foreign interests willy nilly, while running legal immigration to anyone who could afford to pay at historically high and unsustainable levels; thereby creating massive social dislocation and enormous resentment over rising housing costs and high unemployment.
They were selling the country to the highest bidder, and using the misfortune of a few refugees to hide their real actions. 
It was an evil sleight of hand.
And as Turnbull strutted the HMAS Canberra, he thought he'd got away with it.

THE BIGGER STORY:


 



Islamic State militants have forced 1,500 Iraqi families to march to Mosul from the village of Hammam al-Alil, where advancing soldiers have found a mass grave feared to contain dozens of bodies.
As Isis loses control of areas, summary executions and forced marches of civilians have become a grim feature of the military campaign to oust the militants from their last major stronghold in Iraq, now stretching into its fourth week.
Nearly 300 former members of the security forces and 30 sheikhs, or local leaders, had reportedly disappeared from other villages around Mosul, a senior United Nations official said.
Col Khalid Jaburi, a representative of the Iraqi council of ministers for rescuing Iraqis fleeing the fighting, said Isis had taken former police officers, former soldiers and civilians as they withdrew from Hammam al-Alil.

MALCOLM Turnbull ordered the largest ever maritime and air surveillance patrols off the Australian coast after concerns a deal to resettle refugees in the United States could be used as a marketing tool to ignite the people smuggling trade.

US President Barack Obama agreed to take hundreds of refugees stranded in Nauru and Manus Island during a meeting with Mr Turnbull in September but the announcement was delayed to allow Australia to increase its border patrols.

FEATURED BOOK:


 .
100% MUST WATCH:

LEONARD COHEN TRIBUTE I'M YOUR MAN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFnZjrqV1Ds

PROLONGED BASTARDRY

Old Alex flew, or so car travel seemed to the ancient spirits, from the coastal lowlands to the mountains, a long unfolding swoop, and as arranged went to visit Glen at his new house in Katoomba; hoping, perhaps, to unload or debrief after a terrible winter.

They sat in the backyard, as always under surveillance, the favourite tool of government bastardry.

"I am an empath," Glen said, apropos of nothing. "I feel the pain of my friends."

It was obvious Old Alex wanted to talk about the sustained difficulties of that winter, and the torment that had been imposed upon him by government surveillance and the taunting cry of his pursuers.

Glen was an empath alright, and he had sold his soul. The Sellout had just won the Man Booker Prize.

Then Glen began showing him poetry he claimed he had been writing, continuing on the the already discredited story of himself as an aspiring young writer; as if nothing had changed.

In their own comfortable lives, inside their smart cars and Ikea homes, they regarded everyone else with contempt.

The poems were accomplished, intricate work, some of it with clashing styles; and nothing like the earnest poetry of a striving young writer. And nothing like the scribblings he he had previously seen.

"Original," Old Alex commented, as the conversation remained within narrow, ceremonial, dishonest bounds.

He compared some of it to the work of the celebrated American poet E.E. Cummings.

It was original, it just didn't happen to have been written by Glen.

He had no more written the collection of poems than he had written War and Peace.

It was some sort of stupid, bureaucratic test; what he would make of it. Did his literary knowledge and peculiar flashes of clairvoyance go so far as to detect plagiarism.

As before, Glen showed no actual interest in the mechanics of writing, or the great works of the masters. And no camaraderie or understanding of others toiling in the field. And gave himself, or his idiot supervisors, away.

It was just another deeply stupid, contemptuous trick amongst so many.

They had tried absolutely everything but to treat him with respect; and at taxpayer's expense were trying on another heist.

The leaves from the Japanese elms glinted in the cool sunlight, and soon enough he left the house feeling thoroughly cheated; which was exactly what had happened.

And found himself in wild dreams hunted into a cave, with the army of the dark snapping at him, determined to kill.

He was shape shifting rapidly in a corner; and in a frantic piece of magic opened up a deep fiery ravine between him and his pursuers.

They stood on the other side, trying to get to him. But could not cross; their anger and determination spitting barbs of black spite. 

He was changing form so quickly nothing could touch him. But he was frightened nonetheless.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Leonard Cohen, the hugely influential singer and songwriter whose work spanned nearly 50 years, died Monday at the age of 82. Cohen's label, Sony Music Canada, confirmed his death on the singer's Facebook page Thursday evening.
"It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist, Leonard Cohen has passed away," the statement read. "We have lost one of music's most revered and prolific visionaries. A memorial will take place in Los Angeles at a later date. The family requests privacy during their time of grief." A cause of death was not given.
After an epic tour, the singer fell into poor health. But he dug deep and came up with a powerful new album
"My father passed away peacefully at his home in Los Angeles with the knowledge that he had completed what he felt was one of his greatest records," Cohen's son Adam wrote in a statement to Rolling Stone. "He was writing up until his last moments with his unique brand of humor."
Before his death, the songwriter requested that he be laid to rest "in a traditional Jewish rite beside his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents," his rabbi Adam Scheier wrote in a statement.
"Unmatched in his creativity, insight and crippling candor, Leonard Cohen was a true visionary whose voice will be sorely missed," his manager Robert Kory wrote in a statement. "I was blessed to call him a friend, and for me to serve that bold artistic spirit firsthand, was a privilege and great gift. He leaves behind a legacy of work that will bring insight, inspiration and healing for generations to come."

FEATURED BOOK:

PROLONGED BASTARDRY

Old Alex flew, or so car travel seemed to the ancient spirits, from the coastal lowlands to the mountains, a long unfolding swoop, and as arranged went to visit Glen at his new house in Katoomba; hoping, perhaps, to unload or debrief after a terrible winter.

They sat in the backyard, as always under surveillance, the favourite tool of government bastardry.

"I am an empath," Glen said, apropos of nothing. "I feel the pain of my friends."

It was obvious Old Alex wanted to talk about the sustained difficulties of that winter, and the torment that had been imposed upon him by government surveillance and the taunting cry of his pursuers.

Glen was an empath alright, and he had sold his soul. The Sellout had just won the Man Booker Prize.

Then Glen began showing him poetry he claimed he had been writing, continuing on the the already discredited story of himself as an aspiring young writer; as if nothing had changed.

In their own comfortable lives, inside their smart cars and Ikea homes, they regarded everyone else with contempt.

The poems were accomplished, intricate work, some of it with clashing styles; and nothing like the earnest poetry of a striving young writer. And nothing like the scribblings he he had previously seen.

"Original," Old Alex commented, as the conversation remained within narrow, ceremonial, dishonest bounds.

He compared some of it to the work of the celebrated American poet E.E. Cummings.

It was original, it just didn't happen to have been written by Glen.

He had no more written the collection of poems than he had written War and Peace.

It was some sort of stupid, bureaucratic test; what he would make of it. Did his literary knowledge and peculiar flashes of clairvoyance go so far as to detect plagiarism.

As before, Glen showed no actual interest in the mechanics of writing, or the great works of the masters. And no camaraderie or understanding of others toiling in the field. And gave himself, or his idiot supervisors, away.

It was just another deeply stupid, contemptuous trick amongst so many.

They had tried absolutely everything but to treat him with respect; and at taxpayer's expense were trying on another heist.

The leaves from the Japanese elms glinted in the cool sunlight, and soon enough he left the house feeling thoroughly cheated; which was exactly what had happened.

And found himself in wild dreams hunted into a cave, with the army of the dark snapping at him, determined to kill.

He was shape shifting rapidly in a corner; and in a frantic piece of magic opened up a deep fiery ravine between him and his pursuers.

They stood on the other side, trying to get to him. But could not cross; their anger and determination spitting barbs of black spite. 

He was changing form so quickly nothing could touch him. But he was frightened nonetheless.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Leonard Cohen, the hugely influential singer and songwriter whose work spanned nearly 50 years, died Monday at the age of 82. Cohen's label, Sony Music Canada, confirmed his death on the singer's Facebook page Thursday evening.
"It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist, Leonard Cohen has passed away," the statement read. "We have lost one of music's most revered and prolific visionaries. A memorial will take place in Los Angeles at a later date. The family requests privacy during their time of grief." A cause of death was not given.
After an epic tour, the singer fell into poor health. But he dug deep and came up with a powerful new album
"My father passed away peacefully at his home in Los Angeles with the knowledge that he had completed what he felt was one of his greatest records," Cohen's son Adam wrote in a statement to Rolling Stone. "He was writing up until his last moments with his unique brand of humor."
Before his death, the songwriter requested that he be laid to rest "in a traditional Jewish rite beside his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents," his rabbi Adam Scheier wrote in a statement.
"Unmatched in his creativity, insight and crippling candor, Leonard Cohen was a true visionary whose voice will be sorely missed," his manager Robert Kory wrote in a statement. "I was blessed to call him a friend, and for me to serve that bold artistic spirit firsthand, was a privilege and great gift. He leaves behind a legacy of work that will bring insight, inspiration and healing for generations to come."

FEATURED BOOK: