FOOL'S GOLD

They were already breaching backwards and forwards in time. 
The warning signs were over.
We were already there.
Manifest Destiny.
Old Alex had copped all the ridicule.
Beam me up, Scotty.
Which planet  does he think he's from today?
These people wouldn't recognise a literary device if it sat on them.
"Dumb as dog ...."
They had been waiting a long time.
He knew now what they were looking for.
They were not his friends.
"We're crowding him," they had said, out in the arid reaches of Lightning Ridge. 
He promptly went to sleep.
They were f***ing with the fates, and they acted like animals.
They fiddled while Rome burnt. He hibernated, a protective gesture against the winter that surrounded him.
He was so tired of the Watchers on the Watch, tired of their threats, including death threats.
Ceaseless, inane. These pygmies of the soul.
Like cats, Elon Musk said, the AIs will regard humans as like tame animals, like cats.
Except we were already there.
And had been there before.
They already knew that, their classified layers of bull.
The world was changing, and they would all be swept aside.
As the jihadis predicted, as the prophets warned.

Together, we send this message to the extremists of the world who come from all backgrounds, religions and ideologies. We speak out with two aims - first: in the hope that these extremists will re-consider their actions, and second: to make our stance clear in the world.We have felt the hurts of your ways and we want you to understand that what you have done was never in our name, or the name of any religion or God. Furthermore, never in our name or in the name of any religion or God, can you ever be aggressive, unjust or hurt innocent people.You have killed many precious people from all backgrounds and religions and you have hurt many more. There is no political, religious, racial, ethnic or ideological position that can justify victimising the innocent and the defenseless. Tragically, the very communities you claim to represent have also been further victimised because of backlashes by those that have been hurt and angered as a result of your aggressive and criminal actions. Of course, all people deserve the rights to self-defence, justice, security and peace, including you. But self-defence does not justify aggression and the random killing of unarmed and innocent people whom you cannot identify and are not fighting you. No one should have to live in fear. Message to all the extremists of the world, From Australian Muslims. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, including the Victorian Board of Imams and the Islamic Council of Victoria.

It was a complex exercise, to conceal and to warn, to hide and transmit. 
One day they would be free, to go home, the transmogrification of souls.
He heard them muttering, some days, the Episcopalians.
Nobody ever seemed to take his point, that surveillance was harassment. That they had no right being there.
In the past he had done the strangest things, just to annoy them.
Or to explore the vagaries of the species.
But now, time was running out.
It was true he hated them, but that was not why he was here.
A fetid breeze stirred through the stench of dead bodies. Rats were everywhere. The vainglory boasted and danced in the pummeled, pulverised streets, although thousands of their comrades had died.
Stupidity knew no borders.
In Australia, rank out of ideas, addicted to "announcables", for they gave him press coverage and made him feel important, the failing Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull threshed through every putrid moment of his increasingly acrid, embarrassing days.
He was carrying the can. 
Had neither the courage nor the capacity to understand where he was or why he was.
Those around him shivered as they prepared for the train wreck of his leadership.
Nothing could prick that vainglorious man, proud beyond measure. "The cocky little bastard," his mendicants thought, as they told him, every morning, every evening, exactly what he wanted to hear, as his chauffeur doffed his cap, figuratively.
The tragedy of the Turnbull Prime Ministership was that all the mistakes he so obviously made had all been made before. That he could have been the one to carry the Australian people back from the brink of totalitarianism. 
A simpler, less preening ego, a less accomplished and therefore more humble man, would have been able to see through the wickedness, artifice and collusion that surrounded him.
But not General Moi Moi.
In the absence of a big idea there were a thousand small ones; and Turnbull beat the terror drum incessantly.
A desperate government, behind in the polls, rushing panic driven towards defeat, grasped at straws. 
It had worked before.
But in 2017 the old wisdom, that a people voted for the incumbent, supported the government in times of crisis and national threat, no longer worked. 
As they were finding out to their great chagrin.
Malcolm Turnbull did not understand the people, and in return the people dismissed him with contempt, if they thought about him at all.
The government had been handmaiden and enabler in the discrediting of the media, and had therefore helped destroy the very means by which it communicated with the populace.
Not only had they switched off the Prime Minister, they had switched off the channels of communication. 
And therefore, in one muffled step after another, they flowed towards their own extinction.
The idea of democracy, long dead in the minds of those who liked to think of themselves as power brokers, was now also dead in the minds of the citizens.
Terror terror terror.
More than 60 pieces of legislation, more than any other Western country.
But wait, there's more.

Now we can all be assured that our law enforcement and security agencies and our military, are the best in the world. Malcolm Turnbull.

The litany, the constant litany of evidence to the contrary. 
Well never mind that.
Treat the people like fools.
But the headlines of the day, the passing headlines, the sense of importance, the strutting gait, the contempt for the peasants, all of it was fleeting, and would strangle those who were so naive as to believe.
Old Alex had watched the Prime Minsters of Australia, vainglorious to a man, or woman, come and go.
Now he was watching another.


THE BIGGER STORY:

PRIME MINISTER:

I am very pleased to be here at Holsworthy to outline new measures to enhance Defence’s support of the national counter terrorism arrangements.

As you’ve seen we’ve been joined by the Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin and the TAG Force East Command, and we’re announcing the outcomes of the Government’s review into how we can enhance our military support to first responders in our state and territory police.

The measures I am announcing today will ensure that the ADF is more readily available to respond to terrorism incidents, providing state and territory police with the extra support to call on when they need it.

We have to stay ahead of the threat of terrorism. We have to constantly review our law enforcement capabilities. We have to constantly act to improve our ability to keep Australians safe.

This is a key focus of my Government. There is no place for ‘set and forget’, or for complacency.

Our enemies are agile and innovative. We have to stay ahead of them. We have to ensure that every resource we have – legislative, military, police, intelligence, security – is always at the highest standard and able to be brought to bear to keep Australians safe.

Now, last week as you know I was in Hamburg meeting with the leaders of the G20, the 20 largest economies. We saw there, at what is normally predominantly an economic forum, a very heavy focus on terrorism. You saw a unanimous communique on enhancing our collective response to deal with counterterrorism, one in which Australia played a leading role in ensuring that we brought it up to the level of dealing with 21st century technologies and ensuring that the internet is not used as a place for terrorists and other criminals to hide from the law.

Following that, I visited Prime Minister May in London. As you know, I met with the first responders at the scene of the terrorist attack at London Bridge and Borough Market where so many innocent lives were lost, including those of two young Australians Kirsty Boden and Sara Zelenak.

I met with the two metropolitan police officers, two young men, unarmed police officers who had done their best with CPR to revive Sara Zelenak after she’d been attacked and murdered by those terrorists. 

\

Now, we initiated the review into Defence’s role in counterterrorism in May last year in response to the changing nature of the terrorist threat as seen in the terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels, Ankara both in February and March and in so many other places. Recent attacks in Indonesia, London, Manchester and Melbourne as well as the continuing battle against ISIL in the Philippines, continue to underscore the pervasive and global nature of this terrorist threat.

Since the review commenced, we have worked closely with the states and territories to ensure our national counterterrorism arrangements can meet the challenges of the evolving tactics and methods of terrorists.

My highest priority and that of my Government is the safety and security of all Australians to maintain our way of life, our values and our freedom.

Now we can all be assured that our law enforcement and security agencies and our military, are the best in the world.

We have just seen firsthand some of the impressive capabilities that our Tactical Assault Group here can contribute in the event of a complex or protracted domestic terrorist attack.

We have a broad continuum of operational responses to terrorist attacks spanning from the initial response by general duties police in the first instance, to the deployment of specialist members of the ADF such as those we’ve met today.

Now let me be very clear; state and territory police are and will remain, the primary responders to any terrorist attack.

The immediate actions of those first responders will have the greatest impact in terms of saving lives and neutralising any threat.

In the current threat environment, it is most likely that a terrorist attack will use simple methodologies – a knife, a gun, a vehicle– and the attack itself would be over in minutes.

Now, each state and territory police force also has specially trained police who have expert capability to respond to terrorist attacks.

Where necessary, the Commonwealth will assist states and territories to respond.

The Australian Federal Police has high-end tactical and technical capabilities that are able to operate with state and territory police operational response units. You’ve seen some of those demonstrated at the centre in Majura in Canberra. In worst-case scenarios, the ADF has a range of specialist capabilities to resolve complex terrorist incidents, especially protracted sieges and hostage situations.

It is the case that our existing arrangements are robust and Defence’s primary role in counterterrorism is offshore; that is, through our operations abroad in the Middle East to disrupt and degrade terrorist networks and in supporting regional capacity building efforts.

Defence’s largest counterterrorism commitment is in Iraq and Syria, where the liberation of Mosul is a milestone in the campaign to defeat Daesh. When Daesh first captured Mosul in June 2014, it signified its emergence as a major threat both to the region and to the world. Mosul’s liberation signifies the beginning of the end for this criminal Islamist terror group. The defeat and collapse of its so-called caliphate, which it used to considerable effect as a recruiting tool across the world. But the fight to defeat its extremist ideology and terrorism is not over.

The security of Australians and our interests cannot involve a ‘set and forget’ attitude. We’ve demonstrated, as I said at the outset, that we continuously monitor changes in the security environment. We review legislative, policy and operational arrangements to ensure we remain ahead of the threats.

This is the first time these arrangements have been reviewed in over a decade and we are very clear-eyed about the evolving terrorist threat.

The Defence Minister Marise Payne and I know it is vitally important that Defence is able to respond and assist in domestic counterterrorism efforts.

So we need to ensure that nationally we have the best laws and abilities to respond to terrorist attacks, whether they are simple, complex, brief or protracted. We have to be flexible and agile in the way we support the states and territories before, during and after an attack.

That’s why the outcome of the review is increased practical counterterrorism engagement between the Commonwealth, states and territories to build on the strong relationships we already have between the military and police.

Now given this is a national issue, consultation with the states is vital. We know there is not necessarily be a one-size fits all in every circumstance, but as much harmonisation as possible is the objective.

So this will initially occur through the Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee, which includes Commonwealth and all state and territory representatives.

It will involve working with states on specialised ADF training to select state and territory law enforcement elements. In other words, to ensure that the skills the men and women we’ve met this morning, the skills they have are able to be shared with the state and territory police tactical response groups. We want to make sure that they are as well-equipped as they possible can be to respond to the threats to which they will invariably be the first responders.

We will be placing Australian Defence Force liaison officers with the counterterrorism groups, both at state and territory level. Again that is to ensure that there is the closest possible collaboration between the specialists here in the ADF and the frontline police so that once again each of them knows the capabilities, both the strengths and the weaknesses on each side so that there is the ability for the ADF to be able to say to police in certain circumstances, we can do something that you can’t, this is where we may be able to provide some assistance.

It is vitally important that we have that close liaison. There’s no point operating in silos. Our enemies aren’t. We have to be completely connected at all times.

And we’re clarifying the ability of the ADF to pre-position, both personnel and materiel to fortify and enable the quickest possible response.

We’re going to streamline the legislative process for the callout of the ADF under the Defence Act to provide more flexibility for the states and territories to request Defence assistance. Without going into the legalities of it, it is a very cumbersome process at the moment. It basically requires a state to demonstrate that they have exhausted their ability to defend themselves. What we want to be able to do, and this is consistent with the Constitution, is be in a position where a state government, a state police commissioner, for example, and premier can come to the conclusion that there is a special, it might be a niche assistance, it might be using the rig that we’ve got behind us here, or some other specialist assistance where that special assistance is required, it can be readily called upon and deployed. Again, we want to make sure that every asset we have, that is designed to keep to Australians safe, is brought to bear to do so when it is needed.

We look forward to continuing our work with states and territories to ensure that they have the powers they need to prevent terrorist attacks and ensure we have the most robust national response. So we’re going to continue discussions with the states, for example, to ensure that the penalties for those serious terrorist offences are adequate and terrorists aren't walking the streets on bail or parole. You saw the commitment I secured at the last COAG meeting in that regard. We want to aim to have nationally consistent, pre-charged detention of terror suspects, full legal protections to ensure that police are empowered to use lethal force where the public is at risk.

While it is a state issue, I’m of the view we should have as much uniformity as possible when it comes to protections for our first responders. We’ll continue working with industry and other leaders to ensure security and law enforcement agencies can access relevant information when investigating terrorists, paedophiles and violent criminals’ use of the internet. The laws that apply offline must apply online.

I have convened, as you know, a special COAG later this year to comprehensively review the nation's laws and practices directed at protecting Australians from violent extremism and terrorism.

This is all part of our commitment to keep Australians safe. We are constantly reviewing every aspect of our legislation, of our policy, of our resources. The way we deploy our forces. The way we work with States and Territories. The way we collaborate internationally. Everything is focused on securing the safety of all Australians. That is our commitment, that is our duty.

I will now ask the CDF to add to those remarks and we will take questions.