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:

PIRANHAS

Hong Kong 1950s

Other journalists who wrote about some of the same areas as he did, Islamic fundamentalism, national security, received conciliatory visits from the authorities; who would advise them on safety procedures and how best to proceed. He got harassed, year in and year out, month in and month out. Tormented, bullied, ridiculed. 

That was the way of the grinding machinery that was Australian governance.

Piranhas, flash crowds of piranhas, had circled through the invisible air, feeding their careers and determined to torment, because, as someone masquerading as a friend had said to him only a few days before, "you're just one person". 

And Just One Person can be destroyed, is vulnerable, gets lonely, is beset by frailty.

And so the predators came out to play.

Be careful what you pray for, he warned them, as the bullies circled.


THE BIGGER STORY:



It’s 3:30 a.m. in the newsroom, and we’re in a state of shock. Donald J. Trump, against what we thought were all odds, collected swing state after swing state after swing state. Hillary Clinton has conceded the race. Mr. Trump has won.
So, what just happened? “We don’t know what happened, because the tools that we would normally use to help us assess what happened failed,” Ms. Haberman says. “The polling on both sides was wrong.”
Mr. Rutenberg had just finished writing about how the media had missed Mr. Trump’s wide appeal, and what that misfire says about journalists’ flawed understanding of major swaths of our country. “What we now know is that a huge part of the country is far more upset about the ills that he was pointing to and promising to fix than any of the flaws that we were pointing out about him as a candidate,” Mr. Rutenberg says on the show.
“I would say this is a failure of expertise on the order of the fall of the Soviet Union or the Vietnam War,” Mr. Confessore says. “What we are seeing is in part a revolt of the country that people had written off as the country of the past, against the country that most people thought they were living in: a country of the future, of a multicultural future, of a globalized world. This was a revolt of people who did not feel vested in that future America.”

WASHINGTON — President Obama and Donald J. Trump made a public show on Thursday of putting their bitter differences aside after a stunning election upset. The Oval Office meeting brought together a president who has darkly warned that Mr. Trump could not be trusted with the nuclear codes and a successor who rose to political prominence questioning Mr. Obama’s birthplace and legitimacy.
“I want to emphasize to you, Mr. President-elect, that we now are going to want to do everything we can to help you succeed because if you succeed, then the country succeeds,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Trump as the two sat side-by-side after the roughly 90-minute meeting. The president called the session “excellent” and wide-ranging.
It was an extraordinary show of cordiality and respect between two men who have been political enemies and are stylistic opposites — Mr. Trump a brash real estate executive and reality television star whose campaign was defined in opposition to the sitting president, and Mr. Obama, a cool-tempered intellectual who has pressed a progressive agenda in office.

FEATURED BOOK:

PIRANHAS

Hong Kong 1950s

Other journalists who wrote about some of the same areas as he did, Islamic fundamentalism, national security, received conciliatory visits from the authorities; who would advise them on safety procedures and how best to proceed. He got harassed, year in and year out, month in and month out. Tormented, bullied, ridiculed. 

That was the way of the grinding machinery that was Australian governance.

Piranhas, flash crowds of piranhas, had circled through the invisible air, feeding their careers and determined to torment, because, as someone masquerading as a friend had said to him only a few days before, "you're just one person". 

And Just One Person can be destroyed, is vulnerable, gets lonely, is beset by frailty.

And so the predators came out to play.

Be careful what you pray for, he warned them, as the bullies circled.


THE BIGGER STORY:



It’s 3:30 a.m. in the newsroom, and we’re in a state of shock. Donald J. Trump, against what we thought were all odds, collected swing state after swing state after swing state. Hillary Clinton has conceded the race. Mr. Trump has won.
So, what just happened? “We don’t know what happened, because the tools that we would normally use to help us assess what happened failed,” Ms. Haberman says. “The polling on both sides was wrong.”
Mr. Rutenberg had just finished writing about how the media had missed Mr. Trump’s wide appeal, and what that misfire says about journalists’ flawed understanding of major swaths of our country. “What we now know is that a huge part of the country is far more upset about the ills that he was pointing to and promising to fix than any of the flaws that we were pointing out about him as a candidate,” Mr. Rutenberg says on the show.
“I would say this is a failure of expertise on the order of the fall of the Soviet Union or the Vietnam War,” Mr. Confessore says. “What we are seeing is in part a revolt of the country that people had written off as the country of the past, against the country that most people thought they were living in: a country of the future, of a multicultural future, of a globalized world. This was a revolt of people who did not feel vested in that future America.”

WASHINGTON — President Obama and Donald J. Trump made a public show on Thursday of putting their bitter differences aside after a stunning election upset. The Oval Office meeting brought together a president who has darkly warned that Mr. Trump could not be trusted with the nuclear codes and a successor who rose to political prominence questioning Mr. Obama’s birthplace and legitimacy.
“I want to emphasize to you, Mr. President-elect, that we now are going to want to do everything we can to help you succeed because if you succeed, then the country succeeds,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Trump as the two sat side-by-side after the roughly 90-minute meeting. The president called the session “excellent” and wide-ranging.
It was an extraordinary show of cordiality and respect between two men who have been political enemies and are stylistic opposites — Mr. Trump a brash real estate executive and reality television star whose campaign was defined in opposition to the sitting president, and Mr. Obama, a cool-tempered intellectual who has pressed a progressive agenda in office.

FEATURED BOOK:

SURVEILLANCE EQUALS HARASSMENT

Brisbane floods 1893

"Do you think he can detect that we're here?" a voice asked in the Outback night, and he repeated the line.
Monumental stuff up.
His pursuit, the pursuit of a journalist, by government authorities had reached absurd lengths, and so he was here, in this distant place. He had exemptd himself from the game, their game.
There was no reason for them to stop, it was government funding.
There was no reason to apologise, that would involve acknowledging fault.
There was no cause for common decency, they didn't have it in them.
They destroyed lives with impunity; that's what they did.
Those paying taxes to fund the outlandish behaviour of the agencies had no idea what their money was being used for.
Psychologically exhausted from the last book, Old Alex went home early to watch the American election on television, a million miles from the wealth and power on display in New York City. It had been one of the world's longest running soap operas, and a reality TV star had gamed them across the finishing line.
All the pundits had been proven wrong; and Trump was triumphant. 
It had been one of the worst examples of pack mentality Alex had ever seen. All anyone had to do to prove they were an intellectual and a progressive was to call Trump a moron and away the hordes went, Like Like Like.
And in the morning after, they would blame everybody but themselves.
The same dynamics were in play in Australia.
The quelling of debate, ceaseless identity and gender politics, the ridicule and in his case hunting of anyone who didn't swallow the government narrative, all of it was coming back to destroy the very governments, bureaucracies and multi-media channels which perpetuated it.
He came, he saw, he observed.
They would try to kill him one more time.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Democrat Hillary Clinton has conceded the 2016 US White House race to Republican Donald Trump, offering to work with the president-elect who she said she hoped would be a successful leader for all Americans.
Mrs Clinton, appearing at midday (local time) after a bruising election loss to the New York real estate magnate, urged supporters to keep an open mind towards Mr Trump and give him a chance to lead.
"Last night I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country," Mrs Clinton told hundreds of supporters and staff at a Manhattan hotel.
"I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans.
"This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for, and I'm sorry that we did not win this election for the values we shared and the vision we hold for our country."

The artist is likely to be looked upon with some uneasiness by the more conservative members of society. He seems a little unpredictable. Who knows but that he may arrive for dinner in a red shirt… appear unexpectedly bearded… offer, freely, unsolicited advice… or even ship off one of his ears to some unwilling recipient? However glorious the history of art, the history of artists is quite a different matter. And in any well-ordered household the very thought that one of the young men may turn out to be an artist can be a cause for general alarm. It may be a point of great pride to have a Van Gogh on the living room wall, but the prospect of having Van Gogh himself in the living room would put a good many devoted art lovers to rout.

FEATURED BOOK:

SURVEILLANCE EQUALS HARASSMENT

Brisbane floods 1893

"Do you think he can detect that we're here?" a voice asked in the Outback night, and he repeated the line.
Monumental stuff up.
His pursuit, the pursuit of a journalist, by government authorities had reached absurd lengths, and so he was here, in this distant place. He had exemptd himself from the game, their game.
There was no reason for them to stop, it was government funding.
There was no reason to apologise, that would involve acknowledging fault.
There was no cause for common decency, they didn't have it in them.
They destroyed lives with impunity; that's what they did.
Those paying taxes to fund the outlandish behaviour of the agencies had no idea what their money was being used for.
Psychologically exhausted from the last book, Old Alex went home early to watch the American election on television, a million miles from the wealth and power on display in New York City. It had been one of the world's longest running soap operas, and a reality TV star had gamed them across the finishing line.
All the pundits had been proven wrong; and Trump was triumphant. 
It had been one of the worst examples of pack mentality Alex had ever seen. All anyone had to do to prove they were an intellectual and a progressive was to call Trump a moron and away the hordes went, Like Like Like.
And in the morning after, they would blame everybody but themselves.
The same dynamics were in play in Australia.
The quelling of debate, ceaseless identity and gender politics, the ridicule and in his case hunting of anyone who didn't swallow the government narrative, all of it was coming back to destroy the very governments, bureaucracies and multi-media channels which perpetuated it.
He came, he saw, he observed.
They would try to kill him one more time.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Democrat Hillary Clinton has conceded the 2016 US White House race to Republican Donald Trump, offering to work with the president-elect who she said she hoped would be a successful leader for all Americans.
Mrs Clinton, appearing at midday (local time) after a bruising election loss to the New York real estate magnate, urged supporters to keep an open mind towards Mr Trump and give him a chance to lead.
"Last night I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country," Mrs Clinton told hundreds of supporters and staff at a Manhattan hotel.
"I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans.
"This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for, and I'm sorry that we did not win this election for the values we shared and the vision we hold for our country."

The artist is likely to be looked upon with some uneasiness by the more conservative members of society. He seems a little unpredictable. Who knows but that he may arrive for dinner in a red shirt… appear unexpectedly bearded… offer, freely, unsolicited advice… or even ship off one of his ears to some unwilling recipient? However glorious the history of art, the history of artists is quite a different matter. And in any well-ordered household the very thought that one of the young men may turn out to be an artist can be a cause for general alarm. It may be a point of great pride to have a Van Gogh on the living room wall, but the prospect of having Van Gogh himself in the living room would put a good many devoted art lovers to rout.

FEATURED BOOK:

JUST SAY NO

Tim Ritchie

Old Alex pulled up by the side of the road, just past the Namoi River, struck by the sight of the river gums beside a classic Outback scene.

He just wanted it all to stop.

His career as a journalist had made him a POI, a Person of Interest, and he had become, as book followed book, increasingly haunted.

He tried to fight back, as sick of them as they were no doubt sick of him, but he had grown tired of abusing his tormentors through the microphone in the car.

"Never forget: I know how incompetent and dishonest you are."

He was sick of the absolute bastardry of government which had been turned on him after he had left full time work on the national newspaper; sick of the depths of dishonesty these people would stoop to in pursuing him.

Sick of the bureaucratic mentality: Just Say No.

Because to say no, to destroy someone, was safer than working with them.

The more barren the culture became, the more they liked it.

He was tired of demanding compensation for the previous three years of harassment, an acknowledgement, apology and financial compensation which was never going to come.

$27.3 million seemed like a good figure to him, considering the lengths the authorities had gone to destroy him psychologically and physically, to ruin his reputation, to hound him from one place to another, to another. And the vast amount of time, money and energy they had wasted.

"One day that man will kill himself."

What sort of person would do that to another?

Bullies. Government funded bullies.

The Prime Minister's Literary Awards had just been co-won gone by a book, The Life of Houses, about "hidden tensions in one of Australia's establishment families".

"Revolutionary art," he sniffed, as outside storms rumbled in the great skies of the Australian Outback.

This was the same Prime Minister, the same government, who had done much to destroy the Australian book publishing industry, and alienated authors across the country.

The tax payer funded Radio National broadcast Malcolm Turnbull's speech on his love of Australian literature. To Alex it was all preposterous. He simply couldn't stand the hypocrisy. Everything annoyed him. He was becoming a curmudgeon.

Alex was no longer employed by a multi-billion dollar news corporation, no longer confined by the corporate tedium of what Rupert Murdoch's editorial henchmen saw as news; those narrow confines of what they thought, or knew, would please their boss.

"I've never known someone so consistently depressed as you," someone had said to him downstairs in the headquarters of News Limited.

And it was true, he wasn't living the life he wanted to live, he wasn't writing what he wanted to write, and in those aging years when journalism, a young man's sandpit and and old man's quicksand, had become a curse; he simply showed up for work. He had children to support. He had no choice. A profession which once seemed full of excitement became tedium absolute.

The greatest talent required of a senior editor at The Australian had been the ability to please Rupert, not to generate stories, not to appeal to the public, not to create an exciting newspaper.

The Australian was an inexcusably dull vanity publication of Rupert's which lost more than $30 million a year. His escape had been both a liberation and a torment; he missed the camaraderie of fellow sufferers, and for a long time he had been completely lost.

Then he began to write what he wanted to write, and life promptly turned to hell as he became a Targeted Individual, pursued, harassed and under surveillance.

It had reached ridiculous levels, as he was hunted from one home to another, when he never felt safe and he became convinced, as paranoiac as it sounded, that the authorities wanted him dead.

"Heart attack, heart attack," "That man will kill himself one day."

They were standard tactics of PsyOps, or psychological operations, as he understood it.

And he came face to face with a world he had never encountered, or at least never understood; dark policing, government sponsored intimidation and harassment through surveillance operations.

The agencies were vastly over-funded; in secrecy corruption and malfeasance bloomed. Abused from dawn to dusk, he became increasingly ratty. It didn't matter what he did, what he said, how he behaved, what efforts he made to brush them off, the attacks were relentless and ongoing; and had frayed him to the remote edges of sanity; flayed by words and invisible demons and rippling consequence.

It would be so much easier to just comply, but the goal posts constantly shifted. He was not on their payroll, and the obvious solutions were duly ignored. It was easier to revert to type: to be a bully.

And so it felt as if the same bullies who had tormented him in the schoolyard now tormented him in later life; queuing up to kick him in the head.

As the car settled and the silence of the bush surrounded him, he tried to seek a power to turn events around.

And the only advice that came to him, in those crippling days, was: Stay Out Of The Results.

He started up the car, and quickly overtook a clapped out car.

"Drive by shooting," the words plunged through his head. He caught a glance of the car's occupants and they looked as guilty as hell.

They say, everyone who comes to the Ridge is escaping something.

He was escaping.

Welcome to the Edge.


THE BIGGER STORY:




Can Donald Trump win? It's possible, but certainly a long shot. On the eve of the election, Hillary Clinton still holds the edge over Trump, though her once commanding national lead now stands at 3 points and she's lost the advantage in several key battleground states. Once hopelessly behind in the electoral count, Trump has pulled within striking distance over the last two weeks, but will need a last-minute miracle to pull off the win. Real Clear Politics' electoral map based on state poll averages shows Clinton barely edging Trump 272 to 266.

Artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality will play a huge role as humankind heads to Mars and beyond, says the man overseeing NASA’s exploration systems. In an interview with The Australian, Jason Crusan, who is visiting Australia, discusses how NASA is leveraging newer capabilities of artificial intelligence as it undertakes 20 years of preparation for humans visiting Mars.
There’s also internet bandwidth we dream of that will beam 4K resolution images from millions of kilometres away to our headsets, and an upcoming capacity to snap high resolution photos of the entire Planet Earth daily, with each pixel representing a 3 to 5 metre slice.

FEATURED BOOK:

JUST SAY NO

Tim Ritchie

Old Alex pulled up by the side of the road, just past the Namoi River, struck by the sight of the river gums beside a classic Outback scene.

He just wanted it all to stop.

His career as a journalist had made him a POI, a Person of Interest, and he had become, as book followed book, increasingly haunted.

He tried to fight back, as sick of them as they were no doubt sick of him, but he had grown tired of abusing his tormentors through the microphone in the car.

"Never forget: I know how incompetent and dishonest you are."

He was sick of the absolute bastardry of government which had been turned on him after he had left full time work on the national newspaper; sick of the depths of dishonesty these people would stoop to in pursuing him.

Sick of the bureaucratic mentality: Just Say No.

Because to say no, to destroy someone, was safer than working with them.

The more barren the culture became, the more they liked it.

He was tired of demanding compensation for the previous three years of harassment, an acknowledgement, apology and financial compensation which was never going to come.

$27.3 million seemed like a good figure to him, considering the lengths the authorities had gone to destroy him psychologically and physically, to ruin his reputation, to hound him from one place to another, to another. And the vast amount of time, money and energy they had wasted.

"One day that man will kill himself."

What sort of person would do that to another?

Bullies. Government funded bullies.

The Prime Minister's Literary Awards had just been co-won gone by a book, The Life of Houses, about "hidden tensions in one of Australia's establishment families".

"Revolutionary art," he sniffed, as outside storms rumbled in the great skies of the Australian Outback.

This was the same Prime Minister, the same government, who had done much to destroy the Australian book publishing industry, and alienated authors across the country.

The tax payer funded Radio National broadcast Malcolm Turnbull's speech on his love of Australian literature. To Alex it was all preposterous. He simply couldn't stand the hypocrisy. Everything annoyed him. He was becoming a curmudgeon.

Alex was no longer employed by a multi-billion dollar news corporation, no longer confined by the corporate tedium of what Rupert Murdoch's editorial henchmen saw as news; those narrow confines of what they thought, or knew, would please their boss.

"I've never known someone so consistently depressed as you," someone had said to him downstairs in the headquarters of News Limited.

And it was true, he wasn't living the life he wanted to live, he wasn't writing what he wanted to write, and in those aging years when journalism, a young man's sandpit and and old man's quicksand, had become a curse; he simply showed up for work. He had children to support. He had no choice. A profession which once seemed full of excitement became tedium absolute.

The greatest talent required of a senior editor at The Australian had been the ability to please Rupert, not to generate stories, not to appeal to the public, not to create an exciting newspaper.

The Australian was an inexcusably dull vanity publication of Rupert's which lost more than $30 million a year. His escape had been both a liberation and a torment; he missed the camaraderie of fellow sufferers, and for a long time he had been completely lost.

Then he began to write what he wanted to write, and life promptly turned to hell as he became a Targeted Individual, pursued, harassed and under surveillance.

It had reached ridiculous levels, as he was hunted from one home to another, when he never felt safe and he became convinced, as paranoiac as it sounded, that the authorities wanted him dead.

"Heart attack, heart attack," "That man will kill himself one day."

They were standard tactics of PsyOps, or psychological operations, as he understood it.

And he came face to face with a world he had never encountered, or at least never understood; dark policing, government sponsored intimidation and harassment through surveillance operations.

The agencies were vastly over-funded; in secrecy corruption and malfeasance bloomed. Abused from dawn to dusk, he became increasingly ratty. It didn't matter what he did, what he said, how he behaved, what efforts he made to brush them off, the attacks were relentless and ongoing; and had frayed him to the remote edges of sanity; flayed by words and invisible demons and rippling consequence.

It would be so much easier to just comply, but the goal posts constantly shifted. He was not on their payroll, and the obvious solutions were duly ignored. It was easier to revert to type: to be a bully.

And so it felt as if the same bullies who had tormented him in the schoolyard now tormented him in later life; queuing up to kick him in the head.

As the car settled and the silence of the bush surrounded him, he tried to seek a power to turn events around.

And the only advice that came to him, in those crippling days, was: Stay Out Of The Results.

He started up the car, and quickly overtook a clapped out car.

"Drive by shooting," the words plunged through his head. He caught a glance of the car's occupants and they looked as guilty as hell.

They say, everyone who comes to the Ridge is escaping something.

He was escaping.

Welcome to the Edge.


THE BIGGER STORY:




Can Donald Trump win? It's possible, but certainly a long shot. On the eve of the election, Hillary Clinton still holds the edge over Trump, though her once commanding national lead now stands at 3 points and she's lost the advantage in several key battleground states. Once hopelessly behind in the electoral count, Trump has pulled within striking distance over the last two weeks, but will need a last-minute miracle to pull off the win. Real Clear Politics' electoral map based on state poll averages shows Clinton barely edging Trump 272 to 266.

Artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality will play a huge role as humankind heads to Mars and beyond, says the man overseeing NASA’s exploration systems. In an interview with The Australian, Jason Crusan, who is visiting Australia, discusses how NASA is leveraging newer capabilities of artificial intelligence as it undertakes 20 years of preparation for humans visiting Mars.
There’s also internet bandwidth we dream of that will beam 4K resolution images from millions of kilometres away to our headsets, and an upcoming capacity to snap high resolution photos of the entire Planet Earth daily, with each pixel representing a 3 to 5 metre slice.

FEATURED BOOK:

CLANDESTINE AUTHORITY: A FINAL BEAUTY

Picture of Wyndham by Richard Woldendorp

At last he was free.

He stopped chanting at the microphone in the car, and therefore to the authorities: "You are dishonest, incompetent and corrupt." Or: "Never forget, I know how dishonest and incompetent you really are."

The hell, the living purgatory, that had been inflicted upon him and which they liked to say he had inflicted on himself had gone.

His anger, his frustration, as counterproductive as it had been, was already washing away.

The Ridge, as it was locally known, was green from recent rains, unusual in that part of the country. The landscape often looked more like Mars. Now the inland rivers were flowing, and Menindee Lakes was full.

He had been coming to Lightning Ridge on and off for decades. It was one of the only places in the world where opal could be found, and had a peculiar resonance. Decades before, landing at the red dust pot hole filled airstrip had been a dangerous exercise. Now, there was even an asphalted tarmac.

Old Alex had last been here two years before, when, after a similar hounding, he had just finished writing Thailand: Deadly Destination. 

And then, as now, haunted and hunted for so long, felt an enormous relief.

He went, that first morning, to the Artesian Bore outside town, where, as the sign declared, the hot, mineral rich waters would soak away your aches and pains.

As so often, there were Europeans taking the water in this Outback place, and the air was full of the Yugoslavian language.

He liked the idea of bathing in million year old water, although in truth he had no idea how old it was and could find no easy reference.

It was the final month of spring, after what had been a hellish winter; with kidney stones and a fractured vertebrae leaving him in constant pain, and the targeting of him by the authorities, or under the purvey of the authorities, had made his life entirely miserable. 

If he had destroyed one opportunity by his flagrant fury, contempt or disregard, there would be many more. He was was the one bathing in the Artesian waters and watching the birds flock through the low scrub of the Australian Outback. He was the one whose mind could pick through the surrounding fields, at last, without being pressurised. He was the one who had survived.

And they would squirrel back into their useless jobs, no longer safe. For the wraiths unleashed were already out hunting their targets; and they would find their way,

If it was simply puerile revenge, they would never have done their job. It was more than that: a battle between the sacred and the profane. The desire of the ordinary to triumph over the extraordinary was a battle they would not, could not win.

And so he rose bare faced into the laughing sky, and was free.

THE BIGGER STORY:




As the battle for Mosul proper begins -- a pain-staking and brutal process of clearing ISIS street by street -- cracks in the Iraqi government's planning and preparation are already beginning to show.

This was chillingly illustrated by my colleague Arwa Damon's intense 28 hours embedded with one special forces group, as it plunged deep into Mosul's eastern neighborhoods. The terrifying experience revealed a force seemingly ill equipped and poorly trained for the task at hand.
ISIS fighters were lying in wait to ambush the unit Arwa was with as its commander ordered the convoy on without an apparent "Plan B" or reserve forces to back them up if they got into trouble.

Conventional wisdom is the radical Islamist terror group has had two years to prepare for this defense. Reality is in Iraq alone their fighters have spent more than a decade honing tactics and techniques for fighting an urban guerrilla conflict against conventional forces -- American first and now Iraqi.

US election: Hillary Clinton has wafer-thin margin over Donald Trump on campaign's final day
So who is going to win?
It is the question on the lips of every American as this volatile presidential election campaign comes to a close.
Republican nominee Donald Trump's supporters are bullish, and wildly optimistic as he rides a wave of improved polls into election day.
The backers of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton are nervous, and simply want it to be over, and won.

FEATURED BOOK;


     

CLANDESTINE AUTHORITY: A FINAL BEAUTY

Picture of Wyndham by Richard Woldendorp

At last he was free.

He stopped chanting at the microphone in the car, and therefore to the authorities: "You are dishonest, incompetent and corrupt." Or: "Never forget, I know how dishonest and incompetent you really are."

The hell, the living purgatory, that had been inflicted upon him and which they liked to say he had inflicted on himself had gone.

His anger, his frustration, as counterproductive as it had been, was already washing away.

The Ridge, as it was locally known, was green from recent rains, unusual in that part of the country. The landscape often looked more like Mars. Now the inland rivers were flowing, and Menindee Lakes was full.

He had been coming to Lightning Ridge on and off for decades. It was one of the only places in the world where opal could be found, and had a peculiar resonance. Decades before, landing at the red dust pot hole filled airstrip had been a dangerous exercise. Now, there was even an asphalted tarmac.

Old Alex had last been here two years before, when, after a similar hounding, he had just finished writing Thailand: Deadly Destination. 

And then, as now, haunted and hunted for so long, felt an enormous relief.

He went, that first morning, to the Artesian Bore outside town, where, as the sign declared, the hot, mineral rich waters would soak away your aches and pains.

As so often, there were Europeans taking the water in this Outback place, and the air was full of the Yugoslavian language.

He liked the idea of bathing in million year old water, although in truth he had no idea how old it was and could find no easy reference.

It was the final month of spring, after what had been a hellish winter; with kidney stones and a fractured vertebrae leaving him in constant pain, and the targeting of him by the authorities, or under the purvey of the authorities, had made his life entirely miserable. 

If he had destroyed one opportunity by his flagrant fury, contempt or disregard, there would be many more. He was was the one bathing in the Artesian waters and watching the birds flock through the low scrub of the Australian Outback. He was the one whose mind could pick through the surrounding fields, at last, without being pressurised. He was the one who had survived.

And they would squirrel back into their useless jobs, no longer safe. For the wraiths unleashed were already out hunting their targets; and they would find their way,

If it was simply puerile revenge, they would never have done their job. It was more than that: a battle between the sacred and the profane. The desire of the ordinary to triumph over the extraordinary was a battle they would not, could not win.

And so he rose bare faced into the laughing sky, and was free.

THE BIGGER STORY:




As the battle for Mosul proper begins -- a pain-staking and brutal process of clearing ISIS street by street -- cracks in the Iraqi government's planning and preparation are already beginning to show.

This was chillingly illustrated by my colleague Arwa Damon's intense 28 hours embedded with one special forces group, as it plunged deep into Mosul's eastern neighborhoods. The terrifying experience revealed a force seemingly ill equipped and poorly trained for the task at hand.
ISIS fighters were lying in wait to ambush the unit Arwa was with as its commander ordered the convoy on without an apparent "Plan B" or reserve forces to back them up if they got into trouble.

Conventional wisdom is the radical Islamist terror group has had two years to prepare for this defense. Reality is in Iraq alone their fighters have spent more than a decade honing tactics and techniques for fighting an urban guerrilla conflict against conventional forces -- American first and now Iraqi.

US election: Hillary Clinton has wafer-thin margin over Donald Trump on campaign's final day
So who is going to win?
It is the question on the lips of every American as this volatile presidential election campaign comes to a close.
Republican nominee Donald Trump's supporters are bullish, and wildly optimistic as he rides a wave of improved polls into election day.
The backers of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton are nervous, and simply want it to be over, and won.

FEATURED BOOK;