I WILL NEVER COME NEAR YOU AGAIN

Lightning Ridge, NSW, Australia.

"I will never come near you again,"one of his most persistent pursuers finally declared.
The man had been a blustering bastard from the beginning; but Old Alex's natural naivety led him to suggest, "We could work together to ensure what happened to me never happens to anybody else."

That was never going to happen. These people, full of bluster, were too deeply compromised, too embarrassed, had misled so many people and brought discredit to the agencies for which they worked, they were never going to work to change things for the better.

They would go off into some other bluster, their puffed bantam chests.

He was more than glad to be rid of the bastard.

The ceaseless, demonic pursuit by secret police and national agencies, the complete and total misuse of information to spread rumours and lies. The dishonest, aggressive targeting of an individual. Ruthless, tedious, determined, they never stopped.

And then came the Prime Minister.

Malcolm Turnbull was well in the running for worst prime minister in Australian history. Supercilious, determined, a lawyer to his bootstraps, he had zero understanding of the people he purported to represent. 

And in that ancient place, that far centre, a strange dizziness gripped all the denizens, a dementia oozing across broken ground. 

The gods were roiled, far away, but even here, there were the lapping tides of some kind of insanity; for everyone had been sold out, nobody understood what had happened to their country, and they grabbled to make sense of it all.

But in that far off day: not a single solitary conversation made sense. They were shattered.

THE BIGGER STORY:

THE DUNCAN LEWIS ASIO REFUGEE TERROR IMBROGLIO

 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/asio-branded-asylumseekers-as-security-risks/news-story/982bd6b95b90ec7393372113fbee93a2

Almost 100 asylum-seekers who arrived in Australia by boat or sought entry to escape the Syrian civil war have been issued adverse security assessments by ASIO or knocked back after being flagged by the Five Eyes intelligence network.

A week after ASIO chief Duncan Lewis denied a connection between the refugee intake and an increased terror risk, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton confirmed that “close to 30 people” seeking entry through the one-off resettlement of 12,000 Syrian refugees had been disqualified on security grounds.

“We had national security concerns about them,” Mr Dutton said.

“We do rigorous tests.”

The Australian can also reveal that more than 60 asylum-seekers who arrived by boat under the former Labor government were issued with adverse security assessments by ASIO, including a large number of Sri Lankan Tamils deemed members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elan — a proscribed terrorist group.

Defending the personal integrity of Mr Lewis amid fierce criticism from Coalition MPs, led by Tony Abbott who appointed the spy boss in 2014, Mr Dutton described him as a “good (and) decent man” who had the “best interests of our country at heart”.

He said Mr Lewis had since modified his initial comments made in a Senate estimates exchange with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson last week, but stopped short of endorsing his statement there was no link between refugees and terrorism,

“If people want to criticise this government in relation to the refugee program, criticise me. I’m the person in charge of this portfolio,” Mr Dutton said.

“The point Mr Lewis was making ... and I’ve made on a number of occasions, is that we do have problems where people are indoctrinated online, where they have an impressionable young mind. They can be of any background, they can come to this country on any visa.”

MINISTERS RALLY BEHIND ASIO

https://www.msn.com/en-au/video/news/ministers-rally-behind-asio-chief/vp-BBBLfBL

ABBOTT CALLS FOR SPECIAL COURTS FOR RETURNING JIHADISTS

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-01/abbott-calls-for-special-courts-for-returning-jihadists/8579084

Tony Abbott calls for 'special courts' for jihadists returning to Australia
By political correspondent Louise Yaxley

Updated yesterday at 4:20pm
PHOTO: Mr Abbott says evidence rules may be changed so returning jihadists can be charged and convicted.(ABC News: Marco Catalano)
RELATED STORY: Coalition MP wants 'champagne on ice' in case Trump ditches climate deal
MAP: Australia

Islamist fighters returning to Australia should face special courts with a different standard of proof, according to former prime minister Tony Abbott.

Returning jihadis are a "massive problem", Mr Abbott wrote in an opinion piece for News Corp today.


"The only safe jihadi is one who's been lawfully killed, lawfully imprisoned or thoroughly converted from Islamism," he wrote.

He said the Government had stripped dual national terrorists of their right to return to Australia, but that "we need to find ways to keep all the others out of the country or in jail".

The war in Syria and Iraq makes it all but impossible to collect evidence that is admissible in Australian courts about the activities of returning foreign fighters.
Follow the day's political developments in our live blog.

Mr Abbott argued that is why evidence rules might need to be changed.


"We need to ensure returning jihadi can readily be charged and convicted, possibly through the creation of special courts that can hear evidence that may not normally be admissible," he wrote.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said he was not aware that special courts were being contemplated.

"And if there was policy work being done in that regard, I would not have any comment to make in relation to it," he said.

"There is a system that operates in the United Kingdom along those lines but that is an issue for the Attorney-General or for the Prime Minister."

I WILL NEVER COME NEAR YOU AGAIN

Lightning Ridge, NSW, Australia.

"I will never come near you again,"one of his most persistent pursuers finally declared.
The man had been a blustering bastard from the beginning; but Old Alex's natural naivety led him to suggest, "We could work together to ensure what happened to me never happens to anybody else."

That was never going to happen. These people, full of bluster, were too deeply compromised, too embarrassed, had misled so many people and brought discredit to the agencies for which they worked, they were never going to work to change things for the better.

They would go off into some other bluster, their puffed bantam chests.

He was more than glad to be rid of the bastard.

The ceaseless, demonic pursuit by secret police and national agencies, the complete and total misuse of information to spread rumours and lies. The dishonest, aggressive targeting of an individual. Ruthless, tedious, determined, they never stopped.

And then came the Prime Minister.

Malcolm Turnbull was well in the running for worst prime minister in Australian history. Supercilious, determined, a lawyer to his bootstraps, he had zero understanding of the people he purported to represent. 

And in that ancient place, that far centre, a strange dizziness gripped all the denizens, a dementia oozing across broken ground. 

The gods were roiled, far away, but even here, there were the lapping tides of some kind of insanity; for everyone had been sold out, nobody understood what had happened to their country, and they grabbled to make sense of it all.

But in that far off day: not a single solitary conversation made sense. They were shattered.

THE BIGGER STORY:

THE DUNCAN LEWIS ASIO REFUGEE TERROR IMBROGLIO

 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/asio-branded-asylumseekers-as-security-risks/news-story/982bd6b95b90ec7393372113fbee93a2

Almost 100 asylum-seekers who arrived in Australia by boat or sought entry to escape the Syrian civil war have been issued adverse security assessments by ASIO or knocked back after being flagged by the Five Eyes intelligence network.

A week after ASIO chief Duncan Lewis denied a connection between the refugee intake and an increased terror risk, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton confirmed that “close to 30 people” seeking entry through the one-off resettlement of 12,000 Syrian refugees had been disqualified on security grounds.

“We had national security concerns about them,” Mr Dutton said.

“We do rigorous tests.”

The Australian can also reveal that more than 60 asylum-seekers who arrived by boat under the former Labor government were issued with adverse security assessments by ASIO, including a large number of Sri Lankan Tamils deemed members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elan — a proscribed terrorist group.

Defending the personal integrity of Mr Lewis amid fierce criticism from Coalition MPs, led by Tony Abbott who appointed the spy boss in 2014, Mr Dutton described him as a “good (and) decent man” who had the “best interests of our country at heart”.

He said Mr Lewis had since modified his initial comments made in a Senate estimates exchange with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson last week, but stopped short of endorsing his statement there was no link between refugees and terrorism,

“If people want to criticise this government in relation to the refugee program, criticise me. I’m the person in charge of this portfolio,” Mr Dutton said.

“The point Mr Lewis was making ... and I’ve made on a number of occasions, is that we do have problems where people are indoctrinated online, where they have an impressionable young mind. They can be of any background, they can come to this country on any visa.”

MINISTERS RALLY BEHIND ASIO

https://www.msn.com/en-au/video/news/ministers-rally-behind-asio-chief/vp-BBBLfBL

ABBOTT CALLS FOR SPECIAL COURTS FOR RETURNING JIHADISTS

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-01/abbott-calls-for-special-courts-for-returning-jihadists/8579084

Tony Abbott calls for 'special courts' for jihadists returning to Australia
By political correspondent Louise Yaxley

Updated yesterday at 4:20pm
PHOTO: Mr Abbott says evidence rules may be changed so returning jihadists can be charged and convicted.(ABC News: Marco Catalano)
RELATED STORY: Coalition MP wants 'champagne on ice' in case Trump ditches climate deal
MAP: Australia

Islamist fighters returning to Australia should face special courts with a different standard of proof, according to former prime minister Tony Abbott.

Returning jihadis are a "massive problem", Mr Abbott wrote in an opinion piece for News Corp today.


"The only safe jihadi is one who's been lawfully killed, lawfully imprisoned or thoroughly converted from Islamism," he wrote.

He said the Government had stripped dual national terrorists of their right to return to Australia, but that "we need to find ways to keep all the others out of the country or in jail".

The war in Syria and Iraq makes it all but impossible to collect evidence that is admissible in Australian courts about the activities of returning foreign fighters.
Follow the day's political developments in our live blog.

Mr Abbott argued that is why evidence rules might need to be changed.


"We need to ensure returning jihadi can readily be charged and convicted, possibly through the creation of special courts that can hear evidence that may not normally be admissible," he wrote.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said he was not aware that special courts were being contemplated.

"And if there was policy work being done in that regard, I would not have any comment to make in relation to it," he said.

"There is a system that operates in the United Kingdom along those lines but that is an issue for the Attorney-General or for the Prime Minister."

JESUITS, JIHADIS AND THE CRUSHING OF SMALL TOWN LIFE

Lightning Ridge, NSW, Australia.

They murmured in the background, censorious or supportive. At the Tables of Knowledge, there was little discussion but the excesses of bureaucracy. Suddenly depressed, for it all seemed to be going nowhere, the endless carping, the standing up to be counted, the shimmering little skeletal figures against white backdrops fringed along the horizon, the countless pounding of the police and the politicians, he didn't believe them anymore, nobody believed them anymore.

And in the lack of a national ethic, or continuity, in the fragmented and destroyed place that had once been in Australia, a place which once, as a child, seemed as large as the world itself, he looked down on shattering circumstance and knew no peace. 

Why did no one speak up as the country moved step by step towards Stasi Germany. 

Because almost no one ever spoke up, against injustice, against the thuggery of the mob, against the group think that was enslaving the population. He had once belonged, he belonged no more. He could hear them thinking, and stirred restless, plotting their routes, the Gwyder Highway, talking of their holidays. Sometimes their cosy sliding together n the long nights, as fevered, they flew and bounced and waged war.

The country was more on edge, more at war with itself, than it had ever been.

The head of ASIO Duncan Lewis, paid something like a million dollars a year, had set off a storm, declaring there was no evidence of a link between refugees and the rise of the terrorist threat. 

Bureaucrats saw no threat to anything, unless it was their pay packets.

They treated the population, disturbed by the overrunning of their country with strangers,  with contempt. 

It might be a natural instinct to want to protect their homeland; but their homeland had been sold down the river, to foreign interests, and to the creed of high immigration rates and multiculturalism.

The traditional culture of the country was being deliberately crushed. 

You saw it everywhere, and most particularly in these small towns.

The Newsagent in Lightning Ridge burnt down the day before he arrived.

Electrical fault, they swore. 

Just up the road, the Butcher was already closed.

The Baker had almost gone, being only intermittently open.

The largest building in town was Centrelink. Nextdoor, another government agency, JOBLINKS Plus.

In the main street, Food For Families, a welfare service, adjoined BY "SUREWAY: Pathways to Work."

What exactly all this work consists of, no one quite seems to know.


THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.adnews.com.au/news/media-s-role-in-the-politics-of-fear-a-look-inside-one-nation-and-the-alt-right


Media's role in the politics of fear; a look inside One Nation and the alt-right

That moment on Q&A when a stunned Pauline Hanson asked Labor politician Sam Dastyari 'Are you Muslim?'.

The emergence of the global alternative right movement that helped the Brexit vote get over the line and saw Donald Trump become US president has also laid a marker in Australia.

In recent years, the movement has manifested into the rise of nationalist extremist groups, such as like Reclaim Australia and the United Patriots Front, while One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has enjoyed a sudden revival in federal politics.

While many people dismiss these movements and their policies as racist, xenophobic and only representing of a fringe minority, the makeup of their audiences and how savvy they are at marketing their brand will surprise.

Last week at the Sydney Writer’s Festival, one of Australia’s leading journalists, David Marr, and one of its best documentary makers and author, John Safran, offered a fascinating insight into what makes these groups tick, their appeal and how they attract people, including ordinary Australian families, to their cause.

Branding the alt-right

Safran spent many months attending nationalist rallies, hanging out with the leaders of alt-right groups and getting to know ISIS sympathisers and other extremists for his book Depends What You Mean By Extremists.

Perhaps the most high-profile of leaders of the alt-right movement in Australia, is United Patriots Front leader Blair Cotterill, who was recently in court for beheading a dummy outside Bendigo Council offices as part of an anti-Islam video.

Safran said he had spent some time getting to know Cotterill personally and describes him as the “Today Tonight of anti-Islam”, adding “it's like something you can get away with”.

Read more at http://www.adnews.com.au/news/media-s-role-in-the-politics-of-fear-a-look-inside-one-nation-and-the-alt-right#wZxd1PZxVRv0I9x5.99







http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/robert-gottliebsen/are-australians-being-miseled-over-the-real-cost-of-the-f35-joint-strike-fighter/news-story/84959f679258706536efcfcb25439614?login=1

One of the world top independent defence experts has conduced an incredibly exhaustive examination of the real cost of the Joint Strike Fighter (F-35) to those countries that are buying it.

The expert, Paris-based Giovanni de Briganti, of Defence-Aerospace, estimates that the average unit cost of Lockheed Martin JSF in the ninth low-rate initial production run is $US206.3 million.

The Australian parliament has been told by Defence Minister Marise Payne and Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne that the cost of our Joint Strike Fighters will be in the vicinity of $US90 million.

Such a huge variation means that either Giovanni de Briganti has completely got his calculations wrong when applied to Australia, or Pyne and Payne may have misled parliament.

I do not have the ability to decide which of the alternatives are correct but there is a good chance that the Pyne/Payne $90 million vicinity estimate leaves out essential costs.

• READ MORE
• F-35 fighter deal doesn’t fly

Giovanni de Briganti believes the aircraft’s engine is one of the costs they leave out.

Let me explain what I think has happened.

Defence officials for over a decade have been hoodwinking politicians on both sides by conveniently leaving out the massive expenditures required to get the JSF aircraft into service. At least in the past that has included leaving out the cost of the engine.

LIKEREPLY

Mike Ryan3 HOURS AGO

Defence and Security receive a lot of taxpayer's cash but lack oversight - cloaked in the assorted security or non disclosure double-speak. These folks are as insular and isolated as are politicians who thrive in the Canberra bubble. Always at taxpayer expense. This must change now.

RECOMMENDED READING:

http://asenseofplaceblog.com/storyteller-a-foreign-correspondents-memoir-by-zoe-daniel/\

JESUITS, JIHADIS AND THE CRUSHING OF SMALL TOWN LIFE

Lightning Ridge, NSW, Australia.

They murmured in the background, censorious or supportive. At the Tables of Knowledge, there was little discussion but the excesses of bureaucracy. Suddenly depressed, for it all seemed to be going nowhere, the endless carping, the standing up to be counted, the shimmering little skeletal figures against white backdrops fringed along the horizon, the countless pounding of the police and the politicians, he didn't believe them anymore, nobody believed them anymore.

And in the lack of a national ethic, or continuity, in the fragmented and destroyed place that had once been in Australia, a place which once, as a child, seemed as large as the world itself, he looked down on shattering circumstance and knew no peace. 

Why did no one speak up as the country moved step by step towards Stasi Germany. 

Because almost no one ever spoke up, against injustice, against the thuggery of the mob, against the group think that was enslaving the population. He had once belonged, he belonged no more. He could hear them thinking, and stirred restless, plotting their routes, the Gwyder Highway, talking of their holidays. Sometimes their cosy sliding together n the long nights, as fevered, they flew and bounced and waged war.

The country was more on edge, more at war with itself, than it had ever been.

The head of ASIO Duncan Lewis, paid something like a million dollars a year, had set off a storm, declaring there was no evidence of a link between refugees and the rise of the terrorist threat. 

Bureaucrats saw no threat to anything, unless it was their pay packets.

They treated the population, disturbed by the overrunning of their country with strangers,  with contempt. 

It might be a natural instinct to want to protect their homeland; but their homeland had been sold down the river, to foreign interests, and to the creed of high immigration rates and multiculturalism.

The traditional culture of the country was being deliberately crushed. 

You saw it everywhere, and most particularly in these small towns.

The Newsagent in Lightning Ridge burnt down the day before he arrived.

Electrical fault, they swore. 

Just up the road, the Butcher was already closed.

The Baker had almost gone, being only intermittently open.

The largest building in town was Centrelink. Nextdoor, another government agency, JOBLINKS Plus.

In the main street, Food For Families, a welfare service, adjoined BY "SUREWAY: Pathways to Work."

What exactly all this work consists of, no one quite seems to know.


THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.adnews.com.au/news/media-s-role-in-the-politics-of-fear-a-look-inside-one-nation-and-the-alt-right


Media's role in the politics of fear; a look inside One Nation and the alt-right

That moment on Q&A when a stunned Pauline Hanson asked Labor politician Sam Dastyari 'Are you Muslim?'.

The emergence of the global alternative right movement that helped the Brexit vote get over the line and saw Donald Trump become US president has also laid a marker in Australia.

In recent years, the movement has manifested into the rise of nationalist extremist groups, such as like Reclaim Australia and the United Patriots Front, while One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has enjoyed a sudden revival in federal politics.

While many people dismiss these movements and their policies as racist, xenophobic and only representing of a fringe minority, the makeup of their audiences and how savvy they are at marketing their brand will surprise.

Last week at the Sydney Writer’s Festival, one of Australia’s leading journalists, David Marr, and one of its best documentary makers and author, John Safran, offered a fascinating insight into what makes these groups tick, their appeal and how they attract people, including ordinary Australian families, to their cause.

Branding the alt-right

Safran spent many months attending nationalist rallies, hanging out with the leaders of alt-right groups and getting to know ISIS sympathisers and other extremists for his book Depends What You Mean By Extremists.

Perhaps the most high-profile of leaders of the alt-right movement in Australia, is United Patriots Front leader Blair Cotterill, who was recently in court for beheading a dummy outside Bendigo Council offices as part of an anti-Islam video.

Safran said he had spent some time getting to know Cotterill personally and describes him as the “Today Tonight of anti-Islam”, adding “it's like something you can get away with”.

Read more at http://www.adnews.com.au/news/media-s-role-in-the-politics-of-fear-a-look-inside-one-nation-and-the-alt-right#wZxd1PZxVRv0I9x5.99







http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/robert-gottliebsen/are-australians-being-miseled-over-the-real-cost-of-the-f35-joint-strike-fighter/news-story/84959f679258706536efcfcb25439614?login=1

One of the world top independent defence experts has conduced an incredibly exhaustive examination of the real cost of the Joint Strike Fighter (F-35) to those countries that are buying it.

The expert, Paris-based Giovanni de Briganti, of Defence-Aerospace, estimates that the average unit cost of Lockheed Martin JSF in the ninth low-rate initial production run is $US206.3 million.

The Australian parliament has been told by Defence Minister Marise Payne and Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne that the cost of our Joint Strike Fighters will be in the vicinity of $US90 million.

Such a huge variation means that either Giovanni de Briganti has completely got his calculations wrong when applied to Australia, or Pyne and Payne may have misled parliament.

I do not have the ability to decide which of the alternatives are correct but there is a good chance that the Pyne/Payne $90 million vicinity estimate leaves out essential costs.

• READ MORE
• F-35 fighter deal doesn’t fly

Giovanni de Briganti believes the aircraft’s engine is one of the costs they leave out.

Let me explain what I think has happened.

Defence officials for over a decade have been hoodwinking politicians on both sides by conveniently leaving out the massive expenditures required to get the JSF aircraft into service. At least in the past that has included leaving out the cost of the engine.

LIKEREPLY

Mike Ryan3 HOURS AGO

Defence and Security receive a lot of taxpayer's cash but lack oversight - cloaked in the assorted security or non disclosure double-speak. These folks are as insular and isolated as are politicians who thrive in the Canberra bubble. Always at taxpayer expense. This must change now.

RECOMMENDED READING:

http://asenseofplaceblog.com/storyteller-a-foreign-correspondents-memoir-by-zoe-daniel/\

NEW SOUTH WALES POLICE STATE

Lightning Ridge Neighbourhood Centre Photograph John Stapleton

The world had been gripped by a collective madness. Bombs rained down in the Middle East, families ran terrified from a stadium in Manchester.
Politicians preached. 
The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull pontificated about the evils of terrorism, as he himself, the man responsible for the 50, sometimes more than 100 bombs Australia was dropping on Iraq and Syria each month, grew more compromised by the hour. 
It showed in his narrowing face, greyed-out hair, in the blows to his normally bullying swagger.
In the cesspit which Sydney had become, and in which his type thrived, he wanted everyone to know he was rich, successful, his house worth more than $50 million a year.
Now he was a loser, down in the polls, his long standing success curdling in his veins, the people disillusioned, exasperated, praying as they themselves were preyed upon..
In his short stint as Prime Minister he had become one of the most unpopular people in the country. 
Like others before him, the man who had dreamt of becoming Prime Minister all his life had botched the job when he got there, failed to represent the people who had put him there; and now there was nothing to do but flail in an increasingly frustrated quagmire, sad, discontent, a sloven slave to intellectual fashion and bureaucratic bullying.
The thug at the top of a pile of thugs.
Old Alex had woken up muttering, "thermonuclear device".
Did Islamic State have one? Were they prepared to use it? 
Was Armageddon really upon us?
The bombs rained down, the stinking smell of burnt flesh.
What were they fighting for? What was there left to save? 
The primary subject of conversation at the dwindling Tables of Knowledge in the once rollicking town was the excessive zealotry of the police, in this town without a traffic light, in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
It was emblematic of what was happening to the country as a whole, the burden of regulation confronting everyone, urging reform on all the darkest horses emerging from the swamps. 
Just days before, the police had set up a mobile drug testing van, ensuring that the streets were particularly quiet that day, as word spread rapidly.
They had managed, in any case, he was told, to catch 32 people out for having smoked a joint.
More than 50 years after the 60s.
Almost three dozen people's lives destroyed in a single day. Excellent work chaps.
Australia was a backward looking country going rapidly backward, and the signs were everywhere. 
He was told, although he had heard it all before, of the police arresting people for leaving their windows wound down, in 50C heat, for leaving their shopping on the backseat, unsecured load.
And, new one on him, for having too much mud on their mud caps, in a place where dirt tracks riddled out across hundreds, ultimately thousands of square kilometres. 
It was an insanity.
In the short drive from the camp where he was staying outside Lightning Ridge he saw two police vehicles, in a distance of perhaps 1.5 kilometres. 
Exasperated, he looked up and begged: leave us alone. 
But in the totalitarian state that was now Australia, the ferociousness of the government control strung across a collapsing civic culture, that was never going to happen. 


THE BIGGER STORY:



http://www.iraqinews.com/iraq-war/coalition-airstrike-kills-dozens-islamic-state-members-west-anbar/

Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Dozens of Islamic State members were killed in an airstrike launched by the U.S.-led coalition, west of Anbar, a military source in the province said.

“The coalition jets shelled the IS tunnels and weapon stashes in Houran valley, west of Rutba town,” the source told AlSumaria News.

“The strikes left the tunnels and stashes destroyed and dozens of IS militants killed,” the source, who preferred anonymity, added.

Rutba is controlled by security troops, however, the town faces IS militants attacks every now and then that are being encountered by security.

Last week, an offensive was launched in the desert of Anbar leaving 34 militants killed. According to the War Media Cell, the operation was launched through thee axes including north of Qadisiya lake toward Rawa city, south of Euphrates River toward Rihana and Annah cities and another axis toward Makhazin Haditha and Valley of Houran.

Anbar’s western towns of Annah, Qaim and Rawa have been held by the extremist group since 2014, when it emerged to proclaim a self-styled Islamic Caliphate.

Fighter jets from the Iraqi army and the international coalition have also regularly pounded IS locations in the province. The Iraqi government is expected to aim at those strongholds once the Mosul battle is concluded.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/returned-jihadis-roaming-free-in-sydney-not-enough-evidence-to-have-them-jailed/news-story/06453ce90efca3fd1290cb510e71a339

ISLAMIC extremists returning from fighting in Iraq and Syria are roaming our streets as free men because frustrated authorities do not have enough evidence to put them behind bars.

Counter-terrorism experts have revealed authorities have used laws to prosecute returning foreign fighters on just two occasions. This is despite more than 40 people returning from war zones to Australia in the past five years.

The government has been thwarted in the war against terror because it is so hard to obtain evidence from Syrian and Iraqi authorities.

It comes as revelations about Manchester bomber Salman Abedi’s links to Syria continue to unfold — including information he had trained as a fighter in the country after visiting family in Libya.

Attorney-General George Brandis is refusing to say how many extremists have been prosecuted under returning foreign fighter legislation.

But Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Counter Terrorism Policy Centre head Jacinta Carroll said only two returning extremists have been prosecuted. One of them was charged with fighting with al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra at the end of last year.

“A second person was prosecuted in December 22 (last year). The only other use of the foreign fighters legislation was Hamdi Alqudsi’s prosecution for recruitment, but he didn’t leave Australia,” Ms Carroll said.

THE AGENCIES AT WAR

These are early online drafts for the upcoming novel Dark, Dark Policing.
They should not be taken literally.

The agencies are at war.

The message came through loud and clear as he stirred from excessive sleep.

For weeks, perhaps it was months, a pterodactyl sat hunched high on ancient cliffs, rarely stirring, rustling down ever further into the alcove.

Normally highly intelligent and well awake, instead it was in a kind of dreaming, hibernating, dormant state, rarely even moving. 

An occasional disgruntled squawk, an occasional attempt to hide even further inside the stone alcove, that was it. 

The previous season'at summer's chicks were gone, and the creature was alone, surveying the lengthy valley below.

It did not move from its aerie. 

Below the heated air currents were more malignant than it had ever known them, thick with a kind of spiritual treachery. Such were its antennae, its unique psychic abilities, that it could see the danger visible on warm winds.

Perilous.

The world had become a very dangerous place. 

It wasn't kind. 

It wasn't the welcoming, remarkably fecund place where they had originally landed.

High in those cliffs, looking down across once drowned valleys, it was impossible not to notice the changes.

Step by terrible step.

Back on Planet Earth, well back in the future where Old Alex was now anchored, he continued to give the Watchers on the Watch the benefit of his views.

Bored, frustrated, fed up, much maligned, everything had changed since the death, or was it killing, of Bill Leak.

Was Bill Leak killed showed up as a Google prompt.

He wasn't the only one wondering.

Under the alleged protection of the Australian Federal Police, there was no coroner's report, no inquest, no details of his final hours.

Short and sweet: heart attack.

For years now, ever since the fetid heat of Bangkok, he had heard the malicious operatives within the agencies whispering: heart attack, heart attack. 

Auto-suggestion.

They hoped it worked. Save them the murky difficulties of a kill.

"Surveillance is harassment," Old Alex repeated over and over. "And I have been very, very, very badly harassed."

And occasionally: "Think how much money you could have saved with a little cooperation. Journalists are all the same. They just want stories. I am not above trading information."

But they didn't care about the money. It wasn't theirs. 

Some sucker taxpayer had gone to work to support the secret bureaucratic edifices of the agencies. 

And they would never know just how ineptly their money was being squandered.

Just how poor the oversight.

Just how truly, profoundly incompetent the agencies were.

But the time had passed, in the deep delinquencies and contradictions of surveillance. 

It was nothing but bullying.

And bullying didn't work. 

In yet another striking move in a failing democracy, the Australian government had set out to deliberately target and harass journalists, passing outlandishly oppressive legislation aimed at the Fourth Estate.

The bureaucratic instinct to control everything, to dictate everything, to control what people did at every point in their lives, at every passing moment, what they thought, how they worked, how they interacted, how best they could serve the state, was backfiring in spectacular fashion, causing them considerable grief.

Old Alex kept up the chants, all the more to annoy them.

Incompetent and oppressive legislation which turning journalists into POIs, Persons of Interest, under AS  IO legislation, had already created considerable grief for the government, and would continue to do so.

The worst totalitarian instincts of the government were in play when the legislation was in play.

And the oxymoronically titled Liberal Party was there at the helm, waving sticks they did not understand.

Everything the Australian government touched turned to disaster, and the oppressive legislation targeting journalists was no exception.

And the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was no exception.

"We've done a great job of exposing the corruption and incompetence within the agencies," Old Alex told the microphone in the car. "Congratulations to everyone involved." 

CROSS-CULTURAL CONFUSION

Mitta Mitta River Picture by Gilbert Atkin 

But was it true? Was it even possible? That there was reason in the morass, that some of the Watchers on the Watch could actually be friends; that they, too, were constrained by their own circumstances, their own bosses, and would have actually reached out, liked to be friends, would have liked to sit down and discuss everything, explain what had happened, put the accusations that had been handed to them to him, let him answer for himself.

"What do you want to say? What do you want to tell me?" he asked in the predawn, when they were all freest to communicate. "I don't trust anyone. I've been very very badly harassed for a very long time. Everyone is on a payroll. Everyone has a master to serve, nests to feather, career ladders to climb. No one wishes well."

But he had said it so often now that even he was tired of stating the obvious.

"You're exactly right in what you think," came the answer, "Except that things are far worse than you imagine. Far worse."

And in an instant, as if they were living things, he saw the elaborate edifices of the Australian bureaucracies, all the intricate lines of power, the suspensions of disbelief, the obedience to state creeds, the mundane intelligences which festered in air conditioned offices, covering their own asses before they covered anything else, without integrity, without good motive. 

He had made the same mistake before, presuming that what had happened to him had been a simple bureaucratic slip or a misunderstanding, that higher up the food chain there would be commonsense, rationality, responsibility.

"Am I safe?" he asked. 

"They're not going to try and kill you now, you're too closely watched."

Well, well, Dark Dark Policing. 

The legislation targeting journalists allowed 21 government departments access to his data, his emails, websites, personal information, everything.

In other words, one giant cluster fuck. Everything the Australian government touched turned into a fiasco, mismanagement at every level, everywhere; and in the end, as the country took one step after another towards the abyss, as the worst Recession in the nation's history gathered storm, as the country's original stories disappeared into the early pages of its history, as the social engineers remade the social, cultural and demographic makeup of the country, everyone who could looked the other way, out of some sort of fear of being different, or out of some wan hope that the situation wasn't really as bad as they feared.

Summer had arrived, and the anodyne levels of public debate stepped into an over-heated, slippery summer of vacation and the smell of coconut oil, of the pleasures of vitality and hopeful life, of peace and pleasure and bright sunshine, In the Middle East bombs paid for by Australian taxpayers rained down on the mujaheddin, a war rarely mentioned in the media, Those lyrical, peaceful moments were bought at a price; vacuity. 

THE BIGGER STORY:




Hundreds of protesters have gathered outside Cairo's largest Coptic cathedral demanding revenge for the bombing which killed 25 people on Sunday (local time), in the deadliest attack on Egypt's Christian minority in years.
The bombing at the cathedral in Egypt also left 49 wounded, many of them women and children attending Sunday mass.
Scuffles broke out with police after they arrived at the scene with armoured vehicles.
Security sources told Reuters the explosion was caused by a device containing at least 12 kilograms of TNT, with the blast detonating on the side of the church normally used by women.
The attack, which took place on a Muslim holiday marking the Prophet Mohammad's birthday, came as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi fought battles on several fronts.
His economic reforms have angered the poor, a bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood has seen thousands jailed, whilst an insurgency rages in Northern Sinai led by the Egyptian branch of Islamic State (IS).
The militant group has also carried out deadly attacks in Cairo and has urged its supporters to launch attacks around the world in recent weeks as it goes on the defensive in its Iraqi and Syrian strongholds.
IS supporters celebrated on social media.

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