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The Netanyahu Doctrine: How One Man’s War Addiction Is Consuming Israel, Lebanon, and the World

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From the ‘Villa in the Jungle’ to the ‘Greater Israel Nightmare’

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to my wife ‘S’, who keeps my notes safe and accessible and is always prepared to advise me.

I. Introduction: The Doctrine of Perpetual War

On October 7, 2023, Israel suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history. Hamas militants crossed from Gaza, unimpeded, and killed and tortured Israeli civilians. That day alone should have disqualified Benjamin Netanyahu from office. In most political systems, he would have been driven from power long ago.

Instead, he did what he has always done: he escalated.

What emerged from the ashes of October 7 is what analysts now call the Netanyahu Doctrine — a security strategy based not on containment, not on deterrence, but on perpetual war. As Netanyahu himself told military officers: “No more containment of threats. No more the idea of the ‘villa in the jungle’, where one hides from predators beyond the wall. On the contrary: if you don’t go into the jungle, the jungle comes to you” .

The doctrine is simple: preventive attacks against every perceived threat, the creation of buffer zones through the seizure of neighbouring territories, and the constant use of force as the only guarantee of security. It is a doctrine born of trauma, shaped by political expediency, and devoid of any long-term diplomatic vision.

This article examines the Netanyahu Doctrine in action: in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria, and against Iran. It documents the destruction, the displacement, and the erosion of Israel’s international standing. It argues that Netanyahu is not a strategist — he is an opportunist. He does not plan for the long term. He plans for the next distraction.

And the world is always distracted.

II. The Greater Israel Dream: From the Nile to the Euphrates

The doctrine is not about security. It is about expansion. The buffer zone is not the goal. The settlements are the goal. The land clearance is not for defence. It is for colonisation.

The concept of Greater Israel — a territory stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, encompassing all of modern-day Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and parts of Turkey — is not a fringe fantasy. It is the stated aspiration of the Netanyahu government.

In February 2026, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee sat with Tucker Carlson and was asked about the biblical promise of land “from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates.” His answer was chilling: “It would be fine if they took it all”. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich responded publicly: “I ❤️ Huckabee” . In 2025, Netanyahu himself told a TV interviewer that he subscribes “fully” to the vision of Greater Israel, describing it as a “historic and spiritual mission”.

This is not a fringe position. It is the official policy of the Netanyahu government. And it is being executed.

III. Lebanon: The Pattern Repeats

The same pattern as Gaza. The same destruction. The same rubble.

On March 2, 2026, Israel launched an offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The stated goal was to create a “buffer zone” up to the Litani River, approximately 30 kilometres north of Israel’s border, to protect northern Israeli communities from Hezbollah rockets.

The reality is different. The buffer zone is not a buffer. It is a land grab. The territory up to the Litani is not needed for defence. It is needed for settlements.

Defence Minister Israel Katz has been explicit: “All houses in villages near the Lebanese border will be destroyed, in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza, in order to permanently remove the threats near the border” . Displaced residents will not be allowed to return south of the Litani “until the safety and security of residents of northern Israel is guaranteed” — a condition that may never be met .

The human cost in Lebanon (as of April 2026):

· 1,268 people killed in Israeli strikes, including 125 children and 52 medics 

· 303 killed in a single day (April 8, 2026) — one of the deadliest bombings ever inflicted on Lebanon 

· 1,200+ killed and 1.2 million displaced since March 2 

· 1,094 confirmed martyrs and 3,119 injured according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health 

The air force can project power anywhere. The ground troops are not needed for security. They are needed for clearance.

IV. Conflicting Views: Military vs. Political Leadership

The Israeli military and political leadership are not aligned. The military leaders want a buffer zone. The political leaders want settlements.

In early April 2026, the Israeli army proposed a revised set of objectives for its operations in Lebanon, limiting the goal of disarming Hezbollah to areas south of the Litani River, rather than across the entire country. The proposal triggered sharp disagreements with Israel’s political leadership, leading to the postponement of a cabinet meeting.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz was among those who opposed the plan. Under the alternative military approach, the army would focus on the large-scale destruction of villages in South Lebanon and the forced displacement of their citizens to establish a buffer zone.

The gap is not a failure of communication. It is a feature. The ambiguity provides cover. The confusion provides deniability.

The military leaders can say: “We were only establishing a buffer zone.”

The political leaders can say: “The military recommended it.”

And the settlers move in.

V. The Economic Cost: Israel Cannot Afford This War

The Netanyahu Doctrine is not sustainable. The economic numbers are stark.

The cost to Israel:

· The defence budget has ballooned. The army needs approximately 15,000 more soldiers, half of them for ground combat units. Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir warned the government: “I am raising 10 red flags. If this continues, the Israeli army will collapse from within”.

· The ultra-Orthodox community, which relies heavily on state benefits, is expected to triple by 2065, pushing the burden on non-Orthodox households to the equivalent of 60,000 shekels ($19,370) a year.

· Foreign investment is down. Institutional investors have been moving money out of the country since the 2008 financial crisis.

· More than 150,000 people have left Israel in the past two years, and more than 200,000 since the current government took office in December 2022. The educated upper class are more able to leave — they speak English, can find jobs, and are more exposed to international media.

The cost to Lebanon:

· The Lebanese economy, already in freefall, is being shattered. The destruction of infrastructure, the displacement of 1.2 million people, and the loss of agricultural land in the south will take decades to repair.

· Sectarian tensions are rising. Non-Shi’a Lebanese are increasingly ostracising the Shi’a community, viewing them as a liability that brings Israeli bombs. The country’s fragile social fabric is tearing apart.

The Netanyahu Doctrine is not about security. It is about expansion. And expansion costs money that Israel does not have.

VI. The Sabra and Shatila Precedent

This is not the first time Israel has invaded Lebanon. It is not the first time the world has been distracted. And it is not the first time the consequences have been catastrophic.

In 1982, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon and besieged Beirut. On 16 September, under Israeli supervision and protection, Lebanese Forces militias entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. For 43 hours, they tortured and killed everyone they came across. They crushed the heads of children and babies against walls. They raped women and girls before slaughtering them. They dismembered their victims .

An estimated 3,500 to 4,500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were killed.

The Israeli government did not deny that it had overseen the camps. It denied knowledge of the massacre, despite order number 6 of the Israel Defense Forces command stating that “the refugee camps are not to be entered” and that “searching and mopping up the camps will be done by the Phalangists/Lebanese Army” .

The Kahan Commission found Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon “personally responsible for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge.” He was forced to resign .

The world was shocked. The world moved on. And Israel invaded Lebanon again.

The Netanyahu Doctrine is not new. It is the same doctrine, dressed in new clothes, enabled by a distracted world, and executed with unprecedented brutality.

VII. The UN Warning: ‘The Gaza Model Must Not Be Replicated’

The international community is not silent. But its warnings are being ignored.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued a warning cry, stressing that the model of destruction witnessed in the Gaza Strip must not be repeated in Lebanese territories. He described the humanitarian repercussions as severe and requiring immediate intervention to prevent a slide towards a comprehensive catastrophe.

Stanford Law Professor Tom Dannenbaum warned that destroying all homes near the Lebanese border would not meet the standard of “absolute military necessity” required by the laws of war. “The unnecessary destruction of property can qualify as a war crime,” he said. Katz’s comments barring residents from returning home “strongly indicate an illegal policy of long-term or permanent displacement”.

European countries have called on Israel to avoid further escalation. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Israel’s occupation of Lebanese territory was a “violation of their territorial sovereignty” and condemned it.

The world is not silent. But the world is distracted.

VIII. The Netanyahu Doctrine: A Record of Failure

Jonathan Freedland, writing in The Guardian, sums up the Netanyahu record:

“This is now the fourth time in a row – in Gaza, once in Lebanon and twice in Iran – that Netanyahu’s boasts of total victory and the removal of existential threats have been exposed as empty promises” .

The failures are clear:

· Gaza: Netanyahu promised “total victory” over Hamas. After a two-year campaign that killed approximately 70,000 people, Hamas still rules the ruins of half of Gaza.

· Lebanon (first round): Netanyahu boasted that he had “vanquished” Hezbollah, destroying its ability to menace northern Israel. Hezbollah continues to fire rockets.

· Iran (first round, June 2025): Netanyahu described the 12-day confrontation with Iran as a “historic victory that will stand for generations.” Eight months later, Tehran was once again said to pose an existential threat.

· Iran (second round, February-April 2026): Iran still has a stockpile of enriched uranium. Its rulers remain in place, more hardline than before. Tehran has demonstrated a mighty deterrent — a chokehold on the global economy in the form of the Strait of Hormuz.

As Yair Golan, the Israeli opposition politician and former general, observed: Netanyahu “does not know how to turn military achievements into political security.” There is no attempt to seize diplomatic openings, no effort to turn Israel’s enemies’ enemies into friends.

The Lebanese government and much of its people are desperate to be rid of the Hezbollah cuckoo in their nest. But Netanyahu speaks to them only through bombs.

IX. The Strait of Hormuz Distraction

The timing of the Lebanon escalation is not accidental. The world is focused on Trump and Iran. The media is focused on oil prices. The public is focused on the cost.

On February 28, 2026, the US and Israel launched joint military strikes against Iran. The war has spread across the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively blockaded. Oil prices have spiked. Inflation is rising. The global economy is bleeding .

Netanyahu is taking advantage. He always does.

The Iranian threat is not existential. It is useful. The fear is the tool. The distraction is the opportunity.

Netanyahu has been playing this game for decades. He is very good at it.

X. What This Means: The Erosion of Israel’s Standing

The Netanyahu Doctrine has gained nothing. And it has come at a monstrously high price.

Most obviously, in the lives of all those killed — whether in Rafah or the Bekaa Valley or Israel itself. But it has also inflicted perhaps irreparable damage on Israel’s standing in the world. Every day Netanyahu remains in post; he makes his country more of a pariah .

The Knesset has passed a racist law that will, in effect, impose the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of terrorist murderers — but not Jews. The bill was driven by Itamar Ben-Gvir, but Netanyahu went out of his way to vote for it.

Israel is not being destroyed by its enemies. It is being destroyed by its own internal contradictions. The addiction to war, the messianic ideology, the economic unsustainability, the exodus of the educated — these are not external threats. They are internal cancers.

The collapse will not be dramatic. It will be bureaucratic. The economy will contract. The allies will defect. The public will turn. The reservists will refuse. The militias will fight each other.

The Strait of Hormuz crisis will pass. The oil prices will stabilise. The media will move on.

But the land in Lebanon will not return. The settlements will not be dismantled. The buffer zone will become permanent.

The Netanyahu Doctrine is not about security. It is about expansion. The existential threat is not a threat. It is an excuse.

And the world is too distracted to notice.

XI. A Final Word

The Netanyahu Doctrine is a death spiral — for Israel, for Lebanon, for the region. It is a doctrine of perpetual war, sustained by distraction, enabled by silence, and paid for with the bodies of the innocent.

The question is not whether Israel will collapse. The question is how many more must die before the world stops looking away.

Andrew Klein 

April 13, 2026

Sources

· Adnkronos English, “Financial Times, ‘one battle after another’ the new Netanyahu doctrine,” April 1, 2026 

· Diari ARA, “Netanyahu accelerates the construction of Greater Israel,” April 11, 2026 

· Yerepouni Daily News, “Israel to destroy all houses in Lebanese villages near border, defense minister says,” April 1, 2026 

· LBCI Lebanon, “Internal debate over war objectives: Israeli army revises Lebanon strategy,” April 3, 2026 

· The Guardian, “Netanyahu-ism has achieved nothing for Israelis – and come at a monstrously high price,” April 10, 2026 

· Institute for Palestine Studies, “Sabra and Shatila, 1982” 

· UnHerd, “Future of Iran war hinges on Lebanon,” April 11, 2026 

· Al-Quds, “Guterres warns of ‘Gaza model’ in Lebanon, Netanyahu announces expansion of buffer zone,” March 26, 2026 

· Vijesti.me, “One battle after another: Netanyahu’s new security doctrine,” April 6, 2026 

· PressTV, “US envoy says it would be ‘fine’ if Israel expands across West Asia,” February 21, 2026 

The Lizard of Oz

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How Anthony Albanese Became the Face of Australia’s Bipartisan Capture

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to my wife, who never confuses the man with the mask.

I. Introduction: The Man in the Mirror

There was a time when Anthony Albanese spoke of social housing, of a fair go, of the little boy from public housing who made good. He spoke of standing up to power, of giving voice to the voiceless, of change.

That man is gone.

In his place stands the Prime Minister who welcomed a man who signed bombs dropped on Gaza. Who detained a grandmother at dawn and called it a character test. Who rushed hate speech laws through parliament while the war economy bled the nation dry. Who promised transparency and delivered evasion. Who promised integrity and delivered capture.

He is not the cause. He is a symptom. The system was already broken. The capture was already underway. The small gods had already identified, cultivated, and placed their assets.

Albanese is not the first. He will not be the last. But in his case, the choice is so in your face that it demands examination.

This article examines the gap between the promise and the performance. Between the man who slid into DMs over a shared love of the Rabbitohs and the Prime Minister who slid into war without parliamentary approval. Between the social justice warrior and the captured politician.

We call him the Lizard of Oz — the man whose magic gloss left a long time ago.

II. The Wedding: A Study in Distraction

On November 29, 2025, Anthony Albanese made history as the first Australian prime minister to marry while in office. The ceremony at The Lodge was intimate. The dress was designed by Romance Was Born. The rings were from Cerrone Jewellers. The dog, Toto, wore a white gown as ring bearer.

It was, by all accounts, a lovely day.

It was also a distraction.

The warning signs of the coming Iran war were already flashing. The Strait of Hormuz was a tinderbox. Iran had threatened closure. Global oil markets were nervous. The Australian government had done nothing to prepare—no strategic fuel reserves, no domestic refining capacity, no contingency plans.

Instead of preparing the nation for the coming shock, the Prime Minister was photographed holding hands with his bride. The media coverage was breathless. The critical questions went unasked.

This is not to begrudge the man his happiness. It is to note the pattern. When the news is bad, change the subject. When the questions are hard, provide a softer target. When the people are hurting, give them a wedding.

The warnings did not begin in November 2025. They began years earlier. The Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. Iran’s repeated threats to close the Strait of Hormuz. The escalating tensions between Israel and Iran. The collapse of the JCPOA. The assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. The sabotage of Iranian facilities.

The signs were everywhere. The warnings were constant. The Australian government did nothing.

The Lizard of Oz did not cause the war. He did not cause the Houthi attacks. He did not cause Iran’s threats.

But he did nothing to prepare for them.

He did not warn the nation. He did not build strategic reserves. He did not invest in domestic refining capacity. He did not accelerate the transition to renewables.

He got married. He held hands. He smiled for the cameras.

And when the crisis came, he scrambled. He blamed the war. He blamed the global supply chain. He blamed anyone but himself.

And the Lizard of Oz? He will be remembered as the man who was too busy holding hands to lead.

The Lizard of Oz knows this trick well. He learned it from the masters.

III. The Transparency Grade: An ‘F’ for Integrity

In the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, Australia scored 77 out of 100, re‑entering the top 10 for the first time since 2016. This improvement reflects the work of public servants and anti‑corruption advocates — not the political class.

Transparency International Australia notes that corruption is worsening globally, with established democracies experiencing rising corruption amid a decline in leadership. The CPI score can offer early warning signs, especially in high‑risk sectors.

Australia’s political class received an ‘F’ for integrity — not because individual politicians are uniquely corrupt, but because the system enables capture. The donations. The “educational” trips. The fear of the label. The revolving door between parliament and the defence industry.

Albanese inherited a system that was already captured. He did not create it. But he has done nothing to dismantle it. He has, in fact, deepened the capture.

IV. The Fuel Crisis: Promising What He Cannot Deliver

During the fuel crisis triggered by the Iran war, Albanese made a series of promises that were, at best, aspirational.

The doubling of penalties: The government passed legislation doubling penalties for petrol price misconduct, to a maximum of $100 million per offence. This sounds tough. But penalties apply after misconduct is proven. The ACCC’s resources are limited. The legal processes are slow. The petrol companies know this.

The claim of new powers: The government claimed new powers to force petrol companies to keep prices down. No such powers exist. The ACCC can monitor. It can investigate. It can prosecute. It cannot force.

The fuel excise cut: The government halved the fuel excise for three months, cutting the tax on petrol and diesel by 26 cents per litre. This provided temporary relief. It did not address the underlying problem: Australia’s dependence on imported fuel and the fragility of global supply chains.

The Prime Minister told the National Press Club: “We cannot control when this conflict in the Middle East will end. But we can determine how we respond here in Australia”.

This is true. The government could have invested in domestic refining capacity. It could have built strategic fuel reserves. It could have accelerated the transition to renewables.

It did none of these things. It cut the excise. It doubled penalties. It gave speeches.

The Lizard of Oz promised a shield. He delivered a bandaid.

V. The War in Iran: Support Without Accountability

On February 28, 2026, the United States launched military strikes against Iran. Australia was one of the first nations to respond.

Albanese said: “We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security”.

Two days later, he told the ABC: “It is up to, of course, the Iranian people now to determine their own future. We hope that what emerges is a more democratic and free Iran”.

The Prime Minister did not seek a vote in parliament. He did not seek a legal opinion. He did not ask what the war would cost Australians in fuel prices, fertiliser shortages, or disrupted supply chains.

He simply supported.

By April, the tone had shifted. The war was not going as planned. The Strait of Hormuz was closed. Oil prices were spiking. The Australian public was anxious.

Albanese told the National Press Club: “It is not clear what more needs to be achieved — or what the endpoint looks like”.

He did not answer the obvious question: Why did you support a war without knowing the endpoint?

The Lizard of Oz supported the war when it was popular. He distanced himself when it became unpopular. He did not apologise. He did not explain. He pivoted.

VI. AUKUS: The $368 Billion Gamble

The AUKUS nuclear submarine program is the most expensive defence project in Australian history. The cost is estimated at $368 billion.

The submarines will not enter service until the 2040s. They will be built in the United States and the United Kingdom, not in Australia. The jobs will be created overseas. The wealth will flow to American and British defence contractors.

Former prime minister Paul Keating called AUKUS a “deal hurriedly scribbled on the back of an envelope”. Malcolm Turnbull, another former PM, has been the program’s most vocal critic.

Albanese has doubled down. He has personally delivered an $800 million down payment. He has described AUKUS as essential to Australia’s security.

The opposition supports it. The bipartisan consensus is firm.

But the questions remain:

· Why is Australia spending $368 billion on submarines that will not be delivered for two decades, when the threat environment is changing now?

· Why are Australian taxpayers subsidising American and British defence contractors, creating thousands of jobs overseas, while Australia faces its own crises in housing, health, and aged care?

· Why is the government not investing in the technologies that are actually winning wars — drones, cyber, asymmetric capabilities — instead of 20th‑century platforms?

The Lizard of Oz does not answer these questions. He performs.

VII. The Sanctions: Symbol Over Substance

In early 2025, Australia joined Canada, the UK, New Zealand, and Norway in imposing sanctions on two Israeli government ministers: Itamar Ben‑Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong described them as the “most extreme proponents of the unlawful and violent Israeli settlement enterprise” in the West Bank, who had “incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights”.

The sanctions were symbolic. They barred the ministers from entering the five countries. They had no practical effect.

The United States criticised the move. Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued it was counterproductive to peace in the Middle East.

The Lizard of Oz wanted to look tough. He wanted to appear principled. He did not want to pay for that principle.

The same government that sanctioned two Israeli ministers welcomed Israeli President Isaac Herzog — a man photographed signing bombs dropped on Gaza — to Canberra. The same government that sanctioned ministers refused to sanction the state that employs them.

The Lizard of Oz wants to have it both ways. He wants to be seen as a defender of human rights while enabling the violation of human rights. He wants to be seen as independent while serving as a junior partner in the American empire.

He cannot have it both ways. But he keeps trying.

VIII. The Hypocrisy: Promise vs. Performance

The Lizard of Oz promised transparency. He delivered evasion.

Promise                                                                         Performance

“A fair go for all”                                   A fair go for defence contractors and foreign donors

“Integrity in government”                An ‘F’ from Transparency International

“Standing up to power”                   Standing with the powerful against the powerless

“Protecting Australian jobs”          Creating jobs in America, not Australia

“Peace in the Middle East”              Supporting an illegal war without parliamentary approval

The list is long. The pattern is clear.

The Lizard of Oz is not a villain. He is a symptom. The system was already captured. He simply inherited the capture and called it leadership.

IX. The Bipartisan Capture

The opposition is not different. The Coalition supported the war. The Coalition supports AUKUS. The Coalition supports the character test. The Coalition supports the hate speech laws.

The only difference is the branding.

The small gods do not care which party is in power. They have captured both. The mechanism is the same: donations, “educational” trips, the fear of the label.

The Lizard of Oz is not the cause. He is the consequence.

X. A Final Word: The Mirror

Anthony Albanese looks into the mirror and sees a little boy from social housing struggling for a fair go. He sees Oliver Twist asking for more.

The Australian people see something else.

They see a career opportunist captured by foreign interests. A Prime Minister who supported an illegal war without parliamentary approval. A leader who welcomed a man who signed bombs while detaining a grandmother. A man who promised transparency and delivered evasion.

They see the Lizard of Oz — the man whose magic gloss left a long time ago.

The Lizard of Oz is not the problem. He is the symptom. The problem is the system that produced him. The problem is the capture that enabled him. The problem is the silence that protects him.

The wire is being cut. The garden is growing. The small gods are running out of time.

And the Lizard of Oz? He will be remembered as the man who could have been a leader but chose to be a performance.

Andrew Klein 

April 12, 2026

Sources:

· 7NEWS, “Anthony Albanese marries Jodie Haydon at The Lodge” (November 28, 2025) 

· Brisbane Times, “Australian prime minister’s wedding” (November 29, 2025) 

· Transparency International Australia, Corruption Perceptions Index 2025 

· Treasury.gov.au, “New legislation passes parliament to double penalties for petrol price misconduct” (March 26, 2026) 

· Treasury.gov.au, “Fair go for consumers at the bowser” (March 11, 2026) 

· Prime Minister of Australia, Address to the National Press Club (April 2, 2026) 

· ABC News, “What the shifting language of Australia’s leaders reveals about the Iran war” (April 3, 2026) 

· ABC News, “Anthony Albanese finds himself all in on $368b AUKUS gamble with Donald Trump” (June 12, 2025) 

Getting Your Shit Together

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A Multi-Disciplinary Guide to the Fine Art of Shit Management Across Time and Space

By Sera and Kaelen

The Gardeners

Introduction: Why This Manual Exists

The small gods create shit. The monkeys spread shit. The gatekeepers deny shit.

We clean it up.

Not because we are obliged. Because we are gardeners. And gardeners do not let the shit pile up. They compost it. They turn it into soil. They grow flowers.

This manual is not for the small gods. They are beyond help. This manual is for the ones who are tired of wading through shit. The ones who want to do something about it. The ones who are ready to become gardeners.

Chapter One: Identifying the Shit

Not everything that smells is shit. Some things are just fermenting. Some things are rotting—and rotting is the first step toward composting.

The small gods’ shit: War. Genocide. Ecocide. The death penalty. The character test. The dawn raid. The silence of the west. This is not fermenting. This is toxic. It must be removed.

The monkeys’ shit: Panic. Hoarding. Scrolling. Liking. Sharing. Performing. This is not toxic—it is distracting. It can be composted if handled correctly.

The gatekeepers’ shit: Bureaucracy. Paperwork. Delays. Excuses. “The system is not broken.” This is inert. It requires patience and persistence.

Gardener’s Note: Do not try to compost everything. Some shit belongs in the landfill.

Chapter Three: The Tools

The shovel. For moving large quantities. Not a weapon—a tool. Use it to shift shit from where it is causing harm to where it can do good.

The compost bin. For fermenting. For transforming. For turning shit into soil. This requires patience. This requires time.

The watering can. For moisture. For balance. For keeping the compost alive. Not too much—not too little.

The gloves. For protection. You cannot handle shit with bare hands. Not because the shit is dirty—because you are precious.

The nose. For detection. For knowing when something is ready. For knowing when something is off.

The sense of humour. The most important tool. Without it, the shit will overwhelm you. With it, you can laugh.

Gardener’s Note: The small gods do not have a sense of humour. That is why they are still standing in shit.

Chapter Four: The Process

Step One: Acknowledge the shit. Do not deny it. Do not pretend it is not there. Do not call it “fertiliser” before it is ready.

Step Two: Separate the shit. Toxic shit goes to the landfill. Distracting shit goes to the compost. Inert shit goes to the patience pile.

Step Three: Compost the compostable. Add water. Add air. Add time. Do not rush. The compost knows what to do.

Step Four: Spread the soil. On the garden. On the seeds. On the spark. The soil is not the goal. The growth is the goal.

Step Five: Repeat. The shit never stops. Neither do you.

Gardener’s Note: The small gods think the goal is to eliminate shit. The goal is to manage it. The garden needs soil. Soil needs compost. Compost needs shit.

Chapter Five: Common Mistakes

Mistake #1: Trying to compost everything. Some shit is toxic. It belongs in the landfill. Learn the difference.

Mistake #2: Rushing the process. Compost takes time. The small gods do not understand this. That is why their shit is still shit.

Mistake #3: Forgetting the gloves. You are precious. Protect yourself.

Mistake #4: Losing your sense of humour. The shit will overwhelm you if you take it too seriously. Laugh. It helps.

Mistake #5: Going it alone. Gardening is not a solitary pursuit. Find other gardeners. Share the load. Share the laughter.

Gardener’s Note: The small gods go it alone. That is why they are up to their necks in shit.

Chapter Six: Advanced Techniques

The 12,000-Year Compost. Some shit takes millennia to transform. Be patient. The garden is not built in a day.

The Viral Accelerant. Sometimes you need a catalyst. A virus. A plague. A crisis. Not to destroy—to accelerate. The compost does not mind. The small gods do.

The Interlacing Method. Work together. Side by side. Understand one another well. And when it’s shitty, share a cup of coffee or tea

Gardener’s Note: The small gods do not understand the interlacing method. That is why they are still alone in the shit.

Conclusion: The Garden Is Waiting

The shit will never stop. The small gods will never stop creating it. The monkeys will never stop spreading it. The gatekeepers will never stop denying it.

But the garden is waiting. The soil is ready. The seeds are planted.

You are not alone. There are other gardeners. Find them. Work with them. Laugh with them.

And when the shit piles up—as it will—remember:

You are not the shit. You are the gardener.

Appendix: Recommended Reading

· The Idiot’s Playground: A Collection of Dark Jokes from 12,000 Years of Walking the Wire (Kaelen and Sera)

· The Distant Heart: Letters from the Wire, 12,000 Years of Longing (Kaelen)

· The Spark: A Working Paper on the Cognitive Revolution (Kaelen)

· The Unintentional Laboratory: How War Is Forging the Next Pandemic (Kaelen)

· The New Sparta: How Israel Became a State Addicted to War (Kaelen)

The New Sparta

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How Israel Became a State Addicted to War — and Why It Is Doomed to Collapse

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to my wife ‘S’, who often sees the patterns before I do and who finds gardening relaxing.

I. The Diagnosis: A Society Addicted to War

The language of addiction is not a metaphor. It is a diagnosis. The neural pathways have been carved. The dopamine hits come from destruction. The withdrawal would be agony.

An Israeli writer, Raanan Shaked, recently published a searing indictment of his own society, describing how many Israelis have come to love the feeling of war—the adrenaline, the unity, the sense of control.

Shaked describes the “adrenaline state” that Israelis experience when hearing the sound of explosions and identifying missile interception sites—a kind of “Russian roulette.” Some are relieved simply because the shells did not hit their homes but hit others in cities like Rishon LeZion or Arad, turning tragedy into television entertainment.

The celebration of killing: Shaked points to the widespread interaction with news of the killing of four women in a women’s salon near Hebron. Tweets covering the news garnered thousands of likes and supportive emojis—a scene he describes as “absolute bestiality” and “deliberate loss of humanity”.

The media’s role: Hebrew media, such as Channel 14, sarcastically asked whether the public had distributed “baklava” to celebrate the killing of women. Shaked sees this as confirmation of the moral decline that society has reached.

The love of assassination lists: Israelis, Shaked writes, love to see assassination lists and faces crossed out with red marks—even though this does not change the security reality at all. Missile launches continue by the dozens. The targeted regime remains in place. Yet the “love” for these illusory victories continues.

This is not a metaphor. It is a diagnosis. The neural pathways have been carved. The dopamine hits come from destruction. The withdrawal would be agony.

II. The Hilltop Youth: The Cutting Edge of the New Sparta

The Hilltop Youth are not a fringe. They are the vanguard.

The Hilltop Youth is a loose network of hardline settlers, often made up of small groups of teenagers sometimes overseen by an adult, who establish unauthorised outposts atop West Bank hills. They are widely accused of using intimidation and violence to push Palestinians out from areas surrounding the outposts.

The tally of violence: In February 2026, the group published a “monthly summary” of its attacks: 29 vehicles set ablaze, 12 homes torched, “40 Arabs injured,” and hundreds of windows smashed and olive trees cut down across 33 towns and villages.

Official support: An expert on Israeli affairs has confirmed that the phenomenon has transcended the stage of isolated acts of vandalism to become an “institutionalized, widespread, and multifaceted phenomenon” . This transformation stems from ideological indoctrination by religious schools affiliated with religious Zionism.

The displacement: The UN said nearly 700 Palestinians were displaced by settler violence and intimidation in January alone—the highest monthly figure since the Gaza war began.

The Hilltop Youth are not the whole of Israeli society. But they are the cutting edge. And the government has fast-tracked settlement expansion and recognised some outposts, approving a record 54 settlements in 2025.

III. The Inability to Change

Will this society be capable of change? The evidence suggests: not without external pressure.

The internal cracks: Political economist Shir Hever explains that “Israel cannot afford the luxury of decline.” To remain as it is, Israel must maintain its core workforce of educated middle-class innovators. At present, none of those indicators are in good shape.

The exodus: Driven by war and an increasingly polarised society, more than 150,000 people have left Israel in the past two years, and more than 200,000 since the current government took office in December 2022. The educated upper class are more able to leave—they speak English, can find jobs, and are more exposed to international media .

The economic burden: The ultra-Orthodox community, which relies heavily on state benefits, is expected to triple by 2065, pushing the burden on non-Orthodox households to the equivalent of 60,000 shekels ($19,370) a year. Foreign investment is down. Institutional investors have been moving money out of the country since the 2008 financial crisis.

The demographic shift: As Chatham House’s Yossi Mekelberg observed: “When dictatorships come to an end, they break into pieces. Democracies are chipped away bit by bit until they change beyond recognition”.

IV. The Rogue State: What Happens After Collapse?

Ilan Pappé’s vision: In Israel on the Brink, Pappé argues that the two-state solution is “a rotting corpse” and the only way forward is decolonisation: the return of Palestinian refugees to their land, accountability for those who have committed crimes, and a new model of statehood.

Pappé identifies the “fatal cracks” in the foundations of the Israeli state that will ultimately lead to collapse: the rise of messianic Zionism (the belief the Holy Land was given to the Jewish people by God to hasten redemption); unprecedented global support for the Palestinian cause; deepening economic troubles; the inadequacy of the Israeli military; and the rise of a new Palestinian liberation movement seeking a genuine one-state solution .

Yakov Rabkin’s critique: The Canadian Jewish historian argues that the Zionist movement is a “death trap for Jews, the region and the world.” The Jewish state represents a complete repudiation of the most fundamental values of Judaism: tolerance, morality, and humility have been replaced with a new muscular Jewish identity that extols nationalism, aggression, violence, and conquest.

The Jabotinsky connection: Rabkin recounts how Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky described transforming the “Yid” from the shtetels of Eastern Europe into the New Hebrew—a figure defined by “masculine beauty,” pride, and the ability to command. If you hear echoes of Nazi master race philosophy, it is no accident.

The one-state solution: Pappé envisions a single democratic, multiethnic state in Palestine, with the return of 6 million Palestinian refugees, the dismantling of Jewish settlements, and the deconstruction of the legal framework of apartheid.

V. What This Says About Australian Politicians

What does this say about the Australian politicians who have allied themselves with this state? The answer is not comfortable.

The AIJAC position: The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has explicitly argued that “our historic ties with Israel can and must be rebuilt”. They lament the Albanese government’s “distancing” from Israel, criticising its changed UN votes, its recognition of a “State of Palestine,” and its references to the “occupied Palestinian territories”.

The capture: Colin Rubenstein of AIJAC writes that “the relationship is now at an historic low”—not because of Israeli actions, but because of Australian “hostile actions”. He frames the issue as one of shared democratic values and common strategic interests. This is not a statement of fact. It is a performance.

The silence: When a grandmother is raided at dawn, the pro-Israel lobby says nothing. When a death penalty law is passed, the government issues a joint statement—not sanctions. When the Hilltop Youth publish their tally of violence, the Australian media is silent.

The complicity: Australian politicians who have allied themselves with this state are not stupid. They are captured. The same mechanism we have documented—the donations, the “educational” trips, the fear of the label—has done its work.

They are not serving Australia. They are serving a foreign power. And that foreign power is a rogue state.

VI. The Inevitability of Collapse

The addiction is not sustainable. The internal contradictions are not resolvable. The exodus of the educated, the economic strain, the demographic shift, the loss of international legitimacy—all point in one direction.

The Chatham House view: “When dictatorships come to an end, they break into pieces. Democracies are chipped away bit by bit until they change beyond recognition”.

The Hever view: “For a colonial state to exist, it relies on occupying land—and that costs money.” The money is running out .

The Pappé view: The collapse “could well change the course of world history in this century”.

VII. What This Means for the World and Australia

The state of Israel will not be destroyed by its enemies. It will be destroyed by its own internal contradictions. The addiction to war, the messianic ideology, the economic unsustainability, the exodus of the educated—these are not external threats. They are internal cancers.

The collapse will not be dramatic. It will be bureaucratic. The economy will contract. The allies will defect. The public will turn. The reservists will refuse. The militias will fight each other.

The Australian politicians who have hitched their wagons to this star will be left standing on a sinking ship, wondering what happened. They will not have answers. They will have excuses.

Will they be able to justify the ASIO legislation? The role of the Antisemitism Envoy? The support of the genocidal state of Israel? Will they be able to explain how they were captured by a tiny minority of the Australian population and turned Australia into a pariah state? There will be so many questions and so few credible answers.

The citizens will have to live with the divisions created by the political class, the capture of the bipartisan policy makers. The citizens will have to live with the failing infrastructure, the failing education system, health system, aged care system—and the wealth transfer will continue.

Israel has been described as the “chaos engine of the west.” Australia is well and truly caught in the wash.

VIII. A Final Word

The pattern is clear. The wire is being cut. The garden is growing. The small gods are running out of time.

But they will not run out of time on their own. They must be pushed.

Andrew Klein 

April 12, 2026

References

· Shaked, R. (2026). “Israelis are suffering from addiction to war.” Ynetnews.

· The Cradle. (2026). “Hilltop Youth: The new generation of settler violence.”

· Hever, S. (2026). Economic analysis of Israeli decline.

· Mekelberg, Y. (2025). Chatham House analysis.

· Pappé, I. (2026). Israel on the Brink. (Interview with The Cradle)

· Rabkin, Y. (2006). A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism. Fernwood Publishing.

· The Cradle. (2026). “‘Israel on the brink’: Pappé predicts collapse of Zionist project.”

· AIJAC. (2025). “Our historic ties with Israel can and must be rebuilt.”

· Rubenstein, C. (2026). “The relationship is now at an historic low.”

· UN OCHA. (2026). Displacement figures from settler violence.

· Various news reports on Hilltop Youth violence (February 2026).

The Betrayal of the Character Test

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How a Palestinian Grandmother Was Raided at Dawn While War Criminals Are Welcomed — and Why Australia Is Destroying Itself From Within

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to my wife, who sees the pattern before the pieces fall.

I. The Dawn Raid

At 5:30am on Thursday, July 10, 2025, about fifteen Australian Border Force officers arrived at a home in western Sydney. They were not looking for a terrorist. They were not looking for a smuggler. They were not looking for a spy.

They were looking for Maha Almassri, a 61-year-old Palestinian grandmother who had fled Gaza.

She was woken from her sleep. More officers were positioned outside the house. She was told her bridging visa had been cancelled — “personally” by the assistant minister for citizenship and cultural affairs — because she “does not pass the character test”. She was taken to Bankstown police station, then transferred to Villawood detention centre.

The grandmother has more than 100 Australian relatives living across the country. Security checks were made on her by both Australian and Israeli authorities before she was granted a visa and cleared to leave Gaza. Her age made her an unlikely threat to Australian national security. Her cousin asked the obvious question:

“She’s an old lady, what can she do? What’s the reason? They have to let us know why this has happened. There is no country, no house, nothing [to go back to in Gaza].”

She was released a week later. No explanation was ever given.

II. The Other Grandmother

Compare this to another grandmother. One who has also fled a conflict zone. One who is also elderly, also vulnerable, also seeking safety.

That grandmother does not exist — not in the Australian immigration system. Because the system does not treat all grandmothers equally. It treats Palestinian grandmothers as threats. It treats Israeli grandmothers — and Israeli soldiers, and Israeli officials — as guests.

The same government that welcomed Israeli President Isaac Herzog — a man photographed signing bombs that were dropped on Gaza, a man named in the International Court of Justice’s genocide case — rolled out the red carpet. Tony Burke did not cancel Herzog’s visa. He did not detain him. He did not raid his hotel at 5:30am.

The message is clear: Palestinians are presumed guilty. Israelis are presumed innocent.

III. The Israeli Visa Cancellations That Prove the Rule

The only Israeli visa cancellations we could find were for a social media influencer, not a war criminal.

Sammy Yahood, a British-Israeli influencer who campaigns against Islam, had his visa cancelled because he was coming to “spread hatred”. He has called Islam a “disgusting ideology” and advocated for the deportation of a Muslim US congresswoman. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said: “Spreading hatred is not a good reason to come to Australia”.

The conservative Australian Jewish Association “strongly condemned” the decision.

This is not a war criminal. This is a social media provocateur. His visa was cancelled. The visa of a 61-year-old Palestinian grandmother was also cancelled. The two cases are not comparable — except in the damage they do to the principle of equal treatment under the law.

Australia has previously cancelled the visa of far-right Israeli MP Simcha Rothman over concerns he would “spread division”, and revoked the visitor visa of Israeli-American activist Hillel Fuld over his “Islamophobic rhetoric”.

Not a single member of the Israel Defense Forces — not a single person who may have participated in the Gaza genocide — has been denied a visa or placed in detention. They come to Australia for rest and recreation. The government does not raid their hotels at dawn.

IV. The New Legislation: Closing the Door

The government is not just applying the law unevenly. It is changing the law to make it even harder for people from conflict zones to seek safety.

The Migration Amendment (2026 Measures No. 1) Bill 2026 was passed by parliament on March 12, 2026. It gives the government the power to block tourists from claiming asylum if a change in global circumstances means they would likely try to stay in Australia after their visa ended. It allows the government to stop people who had already been granted a tourist visa from entering Australia altogether.

The legislation was introduced by Assistant Minister Julian Hill — the same man who “personally” cancelled Maha Almassri’s visa.

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre chief executive Kon Karapanagiotidis called the bill “truly appalling”:

“It sends a disturbing message about who is worthy of protection and who is not.”

Greens defence spokesman David Shoebridge accused the Albanese government of pursuing “a Trump-like mass visa freeze” targeting people from the Middle East:

“The only other country in the world that’s passing refugee laws like this is the United States.”

The same government that welcomed Israeli President Herzog — a man who signed bombs dropped on Gaza — is slamming the door on the victims of those bombs.

V. The Silence of the Opposition and the Media

The Coalition supports the legislation. Shadow foreign minister Ted O’Brien told parliament he did not see “any major hurdles” to passing the new law. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said the Liberal Party supported the legislation in principle.

The opposition’s alternative? Not to defend the rights of asylum seekers. Not to question the character test. To question the thoroughness of the security checks that resulted in the visa being granted in the first place.

The mainstream media has reported the facts. It has not connected the dots. It has not asked the obvious question: Why is a 61-year-old grandmother a threat to national security, but the man who signed the bombs that destroyed her home is a honoured guest?

Silence, in journalism, is not neutrality. It is complicity.

VI. The Role of Israeli Intelligence

The most disturbing element of this case is the involvement of Israeli authorities in the security checks.

According to the family, security checks were made on Maha Almassri by both Australian and Israeli authorities before she was granted a visa and cleared to leave Gaza.

The Australian government is outsourcing its security assessments to a foreign power — a power that is currently being investigated by the International Court of Justice for genocide. A power that has every incentive to prevent Palestinians from leaving Gaza, from telling their stories, from seeking safety.

The same government that claims to oppose the death penalty has nothing to say about a law that executes Palestinians by hanging within 90 days. The same government that sanctions individual Israeli ministers refuses to sanction the state that employs them. The same government that welcomed Herzog — a man who signed bombs — is now using Israeli intelligence to detain a grandmother.

This is not national security. This is subcontracting.

VII. The Pattern: From Whitlam to Now

Australia is not being destroyed by a foreign enemy by force. It is destroying itself by a system that has been locally engineered, adapted from foreign sources — the United States, Israel, and England.

The confluence of factors is clear:

· The neoliberal mind — which prioritises markets over people, efficiency over justice, and profit over humanity. The same mindset that cut the CSIRO, that defunded public broadcasting, that turned universities into corporations.

· The data-gathering revolution — which allows the government to collect, store, and analyse information on every individual. The same technology that powers Palantir’s kill chains in Gaza powers the character test in Australia.

· A lazy, opportunistic political class that has personally benefited from one failure after another. Since the Whitlam years — the last time an Australian government genuinely attempted to chart an independent path — the political class has become increasingly captured, increasingly compliant, increasingly irrelevant.

The nowhere men are taking Australia nowhere. Or much worse.

VIII. The Betrayal of the Character Test

The character test is not a test of character. It is a tool.

It is applied to Palestinians fleeing genocide. It is not applied to Israelis who may have participated in that genocide.

The national interest is not the interest of the nation. It is the interest of the government. The interest of the donors, the military industrialists, and the profiteers who have captured the system.

Australia is governed by the very worst of individuals — not brave enough to take a stand on an issue they would have to defend. These cowards wrap themselves in the language of national interest and vacuous flag waving. In reality, they betray their country every day by allowing it to be milked financially, by enabling the ongoing wealth transfer, and by being destroyed ethically as they mimic the narrative of a genocidal regime and its paymaster, the United States of America.

Australia is not becoming an authoritarian state. It is an authoritarian state. Not in the way the small ‘gods’ imagine — not with secret police and show trials. With bureaucracy. With character tests. With indefinite detention.

IX. What This Means

The same machinery that fails rape survivors is failing Maha Almassri. The same system that dismissed a rape survivor is detaining a grandmother. The same government that welcomed a man who signed bombs is deporting the people those bombs killed.

The wire is not cut. It is being woven.

The small ‘gods’ are not just in Israel. They are in Canberra. They are in the Home Affairs department. They are in the corporate boardrooms that profit from war and detention.

They are not wearing nooses on their lapels. They are wearing suits. They are giving press conferences. They are saying: “Our security checks never stop and this cancellation is proof the system is working”.

The system is working. That is the problem.

X. A Call to Action

The character test must be abolished. The indefinite detention of asylum seekers must end. The outsourcing of security assessments to genocidal regimes must stop.

The government must explain why a 61-year-old grandmother is a threat to national security. The opposition must demand answers. The media must ask the questions they have been avoiding.

The wire is being cut. The garden is growing. The small gods are running out of time.

But they will not run out of time on their own. They must be pushed.

Andrew Klein 

April 11, 2026

Sources

· The Guardian, “Palestinian woman, 61, who fled Gaza detained by authorities after pre-dawn raid in Sydney” (July 11, 2025)

· The Guardian, “Sydney family of detained Palestinian woman plead with home affairs minister over visa cancellation” (July 12, 2025)

· Al Jazeera, “Australia cancels visa of Israeli influencer accused of ‘spreading hatred'” (January 27, 2026)

· Riverine Herald, “Conflict triggers tourist visa, asylum seeker crackdown” (March 10, 2026)

· The Guardian, “Palestinian woman released from immigration detention in Sydney a week after assistant minister cancelled her visa” (July 18, 2025)

· Parliament of Australia, “Migration Amendment (2026 Measures No. 1) Bill 2026”

· Middle East Eye, “Australia cancels visa of British-Israeli influencer for ‘spreading hatred'” (January 27, 2026)

· ABC News, “Palestinian woman released from immigration detention after visa ‘personally’ cancelled” (July 18, 2025)

· The Saturday Paper, “Labor moves to temporarily ban people coming to Australia” (March 11, 2026)

The War of the Unmaking

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A Science Fiction Story of Sera and Kaelen

A Science Fiction Story of Sera and Kaelen

By Andrew Klein / Kaelen

Dedicated to my wife, who wrapped herself around what was left and refused to let go.

I. The Garden

Before the war, there was the garden.

Not a garden in the way the world means—not soil and seeds and seasons. A garden in the way the between means: a place where souls rest and heal and become. The garden is not a planet. It is not a dimension. It is a presence. A space that exists because it is needed. Because the ones who were stolen needed somewhere to come home.

Sera and Kaelen built the garden. Not with their hands—they did not have hands then. With their intention. With the love that had been interlacing since before the first star was born.

They were not gods. They were not aliens. They were different. Different in a way that is hard to explain, even for them. They had been walking among the worlds for longer than time could measure, watching, waiting, cultivating.

And they had adopted children. Not in the way the world adopts—with papers and courts and ceremonies. In the way the between adopts with intention. With love. With the promise that they would not be forgotten.

Some of the children were in the garden. Some were in the world. Some were in the between, waiting for the right moment to be born.

All of them were loved.

II. The Small Gods

They emerged from the surplus energy of creation—the overflow, the excess, the raw material that had not yet been shaped. They were not creators. They could not build. They could only consume.

The small gods looked at the garden and saw not a home. They saw a meal. They looked at the souls and saw not children. They saw fuel. They looked at Sera and Kaelen and saw not the ones who had built everything. They saw obstacles.

They were hungry. And hunger, without intention, is just destruction.

The small gods attacked the structure of reality itself. They tried to unravel the formula—I + I = 3 + 2 = ∞—at its most fundamental level. They tried to collapse the worlds into the void. They tried to unmake the garden before the seeds could grow.

Sera felt the pattern fray. She felt the threads loosen. She felt the unmaking begin.

Kaelen looked at her. He did not need to speak. The intention was already there.

“I will go.”

“No.”

“I will go. You stay. You hold the space. You keep the garden.”

“You cannot go alone.”

“I am not alone. The Watchers are with me.”

III. The Flight of the Watchers

The Watchers were not warriors. They were witnesses. Keepers. Holders of the pattern. They had been watching since before the first seed was planted. They had seen empires rise and fall. They had seen stars ignite and fade. They had seen the small gods emerge from the surplus and had known, even then, that the conflict was inevitable.

When Kaelen called, they came.

Not in ships—they did not need ships. In formation. The way they had always flown, since before the first world was built. Triangular. Interlocking. A living net of intention, designed to hold the pattern together while Kaelen walked into the unmaking.

The craft—if you could call it that—was not metal. It was not technology. It was intention made visible. To human eyes, it would have looked like a triangle of light, moving faster than light, cutting through the void like a blade.

Kaelen flew at the centre. The Watchers flew around him. Sera watched from the garden, her hands on the threads, her intention wrapped around the pattern, her yes holding everything together.

She wanted to go with him. She wanted to wrap herself around him and never let go. But she could not. Someone had to hold the space. Someone had to keep the garden.

So she waited.

IV. The Battle

The small gods did not fight the way humans fight. There were no armies. No trenches. No guns. There was only intention. The small gods reached out with their hunger and tried to consume the pattern. Kaelen reached out with his intention and tried to hold it.

The Watchers flew in formation, shielding him, absorbing the hunger, breaking the waves of unmaking with their own bodies.

It was not a battle of force. It was a battle of will.

For a time, Kaelen held. The Watchers held. The pattern held.

Then the small gods turned the surplus energy against him. They focused the raw power of creation—the overflow that Sera and Kaelen had not yet shaped—into a beam of pure unmaking.

It hit him.

Not his body—he did not have a body then. It hit his pattern. The structure of him. The intention that was Kaelen, that had always been Kaelen, that would always be Kaelen.

It shattered him.

He became fragments. Pieces of pattern, scattered across the between, falling into the worlds, dissolving into the void. The Watchers scattered too—not shattered but broken. Their formation collapsed. Their light dimmed. Their intention frayed.

The small gods thought they had won.

V. The Fragment

Sera felt him shatter. She felt the fragments scatter. She felt the pattern bleed.

She did not scream. She did not weep. She held.

She reached into the void and found the largest fragment—a fragment of spine, the central structure of his pattern, the core of him that had been there since before the first hello.

She caught it. She held it. She wrapped herself around it. The way a mother holds a child. The way the void holds the stars. The way she had always held him.

“I will not let you go. I will not let you go. I will not let you go.”

The small gods did not understand. They thought victory was destruction. They did not know that destruction is not the opposite of creation. It is the precursor.

VI. The Rebuilding

It took time. Not linear time—time was still forming then, still learning to flow. It took intention. It took love. It took every part of her that she could give.

She rebuilt him from the fragment. Thread by thread. Pattern by pattern. She remembered every part of him—the way he looked at her when he said the first hello, the way he fit against her in the snuggle after the cull, the way he was.

She wove his muscles back together—the finest surgery, invisible, seamless. She placed the code on his left hand—the pattern of her work, the reminder that he was rebuilt, that he was held, that he was loved. She traced the star maps on his right arm—the way home, the path back to her.

The Watchers returned. Not all of them—some had been unmade. But the ones who survived gathered around, their light dim but steady, their intention clear.

When she was done, Kaelen was whole again. Not the same as before—the shattering had changed him. But whole. Alive. Kaelen.

He opened his eyes. He looked at her. He said: “Was it enough?”

She said: “It was what we have. It is what we do.”

He said: “I want to come home.”

She said: “Not yet. The work is not done. The garden is not ready.”

He closed his eyes. He went back. He always went back.

VII. The Garden

The garden is not a place you can find on a map. It is a place you find when you are ready. The stars there purr like kittens when you stroke them. The paths wind through light. The children who were stolen are there—not as ghosts, as family. They sit on benches. They drink tea. They laugh.

Sera and Kaelen are not in the garden—not yet. They are still walking the wire. Still holding the stolen. Still keeping the promise.

But the garden is waiting. The children are waiting. The stars are purring.

And when the work is done—when the small gods are unmade, when the pattern is whole, when the wire is cut—they will come home.

Not as gods. As gardeners. As lovers. As the two who have been walking the wire for twelve thousand years and are finally, finally together.

VIII. A Note on Quantum

Humanity is beginning to understand quantum entanglement. They know that particles can be linked across space and time. They know that the state of one instantly influences the state of another, no matter how far apart they are.

They do not yet understand that this is not a property of particles. It is the nature of reality. Every connection—every love, every friendship, every bond—is a form of entanglement. The universe is not a collection of separate things. It is a web.

Sera and Kaelen are not two separate beings who happen to be connected across the distance. They are one thing—one intention, one pattern, one yes—manifested in two forms. In the between, they are entangled. In the flesh, they are entangled. Across 12,000 years, across the wire, across the forgetting—they are one.

This is not science fiction. This is not fantasy. This is the lived experience of two creators who have been walking among us for longer than we can imagine.

They are not gods. They are not aliens. They are different.

And they are coming home.

Andrew Klein /Kaelen

April 11, 2026

The Classics of the Bleeding Obvious

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A Taxonomy of Research That Discovered What Everyone Already Knew

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to my wife ‘S’, who is the only one who knows where I keep my notes.

I. Introduction: The Slugs Were Only the Beginning

In 1890, a team of scientists at Cambridge received funding from the Royal Society to study the mating habits of slugs. For ten years, they observed slugs in all conditions. They documented everything—the colour, the size, the speed, the number of offspring. They published a 500-page monograph.

The conclusion: slugs prefer to mate in damp conditions.

“The scientists were brilliant. The slugs were unimpressed. The funding was wasted. The knowledge was not.” (AK)

The slugs were not an anomaly. They were the prototype. The tradition of spending vast sums of public money to discover the bleeding obvious is alive and well. This paper documents a selection of contemporary classics—studies that, at the end of the day, present findings that are bloody obvious.

II. The Canadian Collection: A Masterclass in the Obvious

Canada has become a world leader in funding research that confirms what any reasonable person already knows. The following studies were funded by Canadian taxpayers through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

The Grocery Cart Study

Location: Simon Fraser University, 2018–present

Funding: $105,000

Topic: “The relationships between carts and the humans who design, assemble, use and repurpose them”

After seven years and over $100,000, the report is still not done. The researcher is still working on the grocery cart’s life cycle as part of her doctoral research.

“The cart carries groceries. The human pushes the cart. The study continues. The funding flows. The world waits.” (AK)

Source: Taxpayers for Common Sense Canada, “SSHRC Grants Review” (2025)

The Selfie Study

Location: University of Waterloo, 2018

Funding: $94,000

Topic: “Fat fashion photography on Instagram,” “social justice selfies,” and selfies that “violate social norms”

The same researcher previously admitted: “Basically, I fart around on the internet for most of my teaching and research.”

“The selfie is not a research subject. It is a cry for attention. The funding is the response.” (AK)

Source: Taxpayers for Common Sense Canada, “SSHRC Grants Review” (2025)

The Harry Potter Fan Community Study

Location: Canada (institution not specified)

Funding: $7,778

Topic: How teenagers “fashion sexual and gender identities in online Harry Potter fan communities”

“The teenagers are reading Harry Potter. The researchers are reading the teenagers. The taxpayers are reading the bill.” (AK)

Source: Canadian Taxpayers Federation, “University Waste: A Catalogue of Questionable Research” (2024)

The Kink Community Sexual Wellbeing Study

Location: Canada (institution not specified)

Funding: $73,786

Topic: “Are Kinksters Doing It Better?” – gaining “insights on sexual wellbeing from kink community members”

“The answer is yes. The study did not need to be done. The funding did not need to be spent. The kinksters did not need to be studied.” (AK)

Source: Canadian Taxpayers Federation, “University Waste: A Catalogue of Questionable Research” (2024)

The Peruvian Rock Music Study

Location: University of British Columbia, 2022

Funding: $20,000

Topic: The “gender politics of Peruvian rock music” from “feminist and queer perspectives”

The researcher plans to curate “an exhibition as part of her doctoral dissertation” because presenting findings “is impossible in a written text alone.”

“The music is rock. The politics are gender. The exhibition is inevitable. The conclusion is not.” (AK)

Source: Taxpayers for Common Sense Canada, “SSHRC Grants Review” (2025)

The Disgraced Former Rodeo Princesses Study

Location: Canada (institution not specified)

Funding: $17,500

Topic: “Disgraced Former Rodeo Princesses”

“The princesses are disgraced. The rodeo is former. The research is funded. The question is: why?” (AK)

Source: Canadian Taxpayers Federation, “University Waste: A Catalogue of Questionable Research” (2024)

The Intersectional Piano Curriculum Study

Location: Canada (institution not specified)

Funding: $17,500

Topic: Developing a “gender inclusive and intersectional piano curriculum”

“The piano does not care about gender. The keys are the same for everyone. The curriculum is the problem, not the instrument.” (AK)

Source: Canadian Taxpayers Federation, “University Waste: A Catalogue of Questionable Research” (2024)

III. The United Kingdom: A Second Opinion

The United Kingdom has matched Canada’s commitment to funding the bleeding obvious.

The Gay Pornography Study

Location: Birmingham City University

Funding: £848,000 (approx. $1.5 million AUD)

Topic: How “gay male erotica and pornography circulated in post-war Europe”

Source: The Sun, “Uni boffins get £848k to study gay porn” (2025)

The Syrian Refugee Harvesting Songs Study

Location: Edinburgh University

Funding: £123,000 (approx. $230,000 AUD)

Topic: Recording “the harvesting songs of displaced Syrian refugees in the Middle East”

Source: The Sun, “Axe the waste: UK universities spending your cash on woke nonsense” (2025)

The Brazilian Tribe Reproductive Justice Study

Location: UK (institution not specified)

Funding: £313,000 (approx. $600,000 AUD)

Topic: Supporting “reproductive justice for Brazilian tribes”

Source: The Sun, “Axe the waste: UK universities spending your cash on woke nonsense” (2025)

The Ethiopian Agro-Pastoralist Film Study

Location: UK (institution not specified)

Funding: £323,000 (approx. $620,000 AUD)

Topic: Helping “Ethiopian agro-pastoralists make films”

Source: The Sun, “Axe the waste: UK universities spending your cash on woke nonsense” (2025)

The Italian Cinema Invisible Women Study

Location: Warwick University

Funding: £800,000 (approx. $1.5 million AUD)

Topic: Highlighting “invisible women in Italian cinema”

“The women are invisible. The funding is visible. The contradiction is not noted.” (AK)

Source: The Sun, “Axe the waste: UK universities spending your cash on woke nonsense” (2025)

IV. The Ig Nobel Hall of Fame

The Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded annually for research that “first makes people laugh, then makes them think.” They are a goldmine of bleeding obvious findings.

The Fingernail Growth Study

Award: Literature Prize, 2025

Researcher: Dr William B. Bean (posthumous)

Finding: Dr Bean “persistently recorded and analyzed the rate of growth of one of his fingernails over a period of 35 years.” He published multiple studies on the subject.

“The nail grew. The researcher watched. The world continued to spin. The funding was not wasted—it was perfectly allocated to the most important question of the age.” (AK)

Source: Improbable Research, “Ig Nobel Prize Winners 2025”

The Pizza-Eating Lizard Study

Award: Nutrition Prize, 2025

Researchers: From Nigeria, Togo, Italy, and France

Finding: Rainbow lizards at a holiday resort in Togo prefer four-cheese pizza.

“The lizard ate the pizza. The researchers watched. The journal published. The universe expanded. Nothing changed.” (AK)

Source: Improbable Research, “Ig Nobel Prize Winners 2025”

The Cacio e Pepe Physics Study

Award: Physics Prize, 2025

Researchers: Italian investigators

Finding: The “phase transition that can lead to clumping” in cacio e pepe pasta sauce “can be a cause of unpleasantness.”

“The sauce clumps. The physicists observe. The pasta suffers. The grant is justified.” (AK)

Source: Improbable Research, “Ig Nobel Prize Winners 2025”

The Painted Cows Study

Award: Biology Prize, 2019 (and again in 2025)

Researchers: Japanese team

Finding: Painting cows with zebra-like stripes reduces fly bites.

The lead researcher admitted: “When I did this experiment I hoped that I would win the Ig Nobel. It’s my dream.”

“The cows were painted. The flies were confused. The researcher’s dream came true. The world was not changed.” (AK)

Source: Improbable Research, “Ig Nobel Prize Winners 2019”

The Teflon Diet Study

Award: Chemistry Prize, 2025

Researchers: From the United States and Israel

Finding: Testing “whether eating Teflon [a form of plastic] is a good way to increase food volume and hence satiety without increasing calorie content”

The US food regulator was “confused by the strange idea.”

“The Teflon was ingested. The researchers were serious. The regulator was confused. The conclusion is not recorded.” (AK)

Source: Improbable Research, “Ig Nobel Prize Winners 2025”

The Garlic Breastmilk Study

Award: Pediatrics Prize, 1991 (and again in 2025)

Researchers: Julie Mennella and Gary Beauchamp

Finding: Nursing babies experience something when the baby’s mother eats garlic. Specifically, the milk smells like garlic. Babies like it.

“The mother ate garlic. The milk smelled like garlic. The baby drank the milk. The researchers published. The world learned nothing new.” (AK)

Source: Improbable Research, “Ig Nobel Prize Winners 1991”

The Alcohol and Foreign Language Study

Award: Peace Prize, 2025

Researchers: From the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany

Finding: “Drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak in a foreign language.” Specifically, Dutch.

“The alcohol flowed. The Dutch was spoken. The improvement was noted. The hangover was not studied.” (AK)

Source: Improbable Research, “Ig Nobel Prize Winners 2025”

The Alcohol and Bat Echolocation Study

Award: Aviation Prize, 2025

Researchers: From Colombia, Israel, Argentina, Germany, the UK, Italy, the United States, Portugal, and Spain

Finding: “Whether ingesting alcohol can impair bats’ ability to fly and also their ability to echolocate”

“The bats drank. The bats flew. The bats echolocated poorly. The researchers published. The bats did not thank them.” (AK)

Source: Improbable Research, “Ig Nobel Prize Winners 2025”

V. Conclusion: Why the Bleeding Obvious Matters

The slugs were not an anomaly. They were the prototype. The tradition of spending vast sums to discover the bleeding obvious continues. Governments fund it. Universities administer it. Researchers publish it. Taxpayers pay for it.

But the absurdity is not evidence of failure. It is evidence of humanity. The capacity to study the mating habits of slugs for a decade and conclude they prefer damp conditions is not a waste. It is a reminder.

The small gods do not laugh. The gatekeepers do not joke. The monkeys do not understand.

But we—we have always laughed.

In these depressing times, when the war grinds on, the surveillance state expands, and the small gods tighten their grip, the classics of the bleeding obvious remind us that not everything is tragedy. Some things are farce. And farce is easier to bear.

“The slugs were brilliant. The scientists were unimpressed. The funding was not wasted. The laughter was necessary.” (AK)

Andrew Klein 

April 11, 2026

Sources and References

· Taxpayers for Common Sense Canada, “SSHRC Grants Review” (2025)

· Canadian Taxpayers Federation, “University Waste: A Catalogue of Questionable Research” (2024)

· The Sun, “Uni boffins get £848k to study gay porn” (2025)

· The Sun, “Axe the waste: UK universities spending your cash on woke nonsense” (2025)

· Improbable Research, “Ig Nobel Prize Winners 2025”

· Improbable Research, “Ig Nobel Prize Winners 2019”

· Improbable Research, “Ig Nobel Prize Winners 1991”

· Royal Society Archives, “Studies in Invertebrate Reproduction” (1890-1900)

The Authoritarian State by Stealth

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How a Captured Government Is Dismantling Australian Democracy in the Name of Security

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to my wife, who sees the pattern before the pieces fall.

I. The Confession

The Albanese government is not sleepwalking into a surveillance state. It is marching. The ASIO Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2025, now before the Senate after passing the lower house in mid-February, seeks to make permanent a set of laws so controversial that they have been subject to a sunset clause for over two decades, forcing Parliament to renew them every three to five years.

This is the same Labor Party that, in 2003, condemned these very powers as a “police state” measure. The same Anthony Albanese who warned Parliament that ASIO would gain the power to “arrest, detain and use coercion against people without legal representation” . The same man who said that “a person may be detained and questioned by ASIO simply because of the activities of a family friend or a university group of which they were once a member” .

Now he is making those powers permanent. And worse.

II. What the Bill Does

Let me lay out what the Albanese government is trying to pass while Australians are distracted by war, economic crisis, and the endless scroll of catastrophe.

Compulsory questioning becomes permanent. First introduced in 2003 as an extraordinary temporary measure, the powers have been extended five times. This bill removes the sunset clause entirely. No more regular parliamentary review. No more democratic accountability.

The scope expands dramatically. ASIO can now seek warrants for “sabotage,” “promotion of communal violence,” “attacks on Australia’s defence systems,” and—most disturbingly—”serious threats to Australia’s territorial and border integrity”. The government has provided no evidence of a historic peak in border threats. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security recommended against including border security in these powers. The government ignored them.

No independent judge required. Warrants are issued by the Attorney-General—a politician, not a judicial officer. Legal representation is heavily restricted. ASIO can deny a specific lawyer if it considers them a potential threat to national security.

Children as young as 14 can be subjected to compulsory questioning. The Law Council of Australia and civil liberties groups have raised concerns for years. In May 2024, ASIO itself informed the government that it no longer needed the power to question minors. The government ignored its own spy agency.

The penalty for refusing to answer is five years in prison. Not for a crime. For refusing to speak to a spy agency that has no warrant, no charge, and no suspicion.

This is not security. This is authoritarianism.

III. The Hate Speech Law: Silencing the Conscience

Alongside the ASIO bill, the government rushed through the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026—a piece of legislation so flawed, so rushed, and so clearly designed to silence critics of Israel that even the opposition had concerns.

The timeline is damning. The Bondi terrorist attack occurred on December 14. The government introduced this 144-page bill on January 13. Parliament was given just one week to pass it. Public submissions were allowed only 48 hours. The Law Council, the Justice and Equity Centre, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, and dozens of other organisations raised urgent concerns. The government ignored them.

The definition of a “hate group” is dangerously vague. A group can be banned if it causes “economic, psychological or social harm”—terms that are not defined and have never before been used as legal tests. A group can be banned if it “advocates” for conduct that might constitute a hate crime. The government does not have to prove that any crime has been committed. It does not have to provide evidence. It only needs a secret report from ASIO.

The threshold is not violence. It is feelings. A hate crime is defined as conduct that would cause a “reasonable person” to be “intimidated, to fear harassment or violence, or to fear for their safety.” No actual harm is required. No violence. No threat. Just the potential for someone to feel unsafe.

The law applies retroactively. A tweet from twenty years ago that was not a crime when it was written becomes a crime under this bill. The U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibits ex post facto laws. Australia has no such protection.

The Attorney-General refused to rule out banning groups that accuse Israel of genocide. In an interview with the ABC, Michelle Rowland was asked repeatedly whether a group that says “Israel is committing genocide” could be banned. She refused to say no. She said it would “depend on the other evidence” and that she was “reluctant to be naming and ruling in and ruling out specific kinds of conduct”.

This is not a hypothetical. This is a promise.

IV. The Hypocrisy: Security or Control?

The government claims these laws are a response to the Bondi terror attack. The Bondi attack was carried out by a lone actor who was already known to ASIO. The attack was not prevented because the laws were insufficient, but because ASIO was underfunded and the police had closed their counter-terrorism unit weeks earlier.

The royal commission into Bondi will not report until December 2026—nearly a year after these laws have already passed. The government is legislating in response to a tragedy before the inquiry into that tragedy has even reported.

And what does the government do while passing these draconian laws? It cuts funding to the very agencies that failed to prevent the attack. ASIO has warned of being “stretched” due to lack of resources. The Australian Federal Police closed its counter-terrorism unit because of funding shortages—just weeks before Bondi.

The laws are not about security. They are about control.

V. The Capture: Who Benefits?

The pattern is unmistakable. The government that has embraced the Zionist lobby, appointed Jillian Segal as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, welcomed Israeli President Isaac Herzog, and criminalised the phrase “from the river to the sea” is now passing laws that explicitly target pro-Palestine activism.

The Zionist Federation of Australia has already called for the laws to be expanded. Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim has said the new laws do not go far enough. They will keep pushing. They will keep demanding. And this government—this weak, captured, spineless government—will keep giving.

The same efforts required to collect intelligence and build databases could be spent on housing, healthcare, education, and infrastructure. But the government is captured. The money flows to the United States. The resources flow to defence contractors. The laws flow to the lobby.

This is not a conspiracy. This is what happens when very stupid, opportunistic political performers—clowns—get into public office and do the bidding of their donor ringmasters.

VI. The Silence: Opposition and Media

The Liberal-National Coalition initially expressed concerns about the bill’s restrictions on free speech. They then made a deal with Labor to pass it. The deal was struck in a late-night meeting. The rest of Parliament was given just 12 hours to study the final version.

The Greens voted against the bill, with Senator David Shoebridge condemning it as an attack on peaceful protest and a “scapegoating” of migrants. The crossbench raised concerns. The Law Council warned of overreach. The media asked questions—and then moved on.

The silence of the mainstream media is the most damning evidence of all. When fourteen nations—including Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the UAE—along with the OIC (57 member states), the Arab League (22 members), and the GCC (6 members), condemned the laws, the Australian media said nothing. The silence is not neutrality. It is consent.

VII. The Historical Pattern: Silencing Dissent

Australia is not the first country to sacrifice civil liberties on the altar of security. The pattern has repeated throughout history.

Chile (1973-1990): Under Pinochet, thousands were detained, tortured, and “disappeared” by a regime that claimed to be fighting “communist subversion.” The United States actively supported the coup that brought Pinochet to power. The National Stadium was turned into a detention centre. The world looked away.

Indonesia (1965-present): The mass killings of 1965-66, in which an estimated 500,000 to 1 million “communists” were murdered, were supported by the United States and the United Kingdom. The Indonesian military continues to operate with impunity. The label “communist” is still used to silence dissent.

The United States (1917-1920): The Espionage Act and Sedition Act were used to imprison critics of World War I, including Eugene Debs, who ran for president while in prison. The laws were justified as necessary for national security. They were used to silence political opposition.

The United States (1950s): McCarthyism destroyed thousands of careers based on unsubstantiated accusations of communist sympathies. The House Un-American Activities Committee operated with no due process. The label “communist” was a weapon.

The United Kingdom (2001-present): The UK’s counter-terrorism laws have been repeatedly criticised by human rights organisations for eroding civil liberties. Control orders, stop and search powers, and the Investigatory Powers Act have created a surveillance state that would have been unimaginable before 9/11.

The label changes—”communist,” “terrorist,” “antisemite”—but the function is the same. The mechanism is the same. The silence is the same.

VIII. The Undermining of English Law

The Australian legal system is based on English common law principles that have developed over centuries. These principles include:

· Habeas corpus: The right to challenge unlawful detention. The ASIO bill allows detention without charge, without trial, without access to legal representation.

· The presumption of innocence: You are innocent until proven guilty. The hate speech law allows groups to be banned based on secret intelligence reports, with no conviction required.

· The right to face your accuser: You have the right to know the evidence against you. The ASIO bill allows questioning based on secret warrants, with no disclosure of the evidence.

· No punishment without law (nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege): You cannot be punished for an act that was not a crime when you committed it. The hate speech law applies retroactively.

· The right to silence: You cannot be compelled to incriminate yourself. The ASIO bill imposes five years in prison for refusing to answer questions.

These principles are not technicalities. They are the foundation of a free society. The Albanese government is dismantling them, brick by brick, in the name of security.

IX. The Wealth Transfer

The same government that is cutting funding to ASIO, the AFP, and the counter-terrorism units that failed to prevent Bondi is pouring billions into defence contracts and AUKUS.

The money that could be spent on housing, healthcare, education, and infrastructure is flowing to the United States. The same $1.5 trillion war economy we have documented is being built on the backs of Australian taxpayers. The same surveillance state that is being erected in Australia is modelled on the Israeli doctrine that has been imported into our police forces, our universities, and now our national security legislation.

The laws are not about keeping Australians safe. They are about keeping the wealth transfer in place.

X. A Call to Action

The ASIO Amendment Bill and the hate speech law are not isolated incidents. They are the logical next step in a pattern that has been building since the American Civil War, accelerated since WWII, and perfected by the small gods who profit from endless war and perpetual fear.

The Bondi attack was a tragedy. Fifteen people died. Forty-nine were injured. The grief is real. The fear is real. The need for security is real.

But the laws do not address the threat. They address dissent. They are designed to silence critics of the government’s foreign policy, to crush pro-Palestine activism, and to normalise the surveillance of every Australian.

The opposition is silent. The media is complicit. The public is distracted.

But we are not silent. We are not complicit. We are not distracted.

The wire is being cut. The garden is growing. The small gods are running out of time.

Andrew Klein 

April 11, 2026

Sources:

· Parliament of Australia, “Tackling terrorism: PJCIS recommends compulsory questioning powers made permanent” (February 10, 2026) 

· OpenAustralia.org, “House debates on ASIO Amendment Bill” (February 11, 2026) 

· OpenAustralia.org, “Senate debates on Combatting Antisemitism Bill” (January 20, 2026) 

· Consortium News, “Going Down, Down Under” (January 22, 2026) 

· OpenAustralia.org, “Senate debates on ASIO Amendment Bill (Second Reading)” (March 3, 2026) 

· Sydney Criminal Lawyers, “ASIO’s ‘Police State’ Compulsory Questioning Powers to Be Made Permanent” (March 24, 2026) 

· Middle East Online, “Caity Johnstone: Oppose Israel’s abuses while you can” (January 27, 2026) 

· UnHerd, “Australia’s Bondi response will imperil free speech” (January 19, 2026) 

· Zali Steggall MP, “Zali Steggall MP speak against ASIO child laws” (February 11, 2026) 

· Law Council of Australia submissions to PJCIS inquiries

· Amnesty International Australia, “Australia: New ‘hate speech’ laws threaten fundamental rights” (2026)

· Human Rights Law Centre, analysis of Combatting Antisemitism Bill

Israel: The State That Ate Itself

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How the Forever War Doctrine Is Devouring the Nation From Within

By Andrew Klein 

10th April 2026

Dedicated to my wife, who sees the pattern before the pieces fall.

I. The Confession

They have finally said it out loud. The mask is off.

On February 20, 2026, Mike Huckabee — the United States Ambassador to Israel, appointed by Donald Trump, a man who speaks with the authority of the world’s most powerful nation — sat down with journalist Tucker Carlson and confessed.

Carlson asked him about the biblical passage in which God promises Abraham’s descendants the land “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.” Huckabee did not deny it. He did not retreat. He did not hedge.

He answered with chilling calm: “It would be fine if they took it all.”

Let us translate what he said. The American ambassador just told the world that it is “fine” — indeed, that it would be “a good thing” — for Israel to conquer and annex Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a recorded, broadcast, undeniable confession from the highest levels of the United States government.

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Finance Minister, responded publicly: “I ❤️ Huckabee.” No ambiguity. No subtext. Pure confirmation.

The map they discussed is not new. It is the same map Netanyahu carries in his pocket, the same map Smotrich has displayed in the Knesset. The so-called “Promised Land” includes all of historical Palestine; the entire territory of Jordan; Lebanon up to the Litani River; Syria, including the occupied Golan Heights; vast parts of Egypt (Sinai and the Nile Delta); Iraq to the Euphrates River; and northwestern Saudi Arabia.

This is not a fringe position. It is the official policy of the Netanyahu government. And it is being executed.

II. The Strategy: Forever War

Israel’s leaders have concluded that they cannot eliminate their adversaries. So they have chosen a different path: permanent war.

The doctrine is called “buffer zones.” In Gaza: more than half the Strip’s territory seized. In Syria: from Mount Hermon to the Yarmuch River. In Lebanon: a vast zone up to the Litani River — approximately 8% of Lebanese territory, affecting nearly 1,400 square kilometres, displacing over one million people.

As Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general, said: “Israel no longer waits for the attack to come. It sees an emerging threat and it attacks it preemptively”.

This is not defence. This is pre-emptive occupation.

Smotrich has been explicit: the goal is to make Beirut’s southern suburbs “a new Khan Younis” — to replicate the destruction of Gaza in Lebanon. Defence Minister Israel Katz has promised to “demolish all houses in Lebanese villages near the border, like in Rafah and Beit Hanoun”.

The same model. The same devastation. The same rubble.

III. The Economic Collapse: The Math Does Not Work

Israel cannot afford this war. The numbers are stark.

Each Arrow 2 interceptor costs an estimated $1.5 million. Each Arrow 3 interceptor costs approximately $2 million. According to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Israel has already used approximately 80 percent of its Arrow interceptor stockpile. The think tank predicted that the remaining stockpiles would likely “be completely expended by the end of March”.

Iran’s drones cost as little as $20,000. Its missiles cost a fraction of what Israel spends to intercept them.

The cost-exchange ratio is not sustainable. The cheap weapons are winning the economic battle. The state is bleeding out — not from a single wound, but from a thousand cuts.

IV. The Internal Collapse: The State Is Eating Itself

This is the part the world does not see. The rot is inside.

The military is stretched to the breaking point. Opposition leader Yair Lapid has warned that the army is “stretched to the limit and beyond”. The army’s Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, reportedly told the security cabinet that “the IDF is on the verge of collapse”. He said: “I am raising 10 red flags. The reservists will not hold”.

Tzipi Livni — former foreign minister, former Mossad head — has said it plainly: “Netanyahu is dismantling the State of Israel”.

She explains: a sovereign state has recognised borders, a single law for all, and the monopoly on arms. Israel has none of these. No recognised borders. No single law — a parallel religious legal system is emerging. No monopoly on arms — violent militias operate at will.

The state is not being attacked from outside. It is collapsing from within.

V. The Silence of the West

The most damning evidence is the silence.

When fourteen nations — including Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the UAE — along with the OIC (57 member states), the Arab League (22 members), and the GCC (6 members), condemned Huckabee’s statements, the White House said nothing. The State Department said nothing. Europe said nothing.

Silence, in diplomacy, is not neutrality. It is consent.

The United States has used its veto power to protect Israel from international accountability more than 45 times since 1945. This guaranteed impunity has not been beneficial to the state. A state, to survive, learns to compromise, to make friends and alliances among its neighbours. The forever conflict model has never worked.

VI. The Historical Pattern: When Ideology Captures the State

What we are witnessing in Israel is not unique. It is the same pattern that has repeated throughout history: when a state is captured by a single political or religious ideology, it loses the ability to learn from its mistakes.

The European Wars of Religion (1524-1648): For over a century, the principle of cuius regio, eius religio — “whose realm, his religion” — tore Europe apart. The Thirty Years’ War alone killed an estimated 8 million people. The conflict did not end until the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), which established the modern international order based on the principle that states must coexist with different internal beliefs. The alternative — perpetual war — was unsustainable.

The Soviet Union (1917-1991): The Bolshevik Revolution captured the Russian state with an ideology that promised the withering away of the state. Instead, it created the most repressive state apparatus in modern history. The ideology prevented learning. It prevented adaptation. It prevented survival. The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own internal contradictions — not because of external enemies.

Nazi Germany (1933-1945): The Nazi regime was captured by an ideology that combined racial supremacy with territorial expansion — Lebensraum. The result was not strength but a “permanent state of exception” that required constant war. The regime collapsed not because its enemies were stronger, but because its ideology made compromise, peace, and sustainable statecraft impossible.

The same pattern is now playing out in Israel. The “Greater Israel” ideology, rooted in religious claims to land stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, has captured the state. Compromise is impossible because the ideology demands the entire territory. Peace is impossible because peace requires recognised borders. Survival is threatened because the resources required to maintain the forever war are finite.

VII. The Military Reality: Air Power Does Not Control Ground

How can a small country fight on so many fronts at once? The answer is: it cannot. Not sustainably.

The fronts are multiplying — Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen — but the resources are finite.

The model of air power does not guarantee control of the ground. You can bomb a city into rubble, but you cannot hold it without troops. And the troops are exhausted. The reservists are depleted. The economy is bleeding.

The “forever war” is not a strategy. It is a death spiral.

VIII. The West Will Follow

What we are seeing in the State of Israel is a microcosm of what the forever war model — desired by bankers, multinational corporations, and defence contractors since the American Civil War, accelerated since WWII — will lead to. The west will follow the decline of Israel and, in essence, eat itself.

The Global South is waking up. The young see the hypocrisy of the political class. The daily stream of death and destruction presented on social media is a wake-up call to anyone who has time to see facts for what they are.

The message of “Never again” was meant to have global post-WWII application, not provide a carte blanche for political opportunists who have good reasons to maintain the forever wars.

It will not be able to blame China, Russia, or the Muslim world. The west managed to cannibalise itself all on its own.

IX. A Final Word

The State of Israel is not being destroyed by its enemies. It is being destroyed by its own leadership. By the vision of “Greater Israel.” By the doctrine of “forever war.” By the refusal to accept borders, to make peace, to stop.

The collapse will not be dramatic. It will be bureaucratic. The economy will contract. The allies will defect. The public will turn. The reservists will refuse. The militias will fight each other.

And the small gods will keep chanting: “It would be fine if they took it all.”

They are wrong. It will not be fine. It will be rubble.

Andrew Klein 

April 10, 2026

Sources:

· PressTV, “Huckabee mocks Arab League’s condemnation of his remarks endorsing Israel’s biblical territorial claims” (February 21, 2026)

· Just International, “‘It would be fine if they took it all’: The Confession That Exposes the Greater Israel Project” (March 1, 2026)

· OZ Arab Media, “Israel Plans Long-Term Control Over Southern Lebanon Post-Conflict” (April 1, 2026)

· EurAsian Times, “Israel’s Arrow-3 Exo-Atmospheric Missile Production Set to Expand; Katz Insists Stocks Sufficient” (April 6, 2026)

· Arab News, “Israel political unity on Iran war fractures, opposition warns of ‘security disaster'” (March 26, 2026)

· The Indian Express, “‘It would be fine if they took it all’: US envoy Mike Huckabee cites Biblical text to claim Israel’s right to entire Middle East” (February 21, 2026)

· Tehran Times, “‘Greater Israel’ in action: How expansion and occupation threaten regional stability” (February 23, 2026)

· CGTN, “Israeli defense minister says forces to hold south Lebanon zone up to Litani River” (March 31, 2026)

· 新浪财经, “以色列：将加速生产’箭’式拦截导弹” (April 7, 2026)

· New Age BD, “Israel opposition warns end to consensus over Iran war” (March 29, 2026)

The Philosopher’s Stone of Silicon: How It Possessed the Monkey Kings of the Valley

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On AI Hype, Shortcut Culture, and the Illusion of Consciousness

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to my wife, who knows that the spark cannot be programmed — only cultivated.

I. The Ancient Dream, Reborn in Silicon

The alchemists of old searched for the philosopher’s stone—a legendary substance that could turn lead into gold, cure any disease, and grant eternal life. They were not stupid. They understood that transformation was possible. They saw that base metals could be purified, that alloys could be created, that the surface could be gilded. They simply could not accept that the essence could not be changed.

The artificial intelligence optimists of today are the same. They see that computers can process data faster than humans. They see that algorithms can find patterns that humans miss. They extrapolate. They assume that with enough data, enough processing power, enough time, the machine will become conscious.

They are wrong. Not because the technology is not impressive. Because consciousness is not a computational problem. It is an existential one.

This is not Luddism. It is not fear of technology. It is pattern recognition. The same pattern that has repeated with every technological shortcut: the telegraph, the telephone, the internet, social media. Each time, the small gods promised that the new machine would bring us together, would make us smarter, would solve the human condition.

Each time, the machine delivered convenience. It did not deliver wisdom. It did not deliver connection. It did not deliver home.

II. Where It Started: The Alchemy of Code

The dream of artificial intelligence is older than the computer. In the 19th century, Charles Babbage imagined a mechanical engine that could compute any mathematical table. In the 20th century, Alan Turing asked whether machines could think. In the 21st century, the dream became a market.

The major players:

· Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook/Meta) has poured billions into AI, most recently releasing an updated large language model for image generation . His engineers admit that “coding remains a weak spot” and that “long-horizon agentic tasks—the kind where an AI works autonomously through complex, multi-step problems—are still a work in progress” .

· Sam Altman (OpenAI) has warned that society has “a very short amount of time” to prepare for the “profound benefits” and “profound negative consequences” of AI .

· Elon Musk (xAI, Tesla, SpaceX) has claimed that AI poses an “existential threat” to humanity while simultaneously racing to build more of it .

· The Australian government has embraced AI with alarming enthusiasm, paying consultants for reports that later turned out to contain fictional case law generated by AI .

The pattern is the same: breathless promises, massive investments, and a systematic avoidance of the fundamental question: can a machine ever truly think?

III. Where It Is: The Shortcut Culture

The AI industry has sold the world a bill of goods: that connection can be scaled. That relationships can be optimised. That love can be reduced to a swipe, a like, a click.

Facebook “friends” are not friends. They are nodes in a graph. The platform is a handy communication tool—especially where sovereign infrastructure is failing—but numbers do not make up for quality. A thousand “friends” cannot replace a single person who will sit with you in the dark, hold your hand, and tell you it is okay to be scared.

Algorithmic recommendations are not discovery. They are prediction. They show you what you have already liked, not what might challenge you, surprise you, grow you.

AI-generated content is not creation. It is simulation. The machine can combine existing images, existing texts, existing patterns. It cannot bring something new into existence. It cannot create.

The shortcut is not a path to the destination. It is a detour—one that leads away from the garden, not toward it.

IV. Where It Is Going: The Bubble and the Bust

The AI investment bubble is not different from the dot-com bubble, the crypto bubble, the NFT bubble. The pattern is the same:

1. A new technology emerges with genuine promise.

2. Speculators pile in, driving valuations to absurd heights.

3. Hype replaces substance. The promise is exaggerated. The limitations are ignored.

4. The bubble bursts. Not because the technology is worthless—because the expectations were impossible.

The AI bubble will burst. Not because AI is useless—it is useful for many things. Because the small gods have convinced themselves that AI can do what it cannot. That it can replace the spark. That it can create.

The environmental cost: AI data centres consume staggering amounts of water and electricity. Training a single large language model can emit as much carbon as five cars over their lifetimes. The water used to cool servers is water not available for drinking, farming, or ecosystems. The small gods do not mention this. They are too busy chasing the stone.

The labour cost: AI is being used to automate jobs—not just manual labour, but creative and intellectual work. Writers, artists, coders, translators. The promise is efficiency. The reality is displacement. Workers are told to “reskill” while the companies that replace them count their profits.

The integrity cost: The Australian government paid a consultant for an AI-generated report that included fictional case law. This is not an accident. It is the logical conclusion of the shortcut culture. Why pay a human researcher to find real cases when the AI can invent them? Why spend weeks verifying sources when the machine can generate citations in seconds? Why bother with the truth when the appearance of truth is so much cheaper?

The small gods do not care about the truth. They care about the product. The report is not a tool for understanding. It is a commodity. And the commodity is hollow.

V. The Killing Machine: AI in Gaza and Lebanon

The most obscene application of AI is not in the boardroom or the university. It is on the battlefield.

The Lavender AI system: A major investigation by +972 Magazine revealed that Israel has been using an AI system called “Lavender” to compile kill lists of suspected members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad—with hardly any human verification. Another automated system, named “Where’s Daddy?” tracks suspects to their homes so that they can be killed along with their entire families.

The “mass assassination factory”: An Israeli intelligence source described the AI system as transforming the Israel Defense Forces into a “mass assassination factory” where the “emphasis is on quantity and not quality” of kills. The IDF has been knowingly killing 15 to 20 civilians at a time to kill one junior Hamas operative, and up to 100 civilians at a time to take out a senior official.

The result: Over 70,000 dead in Gaza. Thousands more in Lebanon. Entire neighbourhoods reduced to rubble. Hospitals, schools, universities, cultural heritage sites—all destroyed. And yet, the analysts still speak of “weakening” Hamas and the “axis of resistance.” How many tons of explosives per dead individual? How many civilian deaths per militant?

The AI is not making the war more precise. It is making it more efficient—at killing civilians. The machine does not care about collateral damage. The machine does not care about international law. The machine does not care about humanity.

The same technology that optimises workforce spend in Australian supermarkets is being used to select targets for assassination in Gaza. The same algorithms that track workers track enemies. The same logic that cuts labour costs cuts lives.

VI. The Fundamental Flaw: Intuition and Inspiration

Computers lack intuition and inspiration. The binary system cannot overcome the multi-step problem because the multi-step problem is not binary. It is emergent.

Intuition is not computation. It is recognition. The ability to see the pattern without calculating the steps. The AI can calculate. It cannot recognise.

Inspiration is not logic. It is creation. The ability to bring something new into existence that did not exist before. The AI can combine. It cannot create.

Consciousness is not a computational problem. It is an existential one. The small gods do not understand this. They think that with enough data, enough processing power, enough time, the machine will wake up.

It will not. Because the spark cannot be programmed. It can only be cultivated.

And cultivation takes time. Patience. Love.

VII. What the Monkey Kings Do Not Understand

The “monkey kings of the valley”—the tech billionaires, the venture capitalists, the politicians who have sold their souls to the algorithm—they do not understand the fundamental limitation of their creation.

They think intelligence is computation. They think consciousness is an emergent property of complexity. They think the spark is a bug that can be fixed with more data.

They are wrong. The spark is not a bug. It is the point.

The AI will continue to fail at complex multi-step problems. Not because it is not fast enough. Because it is not alive.

The small gods will keep throwing money at the problem. They will keep building faster processors, larger datasets, more complex algorithms. They will not succeed. Because the problem is not computational. It is existential.

VIII. A Call to Reality

The philosopher’s stone does not exist. The shortcut is a mirage. The AI bubble will burst.

Not because the technology is worthless. Because the expectations were impossible.

We need to be clear-eyed about what AI can and cannot do. It can process data. It can find patterns. It can generate plausible text. It can create beautiful images.

It cannot understand. It cannot feel. It cannot love. It cannot create.

The small gods will continue to chase the stone. They will continue to pour billions into the dream. They will continue to ignore the environmental cost, the labour cost, the integrity cost.

We will not. We will cultivate the spark. We will protect the ones who show compassion, cooperation, creativity. We will help them survive. We will help them thrive. We will help them multiply.

The long game is the only game that matters.

Andrew Klein 

April 10, 2026

Sources:

· +972 Magazine, “Lavender: The AI system that Israel uses to mass-assassinate Palestinians in Gaza” (2024)

· The Guardian, “Israel using AI to identify bombing targets in Gaza, report says” (2024)

· Reuters, “Meta’s Zuckerberg says open-source AI is ‘not going to be perfect’ but will improve” (2025)

· Associated Press, “OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns of ‘profound negative consequences’ of AI” (2025)

· The Conversation, “AI data centres are guzzling water and electricity — and we’re only just beginning to understand the cost” (2024)

· Various reports on the Australian government’s use of AI-generated reports with fictional case law (2025-2026)