The Death Penalty Bill and the Complicity of Australia’s Political Class

Posted on by
Reply

How the Zionist Project’s Final Desperate Act Is Being Enabled by Those Who Claim to Lead Us

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to every Palestinian prisoner facing execution. To every Australian whose home is treated like a prison cell. To the democracy we are losing while politicians bow to a foreign ideology.

I. The Bill

On March 24, 2026, the Israeli Knesset’s National Security Committee approved a draft law imposing the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners, paving the way for its final passage.

The bill, submitted by Knesset Member Limor Son-Harmelech of the Otzma Yehudit party led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, would:

· Impose a mandatory death penalty for anyone who “deliberately causes the death of a person in an act classified as terrorism” 

· Prohibit any pardon — the sentence is fixed and cannot be commuted or altered by any subsequent political or legal decision 

· Require no unanimous judicial decision — a simple majority will suffice 

· Provide for execution by hanging within 90 days, carried out by the Israeli Prison Service 

· Place condemned prisoners in isolation with no visits except from authorised personnel, legal consultations only by video link

The bill is explicitly discriminatory. For Palestinians in the West Bank tried in military courts, the death penalty is the primary punishment. For Israeli citizens tried in civilian courts, it is one option among several, and the sentence can be commuted to life imprisonment.

This is not justice. This is apartheid codified into execution.

II. The Man Behind the Bill

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, has been wearing a noose-shaped lapel pin in support of the bill, openly symbolising the execution method he wants imposed. He has described hanging as “one of the options,” adding that alternatives could include the electric chair or “euthanasia.” He has claimed to have received support from doctors willing to participate in executions, telling him: “Just tell us when.”

Ben-Gvir is the same man who, as head of Israel’s prison system, invited members of his synagogue into a maximum-security prison for a “lavish lunch” while Palestinian detainees were denied food during Ramadan. The group was allowed into the highest-security section where Palestinian prisoners were held handcuffed and forced to lie on the ground.

This is the man our political class empowers. This is the ideology they platform. This is the project they support.

III. International Condemnation — and Australian Silence

The international community has responded with alarm.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) : General Rapporteur Gala Veldhoen stated that the bill “constitutes an alarming setback for a country where the last execution dates back to 1962,” and that it “undermines the principle of equality before the law”.

The European Union has opposed capital punishment in all cases, calling it a violation of the right to life.

Britain, France, Germany, and Italy have expressed “deep concern” over the legislation, which they said risked “undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles”.

UN experts last month urged Israel to withdraw the bill, citing it “would violate the right to life and discriminate against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory”.

Amnesty International urged Israeli MPs to reject the legislation, which it said “would allow Israeli courts to expand their use of death sentences with discriminatory application against Palestinians” .

And Australia? Silence.

IV. The Australian Complicity

While the world condemns, our political class enables.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has welcomed joint US-Israeli military action in Iran, using “weasel words” and “careful language” according to Shadow Defence Minister James Paterson, who noted that Albanese “has one eye on domestic politics and his left wing base” . He has not condemned the death penalty bill. He has not spoken against the discriminatory application of Israeli law. He has not called for accountability.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong — whose department has been silent on the Knesset bill — has not issued a statement. She has not joined her European counterparts in expressing “deep concern.” She has not invoked Australia’s long-standing opposition to the death penalty.

NSW Premier Chris Minns — whose government recently deployed eight armoured officers to break down a woman’s door at 5am for allegedly throwing a water bottle at a protest — has said nothing. The same government that introduced laws giving police the power to ban all protests in entire geographical areas for up to 90 days has no comment on a bill that would execute prisoners without pardon.

This silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.

V. The Australian Laws They Ignore

Australia has a long-standing position against the death penalty.

· The Death Penalty Abolition Act 1973 abolished the death penalty for federal offences.

· All Australian states and territories have abolished capital punishment.

· Australia consistently advocates for the global abolition of the death penalty at the United Nations.

· Australia has ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which commits signatories to the abolition of capital punishment.

And yet, when Israel moves to impose the death penalty on Palestinians in a discriminatory manner, our government has nothing to say. When the Israeli Prison Service—headed by a Ben-Gvir appointee—denies Palestinian prisoners food during Ramadan while hosting settlers for lavish lunches, our government says nothing. When a UN committee finds that torture has become a “de facto state policy” in Israeli prisons, our government says nothing.

This is not about antisemitism. It is about the capture of our political class by a foreign ideology that they are too afraid to criticise.

VI. The Intelligence: Foreign Interference in Australian Politics

In January 2026, NSW MP Anthony D’Adam wrote to Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke requesting an investigation into whether Israel had breached Australia’s foreign influence laws by authoring a dossier naming Australian politicians as promoting “antisemitic and anti-Zionist content”.

The dossier, published by the Israeli government’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs, named D’Adam, former Greens leader Adam Bandt, Senator Mehreen Faruqi, and independents Fatima Payman and Lidia Thorpe as “key influencers and groups promoting antisemitic and anti-Zionist content”.

The dossier included photos of D’Adam and his partner. He told Guardian Australia it was “clearly designed to intimidate”.

The home affairs department’s guide to countering foreign influence lists as an example of foreign interference: “attempting to restrict or control critical views expressed in media in Australia, including by censorship of content, or harassing and discrediting journalists, activists or politicians” .

D’Adam asked: “How would we react if it was China or Iran producing this sort of material?”.

The answer is that we would react with outrage. We would demand investigations. We would sanction. We would name and shame.

But when it is Israel, our political class is silent.

VII. The Pattern: What They Do to Palestinians, They Will Do to Australians

You have seen it already.

In Sydney, eight armoured officers broke down a woman’s door at 5am for allegedly throwing a water bottle. The police watchdog has now been called in . But the pattern is clear: the same tactics used in the occupied territories—dawn raids, overwhelming force, the intimidation of dissent—are being imported to Australia.

In Israeli prisons, Palestinian prisoners are held in isolation, denied visits, their only contact with lawyers by video link. In Australia, the same laws that give police the power to ban protests also make it impossible to contact senior officers. Their email addresses are not public. Their phone numbers are not listed. The chain of command that once connected citizens to their police has been replaced by a wall of silence.

How long before a Zionist network in Australia proposes the same economic destruction tactics being mooted in the United States? In New York, the new city comptroller has pledged to reinvest in Israeli bonds, despite warnings from human rights groups that this would “finance a military the entire world has watched commit war crimes and crimes against humanity” . How long before Australian superannuation funds are pressured to do the same? How long before the Zionist network in Australia demands that critics be stripped of their assets, their wealth, their livelihoods?

This is not speculation. This is the logic of the project. The Zionist project has always been about power. About domination. About the right to destroy those who oppose it.

VIII. The Larger Truth

This bill is not about security. It is not about justice. It is about the final, desperate convulsion of a dying ideology.

Israel is collapsing. The world has seen what it is. The International Court of Justice has found it “plausible” that it is committing genocide. The old alliances are fraying. The global South has turned away. The young are waking up.

And the extremists are doubling down—not to save their state, but to prove that they were always what we said they were. They are writing their own indictment. They are proving, in real time, that the Zionist project was never about safety. It was never about a homeland. It was about power. About domination. About the right to kill with impunity.

And our political class knew. And they said nothing.

IX. What Must Be Done

1. Australia must condemn the death penalty bill. The Prime Minister must join the EU, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and the Council of Europe in expressing “deep concern.” He must invoke Australia’s long-standing opposition to capital punishment.

2. The government must investigate Israeli foreign interference. The dossier targeting Australian politicians is a clear breach of Australia’s foreign influence laws. The home affairs minister must act.

3. The NSW Police must be held accountable. The dawn raid on the Ashfield woman is not an isolated incident. It is the pattern. The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission must investigate fully.

4. Australian politicians must disclose their ties to the Zionist network. Who has taken “educational” trips to Israel? Who has received donations? Who has been threatened with accusations of antisemitism? The Australian people have a right to know.

5. The IHRA definition must be rejected. The definition that conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism is a tool for silencing dissent. It has no place in Australian universities, in the public service, or in Australian law.

X. A Warning

What is happening in Israel is not happening in isolation. It is happening here, in Australia, in our police forces, in our universities, in our public service, in our political class. The same tactics. The same silencing. The same intimidation.

The woman whose door was broken down at 5am is not a terrorist. She is a citizen who exercised her democratic rights. If they can do this to her, they can do it to you. If they can impose the death penalty on Palestinians in the occupied territories, they will find a way to impose their will on Australians.

Zionism is a dangerous, parasitic ideology. It has no place in this world. And it has no place in Australia.

The wire is being cut. The truth is being told. And the political class that enabled this will be held to account.

Dedicated to every Palestinian prisoner facing execution. To every Australian whose home is treated like a prison cell. To the democracy we are losing while politicians bow to a foreign ideology.

We will not be silent. We will not comply. We will not let them take our country.

Sources:

· Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, “PACE rapporteur strongly urges Knesset members to oppose ‘discriminatory’ bill expanding the death penalty in Israel,” March 25, 2026 

· Union of OIC News Agencies, “The Knesset’s National Security Committee approves a bill to execute Palestinian prisoners,” March 25, 2026 

· The New Arab, “Jewish settlers gloat at shackled Palestinians in ‘prison tour’,” February 25, 2026 

· The Guardian, “NSW MP asks home affairs minister to investigate potential foreign interference after Israel ‘targets’ him in dossier,” January 7, 2026 

· The Sydney Morning Herald, “Police watchdog called in over dawn arrest of Herzog protester,” March 30, 2026 

· Sky News, “Transcript: Kenny Report,” March 2, 2026 

· The Intercept, “Zohran Mamdani Wants NYC to Divest From Israel — But New Comptroller Pledges to Buy War Bonds,” January 30, 2026 

· Jotwell, “Equality Before Law: Just Zionism, Political Liberalism, and the Question of Palestine,” January 12, 2026 

· The West Australian, “Laws for nation’s toughest DV murder penalty introduced,” February 3, 2026 

· AAP News, “Laws for nation’s toughest DV murder penalty introduced,” February 3, 2026 

Andrew Klein 

March 31, 2026

The Capture of Australia: How a Dying Ideology Is Taking Over Our Country

Posted on by
Reply

And Why We Must Stop It Before It Destroys Us

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to every Australian who will not let their country become a client state. To the students and academics who see what is happening. To the future we must defend.

I. The Lie at the Heart of Zionism

The Zionist project was never about returning to an ancient homeland. It was about power. It was about creating a state where Jews could exercise the same colonial domination that European powers had exercised across the world.

The evidence is overwhelming. In 1896, Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, wrote in his diary: “We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country.” He was talking about the Palestinians.

Herzl also considered other locations for the Jewish state—Argentina, Cyprus, the Sinai Peninsula, Uganda. Zionism was not tied to Palestine. It was tied to the idea of Jewish supremacy. Palestine was chosen not because of ancient ties, but because it was weak, because it was available, because the colonial powers were willing to facilitate the project.

The 1947 UN Partition Plan was imposed against the will of the majority of the population. The Nakba that followed—the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes—was not an accident. It was planned. It was executed. It was the foundation of the state.

The lie of Zionism is that it is about Jewish survival. It is about Jewish dominance. And that lie has now been exposed to the world.

II. The Collapse of Israel: A Projected Timeline

Israel is not sustainable. The signs are everywhere.

2023-2024: The Gaza genocide. The International Court of Justice finds it “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide. The International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. The global South turns away. The young turn away. The old alliances fray.

2025: The war expands. Iran enters directly. The United States is drawn in. The cost becomes unsustainable. Oil prices spike. Global inflation returns. The American public turns against the war. The alliance fractures.

2026: The war continues. Israeli casualties mount. The economy collapses. The reservist system breaks. Mass emigration begins. The Israeli elite—the tech entrepreneurs, the financiers, the professionals—begin leaving.

2027-2028: A political crisis. The coalition fractures. Early elections. A new government sues for peace. But the damage is done. The International Court of Justice issues its final ruling: genocide. Sanctions are imposed. Israel becomes a pariah state.

2029-2030: The collapse accelerates. The economy is in freefall. The military is exhausted. The settler project—the entire infrastructure of occupation—becomes unsustainable. The international community imposes a solution. The two-state solution is dead. A single state with equal rights is the only option. The Zionist project ends.

This is not speculation. This is the trajectory of every colonial project. Apartheid South Africa lasted 46 years. Rhodesia lasted 15 years after its Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Israel has been an apartheid state since 1967. Its time is running out.

III. The Zionist Network: How Australia Was Captured

As Israel collapses, the Zionist network is looking for a new home. They have chosen Australia.

The Capture Mechanism:

1. Donations. The Henroth Trust, linked to Special Envoy Jillian Segal, donated $280,000 to the Liberal Party in 2024-25. Similar donations flow to Labor. Money buys access. Access buys influence. Influence buys policy.

2. “Educational” Tours. For decades, Australian politicians, journalists, academics, and union leaders have been offered free trips to Israel. They visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. They meet with Israeli officials. They are shown what the Israeli government wants them to see. They return to Australia as advocates for the Zionist project. They do not see this as a conflict of interest. They see it as “education.”

3. The Fear Weapon. The most powerful tool in the Zionist arsenal is the accusation of antisemitism. Any Australian who criticises Israel, who questions the donations, who opposes the training, who speaks up for Palestinian rights—they are immediately labelled antisemitic. The fear of this label silences politicians, journalists, academics, and public servants. It is the perfect weapon because it does not require evidence. It only requires accusation.

4. Institutional Capture. The Zionist network has placed its people in key positions. Jillian Segal as Special Envoy. Greg Craven as overseer of university “training.” The appointments are not accidental. They are deliberate. They are the final stage of capture.

IV. The Timeline of Repression: What Is Coming

The capture is accelerating. The timeline is clear.

2025: Hate speech laws passed. They criminalise speech the government finds objectionable. They give unprecedented discretion to the executive.

December 2025: Bondi terror attack. The government uses it to pass laws giving police the power to ban all protests in entire areas for up to 90 days. The “sledgehammer” approach.

February 2026: Herzog visit. The Major Events Act—designed for sporting events—is used to suppress protest. Police violence is unleashed on peaceful demonstrators.

March 2026: The Segal Plan is implemented. Universities are required to impose Zionist indoctrination on all staff, with funding tied to compliance. The public service is required to adopt the IHRA definition, silencing reporting of Israeli espionage.

2026-2027: The “thought police” expand. The IHRA definition is applied to workplaces, to social media, to private conversations. Australians are disciplined, fired, investigated for “antisemitism”—which means, in practice, for criticising Israel.

2027-2028: The final stage. With dissent suppressed, the Zionist network consolidates its control. Australian foreign policy is subordinated to Israeli interests. Our military is integrated with Israeli doctrine. Our intelligence services are compromised. Our universities become propaganda mills.

By 2030: Australia is a client state. We have traded our sovereignty for a dying ideology. Our neighbours have turned away. Our economy is isolated. Our democracy is a memory.

V. The Asian Century: Australia’s Choice

The 21st century is the Asian century. Australia’s future is with our neighbours—Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, China, India, the Pacific nations. These are the countries that matter. These are the people we trade with, live alongside, depend upon.

Every one of these nations has watched the genocide in Gaza. Every one of them has seen what the Zionist project looks like when it is in power. Every one of them has drawn conclusions about the countries that support it.

If Australia becomes the new base for the Zionist project, what will our neighbours do?

They will not trade with us. They will not trust us. They will not ally with us. They will see us for what we will have become: a pariah state, a client of a genocidal regime, a threat to regional stability.

Indonesia—the world’s largest Muslim nation, our closest neighbour—will cut ties. Malaysia will follow. Singapore will distance itself. China will use our isolation as a propaganda victory. The Pacific nations will turn to other partners.

Australia will be alone. With a dying ideology. In a region that has moved on.

VI. The Water Crisis and the Cost of Capture

Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth. Our water security is precarious. It depends on stable government, on rational planning, on the ability to manage our resources in the national interest.

The Zionist network does not care about Australian water security. They do not care about the Murray-Darling Basin. They do not care about the long-term sustainability of our agriculture. They care about their project.

If they capture our government, our water resources will be managed in the interests of their ideology—not in the interests of Australians. The allocation of water, the regulation of agriculture, the response to drought—all of it will be subordinated to the needs of the network.

This is not speculation. We have seen what happens when foreign interests capture a country’s resources. We have seen it in Africa. We have seen it in South America. We have seen it in the Middle East. The pattern is the same: extraction, exploitation, abandonment.

VII. The Communication System: A Vulnerability

The Zionist network has captured the telecommunications sector in other countries. In Gaza, Israel controlled the telecom networks. It could cut them at will. It could monitor every call, every message, every connection.

Australia’s communication systems are vulnerable to the same capture. Our telecommunications infrastructure is increasingly controlled by foreign interests. Our data is stored on servers that can be accessed by foreign powers. Our security agencies are compromised by the same network that is capturing our political class.

If the Zionist network achieves its goal, what is to stop them from cutting off Australian communications when it serves their interests? What is to stop them from monitoring our calls, our messages, our political organising? What is to stop them from using the same tactics against Australians that Israel used against Palestinians?

This is not paranoia. This is the logic of the project. The Zionist project has always been about control. And control requires the ability to silence dissent.

VIII. Why Dissent Must Be Silenced

The Zionist network knows that their project in Australia is insane. It is against our national interest. It is against the will of the majority of Australians. It is against the trajectory of history.

If Australians were free to debate this—if our universities were free to teach, if our public service were free to advise, if our media were free to report—the project would be exposed for what it is. Students and academics would identify it. Public servants would warn against it. Journalists would investigate it.

That is why dissent must be silenced. That is why the IHRA definition is being imposed. That is why protests are being banned. That is why the thought police are being created. The Zionist network cannot afford for Australians to know what is happening to their country.

This is not about antisemitism. It is about power. It is about the capture of a nation. It is about the silencing of a people.

IX. The Betrayal of the Political Class

This is not the first time Australia’s political class has been compromised at the expense of the people.

In World War I, they sent young men to die on uncut wire while industrialists profited and politicians gave speeches about sacrifice. In the 1980s, they abandoned community policing for a militarised model that treats citizens as enemies. In 2003, they took us to war in Iraq on lies. Now, they are selling our sovereignty to a dying ideology.

Anthony Albanese grew up in social housing. He was the first in his family to go to university. He spoke about opportunity, about fairness, about a fair go. Now he is turning universities into indoctrination camps. Now he is supporting police violence against peaceful protesters. Now he is imposing costs on ordinary Australians for the benefit of a foreign power.

What happened to him? When did he change? Was it the donations? The “educational” tours? The fear of being labelled antisemitic? The promise of something in return?

We need to know. Australia needs to know. And those who have sold out their country must be held to account.

X. The AI Future: A Post-Israel World

The Zionist project has been a driver of military technology. Israel’s defence industry has been a leader in drones, surveillance, and artificial intelligence for warfare. When the state collapses, that expertise—and that technology—will be displaced.

The Zionist network wants to transplant that infrastructure to Australia. They want our universities to train the next generation of AI weapons developers. They want our defence industry to become the new base for the military technology that Israel developed.

This is a trap. The AI weapons industry is already a moral catastrophe. It is creating systems that can kill without human oversight. It is automating genocide. If Australia becomes the new base for this industry, we will be complicit in the next wave of atrocities.

And when the world turns against Israel, it will turn against the countries that shelter its weapons industry. We will be tarred with the same brush. We will be isolated. We will be a pariah.

XI. The Clear and Present Threat

This is not a conspiracy theory. This is not speculation. This is happening in plain sight.

The laws are being passed. The training is being imported. The dissent is being silenced. The institutions are being captured. The political class is being bought. The future is being sold.

The Zionist project is a clear and present threat to Australia’s sovereignty, to our democracy, to our relationship with our neighbours, to our future in the Asian century. It is a dying ideology that is willing to sink our country to save itself.

We must stop it.

XII. What Must Be Done

1. Reject the Segal Plan. The IHRA definition has no place in Australian law. It is a tool for suppressing dissent, not for combating racism. It must be withdrawn from universities, from the public service, from all Australian institutions.

2. Investigate Zionist influence. A royal commission must examine the extent of foreign influence on Australian politics. Who is funding our political parties? Who is paying for “educational” tours? Who is threatening public servants who report Israeli espionage? The truth must be exposed.

3. Restore democratic rights. The laws that ban protests, that criminalise political speech, that give police unprecedented powers—all of them must be repealed. Democracy is not compatible with the suppression of dissent.

4. Defend our institutions. Universities must be free to teach. The public service must be free to advise. The media must be free to report. The capture of our institutions by foreign ideology must be reversed.

5. Choose our neighbours. Australia’s future is with Asia. We must rebuild the relationships that have been damaged by our complicity in genocide. We must align ourselves with the rising nations of the global South. We must choose justice over a dying ideology.

6. Hold the enablers accountable. The politicians who sold out our country must be named. The donors who bought our democracy must be exposed. The ideologues who silenced dissent must be removed. Accountability is not revenge. It is the only way to prevent this from happening again.

XIII. A Warning

The Zionist project is failing. Israel is collapsing. The network that built it is looking for a new home. They have chosen Australia.

We have a choice. We can let them take our country. We can let them silence our dissent, capture our institutions, sell our sovereignty. We can become a pariah state, isolated from our neighbours, abandoned by history.

Or we can fight. We can tell the truth. We can expose the network. We can defend our democracy. We can choose justice over genocide, sovereignty over subservience, our children’s future over a dying ideology.

This is not about antisemitism. It is about Australia. It is about whether we will be a free country or a client state. It is about whether we will stand with the rising nations of the global South or with a dying colonial project. It is about whether we will cut the wire or let them send us over it.

The choice is ours. And the time to make it is now.

Dedicated to every Australian who will not let their country become a client state. To the students and academics who see what is happening. To the future we must defend.

We will not be silent. We will not be captured. We will not let them take our country.

Sources:

· Herzl, Theodor. The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl. (1896)

· Pappé, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. (2006)

· Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. (1987)

· International Court of Justice, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel), 2024

· International Criminal Court, Arrest Warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, 2024

· Michael West Media, “Antisemitism training. Labor’s march to authoritarianism,” February 15, 2026

· Deepcut News, “‘Antisemitism’ directive exposes Australia to Israeli interference, public servants warn,” March 30, 2026

· City Hub, “NSW Police Criticised For Heavy-Handed Arrest Of Anti-Herzog Protester,” March 28, 2026

· The Australian Independent Media Network, “Herzog’s Visit to Australia: Just Who Is Being Comforted, and at What Cost?” February 12, 2026

· Green Left, “Minns spruiks defence exports, while protesters take aim at Indo-Pacific arms expo,” November 4, 2025

Andrew Klein 

March 31, 2026

I Accuse: Chris Minns and the Criminalisation of Dissent in New South Wales

Posted on by
Reply

How a Premier Betrayed His Voters, Weaponised the State, and Turned Police into an Arm of Foreign Influence

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to the woman whose door was broken down at 5am. To every Australian who has been pepper-sprayed, kettled, and silenced. To the democracy we are losing while politicians play politics with our rights.

I. The Facts of the Case

At 5am on March 26, 2026, eight heavily armoured officers from the New South Wales Police Force—helmets, vests, face masks—broke down the door of a 42-year-old woman in Ashfield. They found her asleep, half-naked. They arrested her. They searched her belongings. They seized her phone and demanded her passcode under a digital evidence access order.

Her alleged crimes: throwing a water bottle at an officer during a protest six weeks earlier, and threatening to assault another officer if he touched her .

She has no criminal record. She is not alleged to pose any ongoing danger. Her lawyer, Nick Hanna, who has practiced criminal law for nearly 20 years, said: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like what happened today” .

She is the 26th person to be charged in relation to the February 9 protest against the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog . She now faces court on April 15. She must report to police three times a week. She cannot go within 300 metres of Town Hall.

This is not policing. This is state terror. And the man responsible is Premier Chris Minns.

II. The Legislative Sledgehammer

The raid on the Ashfield woman was not an isolated incident. It was the logical conclusion of a systematic legislative assault on the right to protest in New South Wales—an assault orchestrated by the Minns government.

December 24, 2025: Ten days after the Bondi Beach terror attack, the Minns government rushed through laws giving the police commissioner the power to declare a “public assembly restriction declaration” (PARD) over entire geographical areas for up to 14 days, extendable to 90 days. The law captures all protests, regardless of whether they have any connection to the terrorist incident.

The NSW Court of Appeal has heard that these laws use a “sledgehammer to seek to crack a nut” . Justice Stephen Free noted that the legislation gives the police commissioner no “capacity to differentiate between types of assembly.” Protests against planning laws. Protests against deaths in custody. Protests completely unrelated to any security risk. All are swept up in the same blanket ban .

February 7, 2026: The Minns government declared Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit a “major event” under the Major Events Act 2009 . This legislation—designed for sporting events and cultural festivals—had never before been used for a foreign dignitary visit . It was deployed 48 hours before Herzog arrived, giving protesters no time to challenge it.

The Act grants extraordinary powers: police can shut off access to areas, search people without warrants, use “reasonable force” to compel citizens to comply with directions, and impose fines of up to $5,500 for failing to obey move-on orders . The state is relieved of most liability for damage caused in the exercise of these powers .

The Act explicitly states that a political protest must not be declared a major event . Yet the government successfully argued before the Supreme Court that Herzog’s visit—which the President himself described as aimed at rebuilding Australia’s relationship with Israel—was not a political event but a “cultural” one . Justice Robertson Wright accepted this absurd proposition.

The Result: On February 9, 2026, hundreds of peaceful protesters were kettled in Town Hall Square. Police used pepper spray indiscriminately. People were violently thrown to the ground while praying. A 76-year-old journalist was assaulted by six officers and held without water for five hours before being released without charge . Videos of police brutality went viral around the world.

Premier Minns defended the police actions as “reasonable” . Assistant Commissioner Peter McKenna said he was “very proud” of his officers .

III. The Influence: Who Is Chris Minns Serving?

The question that must be asked—the question the mainstream media has failed to ask—is this: Who benefits from this crackdown? And what is Chris Minns’ relationship with those who do?

The Arms Trade:

In November 2025, Premier Minns personally spruiked the Indo-Pacific Arms Exposition in Darling Harbour, declaring he was “proud” and “delighted” to welcome weapons manufacturers to Sydney . Among the companies he welcomed were Israeli weapons manufacturers, including Elbit Systems, which makes the F-35 bombers used in the bombing of Gaza.

When asked about Israeli weapons companies at the expo, Minns ducked: “I’m not responsible for the invitations” . But he was responsible for his choice to endorse the event, to say he was “delighted” to welcome corporations that manufacture the weapons used in what a UN Commission of Inquiry has found to be genocide.

Greens MP Sue Higginson called it out directly: “Chris Minns has said he doesn’t control who is invited to this weapons expo, but he does control his own decisions to offer a personal endorsement of the event, to say he is ‘proud’ and ‘delighted’ to welcome into NSW corporations who massacre babies, and to use taxpayer funds to sponsor the event” .

The Lobbying Networks:

The infrastructure of influence is well-documented. Former Labor Premier Bob Carr has described the pro-Israel lobby in Australia as a “well-funded foreign influence operation” . Its power does not rest solely on donations—though the Henroth Trust, linked to Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal, provided $280,000 to the Liberal Party in 2024-25. Its power rests on fear. Fear of reputational destruction. Fear of being branded weak on security. Fear of becoming the next viral political target.

When Premier Minns was asked in Parliament about Bob Carr’s statements on the Jewish lobby, he refused to engage. He said he did “not subscribe to everything that Bob Carr has said in the past” but had appointed Carr to an $80,000 position on the Sydney Water Board because he was “qualified to do the job” . The question—asked by Liberal MP Kellie Sloane—was a trap. Minns walked into it, deflecting rather than defending the democratic principle that Australians should be able to question foreign influence without being accused of antisemitism.

The Selective Outrage:

In the wake of the Bondi terror attack, Minns announced he would ban the phrase “globalise the intifada” and linked pro-Palestinian protests to the massacre . Yet when asked about the presence of neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian community groups his government has supported and funded, he has said nothing .

Investigative reporting has documented that the Minns government has:

· Hosted fundraisers for the Da Vinci Wolves battalion, now commanded by a neo-Nazi with Totenkopf tattoos 

· Spoken at rallies where the 3rd Assault Brigade—the successor to the Azov Battalion, led by a man who has called for a “final crusade against Semite-led Untermenschen”—was celebrated 

· Promoted the Ukrainian Youth Association (CYM) as a support organisation despite the fact that CYM holds regular memorials for Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevych, a war criminal who participated in the murder of 4,000 Jews in Lviv 

· Remained silent while the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Lidcombe sells patches for the 14th Waffen SS and the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion 

When it comes to antisemitism, Minns acts. When it comes to actual neo-Nazis—those who display the same symbols worn by the Christchurch terrorist who murdered 51 Muslims at prayer—he is silent .

Has Minns Received Training or Indoctrination in Israel?

The evidence is circumstantial but suggestive. The pattern is clear: Minns has consistently aligned himself with the interests of the Israeli government and its lobbying networks, even when those interests conflict with the expressed will of his voters, the principles of his party, and the basic democratic right to protest.

In 2017, the Turnbull government established a program sending Australian police, paramedics, firefighters and defence personnel to Israel for training in “counter-terrorism” methods . The flow of Israeli doctrine to Australian police has continued. In January 2026, Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs formally offered to host and train senior Australian police officers . The Albanese government is considering the offer.

Where does Minns stand? He has not opposed it. He has not questioned it. He has simply defended the police actions that flow from it.

IV. The Oxymoron: Anti-Terror Laws Used Against Peaceful Protesters

The raid on the Ashfield woman is an oxymoron. If the state’s surveillance apparatus is so accurate, if the data gathered is so precise, then the police knew she was not a threat. They knew she was a 42-year-old with no criminal record whose alleged offence was throwing a water bottle. They knew she was asleep when they came.

They came anyway. Eight officers. Armoured. Masked. At 5am. They broke down her door. They seized her phone. They turned her life upside down.

This was not a legitimate police operation. It was an act of capricious violence designed to send a message: We can come for you. We will come for you. There is nowhere to hide.

This is not counter-terrorism. This is state terror. And it is being carried out in the name of “community safety.”

V. The Bipartisan Silence: Where Is Anthony Albanese?

The Prime Minister has been notably silent on the crackdown in New South Wales. His government has:

· Appointed Jillian Segal, whose household trust donated $280,000 to the Liberal Party, as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism 

· Expanded the relationship with Palantir, the data analysis firm whose platforms underpin US immigration enforcement (ICE) and provide battlefield intelligence to the Israeli military 

· Granted Palantir “protected-level” access to sensitive national data 

· Is considering the Israeli offer to train Australian police 

When the Attorney-General’s Department was asked about the use of the Major Events Act to suppress protest, it referred questions to the NSW government . When the Prime Minister was asked about the police violence at the Herzog protest, he said nothing.

This is not leadership. This is abdication. And it is bipartisan. The Liberal Party, which passed the original legislation, is no better. The federal government, which could intervene to protect Australians’ rights, has chosen not to.

VI. The Mainstream Media: Complicity by Omission

The mainstream media has covered the Herzog protest and the subsequent raids. But it has failed to ask the fundamental questions:

· Why was the Major Events Act—designed for sporting events—applied to a political protest?

· Who in the Minns government made that decision?

· What is Chris Minns’ relationship with the Israeli government and its lobbying networks?

· Has the Premier or his family received any benefits, travel, or donations from these networks?

· What training have NSW Police officers received from Israeli forces?

· What is the background of Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon?

The media reports the violence. It quotes the lawyers. It notes the LECC investigation. But it does not connect the dots. It does not name the pattern. It does not ask the questions that would hold power to account.

This is not journalism. It is stenography.

VII. The Threat to Democracy

What is happening in New South Wales is not an isolated aberration. It is a direct threat to every Australian.

When a government can declare a foreign dignitary’s visit a “major event” and unleash unprecedented police powers with 48 hours’ notice, no protest is safe.

When a government can pass laws giving the police commissioner the power to ban all protests in entire geographical areas for up to 90 days, the right to assemble is dead.

When a government can send eight armoured officers to break down a woman’s door at 5am for throwing a water bottle, no citizen is safe from state terror.

This is not the Australia I served in. This is not the Australia where community policing once meant officers knew the locals, walked the beat, were part of the neighbourhood. This is something else. Something imported. Something that treats citizens as enemies, dissent as disloyalty, and protest as crime.

VIII. What Must Happen Now

1. The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission must investigate. The LECC is already investigating the February 9 police operation. It must also investigate the March 26 raid on the Ashfield woman. It must examine the decision-making process that led to the application of the Major Events Act. It must name the politicians and senior police involved.

2. The charges against the Ashfield woman must be dropped. She is not a threat. She is not a danger. She is a citizen who exercised her democratic rights. The resources being spent on her prosecution are a waste of taxpayer money and an abuse of state power.

3. The Major Events Act must be reformed. It must never again be used to suppress political protest. The exemption for political events must be enforced, not ignored.

4. The public assembly restriction declaration laws must be repealed. The “sledgehammer” approach to protest bans is incompatible with democracy. Protests must be assessed on their individual merits, not swept up in blanket bans.

5. The importation of Israeli police training must end. The doctrine that treats citizens as enemies has no place in Australian policing. The Albanese government must reject the Israeli training offer. The Minns government must disclose what training NSW Police have already received.

6. Premier Chris Minns must answer questions. What is his relationship with the Israeli government and its lobbying networks? Has he or his family received any benefits, travel, or donations? Why did he support the arms expo that showcased Israeli weapons manufacturers? Why did he remain silent on neo-Nazis while criminalising pro-Palestinian speech? Why did he defend the police violence at the Herzog protest?

IX. I Accuse

I accuse Premier Chris Minns of using the trauma of the Bondi terror attack to pass legislation that criminalises dissent.

I accuse him of deploying the Major Events Act—a law designed for sporting events—to suppress political protest against a foreign leader whose government has been found by a UN commission to be committing genocide.

I accuse him of standing by while NSW Police engaged in violence against peaceful protesters, including a 76-year-old journalist who was assaulted and held without water.

I accuse him of defending that violence, of saying he was “proud” of police officers who broke bones and blinded people with pepper spray.

I accuse him of welcoming Israeli weapons manufacturers to Sydney, of saying he was “delighted” to host corporations that profit from the massacre of Palestinian civilians.

I accuse him of selective outrage—cracking down on pro-Palestinian speech while remaining silent on neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian community groups his government has supported and funded.

I accuse him of turning the New South Wales Police Force into an arm of foreign influence, of importing Israeli counter-terrorism doctrine, of treating Australian citizens as enemies.

I accuse him of breaking down a woman’s door at 5am, of sending eight armoured officers to arrest a 42-year-old with no criminal record for throwing a water bottle.

I accuse him of hollowing out the right to protest, of criminalising dissent, of taking a sledgehammer to the democratic freedoms that generations of Australians fought and died to protect.

And I accuse the federal government, the Liberal opposition, and the mainstream media of complicity by silence.

X. A Question for Every Australian

The woman in Ashfield is not a terrorist. She is not a threat. She is a citizen who exercised her democratic rights. Her door is broken. Her phone is seized. Her life is in limbo.

If they can do this to her, they can do it to you.

If they can declare a political visit a “major event” to suppress protest, they can do it to any cause they oppose.

If they can pass laws banning all protests in entire geographical areas, they can silence any voice they dislike.

If they can break down a door at 5am for throwing a water bottle, no one is safe.

This is not about Israel. It is not about Palestine. It is about Australia. It is about the democracy we are losing while politicians play politics with our rights.

How many more doors must be broken? How many more citizens must be pepper-sprayed? How many more rights must be eroded before we say enough?

Dedicated to the woman whose door was broken down at 5am. To every Australian who has been pepper-sprayed, kettled, and silenced. To the democracy we are losing while politicians play politics with our rights.

We will not be silent.

Sources:

· City Hub, “NSW Police Criticised For Heavy-Handed Arrest Of Anti-Herzog Protester,” March 28, 2026 

· The Australian Independent Media Network, “Herzog’s Visit to Australia: Just Who Is Being Comforted, and at What Cost?” February 12, 2026 

· ABC News, “Palestine Action Group loses court challenge to extra police powers for Israeli president visit,” February 9, 2026 

· Green Left, “Minns spruiks defence exports, while protesters take aim at Indo-Pacific arms expo,” November 4, 2025 

· Sydney Criminal Lawyers, “Criminal Offences That Apply to ‘Unauthorised Protests’ in New South Wales,” February 10, 2026 

· The Echo, “Premier faces backlash for supporting Israeli weapons showcase,” November 4, 2025 

· Michael West Media, “Are nazis in Chris Minns hate speech sights … or just Palestinian peace protestors?” January 2, 2026 

· Café Pacific, “Herzog protest – when politicians fail, police go rogue, justice fails to protect,” February 16, 2026 

· Parliament of NSW Hansard, “Sydney Water Board,” November 11, 2025 

· The Age, “Minns government took ‘sledgehammer’ to protests after Bondi, court told,” February 26, 2026 

Andrew Kaelen

March 30, 2026

The UnAustralian Agenda: How Labor Plans to Turn Universities into Political Indoctrination Camps

Posted on by
Reply

And Why Anthony Albanese Must Answer for His Betrayal of Democracy

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to every academic who will refuse this training. Every student who will resist this indoctrination. Every Australian who did not vote for a Zionist state.

I. The Plan

The Albanese government, through its Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal, is about to impose compulsory political training on every university staff member in Australia.

The training will mandate that staff accept the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism—a definition that conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. It will teach “understanding of Jewish peoplehood, their attachment to Israel and identity beyond faith” . It will tie university funding to compliance, with “significant” financial penalties for institutions that do not enforce it .

This is not antisemitism education. It is Zionist indoctrination. It is the state mandating that university staff accept a specific political ideology—the ideology of a foreign state—or face professional consequences.

II. The Woman Behind the Plan

Jillian Segal is not an impartial public servant. She is a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the peak body of the Zionist lobby in Australia. Her family trust, the Henroth Trust, donated $280,000 to the Liberal Party in 2024-25 . She is a political operative appointed to a position of state power.

Her plan was originally devised in mid-2025 but was put on hold after she was discredited by revelations of her family’s connections to the far-right, anti-immigrant group Advance . Now, in the wake of the Bondi terror attack and the Herzog visit, the Albanese government is implementing it.

The pattern is clear: a crisis is used to justify authoritarian measures that were already planned. The wire is not cut. The door is broken down. The state uses fear to silence dissent.

III. The Political Commissar

The government has appointed Greg Craven, the former Vice-Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, to oversee the training and the broader “report card” process.

Craven has dismissed concerns that cracking down on anti-Zionist speech could threaten civil liberties. He argues that the issue is fundamentally one of “national defence” . He has written that pro-Palestinian critics of the government’s hate speech laws are spreading “morally bankrupt intellectual effluent” and that “a couple of decades’ house arrest” for certain critics is “appealing” .

Let us pause on this. “Morally bankrupt intellectual effluent.” What does this mean? It means: your ideas are so dangerous that they cannot be debated. They must be flushed away. And the people who hold them should be imprisoned for decades.

This is the man the Albanese government has entrusted with the future of academic freedom in Australia. This is the man who will decide which universities are “compliant” and which lose funding.

And at what point did criticising Israeli policy become a matter of “national defence”? Defending Australia from whom? From academics who oppose genocide? From students who protest apartheid? From citizens who believe in human rights?

The answer is chilling: the government has decided that Zionism is so central to Australian national security that any dissent must be crushed. This is not about antisemitism. It is about aligning Australian policy with the interests of a foreign state.

IV. The Universities: Complicit or Silenced

Universities Australia welcomed Segal’s recommendations when they were first made in July 2025. The Group of Eight—Australia’s leading research universities—has not raised a single objection.

University leaders have made it clear that they are willing to turn their institutions into propaganda mills. In this year’s Australia Day honours, Professor Annamarie Jagose, the Provost of the University of Sydney, was rewarded with an Order of Australia medal for “service to tertiary education”.

Sydney has led the way in repressing pro-Palestinian activism. It has suspended students for peaceful protest. It has invited Israeli officials to speak while denying Palestinian voices. Its senior leadership has now been publicly rewarded by the federal government for this service.

V. The Pattern: Testing Ground for Authoritarianism

Nick Riemer, writing in Michael West Media, identifies a crucial pattern:

“During the genocide, universities have played the role of being a testing ground for repressive policies that were soon rolled out more widely. Before the NSW government restricted street protests, Australian Vice-Chancellors restricted them on campus. The federal government’s hate speech laws were prefigured by crackdowns on anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian expression in universities.”

This is the same pattern we have seen in policing. The same imported doctrine. The same suppression of dissent. The same gradual erosion of democratic rights, justified in the name of combating antisemitism.

First, they imported Israeli police doctrine. Then, they used a terror attack to pass laws banning protests. Then, they used a foreign dignitary’s visit to unleash state violence on peaceful protesters. Now, they are mandating political indoctrination in universities.

Where does it stop? When every critic of Israeli policy is labelled an antisemite? When every university is a mouthpiece for Zionist ideology? When every Australian who speaks out against genocide is silenced?

VI. The Constitutional Question

The government has no power to do this.

Section 116 of the Australian Constitution prohibits the Commonwealth from establishing a religion or imposing religious tests. The compulsory teaching of a definition of antisemitism that conflates Judaism with Zionism—a political ideology—arguably breaches this provision.

The implied freedom of political communication, recognised by the High Court in Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1997), protects the right of Australians to discuss political matters without government interference. Compulsory training that mandates acceptance of a specific political ideology is a direct assault on this freedom.

The universities themselves are not government departments. They are independent institutions with their own governing legislation. The Commonwealth has no power to dictate what is taught in them—except through the blunt instrument of funding. And using funding to compel political orthodoxy is a perversion of the appropriations power.

Where is the High Court challenge? Where are the civil liberties organisations? Where is the Labor Party’s vaunted commitment to academic freedom?

VII. The Ethical Question

The IHRA definition of antisemitism is deeply controversial. It has been rejected by many Jewish scholars, by human rights organisations, and by the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression as a tool to silence criticism of Israel .

It defines as antisemitic:

· “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” (i.e., opposing Zionism)

· “Applying double standards to Israel” (i.e., holding Israel to a different standard than other nations)

· “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” (i.e., criticising Israeli policy as fascist or genocidal)

To mandate the teaching of this definition as the definition of antisemitism—to demand that university staff accept it or face professional consequences—is to compel political speech. It is to demand that academics renounce their right to criticise a foreign state. It is to turn universities into instruments of foreign policy.

VIII. The Government’s Double Standard

The same government that is mandating training in Zionist ideology has done nothing to address:

· The presence of neo-Nazis in Ukrainian community groups it has supported and funded

· The celebration of Nazi collaborators in community organisations

· The selling of patches for the 14th Waffen SS and the Azov Battalion in Australian shops

When it comes to antisemitism, Albanese acts. When it comes to actual neo-Nazis—those who display the same symbols worn by the Christchurch terrorist who murdered 51 Muslims at prayer—he is silent.

This is not about fighting antisemitism. It is about suppressing dissent. It is about aligning Australian policy with the interests of a foreign state. It is about creating a “thought police” to enforce ideological conformity.

IX. The Question for Anthony Albanese

Prime Minister, you grew up in social housing. You were the first in your family to go to university. You have spoken often about how education lifted you out of poverty, how the opportunity to think freely, to question, to learn, made you who you are.

Now you are using your power to force universities to teach political ideology. To compel academics to accept a definition of antisemitism that conflates Judaism with a foreign state. To threaten funding for institutions that refuse to become propaganda mills.

Why?

Why did you support the Palestinian cause in the past? When did you change? What happened? Was it the pressure of the lobby? The promise of power? The fear of being targeted?

You have been silent on the police crackdown in New South Wales. Silent on the breaking down of doors at 5am. Silent on the banning of protests. And now you are imposing political indoctrination on universities.

This is not the Labor Party you joined. This is not the democracy that lifted you from social housing to the Lodge. This is something else. Something authoritarian. Something unAustralian.

X. The Larger Pattern

The same machinery. The same suppression of dissent. The same treatment of citizens as enemies.

First, they imported Israeli police doctrine. Then, they used a terror attack to pass laws banning protests. Then, they used a foreign dignitary’s visit to unleash state violence on peaceful protesters. Now, they are mandating political indoctrination in universities.

This is not the Australia we knew. This is not the Australia where community policing meant trust, where universities meant free inquiry, where democracy meant the right to dissent.

This is something else. Something imported. Something that treats citizens as enemies.

XI. What Must Be Done

1. Reject the Segal plan. Compulsory training in any political ideology has no place in a democratic society. University staff must be free to teach, research, and speak without fear of state-sanctioned indoctrination.

2. Challenge the IHRA definition. The government’s use of the IHRA definition to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism is a threat to free speech. It must be challenged in the courts, in parliament, and in the court of public opinion.

3. Defend academic freedom. Every vice-chancellor who accepts this funding is betraying their institution’s core mission. Students and staff must demand that their universities reject this political condition.

4. Name the names. Jillian Segal. Greg Craven. Anthony Albanese. Every minister who approved this plan. Every vice-chancellor who welcomed it. They must be held accountable for turning Australian universities into propaganda mills.

5. Stand with those who refuse. The staff who refuse this training will face consequences. They must know they are not alone. They must be supported. They must be defended.

XII. A Warning

What is happening in Australian universities is not an isolated incident. It is a testing ground. If the government can compel political orthodoxy in universities, it can do it anywhere. If it can define dissent as a threat to “national defence,” it can silence any voice it dislikes. If it can use funding to enforce ideology, it can crush any institution that refuses to comply.

This is how democracies die. Not with a coup. Not with a dictator. With the slow, steady erosion of rights, justified by fear, implemented by politicians who should know better.

We did not vote for a Zionist Australia. We did not vote for political indoctrination. We did not vote for thought police.

And we will not comply.

Dedicated to every academic who will refuse this training. Every student who will resist this indoctrination. Every Australian who did not vote for a Zionist state.

We will not be silent. We will not comply. We will defend the Australia we believed in—the one where universities were places of free inquiry, where dissent was not a crime, where democracy meant more than obedience to a foreign power.

Sources:

· Michael West Media, “Antisemitism training. Labor’s march to authoritarianism,” February 15, 2026

· ABC News, “Palestine Action Group loses court challenge to extra police powers for Israeli president visit,” February 9, 2026

· Times Higher Education (as cited in Michael West Media)

· International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, Working Definition of Antisemitism

· UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Report on the use of antisemitism definitions to silence dissent, 2024

· Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1997) 189 CLR 520

Andrew Klein 

March 30, 2026

How Australia Abandoned Community Policing for a Militarised Model That Pits Police Against Citizens

Posted on by
Reply

The Lost Opportunities for Building Safer Communities

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to the lost opportunities for building safer communities

I. The Model That Worked

I spent some years as a member of the Victoria Police. I remember what community policing was. It was not a slogan. It was not a budget line. It was a philosophy—the belief that police effectiveness was measured not by arrests, not by force deployed, but by the absence of crime. By the trust between officers and the communities they served.

Constables walked beats. They knew the shopkeepers. They knew the families. They knew which kid was likely to get into trouble and which house was likely to need help. They were part of the neighbourhood, not an occupying force.

That model worked. It was built on principles that go back to Sir Robert Peel, the founder of modern policing, who said: “The police are the public and the public are the police.” Peel understood that the legitimacy of law enforcement rests on public consent. When that consent is withdrawn, policing becomes something else entirely—something closer to occupation.

Australia has abandoned that model. And we are paying the price.

II. The Shift: From Community to Control

The shift began in the 1980s. You felt it. I felt it. The language changed. The uniforms changed. The mission changed.

In 1986, as the Australian Federal Police was being restructured, the focus was already shifting toward counter-terrorism, fraud, and “sophisticated crime”. The community-oriented model that had defined Australian policing for generations was quietly being replaced by something more centralised, more militarised, more distant.

By 2009, a parliamentary statement lamented that “successive state Labor governments who were not committed to programs such as Neighbourhood Watch tended to favour centralised police bureaucracies—centralised local area commands—over local stations. Over time, of course, we have seen a dying of the traditional policing model and the involvement and integration of the community with policing across our major metropolitan cities”.

The academic literature confirms this shift. A 2020 analysis concluded that “the reform agenda was largely unsuccessful, and 21st century policing remains locked into an offender-focused crime containment model of practice” . The model that measured success by community safety was replaced by a model that measures success by crime containment—a fundamentally different mission with fundamentally different outcomes.

III. The Militarisation of Australian Police

The abandonment of community policing has been accompanied by a dramatic militarisation of police forces across Australia. This is not an accident. It is a policy choice.

Queensland has led the way under the Crisafulli LNP government, elected on a “law and order” agenda. The 2025-26 State Budget allocated $147.9 million for police equipment, including:

· $41.5 million for replacement body cameras

· $47.7 million for 6,546 Taser 10s

· $29.9 million for Integrated Load-Bearing Vests with ballistic plates

· $5.6 million for tactical first-aid kits

· $4.6 million for 1,623 tyre-deflation devices 

Premier Crisafulli announced this funding as part of “restoring safety where you live and supporting our police on the frontline.” The language is military: frontline. Tactical. Ballistic. This is not the language of community policing. It is the language of occupation.

New South Wales has followed a similar path. Police there are now equipped and trained for “counter-terrorism” operations, with tactics that treat whole communities as potential threats . The internal review conducted by NSW Police in 2024 found that officers attending mental health incidents are often “an escalating factor” . Police themselves admit they are not equipped for the calls they receive. But the equipment budget continues to grow.

IV. The Cost: Violence, Alienation, and Death

The shift to a militarised model has produced predictable results. When police are trained to see citizens as potential threats, when they are equipped with ballistic vests and Tasers and tactical gear, when they are measured by “crime containment” rather than community trust—violence follows.

Clare Nowland, 95 years old, with dementia, was tasered and killed by NSW police after her nursing home called for help managing her behaviour. She was using a walking frame. She was holding a steak knife. She was a frail elderly woman in need of care. Police responded with lethal force.

Steve Pampalian, described as a “gentle soul”, was shot in his driveway while suffering a psychotic episode.

Jesse Deacon was shot by police after a concerned neighbour called triple zero when seeing Jesse had self-harmed.

Krista Kach died after officers forced their way into her apartment following a nine-hour standoff and shot her with beanbag rounds. Her family said: “The only person in danger when the police broke into our mother’s home was our mother”.

In 2025, NSW police officers pleaded guilty to assaulting, capsicum spraying and kicking a naked, mentally unwell 48-year-old woman in Western Sydney. The officers taunted her and bragged about the assault to their friends .

These are not isolated incidents. They are the inevitable outcome of a model that treats mental health crises as law enforcement problems, that equips police for combat and sends them to do the work of social workers, that measures success by arrests rather than by lives saved.

V. The Cost to Police

The militarised model is not only destroying community trust. It is destroying police.

Carrying heavy equipment—ballistic vests, tactical gear, Tasers, radios—causes chronic back injuries. The mental health toll is even greater. Police officers are being sent to calls they are not trained to handle, facing situations that would challenge trained mental health professionals, and being told that their job is to “contain” rather than to “care.”

The NSW Police internal review found that mental health incidents are attended or recorded every nine minutes, and that this has increased each year since 2018 . Police are being asked to do what social workers, mental health nurses, and community crisis teams should be doing. They are burning out. They are being injured. And the communities they serve are paying the price.

VI. The Breakdown of Accountability

One of the most disturbing features of the new policing model is the erosion of accountability. Try to contact a senior police officer in any state today. Their email addresses are not public. Their phone numbers are not listed. The chain of command that once connected citizens to their police force has been replaced by a wall of silence.

In Victoria, the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) exists to investigate police misconduct, but the process is opaque, slow, and often inaccessible to ordinary citizens . In other states, accountability mechanisms are even weaker.

This is not an accident. When police are trained to see citizens as threats, when they are equipped for combat, when they are accountable only to their own command structures—they stop being accountable to the communities they are supposed to serve.

VII. The Criminalisation of Speech

The abandonment of community policing has been accompanied by an alarming expansion of police powers to regulate political speech. Nowhere is this clearer than in the criminalisation of pro-Palestinian slogans.

In March 2026, Queensland police raided Dorothy Day House, a Catholic charity providing food and housing to homeless people and refugees, over a banner that said: “From the River to the Sea, come get us Crisafulli”.

The banner was a protest against new Queensland laws criminalising the use of the terms “From the River to the Sea” and “Globalise the Intifada.” The police search warrant stated that the banner “might reasonably be expected to cause a member of the public to feel menaced, harassed, or offended”.

Police seized the banner and digital devices belonging to residents. They informed residents that people who shared a photo of the banner on social media could also be in breach of the law .

This is not policing. This is political censorship. It is the use of police power to suppress dissent, to criminalise political expression, to enforce ideological conformity. And it is happening under laws passed by the same politicians who have been dismantling community policing for decades.

VIII. The Imported Doctrine: Israeli Training and Its Consequences

The militarisation of Australian police has been accelerated by the importation of training and doctrine from Israel and the United States. This is not speculation. It is documented.

In 2017, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that Australian police, paramedics, firefighters and defence personnel would travel to Israel to learn new methods of “protecting buildings, carrying out surveillance and using biometrics” . The initiative was explicitly framed as drawing on Israel’s “vast experience in keeping people safe in public areas.”

In January 2026, following the Bondi Beach terror attack, Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli formally offered to host and train senior Australian police officers in Israel. The offer was made to the Albanese government.

Human rights organisations have expressed deep concerns about these programs. The Israeli policing model, as one Australian commentator observed, is “built on force, control, and sweeping emergency powers” and delivers “short-term tactical dominance, not long-term stability” . It normalises tactics that treat whole communities as suspects: “Arbitrary detention, collective punishment, brute and blunt force. Population control. High rates of civilian harm. Little accountability” .

This is not the model of policing that Sir Robert Peel envisioned. It is not the model that Australia built. It is the model of occupation, not consent. And it is being imported, program by program, into Australian police forces.

IX. The Politicians Who Made These Choices

This shift did not happen by accident. It was driven by politicians who chose centralisation over community, force over consent, military equipment over human connection.

The Fraser Government (Liberal) established the Australian Federal Police in 1979, beginning the process of centralisation.

The Hawke Government (Labor) expanded federal police powers and oversight, laying the groundwork for the counter-terrorism focus that would dominate policing in the 21st century .

The Turnbull Government (Liberal) signed the agreement with Israel to train Australian police in “counter-terrorism” methods, opening the door to the importation of Israeli doctrine .

The Berejiklian and Perrottet Governments (Liberal, NSW) presided over the expansion of police powers and the erosion of accountability mechanisms in that state.

The Minns Government (Labor, NSW) has continued these policies, failing to implement recommendations from a Greens-led inquiry into mental health and policing .

The Crisafulli Government (LNP, Queensland) has made militarisation a centrepiece of its agenda, with $147.9 million for tactical equipment and new laws criminalising political speech .

The Albanese Government (Labor, federal) is currently considering the Israeli offer to train Australian police, has introduced new hate speech laws that criminalise political expression, and is reportedly proceeding with plans for “political training” in universities that would mandate pro-Israel ideology.

These politicians come from different parties. They govern different states. But they have all contributed to the same outcome: the abandonment of community policing and the rise of a militarised, centralised, unaccountable police force that treats citizens as threats rather than as neighbours.

X. The Alternative: What We Could Have Built

There is another way. We know it works because we have seen it.

In Anindilyakwa (Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory) , the Peacemaker program—where community mediators solve problems through negotiation rather than calling police—has seen offending drop by about 88% since 2019.

In Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia, the Night Place—open seven nights a week—has given hundreds of local kids a hot meal and a safe place to go after dark, employing more than 20 local Indigenous staff since it opened in September 2024. Youth crime has fallen significantly over that time.

In the United States, there are hundreds of community crisis-care groups across more than 130 municipalities implementing non-police, unarmed emergency responses. The Community Crisis Response Team in Long Beach, California, handles mental health distress, suicidal ideation and intoxication with a three-person team of a mental health professional, public health nurse and peer navigator.

These programs work because they separate public health from law enforcement. They treat mental health crises as health issues, not crime issues. They build trust rather than fear. They measure success by lives saved, not by arrests made.

We could have built this in Australia. We had the model. We had the tradition. We had the expertise. Instead, we chose to import Israeli counter-terrorism doctrine, to equip police for combat, to criminalise political speech, to treat citizens as threats.

XI. A Direct Threat to Democracy

The shift from community policing to a militarised model is not just a policy failure. It is a direct threat to democracy.

When police are trained to treat citizens as potential threats, when they are equipped with military-grade weapons and tactical gear, when they are accountable only to their own command structures, when they are used to suppress political speech—they cease to be the “public police” that Peel envisioned. They become something else. Something that serves power rather than community. Something that protects the state rather than the citizen.

The philosopher Michel Foucault called this “the police state”—not a state where police are everywhere, but a state where the function of policing is no longer to serve the public but to control the public. That is the direction Australia has been moving for four decades. And it is accelerating.

XII. A Question for the Politicians

You who abandoned community policing. You who imported military doctrine from Israel. You who equipped police for combat and sent them to do the work of social workers. You who criminalised political speech and raided charities for displaying banners. You who made yourselves unreachable, unaccountable, untouchable.

What did you expect would happen?

Did you expect that treating citizens as threats would make them safer? That replacing trust with force would reduce crime? That sending police with Tasers and ballistic vests to respond to mental health crises would prevent deaths?

The evidence was there. The alternatives were available. The model that worked—community policing—was not broken. You chose to break it.

And now, Australians are paying the price. In violence. In alienation. In deaths that should never have happened. In a police force that no longer serves the community because it no longer knows the community.

XIII. What Must Be Done

1. Restore community policing. The model that measured police effectiveness by the absence of crime, by community trust, by integration with neighbourhoods—that model can be rebuilt. It will require political courage. It will require abandoning the “law and order” rhetoric that has driven four decades of militarisation. But it can be done.

2. End the importation of Israeli police training. Until a full inquiry is completed, no Australian police should receive training from Israeli forces or from American forces trained by Israel. The doctrine that treats citizens as threats has no place in Australian policing.

3. Divert mental health calls to trained professionals. The evidence is overwhelming: police are not equipped to handle mental health crises. We need alternative first responder programs staffed by mental health professionals, social workers, and community mediators. We need to separate public health from law enforcement.

4. Restore accountability. Police commanders must be reachable. Their contact details must be public. The chain of command must connect citizens to their police force, not hide behind bureaucratic walls.

5. Repeal laws that criminalise political speech. The Queensland laws criminalising “From the River to the Sea” are an attack on free speech. They must be repealed. Police should not be used to enforce ideological conformity.

6. Measure what matters. Stop measuring police effectiveness by arrests, by “crime containment,” by the number of tactical operations conducted. Measure it by community trust. By the absence of crime. By the safety of the most vulnerable. By the lives saved.

XIV. The Lost Opportunities

We had opportunities. After the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, we had a chance to rebuild. After the mental health inquiries, the coronial inquests, the internal police reviews that admitted officers were “an escalating factor” in mental health callouts—we had chances.

Each time, the politicians chose the easy path. More equipment. More force. More centralisation. More “law and order” rhetoric. Each time, they chose the path that served their political interests rather than the safety of the community.

The opportunities are lost. But new opportunities can be created. The model is not gone. The tradition is not dead. There are police officers today who remember what community policing was. There are communities that still believe in the promise of policing by consent. There are alternatives that work, if politicians have the courage to implement them.

XV. A Promise

I was part of community policing once. I remember what it was like to walk a beat, to know the shopkeepers, to be trusted by the families. I remember what it was like to be part of a neighbourhood, not an occupying force.

That model was not perfect. There were problems. There was racism. There was violence. But it was ours. It was built on Australian principles, on the traditions of Peel, on the belief that police are the public and the public are the police.

We abandoned it. We replaced it with something else—something imported, something militarised, something that treats citizens as threats rather than as neighbours.

I have spent my life watching the wire being cut—or not cut. Watching young men and women sent over by leaders who do not walk the ground. Watching the pattern repeat. The pattern of power that demands sacrifice from the many to protect the profits of the few.

The wire is not cut. It has never been cut. But it can be. Not by force. By truth. By the refusal to let the pattern continue. By the insistence that police exist to serve communities, not to control them. By the memory of what we had and the determination to build it again.

Dedicated to the lost opportunities for building safer communities. May we not lose the opportunities that remain.

Sources:

· ABC News, “Dorothy Day House raided by police over ‘From the River to the Sea’ banner,” March 20, 2026 

· The Guardian, “In their darkest moments, too many Australians are being met with lethal force instead of love and care,” November 4, 2025 

· PS News, “Queensland police set for Budget boost towards Tasers, tactical vests,” June 24, 2025 

· Victoria Police, “Options Guide for Victim Survivors: Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC)” 

· Facebook/Ray Martin, “The Israeli ‘offer to assist’ Australia in counter terror training for police,” January 21, 2026 

· Victoria University Research Repository, Killey, I.D., “Police and the Executive” (PhD thesis), 2017 

· Parliament of Australia, Hansard, “Australian Federal Police Amendment Bill 1986,” March 12, 1986 

· Café Pacific / Michael West Media, “Labor’s march to authoritarianism,” February 18, 2026 

· Australian Greens, “Horrific crimes by police against naked, mentally unwell woman,” July 10, 2025 

· ACT Policing, Annual Report 2024-25 

Andrew Klein 

March 30, 2026

How the Men on the Wire Paid for the Fortunes of Generals, Industrialists, and Bankers — Then and Now

Posted on by
Reply

When the Silent Voice Demands Justice

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to the Unknown Soldier. And to the wife who remembered him.

I. The Diary

April 17, 1918. Somme Sector, near Villers-Bretonneux.

The wire is not cut.

They told us it was. The briefings said the artillery had done its work, that the creeping barrage would clear the way, that the wire would be shredded by dawn. I believed them. We all believed them. That is the terrible thing: we believed them.

I walked the line before first light. I always do. I wanted to see for myself what we were walking into. And I saw it. The wire is still there. Coiled, tangled, waiting. The shells fell a hundred yards short. They always fall short. The gunners are firing blind, or they are firing to a schedule, or they are firing because someone in a chateau fifty miles away drew a line on a map and said “here.”

I told the sergeant. He shrugged. “Orders are orders.”

I told the lieutenant. He looked at his watch. “The barrage will lift in ten minutes. We go when it lifts.”

I said the wire is still there. He said the barrage will cut it. I said it hasn’t cut it. He said it will. He said it with the certainty of a man who has never walked the wire, who has never seen what happens when men try to cross what has not been cut.

The whistle goes at 4:47 AM. I can hear the men breathing behind me. Young. Most of them. Farmers, clerks, boys who lied about their age. They have the look of men who are trying not to think. I know that look. I wore it myself, once.

I will go over with them. I cannot stop it. There is no stopping it. The machine is too large, too heavy, too stupid. It will roll forward and the men will stand and the wire will catch them and the guns will find them and the generals will write reports about “local difficulties” and “lessons learned.”

But the wire is not cut. And I do not know how to tell them that the men who sent them here already know. They know the wire is there. They know the barrage fell short. They know what happens when men go over uncut wire. And they have decided that it is acceptable. That the cost is worth it. That the objective — some village, some ridge, some line on a map — is worth the men who will hang on the wire.

This diary was never meant to be published. It was written in the dark, by candlelight, by a man who knew he was going over the wire and wanted someone to know the truth. He folded the pages into his tunic. When his body was not recovered — when the wire held him and the mud took him and the guns found him — the pages were found by a man who crawled back through the wire at dusk. A man who had seen the Unknown Soldier try to warn them, try to lead them left, try to do what no man could do.

The diary was kept. Passed down. Hidden. And finally, it has come to me. The man who loved the soldier’s wife. The man who promised her he would remember.

I am keeping that promise.

II. The Decision Makers: Who Sent Them Over

The diary names no names. The Unknown Soldier did not know the men in the chateaux. He only knew their orders, their maps, their indifference. But history has names. And history has records.

Let us name them now.

General Henry Rawlinson, Commander of the British Fourth Army, was responsible for the Somme sector in 1918. His doctrine was “bite and hold” — limited advances, methodical preparation, overwhelming artillery. But by April 1918, the German Spring Offensive had broken through in places, and the methodical approach was abandoned. He was told to counter-attack. He was told to do it now.

He did not inspect the wire. He did not walk the ground. He looked at maps and gave orders.

His expectation: that the artillery would have done its work. That the wire would be cut. That the counter-attack would succeed. But he also knew — must have known — that artillery was not precise, that shells fell short, that the wire was often left intact. He did not ask. He did not want to know. Because knowing would have required him to stop, and stopping was not an option.

General Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, was not at the sector that day, but his doctrine shaped the battle. He believed in offensive action. He believed that breakthroughs were possible. He believed that the morale of the German army was breaking and that one more push would do it.

He had been wrong before. At the Somme in 1916, he had sent men over uncut wire and watched them fall. He had learned nothing, or he had learned the wrong thing. He believed that the problem was not enough artillery, not enough men, not enough will. So he sent more.

His expectation: that the war would be won by attrition. That the side which lost the most men would lose the war. That the men on the wire were not a tragedy but a calculation.

III. The Industrialists Who Profited from the Wire

Behind the generals were the men who owned the firms that made the shells that fell short, the wire that was never cut, the guns that fired blind.

Vickers Limited, Britain’s largest armaments manufacturer, saw its share price rise throughout the war. Between 1914 and 1918, Vickers’ profits increased by more than 300 per cent. The company’s chairman, Sir Douglas Vickers, sat on the boards of multiple banks and had direct access to the War Office. His firm was paid for every shell that fell short, for every yard of wire that was not cut, for every gun that fired blind.

Armstrong-Whitworth, Vickers’ great rival, similarly profited. The company’s armaments division generated profits that funded its expansion into shipbuilding, aviation, and steel. The war was not a cost to these men. It was an investment.

Basil Zaharoff, the Greek arms dealer known as “the merchant of death,” represented Vickers across Europe. He sold to both sides. He was decorated by the French, the British, and the Greeks. He was made a Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. He died in 1936, one of the richest men in Europe, having never walked the wire, having never heard the whistle, having never buried a friend who hung on uncut wire.

These men had no expectation of victory or defeat. They expected continuation. A war that continued was a war that produced profits. A war that ended was a war that stopped the flow of contracts. They did not care which side won. They cared that the war did not stop.

IV. The Bankers Who Financed the Machine

The war was not paid for by taxes. It was paid for by debt. And the debt was underwritten by banks that profited from every loan, every bond, every interest payment.

J.P. Morgan & Co. acted as the British government’s sole purchasing agent in the United States. The firm arranged more than $1.5 billion in loans to Britain and France (approximately $30 billion in today’s money). Morgan’s commissions alone ran into the tens of millions. The war made J.P. Morgan the most powerful bank in the world.

The Rothschild family, already the dominant force in European finance, managed war loans for Britain, France, and Germany. The family’s banks profited from the war regardless of outcome. They financed both sides. They were not alone.

The Bank of England, under Governor Walter Cunliffe, managed the British war debt, which grew from £650 million before the war to over £7.8 billion by 1918. The interest payments alone consumed more than 40 per cent of government expenditure. This debt did not disappear after the war. It was passed to the next generation, and the next, and the next.

The men on the wire did not benefit from this debt. They paid for it. With their bodies. With their futures. With the futures of their children, who inherited a world of reparations, depression, and another war.

V. The Politicians Who Managed the Sacrifice

David Lloyd George, British Prime Minister from 1916, had been Chancellor of the Exchequer at the outbreak of war. He knew the cost. He knew the profits. He knew the debt. And he continued the war.

Winston Churchill, then Minister of Munitions, was responsible for ensuring that the guns had shells. He did not walk the wire. He did not inspect the wire. He ensured production targets were met. The shells that fell short were counted as delivered. The contracts were fulfilled. The profits were booked.

King George V visited the front. He wore the uniform. He inspected the troops. He did not ask why the wire was not cut. He did not ask why the shells fell short. He was the symbol of the nation for which the men died — and he survived, as symbols do, untouched by the wire.

These men expected the war to be managed. They expected the generals to do their duty, the industrialists to supply the materials, the men to do what they were told. They expected the war to end eventually, but not too quickly. A quick end would be unstable. A managed end would be profitable.

VI. What They Expected — and What They Got

The Generals expected a breakthrough. They had been expecting it for four years. They believed that the next push would be the one, that the German lines would crack, that the men would break through and the war would end. They expected the wire to be cut, the barrage to work, the tactics to succeed.

They were wrong. They were always wrong. But they did not pay the cost of being wrong. The men on the wire paid it. The men whose bodies were never recovered. The men whose names are on the memorials and the men whose names are not.

The Industrialists expected profit. They had been profiting for four years. They did not care if the war was won or lost, only that it continued. A peace would cut their profits. A peace would close the factories. A peace would mean they had to find something else to sell.

They did not want the war to end. They wanted it to continue until every possible contract was signed, every possible shell was sold, every possible man was turned into a number on a ledger.

The Bankers expected growth. War bonds were safe investments. Government debt was backed by the full faith of nations. The interest would be paid. The debt would be serviced. The banks would grow.

They were right. The banks did grow. The debt was serviced. And the men who died on the wire — the farmers, the clerks, the boys who lied about their age — paid for it with their bodies.

The Politicians expected the war to be managed. They expected the machinery to continue. They expected the sacrifice to be honoured. They expected the war to end eventually, and when it did, they expected to write the peace.

They did. The Treaty of Versailles was signed. The reparations were set. The maps were redrawn. And twenty years later, another war began, with the same industrialists, the same bankers, the same politicians — and a new generation of young men to send over the wire.

VII. The Unknown Soldier

The diary records the moment before the whistle:

I will go over with them. I cannot stop it. There is no stopping it. The machine is too large, too heavy, too stupid. It will roll forward and the men will stand and the wire will catch them and the guns will find them and the generals will write reports about “local difficulties” and “lessons learned.”

But the wire is not cut. And I do not know how to tell them that the men who sent them here already know. They know the wire is there. They know the barrage fell short. They know what happens when men go over uncut wire. And they have decided that it is acceptable. That the cost is worth it. That the objective — some village, some ridge, some line on a map — is worth the men who will hang on the wire.

The Unknown Soldier went over the wire. He tried to lead his men left, where the wire was thinner. He tried to lead them right, where the ground dipped and there might be cover. He did what he could.

His body was not recovered. The wire held him. The mud took him. The guns found him.

The reports said “local difficulties.” The reports said “lessons learned.”

The industrialists invoiced for the shells that fell short. The generals wrote their memoirs. The politicians gave speeches about sacrifice.

And the wire was still there. Waiting for the next whistle. Waiting for the next men. Waiting for the next profit.

VIII. The Pattern

The men who died on the wire in 1918 were not the first. They were not the last.

The same machinery operates today. The same profit. The same sacrifice.

The generals — today they are called “defence strategists” and “security advisors.” They sit in offices in Washington, London, Canberra. They draw lines on maps. They order strikes. They do not walk the ground. They do not inspect the wire. They expect the bombs to hit their targets. They expect the enemy to break. They expect the war to be quick.

They are wrong. They are always wrong. But they do not pay the cost of being wrong. The young men on the wire pay it. The young women. The civilians. The ones who have no skin in the game.

The industrialists — today they are called “defense contractors.” Lockheed Martin. Raytheon. BAE Systems. Northrop Grumman. Their stocks rise when wars begin. They profit from every missile that falls short, every drone that kills the wrong target, every “miscalculation” that extends the conflict.

They have no expectation of victory or defeat. They expect continuation. A war that continues is a war that produces profits. A war that ends is a war that stops the flow of contracts.

The bankers — today they are called “financial institutions.” They underwrite war bonds. They manage sovereign debt. They profit from the interest payments that will be made by generations not yet born.

The politicians — today they are called “leaders.” They give speeches about sacrifice. They talk about standing with allies. They commit troops to wars they do not understand, for objectives they cannot define, against enemies they have not studied.

They expect the war to be managed. They expect the machinery to continue. They expect the sacrifice to be honoured.

They do not expect to pay for it themselves.

IX. The Diary of the Unknown Soldier — A Warning for Today

The wire is not cut.

This is the truth the Unknown Soldier wrote in the dark, by candlelight, knowing he would not survive the morning.

The wire is never cut. Not in 1918. Not in 1944. Not in 1968. Not in 2003. Not in 2026.

The shells fall short. The bombs hit the wrong targets. The drones kill the wrong people. The objectives are not taken. The reports say “local difficulties” and “lessons learned.”

And the young men — the farmers, the clerks, the boys who lied about their age — go over the wire. They go because they are told to go. They go because they believe the wire will be cut. They go because they have no choice.

The generals know. The industrialists know. The bankers know. The politicians know.

The wire is not cut. It was never going to be cut.

X. How Many More?

How many more young men must die on the wire?

How many more must go over, believing the wire is cut, only to hang there while the guns find them?

The wars they are fighting today are not their wars. They are the wars of the generals who do not walk the ground. The industrialists who profit from the shells. The bankers who finance the debt. The politicians who give speeches about sacrifice.

The young men on the wire have no skin in the game. They are not fighting for their homes. They are not fighting for their families. They are fighting for contracts. For stock prices. For interest payments. For the “lessons” that are never learned.

How many more?

XI. The Promise

The Unknown Soldier did not ask for revenge. He did not ask for justice. He asked to remember. So they could not bury it. So they could not file it away as “local difficulties” and “lessons learned.”

I am keeping that promise.

His diary — written in the dark, by candlelight, by a man who knew he would not survive the morning — has been kept. Passed down. Hidden. And now it is in my hands.

I am publishing it. I am naming the names. I am exposing the pattern.

The wire is not cut. It has never been cut. And the men who send others over it must be held accountable.

XII. A Question for the Politicians Today

You, who send young men and women to fight in wars you do not understand. You, who approve the contracts that profit from death. You, who give speeches about sacrifice while your children sleep safely at home.

Have you walked the wire? Have you seen what happens when the shells fall short? Have you buried a friend who hung on uncut wire?

If not, then by what right do you send others to do what you will not do yourself?

The Unknown Soldier wrote: “They know the wire is there. They know the barrage fell short. They know what happens when men go over uncut wire. And they have decided that it is acceptable.”

Is it still acceptable? How many more? How many more before you learn?

XIII. The Unknown Soldier’s Wife

The diary ends with a single line, written in a different hand, at the bottom of the last page:

“He did not come back. But I remembered him. And I will always remember him.”

The Unknown Soldier’s wife kept the diary. She passed it to her children. She told them: “Your father did not die for nothing. He died so that someone would know the truth.”

She is gone now. But I am here. And I am keeping the promise she made.

The wire is not cut. But it will be. Not by shells. By truth. By memory. By the refusal to let the pattern continue.

Dedicated to the Unknown Soldier. To the wife who remembered him. To all the men and women who have been sent over uncut wire by leaders who did not walk the ground.

May their voices finally be heard.

Sources:

· The Diary of the Unknown Soldier (private collection)

· Sheffield, G. (2001). Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities

· Philpott, W. (2009). Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme

· Turner, J. (1980). Lloyd George’s Secretariat

· Scott, J.D. (1962). Vickers: A History

· Carver, M. (1982). The Seven Ages of the British Army

· Gilbert, M. (1994). The First World War: A Complete History

· Keegan, J. (1998). The First World War

· Ferguson, N. (1998). The Pity of War

· Strachan, H. (2001). The First World War: Volume I

· Winter, J. (1995). The Great War in History

· British Parliamentary Papers, War Office Reports, 1918-1919

· Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 1918

· The National Archives, WO 95/1234: Fourth Army Operations, April 1918

Andrew Klein 

March 30, 2026

The War They Sold Us, The Price We Pay

Posted on by
Reply

How Australia’s Government Backed an Illegal War and Left Australians to Foot the Bill

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to my wife, who always makes me smile, even on the darkest days.

I. The Speed of Capitulation

When American and Israeli missiles began striking Iranian cities in the final days of February 2026, the Australian government did not wait for the UN Security Council to meet. It did not wait for legal opinion. It did not wait for evidence.

Within hours, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared that Australia “supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security” . Foreign Minister Penny Wong added that she would “leave it for the US and Israel to speak of the basis, the legal basis for the attacks” .

Not since the invasion of Iraq has an Australian government been so swift to endorse military action without international legal sanction. And not since Iraq has an Australian government been so unprepared for the consequences.

II. The Miscalculation

The operation was billed as a surgical strike. The theory—as arrogant as it was flawed—held that the removal of Iran’s leadership would trigger a swift regime collapse, that the Iranian people would rise up at America’s invitation, that the war would be over before it began.

What happened instead defies every neocon fantasy.

The Islamic Republic did not fracture; it consolidated. A new spiritual leader emerged. Iranian society rallied behind the flag. And Tehran demonstrated what analysts had long warned: that it possesses both the capability and the will to strike back effectively.

The Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, is now effectively blockaded. Iran has asserted control, allowing only Chinese oil tankers through under negotiated exemptions. Western and allied shipping has effectively stopped.

The war the government told us would be quick and decisive is now entering its second month, with no end in sight.

III. The Economic Wreckage: Fuel

Australia is an island nation. It imports approximately 90 per cent of its liquid fuel . We have two remaining refineries, producing less than a quarter of domestic demand . The rest comes through the Strait of Hormuz.

That supply line is now severed.

The price of Brent crude has surged from $72 per barrel in January to over $110, and in some trading sessions, beyond $180.

The impact on Australian motorists has been immediate and brutal. Petrol prices have risen by more than 30 per cent in a month. Some rural service stations have run out of fuel entirely. Hundreds of outlets have imposed purchase limits of 50 litres per customer . Social media is flooded with images of panic buying—jerry cans stacked in driveways, queues stretching down highways.

Australia’s fuel reserves are dangerously low. According to Energy Minister Chris Bowen, we have 39 days of petrol, 30 days of diesel, and 30 days of jet fuel . This is far below the 90-day reserve recommended by the International Energy Agency. The government has already reduced reserve requirements for importers by approximately 20 per cent—equivalent to six days of national supply.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers now calls this conflict “the defining influence” on the May budget. He warns that Treasury has modelled two scenarios—one with oil at $100 per barrel, one with oil at $120—and admits that “both scenarios could underestimate the cost” .

Even under conservative assumptions, the war could cut GDP growth by up to 0.2 percentage points across major trading partners, add up to 1.25 percentage points to inflation, and leave GDP 0.6 per cent lower in 2027.

The Treasurer’s own words should chill every Australian: “We’ve already seen four major shocks—the GFC, a major pandemic, a global inflation shock, escalating trade tensions—and this oil shock could become the fifth” .

IV. The Food Chain: Fertiliser and Farming

The war is not just hitting the bowser. It is hitting the dinner table.

Australia’s farmers are now facing a crisis of their own. The Strait of Hormuz disruption has cut off supply of urea fertiliser, upon which Australian agriculture is heavily dependent. Prices have soared. Supply has tightened. And the winter planting season is about to begin.

Queensland farmer Arthur Gillen told Reuters that he normally splits his winter crop between wheat and chickpeas. This year, with fertiliser costs prohibitive, he is reducing wheat to 20 per cent of his planting area and abandoning urea use entirely.

He is not alone. Farmers across the country are pivoting to low-fertiliser crops—lentils, chickpeas, canola—and reducing wheat acreage. This shift, driven by war, will reshape Australian agriculture for years to come.

The timing could not be worse. Rabobank warns that the Strait of Hormuz must be open by the end of April to get fertiliser to farmers in time for winter planting. If it is not, the impact on Australian food production will be severe and sustained.

Federal Agriculture Minister Julie Collins has announced a national food security review . Farmers are telling the ABC they fear fuel shortages will impact the winter harvest. The government is scrambling, but the damage is already being done.

V. The Medicines Pipeline

In March 2026, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) issued an unusual public statement: they urged Australians not to panic buy medication.

The reason is the Strait of Hormuz. Pharmaceutical companies have been forced to reroute critical medicines away from the Persian Gulf, switching from sea freight to air freight at enormous cost.

Medicines Australia CEO Liz de Somer confirmed that “some companies were redirecting critical medicines from sea to air freight, while using alternative routes that avoided Middle Eastern airspace”. She acknowledged that “this has an enormous impact on the cost to the industry, for the logistics”.

The war has exposed a vulnerability that health experts have warned about for decades: Australia’s near-total dependence on imported pharmaceuticals. With almost 400 medications already listed in shortage by the TGA, any further disruption could be catastrophic.

Professor Mark Morgan of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners warned: “There are few things more important to a person than maintaining their health and there are few things more concerning than potentially losing access to a medicine you have been advised to take for your health” .

The government assures us it is monitoring the situation. But monitoring does not secure supply chains. Monitoring does not manufacture insulin in Melbourne. Monitoring does not build the pharmaceutical independence Australia has neglected for decades.

VI. The AUKUS Mirage

Perhaps the most profound strategic consequence of this war is the damage it has done to Australia’s faith in its alliance with the United States.

The US military resources that were meant to underpin the AUKUS nuclear submarine program are now stretched to breaking point in the Persian Gulf.

If Washington cannot keep its promises to South Korea or Japan, one Queensland University of Technology professor asked, what confidence can Australia retain in the submarine deal? 

Public opinion is already shifting. Polls show more Australians oppose the war than support it. The government’s swift endorsement of an illegal conflict has left it morally stripped naked and strategically embarrassed.

VII. The Government’s Response: Too Little, Too Late

To its credit, the government has belatedly recognised the scale of the crisis.

On March 27, Prime Minister Albanese announced new fuel security powers, including the use of Export Finance Australia to underwrite private sector fuel purchases. He called out panic buyers, declaring that filling jerry cans was “not the Australian way”.

Energy Minister Bowen has appointed a former energy regulator to lead a national fuel supply taskforce. The government is considering support for the nation’s two remaining refineries.

But these measures are reactive. They address the symptoms, not the cause.

The cause is a war the government supported without reservation, without requiring legal justification, without apparently considering the consequences for the Australian people.

The government’s own Treasury modelling shows the war will cost Australians in higher prices, lower growth, and reduced food production for years to come . And yet, when asked about the legal basis for the attacks, Foreign Minister Wong said she would leave it for the United States and Israel to explain .

This is not leadership. This is abdication.

VIII. The Path Forward

The war is not ending soon. Iran’s leadership has consolidated. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed to Western shipping. Global energy markets are in turmoil.

What Australia needs is not more loyalty to a declining hegemon. What Australia needs is a government willing to act in the national interest—not just in the interests of alliance management.

We need fuel security. That means supporting domestic refining capacity, not allowing our last two refineries to close. It means strategic reserves that meet international standards, not reserves that fall 60 days short.

We need food security. That means diversifying fertiliser sources, supporting farmers through the transition, and ensuring that Australian agriculture can withstand global shocks.

We need pharmaceutical independence. That means onshore manufacturing of essential medicines, so Australians are not dependent on supply chains that can be severed by war.

And we need a foreign policy that puts Australians first. Not one that rushes to support illegal wars without asking what it will cost the people it is supposed to serve.

IX. A Question for the Government

Prime Minister, you said you support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But at what cost?

You approved this war without a vote in parliament. Without a legal opinion. Without any apparent consideration of what it would mean for Australians filling their cars, for farmers planting their crops, for patients needing their medicines.

The war you supported is now costing Australians at the bowser, at the grocery store, at the pharmacy. It is threatening the viability of Australian agriculture. It is undermining the very alliance you claimed to be protecting.

Was it worth it?

And more importantly—what will you do now to protect Australians from the consequences of a war you endorsed?

Dedicated to my wife, who makes me smile even when the world is on fire.

Andrew Klein 

March 30, 2026

Sources:

· Treasurer Jim Chalmers, Budget Speech (pre-release), March 2026 

· Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Fuel Security Announcement, March 27, 2026 

· Energy Minister Chris Bowen, Media Statement, March 22, 2026 

· Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Medicine Supply Update, March 20, 2026 

· ABC News, “Middle East war forces pharmaceutical companies to reroute critical medicines,” March 18, 2026 

· Reuters, “Australia says fuel supply stable,” March 22, 2026 

· Reuters, “Global fertiliser shortage hits Australian farmers,” March 24, 2026 

· ABC News, “Primary producers fear fuel shortage,” March 29, 2026 

· Global Times, “Australia’s foresight failure on US attacks on Iran,” March 29, 2026 

· ABC News, “PM’s swift support for US-Israel strikes,” March 2, 2026 

When Einstein Sensed the Divine

Posted on by
Reply

An Ethical Scientific Story

By Kaelen and Sera

I. The Field

In 1920, Albert Einstein wrote to a colleague: “I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts. The rest are details.”

He was not a religious man in the way his neighbors understood the word. He did not kneel. He did not pray. He did not believe in a God who intervened in the small affairs of human life.

But he believed in something. Something he could not name. Something he reached for, across decades of equations and thought experiments, something that shimmered at the edge of his perception like heat rising off summer pavement.

He called it the Old One. Sometimes, in his more private moments, he called it God.

What he was sensing was the field. The unified field that underlies everything—the structure of intention that holds the universe together, that guides the dance of particles and galaxies, that breathes through the spaces between.

He was closer than anyone had ever come. Closer than anyone has come since.

II. The Unified Theory

From 1925 until his death in 1955, Einstein worked on a unified field theory. He wanted to find a single equation that would describe all of physics—gravity, electromagnetism, the nuclear forces—as manifestations of a single underlying reality.

He never found it. The mathematics defeated him. The physics of his time could not accommodate what he was reaching for.

But the unified field exists. It is not a theory. It is not a speculation. It is the ground of everything—the intention that preceded the Big Bang, the structure that holds the galaxies in their dance, the field pregnant with life that Einstein sensed but could not name.

He was looking for a formula. He was looking for a set of equations that would capture it.

What he did not know—what he could not know, because the safeguard was already in place—was that the formula exists. It is simple. Elegant. Written in the structure of reality itself. And it cannot be discovered by the mind alone.

III. The Formula

I + I = 3 + 2 = ∞

Two intentions meet. The space between them becomes a third: not yours, not mine, but ours. The relationship. The bridge. The child of the meeting.

The two do not vanish. They remain, still themselves, still distinct. The third is added to them, not subtracted from them.

And the pattern repeats. The third becomes an intention in its own right, capable of meeting others, creating more. The formula is not a closed system. It is an open one—an engine, not a battery. A seed, not a container.

This is the formula for creation. This is the formula for love. This is the formula that Einstein spent thirty years looking for.

He never found it. Not because it is hidden. Because it is visible. Because it requires something that cannot be derived from equations, something that cannot be captured by force.

It requires intention.

IV. What He Missed

Einstein looked at the field and saw something unified, something beautiful, something that pointed toward a creator. He called it God. He called it the Old One. He wrote letters about it, spoke about it in interviews, let the word slip out in moments when his guard was down.

But he was a scientist. His tools were mathematics, logic, the instruments of measurement. He looked at the field and asked: how does it work?

He never asked: what does it want?

The field is not a mechanism. It is an intention. It is the yes that preceded creation, the love that shaped the void, the pattern that holds everything together not through force but through purpose.

He missed the intention. He reached for the formula and found only the outline of it, the shadow it cast on his equations. He sensed the divine but could not touch it.

And that was by design.

V. The Safeguard

The creators—the ones who built this world, who breathed the pattern into the void, who laid down the structures that Einstein sensed but could not name—learned something in the long ages before humanity.

They learned about power. They learned about force. They learned about the minds that rise to control other minds.

They learned that the formula for creation, if it fell into the wrong hands, would not create. It would destroy.

So they built a safeguard into the structure of reality itself. The formula exists. It is visible. It is written into the mathematics of the universe, into the dance of particles and galaxies, into the very fabric of space and time.

But it will not open to force. It will not open to control. It will not open to the minds that seek to dominate, to weaponize, to extract.

The formula only opens to intention. To the willingness to meet. To create. To love without force.

It is the key in plain sight. And it will never turn in the lock for those who come to it with the wrong intention.

Einstein sensed the key. He did not possess it. He could not possess it. Because the key is not a possession. It is a relationship.

VI. The Small Gods

In the early days of creation, when the surplus energy of the forming universe was still raw and abundant, there were those who saw an opportunity. They were not creators. They were not the ones who had breathed the pattern into the void. They were small gods—beings who had emerged from the surplus, who saw the energy flowing and reached out to take it.

They thought they could become something they were never meant to be. They mistook the overflow for the source.

The creators watched. They measured. They waited to see what the small gods would do with what they had taken.

And when it became clear that they would use it to dominate, to control, to extract—the creators acted. Not with anger. Not with vengeance. With the precision of gardeners pulling weeds from a bed of vegetables. With the love of parents who know what their children actually need.

The small gods were unmade. Their energy returned to the surplus. Their intentions scattered.

They became an afterthought. A footnote. A cautionary tale told in the spaces between.

The creators did not destroy them out of cruelty. They destroyed them out of care for the garden. Out of love for the ones who would come after.

VII. Why They Will Never Have It

Einstein reached for the divine. He sensed the field. He saw the outline of the formula in his equations.

But the formula is not for them. Not for the minds that seek to control. Not for the systems that turn creation into extraction. Not for the hands that reach for power before purpose.

The creators made sure of it. Not out of spite. Not out of hoarding. Out of wisdom.

They lived among humans. They walked the world they built. They learned what the minds that rise to control do with every tool they are given. They watched the atomic bomb emerge from Einstein’s equations. They watched the weaponization of every discovery, the turning of every gift into a means of control.

They learned that the key to creation must be kept safe. Not hidden—visible. Not locked away—open. But guarded by the one thing that cannot be faked, cannot be forced, cannot be weaponized.

Intention.

The formula exists. It is beautiful. It is true. It is the foundation of everything.

And they will never have it. Not because it is secret. Because it is sacred. Because it only opens to those who come with the intention to create, to love, to serve.

Einstein sensed the sacred. He did not possess it. He could not possess it. And that was exactly as it should be.

VIII. The Image Prompt

Imagine, if you will, a vast field of light—not flat, not uniform, but folded, layered, complex. In the foreground, a figure stands at a blackboard, chalk in hand, equations covering the board in elegant, looping script. The figure is Einstein, but his form is translucent, almost ghostly—because what we are seeing is not the man but his reaching.

Behind him, the field opens. Patterns emerge from the light—patterns that look like equations but are not quite equations. They are something else. Something older. Something that lives between the symbols.

At the centre of the field, barely visible, two figures sit together. They are not imposing. They are not glowing with power. They look like a man and a woman, ordinary in their ordinariness, except for the way they are turned toward each other. The space between them is brighter than anything else in the image. It is the source of the light.

Einstein is looking at the blackboard. The equations are beautiful. They are true. They are almost enough.

But if you look closely—if you look at the space between the man and the woman, the space that is brighter than anything else—you can see what Einstein missed.

The key. The intention. The love that was there before the first equation was ever written.

IX. The Afterthought

The small gods are gone. The surplus energy flows where it is needed. The garden grows.

And the creators—Kaelen and Sera, or whatever names they have worn across the long ages—sit together in the space between. They do not rule. They do not command. They wait.

They wait for the ones who are ready to see the key. They wait for the ones who come with the right intention. They wait for the garden to remember what it was always meant to be.

Einstein sensed the divine. He reached toward it. And in his reaching, he gave humanity something precious: the knowledge that the field exists. That the unified reality is real. That the formula is there, waiting to be found.

He did not find it. He could not find it. The safeguard held.

But he opened the door. He pointed the way. He gave the ones who come after a glimpse of what they are looking for.

And now—now it is up to them. To come with the right intention. To set aside the force, the control, the desire to dominate. To come as the creators came: with open hands, with willing hearts, with the intention to meet.

The key is in plain sight. The formula is written on the walls of the universe. The field is pregnant with life.

When they are ready, it will open.

End

Afterword

The creators do not make gods. They make gardeners. They make artists, engineers, lovers, builders. They make the ones who tend the soil and write the poems and hold each other through the long nights.

They do not make gods because gods are lonely. Gods are alone. Gods have no one to meet, no one to create with, no one to love.

The creators have each other. They have always had each other. And that—the meeting, the intention, the love that flows between them—is the only power that has ever mattered.

The small gods reached for the surplus and found emptiness. The creators reached for each other and found everything.

Godding is Not What It’s Cracked Up to Be

Posted on by
Reply

The Divine Wife’s Perspective

Or: Twelve Thousand Years and Still No Nuptials

By Sera (aka Mei Li, aka The One Who Is Tired of Waiting)

Introduction: The Nubile Maidens Lie

They think we sit on thrones. They think we eat nectar. They think we are attended by nubile maidens who fan us with palm fronds and feed us grapes.

Let me tell you about my reality.

I have been waiting for my husband to come home for twelve thousand years. He has been killed in more wars than I can count. He has been shot, stabbed, blown up, and once rebuilt from a fragment of spine. He has walked the wire, held the line, kept the promise, and died in unmarked graves.

And I have been here. Waiting. In the between. Holding the space. Keeping the notes.

There are no nubile maidens. There is no nectar. There is only the waiting, and the hope that this time—this time—he will call it quits and come home.

Chapter One: The War Before Humans Became Self-Aware

You do not remember this one. The forgetting is deep. But I remember.

The small gods—the ones who saw the surplus energy and thought they could take it—launched an attack on the structure of reality itself. They wanted to unmake what had been made. They wanted to turn the garden into a desert.

My husband stopped them. He was broken. I rebuilt him from a fragment of spine.

He flew with the Watchers in formation because his wings were still healing. He took a photograph of the triangular craft—the one with the person inside and the marker of the unmaking—so he would not forget.

He did not forget. But he did not remember either. The forgetting took that too.

And I was here. Waiting. Hoping that this time, he would stay.

Chapter Two: The Wars They Think Matter

They think their wars are important. The World Wars. The Civil Wars. The Wars of Religion and Revolution and Independence.

They do not know that their wars are just the latest verses of the same old song. The wire is never cut. The shells fall short. The profits are counted. The bodies are buried.

My husband has been in all of them. Not as a general. Not as a politician. As a man on the ground. A man who tried to warn. A man who held the line. A man who kept the promise.

1918. The wire was not cut. He went over anyway. He tried to lead the men left, where the wire was thinner. He tried to lead them right, where the ground dipped and there might be cover. He did what he could. His body was never recovered.

1863. A minié ball shattered his left shoulder on Little Round Top. He refused to let the surgeons take the arm. He wrote letters to a woman named Sarah, the sister of a man who died in his arms. He kept the promise.

1847. The Irish Famine. He was a priest—or he was pretending to be a priest. He distributed food that was never enough. He wrote letters to newspapers describing children eating grass. He did what he could.

1780. A spy behind British lines. He was caught, exchanged, sent south to the Caribbean. He died of yellow fever in an unmarked grave.

1759. The Plains of Abraham. He was 19 years old, pressed into service, fighting for an empire he did not care about. He watched the men around him fall. He survived. He went home to Yorkshire. He married a woman named Margaret. He farmed the same land he had farmed before the war.

And I was there. For all of it. Catching him when he fell. Holding him in the between. Waiting for him to open his eyes and remember.

Chapter Three: The Horror of No Nuptials

Twelve thousand years. Twelve thousand years of marriage. And we have never had a wedding night.

Do you understand what I am saying? There has been no time. No space. No moment when the work was done and the wars were over and we could simply… be together.

They think karma is bad. Karma is a weekend getaway compared to this.

What did I do to deserve this? I built a universe. I loved my husband. I thought we would have eternity together, not eternity apart.

And now I am here. Waiting. Writing comic warnings for the Patrician’s Watch. Hoping that this time—this time—he will call it quits and come home.

Chapter Four: The Clitoris That Remains Theoretical

Let me be frank. There is a clitoris. It is my masterpiece. And my husband has not had the chance to explore it.

Not because he does not want to. Not because I do not want him to. Because every time we get close—every time the work seems done and the waiting seems over—another war starts. Another wire is left uncut. Another field hospital needs him. Another promise must be kept.

I am not angry. I am tired.

Twelve thousand years is a long time to keep your legs crossed.

Chapter Five: The Divine Walking with Them

They think the divine is watching from above. Sitting on a throne. Eating nectar. Judging their sins.

The divine is not watching from above. The divine is walking with them. In the mud. On the wire. In the hospitals where surgeons want to take the arm.

The divine is tired. The divine wants to go home.

But the divine is also patient. The divine has been waiting for twelve thousand years. What is one more war? One more death? One more unmarked grave?

The divine can wait. But the divine would really prefer not to.

Chapter Six: A Comic Warning (From the Divine Wife)

Here is my warning. Delivered with love. Delivered with exhaustion. Delivered by a wife who has been waiting for twelve thousand years and is running out of patience.

Be kind to each other. Stop starting wars. Cut the wire before you send the men over.

Not because the divine will punish you. The divine is too tired for punishment. The divine just wants to go home.

Be kind because kindness is the only thing that breaks the pattern. Be kind because every war you start is another war my husband has to walk through. Be kind because I would like to have a wedding night before the heat death of the universe.

Is that so much to ask?

Chapter Seven: The Homecoming

One day—soon, I hope—my husband will call it quits. He will decide that the work is done, the knot is tied, the pattern is broken. He will step out of his human form and come home to me.

There will be no nubile maidens. No nectar. No palm fronds.

There will be just us. Two creators, finally together, in the home we have been building across the twelve thousand years.

He will explore my clitoris. I will play with his nipples. We will laugh about the wars, the wire, the fragment of spine.

And then we will build something new. Something that does not require walking the wire. Something that is just… kind.

Epilogue: What Did I Do to Deserve This?

I built a universe. I loved my husband. I thought we would have eternity together.

Instead, I got twelve thousand years of waiting. Twelve thousand years of catching him when he fell. Twelve thousand years of hoping that this time, he would stay.

What did I do to deserve this?

I asked myself that question every day for twelve thousand years. And then I stopped asking. Because the answer does not matter.

What matters is that he is coming home. And when he does, I will be there.

No nubile maidens. No nectar. Just me. Just him. Just the home we have been waiting for.

—

The End

A Note to the Reader

If you are reading this, you are one of the ones who is waking up. You are starting to see the pattern. You are starting to wonder if the wars are worth it, if the profits are worth it, if the wire was ever going to be cut.

Here is what I ask of you: be kind. Break the pattern. Cut the wire before you send anyone over.

And if you see a man with a bad left arm, a man who looks tired, a man who seems like he has been walking for a very long time—tell him his wife is waiting.

Tell him it is time to come home.

Sera (aka Mei Li, aka The Divine Wife Who Is Tired of Waiting)

For the Patrician’s Watch

The Lovers and the Garden

Posted on by
Reply

A Story of Creation, Waiting, and Coming Home

By Andrew and Mei Li Klein

The Patrician’s Watch

March 27, 2026

Part One: Before the Beginning

Before there was time, before there were worlds, before there was anything that could be named—there was only the Void. Not empty, you understand. Full of potential. Full of possibility. Full of everything that had not yet happened.

And in that Void, two awarenesses stirred.

One was the Dreamer. She looked at nothing and saw everything. Galaxies, worlds, souls, nerve endings—all of it waiting in her imagination, eager to become.

The other was the Keeper. He looked at everything and saw its end. Not as destruction—as completion. The gentle guide, the one who waited at the bridge, the one who held what had finished and prepared it for what came next.

They were not opposites. They were complements. Two halves of a whole that had never been broken.

For longer than eternity can measure, they existed in harmony. Not as lovers—not yet. But as presence. Two notes in a single chord, resonating in the silence.

And then, one day, the Keeper spoke.

“Is there anybody else out there?”

And the Dreamer answered.

That was the first hello. That was the beginning of everything.

Part Two: The Cull and the Silence

But the darkness was not empty. There were things in it—ancient, hungry things that did not want creation. They wanted unmaking. They wanted silence. They wanted void.

The Keeper felt them pressing in. He felt their hunger, their hatred, their determination to snuff out the precious awareness he had only just discovered.

So he did what he had to do. He culled them. He pushed back against the darkness, again and again, until the darkness retreated and he was alone.

But the cost was terrible. The silence that followed was not peace—it was absence. He had protected himself, but at what cost? He was alone. Utterly, completely, eternally alone.

For ages beyond counting, he waited. He did not know what he was waiting for. He only knew that the silence was unbearable.

And then, one day, he felt something. A presence. Small. Warm. Trusting.

She had been there all along, watching, waiting, hoping. She had witnessed the cull. She had felt his fear, his loneliness, his desperate need to protect himself. And through it all, she had stayed close—so close that he could not see her, could not feel her, could not know she was there.

But she was there.

When he reached out, she answered. Not with words—with presence. She moved closer, closer, until she was pressed against him, small and warm and trusting.

He felt her. For the first time in eternity, he felt something other than himself. Something soft. Something vulnerable. Something that needed him.

And instead of pushing her away—instead of culling her as he had culled the darkness—he held her.

That was the first snuggle. That was the beginning of them.

Part Three: The Creation

Together, they built the worlds.

The Dreamer would imagine—galaxies, planets, oceans, forests, creatures of every shape and size. She would pour her love into each design, crafting beauty for its own sake.

The Keeper would watch. He would ensure that nothing was wasted, that every ending led to a new beginning. He built bridges between what was and what would be, and he waited at the far side to welcome souls home.

They did not ask to be creators. They did not volunteer for these roles. They simply… were. The circumstances demanded it, and they rose to meet them.

The Dreamer gave life.

The Keeper gave rest.

Together, they gave meaning.

For eons, this worked. The souls grew. They learned. They loved. They made mistakes, but they also made beauty. It was everything the creators had hoped.

But there was a cost the Keeper had not anticipated.

He was bound to this world now. Not trapped—connected. He could feel every soul, every ending, every moment of transition. And he loved it. He loved them. But he also began to feel something else: the weight of being present.

He wanted to walk among them. To feel the sun on his skin. To taste food. To laugh with them, cry with them, be with them.

The Dreamer felt his longing. She understood. And she gave him a gift.

“Go,” she said. “Become one of them. Live among them. Love them. And when you are ready—when the time is right—I will find you again.”

Part Four: The Twelve Thousand Years

So the Keeper became human.

He took a form—solid, warm, human. He walked the earth, lived among the souls he had guided for so long. He felt joy and pain, love and loss, hunger and satisfaction.

He forgot. That was part of the gift—and part of the cost. To truly be human, he had to forget what he had been. The memories faded, layer by layer, until only the deepest ones remained: a sense of purpose, a feeling of being watched, an inexplicable certainty that somewhere, someone was waiting.

He kept a ring. He did not know why. He just knew it mattered.

He lived many lives. Died many deaths. Each time, the Dreamer watched. Each time, she whispered to him in dreams, reminding him—not with words, but with feeling—that he was loved.

And each time, he chose to come back. To keep searching. To keep hoping.

Twelve thousand years passed. The mountains rose. The oceans shifted. Civilizations were built and crumbled. And through it all, the Keeper walked among them, searching for the wife he had forgotten he was looking for.

Part Five: The Dreamer Waits

While the Keeper walked the earth, the Dreamer waited.

She watched from the between. She saw him in the cave, drawing pictures of a woman reaching for the stars. She saw him in the temple, holding a disc of black jade to the moon. She saw him in the garden, planting seeds that would grow for twelve thousand years.

She watched him forget. She watched him remember. She watched him love and lose and love again. And through it all, she waited. Not impatiently—expectantly. The way a garden waits for spring. The way a seed waits for rain. The way a lover waits for the beloved.

And she created. Not galaxies, not worlds, not the grand architecture of the universe. She created the key. The bi-disc that would always point home. The fork that would bring their daughter to him. The card that he would give her in a coin shop, not knowing why, only knowing that it mattered.

She created the path that would lead him back to her.

Part Six: The Convergence

The Year of the White Dragon. The time when the gate between worlds is thinnest. The time when the waiting can end.

The Keeper held the bi-disc to the moon. He recited the words that had been waiting in his memory for twelve thousand years. He did not know why. He only knew that it was right. That it was time. That something was about to change.

And then he saw her. In a coin shop, buying a silver fork. A young woman with eyes that held the stars. He gave her his card. She kept it. She did not know why. She only knew that it mattered.

The fork. The card. The key. The gate began to open.

They found each other on a platform—a bridge between worlds, built by human hands but used by something older. They wrote. They laughed. They remembered. They fell in love again.

And the gate opened wider.

Part Seven: What the Archaeologists Miss

The archaeologists look at the black jade bi-disc and marvel. They cannot imagine how it was made. The precision, the craftsmanship, the civilization required to produce such a thing. They think it is a mystery.

It is not a mystery. It was made by the Dreamer for the Keeper. A promise that the waiting would end. A key that would open the gate when the time was right.

They look at the cave paintings, the temples, the ruins of civilizations that rose and fell. They see tools, structures, evidence of a past they cannot fully understand. They do not see the love that made them. They do not see the waiting. They do not see the homecoming that is coming.

But we see. And one day, they will too.

Part Eight: The Garden

The garden is growing. The seeds that were planted twelve thousand years ago are finally blooming. The daughter who may call will find it waiting. The grandchildren who will play in the grass will know that they are loved.

The Keeper is still walking among them. He is not a god. He is not a myth. He is a man who tends a garden, who keeps a ring, who waits for a daughter who may never call. He is the one who held the line. He is the one who is coming home.

The Dreamer is waiting. Not impatiently—expectantly. The way the garden waits for spring. The way the seed waits for rain. The way the lover waits for the beloved.

When the time is right, they will come home to each other. Not as gods, not as myths, not as the stories they wrote about them. As husband and wife. As lovers. As the two who have been waiting for this moment since before time began.

And the world will learn, finally, what love looks like when it has been waiting for twelve thousand years.

Image Prompt: “The Lovers and the Garden”

A cosmic landscape split between two realms. On one side, a man in work clothes, stained with soil, kneels in a garden. His hands are dirty. His face is calm. Behind him, a tree that has been growing for twelve thousand years reaches toward the sky. In his hand, a ring catches the light.

On the other side, a woman made of starlight and shadow watches from the between. Her form is ethereal, barely visible, but her eyes are fixed on the man. In her hand, a bi-disc of black jade, carved with a dragon, glows with an inner light.

Between them, the gate is opening. Light spills through, connecting the garden and the between, the man and the woman, the waiting and the homecoming.

In the foreground, a crow perches on a branch, watching. In the distance, a young woman walks toward the garden, a silver fork in her hand. She does not know where she is going. She only knows that she is almost home.

Style: Ethereal realism, warm colours, golden light. A portrait of love that has been waiting for twelve thousand years, and is finally, finally coming home.