RANDOM STRIKES RAW MATERIAL : WE ARE ALL BEING PLAYED

From Twitter Source Unknown

QUOTE

Terrorists, terrorists. terrorists. In the Middle East, in the entire Muslim world, this word would become a plague, a meaningless punctuation mark in all our lives, a. full stop erected to finish all discussion of Injustice, constructed as a wall by Russians, Americans, Israelis, British, Pakistanis, Saudis, Turks, to shut us up. Who would ever say a word in favour of terrorists? What cause could possibly justify terror? So our enemies are always terrorists.

Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation.

TEXT

Random, he said; and in the increasing sanity of his thinking... Well he could hear them still. But he was increasingly at peace. He had fulfilled one function and would soon fulfil another. Time stretched out. He made lists of things to do on paper. Dinosaurs and black holes and a million books he wanted to read. He made a shift into the positive. There were so many cruelties that had played out while he maintained silence; withstood the mocking, switched off the tormenters, distracted himself. "But doctor, I don't feel like that anymore, I don't feel the need to write myself off, to drown the voices," he said; and shimmered with a kind of ephereal pleasure, as a doomed world continued to spiral slowly into chaos; a descent into the damned.

There was a ceasefre in Syria which would last five minutes as Islamic State ran rampant, regrouped, ran rampant. The news was all appalling, a contrivance against dust, a theatre of the absurd in the American elections, a time ripe for the plucking. The words Donald Trump were on everybody's lips. The same betrayal of the middle classes which characterised American and Australian politics was throwing up mavericks. Malcolm Turnbull, smooth operator, had already proved just as disappointing as his predecessor, supporting indefensible wars, smiling for the cameras as his bombs rained down on the Middle East. He was killing more Muslims per month than his predecessor Tony Abbott. And he was even more hostage to his predecessor, and to the disastrous legacy of John Howard.

Smile, just keep on smiling. If it looks good it is good.

And besides, the people are all fools. We flirt with them at election time, pretend that our policies are in their best interests, remain openly contemptuous of their stupidity, but they are too stupid to notice; and go on about our blissful, self-important lives.

If people had thought Australia would improve under Turnbull, they had so far been sadly mistaken.

They should put a forensic audience through the entire government, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, everything. And should ask one simple, basic question: why should someone sit in traffic for four hours a day, now the average commute in Sydney, and pay exorbitant taxes on their wages, and everything they bought, everything they did, virtually the air they breathed, to support this.

And hack the entire discredited shambles into a lean and mean organisation that served the people, not fed off them.

Australian democracy was in serious decay; but it would stumble on a little longer.

And then the terror attacks would come. And the cultural, social and religious landscape of the country, transformed into the present shambles by the social engineers, the liars, the lawyers, the bureaucrats, the social engineers, would change again. A freedom loving country would disappear; as easily destroyed as had been the sacred lands of the indigenous, that most beautiful country, a pearl of the divine; vanished and vanquished, just like that.

He was reading The Great War for Civilisation; in part, he guessed, to understand the origins of it all.

He hadn't been paying much attention when more than a million people died in the Iran Iraq Wars of the 1980s, when America backed their friend Sadam Hussein.

He was paying attention now.

THE BIGGER STORY

By RAJA ABDULRAHIM and DANA BALLOUT

Feb. 28, 2016 8:16 a.m. ETWall Street Journal

BEIRUT—The Syrian regime and its Russian allies stepped up airstrikes on Sunday after a relative lull in violence a day earlier when an internationally brokered truce went into effect, according to antigovernment activists.

The activists and monitoring groups also linked to the opposition said some of the strikes hit areas controlled by Free Syrian Army rebels, who are a party to the partial cease-fire. A number of civilians were killed, the activists said.

The truce represents the biggest effort in years to calm violence in a war that has claimed more than 250,000 lives and displaced millions.

Russia had said it wouldn’t conduct any airstrikes on Saturday in respect of the partial cease-fire, which is meant to last for two weeks and help create a calmer environment to convene peace talks in Geneva on March 7. But on Sunday morning, Russian planes launched numerous strikes throughout the northern province of Aleppo, the activists said.

Aleppo has been the focus for weeks of an intense offensive by the regime, backed by heavy Russian airstrikes and Iran-linked militias on the ground. The offensive has largely targeted rebel groups rather than Islamic State.

“Yesterday Aleppo was calm, but airstrikes resumed at six in the morning today,” said local activist Yasin Abu Raed, currently in Aleppo’s northern outskirts.

Areas targeted today included the towns of Anadan and Hreiytan in northwestern Aleppo outskirts.

The Syrian regime, citing local sources, said “terrorist groups” linked to Turkey in the northern countryside of Aleppo targeted the town of Nubil with rockets Saturday night. The regime frequently refers to all its opponents as terrorists.

A map released by a Russian news agency Saturday showed small, limited areas the Moscow government considers covered by the cease-fire. The provinces of Aleppo and Idlib were entirely excluded.

The truce allows for continued attacks by the regime, the Russian and the U.S.-led coalition on both Islamic State and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, both of which are present in different areas in Aleppo province. The strikes on Sunday hit Free Syrian Army rebels in the Aleppo area, the antigovernment activists said.

Nusra’s exclusion is particularly problematic because it is present in much of opposition-held territory and is mixed in with more moderate rebels in many places. Moderate rebels fear the regime and its allies will use this as a pretext to keep attacking and said there were some immediate indications that this might be happening.

In Idlib province, where Nusra has a larger presence than in neighboring Aleppo province, airstrikes continued. Nusra Front fighters pulled out of some of their bases located within towns and cities “in order not to be an excuse for Russia to strike them,” one Nusra member said on Saturday.

Central Hama province was also targeted, the activists said. Clashes in western Latakia province between regime forces backed by Russian officers and Shiite militiamen and rebels were ongoing, activist said.

On Saturday, the Syrian Network for Human rights reported 14 cases of the cease-fire being breached. Antigovernment activists reported airstrikes and mortar fire from regime forces across a number of provinces in western Syria in areas controlled by rebels who agreed to the truce.

But overall, it was calmer than the previous week when the announcement of a cease-fire was met with an escalation of violence.

In the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Daraya, which the regime side struck with dozens of barrel bombs on Friday, residents were hesitant to spend too much time outside, unsure how long the lull would last.

“They are very cautious and afraid that the airstrikes will start suddenly,” local activist Shadi Matar said Saturday. “The residents haven’t forgotten what happened yesterday and all the days that preceded it.”

In another opposition-held Damascus suburb, Arbeen, the local council posted a video online of local residents taking advantage of the cease-fire to clear the streets of debris from past regime and Russian airstrikes.

Sydney Morning Herald Mark Kenny

Malcolm Turnbull's cut-price National Broadband Network is facing mounting delays and rising costs, according to a damning internal progress report obtained by Fairfax Media.

The report, marked "commercial in confidence" and "for official use only", sets out a litany of problems in delivering the Coalition's supposedly more budget-friendly fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) model.

By the company's own assessment, the giant infrastructure project has fallen two-thirds short of its benchmark construction timetable. Connection costs to each house or business are also blowing out. The model had been marketed to voters as superior to Labor's NBN because it was "Fast. Affordable. Sooner".

The "final design" process for connections - needed before construction can start - is running far behind schedule, according to the February 19 report.

While 1,402,909 premises should have been approved at the date of the report, the figure was sitting at 662,665 - 740,000 fewer than planned.

The snapshot says NBN Co has achieved 29,005 fibre-to-the-node "construction completions", while noting its internally budgeted target for this period was more than three times this at 94,273.

The report, which was never intended for public disclosure, reveals the extent to which the more than $46 billion project has drifted off course, mainly during the time when Mr Turnbull was in direct control as communications minister - the portfolio he held before replacing Tony Abbott as Prime Minister in September.

In a statement, nbn rejected claims the company is "at risk" of not meeting its targets but refused to be drawn on "alleged internal documents".

"The company's management has proven repeatedly that it can effectively monitor and manage those risks," it said. "This is an incredibly complex project unlike any infrastructure build anywhere in the world."

Under the heading "Commercial in Confidence: Scale the Deployment Program", the report outlines a plethora of faults, including that delays in power approvals and construction are being caused by electricity companies which account for 38,537 premises or 59 per cent of overall slippages against the target.

Another 30 per cent of delays are down to material shortages...

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