NOWHERE IS SAFE

Vanessa Walker The Lost Cities

There they were in these nether-reaches of dark games, everyone paid but him.

"What do you do when you get home, puff out your little fat chest and say: 'I did good today. I harassed an old man.' "

They told him, there in those long nights, of magnificent tranches of malfeasance, of malfunctioning agencies and incompetencies on a grand scale.

He turned, exhausted, and wished leprosy into their eyes.

Rotting souls and smelly feet and malignant intent, he had seen it all now.

And he had seen the way power corrupted their bureaucratic little hearts, while out in the deserts the gods awaited. He had seen the dark forms dancing at the edge of liquid scapes, and had seen the wotst that men were capable of, or begun to understand. Here on the outer reaches of consciousness, when they, in their mundane lives, were chortling self-satisfied, he had set the hares running, as the saying went, and just as they had tried to kill him, now the hounds they had unleashed would turn.

They were fleeing through forests, European forests, and across sands, Eritrean sands, and they were all, yes, they were all now slouching towards Bethlehem, for they had stirred the forces that should have been left unprovoked, And the Lord would not forgive, for they knew not what they did. Their callow, dissembling hearts, their personal greed, none of it would serve them well in the harsh landscapes they now entered, their eyes dripping blood as they ran.

These were the demons they had so unwisely woken, and the land that should have been safe was not safe, and the villages that should have been safe where children ran and played and old grandparents watched with pride, wind swept through them, arid and hot, and doors banged in deserted buildings, and times of festivity never came.

It was the season of killing, the harvesting of souls, and even in this far off place, the dark lords stalked and manipulated, and the bombs that rained down half a world away, they shook through their temporal dreams as surely as they destroyed the flesh upon which they poured.

And so it was he looked up and said: Leave me alone. You know not what you do. And the interconnections of everything, they ran every which way to hide their own disease stinking guilt and barren consciences they themselves had betrayed, and stoked not flames but bitterness as they stunk and slunk into the reaches, never finding the courage they so desperately needed.

They would not be born again.


THE BIGGER STORY:

MOSUL

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/town-tal-afar-focus-en-route-mosul-battle-161030060800595.html

Iraqi Shia militia groups have launched an operation to retake the town of Tal Afar from ISIL and cut the armed groups's supply lines from Mosul to Syria, a spokesman said.

Michael Pregent, Middle East analyst and a former US intelligence officer who served in Iraq, told Al Jazeera the militias' move was not sanctioned by Iraq's government.

He said the hope by Baghdad and Washington was that ISIL would use the western route to flee Mosul for a "final battle" later in its Syrian bastion of Raqqa.

"The Shia militias are operating outside the control of the Iraqi government. They're not responsive to US requests not to participate," said Pregent.

"The military operation wasn't to encircle Mosul, it was to force ISIL out into Syria. The Shia militias are blocking that now. It sounds like a good military tactic but it's not synced, it's not coordinated. And the Shia militias remain a wildcard, based on what they've done in Ramadiand Fallujah."

The Mosul offensive involves tens of thousands of soldiers, federal police, Kurdish fighters, Sunni tribesmen and Shia militias.

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DANGEROUS FRIENDS: THE REAL CRIMINALS

Picture Warren Clarke

Idiot tipsy girls, overweight from their McDonald's diets and daubed in Halloween makeup, prattled on behind him. Australia had so few traditions of its own the youth were adopting customs they had seen on television. His car had broken down in Wilson Street in Newtown, leaving him stranded on the public transport system. There was much to be desired. His head swirled. Are you really from somewhere else? There were collapsing landscape and fleeting forms whenever he shut his eyes. His level of frustration was rising by the day.

How many countries is America bombing? Asked one post on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=how%20many%20countries%20is%20america%20bombing

The number turned out to be seven, according to the reporter: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia.

And Australia, having surrendered its sovereignty to the United State, was right in there bombing away as well.

And just as in the United States, it was a war unapproved by parliament, or in their case Congress, who were never asked,

The reporter estimated the US had spent $4 trillion and killed 1.3 million people in the combat zones.

Exactly how much Australia had spent on America's wars and how many people it had been responsible for killing, the Australian public would never know.

Meanwhile, Old Alex had been harassed, bullied, threatened, intimidated and ridiculed, ceaselessly, for years on end. And the senior public servants who authorised the operations, on their million dollar salaries and suites of privileges, knew perfectly well they were targeting and encouraging to suicide someone who had a history of attempts or suicidal behaviour. Exactly how that did not breach the Public Service Act in the most grievous way, how these people maintained their jobs and were not sacked, poor Old Alex would never know.

And so he spat in their face. Or brooded out the window as the girls twittered gossip to mundane to keep track of, and he shut his eyes and the landscapes collapsed and the night fled ever darker.


THE  BIGGER STORY:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/settling-in-for-long-campaign-to-free-mosul-from-islamic-state/news-story/c342010a8aea5a7254dd137750727799

David Kilcullen on Mosul

Besides their use of drones and chemical weapons, the defenders are making clever use of terrain. Mosul is bisected by the roughly north-south flow of the Tigris River. There are five bridges across the Tigris, one of which was destroyed in April by a coalition airstrike to prevent ­Islamic State moving supplies to the front. At least one other bridge has been damaged by airstrikes, and Islamic State fighters appear to have wired each remaining crossing point with explosives, placing a guard on each bridge and preparing to blow them up and fall back across the river as coalition forces approach.

They have also demolished key urban infrastructure including power stations and water supplies, and set fire to oil wells, a chemical plant and a sulphur mine, creating a poisonous smoke haze that has sickened ground troops and civilians and hampered coalition air operations. As assault units close in, Islamic State fighters have used smoke and the cover of darkness to pull out of outlying areas.

But far from fading away, they’ve tended to use temporary withdrawals as setups for aggres­sive counter-attacks, often launching multiple suicide truck bombs at once, working around the flanks and rear of attackers to strike headquarters or reserves. Ground that was cleared is often reinfiltrated by snipers who target ­advancing troops. Inside the city, the defenders have wired buildings with massive IEDs and laid deep minefield belts to channel the ­assault into prepared killing areas.

There are also substantial ­Islamic State forces outside Mosul, as shown by determined counter-attacks at Kirkuk and Rutbah over the past two weeks. 

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CLOSER

Sydney Street Scenes 2015/2016 Picture John Stapleton

The book was finished.


Helicopters buzzed over the scene, each trailing a burning trawl rope.


He grabbed on to one, it disintegrated into his hands. He grabbed on to another, it too disintegrated.


The burning ropes cut arcing flames across the darkening scene; dank with fear. Everywhere around him cinders swirled.


He grabbed another rope and it held, lifting him above the scene, just as the ground beneath him buckled and blew. He hadn't expected to die that day, although what gave him such conviction he could barely say.


Swept away from the scene, the arc lines of burning ropes and flurries of ash behind him in an instant, he barely dared to look down.


Life was brief, but he wanted to hang on one more day, as his stomach screamed and the rotors above thrashed towards the horizon. There would be no peace, not that day.


Nine hundred Islamic State warriors had been killed in the fight for Mosul; announced one report. So many died, and this was victory? It was a victory that would taste like ash for decades to come, here in perilous times.


He was emotionally exhausted from the book, which had been written under difficult circumstance, just as had the previous two.


The harassment of the authorities, the psychological operations designed to destabilise him, never ceased. If there were Flaws in the Glass they would pounce. They never learnt, and he acted stupider than he was; a tried and true method.


They fumbled and gashed and lashed; and it wouldn't matter how major or minor the sin, they would pounce. He had been called everything imaginable, harassed month in month out. It was government money, there was no reason to stop. Under the ASIO Act journalists were classified as Persons of Interest, and they felt it was within their purlieu to harass, threaten, bully and intimidate journalists as much as they liked, to encourage them to suicide, to whisper heart attack heart attack, in the hope of bringing on an early death.


For of free thought and freedom on speech in the Australia of 2016, there was none.


The country was now a pale shadow of the boisterous, larrikin country he had once known and loved; a travesty brought on by years of poor governance and rank hypocrisy at the highest levels.


There was a price to pay for war, and they would pay it if they could. And they would silence him, if they could. The bully boys, the bully girls, the henchmen, the henchwomen, the agents of the state.


NEWS


http://www.iraqinews.com/iraq-war/isis-burns-nine-militants-fleeing-battles-mosul/


(IraqiNews.com) Nineveh – Iraqi media outlets announced on Tuesday, that the Islamic State executed nine of its members by burning for fleeing the battles in central Mosul.
Al Sumaria News stated, “ISIS terrorist gangs executed nine of its members for fleeing the battle against the security forces in Mosul, by throwing them in trenches containing a burning oil, after tying their hands and legs.”
“ISIS used the burning oil trenches to impede the visibility of the Iraqi Air Force and international coalition air force,” Al Sumaria added.


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