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| Aleppo, courtesy The Guardian |
The country had sold its soul, and its greatest assets.
He was battered and bruised, having survived years of harassment and surveillance, intimidation; a nightmare.
A false nightmare which had wasted the time and resources of everybody involved.
A nightmare engineered or created by government and conducted with their full knowledge.
Yet there was no apology, no compensation. Not to him. Not to the taxpayers. Not to the well intentioned or the easily manipulated who had joined in the hunt.
Surveillance = harassment.
Tinpot bullies strutted in their air-conditioned offices, comfortable in their military mindsets, pouring scorn on anybody and everybody they did not understand. They would destroy you as assuredly as they could. They would puff out their little man chests and laugh at the idea of the curse already creeping through their veins and distorting their lives. Little things were already starting to go wrong. Bigger things were about to follow. As assuredly as night followed day.
He put out extra food for the birds, and the Rosellas and the King Parrots came.
He laughed at the way things had so magically resolved in the household, and they were happy now, as he had wished upon them in those strange blessings which invariably came true; although they would never know.
He had forgotten, sometimes, in that long life, the power that he had sometimes had. A whimsical power perhaps; but power nonetheless. And they couldn't hurt him now. It had all coiled back upon them.
"You would think," he said, in one of those strange pieces of conversation that didn't really join the flow, "that they would have worked out that everything they do backfires, and escalates the price to be paid."
But they never did work it out. They didn't think that way.
So now, those who had tried to kill him, who told their lies and spread their poison, now they twisted uncomfortably in their chairs.
And still, they did not understand.
THE BIGGER STORY:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/03/aleppo-braces-russian-assault-rebels-vow-defy-putin-ultimatum?CMP=share_btn_fb
Syrian rebel groups in east Aleppo are planning to defy an ultimatum from Vladimir Putin to abandon the city by Friday night, insisting that promised safe passages out of besieged areas do not exist and that an imminent Russian blitz will not change the course of the war.
As the Russian carrier group expected to take part in the attack moved into their final positions in the eastern Mediterranean, opposition fighters made fresh forays into west Aleppo, the latest in a series of attempts to break a four-year siege of the rebel -held east, which is surrounded by Iranian-backed militias that support the Syrian leader.
Moscow has said that corridors for fighters and civilians will remain open until sunset on Friday, ahead of what it has warned will be a bombardment that will level what remains of east Aleppo. As the deadline drew near, however, opposition groups said they had little to fear, and could not escape even if they wanted to.
http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/11/australian-democracy-serious-jeopardy/
Australian democracy is in very serious jeopardy. China is making great strides towards it and its intentions are not benevolent. It’s obvious in local, regional and global trends and if we do not do something soon to protect our freedoms they are going to be sold into the burgeoning Chinese empire, as well as political hegemony, by a corrupt oligarchy.
Some of you will tell me to take off my tin foil hat for writing this. To you I say ‘listen up’.
For the next few decades the global political economy will be a contest between post-cultural free moving capital and deeply cultural labour. This will mean ebbs and flows between investment and regulation in an overall trend towards de-globalisation.
After decades of stupidly pro-cyclical policy-making Australia is now little more than a southern province of Chinese economic policy. With the flick of a pen in an obscure public service department, China delivers tens of billions to our shores in coal revenues and our monumental trade deficit evaporates overnight.
There is no other economy on earth that I know of that works with this dependence. We call it lucky. And it is. But it also comes with strings attached and they have been on display for a decade or more. Australian policy attitudes towards China have morphed steadily from a middle power engagement that included dialogues on human rights and democratic process to today’s pragmatic “do what you like boss” attitude.
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