ABOVE AND BEYOND
Syria
The past continued to disappear in giant swipes and flurried little deaths. In a swirl of terrible
They had failed to keep to their side of the bargain, to leave him alone. All they had done was back off another 500 metres. He didn't trust strangers. He was not an exhibit. They flurried past in their own waste of time, taxpayer funded.
While in the US a preening failed Treasurer Joe Hockey, and a preening failing Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, oh the canapes! the canapes!, were on a full state visit to lick the boots of US President Donald Trump. What a bunch. Surrounded by sycophants and business opportunists. Gazing from their First Class windows. Surrounded by a taxpayer funded shuffle of self-importance.
Who were these people? Who did they represent?
They betrayed their own country. They betrayed themselves. Widely disliked, they hammered home their own failures to a sceptical public. Worse, it just got worse.
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,--
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue--
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men...
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. (3.1.254-275)
Meanwhile the bombs rained down in Syria.
We were complicit. They were all complicit.
Not a word of reproach. The canapes! The canapes!
These preening bastards. Guilty of war crimes, of that no doubt.
And at the same time slabs of history just slewed away. In his own case, from a simpler time.
When I first saw Billy Graham in 1959 at the MCG, he already seemed a living myth. That was 58 years ago.
I was 15 at the time, and my mate David wanted to know if I’d come with him. David was religious, with God-fearing parents. I wasn’t particularly, but I wanted to see the great man.
So we got out our school uniforms, put on our school caps, and travelled up from Geelong by train. When we got to the MCG we were bewildered by the crowds. I’d experienced the MCG before at the 1951 and 1952 grand finals, then a little fella with my parents.
But this! This was different. People travelling in every direction, mounds of them, men in suits with serious faces, women dolled up and with hats on. They may simply have been curious, but their dress sure made them look like religious fanatics.
Billy Graham – who died on Thursday at age 99 – was already a legend to me. He had all the attributes of a film star: tall, lean, full head of hair, very handsome, with a voice that made your hair stand on end.
He was photographed with almost all the US presidents of his day. I remember the one of Kennedy, two tall handsome men with Billy Graham just taller, smiling at the camera with their hands in their pockets.
Alton, Doug, The night Billy Graham drew an MCG crowd, The New Daily, 22 February, 2018.
He, too could remember the call to God in a some wild, remote, pre-sixties suburb; some terrible place full of rustling leaves and a world which lay beyond the border. A world which he had been desperate to embrace. As his own frightened spirits went hovering over the suburb late at night, rising and falling and dipping in those giant, remote places.
And now?
Battered by the world, he summoned new Gods to turn the tide.
In secret. No one had the slightest idea the truth of the matter.
THE BIGGER STORY:
Martin Chulov, The Guardian:
There was a time in Ghouta, amid the planes, bombs and hunger, when ways to ease the suffering remained within reach. Even as the siege closed in, residents in the suburb near Damascus had access to smuggled food and medicine, and a drip-feed of weapons and money kept the militants among them in the fight.
That came to a halt late last year. First, the supply lines of food slowed. Then, in January, a Jordan-based, US-run, military room that had provided weapons to two militant groups was shuttered. Regular cash transfers stopped being sent to rebel groups inside Syria. Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which had backed the militants after the popular uprising in 2011, had grown tired of the cause to oust Bashar al-Assad. And the Trump administration no longer wanted to underwrite their efforts.
The blockade of Ghouta, where a Russian and Syrian air blitz entered a second week on Wednesday, is now the most crippling in Syria, and the estimated 350,000 to 400,000 people below the bombs is the most desperate population group in the devastated country.
As regime forces prepare for a final ground push, those inside Ghouta say they have been abandoned to their fate by regional powers who had encouraged them to revolt in the heady early days, but moved on when their early gains turned to grind, then losses.
There was a time in Ghouta, amid the planes, bombs and hunger, when ways to ease the suffering remained within reach. Even as the siege closed in, residents in the suburb near Damascus had access to smuggled food and medicine, and a drip-feed of weapons and money kept the militants among them in the fight.
That came to a halt late last year. First, the supply lines of food slowed. Then, in January, a Jordan-based, US-run, military room that had provided weapons to two militant groups was shuttered. Regular cash transfers stopped being sent to rebel groups inside Syria. Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which had backed the militants after the popular uprising in 2011, had grown tired of the cause to oust Bashar al-Assad. And the Trump administration no longer wanted to underwrite their efforts.
The blockade of Ghouta, where a Russian and Syrian air blitz entered a second week on Wednesday, is now the most crippling in Syria, and the estimated 350,000 to 400,000 people below the bombs is the most desperate population group in the devastated country.
As regime forces prepare for a final ground push, those inside Ghouta say they have been abandoned to their fate by regional powers who had encouraged them to revolt in the heady early days, but moved on when their early gains turned to grind, then losses.