NOT TO BE TRUSTED

Australia 2016 Kings Cross Nightclub raid

Old Alex left the large stone house on the edge of a Blue Mountain ravine, left the sight of parrots and pigeons squabbling at the bird feeder, and as previously arranged went once again to visit the surveillance expert.

In the early hours of the day he had heard Glen say: "I have no regrets." A piece of bravado ahead of conscience.

You people can go about destroying people's lives, because that's the only thing you're good at.

The arrangements had changed. Without explanation. Common decency had nothing to do with this game.

They sat on the back veranda, briefly, and once again the light glinted off the fresh spring leaves of the Japanese elms and things beyond ken swirled. Once again he had an instant, peculiar headache. This time the glints of light off the trees were sharp as knives, each knife fringed with a narrow, out-of-phase frieze of decaying gargoyle faces, the emblematic consolidation of corruption and ill-intent, bureaucratic decay and the relentless, brutally unfeeling machinery of government, where no one was accountable, no one apologised, and they ground away at free thought as surely as they ground away at commonsense.

"I feel like a thresher's been through my head," he said in a random piece of conversation later in the day, on the other side of the mountains, as his headache grew progressively worse.

As if the knives were still cutting. He felt some terrible swamp of sadness he hadn't felt in years, as if his children had just been stolen from him. Not because he expected the story to end any other way, he already knew the Fairy Godmother would turn into another fat f**k who wanted everything for nothing and thought they could get away with it. But because, at the end of one story and the beginning of another, he had hoped he would be surprised by kindness; not betrayal.

He had a very unhelpful trait for a journalist, he was always surprised when people lied to him. But the lies never stopped.

This time the sign in his head read: "NOT TO BE TRUSTED".

As in, not to be trusted under any circumstances.

He drove north-west, the rolling plains which had so delighted the early explorers drenched green from recent rains; and dropped by a household on the edge of the Liverpool plains. He had a habit of rolling by once a year or so, saying hello, crashing the night and moving on. But they were not there. A few days before, the mother had a brain aneurysm and had been helicoptered to a hospital in the south. The family were by her side. He kept on driving.

"Not good," was the diagnosis.

The sun was setting across the flat rich plains; in the midst of life we are in death.

In the long dark night he heard the voices of his pursuers rejoice: "You've been totally, completely screwed."

Their victory cry was short lived.

When a bee stings you, it dies.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/advance-heart-mosul-slows-isil-fights-161106103351018.html

Iraq's special forces worked to fully push a fiercely resisting ISIL from neighborhoods on Mosul's eastern edge while bombings killed at least 11 people elsewhere in the country.

The current phase and slower pace highlight the challenges ahead for Iraqi forces as they press into more populated areas deeper inside Mosul, where the civilian presence means they may not be able to rely as much on air raids.

"There are a lot of civilians and we are trying to protect them," said Lt Col Muhanad al-Timimi. "This is one of the hardest battles that we've faced till now."



At least 27 people were killed on Sunday in a series of suicide bombings carried out by ISIL across northern Iraq.

The deadliest attack took place in Tikrit, a city halfway between Baghdad and Mosul, where an ambulance packed with explosives went off at a security checkpoint killing 15 people and injuring 35, a security official said.

FEATURED BOOK: 

100%:

https://www.darkmoon.me/2016/explosive-assangepilger-interview-on-us-election-expect-riots-if-hillary-wins/#more-52915