SIGNALLING: NO SHAME, NO PRINCIPLE, NO CHARACTER

Courtesy The Defense Post, Ghouta, Syria

Monkey see, monkey do.
"Don't insult me with peace."
Straight out of the movies.
Someone was trying to talk. 
Party to the deaths of others. Now that they were referred everything was safe. In there, an hallucinatory screech. Long white sands. There were larger games afoot. 
Malcolm Turnbull had returned from a State Visit to the US, supplicant to a higher power. Roll out the best silverware. Not a canapes unrolled, a napkin unfurled. Always at someone else's expense. 
Someone had to go work in a factory to support this nonsense.
In Australia it was politics as normal. Greed and bullshit. 
In Parliament they strutted their stuff: 

TURNBULL: We know what the Leader of the Opposition is trying to do. He is trying to run his politics of envy, his faux class war. Anyone who wants to know what a fake he is as a class warrior only has to watch the video of his address to the CFMEU workers at Oaky. There he is, the great imposter, complaining about an industrial relations system that he created, and doing everything he can to encourage the militancy of people that threaten violence— Ms Plibersek interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Sydney is warned. Mr TURNBULL: not just against other workers, but against their children. He has no shame, no principle, no character.

No shame, no principle, no character.
Now there was a call from the master of callow self-interest.

Labor fears a potential $1bn tender to privately process Australia’s visas could go to a company run by one of Malcolm Turnbull’s former employees.
But the government said a competitive tender process was being run, and the prime minister had no responsibility for choosing who got the deal.
Labor’s Mark Dreyfus asked if Turnbull had a conflict of interest in relation to reports Pacific Blue Capital was planning to bid for the visa processing privatisation. The firm is run by Turnbull’s former employee and friend Scott Briggs, who reportedly put together a consortium of companies including Qantas and NAB in a bid to win the visa contract.

“Given it’s reported the prime minister launched Pacific Blue Capital and that Mr Briggs worked for the prime minister’s private investment firm, does the prime minister have a conflict of interest in relation to this $1bn government contract, and if so, how will he manage it?” Dreyfus asked in parliament on Tuesday.

The government called it “a slur and a smear” of Turnbull. 

$1bn visa contracting process could go to Turnbull friend, Labor says, AAP, The Guardian, 27 February, 2018.

Enterprise agreement. A horse. A dream of danger. Of revisiting The Twilight Soi. Bangkok. A closed door. A secret alleyway. Frustrated affection. "Mafia. Mafia."
"Everything makes sense now." 
We heard a clarion call. 
They were struggling to break through 
They were calling in Bertrand to assist. 
They were masking their own efforts as best they could. 
The machines had already gone sub-atomic. As if that was possible, in this enlightened space. 
The Watchers on the Watch, they fell about laughing. Those that weren't already AIs. He was not surrounded by friends. Good cheer. A shout of triumph. 
We were going to find the core of belief and expose it to the world. 
This stupid race. These stupid people. 
How could they believe? So ardently? 
In Blessings? When they so clearly were not blessed. 
Darkest before the dawn. 

THE BIGGER STORY:

MOSCOW — After the UN Security Council’s demand Feb. 24 for a cease-fire across Syria proved ineffective, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 26 called for a five-hour-daily humanitarian pause in fighting in rebel-held Eastern Ghouta beginning Feb. 27.
Putin’s call came after humanitarian monitors said they suspected forces supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had launched a chlorine attack on the battered city near Damascus. Russia, however, claimed terrorist groups in Eastern Ghouta such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham had been plotting to use chemical weapons themselves and blaming Assad supporters, according to Russia's state-run Tass news agency.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said it is counting on “foreign patrons of anti-government militant groups … to ensure that their charges stop combat activities in the interests of the quickest and safe transit of humanitarian convoys.” Commenting on the Security Council decision, Russia's UN envoy Vasily Nebenzya didn’t mince words, calling on the United States to “give up its occupation-driven attitude [on Syria].”