THE GREAT GREAT DEPRESSION

Blood sports. A pack of thugs. The agencies. 
A staggering level of incompetence. 
"There's a strong case for compensation."
"I bet there is. Or you do this to everybody? How is the crap you guys get up to even legal?"
"We can't be charged for illegal conduct."
Another gift of the current government to an out-of-control secret service. 
Thugs in uniform. Except there were no uniforms.

They had stopped whispering malfeasance. They were trying to keep their own secrets now. 

"What are they going to call the next Depression?" Old Alex asked down at the Lake View. "It's going to be worse than the last one. The Great Great Depression?"
"Oh I think so, you can see it, you can feel it coming."
"Jobs and growth," he snorted. Turnbull's mantra in his election campaign, the one that had barely got him across the line, with a dozen seats lost. The one that had been just as mismanaged as everything else on the list of announceables.  
The people should have been warned. Five million jobs were expected to disappear in the next five years to robots and automation. 
Nobody warned anybody. They didn't have the guts, the gumption or the common decency. They clung to their positions of power - all the better to pillage you with. 
It was daylight robbery what they got up to. 
And discontent swirled on every buttoned down street. In the remnants of every Table of Knowledge. In the dark past and an even darker future. 
The public square was cluttered with debate about gay marriage. 
That Australia had just been involved in the massacre and deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians in the Middle East was simply swept away in the wash. Ignored. In a heavily manipulated media environment, as the forces at play worked to turn the population into unquestioning donkeys.
Could the Prime Minister possibly be prepared to play with the lives, hopes, aspirations and emotional lives of the country's gay people, the LGBTQI "community", in order to distract the populace from what was really going on in the country? 
Of course he was. 
Was he prepared to expose the gay community to what would highly likely be escalating levels of violence against them, as people with the IQ of gnats were forced to think about things they simple didn't want to think about. 
Two men together. 
More sometimes, they'd heard.
Of course. 
It was putrid politics in a collapsing discourse. 
To gamble with people's private lives for personal gain. 
A desperate grab at holding on to power, for the privilege of siting atop a pile of wannabees. To stay in a charade of government.
For what? For why? 
It wasn't for the good of the people. It wasn't for a noble cause. It wasn't out of sustained, integral, honourable belief. It wasn't to bring good administration. Or to reflect in the wheels of the government the wishes of the people. 
What was it then?
Grandiosity and power. An ego beyond measure. 
"Worst Prime Minister ever, I heard them talking about it on the radio," said Kev, as depressed as anybody, a bitter laugh. "Worse than Rudd. Worse than Gillard. Worse than Abbott."
"There's fierce competition."
"We haven't had a good prime minister since I don't know when."
The cost of living out of control. The world's most expensive electricity. The most expensive internet. Among the top five most expensive places in the world to buy a home. The second most expensive place in the world to buy a drink. Among the world's most expensive petrol. It was all totally out of control, as standards of living crumbled and yet thousands more were thrown on the dole queues. 
"It's perfect Fabian socialism," Old Alex said. "Everyone on the same level." And he gestured at the aging tiles.
The election had left the country marooned in deceit. A lawyer's glib deceit. Instead of telling the people to prepare for what was coming, there were tax concessions to the rich. 
"They're so unhappy," he thought, as he sensed the humans around him. 
Everything had washed up on The Fatal Shore. 
"Have you been to a country town recently? Most of them haven't had a lick of paint since the 1930s. Since the last Depression."
On the other side of the world, Hurricane Thelma created havoc. 

THREE people were killed in car crashes, caught in Hurricane Irma’s destructive path as it made landfall in Florida, according to ABC in the US. Announcing itself with roaring winds, Hurricane Irma ploughed into the mostly emptied-out Florida Keys for the start of what could be a slow, ruinous march up the state’s west coast toward the heavily populated Tampa-St. Petersburg area. At least 1.16 million customers are without power, including more than 500,000 in Miami-Dade County. News. 

Australian news outlets, particularly the government propaganda outlet the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, were happy to lead with anything but news about Australia. 
The Great Great Depression. Coming to a mall near you.


THE BIGGER STORY: 

“As the forces of the Isis gangs collapse and the terrorist organisation nears its end in Raqqa, . . . the Isis gangs have been attacking the (SDF-held eastern areas) of Shadadi and the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor in a desperate attempt to raise its forces’ morale in Raqqa,” the statement by the SDF’s Deir Ezzor Military Council said. The battle could create new flash points between US-backed forces fighting Isis, and Russian and Iranian-backed forces also fighting in the region. Already, Washington has fired rockets at Iranian-backed forces and shot down a Syrian warplane in Raqqa, when it deemed this rival alliance to be operating too close to fighters it supports. 

Isis’s self-proclaimed caliphate has been crumbling as the two rival international alliances beat back its territorial hold over Iraq and Syria. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s forces, with Russian and Iranian support, earlier this week broke a long-running Isis siege on their foothold in Deir Ezzor city, the provincial capital, meaning the two internationally backed Syrian forces are now both ramping up campaigns in the area. 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has urged Australians to say yes in the postal survey as thousands packed out Sydney's CBD to rally for same-sex marriage.
Thousands gathered for a march from Town Hall to Hyde Park in support of a change to the Marriage Act, with the gathering causing significant crowd congestion in the city centre.
Organisers have declared the rally the largest LGBTI demonstration in Australian history as thousands more took to Brisbane streets to show their support.
Speaking earlier at the NSW Liberals and Nationals for YES campaign launch in Sydney, Mr Turnbull said the question facing the nation was one of fairness.
"Throughout my public life I've sought to ensure same-sex couples are not discriminated against and their entitlements, be it in respect of medical benefits, taxation, superannuation or employment, are no different to those afforded to heterosexual couples," he said.
"Why then shouldn't those same rights now be extended to marriage?"