THE YEAR OF THE DOG

George Steinmetz, World Press Photo Comp

The media was fracturing, like the rest of the country. 
it was left to maverick Mark Latham to punch between the eyes over Lucy Turnbull's interference in the Barnaby Joyce imbroglio: 

LUCY'S LAW: MRS TURNBULL IS MAKING GOVERNMENT POLICY
Malcolm Turnbull has today confirmed he only announced his Big Brother "bonking ban" once his wife Lucy approved of it. That's just what we need: an elite, entitled, unelected toff like Lucy Turnbull making decisions in Canberra.
She's part of the Our Watch organisation, which promotes the propaganda of patriarchy: that all men are privileged and they are oppressing all women.In truth, the average Australian bloke would love to have half the opportunities, money and privilege Lucy Turnbull has enjoyed in life. She has no interest in true inequality: the long-term unemployed, the poor, the welfare dependent. She is a rolled gold elite making policy on the basis of Sydney's eastern suburbs chattering class. She thinks she has the right to run other people's lives for them, now extending into the bedrooms of Federal Cabinet ministers. Some estimates show that one-third of people meet their long-term partner in the workplace. Malcolm Turnbull first met Lucy in her workplace (when she was working for her very wealthy and powerful father). Turnbull and Morrison are nanny state Liberals who want to control people's lives, even their love lives. Latham, Mark. The Outsiders. 18 February, 2018.

Old Alex turned on the Australian Broadcasting Commission. A story on foetal alcohol syndrome in indigenous communities was followed by another on Afghan refugees in Western Australia, followed by another on women in sport. 
The world fell sideways, laughing. 
A corridor opened up through the miasma. 
A darkness that had cloaked the country was being lifted through absurdity. 
A craven witch hunt. Mismanagement at the highest, darkest levels. 
He knew all too well the absurdity of the country, the incompetence of the agencies, the high flying hypocrisy of the politicians. They talked about privacy! And they infiltrated cameras through the homes of journalists such as himself. 
And spread false rumour. 
Used vigilante groups to prosecute their hunt. 
These scum needed to be kicked sideways, to be exposed. 
There was no decency, privacy, consideration. 
While Turnbull strutted off to see his great mate, President of the United States Donald Trump and his media sycophants talked about the close relationship between the pair. 
The layers of bullshit were impossible to jump over. 

This is not the time to deepen our commitment to the alliance and, become ever more involved in the US’ imperium and need for enemies. We need to think freshly about our international relations and security. The recent Foreign Policy White Paper, constructed by Julie Bishop, was depressingly free of any such fresh thought. The new US Ambassador clearly sees his role to ride shot gun on Australia’s military role in the Alliance.Our continuing, indeed apparently deepening, commitment to our alliance with the US, requires that we deny facts which, rationally, should point us in the opposite direction, because of the dangers it poses to us.
The mind-set of the US and key military/industrial/ intelligence sources of influence over its policies and actions, have seen the comprehensive militarization and repeated failure of both.
The US’ need for an enemy has become neurotic and expanding.
Butler, Richard, Pearls and Irritations, 18 February, 2018.

We've seen it all before, this behaviour.
We march free of encumbrance. 
We let them run free and they hang themselves. 
But this one was not for hanging. 
Corruption reached to the highest levels. 
Malfeasance ruled the governing bodies. 
Personal treachery was manifest. 
All the ceaseless media, flailing his manifest failures in public for reasons only his massive ego could digest, the ceaseless mouth, the ceaseless embarrassments of the Prime Minister, none of it did anything to alter his low standing in the polls. 

After battling a wild political firestorm of its own making for more than a week, the Turnbull government has lost the electoral support it gained over the summer, the latest Newspoll, conducted for The Australian, reveals.
The Coalition’s primary vote has plunged two points in the past two weeks to 36 per cent, with ­disaffected voters moving back to One Nation.
Malcolm Turnbull has not ­escaped the wider fallout since he lashed Mr Joyce over his affair with a younger staffer ­and issued a ban on ministers having sexual ­relations with employees, with the Prime Minister’s personal ­approval rating sliding. Benson, Simon, The Australian, 19 February, 2018.

So poorly advised.
So poorly led. 
The country ran lemming like toward the cliff. 
While the nation's oligarchy smoked cigars and preened with self-importance. 
I'll say it one more time. 
We'll all be ruined said Hanrahan.
And they laughed still further up their own choke holes. 
They laughed at the prophets. They laughed at the peasants. They laughed at their own supplicants. 
For what? For what? 
Betrayal brings its own dark excitement. A sword in blood and flesh. A gasping life. A peak experience in the death of others. 
It all looked so fine from a first class window. 
Their credibility had flown out the window, these ruling elites. 
Another day dawned. An agency engineered heart attack was in the offing. 
They would off the irritants. The journalists. Those who spoke the truth. 
And in the process destroy the future. Their own future. 

THE BIGGER STORY:

Iraq needs nearly £65 billion to rebuild after three devastating years of war with ISIS left more than 138,000 houses damaged and 2.5 million citizens displaced.
Tens of thousands have also been left homeless after large parts of the country were left in ruins during the terror group's brutal reign.
In the northern city of Mosul, entire city blocks were reduced to rubble. Nearly a third of the historic Old City was damaged or destroyed in the final three weeks of a bid to recapture the ISIS stronghold
As a three-day international reconstruction conference got underway in Kuwait, officials were seeking pledges from donors and investors to restore Iraq's devastated homes, schools, hospitals and economic infrastructure.
Baghdad declared victory against ISIS in December, after Iraqi forces, backed by a US-led coalition, regained control of the large parts of the country seized by ISIS in mid-2014.

Mosul (IraqiNews.com) Relief teams in Mosul continue to extract corpses of civilians killed during the war against Islamic State militants on a daily basis, and ambiguity persists as the total of bodies expected.
Ikhnews.com website quoted Abdul-Rahim al-Shamri, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s Human Rights Committee, saying in press statements that “civil defense teams and municipal workers continue on a daily basis to extract civilians’ corpses from the under the rubbles of Mosul city caused by the international coalition and Islamic State’s explosives”.
According to al-Shamri, “most of the corpses is concentrated in the Old City in western Mosul”.
“The number of civilian martyrs is still unknown due to the absence of an official statistics from the local and central government, but they can be counted in thousands according to estimates and eye-witnesses”, said al-Shamri.
“The extent of damage and death toll is much larger in…the Old City,” said the parliament member.
As Iraqi troops recaptured areas held by Islamic State militants since 2014, they have regularly run into mass graves of civilians and security agents executed by militants over accusations of fleeing the group’s havens or collaborating with security forces.