THROWN UNDER THE BUS

Credit Abdulmonam Eassa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

And Australia had been dropping bombs on Syria!!!!!!!!!

While the perpetrators dined in their fine houses. 

A shame beyond measure.

How many people did you kill last night? Oh tally ho, where's the chauffeur? 

There was a madness afoot.

Even in this far off place. 

Not even the AIs thought it was fair, the amateurish attempts to remove Old Alex from the timeline. 

According to the Gospel...

They would rise up... 
Hail Mary. The Magisterium.

The Catholics were far darker than most anybody understood. 

The country had not just Balkanised, it had destroyed its original intent. He could feel them in the ether and he liked them not. If only he had valued each passing day. If only every moment had been precious. These lifespans were so brief. And for the wicked, so disposable. 

A calamity was leering just above the horizon. 

No one doubts he is across his brief. 

The selling of a new leader. 

More would be revealed.

Old Alex was spending a working holiday on the Central Coast, with its long white sands and sparse population. 

Dunes shaped by ocean winds. Offshore islands.

A man not in love is not hostage to fortune, has no stake in the future, he heard. 

If he was in love, it was only with this place, this planet. As he thought, time and again, it is so beautiful. Blessed with a longing for intimacy. Denied.

The plot to overthrow the Prime Minister was well advanced. 

The plane had barely left the tarmac before the heir apparent, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, was spruiking his wares at the National Press Club.

The failed prime-ministership of Malcolm Turnbull was creaking out its last embarrassing slews of data.  

We had all been dudded, duped, thrown under the bus. Just like Barnaby.

This was Australia. Betrayal did not go down well.

The highest immigration rates in the OECD were rapidly transforming the country. 

CUTTING immigration into Australia may improve living standards and housing affordability for residents but there are also trade-offs that need to be considered.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has called for Australia to drastically reduce immigration levels from 190,000 to 110,000 people a year.
“My issue is not immigration; it’s the rate of immigration at a time of stagnant wages, clogged infrastructure, soaring house prices and, in Melbourne at least, ethnic gangs that are testing the resolve of police,” he said during a speech at the Sydney Institute on Tuesday evening.
“It’s a basic law of economics that increasing the supply of labour depresses wages; and that increasing demand for housing boosts price.”
Mr Abbott has come under fire but could he actually be right? Chang, Charis, Is immigration too high in Australia? News, 21 February, 2018.

Like every other hapless failed policy of the Howard era, it served the rich, the oligarchy, and destroyed the poor. 
The only response to ever greater levels of discontent was increased suppression. 
A candy coloured police car drove by. 
They are aware. 
There was no solution but a fundamental rewrite. 

Population expert Bob Birrell, a former Monash University professor and now head of the Australian Population Research Institute, said net overseas migration was responsible for half the growth in households in Melbourne and Sydney.
“Therefore it’s a major factor in demand for housing in those two cities and a major contributor to price rises as a consequence,” Mr Birrell told news.com.au.
“If there’s going to be any solution to metropolitan problems (housing affordability, pressure on infrastructure, cost of living increases), the immigration program has to be cut drastically.”
Ibid.

The only voice raised in support of Howard's betrayal of the country had been the Chamber of Commerce. Always a servant to the Big End of Town, the Chamber of Commerce won.
Other major figures, including Liberal powerplayer and apparatchik Nick Minchin, repeatedly warned there was no public support for increasing levels of migration. 
Howard did his double blind, spending hundreds of millions on his Stop the Boats rhetoric, while opening the floodgates, transforming the demographic nature of the country and destroying its traditional culture.
A fundamental, complete betrayal of the electorate. 
Not to mention an even more cruel betrayal of the Indigenous people. And the sacred lands on which the hordes now trampled. Once conquered, now destroyed. 

Treasurer Scott Morrison has come out swinging against Mr Abbott’s suggestion, saying that drastically cutting Australia’s migration intake would cost the federal budget up to $5 billion.
This potential impact on economic growth is one of the main factors keeping immigration high, Mr Birrell said.
“A great point of pride in Australia is our 26 years of unbroken economic growth, and by economic growth, they are referring to overall GDP (gross domestic product) growth,” he said.
“Government does not want to lose that growth figure and it’s also crucial to tax revenue.
“Extra people consuming things is a major driver to gross domestic product.”
Basically, if population is growing, so are the number of houses and other products required to cater to the extra people. This is good for business, who can make more products.
Mr Birrell said the Coalition, like the Labor Party, had been anxious to maintain overall economic growth and reducing population growth would slow this down.
But he also noted that while “nominal economic growth” would slow, “per capita economic growth” wouldn’t.
“This is what really matters to Australian residents,” he said.
“The benefits would mainly be reducing pressure on the big cities — so it’s a trade-off.”
Ibid.

The Australian government mismanaged everything.
And it had badly mismanaged migration. 
Badly. 
The country was fracturing. 
There was no national pride. 
An ice epidemic ravaged the underclasses. 
The middle class divorced themselves from reality, discussed nothing, stayed at home. As if they were already good Muslims.
The elites who had perpetrated this disaster on the country continued to frolic in their enclaves. 
The world looked fine from 40,000 feet. 
Even for the rigor mortis grin of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The scheming reptiles in their own taxpayer provided plane. 
Somewhere above First Class. 
Somewhere beyond decency. Where greed knew no bounds.

THE BIGGER STORY:

MIDDLE EAST
Syrian Bombardment Takes Its Deadliest Toll in Years

By ANNE BARNARD and CARLOTTA GALLFEB. 20, 2018

One of the heaviest bombardments in years by Syrian and Russian planes has killed more than 150 people, scores of them civilians, at a rebel-held enclave near Damascus.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian government, backed by Russian and Iranian allies, underlined its determination this week to regain lost territory, whatever the cost, killing well over 100 civilians in one of the worst bombardments in years, as allied militias separately clashed with Turkish troops in an escalation of the war.
Since Monday, residents and emergency medical workers in Ghouta have posted a cascade of alarming images — a whole family, five children and their parents, pulled dead at once from the rubble; families huddled in basements and dugout shelters; an ambulance crew loading a patient, then fleeing moments before an explosion hits.
On Tuesday, pro-government militias advanced toward the city of Afrin, in northwestern Syria, in an attempt to join Kurdish militias defending the enclave from Turkish troops advancing from the north. Turkish jets and artillery bombarded the approaching forces, forcing them to retreat, the Turkish government said.
The government’s move against Turks and their allied militias threatened to unravel months of diplomatic efforts among Russia, Turkey and Iran to de-escalate the conflict. But it also signaled a new phase of the war with greater potential for direct clashes among outside powers, including Turkey, Russia, Iran and the United States.
Violence has risen sharply in recent weeks as Russia and the Syrian government pushed offensive operations and Turkey entered the fray.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitoring group, said that Monday was the deadliest day in the area in three years. The United Nations estimates that there are nearly 400,000 people in eastern Ghouta.

The suburb is one of the last major areas held by insurgents fighting the Assad government. Rebels based there have occasionally shelled government-held areas of Damascus, escalating their attacks in recent weeks.
Five medical facilities were damaged in attacks overnight, and a medical worker was killed, according to doctors working at hospitals supported by the Syrian American Medical Society. “Such targeting of innocent civilians and infrastructure must stop now,” Panos Moumtzis, the United Nations regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis, said in a statement.
The Syrian government and Russia have escalated an aerial campaign to subdue the rebel-held area, a cluster of working-class suburbs and farms that has been besieged for years, and as pro-government forces gather nearby for a possible ground assault.