DARK DARK POLICING

Burning oil fields near Mosul

The staff had been smote into the ground.

The curse had been cast.

It would travel through the chains of command, from person to person, under doors, through wires. These ancient curses  did not like the air conditioning of modern offices, but would reach their intended targets nonetheless. The air would thicken around them; and one day, if they were lucky enough to live that long, they would realise that nothing at all was going right in their lives, their health was worsening, and would realise that all the normal pieces of fortune that flowed their way were instead flowing out to sea, that nothing in their lives worked anymore; and as their power weakened the jackals would strike.

There were the usual happenstance meetings. An unlikely Christian told him what it was like to be a lesbian at a Seventh Day Adventist meeting. A Nepalese migrant told him how you could make $40,000 living with a Nepalese girl for a year, in order for them to gain PR, Permanent Residence.

Of all the scumbags they've let into this country, he said, and shrugged. And here were people, willing people, who would have made good citizens.

One of them had been fined for walking across a quiet street against a red light; the latest abuse in the ever spiraling catalogue of abuses of  Australian authorities, who had so little to do and had become so numerous in number that now they were booking people for the way they crossed a street. An empty street.

He had been tormented year in and year out by the Watchers on the Watch, those forces aligned against anyone who dare to speak out, the idle cruelty of castoffs, the unthinking remorselessness of government funding.

"I wish I could see a counsellor on how to cope with government surveillance," he told his doctor; and they agreed, there was no such counselling available.

In the darkest reaches, in all those nightmare reaches, where fascists stomped and pig ignorance prevailed, where predators stalked and kindly voices were drowned out, where the government abused its own citizens and showed no respect, where the crushing of spirit was the aim, in these barren places the worst survived; and briefly thrived.

Before the curse took them, too, and they whimpered into premature old age, dreaming of what might have been.

If only they had been good.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/battle-mosul-direct-iraqi-assault-isil-fighters-161101070901154.html

Iraq's prime minister has urged ISIL fighters in Mosul to surrender as an offensive to drive the group from the country's second largest city continues.

A day after Haider al-Abadi appeared on state TV to order ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, to give up its positions, troops opened fire with artillery, tanks and machine guns on the fighters on the edge of the Gogjali neighbourhood.

"They have no choice. Either they surrender or they die," Abadi said.

The fighters responded with guided anti-tank missiles and small arms to block the anti-ISIL coalition's advance on Tuesday. 

Al Jazeera's Stefanie Dekker, reporting from east of Mosul, said that the battle is intense as ISIL fighters are putting up stiff resistance against the approaching forces.

"We are being told by the Peshmerga forces that the black sky is the result of ISIL burning oil wells and tyres in and around Mosul," she said.

"Now we know this is one of their tactics to try to obscure their position from coalition air strikes and also to obscure the ground. The smoke is incredibly thick, so it is an intense battle."

If Iraqi forces enter Gogjali, it will mark the first time troops have set foot in Mosul in more than two years, after they were driven out by a much smaller force of ISIL fighters in 2014.

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