CORRUPT MASTERS

Daniel Beltra World Press Photo Comp

"These people are completely corrupt," Old Alex muttered as he rolled awake. This day of all days he did not want to be conscious. 
Alarm bells went off. 
"There are terabytes of information on this guy. We've been warned."
Australia placed its own citizens under surveillance more extensively than any other Western nation, and had been doing so for well over half a century. 
Countless files.
Countless misuses of information. 
Countless abuses of process. 
Careers destroyed, news manipulated, public information disappeared into the great vacuum of "just say no". 
For silence suited the military. And it suited this appalling government, the worst, the future would come to tell, in the nation's history. 
For a nation that stood at the precipice was shoved over the cliff by a greedy, pig ignorant oligarchy.
As it plundered the people and lied to maintain its own power. 
Turnbull, with his bullying ways, was now trying to bully a world he could not understand into compliance with a vision fed to him by fat cat bureaucrats. 
And to quash any journalist or any story he personally disagreed with.
He was used to having the Murdoch press in his pocket. 
He was used to the soft lettuce approach of Fairfax. 
And he was used to having the government funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation repeat his self-flattering version of events ad nauseum. 

After complaints from Malcolm Turnbull, ABC News has removed an analysis piece about the government’s proposed corporate tax cuts by economics correspondent Emma Alberici. An accompanying news story by Alberici – which said Qantas hadn’t paid corporate tax for close to 10 years – has been rewritten and reposted.
“Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, one of the most prominent supporters of the Turnbull government’s proposed big business tax cut, presides over a company that hasn’t paid corporate tax for close to 10 years,” the news report said.
The Coalition is arguing that by reducing business tax the Australian economy will attract more investment and create more jobs.
In her analysis Alberici had argued that there was no case for a corporate tax cut when one in five companies did not pay tax.
Guardian Australia understands ABC News management has been in crisis meetings for two days after the prime minister attacked the articles in question time and then wrote formal letters of complaint to management.
The ABC said the Alberici analysis piece had been removed because it did not meet editorial standards and further information and context had been added to the news story. You can still read the analysis article here. Meade, Amanda, The Guardian,  ABC removes corporate tax cut analysis after complaints from Malcolm Turnbull, 16 February, 2018.

It was all about Malcolm. And Malcolm had failed.
"They're baying for his blood."
As if the only form of news was the official version peddled by the public broadcaster. 
As if processing, progressing new forms of media had not yet been born, were of no threat. They would never be able to see beyond their own self-interest these people. And regarded as fools those who did. 
As if anyone in the cocaine riddled upper classes of Australia could point a finger at anyone, as they waged war on the poor and continued to rape the populace for every last miserable cent.
And hide the truth from everybody who dared to try to find it. 
And bully everyone who attempted to expose their greedy, reptilian ways. 
Liar in Chief. Bully in Chief. Reptile in Chief. 
Who was going to stand up to these bastards? 

Senior journalists at the ABC have told of their anger at the handling of the “Cabinet Files” by the corporation’s management and in particular the decision to hand the trove of documents back to the government.
The Cabinet Files was the publication of nine news stories in January, which were sourced from a cache of cabinet documents obtained by the ABC after they were found in a filing cabinet in a second-hand shop in Canberra. “Hundreds of top-secret and highly classified cabinet documents have been obtained by the ABC following an extraordinary breach of national security,” the broadcaster said in its original reporting.
A few days later, the ABC news director Gaven Morris made an agreement with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to return the documents.
In several interviews, senior ABC staff, from both front and behind the camera, have expressed their disquiet at the move. They declined to go on the record for fear of reprisals from the management. The staff, who work across the ABC’s news and current affairs programs, told Guardian Australia there was consternation over what they believed was a lack of rigour in the editorial oversight.
“It looked like they were focusing on damage control rather than looking for really good stories,” one said.
The journalists told Guardian Australia it looked like Morris had done “a pre-emptive buckle” so as not to upset the government. They wondered what was in those boxes and whether the assigned reporters had gone through them “with a fine tooth comb” and found stories they chose not to report or if they had missed anything.
They asked why the ABC had given the files back when Morris had earlier said “we could have told hundreds of stories over weeks or months”. Meade, Amanda,  'Lot of disquiet': Senior ABC staff angry over return of cabinet files, The Guardian, 17 February, 2018.

He could feel the tremors in the line. The anguish at their own lack of commitment. Their own compromised positions. We are secret and we are secretly here. We are doing our best to eradicate you from the timeline, and already understand it is futile. We already know we are pulling bad karma to ourselves. Some of us are spooked. Some of us are dying. We serve corrupt masters, and they, too, are already in advanced states of decay. Collapsed moral standing. We serve corrupt masters. We, just like you, long to be free. 


THE BIGGER STORY:

Homs, Syria.

Here’s a catalogue of the craziness in the Syrian battlespace over the past month: A former al-Qaeda affiliate has shot down a Russian jet, using a Chinese-made missile; Kurdish forces have shot down a Turkish helicopter, using an Iranian-made missile; Iran has flown a drone into Israel, across Russian-monitored Syrian airspace; Israel has bombed 12 sites across Syria in retaliation; and the U.S. response to a Russian-backed sneak attack on oil-and-gas fields near Deir al-Zour killed perhaps scores of Russian mercenaries, overflowing the local morgue.Syria is now riven by “converging forces with diverging interests,” warns a senior Pentagon official. Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. special envoy, said Wednesday that it is as “violent, worrying and dangerous” a moment as any since he took the job four years ago.

What’s the answer to this toxic mix? Not empowering Turkey’s deeper meddling, surely. The path out is a steady, patient advance of the faltering Geneva negotiations to extend the power and authority of a reformed Syrian state and military. For the United States, that means biting the bullet and working with Russia and the Syrian regime — two untrustworthy but essential partners.

Eric Lobekke Courtesy of The Australian

The risks to the continued existence of the Coalition and the survival of the Turnbull government, as well as the personal rancour between the leaders of the Liberal Party and the Nationals, are unprecedented in their scope, cause and potential for damage.
What’s more, never before has such bitter animosity between the leaders of the Liberal Party and the Nationals/Country Party been played out in public.
There is no doubt that Barnaby Joyce has driven the Coalition to this moment and is clearly at fault on every point, but Malcolm Turnbull’s interference in Nationals leadership issues and his evisceration of the Deputy Prime Minister on prime-time television have made things only worse.
Turnbull’s decision to attempt to blast Joyce out of the Nationals leadership and his cabinet has backfired badly, with the Nationals leader scorning the criticisms and appealing to the strength of clan loyalty in the 85-year old country party.
Country MPs from all parties can’t abide media executions; a sacked minister who read about his removal in the media famously declared that “in the bush we shoot our own dogs”. The result is an unknow­able ­effect on the waverers within the Nationals who will decide Joyce’s fate.
It is clear that as a result of the Joyce affair the Coalition has lost crucial political momentum in the first the two weeks of parliamentary sittings. The government is back where it was in the doldrums at the beginning of the previous three years.
Don’t worry about the travails of personal lives, no matter how poignant, personally devastating or dangerously balanced. It is the politics of the past two weeks that has left the government adrift.
The Coalition and Turnbull have no one but themselves to blame for their inability to take advantage of Labor’s huge woes. Like a vessel sailing into a season of dead calm, the good ship Coalition was anticipating an escape from the parched experience of the becalmed sailor. Instead, it has ended up with not a drop to drink and all the boards have shrunk.