Redfern

This is a picture of Redfern, where we live. It has a reputation as one of the most troubled areas of Sydney, but things have been a lot tidier since the police moved into the TNT towers next to the station and can train their cameras across all the trouble spots. It has discouraged activity; and the strife has migrated to Waterloo. I came to live in Redfern without intent, shocked by the scenes that used to greet us, the absolute chaos and criminality. It's been tidy, or at least much tidier, for going on two years now. Once common, you no longer hear women crying hysterically in the streets after their bags have been snatched, . The people waiting in cars are waiting for friends, not anything else. We haven't had to call the ambulance for anyone passed out in the street. Redfern is thought to have character. It is said to be the most left wing precinct in the country. Probably right. The conservatives haven't got a chance, no matter how parlous the state of the Labor Party.

Redfern is completely different to the places I have been in recent weeks. See more cars in a minute than we saw all week.

There are social obligations which you really should have fulfilled, calls to the positive side of life, instead he got stuck with a desperately lonely woman in a house and in a room and he couldn't work out how to leave. She begged him to stay. He made the dash. She didn't look happy and he couldn't care less. The city was full of the desperately lonely. They could cannibalise you with ease. Absolutely eat out every last bit of personal freedom, enchain you with a coating of co-dependence so thick it was impossible to breathe, and have you squirming in the long heat of clammy nights, utterly unfulfilled. Never more alone than lying next to someone. It was time to stop toying with the dead, living with the myths of good times - utterly squandered.

NEWSWATCH:

Hamas have won the election in Palestine, and the commentary and implications are fascinating.

GAZA (Reuters) - Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Saturday rejected international calls for the Islamic militant group to disarm and renounce violence to prevent cuts to international aid for the Palestinian Authority.
"This aid can not be a sword over the heads of the Palestinian people and will not be material to blackmail our people, to blackmail Hamas and the resistance. It is rejected," Haniyeh told Reuters in an interview in the Gaza Strip.
He added that Hamas, sworn to Israel's destruction, was committed to keeping its arms and resisting Israeli occupation.
Haniyeh was speaking after the United States threatened to cut back its $234 million in aid earmarked for the Palestinians this year because Hamas was expected to form a new Palestinian government.
"They've got to get rid of that arm of their party which is armed and violence and secondly, they've got to get rid of that part of their platform that says they want to destroy Israel," U.S. President George W. Bush said in an interview with CBS news.