Head First

There's a million things to do and I only have a few minutes to pound out the stray thoughts of a crowded day, crowded life. Still have to do a "meditation" on war artist George Lambert, have to fix up Suzy's proposals; have to do stuff for the radio show. My fingers hurt and the brain flips from one subject to another; narrative structure decaying.

We live in fear; after the Stalinist purges that sweep through the office time and again, until there is almost no one left. Just before he died Stalin was preparing for the purge of purges, a Russian word, "pushta", or something like that; but simply put, the purge of purges. That is what it is like; living in fear; hiding behind columns, slumping down into the chair; the computer light and the dry airconditioned air making us sick in an oh so modern way.

We were moved, occasionally, by the condtion of others, as the fingers flew across the keyboards; they opened their doors and peered out; I'm sorry to bother you at a time like this. I'm from.... I'm from a naive era that believed there was more than self-interest; that there were deeper reasons for being; that in some elusive way fighting for the common man, for the betterment of humanity, was something worth doing. That is why climate change has gripped the entire country like a new religion. Six months ago it was passe to be green; now you're a criminal if you leave the kitchen light on unnecessarily. We snuggled into our own comforts and certainties, but here, delivered in one delicious package, is a noble cause worth fighting for. And you really don't have to do anything but state that you believe. You can't doubt, not for a minute; because to doubt is to be evil. Rudd has accused Howard of being a climate change sceptic, as if being a sceptic was a bad thing to be; and I swear, the whole country caught religion almost overnight. The Herald ran their green tinted issue the other day; and campaigned unashamedly for Earth Hour, where everyone turned off their lights. We looked out the front door and couldn't see any difference. Turned off most of the lights, and watched television anyway. It was easy to feel you had made a contribution without doing much at all; which of course was the wonder and enchantment of climate change. It requires almost nothing but the statement of belief.

THE BIGGER STORY:

HONIARA, Solomon Islands Apr 3, 2007 (AP)— Survivors scavenged for food and drinking water in towns hammered by a tsunami on the Solomon Islands' west coast, while officials said the death toll was 28 and would rise as they struggled to reach remote communities.
The first television footage of the devastated region taken by helicopter after Monday's double disaster a huge undersea earthquake followed minutes later by a surging wall of water showed building after tin-and-thatched-roof building collapsed along a muddy foreshore.
Men, some shirtless and wearing shorts, picked through the debris. Some buildings leaned awkwardly on broken stilts.
Many of the homeless spent Monday night sleeping under tarpaulins or the stars on a hill behind worst-hit town of Gizo after the magnitude 8.1 quake hit under the sea about 25 miles off the town. Walls of water up to 16 feet high plowed into the coast five minutes later.
Three medical teams six doctors and 13 nurses were to fly to the region Wednesday morning from the capital Honiara to treat an unknown number of survivors, National Disaster Management Office spokesman Julian Makaa said Tuesday.

In Orderly File

This is the NSW Premier Morris Iemma talking to a Surf Rescue chap just prior to the NSW Election; as part of the 75th bridge celebrations. He has this low, understated way of just being there, and talking to whoever is next to him. He isn't striding out and grinning and gripping like a lot of them; and in this quiet, shy, kind of under-stated way, he won the last election absolutely convincingly. The Labor machine was impressive, considering they couldn't run on their rotten record, but there was something about Morris, too, that people don't dislike.

Bob Carr, as I've said before, had them all boxed; sweeping into press conferences, making his grand announcements, picking the two dumbest hacks in the pack, answering their questions in full and sweeping on, an important man with important business. I remember, particularly, about Bob, being stuck with him for much of three days when he was Environment Minister; tromping through the national parks and state forests of the north coast, the dripping, exotic richness of it all, with the national parks guys running around; Bob being dropped at one end of the walking trail with the little herd of journalists and guides, and then at lunch, chicken sandwiches on the top of a waterfall, beer for those indiscreet enough to want one.

Bob never drank. While the rest of us would be nursing blinding, disabling, and very indiscreet hangovers, and I was battling deeper orders of melancholy which kept seeping like an evil surf around our feet, Bob and his wife would be sitting, already neat, at the motel breakfast table. She would be sipping hot water with a slice of lemon in it. I'd never seen anyone drink hot water before; and thought this was amazingly exotic; some rigid puritanical rite; but she insisted it was good for you. Bob, too, was keen on the iced water and fruit juices and while the rest of us swapped notes about the exploits, or failed exploits, of the night before, he sat engrossed in Primo Levi's latest novel; whatever it was. The eighties seem so long ago now. I've got a really busy day ahead, one more week till the school holidays; helping Suzy at work with a project she's pitching at the web editor; finishing the introduction to Crossroads; doing a 800 word "meditation" for the arts pages on war artist Lambert; and of course whatever trivial pieces of crap the day throws up.

THE BIGGER STORY

Channel Four:

At least 12 people have died after an earthquake and tsunami struck the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.
The quake, which measured at least 8.0 on the Richter scale, levelled buildings and damaged a hospital on Gizo island northwest of the Solomons capital, Honiara.
A tsunami, described by witnesses as the height of a two-storey building, sucked homes into the sea as thousands of panicked residents fled for higher ground. The tsunami alert in the region has now been lifted.
One of the worst affected areas was Gizo, in the west of the Solomons, which was only 28 miles from the epicentre of the quake.
At least seven people died in Gizo, many trapped in their homes when waves swept through the town. Other bodies could be seen but not reached because of huge waves crashing ashore, the government said in a statement.

Vicious Self-Interest

T
The stories keep cascading through the brain; fully formed mini-soap operas that are gone the next. Realisation after realisation swamps me, and I keep thinking, yes, Peter was right. Maybe it is all about vicious self-interest. Nobody else is doing you a favour. You fantasise about the proletariat, just another working Joe, making the world a better place, and in fact all that happens is they hold parties without you, they snatch the main chance and treat you like dirt, you, the odd one, who allowed yourself to be kicked around, who always thought you were working or writing for some bigger cause; whatever that cause was.

They stand in the garden of the magnicent stone pile at Point Piper, with views up and down the harbour, the glistening lights telling you, telling everyone, you've made it. Nobody invited me. Nobody even mentioned it to me. Not, do you mind doing the night shift, you wouldn't enjoy it anyway. And I realise, terminally, that nobody cares and nobody will ever care, and the oddities you have fashioned into a curious, eccentric exterior, at the heart of it all they couldn't give a rats about you. And so Peter was right, look after yourself first. Write your own books. Finish your own projects. Save the world another day.

These times that were so dark, that spiralled so rapidly out of control, which now seem a thousand years ago, not a few thousand days, a few thousand minutes; as if, already, it all happened to someone else in another lifetime; another historic period altogether. Taking Joyce to the movies today, I think we're going to see Becoming Jane, or whatever it's called, some sweeping period piece with stunning costumes and sweeping landscapes; hoping, between us, to be swept away from our own lives and our own annoying little heads which never shut up. It's still strange, somedays, being friends with an 80 year old woman, but we look at each other and know exactly what we're thinking. She tells me, it's just the body, I don't feel old. And I say, you're 26 years older than I am and I feel old. We laugh, and I reach out; I never reach out; the masks were too firmly in place, the screens of invisibility behind which we hid.

That was a self image I always had; that I was hidden behind screen after screen and nobody, absolutely nobody, could get to me. If you broke down one wall, there was another. And if you broke down that wall, there was another. But as I grew older, that creature, hiding behind those screens, had atrophied into a tiny, terrified character. And then one day someone broke down that last wall to find this terrified, furless, deformed rabbit. They threw hot water over it; and it ran screaching in pain, straight into oblivion.


THE BIGGER STORY:


http://www.attytood.com/2007/03/the_heartbreaking_blogs_from_i.html


The heartbreaking blogs from Iraq that Bush didn't read today

"They have bloggers in Baghdad, just like we've got here."
-- George W. Bush, speaking earlier today to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.
I was listening -- mostly tuning out, frankly, as I tried to get some work done -- to the president this morning, but I perked up at the mention of the word "bloggers," the first time I'd ever heard the word uttered by the commander-in-chief. Less than three years ago the man was talking about "rumors on the Internets," and just last year we learned he reads "the Google," but mainly for the pictures.
Now Bush is cruising the sphere o' blogs? Here's what he said:
To back up his point that pulling out of Iraq would be a disaster, President Bush has quoted opinions from the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top U.S. general in Iraq — and now, two bloggers from Baghdad.
Bush made a surprising reference to the blogosphere during a spirited defense of his war strategy on Wednesday. The mention seemed even more unusual because the president didn't identify whom he was quoting, so he seemed to be leaning on anonymous commentary.
Here's the passage he then quoted:
Then he began to quote: "Displaced families are returning home, marketplaces are seeing more activity, stores that were long shuttered are now reopening. We feel safer about moving in the city now. Our people want to see this effort succeed."
His point was that Iraqi people are seeing signs of progress — and what better example of their unbridled expression than blogs.
More on that unbridled expression in a moment. First, we won't bore you with a long digression on this, but the AP story makes a bit of an issue of the fact that Bush wasn't really quoting from a blog but from an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Whatever -- it's true that the authors blog from Baghdad: Their names are Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, and their site is called Iraq the Model.
The Fadhils are not really your typical bloggers, though. For one thing, they have actually met with Bush in the Oval Office, in 2004. I happen to know quite a few bloggers -- none of the ones I know have met with the president. The larger point of Bush's speech today, of course, was to put a new spin on the same old tired message, that there is good news from Iraq, and people are just overlooking it.
But I was curious. Other people continue to blog from Iraq, people who didn't get a free trip to the White House. What are they saying about the current situation? I decided to find a random sample of five Iraqi bloggers who are still in Iraq, and who have posted recently.
Now, I consider myself someone who pretty much keeps up with the situation in Iraq. But frankly I never expected the reports to be as glum as what I found. They read as if written from a different planet than the one that Bush and his self-selected bloggers apparently reside on.
I went to the new site IraqSlogger, which has links to four Iraq blogs, including Iraq the Model and another well known one called Baghdad Burning. The last post there was from over a month ago, not a good sign. Here's what Riverbend wrote in the second from last post:
It takes a lot to get the energy and resolution to blog lately. I guess it’s mainly because just thinking about the state of Iraq leaves me drained and depressed.
From the same post:
Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile
OK, you can see why Bush didn't mention that blog. Another one linked on Iraqslogger is called Treasure of Baghdad (the source of the picture at top). Here from the top post:
My aunt’s words are still in mind since that day. She is right. Iraq is destroyed. People are displaced. No more schools are open. No more jobs offered. Markets are no longer welcoming customers. Barbers are killed. There is no longer water and electricity. There is no safety. People sleep with guns next to their pillows. Is that what people were dreaming of?
In the blogroll here, I decided to click on a site called Healing Iraq, again knowing nothing of the politics of the author. The top post at the time (since topped with a fresher entry) shows a picture of a long line of displaced Iraqis seeking asylum in Jordan. And right below that:
Hometown Baghdad is a new website that features short, compelling video documentaries of the lives of several Iraqi youth in Baghdad. Filmed completely by Iraqis, it follows the lives of Adel, Ausama and Saif, three college students, and their families, as they brave the streets of Baghdad, people who have nothing to do with the conflict going on in the country but who were sucked up in the madness nevertheless. They are the people behind the headlines and the numbers you so often see in Iraq coverage (50 Iraqis killed, 100 Iraqis wounded, 600 thousand Iraqis dead, 3 million Iraqis displaced, etc). It is classic citizen journalism from the front in Baghdad, despite Adel's slightly annoying Americanised accent. One of them is a despairing dentist!
Searching through Google, again not trying to prejudice my search, I came across a site called Baghdad Chronicles. The top entry here is called "My Friends," and it starts with this warning:
No one dies in this story so please do not worry.
Later in the lengthy post, she writes:
It was another turning point to our group when D was kidnapped from his house. Thankfully he was returned back safely because at that time, a year ago, kidnapped people were delivered safely after receiving the ransom money. Nowadays they take the money and throw the body in Tigris. Yes in that Tigris which once was sparkling under our suspension bridge, the bridge which is taken away from us and is invaded now like everything else in our life by some weird people who have different language, different blood and different culture.
Finally, I discovered hnk's blog, which is based in Mosul and, I though, might offer a somewhat different perspective. From the top post:
And BOOOOM that's what we heard, my mom jumped from her place and I was too busy watching my mom. my dad as usual did what he always does when we heard an explosion.
He went out of the house. At that time there was a shooting so I go after him and pleased him to come inside and when he came back he was followed by 3 women and a child. they were walking in the street and the explosion made them crazy so they ran into our house. They sat for a little while and then left after the shooting stopped.
the situation is always getting worse. one day ago, we heard about 2 big explosions each hour.We didn't even fix the kitchen's window that broke last month. because every day we heard an explosion which is big enough to break the window over again.
By the way, that post, and I'm not making this up, is entitled "My Vacation."
Five random blogs, five bleak portraits of a nation pushed into the abyss -- and that won't have a prayer of getting better until we start to get real about what our presence there really means to these poor people. The only sign of any progress that I saw anywhere today is that George W. Bush says that he's reading blogs.
He's just not reading the right ones.

Untold Stories

This is a picture of the NSW Premier Morris Iemma underneath the harbour bridge with the descendants of the 16 men who died during the construction of the bridge. A new and long overdue plaque was unveiled as part of the 75th birthday celebrations in tribute to these men. It was good, for once, to see politicians paying tribute to the men who worked and died on whatever building or project they're officially opening or commemorating. As the premier said in his speech sixteen dead was regarded as a good figure in the day; and a testament to the success and high safety standards of the project. Of course 16 dead these days would be a huge construction scandal.

Peter Lalor, who wrote a book on the Bridge as a result of a commission, was there and we swapped notes. It was one of those days when, as he recounted, the old saying about journalism seemed truer than ever: "A young man's sandpit and an old man's quicksand".

I lent down to hear the stories from Faulkner's children and other descendants, who were in tears as the plaque was unveiled. I thought for a moment it was going to be some trendy bit of bullshit; and at the end thought it was a really decent and worthwhile project. It was a pretty rotten way to die, his bottom half crushed by a steel plate. He would have gone in the most frightful agony. There wasn't much getting away from that. The kids, now in their 70s or early 80s, were basically too young to remember, the youngest boy was only five months old when it happened; but they remembered having to return to the family home in Balmain; and they all spoke very highly of their mother, who had brought them up through the depression years on almost nothing. They remembered funny little things: I would stand behind him and plat his hair; and he loved it. He would be tired after work. He would have been so proud of this today, knowing that he contributed to this world famous structure.

And I listened, jotting notes automatically, all those years later; a strangely echoing consequence from the searing pain and awful distress of an accident so long ago. A young man's sandpit, an old man's quicksand.

THE BIGGER STORY

LEST WE FORGET:

THE ACHIEVEMENT OF CONSTRUCTION WAS MARRED BY THE DEATHS OF
16 MEN IN BRIDGE-RELATED WORKPLACES.

THEY WERE:
Addison, sydney John (1905–1930), boilermaker’s
assistant who fell from the arch when he was bolting
up a piece of steel.
Campbell, James (1887–1932), foreman rigger,
knocked by a derrick crane as he was dismantling
scaffolding from the nW Pylon on 6 February 1932. A
gust of wind had caught the crane.
Chilvers, James Francis (1877–1931), dogman, was
working at the Milsons Point Workshops when a piece
of wood knocked him into the water.
Craig, robert (1863–1926) was a braceman who fell
down a ballast heap at Milsons Point.
Edmunds, Alfred (1875–1931) was a Canadian-born
labourer who was packing stones when he crushed his
thumb. He died from tetanus poisoning 11 days later.
Faulkner, John Alexander (‘Felix’), (1891–1931) was
born in Montreal, Canada and the second of the two
riggers to die on the job. He was laughing when a huge
sliding steel plate almost severed his legs.
Gillon, Frederick (1905–1930) was a rigger who died
instantly when a sheerlegs collapsed in Junction street,
north sydney.
Graham, robert (1890–1931) was working as a day
labourer when a tram knocked him down in Alfred
street, north sydney.
McKeown, Thomas (1881–1929), an Irish-born rigger
who fell from a painting gantry which was suspended
from the Bridge’s road deck.
Peterson, engel August (‘Angel’), (1904–1927), a
swedish born rigger who broke his spine in the Dorman
long workshop and died six months later at the Coast
Hospital (aka Pedersen).
Poole, Percy (1897–1927), a quarryman from Moruya,
was working in the quarry when a large stone block
slid back and killed him instantly.
Shirley, edward (unknown–1928), married, was
working as a carpenter when some scaffolding
collapsed on him at the Fitzroy street Arch, Milsons
Point. He died four days later in royal north shore
Hospital.
Swandells, nathaniel (1905–1927), ironworker’s
assistant, was working in a riveting gang when he
fell from an approach pier and died instantly (aka
swondels).
Waters, Henry (1876–1926), dogman and Moruya
identity, was riding on a loco-crane at the quarry when
the big counterweight jib severed his thigh. He died the
next day.
Webb, John Henry (1908–1931) was an english-born
painter who fell from a cross-girder when he was
working inside one of the south pylons.
Woods, William (1886–1928), a scottish-born
ironworker who fell more than twenty metres from a
gantry on the ninth span.

Conflicted

This is a picture of the scene just before the cutting of the ribbon for the 75th anniversary of the bridge; depicting Morris Iemma and his four children with the Governor Bashir. I guess in some unsubtle way you could call it the triumph of multi-culturalism. There isn't an anglo to be seen in any of the major positions of power; with an Italian heritage premier and a Lebanese heritage governor. It's all been engineered, and they spruke left wing ideology as if they and they alone own the high moral ground. Money and power have been shifted, deliberately; it irks, in some residual way; which is weird. As if the whities could give a toss for the likes of me. It's easy to be left wing if you're on a handsome tax payer funded salary, living in large comfortable houses, surrounded by your own kind.

I have to write a Forward for Ian's book The Daddy Split Guide so here goes:

Most separated men, faced with the collapse of their known universe,retreat like wounded animals into caves of their own making.Most of these men lose virtually everything in their life: not justtheir marriage, but often their house, their income, their socialstanding, their friendships, and worst of all any meaningfulrelationship with their children. They also lose complete faith intheir country and their fellow citizens, in their national identityand everything they have ever held dear. For as loyal, uprightcitizens of Australia, most men have got up and gone to work each day,day after day, putting one foot in front of the other, paying theirbills and grumbling, perhaps, about useless politicians. But they haveat least derived some comfort from the belief that while they paid theexorbitant taxes characteristic of this country, at least it was acountry which believed in social justice and the fair go, a countrythey could be proud of.No one who has been through the travesty of justice, decency andhonesty that is the Family Court of Australia and experienced thebureaucratic insanities of the Child Support Agency or the anti-maleanti-father bias of Legal Aid or Centrelink could possibly have anyrespect for our legal system or the politicians who have allowed thesesocial disasters to continue on their destructive paths with suchimpunity.Sooner or later, with most separated men, the light goes on. Theyrealise they have spent their entire lives paying taxes to support asystem totally hostile to their interests, and to supportingbureaucrats and politicians who essentially couldn't care less whetherthey were alive or dead.Although every father's group in the country claims a directconnection between the Child Support Agency and the high death rate ofseparated men the CSA has consistently refused to count its own dead -estimated now to be running at 12 a day - three times what you wouldexpect in the broader population. No other organisation in the countrycould get away with 12 of its clients dying each day, yet not a singlepolitician who has been responsible for the CSA since Dads On The Airbegan broadcasting in 2000 has been able to answer the simple question- how many of your clients die each day?Not a single politician Labor or Liberal, Green or Democrat, has hadthe gumption to stand up and speak out against the massive bias ingovernment funding which sees more than 99% of government fundingspent on women's groups while father's groups go begging.None of them have pointed out that more men die of prostate cancerthan women die of breast cancer it's women who get all the funding andattention. None of them have dared to say what academics around theworld have confirmed - that domestic violence is an equal opportunityemployer. And not a single politician has had the common decency topoint out that a Marxist feminist institution like the Family Courtand its supporting bureaucracies, including Legal Aid and Centrelink,operate on an entirely dishonest and ideologically driven principle -that whatever the woman says is to be given credence as the voice ofthe oppressed, and whatever the man says is to be dismissed as thevoice of the patriarchal oppressor.There is no more brutal, more inhumane or more barbaric act the statecan commit against their own citizenry than to remove children fromtheir parents. Yet that is exactly what happens to separated men intheir hundreds every single day of the week. And none of the peopleelected to represent their interests says a word.One woman's pain is every woman's pain, one man's pain is a socialembarrassment. Faced with the devastating loss of their children,their homes, most of their assets, their income, faith in theircountry and the lives they have lived, separated men crawl silentlyinto their own coccoons. If they cry, which they often do, they cryalone.It is one reason why they are largely invisible in the public debate.Ian Purdie wasn't about to go crawling into any old cocoon. He hadspent much of his working life in rock bands and he just wasn't thesilent type. A big, vibrant man with energy to burn, he turned hishand first to writing books at a furious pace, and then tobroadcasting. Since first coming to Dads On The Air in 2006 he hasbecome a vital part of the program, and a significant factor in itscontinued survival and success.Ian first came to the attention of Dads On The Air when we decided tointerview him for the program, which had been running since 2000 andis now the world's longest running radio show dedicated to issuesaround fatherhood. In its sporadic fury and undisciplined candor, thebook is very much like Ian himself, generous in spirit,all-over-the-shop, insightful and insane, in the nicest possible way. Hopefully the very fact thatIan has had the gumption to stand up and shout about the manyinjustices perpetrated not just against him, but against so many otherfathers in this country, will inspire others to help turn the destructive tide thathas destroyed so many lives and so many families; and hurt so manychildren.At Dads On The Air we estimate that only one in something like tenthousand separated men ever give back to the fatherhood movement whichthey have turned to in their moments of need. Only very few men everhave the courage, conviction, talent or opportunity to speak out against the injusticesperpetrated against them, their fellows and their children. As ourcourts and bureaucracies continue to destroy fathers and break downtheir once loving relationships with their children, and as ourgutless politicians continue to hide in their offices and ignore asocial disaster which has left more than a million Australian children livingaway from their fathers, at least lan Purdie was one of those whostood up to be counted. The country would be a damn sight better placeif there were more men like him.

The Ghost Blogs of Shame

This is me standing on the Harbour Bridge on its 75th anniversary; 50 million cars have crossed the bridge every year for the past 20 years, but not on this day, when it was closed to traffic. It's an essential part of Sydeny, the single most recognisable "icon" - we've been told never to use the word "icon"; it's an over-used cliche - and for a while at work we would get notices counting how many times the word icon had been used in the paper each week and noting with approval or disapproval whether the numbers had gone up or down. We had to meet at the media centre on the southern side of the bridge at 7.30am. A Channel Seven reporter asked me to take a picture of him with his camera, which I duly did, and he returned the favour.

There's a story in the paper today about ghost blogs and the death of the blogging phenomenon. At one stage there were 100,000 new blogs a month; at one stage a new one every eight seconds I read somewhere. The story, originally from The Sunday Times, suggests there are now 200 million blogs which have been started and then abandoned. The article suggests that "The extraordinary failure rate of online diaries and claims that interest in blogging will soon begin a precipitous slide are sparking an intriguing debate about the future of self-expression on the internet and whether blogs, once seen as revolutionary, are destined to become a footnote in the history of computing". As Polly recalled, there was a cartoon in one of the New York papers of two city dogs, with one telling the other, "I've given up my blog, I'm going back to pointless and incessant barking".

It may well be true; just as television could have been something which empowered the people, with video cameras in their hands, to tell and disseminate their own stories instead became a top down phenomenon owned and run by multinationals and a perfect vehicle for advertisers and the homogenisation of our culture. Whatever happened, for instance, to all those stories about community television, how there could be programs run by gays and lesbians, the disabled, various ethnic groups, telling their stories and speaking to their own people. It all died a death, and the potential for blogging to bypass the mainstream and be the ultimate expression of democracy, it all seems to have disappeared.

As the Sunday Times story goes on to note, internet search engines continue to provide links to blogs that have been dead for years, and eradicating embarrassing moments of self revelation, these so-called "ghost blogs", "lingering reminders of a cultish enthusiasm for self expression that is rapidly wearing off", can be very difficult indeed. Some call the abandonment of blogs as "the suicide of your virtual self".

One US analyst has put the peak at last October, when 100,00 new blogs were being created every day. Gartner research suggests there are about 100 million bloggers worldwide and this could fall to about 30 million. At my current rate of persistence maybe I'll be hanging in there in the last 30 million. I don't know why but I like doing it. Not for the first time, I'm writing my way out of trouble.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

From the Kuwait Times: billed as the first daily in the Arabian Gulf.

It's a big, wide, exotic world out there.

Are bloggers parasites?

Published Date: March 18, 2007 By Nicholas Carr Are bloggers parasites? That's the question of the day in the navel-gazing world of the blogosphere.

Robert Niles, the editor of the Online Journalism Review, recently decried what he sees as a tendency by journalists to characterise blogs as "a 'parasitic' medium" that feeds off the work of traditional newspapers and magazines. He calls the charge "a poorly informed insult of many hard-working Web publishers who are doing fresh, informative and original work". Maybe so, but Niles's protestations notwithstanding, blogs are largely parasitic. Yes, a handful of bloggers do original reporting, usually on highly specialised topics, but most simply react to the news of the day.

The blogosphere, as others have pointed out, acts as a kind of global echo chamber. An idea gets swatted around like a ping-pong ball for a few hours until a fresh one takes its place. But is that really so bad? I used to think of blogging's reactive nature as a flaw in the medium. I've changed my mind, though. I've come to believe that being a literary parasite is no bad thing. I'd argue, in fact, that parasitism is blogging's most distinctive and probably its most valuable feature. Bloggers blog for a host of reasons, but what sets blogging apart as a literary form is that it offers a writer an easy way to document his or her responses to their day-to-day reading.

The constant flow of text through the eye and mind is a characteristic of many people's lives, but it has never been possible before to capture the experience so thoroughly and with such immediacy as it can be through blogging. Diaries come closest, but they're private, and I'd argue that they place more distance between the act of reading and the act of writing about reading. The reactive, or parasitical, quality of blogging defined the form from the start. Blogs, after all, began as logs, chronological catalogues of what web surfers discovered in their daily perambulations around the Internet.

Many of the most accomplished and venerable bloggers continue to write in this form. The least interesting blogs are the ones that simply replicate existing journalistic forms such as news articles, company profiles or product reviews. They can be very useful, and they can certainly be very popular, but they're blogs in a technical sense only. In his new book, The Ghost Map, Steven Johnson describes how London's teeming underclass economy in the mid-19th century was built almost entirely on scavenging. The poor were parasites who sustained themselves by collecting the leavings of other Londoners - rags, bones, bits of coal and wood, faeces - and, with remarkable enterprise, transforming them into cash.

Our natural instinct, Johnson writes, is "to fulminate against a system that allowed so many thousands to eke out a living by foraging through human waste". But our outrage, he suggests, should "be accompanied by a measure of wonder and respect". After all, "this itinerant underclass managed to conjure up an entire system for processing and sorting the waste generated by 2m people". Without them, London would have been swallowed up in its own filth. Johnson goes on to draw an analogy between these human waste- recyclers and their microscopic counterparts, bacteria. "Without the bacteria-driven processes of decomposition, the Earth would have been overrun by offal and carcasses eons ago," he reminds us. "If the bacteria disappeared overnight, all life on the planet would be extinguished within a matter of years." Bloggers do similarly useful work.

In fact, the blogosphere may best be thought of as a vast digestive tract, breaking down the news of the day into ever finer particles of meaning (and ever more concentrated toxins). It's worth remembering that, in a literary context, another word for "parasitic" is "critical". Blogging is, at its essence, a critical form, a means of recycling other writings to ensure that every molecule of sense, whether real or imagined, is distilled and consumed. So if someone wants to call my blog parasitic, or even bacterial, that's fine with me. I'll consider it not an insult, but a compliment. NOTE: Nicholas Carr is the author of Does IT Matter? He scavenges at roughtype.com - Guardian

Joy To The World

This is Sam on his 16th birthday with his mates Todd and Bill. It was a successful day; he's organised his own party's for the last ten years and they've always gone smoothly. I remember organising his sixth birthday, the last one he let his parents organise, in a small park in the backstreets of Newtown, swings under the giant damp trees and the wind scuttling between rats and cockroaches; the damp mouldy smell of Sydney even darker here. I was desperate to provide him with a good time, to make up for the disaster of the breakup, to give him the gift of a normal childhood. Solid waves of impending tears couldn't block the pretense, or make anything real; and of course the party went perfectly well; truckloads of parents, or so it seemed, arriving and leaving more or less on time. It was a social must that the children be dropped and picked up on schedule, for other parents all knew that organising a kid's party was really no fun at all.

I wish my life was longer; it barely seems to have started before you're staring down the gun barrel of old age. There was lots of fun to be had; it was just a matter of grabbing the apple off the tree. Polly made me laugh because so many things she said were exactly the way I think, it was uncanny really. Michael introduced us the other night, he's always trying to match make his galaxy of friends, and sits there chortling like Yoda if there's any sign of success. I don't know about any of that, but she was certainly great company. Michael, Polly and I sat on the rooftop of a boutique hotel in Kings Cross, $195 a night for God's sake, and were joined by an architect from Melbourne and we all talked and talked.

Polly was in Sydney for a week to buy an apartment, flying in from New York and returning via Perth; and things had got a bit over-crowded at Michael's, with Kath and relatives.

Michael's an hospitable bloke, but there's only so many beds in a Bondi apartment. The rooftop was surrounded by smart apartment blocks and you could see all sorts of people going about their business; here with some of the best views in Sydney, sweeping down across Woolloomoollo. Polly had worked for UNICEF as head of their land mines unit. She was caught in an explosion of a suicide bomber at the UN headquarters in Baghdad, when 23 people were killed. Pestered for detail, she gave a vivid account of the day. As a consequences she's got a UN pension of something like $US6,000 a month, which is enough translated into Australian dollars to live very comfortably indeed. She was flown through the air, like being banged in the head by a kitchen cupboard, and for a fraction of a second didn't know what had happened. She's mates with the authors of Emergency Sex, an account of the antics of a group of UN aid workers which got lots of attention recently; and had lots of tales to tell. Her house in Islamabad was popular amongst the expats as a late night spot. Already feted, her memoir has all the indications of being another best seller. And as I, too, am struggling to finish off a book, we talked and talked. There's been a few years marked by difference and isolation rather than good old belly laughs; and with Michael and Polly, more than anything I just appreciated the company.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

ABC:

TONY EASTLEY: The New South Wales Opposition leader, Peter Debnam put a brave face on the outcome, citing that four seats had been taken from Labor and that was reason enough to take heart.Here's part of his speech.PETER DEBNAM: First off, can I just say thank you to all those people across New South Wales who voted for us, the Liberal and National Party, all of...(Sound of cheering and applause) ... everybody who voted for us across New South Wales, obviously both in the Lower House and in the Upper House. A lot of people came home to the Liberal Party and to the National Party tonight and we want to say very much from the bottom of our heart, thank you to those people right across the state.Ladies and gentlemen, the people of New South Wales have given Labor one last chance to fix the problems in this state. That's the clear message from the election today, one last chance to fix all those problems we've talked about for so many months, indeed for so many years.Ladies and gentlemen, to win this election was always going to be like climbing Mount Everest, and we've had that discussion a number of times over the last 18 months.But what we've achieved today is a really healthy result. As I've indicated...(Sound of cheering and applause) ...as I've indicated, a large number of people have come home to the Liberal Party and the National Party tonight, right across the state. In fact, we've got the first swing away from Labor since 1988.(Sound of cheering and applause)Today's result, tonight's result is really about consolidation for us. Not only have we laid out a framework of policy that we'll fix the problems in New South Wales, but we've also put the best candidates in every single one of the 93 seats across the state, whether Liberal or National we put out there great candidates and we've got some of them into Parliament and I'm going to mention a few of them in a minute.We've also campaigned very hard - not just for a few weeks or for a few months, but indeed for 18 months, running up to this election and I'm very proud of the results we've achieved right across the board.(Sound of cheering and applause) TONY EASTLEY: New South Wales Opposition leader Peter Debnam speaking there.

Hapless and Hopeless

It's election night. It's a long story but I ended up at Carmel Tebbit's campaign victory party in Marrickville with Trevor after dropping Michael's friend Polly at the airport and then dropping Sammy off at his mom's. The Labor Government and Morris Iemma has romped it back in - a 15 seat majority at last count. They all cheered, but God knows how you could be proud with their rotten record. Nothing works. It's all palava. They had a 16 seat majority the previous time around. I don't know who reads it all, but there's been some great coverage in the final days analysing the whole debacle. Nobody deserved to win. A tragedy for democracy declared others. Why couldn't anyone have done any better? Why do we have to be stuck with these idiots? Why couldn't the world be flooded with heroes, our own lives enriched by courage? He's not a bad bloke in person, I try to say of Debnam; living in the most left-wing precint in Australia it's easy to stir the pot. You only have to suggest that a conservative is not evil and you're painted as a right wing lunatic.

It reminds me, in some juvenile way, of my university days. I ran for election of the student newspaper called Arena; and lost to the chap who ran the Student Council Rod Webb. He was a Trotskyist and it was hard to keep up with a Trotskyist when you were out vying each other for who was more on the left. In those days left equalled good and right equalled bad. The Liberal bloke, handsome devil, was painted as little more than an apologist for the death camps. There was just no way through. I wasn't born to stand on the front line. Debnam stood up to be counted, just, but common decency will get you absolutely nowhere. Clearly. Even the thugs had enough decency to look embarrassed at how easy their victory was. Marshmellow left, I used to be called. All the touchy feely issues. Social justice. All that crap. Now I've lived long enough to be able to honestly say I can't stand any of them.

Voting is compulsory in Australia; so in order to avoid a $50 fine many of us marched up to the local booth at the Darlington school and numbered our candidates one to seven in the lower house; one to 15 in the upper house if you didn't vote above the line - that is, a single one for one of the parties. I just don't believe any of them. It's a tragedy for democracy and the biggest losers are the voters of nsw, as Matt Price pointed out in an excellent piece today. I want to be moved and remain untouched. It couldn't have been more vacuous. How cruel the disaster was. I followed Debnam around yesterday; he held a presser at Captain Cook's Landing Place at Kurnell; surrounded by middle aged supporters outraged by the desalination pant that Labor are going to bnild, fucking up the area with massive pipes. Hapless and hopeless wasn't even the beginning of how hopeless the LIberal campaign was. There wasn't a single Liberal at our polling booth handing out how to vote literature. What is it with these people? They don't think they have to work for your vote? There were the Greens, latter day hippies; and there was Iemma's foot soldiers, standing proudly in front of his smarmy picture. It was a disaster and we're all the losers. I wanted to be reunited, I didn't want to sleep alone anymore, and instead we stood and watched as gusts of rain drenched the suburb; saying goodbye and dreading the future.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

SMH:

Running seat tally: Labor: 52, Liberal: 20, National: 13, Greens: 0, Others: 6
Premier Morris Iemma tonight declared victory in the NSW election, leading Labor to its fouth consecutive term in office despite widespread voter discontent.
"It's a mandate, but a mandate with a message," he told reporters saying his re-elected government would "straight back to work" to fix problems facing the state.
Mr Iemma was greeted with applause and chants of his name from Labor supporters at the St George's Leagues Club in Sydney's south about 45 minutes after Coalition leader Peter Debnam stoically conceded defeat.
"Tonight's result is a message for me, but it is also a message for John Howard," he said saying that the people of NSW had rejected the Federal Government's industrial relations legislation ahead of the federal election later this year.
Mr Debnam, flanked by wife Deborah, put on a brave face in a central Sydney hotel as he told the Liberal Party faithful that he had lost.
Later Mr Debnam told reporters "yes, yes" when asked by reporters if he intended to stay on as Liberal leader despite rising speculation that he will bear the blame for the defeat.
"The people of NSW have given the Labor Party one last chance to fix the problems in this state," he said in a quavering voice.

Hunting In Packs: The Column

Against my principles of refusing to write for nothing, and against my better judgement, I've been persuaded to do a column for my local rag called Hunting In Packs, about the media. Of course the only thing that has been going on in NSW in the last month has been the state election, which all comes to a peak this Saturday. So here goes. Doubling up the blog and my other duties.

One day early in the recent NSW state election campaign Opposition leader Peter Debnam held a water taste test on the Corso at Manly. The object of the exercise was to prove to the general public that recycled water tasted just like tap water and the Liberals would save the state hundreds of millions by not opting for a desalination plant.

Rivetting stuff.

The event provided television with their shots of Debnam for the day but not much else; for the print journalists it just left them yet further exasperated.

On this occasion, trying to write something about an utterly un-newsworthy event, I asked Debnam whether they were launching anything, doing anything, announcing anything. No no no came the answers, we're just doing a taste test.

Nothing could have shown up the ineptness of the Liberal campaign better. Really, what were the journalists supposed to write? What were they to tell their news editors when they got back to the office?

You should learn from the Labor Party I said to his young and clearly inexperienced press sec come campaign manager, the very likeable Brad Burden.
Make ceaseless announcements about anything and everything. You could have put out a press release announcing that Debnam was lauinching a series of taste tests across Sydney's suburbs to familiarise the public with the complex issues of water management as they prepared to launch their vitally important new water policy. Along with this you could have announced the setting up of a string of community and expert consultative groups in a desperate attempt to avert the looming water crisis and rectify years of Labor inaction and incompetence.

No one falls for that crap, Burden said.
I looked at him, like, well have it your way. Because of course they do fall for that crap, all the time. Just put your name on the list for press announcements for Labor and you will be almost instantly flooded with transcripts, announcements releases, with committees being formed, strategies, developed, policies announced. Much of this means absolutely nothing on the ground and rarely evolves into anything solid. But it gives the journalists something to write about and makes the politicians look as if they're doing anything.

After his taste test in Manly Debnam caught the ferry back into town with his wife, lining up for a coffee at a take-away cafe like everybody else and then buying a ticket, like everybody else. It was, well, unimpressive. A weak man, I heard one of the old girls on the ferry say, and that may be unfair; but people don't want their politicians to be ordinary. They want them to be familiar with the running of high public office, able to meet visiting dignatories, impel the attention of the world. Debnam's infamous appearance in front of the press in board shorts, the so-called budgie snugglers, turned out to be one of the highlights of the campaign.

In a porn drenched universe the almost-sight of Debnam's manhood turned on absolutely no one.

Instead of being impressed, warming the cockles of the ordinary person's heart, it turnedoff the electorate in droves. It even made the newspapers in London, along the lines of only at the bottom of the world...

Iemma held an election launch which tried to gloss over the fact that Labor has been in power for the past 12 years, most of it under the increasingly unpopular Bob Carr. Bob was an autocratic, almost aristocratic, oddity for Labor, a book worm who would rather die than be seen with a cigarette and a beer in his hand, lightyears from the working class or the dispossessed that Labor used to represent. I remember going on a three day bush walk with him once, when he was Environment Minister, and I can't say I warmed to him any more at the end of it than at the beginning. But Bob had down pat the art of the press conference. He would sweep in, a busy and important man, make his announcement, pick the two dumbest hacks he could see in the pack and answer their questions in full, and then sweep out; off to another important meeting in his busy and important life. In truth he was probably just going back to his office for a sandwich, but like so many people stuck in offices, he had the art of looking busy down pat. Unfortunately when I'm not doing anything I look truly unemployed.

The latest Newspoll and AC Neilson poll both show that Debnam has gone backward during the campaign; and stands a snow flakes chance in hell of becoming Premier, with something like 58 per cent preferring Morris Iemma as Premier. Whatever Iemma's virtues or vices, the electorate is utterly fed up with Labor and the fact that nothing much actually works in this state and their billions of dollars in taxes have been squandered on pointless bureaucracy, not on trains that work and hospitals that deliver good service. But so resigned are they to this, and so unconvinced are they that Debnam can solve the state's problems, they're prepared to vote for the status quo. There have now been 25 state and federal elections since there was a change of government in Australia....

We detorioate into notes.

Our lives deteriorate into notes.

This is a picture of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on its 75th anniversary; when it was shut to traffic from about 4am to 11pm; the longest period in its history.

Only 48 hours before 4,000 motorists had been stuck on the bridge after yet another transport fiasco when a train broke down on the bridge.

Then in a carefully orchestrated feel good yarn choreographed by the state government; the bridge everyone could be proud of, this monument to steel as the state governor Marie Bashir declared, NSW Premier Morris Iemma walked across the bridge holding the hands of his children, pretending to be an ordinary person....

THE BIGGEST YARN:

Spinning around:

NSW Premier Mr Iemma dismissed as "not valid" a government-commissioned report which said Sydney had the worst train system in the world.
The report, prepared for the budget committee of cabinet, said trains on the CityRail network had far more delays and cost more to operate than networks in other cities around the world.
Mr Iemma said the government was determined to improve the rail system but the report had made unfair comparisons.
"The comparisons in the report are just not valid," he told reporters.
AAP

Out-Spent and Out-Spun

The Liberal Coalition was out-spent, out-spun and out-manoeuvred.

Once again Labor showed just how brilliant they are on the campaign trail.

There have now been 26 state and federal elections since there has been a change of government in Australia.

Iemma used incumbency to full effect, spending $100 million of your money on "government" advertising of services to convince the electorate that when it came to basic services the people of NSW weren't doing so badly after all. At the same time he pulled off the magnificent sleight of hand to suggest his government was only 18 months old and that somehow he shared none of the blame for the debacle Bob Carr left behind.

As Alex Mitchell, chief political correspondent for the Sun-Herald and president of the NSW parliament's press gallery, noted: "There has been a very big difference in the editorial writers, who by and large have been critical of the Labor government; and journalists in the field, who are more influenced by spin doctors." One editorial suggested the Carr/Iemma government was the worst in 75 years. But you wouldn't know it from the coverage, and Mitchell is critical of his colleagues for letting Labor get away with it. "Journalists should be less susceptible to spin doctors,"

The Coalition was solidly out-spent. State political correspondent for The Australian Imre Salusinszky described it as almost a David and Goliath competition. Iemma had at least four highly capable staff members who's sole job was to deal with journalists. Debnam had one young and under-resourced press secretary. While Labor could afford to fly plane loads of journalists around the state, the Liberals often resorted to public transport. "The Labor machine is expert at running campaigns and spin doctoring," he said. "The media has been harder on the coalition than Labor. There has been a ganging up on Debnam, but they really didn't run a very professional campaign."

Much of it boiled down to a an over-simplified battle between Iemma and Debnam.

As Anne Davies at the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out: "It was a very presidential style campaign. We have focussed heavily on personalities rather than issues." This suited the need to simplify everything for TV and ignore boring things like policy.
And in this regard Iemma used his position as Premier to full effect. While Debnam was just another man in the crowd that crossed the Harbor Bridge for its 75th anniversary, Iemma's team had carefully controlled and staged the event. He walked across the bridge at the head of the crowd with governor of NSW Marie Bashir, holding the hands of his children, pretending to be an ordinary person. It was a gift for Iemma and a gift for TV. It was left to the ineffective detail of the press world to point out that only two days earlier 4,000 motorists had been trapped on the bridge for hours after yet another public transport debacle, a broken down train, once more created transport chaos across Sydney.

Despite Labor's many advantages; it took pure genius to turn Iemma into a winner. As Mitchell points out, they couldn't run on their record, which under Carr was abysmal, they couldn't run on Iemma's charisma, he didn't have any.

Instead, far from the minister he had performed unexceptionally in his portfolios and been part of the Carr cabinet, he was transformed into a likable bloke, a suburban man, in counterpoint to Debnam, the "toff" from Vaucluse.

One day early in the recent NSW state election campaign Opposition leader Peter Debnam held a water taste test on the Corso at Manly to demonstrate that recycled water tasted just like tap water and the Liberals would save the stat billions by not opting for a desalination plant. The event provided television with their shots of Debnam for the day but not much else. Trying to write something about this utterly un-newsworthy event, I asked Debnam whether they were launching anything, doing anything, announcing anything. No no no came the answers, we're just doing a taste test.

Nothing could have shown up the ineptness of the Liberal campaign better. Really, what were the journalists meant to write? You could have put out a press release announcing that Debnam was launching a series of taste tests across Sydney's suburbs ahead of the Liberal's launch their new water policy, vital to avert the looming water crisis and rectify years of Labor inaction and incompetence.

No one falls for that crap, Debnam's media spokesman said.

Oh yes they do, and yes they did.

Just Another Frustrating Day

It was just another frustrating day at the office, another call for inspirational dreams wasted; pearls before dots, he muttered in a failed joke. Everything fell flat when it could all have been a masterpiece. Well it was a masterpiece, until the brutality and banality of the page took over. Wind him up and point him in the right direction; a guided missile eloquently capable of taking out its target. How to tell your target, determining what the bosses wanted and what will be published, that was half the problem. The actual writing, that was the easy part.

It was just another assignment on the evening shift, a "fine" art auction with a Brett Whiteley painting up for sale; one of the first auctions of a season expected to break all records as millions of dollars slushed around the top echelons. Stockbrokers, financiers, trust managers; these were the new rich with money to burn. They just needed a few paintings to stock their second or third mansion. Baby boomers awash with cash in a booming economy.

A Brett Whiteley painting is a status symbol. In Sydney, the centre of the Whiteley market. having a Whiteley on the wall shows you've arrived; particularly if the painting matches the harbour views from your own windows.

Because, of course, the meaning of life in Sydney is to own a water view; and many have dedicated their entire working lives to achieving just that end. "Water glimpses," as the real estate agents say. It's a flimsy basis for the raison d'etre of everything; bright colours and burning, flashy heat.

Bidding began at one million dollars and climbed in $50,000 increments to $1.25 million. That's $1.5 million with the twenty percent buyer's premium. The buyer or the man representing the buyer had a bald circle on his head, and the minute the bid was made he dashed out the door. An anonymous bidder, as the papers said. It all had the feeling of a ruse. They thought it might go for $1.5 million and that's exactly what it went for.

The painting was a view from his studio window in Lavendar Bay, with the harbour painted a dark wine red; foreboding and ecstatic all at once. It was painted a year before his death from a drug overdose in a very ordinary motel room in Thirlmere south of Sydney. Despite all his millions, that was where he went when he wanted to get plastered; ordering in the scotch and the smack and the smoko in a redbrick motel. None of the locals had any idea who he was; that they had Australia's most famous, successful and wealthy artist in their midst. Nor, probably, would they have cared. Art was not high on their agenda. Money and drugs most certainly were.

I saw Brett not long before he died. We used to go to the same cafe, the Tropicano in Kings Cross. I had a job as a reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald, a job which saw my name jump up regularly on the front page and in that circle of lost hope and small recoveries carried a lot of kudos. And he was Australia's most famous contemporary painter; knew everybody and cut quite a figure with his moppish hair and his little white BMW; when most of the people hanging around there were fresh out of detox and couldn't afford a coffee, clinging to each other in the fight not to drift down the road to the Cross and all it represented.

Both being famous in our own ways, because the Sydney Morning Herald was regarded as the bible of the chattering classes and in those days I was used to being someone that others were curious about, we got to know each other. There was something wrong with my car, last time I saw him, and he dropped me off at work that Sunday morning, whizzing in that georgeous little car through the for once quiet streets to the old Fairfax building in Broadway.

In those days; before everything turned into just another office, there were trucks lined up at the delivery docks, and the wrappings and sheets of newspaper drited in the grimy wind.

We agreed, in a rapid fire conversation as the coffee took affect, that most of the people we knew from meetings were all a pack of pygmies - quivering little drones just out of detox and rehab who had never done anything with their lives. They might be straight for once in their lives, but they weren't doing much now either. We confessed, in our own oblique but knowing ways, surrounded as we were by twelve step zealots, that we had the occasional little dabble; and he told me how he used to go down to Thirlmere where nobody knew where he was, for his own private party.

Within weeks came the news that one of Australia's most famous charcters, the internationally renowned artist Brett Whiteley, had died from a drug overdose in a cheap motel room on the the south coast, in a seaside suburb most people had never of called Thirlmere.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

The Oz has just published an excellent piece by Michael Fullilove from the Lowy Institute on Iraq, saying it's time for a bit of ruthless honesty from the pundits and neocons who once supported the war.

He writes that in sharp contrast to their American counterparts, Australia's prominent intellectual supporters of the Iraq war are not owning up to their own errors.

"The balance sheet on Iraq is now pretty clear: it was a mistake. Yes, a murderous tyrant who brought suffering down on the heads of his people has been ousted.

"But the country is a bloody mess and numberless Iraqis have lost their lives; the fabled weapons of mass destruction were not located; the jihadist fire has been fuelled, not smothered; the Middle East has been reordered only to the extent that Iran has been strengthened and emboldened. The blood and treasure spent by the Americans totals well over 3100 troop fatalities and $US400 billion ($513 billion).
Most analysts believe the eventual financial cost of the war will be between $US1 trillion and $US2 trillion, but the cost to US prestige and influence is even greater."

I don't know Howard has got away with leading Australia into such an unpopular fiasco; and why he has not had the gumption to own up to the fact that it was all a terrible mistake and Australia should never have been involved.

Fullilove concludes that "Iraq was a once-in-a-generation, system-shifting foreign policy decision, and we got it wrong. Now we need - in fact, we are owed - an exercise in due diligence on the part of the commentators who cheered Canberra on."

Chaos At The Crossroads

It looks like I'm being offered money to finish the book I started Chaos at the Crossroads on family law reform in Australia. I've always wanted to finish it but just never had the resources. I started it a couple of years ago and most of it was finished in the early hours belting it out on the typewriter till 4am, a lonely and obsessive pursuit. Finally my fingers just gave out, it was too much to ask from one person after finishing a general reporting shift; and I put what I had done up on line and left it at that; never getting back to it.

I've just converted it all into a google document - google docs and spreadsheets is a wonderful piece of technology, typical google wizardry, easy to use and incredibly clever - and am rewriting the introduction right this minute.

I'm struggling with it and thought I'd give it a go here; where I feel more free to write just about anything.

++

The Howard Liberal Government was presented, early in the millenium, with an historic opportunity to fix once and for all the rotten mess that was child welfare and child custody in Australia. The routine stripping of children from their fathers and the creation of single mother households that characterised separation rose from policy decisions made as long ago as the 1970s. It represnted a well of pain that was disfiguring the country. MPs across the country were besieged with complaints about family law and child support; hour upon hour of their time was being eaten up by distressed parents with intractible problems made worse by their interactions with state agencies.

Modern fathers had embraced with gusto the increased involvement with and hands-on parenting of their children sparked by a feminist push to remake the family and remodel women's roles. The traditional nuclear family was painted by feminist academics and their bureaucrat foot soldiers as a patriarchal prison from which women must ecape. In a modern urban environment, where both parents often worked in order to pay massive mortgages, shared parenting was already the norm in many intact families. Not to be at a child's birth was now the exception rather than the rule. The cigars and slugs of whisky down the pub while the woman screamed her way through childbirth were now a distant memory. The shopping centres of the era were full of kids crawling over their fathers, of holidng hands, dribbling and drooling, whle the cheerfully harassed dads struggled to do the shopping.

But in one moment these same fathers laughing in the sun with their children at their local shopping mall could be transformed into the now familiar sight of the lonely, said and suicide prone separated dad.

The mistreatment of fathers and their chidlren by state institutions was fostered by the gender politics of those in the highest reaches of the country's bureaucracy and judiciary. These injustices were protected by a bi-partisan veil drawn across the entire arena. Both major political groupings in Australia, the "conservative" Liberal National Party coalition and the Labor Party, knew their was little to be gained by bashing each other over the head with the issue, and much to be risked in openly attacking the courts.

The mistreatment of fathers and their children led by extention to the mistreatment of their new partners and often enough of her chldren, along with the child's grandparents and extended families. In the meantime the mistreatment of non-custodial mothers was swept under the carpet, an embarrassment to women's lobby groups focussed on working for single mothers, elevating their victimhood status to the front of those queuing for the welfare dollar.

The ideologically driven state and taxpayer funded creation of the single mother household spawned in the 1960s as the normal family pattern post-separation had created a massive multi-billion dollar industry. Enormous slabs of the country's $80 billion welfare tab were taken up catering for their welfare; with a slew of benefits flowing on from obtaining custody of children. These included family and child payments, child support, rental assistance, and reduced medicine and transport costs. Any attempt to reform family law was a threat to this empire.

But by the early part of the millenium, public debate had shifted and the suffering of separated families came on to the political radar. With public and media support, the government was in a position to alter for the better the destiny of the country's one million children from separated families, The familiar sight of bitter couples at war with each other, burning through hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own and taxpayers money in a bitter fight over the custody of their children, could have been relegated to history.

The Prime Minister of Australia John Winston Howard set the hares running in mid-June of 2003 when he told Australia’s coalition Members of Parliament, and thereby the country, that it might well be worth re-looking at joint-custody.

This was an issue who's time had come. In a rare confluence of opinion, the public, the media and politicians all supported change. The mind-boggling bureaucracy of the Child Support Agency and its staff's overt hostility towards separated fathers rubbed salt into the wounds from dysfunctional Family Court cases. In the padded surrounds and heavy security of their plush offices judges continued to make judgements "in the best interests of children" while out in the real world politicians, counsellors and ambulance officers were left to pick up the mess.

Howard, always one to sniff the political wind, knew that a large number of voters were looking to him to fix the lunacy of Australia's Family Court and its Child Support Agency, both creations of the country's left-wing Labor Party during its many years in power through the 70s and 80s. It was a storm which had been brewing since the creation of the Family Court of Australia in 1975 and the Child Support Agency in 1989. As a suburban solicitor promoting traditional family values, many assumed that he could not have personally condoned the extreme anti-father bias of these institutions, their arbitrary decision making processes, or indeed what many saw as blatant corruption in the rigging of evidence and procedures advantaging the mother at virtually any cost. While separated fathers were routinely painted as violent to their partners and indifferent to the welfare of their children violent, abusive, drunken and drug addicted mothers routinely gained custody in the Family Court of Australia.

Keeping Up

Keeping up. These posts are still going up out of chronological order because I put a batch of five photographs up at the same time, trying to speed up the process. It's new technology, well new for me and indeed new for everybody. Rapid adapters, or adopters. I've got a 250 word column to do for the local rag, the South Sydney Herald, which is due on the 23rd but which I should really bash out as soon as possible. I've done other stuff for them over time, but they don't pay and essentially it's against my principles to write for nothing, this blog excluded. I think if you write for nothing for all these greedy and exploitative community rags, then they just take you for granted. They pay the printers, they pay the editors, they just don't pay the writers. And of course you get what you pay for.

Our paths are clogged by a stream of stray thoughts; fear of being a wanker, fright at the thought of a mistake.

It's 4.08am and already I am off and running, the ideas and projects queuing up for attention. I need to get the voice recognition software working on this machine. There is so much to do. I'm negotiating to get paid $10,000 to finish a book I started on family law reform in Australia called Chaos at the Crossroads. I sat down and started writing it almost two years ago; and then ran out of steam. I would bash it out in the early hours of the morning after I finished work when I was on the night shifts - get home at midnight and run out of steam sometime before sunrise.
It was a lonely enterprise. I was incensed by what had happened, but was entirely alone in my obsession. Working the night shift while the kids were over at their mom's, I had discovered that there were all sorts of people up at that hour; working on the internet. But at the end of the day it was a lonely obsession nonetheless.

It's been up on the web unfinished ever since and the Shared Parenting Council of Australia is now negotiating to get it finished. I've always wanted to complete it; that gnawing feeling when something is half complete. It's a long way from Pai, where the fingers stopped flying and each day was a calm offering. I have to be at Observatory Hill near the Bridge by 7.30am for a day of wonder, chaos and crowds; dodging cliches, leaning down to people in wheel chairs; asking them to croak their reminiscences of what it was like to walk across this very same bridge 75 years ago. How many cars have driven across since? The population on the other side was all of 15,000 people. I lived once in a tiny little room in an Allen's private hotel at Kirribilli and walk across the bridge to work. There was so much to say. And today, in professional mode, I'll be walking across it again. There isn't going to be a disaster after all. There's just so much to do.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

ABC:

350 Iraqis poisoned in chlorine bomb attacks
At least 350 Iraqi civilians needed hospital treatment after insurgents detonated three trucks filled with toxic chlorine gas, killing two policemen, the US military says.
The attacks were carried out on Friday afternoon, two of them just south of the town of Fallujah and one north-east of the nearby city of Ramadi, both hotbeds of Al-Qaeda militants in the Anbar province.
"Approximately 350 Iraqi civilians and six coalition force members were treated for chlorine gas exposure," said Lieutenant Roger Hollenbeck of the US-led Multinational Division West, based in Ramadi.
Iraqi state television reported that at least six people were killed in the blasts, but the US military could initially only confirm the deaths of two Iraqi policemen in the second explosion, in Ameriyah, outside Fallujah.
"Coalition forces confirmed that the Ameriyah citizens exposed to the chlorine were treated locally for symptoms ranging from minor skin and lung irritation to vomiting," Lieutenant Hollenbeck said in a statement.
In each attack a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives and gas canisters near police and civilian targets.

Crash

Skittering across melancholy, wild thoughts queuing up for expression, lists of things to do forming in wave after wave; that was just another morning. Adult ADHD Suzy at work diagnosed the other day; as if we all need to be labelled with defects and profound psychological disorders. Maybe it's just hormones. The glass half full or half empty; and we agreed that struggle as we might we were the half empty types. Other people are just born positive; they enjoy their lives, they would be honoured to be labelled sperm donors, but don't really care one way or the other. I really wanted to have kids; didn't want to grow old sitting on a bar stool, a profound compulsion which stretched back over years.

I can remember, when Clara said she was pregnant one morning, walking past White Bay and across what is now the Anzac Bridge into town, when I lived at Quirk Street in Rozelle. I felt cozy, warm and protective of someone who hadn't even been born, and in this case wouldn't ever be born. I just wanted to be a parent, I wanted a kid in my arms; I wanted to have to go to work to provide money and a living for my little family. Cara had an abortion and the day it happened I just went to work like it was just another day. I didn't want to be there; I didn't want to lend support. I didn't agree with killing the unborn. I must have been a right-to-lifer in another life.

It never happened and I was shy of sex, particularly with women. Some blokes can raise the mast for any occasion, think nothing of banging away to a mounting organism several times a day, and if they don't get enough of that a wank or two or three keeps the urge at bay. That wasn't me, I don't know why. Up until about 24 sex was always for financial gain; the sad, lonely, desperate and the rich; but even then they didn't get much bang for their bucks. The Thais might believe in happy endings, their professional roles an art, or a job, all in itself. Not me. I had to be completely drunk before I let them suck me off; and as for the rest of all that grotty stuff, I just didn't want to do it. Even in later life; whole relationships and possibilities have passed by while I diddled and daddled and held back. You put what where? I can hear a kid's voice ask. You've got toe be joking. Yuk. And yet the bestiality of man and the flashing thoughts and images; it's meant to be our most profound drive.

Just like everybody else, your whole life can change in a moment. Just like these two blokes, who headed off for a flight one afternoon from a quiet little aerodrome in Sydney's west; only to find minutes later their dream plane in pieces, the sirens screaming and the waves of pain hacking through their damaged bodies as they sped towards intensive care.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

More and more it looks like Australia may be heading for a change of government. Elections must be held by the end of the year.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/santoro-a-setback-that-howard-can-ill-afford/2007/03/16/1173722750147.html

Santoro a setback that Howard can ill afford

Michelle GrattanMarch 17, 2007
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John Howard is angry at Santo Santoro and probably at himself.
There he was earlier this week, defending Santoro's blunder over one parcel of shares, while his minister didn't mention 70 other transactions.
It is almost inconceivable that this could have happened. Santoro didn't explain it adequately yesterday, other than saying he had his mind on his ministerial work.

We are told that last year Santoro discovered he had undisclosed shares in a company, CBio, that impinged on his portfolio. He informed the PM, and got rid of the shares, giving the profit to "charity".
That initially sounded straightforward. But it wasn't. It emerged that the shares had been offered to Santoro by the head of a conservative family organisation — and that was the body to which Santoro donated the profit.
But that's not what brought Santoro down. The story got worse. The message came to Santoro from Tony Nutt, chief of staff to the PM (who was overseas): tell us your finances are OK. The answer — that there had been all these other transactions — sent waves of shock and fury through Howard.
No wonder he said Santoro's resignation was an open-and-shut case.
It's a mystery why Santoro failed to declare his finances, an even bigger mystery why he didn't put his affairs in order when fixing up the error over CBio. He changed his story within an hour yesterday, first saying Howard had not asked about other shares last year, and then saying he had.
Howard says he did. No doubt he will be pressed on the detail when Parliament resumes next week. He will be kicking himself for not pursuing his minister harder. But whatever the PM said, wouldn't any halfway brainy minister have made the connection?
Some will be tempted to see Santoro's fall as part of the general mudslinging that has dominated federal politics in recent weeks.
But it should be viewed as a stand-alone issue. Members of Parliament are supposed to declare their financial interests; ministers have the additional requirement of declaring them to the Prime Minister. As Howard said, a genuine oversight can be tolerated, but this cannot. Either deliberately or because he is totally flaky, Santoro has thumbed his nose at parliamentary and ministerial standards.
Until Ian Campbell was sacrificed to the Coalition's pursuit of Kevin Rudd over his contact with Brian Burke, Howard had let his code of conduct gather dust. But even if the mud wasn't flying, it would have been hard to overlook this one.
Santoro's share transactions are pretty extraordinary, although both he and Howard claim they didn't amount to "trading".
Santoro is an unusual character. "He has been a tribal Liberal warrior since he was in short pants," says Queensland Liberal Cameron Thompson.
He is the action man who in his political dealings doesn't fuss too much about the niceties. In this case, that neglect has not only caused his fall but inflicted a setback that the Government, already beleaguered, can ill afford. Especially in Queensland, where the police have recently raided the offices of three Liberal MPs.