Sydney Sideways

"The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force."
Adolf Hitler.

"Conscience is a Jewish invention."
Adolf Hitler.

"To become history's greatest destroyer, Hitler had to free himself from the values he was taught and from personal inhibitions."
The Pathology of Evil.


All that could be done had been done. The city is about to be turned upside down. We who live here can only watch on from a remote and distant angle. The sensitivity was blown. My teenage son Sam is waiting for the computer to get on with his projects, although he seems to spend an awful lot of time on ITunes.


The cafe isn't open yet. The terror will come in different ways. Bowed down; beaten down; the masses can only look on from a distance. From beyond the wall. Beyond the Pale. The great unwashed can only stare; and the voices they have so deliberately silenced; all the changes that have been made; we sit in secrecy and we condemn.

Sydney is about to become world famous. The museums that have been passed, the clutches of old thoughts; the way the streets intersect through the old parts of town; the splashing beauty of the harbour and the thousands of secret rooms; the towers that mock the smallness of our own lives; everything is coming home to roost. The wall is under construction. The water cannon truck to quell the rioters is ready for action.


THE BIGGER STORY:

Sydney blockaded by 'ring of steel' ahead of APEC

SYDNEY (AFP) — A massive steel and concrete wall was being erected around Australia's largest city on Saturday as Sydney stepped up its preparations for the APEC summit with an unprecedented show of security.

A strong police presence was visible near the sprawling 2.8 metre high (9.2 foot) "ring of steel" barrier, which stretches 5.5km around the site and has been erected to deter unwanted guests when world leaders will meet this week.

The wall trails through Sydney's tourist centre near the iconic Opera House, is designed to help police manage large crowds and to block vehicle access, preventing the possibility of a car or truck bombing.

New South Wales police commissioner Andrew Scipione said hosting the September 8-9 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit of world leaders was the biggest security challenge the city had ever faced.

"Right now, there's one priority, there's one show in town and that's APEC," he said.

"APEC must be delivered. It's the biggest security event we've ever had in this nation."

Australia has taken unprecedented security measures to ensure the safety of the 21 world leaders, who include US President George W. Bush, China's Hu Jintao and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, while they take part in the annual APEC meeting.

Sydney will be in virtual lockdown from September 2-9, with some roads and train stations closed, many shops shut and Friday September 7 declared a public holiday to encourage residents to leave the city for the weekend.

The Walled City

"God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing."
Thai Proverb.


This morning the building for a 2.8 metre high five kilometre long wall through the centre of Sydney to cut off the great unwashed from APEC begins. It is astonishing to think that a wall is being constructed in the middle of our city. I reckon it's just amazing; and the visual impact should be very powerful. The Walled City. Twenty two world leaders in town; in the city that we live in and drudge in; life for a lot of people sitting in the city's ridiculous traffic for hours to and from work everyday, drowning in debt and living on credit, these days when the mainstream narratives bear no relationship to life as it is lived, in the burbs and snail trails of a ground down place.

The so-called booming economy of which the government is so proud, and so repeatedly reminds us, feels more like every last available dollar has been hoovered off the populace. The top ten; or is it five; per cent are booming alright; and the rest of us pay tax at every turn. That's the gripe; in a ground down place not nearly as vibrant, as productive, as colourful and intense as it should be. Ground down is bloody right; bleached. But none of this will be seen by the glittering lights that will pass through this at times most beautiful city; windy on occassion, the shock of fresh hair, the striking scenes across the Harbour.

Giant tourist boats mix with the public ferries; and even in my lifetime it has changed enormously. From a so-called "working port", that oft-repeated phrase which appealed to the romantic streak of the city's journalists, usually after the event; when the demise of another dock side or water-based industry briefly made the news. All the container shipping has gone south to Port Botany. The escalating price of foreshore land washed away thousand of boatsheds and little working enterprises; repairs, sails, all sorts, blokes in wooden sheds surrounded by tools who either clearly knew what they were doing or were in their sheds happily escaping the world out there, elsewhere.

The thousands of delegates will see a beautiful harbour; swank restaurants, smart hotels; the city's best features. On the other side of the wall; we wait. Most everyone in authority is expecting some sort of trouble with demonstrators; and I'm alone in doubting whether the locals will put up that good a show. Perhaps its the imports that will create the riot scenes; anarchist groups. No body knows quite what is going to happen. Next Friday has been declared a Public Holiday. One of the last estimates for the cost was $340 million. Howard will parade on the world stage, and the grime of local politics; and how grimy it has been; will dissolve. Each day forward is a step into the unknown. The waiting has begun.

THE BIGGER STORY:


The steel and concrete security fence springing up in parts of central Sydney is proof that APEC has well and truly arrived.

Construction of the 5km fence encompassing the restricted area around the northern part of the CBD, the city's main financial hub, as well as the iconic Sydney Opera House and the picturesque Royal Botanic Gardens begins on Saturday.

Deputy Premier John Watkins said from now on the public will start to see real and significant changes to the city because of APEC.

"The construction of the fence will begin around Circular Quay and this will have a knock-on effect throughout the northern part of the city," he said.
AAP

GOOGLE NEWS:

Sydney's Apec meet struggles for agenda, fashion By SID ASTBURY
Bangkok Post, Thailand - 6 hours ago
Apec has to struggle for air against groupings put together on a better basis than just the geography of being on the Pacific Rim. ...
Climate change to top agenda at APEC BusinessWeek
Outlook gloomy at Apec summit New Zealand Herald
APEC region reaps benefits from freer trade: Australia AFP
Voice of America - Bloomberg
all 334 news articles »

PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung)
Climate change breakthroughs unlikely at APEC, but meeting could ...
International Herald Tribune, France - 1 hour ago
But any consensus reached in Sydney by APEC's 21 members — which together use about 60 percent of global energy and include six of the top 10 carbon ...
Harper to seek breakthrough on climate change when APEC leaders meet Canada.com
Disparate gathering not a united front The Australian
Malaysia criticises APEC climate change agenda Reuters
ABC Online - The Canadian Press
all 63 news articles »

Ninemsn
Howard Bets on Climate at APEC to Aid His Re-election (Update1)
Bloomberg - 30 Aug 2007
Howard will push his fellow APEC leaders, including US President George W. Bush, to sign an agreement to reduce energy intensity by 25 percent by 2030, ...
On the world stage The Age
Rudd Bushwhacked by 'man of steel' remark The Age
Bush warning for Rudd on troops NEWS.com.au
The West Australian - Houston Chronicle
all 335 news articles »
Great wall of Sydney springs up for APEC
The Age, Australia - 4 hours ago
The steel and concrete security fence springing up in parts of central Sydney is proof that APEC has well and truly arrived. Construction of the 5km fence ...
Sorry for the trouble I cause, says Bush Sydney Morning Herald
all 18 news articles »
Guarantees sought from PM on APEC shirts
The Age, Australia - 16 hours ago
A lobby group wants a guarantee from Prime Minister John Howard that shirts given as gifts to APEC delegates will be made by workers receiving fair pay and ...
'Election wheel' points to October 20 NEWS.com.au
all 28 news articles »

The Age
'Excluded' protester to march against APEC
The Age, Australia - 18 hours ago
University tutor Paddy Gibson, 24, is on a list of people who NSW Police have said cannot enter any APEC security area. Mr Gibson said he had seen the full ...
APEC's banned persons 'will be contacted' ABC Online
Police, protester stalemate continues ahead of APEC ABC Online
Protesters, police fail to agree on APEC The Age
The Age - SBS - World News Australia
all 28 news articles »

AFP
Newspaper sympathetic to Falun Gong to cover APEC
AFP - 19 hours ago
SYDNEY (AFP) — A newspaper sympathetic to the Falun Gong spiritual movement Friday said it has been accredited to cover the upcoming APEC leaders summit, ...
Anger as Falun Gong gets APEC media pass NEWS.com.au
China Voices Dismay At Falun Gong-Linked Reporter's Entry To APEC AHN
Falun Gong reporters granted APEC pass NEWS.com.au
all 20 news articles »
Bush says sorry to Sydney for APEC security
NEWS.com.au, Australia - 21 hours ago
By Lincoln Archer US President George W. Bush has apologised to the people of Sydney for the widespread inconvenience the APEC summit security lockdown will ...
APEC secure despite no horses: Keelty
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 29 Aug 2007
The APEC summit in Sydney will be secure despite the absence of police horses because of the equine influenza outbreak, Australian Federal Police ...
1500 ADF personnel to provide APEC security ABC Online
APEC security stepped up in Sydney NEWS.com.au
Cost of Sydney lockdown: $150m Advertiser Adelaide
Macquarie National News - The West Australian
all 35 news articles »
Australian city of Sydney prepares for APEC summit
Radio Australia, Australia - 2 hours ago
"It's really from this weekend, Saturday morning onwards that the disruption caused by APEC will commence," he said. Buses terminating at the Quay will ...
Up goes fence, in comes gridlock Daily Telegraph
all 2 news articles »

Flags Of Convenience

"Small stores of all kinds lay in neat bundles for storage in holds. Food for the voyage, seeds for the colonists of far-away New South Wales, wooden and iron implements, guns, gunpowder and shot, rolls of cloth, needles and scissors, canvas for sails, blacksmith's tools, pots and pans, cast iron camp ovens, wooden kegs of rum and brandy, bottles of wine for the gentlemen, bonnets for the ladies, furniture and material for dresses or curtains, all were consigned for the merchants of Sydney Town... Everywhere there was a pitch of activity. A group of late arrivals, three convicts, was moved through it all, chains clanking grimly. Sailors clambered about the rigging making sure every sheet was correct. Sails were shaken out and tested on the yardarm... The ship would sail on the morrow."

Valerie Lhuede, Yerranderie Is My Dreaming.


I can't believe what a fool I've been, that I briefly thought this government was alright; that I flirted with the conservatives. I have sinned in my heart, lusted, as former President Jim whatever his name was said. In disavowing everything that I had ever believed, in sobering up and taking a new course, I dismissed as irrelevant everything I had believed. My turning point from marshmallow left to utterly confused was going through those left wing icons, The Family Court and the Child Support Agency. These utterly dishonest and utterly corrupt institutions do so much harm to so many people, all in the name of disintegrating the nuclear family; all in the name of that greatest lie, "the best interests of children". It was Hitler in Mein Kempf, of course, who said if you could convince the people something was in the best interests of children they would tolerate anything, and thus it has proved to be.

Not just despised and dysfunctional, as I regularly call them on radio; the betrayal of the working populace is far deeper and more systematic. I, like many others, briefly thought that a so-called conservative Prime Minister couldn't possibly condone or even tolerate the brutal insanities and the blatant corruption that characterise these institutions; the alchemy of truth which turns perfectly decent fathers into marauding and abusive patriarchs. It doesn't matter what excuse they use, you will lose. If you're a male. And your kids will suffer. If you are a male. And for some reason, a long long time ago, I thought the conservatives would fix this.

APEC is coming to Sydney, and the cowardly, treacherous little man who was in a position to fix these appalling institutions but didn't, flirted with the separated dad vote and then decided there were more votes in the women, our wonderful Prime Minister John Howard, is about to do his swan song on the world stage. His government is on the nose from coast to coast, lagging badly in the polls, facing generational annihilation at the coming election; and he must be hoping that some miracle will change the nation's tide of disgust with his timid, mealy mouthed, dishonest, unimaginative little ways. But nothing is going to change. They'll have to dynamite him out of the position, people say; he is not going to leave of his own accord. He's addicted to it.

Here, 235 years after Captain Cook sailed into Sydney Harbour, we are coated across the suburbs, our stories overlaying constantly everything we once believed; threads of narrative that wind into the body populace and make the city the depth charged place that it is; a city built on tyranny and crime and hope. Brash, arrogant, superficial, are we all that bad? asks the Sydney Morning Herald's glossy magazine. You bet we are. Twenty two of the world's leaders are about to see the Harbour Bridge for themselves; and ordinary working people, already savagely stripped of every spare cent by excessive taxes; can only look on from afar for the spectacle they have paid for with their own sweat, blood and endurance. Hypocrisy, it's all hypocrisy.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Protesters, police fail to agree on APEC

August 30, 2007 - The Age:


NSW police and activists are on a collision course during next week's APEC summit after failing to negotiate an acceptable protest route through Sydney's CBD.

The Stop Bush Coalition and NSW Greens said the police had been unreasonable in denying their proposed route for the September 8 protest, which would pass the US Consulate at Martin Place and include Macquarie Street.

They are threatening legal action if the route is not approved.

The escalation of the dispute came as unprecedented powers allowing police to target unruly protesters during the APEC week came into effect.

The laws, which will remain in place until midnight (AEST) September 12, allow police to search and detain people within restricted zones, set up check points and prohibit certain items.

Premier Morris Iemma denied the government or police were depriving activists their right to protest, adding the additional powers and equipment for officers were needed to protect citizens and guests.

"This is a democracy and in a democracy you're entitled to protest but you're not entitled to disrupt, cause inconvenience, break the law or take the law into your own hands," Mr Iemma told reporters.

"If you want to make your point, make your point peacefully, make it in accordance with the rules."

Incoming Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said 29 people who are viewed as a security threat would from be informed that they were on an "exclusion list" for APEC, which will prevent them from entering the Sydney CBD.

Market turmoil not a big issue for APEC, US says
Reuters - 35 minutes ago
WASHINGTON, Aug 30 (Reuters) - The recent turmoil in global financial markets is not expected to be a major topic at next week's Asia-Pacific leaders summit ...
APEC to reject India, focus on internal issue at Sydney summit Economic Times
Australia Ready for APEC Summit Voice of America
Climate Change, Trade, Free Trade Zone to Top APEC Summit Agenda Voice of America
Economic Times - Reuters India
all 85 news articles »

PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung)
Police, protester stalemate continues ahead of APEC
ABC Online, Australia - 10 hours ago
Greens Senator Kerry Nettle is calling on the Federal Government to reveal its role in the creation of a black list of APEC protesters. ...
Protesters, police fail to agree on APEC The Age
APEC protesters sticking to demo route The Age
APEC secure despite no horses: Keelty Sydney Morning Herald
INQ7.net - Sydney Morning Herald
all 114 news articles »

The Money Times
Malaysia criticises APEC climate change agenda
Reuters - 14 hours ago
Host Australia has written to leaders of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum to put climate change at the top of the agenda at the ...
China's Hu says climate change on APEC agenda Reuters India
China set to push climate change deal The Age
Climate change a priority for APEC as it could impact growth: APEC ... International Herald Tribune
The Australian - Brandon Sun
all 73 news articles »
Sydney locks-down for APEC leaders
TVNZ, New Zealand - 17 hours ago
The week-long APEC invasion begins this weekend, as Sydney prepares to host Asian and Pacific leaders including US President George W Bush, ...
Australians lack warmth for Bush on eve of APEC - survey Radio New Zealand
PREVIEW: Australian ghost city awaits APEC summit Monsters and Critics.com
Bush a no show? No way, says White House Sydney Morning Herald
MSNBC - Melbourne Herald Sun
all 12 news articles »

Sydney Morning Herald
APEC hijacks commuters' new buses
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 7 hours ago
"The APEC conference tentacles have spread far beyond the CBD," he said. The State Government has announced clearways along many of Sydney's busiest roads ...

Sky News Australia
APEC powers in effect
Sky News Australia, Australia - 1 hour ago
State Premier Morris Iemma says the powers, including the authority to stop and search people in restricted areas, are necessary and that APEC is the most ...
APEC powers now in effect SBS - World News Australia
Increased police powers online for APEC Macquarie National News
Sydney ready for its biggest security challenge: Iemma ABC Online
all 9 news articles »
1500 ADF personnel to provide APEC security
ABC Online, Australia - 28 Aug 2007
Next week's security operations during the APEC leaders' summit in Sydney will involve 1500 Australian Defence personnel. The Australian Defence Force (ADF) ...
Lethal force 'possible' during APEC Macquarie National News
Fortress Sydney: the lockdown begins Sydney Morning Herald
Sea, sky security drills ramp up ABC Online
Sydney Morning Herald
all 32 news articles »

Ancient Impulses

Artist: Svinko.


"From what I have said of the Natives of New Holland they may appear to be some of the most wretched people on Earth, but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the the ncessary Consequences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them."
Captain James Cook


"Thus live those, I had almost said happy, people, content with little, nay, almost nothing; far enough removed from anxieties attending upon riches, or even the possession of what Europeans call common necessities..."
Joseph Banks


Monday I drove to Tambar Springs six hours out of Sydney, Tuesday I caught the train back from Gunnedah to Sydney, Wednesday I flew to Yerranderie in the centre of the Blue Mountains world heritage and this morning I have to be in Newcastle by 9.30 for a court case of some alleged idiot. It's all a bit much. Need to stop and get the shopping done; that sort of thing.

What was it all about, this drift through old houses? In these old terraces scattered across the hills of Sydney town, founded 235 years ago by astonishing expeditions from the other side of the world. The rooms that we had been caught in; not smothered then, vibrant with ideas; always up before dawn; my mind stretching across the suburb so I could feel every thing; as the sun rose over the houses. "Try to be more normal son. Nobody knew what it was that haunted Bruce. His rooms smelt of claggy damp. There was no room for warmth, love, friendship. His body seemed to hang strangely upon him, as if a tailor had not quite sewed his mind in well enough.

"Every trip he dropped held the promise of a universal answer but in the end nothing was revealed to him, his personality filed down into singularity. We called out for her to come back but she never even turned her head, although she must have heard us, we yelled so loud. Well, there goes another one... We had many good times, the black coffee morning rice bubbles hangovers happiness embarrassment finite laughter red wine relatives who never understood friends who tried to dictate the pattern of our lives. His fingers trembled nervous tense love splintered through the wintry light... I don't know what is going on here, but surely it can't be legal."

These were crazy impulses and distorted days. Bits and pieces of stories were stuck all over the walls; and these old terraces were like rats nests; the walls dirty; the floors this cheap cane matting that collected dirt was everywhere because it was cheaper than carpet. Common sense did not prevail. I have no idea why I think back to these houses; now, 30 or more years later. I was always writing, but much of it made little sense. Most of it was unpublishable. Fluidity and contempt; those were the days when I felt most alive; most deranged; and the garbled science fiction stories that I used to write back then; who could have known where it would all lead.

Thirty years and only a few kilometres away; the world has changed utterly. Those dazed days are gone and more ordered days are upon us. I stuck up thousands of words around the rooms; trying to follow chaotic story lines; to cohere a ramble into a story. Melancholic, eccentric, fun loving, the tribe's story teller; these ancient impulses have gone now; the tribe has gone now. In a professional, glossy age; all that chaos, all the great characters who died; it's all vanished as if it had never been.

THE BIGGER STORY:

PM condemns 'Jesus bin Laden' artwork
Thursday Aug 30 05:00 AEST
By ninemsn staff

Prime Minister John Howard has condemned two entries in Australia's top religious art competition because they appear to ridicule Christianity.

A holographic image that combines Osama bin Laden and Jesus Christ, and a statue of the Virgin Mary wearing a Muslim burqa have both been submitted as contenders for the Blake Prize.

Mr Howard yesterday joined several politicians and church leaders in speaking out against the artworks.

Original Impulses

Artist: Angus McKie


"When the fury passes, what will they have left? They will look at their core principles for guidance, only to find that they, rather than their conservative opponents, have battered them to the point of destruction. If they talk about the urgent task of combating terror by spreading the freedoms they enjoy, the audience they taught to sneer at others will sneer at them. If they provide evidence of a totalitarian menace, the accusation of lying they have thrown so freely at others, will be thrown back in their faces."
Nick Cohen.


Been up to the farm and back all in a couple of days. It's a minimum six hour drive. Left my old car up there. It's run out of rego and has gone to live another life as a farm ute. There's no petrol stations around there but it has a three quarters full tank, enough to do several hundred kilometres. That's a lot of bails of hay, or whatever, around a small acreage. There are stories that interlope back on each other; a gorgeous city which long ago lost its soul. For some reason, perhaps because they were offering a 40 per cent discount as part of some promotion, I caught first class back after Phillip drove me to the Gunnedah station.

Before long there were a number of refugees making their way back from the Moree carriage. "The language!" some of the old ladies exclaimed of the aboriginal mob in the front carriage. "It's always like that from Moree, you get used to it," the conductor said. The woman behind me never shut up; not for a moment; and wore out everbody around her on the day long journey. There had been a derailment and it took longer than normal. Seeking sanity from the constant yabber behind me, I looked forward to see a large woman in a nightie with died red hair and sun glasses clutching a small teddy. When she spoke she had an incredibly high pitched voice; and I despaired.

There were original impulses that cycle through my brain every day; when I was up at dawn and I could feel every cat that stirred in the cold morning for a mile around; every stretch, every muffled good morning I love you; every bit of despair. I put together collections of short stories and novellas which hang around still; Fragment Me Quick, Blue Queen; Boys In Glass Castles; A Shortage of Vision. The latter about Queensland descending into a totalitarian state. "From the banning of street marches to the banning of strikes it had only been a few logical steps through a period of political instability after the death of Bjelke Peterson, combined with economic chaos in the rest of the country, that had led to seccession from Australia and the arrival of a military dictatorship." Which led to that ultimately world weary claim: "So much have I written, so little have I gained."

Half finished manuscripts lie in boxes everywhere; some impossible to decipher or put back together after so many moves. These broken children, broken projects, never finished as one bit of madness overtook another; as my left fell apart with convincing regularity into chaos and drink and addiction; the great struggle burnt out. All he wanted now was the quiet life on the farm; peace; and in those winding days of fortune other things lay. He could bring it all together, he would bring it all together, the unfinished projects and the uncompleted dreams; in the years that lay ahead. Today; the plane will sweep low along the old explorer routes; finding a mystery still left in the Blue Mountains. Great story about an 81 year old woman who owns a silver mining ghost town surrounded by the Blue Mountains National Park. There is much to be done. Pluck up my son. Life takes many courses.

THE BIGGER STORY:


NSW Police Chief Ken Moroney is finally retiring. He was never one to knock back an increase in surveillance techniques; ever more powerful and intrusive ways of monitoring the population. Sydney is a bent town to the core; and these people are like strange white caterpillars feeding off the host. You've never belonged, you never will, wailed the lost voice of the body populace; let me be free.


The Age:


It's normally just a tradition for recruits, but NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney also threw his hat into the air before he strode off the Goulburn police academy parade ground for the last time.

In one of his final official duties before retiring on Friday, Mr Moroney welcomed 225 new recruits into the force, urging them to maintain a thirst for knowledge and to "apply that knowledge in service of the people of NSW".

But much of the focus of the day was on Mr Moroney and his 42 years of service with NSW police, which he joined when he was 19.

With his wife Bev watching, and his three police officer sons nearby, Mr Moroney said he hoped history would paint him as a man who did his best.

"To my wife Beverly, my family friends and colleagues, both serving and retired, thank you for the love, loyalty and support that you have shown me, not only over the past five years as commissioner of police, but equally as a member of the NSW Police Force," he said.

"I also wish to thank the community of NSW for their trust and support whilst I have been commissioner.

"When this period of police history is finally written, and however history records my service as a police officer, I trust that all that is said is that `he did the job to the best of his ability'."

Core Principles

Art by Svikli.


"Pessimist - one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both."
Oscar Wilde.

"It just isn't reasonable always to expect the worst to happen; it doesn't. Nor is it logical to paint all circumstances black; they aren't. It is just as easy, and just as reasonable, to look up as it is down. Habitual melancholy can be rejected as well as accepted."
Larsen & Hegarty


We were trailed in bliss; in discontent; the city overlaid with stories where we reach back decades to the hysterical lounge rooms and the anarchic fun that was our youth. In times, in great times, that we never knew in retrospect would be great times. They were always stepping stones to a greater future, a broader understanding. To a happiness presently deprived.

I was already sick; even then. I couldn't stop drinking; not even then. While most of the gang was happy enough sitting around smoking hash; common enough in those slack days; I was happily on the bar stool getting pissed, talking to total strangers.

What embers of the self there had been; the ashes of the architect of dreams. I would never know. The dizzying ranks; the crazy nights; I thought these were our future; that in them; ripped beneath the surface of it all; lay the meaning of everything. But the days passed and reality remained unripped. Our core principles descended from group households 30 years ago; and most of what went on has been forgotten. Most of the participants are dead; and I walk past the fronts of terrace houses, in Hargreave Street and Elizabeth Street in Paddington, long owned by someone else; and pointless stories pour through a dissolving brain. There were so many characters. There was so much life. And now our lives curl out in curious night shades; coated by conspiracy; cloaked in secrecy; the future another country.


THE BIGGER STORY:

Indian police say they found 19 unexploded bombs in the southern city of Hyderabad after bomb attacks at two locations killed 42 people.

Extra police and special bomb detection equipment have been sent from New Delhi to Hyderabad as the hunt begins for those who planted the bombs.

Hyderabad has a mixed Hindu and Muslim population and security has been stepped up to prevent any rising communal tension.

The blast locations were popular with both communities.

Plastered In Waiting

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!


Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Sheakespeare, Macbeth.


This is a digital picture by Sci Fi artist Alexander Preus I found loping around the net; found a blog on sci fi art. Wish I could work out how to work the links thing on this; there's some great stuff out there. Blogger have just introduced video uploads. Haven't got any interesting videos but I'm going to try it anyway. Just tried. Doesn't seem to work on the video downloads off my phone - Sony Ericcsson. Which is a pity. We could all become instant film crews. No moment safe. No moment sacrosant.

For some reason this picture made me want to read the first paragraph of Someting Wicked This Way Comes from a long time ago; when magic infested every move. There's lots of summaries of the plot on the net, but I can't find the first paragraph.

"Wikipedia note that Something Wicked This Way Comes is a 1962 novel by Ray Bradbury about two thirteen-year-old boys, Jim Nightshade and William Halloway, who have a harrowing experience with a nightmarish carnival that comes to their Midwestern town one October. The carnival's leader is the mysterious "Mr. Dark" who bears a tattoo for each person who, lured by the offer to live out their secret fantasies, has become bound in service to the carnival.

"One of the events in Ray Bradbury's childhood that inspired him to become a writer was an encounter with a carnival magician named Mr. Electrico who commanded him to "Live forever!" The twelve-year-old Bradbury, intrigued at the concept of eternal life, revisited Mr. Electrico, who spurred his passion for life by heralding him as the reincarnation of the friend he lost in World War I. After that memorable day, Bradbury began writing nonstop.[1]"

Similar things can only be got in intense meditation; propelled by a spiritual dynamic.

I keep thinking I have no choice but to finish this project Chaos At the Cross Roads; which could be subtitlted The Failure of Democracy. We shall see. Some things become inevitable in life. Otherwise you go crazy. Time will tell. First things first. Get through the day.


THE BIGGER STORY:

SMH:

IF YOU believe the Premier's Department version of history, an outburst Morris Iemma had at a media conference last year - calling the then chief executive of Sydney's Cross City Tunnel a "f---wit" - never happened.

After it was revealed in the Herald yesterday that staff at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet were editing Wikipedia articles to remove details that might be damaging to the Government, it has emerged that staff in Mr Iemma's department have been doing the same...

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet was found to have made 126 edits on subjects ranging from the children overboard affair to the Treasurer, Peter Costello, whose entry was modified to remove a reference to the nickname "Captain Smirk".

ABC:

US President George W Bush has signaled his unwillingness to consider early US troop reductions in Iraq, saying new offensive operations there were just in their "early stages."

The statement, made in his weekly radio address, followed a fervent plea by John Warner, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who publicly asked the president to initiate by September 15 at least a symbolic drawdown of US military forces from Iraq.

Senator Warner, a former secretary of the Navy and a widely respected authority on military affairs, suggested last week the President bring home up to 5,000 US troops as "the first step in a withdrawal of armed forces" in order to "send a sharp and clear message" to the Iraqi Government that the US commitment was not open-ended.

Mr Bush has not formally responded to the appeal. But in his address, he expressed satisfaction with offensive operations launched in the wake of a nearly 30,000-troop surge he announced at the beginning of the year - and said they were just beginning.

"We are still in the early stages of our new operations," the President said. "But the success of the past couple of months have shown that conditions on the ground can change - and they are changing."

He argued that every month since January, US forces have killed or captured on average more than 1,500 Al Qaeda fighters and other insurgents in Iraq.

Mr Bush went on to say that young Iraqi men are signing up for the army, police are patrolling the streets and neighborhood watch groups are being formed in Iraqi cities.

Mr Bush says Iraqis are now volunteering important information about insurgents and other extremists hiding in their midst more frequently, which has led to a "marked reduction" in sectarian murders.

"We cannot expect the new strategy we are carrying out to bring success overnight," the President concluded.

"But by standing with the Iraqi people as they build their democracy, we will deliver a devastating blow to Al Qaeda, we will help provide new hope for millions of people throughout the Middle East, we will gain a friend and ally in the war on terror, and we will make the American people safer."

Weemala

Come back into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

William Wordsowrth

This is a picture of the lane just down the road; where I walk most mornings to get my coffee.

Weemala has been back in the news and I remember the place vividly from 20 years ago. Weemala means, so I'm told, white house on the hill, and it was a huge old institution for the severely disabled. It always had a very striking, Dickensian atmosphere about it; of secret lives passing by inside. They couldn't go anywhere else.

Weemala was packed full of characters; and if you looked through doors you could see the profoundly hopeless, flopping on their plastic mattresses. It was a disturbing and fascinating place to be. There were all sorts, from the days when the disabled were locked away for life. There was a woman there; she had been 16 when she had jumped off the side of the pool at Coogee and been permanently disabled after injuring her spine. Here she was; still here, her bright intelligent eyes meeting mine. Wanting her story, their story, told by someone with some empathy. They had been waiting so long to get their points across; for someone to retell their tales of triumph and adversity in this strange place.

I was working for the Sydney Morning Herald at the time. Everyone knew the Herald, which in those days was regularly ranked as one of the top 20 newspapers in the world and was an exciting place to be. Everyone wanted to talk to you. Weemala had been a centre of disabled activism; a book had just been published about it; and everyone wanted to tell me everything. Those were the days, pre the Richardson report, when there was a lot of debate about closing down institutions and putting these people out in the community. A cheap option for the government, who embraced the idea wholeheartedly. A disaster for many of the mentally and physically disabled, who subsequently were to be found fending for themselves on the streets of Sydney.

I forget what the original story was that took us there; it was a dull but worthy of some kind about the disability debate. I didn't want to be dragged into some fascinating story; I just wanted in and out. Then work rang. We're desperate for a front page pic tomorrow; is there anything there?

Not that I could see, I told them. The disabled don't make natural front page stories.

But the photographer Rick Stevens took the request seriously; and spotted a young woman waiting in the same foyer we were to see the management. She was very pretty, very 16, but disabled, in a wheel chair, no doubt a hand full to look after. Her mother, of a certain age, had brought her there because she apparently couldn't handle her any more, wanted to get on with her own life - the lipstick said everything.

It was a horror story I had to write to the photograph, the daughter being dumped at the place. She was being brought there for the first time to see if she could live there. The look on her face said it all. She didn't want to go in, that was for sure. But the mother, clearly, had had enough. The story ran on the front page the next day; and evoked enormous sympathy. It was an amazing picture; of the exact moment when this girl was literally being dumped in an institution by greedy, selfish relatives. We couldn't have been more relieved, we had kept work happy; and debate swirled for days.

There were several books within the walls of Weemala, of tragedy and the brutality of nature; of triumph; of courage built out of bizarre lives and strange physical afflictions, most of all, human nature in extreme; the dignity of small things; while our society did its best to ignore the profoundly disabled and the world outside moved on; into the computer age.

Despite all the controversy and the publicity; the girl was left at Weemala. For all I know she's still there.

THE BIGGER STORY:

SMH:

Weemala disabled residents' future 'secured'

August 14, 2007

The group behind the controversial redevelopment of a Sydney disability home has promised to accommodate its most profoundly disabled residents, NSW Planning Minister Frank Sartor says.

He has accused Prime Minister John Howard of lying about his representations to the State Government about the Weemala home in Ryde for his own political gain.

Mr Howard has attacked the proposed redevelopment of the facility in his north-west Sydney electorate of Bennelong over fears 40 of its residents - 16 of whom are profoundly disabled and need constant care - will lose their home and be moved into the community.

The concept plan proposes a $45 million redeveloped rehabilitation centre for 900 severely injured patients a year to be funded by the sale of 16 of its 18 hectares of land for residential development.

The proposal was rejected by Ryde Council but later conditionally approved by Mr Sartor.

He said today he had yesterday met the board of the not-for-profit Royal Rehabilitation Centre, which had provided him with a written undertaking to accommodate the 16 most disabled residents on site.

"As a result of its considerations - and I quote: 'The board has now reassessed its position and will proceed to develop a small purpose-built residential accommodation on site and adjacent to the new rehabilitation campus,' " Mr Sartor told Macquarie Radio.

He rejected Mr Howard's claims that his letters to him had been ignored.

eemala disabled residents' future 'secured'
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 13 Aug 2007
He has accused Prime Minister John Howard of lying about his representations to the State Government about the Weemala home in Ryde for his own political ...
PM "remains concerned" about Weemala development
IBN News, Australia - 14 Aug 2007
He has announced plans to offer an independent assessment to Weemala residents who will be relocated permanently or temporarily because of the development ...

Sydney Morning Herald
Turfed from the only home they know
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 12 Aug 2007
Today he lies motionless while being fed through a tube to his stomach in Weemala, a place he and 40 other profoundly disabled residents - many of whom are ...
PM 'exploiting disabled to save own hide'
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia - 14 Aug 2007
Mr Sartor said the Prime Minister wrote to him in January, making no mention about Weemala, and in a second letter in June, only mentioned the facility as ...
Backdown on home for disabled
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 14 Aug 2007
The news prompted the spokesman for the Weemala Residents and Advocates Committee, Michael Matthews, to say: "I think we're fortunate that it's an election ...
Hospital conflict of interest denied
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 13 Aug 2007
Families of profoundly disabled residents who live in Weemala, an institution on the site, have been fighting the redevelopment. ...
Howard seeks assurance for disabled
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 13 Aug 2007
Under the $295 million redevelopment plan, the Weemala home in Ryde would be demolished and about 40 of its severely disabled residents moved. ...
Concerns continue over fate of disabled residents
ABC Online, Australia - 14 Aug 2007
A New South Wales MP, Anthony Roberts, says he still has concerns about the plight of a number of profoundly disabled residents of the Weemala home in his ...
PM denies playing politics over nursing home
ABC Online, Australia - 14 Aug 2007
It had been feared that 16 disabled residents of the Weemala nursing home in Mr Howard's seat of Bennelong would be shifted into the community so the home ...
Disabled residents to remain at redeveloped Sydney site
ABC Online, Australia - 13 Aug 2007
The New South Wales Government has approved a $295 million plan for the site, which will see the Weemala Home demolished. Families of the residents are ...

Washed Away

As the poets have mournfully sung
Death takes the innocent young
The rolling in money
The screamingly funny
And those who are very well hung.

WH Auden



These are the only pictures I have of Tom and Colin; left to right, taken outside my house in Redfern, Sydney.

Young Tom died a copule of weeks ago now from an overdose. The funeral has been and gone. He was full of life, doing well after various hard times, and the whole damn thing made no sense at all. If anyone was going to die it was going to be Colin, who has AIDS and has been bouncing in and out of hospitals for years. Colin was in his 50s and Tom was in his 20s and Colin couldn't believe his luck. Youg company, it seemed, here at the end of our days, was a gift directly from God. The God of saints and sinners, of those who shout pointlessly into the night, the dramas of our own selves bleached in the cruel light.

Colin was an old old friend of mine from the 1970s; a time of parties and freedoms, adventures and discovery. A time when we all embraced in the wild nights. We were a band of crazies hanging out in the then student suburb of Paddington. I had the house next to the Bellevue Hotel; as I think I've said before; and we were constantly getting smashed in the pub and then blowing joints in the loungeroom; the absolute chaos of lost days. I kept bantams in the rundown backyard toilet; and the rooster would crow earnestly each morning, there being no other roosters in the inner-city for it to communicate with. We had painted each pointed top of the iron work gate at the front of the house a different colour, silver pink, orange, green, and we were happy being the souls we were; destiny driven; we were all going to reshape the world.

Colin was there, his face more interesting than handsome as he likes to say, and unlke the rest of us, who in our smoke filled dreams were going to reshape Austrtalian literature, theatre and music; Colin was just there for the good times. He was a party boy par excellence; always good company; and that, at the end of the dya, was his greatest achievement. To keep us all company as we partied till dawn.

Fast forward a few decades and the picture ain't quite so pretty. Colin went to live in Brisbane for a couple of decades; and only came back to this part of the world because he thought he was dying and wanted to be with his family in and around Newcastle. But the new anti-virals are keeping all the Aids boys living a lot longer; and while he thought he was going to die in 2004; here it is 2007 and he's still going. And he and Tom had formed this friendship; which Colin thought was a gift from God for all that he had been through; to make up for all the friends who had died and the tragedy of his recent years. But it was not to be. Tragedy compounded on tragedy; and Tom was found dead. Over-dosed. He'd been on some program, he'd looked wonderfully healthy and happy last time I saw him; and the convoluted insanities that kept our lives going; these played out in the saddest ways. Washed away.


THE BIGGER STORY:

UK TELEGRAPH


George Bush: Iraq must not become Vietnam

By Alex Spillius in Washington
Last Updated: 8:20pm BST 22/08/2007

President George W Bush has turned the comparison between Iraq and Vietnam on its head in a speech to war veterans, arguing that America's experience in south-east Asia support the case for keeping US troops in the Middle East.

George Bush compared Iraq and Vietnam at a speech to war veterans
George W Bush made his case to veterans of past conflicts

He said that the rapid US withdrawal from Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975 had led to bloodbaths, persecution of those who worked for the Americans and the boat people refugee crisis.

He argued that a premature US exit from Iraq could have similar consequences.

"Many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people," he said, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars association in Kansas City.

"The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands died by starvation, torture, or execution.
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Telegraph - Menswear/Shoes

"In Vietnam, former American allies, government workers, intellectuals, and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished."

Mr Bush has always avoided comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, which is seen as America's most calamitous defeat. From the start of the Iraq war critics have said it will prove another quagmire and graveyard for US troops.

eFlux Media:

Ladies And Gentlemen Google Earth Offers You The Sky
by Anne Shaw
August 22nd 2007

Have you ever wondered how it feels to explore space without any limitations or fears? How it feels to be in search of a star or a planet, even without to be an astronomer? Well, from today on, you may just get a hint about those kind of feelings thanks to the new add-on introduced by Google in its Google Earth program: Sky.

With this new feature, you may float through the sky as seen from our planet and, according to Google, you have no less than 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies to view and explore.

"We’re excited to provide users with rich astronomical imagery and enhanced content that enables them to both learn about what they’re seeing above and tell their own stories," said Lior Ron, Google Product Manager. "By working with some of the industry’s leading experts, we’ve been able to transform Google Earth into a virtual telescope."

Sky combines high resolution imagery and informative overlays in order to create a unique playground for visualizing and learning about space. The images used to recreate the sky are offered the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the Digital Sky Survey Consortium (DSSC), CalTech’s Palomar Observatory, the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC), and the Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO).

The Digitized Sky Survey comprises photographic surveys of nearly the entire sky and contains about a million objects. The Sloan survey comprises images of hundreds of millions of much fainter objects and covers more than a quarter of the sky.

"Sky is a very cool new feature for anyone who has ever looked up at the sky and wanted to know more," said Sally Ride, former astronaut and CEO of Sally Ride Science. "I think this is a great tool for satisfying that curiosity."

And you will never get bored as Google has introduced seven amazing layers to illustrate celestial events. For example, thanks to Constellations, you may learn about the stars that make up a specific constellation from Cassiopeia to Andromeda. All you need to do is just to click the desired name and the layer will connect the points of constellations through space.

If you want to learn about the Planets or the Moon, Sky offers two layers which display animations of two months of both lunar positions and moon phases and the position of the planets in the sky two months into the future.

Weekend Jumbles

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conversations conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

WH Auden.


I've gone to four days work a week work and suddenly it's much more relaxed. Not that I've done that much with the extra day but try and feel normal. Instead I feel guilty for relaxing.

APEC is coming to Sydney and the momentum of preceding announcements has escalated. They've unveiled a new water cannon truck, which brings Australia into a new era of crowd control. We've never had a truck that water bombs rioters before; and it takes us into a different level of imagery, of state control. The right to protest has been a sacrosanct if often ineffective form of political protest in Australia for a very long time. Organisers are expecting trouble; which I've been surprised by; the demonstrators I've observed over the years aren't up to all that much.

Indeed the general protesters we get in Sydney are not a very fearsome bunch at all. Over the years marches and demonstrations have become an ineffective form of protest; largely ignored by bored journalists. For the protesters, too, it was more a day out, a social event, than a full-on opportunity to throw yourself in front of police vehicles or get yourself arrested. The security is astonishing. Days of acquiescence, days of charm; grubby little buggers who haunt us still. Half the city is going into lock down.

THE BIGGER STORY:Fences Will Divide Sydney for APEC
오마이뉴스, South Korea - 18 Aug 2007

Apparently, it's an honor for Sydney, Australia, to be chosen to host the APEC conference in three weeks time, which will bring together more than 20 world leaders, including U.S. President George W. Bush.

But most Sydneysiders are wondering why they couldn't have chosen one of the dozens of luxurious islands of the far north to hold their conference, now the full scope of the staggering security measures that will lock-down half of the city's center for 10 days are being made public.

A 5-kilometer long, 3-meter high security fence will cut Sydney's central business district in half.

You will only be able to enter the lockdown zone on foot, and then only through a small number of gates manned by some of the 4,500 police and thousands more private security guards, secret service and intelligence agents already descending on the city.

You will need to queue at the gates, where your face will be scanned in a live field test of facial recognition technology and assessed by agents for suspicious body language. Police and intelligence agents have been scouring through years of antiwar protests and building up a database of faces that were captured on police and security video.

Nearly everyone who passes through the gates will be searched, have their ID checked and have their handbags and briefcases unpacked.

Once you've produced ID, your name and address will be compared to a long list of suspected "troublemakers" that the police and intelligence agents have been compiling for months. Everyone who enters the security zone is expected to be photographed and entered into a database.

Police reveal secret APEC weapon
NEWS.com.au, Australia - 2 hours ago
By Rhett Watson A FLYING squad of motorcycle police will be the eyes and ears of the law in Sydney's CBD in an attempt to get on top of unplanned APEC ...
Iemma blames 'idiots' for APEC protests NEWS.com.au
APEC protesters plan Sydney march Melbourne Herald Sun
Route change angers APEC marchers Sydney Morning Herald
TVNZ - Sydney Morning Herald
all 73 news articles »

Turkish Press China cutting APEC's grass, says Clinton adviser
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 4 hours ago
Lael Brainard, a former White House co-ordinator for APEC and deputy national economics adviser to Bill Clinton, said the US's preoccupation with the war in ...
APEC meeting to address broad range of issues Channel News Asia
APEC emergency experts meet in Cairns Melbourne Herald Sun
APEC visitors to bypass quarantine Sydney Morning Herald
NEWS.com.au - Taipei Times
all 37 news articles »
Plan for maximum APEC mayhem
NEWS.com.au, Australia - 2 hours ago
The Daily Telegraph reports APEC organisers are bracing for protests from a range of radical groups that are also recruiting high school students to take ...
Iemma warns students about APEC 'ferals' Sydney Morning Herald
Students warned against APEC protests The Age
APEC protesters 'prepared for court action' ABC Online
Sydney Morning Herald - Sydney Morning Herald
all 13 news articles »
Enjoy APEC's adventure escape
NEWS.com.au, Australia - 19 hours ago
By Mike Smith and Joe Hildebrand WHILE thousands of Sydneysiders plan to flee the city during APEC, they may well be replaced by an wave of visitors keen to ...
Sydney's APEC challenges SBS - World News Australia
Regional NSW to reap APEC rewards ABC Online
all 5 news articles »
APEC disaster management summit continues
ABC Regional Online, Australia - 20 hours ago
Representatives from Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) countries at an international summit about disaster management will start an intense series ...
APEC summit security acquires a water cannon Radio Australia
Shoalhaven tourism hopes to cash in on APEC ABC Regional Online
APEC summit to bring boom to regional areas Radio Australia
Green Left Weekly
all 5 news articles »

Times Colonist APEC to focus on efficiency, not targets
Taipei Times, Taiwan - 18 Aug 2007
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member nations will not accept greenhouse gas emission targets to fight global climate change and creating ...
APEC leaders to set 'aspirational' goals on climate: draft Philippine Star
Green party leader blasts APEC plan Vancouver Sun
APEC to shoot for 25% boost in energy efficiency The Japan Times
The Brunei Times - Montreal Gazette
all 16 news articles »

Sign Posts

"Families scattered around the world can now be in constant touch: every passing thought can be converted into an email and sent to the entire family all at once, all in an instant. Businesses can move mountains of information in the twinkling of an eye. Scholars can exchange ideas, references, scraps of insight with colleagues in universities on the other side of a city, a country or the planet. People who are isolated and lonely, or socially inept, divorced, bereaved or depressed can tap into a network of 'friends' in cyberspace - faceless but curiously real and over time, reasurringly familiar - who will be there at any hour of the day or night, to listen, comfort, advise, amuse, flirt, or simply distract us from the dark places in our minds."
Hugh Mackay, Advance Australia...Where?


It's aastonishing really; the furore in recent days over Australia's opposition leader Kevin Rudd's visit to a strip club in New York four years ago. Sleazy little fucker. Aren't all men? Can only saints and prudes become prime minister now? Can only the straightest, most conformist, blandest of accountant types aspire to public office? Our own dreams have subsided, our own voices of discontent gone for a million miles, and brutality in the region, that was what we avoided, going to bed early, staying out of the light.

Still haven't finished the Hunting column, still take measured time and measure out the days in working shifts. Above is a picture of Ian Purdie looking his debonair rock and roll self and me at the front of Parliament House, ready for the Lone Fathers conference where we gave a speach and he and Pete put on a performance. We were nervous, not sure of what would happen.

What happened was that the conference came and went; and nothing changed. We were patted on the head and ignored. Barry Williams managed to get all the politicians to speak, they all went away with a bee in their ear, fully aware that no one was happy. And they did nothing; retreating back into their comfortable offices where the bureaucrats tell them that black is white and that the men are a minor irritant in their great social schemes. They preside over a disaster; and they get away with it. And the men, cooperating in their own oppression, their dissident voices contained in jars aka conferences acknowledged and ignored. What matters is the ballot box. And they think there's more votes in bashing up on separated blokes than in listening to their concerns. The great socialist experiment continues; and this government has been entirely hopeless. The only thing that will be worse is the other side; and Kevin's stint in a nightclub, looking bookish and boyish in the headlight of the television cameras, will only boost his ratings. At least he apparently likes women; and women like men who like women; witness Bill Clinton.


THE BIGGER STORY:


Australians ready to forgive Rudd's lapse into strip club indiscretion
Kevin Rudd

(Justin Lloyd)

Kevin Rudd
Bernard Lagan in Sydney

Faced with headlines of the kind that have seen many a British politician clearing out their desks, Kevin Rudd, the Australian Labor leader, has simply played down his drunken visit to a New York strip club as the kind of mistake men make. Most Australians — including, surprisingly, his political rivals — seem to agree.

As Rudd insisted yesterday that he had never claimed to be “Captain Perfect”, commentators suggested that Australians were in a mood to forgive the Leader of the Opposition — tipped for electoral victory this year — his 2003 escapade. His case was bolstered by the helpful disclosures of some of his political opponents that they, too, were no strangers to strip clubs.

Mr Rudd’s big night out at the Scores strip club in Manhattan, at the invitation of the editor of the New York Post, has come back to embarrass him just as he appears poised to end the decade-long reign of Australia’s conservative Prime Minister, John Howard.

A general election is expected to be held in October and Mr Rudd, a studious 49-year-old former diplomat and father of three who has portrayed himself as a devout Christian with conventional views, has been leading opinion polls for most of the year.

Mr Rudd has adopted what is known in Australia as the footballers’ defence; he admits going to the club while on official visit to the UN’s New York headquarters but maintains he was so drunk that he had no recollection of what happened — although he has denied unsourced reports that he groped a stripper.

Australians ready to forgive Rudd's lapse into strip club indiscretion
Times Online, UK - 2 hours ago
Faced with headlines of the kind that have seen many a British politician clearing out their desks, Kevin Rudd, the Australian Labor leader, ...
MPs laugh off strip club visits as Rudd pain continues Stuff.co.nz
Rudd recalls big night out The Australian
Ejected? Most certainly not, Rudd declares Sydney Morning Herald
The Age - Melbourne Herald Sun
all 393 news articles »
Unions working on Rudd's choices
The Australian, Australia - 5 hours ago
THE union movement has launched a pre-emptive strike designed to stop Kevin Rudd weakening his pledge to roll back the Howard Government's workplace reforms ...
Folly of Kevin '03 steals the show from Kevin07 The Age
Hike hurts Howard's credentials The Australian
Ports takeover poll-driven - Rudd NEWS.com.au
The West Australian - The Australian
all 24 news articles »
Rudd on last chance
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia - 4 hours ago
Within hours of the story of prime ministerial hopeful Kevin Rudd's naughty night in New York hitting the streets, radio talkback was suggesting that, ...
Sister-in-law 'exotic dancer'
Advertiser Adelaide, Australia - 4 hours ago
KEVIN Rudd's sister-in-law yesterday admitted to her secret past as a stripper, saying it was a period of her life she regretted. Okhola Rudd, the wife of ...
Rudd's hanging on by a thread
NEWS.com.au, Australia - 1 hour ago
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has yet to be discovered without his pants but sufficient snippets of the events which took place at a full-on New York ...
Rebel MP Harry Quick thrown out of ALP The Age
all 28 news articles »
Rudd pledges submarines
The Australian, Australia - 16 hours ago
In a joint statement Labor Leader Kevin Rudd and Opposition defence spokesman, Joel Fitzgibbon, said a Labor government would aim to have work start on the ...
Parties pledge submarine work for SA Sydney Morning Herald
Labor pledges to build new subs in SA Sydney Morning Herald
all 23 news articles »
Rudd linked to another strip club on MySpace
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia - 4 hours ago
KEVIN Rudd's name has been linked to another strip club, in another embarrassing blunder for the Opposition Leader. Yesterday, Rudd was the top friend on ...

Ian Purdie and Peter van de Voorde from the DOTA team at Parliament House

Messages Found On The Troubled Path

"He was my North, my South, my East, my West,
My working week and Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,
I thought love would last forever - I was wrong."

WH Auden

I've always loved these words; they just hit me as to the way I was; ready to sacrifice everything for whoever it was I was sleeping with. The nights are long; perhaps I should get a dog. I was thinking of trying to get the car up to the farm today but it's pouring rain and the portents are all wrong; Henrietta is firmly against; and doesn't God talk through children? And Joyce wants to go to the movies; although we've seen just about everything. But I can't just leave it in the street collecting parking tickets from the marauding parking dogs who make their living fining ordinary people who can't find a parking spot.

Sydney is bedevilled by these parasites; the councils have worked out they don't have to do anything but fine people to make the millions that feather their own useless nests; and the parasitical nature of our local, state and federal governments compounds; stomping into our lives, controlling our every move.

I have to finish the Hunting In Packs column off for Trevor today. I'm not sure why I do it; considering it doesn't pay; he's a gnome like creature who is everywhere in Redfern, commissioning editor you could call him for the local paper, The South Sydney Herald. He was always in awe that I worked in the mainstream; something I had been doing for so long it didn't impress me. I kept telling him he had to broaden his political base from his narrow left left every minority deserves sainthood Labor can do no wrong all conservatives are evil editorial line; and he finally took me up on it. So now I have to deliver.


HUNTING IN PACKS


We have entered a strange disconnect between the manufactured world on our television screens and the lives most of us live. A strange, Stepford Wife world. Can there really be that great an interest in cooking shows?

All rationality has left us and there is something fundamentally wrong with the bland fronts that make up Australian culture - its decaying intellectual and media life. Left and right have morphed together, horrors coming equally from each side. Labor leader Kevin Rudd poses as a conservative while our supposedly right-wing John Howard out spends and out taxes anyone in Australian history.

It was perhaps a more profound disconnect over the collision of ideologies and reality that compelled columnist for the UK's flagship left newspaper The Guardian, Nick Cohen, to pen What's Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way.

What's Left Of Altered States?

"When servants are rude one should merely ignore it."
EM Forster

"There was something better in life than this rubbish, if only he could get to it - love - nobility - big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend..."
EM Forster

This is a picture of Phillip across the paddock at Tambar; when he came down pissed as a newt one night for a smoke; and was belligerent and friendly all at once; the sparks flying from the over-hot fire; fighting with his wife and overwhelmed by his five kids. He's not really all that old. I paid him to mow my lawns.

I have to do my bi-monthly column Hunting In Packs for the local paper, The South Sydney Herald, so I'm going to do it on Nick Cohen's book What's Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way, which I've just finished reading.

So here goes. Hopefully I can do it in one take:

HUNTING IN PACKS:

We have entered a world where there is a strange disconnect between the manufactured world of what we see on our television screens and read in our newspapers on the one hand, and the lives that most of us live on the other. There's a gnawing sense that all rationality has left us; that there is something fundamentally wrong with the bland fronts that make up Australian culture - its decaying intellectual and media life.
javascript:void(0)
Publish Post
Left and right have morphed into each other, even reversed. Kevin Rudd paints a smug, self-satisfied, conservative veneer across every controversy, emphasising at every opportunity how truly boring he is and how utterly mundane his life in "Brissie" really is; with nothing more exciting than a cup of tea on the verandah with his wife, the dog, the cat and the kids. Meanwhile our supposedly conservative Prime Minister John Howard has thrown all dignity to the wind, appearing ever more pathetic and frenetic as he runs frantically from one policy front to the next; desperately trying to retain power while dishing out money at a giddying rate.

People once thought John Howard stood for small government and constrained public spending; but he has become the biggest taxer and the biggest spender in Australian history. While Howasrd boasts incessantly about a booming economy, gifted to him courtesy of China's insatiable demand for raw materials; many of the so-called "Howard battlers" are drowning in debt and living on credit. While bankruptcies and fore-closures are climbing rapidly; those who encouraged these very same people to over-mortgage through the $7,000 first home buyers grant escape blame. They don't only escape blame, they boast about how rich we all are.

While preening himself as a good economic manager; ask any small business person, strangled by paperwork and the continuing nightmare of the GST, whether they think Howard was a good economic manager. Or whether he's bled them all dry so he can spend vast sums of money on social programs designed to keep him in power - expanding welfare into the middle classes and beefing up the bureaucracy to levels worthy of a communist.

We have entered a surreal, Orwellian world dominated by government advertising and divorced from reality. This will only get worse as the election approaches. Our newspapers reflect a slice of life, full of concern for the environment and global warming, that bears almost no resemblance to conditions on the ground or the toil of people's daily existence: a narrative we have been trained to accept.

Someone had to work very hard in a factory to pay the taxes which allow the government to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of our money to convince us that black is white. If Howard had really done such a great job of running our lives he wouldn't have to spend so much money to convince us of the fact. But where are the voices raised in protest at this grotesque waste?

Know Where You Stand demand WorkChoices advertisements. Bent over the kitchen table waiting to cop it; was the image that came most readily to most people's minds. Why should we have to pay taxes for this type of poor-qualtiy propaganda? For a government that didn't have the gumption to mention the word Workchoices at the last election; before radically rewriting Australia's industrial relations landscape with no mandate whatsoever.

Howard has announced yet another crackdown on drug users and a new round of anti-drug advertising. But governments have been perfectly well aware, ever since Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign back-fired and increased the level of illegal drug use in the community, that these campaigns are counter-productive; they don't work. They arouse rather than dampen interest and define margins towards which people are drawn. That a morally bankrupt Howard is prepared to put the welfare of young people at such patent risk in order to reassure the middle classes his government is doing something; and thereby hoping to garner a few more votes; is an absolutely shameful disgrace. But will a single major newspaper pursue this line of questioning?

The Howard government knew perfectly well when it launched its "Violence Against Women: Australia Says No" campaign that there was no evidence from anywhere in the world that these types of campaigns actually decrease the levels of inter-personal violence in the community and that in fact public campaigns are often counter-productive, their outcomes controlled by the Law of Unintended Consequence.

The government, preening itself on a motherhood issue, knew perfectly well that academics around the world have critiqued the ideologically driven feminist depiction of domestic violence as a simple paradigm of the oppressor and the oppressed, the batterer and the battered, the male perpetrator and the female victim, as not just inadequate but ultimately dishonest. But the Howard government appears not to have cared.

Deliberately stirring up public hysteria over domestic violence and vilifying all males as violent patriarchs for the government's own personal gain has indeed had unintended consequences. We see the results in a blizzard of false or exaggerated allegations across the nation's court rooms. Where are the voices raised in protest? Why are men presumably happy to see hundreds of millions of dollars of their taxes used in a campaign designed purely to vilify them?

It is this same disconnect that columnist for the UK's flagship left newspaper The Guardian, Nick Cohen, writes about in his excellent new book What's Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way. For him it was the Iraq War and the liberal left's defence of the ultra-right fascistic ideologies of Islamists which compelled him to put pen to paper. What's Left? is essential reading for anyone interested in politics and the history of ideas.

Comfortable with their "well oiled" anti-American rhetoric...

As he notes: "All around me, liberal London descended into the radical chick of the ultra-right... I can see now that going along with the fascistic ideas to some degree was a way of subliminally coping with the Islamist threat, or of letting Bertrand Russell's fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed turn anger at the treatment of the Palestinians into sympathy for the Devil. The desire to appease terrorists by agreeing with their prejudices and outrage at oppression in the West Bank and Gaza shepherded the herd of independent minds to the extreme right, and you can't deny that many enjoyed the trip."

Nick Cohen knows full well of what he speaks. Like a reformed smoker...

Columnist for The Guardian in London Nick Cohen had an impeccable left wing upbringing. Growing up, even simple things like going to the supermarket provided a host of ethical dilemmas.

Before him HItchens. ...

Howard has been in campaign mode for months, while the rest of the country would have been much more impressed if he actually went about governing the country instead of using our taxes to denigrate the other side of politics - that is to denigrate half of us.

"Good to meet you, nice to meet you, good to meet you," he says frantically, shaking people's hands for barely a second before moving on in shopping mall after shopping mall. If anybody tries to take up a serious issue with him he dismisses it quickly, "other people tell me different", before moving on, spinning that ultimate of lies: "Good to meet you..." Our political class on both sides of politics have disconnected from the country's heartland; maintained in isolation by their massive salaries and receiving all their information from departmental bureaucrats. Democracy is failing; and we will all be the poorer for it.


THE BIGGER STORY:

Associated Press

SYDNEY, Australia -

The first known pirated copy of "The Simpsons Movie" to make it onto the Internet was tracked to a home raided by Australian police Friday, authorities said.

Police ordered a 21-year-old Sydney man to appear in a Sydney court in October when he will be formally charged, the Australian Federal Police said. Details of the likely charge and penalties have not been made public.

The Motion Picture Association industry group said the investigation involved News Corp. (nyse: NWS - news - people )'s Twentieth Century Fox movie studio, Australian police and the private investigation group Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft.

The federation said the illegal "Simpsons" copy was the first on the Internet and was recorded by a cell phone in a Sydney cinema on July 26 - hours before its release in most of the world. Officials said the movie was uploaded to a video-sharing site based in the United States before it hit U.S. theaters July 27.

"Within 72 hours of making and uploading this unauthorized recording, AFACT had tracked it to other streaming sites and P2P (peer-to-peer) systems, where it had been illegally downloaded in excess of 110,000 times, and in all probability, copied and sold as a pirate DVD all over the world," AFACT executive director Adrianne Pecotic said.

Micheal Duffy in the Sydney Morning Herald:


Cold, hard facts take the heat out of some hot claims

Imagine if the American government agency responsible for temperature records had announced a fortnight ago that it had overestimated annual temperatures since the year 2000. Imagine if, at the time of correcting this error, the hottest year on record was mysteriously altered from 1998 to 1934. Imagine further that if you considered the 10 hottest years on record after these corrections, the hottest decade changed from the 1990s to the 1930s.

Would that change your views on global warming? It should, because climate change theory says increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere raises the temperature. Yet the hot 1930s was hardly a decade of carbon-spewing industrial growth.

Well, all these things have happened. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies calculates the average US temperature figures. It does this by processing data from land measurement sites. Earlier this year a Canadian mathematician named Steve McIntyre approached the institute and pointed out an error in its more recent calculations. Figures since 2000 had been inflated by about 0.15 of a degree celsius.

The institute thanked him and on August 7 quietly changed these figures, and some of the rankings on its list of the hottest years on record, which extends back to 1880. It did this without any public acknowledgment of the changes.

The Goddard Institute is a major supporter of the climate change orthodoxy, and the discovery that it got one of the central data sets of global warming science and debate wrong is embarrassing and disturbing.

Previously, McIntyre, along with the economist Ross McKitrick, had demolished the so-called "hockey stick" chart used in the third report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The graph incorrectly portrayed the history of the Earth's average temperature over the past millennium as essentially unchanged until a steep climb in the 20th century. This made a modest rise in temperature appear far more unusual than it really was.

The two men had difficulty gaining access to the data and methodologies used in creating the hockey stick, a difficulty facing many who want to question the most basic research on which the science of climate change rests. It was McIntyre's continuing interest in such basic questions, pursued publicly at his blog climateaudit.org, that led him to look at the problematic siting of many US land weather stations (see photos of them at the website SurfaceStations.org) and how the data they produce is processed.

Troubled Debris

"All around me, liberal London descended into the radical chick of the ultra-right... I can see now that going along with the fascistic ideas to some degree was a way of subliminally coping with the Islamist threat, or of letting Bertrand Russell's fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed turn anger at the treatment of the Palestinians into sympathy for the Devil. The desire to appease terrorists by agreeing with their prejudices and outrage at oppression in the West Bank and Gaza shepherded the herd of independent minds to the extreme right, and you can't deny that many enjoyed the trip."

Nick Cohen.


They were tired, horrified, the cars kept whizzing past and in his head was the high tide mark of previous troubles, a rim of old bottles and sticks and garbage that marked all the chaos of before. He missed the moments of inspiration, he missed the benighted call when everything seemed of purpose, when the gift was strong. He made mistakes and told people things he should never have revealed. His own lapping consciousness was full of contradictions and uncertainties; and the purposeful gait that had so recently been his had dissolved. There was nothing to look forward to.

The pointlessness of assignments that never ran; stories that were never published; people who were inconvenienced for no reason; for a newspaper proprietor light years away from the concerns on the ground - there were days when going through the motions just didn't make sense anymore.

He wanted relief; release; he fought self-consciousness and fought disgrace. Why, why, had he made these awful mistakes? Why had he said things that could never be undone; revealed vulnerabilities that would only be used against him? He wanted relief, that was most certainly true; and he wanted peace, the same peace and sense of purpose he had known drunk as a skunk in the early hours; caught in intense conversation with strangers; the morning a long way off. There was nothing left but that debris along the shore line; the salt air; voices whipped away in the wind. At the end of the day, absolutely no one cared. The gulls squealed in the glinting air; and his own purpose had dessembled to almost nothing, a fossicker along the beach, like his grandfather, picking up the detritus of other people's lives in order to survive.


THE BIGGER STORY:

The American death toll in Iraq has now hit 3700.

Voice of America:

The Bush administration continues to defend the war in Iraq ahead of a report to Congress next month on progress there. VOA White House Correspondent Scott Stearns reports that, two days after truck bombings that killed at least 400 Iraqis, presidential spokesman Tony Snow defended the war in an address in New York.

With President Bush on his Texas ranch, White House Spokesman Tony Snow went to New York to again outline the administration's plans for success in Iraq.

In a speech to the Hudson Institute think tank, Snow said the debate in Washington should not be about how to leave Iraq but how to win there.

"The establishment of a stable democracy in Iraq would serve as the ultimate refutation of the philosophy, the means, and the methods of the terror movement," he said. "There they will have tried their very best using weaponry, using the instruments of terror, trying to argue throughout the world that they have a better way, and they will have been humiliated because people will have said to them, 'Sorry. You were wrong.'"

Snow said the president's decision to send more troops to Iraq this year is beginning to show signs of progress despite what he acknowledges are considerable political and security challenges.

Truck bombs Tuesday's in two northern villages were the deadliest coordinated attacks in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion more than four years ago. Iraq's interior ministry says at least 400 people were killed in those attacks. The U.S. military command in Baghdad has blamed al-Qaida for the bombings, saying they are meant to undermine a sense of progress that U.S. and Iraqi forces are creating.

The Treachery of Images

"News is something that happens in front of a journalist."
Anon.

"Those who matter don't mind and those who mind don't matter."
Anon.

"Journalism: a young man's sandpit and an old man's quicksand."
Anon Rpt.


This is a picture of the cafe I go to most mornings, A Little On The Side. One of my last remaining addictions is a coffee in the morning; down from the 15 cups a day I used to drink. I'm 55 now and everything has slowed down, including my coffee intake. I always thought when the torment of youth and the struggles of life were through, you would enter some golden paradise of calm, tranquility, wisdom. Instead, all that happens is you get old. So I'm well known at A Little On The Side as the bloke that comes down there for his one real cup of coffee each morning; the rest of the day being decaf. Decaf, how f'n pathetic. But that's what it's all come down to.

Fifteen a day! The doctor repeated in astonishment. That would be irritating a few things. How can you drink 15 a day? It's easy, I replied; I have three double shots before breakfast to wake me up and then I drink it all day, every day. Anyone who doesn't think caffeine is a mood altering chemical just doesn't drink enough of it.

There are considerations, there are deep treacheries; and the sad and normal dross of days and the dreary routines of daily journalism; it's all there. Back down in the public foyer of the stock exchange; interviewing investors; dodging those who just use the place as a shelter from the cold. One bloke has been there every day for 32 years; watching the numbers; and says at least it's kept him out of jail. Others are wealthy, living off their investments; and everything is calm; inside I regroup; wonder where to go; feel sadness that we have not single handedly been able to alter the universe; feel nothing but contempt and disgust for the Howard government and nothing but fear for the alternative; which we're likely to have in just a few months now. The country has turned; and Howard is likely to lose his own seat in the landslide. But as Barry Humphrey's asks: Is Australia really ready for a Prime Minister called Kevin?


THE BIGGER STORY:


Wall Street wilts as investors flee risk

Posted 5 hours 10 minutes ago
Updated 5 hours 12 minutes ago
The Dow Jones industrial average shed 88 points minutes after the market opened [File photo].

The Dow Jones industrial average shed 88 points minutes after the market opened [File photo]. (Reuters: Brendan McDermid)

* Related Story: World leaders urge calm amid fresh market turmoil
* Related Story: Analyst unconcerned about falling Aussie dollar
* Related Story: US housing starts fall to 10-year low
* Related Story: Market sheds $21 billion

US stocks have dropped sharply as fears grew that deteriorating credit market conditions may deal a blow to economic expansion.

That is despite the US Federal Reserve injecting $6 billion into the banking system to ease a credit crunch and another glum report on the housing market.

The Dow Jones industrial average shed 88 points minutes after the market opened.

At 11.45pm AEST, the Australian dollar was trading at 79.03 US cents.


Iraq is an even bigger mess; and Australia is involved!! To our great shame.

BAGHDAD: More than 400 people were slaughtered in four suicide truck bomb attacks in northern Iraq targeting the ancient Yazidi religious sect, a senior Interior Ministry official said on Thursday.

"More than 400 people were killed and the toll is expected to rise," the ministry's director of operations, Major General Abdel Karim Khalaf, told a news agency.

He said more than two tonnes of explosives were packed into the four bombs that ripped through two villages in Nineveh province late Tuesday.

Entire families of Yazidis were wiped out after suicide bombers, which the US military said were from Al-Qaida, blew up the lorries full of explosives in the villages of Al-Qataniyah and Al-Adnaniyah.

Two days after the bombings, rescue teams of hundreds of soldiers, police and civilians were clawing through the devastation of flattened homes, some helping by hand to sift through the rubble looking for the dead.