"There were approximately ten domonstrators near a tank. We heard a shot in the distance and started shooting at them. They all died except for one. We left the bodies there... The survivor was hiding behind a column about 150 metres away from us. I pointed at him and waived my weapon to tell him to get away. Half of his foot had been cut off. He went away dragging his foot. We were all laughing and cheering."
Staff Seargent Jimmy Massey
"The occupation of Iraq was the most spectacularly incompetent and corrupt operation carried out by the government of any developed country in many decades, and it turned the high probability of a major insurgency in Iraq after the invasion into the certainty of countrywide violence, despair and anarchy."
Gwynne Dyer, The Mess They Made.
We've just driven back from the shack; the final hour or more caught in the twisting chaos of Sydney's toll ways. At some points its impossible to tell if you're on one, which one you're on, and being cash free it's impossible to ask anyone. I rang a number provided on some bill board and they couldn't tell where I was and whether I had ventured on to a toll way or not. "It sounds like you might have been on the M7 for a short period," some woman said, proceeding to put me through to someone who could "help you with your inquiry". Which of course they didn't. "For this we pay taxes," I ended up snapping, clicking the off button; one of the beauties of mobiles. You don't even have to slam the receiver down anymore. Click. Although whether your annoyance is conveyed as effectively by a click as a slam is no doubt a moot point.
The chaos of the road system; and the expense of it all, is just mind blowing. Our appalling Labor state government long ago cosied up to the developers of all these hated tollways; which have added immeasurably to the cost of getting around Sydney, and the RTA, hand in glove with the developrs, set out deliberately, indeed as part of the contracts, to narrow the public roads to force people on to the tollways. All done by Labor politicians who are supposedly representing the working class. Bob Carr, reading the polls on just how unpopular he was, wandered out of his job, supposedly because he wanted to spend more time with his wife, oh sure, and immediately snapped up a $500,000 position with Macquarie Bank and has lived apparently happily ever after, preening himself at various functions where he won't be confronted about anything and weathering the storm over such infrastructure debacles as the Cross City Tunnel; a multi multi million fiasco which, surely not, but assuredly yes, was one of his credentials for the half a million dollar a year job.
While the rest of us pay and pay and pay; sitting in traffic jams as petrol prices soar; paying taxes at every move. The richer have become richer and the poor have become very angry. The left are entirely in ascendance around the country; but they're the gucci socialist rich, all of them multi millionaires who have benefited enormously from their connections, from the way things are. I sit in this traffic, in this chaos, and despair. My son is trying to get up his 50 hours to get from his L plates as a learner driver to his P plates as a provisional. He turns 17 in seven days, at which point he cna get his own licence. And drive without his parents; as he is so clearly aware. I remember at his age; the brand new glinting holden I drove, the property of a sugar daddy. The planes I would catch out west to his property. The times that we had, not all bad by any means. He was not very demanding. But it was a different life, a much more disturbed life; while he's just a "typical teenager"; well not really, he's very well adjusted, and happy. And excited at normal things, like getting his licence. While I flail at phantoms; and despair at the world.
It will never be over; things will always be lost. The torrents of images will never end; cloaked in sadness and triiumph from a golden but chaotic past; ribbons of despair and over-arching melancholy; and the eternal, ancient bliss that coursed through our bodies; that merged the beauty of the landscape into the universe at large, ripping away the veil to the core of darkness; that appalling beast, the descendants of monkeys; corrupt to the core, politicians of which we should all be ashamed, who have shamed us all with their blatant greed, with the arrogance of their utter dishonesty. We've all been taken for a ride.
THE BIGGER STORY:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says next week's parliamentary apology to the stolen generations will remove a "blight on the nation's soul'' and has the overwhelming support of Australians.
Mr Rudd today announced the government would bring more than 100 members of the stolen generations to Canberra for the national apology, to be delivered in parliament on Wednesday.
Among the guests will be first generation survivors, selected by the Stolen Generations Alliance and the National Sorry Day Committee to best represent their fellow survivors.
Mr Rudd said he believed there was an "overwhelming desire'' among most Australians for the apology, the wording of which is still being finalised just three days out from the historic event.
"It's never going to be a unity ticket, a whole lot of people out there have raised objections and concerns,'' Mr Rudd told the Nine Network.
"But I think this is a blight on the nation's soul, I think we need to act.''
Mr Rudd revealed he yesterday met with an elderly member of the stolen generations and spent about an hour and a half just listening to her story.
"I wanted to do that before sitting down and framing my own speech to the parliament this week,'' he said.
"I wanted to speak directly to someone who had been through those experiences, in her case in the early 1930s, when as a young child she was taken, stolen, from her family and her community.''
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