"At root PC is an attempt to bring about a political goal by pretending that it is already a fait accompli - the ultimate elision of 'ought' and 'is'. It involves lying about what pertains in the present in order to bring about what is supposed to be inevitable... A liberal heresy whereby an argument is put forward not for its rationality but for its appeal to emotion (especially the feeling of virtue of those making the argument); it's at its strongest when this involves the suppression of any opionion that is at odds with PC. In a nutshell; it's the 'dictatorship of virtue'. This would be bad enough if the virtue was real, but...the supposed virtue PC promotes is itself far worse than a vice. The picture PC paints of disadvantage and oppression is not merely false; but regarding the sub-group that PC most despises (men) it's the diametric opposite of the reality."
Steve Moxon.
There were glimpses in the corners of other lives, the what ifs, the sad melodramas that encroached upon our own sanity; the shifting sands of what was in the end all too short a life. Suddenly they were old. We visited my uncle Barry last night; my mother's brother, the one member of my mother's family who had done well in life. Multi-millionaire was the term, or used to be. His three story house with its white arches and balconies overlooking a bend in the Georges River, the giant gums reaching up to the swimming pool perched on the side of the cliff; this by now almost old fashioned wealth in sharp contrast to Redfern where we live. I picked my brother, visiting form America, up from the Four Seasons Hotel at the bottom of George Street, overlooking Circular Quay. In the eighties, when it was first built, considered Sydney's best hotel. The status didn't hold. We craved darkness and we could see the gnomes hiding under the overpasses; sleeping in the sides of building, the smell of urine strong.
I picked him up and we spent the day, which I had off from work, looking over Sydney university, where he studied. I gave a lecture here, he said, standing in one empty lecture hall, it's much smaller than I remember. I had just come back from Adelaide and was meant to encourage them. We found an old lab attendant, sitting quietly in his alcove, preparing for the onslaught of students next month. They swapped notes on who was around back in the eighties; the man with the high voice who always wore his academic robes, a cloud of chalk coming off him if you went near. People do go on to have careers from here, my brother said. I've made tens of millions of dollars. My daughter, who had taken time out from school for the day to be with her cousin from America, as she boasted on the phone to a friend, pricked up her ears. Like all girls her age, she's 15, she wants to be rich and famous but doesn't quite know how to achieve it. She'll get there, she's a very determined miss.
After lunch at the pub, the cheapest place for a decent feed around these parts, and a trip to the bottle shop to get something to take for the evening, even though most of us don't drink anymore, just so as not to show up empty handed, we drove out to pick up my son from school. The kids were left back at my house playing on the computer, my 15-year-old daughter and his 14-year-old son. And then, as we waited in the carpark for school to end, he told me the problems he was having with his son, one of the main reasons behind the trip. His smarks have plummetted. He's been hanging around with a bad crowd. He's been smoking dope. He thinks we're all a bunch of fuddy duddys and we don't understand. We're just straight and useless. I don't know if you've got any advice, he asked.
There aren't any happy endings, I said. What's clear now, which wasn't in my day, was the parabolic arc of addiction, the rise and the fall, the path from intitial exultation to the plateau, to the final slide into jails, institutions and death. I've never met anyone who knows so many dead people, someone said to me recently, and I relayed this to him. We all thought we were going to change the world, every puff was a step towards revolution, and instead the world changed us. And so many of my friends died. So many. Fourteen is young to be starting out; but typical for an addict or alcholic. It's quite possible he has the alcoholic gene, I said. At least one of our grandfathers was alcoholic. He said he was worried about the meth, speed, which was also apparently at the school. They age ten years in a matter of months, I said, we see them all the time around where I work. The new stuff, the ice, shaboo in Thailand, I don't know what they call it in America, the new stuff drives them crazy real fast. Then there will be trouble with the law. And everything will slide.
He's grown up with everything, there's no shortage of anything at our house, possessions. His mother wants to move the whole family to Austin, Texas, to get away from it all. But I went for a walk down the music section, the nightclubs, and there are probably drugs everywhere there, too. Everywhere, I confirmed. There's no point doing geographicals. He'll find it if he wants to. I wish he could hear this conversation, he said, just put a tape on what you've been saying for the last ten minutes and play it to him. Maybe the kind old souls in AA or NA could help him, or at least show him the future. There's twelve step programs for young people now; typically they're the ones that bottom out early, 17, 18, 19, and go on to get their lives back together. Is there any way to halt the slide, to step off the path before it kills you?
There they were, the dark gnomes, hiding in the shade of buildings, a different species of man. They may once have been like normal men, many of them had, but the cool darkness that had gripped our sliding souls, the flimsy link with any normal life path, the sad sad look that grips their faces, a far off gaze, that haunted look, the tears rolling spontaneously down their cheeks as they take another swig, everything that had happened in the tumult of their lives, the simple inability to say no as they slid into alcoholism and addiction, a normal happy life a far off thing they could never reach, these crippling impacts which left them diseased sub-humans in the shadows; there wasn't any way to reach out. It's all in front of you, he thought, catching that sad little look for a fleeting second; it's all in front of you and you're unlikely to survive. Few of us do. I don't know what to say to you, I don't know how to transmit any message; except to say what you cannot see, that those people begging for money, in their ragged clothes and smelling of urine, they were once exactly like you: a young boy from a nice family, with the whole world in front of them. If only you hadn't chosen the path to derelection and despair, to a chaotic and unhappy life; or if only the path hadn't chosen you.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSB4868
Feb 18 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber targeting a foreign military convoy in Afghanistan killed 37 civilians in an attack near the Pakistan border on Monday, the interior ministry said.
Some 11,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan in the last 18 months.
Here is a chronology of major bomb attacks mounted by suspected Taliban or allied militants in Afghanistan since 2002:
Sept. 5, 2002 - A car bomb explodes near Kabul's Information Ministry killing at least 26 and injuring 150 in the worst bombing since the Western-supported government came to power.
June 13, 2005 - A suicide bomber wearing a police uniform kills 20 people, including a police chief, in an attack on a mosque in the southern city of Kandahar, as mourners gathered to pay respects to an assassinated anti-Taliban cleric.
Jan. 17, 2006 - Taliban suicide bombers kill at least 20 people in the town of Spin Boldak, bordering Pakistan.
Aug. 3, 2006 - A suicide car bomb attack aimed at a convoy of NATO troops in Kandahar kills at least 21 people.
June 17, 2007 - A Taliban suicide bomber blows up a police bus in Kabul killing 24 and wounding dozens.
Sept. 29, 2007 - A suicide bomb attack on an army bus kills 28 Afghan troops and two civilians in Kabul.
Nov. 6, 2007 - More than 70 people, including at least five Afghan lawmakers and many school children, die in a suicide raid and suspected gunfire by police in the northern town of Baghlan. The Taliban insurgents said they were not behind it.
Feb. 17, 2008 - A suicide bomber kills more than 100 people in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar. The Taliban distanced themselves from this attack.
Feb. 18, 2008 - A suicide bomber targeting a foreign military convoy kills 37 civilians in an attack near the Pakistan border.
Source: Reuters; (Writing by Nagesh Narayana)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/world/asia/19pstan.html?ref=world
LAHORE, Pakistan — Fearful of violence and deterred by confusion at polling stations, Pakistanis voted Monday in parliamentary elections that may fail to produce clear winners and could result in protracted post-election political skirmishing.
A number of clashes among polling officials and voters resulted in 10 people killed and 70 injured, according to Pakistani television channels.
Voter turnout was low; in the North-West Frontier Province, which abuts the lawless tribal areas, turnout was only 20 percent, according to election officials. In Peshawar, the provincial capital, Islamic militants prevented many women from voting. Election officials estimated that only 523 of 6,431 registered female voters at six polling stations cast ballots.
In Lahore, the political capital of Punjab province, lines were thin, and many voters complained they could not find their names on the voting lists.
But as the polls closed at 5 p.m. local time, election officials said that nationwide voting had been relatively calm compared with past elections.
Me and Joyce down at Broadway.
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