Virulent Warning

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
- Nora Ephron

When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half.
- Gracie Allen


"The savage looting that swept Baghdad after the fall of Saddam was a measure of how angry and alienated working-class Shias were: totally impoverished, jobless, and alternately patronised and neglected by the Shia political and religious establishment. They didn't trust the religious hierarchy in Najaf, they didn't trust the exiles coming back to rebuild the Shia religious parties, and they certainly didn't trust the Americans."
The Mess They Made, Gwynne Dyer.

The remnants of the last government hung over us like a shroud; we were caught exposed in instances of our own making. My brother is now staying down with our mother for a couple of days, jamming everything they can into a fleeting visit. A jam packed life. It would be great if you could come over. He laughed; ideas falling over each other in his brimming brain. Those dark images of deteriorated drunks skulking in the cities corners kept clutching at his eyeballs; as if assaulting him with memory, confronted by what could have been. It was always the dark side that clawed away at him; the wealthy houses, the other side, was now so remote a possibility they did not even offer a reproach. He resented the rich; that was it. Flat, unproductive emotions, if they could even be called that. He leapt back through time to the origins; confused it with Origin in Star Trek, Ian woke up sweating from a nightmare that his son had died; his subconscious clear that his boy was in danger. Beware. They are watching. The world closing in; those haunted fragments flailing in a dank wind.

We were taught that the world was going to end in 1972, then when that didn't happen, oops, we got it wrong, just slightly, that it would end later in the 1970s. No wonder he had grown up with a sense of calamity; that all was going to end. That he would never grow old. That there was no point planning for the future, because it would be so different, so harsh, that the end time of judgement was just around the corner. Prepare to meet your maker, literally. I was crushed by this overwhelming sense of doom. We stored bottles of water in the cupboard, waiting for disaster to strike. We urged control and got chaos, an absolute abandonment. He'd get that click in his head, beyond which there was no memory and a good time was had by all. Bourbon and coke; the black drink. And the night would end in chaos, in someone's bed, somewhere.

Not much comforted him for years, decades to be truthful. Signposts were everywhere and he paid heed to not one. There were warning messages lining each side of the highway and he couldn't read any of them; the words indistinct, his eyes playing up. Ahead he could see the giant open floor, his feet crunching on the broken glass, the discarded syringes. Above the vacant sky. He kept moving forward, bnt even here, he wasn't sure why. His life had been so shrouded, so full of misery, his heart cloaked, his spirit exhausted, clutcing his sense of calamity, impending doom, the certainty of disaster, moving step by step as if nothing could stop him, compelled, forced, one step at a time, towards the light.

These chimaeras hasd dominated his life; gloom lasden but stoic, doom laden but heroic. He had never expected to live long enough for his body to fail him. He had been crunching through the broken glass, sadly determined to make it through this time, when he spotted a waterfall of colour cascading from one of the low, featureless clouds. He headed towards it automatically, fascinated by this outbreak of activity on a featureless plain. His mood shifted into exultation, step by step, as he moved towards it. Flashes of coloured light streaked past him on either side; and as he moved closer he could hear the noise from the torrent of light. He could see the portals that were opening up inside it; each leading to a happier future. He could feel the forces behind and the lures in front. He was frightened, always frightened, but still he moved forward. He thought he caught glimpses of other souls, just beyond eye's reach; and he was increasingly scared witless.

If only we had known there were these ways out, if only we hadn't wasted so many years. If only the alternatives had presented themselves earlier, before his bones began to creak. Step into the light, a cornball voice said, and he laughed as he walked directly into the waterfall of colour and streaming light; and saw the portal open up into a different, happier life. Almost unconsciously, barely thinking at all, he crossed over into a solid room, green fields and open sky, his memory of how he got here being deliberately erased. He woke up startled, looked up through freshly innocent eyes, smiled in gratitude at having been saved from so much self-imposed tragedy. And reached out a hand in a new world, laughing with delight. Come with me, a new voice said, you will be happy.


THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23244904-662,00.html

The farce of our state government continues:

A CLOSE friend of NSW Government minister Joe Tripodi who is facing corruption allegations before the ICAC was given a $200,000 a year job in the minister's department just four weeks ago, despite a cloud hanging over his character for the past 18 months.

Joe Scimone, a senior NSW ALP official, is facing allegations that last year he paid $30,000 to conmen posing as ICAC officers offering to destroy evidence against him.

A delegate to the ALP National Conference in April last year, Mr Scimone was appointed to a senior public service job managing property within NSW Maritime on January 14 this year.

He is believed to have been under investigation for more than a year. Mr Tripodi yesterday admitted that Mr Scimone, who narrowly missed out on being selected as the federal Labor candidate for Cunningham in 2002, was a friend whom he had known for a long time.

He denied he knew of the allegations against Mr Scimone when he was appointed as an executive director of NSW Maritime's property division.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23243426-662,00.html


THE Coalition has performed a stunning about-face on Australian Workplace Agreements, ending its support for the controversial Howard-era contracts.

Opposition MPs yesterday agreed to pass legislation to axe AWAs in the House of Representatives, dumping the last vestige of WorkChoices from Coalition policy.

The move represents a humiliating backdown for Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson and his deputy, Julie Bishop, who wanted to keep AWAs.

The capitulation came as Dr Nelson made history with a record-low 9 per cent approval rating in the latest Newspoll. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd enjoyed a record-high 70 per cent rating as preferred PM.

Ms Bishop, the workplace relations spokeswoman, had argued hard, with Dr Nelson's backing, for the Coalition to retain support for AWAs, but colleagues rolled them.

Mr Rudd had threatened a double dissolution election if the Opposition blocked Labor's dismantling of WorkChoices, but Ms Bishop said this had not influenced the decision.

"That is irrelevant to our considerations," she said.



Sam with his friends Bill and Tom