Shellharbour, NSW, Australia.
'The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism…. [but] to write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.' ––George Orwell
'Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.' ––Doris Lessing.
We cry for the past, for figures flapping in the street, for unrealised dreams and unfinished projects, for aching bones and an all pervading sense of loss. That was all that was left. His crab like fingers moved across the keyboard. "I burnt out long ago, they broke my heart years ago," he said, and meant it. "Now I just get through the days as best I can." It was all too true, too cruel, the world they battered against now, the closed walls of academic debate, the elegant comforts and self congratulations of the chattering classes. They had moved into positions of power, and were entirely unrepentant. They thought they knew everything.
Every man over 40's grumpy, including Mick, Polly said. It's true what they say, grumpy old men. He looked back at her in mild disbelief. The world was full of women having a fabulous time while the men worked themselves into an early grave. They soared, they flocked, they scribbled earnestly in cafes, living some Parisian dream, their crinkled skin not adding the character they thought it did. They were all the same to him, mad, earnest, thinking the same thoughts despite their personal isolation. What could it be? Why this eternal contempt? Why did his neck hurt so much?
So much was unresolved. "He should be at home with his mother," a voice cut through the crowd, as he swayed drunkenly, far too young to be so far drunk. And now the world had shifted on its axis and he was an old pariah; not sitting on a bar stool, but sober, cold, out-of-place. His head boomed and the disconnected city threw up a ceaseless stream of images, the cars flowing over Anzac Bridge at dusk, the city lights on the horizon, the roar of trucks, the flash of a good looking face. His own pit devil ate away, and he crawled back into his cave. There was no way to survive out there. These times were too cruel to adopt observer status.
The cruelty lay in a quiet, out of sight despair, as home owners lost their homes, as sherrifs showed up to toss people on to the street, as the prosperity contracted and hard working people saw their dreams battered into dust. We were ruled by Gucci socialists, millionaires all, every last one of them, while everyone else started their working day in the cold pre-dawn dark, the city's pace quickening long before the sun. It wasn't possible anymore. It wasn't fair anymore. The dream of home ownership was drifting away; and we slipped closer and closer to chaos.
$4,000 a month one family was paying in mortgage, who we watched on the television program Today Tonight being evicted from their home after the bloke lost his job. The sherrifs were changing their locks. The banks, the lenders, couldn't have cared less. They got their money whichever way. And all the time the prices went up and up. And time crept through their heartbreak, their noble dreams, their messy, smelly, screaming, laughing, cuddling lives. The father was too ashamed to be filmed. We danced with the devil so long ago; but through it all he had maintained a fantasy about the nobility of the common man, a belief in some greater good.
All was shattered, all was brutalised, by the changing circumstance of a country which had lost its soul, besieged by foreigners and its core cut to ribbons; stomped on by government and circumstance. People accepted now that the state government was infinitely corrupt, utterly incompetent, that these people served themselves not us, that the Labor Party could not survive without a steady stream of donations from developers, that we had an Independent Commission Against Corruption which was refusing to investigate the relationships between developers and government ministers, that in the end they would all get away with it.
HIs romatic visions of an Amsterdam by the sea, a bohomenian paradise set on the Pacific, dated from so long ago it was hard to see even the vestiges of what he was talking about. He had lost all hope, there wasn't any doubt about that. He was fearful that sooner or later he would have to move, a difficult project with two kids in tow. And he hoped against hope that nothing would happen, that his world would not collide and collapse, that God would look after him despite his previous desertions, that he wouldn't continue to be hapless and hopeless, a lost crushed soul facing one ignominy after another.
He wanted to be free. He wanted to walk tall, proud, confident, but the bank account didn't match and the past he had clung to meant nothing to anyone anymore. The world was a vastly more complex place than the one he had been born into. The population had quadrupled, bringing with it welcome elegance and diversity, but also a grasping, ungracious, angry greed that marred the surface traffic, that became people's souls, angry, fighting, yelling at each other, the peaceful bohemian place of causal adventure long gone. Elegant minimalist leather and chrome cafes lined streets where there had been nothing but scruffs; expensive apartments now replaced the crumbling terraces he had known, their balconies jostling for the million dollar view that hadn't been worth a thing when he was a kid; in the days when he was the only one standing there, looking out across the brilliant depths of colour, the blues, the greens, the spread of houses to the city skyline beyond. He had missed the march, and still stood on the outside, decades later.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23464860-29277,00.html
Rudd to meet US presidential hopefuls
By Sandra O'Malley
April 01, 2008 03:53am
Article from: AAP
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PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd will meet Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton today, vowing that Australia and the United States will have a strong alliance no matter who is in the White House.
He will meet Republican nominee John McCain tomorrow, but has had to settle for a lengthy telephone conversation with Democrat frontrunner Barack Obama, who is campaigning in Pennsylvania.
After his successful meeting with US President George W Bush last week, Mr Rudd's next step will be to lay the foundation for a fruitful relationship with the two men and the woman who would-be president.
"Whoever wins this next election in the United States, Australia stands as a long term partner with America,'' he said.
"Whether it is a Republican or a Democrat, we are partners with this country, long term future, whoever forms the next administration in Washington.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h5Z6bJwtN_roGSIUQiQnfbf2NkhgD8VOHS3O0
China Arrests Suspects in Tibetan Riots
By TINI TRAN – 46 minutes ago
BEIJING (AP) — China lashed out at the Dalai Lama on Monday, accusing him of being a hypocrite who has deceived the west about his political agenda as authorities announced they had detained suspects in four deadly arson cases in Tibet.
Jiang Zaiping, the vice chief of the Public Security Bureau in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, said investigators have taken into custody suspects responsible for arson attacks on three shops — including a clothing outlet where five young women were burned to death — and one in nearby Dagze county, the Tibet Daily newspaper reported Monday.
The fires killed a total of 12 people, state media has reported.
Authorities have taken 414 suspects into custody in connection with the anti-government riots, Jiang was quoted as saying. Another 298 people have turned themselves in, he said.
The Tibetan regional government also announced that the families of two of the women killed were given compensation of $28,170, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
It did not say how many suspects were involved in the four arson cases or give any other details.
An official who answered the telephone at the Lhasa Public Security Bureau said no senior officials were available to give details. He refused to give his name. It was unclear how many suspects had been directly involved in the four arson cases.
The government has promised to give the same amount of compensation to the families of 18 civilians killed. China's total number of deaths from the riots also includes one policeman and three people who died jumping through windows to escape arrest. Tibet's government-in-exile has said that 140 Tibetans were killed during the protests.
The kids with their grandmother, Oak Flats, NSW, Australia.
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