Murals in Redfern, Sydney, Australia.
This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we -- we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything.
Doris Lessing.
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
Bertrand Russell
Even then, in the massive dark halls, he didn't know how to proceed. Things had been easier before he had been plugged in, had become virtually clairvoyant. He couldn't imagine what life would be like not knowing so many things. He knew what his neighbours were doing. He could feel the pressure of the thousands of lives around him. The stirrings in their sleep, the smells, the arguments, the warmth as they coupled and slept, embraced, made breakfast.
The walls divided them into compartments, thousands, ultimately millions of them. He soared above them all. He had lost control long ago. The flood of images was impossible even to order. He wanted immunity, he wanted purpose, he wanted to fly above the deluge and be able to say: this has happened to me for a higher purpose, I am ready, willing and able. Instead he turned the tap on, went about the physical routines of his own life, becoming increasingly unhinged. What was cruel was the clairvoyance: he knew so much, but could not understand why.
Finally he relented and turned his mobile phone back on as he walked back to the office. The messages pinged as they arrived on the screen. He was trapped, totally trapped. The children meant he couldn't just walk away. They were getting older, but not old enough for abandonment. Teenagers could think of little else but themselves and the latest song. He had never meant to become so austere. He had never meant to be so confounded, to become this person he could no longer understand.
In the sequence; as he replayed the sequence through his brain, the face he recognised but couldn't place, the computer like string of images playing like a video-ticker on the front of his brain, the sense of total disruption, the filing system groaning under the weight. One foot went in front of the other, as the brain kept up its strange activity; he could see the asphalt at his feet, the craps of paper and dust, the garbage that had collected in corners. And then he could see every thing else.
By the time he was back to the office he was exhausted. He ha passed the giant car parks, the rewired skyscrapers, the poorer buildings at the wrong end of town, the central train station, still run down despite decades of promises by state governments and massive advances everywhere else. He could feel her, his tormentor, his boss, in the floors above him. Her head was full of shouted thoughts, including some concerning him, those tinged with complete contempt. He was shocked by the level of disregard she had for him.
Somewhere else, he saw a walrus dive into the sea, a magic moment recorded by a film crew, their excited thoughts transmitting to him, even here in this dark fiasco. Finally, he could almost hear the whirring as the images coalesced, the face lined up with another face, at a meeting long ago, deep in suburbia. Finally a name popped up, Darren Stewart, and finally he arrived at the thought, the images, the recording of what he had said. He had been very distressed. His wife had walked out, taking the children. It was a common story, no different to thousands of others, but this man's distress, and his anger with the system, had been intense.
Other people had tried to calm him, to talk him around in to some sort of acceptance, compliance, that's the way things are. But he wasn't having any of it. Some sort of direct action had to be taken. They couldn't just take your children and be gone like that, expecting you to work your butt off in slavery so they could live happily ever after. The implanting project hadn't got this far out. He remembered being shocked by the rawness of the emotion, the savagery of this one man's loss.
He was back on the floor and his boss was screaming at him, where have you been? she shouted. Just walking around the block, thinking, he replied, surly. You're phone's been off. Sorry about that, it was an accident. She looked at him in disbelief and vicious contempt, the look meant to convey that his punishment could wait, but punishment there would be. There's been another explosion at the central social planning offices, get up there now, she said. Now! Here's your cab charges, a photographer's already on the way. There's no one else available, so get up there now.
He grabbed his reporter's pad and headed for the door. He already knew there had been another explosion, he had been there when it happened. He replayed the crowd scenes in his head, particularly watching the actions of a Mr Darren Stewart. He couldn't see how he would have got past the police guards. And then in the corner of his consciousness, in what had been the corner of his eye sight, he saw him slipping under the crime scene tape and falling in lock-step with a group of suited officials; so fast no one had noticed.
The officials had been too busy to question his presence. And his minds eye watched as the group headed towards the elaborate, at that point undamaged facade of the foyer. And then disappeared inside. Shortly afterwards, less than five minutes, he saw him move purposefully back out of the building, no group of officials protecting him now, and saw in astonishment how he strode purposefully pass the knotted groups of police and security guards, federal, state, local, special forces, not one of them looked up or moved to ask him who he was.
And then he merged back into the crowd, joined his friends, and it was at that point that he had first consciously seen him, and knew in one sharp instant that there were other images in his brain that connected this man to something, he didn't know what. Some sort of rebellion, some sort of underground movement, some group that boldly, futilely, questioned the way things were and the way the country was going. And had been angry enough to do something about it; even something this extreme. Once again he approached the scene, knowing that Stewart had long escaped. Once again he was enveloped by chaos, the sirens, the shouts, the smell of smoke, the senseless, frightened movements of the crowd.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7329965.stm
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been criticised by opponents after greeting US President George W Bush with a playful military-style salute.
Footage of Mr Rudd meeting Mr Bush at a Nato gathering in Romania has been played repeatedly in Australia.
One broadcaster suggested Mr Rudd was acting like Mr Bush's "deputy sheriff" while political opponents described the gesture as "unbecoming".
Mr Rudd laughed off the criticism, saying the salute was a joke.
"I was just saying 'hi' to the president of the United States," Mr Rudd told reporters.
But his political foes were less amused, with the Liberal Party's Brendan Nelson leading the criticism.
"Mr Rudd appears to conduct himself in one manner when he thinks the television is upon him and another when it is not," the opposition leader said.
Greens' leader Bob Brown also joined in, saying: "We are not the 51st state of the USA and Mr Rudd's salute carried a subservient connotation many Australians won't like."
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23486034-661,00.html
FOR Kevin Rudd, it was a friendly salute but to others an insulting gesture or a sign Australia was kowtowing to the world's super-power.
However, the Prime Minister's theatrical wave to US President George W. Bush has shifted attention from any achievements at the NATO summit in Bucharest.
Mr Rudd was standing on his own when he saw President Bush, saluted and walked across the room to greet him.
"I went over and had a chat," Mr Rudd said.
He said he had made the friendly gesture because the pair had been talking in the US only days beforehand.
"It was just a joke," Mr Rudd explained to reporters.
"I was just saying 'hi' to the President of the United States -- I was just with him the other day."
KEVIN Rudd has warned the leaders of NATO that Australia was determined to see the mission through in Afghanistan but the Government was not prepared to sign a blank cheque.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pm-wants-results-for-62m-to-nato/2008/04/04/1207249460486.html
The Prime Minister demanded NATO start setting performance benchmarks for success and ways to measure them as he pledged another $62 million over two years for training police, clearing landmines and leasing helicopters for humanitarian work.
The Europeans headed off a crisis among the allies by promising a modest increase in troops, but Mr Rudd got nowhere with his earlier demand, that the $4 billion annual opium trade be further curtailed.
Mr Rudd went into yesterday's NATO summit in Bucharest's giant monument to the communist era, the Palace of the Parliament, suggesting an aggressive increase in the destruction of opium crops and subsidies for farmers if necessary.
It was not adopted, so a frustrated Mr Rudd demanded a measurement of the success or not of the current crop eradication program which is monitored by satellite.
"If not, I will have something further to say on that," he said. "It surprised me to some respect that that has not been a performance indicator to date."
Murals in Redfern, Sydney, Australia.
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