A LITTLE POEM:
We drank for happiness and became unhappy.
We drank for joy and became miserable.
We drank to be outgoing and became self-centered.
We drank for sociability and became argumentative.
We drank for sophistication and became crude and obnoxious.
We drank for friendship and made enemies.
We drank for sleep and awakened without rest.
We drank for strength and felt weak.
We drank for sex drive and lost our potency.
We drank for relaxation and got the shakes.
We drank for confidence and became uncertain.
We drank for courage and became afraid.
We drank for warmth and lost our cool.
We drank for coolness and lost our warmth.
We drank for freedom and became slaves.
We drank for power and became powerless.
We drank to soften sorrow and wallowed in self-pity.
We drank to stimulate thought and blacked out.
We drank medicinally and acquired health problems.
We drank because the job called for it and lost the job.
We drank to make conversation and became slurred in speech.
We drank to stimulate thought and blacked out.
We drank to feel heavenly and knew hell.
We drank to forget and were haunted.
We drank to erase problems and saw them multiply.
We drank to cope with life and invited death.
So now, we don't drink.
If it was all there could be, an ancient gripe, rustling in the bushes long ago, a mere fleck on an ancient land. He could muster strength. He could gather himself into one in order to face the whole. He could tell you everything and end up being nothing. He could forsake you and be gathered up for a higher life. He could move through splintered fissures in the sky; and awake. Oh Lord have mercy on my soul; they gasped. They didn't want to be free because freedom was terrifying; it cast you back amongst your selves and left you responsible for your own torture. These days were changing, but not fast enough.
Just as The History of the Machine Age had made him world famous; so too The History of Computer Threat received a great deal of attention. He was being interviewed even before it was finished. He hadn't expected to recount his own journey to the core; indeed he had never even expected to survive it. Wiped ten times, he had not been wiped since; and slowly found his faculties coming back. They were mundane, led by fools. The country's governance had lurched from bad to worse, from pseudo-conservative to rabid left. There are more than a 100 new committees and organisations, including the Board For Social Inclusion, which could mean anything and do anything. It is entirely communistic.
The gloss has fallen off Rudd in six months, and the long and astonishing honeymoon that he has had is coming to an end. If Howard hadn't been so bloody hopeless, splashing money everywhere and offending everybody, bleeding the ordinary worker dry and recycling billions of dollars into the pockets of those he chose, the mountainous divide, the insane levels of paper work, the bureaucrats who all thought they knew better. The country is going down the tube, most old people gristle. We betrayed those who went to war. We sold the farm. We flogged off our minerals and wasted the proceeds. We sheltered in alcoves and the tide of discontent passed by. It wasn't his world anymore.
If those lingering memories meant anything, he had to make sense of the broader framework, and that was becoming increasingly impossible. The ineptitude of the government was mind boggling. Howard was hopeless, and the present mob are starting to look even more hopeless. And there had been so much hope. After 11 years of a conservative government, and the drearily persistent personality of the leader, stale, old, smelling of dentures and age, furrowed, bushy little eyebrows migrating across old skin, a persistent little quack in his voice; and he went from rock star to skid mark in a matter of months; from able administrator to idiot of the first order almost, it seemed, overnight.
In the old days, at the height of it all, Howard was greeted like a rock star wherever he went. The Howard haters, the doctrinaire left who couldn't bear to be disagreed with and longed for power, could never believe it. But it was true, more than true. The disabled athletes came back from the disabled Olympics. No one could have cared less, certainly not the media. But to the ones who were returning, the fact that they were being met by the Prime Minister was exciting indeed. They wore the famous Australian colours, the green and gold, and he said how excited he got, every time he saw the colours.
The first one through the barriers, an intellectually disabled man, virtually jumped into his arms. Howard, almost knocked over in the rush, beamed good-naturedly. In the long wait for the athletes, for the plane had been delayed, he signed an autograph for my children, who I had taken to the airport because it was too early to take them to school. The kids took the autograph to school, where they proudly showed their teachers the autograph from the Prime Minister. But the left wing teachers hated Howard, and it is unlikely an autograph from their nemesis would have provoked much enthusiasm.
But these were the good sides of Howard. The things he did that no one saw, the mundane, almost suburban kindnesses, unassuming, almost humble. And then something happened and everything went wrong. He spouted at endless press conferences and we knew he had lost the plot; mini announcements, money splashed everywhere, the cost, the astonishing cost of everything. Good to meet you, glad to meet you, good to meet you, he kept repeating on the last campaign trail, shaking hands and shaking hands, his simpering little eyes betraying defeat. It had all gone mad, all was lost, and with him, although nothing much can be seen now through the prevailing orthodoxies of the left, with him went the hope of the conservatives; who almost to a man are annoyed at the insane things he did, the money and opportunity he squandered, the waste, the terrible waste, of an historic opportunity to actually fix the country. Now the left has formed a smothering blanket from coast to coast, a wall of incompetent governments, and it has all gone mad.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23775288-662,00.html
THE Rudd Government ignored the advice of four government departments that its much-vaunted FuelWatch scheme could leave motorists worse off.
Bureaucrats said the scheme could push up petrol prices, increase costs for small business and disadvantage independent service station operators.
The revelation came as petrol hit a new high of 164.9c in Melbourne yesterday.
And Qantas revealed soaring fuel costs have forced it to cancel some domestic flights and alter international routes.
A leaked Cabinet document revealed that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was warned by his own department that FuelWatch could lead to "a small overall price increase" in the pump price.
Three other departments -- finance, resources, and energy and industry -- also argued against the scheme.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7424302.stm
The Himalayan nation of Nepal has become the world's newest republic, ending 240 years of monarchy.
A constituent assembly meeting in the capital, Kathmandu, overwhelmingly voted to abolish royal rule.
The Maoists, who emerged as the largest party in last month's elections, were committed to ousting King Gyanendra and creating a republic.
They entered politics in 2006, after signing a peace agreement that ended a decade-long insurgency.
The approved proposal states that Nepal is "an independent, indivisible, sovereign, secular and an inclusive democratic republic nation".
Only four members of the 601-seat assembly opposed the change.
Royal privileges "will automatically come to an end", the declaration says.
It also states that the king's main palace must be vacated within a fortnight, to be transformed into a museum.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/muslims-warn-of-gift-to-extremists/2008/05/28/1211654124109.html
CAMDEN Council's decision to block an Islamic school could force Islamic education underground, where "extreme imams" could reach children without supervision or monitoring, the president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Ikebal Patel, has warned.
Muslim schools should be encouraged so that education could be overseen by the State Government, he said.
"Or Muslim children will be given their religious education in backyards and garages by … teachers whose credentials no one could vet," he said. "You may have some very extreme imams or religious teachers getting through to the children."
The school's developers, the Quranic Society, said it would appeal in the Land and Environment Court against Monday's decision to reject it on planning and environmental grounds.
The project's consultant, the former Sydney lord mayor Jeremy Bingham, said the rejection was tainted by politics and accused the council of pandering to ill-informed residents.
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