"Morality, like numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be 'given' in the facts of experience."
C.S. Lewis
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness."
George Washington
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
George Washington
"The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry."
William F. Buckley
"Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things."
Adam Smith
The trouble was, in all his parallel lives he was already dead. That was one reason he felt so disassociated from this one. We were all in love with Richard. That was one of the reasons we propelled ourselves through so much alcohol. He was hopeless the last time he had seen him, pilled to the eyeballs and drinking from morning to night. The get-togethers were hapless and hopeless. He could never bring himself to make the move. The moon was so bright, those full moons. We tried to drag him back to the land of the living. He died a couple of months later, having gone back to that large, comfortable house in North Adelaide, his mother's house.
Someone was trying to get through, there wasn't any doubt about that. But it was all hopeless. He didn't have a clue who he was this time. He couldn't understand why he kept seeing images of gay bars. Why he kept reading victim impact statements. Why tragedy cloaked their every move. Why those glittering baubles in a far off place, the darkened flash of the disco ball, the nights when nothing was going to stop us dancing through to the early light. All the tales were tales of decline, once the abuse started.
The same places of the heart where he had been, in the land where they preyed on the weak. They started fragile, and perhaps that's what made them vulnerable. Were they already drifting from that moment of infinite possibility; where they knew for certainty they could do anything in life and the best times were most certainly ahead. In these infinite times, infinite moments, when a drunken slur told of a different person, serious, with dreams. It wasn't all bravado, but it was the shock of the new. He seemed such an important person, we thought it must be alright, they all said. There did not seem to be any collusion. The tales were too intimate.
We seek to expose these tales for a multitude of purposes, for financial, social, entertainment reasons; and he wasn't sure there was any way back. In all these times, why couldn't things have been different. They knocked on the door of another tragedy. Richard was drinking heavily, and once he got the first dozen or so beers into him in the morning to calm his nerves, talked blindly of all the good times, some of the biggest parties the city had ever seen, mammoth events, and they were there at the absolute heart of it all. Then he'd tell you he was bleeding, the alcohol was tearing his body apart, and talk for a moment of another future. That was the time of the RAT parties, organised by Jac Vidgen, and a thousand other would-bes if they could-bes circling the centre of absolutely everything. There wasn't any doubt he was party central.
Richard was one of Jac's favourite acolytes, not least because he was so damned handsome. He maintained his straightness while surrounding himself with gay men, which of course just increased his allure. Everyone wanted the unattainable. His girlfriends were always equally gorgeous. How could you, how could you have led the dance? Pied piper. Wiliam Burroughs. The musty smell of rotting oranges. Fishboys ejaculating on silver streams. All that tired imagery which seemed so astonishing in the first instance. The scaffolds of the dying, the ejaculating. The heat of Morocco. The terminal love of the exotic. Your desperate heart, your desperate body. He had loved so much, in the aching depths.
All this was too soon, really, to acknowledge. He had always thought the written word was the best way to justice, to satisfy his grievances. He would be the one to write their history. But decades on, these tiny things seem barely worth recording at all; and he couldn't hope for a harder time. The Jesuit thirst for suffering. A cruelty that only the external world was capable of. He couldn't have been more humiliated, there in the night when he had to admit his own passions, the times when their hearts were not so easily crossed. The volume of the music just got louder and louder. The tribal beat devil's beat of complete abandon; in the shafts of light when they were where they wanted to be; off their trees.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://voanews.com/english/2008-05-09-voa57.cfm
Days after a deadly cyclone swept through Burma, governments and aid organizations around the world are ready to help, but Burma's military government has allowed very few aid workers to enter the country. As VOA's Kent Klein reports from Washington, these groups want the international community to put more pressure on Burma to let them in.
In this Burma News Agency photo taken on 7 May 2008, relief supplies from Bangladesh are unloaded at an airport in Yangon, Burma
In this Burma News Agency photo taken on 7 May 2008, relief supplies from Bangladesh are unloaded at an airport in Rangoon, Burma
Burma has agreed to accept some foreign aid, but insists that its own nationals distribute the supplies. Humanitarian groups are growing increasingly frustrated at the military government's refusal to let the aid workers in.
Tony Banbury is the United Nations World Food Program's Asia Director in Bangkok. In a video teleconference with a forum in Washington, Banbury said hours of negotiations with Burmese officials to admit food deliveries went nowhere.
"We prepared a letter, had it hand-delivered. The response back was, 'No, you cannot have any supplies,'" he said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/10/america/NA-POL-US-Elections.php
The Associated Press
Published: May 10, 2008
WASHINGTON: Barack Obama has almost tied Hillary Rodham Clinton in the crucial superdelegate count that she once dominated, with the slew of new support offering one of the clearest signs yet that her Democratic White House bid was nearly over.
After a grueling months-long duel marked by bouts of acrimony and bitterness, the Democratic race entered its final weeks, if not days, with electoral math the deciding factor. Clinton, unlikely to be able to erase Obama's 1,859.5 to 1,698 lead in delegates, needs massive support from those superdelegates — party leaders free to vote as they chose — who have yet to declare their preference.
With Obama also unable to reach the 2,025 delegates needed to win the nomination based solely on elected delegates, that same group offered the key to his securing the party's stamp. The support of nine superdelegates Friday were the latest in a steady trickle since he crushed Clinton in North Carolina and narrowly lost Indiana on Tuesday. Clinton gained two superdelegates Friday.
Obama's quiet, and increasing, confidence that the nomination was his was evident in his campaigning Friday in Oregon, where he focused his criticism on Republican John McCain and largely ignored his Democratic rival.
Insert Source:
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., buzzed into an airplane hangar in Sioux Falls, S.D., this afternoon, where even die-hard supporters such as Bev Austin worried Clinton may no longer have a chance.
Obama leads in delegates, but Clinton continues to push for the nomination.
"I will say a big, fat maybe," Austin said, "A big, fat maybe. I wish."
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., needs to win a mere 36 percent of the total remaining delegates in six remaining primaries to become the Democratic nominee.
Clinton needs to win 70 percent. But, apparently, she is convinced that might happen, which is why she visited three of the six primary locations today.
Murals On A Wall at Albion Park, NSW, Australia.
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