Benediction
When by decree of the almighty powers,
The Poet walks the world's wearisome sod,
His mother, blasphemous and fearful, cowers,
Clenching her fist against a pitying God:
— "Ah, would whole knots of vipers were my spawn
Rather than this woeful abomination!
Cursed be the sweet swift night and evil dawn
Wherein my womb conceived my expiation!
Since of all women Thou hast chosen me
To be my sorry husband's shame of shames,
Since I may not toss this monstrosity
Like an old billet-doux into the flames,
Thy heavy hatred I shall vomit back
On the damned tool of your malevolence,
Twisting this wretched tree until it crack,
Never to sprout in buds of pestilence!"
Thus she gulps down the froth of her despair,
Nor knowing the eternal paradigms,
Sinks deep into Gehenna to prepare,
Herself, the pyre set for a mother's crimes.
Yet guarded by an unseen Angel's favors,
The outcast child is fired by radiant suns,
In all he eats and all he drinks he savors
Ambrosial gifts and nectared benisons,
He sports with winds, he talks with clouds, he keeps
Singing along the road to Calvary,
While the bright Angel in his traces weeps,
Beholding him as free as birds are free.
All those whom he would love watch him with fear,
Or else, made bold by his serenity,
Wring groans from him that float sweet on the ear
Making him touchstone of their cruelty.
With his due bread and wine, hypocrites, they,
Mix ashes and fat gobs of spittle; grim,
What he has touched, these humbugs cast away,
Deeming it guilty but to follow him.
His wife cries in the market place: "Behold
Since he adores me, I am fair, and fain,
As idols did, and images of old,
To be regilded and adored again.
I shall be drunk with spikenard, incense, myrrh,
With genuflections, viands and wine to see
If, as a glad usurper, I may stir
His heart to pay God's homages to me!
Tired of these impious japes and of their butt,
My strong lithe hand's caress with subtle art
And my sharp nails like harpy claws shall cut
A mortal path straight to his quivering heart.
That heart which flutters like a fledgling bird,
I shall tear, bleeding, from his breast, to pitch
It blandly in the dust without a word
To slake the hunger of my favorite bitch."
To Heaven where he spies a splendent throne,
Serene, the Poet lifts rapt arms; and bright
Luminous thoughts that shine through him alone
Conceal the furious rabble from his sight:
— "Blessèd, O God, who send woe for a cure,
A balm divine for our impurities,
Of essences the noblest and most pure
To school the strong for holy ecstasies!
I know the Poet has his place above
Amid God's saintly hosts and congregations,
Guest at the everlasting banquet of
The Thrones, the Virtues and the Dominations.
Sorrow alone is noble and august,
A force nor earth nor hell shall ever mar,
To weave my mystic crown I know you must
Tax every age and universe that are.
Old Tadmor's vanished gems beyond all price,
Metals unknown, pearls from the richest sea,
Set by Thy holy hand, cannot suffice
To match this dazzling chapter's splendency;
This diadem shall be of sheerest light,
Drawn from the sacred source of primal rays,
Whereof our mortal eyes, however bright,
Serve but as piteous mirrors dull with glaze."
Charles Baudelaire, Benediction.
The mirrors glazed, the dark knights. Before Bangkok there had been the changeover in Rome, arriving just before dawn, heading straight to St Peter's Square. We had bourbon and coffee and watched the dawn break over the world's most famous church; together, suddenly out of Africa, this little band of Australians. He had become quite close to them, his sickness well behind him now. Only they had climbed the Rift Valley together, had seen that Italian church on the cliff's edge, had telescoped into the lives of those villagers, their humble mud houses perched on the lip of the cliff, the narrow goat paths, the children running everywhere. The dust and the dirt and the mewing warmth, their cuddles, their compassion, their affection for each other.
And here they were in Rome downing bourbons and coffees waiting for the next flight, as the night turned to day and the pigeons came to life, flocking in the pink. Which, when they shared these things, the acres of marble, the world's most beautiful church, here at the heart of eternal mysteries, a bunch of Aussies a long way from home. Which made the betrayal even worse. It seemed like a good idea at the time, when he tried to justify the fortnight out of the office swanning around Africa by proposing a feature on the charity after the death of its founder. One of them came into the office several times, and helped him in every way he could, with the history of the group, even with other contacts in the charity world.
There is always, in a world of limited money and limited resources, someone who will bitch about someone else, usually on the record. He hunted them down. He found them. He interviewed them. He took the choicest and most damming of quotes and used them against his host. He wrote it in a neutral way, and buried the controversy, so it was there, in its rightful place, a nagging doubt properly buried, so he could satisfy all parties, they who had been so generous in providing him a free trip to Africa, and his bosses, who wanted a story of doubt and despair riddling an organisation after the death of its founder Fred Hollows, a saint like creature known for curing blind children in the third world.
And creating a charity based on the principle of curing blindness wherever it was found; providing cheap eye operations to people who could not afford it, people who would otherwise spend their lives sightless. Transforming their lives with little money and lots of energy. But the editor, a difficult woman as they often were, wanted to pile all the negatives up front, to stick it up the saints, to raise doubt about a charity which relied solely on public donations. The copy went back and forth between them all day. She kept emphasising the negatives, wanting an attack piece, protecting her place with the editor, uncaring that he had just spent a fortnight with these people she was trying to dish.
He kept rewriting, reorganising, toning it down into a sensibly nuanced discussion about the group's future, and she kept going the other way. Finally, with young children at home, the evening turning into night and the deadline looming, he handed it over and gave up; let her do what she wanted. He would bear the acrimony if he had to. And acrimony there was. They were apoplectic with rage. They felt utterly betrayed. They had been so intimate. They had been to each other's houses. Their children had played together. They had looked after him when he was sick. They had handed out envelopes of Eritrean money for expenses, put them up in hotels, sent a doctor around when he lay moaning.
And now he had betrayed them and he was a dog in the manger. Now their anger rained down upon him and he never received another invitation. What could have been a glorious and fruitful relationship became nothing but bitterness, contempt, embarrassment. He had fought hard to stop the changes, to make it more neutral, less damaging, but they had wanted their angle and they got it. He wrote for good, not evil, that had been his want. He wanted things to be cosy, less damaging, he didn't want to do harm. His precious neutrality was destroyed by an editor, and there was nothing he could do about it. The cold hard print stared out at him in reproach, he could barely even stand to look at it. Came the reproachful phone calls. Came his apologies and attempts to shift blame.
Came the day when he tried to shrug it off as just one of those things, and knew it wasn't. He avoided them for years; and then life happened; they disappeared into the broader fabric of things, wheels turned, personalities vanished or grew old, he swore to do no evil. And he tip toed through the thickets, ashamed at having survived, be true to the story, be honest to the people involved, do the best you can by the situation and then go home, forget it. Guilt will destroy you, compounding guilt, compounding stories, the cloaks of shame. He gave a lecture at the University of Technology, and used it as a case study of the terrible personal compromises journalism sometimes demands. They sat with their mouths open, and then applauded. It was applause he did not deserve. Wrongs continued to haunt him. Some things can never be set right.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/2328/218/
Sit tight on climate change
Written by Bill Pyle, Weekly Times Now
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Garnaut, in his report on the so-called "climate change", is discovering Australia is so tiny in the world global warming religion, we will be better off sitting tight and waiting to see what the rest of the world does.
Whatever we may try, it will make no difference whatsoever in the eyes of the rest of the world.
More importantly, if Australia did implement some of the demands from "green movement devotees", thousands of jobs would be lost. Worse still, the cost of living would go through the roof.
A dairy farm's cost of production will increase by perhaps a third, even if agriculture is left out of the emissions trading scheme.
Farmers will be hit with massive increases in electricity, fuel, transport, etc, plus flow-on from businesses that will have to pay. After all, they have the ability to pass on costs. Farmers do not.
On September 11, Herald Sun business analyst Terry McCrann wrote: "The Garnaut report on climate change. Is it a masterful exercise in Kissingerian realpolitik? One that accepts harsh realities and yet manages to chart a skilful - indeed miracle - path through the climate quicksand?
"Or an exercise in utter futility that is both mindless and dishonest: and yet would impose real and significant costs on all Australians, living and future," he wrote.
The Department of Primary Industries has computer models with several scenarios as to what will happen in the Western District over the next 50 years due to climate change.
It has lead to some highly suspicious suggestions such as that the region will become desert, that the present food bowl of Victoria will fail, and that Gippsland had better lift its game!
The well-known fact about computers is that the results they produce are only as good as the information put in, which is clearly shown by some of these scenarios.
Some simple facts from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology may help us to understand why these scenarios should be questioned.
The average rainfall trend in eastern Australia over the past 107 years has increased. The past 12 years, however, have been below average, but not as low as 1902-03.
It will get back to average rainfall, just as surely as farmers will adopt and cope as they have done over the past 200 years.
Open-minded research scientists studying ship logbooks from the past 350 years have discovered they contain excellent, clear and similarly written information about weather patterns that are establishing grave doubts about many of the so-called "facts" the climate change addicts are hooked on.
If everybody keeps a level head, this situation can be worked through - history proves it can!
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24393655-12339,00.html
Spy story triggers police raid on reporter's home
Paul Maley | September 24, 2008
FEDERAL Police yesterday raided the home of a journalist who published a series of stories detailing the intelligence targets of Australia's spy agencies.
AFP agents spent more than five hours searching the house and car of Canberra Times journalist Philip Dorling in the city's inner-north suburb of Braddon.
The raid was understood to be in response to articles in which the former Labor staffer cited secret briefings written for Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon.
The articles named China, North and South Korea, and Japan as primary targets for Australian intelligence agencies.
Speaking outside his home yesterday, Dorling told The Australian seven AFP officers had arrived at his home at 8.30am, armed with a search warrant.
"They have been very industrious," Dorling said. "They've been searching the house from top to bottom, literally -- from the ceiling to the garbage."
News of the raid provoked immediate protests from Australia's largest media companies.
In a written statement, Fairfax Media, owner of The Canberra Times, said it was "gravely concerned by this legal assault on one of our journalists for doing his job". "A federal police raid on the home of a journalist cuts to the heart of the operation of a free press, and is unacceptable."
In a statement written on behalf of Australia's Right to Know coalition of print and electronic media, News Limited director of corporate affairs Greg Baxter also condemned the raid.
"The raid in Canberra today, which follows a raid by 16 armed police at The Sunday Times in Perth in May, shows that it's time for governments to stop talking and start enacting laws that will protect whistleblowers and journalists from being hunted down and prosecuted if their information threatens to embarrass governments," Mr Baxter said.
"There is no evidence that national security or public safety is at risk or that this information could lead to a serious crime ... and therefore there are simply no legitimate grounds for today's police raid."
Yesterday was the second time Dorling's house has been raided.
In 2000, when Dorling worked for then shadow foreign spokesman Laurie Brereton, his home was raided after leaks embarrassed the Howard government. The leaks related to warnings apparently received by the government concerning Indonesian militia activities in East Timor and the involvement of the Indonesian military.
Yesterday, Canberra Times editor Peter Fray said the paper stood by Dorling and his reports.
http://news.theage.com.au/world/rudd-begins-meetings-on-financial-crisis-20080924-4mo4.html
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will take part in a series of meetings designed to give him a first-hand account of the scale of the financial meltdown hitting world markets.
Mr Rudd arrived in New York on Monday night for a three-day visit to the United Nations General Assembly, which opened earlier on Tuesday.
He has come in for heavy criticism in Australia for heading to New York when the Australian economy is experiencing its own turmoil.
Mr Rudd will begin the first of a series of meetings with business executives, regulators and other world leaders, aimed at giving him greater insight into how Australia should best handle the flow on effects of the financial crisis.
He will meet executives from Macquarie Bank, Goldman Sachs and UBS Investment Bank before heading into discussions with the chief executive of the US Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue, followed by a meeting with World Bank President Bob Zoellick.
Mr Rudd is also expected to see US President George W Bush at a commemoration of the fallen in Iraq taking place at the UN.
Parramatta River, western Sydney, Australia.
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