Too Melodramatic For Words Darling

*



Growing up in Bondi

On grass-clipping streets and median strips
and cracked concrete that baked in heat and
bitumen on roads that bubbled under feet,
you hurled water bombs at the kids
from around the street and
went to the beach 'cos that's
just what you did.

And there you sat in groups beside
North Bondi Surf Club
or near the barbeques
or down South on The Hill or in The Corner
or at First or Second or Third ramps.

And the milkbars were still standing
and at Valis's and Raffle's and Bill's
you drank thickshakes and played the pinnies
and you ventured to Homestead chicken
for special hot chips.

And school came and thankfully went
and the endless six weeks of Chrissie holidays
fanned out endlessly in front of you
and it was fish and chips in the sunset park
after a day in the water and into the 9pm dark
and into sandy feet station wagons and off home
to sleep behind salt-coated windows
and open fly-screen doors
and the whole neighbourhood wearing worn rubber thongs
and the cicadas noisy all the way into night.

Then February and on into the year,
Easter being marked exactly by the sideways blow
of the westerly wind like clockwork
and into the desolate antenna evening of June,
the grass-blade sunshine of July,
The flannelette days of August,
Then again the sudden jasmine days of September and
Into the salty October mornings,
Then the nor' easterly afternoons of November
and around again and again.

Then my life turned to high school
and the dumped couches on the footpath
and the boarded up shops of early '80s Campbell Parade
where you'd be crazy to loiter after dark,
the needle stick stabbing streets,
the heroin sand.

And the Maori kids who caused legendary trouble chaos down there
and the thrill of the stories of them
and those hot girls down there at night
who smoked ciggies and drunk cases and beer
and smashed bottles and fucked
and in one of those still-standing sheds
I kissed one of those smoke-tasting mouths
and I have never forgotten a single moment
nor the way I felt,

just as I have never forgotten
a single other moment
of growing up in Bondi
at all
either.

Adam, The Bard Of Bondi.

http://www.blindingsunlight.com/page20.htm



He gusted out from a different world; dank with despair. Already there were ghosts, entities, fleeing from the sunlight. He walked and he walked. Everything had been thrown up in the air. Cruel passage, but truly everything, his home, his children, his job. And so, when the initial bender subsided, he walked. The children splashed in the surf. The shapes of the board riders were imprinted against the sea and sky. They had come from a very different place. It could be a different city, his daughter said. I love Bondi. I don't ever want to leave. Can't you do something?

But all in all, as their life together passed into its final stage, he could feel the world tugging and yet was frozen; each day more stiller than the last. He couldn't make a single phone call. He couldn't maintain old friendships because they just washed away. He was so cruel; that utter indifference. And yet there was much that was good. He sheltered from the many storms. Dodged the bikini clad girls, the handsome boys. Made as if to wander. Was always politically correct. Never deviated from the mass. Thought of old love; as he passed so much youthful joy. The sun warmed the morning air for another day of revelry. Everything was closing. He didn't want to do anything anymore. The sea had finally taken over.

He had passed Marsha a couple of times since; it was hard to avoid her with the house perched so neatly at the end of the road, and studiously ignored her. She called out and he kept on walking. She became a byword for bad behaviour. He didn't go to the pub anymore. Instead he sat listening to people in the pavilion; and he grew at once calmer and more frightened. Everything became desolate for that old man hiding high in the apartment. Housing Commission had loomed over the suburb where he had worked. And he saw the desperate on the street as if they were old friends; if he only had time he could join them. It wasn't to be. Even that adventure passed him by.

His son mentioned the word retired. That's how he felt. It was time to do different things. He had been slave to Sydney rents for decades; and now was the time to break free. He was going to make it through the night. Laughter was going to populate this sadly exterminated view. The sweep was there for all to see; as if anyone was looking. He could see the wealthy houses perched along the mini-cliffs behind the beach; their stolidity, the sound of people talking, parties winding up, winding down. Every weekend there was a wild party next door. Are you going to write another book? He had asked Paul Bowles all those years ago. Only if I've got something to say, he had said. Sheltering Sky the movie was about to come out; and that elegant love in a foreign climb, the exotic rush, the beat of drums, the boys hanging on the street corners; he was going to see it all again.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/travel/travel-news/political-firebrands-arrest-shocks-opponents-20091229-lin4.html

Former political opponents of Robert Paul Mcjannett, who was arrested on drug charges in Bali on Monday night, have expressed shock at his arrest.

Mcjannett, 48, was arrested on Monday night after Indonesian customs officials allegedly found two grams of cannabis in his luggage.

He had just arrived on a Virgin Blue flight with his adult son from Perth when he was arrested.

Mcjannett was a regular candidate in Redcliffe City Council elections and most recently appeared on the ballot during the 2005 Redcliffe by-election for State Parliament.

Moreton Bay Regional Council Mayor Allan Sutherland, whose name appeared on several Redcliffe City Council ballot papers with Mcjannett, said he was surprised to hear of the arrest.

Cr Sutherland said Mcjannett was a "bloke of some notoriety" in Redcliffe political circles.

"He ran in numerous elections - he was a stayer, I'll give him that," Cr Sutherland said.

"If this (charge) is proven, I'd be surprised that someone who sought public life would be involved in that sort of activity," he said.

"It sets a really bad example and it shows a certain amount of naivety. There's enough publicity involving Indonesia and drugs, you'd have to be totally naive to do that sort of thing."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/29/akmal-shaikh-final-hours-china

Correctly applied, the lethal concoction injected into the veins of Akmal Shaikh, the convicted drug smuggler from Kentish Town, north London, would have taken less than a minute to stop his heart and seal his unfortunate place as the first European to be executed in China in more than half a century.

A video was recorded of the killing, but there were no family members or UK consular officials present to witness his final hours because they were refused permission by the Chinese authorities.

The only official confirmation of Shaikh's death was a brief fax from the press office in Urumqi, where the execution was carried out, and a story in the state-run Xinhua news agency that reported he was killed by lethal injection.

Yet it is possible to sketch a partial picture of what happened in his final 24 hours based on records of previous executions in China and reports from family members, lawyers and human rights organisations.

Shaikh had been incarcerated in Urumqi, the centre of the heroin trade in China owing to its proximity to Afghanistan and Pakistan, since September 2007, when he was caught at the local airport with 4kg of heroin in his suitcase, which he brought from Kyrgyzstan via Tajikistan. His family and supporters say he suffered from a bipolar disorder that diminished his criminal responsibility, but it has never been recognised by the authorities and the courts denied requests for a mental examination.

http://www.examiner.com/x-32936-Seminole-County-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2009m12d28-Headline-to-come

The global warming movement has taken a decidedly sinister turn.

Not content with scaring moms and dads with tales of a coming global warming apocalypse, the true believers in human-caused climate change have taken their controversial doomsday message into the classroom and onto the Internet, polluting impressionable kids with green propaganda and creating youth legions of enviro-fanatics.

Fresh from their daily “greenwashing” sessions at school, these save-the-earth converts arrive home as little inspector generals, haranguing parents for exhibiting environmentally insensitive behavior and contributing to the planet’s looming CO2 overdose.

The young Greenites, already pre-conditioned by classroom propaganda, are subjected to the same man-is-destroying-the-earth homilies on the Internet. The eco-epistles consist of the usual heart-tugging climate scare stories (e.g. polar bears are dying and ice caps are melting), which conveniently fail to mention that the earth has warmed – and cooled – naturally for billions of years and that CO2 is a life-giving atmospheric gas. In the dark and depressing world of quasi-religious eco-fanatics, there is no room for the light of truth in their save-the-earth evangelism, and kids are easy targets.

Lower Than The Limestone Beneath The Concrete

*




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos

Although a sudden outgassing of CO2 had occurred at Lake Monoun in 1984, killing 37 local residents, a similar threat from Lake Nyos was not anticipated. However, on August 21, 1986, a limnic eruption occurred at Lake Nyos which triggered the sudden release of about 1.6 million tonnes of CO2; this cloud rose at nearly 100 kilometres (62 mi) per hour.[4] The gas spilled over the northern lip of the lake into a valley running roughly east-west from Cha to Subum, and then rushed down two valleys branching off it to the north, displacing all the air and suffocating some 1,700 people within 25 kilometres (16 mi) of the lake, mostly rural villagers, as well as 3,500 livestock. Worst affected villages were Cha, Nyos, and Subum.[8] Scientists concluded from evidence that a 300-foot (91 m) fountain of water and foam formed at the surface of the lake. The sudden amount of water rising caused much turbulence in the water, spawning a wave of at least 80 feet (24 m) that would scour the shore of one side.

One survivor described himself when he awoke after the gases had struck:

"I could not speak. I became unconscious. I could not open my mouth because then I smelled something terrible . . . I heard my daughter snoring in a terrible way, very abnormal . . . When crossing to my daughter's bed . . . I collapsed and fell. I was there till nine o'clock in the (Friday) morning . . . until a friend of mine came and knocked at my door . . . I was surprised to see that my trousers were red, had some stains like honey. I saw some . . . starchy mess on my body. My arms had some wounds . . . I didn't really know how I got these wounds . . .I opened the door . . . I wanted to speak, my breath would not come out . . . My daughter was already dead . . . I went into my daughter's bed, thinking that she was still sleeping. I slept till it was 4:30 p.m. in the afternoon . . . on Friday. (Then) I managed to go over to my neighbors' houses. They were all dead . . . I decided to leave . . . . (because) most of my family was in Wum . . . I got my motorcycle . . . A friend whose father had died left with me (for) Wum . . . As I rode . . . through Nyos I didn't see any sign of any living thing . . . (When I got to Wum), I was unable to walk, even to talk . . . my body was completely weak."[10]



Well, didn't he look up startled. It was November and everyone seemed to have come to the party with one intent in mind: to relax, get shnickered, mark the end of a tough year. The season was changing; the days warming, summer and the hordes of backpackers just around the corner. Oh how he could have cried, for them, for everybody, as they jogged past in their infinite beauty. He had been determined to be the first to arrive; and had helped set up; but as the evening progressed he and John Price populated a corner; near everything but neatly out of the way; and they just, between them, over the hours, got increasingly giggly. He hadn't laughed so much in years. Everything he said was on the mark; coruscating wit; critiquing everybody with a quick acerbic charm, taking their best and worst points nad making it funny none the less.

You're pissed, she declared, populating the end of the table, a shock out of the mist. Where have you been? What are you doing with these people? They're beneath you. A silence developed around her as people, people he had known for 30 years, began to listen. I told you I could rescue you from all this. I told you I could take you into the light. Everyone's disappointed in you, everyone. I'm disappointed in you. Everyone here is disappointed in you. Your children are disappointed in you. He grew more silent; if that was possibnle, having uttered not a word; as the tirade continued. That's what you get for standing someone up, he thought ruthfully.

One of your girlfriends, mate, John Price whispered in his ear.

And then he really did see the funny side, couldn't help but see the funny side try as he might; collapsing into laughter on the table, dislodging a beer bottle. Which sent her off into new paroxysms. These people aren't worthy of you, how dare you! I told you I could bring you into the light. I was serious. You know I'm psychic. You know I can help you. Why have you turned away from me like this? Why are you choosing to corrupt yourself in this sad, pathetic way? Everyone's disappointed...

At which point he stood up abruptly, walked out of the party and went home.

His son, coming home after midnight, found him sitting in the flat in the dark.

What are you doing? he asked.

Hiding from a woman.

Fair enogh, he replied, and went to bed.

Later, apologetic and avoiding old friends, fearful he had made a dreadful fool of himself, he's not the good friend you think he is, the voice boomed in his head, thinking of his host, and everything was in anguish again, the swirling disqujiet, he found out she had continued to make a presence of herself. You're lower than concerete, lower than the limestone beneath the concrete; she told one old friend of his. She collapsed in the street on the way home; and an ambulance had to be called.

I met her at the pub was his only excuse; much to everybody's mirth.

He hadn't had a drink since.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/parliament-a-charade-says-former-pm-20091229-li7a.html

Former prime minister Bob Hawke has labelled parliament as a "charade" during an animated appearance at Queensland's Woodford Folk Festival.

The Labor luminary also slammed arguments against economic growth as "pig's tit" and expressed glee about Liberal prime minister John Howard's downfall during a public interview session last night.

More than 2000 festival visitors crammed into a marquee at the Sunshine Coast hinterland site last night to see ABC presenter Kerry O'Brien quiz the 80-year-old former union leader about his life, career and political views.

Mr Hawke said he believed the institution of parliament was a charade because all the proposals had already been approved by the ruling party's caucus and cabinet.

"I never liked parliament," he said.

"I was an advocate for 10 years in the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission.

"I was used to an environment in which the argument was real and you'd win or lose on the quality of your argument."

Mr Hawke said politicians would walk into parliament and engage in a "bloody long debate, which is pointless because the decision's been made".

Question time and the senate committee system could provide an opportunity for scrutiny depending on the quality of the opposition, which had been "pretty bloody poor" in recent times, he said.

Later, Mr Hawke fired up when fellow interview guest and public intellectual Clive Hamilton attacked the Hawke-Keating government's economic reforms along with society's obsession with growth and wealth generation.

The former prime minister dismissed the criticisms as "crap".

"I say 'crap' because I find it strange verging almost on the obscene to hear comparatively well-situated people telling the poor they don't need to aspire to improve their condition through wealth," he said.

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/30255/1066/

Duane Hamacher, a doctoral candidate at Macquarie University, used ancient folklore from an Australian Aboriginal people and modern Google maps to locate a meteorite crater in central Australia.

Hamacher considers himself an educator within the field of astronomy. He is associated with the Sydney Observatory and the Foundation for Astronomy at Macquarie University.

He investigates how the Australian Aboriginal peoples have incorporated the darkened sky above their lands into their ancient cultures.

Duane Hamacher looks at paintings, stone arrangements, historical literature, and other ancient folklore to understand their cultures with respect to astronomy, archaeoastronomy, and ethnoastronomy.

And, with his education, experience, and expertise at investigating the Aboriginal peoples, Hamacher has incorporated ancient Arrernte dreaming stories and modern Google maps to find a bowl-shaped meteorite crater at Palm Valley.

Palm Valley is located about 130 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of Alice Springs, which is located near the southern border of the Northern Territory, and near the geographical center of Australia.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/australia-magnet-for-people-smugglers-20091229-lhih.html

The federal opposition says the arrival of another boatload of asylum seekers shows that Australia has become a favoured destination for people smugglers.

A boat carrying 11 suspected asylum seekers was intercepted near the Ashmore Islands off northern Australia late on Monday by Border Protection Command.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison says the continuing arrival of boat people is putting the assessment system under too much pressure.

"The government's indifference and weakness, both in their border protection policies and the decisions they've taken, have ensured that Australia has become a magnet for people smugglers," Mr Morrison told ABC radio on Tuesday.

"So we're now left with a situation where we have Christmas Island full, boats arriving pretty much at will and this must be putting extraordinary pressure on the processing systems that need to be undertaken under such overcrowded conditions."

The latest suspected asylum seeker arrivals will be taken to Christmas Island for questioning and to undergo security, identity and health checks.



Bondi Beach in a dust storm.

You're Lower Than Concrete, She Said

*



Bondi Beach (pronounced "BOND-eye", or /'bɒndaɪ/) is a popular beach and the name of the surrounding suburb in Sydney, Australia. Bondi Beach is located 7 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Waverley Council, in the Eastern Suburbs. Bondi, North Bondi and Bondi Junction are neighbouring suburbs.

"Bondi" or "Boondi" is an Aboriginal word meaning water breaking over rocks or noise of water breaking over rocks.[2] The Australian Museum records that Bondi means place where a flight of nullas took place.

In 1809, the road builder William Roberts received a grant of land in the area.[3] In 1851, Edward Smith Hall and Francis O'Brien purchased 200 acres (0.81 km2) of the Bondi area that included most of the beach frontage, which was named the "The Bondi Estate." Hall was O'Brien's father-in-law. Between 1855 and 1877 O'Brien purchased his father-in-law's share of the land, renamed the land the "O'Brien Estate," and made the beach and the surrounding land available to the public as a picnic ground and amusement resort. As the beach became increasingly popular, O'Brien threatened to stop public beach access. However, the Municipal Council believed that the Government needed to intervene to make the beach a public reserve. On 9 June 1882, the Bondi Beach became a public beach.[citation needed]

On 6 February 1938, 5 people drowned and over 250 were rescued after a series of large waves struck the beach and pulled people back into the sea, a day that became known as "Black Sunday".[4]

Bondi Beach was a working class suburb throughout most of the twentieth century. Following World War II, Bondi Beach and the Eastern Suburbs became home for Jewish migrants from Poland, Russia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Germany, while a steady stream of Jewish immigration continues into the 21st century mainly from South Africa, Russia and Israel, and the area has a number of synagogues, a kosher butcher and the Hakoah Club.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bondi_Beach,_New_South_Wales



You're pissed, she practically shouted, and he looked up startled. He had stood her up after inviting her to the party and he had known the minute he opened his mouth and said Michael's having a party Saturday night that it was a mistake. For a start he shouldn't have invited someone without asking first. They were in their 50s now. The open door policies of the past, the embrace of strangers one and all, was fading into gentility. He had met her down at the Bondi Hotel in that previous era when he had brazenly hit the piss, throwing caution and ill health to the wind and embracing his absolute desire to be normal. He drank and he drank, sometimes in company and sometimes alone; not to excess mind, oh no, not that, well not often, but enough, perhaps, to maintain the illusion of normality.

Joe, a girl he had known at the Sydney Morning Herald in the eighties, was behind the bar. He had always liked her; and was pleased to see a familiar face. Everything had seemed so hostile, even if he hadn't seen her in 20 years. Work, the job he thought was a golden ladder to a better life, had turned into a complete and utter nightmare. He had landed in this backside suburb completely lost. He paced up and down the sand as if he was in a graveyard, and only slowly raised his eyes to take in the ever changing beauty around him. They chatted quickly, happily, she served customers, they came and went interrupting their conversation. He got a potted history of the past 20 years, Brazilian boyfriends, wild times, lost in the mountains of South America with handsome criminals and dangerous bad boys; joining the great chorus of the different and the adventurous. They shared stories of drivelling down the same self destructive whirlpools everyone with any sensitivity or flair for the insane seemed determined to throw themselves down. And suddenly being adults with life passing by. It was all too much; he thought, running his hand across his brow melodramatically.

It was a craven desire to be normal; the well established bloke chatting to an old friend at the bar; worldly wise, friendly, wanting nothing but good company. It was such craven stupidity. I'm going to have to work, the management keep a very close eye, they get upset, Joe said; I've got a friend outside, I'll introduce you; you two would have a lot to talk about; she used to be in the media. So that was how he met Marsha. She was sitting on a high stool at one of the tables outside; the Bondi Hotel was in the middle of renovations and much was at odds with its normal self; just as in his own life everything had been thrown out of kilter and it was simply true to say he was no longer coping; stressed beyond all reason. He climbed mountains everyday and got paid almost nothing. He did the right thing and it simply backfired. He got pissed for no known reason; and every reason; and was happy to settle with a full schooner glass next to someone with an equally full glass; to chat with someone his own age about life, the universe and everything.

They talked all afternoon and he was so sorry about everything he had done. Sit up straight, she remonstrated several times; and he tried to ignore her until she physically bolstered him. I'm psychic, she told him within the first half hour, I sense things, know things. He heard it all, the lesbian daughter, how she had bought the terrace opposite Jamie Packer in the eighties for just over $100,000 and now, with its spectacular views down Australia's most famous beach, would have to be worth millions. He had fallen off the real estate ladder and could do nothing but look on with envy at all those people who had been more sensible than him; how easy it would have been in retrospect. If he had expected to live; which of course he never had. The beer flowed all afternoon and the day turned into evening; he heard about living with Martin Sharp, about Sally Anne Huckstepp, a famous Sydney identity, a prostitute and heroin addict revered for her wild ways; her boyfriend killed in a Chippendale back lane in the 1980s by Sydney's most infamous cop, Roger Rogerson.

We all touched, our lives all touched; the great and the famous; the terrible shifting sands, this illusory place. He grandly insisted on shouting schooner after schooner, Boags, the best beer you can get, which of course made it alright. They drank and they smoked, unfashionably, the old party animals who never gave up, could see no reason to give up. Sobriety was for morons and the characterless. Day turned into night and the tourists drifted up and down the concourse. Groups came and went at the surrounding tables. He was in the flow and nothing mattered; a fascinating man, life battered. A story for every occasion. They were firm friends by the end of their drunken communion; having established that they lived in the same street and that both were in desperate need of human comfort. Embarrassing moments followed. They shared Bloody Marys at the Italian cafe on the corner one morning, despite his remonstrations about trying not to drink; taking in the shuttered windows of the beach house of Australia's richest man. One afternoon she tried to make him dance to Van Morrison on her polished wooden boards; clearly showing their age.

Did anyone dance to van Morrison anymore? You're the first man in years I've fantasised about - waking up in your arms. I'm psychic. You know I can help you. Things are changing. I know I'm closely monitored. The cameras from the Packer house purportedly leant some safety. But the wife of the man who had bought the house next door died in allegedly mysterious circumstances; jumping from a bridge in the gorges south of Sydney and falling 300 metres to her death. Two young children were left motherless. She was frightened for her own life. They drank once again; back at The Bondi, uniting, in one of those terrible confessional afternoons when writing themselves off seemed an entirely sensible, almost noble thing to do. Work had only gotten worse. He was even more battered by circcumstance than before. That job's killing you, she said; and that, if nothing else, was true. They shared their conversation with a local on a similar path Marsha knew; and her friend, having settled into a heavy intake of alcohol and nicotine, imparted that blokely Australian wisdom to a fellow in crisis, the same wisdom that had been passed down from the Eureka Stockade; hang in there, the bosses are bastards, be your own man, hold yourself together, don't let the bastards beat you; have another beer, enjoy yourself, life wasn't meant to be an agony. You'll get through this. Change is nothing to be frightened of. He knew inside it was all wrong, the world was a cave of liquid deceit; that this wonderful communion was yet another lie. He would never be able to make such convenient love.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/world/asia/28pstan.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A handful of deadly attacks ravaged parts of Pakistan this weekend and highlighted the multiple security challenges confronting the embattled Islamabad government, from violent vendettas by Taliban militants to sectarian violence against minority Shiites.

The bloodiest attack happened Sunday in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir in the north of the country, where a suicide bomber killed at least 10 people and wounded more than 80 during a Shiite religious procession. The attack could have been worse, the local authorities said: the bomber had been trying to enter a prayer hall but blew himself up when guards blocked him. Pakistani troops were rushed in to restore order.

More than a dozen people were wounded in Karachi the day before by a small bomb. Both attacks appeared directed at Shiites observing Ashura, which commemorates the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in A.D. 680.

The identities of the attackers were not clear, but the country’s Shiites, one-fifth of the population, continue to be the targets of Sunni extremists. Past Shiite holidays have been singled out by sectarian militants, leading Pakistani security forces to deploy tens of thousands to protect Ashura marchers this year.

The Kashmir attack followed the assassination on Sunday of a mid-level political administrator named Sarfaraz Khan and his family in the Kurram tribal area near the Afghan border. Taliban militants detonated a bomb at Mr. Khan’s home, killing him, his wife, and four of his children, the local authorities said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/28/2781346.htm

US President Barack Obama has ordered reviews of airport security and the country's terrorism watch lists after the attempted bombing of a passenger jet as it came in to land at Detroit on Christmas Day.

Twenty-three-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to set off an explosive device sewn to his underwear as the airliner came in to land, but was stopped by passengers and crew.

It appears the lives of the 290 people on board the plane were only saved because the explosives failed to detonate.

Mr Obama wants to know why someone on a terrorism watch list did not set off security concerns and why tight airport security did not discover explosives strapped to the accused bomber's body.

The chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Senator Joe Lieberman, was incredulous to learn that the suspect's father had alerted the US to his son's extreme religious views.

"What happened after this man's father called our embassy in Nigeria? Was there follow up in any way to try to determine where this suspect was?" he said.

"Secondly it appears that he was recently put on a broad terrorism screening list - a database. Why wasn't that database activated?"

There are 500,000 names on the screening list so simply being on it does not prevent anyone from flying into the US.

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/aussies-triple-grog-intake-at-christmas-20091228-lgon.html

Australians' weekly average alcohol intake triples during the festive season, new research shows.

December and January are the periods of greatest alcohol consumption, more so than birthdays, work drinks and traditional weekend socialising, a survey conducted by Australian charity FebFast has found.

The organisation, which works to highlight the dangers of drugs and alcohol, has launched a campaign encouraging people to have an alcohol-free February.

The survey quizzed 1006 Australians from all states and territories on their drinking habits.

A quarter of respondents admitted to spending between $200 and $1000 on alcohol during December and January, with seven per cent saying they turned to alcohol in the festive season to help cope with their family.

"There's nothing wrong with enjoying the summer and the season's festivities, but we need to be aware of how much some Australians get carried away and take celebrations to excess," FebFast chief executive Fiona Healy said in a statement.

The survey found most respondents drink one day a week and that during the festive period that increases to three days a week.

One-third of Australians consume more than 10 standard drinks a week during the festive season, the survey found.

Almost half (49 per cent) of people aged 20 to 29 admitted binge drinking during the festive season, with men more likely to drink too much than women, the survey shows.

The Fatal Shore

*



I pushed my glass to the edge of the bar gutter and said to the bartender, "Gimme a Guinness and get yourself one too."
I decided it was time to slow down and one way was to drink Guinness, since it took so long to fill a glass out of the tap. When the bartender finally brought it to me I saw that he had etched a harp in the foam with the tap nozzle. An angel's harp. I hoisted the glass before drinking from it.
"God bless the dead," I said.
"God bless the dead," the bartender said.
I drank heavily from the glass and the dark ale was like mortar I was sending down to hold the bricks together inside. All at once I felt like crying. But then my phone rang. I grabbed it without looking at the screen and said hello. The alcohol had bent my voice into an unrecognizable shape.
Michael Connelly
The Lincoln Lawyer.



Well, 19 years ago, when the world was young and laptops did not exist, when we didn't have mobiles and Google meant nothing, he had been an adult male with a pregnant woman in tow; and the world had seemed a fresh, very different place. The young blond had ballooned. Astonishing things had happened. His life had been transformed. Sincere drops came sweating from his brow, and they were together, the young, handsome couple. His articles were appearing regularly on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald and he was known not just as a character, but something of a success. Everything swirled and the world seemed full of portent.

He had moved from his magnificent apartment in Potts Point, with views stretching across Woolloomoolloo; and had surrendered all the neurotic past, bouncing in and out of meetings; falling desperately into the arms of others; maintaining a quiet dignity. He was so afraid; and yet there was nothing to be afraid of. A child was on the way and life was being transformed utterly. He was proud and confused and desperate; could feel his old life slipping rapidly away; and everything was born anew; everything was full of hope. He had moved into her shared apartment overlooking Bondi Beach; and would come home from work to find his increasingly large girlfriend happily chatting to the neighbours, equally excited.

Because the whole world lay in front of us. Because neither of them had had children before. Because his stories were getting on the front page and all was right with the world. Because young love knew no obstacles; of course everything would work out, this was noble destiny; this was their life. And 19 years later, why 19? It wasn't a magical number. It made no sense. But 19 it was. After 19 years they were back living in Bondi, if only briefly. Like previously; they were lives in transit, from one to the other. And that once gorgeous girlfriend he had once been so proud to be seen with stood outside the apartment on Christmas Day, crying; there were always tears these days.

Crying although over God knows what; and he brought her in and was kind; while the kids rolled their eyes and shrugged sadly at the state of their mother. For they had seen everything; and by the end of the day would be subdued, almost in shock. I'm on two different kinds of antibiotics she declared; scratching at the ulcers on her legs; bursting into tears and laughing within seconds. So much had changed. My blood's going septic, she declared, and he believed it, her legs puffy and the sores appalling.

What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? He could hear the anguish still. And he would never forget the day she rang him up; just before he had moved down to Bondi Beach, to that apartment with spectacular views down the country's most famous beach, and proudly, a little nervously, unsure of the reaction, declared she was leaving meetings and was having a drink to celebrate. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We were frontiers people, always pushing the boundaries, and this was an easy boundary to push. Now the kids called her the weirdo; with nothing but disgust and contempt; and sadness.

So much water had passed under the bridge; so much of their lives had disappeared. That child she had been swollen with; the smell of white nighties, of pregnancy and expectation; was now a 19-year-old university student; with a low opinion of the chaos from which he had been borne. The daughter who followed so rapidly was now a 17-year-old girl who could hardly be a more typical 17-year-old girl. Dad, dad, she said excitedly, you know Bondi Rescue? Yes. You know the hot one? No. The hot one! Dad you don't know anything. The hot one! The blond one! I met him. And he stood in the wreckage of the past, and was horrified by what he saw. The shock of her presence. The shock of the physical decay. Nothing would be the same again. The cycle, the universe, had brought us back here; to show us what?

The tourists splashed happily in the vivid heat. Other lives were beginning, others were ending. The waves broke against the shore.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.canada.com/business/Copenhagen+blame+game+helpful+climate+chief/2375889/story.html

LONDON — Countries should stop blaming each other for the weak outcome of the Copenhagen climate talks and sit down together to move the process forward, the UN's top climate change official said on Wednesday.

It is still possible to reach a legally binding global treaty, and bickering among countries like China and Britain is unproductive, Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN's climate change secretariat, told Reuters.

Britain accused a handful of states including China on Monday of hijacking efforts to agree deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. China replied that the allegations were an attempt to sow discord among emerging countries.

"These countries have to sit down together next year, so blaming each other for what happened will not help," de Boer said.

The Copenhagen summit ended with a non-binding accord between the U.S., China and other emerging powers that sets a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius and offers funding to help poor nations adapt to climate change, but the details are scant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/opinion/24iht-edloy.html

The drama was of high order. In the decidedly unglamorous side-rooms of Copenhagen’s Bella Center, leaders of the most powerful countries of the world faced off, trying to rewrite the rules for how the world confronts the risk of catastrophic climate change. Thousands in the center and untold numbers around the world awaited the result.

The outcome — a three-page political declaration known as the “Copenhagen Accord” — has been roundly attacked. “The worst development in climate change negotiating history,” said the spokesman for the G-77 block of about 130 developing nations. Greenpeace, which is hardly ever satisfied with anything, declared it “a crime scene with the guilty leaving for the airport.” The London Independent’s front page proclaimed it “a historic failure that will live in infamy.”

These descriptions are ridiculous. The Copenhagen Accord is a serious step forward, if a severely limited one. It starts by establishing a concrete and demanding goal: keeping the rise in global temperature to two degrees Centigrade. Up to now we have been working with a slippery aim of avoiding dangerous harm to the atmosphere. The new objective lets people and governments do the math, and see if their efforts are adding up.

Moreover, for the first time in 17 years of negotiations all the major emitters of greenhouse gases have acknowledged that they have specific individual responsibilities to reduce their emissions.

http://www.businessinsider.com/carbon-offset-futures-tank-after-copenhagen-fiasco-2009-12

It's a pretty tiny market still, but there is actually trading in carbon permits. In some countries, where they have emissions limits, they actually have value. And if there ever is a cap & trade scheme put into place in more places, what's worthless now may actulaly end up being valuable.

Well, here's how you know the Copenhagen summit was a total joke. The cost of emitting carbon just plunged 8.7%.

Bloomberg: European Union carbon permits fell the most since February on the European Climate Exchange. The U.S., China, India and other nations attending the two-week Copenhagen summit that ended at the weekend agreed to voluntary, rather than binding, targets to reduce emissions. The accord isn’t enough to boost demand for permits, said Trevor Sikorski, an emissions analyst at Barclays Capital in London.


Shellharbour, NSW, Australia.

A Sense Of Place

*



Redfern is an inner-city suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Redfern is located 3 kilometres south of the Sydney central business district and is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney. Strawberry Hills is a locality on the border with Surry Hills

Redfern is subject to extensive redevelopment plans by the state government, to increase the population and reduce the concentration of poverty in the suburb and neighbouring Waterloo (see Redfern-Eveleigh-Darlington).

The suburb is named after surgeon William Redfern, who was granted 100 acres (0.40 km2) of land in this area in 1817 by Lachlan Macquarie. He built a country house on his property surrounded by flower and kitchen gardens. His neighbours were Captain Cleveland, an officer of the 73rd regiment, who built Cleveland House and John Baptist, who ran a nursery and seed business. Sydney's original railway terminus was built in Cleveland Paddocks and extended from Cleveland Street to Devonshire Street and west to Chippendale. The station's name was chosen to honour William Redfern. At that time, the present Redfern station was known as Eveleigh. When Central station was built further north on the site of the Devonshire Street cemetery, Eveleigh station became Redfern and Eveleigh was retained for the name of the railway workshops, south of the station. The remains of Cleveland Paddocks became Prince Alfred Park.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redfern,_New_South_Wales



And then, in that frightening morning mist, one of those figures slumped in doorways, giggling, or talking desultorily as they waited for someone to come home, for the dealer to regain consciousness, for a vast network of springs to break out, for life in some Arcadian universe, they stirred off the steps and picked themselves up into the street. He was already 50 metres down the street, but could sense danger as if it was a real thing prickling through the air, a terrible panic. Dying out here, alone, at this peculiar hour of the morning, 4am. He was frightened and looked back to see the figure already beginning to amble along the path, to slime through the shadows; ultimately presaging his bashing and his death.

It was already too far. He had made too many mistakes. The dog sniffed happily at every available tree, unaware of the danger. But he knew instinctively that things were severely wrong. Oh how could this be? Now; when he was out walking, getting fit, doing the right thing. If you can't talk it out walk it out; as they used to say in the classics. It was only a small way of being. It was only the morning that could frighten him. He quickened his pace; and the shadow behind him quickened theirs. Now he was truly frightened. It came in waves. He took a turn down to the main drag; away from his normal path. He knew he was writing stories twice; and had been here before; and didn't care. Nothing could save him now.

It was such a minute danger, when soldiers were dying on the battlefields of Afghanistan, in the bitter cold, in a war that was not ours, in the terrible stupidity in which he had wrecked everything in his life. He walked still faster, the dog scuttling ahead of him as he urged it to keep up. There were no cars in the street. It was just too early. Why him, of all people, why couldn't he have stayed safe behind the grills in his admittedly rented Redfern terrace; the place that had become their home, part of them. Where they had totally internalised the landscape. Where they were characters in the community; where they could walk down the street and invariably meet people they knew; where every shop keeper was familiar; and even the chaos of the Block, familiar.

He had made so many mistakes and fallen off the real estate ladder. I might not be much but I'm all I can think about, the little man said, tension flickering beneath his jaw bone. They all laughed in recognition. Everything was floating away; great chunks of the physical world dismembering into space. As he turned the corner into the main drag; or semi-main drag you might have called it, Abercrombie Street, he looked behind to see the shadow had turned the corner; and was less than a hundred metres behind. He picked up his pace yet again, urging the dog to stop its rapturous sniffing of a light pole.

It was all too much. He needed a partner. He needed something concrete in his life. The kids were growing older and he missed them already; even though they were still a hermetically sealed unit; it was them against the world. John and the kids in Redfern. Everything was dying off. Everything was in flux. He couldn't see his way clear to achieve anything. All he could do was look back in terror. At last it looked like he was putting some distance between him and the no doubt ice addled lunatic who had been following him. The man, drug skinny with clothes hanging off him dank with addiction sweat, had stopped at the corner, watching him as he disappeared up the street.

It was so cruel, and yet a relief, as he headed up to the main street where there would definitely be traffic and he would definitely be safe. Every old lady in the city screamed inside his head; everyone who had felt unsafe. They fumbled with their keys and peered out from their tiny flats. They went to the community centre once a week, often more, and sat there listening to all the tales, the antics of the other residents. She had been going every day in recent weeks, fascinated by the gossip, sitting there quietly. The real, dangerous world, was a long long way away, here in the cosy afternoons, when the girls talked of their bingo outings and the conduct of the housing department; a subject of endless scandal and intrigue. And he looked back to see the ice addict give up the chase; turn and leave; and knew he had survived yet one more threat; and was beginning to stand tall.




THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/copenhagen-failure-no-surprise-ross-garnaut/story-e6frfku0-1225812351189

Copenhagen 'failure' no surprise - Ross Garnaut

NO ONE should be surprised that a binding agreement wasn't reached in Copenhagen, climate change expert Ross Garnaut said.

In the final hours of the two-week summit, world leaders put forward a deal aimed at limiting global warming to 2C.

But it contained no targets to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change.

Professor Garnaut said there was no groundwork put in place before the meeting to ensure a binding deal would be met.

"It's been clear that there wasn't going to be a binding agreement at Copenhagen," the government's adviser on climate change told ABC Television.

"Expectations were overblown, so it's not the slightest bit surprising; it's not appropriate to be greatly disappointed."

But world leaders made some "steps forward", he said.

http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2009/12/21/116991_tasmania-news.html

THE Copenhagen climate change summit was an unmitigated failure, Greens Leader Bob Brown says.

The Tasmanian senator said world leaders had blown their chance at introducing meaningful and binding targets to reducing emissions.

The summit only managed to settle on a non-binding accord which relies on countries setting their own emissions targets.

Senator Brown said the accord condemned the globe to a very grim future.

"Copenhagen began full of hope but it has ended up full of disappointment and that's because the world's polluters -- the oil industry, the coal industry, the resource-extraction industry, including the loggers -- have such power over politicians around the world," he said.

"We have got to put the climate first."

Senator Brown said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was a climate change failure and Liberal leader Tony Abbott was a climate change denier that wanted to go back to last century.

"Next year's election is now shaping up as a referendum for all Australian voters to have their say on action on climate change."

He said Australia should commit to a target to reduce emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 rather than the current 5 to 25 per cent policy of the Federal Government.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/labors-push-for-ets-discredited-hunt-20091221-l7r6.html

Labor's argument for emissions trading has been discredited after world leaders failed to reach a binding climate deal at Copenhagen, the federal opposition says.

In the final hours of the two-week summit, world leaders put forward a deal aimed at limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius.

But it contains no targets to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change.

Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt says the non-binding deal vindicates the party's opposition to emissions trading.

"Kevin Rudd should face up to facts that his justification for an ETS (emissions trading scheme) has now been taken away," he told ABC Radio.

Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce says it's lucky Australia didn't attend the summit with an ETS in hand.

"If we had we'd be sitting out there all alone by ourselves at the moment and looking decidedly ridiculous," the coalition frontbencher said.

The Rudd government will reintroduce legislation to set up an ETS early next year.

It will be its third attempt to get a scheme agreed to by parliament.



A Sense Of Place: Sydney University.

Precious News

*



The morning air off the Mojave in late winter is as clean and crisp as you'll ever breathe in Los Angeles County. It carries the taste of promise on it. When it starts blowing in like that I like to keep a window open in my office. There are a few people who know this routine of mine, people like Fernando Valenzuela. The bondman, not the baseball pitcher. He called me as I was coming into Lancaster for a nine o'clock calendar call. He must have heard the wind whistling in my cell phone.

"Mick," he said, "you up north this morning?"

The Lincoln Lawyer. Michael Connelly.



Well well, if it wasn't the dwarf skating out in front of the giant wave. He was shattered and yet inept. Curly haired, in the frame, lost, lost, and laughter full-tilt. Giant boxes, almost on legs, groaned across the geometric landscape. Stop writing that fantasy stuff that doesn't make any money and do the stuff that does, his daughter said. He grimaced at his own disengagement from everything. Speculation about Thai islands just promoted fears from his teenage children that he would return with a Thai prostitute for a wife. He laughed at the odd stage of it all. It must be good for your mental health, the beach, his daughter said and he looked up, perhaps surprised at the perceptiveness of it all.

Everything had come to an end; and that's what amazed him; one door shuts and another opens. It was cruel, what had been suffered; but indeed his own head had turned his life into agony; every day a trudge up Mount Everest; anything to justify the most indulgent of behaviour; life is so terrible, I must get drunk. There in the holy citadels. The women he met spoke dismissively of bars; the way they smelled of stale beer and stale cigarettes and everyone in them was a moron. But he had loved them; from the first wintry light in the morning to the last ramshackle moment as the patrons struggled home. He had done his sociology thesis on bars; towards an ethnography of the bars of Adelaide; participant observation being a big thing in the 70s, and it never occurred to him he might have a problem with alcohol.

It wasn't right, what had happened. He wanted to say goodbye to everybody. He wanted to gather every good person he had ever worked with in the last quarter of a century together in one great farewell; and shudder, shudder, at the anguish and embarrassment of the corpse; an identity that was rapidly vanishing; a toe-hold in a community which would soon be gone. He was fabulous. He was convinced. And then it all disappeared; disappeared; and he was left as a tiny little worm; an old man waiting outside the cake shop for a young woman who he thought was ignoring him; there in the smart streets of Double Bay. It turned out she couldn't see for looking. And everything came together. And they laughed. Briefly. Before the zealotry set in.

Why did they have to be so fervent? Why did they have to be so successful? Her magic face. Her hands as they touched him. Her friendly texts. Her exotic looks. He could see her working through the glass and was proud to be meeting such a beautiful woman. There amongst the wealth; the Porsche's, the BMWs, the Lexus. It was all too cruel; his diminishing flesh; his crummy old car. He methodically cleaned out the clutter as he waited for her; the garbage which had built up inside; while outside it was filthy. He wanted to be pleased with himself. He wanted to be proud. Instead doubt plagued every circle and every moment; and the children clung more than ever, even though they were teenagers now.

There had been so many strange fantasies, such long walks; there in the unhappy morning hours when he paced down the street fleeing his own shadow; frightened of the party goers lurking on steps and in doorways, the tinkle of broken glass; the mist; the sleeping houses; the fear and the evil, the malignancy which crept through the fabric of the streets towards him. He had walked faster and faster, trying to escape, and these momentous things, the collapsing world, kept trying to catch up with him, to imprison him, there in the cold shadows before the dawn when he was truly himself, a fleeing animal. All of it changed when they moved. Their whole world collapsed and he was trying to catch up, looping rapidly back through the past in recycling circles; trying to catch the threads of distress and memory; of the darkest times.

Everything fell apart and he couldn't understand the driving force. Those who try their best are on the road with all the rest. It's not good enough just to do your best. It's not enough to be here in the shadows calling, calling, the sentinel that said we were doomed, and yet smiled as if there was more over the horizon, a sunlit town, a safe haven, a place where they could be human and triumphant and bring up their children in peace; not this lonely wastrel in the dark passages high in the mountains, not the lone voice of common sense and decency on a crowded political stage; not a denier in a sea of believers; not someone who would never fit in, not here, not now, not ever. Oh how cruel it was. He walked around the Newtown cemetery at least five times; more like ten; and the sun set in a polluted orange blaze and the dog owners gathered on the green. And he walked and he walked: waiting for the decision to hit him, waiting for the future to happen.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,1,26507801-952,00.html

GREENIES have chained themselves to a coal train and rail tracks near Newcastle Harbour in NSW in protest against the outcome of Copenhagen's climate talks.

The 25 activists marched onto the tracks at the Kooragang coal export terminal about 10am today, stopping a train and occupying a bridge.

The action, organised by the environmental group Rising Tide, aims to shut down coal exports from Newcastle, the world's busiest coal terminal.

Spokesman for the group Steve Phillips said the protest is an act of desperation after the UN climate talks in Copenhagen failed to produce a just, effective and legally binding treaty.

"People are tired of seeing our leaders fail to address to problem of climate change - we want to undertake bold and long-lasting action."

Police had begun removing and arresting those sitting on the tracks about noon, he said.


Copenhagen fails to nut out agreement

Meanwhile, questions are being asked about whether the summit was a waste of time.

A "frustrated" Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last night joined US President Barack Obama in putting the most positive spin on the outcome of the conference, but the final "deal" was condemned across the political spectrum.

Poor countries and green groups were outraged by the three-page "political statement" brokered by Mr Obama – and four other national leaders – in the dying hours.

Greenhouse 2011 in Cairns

Mr Obama called the outline of the agreement – yet to be endorsed by most other countries last night – a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough", but admitted "this progress is not enough".

Mr Rudd was not in the inner group which finalised the statement.

After 10 days of talks among delegates from 193 countries, the leaders failed to agree on any firm commitments. They proposed limiting global warming to 2C, but failed to get a legally binding agreement or certify specific targets to reduce greenhouse emissions.

They also agreed to provide $A33.7 billion to help poorer countries reduce emissions between 2010 and 2012. The cash handouts will rise to $112.4 billion a year by 2020.


Political commitment

Mr Rudd described the outcome as a political commitment to act, rather than a legally binding agreement, and said it was the best possible outcome in the circumstances because it was the first time the whole world had agreed to the 2C maximum warming limit.

"It's a huge sense of frustration, which is: You push as hard as you can, you give it everything you've got, to produce the biggest outcome for Australia possible," he told The Sunday Mail.

"But what's equally the case is just how frustrated you get when you feel that people don't see sense."

The overly optimistic analysis by Mr Rudd and Mr Obama was matched by the blistering critique by poor nations and environmental activists.

Chief negotiator for the G77 group of 130 developing countries, Sudan's Lumumba Di-Aping, said: "Gross violations have been committed today against the poor.

"This deal will definitely result in massive devastation in Africa and small island states."

- with AAP

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/20/2776768.htm

The Australian Government has slammed "radical nations" which refused to back a new international deal on climate change, after the Copenhagen summit wrapped up without a legally binding agreement.

Negotiators failed to get consensus on the new international deal brokered by the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa, with several countries railing against it.

Venezuela's delegate called the deal a coup d'etat and complained his country had been left out of the process. Sudan called it a suicide pact and compared it to the Holocaust.

The opposition meant the conference could not formally adopt the accord, so it opted to simply take note of it instead.

Australia's Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, has criticised the critics.

"There are a few radical nations, a few radical states seeking to block action on climate change internationally, seeking to derail this process," she said.

Many said the deal fell far short of UN ambitions, but Senator Wong welcomed the outcome of the talks.

"Of course there is a lot to do," she said.

"Of course we would have wanted more, but this is a significant step and what is important now is pressing on."

The Copenhagen Accord sets a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degree Celsius rise over pre-industrial times and holds out the prospect of $US100 billion in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations.

It sets a January 2010 deadline for all nations to submit plans for curbs on emissions to the United Nations, but does not specify the cuts needed to achieve the 2C goal.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/rudd-fails-on-climate-change-abbott-20091220-l73s.html

'A disappointing result'

The Federal Opposition says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd must admit the results from the Copenhagen climate talks are disappointing.

Climate change spokesman Greg Hunt says the lack of a global framework means claims that Australia needed an emissions trading scheme (ETS) in place before the talks are false.

"Mr Rudd, for his own purposes, is trying to present it as more than it is," he said.

"There are no targets, there's no treaty, there are no binding agreements, there's not even a commitment on a timetable.

"Mr Rudd should be honest with the Australian people that it's a disappointing result, and that it puts to rest his claims that he needed an ETS before Copenhagen."

The Copenhagen conference on climate change has been a "comprehensive failure" for the prime minister, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says.

After 13 days of tortuous talks, the representatives of 192 nations on Sunday set a goal of limiting warming to 2C and earmarked $US10 billion ($A11.28 billion) in early funding for poor countries most at risk from climate change.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd threw his support behind the deal as "a significant global agreement on climate change action", but said much more remained to be done.

"Some will be disappointed by the amount of progress, the alternative was frankly catastrophic collapse," he told reporters on Saturday at the troubled summit.

However, Mr Abbott said the result was a rebuff to the prime minister.

"Intentions are better than nothing, but Mr Rudd has failed his own test," Mr Abbott told Sky News on Sunday.

"He said a few years ago that what we wanted to get were real targets against real time lines ... and certainly by that standard it's been a comprehensive failure."

He said such agreement as was reached by world leaders was too unspecific to be of value.

"We can all say let's get temperature increases down, but they haven't said what they would do to bring that about ... They've said let's not let the temperature go up by more than two degrees but they haven't said how they're going to achieve it.

"No country at Copenhagen has committed to any particular way forward. That's why I think it's very disappointing and that's why I think it's very hard for the prime minister, who always said real progress meant real targets against real time lines, it's very hard for him to claim any kind of a victory."

Mr Abbott added: "What this shows is that Kevin Rudd was very unwise to rush Australia into prematurely adopting a commitment in the absence of similar commitments from the rest of the world, and I think it certainly entirely vindicates the opposition's stance in rejecting Mr Rudd's great big new tax on everything when parliament was sitting earlier this month."

Greens leader Bob Brown described the outcome of the Copenhagen conference as a disaster and said it was time for the federal government to start "serious negotiations" with his party in the Senate.

"I think it's a very big setback for the planet and that means all Australians as well," Senator Brown told Sky News on Sunday.

"It (Copenhagen) isn't a deal - it's an agreement that's been noted by the conference but it has no target, no binding mechanism and it really gives no hope... It has simply left the board vacant when it comes to a commitment by any country on Earth to do anything in particular."

New Dawns in The Fabric of Things

*



Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun:
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

By W H Auden




If there was anything to be had, anything at all, we would have mustered courage and faced the day. He had been promised everything. He thought he would never die. He thought the magic kingdom would be his and there would be reprieve from the fate of mortals; his fading eyesight was not a sign of age, his lumping body still desired. These were the deepest, most misguided of fantasies. We were crooked, twisted over in hope, looking up at the sky, grimacing at the awkward angle of our bodies, as the light shone between the trees, children played in the forest glens nearby; and all was not lost, not here, not for you.

Such naivety was simply odd in some so battered by life; misfortune; injustice, someone who had made his own life so unbearable it justified almost any behaviour; any excuse to escape the torment. It was a cruel, dark time. Everything became dismembered. The fabric of things was no longer malignant, but even so he could feel his stomach swirling in despair, tightening and dismembering each shallow smile; clawing his way out of the abyss. It had seemed so noble, this struggle to survive. You are only as happy as you make up your mind to be, Abraham Lincoln had famously said, but all of his purpose, his reason for being, was bound up simply in surviving the daily torments. There was no rationality; and no easy escape.

He was trying to reorganise things. There were moments of hope, as he sat listening to the tales of others, but in reality it was pointless. He had created a dark, familiar fantasy and was comfortable to live in the enveloping glue, the daily grind, the misery with which he placed one step in front of the other. Each day became a Mount Everest, to be borne as best it could, each step a hero's journey, each frothing moment something to be endured. He smiled, hoping for some human recognition, but the daisy weights which held him to the surface, the passing of time which allowed him to prosper, it wasn't what he had asked for.

In flinging himself off the cliff, he had made no provision for a return, much less survival. He hadn't expected to live this long. There had been no plans. It was all very well to fight against the hypocritical bastardy which surrounded him, but oh, oh, it wasn't worth it; there couldn't be a solution without a precisely defined problem. And who could define this missing miasma, this vague space, call it conglomeration if you will, which was meant to represent a human; a full blown individual. There was no such thing. He was the victim of a shark attack. He was falling from a plane, the bodies falling through the air as if from a Saul Bellow novel, replete with life stories and intellect.

But when they landed the truth was revealed; lumpen, leaden, malformed weights. The children played outside; but in here he simply tried to understand the terrible things which had happened. Ripped asunder, ripped from his own life, his daily purpose and message from beyond, all of it was hard to understand, or even decipher. And then finally all the angst just splashed into foam and he was completely free, completely at peace. It had all been for nought. The liquid ecstasy which had been each waking day overwhelmed him. The sun glinted off the water. A pretty girl carrying red hibiscus handed one to a stranger, a girl on the corner kissing her boyfriend. The pair laughed; and the girl beamed as she practically skipped down the street. He turned the corner and the bay was set out below him. It was entirely different. It was an entirely new life.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/17/2774855.htm?section=australia

Bushfires are wreaking havoc across New South Wales, with a number of large blazes menacing homes and destroying property.

The Rural Fire Service (RFS) says sheds, crops, cars and at least one house have been destroyed by a large fire at Gerogery, north of Albury, in the south of the state.

A large bushfire has also destroyed a house and sheds and forced the evacuation of some residents in Londonderry, in Sydney's north-west.

Fire crews say strong winds are making it hard to control the Gerogery blaze, which began at a tip near Walla about 1pm AEDT.

RFS spokeswoman, Marg Weyner, says the blaze is now heading towards the Benambra Range, putting other towns at risk.

"Mountain Creek, Table Top North, Mullengandra and Bowna, Wymah areas are likely to come under ember attack and property threat if we cannot contain that fire in the Benambra Range," she said.

"It's high country, it's got a lot of timber in it and we've really been concentrating our efforts on property protection in the townships and the locality around Gerogery West."

Part of the Olympic Highway has been closed because of the fire.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6828035/Copenhagen-climate-conference-260-arrested-at-protests.html

Police in riot gear fired tear gas and used pepper spray to disperse more than 1,000 activists attempting to get into the Bella Centre where the crucial talks are going on. At the same time indigenous people’s groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) carried out a colourful protest inside the conference.

The protests brought the conference to a standstill and Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, was prevented from leaving for important meetings in the town centre.

Activists admitted the aim of the protest was to penetrate the UN Climate Change Conference for a “people’s assembly” but were pushed back by hundreds of police with dogs. More than 250 people were arrested.

Kevin Smith, a Climate Camp activist from England, compared the actions of the police to G20 protests in London. “There was pushing and the police started hitting people indiscriminately with batons. I got hit a couple of times,” he said. “I also saw people with streaming eyes and noses from pepper spray which can be excruciatingly painful.”

Dorothy Guerrero, from the Philippines, was with a group of indigenous people’s groups and NGOs who tried to join the protests happening outside. “I saw people fall to the ground and they were hit by batons,” she said.

The “Reclaim Power” protest was organised by Climate Justice Action, a coalition of groups from around the world. It follows a 40,000-strong protest at the weekend, where more than 1,000 people were arrested.

NGOs, civil society groups and charities, that represent millions of people in Britain, are increasingly angry that they are being left out of the climate change talks and there are expected to be more protests in the coming days.

Andy Atkins, Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, who joined a “sit-in” of more than 50 protesters after being barred from entering the centre, said it was an “affront to democracy”.

Trying Again

*



Musee Des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W.H. Auden, 1940



Well so? The malignant glue had taken over completely; and nothing anyone could say or do made the slightest difference. He went through each agonising day without even a sense of irony for what seemed, in his grandiose abstractions, like climbing an everest of agony on a daily basis. Not a laugh, unless it was crazed. There were funny tableau's which always erupted in front of him. It was so terribly poignant, and so habitually addictive, he could not let go. It was crazed and it made no sense; but those days of crisis were a familiar blackness; as if he had been here all before. But this time he was shocked by the sheer brutality of the blackness; and scurried back on to the lapping shores; comfort.

Two Men and a Truck have pulled up outside; the sound of reverse indicator piercing the culdesac calm. Everything is different here. He doesn't hear the drunken squabbles at 4am; you ripped me off.... How long had it been; before he was dynamited out. Almost literally. With three of the ceilings collapsed, builders everywhere, nightly eroded; fighting desperately to save an impossible situation, undermined at every turn. What was it about him that made these people think they could so readily attack? Everything that was familiar was gone. We knew everybody; identities in the street. Welcomed like an old comrade at the Glengarry; if he ever dared to go; and feted as he walked, hello, hello.

Everyone knew him and the kids. The landscape became a part of the soul; gritty; looking either way to ensure you were not about to be robbed. The gentrification continued apace. But the mob on the block were doing their best to withstand the tides of progress. You look after her, you white c..., they shouted, dumping an utterly drunk Doris in front of the young police officer. I only ever drink to get drunk he declared, almost proudly. Well you've done a good job, the publican said. And the night was black and infinite and he could sense everything within a hundred kilometres; and the stars bloomed in the black sky and all was not lost; not here at the end of the adventure; at the end of one personality and the beginning of another.

He draped himself in the woes of others; even in their triumphs; but mostly in their woes. The tiny pink and blue coffins; the hushed church, the teary relatives; the mother and father and children all dead. At the hand of a gun. In one crazed moment. The woman had pulled the trigger; but somehow there was that feeling it could just as easily been the man. No one wanted to apportion blame. No one wanted to witch hunt; or speak ill of the dead. The family of the father made an ostentatious display to the family of the mother; signalling in death that there was no blame. That this terrible tragedy had struck out of the blue. And as a result of all that hard work; he was to be liberated.

It had been such a very long time. He had been a young man when it all began. And each time he rose up and the forces gathered; another entity ate him down. The froth of the landscape, the vivid colours of Sydney, the ant like nature of the inhabitants, the lifeless, conservative streets; the endless queues and traffic jams and tunnels filled with smoke; the tension between drivers; the fumes shimmering in the heat and the voices of malcontent droning on the radio; lock them up, lock them up, was their solution to everything, soft judges.

Each day things vanished into the sand. It's tourist season at one of the world's most famous beaches, Bondi, and the bodies coat the sand and the cafes are full; with little English. These languages, these intimacies, as they move closer together and swing their Euro trash perfect bodies; how far from where he had come was all this? In those early hours; walking alone in the untrusting mist, frightened by footsteps following him; frightened by the sickness he could feel all around; to here in these perfect places; the light playing across the water; everything at peace, everything whole. He would never know happiness again was now reversed; and the shadows no longer raced across the sand as he stared glumly down.





THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/14/2771512.htm?section=justin

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has stepped up his attack on the Federal Opposition over climate change policy, as he prepares to leave for the UN talks in Copenhagen.

The Opposition policy is expected to focus on measures such as energy efficiency and carbon sequestration technology.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott calls it direct action but Mr Rudd says it is more like a case of direct regulation.

He says the Opposition's plan will be more expensive and less effective and engulf businesses in red tape.

"We have a clear cut, well-thought-through policy," Mr Rudd said.

"They are policy-making on the run. We have one which puts a cap on the amount of the amount of carbon pollution we produce. They have no cap.

"We have a clear compensation mechanism for families. They have none. Our system is fully funded. Theirs is a magic pudding."

Mr Rudd says the Opposition's plan to focus on measures like sequestering carbon in soil, better land management and more energy efficiency policies will end up costing more.

"What the Liberal Party needs to do is to take a calm, measured approach to developing mainstream policy for the future, including on climate change, rather than simply shooting from the hip, shooting from the lip and policy development on the run," he said.

But Mr Abbott has brushed aside the criticism.

"When our policy comes out before the Parliament sits again, people will see that there are much better ways to improve the environment and reduce emissions than Mr Rudd's great big tax," he said.

And he does not buy the Prime Minister's argument that the Opposition's plans will strangle businesses in red tape.

"Mr Rudd knows all about bureaucracy. What does Mr Rudd think his emissions trading scheme is?" Mr Abbott said.

"It's a great big tax to produce a massive political slush fund to provide enormous handouts to favoured groups that will be administered by a vast bureaucracy."

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/time-running-out-for-climate-deal-rudd-20091214-krvf.html

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has acknowledged time is running out for a global deal on climate change as he prepares to enter the fray in Copenhagen.

And he's unlikely to be welcomed with open arms after taking an early battering over Australia's handling of land use emissions, which have prompted cries of cheating from countries such as France.

Talks have hit a critical stage with just four days left to negotiate a global pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

With the clock ticking and ructions continuing to flare between developed and developing nations, Mr Rudd has acknowledged the risk of failure remains.

"It's going to be tough to get an agreement by Friday," he told Sky News on Monday.

"There'll be plenty of predictions of total failure, emerging success, dashed dreams, dashed hopes ... we've got a lot of work ahead of us.

"I wish I had a crystal ball to tell you how it is going to turn out."

His comments come amid accusations of mass-scale accountancy fraud relating to agricultural and forestry emissions.

Government negotiators are pushing for complex rule changes in Copenhagen that will allow Australia to take credit for any cuts to emissions made through land use.

Along with other developed countries, they are arguing the planting of trees, advancement in agricultural practices and so on, should all count towards meeting emissions targets.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/green-pot-of-carbon-gold-lures-politicians-20091213-kqim.html

IT WAS a candid remark in a private briefing. But the comments by an Australian climate negotiator in Copenhagen late last week gave some insight into where Labor intends to find a potentially ambitious cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

It will be in the same place that Liberal leader Tony Abbott is indicating he will go looking for his ''practical measures'' to solve climate change - and nowhere near the smokestacks of coal-fired power stations or greenhouse-intensive industries. It will be in the rolling back paddocks, grazing lands and grasslands of rural Australia, from Burke to Barcaldine, from Wubin to Wangaratta - a green pot of carbon gold.

It is hard to put a dollar value on the potential bonanza. Equally, it is hard to put an exact figure on the possible emissions reductions, but the predicted numbers are mind-boggling - enough, some say, to make Australia carbon neutral for the next three or four decades. And all that without having to impose a nasty tax, set up a complicated emissions trading scheme or clean up a single polluting pipe. It is a political win-win.

The climate change negotiator reportedly told a private briefing last week at the UN climate conference that Australia would be able to commit to a 25 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 if proposed land-use rule changes pushed by developed countries are accepted as part of a new global climate deal.

The changes are highly contentious in Copenhagen, as developing nations recognise the potential for countries such as Canada, the US and Australia to offset industrial pollution against carbon sequestration in rural landscapes. Intuitively, it seems implausible that simple changes in how we manage agricultural land might return much carbon to our soils. It's hard to imagine that perennial pastures, reducing tillage and fertiliser use and improving fire management could be any match for the relentless 24/7 pollution billowing from coal-fired power stations and grid-locked freeways.

Yet, because we have hundreds of millions of hectares of land, very small increases in soil carbon could generate huge reductions in our net emissions.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, Australia has no incentive to take up these opportunities, because we don't have to account for most land-related emissions. And from the figures revealed today showing a 657 per cent jump in the numbers since 1990, it is obvious why Australia at present prefers not to account for them.

Australia has led the charge at climate change negotiations over recent years to change the way that land-use emissions are counted in the next global climate deal. If it carved out so-called natural or ''exceptional'' events such as bushfires and drought, which cause the huge spikes in our emissions, Australia could claim carbon credits from ''forest and land-use management''. This then opens up rural lands to so-called ''carbon farming'' on a grand scale.