Absent Without Leave

*



ABOUT fifteen miles below Monterey, on the wild coast, the Torres family had their farm, a few sloping acres above a cliff that dropped to the brown reefs and to the hissing white waters of the ocean. Behind the farm the stone mountains stood up against the sky. The farm buildings huddled like little clinging aphids on the mountain skirts, crouched low to the ground, as though the wind might blow them into the sea. The little shack, the rattling, rotting barn were grey-bitten with sea salt, beaten by the damp wind until they had taken on the colour of the granite hills. Two horses, a red cow and a red calf, half a dozen pigs and a flock of lean, multi-coloured chickens stocked the place. A little corn was raised on the sterile slope, and it grew short and thick under the wind, and all the cobs formed on the landward side of the stalks.

Mama Terres, a lean, dry woman with ancient eyes, had ruled the farm for ten years, ever since her husband tripped over a stone in the field one day and fell full length on a rattlesnake. When one is bitten on the chest there is not much that can be done.

Flight, John Steinbeck.



In cruel heights and dark days, in the times when we were remembered, when he was caught out in the open, when all sufficed. It wasn't new, he was certain there was some other way out. They had lived under the hook of the sandstone cliff thousands of years ago, but even now he could feel them, as they danced and sang: I'm the king of the castle and you're the dirty rascal. These shadows, these flickering thoughts, never fitted into the too bright colours of a coastal city, the intense deep blues and greens, the choppy waters, the dislocated thoughts. He was never going to be retrieved. He wasn't your enemy any more. There were so many handsome men, and she could have kissed them all.

Derelict inside his own soul, the drunken queen inside him desperate to get out, all the sins of his contemporaries laid down on top of him, the expensive motor blokes parked casually on the side walk, the tramps he watched with so much fascination gathering near the hotel, the alcohol font. He knew the sickness would destroy him. He saw what had happened to others. He watched the old junkies on their walking sticks, not just pass their time but derelict in a different, more abandoned way, more chaotic, smellier, their own abandonment of self written large. These were the warning avatars, the unquiet spirits acting as warning posts for his own slippery path. All was not well, he knew that now. Shadows were never going to fill his heart, to grant him purpose once again.

She came up at the most inappropriate times, the bitter old thing, collapsed in her fey ways, so caustic it was astonishing. The hands flapped and the daaahlings poured forth; and the butch working blokes gathered around looked at each other, not sure what to make of this latest oddity from the city; a walking debacle of a human being. She was so caustic there might have been humour there, in the shadows and the warm pools and the acres of alcohol. These constructions were worthy of Multiplex, they were so often there and so intimate, so detailed in their portrayal. Well, well, he thought, aren't they all so cute, as he could feel the fabric of things submerging in oblivion soup, the tales of the real world far removed, their cackling reminiscent of gay bars all over the world.

And then she flapped a wrist in the middle of the agriculture show, pushed a hand forward with an empty cup, more please darling, whatever it is. A red concoction which was having the desired affect, he was disappearing under the strain. Nobody understands, he sobbed, random in his incoherence. His guides, flogging their products and trying to weasel a story into the august publication for which he worked, were at a loss. City folk. Media folk. They are different to you or I; it was the only explanation. She couldn't have cared less, let loose. It was her job to outrage the locals, always had been. Let loose now, thanks to the ample alcohol consumed by her host, was wonderful. That through his skin she could feel the country air and the sun dappling through the edges of the media tent, was all the better.

It was a wonder in all those years that he, and therefore she, never got the sack. Because she appeared all too often, in all too many inappropriate circumstances. Nothing could be done to stop her busting out; not when the defences were already down and his commitment to the real world marginal at best. You wouldn't know what it was like, the tens, the hundreds. How many sexual partners have you had, they had asked him at the VD clinic. He looked blank. Less than ten, more than ten. He continued to look blank. More than a hundred? He smiled. Well... Well he lined up for yet another, determined to get plastered in the afternoon sun, haphazardly organising the story he would have to return to the office with, liaising with the photographer, who was out being healthy looking at all the exhibits.

He watched the cows as if they were from another planet. He admired the rustic faces. Every where else there were simpler, nobler lives, people who went quietly about their business with a grace and dignity that he could only pretend. He scuttled straight back to the media tent as fast as his legs could carry him. There were tit bits. But mostly there were splendiferous amounts of particularly lethal punch. He drank far too much. How do you tell the real journalists? They're the ones who head straight for the food and pay no attention whatsoever to the story. The only time he showed any interest was when we offered him coffee, the complaint went. But she didn't care. She thrived at times like this, when he mixed in a few beers with the punch and eyed off the bourbon to make the plane journey disappear. He raised a glass and they both raised a glass, the story appeared in the paper next day as if nothing had gone wrong, and nobody, he hoped, knew that he had been absent without leave. Completely absent.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/article.aspx?id=314930

The ranks of the NSW Police gang squad will more than double in response to a fatal bikie brawl at Sydney airport.

In addition to the 50 officers already attached to the Police Gang Squad, 75 officers have been drawn from various sections of the police force to establish Strike Force Raptor.

The strike force will target outlaw motorcycle gangs in the wake of the violent escalation of feuding between rival groups.

It will come under the umbrella of the gang squad and will be operational by the end of the week, with an indefinite mandate.

NSW Premier Nathan Rees said a review of current laws would also be expedited in the wake of Sunday's vicious brawl.

NSW will consider following South Australia's lead and declaring outlaw bikie gangs prohibited criminal groups, allowing police to arrest members for criminal association.

A 29-year-old man was bludgeoned to death on Sunday at Sydney's domestic airport during a fight involving up to 20 people, among them members of the Hells Angles and rival Comancheros bikie gangs.

Police won't confirm a report that the dead man was Anthony Zervas, the brother of a Hells Angels member who had recently served jail time.

Four men were due to face a Sydney court on Monday charged with affray.

After meeting with Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione and other senior police, Mr Rees said he was 'sickened and appalled' by what had taken place.

'This is a new low in the activities of these criminal gangs,' he told reporters.

'Once they kept these things to themselves.

'This has now overlapped into the public domain and that's why we are taking this so seriously.'

Mr Rees and Mr Scipione both stopped short of declaring Sydney to be in the midst of a bikie gang war, but both men said there had been an escalation in gang-related violence.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iLJ2gzRRfTYc_YuS7r1yuwnmne-gD973TVN80

LUANDA, Angola (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI on Monday left Africa with a final impassioned plea to corrupt leaders to let the poor share in some of the proceeds of the continent's natural resources.

The parting words followed a controversial first pilgrimage to the continent where the growing number of Catholics welcomed his ringing denunciations of corruption — while critics worldwide condemned his rejection of condoms to fight the AIDS epidemic.

"Our hearts cannot be at peace as long as there are brothers that suffer the lack of food, work, a house, and other fundamental goods," the 81-year-old said in his farewell speech at Luanda's airport before returning to Rome.

The pope bathed in a warm welcome from huge crowds during the seven-day visit to Angola and Cameroon, two countries with large Catholic populations and Catholic presidents.

The countries are rich in resources, including oil, but the countries' bishops accuse the authoritarian regimes of enriching a small elite while the vast majority remain mired in poverty.

Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos, who joined the pope at the airport, did not directly address the pope's comments. "We are very happy we had this opportunity to welcome you to our country and we are very grateful for all the advice that you have given to our people," he said.

During the pilgrimage, Benedict said Christianity could inspire hope among the desperately poor of the region.

But his rejection of the use of condoms to help Africa fight the AIDS epidemic provoked a firestorm of criticism, including from governments in France and Germany and European Union officials.

On the plane to Africa, Benedict said that distributing condoms was not the answer to the problem of AIDS. He said the best strategy was the church's efforts to promote sexual responsibility through abstinence and monogamy.

Before Benedict returned to Rome, a few dozen protesters gathered in front of the Vatican carrying candles and banners that read "Pro life? Pro condom" and "Condom no AIDS." They arranged condoms to form the word AIDS on the cobblestones in front of St. Peter's Square.

Despite the criticisms of his comments, Benedict's flock in Africa — the continent suffering most from the disease and where the church has seen its biggest growth in recent decades — turned out in the hundreds of thousands. Even clerics and those who believe condoms save lives turned out to see him.



http://www.sott.net/articles/show/179428-The-crumbling-case-for-global-warming

One young radical turned up at the Heartland Institute's climate change skeptics' conference in New York this week to declare that he had never witnessed so much hypocrisy. How, he asked the panelists of a session on European policy, could they sleep at night? Clearly puzzled, one of the panelists asked him with which parts of their presentations he disagreed. "Oh," he said "I didn't come here to listen to the presentations."

The conference - titled "Global Warming: Was it ever really a crisis?" - attracted close to 700 participants. Most of those I met displayed almost joy at being among people who dared to stand up to the mindless climate "consensus" and the refusal to debate, or even look at, the facts, as typified by that righteous young radical.

President Obama is considering a cap-and-trade system with which Canada would be forced to co-ordinate its own policies. The conference made clear how damaging and pointless such a policy would be.

Vaclav Klaus, the professorial president of both the Czech Republic and the European Union, pointed out at the conference's first session on Sunday evening that the global political establishment was still in the grip of thinking reminiscent of the Communism under which he once lived. He noted that few if any politicians seemed even aware of, or interested in, either the shortcomings of officially cooked climate science, or the potential disasters of climate policy.

Professor Richard Lindzen, one of the world's leading climatologists, also stressed that climate alarmism was a political and not a scientific matter. Particular worrying, he said, was that various scientific bodies had been seized by alarmists, who now issued statements without polling the members. This played into the appeal to authority rather than science. He called climate modelling "unintelligent design" and global warming a "postmodern coup d'état." He stressed that "Nature hasn't followed the models" used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There has been no global warming for 10 or 15 years. Countering all the blather about Exxon's (former) support for Heartland that appeared in coverage of the conference by climate-change cheerleaders at The New York Times and The Guardian, he noted that skeptics in fact had minimal resources to rectify the incipient policy horrors.

Asked why the skeptics had so much trouble in presenting a unified front, Professor Lindzen stressed that there was no "skeptical solidarity." But Joseph Bast, head of the Heartland Institute, pointed out that such diversity was a sign of free inquiry, as opposed to bogus claims that the science was "settled."

The sessions indicated the huge potential costs of the Obama administration's commitment to cap and trade, regulation and the promotion of renewables, effectively rationing energy as a way of grabbing revenue. Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who takes pride in having been dubbed a "climate criminal" by Greenpeace, noted that the political struggle had to keep the message simple. Voters should ask politicians one simple question: "Why do you want to raise my energy prices?" Since the one issue on which there truly is consensus is that Kyoto would have had little or no impact on global temperatures, it is a question for governments around the world, not least that of the government of Ontario, which has just introduced its draconian Green Energy Act.

Indur Goklany, an expert on globalization and a contributor to the IPCC, noted, using the UN's own figures, that global warming was by no means the threat conventionally portrayed. Indeed, the UN even acknowledged its benefits, although to establish that fact you had to read the documents "like a lawyer."

The session interrupted by the callow youth outlined the disaster of the EU's emissions trading system, and of its climate change policies in general. The good news, as Benny Peiser of John Moores University in Liverpool, and editor of the influential CCNet science network, suggested, was that the green movement was collapsing in Europe and becoming increasingly unpopular, as its enormous costs and minimal results were becoming apparent. The attempt to "rebrand" Europe as the "Environmental Union" had fallen apart and was now causing increasing discord both between and within countries.

Europe was now desperate for the United States, China and India to share its self-inflicted pain in time for the next great UN expense-fest in Copenhagen, but it was unlikely to happen.

One of the most devastating presentations came from Gabriel Calzada, a Spanish economist who indicated how Spain's "leadership" in subsidizing wind and solar power - which had been praised by President Obama - had produced enormous costs, no benefits and was now falling apart. "Green jobs" were calculated not only to cost around half-a-million Euros a pop, they came at the expense of two "normal" jobs. And they were now disappearing as the renewables bubble collapsed.

The Sydney Town Hall, endless school presentations.