Sunday

*



And I know you like your boys to take their medicine
From the bowl with a silver spoon
Who run away with the dish and scale the fish by the silvery light of the moon
Who were taught from the womb to believe till the tomb
That as far as their bleeding eyes see
Is a pleasure pen, meant for them, builded and rent for them
Not for the likes of me
Not for the like of you and me

And for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

Oh but the green-eyed harpy of the salt land
She takes into hers my hand
She says, "Boy I know you're lying
Oh but then, so am I,"
And to this I said "Oh well."

Well put me in a cage full of lions, I learned to speak lion
In fact I know the language well
I picked it up while I was versing myself in the languages they speak in hell
That night, the silence gave birth to a baby
They took it away to her silent dismay
And they raised it to be a lady
Now she can't keep her mouth shut

And for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

Augie March



They jogged past, fit as fiddles, astonishing good looking some of them, and he walked past them. Nineteen years before, well, 19 years and almost 9 months before, his son had been conceived, in one of those flashing moments when he knew she was pregnant. She was the third woman in rapid succession, the only one who went through it. They had two children under two before they barely knew each other. I've always wanted to have children, he had expressed out loud, there on that balcony overlooking Woolloomoolloo, with views to the Opera House and the Bridge. Shortly thereafter there had been a miscarriage. Shortly after that he moved. And shortly after that came the next pregnancy. It all happened very fast. He had been a reporter on the Sydney Morning Herald and all had been fine with the world.

A young, good looking partner. The world turning on its axis. The sound of the sea out the window, the boxes of his old life inappropriate in the new surrounds. A milk crate? Well, those were the days. Later he would come home to find half his clothes had been thrown out. They were daggy, she said dismissively, perhaps truthfully. The waves crashed and young fit friends seemed to bounce in and out. Now everything had ended, everything, his life as a reporter, with both of the children off in boarding situations his life as a single father, everything. And so he walked up and down the beach every day, and half the world jogged by. They were in a different realm, in a different stage of life.

How he envied them some days; and when he first came there, after that darkest of dark molasses evil period, would pace up and down the beach staring bitterly, angrily, sadly, blankly at the sand. They say God is in the places in between; perhaps. He wouldn't know. But the waves crashed and his eyes lifted. And after a few months the thought came crashing in: Life Is Magnificent, Every Day Is Glorious. Where did that come from? How could it be? He sat in his alcove and smoked an inappropriate cigarette, and could see the dolphins splashing out to sea, the lovers canoodling on the rocks below. Or depending on the hour young men with their shirts off doing their Eastern inspired exercises.

Yesterday he saw a group of businessmen at about 7am. They had obviously been up all night drinking and decided to go for a skinny dip. Their unattractive bodies, by local standards, shivering in the shock of the sea. They were laughing hysterically as one of them stood on the sand with his togs still on. Not going to join them? He asked, grinning because everything was so fabulous and the day so wonderful and the beach just looked absolutely beautiful; every where he looked another tableau. It's public! The man declared rather superfluously. People are looking! Have fun, he grinned back again; barely braking his stride, because there was more that was beautiful to be embraced, the view from the point, the water splashing on his feet.

He had been spending 12 hours or more at work and now he was free. He tried to give them a cuddle but they were too big now. And it was all such perfect timing. But he couldn't help but feel sad, at everything, everything. The farewell came and went and was really nice. None of the hierarchy came, of course. These were the masters he had been enslaved to all these years, invisible. Names and legends and stories, all things In the passing days and the passing years, his once garrulous nature wrecked by tragedy, his own vulnerability leading to attack. Never again. But who can know now. He was prepared to change everything; to walk into a new role; to become a different person. How grounded was that? Not very.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/most-popular/2010/01/30/jd-salinger-had-15-new-novels-hidden-in-safe-115875-22005281/

Locked behind the thick steel door of a safe, inside an isolated house in a remote wood, lie what could be some of the greatest works of literature ever written.

Yet the words that fill every page have never been read by anyone except the reclusive genius who wrote them.

And now, at least 15 unpublished novels by JD Salinger, the American author of The Catcher in the Rye who died this week aged 91, could well be destroyed.

Fans of the author, one of the 20th century’s most influential writers, have longed for more since his last published work, a story in a magazine back in 1965.

But while his most famous work sold more than 60 million copies worldwide, Salinger retreated from society, giving his last interview in 1980, and was rarely seen in public.

However, he never stopped writing. For 40 years, alone inside a concrete bunker in his rural New Hampshire home, he is said to have furiously bashed away at his typewriter.

But he didn’t allow anyone to see his latest works – locking the precious manuscripts away as soon as they were finished.

Tributes to the legendary author poured in yesterday after his son, actor Matt Salinger, released a short statement that his father had died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday night.

Horror novelist Stephen King said it felt like “an eccentric, short-tempered, but often fascinating uncle had passed away”.

But it is the fate of the author’s secret cache which is causing the most interest – and distress – to fans.

While there was speculation Salinger wanted the books to be published after his death, others have hinted he may have ordered that they should all be destroyed.

Whatever happens, this last chapter in Salinger’s fascinating life is likely to throw up far more questions than answers.

Almost nothing is known about the author’s life since he retreated into self-imposed seclusion in 1953, in the tiny village of Cornish, New Hampshire.

In his last interview, for a high school newspaper in 1980, he said: “I love to write and I assure you I write regularly. But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.”

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2010/01/30/salingers_solitude_their_source_of_pride/

Salinger’s solitude, their source of pride
A little town fondly recalls one very quiet neighbor

By Bryan Marquard
Globe Staff / January 30, 2010

The tall, angular writer with his recognizable shock of white hair could be seen over the years striding through downtown Hanover, some 14 miles north, where he would duck into the Dartmouth Bookstore on Main Street. On an overcast day, passersby might spot him in the Windsor Diner, across the Connecticut River in Vermont, his profile defined by lights inside as he sat in a window booth overlooking Route 5.

He was such a regular at the fund-raising roast beef suppers at First Congregational Church in nearby Hartland, Vt., that when his health failed and he became too frail to attend, his wife drove over to pick up a take-out order from the basement fellowship hall.

“I think maybe he looked like a recluse to the media, but he talked to people, you know,’’ Merilynn Bourne, chairwoman of the Cornish Board of Selectmen, said in town offices yesterday. “If you knew who he was, you’d see him here and there. You’d see him in the grocery store; you’d see him in the post office.’’

“We didn’t use the word recluse; he just kept to himself,’’ said Keith Jones, a selectman. “In my eyes, he wasn’t famous. He was just my neighbor.’’

The writer John Updike once praised Salinger’s short stories for the “Zen quality they have.’’ Salinger himself might have appreciated how the best approach to spotting him had the paradox of a Zen koan. If you did not go looking for him, he was there. If you did, he was not.

When reporters and fans of “The Catcher in the Rye’’ asked for directions to Salinger’s house, “sometimes we’d send them on a little goose chase,’’ said Mike Ackerman, proprietor of the Cornish General Store.

“Nobody would give him up,’’ Jones said.

With protection like that, Salinger lived relatively undisturbed in a largely rural area where many treasure privacy and where the distance between houses is often measured in several wooded acres, rather than lawns. Cornish is part of the Upper Valley, a region straddling the Connecticut River that forms the border between New Hampshire and Vermont. The area’s most urban communities endure only brief traffic jams at rush hour; the smallest have a flashing yellow light at crossroads.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/American-writer-JD-Salinger-leaves-a-rich-legacy/articleshow/5521915.cms

JD Salinger’s reclusiveness was as famous as his slim output of books. But the walls he built to protect himself— and his art—cannot take away from JD Salinger, American Writer
the world his words that remain deeply etched in the American conscience. Why did Salinger disappear from the American literary landscape, a landscape he himself made more beautiful with his own elegant and, at times, comic brush strokes.

His stories, most of which talk about the emotional wounds of the young, changed, post-war, the American model of short fiction. If Hemingway made American writing more virile, Salinger lent it a soft and comic touch. With his great ear for American street argot and a comic timing better than a stand-up comedian’s, Salinger influenced and shaped his successors more than any writer would ever do. They got excited as hell thinking (The Catcher in the Rye) about it as probably he would have written.

John Updike, who was to follow him into the New Yorker, said: “Salinger opened my eyes as to how you can weave fiction out of a set of events that seem almost unconnected, or very lightly connected.” Salinger’s is a constant presence in all Updike’s books. The vernacular in the Rabbits, the humour in Couples, the comic element in The Witches of Eastwick would not be possible without The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger’s only novel, a rite of passage for millions of teenagers across the world.

Updike—unlike Salinger—was a tremendously prolific writer, compulsively playful with language. He left American letters richer by many masterpeices of short and long fiction. All of them have the ‘lightly connected’ touch that Updike found so enriching in Salinger

“A man who used language as if it were pure energy beautifully controlled, and who knew exactly what he was doing in every silence as well as in every word,” Richard Yates said. Yates’s Revolutionary Road came in the early 60s, around the same time that Salinger decided to brick himself up in Cornish, New Hampshire, on a 90-acre ranch. Yates’s book deals with the deeply wounded emotions of a suburban couple and is vastly different in pitch and tone from any of Salinger’s fictions.

But the polished beauty and controlled brevity of Yates’s language comes directly from Salinger. Compare: The whole slow, dry agony of this place would be cut away from his life like a tumour from his brain (Revolutionary Road). Now Salinger from The Catcher: He was rather like a Christmas tree whose lights, wired in a series, must all go out even if one bulb was defective. Two different sentences, two different meanings, two different moods.

But the sharp control, the strong belief in conciseness is there in both sentences.

Saturday

*



http://1.bp.blogspot.comhttp://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/ahc/national-assessments/bondi-beach/pubs/bondi-beach.pdf

Bondi Beach is one of the world's most famous beaches and is of important social value to both the Australian community and to visitors. Bondi Beach is significant because of its special associations for Australians as a central
place in the development of beach culture in Australia. It embodies a powerful sense of place and way of life. It is where Australians meet nature's challenge in the surf and is strongly associated with the Bronzed Aussie myth of
easygoing hedonism and endeavour balanced with relaxation. A place full of Australian spirit, synonymous with Australian beach culture, it is recognised internationally... Egalitarian in nature, the beach and surfing had a profound effect in changing our way of life, and developing our
sense of national identity. The central role of beaches, and Bondi Beach in particular, in Australia’s self image is reflected in the use of the beach by painters, filmmakers, poets and writers in exploring this new self image and reflecting it back to Australian society. Bondi has played a central role in this process, and has come to be viewed both within Australia and internationally as the quintessential Australian beach.



Already the days are getting shorter as the cusp of summer recedes. Got a call from the builder who was sanding his floors, wanting more money. He couldn't believe how hopeless they were. And yet this was Australia, where half the able bodied men of the nation sat around on disability pensions and passive welfare destroyed much of the nation's character. On Australia Day they went to the Oxford Tavern, which advertised topless barmaids, thinking that as it was nearby where they were and nothing else would be happening, it would be going off. A scrawny, rather nice, lets face it, barmaid with enormous jugs served three rather ordinary looking working blokes; and them. That was it. And soon the other blokes left; and it was only them left. After the other blokes left the barmaid put her top back on.

I'm not paid enough, she declared, while Ian pointed fruitlessly to the sign guaranteeing topless barmaids. I'm not paid enough she repeated. Leave her alone, he said. I'm more comfortable if she's more comfortable. Ian pointed at the sign again, but he shrugged. He wasn't a perve in any normal sense. This bar is like Australia itself, drained of life, he said, and they agreed, looking around at the grim surroundings, the peeling posters, the beer stained carpet, the povo walls. If there had ever been any good times in this place, it wasn't now. Behind them stretched another 20 kilometres of suburbs, equally dreary, equally drained of life. Outside the traffic whirred on the hot ashphalt, it, too, ugly and lifeless.

They were all shutting down. He downed another lemon squash. He thought of ripping someone's head off but couldn't be bothered. He thought of gangsters holding up banks, criminals owning bars, flash Leb boys in souped up cars, and realised that it was never going to happen here, there would be no guns pointed here. Down the road a group of men hovered at a tapas bar, drinking short black coffees, smoking cigarettes, not the least bit interested in the tapas. Australia's ludicrous licensing laws had crippled the bar scene. Richard Trevaskis had fantasised about opening a cocktail bar on Oxford Street, a cocktail on the way home from work. A perfect little bar.

But he died and it was well over a decade after his death before the licensing laws changed sufficiently to allow it to happen; those cosy little alcoves where money was no object, where men were united with each other, where flash days and glamorous nights lured them all into a startling intimacy, where other ways of being were all too well documented, where his own departure from the scene would be noted. Oh how he wanted to live in a village, to be known, recognised, appreciated. Here the hordes of tourists pass by and no one could care less. Leaving Sydney, he took his teenage kids first to the Icebergers, hunting for food, and then to Hurricane, where there was a wait of more than half an hour. But the ribs, the ribs, they're delicious, his son kept repeating. They were both moving into boarding situations, after all these years.

It had been him and the kids against the world for so long. Behind those locked doors and grated windows. Him and the kids and Major, the dog, huddled inside against the world. He had no belief that things would work well. No trust in anyone. He wanted to be free and yet didn't know how. Outside children with their yummy mummy ran towards the beach. But here they trailed the past with them, trailed through everything that had been. Surely there was an option, or an answer, but there was no knowing what it was. His farewell was later today; he just wnated to disappear. A gathering of the clan. A passing day. A passing life. It was all too easy and all too cruel. Oh, for God's sake, get a backbone, he thought, dismissing the local yokel pleading for more money.

All they had to do was finish the job to get their money - and they couldn't even do that. If everything worked it would be alright, but it wasn't going to. They hadn't worked in a generation and that was all there was to it. He could sigh with exasperation but there would be no acknowledgement. These shadows were going to beat them. The bastards had been too clever by half. He was going to Tambar to fix the house; and was utterly frustrated by the incompetence he found everywhere. His superannuation fund lied over the cheques being sent. So days rolled by when things should have been done but weren't. It was too easy to blame someone else. A life in transition. Is that all there is? Mary, Mary, quite contrary....


THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/29/tony-blair-iraq-inquiry-billington

Blair at Chilcot: a well-rehearsed performance

Our theatre critic assesses Tony Blair's performance, and sees familiar mannerisms and usual arguments

What did we expect? That Tony Blair would break down in front of the Chilcot inquiry admitting he had taken Britain to war on the basis of flimsy intelligence? That he would beg God's forgiveness for the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqis? That he would guiltily confess that at the famous meeting at Crawford, Texas, he had given George Bush unequivocal support for military action?

None of these things happened, of course. What we got was an event short on drama but long on the now-familiar Blair apologia: a kind of "je ne regrette rien" in which he argued that, whatever the messy aftermath, he was right to take us to war to remove Saddam Hussein.

Just occasionally the panel broke through Blair's impenetrable mask of self-belief. He looked a touch rattled when the notorious Fern Britton interview was mentioned and he seemed slippery and evasive when questioned about Lord Goldsmith's change of heart over the legality of military intervention. But except when being interrogated by the terrier-like Sir Roderic Lyne, Blair gave an assured, well-rehearsed performance.

We got all the familiar Blair mannerisms: the thumb and forefinger pressed together to underscore a point, the palms extended outwards to betoken moral certainty in the face of external pressure, even the occasional wry smile as when he claimed: "I was never short of people challenging me."

It was a clever, lawyerly, almost Ciceronian performance in which Blair trotted out all the usual arguments and gave a display of his question-dodging skill. But it would have been much more revealing to see Blair quizzed by the parents, many of them present at the inquiry, of the British soldiers killed in Iraq. Then perhaps he wouldn't have got away quite so easily, as he did here, with murder.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/apr/27/ukcrime

The caged misery of Britain's real 'Hannibal the Cannibal'

Multiple killer Robert Maudsley has spent more than 20 years in solitary. His supporters say this only repeats the abuse that led to his crimes

'It does not matter to them whether I am mad or bad. They do not know the answer and they do not care just so long as I am kept out of sight and out of mind'. Robert Maudsley.

They called him 'Blue' because that was the colour the face of his first victim had turned as he slowly strangled him. Then he became known as 'Spoons' after killing again and leaving the body with a spoon sticking out of the skull and part of the brain missing.

His third and fourth victims died on the same afternoon and soon afterwards Robert Maudsley acquired the nickname that has stuck: Hannibal the Cannibal.

Although he is now nearly 50 and has not committed a crime for more than 25 years, Maudsley is officially classified as Britain's most dangerous prisoner, a man said to represent such a high risk to those around him that he has spent the past quarter of a century in virtual isolation. With no prospect of ever being released, he will remain in prison in isolation until he dies.

Maudsley's bizarre and tragic story will be highlighted by Channel 5 next month as part of its Hideous Crimes documentary series. Using unprecedented access to members of his family, friends and former inmates, as well as Maudsley's own letters and psychiatric sessions, the programme paints a startling portrait of the abusive childhood that turned the man into a killer.

It will also mark the start of a new campaign to improve Maudsley's quality of life, on the grounds that his treatment could lead to further mental breakdown and is therefore a breach of his human rights.

'The prison authorities see me as a problem, and their solution has been to put me into solitary confinement and throw away the key, to bury me alive in a concrete coffin,' Maudsley wrote recently. 'It does not matter to them whether I am mad or bad. They do not know the answer and they do not care just so long as I am kept out of sight and out of mind.

'I am left to stagnate, vegetate and to regress; left to confront my solitary head-on with people who have eyes but don't see and who have ears but don't hear, who have mouths but don't speak. My life in solitary is one long period of unbroken depression.'

It is a situation that has appalled his supporters, who say that Maudsley is the victim of an uncaring and unsympathetic prison system that virtually denies him treatment and does nothing to assist in his rehabilitation.

Maudsley is housed in a 'glass cage', a two-cell unit at Wakefield prison that bears an uncanny resemblance to the one featured in The Silence of the Lambs. It was built for Maudsley in 1983, seven years before the film was released. At around 5.5m by 4.5m, the two cells are slightly larger than average and have large bulletproof windows through which inmates can be observed.

The only furnishings are a table and chair, both made of compressed cardboard. The lavatory and sink are bolted to the floor while the bed is a concrete slab.

A solid steel door opens into a small cage within the cell, encased in thick Perspex, with a small slot at the bottom through which guards pass him food and other items. He remains in the cell for 23 hours a day. During his daily hour of exercise, he is escorted to the yard by six prison officers. He is not allowed contact with any other inmates. It is a level of intense isolation to which no other prisoner, not even Myra Hindley, has been subjected.

Maudsley has a genius-level IQ, loves classical music, poetry and art. He is keen to take an Open University degree in music theory. Friends and family describe him as gentle, kind and highly intelligent. They enjoy both his company and his sense of humour.

'Since getting to know Bob, I have seen many prison documents about him,' says Jane Heaton, who began writing to Maudsley three years ago and has visited him several times. 'Everyone concentrates on the crimes he committed 25 years ago.

'It's as if they are living in a time loop and no one is prepared to look at how he is now. I would like to see him get an independent review of his condition and find a suitable course of treatment for him.'

The most recent pictures of Maudsley are more than 20 years old and were taken from a documentary made about his time in prison a few years into his regime of solitary. The rigours of solitary have taken their toll and today Maudsley looks far older than his 49 years. He has a grey beard, his hair is long and wispy and his skin, pale from lack of sunlight, is sucked in across his cheekbones.

During his last murder trial in 1979, the court heard that during his violent rages Maudsley believed his victims were his parents. The killings, his lawyers argued, were the result of pent-up aggression resulting from a childhood of near-constant abuse. 'When I kill, I think I have my parents in mind,' Maudsley said. 'If I had killed my parents in 1970, none of these people need have died. If I had killed them, then I would be walking around as a free man without a care in the world.'

Maudsley was born in June 1953, the fourth child of a Liverpool lorry driver. Before his second birthday, Robert, his brothers Paul and Kevin, and sister Brenda were all taken into care after they were found to be suffering from 'parental neglect'.

The young Robert spent most of his infancy at Nazareth House, a Roman Catholic orphanage run by nuns in Liverpool. During that time he formed a close bond with his brothers but barely knew his parents, who used to visit occasionally. Several years later, during which time they had eight other children, they took the first four back home.

It was to be the start of a horrific campaign of physical abuse. His brother Paul remembers: 'At the orphanage we had all got on really well. Our parents would come to visit, but they were just strangers. The nuns were our family and we all used to stick together. Then our parents took us home and we were subjected to physical abuse. It was something we'd never experienced before. They just picked on us one by one, gave us a beating and sent us off to our room.'

The worst, however, was reserved for Robert. 'All I remember of my childhood is the beatings. Once I was locked in a room for six months and my father only opened the door to come in to beat me, four or six times a day. He used to hit me with sticks or rods and once he bust a .22 air rifle over my back.' While his brothers had some vague memories of his parents, Robert had been too young and never knew them at all.

He was eventually taken away by social services and placed in a series of foster homes. His father told the rest of the family he had died. Robert drifted down to London at 16, developed a massive drug habit and spent the next few years in and out of psychiatric hospitals after repeated suicide attempts. On numerous occasions he told doctors that he could hear voices in his head telling him to kill his parents.

Working as a rent boy to support his growing drug habit, Maudsley committed his first murder in 1973 after being picked up by labourer John Farrell for sex. When Farrell produced pictures of several children he had abused, Maudsley flew into a rage and garrotted him.

Declared unfit to stand trial, Maudsley was sent to Broadmoor hospital for the criminally insane and remained there for three years. What happened next has become the stuff of prison legend. In 1977 he and another psychopath took a third patient, a paedophile, hostage and barricaded themselves into a cell. They then tortured their victim for nine hours before garrotting him and holding his body aloft so that guards could see him through the spy hatch. According to one guard, the man was discovered with his head 'cracked open like a boiled egg' with a spoon hanging out of it and part of the brain missing.

Ironically, despite killing a patient in Broadmoor, Maudsley was found fit to stand trial. Convicted of manslaughter, he was sent not to hospital but to Wakefield Prison, otherwise known as the Monster Mansion. Maudsley arrived at Wakefield to find his reputation had preceded him. Dubbed 'cannibal' and 'brain-eater', he had been at the prison for only a matter of weeks when he set off on another killing spree.

According to other inmates who were there at the time, Maudsley set out to kill seven people that day. The first was sex offender Salney Darwood. He lured him into his cell and cut his throat, then hid his body under his bed. Maudsley then spent the rest of the morning trying to find other people to lure back, but no one would go with him. 'They could all see the madness in his eyes,' said one.

Eventually, he sneaked into the cell of 56-year-old Bill Roberts and attacked him as he lay on his bunk, hacking at his skull with a makeshift knife and then repeatedly dashing his head against the wall.

He then calmly walked into the wing office, placed a serrated home-made knife on the desk and informed the guards that they would be two short when it came to the next roll-call.

Convicted of double murder, Maudsley was inexplicably sent back to Wakefield Prison. Unable to mix with others for his and their safety, he was moved into solitary confinement and has remained there ever since.

During a spell in Parkhurst, on the Isle of Wight, Maudsley met psychiatrist Dr Bob Johnson, who, after three years of interviews and counselling, believed that he was making great progress and was three quarters of the way through removing the aggression and latent violence that made Maudsley such a danger. But then, without warning, the treatment was cut off and Maudsley was moved back to Wakefield.

'As far as I can tell, the prison authorities are trying to break him,' says his brother Paul. 'Every time they see him making a little progress, they throw a spanner in the works. He spent a time in Woodhill prison, and there he was getting on well with the staff, even playing chess with them. He had access to books and music and television. Now they have put him back in the cage at Wakefield. His troubles started because he got locked up as a kid. All they do when they put him back there is bring all that trauma back to him.'

Maudsley himself agrees: 'All I have to look forward to is further mental breakdown and possible suicide. In many ways, I think this is what the authorities hope for. That way the problem of Robert John Maudsley can be easily and swiftly resolved.'

The Byronesque Quest

*



Backyard

The God of Smoke listens idly in the heat
to the barbecue sausages
speaking the language of rain deceitfully
as their fat dances.

Azure, hazed, the huge drifting sky shelters
its threatening weather.
A screen door slams, and the kids come tumbling
out of their arguments,

and the barrage of shouting begins, concerning
young Sandra and Scott
and the broken badminton racquet and net
and the burning meat.

Is that a fifties home movie, or the real
thing? Heavens, how
a child and a beach ball in natural colour
can break your heart.

And the brown dog worries the khaki grass
to stop it from growing
in place of his worship, the burying bone.
The bone that stinks.

Turn now to the God of this tattered arena
watching over the rites of passage -
marriage, separation; adolescence
and troubled maturity:

having served under that bright sky you may look up
but don't ask too much:
some cold beer, a few old friends in the afternoon,
a Southerly Buster at dusk.

John Tranter



In Afghanistan more than a million people now face virtual house arrest, allowed out of their homes only for three hours each afternoon. In many remote areas this means it is impossible to get to a hospital, and women die in child birth. People dash from their homes to the markets. Helicopter gunships shoot people they find in the fields outside the narrow curfew hours. It's all part of the war on the Taliban, funded by western money, approved by the Western powers, including Australia. There is almost a total blackout of media coverage of the gross human rights offences and the massive damage being done to the economy because no journalists venture into the tribal areas anymore; and those who are there daren't speak out for fear of being shot. People die in distant fields while preening power brokers, Nobel Peace Prize winners no less, turn the other way while providing the money for these gross outrages.

These fragments of present history come down to us through many different sources. There were always outrages in the distant fields of war. His whole life was changing and that was all there was to it. They looked back at their own dishevelled pasts as some kind of Bryonesque quest, noble within itself, discovering the truth about the days flickering past, about their own existence. Grown in the suburbs, destined for the suburbs, these mantles of mediocrity had settled across the entire place. There was no solution. All was not lost but times were most certainly difficult. Sydney really is at the end of the known universe, he said to his friend in the back garden, who agreed. The only bit I'm interested in is from here to there, he said, gesturing at the distance between his house and the beach, Australia's most famous beach.

It was time to leave, there wasn't any doubt of that. He made friends with a charming old American academic who reminded him, in part, of John Parks, the American academic he had worked for for a year at Sydney University. We weren't going to reveal the most intimate flashes. Time was of the essence yet time was slipping away. We were prepared to be distorted. We came running, running, in a flurry of sweat and excitement out of the night. Distant battlefields were just another undiscovered tragedy; impossible for the brain to take in. They were miniscule worms wriggling in a petrie dish; they made way for the future and a way for the past. They didn't know who they were anymore. He was disconsolate with rage.

Because while nothing seemed fair, there were many other solutions to be had. He wanted to reach out and embrace everyone, record everything. Five am and on queue the kookaburras begin their raucous chorus. They were destined to be strangers. It was such an intimate thing, this lost longing. Could hardly be more intimate, he heard a voice say, and he wanted to make everything his own, be accepted, march every which way, approach the same bar, high in a Penang penthouse, watch the sqwawling, skanky city beneath. Hey Johnnie, you want something? These tales, there had been so many, did not a story make, and yet images collected over a lifetime needed to be portrayed, to fill the holes in the meta-narrative, whatever it was.

And so he knew, though he still found it hard to believe, that he was leaving Sydney, if not for good at least for now. There were other shadows flickering by, withdrawal sweats and drifting clouds of depression, free floating anxiety, but what had seemed like such a noble, Byronesque quest in their youth had turned them into nothing but thrill seeking derelicts, always looking back for the great party that had been. Father and son sat next to each other; while others sneered at outdated programs. He sought the answer and could not find. He made all those unique connections necessary for a shadowy lifestyle; and in their secret flitting from one place to another registered on nobody's radar. The authorities couldn't care. The politicians couldn't care.

And so, in the end, it came to nothing. Their destiny as street alcoholics defied their multiple talents, all the gifts and benefits they had been born with. He was marching past the statues he himself had built. They had once meant something but now were shimmering into disbelief; flickering and fading into eternal night. Beauty lasts forever. Love lasts forever. That's what they say. It was obvious nonsense. From that lonely beach so long ago where he had waited to die to the present, massive beach where tourists from around the world stretched their perfect bodies and flirted with each other, not noticing the old man who walked between them, he had learnt one truth: all was ephemeral, nothing lasted. Now he packed his bags and prepared to leave; an entire life.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/rich-or-poor-gillard-plans-to-put-it-all-online-this-year-20100128-n1s7.html

THE financial resources of every school in Australia will be on public display in the next version of Julia Gillard's My School website, due later this year.

State and territory governments and Catholic and independent school authorities agreed a year ago to provide the information but have not yet been able to devise a measure that allows fair comparisons between government, Catholic and independent schools.

Peter Hill, the chief executive of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which is responsible for My School, said data about each school's financial resources would be published in a second version of the site, along with results from this year's national literacy and numeracy tests.

''A lot of people will be very interested in finances of schools, because, of course, some schools have much more in terms of financial resources than others and this may go a long way to explaining some of the differences we're observing,'' Dr Hill said.

He said financial data would not be used to determine ''similar'' schools to which schools could be readily compared but would be displayed on the site separately.

Many parents had difficulty using the site after it was launched yesterday.

Dr Hill said the level of interest was greater than site producers had prepared for. It received 290,000 hits in the hour after its launch, at 1am. By 10am it had received 2.5 million. By 2pm this had grown to 4.5 million.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/tennis/8485282.stm

Andy Murray believes he is ready to end Britain's 74-year wait for a male Grand Slam singles winner after reaching his maiden Australian Open final.

The 22-year-old beat Marin Cilic to become Britain's first finalist in Melbourne since 1977, but he said: "I want to be remembered for winning it."

Asked if he thought he could triumph, he told BBC 5 live: "Yes, I think so.

"I've played my best tennis so far, I just need to do it in one more match. I'll give it my best shot."

Murray will meet Roger Federer or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in his second Grand Slam final on Sunday after coming from a set down to beat Cilic.

"There's a lot of pressure in Slam finals and if it's Roger, he's going to have the edge in experience," said world number four Murray, who lost to Federer in the 2008 US Open final.

"But I feel like if I play my best like I have been this week and fight hard, I've definitely got a chance of winning."

I want to win it obviously for the people that I work with, for my parents... then doing it for British tennis and British sport would be excellent as well

Andy Murray

Murray dropped his first set of the tournament in his semi-final against Cilic, and was struggling for inspiration when he trailed 6-3 2-2.

But, with a break point, Murray chased down a drop shot, produced a volley on the stretch before racing back to the baseline, spinning, and rifling an outrageous forehand pass down the line.

As a stunned crowd rose to its feet, a fired-up Murray pumped his fists and roared his approval.

"They don't happen that often, so you've got to enjoy them," he said later.

"It was really important because, I don't want to say the match was slipping away from me but the momentum was definitely with him."

From there, Murray swept to a 3-6 6-4 6-4 6-2 win over a tiring opponent in a minute over three hours.

The Scot now has two days' rest before Sunday's final.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/01/100128_obama_analysis.shtml

President Obama has delivered his first State of the Union address, stating his main focus would be job creation and fixing the economy.

Mr Obama acknowledged that the government bail-out of banks had been deeply unpopular, but said it had been necessary to stabilise the financial system.

In a speech that was at times combative, Mr Obama said he would not leave the huge budget deficit he had inherited to be tackled by another generation.

He warned Congress that it must change the way it does business to restore the trust of the American people.

Many African-Americans voted Mr Obama into office hoping he would make a real difference to their lives.

His candidacy created an unprecedented excitement in black districts of St Louis, but there are parts of this city that are suffering from almost unbelievable deprivation.

Amid one of the most run-down parts of town, Fergus Nicoll finds a church that is helping the local community rebuild lives ruined by the economic downturn.

One Crowded Hour...

*



Now should you expect to see something that you hadn't seen
In somebody you'd known since you were sixteen;
if love is a bolt from the blue, then what is that bolt but a glorified screw?
and that doesn't hold nothing together
Far from these nonsense bars and their nowhere music it's making me sick
And I know it's making you sick
There's nothing there, it's like eating air
It's like drinking gin with nothing else in
And that doesn't hold me together.

But for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

Augie March



The Australian Open is slowly winding to an end. One Crowded Hour. You Were The Only Person in the room. And everything dissembled. Everything fell apart. He was brought together and brought apart; and if only these final days weren't so cruel. He misted up at the very foot. His daughter was packing up her bags for the last time. The children were off into their own lives. Everything had been centred around a single duty, to protect, to nurture. The children came and he went; in a sense. I didn't want to be an old, childless queen sitting on a bar stool, he said, And yet he went back to that bar, the Oxford Tavern, where he used to get blindingly drunk after work, knowing when he started on the bourbon and cokes that soon enough he would remember nothing; soon enough would be the click in his head on the dance floor, and all would disappear.

It was this union with the world, this abnegation of the self, a total loss, that he so repeatedly sought. I was well known in my profession, even admired to a certain degree, but it never brought me happiness, he said. Trying to concoct a story out of nothing but disorganised strands; bits and pieces of another life. In reality nothing but a drunken union with the forces of the dark. He would crawl home to his apartment, but it meant nothing. Their life was meant to be a bold adventure; the personal the political, brave, pioneering, a stroke for a better world. Instead they were just another group of young, prematurely old hasbeens, marking time, trying too hard, phony as. And so he sat in that bar and he drank and he drank; watching the traffic stream by into the night, watching the day turn blind and the barmen become increasingly besieged.

What's this, his friend asked, replaying the old joke as he rubbed his fingers together: the smallest joint in the world, rolled just for you. Another round. Of drinks and gossip. Once again they replayed the recent drama, when his friend had smothered his lover to death with a pillow; all to avoid the final stages of AIDS. Outside the office workers streamed by on their way home to the eastern suburbs; their trite lives and their trite concerns. He couldn't have been more awkward. He had already had two double bourbon and cokes before he wrote up that day's stories for the following day's paper; then he had had a couple of quick schooners which turned into several; and now he was on his way to a darker night. Surely all this meant something? Surely this marathon of self destruction had its own nobility of purpose?

But of course that wasn't the case. He didn't know until he had been shell shocked into an altered consciousness what was actually happening. He didn't realise that he was on the decline. He didn't realise there was another way of being. He didn't realise that not everyone drank like him; or to be more accurate, he didn't realise the consequences of what he was doing to himself. Much like a climb up Mt Everest, he thought of it all as a noble enterprise, having swallowed whole the the lyrical possession of the dispossessed, the noble struggle, the adventure. That this was a journey he was taking on the behalf of others. That to experience this journey, to record it, to document the fellow travellers he met along the way, was in itself the truest, most sincere, most creative thing he could do.

These delusions, acquired through the ether, through the breathing air, through the zeitgeist of the times, may have first formed in lightning moments of youthful camaraderie and shared joys, but solidified into dangerous falsehoods over years. Years he had always assumed would lead into greatness, never enjoying the moment, always looking to the future. William Burroughs. Silver fish boys ejaculating on silver streams. All these enthusiasms, these hallucinations, so hard fought, so heavily manipulated, were meant to be part of a noble history, but instead became a savage falsehood, hiding in the shadows, a wounded dog. Justine Hennana moves into the finals. Andrew Murray in the semi-finals. Nations barracking their stars. The kids waving goodbye.

He didn't know how to make this any difference. The pack mentality was as strong as ever. If the world didn't agree they weren't prepared to utter the thought. Independence was not admired. Independent thought was little more than a joke. Cruel to be kind, that's what he thought, but instead he ordered another double bourbon. The decline took him by surprise. He could see the pity in his visitor's eyes. The malignant nature of the air, the atmosphere, the fabric of things, was everywhere, fighting through the gluey air. He hadn't realised there was any other way of being. That there was any alternative. And, increasingly drunk, he had no idea there was any alternative. Wake up, smell the roses, someone said as he wretched into the gutter. You alright mate, someone asked. He grunted as he looked up. He would never be alright. He had been born fundamentally deformed; and nothing could change that.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7004691.ece

Mahinda Rajapaksa, the incumbent President of Sri Lanka, was declared the winner of a presidential election today even as his main challenger, surrounded by troops in a luxury hotel, contested the results and accused the Government of trying to have him assassinated.

Mr Rajapaksa, who took power in 2005 and presided over the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels in May, won 57.8 per cent of 10.4 million votes in the first peacetime presidential poll in almost three decades, according to the final results.

General Fonseka, the former army chief who led the campaign against the Tigers before falling out with the President and joining the opposition, won 40.2 per cent of the vote on the Indian Ocean island.

"I announce that Mahinda Rajapaksa has won this presidential election," Dayananda Dissanayake, the independent Elections Commissioner, told reporters as the President’s supporters cheered and let off firecrackers in the streets.

The emphatic result dashed opposition hopes that General Fonseka could split the vote of the ethnic Sinhalese majority and win enough support from minority Tamils and Muslims to unseat Mr Rajapaksa.

It came amid high melodrama in Colombo, the seaside capital, with heavily armed soldiers surrounding the Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel, where the General and his team are staying, since the early hours of the morning.

Even as the results were being announced, General Fonseka told reporters in the hotel that he rejected them and had sent a letter to Mr Dissanayake asking him to nullify the election because of vote-rigging and abuse of government resources.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/world_agenda/article7001488.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=6986833

Angela Merkel, once billed as a kind of Iron Lady, has become the Invisible Chancellor. Even Germans who are usually quite happy to have a non-intrusive, modest head of government, are astonished. There is trouble brewing at home and abroad but the leader of Europe's biggest economy is distinguished by her absence.

One of her coalition partners, the Bavarian Christian Social Union, is bracing for embarrassing revelations from the trial of an arms dealer: he is expected to spill the beans about how illicit funds flowed into party coffers. Ms Merkel’s other coalition partner, the Free Democrats, are under fire for cutting value-added-tax for the hotel trade – and receiving hefty contributions from grateful hoteliers. Clearly party funding reform should be on the government agenda. Equally clearly, Ms Merkel does not intend to touch the issue: it is too dangerous, and she is adept at stepping out of the firing line.

At home, she suddenly looks weak. And abroad, there is a sense that her attention is flagging. The failure of the Copenhagen summit was partly her failure. Nothing much has been heard about the grand re-launch of the France-German relationship. For the past half year Germany has had no policy on Afghanistan. It was waiting to see what President Obama would come up with. Now it is waiting to see what will be demanded of it. That’s not exactly distinguished leadership.

An explanation offered by someone who knows her well is: exhaustion. The twin burden of dealing with the economic crisis and of fighting and winning a general election has left her drained. She loses concentration more quickly than three or four years ago; she is said to be sleeping badly. Ms Merkel took a two week mountain holiday at the outset of last year’s election campaign and this set a pattern of absent or remote leadership. Her Christmas break was unusually long. She was spotted reading a biography of Emil Zatopek, the remarkable Czech long distance runner who despite his oddly clumsy gait managed to win Olympic medals in advanced age. Germans see, in this choice of reading, the signs of a leader searching for her second wind.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/violated-by-hypocrisy/story-e6frf7jo-1225824126491

Violated by hypocrisy

* Jill Singer
* From: Herald Sun
* January 28, 2010 12:00AM

TONY Abbott's hairy-chested stance on female sexual behaviour is a boon for nostalgia buffs.

His latest pronouncements on the value of female virginity (it's a gift, presumably for husbands) place him firmly in the mid-20th century - an era that continues to inspire wistful longing for a simpler life, solid moral values and tailfinned automobiles.

It's an era I've been immersing myself in over the holiday season, courtesy of a boxed DVD set of Mad Men, the hit TV series focusing on 1960s advertising executives and their alpha-male lifestyles.

How it takes you back to that cosy time when a woman's place was in the home, daddy knew best, girls who "did it" were sluts and boys were left blissfully free to "sow their wild oats".

The Mad Monk's views on women and sex dovetail perfectly with those of the Mad Men - as the story goes, women must retain their virginity until they are married, otherwise men will view them as devalued, second-hand or shop-soiled goods.

One might also add that Abbott's tender appreciation of female chastity would sit happily alongside that of an unreconstructed cave-dweller such as, say, Osama bin Laden.

How that heady combination of political leadership and religious worship can facilitate male bonding, transporting them far beyond any constraints of time, culture or reason!

Now that he has nailed female virginity as a commodity that can be exchanged for a wedding ring, Abbott might further plunder the historical archive in his quest to restore respect for it.

If we zip back to the Middle Ages, for example, women were convinced that their virginity was worth dying for.

Lest she be rendered imperfect in God's eyes, a good and godly nun would rather kill herself when threatened with rape than allow herself to be soiled. Now, that's self-respect for you.

If Only, Be Brave

*



The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,

which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.

It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is hidden from its heat.

Psalm 19.



If there was no other cause, then he no longer belonged. He was astonished, disturbed, at once wondering pointless through the back streets weaving from the city to the beach, walking, walking; entirely disengaged. He looked with envy at the well formed lives of those around him. They could sneer, he knew that, there was no love or affection or sense of belonging. He had been betrayed on every level, by the place, by himself, by his own worse angels. Oh cruel, cruel, distance yourself, not just from the complicated plays of the crowded city around him, but from everything, the fabric of things, the wash of coloour that was the day. The song erupted in the cul de sac outside his bedroom window at around 5am: "One crowded hour... You were the only person in the room."

They were all drunk, spilling out from some party. He focussed on things. You can't feel guilty if you haven't done anything to feel guilty about. How short and sweet these evangelists were; the zealots. The sad tired eyes of those who watched his demise. And the group of the young singing in perfect tune with the record: "One crowded hour..." One crowded hour indeed. How strong it had been, the chaos; the marshalling of the forces in order to triumph, the indignity upon indignity heaped upon him by life itself. There were half formed stories. It had all the elements of a good journalistic story - controversy, topicality, narrative structure. The street light was hidden behind a veil of leaves. He kept expecting to see someone he knew, anyone he knew, but the city, chance, was simply not that kind. The poisonous dwarf would forever be.

There was a narrative structure but in the shape of a city, vast, little stories, like fireflies, darting here and there. So much of the public culture was an unadulterated lie; worse now that there were left wing governments at every tier of government, and anyone who dared to disagree, with global warming, with domestic violence propaganda, with the unadulterated virtues of multiculturalism and the terrible, crippling embarrassment of what had once been a proud history. Millionaire left wing media commentators ridiculed the genuine beliefs of the populace as old fashioned, out of date. What was out of date was honesty, truth. There were places in this city where lice and scabies and all form of known disease crawled in the black leather rooms and young men bared their arses to all and sundry, young and old. The vice crawled up across his skin. He was letting go of everything now.

There had to be another story. Everything was known and yet their past, evil, lackadaisical problems, came to dominate everything they did, their every waking moment. He was shocked by what he had seen. And shocked, no less, by the sudden absorption of his narrative back into the past, to be swallowed whole by the city. He wanted to belong to a village, where he could point to a hut and say: I built that. Where he could point to an old woman perched in the doorway, keeping a beagle eye on the children, and say: that is my grandmother, she is my aunt. Instead he could have been a ghost for all the impact he made; barely collecting dust as he moved from one path to another, past houses where he had lived, corners he had waited on.

The street people did not know him, nor did the young office workers spruiked and ready for work. He wanted to tell them a story, a cautionary tale. He wanted to say: these are the lessons to be learnt; be proud, be strong, be ready to fight. There were cul de sacs behind the Cross. There were apartments where he had been decades before. There were stories he had wanted to tell; but now they all merged together and meant nothing. Their import was gone. The Australian Open dominated the airwaves; but it wasn't easy, that was for sure. He could have sighed and been measured; but he knew the property owners banded together and betrayed him, he knew that they whispered behind his back, he knew that his own lack of power, property, prestige was enough to justify their killing him as a mere inconvenience, dismissing the tale he had to tell.

There, there, he felt like saying, pointing up at the bland concrete exterior of Withering Heights aka Gotham City, we used to live there; party there. We saw the future and embraced the past. We were a significant part of the city's destiny, our unique talents, striking personalities, our desire for strength and a future. They had always been about overthrowing the central ground, measuring pleasure and pain, telling stories to the sky. They wanted to be significant, loud and proud. The personal is political went the slogan of the era; minted by feminists at the beginning of their long career of male bashing lies; and all he wanted to do was stand up and tell the truth. To record what had happened here. Away from natural disasters, away from the telltale signs of a purposeful life, a strong gait, head held high, clear eyes; a sparkling smile and a clean wit. He missed them now, decades later, just as he had missed them then, all those years ago, the very events of their lives draped with the melancholy of altered lives.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/25/ethiopian-airlines-crash-lebanon

Investigators were tonight carrying out DNA tests on severely burned bodies recovered from the sea after an Ethiopian Airlines flight carrying 90 people caught fire during a lightning storm and crashed into the Mediterranean minutes after taking off from Beirut.

As darkness fell no survivors had been found in the stormy waters off Lebanon, despite search and rescue efforts by the country's military, UN naval peacekeepers and units from nearby Cyprus who were tonight joined by British and French helicopter teams.

The plane's 83 passengers included 56 Lebanese – two with dual British nationality – 22 Ethiopians and individuals from Canada, Syria, Iraq and Russia, as well as the American-born wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon. By tonight at least 34 bodies had been recovered.

Lebanon's National News Agency tonight confirmed that 57-year-old Afif Karshat was one of two Lebanese with dual British nationality among the casualties.

Lebanon's president, Michel Suleiman, said terrorism was not suspected in the crash of the Boeing 737-800, which was headed for the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. "Sabotage is ruled out as of now," he said. Lebanon's defence minister, Elias Murr, blamed bad weather for the crash. An official investigation has been launched, but the plane's black box has yet to be recovered.

Several eyewitnesses reported hearing an explosion and seeing a ball of flame in the sky just after 2.30am today, during a fierce winter thunderstorm.

"There was huge thunder and it was raining like crazy. The lightning was coming down from the clouds. The electricity had gone out, but I couldn't sleep. Then I heard an explosion," said Hassan Ramadan, a 39-year-old engineering contractor from Khalde, just a few miles from where the plane went down.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/26/2801101.htm?section=world

One of Saddam Hussein's most hated offsiders has been executed for ordering the deaths of thousands of Iraqi Kurds more than 20 years ago.

Ali Hassan al Majid was better known as Chemical Ali for his role in the gassing of at least 5,000 Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war in 1988. Most of those killed were women and children.

His execution was announced shortly after suicide bombers struck the Iraqi capital in a coordinated attack, staging three car bombings aimed at well-known hotels in the city that killed more than 30 people and injured at least 70 more.

Majid had been sentenced to death three times before, but each time his lawyers managed to delay his execution. Now, a week after his fourth sentence, he has been hanged.

Majid was a close cousin of Saddam Hussein.

He had also been previously sentenced to death for war crimes committed during a Shiite uprising in southern Iraq in 1991, and the murders of dozens more Shiites in Baghdad and Najaf in 1999.

Bomb blasts

On the same day, at least 36 people have been killed and 71 wounded in three massive car bombings that targeted hotels in Baghdad, in an apparently co-ordinated attack less than six weeks from a general election.

Iraqi and US forces have warned of rising violence in the lead up to the March 7 vote, the second parliamentary ballot since the 2003 US-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein but ushered in a deadly and long-lasting insurgency.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/26/2801092.htm

At least 36 people have been killed and 71 wounded in three massive car bombings that targeted hotels in Baghdad, in an apparently co-ordinated attack less than six weeks from a general election.

Iraqi and US forces have warned of rising violence in the lead up to the March 7 vote, the second parliamentary ballot since the 2003 US-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein but ushered in a deadly and long-lasting insurgency.

The first bomb struck near the Palestine and Sheraton hotels in Abu Nawaz, close to where a giant statue of Saddam was symbolically toppled almost seven years ago, at around 3:30 pm (local time), an interior ministry official said.

The second and third blasts just minutes later targeted the Babylon Hotel in the central district of Karrada and the Hamra hotel in Jadriyah, in the south of the capital, he added.

Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad Major General Qassim Atta said all three car bombs were suicide attacks.

An interior ministry official said that 36 people had been killed and 71 were wounded.

The first explosion which shook ground miles away from the site of the blast sent plumes of smoke rising hundreds of metres into the air.

Monday's attacks differed from recent high-profile bombings that have become increasingly common in Baghdad in that they targeted hotels rather than government buildings.

The most recent deadly bombings in August, October and December last year occurred at government buildings, including the ministries of finance, foreign affairs, and justice. Those attacks killed nearly 400 people.

US and Iraqi politicians have warned that the election could be a focus for violence.

The Crippled Wings Of Flight

*



When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead -
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute -
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee,
As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.

Percy Shelley




He knew he had entered a new period of crisis. Jim Courier commenting on the Australian Open, causing consternation and difficulty across hundreds of thousands of Australian households as they struggled to mute him out while still watching the game and picking up the odd interesting bits. It was a skill, blocking out Courier's voice in the mind while tuning into the others - not to mention the accomplishment of other tasks. The cicadas screached and the Australian Open hummed and murmured, went through peak and trough, the blue of the Melbourne courts a fixture in so many people's lives. At this time of year. As if the passing of years could be measured by past victories. Federer. Of course. Playing Hewett tonight. He isn't, from what he could pick up, certainly in his household, popular amongst teenage girls. Two gorgeous babes, he laughed, the girls dolled up for a party.

These were the final days of an entire cycle of life. It was time to man the barricades against the destructive patterns of the past. To protect himself against himself. If anything could be more tedious. The stereotypical fear. New waves of tourists crowded Campbell Parade, the boulevarde, if you could call it that, along the front of Bondi Beach. The muggy heat interfered with his own mercurial, melting state. Things were collapsing and there was nothing he could do to control them. Everything was being stripped away. He had become an invalid, in need of protection, even from himself. These were dark times when the evil engineers who had populated those institutional corridors ate away into the fabric of his brain.

And in order to survive he was forced to create his own army of evil agents; to fight against the fabric of things; to ensure that good conquered evil, just for once, just once. Courier continues his technical love affairs; today with Davidenko - "he is not afraid to go forth" - while the Australian commentators, such as John Alexander, are virtually mute in comparison; their coverage dignified, restrained, unopinionated and non-self obsessed coverage is lost in the American accented babble. Why does the Australian Open have an American as its most public figurehead? It is just ridiculous. But these things, these idle things, were lost in the summer heat; tragendy in Haiti, Nigeria, far away. Still, it was hard to believe.

If he could have crumpled up and disappeared he would have. It was not possible to be more restrained. He said nothing to no one. He would not, could not communicate. People sensed his reluctance, and rarely bothered to engage. Oh what stupid things people say. It was too painfully cruel. The tennis balls bounced. The world turned on its axis. Postcards drifted by; the boy in the gutter, the queen peering down, oh so concerned, of course, a shower a blow job $20 and on his way, he was that sort of kid; the acres of pain that the Rex Hotel presented, the epistles he had heard from people disturbed decades later; alcohol can save you and destroy you, one path obviates another; but nothi9ng could be more painful than a thousand hands reaching out, plucking, plucking, wanting, wanting. He was only one person and they could easily eat you alive.

It wasn't healthy; they didn't even for a moment pretend that it was. Life was effed and that was all too it, they could cluster around the Fountain and swap notes, escapades, intrigues, opportunities. Who was paying what, who was getting what. Who had stolen what from whom. If he had spent his childhood reading his way systematically through the school library, here was something that presented a real world experience. People who had no idea what The Great Books were, much less the Encyclopaedia Brittannica which his father had so ostentatiously bought for their education. The old drunks living up under the Harbour Bridge frightened him each night as he walked to work, the sound of smashing bottles. It was so painfully cruel. He had seen too much.

Thus, as his mind searched for any possible excuse to destroy him, to dive off the ledge and never come back, to embrace chaos and die a sad relic, "no harm no fowl, great point" says Courier, deuce says the empire, there was a terrible realignment of the stars. They all seemed so happy, so preoccupied with their own laughs, the teenagers he waded through, past the shops selling board shorts and suntan lotion, past the girls in skimpy outifts, sustained by attentive boyfriends. Hands clutch casually, lustilly together. He was determined there would be another way out. It was a strange point to have reached. One narrative ended and another began. Projects loomed large but all he wanted to do was disappear. There would be shadows; there would be light. The elements needed to be realigned. He could be reabsorbed; in a world drenched with information, stories, broken narratives.





THE BIGGER STORY:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/23/haiti.earthquake/

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- The Haitian government has declared the search-and-rescue phase over for the survivors of the massive quake, the United Nations said Friday.

International search teams have rescued 132 people since the 7.0-magnitude quake rocked Haiti on January 12, the U.N. said.

While the search-and-rescue phase was ending, humanitarian and relief efforts were still being ramped up, the U.N. said.

The Haitian government has confirmed 111,481 deaths from the quake, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its latest report on the relief effort.

Fires are expected to flare up in the quake's aftermath, from broken mains and other damage. A massive blaze consumed a textile factory in Port-au-Prince Friday night as U.N. workers tried to contain the flames and spare nearby buildings. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.

Meanwhile, aftershocks from the 7.0-magnitude quake have become a way of life for people here as they spend their days searching for food, water and shelter.

Haitians brace for each aftershock as they wait for supplies and sustenance to reach them.

More than $355 million in donations in the United States alone has been raised for the relief effort, but stacks of aid -- baby formula, pain medication, antibiotics and other much-needed supplies -- are sitting on the tarmac and in warehouses at the airport in Port-au-Prince.

Whatever you call last week's Massachusetts Revolt – Massachusetts Miracle? Massachusetts Message? – one thing is unmistakably clear: Republican Scott Brown winning Ted Kennedy's Senate seat changes everything for President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats.
Also Online

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DN-obama_0124edi.State.Edition1.295f2aa.html

What's The Big Story? Find out at dallasnews.com/opinion

Blog: Opinion

At the very least, Brown is the 41st Republican senator, removing Senate Democrats' filibuster-proof majority to pass big initiatives on party-line votes.

Despite gloom on the left, this could be good for Obama and his party – not to mention the country – if it forces them to lose some of their hubris and govern more from the middle. Now Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid must get at least a few Senate Republicans to sign off on major items like health care, deficit reduction and immigration reform.

If this recalibration proves a good thing, it's only too bad that we had to have a third consecutive presidency where the administration learned the hard way that governing solely from the base is a ticket to trouble. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama each got their comeuppance after aligning too closely with partisan congressional leaders. Before Massachusetts, voters in Virginia and New Jersey, two states Obama won in November, sent similar messages of distress at the nation's direction.

Former Democratic Sen. David Boren of Oklahoma puts a fine point on this problem in today's Point Person interview. As he explains, Congress has become a much more polarized place. When a president hands off a big issue like health care to his party's leaders on Capitol Hill, as Obama did, it is only natural that they exclude the opposition party.

More than that, they will frame most pieces of legislation in a way that attracts only party die-hards. And that is something Americans have said over and over that they don't want. Voters don't want a hard-right or far-left country.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/americas/Obama-scrambles-to-revive-economic-optimism/Article1-500876.aspx

President Barack Obama is seeking to reassure voters he is determined to create jobs while his administration is trying to protect an architect of the increasingly unpopular banking bailout that may have helped prevent a financial collapse.

Obama's efforts on the economy come after a Massachusetts Senate election this past week that suggested voter unrest when Republican Scott Brown claimed a Senate seat in Democratic hands for more than a half-century. Brown gives the Republicans a crucial 41st seat in the 100-seat Senate, taking away the Democrats' supermajority and threatening Obama's agenda.

And the administration has been working to shore up eroding support for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who is seeking another four-year term.

In the face of daunting political conditions, Obama was sounding feisty as he told a town hall crowd he was more determined than ever to help the economy and pursue his agenda.

"I'm not going to win every round," Obama said in Ohio Friday. But he pledged, "I can promise you there will be more fights in the days ahead."

He tried out a revamped message focused mainly on the economy that is part of a stepped up effort to convince Americans that he's doing all he can to create jobs.

Second Take

*







http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s1618196.htm



Father Ted Kennedy (archival):

I remember one cold night about 3am being called out of my warm bed by a man called Hughie who was drinking at that time. But he had a friend and he was really concerned the friend didn�t understand Christianity, and he asked me to do down and tell him about Christ. That was one of the turning points of my life. I realised that it would be an affront to Christ himself if I were to go back to that warm bed having given a class in Christian doctrine in a place like this. I decided very strongly at that time I had to open my home to the homeless and that I had to fight for social justice.

Rebel Cooper BBC archive:

If I knew God, I reckon he�d be the same, Father Ted is powerful, he�s just, he�s understanding, people say they mightn�t like me or something like that, but Fr Ted accepts me for what I am, a person.



Narr:

It was here in Redfern that Ted Kennedy carried out the first act that branded him a radical � he opened up the priest�s house to Aboriginal people, having as many as one hundred staying at any time.



Father Ted BBC archive:

A presbytery should not be a fortress as so many presbyteries tend to be, where the poor particularly don�t feel welcome. But gradually the Aborginal people who are undoubtedly the most dispossessed in Sydney found it became their home and I think I see now that this place, the old presbytery is much more the home of the Aboriginal people than it is mine. I like to think of myself as their loving friend, their guest.



Narr:

Ted Kennedy died at the age of 74 after serving 31 years as parish priest at Redfern.









Custard flavoured milkshakes. Villages lost in time. A sense of community. All these things he craved, and apart from the custard flavoured milkshakes, which were rarely seen in Australian milkbars after the 1960s, he found all of these things in the Redfern Streets. His little family, him and the kids, found their peace and security behind the well locked doors, the grated windows. Until an evil landlord named Ian Tuit destroyed their cosy life; a pissy little man exerting power over the only person he had power over. And so he felt utterly betrayed. These dogs were everywhere, these evil little pricks out to destroy, grubs, absolute grubs, and yet through his own mistakes he had allowed these ghastly little people to have power over him; and he was betrayed, utterly betrayed, by people he had naively trusted.



It was cruel; to have so much faith and to be so utterly double crossed. But these slime buckets would never have had their power if he had not fallen off the Sydney real estate ladder; if things hadn't gone so badly. The years passed and the kids grew. They passed from Primary school to High School and still they were there, behind the Redfern walls. Major, the dog, made their little grouping seem like a genuine family; the constant barking of Lucky next door, neglected by their Lebanese owners, gave it a sheltering, neighbourhood feel. And Craig next door, with his quiet wife Mel and his two young children, Venus and Annise, was always kind. Until it came to crunch time and owners always win out over renters; and they were dynamited out of their home, the only home the kids had known for more than half their lives.



Everything changed, where they lived, his work. What had once been so secure, so much a part of who they were, disappeared. The neighbourhood characters who dominated their landscape simply vanished out of their lives. Sometimes it seemed as if the car drove through Redfern of its own accord. The streets were so plain, washed of colour. Little groups of aboriginal kids gung on the corners, their fast patois, the voices of the street, impossible to decipher. There were no parents in sight. He stopped and went to check the beer garden at the Glengarrie, that crummy little piece of concrete where he had been so happy, where the conversation flowed so wildly across so many interesting subjects, where people confessed and drank and laughed and moaned and partied, partied, because this was the best day, the best life, the single best place to be.



Now it had all changed. As he walked up from Bondi Beach his 18-year-old son walked past in intense conversation with a girl, a little nerdy, with glasses, pimply, that terribly awkward age. They didn't even notice him as they walked past; and he stopped and watched as they went down the slope and onto the beach, and then walked towards the waves, still in conversation about God only knows what. Life had passed him by with astonishing speed; and here he was watching his own son, talking to a girl! He had missed them, as he had always said, long before they were gone. But this time it was for real. This time there was only a week left in Sydney and it all came to an end; and the life he had built and the life he had lived, it too was being washed away into history.



Televisions were on everywhere; with the Australian Open on constant display. There was no loyalty to him; only loyalty to themselves. He knew the world was a harsh place, but had naively believed that if he did the right thing he would be rewarded, one way or the other. It was in the back of a cafe in Paddington that someone said: those who try their best are on the road with all the rest. And it was so true. It didn't matter how earnestly he had worked, how cleverly he had marshelled the words, how many hours he put in at the mill, his fingers flickering across the keyboard. It didn't matter because it would make no difference, whatever the result. They were here for the briefest of times; the human lifespan barely a blink in the flow of history.



His daughter, dolled up to the nines, went out to a party with a friend. She, too, was suddenly grown and flown, looking model-like, as he told her, as she flounced out the door, seeking his approval but at the same time determined to announce that she was woman, on her own, indepedent, almost a woman now. He had walked down the streets with the two of them on either side, snuggling close to him so that it was impossible to be any closer. Now they were teenagers and there was no snuggling to be had. Now he was old and they were young. Nausea gripped him as the medication changed. The person he was was not the person he would be. Sparkling sands were only part of the story. Now the narrative was entirely different. He could no longer suffer the journalist's disease - you're only as good as your last byline - because he no longer worked for a newspaper.



It had been the proudest moment of his ofe, there at the Sydney Morning Herald, when they had reached out their hand and given him the job. Now, decades later, he was the grey haired old hack and new young things populated the news floor and the general news pages. It was someone else's turn. But the fact that it was his own children's turn, their time to twirl in the spotlight, to live their own lives, was the hardest to bear. They had been so close, so inseparable, building their cosy union in a hostile world. But it wasn't to be, wasn't to be. He could not see any way out; except day by day. One thing passes and another begins. One door closes and another opens. How could we have been so stupid? How could they have been such arseholes? Couldn't they see his distress writ large?







THE BIGGER STORY:



http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/fairytale-as-prince-visits-the-block/story-e6frg6nf-1225821403692



IMAGINE for a moment that you are a nine-year-old indigenous girl, and you've been told that a handsome young prince is coming to visit you.



What would you ask him about?



Little Peneloppee McGrath, who met Prince William on day one of his three-day Australian tour in Sydney's Redfern yesterday, didn't hesitate.



"Does your grandmother live in a big castle?" she asked.



"She does," replied the prince.



The exchange was one of many that will linger long in the memories of more than 30 delighted indigenous children, and hundreds of other Australians, who met Prince William at the Redfern Community Centre yesterday.



That such a meeting would ever take place was surely inconceivable, even 20 years ago. The community centre sits at the heart of The Block, a neighbourhood once notorious for filth, violence and Aboriginal hopelessness.



Successive governments poured money into The Block but in the end, it was the community - the Gadigal people - who took the place back from the pushers and spivs who once roamed its streets.



Such has been their success that instead of drunks rolling around, there was an ice-cream van parked there yesterday, selling soft-serve cones to the crowd.



Many people in the 1500-strong crowd admitted they'd come not only to see William, but to pay their respects to his late mother, Princess Diana, whom they loved.



http://www.smh.com.au/national/two-catholic-worlds-collide-as-church-disagreement-deepens-20100118-mgt6.html



The fight, ostensibly, is over a baptismal font and some words in chalk on a wall, but the latest in a series of rows at St Vincent's Catholic Church in Redfern shows the conflict runs much deeper.



A recent clash between the parish priest, a conservative Catholic from Brazil, and a group of long-standing parishioners is really a battle between traditional Catholicism and the more vernacular version practised in Redfern for years.



A group of St Vincent's church-goers has accused Father Clesio Mendes, a 41-year-old Perth-trained priest, of disrespecting local Aborigines by scrubbing a line of hand-scrawled poetry from the wall of the church.



They also say he has removed a baptismal font sacred to the memory of the late Father Ted Kennedy, the beloved former parish priest whose shoes his successors have struggled to fill.



The font was brought to the church by Father Ted, who is revered as a compassionate priest who was unafraid of church authorities.



Len De Lorenzo, who has attended St Vincent's for about 30 years, said the font had been removed by Father Clesio, prompting one concerned parishioner to send a petition to the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, asking for it to be reinstated.



http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/prevent-jail-time-for-aborigines-calma-20100122-mpyj.html



The money spent on incarcerating indigenous Australians would be better spent on preventative programs, a report has recommended.



Delivering his sixth and final Social Justice Report in Sydney on Friday, Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma called for what he labelled "justice reinvestment" in communities with large numbers of offenders.



Indigenous adults were 13 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-indigenous adults, while indigenous children were 28 times more likely to be placed in juvenile detention, Mr Calma said.



He said better prevention programs were needed to target problems like substance abuse and chronic unemployment to help drive down the imprisonment statistics.



"You can put an individual offender through the best-resourced, most effective rehabilitation program, but if they are returning to a community with few opportunities, their chances of staying out of prison are limited," Mr Calma said in a speech at the Redfern Community Centre.



"The money that would have been spent on imprisonment (should be) reinvested in programs and services in communities where these issues are most acute in order to address the underlying causes of crime.



"Justice reinvestment is as much about economics as it is about good social policy."



Mr Calma, who steps down as commissioner next week, has also called for better protection of native languages.



"Prior to colonisation, Australia had 250 distinct languages which expanded out to 600 dialects," he said.



"Today, only 18 indigenous languages are fully intact and even these are endangered.



"Without intervention, indigenous language knowledge will cease to exist in Australia in the next 10 to 30 years," Mr Calma said.





Redfern Station, Sydney, Australia.