Retribution

*

Consternation, a flood of tears, anguish in the making, nothing would make me happier my dear, the sequence of blustering comments. If all else fails, smile in the face of fear, they say, across cracked porcelain ribs, across aching hearts, across a fetid, overheated atmosphere, with nothing but unresolved issues and contemporaneous pain, a thousand rich Bangkok gay boys squeezed into a single venue, an appalling drag show which they all applauded enthusiastically, as if nothing could be better than a poor version of Mariah Carey, thumped out loud so the speakers vibrated in unison with his ear drums, and over-moisturised, perfect young men crammed together, all eyes, all saying I belong here, this is our place. It wasn't his place. He felt more comfortable with the rent boys down at Hot Male Station. Everyone knew where they stood. They all welcomed him as part of the crew. He watched the other foreigners being stitched up, or hitched up, as you see it; now you don't. The fast and the furious, no doubt. Get it over with, get it done, take the baht and depart. But in the DJ's tunnel the lady boys in their uniforms swept up and down the alley, the high rent bars spilled off on either side, and in the multi-floored disco itself, well, you needed to be drinking. He downed his two free drinks for the price of entry, two bottles of water, in rapid succession, surrendered to a cigarette outside; and thought, oh bugger it, I'll sleep alone, for once. Hey, won't do you any harm. For once. It just seems wrong, man, this rare opportunity; but no, he went home alone.

The boy was off on a university science expedition; and it was a dangerous sign that he immediately felt out of sorts, as if things weren't right, without his loyal soldier and his constant companion; there, looking after him, taking care. He missed him and that was all there was to it. Simple things. He spent an hour talking to his daughter on Skype, this time with video connection; and he noticed the repeated attempts at contact the previous day; when the computer had been away. Oh soldier, come here, nestle with me. Their young frames caught in slow motion on the Sky Train. The girls, delicious, pert, like cartoon characters, some of them were so gorgeous, and gorgeously made up, with large black eyes and perfect make up. Oh come hither, come with me. There were times, ill at ease, when drawn to frightful queens for the fact of the theatre, he went to lunch with Jack the Washington lawyer, who called everyone dear in a pronounced, camp way, as if there was any doubt, and suddenly the boys in the street were thrusting gay porn at him as if there was no doubt, and when he said in the massage parlour "massage, boy", pointing to the best looking one there, Jack exclaimed: "Oh I wanted that one dear." The girls giggled and the boys grinned at him knowingly and all was managed in fine, short style. Oh, such a perfect day, they just keep me hanging on. Thank you Lou Reed.

We were easily surrounded. Australia seemed a long way away. Caught between consonants, laughing in the gaps, the streets were as shadows; the beggars with their plastic legs; the beggars with their well cared for children, looking too good to be genuinely poor. He took account. He didn't give them any money. He wasn't that desperate to earn merit. Enough had been done to help the strangest of creatures. He looked forward to change and he looked forward to things staying the same. He sat in the gangster's lair, probably for the last time, talking to the lawyer who was drawing up a contract for him; there by the pool. The pool had not been cleaned, nothing had been cleaned, that was obvious; and the drifts of browning frangapeni flowers and the dying leaves from the overhanging trees spoke to the fact that nothing had been done; Paul had stayed in his room. He stayed in his room this time around, too; as the lawyer told him of all the complexities of the case. They were winding up the house. There would be nowhere to go. Evil spirits get their comeuppance. Evil spirits cast adrift, if not on the high seas well then on to difficult streets, difficult places. They had looked after him well, too well, and now all of that was coming to an end. He was shadowed by former loves; haunted by strange beasts, by flashes of former lives, by unresolved injustices, not from this era, not from this century, but from thousands of years before. So when he saw the drift of dying leaves, the dying flowers by the pool, he knew retribution was at hand.

That in some strange way justice would out, that all that was fair and right would come to the fore. All those people the gangster had bashed. All those scams he had pulled. Now was the time to pay the piper; and the piper would be paid. Oh how it broke his heart to see the bastard suffer. Well he didn't even know that, but presumed, because the entire time he was there the gangster never emerged from his cell, his room which might as well have been a cell, so rarely did he come out of it. It's because he's depressed, the lawyer ventured, but whether or not that was the case he did not know. All he knew was that the air of decay that had settled over everything, not just in the untidy piles of browning flowers and dying leaves around the pool, but in the garbage that had begun to accumulate in every corner, the state of the house, the air of a bleak English gangster, the scales from his skin, impregnated in the walls, all that room, all that money, wasted, because no one went there, it was barely used. They could have seen this coming, they should have seen this coming. But instead they let the gangster take over their real estate, and destroy it for everyone else. So when he saw the damage done, those browning frangipani flowers, he knew that the day of retribution had come, that by staying faithful to the good, by maintaining a wholesome heart, he had avoided the evil that stalked the world, that swept through upmarket villas just like this one, and destroyed the most arrogant, most self centred, most assured criminals just like that, leaving them not just bereft, separated from their former lives, but destroyed, evicting them from luxury and leaving them as nothing but poisonous slugs feeding on mean streets, darkened asphalt and choking fumes.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/gillard-needs-to-put-abbott-in-the-frame-20100731-110ps.html

THERESE Rein is one sensible and savvy woman. Yesterday she seemed to be suggesting a way to get the ''Rudd factor'' under control in the campaign.

Speaking to journalists, she indicated she'd like to see Kevin confined for a while to get properly better after his gall bladder operation. So would most of those running the ALP's campaign. The idea of Rudd on the loose around Queensland and further afield, even if ostensibly for Julia Gillard, fills most (admittedly not all) with fear.

Rudd's wife pointed to the escape hatch. ''I am encouraging him to take the time that is clinically advised to recover.'' She was sure he'd be ''up on his feet within the next couple of weeks''. He'd be following ''clinical medical advice'' on when to leave hospital and when ''he's allowed to resume normal activities''. Her emphasis was different from Rudd's, who on Friday anticipated hitting the campaign trail this week.

Whether Therese will be able to keep Kevin on the leash we'll have to see. But an enforced rest could be a saver all round, including for him. And the beauty is that it can be put down to ''medical advice''.

Rein's comments came on a day when Gillard performed quite well. It had opened badly, with an Age/Nielsen poll showing Labor facing defeat and The Australian reporting Gillard had sent a ''former bodyguard'' to attend cabinet's national security committee when she couldn't. But this ''leak'' lacked the potency of earlier ones. Gillard said staffer Andrew Stark, a former policeman, didn't represent her but took notes for her. This doesn't seem unreasonable: she was deputy PM and didn't hold a security-related portfolio.

As she wound up campaigning in Perth, bad poll notwithstanding, she looked more in charge than on Friday, when she'd been hounded by Rudd questions. She also seemed more herself: neither regally confected nor over-contrived.

''I'm in the fight of my life,'' she declared. ''I am a fighter.'' She set about highlighting the choice facing Australians on the economy, industrial relations and the like. ''Do you keep the economy strong … Or do you run the risk with Mr Abbott?''

In the next few days, Gillard has to get the focus onto the Opposition Leader. While it stays on her, she'll remain in deep trouble.

Not only is Labor divided but the policy fixes Gillard has put in have unravelled: the smaller miners are continuing the tax war; her plan for East Timor to have a processing centre for asylum seekers remains problematic; and the poll found more than half the voters oppose her citizens' assembly on climate.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/01/2970011.htm?section=justin

Heavy flooding has killed at least 800 people and affected one million others in Pakistan.

Officials in Pakistan say they death toll from the flooding in the past week has risen to 800, while 150 others are still listed as missing.

Flash flooding and land slides have destroyed thousands of houses in north-western Pakistan.

The city of Peshawar has been cut off and roads have been washed away.

The United Nations estimates up to one million people have been affected by the floods.

Thirty thousand troops and dozens of helicopters have been deployed, but many districts are yet to receive any help.

Footage shot from helicopters has shown people clinging to walls and rooftops as water gushes through inundated villages.

Rescue teams are struggling to reach many areas where transport and communication have been cut off.

Further rain is expected in south-eastern Pakistan in the next few days.

Flooding has already been reported in the provinces of Sindh and Punjab.

UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs spokesman Manuel Bessler says they are struggling to access some of the worst affected areas.

"The needs are first of all still search and rescue. Secondly, shelter, to have emergency [shelter] for these affected people, then food," he said.

"There is a major need for health services and then of course drinking water. We have to bring drinking water to these affected people."

Thousands of people have also lost their homes across the border in Afghanistan.

Picture: Peter Newman.

Silent In Intent

*

Well the moon is broken
And the sky is cracked
Come on up to the house
The only things that you can see
Is all that you lack
Come on up to the house

All your cryin don't do no good
Come on up to the house
Come down off the cross
We can use the wood
Come on up to the house

CHORUS
Come on up to the house
Come on up to the house
The world is not my home
I'm just a passin' thru
Come on up to the house

There's no light in the tunnel
No irons in the fire
Come on up to the house
And your singin lead soprano
In a junkman's choir
You gotta come on up to the house

Does life seem nasty, brutish and short
Come on up to the house
The seas are stormy
And you can't find no port
Come on up to the house
There's nothin in the world

(Chorus)
there's nothin in the world
that you can do
you gotta come on up to the house
and you been whipped by the forces
that are inside you
come on up to the house
well you're high on top
of your mountain of woe
come on up to the house
well you know you should surrender
but you can't let go
you gotta come on up to the house

Tom Waits, Come On Up To The House.

Collapsed, in the sequence of things, he had been to the same meeting every week since he came back from Pnom Penh, and marched each week as a gathering disaster; or as they would put it the road to recovery. Forty days and nights in the desert, he quipped, getting a short laugh before they knew they were appalled when he failed to follow the party line. Sometimes I just go and let it all wash over me, he said. Sometimes I think, my god what a crock of shit, I can't believe the garbage coming out of people's mouths. But whatever the solution, whatever the time, whatever the diatribe, these things marched in unison like demented toy soldiers, up and down the sois, up and down his spine, marching to some infernal tune aimed to destroy in one hysterical laugh. I worry about mortality, each one of them said in turn, and he thought, I don't. I'll slip behind another curtain and that will be that. There were so many solutions. There were so many problems. So many promises. He listened to them, full of themselves, as if they had anything to offer, anything at all. And as always, he was drawn to appalling queens, including Jack the lawyer from Washington, who was as pompous and precise and as long winded as any lawyer could be. It was eight, ten years ago, no nine, I think, he would say. Yes nine. I'm sure it was nine. You clearly need to be taken out, he said.

There was a range of solutions on offer, but not here. He fought for peace, and found a new disturbance in his failing heart. How unfair is this, he thought, stalking his upmarket apartment, everything was free and yet here he was, like everybody else, imprisoned by the flesh, paying for the past. Present sainthood did not always reap immediate rewards. They all talked the same talk: life is short. He tossed and turned fitfully and slept more hours than he had ever slept. And couldn't be sure: what was going wrong? How dare life threaten his perfect presence. Some things were coming home to roost, both good and bad. Work was on offer. He was characterised by plain disaster. There were catastrophes beckoning, all in the future, plane crashes, landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis. They would all provide opportunity for someone such as himself. If you see me coming you're having the worst day of your life, he would sometimes quip; and sometimes it was true, the courts, the riots, the funerals, the day of death. He rang the father of that handsome boy the second after the Federal Police had informed him his son had died in the Bali bombing. Everything fell softly to earth. The exigencies of the flesh seemed far away.

When the pleasure dome ceased functioning, when they sat in silence in the restaurant, their mutual English and mutual Thai thoroughly exhausted, he knew it was all a waste of curdled time; "stranger stranger strange how you listen to the river of my curdled song"; "you been whipped by the forces inside you, come on up to the house" quoted the lanky academic; all sensitive and gooey, cloying almost. The academic who was always giving up cigarettes. He was passionately concerned, as if it would make any difference, and he fought, fought to make a difference, fought against the shadows and the flesh and the past and the future, and settled here in an over-heated present, with the time on their side, not his, and he thought: I just want one happy year in Bangkok. Which, incidentally, has just been named the number one city in the world by Travel and Leisure, despite the problems of the red shirts, despite the traffic, despite everything. Because of course in so many ways it is the number one city in the world, it attracts money from everywhere, it is fascinating in all its corners and its ancient spread, and it attracts people from not just around the world but all over Thailand, the poor from Issan come to work in every trade imaginable, and contemptuous little shits asking his boy: are you from Issan? Are you a poor boy? Eff off, he felt like shouting, and instead they jerked monkey like across a frozen landscape; eerie in intensity, silent in intent.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/leaking-labor-is-a-shambles-abbott-20100729-10wix.html

Opposition leader Tony Abbott said today the Gillard government was a "shambles" with a series of damaging leaks showing a party divided.

The coalition's renewed attack came after the Deputy Prime Minister, Wayne Swan, admitted last night Labor was powerless to stop the leaks.

Mr Abbott said the government had deteriorated under Julia Gillard's watch.

''Since Julia Gillard took over, we've gone from incompetence to incompetence, chaos to chaos, shambles to shambles,'' he told reporters.

''It's extraordinary how Kevin Rudd's government looks disciplined compared to Julia Gillard's government.''

Mr Swan rejected the criticism saying the government had ''the runs on the board'', especially on economic management.

''We've got a big story to tell,'' he told ABC radio.

Paid parental leave continues to be part of the election campaign story as both Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott campaign in Melbourne. Both sides are trading blows on the issue with the coalition continuing to question Ms Gillard's belief in paid parental leave.

''What's now been revealed by this series of leaks from within the government is that Julia Gillard is not a true believer in paid parental leave,'' opposition frontbencher Joe Hockey told ABC Radio.

The coalition has flagged it will announce another change to its business-funded scheme in the next few days.

Earlier in the week it announced carer fathers would be paid only the working wage of the child's mother.

Mr Swan said these changes - and a decision to cut the company tax rate to 28.5 per cent from 2013 - were an indication the coalition was in ''policy chaos''.

''They are out of control behind the scenes,'' he said.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/Plane-Crash-in-Pakistan-Kills-152-99466739.html

Authorities said the Airblue jet was traveling from the southern port city of Karachi to Islamabad when it crashed into the Margalla Hills while attempting to land in rainy and cloudy conditions.

Rescue teams and army helicopters were sent to the crash site, but search and recovery efforts were hampered by difficult terrain and bad weather.

Pakistan's Federal Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said rescuers had so far recovered 115 bodies and were searching for the plane's flight data recorder to determine the cause of the crash..

Witnesses said the plane was flying very low just before the crash, while an Airblue spokesman (Raheel Ahmad) said the pilots did not send any emergency signals.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani expressed grief over the "tragic incident." The government declared Thursday a national day of mourning.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered condolences to the families of victims including two U.S. citizens. They said the American people stand with the people of Pakistan at this difficult time.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said he was deeply saddened by the tragic air crash and extended his heartfelt condolences to the people and government of Pakistan. A U.N. statement said Mr. Ban wrote to Prime Minister Gilani to express the sincere sympathy of the United Nations with Pakistan at this painful time.

Promotional picture: Tasmania.

View from the Sky Bar, Bangkok, 27 July, 2010.

Painful It Was So Bright

*

So he knelt down on Patpong before the monk, with the two go go boys by his side, there between Super Girls and Super Pussy, and thought: it doesn't get much more dislocated than this. He had sought strange experiences and ended up in the company of rent boys. Not that they weren't good company. They often were. He fought through the thickening fog, the strange curtains, strange branch like structures beating on his face as he ran; and to think he had paid for this experience. Darkness wasn't here, it was more like a shattering ethereal light, painful it was so bright. So completely abandoned, so completely departed from his old life, he watched with a certain fascination as the falang, the foreigner, sat in the corner of Hot Male Station and made various proffers on the boys; 1,000 baht he began at, Aek, I like, no, sorry, I have boyfriend, Mr Yung, too trisy, Mr Tong, no, I don't take customer, and settling on a butch little boy, well butch by Thai standards but nonetheless pretty, who looked entirely distressed, indeed extremely unhappy at the thought of going off with the old man in the corner. The man offered him 2,000 bath, near enough eighty dollars on the current exchange rates, to which he demanded four, raising four fingers in the air. Three is enough to buy the best looking bodies in town stay till morning; almost no one gets four. The falang agreed instantly. This one he wanted.

He had a belt slung low and all the accoutrements of a teenager, Western or Eastern, and still looking very unhappy about the whole situation, and barely old enough to cope, he went back on the dance floor and embraced his equally young girl friend, whispering in her ear, explaining what was happening, telling her he wouldn't be all that long and he would be 4,000 baht richer and they could eat for the week, pay the rent, live well. She cuddled him affectionately, supportively, and he went back to the foreigner in the corner; and smiled for once at some joke the customer and the mamma sahn made, and shortly after they left. It was just another bit of theatre on another day, well early morning, at Hot Male Station. The club filled rapidly after 2am as the boys without customers came down from X-Boys and Bangkok Boys and the other clubs; and they danced till dawn because that's what they liked to do, nocturnal creatures. They clicked his glass because he had covered the cost of drinks and they all knew him as Aek's friend, the one with the condo who had paid Aek out at the bar, perhaps a dream for many, and the shadows danced and climbed in his bewildered head; sober, so effing sober he bummed a cigarette, only the second time in six weeks, and sat outside and watched the goings on. The security guard embraced him pointedly and the others joked: you have new boyfriend now. The same operator he had met last time said: welcome back and repeated his previous claim, this is Bangkok, you can take home anyone you like, you can take home three boys, you want me?

He finished his cigarette and went back inside, where the party continued. He remembered everything and nothing. The impossibly trissy boys continued to click his glass. Dry away the tears, went the melodramatic disco song. A snatched remix. Aek was dancing, having had a rare whisky. The man, and he was a man, he oddly fancied most in the entire place was getting seriously pissed, and once upon a time, in a different, parallel life, he would have got pissed with him. There in the shortfall, there where the mattresses thudded to the ground, falling from on high on to dusty floors. Once twined in a brief engagement, now everything was committed, or was it trapped. He didn't know. He wasn't used to comfort, a tidy house. Take care, went the saying, and some of these boys took it seriously. They really did take care, in every sense. So it was a brutal thing: you take care of me, I take care of you. He just didn't do happy very well, but was attracted to the theatre of it all most of all. Even that frightful queen Alex from Washington, who had shown up at meetings in recent weeks and where everything was an affectation, a limp wrist, a knowing fall of tone. They swapped rapid notes. Alex had found his way to Babylon, a sauna where he hadn't been and had no intention of going, the world being far from ready for his naked flesh, certainly at his age, although Alex was 70 and seemed to feel no shame. He had had a quadruple bi-pass or something; scars over his chest, and had upset everybody at the gay and lesbian meeting near the Malaysia Hotel when he said: I've seen how Robbie lives and I don't want that.

Robbie was one of the former owners of Studio 54 in New York and apparently much loved by his coterie of friends in Bangkok. Far from snorting coke till dawn, these days he did good works and was passionate about helping Burmese refugees. Education, learning English, was one of the ways these people helped. Whether anyone really appreciated all these westerners dedicated to good causes he sometimes doubted; but they were there, everywhere, and in a Buddhist way of thinking, they could earn merit if they liked; that, in itself, was a good thing. He had thought Robbie was just a generic term for white man; as in, I can see how all the expats are living here, idly, aimlessly, their unfocussed, pleasure seeking lives, and I don't want that. He didn't realise, at first, that he was referring to a real person. But then after the meeting Robbie turned on him and said: I've got a bone to pick with you. What do you mean, I've seen the way Robbie lives, wandering around aimlessly. I walk and jog a lot because I need to keep fit; so you often see me out and about. What do you mean? He thought it best to exit at this point, as did everybody else, but he contineud to watch the drama through the glass; loved a spat, loved the theatre. And yet even though Alex had behaved so badly, and was so obviously such an appalling idiot, he nonetheless kept finding himself talking to him, running into him in the street, sitting next to him in a restaurant, and he was always greeted with a: how are you dear? To which he usually replied, at least in the last few days, I've got a splitting headache, I've given up coffee. And Alex would listen with great fervour to his casually droppped exploits, his long fingers wrapped around a glass in an attempt at elegance. Where is that, where is that? He would ask.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://news.google.com.au/news/search?aq=0&pz=1&cf=all&ned=au&hl=en&q=gillard+RAT

ANALYSIS - Tony Wright

Julia Gillard did a credible job this morning of trying to limit the damage of continuing leaks.

But the paranoia within her party about who is doing the leaking - and more to the point, why - remains at fever pitch.

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While many suspect an embittered Kevin Rudd or his supporters are somehow behind the leaks, senior Labor MPs and officials privately believe this is far too neat and convenient.

Kevin Rudd would be pulling so much ire on his head that he may as well kiss goodbye to his political career within Labor.

More complicated and Machiavellian motives by others are suspected.

One theory is that enemies of Rudd are working far behind the scenes to place him in the frame - and thus destroy any chance he might have of returning to a senior frontbench position, as promised by Gillard. The theory continues that two or more ambitious Labor MPs are planting leaks that would appear to come from Rudd.

Under this scenario, Ms Gillard and her senior allies would be infuriated by the belief that the former PM was prepared to wreck her campaign and reputation: so infuriated that Rudd would never be considered for the foreign affairs ministry he so desires.

The result of that would be that a desirable frontbench seat would be freed up for an ambitious plotter.

One current minister and one less senior Labor MP are suspected by those who place credence in this theory.

The problem with it is that such plotters would risk blowing their entire party's chances of retaining government.

They would need to believe that Ms Gillard was going to lead Labor to victory whatever damage she might sustain, or to have such a narrow focus on trying to destroy Rudd that they were prepared to ignore the bigger picture.

The other conspiracy theory under quiet inquiry is that a very senior minister wants to expose Ms Gillard as hypocritical, arguing positions behind closed doors that are far from her old leftist views, and then publicly embracing social policies that others fought for.

The strength of this theory is that only a very senior minister would be privy to conversations during high-level decision-making on such issues as paid parental leave and pension increases.

Its weakness is that such a figure would hardly put in jeopardy the government they serve.

It could destroy their own career.

But what if such a figure was so unimpressed by Ms Gillard - and perhaps didn't mind if Kevin Rudd got the blame - that they had decided their political career was no longer worth pursuing, anyway?

The fact that such thinking is occurring among a number of well-placed Labor government figures makes clear that the content of the leaks are not the biggest problem facing Julia Gillard.

Suspicion and Byzantine conspiracy theories swirling within the party itself have the ability to do greater damage.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7913088/Wikileaks-Afghanistan-suggestions-US-tried-to-cover-up-civilian-casualties.html

Fresh evidence suggesting that US-led forces attempted to cover up civilian casualties in Afghanistan has emerged through leaked military documents.

They include an internal account of a disastrous operation by US Marines near the city of Jalalabad in March 2007, in which 19 unarmed civilians are said to have died and up to 50 injured.
US commanders later accepted that dozens of Afghan civilians had been killed or injured in the shootings, as the marines extracted themselves from the scene of a suicide bombing in which one of their number received shrapnel wounds.
But the original incident report makes no reference to the carnage, noting only that the servicemen had “returned to JAF (Jalalabad Air Field)”.
The “war logs” also detail how US special forces arranged for six 2,000lb bombs to be dropped on a compound in Helmand Province in August 2007 in an incident in which up to 300 civilians were later claimed to have been killed.
According to extracts, an internal US account of the operation states that efforts had been made to ensure that “there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area”.
It adds that commanders believed that “high value” Taliban targets were meeting in compound.
The records log a total of 144 incidents involving Afghan civilian casualties, in which 195 non-combatants are said to have died and 174 injured.
They include at least 21 cases allegedly involving British forces which are said to have led to the deaths of at least 26 people, among them 16 children.
The disclosures have led to allegations that coalition forces may have committed “war crimes” in Afghanistan.
In London, the British Ministry of Defence said it was examining the leaks.

Picture: Peter Newman, taken from the top of the State Tower, Bangkok.

Pray For Me Brother

*

So somewhere between Super Girls and Super Pussy on Patpong they knelt down before the monk and handed over their offerings, he and the two Thai boys, his sleeping companion and his friend, because no Thai came alone. Everyone know he is too crazy to have a relationship with, drink too much whisky, too many girls. Everyone but him. And even as these stale thoughts ricocheted around his aging head, he was with different company now. I have a new boy now, the words falling on muffled air, despite the phone line. He couldn't help thinking, as they headed towards Surawong, what are the chances of seeing him again. How would they react. This is my new friend. The introductions. As if any of this tired, obsessional thought mattered. They knelt, there in the tattered streets, before the monk, it being a period of Buddhist holidays, and were prayed over. All the time, thoughts disappearing like flocks of pigeons up through the shambolic houses, up past shuttered windows and closed rooms, scenes of a thousand orgasms; of sweat and indignation, cheating and service. Up and away in the morning clouds, already dusky, already damp, already the heat of the day marking a triumphant return to form.

Your health is not normal, you take a lot of pain killers, Mr Jue, their translator in difficult circumstances by dint of being shacked up with a falang, said on the phone. He tried to explain: he had just given up coffee because of high blood pressure; and he missed those mornings at the Anan Cafe with the swishy boys like he missed the morning dealer before work or the boys in Penang with their eternal cry: Hey Johnny, you want something. In other words he missed that morning coffee as if it was heroin, it was the one thing that added sparkle, coherence and meaning to an ordinary morning, made it all worthwhile. There in the footfalls. There in the most delicate shadows. When he stood on Silom and waited for Aek to purchase the offerings. He had thought they were heading towards the Wat, perhaps that was the original plan, but as it turned out they stopped on Patpong; and as the monk approached from the other end, pale, unsmiling, they lined up along the side; every step orchestrated, told what to do at every point. Pray for me brother, he felt like screaming, but in reality the pain of his disoriented head and the muffled confusion of his emotional state meant he might as well have been part of the walls, part of the weather, there between Super Girls and Super Pussy.

Then they went and had breakfast at the corner open air restaurant at Patpong, the owner asking if he spoke Thai - passah Thai - and he having to respond: nik noi, little. Chinese porridge, putting aside the liver. He is there 24/7 to take care of you, Mr Jui said. Sometimes he just forgot how strange they seemed to them. He caught Aek the other day asking one of his friends: what does this mean? And then he mimed him going: "F...ing hell." With all the intonations. They had to explain they were just swear words, an expression of annoyance when everything was not going right, the phone kept dropping out or the internet was wonky, or Skype didn't do what it was meant to do. These were the fortunate times, when everything was blessed. The patients with a pot plant live longer, the movie line went, and it was probably true, those with pets, with lovers, with something in their life, they all lived longer. Did God, that demented, tortured, brutal, authoritarian God he had grown up with, count as a comforting presence? Perhaps for those without sin, those who had sacrificed all in His name. But what was this, as a spiritual experience, when the monk mumbled words he could not understand and their offerings were immediately replaced into a large bucket carried by a helper.

I know why we met, why the Buddha sent you here, the boy said, because you were lonely; and I can help you. Well that's as may be. The boy certainly helped to relieve his wallet; and lead a merry dance. But the same thought kept recurring to him: I wouldn't be here if I hadn't been there. Young Peter has gone and the apartment is quiet without him; always downloading music, his many passionate concerns. Off to the eternal city. The Spanish Steps at sunset, St Peter's Square at dawn, The Sistine Chapter, that fountain, Bertellini, whatever it's called, the Colloseum, walk along the Tiber River, these things you must do. Everything else will fall into place, he told him. Just to look across Rome from the Spanish Steps in those hours, minutes before dawn, was something not easy to forget, the rising clamour, the most beautiful of sights, when he wandered alone as if these were the most profound moments, and found himself, well found himself everywhere, shooting heroin in the back streets of Naples, coursing through the back lanes, lingering in neighbourhoods where the well dressed Italians ran straight up against stylish sleaze, and he could scent every possibility in the air, and could feel the gathering paces of a curdled storm, and knew that behind the fabric of things, the surface gloss, lay a different, more profound, more important world, if only he could break through. And there was only one way to get there. Or only one way he knew.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIkk0CUHMP_fMcrg9CqTa38dJIgwD9H70HC82

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A war crimes tribunal sentenced the Khmer Rouge's chief jailer on Monday to a prison term that will see him serve less than half a day for every person killed at the notorious torture center he commanded.
Survivors expressed anger and disbelief that a key player in the genocide that wiped out a quarter of Cambodia's population could one day walk free — despite being convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
"I can't accept this," sobbed Saodi Ouch, 46, shaking so hard she could hardly talk. "My family died ... my older sister, my older brother. I'm the only one left."
Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, was the first major Khmer Rouge figure to face trial more than three decades after the "killing fields" regime tried to turn the country into a vast agrarian society — leading to the deaths of 1.7 million people.
As commander of the top secret Tuol Sleng prison — code-named S-21 — the 67-year-old Duch admitted to overseeing the torture and deaths of as many as 16,000 people.
He was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but will spend only 19 in jail — 11 years were shaved off for time served and another five for illegal detention in a military prison.
"It is just unacceptable to have a man who killed thousands of people serving just 19 years," said Theary Seng, a human rights lawyer, who lost both her parents to the Khmer Rouge and has been working with other victims to find justice.
"It comes down to serving 11 1/2 hours per life that he took," she said, adding that if prosecutors could get only such a lenient sentence in a case where the defendant admitted his guilt, they could expect even less in the upcoming trial of four senior Khmer Rouge figures.
The U.N.-backed tribunal is scheduled to try the group's top ideologist, 84-year-old Nuon Chea, its former head of state, Khieu Samphan, 79, and two other top leaders, both in their 80s, early next year. Unlike Duch, they have denied any guilt.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/asia/Thai-Governing-Partys-Victory-Overshadowed-by-Bomb-Blast-99232824.html

A weekend by-election victory by Thailand's governing Democrat Party has been overshadowed by fresh concerns of political instability after an overnight bombing in central Bangkok. The blast left one person dead and up to 10 wounded at a bus terminal near where anti-government protests were held in April and May.

No group claimed responsibility. Bangkok and more than a dozen provinces have been under a state of emergency since the protests.

The blast overshadowed a crucial by-election victory by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjaiva's governing Democrat Party over the opposition Puea Thai Party.

Analysts saw the by election as a vital test of support for the government, after the army dispersed the anti-government red-shirt protesters in late May. The clashes left 90 people dead and almost 1,900 injured.

Democrat Party spokesman Buranaj Smutharak said the election was a step forward to political normality after the recent turbulence.

"This is a vote of confidence in democracy in Thailand. So I think hopefully this will continue and provide itself in the subsequent national elections will be relatively peaceful," said Buranaj. "But of course the reconciliation process will determine whether that can be achieved and how long it will take."

The by-election winner is a former investment banker. The opposition Puea Thai Party candidate was the leader of the anti-government "Red Shirt" movement and is in prison facing charges linked to the protests

Chulalongkorn University economics professor Sompob Manarangsan said the results of the by-election underscore a sharp divide in Thai society.

"One of the very clear messages is that the opposition group of people to the government, in particular from the 'Red Shirts,' is still very strong and still very united, even with the nominee from the Puea Thai Party is still in jail," Sompob said.

The government had hoped the by-election would mark a major step towards the country stepping away from the political turbulence of April and May.

The bombing, however, has raised more questions about the country's political uncertainties, said Human Rights Watch Thailand representative Sunai Pasuk.

"All in all, having an explosion go off in the evening of an election day would raise concern about political stability in Bangkok," Sunai said. "It would raise concern - it does not matter who did it - but whether the political climate has returned to normalcy or not."

Last week, a government-established committee for political reform and reconciliation called the state of emergency to be lifted. But a government spokesman said the bombing makes the case for keeping the decree in place.

Picture: Bangkok. Peter Newman.

The End Of Paradise

*

The birds tweeted their early morning sounds. You look tired, Peter said, to which he responded: yes, I'm tired of cheating death. It was only last year when the doctor measured his blood pressure and said: you are about to have a heart attack. I don't know whether to send you straight to hospital or not. In the end the medication worked. But now he was being treated for hypertension; an appropriate enough sounding illness. Getting old sucks, that's all he could think. Human. Divine. Damaged goods. Travelling, and falling into the liquid desire, the furnace of all things possible, keeping up the medication for something he didn't want to have seemed a far off priority, and while they, his passing companions in this fundamental, impossible to maintain disregard, might have been shocked at the sight of the old man puffing on cigarettes and displaying such careless contempt for his own health, nothing could be sustained. It didn't seem fair that now he was not drinking, or smoking, and swam his laps every day, that he should be bedevilled by something so mundane as a wonky heart, something so crisply and easily forgotten in the swirling search for paradise on earth, for days which would never end, for the ultimate fulfilment in the universal bar.

Languid, except there was nothing languid about a crushing headache and a threatening stroke, so he had his blood pressure checked and they refused to sell him medication over the counter, sending him off to the doctors. He wasn't sure where it would all end. He didn't like to be alone. Sometimes they were nice, the boy nurses anyway, the girls were all efficient professionalism while the boys flirted cheerfully while getting the job done. He didn't like being back in hospital, even for a few hours. He was exhibiting several of the signs of an impending stroke upon admission to emergency in one of Bangkok's five star hospitals, as the management at condo heaven claimed, and he wasn't sure where it would all lead, but hated being alone, even for these moments, even in this crisis, and just wanted to be back at the apartment whiling away the time, concerned and dismissed, nothing more to worry about than whether there were Thai subtitles on the latest pirated film they had bought off the street, amidst a vaguely generated fear that his past lifestyle might catch up to him, that his perfect life would come to an end, that he would not be able to generate enough cash to maintain the apartment. That he might have to fly back to Australia to sort out a few loose ends. Here in the ne'refall, with the snow falling, or was it ash, the eternal apocalyptic images floating in the ether, disturbed.

The woman with the plastic legs looked up and didn't even see him. Peter the multi-media artist from Erskineville, one of those trendy inner-Western suburbs of Sydney where the young, the fashionable, the aspirant, gathered, had arrived back from Cambodia and was already heading off; partly thanks to his advice off to the eternal city, to Rome. How beautiful, how amazingly beautiful, was that place. He couldn't be sure what he was going to do. He felt safe and he felt compromised. Surely he hadn't come all this way just to be dumped on a death bed? But why not cure the initial condition; why not let him walk free? If there was a God, which he very much doubted. If all those prats crapping on in meetings were right after all, which he also very much doubted. God grant me the serenity... He kept his mouth shut. There wasn't any way to be free. Certainly not through a testicle massage or the massage boy he liked around the corner, patting him on the behind in appreciation of his custom. A booking made him look good in the eyes of the management, and that he also liked, as he looked curiously to see who it was that had booked him. For two hours no less. I never want to leave here; he declared, I just don't want to go anywhere. Peter spent the day booking tickets and accommodation on his lap top. He was sad to see him go so quickly.

Thank you, Peter said, I've felt very welcome. Yes, you are, he responded. Aek kept the house tidy and every thing functioning, while his heart careered into a garbage dump and he knew he would end up back on the slab, ready to make the jump, any jump, into another life, another soul, functioning spirit, here on this strange fetid earth assaulted by smells, a sense he had never previously possessed. There were the creeping, encroaching walls of past benders; there was the infinite flap of a chorus of hands and the eternal shriek: not well, dear, not well. There were the stories of old friends which folded in and over each other, because every part of Sydney held a memory of intimacy or disgrace, of riding high and riding low, into a palace of ridicule and self abnegation; from the highest heights. When everyone had known him. When it never occurred to him that someone might not want to sleep with him. It's shocking, Scott said at the Tawana Palace cafe on Surawong; shocking; I was about 40 when it happened. When suddenly not everyone was available - and you might as well be 70. Or more like 150, he chimed in helpfully, to which Scott could only agree. From the hunted to the hunter, he threw in the cliche for good measure. And Scott nodded once again. I was 35 when it happened, he said. I remember the moment very clearly; when I was sitting in a sauna and the person I had my eye on moved away; and he felt like screaming, don't you know who I am, don't you know they've queued at the door all my life. That you should consider yourself lucky. Well, lucky no more, he showered and left, and that, if not the end of paradise, was the beginning of the transformation.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/coalition-narrows-the-gap/story-fn59niix-1225896788276

THE election campaign has become a tight contest, with the Coalition back in front on primary votes.

Furthermore, Tony Abbott has narrowed the leadership gap on Julia Gillard.

The latest Newspoll, conducted exclusively for The Australian, reveals voters have turned against Labor's proposal for a citizens assembly on climate change and that the women's vote advantage for Australia's first female Prime Minister has disappeared.

Labor's 10-point lead on a two-party-preferred basis at the start of the election campaign has been reduced to a knife-edge 52 per cent to 48 per cent over the weekend, while the Coalition's primary vote jumped four points to 42 per cent, compared with Labor's 40 per cent, down from 42 per cent.

The two-party-preferred vote, based on preference flows at the 2007 election, is now the same as it was the weekend before Labor dumped Kevin Rudd as prime minister and put Ms Gillard into the job - only three weeks before she called the election.

Primary support for the Greens is unchanged on 12 per cent, while support for other candidates and minor parties dropped from 8 per cent to 6 per cent.

Satisfaction with the new Prime Minister has also dropped dramatically, from 48 per cent to 41 per cent; dissatisfaction with the job she is doing leapt from 29 per cent to 37 per cent last weekend.

Last Monday, Newspoll showed Labor ahead 55 per cent to 45 per cent on a two-party-preferred vote and four points ahead on a primary vote, 42 per cent to 38 per cent - initially vindicating the removal of Mr Rudd as leader to improve Labor's polling.

According to a breakdown of Newspoll figures, much of the Labor boost came from female voters, with Labor's primary vote of 42 per cent coming from male voter support of 39 per cent and female voter support of 44 per cent.

Last weekend, the Labor primary vote of 40 per cent came from an unchanged male vote and a female vote of 40 per cent, down four points in the first week of the election campaign.

Approval of the way the Opposition Leader is doing his job has improved markedly in the first week of the campaign, with satisfaction up four points to 40 per cent and dissatisfaction down from 51 per cent to 46 per cent.

Mr Abbott has also halved Ms Gillard's 30-percentage-point lead as preferred prime minister at the start of the campaign after her support fell seven points to 50 per cent and his rose seven points to 34 per cent. At the last Newspoll survey when Mr Rudd was prime minister, he led Mr Abbott 46 per cent to 37 per cent.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10755856

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has demanded an "intensive" investigation into the deadly stampede at the Love Parade music festival in Duisburg.

Mrs Merkel said she had been "appalled" by the tragedy, adding that everything must be done to ensure such deaths did not happen again.

The crush outside a tunnel at the entrance of the festival killed 19 people and injured 340 on Saturday.

Survivors have blamed organisers for the deaths.

Speaking in the town of Bayreuth, Mrs Merkel again offered her condolences to the families of those killed and injured, saying the federal administration had offered full support to the North Rhine Westphalia regional government.

She said: "It now needs to be very intensively investigated as to how this happened because the many young people who were delighted to be going to the event have had... terrible memories and we have to do everything to make sure that something like this does not happen again."

Officials said blame should not be apportioned before the investigation had run its course
Mrs Merkel added: "The organisers have said themselves that they will not hold any more Love Parades but such large events need to be made safe and the federal states of course have the required police forces to do this."

Festival organiser Rainer Schaller appeared with officials at a news conference in Duisburg on Sunday.

He said: "The Love Parade has always been a joyful and peaceful party, but in future would always be overshadowed by yesterday's events.

"Out of respect for the victims, their families and friends, we are going to discontinue the event in the future, and that means the end of the Love Parade."

Picture: building site, Bangkok, taken on my Blackberry.

Watched By An Indifferent Gaggle At The Bar

*

Torrid dangers. Thailand's third gender. And only in Bangkok, the sign outside the parlour just down the road: Special Testicle Massage. Feel Young Again. There is no mistaking the world's happy endings, oil massage being code for getting your rocks off with a quick hand job. Bangkok specialised in this; amongst so many other things; but now the foot massage palaces and the glittering shelves were all empty, barely enough tourists to block the streets; the Arabic women to the fore, shopping for fancy shoes, their bulky burqas at odds with the skimpily, stylishly dressed Thais, with the bars that beckoned on every corner, with the life they could and should have known, there in the free fall, when everybody answered to someone else and malformed creatures scuttled from the light. They went to Siam Paragon, to the Imax Theatre, to watch the utterly pointless Inception, and tipped the driver 50 baht because there were four of them for a short ride, because Thai taxi drivers were amongst the worse paid in the world, because they were falang and the exchange rates still stood in their favour. And because he was kind to those who were kind to him. Jaan, the intense, single American woman who's apartment at one time he was going to take over, before she changed her mind because of Baw and because she kept changing her mind anyway, has lost her apartment after she put in her notice and then decided to withdraw. Only one person saw it. They took it. At 10,000 baht a month just off Chong Nonsi in the heart of the city, it was pretty near impossible to get anything cheaper or better located.

She was upset to discover, when she contacted the landlord to cancel giving notice after getting a couple of job interviews in Bangkok, that the apartment was already gone, putting her on notice that it was time to leave. He never wanted to leave. The world moved forward and back; that was crystal clear, but he had settled and never wanted to move; was happy, for once, exactly where he was. Alex, who he presumed dead or in hospital, showed up at the Rum Rudi meeting yesterday fit as a fiddle, having also moved in with someone who was a looker, and who wasn't drinking. Well she's mad on the piss, mad as a cut snake, and she's seen me drinking, she knows what I'm like, she knows it's a serious problem, so she's promised not to drink and she's moved with me to a little town three hours north of Bangkok, where I'm teaching English, he explained. Coming up two months without a drink. They had been buddies in those early days when the world was reversed, when crimes out of mind were committed on a routine basis, when he was physically too screwed to even bother going to the lady boy bar, which Paul kept urging them to do; they're good company, great personalities, he insisted; and you've never had a blow job till you've had a katoy. Well as far as he was concerned Thailand's third gender could remain unexplored by him; but perhaps he was being closed minded. They always caught his eye on the early morning works, those hyper-dressed girls with the hard faces and the roving eyes; looking for business, looking for lunch, looking for a foreigner just like him.

I want what he's got, the boy's university friend had loudly declared, stripping off shortly afterwards to have a shower. Let's go, he said, none too subtly. Make yourself at home, he thought. I'm already happy with what I've got, suppose you've got to learn to go with the flow here. And if that involves group sex and casual liaisons at any time of the day or night, well so be it. He was paying for it, but monogamy didn't seem to be a part of the picture. Then again... He managed to escape; and at last an alien kind of peace descended into his life. It was very hard to get used to. I don't do happy, he thought, only manic or world weary or a laugh a minute bleak tiredness which caught every fractured discord on a collapsing planet; and so when they spilled out of the bar in the early dawn, the last dance club open in Chiang Mai, they were perfectly at home. So at home there was no answer when the English boy insisted, we've lost our keys, we want to come home with you. But we're happy the way we are, he insisted; although that wasn't exactly true. He would have been happy with just that one, might have been more to the truth; and the fast fire patter of the walking disaster zone they called a young queen from the west, all the stories of having fled Jersey in disgrace, he loved it. But when someone said something all he said was: he'll be a bitter old queen one day, hunting for the glories that never were. And of course he had seen it so often, one reason he was attracted to the theatricality of it all. Here was a young one, ripe for the plucking. There was an old one, shrieking and flapping as he landed on the scrap heap, watched by an indifferent gaggle at the bar.

It was here in these reaches that he now found himself. Safely cushioned perhaps, but then again there was no excuse. He could walk the line and never be imprisoned. He could listen to his own head and think himself young again. Aek would catch himself in the mirror in the lift, and admire himself. Good, good, dee, dee, he would say, pleased with his own image; but he was never pleased with his own image. The horror, the horror, he joked, kind of, but at least the horror was not as cracked and worthless as it had been a month ago. Things were coming back into focus. Stories were being told. Treasures were filtering out from the swamp. Waving spinsters, tall young lads, the beggars that would always be with us; the beggars that suddenly multiplied at the Cambodian border; or those on the streets of Sala Deng, most of whom he knew well by sight now; the woman with her well dressed, happy children, who certainly did not appear to be starving, the woman with her plastic legs, the other wizened woman who would still be sitting there at 5am, cross legged with the begging cup in front of her, awake, still, always, because the madness was in her. Deformities were a consequence of sins in a former life; and therefore worthy of little sympathy, he heard; and the shreds, the farcical displays, all spoke of a tortured time he had overcome; a shadow he had walked past; a river not worth crossing. Liquid desire had turned to liquid despair; and he should have known the outcome before he even started. He didn't think of consequence. He didn't think of anything. The world was a lonely hearts club and he was an active member; that was all. Oh f... it, let's have a beer, he had said. I'll go back to meetings tomorrow.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/features/federal-election/coalition-will-cut-immigration-says-opposition-leader-tony-abbott/story-fn5tar6a-1225896532324#ixzz0ue7p6Q51

OPPOSITION leader Tony Abbott has vowed to put a lid on Australia's population growth by slashing immigration by nearly half over the next three years.
Mr Abbott will announce today a Coalition Government would cut net overseas migration from nearly 300,000 to 170,000, and reduce the nation's population growth from 2.1 per cent to 1.4 per cent.
Echoing the mantra of former prime minister John Howard, Mr Abbott told The Sunday Telegraph: "We will determine who comes to our country and the circumstances under which they come."
The planned cuts will focus on family and student visa programs, while skilled migration would largely be quarantined.
Mr Abbott said a "fair dinkum" debate was needed after Prime Minister Julia Gillard's attempts to distance the population debate from immigration levels.
The Coalition's policy, to be announced today in the lead up to the first and only leaders debate tonight, sets up an historic split on bipartisan immigration policy.
The immigration debate fired up again yesterday after a report that 800 asylum-seekers would arrive on our shores over the next month.
Mr Abbott said the Coalition would keep skilled migration numbers up, but would crack down on "dubious educational and family-reunion applicants".
Although the Coalition doesn't nominate a population figure, the growth rate would put Australia on track for a population in 2050 of well below 36 million.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said although the Coalition believed that Australia was a nation of migrant success stories, "these do not justify a population blank cheque for the future".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/25/2963433.htm?section=justin

The Federal Opposition is dumping its candidate for the western Sydney seat of Chifley for attacking his opponent's Muslim faith.

David Barker is reported to have used his Facebook page to accuse Labor of bringing Australia closer to a Muslim country.

Labor's candidate in Chifley, Ed Husic, describes himself as a non-practicing Muslim.

Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey says the comments are unacceptable and Mr Barker will not be the Liberal candidate by the end of the day.

"Our concern with Mr Barker is what he said his opponent and trying to use religion as some sort of tool in the election campaign," he said.

Chifley is a very safe Labor seat in outer western Sydney seat.

It covers the suburbs of Rooty Hill, Doonside, Woodcroft, Dean Park, parts of Marayong and Blacktown, plus all the suburbs that make up the Mt Druitt housing commission estate.

On top of the state tower, Bangkok. Photograph: Peter Newman.

The Theatricality Of It All

*

She was always there, at three or four in the morning in Sydney's first 24-hour coffee shop, Una's, ready to sober him up with black coffee and ice cream. She was always, for some strange reason, supportive of him; of his dreams to finish high school and go to university, unlikely prospects for a drunken 16-year-old on the streets of a red light district; such as it was. Perhaps it was the cast of characters that drew him there more than anything; Peter, the male prostitute, in a town short of male prostitutes, always changing his hair colour, always funny, full of pretence, full of the dark lords and throw away lines. Boasting about numbers. As if anyone cared how often he hocked his box. The drag queens that clustered there. The easy speed, in the days when if you knew, as of course he did, the right chemist to go to you could buy the highest pharmaceutical grade straight across the counter. Sometimes he would wander down there from his job as a copy kid on the Daily Telegraph, in those early morning hours after the bosses had gone home and before the cleaners, always shocking dobbers if they didn't like you, arrived in the morning, in those hours when no one was really watching what he was doing and the machines clicked out stories from London and elsewhere; with nowhere to go. No one was on duty. The paper had already been put to bed, so to speak. Nothing was happening. He was it. War and Peace got a good thrashing.

There were times when he would have liked to have seen what was happening, viewed the thread, caught the shadows before they formed; cut off the darkness and the rotting brain cells and the malignant patches forming in the fabric of things, but he was too young, too naive. You're a baby. Well yes he was. He should be at home with his mother, one voice said, as he swayed under the Coca Cola sign. And yes he should be. But instead by the time he was 16 he hit his first detox, and there he met Harry Godolphin, one of those strange creatures that lurked on the fringes of the street boys, always ready with a bong and a soothing word. He never made a move, that was to his credit; they appreciated that, because everyone else did. In a way Harry's, with that stained straw matting in that old single story terrace overlooking Woolloomoolloo, was their special place. They all went there for solace from the storm. It had spectacular views of Sydney, in the days before a view of Sydney set you back a million dollars, perched high above the stone ramparts, the sandstone cliffs with their secretive stairs leading down into the slums settled around the bay, and they would knock on the door and Harry would open it, still wearing sunglasses inside, still, with his long dark hair and pale skin, a strangely serious creature, an enigma. But there was never any doubt. He gave them bongs and didn't try to put the hard word on them; and for that they were eternally grateful.

He had come from a shocking, sharp edged place and the contrast with now was complete; when the fetid streets and the overcrowded alleys of Bangkok, busy even in his favourite hours before dawn, when the foreign queens spilled out of DJs and he could see the street stall owners, setting up shop, getting ready for the day, smile with amusement at their antics on Silom. All the foreigners said they liked DJs. The Thais didn't, there were too many foreigners, too many boys, too much competition. They liked Hot Male Station, where they were amongst their own kind and clouds now and then, how we ached for you, for the pleasures of the past, for friendships destroyed by death and the passing of time; yet here was another place. What am I going to do without my friends from New York, Marie whined and he said simply enough: make new ones. It's not as if the bars aren't full, the streets aren't crowded, as if there weren't plenty of Thais you could befriend. You don't have to have sex with them, you know, he felt like saying, as if this was a learned observation; but instead he just suggested they go to the movies. It hadn't happened yet. There was another way; he just couldn't think what it was. They shot up as if every little flick of ecstasy, every drop of blood ballooning in the bowl, would change their lives forever; as if this was the most profound, most decent, most honourable course of action. Creativity through oblivion. They all thought it was the path.

Instead they were left staring out of plane windows, watching the crystalline splinters dance amongst the clouds; swamped with a terrible panic, a complete disregard for any normal life, and he knew, as he always knew, the grazier would be be waiting for him there at that dusty airport, there with his cowboy boots and worn, warm face, as if every aching pleasure was a place to dance, so he would throw more acid down his throat and wander around the homestead, across the dry red soil and the profoundly moving scrub, as if all heart was pleasure. Now the shoe was on the other foot, so to speak, and he was happy to pay for company, for a hot water bottle boyfriend who just watered the plants on the balcony and accidentally spilt water on someone on the ground beneath; as if all soaring compromise, splintered moments and aching hearts had come home to roost. I'm happy to pay, he declared, it's simpler; I'm closer to 60 than 50 and I wouldn't sleep with me for love or money. Well who would know what goes on behind closed doors; what was shared, understood, not understood. I love you, the boy declared every day, but his level of affection no doubt improved with a few extra baht and these were arrangements entirely understood; as if affection was easily bought and the obsessional love of the West was obsolete. The Thais have a different notion of love, he was told; to which he responded: Oh, yes, I know. More practical, Alex continued. Yes, he replied: I like your apartment, I like you well enough, I'm happy enough sleep with you; you take care of me I take care of you. It's good work when you can get it. From a poor family. He went back down Soi 4 to the gay bars where the boy was clearly uncomfortable: falang, boyfriend, falang, boyfriend, he pointed at the European queens with their Asian boyfriends; while the broken down idiot next to them, with a dumpy wife and a face that said he was once a pretty boy, before the last 600 bottles of whisky and 10,000 packets of cigarettes. You from Issan? he asked the boy; as in, are you from the poorest province in Thailand, are you for sale? No, the boy replied, Ratchuburri; and one glance from him was enough to make the gnome of the spirit scuttle away; while another drunken queen with long long white hair and a protuding stomach stumbled towards him: what you looking at? I'm from Abba, he declared, before stumbling off just as quickly. The theatre, I'm attracted to the theatricality of it all, he tried to explain, but none of that was washing: and they left as soon as their sodas were finished. Mai dee, mai dee, the boy said as they walked back, talking of the Issan queen and the Abba queen, no good, no good, you good. In the strangest of ways, they seemed happy together.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/kevin-rudd-and-trouble-in-paradise-20100723-10ow8.html

A pall has fallen over the Sunshine State. Voters look set to punish Labor for Kevin Rudd's demise - and the former PM is not really helping. Michael Gordon reports.

'IT'S cleaner and it's smoother! I'm all for things that are cleaner and smoother.'' This was a beaming Kevin Rudd on Wednesday, addressing third and fourth-graders during his appearance at Coorparoo State School in his Brisbane electorate of Griffith.

He wasn't talking about his approach to politics, or that of Julia Gillard. No, he was talking about the shiny new floor of one of the monuments to his prime ministership, a $3 million school hall that was completed ahead of time, on budget and opened a month ago, the day after his political execution. If Rudd's removal set a new standard for being clean and smooth, the former prime minister's entry to this election campaign has been something altogether different.

Despite the declared intention to confine himself to local issues, Rudd, almost unwittingly, managed to occupy the national spotlight for the best part of three days of the first week, giving the shaky Abbott campaign ammunition, sapping political oxygen from Gillard, reviving leadership antagonisms and raising all manner of questions about the wisdom and viability of his intention to stay in politics.

Even before any of this, the Rudd factor loomed large in this election - especially in Queensland, where half of the 30 seats are considered marginal. This, after all, is the state that delivered more Labor gains than any other in the Rudd-slide of 2007. It is the state that may well have the most bearing on the August 21 election. It is Kevin's backyard.

When, for instance, The Age accompanied Liberal National Party candidate Malcolm Cole as he door-knocked homes in the seat of Moreton on Tuesday evening, the first Labor voter he encountered told him she was now undecided. ''I vote Labor but, like just about everyone in Queensland, I'm feeling a bit funny about how they treated Kevin Rudd,'' she volunteered.

Cole, a former political journalist, later confided that ''he would hear that about 20 times a day. I tend to find that people say it's left a bad taste in their mouth.''

This sentiment was echoed in interviews across Brisbane this week and is reflected in today's Age/Nielsen poll, which shows the exact opposite of the national picture, with Labor trailing the Coalition in two-party preferred terms 46-54, and a huge reservoir of support for Rudd, with more than two-thirds of voters disapproving of the way he was treated and backing him to be foreign minister if Labor is returned.

Before Rudd's debut on Wednesday, this was a campaign wanting for political energy. Abbott can be seen running in almost every TV news bulletin, usually in his suit, but he has failed to generate much momentum for his cause. Gillard has projected a contrasting sense of calm confidence, but she, too, lacked a framework to give any real meaning to that oft-repeated slogan ''moving forward'' - especially on the issue she chose to differentiate herself from Rudd: population.

In the absence of something more meaningful, the contest boils down to a choice between validating Labor's leadership change and rewarding incumbency, or endorsing the Abbott critique of mismanagement and his mantra about stopping the boats and entrusting him with the top job. In the absence of more, it is a question that suits Gillard more than Abbott, but maybe not in Queensland.

Rudd's entry was news because we are witnessing something that has never happened in this country before: a first-term prime minister, who led his party out of more than a decade in opposition and rode high in the polls, was suddenly dumped when the polls turned sour and, inexplicably, chose to remain in politics.

It was news because Rudd is yet to answer any of the questions raised by his shock removal and his decision to stay in politics: can he work closely with the former deputy who tore him down?

Will he follow Gillard's lead and refuse to divulge what was said, and agreed, in those conversations before he was axed?

Is he committed to serve the full three years of the next Parliament? Why is he staying after losing the job that was, after all, his reason for entering politics?

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/2010723123126458141.html

An Afghan parliamentary candidate and at least 16 other people have been injured in a mosque bombing in the eastern province of Khost.

Mawlvi Saydullah, the candidate, was delivering a speech during Friday prayers when a bomb exploded inside the mosque.

He and his bodyguard were both wounded by the explosion.

"[Saydullah] was the target," said Mubariz Zadran, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

Nobody has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing, but General Nawab Khan, an Afghan army official in Khost, blamed it on "enemies of Afghanistan".

Afghanistan's parliamentary elections are scheduled for September 18, and security is a major concern.

Last year's presidential elections were marred by dozens of attacks on voters and polling places.

Khost is one of Afghanistan's least secure provinces. Anti-government groups staged 364 attacks there between April and June, up from 240 during the same period in 2009, according to a recent report from the Afghanistan NGO Security Office.

The Haqqani network, one of Afghanistan's three main insurgent groups, is particularly active in Khost, which shares a border with Pakistan.

Picture: Peter Newman.

The Gangster Festered In His Lair

*

Swamps and flying things; restless, spikes reaching up and gone, strange insects. He was not from here, that was all there was to it. These voices, these landscapes, spoke of a home of origin, a planet of origin, a very great distance away. We are all travellers, someone said, but it simply wasn't true. Most of the people here were born here, would die here; or lived their entire lives within the confines of a village; and were entirely happy, fulfilled, their days full of laughter and gossip, lazy, indolent afternoons, jokes, easy love. I am very sorry not to sleep with you tonight. How deeply he misread situations. How misplaced were his loyalties. He could be sure of only one thing: here was the day, here was the tranquillity that had always escaped him. The boy, more like a hot water bottle than a sex worker, slept through the nights and busied himself in the morning. When he went out he re-arranged the apartment, like any girl. He was pleased. He didn't have a domestic bone in his body, found it hard to make anywhere a home. His last travel bag literally fell apart, and when he handed it over to the Bangkok Air staff at the airport the rip in its side just grew larger, so they were forced to tape it together and obliged him to sign a document to that affect. They didn't even bother to explain to him what the document said. It was all too obvious. Probably they could smell the Jack Daniels on his breath; the last and final.

Well almost. These days it seemed like a million miles away. Crash and burn. Well, Phoenix like, the wounded bird squawked and climbed, flapping mythological wings as it tried to take flight, falling and rising, clumsy but triumphant. It was better than the cartoon landing that had been going on before. They embraced him in their own quiet way which meant nothing, because so many people came and went. This was Bangkok after all. There were secretive assignations he should have been ashamed of, but wasn't, and points of amusement only theatrical queens could manage to pull off; so to speak. The 70-year-old with scars across his chest, worried about his mortality, idiotic, hysteric, told us all how he had waved his young boyfriend off at the airport, someone he "loved" so much, and promptly went to the baths, where, of course, the inevitable happened. There's hope for us all if that balding old f... can go naked to a sauna, strip naked and attract anyone, as he insisted on telling us. Believe it or not, was one of the phrases he used, and he chose not to believe. Twenty five, he whispered fervently, like some magic incantation. Young flesh to feed upon; these ancient crones, their wings flapping as they fed. Oh my God. There were things he did not need to know. No money changed hands, he insisted, but hey, some boys took the long term view, apartments, cars, gold jewellery. Nothing was for free. Not in this town. Not in any town in 2010; life just wasn't that easy.

The gangster festered in his lair; and voices of warning he should have taken heed of kept playing back. Everyone knows he is too crazy, drinks too much whisky, to have a relationship with. Everyone but him. How many lies had been piled one on top of the other? How much pretence? Time and again; when drunk, he would haul home some street worker. When there was blood on the sheets and they were shocked they had deflowered a virgin; having had no idea. No wonder everyone was upset. No wonder the hotel warned him: you are welcome back, but the boy is not. And all the time that five-bedroom house paid for by the company sat almost empty in the streets up past Om Nut, and he wanted to say, I'll take it, I'll keep it tidy, or at least the boy will, and we can mark these times as already read. But of course he had blotted his copy book and they had seen him at his worst; well, not really, there was a damn sight worse to come; but it was obvious these were not the routine machinations of a high functioning professional, that a certain shambolic nature was creeping into his every day functioning and this was not a person to put your faith or your money into, because anything could unfold at any moment. He failed to transmit the mesmerising brilliance behind the facade. Or they failed to see a nuance, a glimmer of hope, seen only from within a deep well.

There were times when he was ill at ease; in the early days of this strange journey, when the world was turned inside out and a trip on the Bangkok Sky Train seemed in itself an astonishing thing; the slanting cityscapes, the beauty of the skyscrapers, all of it shifted off into an urban real he couldn't possess, couldn't long for, couldn't understand. Slowly the words began to make sense. Slowly time stood on its essence, thrilled within itself, shivering beyond the real, and he sat in meetings and said nothing and listened to American garbage and thought, oh God protect me, but there was nothing, no way out; ... Now the gangster was about lose his aerie. About to be tossed onto the slum lord glories of a welfare England. To die stoned on cheap drugs in a dismal room telling stories of the glory days, of how he had owned a nightclub in Pattaya, a bike shop full of Harley Davidsons, of how well heeled well connected friends got him out of trouble, of how he had paid to have his persecutor periodically bashed and hospitalised, of how he had lived in a five bedroom mansion in Bangkok with a swimming pool and a gardener, of how he had been the enforcer in the Australian jails and the criminal master mind in the drug trade between countries. Nothing about how it all came to an end. Nothing about those final years mumbling in a room, barely venturing out, more comfortable in close confines, living on jelly sweets, chocolate, white bread, strawberry milk and weetbix, his health declining as he smoked three packets of cigarettes a day until, in terminal decline, he slumped over one of the houses many internal balconies, and his heart gave out, squandered in evil, every opportunity, every path, every possibility of good will.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/child-play-to-juggle-un-role-says-rudd/story-fn59niix-1225895831369

KEVIN Rudd moved to kill rumours yesterday that the UN would entice him to quit parliament, insisting he could juggle the role with his day job.

As the opposition exploited the confusion over the former prime minister's position, demanding Julia Gillard clarify what role he would have if her Labor government were returned, Mr Rudd confirmed he had discussed joining an international panel with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

In a statement, Mr Rudd's office said he could perform the part-time role from Australia and it would be no "impediment to him discharging his responsibilities" as an MP or minister.

And it affirmed that Mr Rudd would recontest his safe seat of Griffith and serve out the full term in the likely event he won it.

"The UN Secretary-General telephoned Mr Rudd a couple of weeks ago and, among other matters, raised the possibility of Mr Rudd being appointed to a UN panel which might look at a number of issues related to development," the statement said.

"When in New York last week, Mr Rudd met with the UN Secretary-General who explained that such a panel may comprise of a significant number of former and current heads of government, foreign ministers and ministers from developing and developed countries."

A spokesman for Mr Ban told The Australian yesterday the UN boss was aware of media reports that Mr Rudd was in the running for a top-level UN advisory position on climate change that would force him to leave Australia. The UN had no comment, however. Friends and allies of Mr Rudd in the US are believed to have searched on his behalf for international roles with the UN or other agencies, without locking one in.

Mr Rudd was in Washington and New York last week for the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, which debates issues common to both nations. Mr Rudd also met US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

He is understood not to have taken Australian officials with him into his meeting with Mr Ban. One senior source told The Australian: "I've not heard of any definitive offers, but various people have been trying to find envoy roles for him."

Another said the UN did not have available positions in the climate change area for Mr Rudd, as reported, after senior logistics and advisory roles had been filled. Mr Rudd has been blamed by Labor colleagues for a series of leaks damaging to Ms Gillard over the past fortnight.

For the second day running, he occupied the limelight in Brisbane, stepping out to tour another school in his southside electorate.

Despite his insistence that he would run again in Griffith, positioning continues behind the scenes in the ALP should Mr Rudd vacate the seat. Formal nominations for candidates must be registered with the Australian Electoral Commission by next Thursday.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-copter-crash-20100723,0,2435187.story

Two U.S. service members were killed Thursday in a helicopter crash in Helmand province, the third fatal chopper crash in the south of Afghanistan in less than two months.

The Taliban claimed to have shot down the aircraft. The NATO force said an investigation was underway and that hostile fire could not be ruled out.

American military deaths in Afghanistan are running at their highest levels of the nine-year war. A record 60 U.S. service members were killed last month, and the latest fatalities bring July's tally to at least 50.

Two NATO helicopters were lost during June -- one shot down and one as a result of mechanical problems. Both of those deadly crashes also took place in the Taliban heartland, where the majority of Western military casualties occur.

A coalition military offensive centered on Kandahar, the south's main city, is gathering momentum after months of delays, with fighting heating up in outlying districts where Taliban fighters have long been in control.

The NATO force is heavily dependent on helicopters for troop transport, resupply runs and combat missions, because many of the roads in Afghanistan are poorly maintained and the rough terrain makes ground travel extremely difficult.

But helicopters are vulnerable to malfunction in the harsh climate, and NATO says the Taliban supreme commander, Mullah Mohammed Omar, has ordered field commanders to try to procure more heavy weapons, some of which could be used to target aircraft.

Thursday's crash took place near Lashkar Gah, Helmand's provincial capital. Thousands of U.S. Marines and British troops are deployed in the area, which lies close to the town of Marja, the scene of a major offensive earlier this year.

Afghan and Western officials, meanwhile, reported the arrest of an insurgent leader who they said had plotted to attack a major international conference earlier this week. The man was captured Wednesday night near the capital, Kabul, in a raid by NATO and Afghan forces, the military announced Thursday.

Picture: Peter Newman.