Liquid Desire Fatal Attraction and the Abandonment Of All Commonsense

*

He didn't mean for any of it to happen, didn’t think the situation through for a second, it never occurred to him that a relationship sealed on the first morning with four shots of Vodka before breakfast might be fraught with alcoholic doom. Sober for weeks, he was starting to feel at least partially sane. He had no thought of becoming part of a tribe-let of marauding Thai boys, haunting karaoke bars – once classy brothels, now decaying dens packed with cheap girls and the smell of Thai men; on the hunt, always on the hunt. Oh they’re so naughty, the dry old queen – his alter ego – sighed. My money, their whiskey and girls.

He would wake up sandwiched between sex workers of various genders, hands groping everywhere, the grunt of someone coming in the bathroom and think: nothing could be more beautiful.
Swishy girls and high pitched boys; after cruel abstinence, time spent afresh and anew, woken, from a long sleep, if not at the end of his life then older, much older than he had ever expected. Die young stay pretty had happened to a lot of his friends, but not to him.

Dropping earnest recovery, he had walked out of an AA meeting at the Plaza Hotel on Soi Seven in Bangkok and straight into the arms of liquid desire.

It started this way: his mate Ian was a jolly chap with no apparent source of income who dedicated his affluence to hedonism. He parked Ian in the Biergarten opposite the AA meeting, declaring he would be back in an hour. Ian could hardly have looked happier. From morning to night there were never less than a 100 girls in the Biergarten, all of them available. They varied between charming and drop-dead gorgeous; 500 baht girls went elsewhere.

I'll buy you a boy, Ian had declared cheerfully earlier in the day, anything you want. A girl or two for me, a boy for you. If you don't see a girl you like. Never sure about you.
I'm not really up to it at the moment, he protested.
Oh don't be ridiculous, Ian snorted. This is Bangkok.

I keep picking up these swishy, horrible boys, he confessed. They make me feel worse – sleazy – they never stay very long; and the girls – they just can’t raise the mast right now, I don’t know why. They’re so gorgeous some of them; and they’ll do anything. And I just can’t.

Ian snorted yet again.

All was moving in a discordant accord; he was deeply concerned and mortally frightened. He wanted to be inside everybody's life, inside every moment of history, to be at one not just with this universe but all universes. Ancient voices sprang up strong inside of him, harking back across the centuries, to times when he was a warrior, a guardian, a court official, a lonely drunkard in an English village; a once-young man disgraced.

Re-entering the Biergarten to collect Ian, he realised the number of girls sponging drinks had risen with no sign of decreasing; he whispered: let's try somewhere else. On the way to the Merman show – naked boys underwater – they ended up on Soi Cowboy, yet another red light district dedicated to foreigners.

And so the drinking began; it would be a full two months before it spluttered to a stop.
They settled on a go-go bar, and he thought, oh eff it, I'll just have a few beers and go back to meetings tomorrow. Never confess. What they don't know won't hurt them. The girls twirled around poles and danced naked above mirrored floors; the mama-san organised some of the more delectable to come and flirt with them but nothing quite worked. I’m getting myself a boy, the thought kept repeating as the alcohol began to pulse through his veins.

So they abandoned the hetero-commercial tumult of Soi Cowboy and headed to the Boy Zone. Touts for Bangkok Boys, Beach Boys and X-Size all vied for their attention.

Ian was one of the planet’s most heterosexual males and the Merman show was Gay Bangkok’s most glorious sleaze; his presence was a classic act of Australian mateship. As in, “I don’t care if you are a poof. I’ve never been to a gay bar before, but if you want to watch naked boys with erections swimming in a tank, no worries, I’ll have a beer with you.”

The show was seedy, the boys tacky. They swam naked with condoms over their erections, then strutted about flapping their large appendages against the clients in the hope of a tip or a trick: he and Ian exited the bar. Ian was shaking, flummoxed; they sat down in a makeshift bar next to a gaggle of cheap massage boys.

Patpong, Patpong, Ian kept saying, I need an antidote. I need to perve at some girls, get those dicks out of my head. A man of the world finally ruffled; shocked to the core of what he had thought to be a broad minded being.

But he was a hunter now; gone were the days when he could sit in any gay bar in the world and the drinks and drunks would queue up. He wanted action. But the previous mistakes – swishy little boys, thieving AIDS infested pricks who went through his wallet but who, much to his despair, he liked anyway – made him cautious.

I'm not leaving till I pick up a boy, he announced, watching the flouncing little queens at Bangkok Boys gesturing with their eyes. Too camp too camp; not what he had wanted. He sat there, still drinking; suddenly Ian stood up and headed back down the gay soi. That's the end of him, he thought, he’s drunk as a skunk in the wrong part of town. God knows where he's going to end up. Music continued to pump out of the bars opposite, boys continued to flounce and gesture.

Some minutes later, much to his surprise, Ian returned with a handsome, straight looking young man. What about this one? he demanded, having decided to cure his mate’s indecision. Another round of beers in an already disintegrating evening and it soon became obvious this was not a boy who was going to say no to a drink. They talked briefly and negotiated a price - three thousand baht stay till morning. Pay above the local market price; that got their full and undivided attention. Pay them well treat them well they’re happy you’re happy, went the local mantra.

And suddenly they had a new Thai friend, Baw, who spoke enough English to laugh with them in a nearby restaurant, soaking up the alcohol with a bit of food, but of course with another round. Ian headed home. Leaving Baw. And unlike every other boy, Baw just never quite left.
The next morning they had four generous shots of Vodka each, polishing off the Absolut Ian had left in the room at the atmospheric Romance Hotel, ever after known as “the cheap hotel”, where their happiest early days were spent. Out beyond the last Skytrain Station, where criminal gangs roamed a barely lucid earth; where his own fear of movement left him living stationary in a working class Thai neighborhood, the only foreigner lining up for morning coffee; where he sacrificed himself for the consideration of others.

And so it turned out that he was suddenly not alone; after the years following his divorce, years bringing up the children alone, never re-partnered. He had never slept alone until his late 40s, after that always. And so he was vulnerable to the cyclone, the fatal obsession, that overtook his life.

He would stare at the boy, handsome and personable, in bars, cafes, nightclubs, with the first drinks of the evening and the final drunkenness of dawn, thinking, I can’t believe I’ve been there. In the end he wasn't thinking anything at all.

Quickly dragged up to a remote province to meet the family, the village boys all came on to him. The handsomest boy in the village declared earnestly to him at three a.m. in school boy English: I am very sorry not to sleep with you tonight. Then back to Bangkok, happy together in that room at The Romance, even with Baw’s girls. No marriage made in heaven; it was a time together which only he would wish would last forever. The Thais just didn't think like that. Sufficient unto the day.
Then they headed to one of the islands, Koh Chang, less developed than Phuket or Koh Samui. Bars lined the beach, he hated every last one of them, the backdrops to an insane and dangerous bust. A kind of honeymoon became anything but, their drinking spiraling out of control. Suicidal drinking, no alternative, Baw plundering the local girls with gusto. You don’t mind?, a local bar owner asked. Boys will be boys, he said, world weary, heart foolish. He regularly woke up sandwiched between a boy and a girl. And then the blackouts, just like in his twenties. Heart haywire: Western love, possessive love, crashed up against the flanks of a straight Thai boy and a communal sense of love, sex.

Oh you are so handsome, or so beautiful, he would say; and always they kept saying, I come your room, no problem. He hadn't had so much sex since time began; it was simply impossible to come more often. The offers often came with amazing good will; of course a tip was expected… Crippled and alone, so sad, so unbelievably sad, with the world and its beauty nothing but a melancholic backdrop for ever greater dissolution.

Devastated, pretending good cheer, he met some English lads at an ATM at 7am one morning. They invited him to the last bar open on the island. He woke up two days later and two thousand dollars lighter, with no idea of what had happened. The scene repeated itself, blackouts merging into each other. Days when he didn't know where he was, didn't know who, didn't care if he died tomorrow. He had done everything he had ever wanted to do; all obsessions realised, sad days and wasted lust. The dream fell apart as he should have known, should have realised it must.

Finale: after having got drunk across half of Thailand, they returned to Bangkok, to the streets, the brothels, the karaoke bars. Regularly waking up with two boys, both called Baw, and often enough with a hooker as well. Much to the horror of the management, until generous tips got them saluting again. He knew deep in his heart how pathetic he had become. An old man trolling the beach, the streets, the bars, looking, looking, for love, for fun, for the sole object of his desire; and knew, too, it was crazy to be like this. As if he hadn't known all along that things would end badly. Crimes against humanity, against nature. Ending in a Godless place, horror dripping in the heat, self-abnegation reaching fatal depths…

It took months of not drinking to recover from the escapade, to once again take control of his life, of marching through evening storms. Of other boys declaring: I go now.

There is a Thai saying, bad things are a good thing, because after the bad comes the good. Maybe that was the only truth he could take out of this situation. Paradise dawns for a brief time, paradise is in the day, not in the heart; in the heat of the sky and the dawning shreds of being.

He stumbled back into meetings, sometimes having had half a dozen shots of whiskey just to get there.
You have a cool heart, he’d been told when he first arrived; and back then it had been true. In the end it was exactly as he thought. He would have a much better time if he changed his attitudes. And in the end that is exactly what he did. Finally happy with another boy he declared: I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t been there.

He knew he shouldn't go to see Baw again; that toxic siren luring him onto the rocks, now that he was domestically ensconced with a boy who didn’t drink, smoke or take drugs. But he did anyway, as if seeking an end to the story. Baw was living in a large cheap apartment block, one of those typical Thai arrangements, four to a room. They smoked. They didn't drink but he might as well have. Things went awry very quickly. Indeed he went back several times; and their heads were winding through the clouds and their teeth clenched, instant ecstasy, dripping crystals... And finally he had the very clear thought: I leave you to your fate. Even after that final visit the calls were frequent, urgent; every instinct told him: answer, rescue, be kind. Instead he threw his phone in the bottom of a drawer and left it there for a week. And indeed, left the boy to his fate. And embraced his own.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/tony-abbott-offers-bush-deal-as-julia-gillard-mandate-slips/story-fn59niix-1225912101882

JULIA Gillard's claim to government on the basis of winning the two-party-preferred vote in the election has collapsed, with the Coalition overtaking Labor last night by almost 2000 votes.

Tony Abbott has begun preparing to capitalise on his gains with plans to give a greater share of government spending to rural and regional Australia to appeal to the three rural-based independent MPs whose support he needs to form a government.

As horse-trading to determine the nation's next government finally began yesterday, newly elected Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie staked a late claim for recognition from the major parties, declaring poker machine reform and a new Royal Hobart Hospital were the issues he would consider when deciding which major party to support.

But Mr Wilkie said the only guarantee he would provide either party was that he would not block supply or support any "reckless" no-confidence motions.

More than a week after the election, the Coalition has 73 House of Representatives seats, Labor 72, with four independents and one Green.

Seventy-six seats are required to form government.

After the election produced the nation's first hung parliament since World War II, the Prime Minister asserted Labor had a right to govern on the basis that it won more of the two-party-preferred vote than the Coalition.

Last Monday Ms Gillard, pointing to Labor's lead, urged Mr Abbott to accept its importance. "It is clear that the government has attracted the majority share of the two-party-preferred vote," Ms Gillard said. "What that means is that the majority of Australians wanted a Labor government."

But the Opposition Leader argued after the election weekend the Coalition had a greater claim to legitimacy because it won 500,000 more primary votes than Labor. Last night it had extended its lead on primary votes to more than 618,000.

Yesterday, as the independents converged on Canberra for formal talks, counting showed the Coalition edging ahead of Labor on the two-party-preferred count.

By 10.30pm last night, with more than 80 per cent counted, the Coalition was ahead by 1909 votes after the AEC removed eight seats from its two-party count on the basis that the major parties did not run first and second.

In a stunning measure of the closeness of the election, the Australian Electoral Commission website had the parties locked at 50.01 per cent for the Coalition to 49.99 per cent for Labor with close to 11 million votes counted.

While Ms Gillard made no public appearance, her spokesman said last night the most important resolution was the delivery of "stable and effective" government.

Coalition sources said the shift in the vote would increase the legitimacy of Mr Abbott's pitch to win the support of three independent rural MPs - Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor - to form a government.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/election/julia-gillards-slip-is-showing/story-fn5zm695-1225912081380

ONE of Julia Gillard's major claims to form a new government vanished last night when Labor lost its majority of two-party preferred votes.

The tally - after preferences are allocated - is now 50-50, and it is possible the Coalition could pull ahead later in the week as more postal votes are counted.

The Prime Minister has argued that one strong reason for the return of her government was that Labor had the biggest share of the two-party preferred vote.

But at 6.30pm yesterday the Australian Electoral Commission reported that that majority had disappeared.

Labor had 5,336,972 preference votes to the Coalition's 5,336,911. That gave Ms Gillard a lead of some 61 votes, but the split was rounded to be the same for both sides.

The seat tally of 72 each, plus a likely supporter each, and four independents, remains unchanged.


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Richard Torbay: Voters show again their disdain

On the Monday following the election, the vote was estimated at 50.7 per cent for Labor and 49.3 per cent for the Coalition. The vote collapse was in part because of changes to the count implemented by the AEC, which yesterday withdrew the preference flows from eight seats because they were not classic Labor v Liberal contests.

One of those was Grayndler in Sydney, held by Labor.

This brought about much of the ALP vote slump.

However, the eight seats were equally divided between Labor and Liberal victories, and there is a claim that the national result is thus not greatly affected.

Coalition sources claimed it was possible that postal votes, the last to be counted, would so favour the Liberals and Nationals that the Coalition would be able to grab the two-party preferred majority as well as boasting the highest primary vote.

Picture: Peter Newman.

Hot Male Station

*

I'm so hot I wish I could f... myself, Shawn declared enthusiastically on the phone, I keep catching sight of myself in the mirror and I'm transfixed, I can barely get out of the house. I wouldn't sleep with myself for a million bucks, he replied. Probably one reason I'm so generous to the Thai boys. All this banter while he tried to dispel the creeping sense of unease which had been invading his life for weeks. Where did the initial triumphs go? Why was he so worried? If all they did was pay for themselves, if the dancing boys beckoned from catwalks, dressed in their tight white underpants, what was the problem? Opportunities kept presenting themselves, but none of them were very ludicrous; none of them made ridiculous amounts of money. He was staunch and beknighted, glasped and clasped, groping and bewildered, craving affection and listening to the far off grunts, watching the lights come on and off in the building opposite as someone, he knew not who, moved from room to room in that gloomy, puzzling mansion.

Hot Male Station was owned by the same man who owned the go-go bar Hot Male down the road, surprise, and on the previous evening, when they went down to X-Size to watch the f...ing show, to satisfy or entertain the curiosity of one of their visitors, it became obvious that nothing was intended, that his hand was grasped as a display of ownership, that the current boy and the former boy both sat close to him for essentially the same reason, hoping for money, and if all was bewildered and all was lost in this world of Bangkok rent boys, going to the toilet confirmed it. The boards were coming lose from behind the urinal. He wouldn't like to see this place during the day.

Shadows were committed, fine shadows; and they began to arrive early. Hot Male Station did not turn into a disco until one a.m., prior to that it was a karaoke bar. The Thais loved karaoke but he wasn't sure it was improving his language skills, sitting there listening to so many love songs which made little sense. I love you, only you. Embarrassed by public displays of affection. All moved in unison. Nothing was to be watched. The coyote boys, the hot male dancers, came in about three each morning and added a bit of spice and professionalism to the dancing prancing young queens who went off their heads to the endlessly spliced disco tracks, where no single theme or song seemed to last more than a minute or two; and they were all merged together in an endless frenzy. Some of the old hands, who knew every track and surge, danced through every merge in perfect time. Others stood momentarily lost. Ancient things came crawling through the mud. Some things would never be the same. He was happy here. Baw number two, who now appeared to be guiding tourists to the bars in the gay zone, the Twilight Soi as it was sometimes known, for 100 baht every new customer they brought, latched on to him with a cheerful enthusiasm. He looked better than ever.

Perhaps a promiscuity was the only answer. Baw2 might have disengaged, heading back into the Twilight Zone to work more tourists, but the young boy from Chiang Mai in his tight white underpants made it clear enough they had a previous relationship, had played pool in one of those gothic Bangkok buildings he had come to know through the boys, those buildings full of working girls and strange twists of life; and sat closely, if unhappily, next to him for a good hour while on the other side Aek expressed all the affection of whiskey and ownership. Even on the way home, as they passed Prime, one of the boys, the prettiest, handsomest of all their boys as far as he was concerned, clasped his hands together in a greeting and beamed at him. His current lad was smart enough to know what that meant, and insisted, you have boyfriend? What's his name. Aek. Not some massage boy, not some go-go boy at X-Size, not some street spruiker, me. I'm the one who sleeps with you and makes sure you have breakfast and takes care of you properly; in a city seething with rent boys and foreign opportunities. Take it or leave it. Fate has dealt you a hand; and I'm it.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/29/2996462.htm?section=justin

Two of the key independent MPs say they think the election deadlock can be broken by the end of the week.

Four independent MPs are currently negotiating with Labor and the Coalition over who will form a minority government.

Two of those independents, Andrew Wilkie and Tony Windsor, say they aim to make their decision on who they will support this week.

"We're entering into a range of meetings this week. I would hope that by the end of the week we should be able to make a decision," Mr Winsor told Channel Ten.

But Mr Windsor also told ABC1's Insiders that "it could take a little bit longer than that".

He also says there is a small chance Australia will go back to the polls.

"I would say there is probably a 10 per cent chance," he said.

"I don't think it is likely, because I think there is genuine intent on behalf of both of the leaders to actually try to make something work.

"If I sense that that intent isn't there or there is undermining going, on or people just want a temporary parliament so they can go back to the polls in six months time, my vote may well opt for the people to make a decision."

Mr Wilkie is also keen to see an outcome, telling Channel Nine that he will make his decision "very soon".

"I would hope to make my decision Tuesday or Wednesday - that's what the people want," he said.

"I'm well aware that stability is very important, there is already a restlessness in the community that it's over a week since the election and we're still to know who is going to govern Australia for the next three years."

Mr Wilkie says he would be "very surprised" if the political situation takes a fortnight to resolve.

"It would be a bad thing for Australia, it would not be in the public interest to stagger on very long at all - I can't see it lasting that long," he said.

He says he will meet Opposition Leader Tony Abbott tomorrow afternoon and then hold more talks with Prime Minister Julia Gillard immediately after.

Standing alone

Mr Windsor and the two other incumbent independents, Robb Oakeshott and Bob Katter, have acted together so far in negotiations.

While the trio say they will make their minds up independently, they presented a list of requests to Mr Abbott and Ms Gillard last week.

Mr Wilkie, who yesterday claimed victory in the Hobart seat of Denison, is also presenting some requests to the leaders, but he has reiterated he will be acting on his own.

"I'm not criticising the other three independents, it's just not the way I want to go about my business," he said.

"People see them as operating as a bloc, they certainly presented a common list of concerns or demands to the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader.

"That's their business - I think it's my business to be fiercely independent and just focus on what my electorate expects of me."

He also says he will not support either major party if they don't convince him they can deliver "stable, ethical, competent government".

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/independents-could-go-separate-ways-20100828-13wxs.html

THE bloc of three rural independents could split and negotiate separately in shaping the next government, amid deep divisions over key policy questions.

New South Wales MP Tony Windsor said it should not be assumed the bloc formed with fellow NSW independent Rob Oakeshott and Queensland MP Bob Katter to assist negotiations with the major parties would last. ''There is no three amigos in this. Anything could happen,'' he said. ''The three of us may or may not agree.''

Adding to questions over the tentative bloc, new Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie, who met Prime Minister Julia Gillard for the first time in Melbourne yesterday, said he had been careful to keep his fellow independents ''at arm's length''.

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''I am not going to go around in an apparent bloc the way they have done, and I suspect some people are a little bit uneasy about the way that bloc appears to have been formed,'' he said.

''Three or four independents standing together in a bloc looks like a political party, with factions.''

Mr Wilkie presented Ms Gillard with a two-page list of 20 issues he considers crucial in weighing up whether to support either major party, or sit unaligned. His push for poker machine reforms, including a $1 limit on bets and a cap on losses of $120 an hour, dominated their one-hour discussion at Treasury Place yesterday morning.

''I made it quite clear to the Prime Minister that the time for inaction has passed. With something like 100,000 Australians problem gamblers with poker machines, it is very, very important that the next federal government finally bring about some reform in this matter,'' he said.

''I reminded the Prime Minister that her own electorate is notorious as one of the electorates with the heaviest losses … and the Prime Minister is well aware of that and I believe she is genuinely interested in bringing about some kind of reform.''

Picture: Peter Newman.

Liquid Desire Fatal Attraction Defiance Of All Commonsense

He didn't mean for any of it too happen. None of it at all. He had been proudly sober for weeks and was starting to feel, well at least partially sane. Instead he walked out of an AA meeting at the Plaza Hotel on Soi Seven in Bangkok and straight into the arms of liquid desire. He had parked his old friend Ian - one of those jolly chaps with no apparent income who dedicated their affluence to hedonism - in the Biergarten opposite the meeting, declaring he would be back within the hour. Ian couldn't have looked happier. There were never less than a 100 girls in the Biergarten at any one time, all of them available to a Westerner at a price. They varied between drop dead gorgeous and perfectly reasonable. Most were pretty charming to boot. Ian had been fantasising about girls all day, well all of his life really, but on this day it had reached fever pitch. His current, exotic but temperamental squeeze being away visiting her typically enormous Thai family somewhere in the provinces. I'll buy you a boy, Ian had wilfully declared. A girl for me, maybe two girls for me, and a boy for you. If you don't see a girl you like. Not sure about you.

I'm not really up to it at the moment, he protested.
Oh don't be ridiculous, Ian snorted. This is Bangkok. You can't sleep alone.

When he re-entered the Biergarten to collect him Ian already had two or three girls on either side vying for his attention. He was laughing away at their affections and affectations while simultaneously oggling off a younger and older woman seated together. Never had a mother daughter combo, Ian whispered in his ear. That would be worth trying.

Rapidly realising that the number of girls sponging drinks had already reached six or seven and was showing every sign of increasing, he whispered back: let's try somewhere else. Thus it was that they ended up at Bangkok's notorious Soi Cowboy; again a red light district dedicated to foreigners. Thai brothels for Thai men were another story entirely. They stood amidst the flashing lights and the crowds of Soi Cowboy, uncertain which of the go go bars to enter, whose enticement to respond to. A middle aged man was standing slap bang in the middle of the soi. You look lost, he said. I am, the man replied. Realising they had a fellow Australian in hand they cheerfully embraced him. Don't worry, they told him, we'll show you the ropes. I'm married, he protested. Yes, well, is your wife with you in Bangkok? No, I'm meeting her in London. We've been married for 24 years. We have two children. What she doesn't know won't hurt her, they assured him. And so they settled on the go go bar in the centre, drinks 70 baht until 9pm. And he just thought, oh eff it, I'll just have a few beers and go back to meetings tomorrow. Never confess. What they don't know won't hurt them either.

For some weird reason known only to him the accountant couldn't bring himself to betray his wife of 24 years; so in the end, after an impressive number of beers and several inconclusive flirtations, none of the admittedly very pretty girls seemed quite right, they decided to move on yet again and check out Patpong, Bangkok's oldest red light district targeting falang, foreigners. But first of all they would go and check out the Merman show, where naked boys swam in a tank. It all sounded very Bangkok.


He knew he shouldn't go to see him again; that invisible toxic lure, the sirens crashing on the sure. But he did anyway, impossible to resist. Baw was living in a large cheap apartment block, one of those typical Thai arrangements, four to a room. They smoked. They didn't drink but he might as well have. Things went awry very quickly. Indeed he went back several times; and their heads were winding through the clouds and their teeth clenched, instant ecstasy, those puffy white things dripping crystals...

The Fall

*

The thoughts were all twisted around inside, hollow of substance, insubstantial of will, everything coalescing. He needed to be free again. He didn't know what was happening. All things colluded to make the biggest con trick of all. I love you, the young man said, and love in this world was a practical thing, haunted, especially, by images of former lives. They lay bathed in sweat and nothing was consequential. The f... show at Night Boys was particularly athletic. Everything was hollow. Not like him or me, they said of a friend, a singer, who made a legitimate income. Although all was seen as legitimate here. Everything came round and round. Haunted by the light, by the right, by the triumphalism of the left. They so believed they were in the right; and dismissed the normal populace, which they were supposed to represent, as having done nothing, of being blind and ignorant, fools long before they emerged from the bush, the scrub, the mud, before these neanderthals crawled onto land and he was trapped in a situation of his own making. Hell hath no fury. It was a tight way to exclaim, to die, to be confounded by what was meant to be love and was nothing but bought sex, time and again, here in the now. You are very kind, they said, and yes, he was generous to a fault. Everything mattered.

Come again, the man had said, all those years ago. Nothing mattered. He was cast adrift. Pale flesh drifted, and ancient concerns undulated off an ocean floor, deep with unease, blessed with timelessness, the unconcerned laughter of the young. All was conspiracy. Nothing was right. And they caught him laughing when he wasn't laughing, and manufactured hysteria when there was nothing to be concerned about. Suddenly the apartment seemed small. Everything was drifting away. Athletic wasn't the word for it, wouldn't want to be caught on the end of that donkey slonger. He went to the meetings and their content drifted over him. Everyone seemed to be in relapse zone; so he had a good fight with an older member, just for good measure, to throw any spanner, any excuse, into the works. Grinding machinery was all that was left. Then he discovered other weaknesses of the flesh. All was caught, fractured, time moving. He was bent asunder. Nothing was right. Those billows from the ocean floor may have been timeless, but in the here and now they impacted on his daily life, his hard fought equilibrium. Asia suits you, his brother in law said, you look ten years younger, as if all the weight has been lifted from you, as if you were a different person. I like it here, he said. And of course part of the like was the easy sex, the fact he did not have to sleep alone.

Whenever we are awakened, we hear the unconcerned cackle, we hear things we should never have heard, suspect things that were barely happening. I love you and he responded same same, wishing it to be. There was an all out frankness. Time was moving inexorably to its conclusion. I'm 82 and I'm happy, the man said, beaming at them all. I love music. He repeated the phrase several times, I love music. And I have two children. And I have grandchildren I have never seen. I'm happy. All was moving in concert; he was deeply concerned and deeply frightened, most of all for his life ending, for time being disconcerted, for a shrug of a shoulder, a drift of a pattern, a hem in a crowded street, a pretty face on a crowded train; all of it mattered. He wanted to be caught inside everybody's life, inside every piece of history past and present, to be at one not just with this universe but all universes. There wasn't any way out of this mortal frame; but it seemed hardly true that this was all there was. The ancient voices still sprang, swam, strong inside of him. He could hear them barking back across the centuries, to the times when he was a warrior, a guardian, a court official, a lonely drunkard in an English village; a once young man disgraced. It wasn't to be, whatever he had hoped to be, this time around. The voices would not be silenced. They would take him soon enough; twenty years, a lifetime, were as nothing to them. They would come for him; and he would never be ready. Too full of regret, too anchored in the present; he looked wistfully across the skyscrapers; and wished he could raise a glass in joy. Beware the heights, beware the fall, that is all.

THE BIGGER PICTURE:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/07/AR2010080700822.html

KABUL -- Gunmen killed 10 members of a medical team, including six Americans, traveling in the rugged mountains of northern Afghanistan, demonstrating the reach of insurgents far from their traditional havens and shocking the expatriate community here.

The attack was one of the deadliest on civilian aid workers since the war began in 2001. That it occurred in Badakhshan province, a scenic mountain redoubt considered a peaceful refuge from the war, added to growing concern that the Taliban has seized on northern Afghanistan as its latest front.

The dead have not been officially identified, and the bodies not yet returned to Kabul, but Afghan and Western officials said the victims were thought to be members of a medical team working with a Christian charity group that has decades of experience in Afghanistan. That team, from the International Assistance Mission, lost contact with its office in Kabul on Wednesday, two days before the attack, said Dirk Frans, the group's executive director.

"We've got a team that has gone missing, and then there are 10 people found dead. At the moment we're working on the assumption that this is the same team," Frans said.

The Taliban quickly asserted responsibility for the killings, saying the medical workers were "foreign spies" and were spreading Christianity. But police officials have not ruled out robbery as a motive, as the victims was stripped of their belongings after they were shot.

The team members -- six Americans, one German, one Briton and four Afghans -- were returning from neighboring Nurestan province, where they had spent several days administering eye care to impoverished villagers. They were traveling unarmed and without security guards, Frans said.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/real_estate/2010/08/06/2010-08-06_house_where_michael_jackson_died_goes_up_for_sale_.html#ixzz0vyOeuBpR


At first glance, it doesn't sound much different from any other Los Angeles real estate listing.

Holmby Hills, 17,171 SF, 1.26 acres, 7 BR, 13 BA, 12 fireplaces, guesthouse, pool, theater, wine cellar, tasting room, art studio, elevator, gym, spa. $28.995M, possibly negotiable.

But this little pad does have one little extra thriller you could throw out to the guests you invite for a cocktail party in the tasting room: It's the house Michael Jackson was renting at the time of his death on June 25, 2009.

If the exterior looks familiar, it's probably because that's where thousands of fans gathered that night for impromptu memorial celebrations.

Jackson was paying $100,000 a month for the rental, where he stayed while he was rehearsing for what he planned as a series of comeback concerts.

The house was built in 2002 and sold in 2004 for $18.5 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. It was listed in 2008 for $38 million, but pulled back when the real estate market deflated, which is why it was available for Jackson to rent.

It is owned by Hubert and Roxanne Guez. He's chief executive of clothing manufacturer Ed Hardy.

Bangkok. Picture: Peter Newman.

Over Soon Enough

*

Strange how when he drifted off the air, so did his sleeping companions. All else was lost. He gathered himself up in the storm reaches, water swirling down a drain. He didn't know what situation he had got himself into. He didn't expect them to be anything other than devious. Consternation was at its height; but also a strange fog as he landed back where he had been only two months before; recycling hope, handsome boys, the gift of a smile. The flags still fluttered in the heat. The rickshaw drivers clustered outside the hotel. The begging families, a pregnant woman and her children camped on the pavement all day. The convergence of the Mekong and Tom Lesap Rivers. An ancient creek bed. A time far beyond anything he knew. Wasted moments and wasted days. Cruel discord. Laughter at its most manic. Head buried under the pillows. What have I done? Does love die as fast as it is born? Do moments of intimacy betray us at the heart? Did a lonely old man stumble into keeping a boy almost by accident? Was it a simple desire not to sleep alone. After they had come in the cheap hotel, they lay next to each other, arms draped across each other; and that in a way was the best of it; the one moment of affection they were allowed in the day.

He had become used to the routine now. They met at four, when the handsome young waiter finished work, and he would wait in the cafe for him while the young man had a shower. It was obvious to all. Time stood across many a mountain, and he wasn't himself, not yet, not now. Caught in betwixt and between. So much had happened; alone in those two months when he was never alone; didn't like to sleep by himself and everything came crashing down, caught in so much ceremony, blessed by tiny ritual, forsaken at dawn. Just an old man on a balcony. He couldn't remember why he was here. The time machine was malfunctioning. Motive was out the window. The flags of many nations flapped in the wind, the boats plied the channels further out in the river, and now and then even a tourist boat joined the melee. You're creating an artificial crisis. They knew he wasn't with them. They made excuses. He's a little sleepy, the cousins said. It was a nice way of saying he wasn't all there, not committed, not part of this world. You'll come calling one day, that's for sure. He ran his hands down a flat belly, assured of success.

There was a certain shame in having been so vacant for so many days. But then Cambodia was always an interlude to the main game. He sat and talked to the lawyer in the 12-room mansion. The cook prepared them porridge. They talked of contracts and of scripts; and laughed in acknowledgement because only they knew how truly effed up was the financial situation. It kept on bearing truth. They kept on sighing and waking up, stretching, a physical smell. Was it his fault he couldn't love? Were the boys, three decades younger than him at the least, beginning to wear thin? Was it here in the reaches that he contemplated ending a perfect life; a way of life, the pool on the roof, the attentive staff at the apartment block, the alert security guards? He was so out of phase it made little difference. Only he knew the end could be just around the corner, a simple twist of fate, a couple of weeks off into a crazy world; and that would be it. I can no longer support you, he said warily. He watched as the summer came along, as the rainy season passed. He heard every story and stuck loyally to the story: I love you. Same Same. Brief exchanges. But he didn't know where the answer lay. He said goodbye to the handsome young man in Pnom Penh, and rejoined another in Bangkok. It was a long way from sleeping alone in Redfern. Today he passed from one country to the next. Today one story was sacrificed for another, muffled seclusion, a distant space, and when they swirled together and he ran his hands across that perfect body, all else was lost. He didn't care what the level of fraud was. Love was a practical thing. You take care of me and I will take care of you. A simple exchange. They smiled in their cracked and phoney hearts. They were compromised at the deepest levels. He was glad to see him again, smiling as he lounged in the armchair on the balcony, as he looked out across the currents of the conjoining rivers.

THE BIGGER STORY:


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1301214/Pakistan-fury-presidents-playboy-son-using-floods.html#ixzz0vyK5vW00

The playboy son of Pakistan’s president yesterday faced damaging claims that he was exploiting his country’s devastating floods to boost his political career.
Oxford graduate Bilawal Zardari, 21, angrily described as a ‘lie’ the accusation that the five-day visit to the UK by his father, Asif Zardari, was a springboard for his own ambitions.
Bilawal’s outburst, made as he launched an appeal for flood aid, is the latest controversy to overshadow a visit already hit by a diplomatic row over Islamabad’s alleged links to terrorism and growing outrage at the President’s absence during one of the country’s worst-ever disasters.
More than 1,500 people have died and 13 million have been affected, with more rain expected.
Bilawal’s mother was the former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated at a political rally soon after her return from exile in 2007.
Bilawal became co-chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), now the ruling party, which has always been led by a Bhutto or Zardari.
However, Bilawal is yet to take an active part in politics. He was expected to accept sole party chairmanship when he joined his father at a rally of British Pakistanis in Birmingham yesterday, but it is thought the plan was aborted at the last minute as advisers realised it could fan anger back home.
Asked if he was using his father’s visit to launch his career, Bilawal said: ‘This is not the time to play politics. We need to do whatever is necessary to help our brothers and sisters in Pakistan.’
He then denied he ever intended to appear at the rally, shouting: ‘That’s a lie.’

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/national/national/general/latham-rudd-overshadow-gillard/1907246.aspx

PRIME MINISTER Julia Gillard's predecessors continue to overshadow her campaign, after she was confronted by Mark Latham and sat down with Kevin Rudd for the first time since dumping him as leader.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott played down concerns the Labor ''soap opera'' threatens to overshadow the Coalition's official campaign launch in Brisbane today, when he will announce tougher penalties including mandatory jail sentences for people smugglers.

It comes as the latest Nielsen-Fairfax poll shows the Coalition remains ahead of Labor. Its two-party preferred lead has dropped from 52-48 a week ago, to 51-49, thanks to a 1-point shift from the Coalition to the Greens.

Mr Latham, who is working for the Nine Network's 60 Minutes program, confronted Ms Gillard at Brisbane's Ekka show yesterday, demanding to know why Labor had complained about his presence.

Ms Gillard tried to laugh off the confrontation, but Mr Latham told her if she wanted to make complaints, she ought to ''have a dig'' at Mr Rudd, who was trying to sabotage her campaign.

Earlier, only a cameraman and photographer were allowed into the first meeting between Ms Gillard and Mr Rudd since she deposed him, and that too for only about one minute.

Footage showed the two, accompanied by Labor officials, never making eye contact while looking at a map of Queensland.

Bangkok. Picture: Peter Newman.

Out Of What?

*

The towers went off in every direction, myriads of spikes heading off into the distance. Each contained thousands of stories. Sometimes he wished he could be part of all of them; embrace everything. From the street workers, the men pushing their trolleys of noodles, fresh fruit, drinks, through the benighted, chaotic streets. Everything came falling down at once. He saw some handsome Asian boy flirting with some fat American bastard in Soi Four, at the Balcony, and could see every bit of artifice that had been applied to him in that tricky face, the easy affection. He felt like a fool. Everything that had been applied to him. We'll look back and say, this was your drunk boyfriend, this was your getting sober boyfriend, this is your staying sober boyfriend, Jack, the gargoyle queen, had said. He felt a stab of I hope it isn't true; and in any event the years were marching so rapidly by it hardly mattered any more. Every trick had been applied to him. Oh what a surprise. They went and sang karaoke songs at Hot Male Station; it didn't convert to a disco until after one, usually more like two, when everyone came in from the other clubs, when handsome coyotes, male dancers, performed in the corners and smoke machines and lights added atmosphere. I have dirty boy for you, 18, some spruiker declared when he wandered 20 feet down the soi, restless, deeply restless. Those calls had disturbed him on some infinite level, and he was out of sorts at the cracks that had shown up in everything. Nothing was right.

And yet here he was, equally disturbed by the 300 page manuscript he had printed off with his newly acquired printer; all that power, all those years of frustration, all those years of seeing the world askance paid off in texts which picked apart every functioning moment of the world they had come from, the hypocrisy of the courts, the blind adherence of the media, the abhorrence of the talentless, herd like journalists who equally followed the precepts of the conformist masters above them. He was sick of it to the core. Originality was despised. It would always be thus. After decades of everyone deciding to think "outside the square", of mul-mul-mul-multiplicity every strange station, every askance thought, every tiny wave of originality, was abhorred. They travelled in packs, thought in packs. He couldn't bear it. No wonder you never get asked to share, the tubby ex-con said to him when he finally heard him speak. You don't give the gospel according to them. You don't say what they want to hear. They're a cult, he snapped back, suddenly weary and embarrassed; tired of being different, tired of the insomnia, the manic energy, the long walks when the rest of the city slept. More than anything he was tortured by the unfinished manuscript, by the hours it would take to complete the project, by a thousand possibilities which never occurred, by the lives he would never be a part of. He wanted to drape himself in everything, the street sweepers, the masculine security guards lounging in the front of buildings, or in the car park at the back of the Bangkok Bank, the sleepless beggars who still sat awake on the street despite the lack of passing traffic, the queens spilling out of DJs, the last of the massage boys lounging at the front of the Angkor Spa.

He could find comfort in the strangest of things, was already passing through the I don't know who I am phase, as the liquid desire splashed out on to concrete streets, as he physically recovered and mixed in different circles, as obsessions and destructive behaviours evaporated into the passing days; and now, it was just a matter of getting the work done. There would be rewards at the other end. Now was not the time. He watched the falangs, the foreigners, with their Thai or Asian boyfriends and felt stabs of the heart, caricatures of his true self, a dream scape filled with whites in a land of tiny brown men, pert, often astonishingly pretty women, of disco anthems and endless fascinations. These intoxications didn't belong to anyone any more. They were part of a dream scape which had morphed into reality; they were as much a part of the real world as the crushing morning crowds of office workers buying their favourite breakfasts and queuing for coffee in the morning crush along Silom. Everything was different now that he at last saw clearly. Confiding in no one, talking to no one, he would make it through this extra piece of desolation into the sunny uplands just as he had endured every other piece of misinformation and dislocation, only to wake up to Shawn and what he regarded as the perfect joke, characterising as it did so many sacred cows: a Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi were walking down the street when they passed a 14-year-old boy. Ooh, I'd like to screw him, said the priest. Out of what? asked the rabbi.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/08/2976681.htm?section=justin

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has taken a swipe at former Labor leader Mark Latham after he confronted her yesterday, saying he is still struggling with the 2004 election loss.

Mr Latham is working on a story for Channel 9 and yesterday approached Ms Gillard in Brisbane, asking if Labor had made a complaint about him.

Nine Network CEO David Gyngell has since apologised for the incident.

The confrontation threatened to derail another day of campaigning for Ms Gillard who earlier in the day had met with her predecessor Kevin Rudd for the first time since he was deposed.

Ms Gillard has described Mr Latham's behaviour has inappropriate.

"Some people take election defeats better than others; I think Mark's still struggling a bit," she told ABC 1's Insiders program.

"I'm made of pretty tough stuff but I did think that this was inappropriate.

"We're in the middle of an election campaign; I'm the Prime Minister of this country. I'm not a human interest story."

Ms Gillard has conceded she has had some "hurdles" in her way during the campaign but is adamant she will not be distracted.

She described yesterday's meeting with Mr Rudd as positive and constructive, despite suggestions they looked uncomfortable together.

"I'll let other's engage in the pop psychology of one still image," she said.

Mr Rudd will today begin campaigning in some parts of Queensland.

Ms Gillard is campaigning in Darwin today as the Coalition officially launches its campaign in Brisbane, where leader Tony Abbott will outline mandatory prison sentences for anyone convicted of people smuggling.

But Ms Gillard says the Government has already brought in laws to crack down on people smuggling.

"In May this year, legislation went through the Parliament to toughen up on people smugglers, including those people who assist people smugglers," she said.

"We've got mandatory jail sentences in the current legislation."

But Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has told ABC News 24 says Australians are concerned about Labor's handling of immigration.

"This issue has got to where it is today because of the failure of Labor's policies," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10904903

More heavy rain in Pakistan is frustrating efforts to help about 12 million people affected by severe flooding in much of the country.

Helicopter missions in the north-west have been grounded and a red alert has been issued for the south.

One dam in Sindh province has been breached and engineers are warning that the huge Tarbela and Mangla dams are close to their maximum levels.

The worst floods in the region for 80 years have killed at least 1,600 people

Pakistan's meteorological office has warned that at least two more days of rain are expected in Sindh, where authorities have declared an "imminent" and "extreme" flood threat.

Further downpours are also forecast in the badly-hit north-western province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

"Things are getting worse. It's raining again. That's hampering our relief work," said UN World Food Programme spokesman Amjad Jamal.

Many helicopter aid flights in the north-west have been grounded by the bad weather.

The helicopters are essential in the region's rugged terrain because the floods damaged or destroyed most of the bridges, cutting off many survivors from relief.

"The situation is bad, particularly in the Swat valley, and we have advised people in low-lying areas to vacate their homes as river water levels are rising," said Adnan Ahmed, an official with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa's government.

The deluge has brought the water levels behind the Tarbela and Mangla dams - two of the world's largest - dangerously close to their maximum, engineers warned.

A dam in northern Sindh's Kashmore district has already been breached, inundating large parts of the surrounding area with floodwater and forcing thousands of residents to take shelter on rooftops or in trees.

One man told the BBC said his entire village had been destroyed and all its livestock washed away.

The floods, brought on by seasonal monsoon rains, began in the north-west, but have now inundated a stretch of Pakistan about 1,000 km (600 miles) long, primarily along the Indus river and its tributaries.

With the flood surge heading south, authorities have evacuated more than half a million people living near the Indus river as hundreds of villages have been inundated by floodwaters.

Picture: Bangkok: Peter Newman.

No Good At Heart

*
*

Their Christmases came early. Pat called and everybody called. Family matters. He was seeking an end to the story so he could submit it to Hack Writers in time for their deadline; but the end hadn't happened yet and the repeated calls had done nothing but throw him, making him want to drink. Already there was suspicion and changed atmosphere on the home front; and nothing had happened, a couple of calls. An embarrassing incident left him fleeing to the dentist; and there he called back. I miss you. I never do with anyone like you. Same, he said, which was true enough. I just want to meet, talk, Baw said. I have a boy now, he said. I'm glad, Baw replied, happy for you. I just want to talk. We had some good times, and bad, he said; and they both laughed together because they knew how crazy it had all been; all the things they had done; all the places they had been; the bars they had stumbled out of; the nightclubs they had impressed, the clapped out buildings with their Thai karaoke bars and 500 baht hookers; all of that, all of these things. She was no good, Baw would complain, too many customers, sloppy. Well why go there; but nothing would stop these lads, nothing. He learnt a lot about Thai culture from the bottom side up. He learnt a lot about Thais. And when different things came along; well you wouldn't be here if you hadn't been there; that was all there was to say about it.

Pat called and they talked about Henrietta; who had to set up Skype. It takes five minutes, she said. Even my mother, who's tipped 80 now, has Skype. The free internet phone service. Or free for skype to skype calls, anyway. There were forests of bars, their neon signs shining out. The desire to drink was upon him in waves; and he sat through boring meeting after boring meeting with a bunch of utterly self obsessed Americans, and thought: I don't know how anyone gets sober in this environment. But things would pass. Times would change. He printed out a book to work on. He managed to come clean just on the surface, just in the way of things, and made as if to be clear of all they had ever worked for, to take a sip, just one sip, before abandoning his life for ever, heading to the streets of Calcutta, throwing away everything he had built up. Is that what you want? Not really, he answered. I'm happy here. But I just can't believe it. It doesn't seem real. I don't do happy. Well it's time to learn, he was told, to be a normal person, a human amongst humans, not to waste away paradise in some forlorn gesture only you can see. The sweep of the arm, the scattering bottles, the broken glass, stumbling out into the dawn after a night on the tiles. It wasn't heroic. In the end it wasn't even interesting, although he enjoyed some of the characters along the way. Buck up deary, no reason to be dreary, and everything, everything walked away and left him: cold stony sober.

So perhaps that's why the calls so fundamentally disturbed him, like a siren call from a past he never wanted to answer. They had been so drunk together so often; and he drank in a way he hadn't drunk for decades, in the way he drank in his 20s, when he could still physically handle the stuff; before liver disease ate away his confidence and ability to cope. So the fact they were merry, united in a party, united on the home front, two men out prowling with their flashing love and strange level of intimacy, accepted by girls and bartenders alike, was a way of saying: get real. You're just another foreigner and they're just taking your money. Well that they did do. But nothing can happen for that long without other things occurring. So when the calls came it was like a temptress on a rock, a siren call to the dark side; and even the other Baw, the lyrically handsome one who came by bludging money and had frightened both of them, it was easy to come by and easy to be free, who had said immediately they met: I have a new girlfriend, I can get a big bag of ice, you can watch me fuck her, we can have an orgy together; and the new boy responding with horror. Sad he whispered in his ear. Sad. Well that was one way of thinking about it. So the siren call came fast and early; and he wanted to live not just beyond his means but in some strange emotional comfort zone where he had never been before. And when the boy started helping him number the pages of the book he was printing out he just thought: you complete me. That's what it is. I am happy with you. Why risk everything for a flirtation with the dark side? Just because. Ting Tong. Crazy. Because you are insane. Because they're cute with their clothes off. Because you've always been dysfunctional, damaged goods; and this would be living proof, you're no good at heart.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/30/2968356.htm?section=justin

Former Labor leader Mark Latham has launched a vitriolic attack on Kevin Rudd, accusing him of being the source of the latest leak to hit the Gillard Government.

Mr Latham called the former prime minister a "snake" and said he should "be a man" and own up to the leak, which claimed Prime Minister Julia Gillard was opposed to the Government's parental leave scheme and questioned the aged pension rise.

"It's the coward's way to get on the blower with Laurie Oakes and say, 'I'll tell you this but you're not allowed to identify me'. It's the snake's way," he said.

"I challenge Kevin Rudd to be a man, to be honest, to have some honour, and actually if he feels this strongly about it, put his name to his words."

The firebrand former opposition leader told Sky News he was sure Mr Rudd leaked the information to Channel Nine reporter Laurie Oakes.

"When you're lying in bed at night and hear the pitter-patter sound on the roof you don't actually have to see the drops to know that it's raining," he said.

"So too, you don't need to have a wire tap on the conversation between Kevin Rudd and Laurie Oakes to know it was Kevin Rudd.

"It too is one of the laws of nature, that Kevin is a serial leaker."

He said Ms Gillard's decision to leave Mr Rudd on the backbench would have contributed to the leak.

"I think he was insulted when having lost the prime ministership and wanting to go onto the frontbench he wasn't accommodated," Mr Latham said.

"He was really quite humiliated by being left on the backbench by Julia Gillard."

Mr Rudd's spokesman has issued a one-line statement in response: "Mr Rudd has not responded to the substance of anything Mr Latham has said over the past five years. He does not intend to start now."

Previously, Mr Rudd issued a statement saying he never comments on private Cabinet discussions.

Ms Gillard has said she thinks Mr Rudd is "honourable" and is welcome on her frontbench if Labor wins the upcoming election.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/latham-morphs-into-the-hack-he-despised-20100806-11o5c.html

He told any who would listen just how vile and depraved journalists were and now he has become one.

Former Labor leader Mark Latham is working with the Nine Network's 60 Minutes in the lead-up to the federal election campaign.

Mr Latham appeared in Canberra on Friday and interviewed Australian Greens leader Bob Brown before observing a press conference with a TV crew in tow.

n his incendiary diaries, Mr Latham routinely attacked journalists.

Asked by a reporter for his thoughts on the election campaign, Mr Latham said he was not at the press conference to answer questions but rather to observe.

Wearing sunglasses, a dark suit and security clearance card, Mr Latham was a far cry from his former self.

A Nine spokesman confirmed he was working with a news team.

"Yes Mark Latham is working with 60 Minutes," the spokesman told AAP.

"Having been there himself, Mark's intimate knowledge of campaigning will give our viewers an honest, unvarnished insight into what's really happening because for all the talk of realness it's all turned a bit unreal," a statement from the network said.

"It's not a square-up or an exercise in character assassination.

"Mark still has his gall bladder intact but he says it's not about bile."

The story will be aired on August 15.

Picture: Bangkok. Peter Newman.

The Sky Bar

*

Old people never vote Labor, Australia's first woman Prime Minister Julia Gillard said, or probably said, depending on how much you believed the leak. They were all superficial, antagonistic, utterly incompetent. Labor was on the nose and they knew it. These things, this election form afar, the machinations of politicians in his country of origin, meant less than nothing here. Jack the high camp Washington lawyer who calls everyone dear, is off to Pattya with his boyfriend, who he calls a partner although they only spend a month or two together each year, that Jack who almost no one liked because he had an unerring ability to offend everyone, including Tommy. I've seen how Tommy lives and I don't want to be like that, he had said, referring to Tommy's tendency to wander around. I exercise, he said when he insisted on confronting him after the meeting, I've got a bone to pick with you, and so yes, I'm out about, in the confrontation they had after the meeting. It was all a misunderstanding dear, Jack said, but he doubted that was Tommy's version of events. Tommy was a former co-owner of Studio 54 in New York. He told some colourful tales of living the high life, partying in giant houses, partying with America's rich and famous. His partner of 20 years drank himself to death. Everyone's story is different, he said, after the urge to drink and smoke and obliterate himself came smashing back in. Forty seven days and he wasn't going out there again, but some days, petty frustrations, underlying tow lines, everything combined to bring the world back into focus, the appalling consequence into place, everything combined.

Perhaps it was the call from Baw number one in the morning; when he could hear the boy he had been so obsessed with in a group. Number one friend from Australia, he heard him explain to whoever he was with. The Thais, as he had said before, never came alone. That was the universal bender. That was the place he had thought he would never escape. That truly was the heart of darkness, as they staggered across devastated landscapes. Yet moments had been such fun, and so outrageous, and he had loved spilling out of clubs at dawn just as if he was twenty again, and catching the first shifts of light across the city; or the town, or the beach, wherever it was they were on that epic bender when days would disappear and he would have no memory; his only knowledge the reactions of those around him. Oh my God. And the woman who kept dragging him off to AA meetings, even though he didn't want to go. There was always some time or space to rip apart the heart. Well dear, why don't you just write what the publisher wants, Jack said to Nate, who had written the 1,000 page book he had wanted to write about Pol Pot, and had no intention of bending to the putrid desires of some idiot editor who knew nothing of what she spoke. Art was art and masterpieces were masterpieces. He said. When he spoke out about the shadows. When Aek asked him about The Wire which he was obsessively watching his way through; and he pointed out the words masterpiece, genius, powerful, in their well worn Thai English dictionary.

Jack had punctured all his illusions, as he had a tendency to do with everyone he met, an arch old queen in the old fashioned style, a style of campery, of being gay, that hadn't been around much for decades, escept amongst this little bunch of aging middle aged queens, he could see them now, having their little drinking meets in comfortable restaurants and exclusive bars, keeping track of each other's lonely lives, who was doing what, who was dying now, who had made a fool of themselves falling in and out of love. He had seen them in Sydney; used to catch one of his old bosses in one of those eternal gaggles. They were all working. They all had hearts of stone. They all lived their neat little lives in their neat little apartments. They were all falling apart in the inside, if they had the sensitivity to do so; which many of them didn't. He knew exactly what it was like to sleep with them, dreary deary, and he didn't like any of them if the truth was known. But he was drawn to Jack as if to a gargoyle, and when Shawn, the academic who was a walking encyclopaedia of contemporary culture and could quote the lyrics of rock song classics to you with ease, something suitable for every occasion, every twist of the conversation, when you're torn apart by the forces within you, come on up to the house, and the mean street jargon and the forces of change, and the whispy winds of the sighing dears, there was a right song for every turn of phrase and abnegation. So he rang him and said: I felt like a cigarette so I thought of you. The last one he had being at Coffee Circle where the tables were filled with swishy boys and Shawn smoked his menthols constantly. And Shawn said of Jack: I didn't like him at first, what he said about Robby, but he's a fascinating character, I can see that. I'm not sure if I like him, but he's fascinating. Are you sure, dear, he replied, and they both laughed.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/commentary/it-takes-two-to-tango-but-one-to-lead/story-e6frgd0x-1225901825100

FOR the first weeks of the campaign, Kevin Rudd was a shadowy and destructive figure behind Julia Gillard and the party that dumped him.

Now Rudd is out in the open and campaigning for Labor.

Unfortunately for the prime minister, Rudd's campaign is likely to be no less destructive than when he was kept in the background.

Labor now has two "leaders" campaigning against Tony Abbott, one who said the government under Rudd had lost its way and the other one saying the government wasn't perfect but had the policies about right.

Rudd began his campaign yesterday defending his record while Gillard has spent the first 2 1/2 weeks of the campaign walking away from it and "fixing" the issues of asylum-seekers, the mining tax and climate change.

What's more, Rudd made it clear yesterday that he was stepping in to save Labor from losing the election as the Coalition and Abbott slid to victory by default. Losing by default because the new Labor leadership wasn't winning after starting the campaign with a 10-point lead on a two-party preferred basis.

It is confusing and bizarre in the extreme that Rudd, who was so unpopular and seen to be leading Labor to a generational loss, has been wheeled in to save Labor.

Of course, Rudd has declared that he is doing this for the Labor cause, that he has no resentment or anger and he just wants to stop Abbott "tearing up" what his government had achieved.

"My mum taught me years and years and years ago, life's too short to carry around a great bucket-load of anger and resentment and bitterness and hatreds and all that sort of stuff," he said on Phillip Adams's ABC radio program.

"And, she's absolutely right, there is too much to be done.

"The bottom line is I can't just stand idly by at the prospect of Mr Abbott sliding into office by default," he said.

His magnanimous offering will be welcomed by many and give heart to some Labor supporters but the manner of his arriving at this position, the confusion it creates and the potential for political disaster in the last two weeks of the campaign is enormous.

His statements are also redolent of all the divisions and bitterness that have marred Labor's campaign so far and further damaged the Labor brand.

Rudd's very public presence will drain attention and focus from the real Labor leader. He will be asked to defend his policies - which she has changed - and whether he thinks the attempts to change the policy on asylum-seekers represents the "lurch to the Right" he said he wouldn't stand for.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/julia-gillard-denies-doing-a-deal-with-kevin-rudd-to-get-him-back-on-campaign-trail/story-fn5z3z83-1225901951996

JULIA Gillard has denied she’s struck a deal with Kevin Rudd in return for his help to revive Labor’s struggling campaign.

The Prime Minister said she and her predecessor have been exchanging text messages and will catch up tomorrow to thrash out Mr Rudd’s return to the campaign trail.

Mr Rudd yesterday agreed to Ms Gillard’s “request’’ to help her struggling campaign and is expected out on the hustings this weekend.

Ms Gillard denied she had offered her former boss anything in return for his help.

“There’s no deal, there’s his enthusiasm to make sure the Government is relected…so he can keep pursuing the things that he passionately believes in,’’ she told the ABC this morning.

The Prime Minister said if Labor was relected, she would honour her pledge to give Mr Rudd a frontbench spot, but had struck no deal with him about a portfolio.

“There’s no deal, there’s no arrangement, what I’ve said publicly is all that there is to know,’’ she said.

Ms Gillard said the two were yet to speak, but had been texting.

“We’ve chronic, chronic texters,’’ she said. “We’ve been communicating like that and we’re going to catch up face-to-face on Saturday.’’

It has been just weeks since Ms Gillard knifed Mr Rudd and took his job, saying the Government had lost its way under his leadership.

However she said the two had fought some “big battles together’’ and could put the recent past behind them to unite and defeat Tony Abbott.

“There are bigger things here than things about us and people and personalities,’’ she said.

Picture: Peter Newman. The Sky Bar on the top of the State Tower Block, Bangkok.

Dear

*

There were clouded times, but there were also times of infinite success, infinite happiness. And it was the latter that caused him so much grief. He didn't know who he was any more. He had never been happy, simply didn't do happy, and so it was a confusing quagmire, these balmy, blissful days, not on an island, not cursed by palm trees, but here in the heart of the city, in a sea of glass and steel, with skyscrapers for mountains and buildings for trees, hemmed in like the forest of old. Perhaps it was the same as that brief, blissful time, in another life, when he had returned from the township afar to that tiny, rustic village nestled in the foothills, and fallen in love in the cold European spring, and yes, been happy as the years rolled by and the children came along. He couldn't conjure her face now, not from so long ago, not across so many life spans, but he did remember that brief respite from the wars and angst that had bedevilled every last stay. Nate got into Safe Haven and while he seemed to expect the world to pay for it, these brief sad times, moi, moi, drunk, drunk, the interconnectedness that played out in farcical reunions, in collapsed realities, in passing friendships, also played out as he sat in the garden restaurant near the Malaysia Hotel with Alex the author of books for teenage girls, Boyfriends With Girlfriends being the next item out, and they talked about anything and everything, as if there was no need for pleasure.

Time out of mind they called it, but Jack the lawyer from Washington who called everyone dear was all excited because his boyfriend was flying in from Malaysia or Singapore or wherever it was, and he was declaring they would have a quiet dinner and almost for free, just like that, he would have sex and be loyal. It's the best sex I've ever had, dear, Jack said. It wasn't an erotic thought. He'd only been happy, on their inspection of so many of Bangkok's available apartments, when they were in high rise buildings, antiseptic flats on the 24th floor. And an extra room, well he didn't need that dear. You'd only have to cool it. What, no one's ever going to come and stay? You wouldn't like a study? But the views were spectacular in an ice like way, while he was happy to look out on the backs of houses, walled in, with the sound of the metal grinder in the evening and the blanket privacy, as if they were ground into a heart, as if nothing mattered, as if the full weight of circumstance hadn't crushed them already. There was no narrative sense because life didn't flow in a linear fashion. He bought his ticket to Pnom Penh and didn't want to go; although once he got there it would be a different story. The sins of the past and the sins of the future, they would all come down to a simple afternoon in a five dollar flea pit; where nobody asked any questions and the crack down on vice had never happened. Not that this was vice. It was simple love; passion in a passionless life. A land bereft of love.

Im, I'm full, Aek said, rubbing his belly after a confusion over dates and times and a trip down to Silom for food. The previous day Nate and Shawn and he had walked through Limpini to Ruhm Rudi after sitting at Coffee Society near Salen Dang for an hour. Being close to DJs, there was barely a straight person there, a couple of tourists who must have wandered in by accident, otherwise nothing but gangs of swishy young men. But Jack, with his infinite capacity to offend almost everybody, showed up later at the meeting; after which, as they walked off down the soi, he declared loudly of Nate: "That's a sad case, dear", only turn to find him right behind them. It was typical of Jack. Who was no doubt happy this morning, after the advent of his lover. He had sought out Chinese herbal viagra the night before, but when the chemist had it in stock decided against it, frightened of a heart attack. Have you ever tried it dear, he asked Alex and Shawn and himself. No, they replied in turn. Oh you're all young, dear, he declared unabashedly. They were on the way to a restaurant. Foreigners were always on their way to a restaurant in this town. It was easy to put on weight. They had spent part of the afternoon in a very up scale French restaurant around the corner, not a Thai in sight, except for the staff, and a little woman who looked for all the world like Coco Channel, but when he said she looked very much like Coco in the movie, she had no idea what he was talking about; and they had no idea who Coco was, or what a Channel shop was. But when they finally got the idea there was a movie they grinned: and the male waiter explained: you look like a superstar in a movie. That got a grin, and a hoped for tip. And as they left and the owner, sitting at the bar, thanked them for their custom Jack declared once again: That's alright, dear.

THE BIGGER STORY:

https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12a40d5d1a598dae

As Pakistan turns 63 years old in exactly nine days time, its worst floods in 80 years have left up to 3 million souls stranded amid outbreaks of disease after monsoon rains forming floods kill almost 1,500 people.

The situation is grim over most of the country. The water which broke from breached Muzaffargarh canal is now a threat to the nearby oil refinery and Kot Addu Power Station which produces 1400 megawatts of power. “Main highways are cut off as bridges across the country’s inflated northern rivers have been washed away,” said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

According to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA): "More than 29,500 houses were damaged and a key trade highway to China was blocked by flooding.”

Over 900,000 cusecs of water was released from the head Chashma in Layyah over the past three days, now posing a threat to Taunsa. “The floods have damaged 8,16,842 acres of crop across the Punjab province,” said Shahbaz Sharif, Chief Minister of Punjab province.

The South province of Pakistan, Sindh, is to face the worst of all, as the combination of the flood streams from the north and north-east finally heads down to the south. About 100,000 extra cusecs of water has entered the Guddu Barrage and the level is speedily mounting in River Indus. The water level at Guddu Barrage now points to 470,000 cusecs and to 225,000 cusecs at the Sukkur Barrage in Sindh.

“Sindh has been put on code red and there are fears that up to 150,000 people could be displaced in the province," says a government official. “In case of further rain, it is expected that out of 23 districts in the Sindh province, 19 will be affected.”

Torrential rains are forecasted for the next two days by the meteorological department, so the River Indus will be in a very high flood situation. DG Met Office Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry forewarns: “The first half of the current month [until August 15] is critical as another system of heavy rains would enter Sindh province from Bay of Bengal on August 8 or 9."

The Pakistan Army has rescued over 60,000 stranded people in the last five days, a spokesperson of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said on Wednesday. Some 40 helicopters and 450 army boats are participating in the continuing rescue activities in the wide spread areas of the country.

The army is also providing cooked food to flood-affected people at Army relief camps, set up at diverse places. Army engineers are working on opening roads and making diversions to facilitate the flow of traffic. Around 2,600 tourists have been evacuated from Kalam. Thirty Chinese engineers, who were working on the Dobair-Khwar Hydel project in Kohistan, have been safely evacuated to Bisham. Helicopters and boats have so far ferried 28,000 people to safety from the areas nearby.

Pakistani officials warn the shortage of drinking water is spreading diseases, including cholera, a stern bacterial infection which chiefly affects the small intestine. Syed Zahir Ali Shah, health minister for the Khyber-Pakhtunkhua province, says around 100,000 souls, mostly children, are suffering from illnesses such as gastroenteritis, involving both the stomach and the small intestine, resulting in acute diarrhea.

https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12a40d5d1a598dae

PR flaks buzzed anxiously as Crikey arrived at the University of Melbourne's Carrillo Gantner lecture theatre last night to witness PJ Keating lay down a well-researched speech on the Australian media's notorious allergy to privacy.

As the country's 24th PM gasbagged with Vice Chancellor Glyn Davis, Centre for Advanced Journalism chief Michael Gawenda warned the audience about the exhaustive analysis to come, chortling that "if you haven't had a comfort stop, you'll need one at the end," before Keating shuffled to the front to slam News Limited and deliver a 17-page plea to reform Australia's hodge-podge of media snoop laws.

This was a no-nonsense restatement of the country's shortcomings on privacy -- that, given News' obsession with pointless and ineffectual self-regulation, was both well overdue and getting worse.

Keating started big, quoting privacy's intellectual forbears Warren and Brandeis on the "right of the individual to be let alone" and universal charters on civil and political rights. Those concerns were lined up against the modern day perils of Google StreetView, "peek and seek provisions" and data mining by business and government.

The current toothless triptych of the publisher-funded Australian Press Council, the Australian Communication and Media Authority and internal union processes has meant that complaints almost never get up, and sanctions are never enacted. Self regulation was a joke, with the "everything is working well" line bleated by News supremo John Hartigan and his Right to Know coalition utterly indefensible. Keating said it was telling that amid all the failed attempts at self-policing the one accountability mechanism that stood out was Media Watch.

Serious opprobrium was reserved for former Sunday Telegraph deputy editor (and current Woman's Weekly editor) Helen McCabe who, in the aftermath of the Pauline Hanson debacle, famously chirped that the public interest was anything her readers might find interesting.

Other potentially actionable incidents, including the Tele's decision to run photos of Sonny Bill Williams and actress Candice Falzon's toilet tryst and Adam Walters' report on David Campbell exiting Kens of Kensington using a "taxpayer-funded vehicle" (an hypocrisy pointed out by Crikey hours after the story appeared).

Tellingly, no News Limited publications decided to report Keating's comments this morning, despite editors and journalists being provided with copies of the speech well in advance of their deadlines yesterday.

The former PM's renewed interest in privacy was almost certainly piqued by an outrageous Sunday Telegraph piece last November, that claimed his lobbyist daughter Katherine had threatened to "kill" a News Limited photographer while dressed as Amy Winehouse at an Absolut Vodka Halloween party.

Crikey understands that Keating has been fastidious in his desire to wrap an intellectual framework around his anger ever since.

The day after the offending report Keating used Fairfax newspapers to assail News, prompting a war of words with Hartigan who said it was "difficult to stomach the hypocrisy of Paul Keating". Last night, Keating hit back, making special mention of the News chief on four separate occasions.

Keating turned Hartigan's words from last year back on himself: "The hypocrisy, to use a John Hartigan phrase, is ‘stomach-churning’," he demurred.

Other senior News figures also came in for a bollocking, with in-house lawyer Julian Quill questioned over his take on the Herald Sun's decision to run Brendan Fevola's camera-phone picture of Lara Bingle on its front page.

Picture of Bangkok: Peter Newman.