Tragic, Dear, Tragic

*

There were shifts in the pattern of distinction. There were ways forward; and a battalion of new beginnings. Doors, like those lined up along an old fashioned beach, painted different colours, rusty in the sun, cursory in their intensity, superficial in their beckoning desires. Doorways to another place, other places. To laughing, frolicking and dancing in the shallow water's edge; far from the deep where scientists kept discovering new creatures hidden in the depths. He stood in the glinting glare. He watched with envy as the boy kicked a soccer ball along the edge of the beach. His body ached from the last appalling binge. Everything was clouded. The glare was just a knife through a sodden heart. And then it all changed; by dint of change of landscape; and they were in other hotels, in other circumstances, in other bars, surrounded by other new found friends. These catastrophes were minuscule in answer. They fathomed from a random place. And when he landed in a new found place: and could truthfully declare, I wouldn't be here if I hadn't been there, none of it made much sense. Jack the appalling old queen from Washington continued to offend everybody, thinking aloud in that strange syndrome the elderly get, where they are immune to the embarrassment they cause everybody, where they lose the social graces and talk of things better kept to oneself. "Well you're all at sixes and sevens dear," he told one of the most together people in Bangkok AA.

Nate was continuing to mop up resources and sympathy; I've only got 25 baht to my name changed to I've only got 50 baht, the story kept changing. That beautiful lap top they had bought for him was long gone. Everything was gone. The woman who was looking after him had tossed him out. The embassy was about to repatriate him. Jack managed to tell him pretty bluntly, well there isn't much hope, dear, you can't stay here, too much temptation, too many bars, you don't have any resources, go home to your family. I've burnt every last bridge, Nate said, I can't ask them for any more. They don't want to know me. I've been through 16 rehab centres in the past few years and no one wants to help me any more. Surprise surprise. All the good intentions, the world famous stories he broke, the years in the jungles of Cambodia, were as nought now as he tried to get into Safe Haven for free; when they weren't too keen. It would normally cost 600,000 baht they told him. Lord let me be a channel of thy peace, went the prayer; and he bought him lunch and bought him coffee and at the end of the day, when Nate said: thanks for looking after me, he doubted if any of it was genuinely appreciated. These days were shallow and passing, and the crisis that everyone had conspired to help bring about, by turning off every money faucet, by dialling up the tough love option, by refusing to enable him any more, to live on past glories, to sit at the bar and tell great stories of being a war correspondent across half the world, that crisis was the here and now.

They stayed with him throughout the day, despite their own biting scepticism and the "heart of stone" that Jack claimed to be; ring your parents, mother will always help. I can't do that, he kept insisting. Well dear, write a book, make some money. And at the end of the day, after they left Ruhm Rudi and were walking through the damp streets, Jack declared: "what a sad case dear". He shrugged. He had seen worse. It's hard to get sober when you've got no resources, Nate said, but he had no resources because he pissed them all away. He sponged off everybody and pissed them all away. Tough love was called for, everybody said, and no one was prepared to fork out $20,000 for yet another rehab centre, not after the past failures, not when it was never coming back. Never. Or that was the likelihood. So the once great cut sad figures, and they sat around his apartment in the afternoon, and while Aek reacted to the words super star, a journalistic super star did not hold any of the same fascination as a television super star, not to a Thai, and a foreign journalistic super star even less so. Particularly one on hard times. One who had drunk himself almost to death, certainly into dereliction. Facing repatriation, compulsory government detox, spat out on to the mean streets; nothing to show for all those years, all those stories, all those triumphs. You'll rise again, Phoenix from the ashes, he advised. And once again you'll be sitting on the 34th floor of some stunning upmarket hotel; on your book tour, talking about Pol Pot. And you'll think; life is wonderful, the only thing that could make it better would be whisky and cocaine. And it will all begin again. Life is a wonderful thing. Tragic dear, just tragic, Jack declared. For God sake's don't let him sleep in your spare room. You'll never get rid of him.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/05/2973837.htm

Forget gender and policies, it's all about Gillard

By Barrie Cassidy

Rather than talk about a change in campaigning style,Julia talked about a change to herself. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

At the halfway mark of the election campaign Coalition strategists are convinced that "brand Gillard" has been damaged, maybe not irreparably, but certainly to the point where she cannot mount a sustained or a convincing comeback.

The good news, they say, is that even without the "world of hurt" inflicted by the leaks, Gillard does not have a coherent cut-through message that is coming up in focus groups.

That is important because election 2010 has been characterised by the greatest volatility in voting intentions for decades.

The ALP lost 6 per cent of its primary vote in two weeks. They cling to the hope that what went down, might come back up again, or at least by enough to scrape back in.

But the Coalition strategists are seeing enough in their feedback to encourage them that views formed over the past fortnight are "not cursory or superficial," but suddenly "illuminating and firm".

Undoubtedly the leaks hurt Labor, for two reasons. They came from within, creating a sense of disunity. But more to the point, they went straight to family values; maternity leave and pensions. Whoever leaked the material had a good sense of both Cabinet deliberations and Gillard's vulnerabilities.

That is not to say the Coalition believes the election is won. Far from it. The results are so uneven around the country, the mood so different wherever you look, that this is the toughest result to predict since 1993.

When you average out the three major opinion polls, the two-party preferred vote is split almost 50-50, with the Coalition having a slight edge.

Allowing for a uniform swing, that would give the Coalition 14 seats, enough to cost Labor its majority, and close to delivering the Coalition government without the support of the cross benches.

But it's not as simple as that. It never is. Incumbent governments often defy general swings by exploiting incumbency.

On the face of it, that is not such an advantage this time around because of the 12 seats Labor needs to win to retain its majority, only four have sitting members, Solomon (NT), Corangamite (Vic), Hasluck (WA) and Bennelong (NSW).

But Labor strategists are nevertheless, hopeful that three seats in Queensland could run against what is for them, a hostile environment. They are Dawson, Herbert and Longman.

If a handful of seats in Queensland and New South Wales defy the general swing, then Labor can be re-elected, however narrowly.

Even if that doesn't happen, strong support for Labor in Victoria and South Australia might partially compensate for heavy losses elsewhere.

But that is an indication of just how tight the contest is.

Labor strategists, though a little shell shocked after the past week, insist that Gillard can turn the campaign around, and that is why the Prime Minister started this week with such a dramatic flourish.

The problem was that rather than talk about a change in campaigning style, she talked about a change to "Julia" herself, a confusing concept so effectively exploited by the Opposition.

For Labor, the great unspoken hope is that when voters go into the privacy of the booths on August 21, two things will guide their shaky hand. One, that Tony Abbott is genuinely a risk; and two, that surely it would be a big call to throw out the country's first female prime minister after just a few weeks.

To the first, Abbott has gone yet another day without stuffing up. Time is ticking away. He remains controlled and even at times, prime ministerial.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-combat-rules-20100804,0,5192303.story

The new American commander of Western forces in Afghanistan has issued a directive asserting troops' right to defend themselves but also calling on them to continue efforts to safeguard Afghan civilian lives, military officials said Wednesday.

Gen. David H. Petraeus' tactical directive, his first since assuming command last month, appears aimed at countering some grumbling within the ranks that Western forces' hands are tied in confrontations with insurgents because of battlefield rules handed down last year by his predecessor, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

Get dispatches from Times correspondents around the globe delivered to your inbox with our daily World newsletter. Sign up »

It is a delicate balance to strike, because civilian casualties are one of the most inflammatory issues between North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The proportion of civilian deaths attributed to Western troops has declined significantly since last summer's directive by McChrystal. In a departure from previous practice, he ordered that airstrikes and artillery not be used if civilians might be present, unless troops are in imminent danger of being overrun.

Petraeus' directive, which supersedes the old one, is classified, but parts of it were made public on Wednesday.

U.S. military officials speaking on condition of anonymity said the new version includes some refinements to guidelines on use of aerial bombardment and artillery fire, and spells out more instances in which such methods should not be used.

However, the directive is also meant to address what those officials described as a "misperception" among some junior field commanders that airstrikes and artillery — two of the international forces' main battlefield advantages against the insurgents — were all but forbidden.

"We believe the most pertinent issue in play is uneven application of the [previous] tactical directive," said Lt. Col. John Dorrian, the operations spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force. The new guidelines, he said, are "intended to ensure that everyone is on the same page."

In the unclassified portion of the directive, Petraeus writes that "every Afghan civilian death diminishes our cause." But he added that the directive "does not prevent commanders from protecting the lives of their men and women" and included an admonition to subordinates not to put further restrictions on use of force without his explicit approval.

Petraeus was a driving force behind McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy, which holds that winning the war is impossible without also winning over the populace. Petraeus earlier this week issued what he said would be the first of a series of counterinsurgency guidelines telling troops to be friendly and respectful in their dealings with civilians.

Bangkok. Picture: Peter Newman.