BE HAPPY

South Coast, NSW, Australia

Be Happy. May all Beings Be Happy. All creatures. We all reached our own rock bottoms and he had reached his several times over. He was sick, but he was not sure what from. And depressed, in a crippled way which helped him dive to to the bottom. All these strange thoughts, which enabled him and destroyed him and which he had never been able to deal with. All was lost; but in the end the only story was the story. And so we worshipped from afar. Old injustices ran around in circles. "Why couldn't they just leave me alone?" But kindness was repaid with theft; and everything came home to roost.

Loss of status, loss of position, loss of purpose. Men felt it in particular, and did not do well. He watched the entire six seasons of The Supranos, lost in another family when his own barely seemed to exist. The children were grown and flown. His parents were in their eighties. He had failed his responsibilities. There were only so many hours he could stare at the wall. Or keep his eyes closed and his head covered. There were symptons of classic depression; but most of all he just needed a home. And he didn't want it to be here. This wasn't his place anymore. Hadn't been his place in years. He hadn't wanted to come back; but one course leads to another, that's all there was.

He was shadowed by ghosts of his own making. He could still hear their voices in the wind. "I told them not to." As in, leave him alone. We've joined the hunt. We're doing their work for them. There's nothing to be gained. He knows nothing, and if he knows anything, he's not stupid enough to tell you. Unless it incriminated those who had done him harm. But the point was, he was not alone. They were preyed on, and he had been preyed upon. And that was it; he had made the mistakes. Now came the recovery phase. Again. As if, just when it was all over, it came back again. He didn't know when it was wearing out. He didn't know what was happening. He hoped for a warm home coming and found the same disparate people; and did not make contact.

His own past, his own demise, kept replaying in a perpetual, tedious loop. Depressed people are not attractive. He wanted to rise up, and could rise up. But these shadows still haunted him; and always would. "He'll regret it for the rest of his life," someone said. As if his life would be short. He circled up the leaves; he gained tolerance; he made as if to arch back to a better time; and then forgot that too. May All Beings Be Happy. May All Beings Be Free. The sayings of the Buddha had become fridge magnets in some parts of the world; but still held power. They would always hold power. He would always be free. There would always be the power of the story; and that, in the end, was all there was. The story.

MALICE AFORETHOUGHT

Australia's Nanny State

In all its forms, in all its wickedness, he slept more than he had ever slept because he was depressed, and sleep was the only escape. If escape into tormented dreams was escape at all. In pristine suburbs and grotty holes, in places where he no longer belonged and did not want to be. Already the world had overlapped several times; he had done his best and should have been free. To murmur into dusks. To entertain past passions. To hear the stalking through the bush; the shriek of cicadas in the summer. "He will regret it the rest of his life." Yes, well that may be. But he would like to have been free of the commentary. 

The cruel past, the distant future, things were running headlong into walls. He remembered Colin as much as he remembered anyone, and transposed their long legs. He wanted to reach down and kiss them, these vaporous forms. "It was a bit of a shock, seeing him naked." Yes, well, as he had said, he could do without the commentary. "Shirt lifter." The changing guards, the changing nature of everything, made as if for relevance but opted out. He was kind when there was no room for kindness. Life was stark when it should have been dismembered. Flyovers and underpasses, traffic that dissembled out along long ribbons. He could have been free. Instead he was trapped.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://rt.com/politics/volgograd-terror-foreign-ministry-993/

The suicide blasts in Volgograd signal that it’s time for international players to stop dividing terrorists into “good” and “bad” ones based on geopolitical agenda, and to unite the globe in a battle against the threat, Russia’s Foreign Ministry stated.

“A strike, cynically planned on the eve of New Year celebrations, is another attempt by the terrorists to open a domestic ‘front,’ spread panic and chaos, cause interfaith strife and conflicts within the Russian society,” the ministry said in a statement.

The two consecutive suicide attacks in the southern Russian city of Volgograd - which killed more than 30 people on Sunday and Monday - will not see Russia retreating in its “tough and consistent battle against the insidious enemy that knows no boundaries and can only be stopped collectively,” the ministry said.

The ministry stressed that the Volgograd blasts were staged using the same template as recent terror attacks in the US, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and other countries.

“The position of some politicians and political strategists, who are still trying to divide terrorists as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ones, depending on current geopolitical aims, is becoming evidently mischievous,” the ministry stressed. “Terrorism is always a crime and the punishment for it must be inevitable.”

AVENGE

From The Daily Telegraph

He had been angry and sad for a very long time; haunted by his ridiculous pursuit, humiliated by his own mistakes. Stories of being robbed, deceived and ridiculed circled in his brain as if they would never stop. Dangerous people, dangerous to know. And all he had achieved was to blow himself up. "He should be thankful to be alive." Yes, well there was that. He was deliberately climbing out of a depression which had hit him, a dark, clammy hand. Someone was always betrayed in the end. He wanted to be quiet now; to get on with things. He had found the surveillance extremely difficult; how much they had ridiculed him, concocted hate. Searching for fun and affection, instead all he had found was ignominy and confusion.

He had to stand up to it. He had to move on. Sometimes he thought they were still threatening to kill him; but they had done their worst and he had done his worst and he just wanted to retreat to the sunny uplands of the spirit, to quote Michael Dransfield. "Let us go then, you and your music and the wind and I, leaving from very strange stations of the Cross, from the uncharted uplands of the spirit." He had collapsed under pressure; a broken man. But from every death a resurrection. Except this time was different. Regret and remorse could pound him forever; the things that had happened. The security he had flung away.

One door shuts and another opens. He was fond of quoting the old cliche. And perhaps he would never have started off with the new project if he had slipped comfortably into retirement. That was where the story came in, became the justification. At least he had given it a go. But he didn't know now where it would lead. Humility. Remorse. If he felt claustrophobic it was easy to understand why. Watched, watched, squirming, his unlovely, aging body. Humiliated as he had been. He wouldn't have wished it on his worst enemy. "And if they had succeeded, if they had killed me, none of them could have cared less," he told a senior editor in a farang bar in Bangkok late one afternoon.

These moments of intimacy, or clairvoyance, seemed impossible without the fluidity of alcohol lifting the wings; although plenty of other people managed it. He had done his sociology thesis on bars and it never once occurred to him that he might have a problem with alcohol. That it made him feel worse, not better. That perhaps the Buddha might have had a point when he declared, "no intoxicants". For all the stifled shouts; difficult to tell now what was real and what concocted; what were natural fluctuations in sound and what were exactly what he wanted to hear, or, all too often, what he was meant to hear. These things had been so haunting, and now he had drifted away. It had all been a terrible accident. He hadn't meant to come to the attention of anybody. He had just wanted respite after all those years of work. 

There had been no respite. "Amazing how miserable you can get trying to have fun," he declared, but the irony was lost.

THROUGH THE DARK

South Coast, NSW, Australia

The old woman lay at the base of the steps. She was nothing like the smart young labour lawyer he had once known. She was fat, she smelt and her face, crushed into the pavement, bore almost no resemblence to her younger self. All was lost, lost for these people, in this strange outpost of dysfunction, where nothing worked, nobody trusted each other, and the siren calls that were so much a part of a transcendent life, they were all gone. She was too big to move. A useless "friend", as much as anyone in these distended lower states could be a friend, hovered uselessly over her. She was too big to move. She muttered pointlessly about who was a good guy and who was a bad guy in the crumbling, historic apartments behind her, but she could not move.

A smartly dressed woman with a miniature Airedale walked past and asked: "Has someone called the ambulance?"

"Yes," he replied, and the woman kept on walking without getting involved.

Good guys, bad guys, it didn't make much sense at this end of a shattered life, but so it was. Still a longing for decency. But there was none. The story went that the she hadn't washed since September. By the smell of her and her flat, it was entirely plausible. The only sign of washing in the shower was a dirt caked piece of soap which looked like it hadn't been used in a very long time. 

The woman tried to raise her head from the pavement, "Michael, Michael," but couldn't, and so instead spoke directly at the concrete.

It looked as if she had fallen from the old iron stairs, but it also looked like she had been bashed and tossed onto the street. Either was possible. 

"How long have you been here?" the ambulance officer asked.
"I don't know," she said, still speaking at the pavement. "A while."

It was generally assumed she had been there for hours.

He helped talk the ambulance officers into letting them take her to hospital. 

There wasn't going to be an easy solution. Not for one second. 

He watched and he waited; and Christmas grew like a dark, overwhelming tide.

From one place to the next.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/15/the-letter-that-changed-the-course-of-modern-fiction.html

The Letter That Changed the Course of Modern Fiction

By Ted Gioia

December 15th 20135:45 AM

More Stories by Ted Gioia

A hundred years ago, Ezra Pound wrote a letter to the struggling and largely unpublished James Joyce offering to help him—and set in motion a literary revolution.

Can a single piece of unsolicited mail change the course of literature? In my opinion, only one letter justifies such a bold claim—a query sent a hundred years ago this month, on December 15, 1913, when Ezra Pound, searching for new talent, reached out to a struggling Irish author living in Trieste.

James Joyce, thirty years old, had faced rejection after rejection during the previous decade. He had completed his collection of short stories, Dubliners, eight years before Pound contacted him—but Joyce still hadn’t found a publisher willing to issue the book. Every time he came close to seeing this work in print, new objections and obstacles arose, and even Joyce’s offer to make changes and censor controversial passages failed to remove the roadblocks.

Joyce had even fewer prospects to publish his novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In 1911, his frustration had grown so intense, Joyce threw the manuscript into a fire, and only the quick intervention of his sister Eileen, who pulled the pages out of the flames, prevented the loss of the novel. Joyce had made even less headway with Ulysses, a work he had been planning since 1906. His constant financial pressures and despair over his inability to publish his fiction sapped his determination to push ahead with the future masterpiece.

During his late twenties, Joyce explored other ways of earning a living. He tried his hand at setting up a chain of movie theaters in Ireland, and worked at importing Irish tweed to Italy. His opportunities to write for hire declined, and most of his income came from teaching English at Berlitz schools. Joyce worked tirelessly at this humble job, but still needed to rely on constant financial support from his brother to pay his bills.

At this low point, James Joyce received a letter from a total stranger.

“Dear Sir,” it began, “Mr. Yeats has been speaking to me of your writing.” Ezra Pound offered to make useful connections for Joyce, and find places where he could publish his writings. “This is the first time I have written to any one outside of my own circle of acquaintance (save in the case of French authors),” Pound admitted, but he was quick to add: “[I] don’t in the least know that I can be of any use to you—or use to me.”

Yet Pound proved of incalculable value to his new friend. In the coming months, he would arrange for the serialization of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in a fashionable literary journal. He sent off Joyce’s short stories to H.L. Mencken, the influential American journalist and editor. Pound also featured Joyce’s poem “I Hear an Army,” written a decade earlier and now all but forgotten, in an anthology of Imagist poetry.

These two young men were unlikely allies. In his first letter to Joyce, Pound admits: “I imagine we have a hate or two in common—but that’s a very problematical bond on introduction.”

But Pound’s efforts on Joyce’s behalf didn’t stop there. He spread word of the Irish author’s genius to his numerous contacts in the literary world, and started laying the groundwork for the later success ofUlysses. In championing his new discovery, Pound brought his work to the attention of Harriet Weaver, later Joyce’s chief financial backer, and Sylvia Beach, the Parisian bookseller who would eventually publish Ulysses. In the face of every obstacle stifling Joyce’s prospects—financial, editorial, legal—his new American friend searched for solutions, and more often than not found them.

Ezra Pound ranks among the finest poets of his generation, but his greatest trait may have been his eye for talent in others. In addition to advancing the prospects of James Joyce, he also served as mentor and advocate for T.S. Eliot. (Joyce, for his part, later grumbled that Eliot gained renown by borrowing from hisUlysses.)  Pound also offered encouragement and support to Ernest Hemingway—whom he also introduced to Joyce—Robert Frost, and many other writers and artists.

“Ezra was the most generous writer I have ever known,” Hemingway later remarked. “He helped poets, painters, sculptors and prose writers that he believed in and he would help anyone whether he believed in them or not if they were in trouble.” By Hemingway’s estimate, Pound devoted only around one-fifth of his time on his own writing, focusing the rest of his energy on advancing the careers of others.

Yet he would never have heard of James Joyce, had not poet William Butler Yeats mentioned the Irish ex-pat in response to Pound’s pointed questioning about possible poets to include in his anthology. Yeats certainly remembered Joyce from the latter’s time in Ireland, although he may have preferred to forget his dealings with the brash newcomer on the literary scene. When George Russell had first told Yeats about Joyce, years before, he had described the impetuous youth in a memorable phrase: “I have suffered from him and I would like you to suffer.” At their eventual meeting, the all-but-unknown Joyce allegedly told the celebrated Irish poet: “You are too old for me to help you.” Yeats was certainly impressed by Joyce’s talent, but the younger man’s crass audacity probably made an even deeper impression.

More than a decade had transpired since that meeting. Now Pound held the enviable role of Yeats protégé, serving as the older poet’s secretary, house tenant and informal adviser. Pound was twenty years younger than Yeats, and a member of Joyce’s generation. On the basis of the older man’s recommendation, Pound reached out to his struggling contemporary, and indirectly set in motion a literary revolution.

These two young men were unlikely allies. In his first letter to Joyce, Pound admits: “I imagine we have a hate or two in common—but that’s a very problematical bond on introduction.” In later years, the two drifted apart. Joyce never had much enthusiasm for Pound’s poetry (although it’s unclear how much of it he actually read). Pound expressed reservations about Joyce’s final work Finnegans Wake, and after his move to Rapallo, Italy in 1924, maintained only sporadic contact with the author’s whose work he had once fiercely championed.

Of course, Joyce had little need for Pound at this point. Joyce was now the more famous of the two. Pound, for his own part, was descending into new obsessions, with fascism and amateurish economic theories, fixations that led to ruptures with old friends, a lasting taint on his literary reputation, and perhaps even the unhinging of his mental faculties.

But imagine what might have happened if these two literary lions had not crossed paths a hundred years ago! Would Joyce have risen to fame without Ezra Pound? I suspect that the Irish author would have eventually published most of his major works, but probably at a later date with less acclaim and certainly less financial support. Stream-of-consciousness might have emerged as an accepted narrative technique, but certainly without the same impact on later fiction. Joyce’s greatness would still stand out on the printed page, but his fame and influence would be much less. This unsolicited letter, sent a century ago, made a different destiny for James Joyce. With the help of his American friend, the Irish master changed the course of modern literature.

THE CATACOMBS

Port Kembla, NSW, Australia

He could feel the cloying commnentary months, years later, and it didn't seem to matter how invisible he became, how quiet, how non-controversial. He walked the quiet path, and still he could hear them. "The laughing stock." Well, who points the finger points it back at themselves. He hadn't wanted to come back here, to the country of his birth. Not in any way. Most of his friends were dead; others had moved on. Nobody retired to Sydney, they all retired to the bush, one way or another.  

There wasn't any place you could call a village, or a home. There were old neighbourhoods, and that's it.

And the strange, late night catacombs he had dreamt of even as a child. 

"I've made a shocking discovery, gay men like to get stoned and go out and have sex with each other half the night," he said in mock outrage to his invisible friend. "You could have knocked me over with a feather when I realised."

There weren't any corridors left unexplored, there were old, fleeting points of passing, and that was it. A memory. A distant call. A large, tubby, amiable man. Strange how affectionate strangers could be to each other.

"I know, he's sent him to protect him," came another invisible voice. And Michael remained just as haunted here as he had been anywhere else; and didn't want to be here. 

The crisis remained. He remained. The rest of the country was steaming towards Christmas; the isolated remnants of what passed for his family did not celebrate it; another pagan ceremony, another reason to decry the world at large. And so he grew more silent with each passing day; and let them fly.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/us-bill-requires-smart-phone-kill-switch/story-e6frfkui-1226787091767

TWO US officials have announced plans to introduce legislation requiring smart phones to have a "kill switch" that would render stolen or lost devices inoperable.

California State Senator Mark Leno and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon announced on Thursday that the bill they believe will be the first of its kind in the United States will be formally introduced in January.

US law enforcement officials have been demanding that manufacturers create kill switches to combat surging smart phone theft across the country.

"One of the top catalysts for street crime in many California cities is smart phone theft, and these crimes are becoming increasingly violent," Leno said.

"We cannot continue to ignore our ability to utilise existing technology to stop cellphone thieves in their tracks..."

Almost one in three US robberies involve phone theft, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

Lost and stolen mobile devices - mostly smart phones - cost consumers more than $US30 billion ($A33.98 billion) last year, according to a study.

In San Francisco alone, more than 50 per cent of all robberies involve the theft of a mobile device, the San Francisco District Attorney's office said.

Samsung Electronics, the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, earlier this year proposed installing a kill switch in its devices.

But the company told Gascon's office the biggest US carriers rejected the idea.

The CTIA-The Wireless Association, a trade group for wireless providers, says a permanent kill switch has serious risks, including potential vulnerability to hackers who could disable mobile devices and lock out not only individuals' phones, but also phones used by entities such as the Department of Defense, Homeland Security and law enforcement agencies.

CONFOUNDED

Beached

Beached at long last in some terrible ordinariness, he was convinced they had finally let go. That he had become so dull not even they could persist. But what was mask and what was not, perhaps there was no mask left. He crossed his legs and laughed in an elegant manner. Everything was as if it had never been. He could find them circling old garbage dumps, doing hooray henry's beside the swill. The lines were so frequent, the passion so clear. He could feel them lost, crawling in the fabric of things, and finally he had come to accept: he would always hear things he wasn't meant to hear.

A can of worms. A distant past. Not welcome back. A crawling piece of deformity. Thanks, I paid for that. Unprofessional and unpleasant, he had paid the price. Joycie didn't answer her door, although when he had left the country three years before she had been 82 with leukemia, so perhaps it wasn't surprising. The cold summer continued. Every conversation had been had before. He forced himself to relax, because the sustained stress bought on by his pursuers and by a series of unpleasant incidents, originating in a simple theft, a few grandiose lies and some corrupt journalists had propelled it across time and borders into the here and now.

So much had happened, so much to be ashamed of. Diminished status. Except sometimes he just didn't care. Every angle was interesting. At others he marvelled how utterly lost, bereft, directionless and stripped of assets he had become. He had been nomadic since they had burnt his house down all those years ago, from one place to the other to the other. All attempts to establish a base failed. And so he wandered still, sometimes passing through the lower echelons of a city he had already left, sometimes, just pointless, trying to reconjure a time long past.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Vale Martin Sharp ... pictured with fellow artist Peter Kingston last year, in front of Martin's 10-year anniversary screen print of the Opera House. Photo: Ben Rushton

• A reflection on Sharp's work

Australia has lost one of its greatest artists following the death of Martin Sharp in Sydney.

Fellow artist and close friend Garry Shead confirmed the artist died on Sunday night at Wirian, his rambling home in Bellevue Hill, after a long battle with illness. He was aged 71.

Click for more photos

The artwork of Martin Sharp

A self portrait by Martin Sharp.

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Sharp rose to fame in the 1960s as art director and a major contributor to Richard Neville's satirical magazine Oz.

His album covers and psychedelic concert posters of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan came to symbolise the heady '60s.

Sharp created the cover for Cream's 1967 album Disraeli Gears and also co-wrote the lyrics for one of the band's most famous songs Tales of Brave Ulysses.

He cemented his importance in Australian art with the establishment of the Yellow House, an artists' collective in Potts Point that influenced a generation of artists, performers and film makers.

Neville described Sharp as ''incredibly tenacious'' and not the most relaxed person in the world because of his intense focus on his art and beliefs.

''He was a fully-charged non-stop rocket in his younger years but it always continued on,'' he said.

But he was ''my very best friend in all the world''.

Artist Luke Scibberas said he had sat by Sharp's bedside in his final weeks and read him passages from the bible.

Sharp was a godfather to Scibberas’ daughter, and he said Sharp will be remembered as an old friend and part of the family as well as a source of inspiration.

‘‘He was one of the most mercurial men I’ve ever known and one of the most talented,’’ Scibberas said. ‘‘He was incredibly devoted to the making of art and the history of art.’’

He was also skilled across a range of artistic disciplines, Scibberas said. ‘‘He could turn his hand to everything. He could just about draw anyone under the table.’’

The literary executor of Sharp’s estate, Scibberas said the artist was famously obsessive and had a wonderful elastic intellect.

‘‘You never really had the sense you knew what Martin was thinking.’’

But Sharp could also be irascible with people who bored him.

‘‘It used to make some people quite uncomfortable,’’ Scibberas said. ‘‘He was very good at sitting quiet and making you talk too much.’’

Fellow Australian artist Reg Mombassa called Sharp a ''great inspiration''.

''As a matter of fact, I first saw his work when I was about 16 because he did the cover of Disraeli Gears, the Cream album. And I've always said that Martin would be one of the best-known artists around the world, even though people may not know his name, because millions of people have that record," Mombassa said.

''His psychedelic artwork is fantastic. I'm very sad to hear that he's died. I knew he was ill, he's been ill for some time.

"He's one of the great Australian artists definitely, and globally known. And I think to some extent probably a little under appreciated in the fine art world.''

Sydney's Luna Park and Arthur Stace's Eternity signature were recurring themes in Sharp's work. The work of US singer Tiny Tim was also a major inspiration after Sharp saw him perform in London in 1968.

Despite making a ''huge splash'' in the '60s, Neville said it took a while for Australia's major institutions to embrace Sharp's work.

But Neville said Sharp was not concerned about gaining the approval of the art world.

''Martin, because he had an income, didn't give a shit as long as he was able to produce work and felt it was up to standard,'' he said. ''That was his central reason for being.''

Sharp suffered from emphysema after years of heavy smoking. In an interview with Fairfax Media last year, his friends admitted concerns about whether he would even see his 70th birthday.

Sharp was genuinely thankful for the opportunities that his art had given him, telling Fairfax: "I never would have thought art would lead me into all these endless realms of thought. But here we are."

Shead praised his friend's attention to detail, saying "to do one painting he'll take years. He'll go over it. It's a magnificent obsession ... He's striving for perfection".

These sentiments were echoed by fellow artist Peter Kingston, who said: ""Martin has a beautiful line - he can pick up a pen and draw anything. I do regard him as a great artist, one of our finest."

Sharp was born in Bellevue Hill, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, and was educated at Cranbrook private school as well as the National Art School.

The headmaster of Cranbrook, Nicholas Sampson, said members of the school’s community were saddened by the death of one of their most eminent alumni.

‘‘An artist of genuine distinction and originality, Martin’s deep connection to Cranbrook – as a former student, neighbour, benefactor and friend – was powerful and strong,’’ he said. 

‘‘His lively interest in news from the school in general, and from the art department in particular, was genuine and affectionate. He stood up for his beliefs even when to do so involved considerable personal cost. We shall miss him."

The Art Gallery of NSW's head of Australian art, Wayne Tunnicliffe, said Australia has lost one of its most exciting artists and a unique voice.

''We've lost a major figure and a great character,'' he said.

Tunnicliffe described Sharp as charming and challenging: ''He stopped you thinking along thin lines.''

Tunnicliffe said Sharp had a remarkable practice in the '60s, moving from a gallery-based practice into popular culture by designing posters and album covers for singers.

''That fluidity marked the best artists of that period,'' he said. His eclectic practice also embraced theatre, producing posters for Circus Oz and the Nimrod Theatre as well as designing sets, costumes and scenery pieces. ''He was very much a part of Sydney's cultural life.''

The Art Gallery of NSW holds a number of works by Sharp's early works form the late '60s and '70s, including Ginger Meggs Sings 'Mammy' at the School Concert (1979) and Sunshine Superman (1968), his psychedelic poster for the singer Donovan.

Sharp's work was celebrated in the AGNSW's Yellow House exhibition, as well as a major retrospective at the Museum of Sydney in 2009.

Sharp was also a finalist in the 2012 Archibald Prize for his portrait of David Gulpilil, The thousand dollar bill.

Tunnicliffe is preparing a major exhibition of pop art for late 2014 that will feature many works by Sharp.

Tunnicliffe said Sharp's legacy was considerable and included ''his satirical approach to political and cultural life in Australia and London and his lasting take on our city, people and politicians''.

''He had both a strong Sydney-focused practice and also took it to the world during that most revolutionary period in 20th-century history,'' he said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/artist-martin-sharp-dies-of-long-term-illness-20131202-2ykk4.html#ixzz2nZPzFedr

WE HAVE MOVED

Another empty shop, South Coast, NSW, Australia

The advertising slogan "The Land of Smiles" has been one of the most successful advertising slogans in history. 

First devised by... in .... 

It underpinned, in a sense, a multi-billion dollar tourist industry; and it fed into people's existing preconceptions, or hopes. A desire for a better place; better than their own often grim factory towns, crowded cities and frantic lives.

The slogan, like so many other advertising slogans, is a lie.

And in the case of Thailand a deeply irresponsible lie peddled by travel agencies and hotel chains which continue to place many hundreds of thousands of gullible tourists at risk every year.

Some of them ended up dead. Many of the ended up robbed. Or lured by a delusion, partly of their own making, partly manufactured. And fleeced by more elaborate scams than just plain old fashioned robberies.

When tourists should have been warned to take care when they ventured out on their own or wandered into the nation's many bars and clubs, instead they were deceived into thinking that they would be safe amongst friends.

When tourists should have been warned that they were actively disliked by the locals and were highly likely to become victims of the many scams being operated against them, instead they were lured into thinking they were amongst people they could trust. 

Instead of understanding the true complexities of the country they were visiting, tourists were lured into thinking they were walking amongst a simple, friendly, lobotomized people who posed no danger to them.

And for those who did not stray far beyond the hotels, guided tours and restaurants catering to foreigners, the illusion could be maintained for the 12 (check) days on average that tourists spend in The Land of Smiles.

That they may have been overcharged in the shops, bars and restaurants was only of minor concern, if concern at all.

Some of the foreigners who spend more time in the Land of Smiles than the average quickly develop a more astute, or more sceptical view of their adopted land. The Land of Scams. A Land of Lies. 

As many long time foreign residents noted; it was in fact extremely difficult if not impossible to establish friendships with ethnic Thais, whose own ethnic peculiarities set them apart not just from the West, but from their neighbours in Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia and India.

Many Thais regarded it as impossible for foreigners to understand "Thainess"; and were proud of their difference.

Indeed the illusion of The Land of Smiles was so different to the reality that the dangers imposed in the marketing delusion amounted to a kind of cognitive dissidence. 

As tourist numbers escalated over 20 milion a year, a visitation volume which had sometimes traumatic affects on the countries of Spain and Greece and a brutal impact not just on their cultures but their landscapes, as classic examples, Thailand too began to suffer from the same impacts of hyper-development and dislocation from the volumes of cashed up tourists and the realities of ordinary working life.

THE BIGGER STORY:

South Africa's Nelson Mandela dies in Johannesburg

The announcement of Mandela's death was made by President Jacob Zuma

Continue reading the main story

Mandela dies

• Ban made legend
• Reaction
• Obituary
• World tributes

South Africa's first black president and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela has died at the age of 95.

Mr Mandela led South Africa's transition from white-minority rule in the 1990s, after 27 years in prison for his political activities.

He had been receiving intensive medical care at home for a lung infection after spending three months in hospital.

Announcing the news on South African national TV, President Jacob Zuma said Mr Mandela was at peace.

"Our nation has lost its greatest son," Mr Zuma said.

Scenes from around the globe in the hours after Nelson Mandela's death, as world leaders, South Africans, and our own journalists react.

"Although we knew that this day would come, nothing can diminish our sense of a profound and enduring loss."

Mr Zuma said Mr Mandela - who is known affectionately by his clan name, Madiba - had died shortly before 21:00 local time (19:00 GMT). He said he would receive a full state funeral, and flags would be flown at half-mast.

Crowds have gathered outside the house where Mr Mandela died, some flying South African flags and wearing the shirts of the governing African National Congress, which Mr Mandela once led.

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1918 Born in the Eastern Cape

1943 Joined African National Congress

1956 Charged with high treason, but charges dropped after a four-year trial

1962 Arrested, convicted of incitement and leaving country without a passport, sentenced to five years in prison

1964 Charged with sabotage, sentenced to life

1990 Freed from prison

1993 Wins Nobel Peace Prize

1994 Elected first black president

1999 Steps down as leader

2001 Diagnosed with prostate cancer

2004 Retires from public life

2005 Announces his son has died of an HIV/Aids-related illness

• Remembering the man
• In pictures: Mourning Mandela

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was one of the world's most revered statesmen after preaching reconciliation despite being imprisoned for 27 years.

He had rarely been seen in public since officially retiring in 2004. He made his last public appearance in 2010, at the football World Cup in South Africa.

His fellow campaigner against apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, said he was "not only an amazing gift to humankind, he made South Africans and Africans feel good about being who we are. He made us walk tall. God be praised."

BBC correspondents say Mr Mandela's body will be moved to a mortuary in the capital, Pretoria, and the funeral is likely to take place next Saturday.

'Bid him farewell'

Mr Zuma said in his statementthat "what made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.

"Fellow South Africans, Nelson Mandela brought us together and it is together that we will bid him farewell."

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Analysis

Pumza FihlaniBBC News, Johannesburg

The greatest father there ever was: this is how South Africans will remember the man who brought an end to apartheid and delivered the nation from the brink of civil war.

Social networking sites are abuzz with messages of condolences and messages of gratitude to the late statesman. He had been in and out of hospital in recent years and had become increasingly frail but many South Africans had continued to express their unreadiness to lose him.

As he did in life, his passing has brought unity amongst South Africans as black and white speak of their love for him. Many here will be drawing on that same spirit for strength, that "Madiba magic" over the next few days and weeks as the nation left with the great burden of honouring Mr Mandela's legacy, mourns his passing but also celebrates his life.

Tributes have come in from around the world. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was "a giant for justice and a down-to-earth human inspiration".

"Many around the world were greatly influenced by his selfless struggle for human dignity, equality and freedom. He touched our lives in deeply personal ways."

US President Barack Obama said Mr Mandela achieved more than could be expected of any man.

"He no longer belongs to us - he belongs to the ages," he said, adding that Mr Mandela "took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice".

Mr Obama, the first black president of the United States, said he was one of the millions who drew inspiration from Mr Mandela's life. He has ordered that the White House flag be flown at half-mast.

FW de Klerk, who as South Africa's last white president ordered Mr Mandela's release, called him a "unifier" and said he had "a remarkable lack of bitterness".

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“Start Quote

We are relieved that his suffering is over, but our relief is drowned by our grief”

Kofi AnnanChair of The Elders

• World reactions

He told the BBC Mr Mandela's greatest legacy "is that we are basically at peace with each other notwithstanding our great diversity, that we will be taking hands once again now around his death and around our common sadness and mourning".

The Elders - a group of global leaders set up by Mr Mandela to pursue peace and human rights - said they "join millions of people around the world who were inspired by his courage and touched by his compassion".

The group's chair, Kofi Annan, said the world had lost "a clear moral compass".

"While I mourn the loss of one of Africa's most distinguished leaders, Madiba's legacy beckons us to follow his example to strive for human rights, reconciliation and justice for all."

UK Prime Minister David Cameron said "a great light has gone out in the world".

Earlier this year, Mr Mandela spent nearly three months in hospital with a recurring lung infection.

He was moved to his home in the Houghton suburb of Johannesburg in September, where he continued to receive intensive care.

Robben Island

Born in 1918, Nelson Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1943, as a law student.

Many of those gathered outside the former leader's home were reduced to tears at the news

In London mourners placed flowers outside the African High Commission - among them the daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Lungi Morrison

The UN Security Council in New York stood for a minute of silence

He and other ANC leaders campaigned against apartheid. Initially he campaigned peacefully but in the 1960s the ANC began to advocate violence, and Mr Mandela was made the commander of its armed wing.

He was arrested for sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964, serving most of his sentence on Robben Island.

FW de Klerk: Mandela "was a great unifier"

It was forbidden to quote him or publish his photo, but he and other ANC leaders were able to smuggle out messages of guidance to the anti-apartheid movement.

He was released in 1990 as South Africa began to move away from strict racial segregation - a process completed by the first multi-racial elections in 1994.

Mr Mandela, who had been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993 jointly with Mr de Klerk, was elected South Africa's first black president. He served a single term, stepping down in 1999.

After leaving office, he became South Africa's highest-profile ambassador, campaigning against HIV/Aids and helping to secure his country's right to host the 2010 football World Cup.

He was also involved in peace negotiations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and other countries in Africa and elsewhere.