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| Signs of the Cross Picture by John Stapleton |
"It is very dangerous to write the truth in war and the truth is very dangerous to come by."
Ernest Hemmingway
Signs of the Cross. Golgotha. Everywhere impuned. Flashes of time across distance; pain across space, as if suffering could be translated from one time zone to another, from one historical era to another. But there was nothing like the present. A web of glittering lies. He was reading Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World, by Christina Lamb. Compulsory, compulsive reading. Anyone left who somehow thought the West's involvement in Afghanistan and then Iraq had been a good idea, a gesture for a noble cause, had only to read this book. What a mess. Compounding disbelief. Forty one Australian soldiers died there between 2001 and 2014, along with hundreds of British and Americans. There was no use pretending they did not die in vain, at the hands of weak, self-serving politicians pandering to international alliances and idiotic, unworldly ideologies. They should have had the courage to say: No. They should have had the determination, the strength, to stare incompetence and dysfunction in the face, and withdraw. But they did not. This was Australia. This was the West. This was the path to 2016.
No one had had the courage to stand up and say Go Back: You Are Going The Wrong Way. Mission Accomplished. Heart rending speeches at funerals. All a farce the best of fiction writers could never have invented. The ever expanding highway to the Apocalypse; to a world where one terror story overlaid another, where Islamic State and their myriad affiliated or like-minded groups had won the day, simply by becoming the biggest story on Earth.
In his own life things were becoming simpler or more complex, it was hard to tell. His pursuers had become more subtle, or decamped. It was no longer possible, in the drone of morning television and radio stations, of yawning awakenings and stabs of "I don't want to go to work", what was what, who wished him ill. "He's got my vote." "You're biased against him." "He's lost that job." "For someone so intelligent, he can be amazingly stupid." "I just don't like him, he gives me the creeps." And of course the accusation of arrogance, because anyone who stood up, anyone who did anything, was arrogant in presumption, in a world that so actively sought the ordinary; cooking shows and flash trash and the Goggle Box, a show about people watching television, the ever expanding role of sport in news bulletins, as if anything but genuine news best served the desires of their listeners.
For nobody read anymore.
In awakenings, in crystal dawns, in the emergence from the miasma, brushing away cobwebs, the trails of deceit, the oh too many lies, another parade of politicians was treating the public as if they were idiots. Tony Abbott, the most dangerous Prime Minister in Australian history, was gone; but in his place the bureaucracy had a newer, smarter, more polished presenter, Malcolm Turnbull. Or Lord Malcolm, as he called him, a cheap shot at his wealth and standing. "I look forward to the day when you're Prime Minister," he had said to him once, at a launch of John Olsen's work at a gallery in Woollahra, but when the time came, the targets switched. Because while the oft hated Abbott was gone, in his place was just a more polished spruiker. Malcolm had been too long in the wings; and had forgotten the simple creeds of politics: why should someone go to work in a factory to pay taxes to support this?
The projects were endless; and largely meaningless. Innovation had become the catchword of the new administration, and the government was spending $29 million just to promote its one billion dollar innovation program. In other words, as always in Australian political life, money was being ripped off the back of workers and diverted to the professional classes. Australia was notoriously hopeless at innovation; the country which had invented the bionic eye but failed to make a cent from the invention, the country which had been responsible from some of the signal research behind WiFi, but again failed to capitalise on it. A billion dollars would be frittered away in research grants. There was no test for success; there was no achievable goal. This was a country which, despite its vast distances and scattered population, had hopeless telecommunications, hopeless internet, a country going backwards, a population turning inwards.
Considerable swathes of the population had little or no access to the most sophisticated technology ever utilised by man; the transformative technologies of the 21st Century. People remained remarkably ignorant of the so-called information superhighway which could so enrich their lives; and believed they were happier that way. It suited the governing class to have an ignorant, defenceless, population, lulled to sleep by a largely hapless public broadcaster and an often equally hapless privately owned media. The stories, the questioning, the thrusting urgency to create a better world, it was all gone. In its place: Australian bombs, as part of a stitched together and utterly hypocritical alliance, the so-called Coaltion of the Willing fast forwarded, rained down on Iraq, killing Muslims, killing people for their religious beliefs. Nobody asked why Australia continued to push down a path which had so obviously failed. All questions about what tragets taxpayer funded bombs were taking out were referred to America. The country had handed over its foreign policy to the U.S. of A. Nobody queried, almost nobody bar the Muslim minority protested. And so we marched, as if blindfolded, to our own Golgotha. The cruelties would only mount.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-15/newly-discovered-supernova-most-powerful-explosion-ever-seen/7086138
Newly discovered supernova most powerful stellar explosion ever seen
ABC Science By Stuart Gary
Updated Fri at 2:54pm
PHOTO: An artist's impression of the super-luminous supernova ASASSN-15lh as it would appear from an exoplanet located about 10,000 light-years from the blast. (Beijing Planetarium/Jin Ma)Astronomers have detected the most powerful stellar explosion ever seen — a massive supernova, twice as powerful as anything previously recorded.
Key points
Massive supernova is 570 billion times brighter than our Sun, and 20 times brighter than all the stars in our Milky Way Galaxy combined.
Scientists unsure about what could be powering the supernova named ASASSN-151h
Unlike other super-luminous supernovae, ASASSN-151h exploded in a large, calm galaxy
The supernova, named ASASSN-15lh, occurred in a distant galaxy 3.8 billion light-years away, and is 200 times more powerful than the average supernova.
The huge blast, reported in the journal Science, is at the very upper limit of researchers' understanding of stellar physics, raising new questions about how such a powerful event could be generated.
"It's an extreme example — it's so extreme that it's really unclear what's actually causing the supernova — if that's what it is," one of the study's authors, Dr Benjamin Shappee of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, said.
"This was so exciting and so far outside what's expected, I was a little sceptical until we got the follow-up data.
"Then when we saw it on two different telescopes and confirmed the data I started to get extremely excited."
The record-breaking explosion, thought to be a super-luminous supernova, was discovered in June using the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae system (ASASSN).
Most super-luminous supernovae occur in small, busy star-forming galaxies. However, ASASSN-15lh exploded in a large and rather calm galaxy.
David Bowie left an incalculable legacyJanuary 17, 2016 12:00am
RICHARD WILKINS
Sunday Herald Sun
Richard Wilkins with David Bowie.DON McLean wrote the song American Pie, lamenting the death — more than half a century ago — of his idol Buddy Holly.
But for many of us it will be the sad day last week that we’ll never forget — the day we learnt of the passing of one of the giants of contemporary music and pop culture.
David Bowie. Even the name screams rock star and his loss is enormous, his legacy incalculable.
The first time I heard him was when Ground Control was dialling up Major Tom and telling him to take his protein pills and put his helmet on — what a song.
The Beatles and The Stones, the Hollies and The Who didn’t sound like that. It was the first glimpse of Bowie’s fascination with the cosmos and a clear indication that he was one to push the boundaries in every way. So inventive and imaginative, with a wry humour and intelligence to burn. He was sailing uncharted waters, following no one, the master of reinvention. While the word chameleon is often used when people are describing Bowie, it’s perfectly accurate.
To meet Bowie was to understand the concept of being in the presence of greatness. He was such a lovely man, passionate about his work, keen to talk about it and eager to have you listen to it. And while his reputation preceded him, he still radiated a warmth and generosity of spirit that made him instantly likeable. Charming, funny, confident about himself, but slightly shy around others, he was everything we want our rock stars to be.
FEATURED BOOK:
From one of the world's most admired war correspondents, Christina Lamb, comes a searing indictment of the West's involvement in wars against fundamentalist Islam, Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World. The pointless loss of American, British and Australian lives, has achieved nothing; despite the efforts to eliminate the Taliban from the country, their presence has continued to grow. Insurgent attacks have also increased, and the region still struggles against poverty, an unstable infrastructure and a huge number of land mines. Initially billed as the West's success story by both Bush and Blair, Afghanistan remains a lawless, violent land. The promises made to its people in 2001 have not been fulfilled. Foreign correspondent for one of the world's leading newspapers, The Sunday Times, educated at Oxford, a Fellow at Harvard University, a member of the National Geographic Society, former British Foreign Correspondent of the year and a multi award winner, Lamb has been reporting on the region of "pomegranates and war" since the age of 21, when she crossed the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan with mujaheddin fighting the Russians and fell unequivocally in love with this fierce country, a relationship which has dominated her adult life. Lamb has fought with the mujahadeen dressed as an Afghan boy, experienced a near-fatal ambush and head-on encounter with Taliban forces and successfully established links with American, British, Afghan government, Taliban and tribal fighters. Her unparalleled access to troops and civilians on the ground, as well as to top military officials has ensured that Farewell Kabul is the definitive book on the region, exposing the realities of Afghanistan unlike anyone before, compelling, moving and impossible to put down.
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