Wistful At An Early Age

"Sometimes it was as if his beauty created an invisible barrier between himself and the rest of the world, a window through which every admiring glance was somehow magnified, and viewed with a mixture of of gratitude and suspicion. Was it just his imagination, or did people look at him as if they were expecting to hate him, as if they were somehow torn between marvelling at his looks and resenting his good fortune at having been blessed with more than his fair share of them? And even when they were throwing themselves at him, was it him they really wanted, or just a taste of what it would be like to possess such rare physical gifts, preferably for a few hours and without sparing a thought for the person behind the perfectly formed image? It wasn't even as if he could rely on his looks for ever. He might only have been 23, but there were times when he feared that his days of being desired were rapidly running out."
Paul Burston.

I was the son of a pilot. Flying overhead, shrinking into seats, gazing silently out of windows, it was all part and parcel. Looking longingly down on remote, secret valleys no one could possibly find by foot, without roads, only donkey access, or in more recent cases, landing on remote Australian land strips, finding houses where we could live safely and unterrorised for the rest of our days. These places, other people's comfortable lives, the swooping of entry, outside eyes, this sort of remote but accessible comfort was what I had expected to find at Henry's.

When he told me of his house, I could see it glowing with all the polished rainforest woods of the area, the veranda on the side of the hill, the hippies up the road grinding their own bread and the perfect valley spread out below. So that it was impossible to imagine why the rest of the world didn't want to be here. There wasn't much room, he had warned me, so I imagined I would have to sleep on this very same veranda, and wake up to watch the mist clearing from the thick, rich green grass into the vivid greens of the lilli pillis. For a start, I got the location completely wrong. It wasn't 20 minutes out of Lismore at all; but what seemed like hours away, down towards Grafton.

I followed him and followed him; on that Casino Grafton road, notable for how flat and straight the road was; and how little was on it. Once past the first couple of settlements, imagine living there, my God you'd die of boredom, we drove and drove. Reluctant to let go of preconceptions, my spirits remained high. We'd become alone, as the years passed, but there was always company; and Henry was certainly that. Finally, 80 ks from the last signs of habitation, we pulled off the road, into that great brooding silence with nothing but the screech of the cicadas and the freakish gloom of the enveloping trees. There was no sign to mark the turnoff from the main highway; no sign of the friendly hippies up the road; indeed no sign of anything but the forest I had always driven through as fast as possible; afraid, if I stopped, that some forest evil would attack, and not just physically.

You couldn't come back from these sorts of landscapes. The evil that lived in them was unrelenting; unforgiving, cruel by it's very nature. This was a place I never even stopped for a quick piss by the side of the road, for fear of what would happen. And here I was, threading down the path, following Henry's clapped out car. At least it would be good to get to the house, I had assumed, even though he had warned me that the accommodation was basic.

THE BIGGER STORY:

I met Edmund Hillary's son once, on that ancient sadhu trek in the beautiful mountains north of Risshikesh; and there were intense conversations in that remote place; as we appeared equally delighted to meet someone who spoke English.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10486546

A mighty mountain of a man

It is a long-held mountaineering axiom that when you reach the summit you are only halfway there. Sir Edmund Percival Hillary, KBE, ONZ, KG, climber, humanitarian and national icon, reached the summit of Mt Everest on May 29, 1953, and spent the remainder of a remarkable life completing the climb.

As his biographer, Alexa Johnston, wrote, the 15 minutes that Hillary spent on the roof of the world became the defining moment of his life. He would never escape the effects of that particular dream coming true. Nor would he try to.

Hillary, with the understatement that marked his life and his greatness, would be the first to suggest he owed that moment to being in the right place at the right time.

He was never a technical mountaineer. His forte was formidable strength, energy, stamina and determination. His skills lay in forcing a route through snow and ice, skills forged mainly over a handful of years in the Mt Cook region on holidays snatched between the commitments of harvesting honey and often, of necessity, with a mountain guide as a climbing partner.


http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/the-first-man-on-everest-has-died-at-88/2008/01/11/1199988590405.html

Tributes flow for Edmund Hillary

John Henzell in Christchurch
January 12, 2008

ON A quiet and bitterly cold night in July 2003 Sir Edmund Hillary attended his own wake with a group of other climbers in the place where his mountaineering dream began.

The former New Zealand Alpine Club president Dave Bamford said the climbers knew Hillary's passing would become a global event, as it did yesterday after he died in Auckland City Hospital, aged 88. So they decided to hold their own remembrance ahead of time for the man who, with Tenzing Norgay, was the first to conquer Everest in 1953.

And if they were going to speak about Hillary's achievements, it seemed only fair that "the old bugger" was there to hear it. "Ed was quite matter-of-fact about it. He was very pragmatic."

Every mountaineering function involving Hillary in the past few years had been "one to savour and enjoy" rather than waiting for a respectful and crowded wake.

"Then it will be New Zealand and the world remembering

Ed, rather than a group of mountaineers who have a long history of time in the back country with him," Mr Bamford said.

And so it was yesterday. New Zealand's Prime Minister, Helen Clark, called Hillary "a quintessential Kiwi".

"Sir Ed described himself as an average New Zealander with modest abilities," Miss Clark said. "In reality, he was a colossus. He was a heroic figure who not only 'knocked off' Everest but lived a life of determination, humility, and generosity. He is the best-known New Zealander ever to have lived."

We Knew Before Anyone

"Many in the West are polite and good people. The American media are inciting them against Muslims, but some of these good people are demonstrating against the American attacks because human nature is against cruelty and injustice... All my wives are Arabs...the kind of life I have chosen is ultimately not for personal gain."
Osama Bin Laden

We knew before anyone else but his inner cicrcle that the Prime Minister had lost the plot. The frantic whistle stops through shopping malls, touching a thousand hands, shaking, shaking, good to meet you, good to meet you, nice to meet you; had, this time around, an ethereal, distant air. He failed to connect with anybody or anything. The rock star status he had once had, much to the astonishment of the Howard haters, had disappeared. If anybody tried to tell him there were problems, he would barely listen, in his half deaf manner, before cutting his critic short: "Other people tell me different". And walk on. None of it touched him; nothing filtered through. These were the people he was suposed to represent; and he had lost them. He had forgotten the very source of his power.

We would land, in those long lost days, on the properties which had grown up on the flood plains. Water was all important and the politicians never listened. The ancient river meandered in elaborate curls across the flood plains, marked by the line of green beside the river channel. In the wet there was water as far as the eye could see; but in the dry, which was most of the time now, the plains were little better than desert. That anyone could eke a living out of this hostile environment was incredible, yet they did. And to me, urban to the core and sleazy from past and present addictions as we flew from one remote settlement to another, there was a cosiness and truth in the rambling houses; those magnificently large homes built by the squattocracy and the wealth that had come even to here; the last wave the sheep boom of the 1950s.

And then there was John Howard, who we had all hoped would lead us to the prommised land; a conservative in a fundamentally left wing country - a reaction, perhaps, to its convict heritage - and he was going to slap the country back into shape after all those excesses of the left; and in the end that was what made his betrayal even deeper. Small business thought he was on their side; and he wrapped them up in paperwork and the GST like never before. Separated dads thought he was on their side; and instead the populace was bombarded with domestic violence hysteria promoting the myth of the violent male; and the Family Court and the Child Support Agency and all the rest of the parasites remained as dysfunctional and dishonest as ever they were. The people who thought, like all good conservatives, that you should stand on your own two feet and a government's role was only to help you do that; they too were betrayed as welfare spread ever deeper into the middle classes. He bought himself out of trouble and spent and spent and spent. You now have to have an income of more than $100,000 before you escape the clutches of Centrelink.

And the festering bureacracy spread and spread. The world, the government, he created was a lawyer's picnic. A complete charade. Most of all, the true believers are left gasping for something to believe in; and it's all gone. And Howard will get a pension of something like $350,000 a year, seven times the average wage, for doing nothing but having been the Prime Minister. And all those excesses, the grotesquely high salaries of our hopeless judiciary, the ridiculously high and utterly unjustifiable wages of senior bureaucrats; it's all got worse. And once, we were naive enough to believe. And now; we have been betrayed at our core and can only look in other directions for the meaning and comfort we so desperately need.

THE BIGGER STORY:

EXTRACTS FROM PAMELA WILLIAMS series of articles in the Australian Financial Review:

Australian Financial Review

MON 15 OCT 2007.


A tough competitor to the bitter end - ELECTION 2007


By: Pamela Williams



The Prime Minister is the ultimate aspirational - he has spent much of
his political life either fighting to get the top job, or to hang on
to it, writes Pamela Williams, national correspondent.

In the casino of Australian politics John Howard is an obsessive
player. If it takes another poker hand, one more throw of the dice, or
a last spin of the bottle, the gambler is there. Addicted to the game,
the Prime Minister never folds his cards.
Through 33 years as a politician, Howard has bet on himself. Others
may have thought he lacked the nerve, but Howard has seen off many a
high-stakes player. Now he has placed his biggest wager since taking
the leadership of the Liberal Party in January 1995.

Whether it is finally one bet too many will be known on election day.

Howard thought carefully about his legacy last year when he briefly
considered quitting and handing over - Tony Blair-style - to Treasurer
Peter Costello. But it was a short flirtation and he has now bet both
the government and his own place in history on himself. His brief loss
of nerve last month when he asked cabinet members if they thought his
time was up was a mirage. Thirsty men and women, they turned towards
the oasis, but just as suddenly it vanished as Howard pleaded with
voters to give him one more turn.

...

Had he quit last year, Howard would have gone out a champion, much as
the great sports stars he so admires. If he wins this time, there will
be absolute jubilation in the Liberal ranks, but the victory will be
shaded by the notion that Howard never knows when to let go - and
fears that the next three years will be jinxed by Howard taunting
Costello, while toying with his own desire to go on for ever. If he
loses, Howard risks being pilloried for squandering the goodwill and
the loyalty, for never resisting the urge to play one more hand and
robbing the government of a chance for generational change.
...

Australian Financial Review
MON 26 NOV 2007.

Costello clocks off as Howard's flaws are exposed

By: Pamela Williams National correspondent

He told Howard of his decision not to
stand during a phone conversation on election night.
This spectacular finale to the decade-long contest between the two men
leaves the Liberal Party wounded to the core and removes Costello as a
juicy target for a resurgent Labor Party in government.

It was almost 9 o'clock on election night before Costello knew
officially what had been an open secret at Liberal campaign
headquarters for more than a week: the government of John Howard was
dead. With it died more than a decade of Costello's hopes to lead the
nation, lost in karmic retribution against a government that paid the
ultimate price for not listening to the electorate.

The Liberal prime ministerial transition plan - Howard's sleight of
hand to cling to power himself - was dead, too. It was a preposterous
plan designed by Howard to hold onto the leadership in the face of a
recommendation from most of his cabinet that it was time to go.

...

For Howard, who would risk anything to cling to power, the massive
election defeat should have come as no surprise. Lying in a drawer
somewhere was the secret Liberal Party dossier that almost a year ago
predicted the Prime Minister's demise, warning that the nation had
stopped listening to him.

The dossier, developed shortly after Rudd became opposition leader on
December 4 last year, showed voters had a string of grievances against
the government over broken promises and dishonesty and against Howard
in particular; voters had gravitated straight to the
pleasant-mannered, unthreatening Rudd. The government was seen as
arrogant and out of touch. There was an urgent need to reinvigorate
the Liberal team.
Howard was very quickly made aware of internal Liberal polling showing
a sharp fall for the government. This was no honeymoon season for
Rudd. This was the real thing. The secret document, prepared by
Liberal pollster Mark Textor, spelled doom for the government with
Howard at its head.
But Howard took the expedient course of a man obsessed with power and
personal conviction. He ignored all warnings...

The public polls that dogged Howard's steps for the next year after
Rudd's elevation to the Labor leadership, told Howard the same thing
his own pollster had told him: that it was time to go.

....
As Costello finally left the hall, flanked by a crush of fans,
security and media, he heard over his shoulder Howard's voice. He
turned back, pushing to the front of the hall with his family again
where they stood as a group, watching Howard's speech of concession.
Costello kept a smile on his face, while the man who he had already
told some time before that he would not stand as leader, declared that
the future of the party lay with Peter Costello.

...

Inside the Liberal campaign headquarters the Prime Minister's
inability to stick to the message - promoting the economic story and
bashing Labor over union connections - was bringing everyone down... Instead of sticking to the message on the economy, Howard decided to
give the media a lesson on how a leadership succession would occur.
"The incumbent leader goes to the meeting and says, 'I have decided to
resign' and then you know I make a little speech about various things
and thank the party for its support, understanding and loyalty and
then I say, 'Now we have a vacancy for the leadership'."
Those listening in Melbourne cringed. Crumpled paper was thrown. Worst
of all, it was another lost chance to push the message. Instead Howard
was back on his own theme, talking about himself.

...

After rates went up, Howard simply lost the plot, first saying sorry
to voters and then prolonging the agony the next day with a spurious
argument about whether saying sorry was an apology or a sorry.
Standing beside Howard, Costello, grim-faced, looked to be a man ready
to fasten his hands around the prime ministerial throat.

The worst day of the campaign, when things really went south, was the
day the entire message went to hell in a hand basket: the Liberal
campaign launch in Brisbane. Howard's rambling speech veered all over
the place. His spending, apparently pruned back by Costello, still
spiked up. There had been a campaign strategy drawn up for the speech,
but Howard decided to do his own speech - and focus on himself.
The speech blew out to double the time and culminated with a ramble on
why Howard wanted to continue as Prime Minister: "Let me tell you why
I want to be Prime Minister," he went on. "Let me tell you about my
hopes and dreams . . ." Twenty minutes later, he gave Costello a
tribute. Yet this was the man Howard was supposed to be pushing as the
next prime minister. It all had a tacky, stale feel to it. Howard's
strategy to spend, spend, spend, cut right across the campaign message
- a point Kevin Rudd leveraged to acclaim days later. Television
coverage of the Liberal campaign focused on Howard's pitch for himself
to remain as Prime Minister.
It could not have been more damaging.

Behind the scenes, Howard was said to take more account of the advice
of his wife Janette, his former chief of staff Grahame Morris, and his
friend, the former adman and now climate change campaigner Geoffrey
Cousins, than he did of the professionals at campaign headquarters.

For at least part of the campaign Howard was said to be reading
"Dickie's media briefing notes", as one disillusioned campaign adviser
described a media summary he claimed was often sent to Howard
overnight by his son Richard in the United States - where he had the
benefit of the time difference to read and assemble news from the
Australian newspaper websites. "It's almost Captain Wacky in reverse,"
muttered another adviser.

By the end of the campaign, senior strategists inside campaign
headquarters urged Liberal state directors to resist any pressure from
Howard's office to put his photograph on the party's how to vote
cards.

The ugly last-minute racist shenanigans in the seat of Lindsay were
perhaps the last defining imagery of Howard's era. Brochures intended
to provoke racism in the electorate were designed by the husbands of
Howard pet Jackie Kelly, who was quitting, and her successor, Karen
Chijoff. In what seemed a breakthrough for men's rights, both women
claimed to know nothing of their husband's activities.




+++++++++++++++++

Australian Financial Review
FRI 30 NOV 2007, Page 1



It's my party: the day John Howard refused to go

By: Pamela Williams

The PM's ministers begged him to step down. But, as national
correspondent Pamela Williams reveals, his response was a
Machiavellian plot to cling to power.

The windows of Alexander Downer's suite at the cushy Quay Grand hotel
framed the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The tinkle of ice suggested a
cocktail party in full swing. Just across the water was the ultimate
political trophy, the prime minister's residence at Kirribilli.
Sydney was abuzz. It was Thursday evening, September 6, and
international leaders, great and small, were gathering for the APEC
summit. For those present, Downer's little gathering would make
history too, because it was here at the Quay Grand that some of the
most senior members of John Howard's government assembled to ponder
the future of their ageing and increasingly unpopular leader.
After hours of debate they agreed on a plan. But what they saw as its
strength, the Machiavellian Howard would quickly exploit as its
weakness.
Never mind that Howard had asked for this meeting. Within days he
would reject them completely, clinging to the leadership and, as they
feared, leading them to humiliating electoral defeat last weekend.
Distilled from the knowledge that disunity is death, his ministers'
strategy was to ask Howard to do the right thing by the party that had
given him absolute loyalty since he was elected leader in 1995. They
could not confront him, but they would ask Howard to stand aside and
hand over to his deputy, Peter Costello, both for the sake of the
party and Howard's own legacy.
But Howard would outfox them all.
...

On Wednesday, September 12, Howard recorded an interview with the
ABC's Kerry O'Brien. It would be a desperate plea to stay in power and
it would be the first that his party room had heard of his definitive
promise to retire in the next term if he won the election. It was a
preposterous promise. Howard, with a beseeching look, said he would
seek re-election and would then retire after a period, and hand over
to Peter Costello.
It was the Liberal Party's kamikaze moment.


Australian Financial Review
TUE 11 DEC 2007, Page 1



A right royal mess: how Howard led Libs into chaos


By: Pamela Williams


His rule of the Liberal Party was absolute, writes national
correspondent Pamela Williams. Now it must repair its internal
structures and restore its battered finances.

From the prime ministerial suite in the white-angled splendour of
Parliament House, and from the gabled elegance of Kirribilli House in
Sydney, John Howard ran both the country and the Liberal Party.
It was an unrivalled grip on power. By the time of the 2007 election
campaign, Howard, his wife Janette and a tiny coterie of close family
and friends were nicknamed the "Royal Family" by some Liberal insiders
due to their influence over party and over campaign matters both large
and small.
Now, as the family leaves behind the prestige of Kirribilli and
Howard's shattered aura of invincible power, his role in sidelining
the Liberal organisation is also coming under the spotlight.
Like a house of cards, everything has collapsed, leaving the party
structurally and financially vulnerable.
The Liberals' fortunes are teetering, caught between massive campaign
spending costs and seriously reduced fund-raising.
The situation is so fraught that one insider told The Australian
Financial Review the party was "unviable".
So much had been spent on the campaign that staff at the federal
directorate faced a slash and burn, he said, before adding a
devastating assessment of the organisation John Howard professed to
love: "The party's broke. They're smashed up. And it's mayhem."

...

Over the years as Howard became the party's supreme commander, many of
the old practices broke down. The federal executive, once playing a
commanding role itself, was sidelined and largely ignored by Howard.
The federal election campaign, with Howard controlling the strategy,
was a revelation of the steady deterioration of the party organisation
over a long period of time. One insider said yesterday there had been
at best only one federal executive meeting in the past year.
"Increasingly this all became a Howard operation, with his small
coterie," said a party-machine man yesterday. "As a consequence, the
organisation was marginalised and the competitive tension between the
organisation and the parliamentary party was lost. There was no
counterbalance."

...



Howard's wife and closest confidant, Janette, had become so entrenched
in the campaign structure that few dared to challenge her opinions.
Her views were imposed in even minor matters such as lighting and the
colours in advertising brochures. One bitter campaign worker said last
week: "While the ALP was running a professional campaign, the Liberals
were doing Homebake."

In the end, Howard's old modus operandi ran out of steam too. Spending
his way back to power had been the hallmark of every election for this
veteran politician. But suddenly, spending was out of fashion. Former
treasurer and longtime leadership aspirant Peter Costello had tried
his best to tie up the money with a massive tax cut strategy, working
on the basic assumption that if you cut tax, you can't spend it.
But Howard then wanted a massive health policy on top of the tax cuts.
He planned to spend billions of dollars taking over district hospitals
across the country.
Costello fought and fought. Finally, with the coup of Rudd's tactical
announcement that big spending was out, and health minister Tony
Abbott's personal campaign implosion, Costello won.
He pared back Howard's plans for even more generous child-care
rebates. It was a constant war between the treasurer and the big
spenders led by Howard, the prime minister who believed that
ultimately only he could draw the ace. But in the end, Howard's
strength was proved ephemeral. The man who misplayed the electorate so
badly did not even have the membership ticket to vote for a new party
leader. The man who believed he could hold the vote around the whole
country could not even hold his own seat. And when he fell, he took
the party with him.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Australian Financial Review, Edition 1
FRI 21 DEC 2007, Page 29



Fall of the liberal empire


By: Pamela Williams National correspondent


There was more than one attempt to cut down an intransigent John
Howard before the great election loss that has left a divided Liberal
Party struggling to find a path out of oblivion.

The Prime Ministerial Boeing 737 is known in the RAAF as Air Force
One. It is the ultimate symbol of life at the top, with its privacy,
its pilots and crew, its club lounge chairs, beds, and its $10,000 an
hour running cost. Here in this exclusive sanctum John Howard really
knew he was boss.
It was here too that Howard ran up travel bills estimated at more than
$10 million over 11 years just flying back and forth from Canberra to
Kirribilli, the Sydney residence where no previous prime minister had
lived, but which Howard chose to make his home. And just as he
eschewed The Lodge in Canberra, Howard eschewed the cheaper Challenger
aircraft that was intended for the Prime Minister's domestic use. The
Howards liked the status of the big Boeing. They became accustomed to
first class.
Back in 1996 the perks of power were anathema to John Howard. He was
carried to government on the shoulders of a party bereft and out of
office for 13 years. Back then, Howard listened to everyone in his
party organisation as they mapped strategies, first for a leadership
tilt and then for a prime ministerial run. For Howard, no advice was
too small. But that was then.


Andrew Robb is a man who knows both John Howards well - the humble
supplicant of 1996 and the hubristic jet-setter of 2007. Today Robb is
a federal Liberal MP himself and has been given the Herculean task of
overseeing the rebuilding of the devastated Liberal Party organisation
and its finances, which withered away during Howard's reign.

...

The role of Howard's wife,
Janette, in the election campaign has played into the story, becoming
a sore point with senior parliamentary members as well as with members
of the federal executive and the campaign professionals.

It was Howard himself who revealed his wife's role in his
decision-making to the public, declaring that he had consulted his
family in his decision to reject the request of his cabinet members to
go quietly. Downer has privately denied that Janette Howard's rage at
the cabinet was a factor in Howard's decision to stay. Nevertheless,
the talk continues in some Liberal circles that Janette Howard turned
on Downer too as the bearer of bad news, asking, "How could you do
this to our family?". In the end only Downer knows the truth, but the
fact it has become a topic of discussion shows how controversial the
role of the prime minister's family eventually became.


Howard had been one of the luckiest prime ministers in history. From
the landslide win of 1996 against Keating through to the tactics of
Tampa, when he literally scared people into voting for him, Howard had
the country in his hand. Finally he betrayed that trust, introducing
Work Choices, the hardline industrial relations policy that had not
been flagged to the electorate. It was the moment when Howard finally
forgot how he had succeeded in the first place - by listening and by
asking voters to reject the arrogance of the other side.

...

Business has flocked to Labor, naturally
following the government of the day. The Liberals must start again
from the bottom. Fewer and fewer major companies are giving to the
Liberals, and in states such as NSW, the ALP has become the natural
party of choice for big property developers. The Liberals have little
hope of making serious inroads here.

...

In just over a decade the Liberals have gone from feather duster to
feather duster. From the party high point when the federal president,
treasurer and director had the clout and respect to give Downer the
last rites for the sake of the party, to the low point of 2007, when
no-one even thought to contact federal director Loughnane to advise
him that Howard had asked his cabinet members if he should stand
aside. Senior ministers say Loughnane found out the same way most
others did, by phoning around to ask what was going on after the
rumour mill started churning.
It was a classic example of the degradation of the party: the leader
mortally wounded and at loggerheads with his cabinet over his future,
and an election coming up...

Loughnane struggled to pull back the strategy from the Howard family,
according to insiders, trying to get Howard to attend meetings without
his wife and key adviser. The problem for the campaign team was that
once Janette Howard took a decision, no-one dared to oppose her.
Moreover, the role of Howard's son Richard, based in the US and
providing his father with a media strategy, ultimately made him the
honorary deputy strategist to his mother.
It was chaos for the professional campaign staff. If the campaign put
out a brochure that Howard did not like, he would distance himself.
The threat of this hung in the air, sapping the campaign of passion
and immediacy. No one would say "shove it up your jumper" to Howard.
Everything had started to crack open the year before. The introduction
of Work Choices, in the face of a broad understanding in the
electorate that this was not going to happen, set off alarm bells
among party hard-heads and professionals. But there was nothing anyone
could do. With the imbalance between the organisation and the
parliamentary wings, there was no substantive discussion in the
broader party, no briefing first of the federal executive; there was
no robust discussion, no testing in the market, and virtually no
research. Here was proof positive that power had gone to Howard's
head.
For Howard himself, the end was tumultuous. He had achieved all his
great dreams, he had travelled the world, lived in the perfect house
on Sydney Harbour, presided over APEC with Russia's Vladimir Putin on
one arm and US President George Bush on the other. Janette Howard,
too, had enjoyed the spoils of office, planning and preparing for a
year for the star-dusted APEC moments, designing the outfits,
orchestrating the menus. For all the world they appeared to be the
glamorous hosts. Watching them through the APEC prism, it would be
hard to believe either seriously entertained the thought of giving it
all away before this grand finale.
Howard was on borrowed time.
Liberal Party polling showed he was no longer trusted, that the
electorate was no longer listening to him. Public polling showed the
same thing. Party research showed that Work Choices was the last
straw. All this must have seemed trivial against the glitter of world
leaders, the intimate barbecues with the Bush family and the revving
jets as Air Force One took off smoothly for Kirribilli.
Howard promised the nation one last time that if they favoured him
with a repeat performance, then he would go. But the public had worked
out that John Howard would never stand down. And that his party would
never force him out. They did not believe him.

In order to finally put a stake through the heart of Lazarus with a
triple bypass, the electorate took on the job itself. They would vote
him out, and not just out of office, but out of his seat as well.

Henry

Source: ABC.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
- Oscar Wilde

Henry used to work for the Australian Cotton Foundation; their industry body; as a public relations expert come policy officer. As a greenie before it was fashionable to be green he cut an unlikely figure amongst ultra conservative farmers; lathering on about the economics of progressive environmental policies. The cotton industry had a filthy reputation as a guzzler of water in a dry continent and had become a focus for environmental disputation. They were an easy target.

The farming families, decades ago now, had taken the government at its words and when officers came knocking on their doors offering them water licenses at next to nothing per year as long as they developed their properties; that's what they did. Mini-empires had been built on the back of the licenses so readily given; and as far as they were concerned their job, their empire building, was a noble cause. The properties had expanded; the outhouses increased in number; the expensive equipment, half a million dollars for some of the huge tractors, littered their properties.

Some of the ultra-conservative Christian families from the US moved out here and established their significant holdings; and the Australians, seeing dollar signs and prosperity under the normally harsh sun, learnt quickly and followed suit.

And then along came Henry, with his funny square face and his piercing blue eyes and his bombastic love of the left; with his streams of vitriol at the conservatives and a love of a good time. How easy it was, in those wonderful days; when everything left was good and everything right was bad; and of course we all wanted to align ourselves with the progressive. Expressing doubt about the mantra could get you labeled a fascist, so instead, if we dared to dwell on why the pack mentality of the left had served us workers so poorly, we kept those thoughts to ourselves.

Even now, as the cult like aspects of the global warming or the domestic violence mantras so beautifully illustrate, there is no room for independent thought amongst the tribal paths of the dispossessed. A man was killed a few months back while watering his front lawn; because some bloke, living in public housing down the road, accosted him and accused him of wasting water. There has become no bigger crime.

Meanwhile, it's flooding everywhere after torrential rains and our utterly totally and completely incompetent Labor government, headed by the hapless Morris Iemma, continues to peddle belief systems which serve us all very poorly indeed.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Personally I'm fascinated by Obama and think Hilary would be a dreadful president; but I've been wrong before.

(CNN) -- With the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries now history, the Democratic and Republican presidential races are still wide-open contests that will force candidates to continue to battle over the next four weeks.

John McCain arrives at a rally Wednesday in Grand Rapids, Michigan, after his win in New Hampshire.

Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, the big winners in the New Hampshire primary, and the rest of the candidates did not rest on their laurels Wednesday as they began looking ahead to the next primary contests in Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina.

Clinton's two percentage-point win over Sen. Barack Obama in the Granite State's Democratic primary, after she came in third in the Iowa caucuses, had supporters chanting "comeback kid" when she took the stage to claim victory Tuesday night.

With 96 percent of the precincts counted, Clinton beat Obama 39 percent to 37 percent, a surprise win as polling going into the night had Obama leading the New York senator by 9 percentage points. John Edwards come in a distant third at 17 percent.

Henry in a Whole New Year

Source: NLS computer; animal pictures.

"What I have come down to be, since I first saw you... I was on my downward way then, but the dreary, dreary, road I have traversed since! Weak indulgence has ruined me. Indulgence in remembrance, and indulgence in forgetfulness. My natural grief for my child's mother turned to disease; my natural love for my child turned to disease. I have infected everything I touched. I have brought misery on what I dearly love...Thus the lessons of my life have been perverted! I have preyed on my own morbid coward heart, and it has preyed on me. Sordid in my grief, sordid in my love, sordid in my miserable escape from the darker side of both, oh see the ruin I am, and hate me, shun me!"

Mr Wickfield in David Copperfield
Charles Dickens

For years he had pestered me to visit his property on the north coast. We both whinged about Sydney and the disaster it had become, arseholes crawling over each other with no regard, traffic jams and a callow, shallow, vicious, vacuous nastiness that knew no bounds. No one was considerate. No one cared. The cosy past that we had both known, a floating world from a comfier time when friendships meant something despite our dislocated lives; when indeed we built families of acquaintances to make up for the absence of our own; when railing against the status quo and the conservatives passed for original thought.

And now. He'd sued the last company he had worked for after a complex dispute I couldn't follow; and had been overseas for the last couple of years on the proceeds; and even now harboured dreams of suing them again. It was the ultimate capitalist dream; sue the bastards. He had been living in Luamb Prabang in Laos and after a long absence had emailed me. I spent a month there once, sitting in the opium den. It was the end of the Vietnam War and the currency had collapsed. I was just a poor student at home but rich in Asia, and loved it; the glistening acid drenched walls of the caves, the monks leading the way with candles through the labyrinths. Everything about it I loved.

And now he was back in Australia; the money running low. And everything was silence and disturbed; everybody was watching and it was impossible to get the sequence of things. We met up in Lismore and drove through Nimbin on the way to his acreage. That place he had boasted so often about; as the place to hide from the world and build a different future. Thoreau got it right and we all needed to build a different life. But a different life was not what was going to make us now. The beaches are packed, the crowds are celebrating, the fireworks burst over the bridge and for once; the country is saturated with optimism. We have a new Prime Minister; and it is probably all as much an illusion as the past one; who masqueraded as a conservative and expanded the grip of the tax and the welfare systems until there's almost no room to move anymore.

Sam's doing a crossword, Henrietta is watching medical emergency, Nanna is cooking rissoles for dinner and now; the stories begin all over again.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/us/politics/09dems.html

From a Big Boost for Obama to a Sharp Blow


By JEFF ZELENY
Published: January 9, 2008

NASHUA, N.H. — On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Senator Barack Obama delivered a message to supporters: “Do not take this race for granted. I know we had a nice boost over the last couple of days, but elections are a funny business.”

It was a prescient warning.

Mr. Obama, who arrived here five days ago after a commanding triumph in the Iowa caucuses, had planned to leave New Hampshire on a similar high. But a defeat by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton here on Tuesday evening startled Mr. Obama and ensured that the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination remained fully engaged.

“We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change,” Mr. Obama said, speaking at a rally of crestfallen supporters. “We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics that will only grow louder and more dissonant in the days and weeks to come.”

For the last five days here, Mr. Obama made one appeal above all to the legions of voters who turned out at rallies from dawn to dusk to see him: Prove that Iowa was not a fluke. He made that pitch again and again to audiences, which spilled from gymnasiums into side rooms and from opera houses onto snow-covered sidewalks, a tableau of young and old pressed closely together as they cheered his historic candidacy.

In the end, though, it was another historic candidacy — that of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton — that appealed to more voters in New Hampshire, particularly women who broke with Mr. Obama in significant numbers in the closing hours of an accelerated campaign here.

Mr. Obama was counting on a New Hampshire victory to serve as a permission slip for Democratic leaders across the country to step forward to support his candidacy. He was hoping to trade the title of insurgent candidate for the perilous crown of front-runner. But the race is now a draw between the two rivals — with John Edwards of North Carolina, who came in a distant third, vowing to continue — and a furious scramble lies ahead.

With a confidence buoyed by a series of polls that consistently showed Mr. Obama leading Mrs. Clinton by as many as 10 percentage points, the Obama campaign was shaken by the loss as the final ballots were tabulated from a primary election held on a glorious springlike day where a record number of Democrats turned out.

If Mr. Obama had hoped to leave New Hampshire as a soaring victor, on his way to seizing the air of inevitability that had belonged for months to Mrs. Clinton, his narrow loss underscored the challenges that lie ahead for turning a political movement into an electoral success. As he addressed his supporters in a gymnasium at Nashua High School on Tuesday evening, he showed no signs of relinquishing his fight.

“When we’ve been told we’re not ready or we shouldn’t try or we can’t, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people,” Mr. Obama said. “Yes, we can. Yes, we can.” Throughout the evening, the confidence of Mr. Obama’s campaign gradually fell as returns poured in from across the state, which never put him over Mrs. Clinton. Aides said they believe that women rallied behind Mrs. Clinton in the final hours of the race, when news coverage was dominated by accounts of her nearly breaking into tears as she answered a voter’s question.

With Mr. Obama winning in Iowa and Mrs. Clinton winning in New Hampshire, a fresh dose of uncertainty was injected into the race as it moves to Nevada and South Carolina before contests in 22 states take place on Feb. 5. Mr. Obama was still hoping to win a crucial union endorsement in Nevada, where he dispatched his top aides from Iowa to organize the state.

They're All Dogs

"Desperately he watched the walls begin to lean, the floor to tilt. Grabbing a stanchion, he hung on almost calmly as the cabin moved from vertical to horizontal, then into a complete roll. Dust, mud, water, bits of wood, and a few pounds of miscellaneous components showered down on him as he stood, shakily, in the centre of the cabin trying to find enough energy to scream."
Martin Logan.


They're all dogs, she said, as I approached the small huddle outside the train station. You don't have to tell me that, came the reply. I know. She gestured down the block. The streaky boy pushing the pram, nineteen and pale sick with scars up his arms, remained silent. Oh they're dogs mate; they'd do anything. I approached, pushed through, they barely parted for a pedestrian. The sky was closing in but the rain hadn't come, not yet.

Notes for a radio spot:

This story has had widespread coverage in Australia not just because of the horrific details of the case but the political backdrop. The decline in outback communities, with children sniffing petrol, not attending school and being regularly abused or neglected, is widely being seen as a failure of government policy, particularly left wing government policy. Billions and billions of dollars have been poured into the desert sands and the situation for many aboriginal people has simply got worse.

What is most shocking about this case is that it is not an isolated incident. The dysfunction and sexual abuse in remote communities has now sparked direct government takeover of dozens of isolated communities in the north of the country. It brings into stark relief the issues of child protection and the damaging impacts of passive welfare. The abuse and rape of so many of these kids is being painted as the abject failure of political correctness which has protected and concealed these disasters. Child protection officers are being accused of keeping cases from police.

The girl in question was born with foetal alcohol syndrome, making her somewhat intellectually disabled, at Cape York in the far north of the country. She was first abused at the age of five and placed in foster care, but then returned by child preotection authorities to the community, where raped by five boys at the age of seven. She was again removed.

After a number of failed placements she eventually settled and found some happiness with a white foster family.

Defying belief, officers from the Department of Child Safety child forced the child's removal back to the community where she had been raped. The girl's mother pleaded with them that the girl was not safe at Araukun.

At age ten she was raped by six youths three men in their early. She was raped on six other occasions.

The prosecutor of the case Steve Carter, tried to paint the rapes as childish sexual experimentation and described the boys and men involved as "naughty". The girl was reportedly offering sex in return for alcohol and cigarettes. Not surprisingly, the prosecutor has been stood down.

Cairns District Court judge Sarah Bradley, a graduate of the 1970s and something of a golden girl of left wing women lawyers and a public advocate for differential treatment of aboriginal offenders, allowed all nine attackers to walk free because the girl "probably agreed to have sex with all of you." She released six younger males with no conviction and gave three older males suspended sentences.

There's reports in parts of Australia of homes where children have taken the knobs off their bedroom doors to protect themselves. Most of the doors have been kicked in. Those children are not being protected.

Ever since the delivery of a nation transforming report Bringing Them Home, documented in graphic and moving detail the so-called stolen generation, the children who were removed for decades in the earlier parts of last century from indigenous families by charities and the authorities for decades; it has been very very difficult for child protection authorities to remove children from their families. The fear of creating another stolen generation has meant indigenous children are often left in circumstances which would not be tolerated in most Australian suburbs.

Politicians have been accused of instructing welfare workers not to report suspected child abuse cases to police. Police say cases of children showing up at clinics with gonorear or other sexually transmitted diseases are not passed on to them.

The complete collapse of these isolated communities has been going on for years, but has often been hidden from view by a thing called the permit system. I don't think a lot of people realise that there are vast tracts of Australia that with landrights have been handed back, and for outsiders to get in requires special permits and permission and can be quite difficult. What began with such noble intent, the gifting of land and effectively pride, in the end isolated these remote communities from all the benefits of the modern world.

I believe the complete moral and civic, spiritual and physical collapse of these communities, with chaotic scenes of alcohol abuse and child neglect, will be studied by amthropologists with great fascination for decades.

The former Federal Government began what is being called The Intervention in the Northern Territory, with the use of teams including the Federal Police, following a report Breaking The Silence which documented the complete social collapse of these communities. Alcohol and pornography have now been banned or strictly proscribed.

Our new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd met with aboriginal leaders on the weekend has suported the Intervention but said he will be reviewing it closely. The absue of indegenous chidlren is expected to be high on the agenda at a meeting of the Prime Minister and the country's premiers this week.



THE BIGGER STORY:

SMH:
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says he doesn't think his campaign will be hurt by the effort last week by an adviser for rival Hillary Clinton to bring attention to his admitted teenage drug use.

He suggested at the weekend that the Clinton campaign's increasingly negative tenor was a measure of a tightening race.

"I do think that the average American believes that what somebody does when they were a teenager 30 years ago is probably not relevant to how they're going to be performing as commander in chief of the United States," Obama said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3056283.ece

The new face of America
Once written off, Barack Obama is suddenly surging in the polls and could become the first African-American president . The reason is because he is the only man who can halt the racial, religious and cultural civil war that is tearing America apart.
Andrew Sullivan

Last week was a horrible one for Hillary Clinton. Her husband had thrown a wrench into her campaign to become president of the United States by declaring that he’d been against the Iraq war from the beginning - a transparent fib that reminded many Democrats of the pathological lying of the 1990s.

Two Clinton campaign staffers were then caught sending out e-mails warning that Barack Obama, her main rival for the Democrat ticket, was a closet Muslim. And one of her campaign co-chairmen raised the issue of Obama’s past drug use - something Obama had dealt with candidly years ago. Clinton was forced to apologise and her aide resigned. Grassroots Democrats were appalled at the descent into nastiness. It suggested desperation in the Clinton camp.

But everything came to a head in last Thursday’s Iowa debate between the Democratic candidates. Obama was asked by the moderator how he could claim to represent change on foreign policy when he had so many former Clinton administration officials advising him. Hillary burst into desperate laughter. “I’d love to hear him answer that,” she cackled. Obama paused, then fired: “Well, Hillary, I’m looking forward to having you advise me as well.” The audience erupted. In one moment, the Alpha Female ceded authority to the Alpha Male.

The Washington media are taken aback by Obama’s surge in the polls. They dismissed him months ago, buying into the notion that a Clinton presidency was inevitable. But they can’t ignore the facts in the key states: in Iowa, Obama is slightly ahead and has the organisational edge. In New Hampshire, Clinton’s double-digit lead has suddenly evaporated. In South Carolina, black voters have begun to switch en masse to Obama. It’s still far from over - and no one should discount Hillary Clinton - but the momentum is suddenly his.

After Clicking Done

Admiration, n.: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
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Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

To be positive: To be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
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Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
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Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
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Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary
- More quotations on: [Brain]


There wasn't anyway through this, the nervous clasping, and he was in sympathy for lost causes, fervent but unfashionable beliefs. The damaged building loomed over them, familiar faces looked up and away, caught in wintry sunlight. He could see remotely familiar faces in the crowd who he knew were detectives. Everything was closing in. Indeed had closed in long ago. His viral count was up and he was on another batch of herbs. His new car whizzed through the streets, and gave him pleasure, briefly, before he was faced once more with the stark truth. They had come to this. They had surrendered. His dissenting voice had failed. They had, all of them, become automatums.

The decline of the country he had once loved so passionately, had been so proud to be part of, began innocuously enough. New anti-terror laws had seemed appropriate enough; in the post September 11 environment when the world was gripped in fear of Islamo-fascists. Long fought for freedoms were dispensed with; just like that. Legislation drafted and passed and the toiling masses barely noticed. Civil libertarians poked up their whingy voices and no one listened. He certainly hadn't listened. His preoccupations had been graver, more profound; he had been gripped by a far greater melancholy than they would ever know. That was a result of being born defective; he felt too much.

The backlash had been slow; scattered; unfashionable, stifled, closely monitored by the authorities. He should have known better, but didn't. Those meetings, so long ago, had seemed futile to him even then. There were no grave consequences. They didn't even really understand what they were fighting against. Before the implants. Before his intelligence had been augmented in what had once seemed dramatic and exciting ways. He was drifting away from Don now; in the crowd. Coffee, he shouted over the noise; more sirens in the distance; sheltering under the crumbling facade. Don shrugged; and slipped into the crowd, disappearing before his eyes.

It left him there, bewitched, uncertain; his thoughts echoing through the empty chamber of his head. And beyond the mop-up what was the story? Nothing he could grasp. Nothing that would satisfy his bosses. And he turned away from the grand marble entrance of the building he had learnt to hate more than any other building in the city; one foot before the other, his skeleton imprinted on the planet surface and his head in a thousand places. He looked back at the crowd which still stood behind the police tape, staring in awe, or disbelief, or perhaps even satisfaction; and this time recognised no one. It wasn't his city, his place, his time, any more. The doctor's warnings rang in his head, as he walked fearfully back to the office.



THE BIGGER STORY:


Lone voice of dissent censored by United Nations
Written By: Tom Swiss
Published In: News Releases
Publication Date: December 13, 2007
Publisher: The Heartland Institute


(CHICAGO, Illinois - December 13, 2007) -- For the second time this week, the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) was kicked off the press schedule for the United Nations' climate conference in Bali, Indonesia.

The ICSC is a group of scientists from Africa, Australia, Europe, India, New Zealand, and the U.S. who contend sound science does not support the outrageous claims and draconian regulations proposed in Bali.

The ICSC team leader, Bryan Leyland, an expert in carbon and energy trading, reported, "This morning I confirmed we had the main conference hall for 9:00 AM tomorrow. At 4:30 PM today, I found that Barbara Black bumped us off the schedule and closed further bookings. I'm fuming."

Black is NGO liaison officer for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali.

Earlier in the week, UN officials in Bali closed down the ICSC's first press conference there. Black interrupted the press conference and demanded the scientists immediately cease. She threatened to have the police physically remove them from the premises.

Black's efforts are part of the United Nations' ongoing censorship of dissenting voices at Bali. ICSC scientists have been prevented from participating in panel discussions, side events, and exhibits.

For further information:

Bryan Leyland
+64 21 978 996
bryanleyland@mac.com
Christopher Monckton
+44 7980 634784
monckton@mail.com

Posted by A Dog Named Kyoto

Infinite Silence Infinite Melancholy

"The order of Trappist monks got it right - keep your counsel and maintain hope."
John Howard, deposed Prime Minister of Australia.

These were all the cruelties that came gushing out; the infinite longing and the sensation of being utterly lost; while all around is Christmas and celebration; other people's celebration. I didn't know what had become of me. I didn't know that the world was changing. He was teary for no reason and clung to things that were utterly pointless. The changing political tide was only fast in retrospect. At the time he had barely noticed anything. There were inappropriate tears and maudlin chaos. Get a grip get a grip. Then a man says brightly, "another day in paradise", and I look up, startled. Paradise? Not in here it ain't.

He looked up and around and was surprised by the number of faces he recognised in the crowd. Don was looking at him strangely; waiting for him to act. But what was he to do? Gesture to the police; indicate to them the man he thought was guilty. Explain that it was just a feeling; that his enhanced brain had triggled together the dots; that scene after scene kept flashing through his brain, neatly dated, neatly timed. Born with the lost twin syndrome; he kept thinking there was someone he could turn to, some advice he could take, some way to escape the gripping tendrils; the melancholy with which he was born. The pit of his stomach kept sinking, there was no way out.

Henrietta has left for Thailand and the house is much quieter. The politics had moved; so that he and his ilk were not just no longer fashionable; but no longer deserving. The Rudd government is all off to Bali to talk Kyoto. I ran into Bernadette today at a meeting in Newtown; and even she thinks it's all a crock. I was there in '92 and I helped draft it; she said. It's not just shite, it's worse than shite, she said. And yet everyone is in a grip, we're signing Kyoto and we've all moved on to a higher moral plain. The dogs keep whining at the back door; and I don't know, I really don't know, how to move from here back to the promised land; to "another day in paradise", to climb back into sanity and be happy again.

And then the phone rang, again. His boss, again. And he couldn't believe in this modern life of opportunity and colour and easy magnificence, that he had become a slave.

THE BIGGER STORY:

ABC:

Reporter: Rebecca Barrett
MARK COLVIN: Commonwealth-State relations got their first real road test since the federal election today, at a meeting of the nation's Health Ministers. And if we're to believe them, it was all sweetness and light.

The Ministers said after their meeting in Hobart that the blame game on health had ended. Their task was to begin discussing the next hospital funding agreement. The Federal Government had come with an offer of $600-million to start clearing elective surgery waiting lists around the country.

State and territory ministers now have a week to come up with plans to wipe out the backlog. The new Commonwealth money should start flowing early in the New Year.

Rebecca Barrett reports.

REBECCA BARRETT: By all accounts, it was a very unusual health ministers meeting.

It seems there was no sparring or even disagreement as the nation's all-Labor Health Ministers sat down together for the first time.

STEPHEN ROBERTSON: Today is the end of the blame game. Today is the first day where all state, territory and commonwealth health ministers are dedicated to working together to improve health care in this country.

Cascading Wit

Cocaine is the drug of ego. All shiny surface and hollow euphoria, it's the drug of stockbrokers and estate agents. Of puppet governments and corporate warmongers. Of thin girls with expensive teeth and cheap souls, of sharp subprime boys whipping fast financial horses. Where acid dissolves ego, cocaine is powdered narcissism. The Age of Aquarius is dead. All hail the Age of Celebrity. Do what? Invest, obviously, in coca futures.
Elizabeth Farrelly


He answered his phone and wished he hadn't. Where are you, she demanded. You can't just walk out without telling me where you are.
Of course not, he thought, because then you wouldn't have total control.
Total control, over you. A pop song from long ago.
I just had a feeling...
You're not paid to have feelings.
Finally, a flash of anger. It was all very well to be a control freak, but this woman was beyond anything...
He was cured, he had been cured for a long time. He was coming back.
I just had a feeling, he repeated...
She started frothing at the other end of the phone.
He turned it off.
He should have turned it off a long time ago. No one should be constantly humiliated, as he was. Nothing was right. The crowds were tittering, as if the surface had been tilted.
There were still wisps of smoke from the top of the building, and a curious crowd. The crime scene tape was still intact, and kept the crowd back.
He scanned the faces, and wasn't in the least bit surprise to see Don, standing there with a group of others. Three men and a woman, he thought. Just staring. As if they couldn't believe it.
He made his way over to them.
Don looked up, mistrustful after their conversation.
What happened? he asked.
Nothing that's not in the newspapers, he replied, staring at his old friend.
How was this to play, what was he to do?
Call the police? This is my old friend, I think he did it.
Now, standing next to him, he felt even more certain. He took in his companions, he had seen them, in those meetings, in those rooms in those remote suburban church halls. His brain was doing overtime, checking the archives.
Well, I don't suppose everyone will grieve, he said.
Perhaps, Don grunted, and just kept on staring. Weren't the guilty always meant to return to the scene? Wasn't this too big a give away?
"Perhaps," he said again quietly. "But certainly not everybody."
"Maybe we should go somewhere, talk?" he asked.
"You're a newspaper man, and not to be trusted," Don said. "Even if I knew something, which I don't, you'd be the last person..."
"Don, I know you know," he said quietly. "If I know, it's only a matter of time before the authorities catch up."


THE BIGGER STORY:

SMH:

TREASURER Wayne Swan flies to the international climate change conference in Bali today carrying an ultra-cautious message on targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

As part of the Government team arriving over the next week, Mr Swan will set the stage for Australia to resist growing pressure to sign up to a 2020 target.

From Australia, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd overruled the official Australian delegation in Bali after it last week endorsed a 25 to 40 per cent cut in 1990 greenhouse gases levels by 2020.

Mr Swan told The Sun-Herald before departing that the Government would await a report commissioned from Professor Ross Garnaut before committing Australia to short-term targets.

"Labor has a policy to reduce greenhouse gases by 60 per cent by 2050, but any interim target will depend on the Garnaut report," he said.

Professor Garnaut, the head of economics at the Australian National University and chairman of the Government's climate change review committee, will not deliver his report until the middle of next year. Professor Garnaut is attending the Bali conference.

Conquered

The Fractured Cloud


The fractured cloud struggles just to breathe. Tortured and tormented by the stresses of life, she is teetering on the brink of sanity. She started her existence normal enough: calm, collected, and clear-minded, but recently something changed. It started off small. A stream of small problems and challenges not unlike those she had faced earlier in life, but this stream never stopped. She tried to get through solely on her own steam, too proud to ask for help. This was probably her undoing. In time, this stream of problems turned into a web. Trapping, and immobilizing her to the point where she was no longer even able to partially slow the flow of problems. Now she sits, helpless, gathering all of her might to unleash in one final burst of strength. How this will affect her situation, and what effects it may have on her psyche is not quite clear, but at this point one thing is quite clear: no matter what the consequences, this is her only remaining hope.


http://theweeklycloud.blogspot.com/2007/11/fractured-cloud-struggles-just-to.html


The country has changed already; almost overnight; and the sweet chaos to which we had all beckoned, it was gone. A smooth incumbent. The parties in chaos. The building kept burning in his imagination; as if it would never stop; the sequence of yesterday's events playing through his head. There were other reporters involved now; police, social affairs, legal affairs. The stream of consequence moved forward like a great procession; and he had nothing to say for himself.

He waited until there was a gap in the authoritarian rule of his boss and made his own way back up to the scene of yesterday's events. Police tape still surrounded the building, which was still closed to staff and the public. Traffic diversions were still in place. A small crowd of onlookers had gathered to gape at the damaged building; the misshapen penthouse on top of the stolid, expensive government architecture.

He recognised a couple of faces in the crowd; not just other reporters gathering atmosphere or seeing for themselves; but faces he had seen in meetings long long ago. Had they, too, just come to see for themselves? Or was it more? The changing nature of everything; the overthrow of the mundane; the increasing expansions of their brains. The meetings were coming up in his head now; as if from a retrieval system; and he could see the impassioned talks in the town halls. Before the implants came. They were trying to argue it was wrong; that we as a race would never be the same. Those who were protesting in a stream of impassioned words were painted in the media and therefore in the public mind as reactionaries, alarmists, old fashioned and ridiculous. Who wouldn't want a better brain?

Already he could see his phone going off again. That woman never rested.

THE BIGGER STORY:

ABC:


Outgoing prime minister John Howard has arrived back at Parliament House for the first time since his election loss, to clean out his office and make way for his replacement Kevin Rudd.

Mr Rudd may not officially take over until early next week and says he hopes to have his new Cabinet finalised by Thursday and sworn in by next Monday.

In another of Mr Rudd's priorities, the Labor leader says any apology to Indigenous Australians will only be made after adequate consultation with Aboriginal communities.



Bernama
Howard was bushwhacked
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 15 hours ago
Kevin Rudd has fractured the electoral coalition that kept John Howard in power for more than a decade by winning over voters from the provincial and rural ...
Kevin Rudd pushes Work Choices, Kyoto mandates NEWS.com.au
Howard's official website suspended Hindu
Howard’s end leaves poorer legacy National Business Review
RTT News - Telegraph.co.uk
all 2,293 news articles »

Sydney Morning Herald
Libs turn on Howard: let's dump Work Choices
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 13 hours ago
"No Liberal candidate could look in the mirror and say the leadership of John Howard was not the central factor on Saturday," Mr Pyne said. ...
Keating says Bishop should lead Libs The Age
Three to contest Liberal leadership The Age
Rivals left to slug it out among themselves Sydney Morning Herald
NEWS.com.au - The Age
all 275 news articles »

Canoe.ca (subscription)
Howard cleans out office as Rudd looks ahead
ABC Online, Australia - 2 hours ago
Outgoing prime minister John Howard has arrived back at Parliament House for the first time since his election loss, to clean out his office and make way ...
Australia's PM-elect to say sorry to Aborigines Reuters South Africa
Rudd Will Apologize to Aborigines The Associated Press
New PM Kevin Rudd to apologise to Aborigines Telegraph.co.uk
BBC News - Melbourne Herald Sun
all 118 news articles »

Canada.com
mckew Set to Win Howard's Seat, First Leader to Lose Since 1929
Bloomberg - 25 Nov 2007
26 (Bloomberg) -- Maxine mckew, a former journalist, is set to topple John Howard from his Sydney seat, making him the first Australian Prime Minister to be ...
Howard's End CounterPunch
Easy life on pension for John Howard Melbourne Herald Sun
pm's people didn't think we had it in us: mckew Sydney Morning Herald
Reuters UK - Melbourne Herald Sun
all 449 news articles »

Sky News Australia
Howard told to quit a year ago
The Age, Australia - 15 hours ago
SENIOR Liberal strategist and former minister Nick Minchin strongly advocated a leadership change more than a year before the poll, telling John Howard he ...
Pasquarelli: Howard held hostage by Bennelong's ethnic make up Crikey (subscription)
Liberal senators round on Howard Sydney Morning Herald
Defeat can be a new dawn for the Liberals Sydney Morning Herald
ABC Online - ABC Online
all 95 news articles »

Sydney Morning Herald
Knives come out for final act
New Zealand Herald, New Zealand - 11 hours ago
By Greg Ansley The battle to succeed John Howard as leader of the Liberals has already begun. Photo / Getty Images As Labor Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd ...
Downer out as senior Libs jockey Melbourne Herald Sun
With new Labor in place, can new Liberalism be far behind? The Age
Libs more harmonious than ever: Hockey Melbourne Herald Sun
Melbourne Herald Sun - The Age
all 551 news articles »

Time Travel

"I am focused on spending my waking hours and my energy over the next three days in saying to that group of people ... if you think that Howard hasn't done a bad job, if you think the economy's good and national security's being looked after, if you're flirting with change just for the sake of change, remember that you can't have a changeless change of government." John Howard.

"John Howard is running in this election to retire, it's an extraordinary thing, unprecedented in Australian political history that a leader walks into an election campaign and says I'm going. The problem with being a lame duck, and John Howard is a lame duck, is that your promises don't count. Anything you say does not bind your successor." Kim Beazley.





He didn't know why he was wanted. It wasn't safe anymore. Cracks kept appearing where ever he looked, he didn't know why. His head was full of things he shouldn't have known. There were even little video clips running in his head of their last dozen visits. They were being watched, even back then. He wished he could withdraw everything that had happened, but it was impossible. Regret was mashed up with a jumbling set of priorities, he would have to act. His boss was at him, again and again. She never gave up. He swallowed every last shred of dignity and bowed his head to his desk. There was no way out.

There was more political turmoil running on the screens constantly, politicians denouncing each other in a strangely restrained way; as if the truth was something no one could face. For a moment, deciphering the streams of propaganda, he thought it was a fight between those with implants and those without. He could see the government's press releases, call them up in chronological order, collate them by topic. It was useless information and his head was full of it.

Don was no ordinary friend. Their friendship blossomed in a different time; away from the fluorescent lights that now pierced his soul; in quiet suburban streets where secret networks pulled towards each other; where all their lives had been destroyed by government agencies and there was nowhere to go. There was no sanity in the system. There was nothing to keep them safe; nothing to make them belong. He crawled up inside and knew the answer; plain as the nose. It was all there, the recordings of their conversations. Strangely, considering the normally shot nature of his memory, he could recall every last word of their last encounter. That cryptic look, those cryptic words. It all made sense now. How far would he betray someone, for the sake of a story? How far was he driven, to do what he did?

THE BIGGER STORY:

Howard says Rudd would be for life, not just Christmas
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 1 hour ago
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, who today received a 90000-signature petition calling for the laws to be scrapped, challenged Mr Howard to release the ...
'Bomber' flies last mission for Rudd The Age
Kevin Rudd slips slightly in poll Melbourne Herald Sun
Rudd's approach to economy hijacks Coalition's strongest selling point The Age
International Herald Tribune - NEWS.com.au
all 379 news articles »

The Age Rudd would seek four-year fixed terms
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 5 hours ago
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd told reporters he would put the issue to a referendum if he won government. "I do not believe it is proper for the prime ...
Rudd's $5m mentor plan Sydney Morning Herald
Rudd visit inspires a case of school daze The Age
Teen girl faints as Rudd mobbed Melbourne Herald Sun
The Age - ABC Online
all 159 news articles »
Rudd given anti-Work Choices petition
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 9 hours ago
Labor leader Kevin Rudd has been presented with a petition signed by 90000 people opposed to the Howard government's industrial relations laws. ...
Rudd can't fathom workchoices secrecy Melbourne Herald Sun
ALP ramps up Work Choices scare campaign Sydney Morning Herald
PM denies second wave of IR reforms LIVENEWS.com.au
NEWS.com.au - The Age
all 176 news articles »
Kevin Rudd's 'cocky little smirk' won't work - Alexander Downer
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia - 7 hours ago
LABOR leader Kevin Rudd's "cocky little smirk" and cliche-driven style won't wash with voters, says Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer. ...
Downer attacks Rudd's 'cocky little smirk' Daily Telegraph
Press ganged into that sinking feeling The Age
all 14 news articles »

Gulf Times Australia's Rudd will sign Kyoto pact if wins vote
Reuters - 18 Nov 2007
By Rob Taylor CANBERRA, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Australia's Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd said on Monday he would lead his country's delegation to December's ...
Rudd won't commit Garrett to portfolio Sydney Morning Herald
Rudd sets emission target The Age
Carbon copies the order of the day The Age
AFP - NEWS.com.au
all 117 news articles »

LIVENEWS.com.au Rudd won't pull Liberal appointees from diplomatic postings
ABC Online, Australia - 12 hours ago
Federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd says he will not recall former Liberal politicians who have been appointed to diplomatic roles if he wins government. ...
Rudd to keep pm's diplomatic postings The Age
State 'will lose clout' with Rudd Advertiser Adelaide
You're toast, says one happy little Vegemite to the PM Sydney Morning Herald
LIVENEWS.com.au
all 11 news articles »
Waxing frugal, praise rings in Rudd's ears
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 21 hours ago
Future aspirants will note there is no evidence it damaged Kevin Rudd's standing and it did give him something to joke with Rove mcmanus about - "I was just ...


LIVENEWS.com.au Media complicit in Rudd's spin
LIVENEWS.com.au, Australia - 13 hours ago
There has been criticism, as you know, of Kevin Rudd pulling out of difficult engagements with the media. I have no problem about that, he's entitled to go ...
Howard is a big finisher but Rudd still holds the cards Courier Mail
Poll will be closely, says Rudd Sydney Morning Herald
Polls have Rudd winning nailbiter NEWS.com.au
Melbourne Herald Sun - Special Broadcasting Service
all 106 news articles »

Sky News Australia Election an IR 'referendum'
The Age, Australia - 8 hours ago
Labor leader Kevin Rudd says Prime Minister John Howard wanted the election to be a referendum on industrial relations - and he's got it. ...
workchoices clash Sky News Australia
maccormack: The government's bad luck campaign continues Crikey (subscription)
It's not workchoices, it's the economy: Hockey The Age
ABC Online - NEWS.com.au
all 59 news articles »
Rudd dismisses interviews criticism
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia - 13 hours ago
LABOR leader Kevin Rudd has dismissed criticism that he has not made himself available for challenging news interviews, instead preferring soft media ...

Gaps In The Transmission

"He passed houses and tenements which had grown into desolation the way a man grows into senility, unnoticed, with a fragmentary concern; each existed on the edge of life, and carried the despair of being incomplete. He moved towards the centre of town, but swung round after a few minutes, avoiding the centre. It was clear to him, in this peculiar light of evening, that the days of youth were really gone: the smooth days, the balmy days, the days of no decisions had petered out, like a disused road."

Randall Flynn


There were gaps in the transmission, when he stepped over the edge into a vast silence; when the mall that was his face held corrupted secrets; and all was lost. These moments never lasted long; as he sat at his desk, dialing routinely, pretending to be busy. There wasn't any way out, or through. He could guess. The crime linked back through other crimes; and his own vageries, his own indulgences, were swept away by the passing days; his skeleton on the planet surface, his strong desire for release.

The termination date, however, came as an unpleasant surprise. he had always thorught he would be there forever, his consciousness just not the type to be washed away easily. Somehwere, in the internal alley ways, he would survive, hunted but alive. He could see the date, ten years hence, as if on a digital clock, hanging in his brain. Would he betray his friend? Without proof, but with absolute certainty. Would they find the evidence to prove his madness? Did he know anymore, if at all, what he stood for?

The timescales were impossible, he knew. The country has been enveloped in an election. The ads batter each other on television, 70% of a Rudd Labor government would be former union officials, the ads pound. And Labor fights right back. Don't let Howard and Costello expand the IR laws. They fight only on the grounds on which they're comfortable. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion, the Liberal National government heading towards defeat; or annihilation on some predictions. Howard could lose his own seat. They stare defeat in the face. The tumult and the shouting will die down. And half the country is barracking for one man's disaster; the shocked stare out the window of the government limousine. The end of an era.

THE BIGGER STORY:


Turkish Press
Five days left and Howard looks a goner
New Zealand Herald, New Zealand - 10 hours ago
By Greg Ansley CANBERRA - Prime Minister John Howard today starts his final week of campaigning for Saturday's elections so far behind the only question ...
Australia's battlers 'to turn on John Howard' Telegraph.co.uk
Howard, Rudd switch to all-out attack Melbourne Herald Sun
Howard attacks Rudd on mining boom ABC Online
Earthtimes - The Age
all 313 news articles »

The Age
Howard shores up Asian vote
ABC Online, Australia - 2 hours ago
By Peta Donald Prime Minister John Howard talks to members of the Sydney Sae Soon Presbyterian Korean Church. (AAP: Paul Miller) It is almost 20 years since ...
Howard losing the Koreans and Chinese Sydney Morning Herald
Rudd, Howard deny cockiness on campaign trail ABC Online
God likes Liberal policies: Howard Sydney Morning Herald
New Zealand Herald - Telegraph.co.uk
all 46 news articles »

Sydney Morning Herald
JOHN HOWARD has always been shrewd but, famously, he has also had ...
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 13 hours ago
Bad luck, John. Even after embracing climate change as a cause last year, Howard still has trouble mentioning it without immediately adding the word "but". ...
World won't end tomorrow due to climate change - Howard NEWS.com.au
Environment goes from bad to worse Sydney Morning Herald
Poll spotlight on climate The Age
ABC Online - Border Mail
all 94 news articles »

Sydney Morning Herald
'I'd take Howard in a bar fight'
NEWS.com.au, Australia - 13 hours ago
And he didn't disappoint, admitting he was a nerd but saying he could beat John Howard in a bar fight. Mr Rudd was forced to use his skills as a diplomat to ...
Rudd shows soft side on Rove show NEWS.com.au
Leaders gear up for final campaign week ABC Online
It's not workchoices, it's the economy: Hockey The Age
Sydney Morning Herald - ABC Online
all 88 news articles »
Howard promises drug crackdown
NEWS.com.au, Australia - 18 hours ago
... Government would take control of the welfare payments of people convicted of offences involving hard drugs, Prime Minister John Howard announced today. ...
Howard to withhold welfare from drug offenders ABC Online
AMA slams Howard drug plan Gold Coast News
Welfare plan to hit drug users The Age
Sydney Morning Herald - Sydney Morning Herald
all 59 news articles »
Girl faints as Rudd visits
The Age, Australia - 52 minutes ago
Quizzed about his breakfast preferences on Network Ten's 9am with David and Kim, he said he liked simple fare and, like John Howard, he makes it himself. ...

Sydney Morning Herald
Vaile denies Coalition split
ABC Online, Australia - 1 hour ago
Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull has today denied newspaper reports that he has privately criticised Prime Minister John Howard for staying on and has ...
Vaile says sorry to auditor Melbourne Herald Sun
Regrets, the Deputy pm's had a few The Age
PM backs Vaile over grants The Age
The Age - ABC Online
all 73 news articles »

The Age
Election defeat looms for ‘big spender’ John Howard
Times Online, UK - 17 Nov 2007
JOHN HOWARD, Australia’s prime minister since 1996, may be ousted in federal elections next Saturday, polls suggested this weekend. ...
The most important week of all? The Age
Labour’s Rudd set to oust Howard in Australian election Sunday Business Post
Try-hard looks good to beat the devil you know The Australian
The Australian - Melbourne Herald Sun
all 13 news articles »

The Polluted Line

These were the points of shame; the entire public debate polluted with negativity, hostility, lies in the old format. There wasn't going to be any salvation, any way back. The public discourse had been entirely corrupted. His brain kept flitting across the extra domains of information it had acquired; the maps that showed him where his friend Don lived; the telephone number; all of it.

And oddly, he could see a list of all the numbers Don had called over the past six weeks; although there were patterns in the numbers. He could see, he didn't know how; that he had trouble with his plumbing a fortnight ago and called both his landlord and an emergency plumber; that he had been robbed and had to replace all his credit cards. But something inside him told him more; that one of those numbers held the key.

But who's side was he on? That's what he wanted to know.

Any progress? his boss asked yet again.

And he shook his head again; lying, again.

Partly because he couldn't explain how he knew what he knew. And partly because he kept glimpsing the full depth of Austin's bastardy; the callous disregard for those who had appeared before him; the sounds of children crying, daddy, daddy. And he was unconvinced the world was not a better place without him.

The thought kept recurring: should he tell someone the implant wasn't working? Should he go back to the doctors? Should he just let the chasms that kept opening up take their course? He didn't know, he just really didn't know.

THE BIGGER STORY:

THE AGE:

A bugger of a sorry life

Jewel Topsfield
November 10, 2007


WHEN Jackie Kelly decided to quit her seat of Lindsay in Sydney's western suburbs, the home of the mythical Howard battler, she famously declared politics was a "bugger of a life".

John Howard was probably inclined to agree after he courageously, some might say foolishly, visited the mortgage-belt electorate in the same week he declared he was sorry — but was not apologising — for a rate rise, and then blamed the other mob for playing word games. Quizzed ad nauseum about when sorry did not mean sorry, Mr Howard clarified on radio that he was the Prime Minister and not an English teacher.

He then dropped in on working-class Lindsay, held by a precarious 3 per cent by Ms Kelly, who came to symbolise the Coalition's success in winning seats considered Labor territory.

Mr Howard visited a fencing factory, where everyone was apparently loving workplace agreements, before braving the uncharted territory of Penrith shopping plaza.

There was chaos and carnage. The Prime Minister was mobbed by shoppers, demanding handshakes, kisses, photos — and to know what he was going to do about interest rates and climate change. One woman was knocked out cold by a rampaging soundie in the thick of the media scrum.