The Comforting Cloud

*



Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Bertrand Russell

http://www.smh.com.au/national/cross-off-the-drugs-into-binge-drinking-20090508-axzx.html

While the driving forces behind Kings Cross's safe injecting room were this week celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Wayside Chapel's original "act of civil disobedience" in setting up its tolerance room, the area's new scourge was identified by police, the City of Sydney Council, and residents. The drug doing the damage is the legal one: alcohol.

The face of Kings Cross has changed momentously in 10 years. Tourists have been replaced by thousands of middle-class residents occupying what were once the Top of the Town, the Hyatt, the Sebel, the Rex, the Gazebo, the Chevron and the Commodore hotels. But the Cross's increasing density as an "entertainment district", with new bars open to 3am and 6am, has collided with that demographic change. On Darlinghurst Road, the old Westpac Bank is now the Sugarmill; the old Hungry Jack's is the Elk; the old Commonwealth Bank is Madam de Biers. On Bayswater Road, the Mansions Hotel, Hugo's Lounge and other bars generate such late-night crowds that buses cannot use the road.

A City of Sydney study found that alcohol-related crime had soared due to an increase in late-night licensed premises. Licensing officers and council rangers were overstretched and extra police numbers were not sustainable, said the acting commander of Kings Cross police, Darren Schott: "There is a direct correlation between the density of alcohol establishments and the level of crime."

A former Wayside pastor, the Reverend Ray Richmond, said drug use paled beside "the more destructive and pervasive alcohol problem".

Local residents are saying the Cross is the worst it has ever been. Cath Lyons, who has lived in the area since the 1950s, said: "It's much worse than when the Americans were here in the 1960s, and the worst I've known it, due to the alcohol. It used to be that the worst that would happen to you walking through the Cross was that someone would pinch your bum. Now you're scared someone will push a broken bottle into your face."

Malcolm Knox.



And then there was none. That's what we found in the haunted wood. That's what we found, too terrified to move off the couch. How very blank the walls had become. How very frenetic was the world that awaited. Major reforms. Major projects. There was nothing he needed more than voice recognition software. Come what may, come the cruel tides. He could hear the echo chamber so vast. So many times he should have just gone out. She was a nightmare. He continued to dance on a high wire. It soon gave way to a narrow path, with steep valleys and cliffs on either side. Oh how absolutely gorgeous those days had been. It had all meant to lead to something. Where it led was the distant past. Where it led was abnegation, a body for sale. Rent boy. Pay the price. And so he had wandered into old age utterly unprepared; as for so many others. He was cross at the divides.

Why did that girl look so sad, that day in the labyrinths of Istanbul? Why did he always regret not tipping the Aia more? Why did he know she could be beaten as a result? Why did he still hear that boy being beaten mercilessly in the slums of Calcutta, and no one intervening? IN ossified time, there was a time to stop, to shift focus; to do what should have been done long ago. He was compromised but willing. Soft tissue would always give way. Once again he expounded on his theory of humans being like dogs, if you're vulnerable they attack. Just see how people behave differently if you're limping from a sore foot. He was shocked at the indifference so often displayed. He paid to be cared for. He spent a month in the bars of Berlin once, and even that was a presage to something greater, he knew not what. Couldn't we be sure of answer? Couldn't we be assured it would all end well.

So that was it. One project morphed into another and he decided to end it. He wasn't going to be reassured by anything now. There was no denying things had grown seriously weird. Liquid creatures danced just on the periphery of his vision, but he could never catch them straight on. All of a time, all of a wine, things were different then. Could any stir be more complete? How ghostly would that be, living in a car by the river bank? She was completely undone, scrambled, lost, homeless. The dance floor had become the mean floor. We weren't ready to be resurrected yet. The offers had been there, spiritual tunnels into other worlds, but he hadn't chosen to take any of them. Why? He just didn't want to; here in the prosaic. Safe. Warm. Subtle. There was no one left to argue.

This was why, in those late night conversations, he became increasingly amazed at the colourful stories that came rolling out. There in that derelict house? How did you get here, how did your life get to this? He was looking at his friend, at the bottle of wine on the messy table, at the shadows and graffiti sprawling across the crumbling plaster, The drunken queen, the right wing vigilante, none of these were enough. He had to play the Ordinary Joe. That was the only thing he was good at, playing the part. The real Edward had left long ago, too disappointed at the wasted opportunities of a half-lived life to bear the remorse a moment longer. Oh come now, please be near. Please embrace the ordinary heart. Please endure for the sake of others. Please lie down and remember lost love. Because nothing will make a difference now. Nothing. She couldn't begin to feel more disassociated than she already was.

What parties, what parties they were, generations ago, before the rich occupied all the best vantage points and an ancient wealth began to cloak the older, more established, more sought after suburbs. He was never going to be free of these concerns. And yet there was hope, plenty of it. He knew there were ways to recover. He had known for a long time. So he reached down to that dance floor, old before his time, rattled to the four winds, and picked up a cigarette butt, mistaking it for the things he had lost. And he knew then that he could reach no further into the chaos before full blown psychosis set in. So he went to the bar, because the bar always offered peace, the music behind him, the lights, a drag queen tottering in front of him, the girls getting ready for the show. Air kisses. Feathers. Arch camp and decamp. He wasn't going to find peace anywhere but at the bottom of a bourbon and coke; praying they didn't water it down. Too much money slipped through his fingers. He knew he had gone too far.

But it didn't matter then how off your lolly you were, you still got served; and soon enough he was nursing a bourbon and surveying the traffic, hoping for more. Well, anything at this point. Anyone who would understand. Anyone who was hot. Long before the doubts set in. Long before the world changed. He was going to San Francisco and he was going to feed the squirrels in the park, just as he had done as a kid. He was going to see a world transformed utterly, even in the time he had been alive. He was going to the Thai Islands, even though mansions now coated the bays where little huts once rented for five dollars a day. Google Docs is amazing, I'm surprised more people don't know about it, the doctor said. The technology, we agreed, two men in their fifties. All in our lifetime. Our kids lifetime. And so it was, in an unresolved flurry, that one story ended and another began.




THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/world/middleeast/11intel.html?hp

WASHINGTON — As Taliban militants push deeper into Pakistan’s settled areas, foreign operatives of Al Qaeda who had focused on plotting attacks against the West are seizing on the turmoil to sow chaos in Pakistan and strengthen the hand of the militant Islamist groups there, according to American and Pakistani intelligence officials.

One indication came April 19, when a truck parked inside a Qaeda compound in South Waziristan, in Pakistan’s tribal areas, erupted in a fireball when it was struck by a C.I.A. missile. American intelligence officials say that the truck had been loaded with high explosives, apparently to be used as a bomb, and that while its ultimate target remains unclear, the bomb would have been more devastating than the suicide bombing that killed more than 50 people at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September.

Al Qaeda’s leaders — a predominantly Arab group of Egyptians, Saudis and Yemenis, as well as other nationalities like Uzbeks — for years have nurtured ties to Pakistani militant groups like the Taliban operating in the mountains of Pakistan. The foreign operatives have historically set their sights on targets loftier than those selected by the local militant groups, aiming for spectacular attacks against the West, but they may see new opportunity in the recent violence.

Intelligence officials say the Taliban advances in Swat and Buner, which are closer to Islamabad than to the tribal areas, have already helped Al Qaeda in its recruiting efforts. The officials say the group’s recruiting campaign is currently aimed at young fighters across the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia who are less inclined to plan and carry out far-reaching global attacks and who have focused their energies on more immediate targets.

“They smell blood, and they are intoxicated by the idea of a jihadist takeover in Pakistan,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former analyst for the C.I.A. who recently led the Obama administration’s policy review of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/article.aspx?id=330865

Swan says huge deficit necessary
Updated: 12:46, Monday May 11, 2009

Australia's huge deficit is necessary because without a deficit there would have to be a huge increase in taxes or a massive cuts in services, the government says.

When Treasurer Wayne Swan hands down the 2009/10 budget on Tuesday it is expected to show a deficit of up to $70 billion and forecasts of a $200 billion drop tax revenue over the next four years.

Responding to criticism from federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull that the government was spending money recklessly and building up a huge mountain of debt, Mr Swan said there was no realistic alternative.

'The reason why the deficits are higher and will last for longer is because of the massive revenue write-downs that have come from the global recession,' he said.

'It's not a consequence of government spending and that's what the opposition hasn't recognised.

'If they were in government now, and they would claim that they wouldn't be running these deficits and the borrowing to go with them, they would have to massively slash existing government services or massively increase government taxes to make up for this lost revenue caused by the global recession.

'They, like the current government, would have to borrow, because the consequence of not doing that would be a savage attack on services or dramatic increases in taxes, which would make the recession deeper and longer.'
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/articles/2009/05/09/1241727662559.html

A MAN was left unconscious in a Sydney street after an argument with his drinking companions turned physical and he was kicked in the head and stomped on.

The victim and two other men were drinking together at a club in Kellett Street, Kings Cross, just before 4am yesterday when an argument broke out.

"The trio left the club and the dispute turned physical with two of the men assaulting the other, causing him to fall to the ground," police said in a statement.

"Another man joined in the attack and the victim was repeatedly kicked and punched to the head. One of the offenders also stomped on the victim's head.

"The offenders ran from the scene."

Police and ambulance officers were called to the club and found the man lying unconscious on the ground outside.

He was treated at the scene and regained consciousness before being taken by ambulance to St Vincent's Hospital.



Flynn.

And Then There Was None

*



‘You say Mr. Quamby you left your pension money in the bank, which bank?’
‘That one there,’ says Charlie pointing directly at the empty box clearly marked “Cooking Salt”.
‘Besides you Mr. Quamby, who else has knowledge that the wooden container marked cooking salt is actually where you prefer to hide your pension money?’
‘Well for starters, Fred knows,’ says Charlie.
‘Anyone perchance,’ says Roberto, ‘with two legs and maybe answering to the description of being, a human being, Mr Quamby?’
‘Struth, I reckon, just about everyone I know, being a pensioner I have most of my stuff delivered, need to have the cash handy to pay them you see.
I am here most days anyway, except every second Thursday when I collect the pension and of course the very next day, if it is not raining, I play bowls and my two best mates Bountiful and Debonair bring me home from the club.’

A flash of lightning, a shuffling of molecules, and life for Franz Kafka Molekel will never be the same. His sudden metamorphosis from a bright young lad into an energetic and clever jack russell terrier brings a neverending series of amazing challenges and adventures into Franz’s life.

Ian Derrick



Oh how could this be, shattered of course, cringing in pain, but also triumphant, dignified, piercing in the way he controlled himself. Gersch; who couldn't drive his vehicle without breathing into a breathaliser which would automatically stop the car if he was over the limit, was always happy to tell stories. He had already heard the stories of love and obsession. Old ladies made themselves available to him, but he wasn't interested any more. Why they laughed so much he would never know. There was a certain discrete passion about the way he presented himself. And Gersch told the most hysterical of all the stories, in the round table on cats. It began with a bloke, bearded, from the mountains, Keith, they called him, who had adopted their little watering hole and was often present, a gracious contrarian who always wanted to argue, coming up with illogical theories just to prove he was a thinker.

Keith told the story of the cat that would always be up a tree on the path from the train station whenever he came home. Didn't matter whether it was two in the morning or two at night. Up the tree. Waiting. How did he know when I was coming home? Keith asked. And the blokes all nodded at the great, whimsical mysteries, as the blokes drank their schooners and thought about ordering another $10 jug, the Glengarry speciality. The cat up the tree story had followed anothoer about the cat next door who was so fat it had to be virtually wheeled around; amidst uproarous laughter about how it had grown even fatter in the absence of Margaret, who had gone to Scotland, leaving Frazer in charge. Frazer had been drinking campari and vodka mixed together all afternoon; and was just in the mood for story telling. Oh he could tell a few.

But this was just a silly yarn about the cat who would only drink from the bath tap or the shower; and it reminded him of the cat which had been trained to sit on the toilet. Then it was his turn, in the great camaraderie of blokedom, and he told the story of the cat his ex had dumped on him one day. The cat was called Mosquito and was an American snow cat, or some such thing, supposedly worth money, rather attractive if you ignored it's personality. But he just hated the damn thing; hated it from the moment it was dumped on him. The kids liked it, but he didn't, and whenever the young ones weren't watching he would do his best to drive it away, chasing it around the house with a broom, giving it all the encouragement he could to seek a better place. The day it shat on his bed was the day it signed its death warrant.

He had been thinking for days of cornering it, for by this stage they truly hated each other, taking it up to the university and releasing it. Someone would find it. Someone would love it. And then it pooed on his bed and that was it. He cornered it; must have taken a good hour to catch the damn thing; put it in a box and had taken it to the euphemisticallhy named Cat Protection Society. The concerned, earnest, animal loving luvvies behind the counter were so concerned; as he dumped the box with the whining screaching cat inside. I just can't cope with it anymore. I can't look after it. My ex dumped it on me and I just don't want it. So rather than blaming him, they rang her; and she, bless her, told them in no uncertain terms that the cat known as Mosquito could get stuffed, they could get stuffed and who were they to moralise to her? So she attracted the moral censure, not him; and ducked through the traffic back across the road, relieved.

And then Gersch began his story. He had been lonely when a little kitten showed up on his door; they had looked at each other, both lonely, and suddenly it was as if they belonged to each other. The cat needed him and he needed the cat. The neighbours also all loved the cat, and Gersch became something of a local hero for adopting the stray. Until it began to shit in the house. It shat in the bedrooms, it shat in the kitchen, it shat in the loungeroom. If he dwent away for a couple of days there would be cat poo from one end of the house to the other. Slowly the poo began to grind into the carpet, there was so damn much of it. He had never met an animal which could produce so much excrement. He, too, began to hate the cat which he had once thought so cute. It had to go.

One day, one poo too many, he too cornered his cat, put it in a box despite its wailing protests, drove it down to Woolloomoolloo near Harry's Cafe de Wheels, a Sydney landmark, grabbed the protesting cat out of the box and literally threw it out the car window. He drove off before he could even determine if it had landed on the ground alright. He had had enough. He told the neighbours the cat had disappeared, and there was much local distress at the disappearance of the much loved piece of fluff. People, of course, care more about animals than they do each other; particularly in a city where the people are more like pack dogs. Concerned young women kept knocking on the door; asking if there had been any sign of Fluff. Finally there was a spurt of excitement, he had been spotted down at Woolloomoolloo. I'll go searching for him; Gersch assured him, the lie beginning to amplify.

I searched, I searched everywhere, he told the earnest women of the neighbourhood, I just couldn't find him. Instead, of coursse, he had just gone to the pub and had a few more than usual in celebration of the cat's disapperance. But he kept up the pretence of deep concern at his front door; each time the neighbours, some of whom he would be happy to bed, if not wed, came knocking. Eventually a woman showed up with Fluff tucked in her arms; enormously excited at her great achievement in having found the cat living on the streets down at Woolloomoolloo. Like a boomerang the damn thing had come back. He shut the door and looked in disbelief at the poo machine in front of him, bundled it into his car, drove it up to his sister's place in the country, the cat shrfieking all the way in fear after what had happened last time it got into a car. But unlike the rest of us, the cat lived happily ever after at his sister's house in the country. And all else failed, they failed, but the laughter grew more maniacal as they tensed; waiting, for a future which could bring only fear and disgust.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/10/2565667.htm?section=world

The Pope has condemned what he called ideological manipulation of religion as he addressed the crowd at Jordan's largest mosque.

This is the Pope's second day in Jordan as part of his tour of the Middle East.

Speaking inside the gleaming new Amman mosque built by the Jordanian royal family, Pope Benedict made a heartfelt plea to followers of Christ and Prophet Mohammed to bury past misunderstandings and work together constructively for the benefit of the small Arab kingdom.

The Pope was shown a precocious relic - a letter written on animal skin by the Prophet himself to a Christian emperor of Byzantine nearly 1,400 years ago.

The letter asked the emperor to convert to Islam and the emperor declined.

The Pope has been treading an increasingly careful path in order not to say or do anything in public that is likely to offend either his Muslim hosts or the Jewish authorities who will be his host in Jerusalem next week.

But even so there has been some carping.

Earlier in the day the Pope talked of inseparable bonds between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people, to which some clerics in Jordan reacted angrily.

Others remarked the Pope failed to remove his shoes when he visited the mosque in accordance with Muslim custom.

Yesterday, Jordan's Queen Rania welcomed Pope Benedict upon his arrival at the royal palace in Amman

The King and Queen gave the German pontiff a red carpet welcome at Queen Alia Airport as he began his eight-day pilgrimage, which will on Monday take him to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25453397-5012689,00.html

ELENA Dokic always had an excuse for the bruises and welts, but everyone in tennis knew she was being abused. So why was nothing done to protect her?

Growing up, Dokic would tell people she had taken a tumble on the tennis court. Or that her younger brother, Savo, was learning karate and had practised his holds on her.

But as her career began to take off and she was still in her teens, hotel walls weren't thick enough to hide the terrible truth.

The tennis world has long known what was revealed to the rest of the world during the week, that Damir Dokic physically abused his daughter.

"I know people who were in the next-door hotel room after she'd lost matches and he used to beat the s--- out of her,'' tennis legend John Newcombe said.

"When she was a junior, he was belting her in a car park down in Victoria and a court case came up about that. But she wouldn't testify, so it was dropped. Why would you testify? You've got to go home and he's going to belt you again.''

Even though Dokic hasn't spoken to her father in five years, he still torments her life.
In 2006, when she returned to Australia by herself, he threatened to kidnap her.

This past week he threatened to have a bazooka delivered to his doorstep and fire at Australia's ambassador in Belgrade. He was arrested with two bombs found in his Serbian home.
Now he claims he was joking.

Jelena Dokic has never said directly that her father abused her. It was implied.It was Damir who admitted the abuse during the week.

"When I was young I was beaten by my parents,'' Damir told Serbian newspaper Vecernje Novosti, "and I am now thankful to them for that because that helped me to become the right person.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/10/pakistan-mingora-taliban-swat-fortress

The skiing season at Malam Jabba, Pakistan's only ski resort, is over. Yesterday the pistes echoed with the sound of explosions as fighter jets screamed overhead, part of the Pakistan military's intensifying campaign to dislodge the Taliban from the Swat valley.

An hour's drive away in Mingora, the war-racked valley's main town, the Taliban and army are readying for an urban battle unprecedented in the short history of Pakistan's battle against the Taliban.

Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, yesterday said the army was fighting for "the survival of the country", speaking after an emergency cabinet meeting.

The country's leaders, encouraged by the United States, launched the full-scale offensive in Swat last week in order to halt the spread of Taliban control which had reached districts within 60 miles of the capital, Islamabad. The battle has now been taken to the heart of the north-west region of the country which the Taliban has seized as its power base, and in particular to the beleaguered, frightened town of Mingora.

This once bustling riverside community, nestled between orchards and rolling mountains, has become a hub of the dispossessed and the desperate. Since fighting erupted last Tuesday, following the collapse of a fragile peace deal, tens of thousands of frantic residents have fled, scrambling on to buses, cars and even rickshaws. They left behind a ghost city controlled by the Taliban, under siege from army mortar fire and helicopter-gunship assaults, and tensed in the expectation of an army ground offensive that could lead to urban warfare reminiscent of Russian bids to clear Grozny, Chechnya, in 1999 and 2000.

At Mingora hospital yesterday embattled medics struggled to tend to dozens of residents injured by army shelling and stray gunfire. Riaz Khan, a 36-year-old teacher, his wife and two daughters occupied four of the beds, suffering shrapnel wounds to the arms and legs. His two other daughters were killed by an army mortar last week, he told an Associated Press reporter.

The Secret Streets

*



The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my
soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my
good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?

This ... government — what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the ... people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it.

Henry Thoreau



He wrote, movingly, profoundly, catching the multiple strings of the argument, a piece about trace memory, the struggle to survive in remote places, the voices that came down to him from the past. He was shattered and in awe of what was happening. The lyrical phrases pounded in one after the other. Then he pressed a button, went to publish, and asthe entire trace memory spiel disappeared; as if it, too, wanted to vanish into the ether, to show off the shallow nature of time, the way nothing would stick. Even that half hour he had spent writing it could never be retrieved. The words could never be rediscovered. Whatever was happening to him had a higher purpose; that he had always felt. Hence, of course, the great disappointment with the grinding present.

His life had been a preparation for something else. That was why it had all seemed so damned profound. Caught in sockets, flashed about in caves. That was why he could hear the ancestors; hear them in his blood and in his dreams. They were coming for him; but not yet, not yet. The human life span was so tiny and its concerns so insignificant it was natural to hope for more. Six billion stories and rising goes the tagline on SBS, a flickering screen in a derelict building, an alcoholic resident. He looked at the man, his friend of recent months, and thought: how did you get here? All the blokes warned him against Bridgette. He was shocked by the passing days. Shocked by the shallowness of his concerns, the predictability of his children, the queitness of the present; the roaming conversations.

Which is why he thought of red light districts; his habit of always seeking them out in strange cities; and of one of the most bizarre of them all, the red light district in Istanbul. First he had gone alone, then with his friend; finally an American sociologist asked if she could come along, but was blocked from entry by police at the gate. No women allowed. And then suddenly the path was cleared. They could enter. They passed through the gates, past the police, leaving the feminnist academic in their wake; he glanced back to see her still arguing with the security guard and smirked. There were still advantages to being male; entres into secret societies. And he looked once more on the strange scene before him. And smiled again.

There was a network of streets; each house a brothel. Outside each one a crowd of a hundred or more men had gathered. There was a liquid tension in the air, a certain smell, men on heat, a murmuring in the crowd. Every now and then a man would go forward and the crowd burst into applause. The women were of varying degrees of beauty. He had written this before. They were of varying degrees of beauty and varying prices. The crowds were thicker at the cheaper end. Down one alley, with the prices higher, the crowds thinned. He saw a slim, barely touched girl from the provinces and caught the look in her sad eyes. Your life not mine; and a spark of understanding passed between them. She was looking for a client. He was just another stranger in the crowd; but he was European, a tourist, would have more money, would treat her better. She smiled bravely; it was meant to be enticing.

But these liquid moments were rare; fancy going where so many had gone before. He returned to the more crowded sectors; his friend, sometime boyfriend, in tow. The cheaper women were fat, the rolls of their flesh billowing out of their garish outfits. He was shocked, decimated, by everything that had happened; love gone wrong, adventure gone wrong. These things were nothing to be frightened of. He couldn't be that bold. He couldn't lose everything all over again. He coldn't be that shattered again, ineffectual love, never enough money. He didn't want to be dependent on someone else; he wanted to make sure everything would work. He wanted to be certain everything was in place.

The crowd of muslim men pushed forward; as if getting closer to the forbidden could change their life; or at least relieve their tension. He knew how brief and unsatisfying the event they were paying for really was. In seconds it was over, after all the buildup. And strangers continued to bless him. Shapes continued to shift. Trace memories continued to haunt him. Momentarily diverted, nothing would ever be the same again. Not used to being told no, the woman academic had argued long past anything that was reasonable. They had bid their farewells, after arranging to meet at the same restaurant the following night; at the line of fish restaurants underneath the bridge. To see once again the Hagia Sophia; to be entranced by the oldest domed building in the world. And he glanced once more at the thrusting crowd; he could feel them, their urgency, the unlovely nature of men en masse. And he prayed for their souls to be released from the desperation of the flesh; as he sidestepped quickly into another realm, secrets in the winding alleys, beauty in despair.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/30/2556555.htm?section=justin

US President Barack Obama has called Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to express his thanks for the extra Australian troops being sent to Afghanistan.

Mr Obama says he personally thanked Mr Rudd for what he is describing as a substantial troop contribution.

The President says the 450 additional Australian soldiers will help enhance the training of Afghan security forces, support the approaching presidential election and bolster efforts to build and strengthen civilian institutions.

Mr Obama says greater commitments from countries like Australia are critical if Al Qaeda and the Taliban are to be defeated in Afghanistan.

But a leading defence expert says the decision to boost Australia's troop numbers is just a show of support for the US government.

Professor Hugh White told ABC 1's Lateline program that the increase is a symbolic gesture.

"I don't think it counts for much. I think the chances of this making any real difference to the situation there are low," he said.

"I think really it's best to look at it as a political strategy by the Prime Minister to address the very deep problem he has over supporting the US rather than a serious attempt to change the facts on the ground."




http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5juui7didNwh_vzBmJyrbjxkeF-IgD97SB1I80


ARNOLD, Mo. (AP) — Marking his symbolic 100th day in office, President Barack Obama told Midwesterners Wednesday: "I'm pleased with the progress we've made but I'm not satisfied." "I'm confident in the future but I'm not content with the present," the president told a town-hall style event in a St. Louis suburb.

Later, the president planned to head back to Washington to send that same message to the rest of the country at a prime time news conference.

Even as his administration sought to minimize the symbolism of the 100-day marker, the White House staged these two high-profile, high-visibility events to promote Obama's accomplishments while pressing his big-ticket agenda.

In office just three months, the Democrat enters the next phase of his new presidency with a high job approval rating and a certain amount of political capital from his history-making election last fall. But he also faces a thicket of challenges as he seeks to move ahead on multiple fronts both foreign and domestic amid recession and war. He will need continued public support to accomplish his lofty goals.

Thus, Obama used the anniversary — some aides derided it as a "Hallmark holiday" — to travel to Missouri to press his case.

"We have begun to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off, and we've begun the work of remaking America," Obama proclaimed. But he acknowledged, "We've got a lot of work to do because on our first day in office, we found challenges of unprecedented size and scope."

He defended his ambitious, costly plan, saying: "These challenges could not be met with half measures. They couldn't be met with the same, old formulas. They couldn't be confronted in isolation. They demanded action that was bold and sustained."

And, Obama countered critics who said he's taking on too much, as he works to turn around the recession while revamping energy, education and health care in the United States.

"The changes that we've made are the changes we promised," Obama said. "We're doing what we said we'd do."



http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25406815-5013871,00.html

TWO boats carrying almost 80 suspected asylum seekers have been intercepted by Border Protection Command, bringing to 17 the number of vessels detected since August.

The interceptions occurred less than 24 hours after the mysterious discovery by Customs of four suspected asylum seekers on Deliverance Island, 30 nautical miles off the coast of Papua New Guinea.

As more of the injured from the fatal boat explosion of two weeks ago left hospital - for immigration detention - Afghanistan's ambassador to Australia backed the Rudd Government's argument that global instability was behind the surge in arrivals.

One of the boats stopped yesterday was carrying seven people and was intercepted one nautical mile north of Ashmore Reef.

Sources said the passengers, who included at least one child, appeared to be Indonesian. The second boat was carrying about 72 people and was stopped 27 nautical miles west of Bathurst Island, just north of Darwin.

Several women and three or four children were believed to be aboard.

The interceptions occurred hundreds of kilometres apart, suggesting the boats were not travelling together.

They came less than a day after four people, understood to be two Afghans, a Sri Lankan and an Indian, were detected by a surveillance flight by a Customs helicopter.

No boat was found with the men.

Yesterday, a government source speculated the find could be a new trend, with people-smugglers preferring to drop their cargo and go home rather than stay with their passengers and risk arrest and prosecution.

Afghanistan's ambassador, Amanullah Jayhoon, told The Australian yesterday a recent crackdown by Pakistani and Iranian authorities on Afghan refugees was a major factor behind the spike in boat arrivals.

The Struggle To Survive

*



Lay Your Sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm:
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy,

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost.
All the dreaded cards foretell.
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought.
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

W. H. Auden
Lullaby.



Well of course things were faulty, he had disengaged. But the ancient voices were still clear. He could hear the wolves howling outside his family's humble, wooden plank cottage. Its earthen floor. The fire that provided them with warmth, dinner, emotional comfort. Many bad things had already happened, but there was no other choice except acceptance. Their fate had been chosen. He was walking in the darkness through the forest. Home was near and comfort everywhere, but he wasn't yet home free. Grey shadows lurked just beyond his field of vision. Everything was gone. He had been so strong and handsome; he knew it casually, the way people reacted around him. He carried authority. One day he would be leader of the village, despite the complications.

But this night was a different night and before there was any future of grandchildren and rotting teeth he had to make it home. This was where he became frightened, as if pre-destined. The horrors were out here. He had misjudged the timing; only the last glimmers of the day were in the sky now and with a moonless night sky it was almost impossible to see the path. Sometimes he thought he could see the glow of the village fires through the trees, smell the burning wood. But with the coming of winter people had moved indoors; and perhaps they hadn't even bothered to light a fire outside tonight. Wood had been scarce; their extreme poverty crippling the older folk so they barely had the energy to find wood, deep in the darkness.

The forest, as far as he knew, had no end, although their stories spoke of places where animals roamed free on great open grass lands. It was something he had always longed to see, but with the coming of children his own youthful dreams disintegrated; all shadows and rocks and threads of causal moments. He tripped over a log on the path, but was comforted by the accident because he could remember this very same log from the morning going out. His backpack was heavy from the rabbits he had artfully caught. Their speed and their size had made the catch very difficulty; and they had been far away; further than his competitors had been prepared to go at this time of year. But he was overwhelmed with love; a determination to protect the new-born, to provide the best to his children's mother; so he had set off early and told no one of his destination.

They would be beginning to worry now. The pot empty. The children grizzling as they went to bed with nothing but porridge, again. He could smell the blood of the rabbits on his back, and moved even quicker. He thought he recognised the shapes of the trees, he thought he recognised bends in the path. What was unmistakable was the movement of the hungry dogs in the forest as they followed him. Sometimes he caught a gleam of their eyes, hungry, almost evil, certainly the biggest threat he now faced. Briefly he had thought of leaving his cargo behind, the catch of which only a few hours before he had been so excited and triumphant about. But he knew he was close; and at last the path beneath his feet began to broaden as they approached the village.

It was as he had predicted. The children had been crying; they didn't like it when he wasn't there to protect them. His beloved barely looked up, stirring a pot full of twigs and grass and the only vegetables she could find. He dumped the load right next to her; and then she she smiled and climbed up and shouted thanks to the spirits. Any thought of the children going to bed hungry was banished now. He watched as she skillfully skinned his catch and threw the unfortunate animal in the pot; virtually whole. He was glad to get his shoes off; to shut the door on the bitter cold of the forest; to say hello to the ragged elements of his little band, her aging parents, his already being dead, his clawing children, an ancient uncle from his side. Everything about their survival fell to him.

These historical memories were triggered by the sight of fire, by the beginning of a cold winter. All would be shadows. Something was afoot. The other houses in their tiny collective were also feeling the impacts of the famine. Their crops had almost all failed this summer; rain never came, the season was short. These threads were a long way from supermarkets and welfare cheques without connection to effort. He was clear at the time that nothing would make any difference, genes would be passed down through generations, cold would always trigger the desire for fire and comfort. The bright packaging, the muzak, the queues, the ugliness of the grasping crowds; all of this lay in a future he could never imagine; here in the smoke stained walls of his family hut; here in the darkness of a forest so dense no one had ever escaped, here where his family struggled daily to survive, but could imagine no other life.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/27/2553179.htm?section=australia

Federal politicians are to receive $4,700 a year more in electorate allowances, taking the total yearly subsidy to $32,000.

It amounts to about $90 a week, three times what aged pensioners are calling for in terms of an increase to their pension.

The allowance is designed to cover electorate expenses, but any money not used at the end of each year is treated as personal income.

The Remuneration Tribunal says the allowance has not been changed since 2000, and inflation means politicians are still worse off in real terms.

Superannuation Minister Nick Sherry has defended the increase, saying the money is used for valid electoral purposes.

"Well I don't keep the money because it's the electoral allowance, it doesn't go into my pay, it doesn't go into my pocket, it's for expenditure in the electorate," Senator Sherry said.

"Typically I would spend it - and I spend all of mine - on things like like donations to sporting and community organisations, raffles, donations to individuals - they're the sorts of expenditures.

"That is what it's for, it's not pay as such."

http://www.smh.com.au/national/bikies-unite-to-fight-new-gang-laws-20090426-ajd9.html

A LEGAL challenge to new anti-gang legislation will be one of the first moves a new bikie club council will make.

In an unprecedented move, the largest outlaw motorcycle club in Australia, the Rebels, opened the gates of its Leppington national clubhouse to the media yesterday to show a publicly united front to the organised crime bill recently enacted by the State Government.

Members of all the main clubs in NSW except the Nomads arrived at the Bringelly Road clubhouse to shake hands and - publicly at least - present a peaceful and united front.

After watching a procession of bikies enter the fortified club house, the media were ushered inside by large, tattooed men wearing Rebels regalia.

Inside the large cement hall, with a boxing ring in one corner and a long bar against one wall, about 20 men in full club colours stood drinking and talking quietly.

Despite originally saying "interviews" would be available, the Rebels national president, Alessio "Alex" Vella, told the media there would be no questions and no comment except by barrister and long-time Rebels lawyer, Geoffrey Nicholson, QC, and a senior God Squad member who called himself "Fish".

"We're here to unite as one voice, to reassure the public that there's no ongoing disputes between the clubs," Fish said. "The council will be meeting for consultation and discussions on a regular basis. The clubs are united."

Some clubs were on "runs" so could not attend, he said.

Mr Nicholson then addressed the media, attacking the Criminal Organisations Control Act passed this month.

"It's important to remember that all that activity has been carried out under existing laws, not under these new laws."

The new laws were directed not only at the outlaw clubs, but at "any organisations or club in the community" and would limit freedom of speech and the freedom to associate, he said.

Basic civil liberties had been forsaken by the Government in order to target the clubs, Mr Nicholson said.

"Today a bike group, tomorrow perhaps a trade union, a dissident group. There is no restriction in that legislation," he said.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25390427-5013404,00.html

THERE were some signals of hope from the world's finance ministers in Washington but Wayne Swan appeared keen to talk it down yesterday, leaving open the possibility that the world might yet sink into another Great Depression.
A communique from finance ministers of the largest seven countries in the world said there were signs of stabilisation in the G7 economies and that "activity should begin to recover later this year amid a continued weak outlook".

But the Treasurer said the consensus in Washington was that the forecast remained "bleak".

As the Rudd Government plays the tricky task of managing expectations for its budget next month, maintain political support for its spending plans and blame any economic ills on events overseas, talk of the global contraction ending before a recession has even officially begun in Australia presents a challenge for Labor.

Asked in an interview on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund's spring meetings if there were encouraging signs in the global economy, Mr Swan said: "I don't think anyone is saying that. There are glimmers of hope and some signs of stabilisation, or at least of the contraction decelerating, that's all.

"If anything, the view here is that (the contraction) is likely to be deep and reasonably long and why we need to redouble our efforts taken in London (at the G20 meeting earlier this month).

"Yes, there is a sense at this stage the financial system is better than it looked for a while but nobody is claiming anything more than that." US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner acknowledged on the weekend that it would be "wrong to conclude that we are close to emerging from the darkness that descended on the global economy early last fall".







Penrith Train Station at sunset; I was out there covering an inquest and there's been a crackdown on cabcharges; hence the train station.

The Cold Morning Sun

*




Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shit out through wholesome
American guts.


Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin' lawmen,
feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for
Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where
nobody's allowed to mind the
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories-- all right let's see
your arms!

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

William Burroughs, Thanksgiving Prayer.




There was a spiralling wrath, a way forward, next, next, come into my parlour. They were marching forwards. There were threats on every side. But there was also hope. They were challenged in their fundamental beliefs. They crucified the darkness and welcomed the light. They were shadows flickering past in a crowded life. He could barely remeber the personalities who had played out so many years ago, why he had thought them so iimportant. Now, in the midst of a crack down, with police squads and their dogs roaming the street, with the Public Order vans parked prominently like a tinge of South America, Mexico, Argentina, places where crowds were bashed into submission and riots were not permitted.

The streets were dull, he couldn't deny that. The population was discontent. But more than anything he wanted to complete his mission; and now was confused by the sheer dreariness of the day after day routine. What happened to lurching from crisis to crisis? What happened to never growing old? I tell you life's different when you hit your eighties, a man said in the doctor's surgery. He looked up, happy enough to talk, to engage with anyone really in this day full of lonely holes and steady routines; voices which barely made it past the edidermus. And then he was proud, gathered, touched, they shared, as he had always shared, vulnerabilities rather than strengths, strange decays of thought and routine, collapsing lives.

But in fact things had never been so stable. This was the problem, perhaps. The kids were older and didn't need him so much. Suzy rang from Moree and sugested a visit, but they laughed, as if there couldn't be anything worse, anything duller than the Australian contry side and the troubled, dying towns which characterised the place. Heat, dust, the sides of roads. Flat countryside that stretched as far as anyone could see. And the urban shadows, the crowded ghosts which kept crowding in around him, as if a thousand people had died in these old houses, as if all their voices were coming back, their souls had not left. The land out there was full of ghosts of a different kind, ghosts the kids were immune to, would never believe.

But the ancient terraces they lived in in Redfern were equally riddled with ghosts; unhappier ones. Some just old, having lost the good fight and gone to the cemetery. And others who just lurked, virtually in the chimneys sometimes, looking on at a world they couldn't understand either. Everything had changed so fast. The ancient spirits which had survived the concrete were hard to access; reluctant to appear, almost dead. Their faint thoughts only came in moments of extreme clairvoyance. This wasn't going to be fun anymore. No wonder the old retirement age was 55. Where was the fun now, what was there to do? Would he just keep marching on until the tap on the shoulder.

Well all was not well. There was a sickness out there. In the present time in the present realm. A sickness of man's own making; and not the polluting mytho-poetic global warming ideologies which gave credibility to the most lunatic of the old hippy's drop out instincts. But they, too, grew old and everything they ever believed was swept away in the corroding dust. And so he smiled; his shattered, broken teeth, his aging face, his crumbling will to create. The antibiotics had worn him to a thin shred. Another day be brave; he said; and the bishop swang holy water at him and the first rays of sunshine hit the cold streets; an alley cat watched as he passed and soon enough the streets were once again full of strangers passing each other, bubbles of thought uncompromised. And he realised: he wasn't ready to die, yet. He didn't want to die at all. And the long dreams that threaded out into the future; that future which had rushed up so rapidly it was like being gusted in the wind from one decade to the other; he shivered in that first cold sun and headed straight for a morning coffee.




THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/26/2552728.htm?section=justin

The Federal Government says it will take up to four days for a Navy ship carrying a group of asylum seekers to reach Christmas Island.

The boat carrying 54 passengers and two crew was intercepted by HMAS Albany yesterday in international waters about 900 kilometres from Darwin, south-west of Ashmore Island.

The Navy found the boat after workers onboard an oil rig tender vessel saw it and contacted Customs.

The group boarded HMAS Albany voluntarily.

The Federal Government has not released details about their nationalities.

Meanwhile, 32 Sri Lankan men are being processed by authorities on Christmas Island after arriving there yesterday.

They had been on a boat which was intercepted near Barrow Island off the Western Australia coast on Wednesday.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/heavy-clashes-in-afghanistan-20090425-aitp.html

THE Department of Defence says Australian troops have inflicted heavy casualties on the Taliban in a series of operations in southern Afghanistan over the past month.

The Australian Defence Force released broad details of the fighting yesterday, five weeks after the operations began. The ADF statement included belated official confirmation that Australian special forces are fighting outside Oruzgan province, their normal area of operations.

Taliban forces were routed by special forces in fighting in Helmand province, while Australian troops supporting Afghan soldiers inflicted "numerous insurgent casualties" in Oruzgan, the statement said.

Release of the statement coincided with an Anzac Day visit to Afghanistan by Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon. He was accompanied by Keith Payne, 75, who was awarded a Victoria Cross in the Vietnam War.

The ADF said special forces had been involved in "major combat operations" in Helmand since March. They operated inside a Taliban stronghold for 26 days, and were involved in 11 major fights. On April 1, they faced determined resistance in a day of "heavy and sustained" fighting, but in the end the Taliban were "seriously routed".

One Australian serving with the special forces, Sergeant Brett Till, was killed on March 19.

Elsewhere, Australian mentoring and reconstruction troops were involved in intense fighting in Oruzgan province. The statement did not say when the clash occurred, but said it happened 12 kilometres north of the main Australian base at Tarin Kowt.

The Australians called in support from Dutch and US aircraft during the fight against almost 40 insurgents.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/burningIssues/idUKTRE53O23A20090425

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Saturday urged Iraqis to overcome their divisions as a spate of suicide bombings revived fears of a renewed sectarian war when U.S. troops withdraw.

Making a brief visit to Baghdad, her first since becoming secretary of state, Clinton sought to reassure Iraqis of U.S. support as Washington prepares to withdraw all its troops by the end of 2011.

The top U.S. diplomat arrived on a military transport plane a day after two female suicide bombers blew themselves up outside a Shi'ite Muslim shrine in Baghdad, killing 60 people in the deadliest single incident in Iraq in more than 10 months.

It was the third major attack in two days, bringing the death toll since Thursday to at least 150 people.

The attacks have fanned fears of a resurgence in violence as the United States prepares to pull its combat troops out of Iraqi cities by the end of June, to end all combat missions in August 2010 and to bring all forces home by the end of 2011.

At a meeting Clinton held with about 150 Iraqis at the U.S. embassy, an Iraqi journalist bluntly said many Iraqis were afraid of what would happen when U.S. troops left, and that people did not trust Iraqi security forces.

"There is nothing more important than to have a united Iraq," Clinton replied. "The more united Iraq is, the more you will trust the security services. The security services have to earn your trust but the people have to demand it."

The Sour City

*



I can travel
faster than light
so can you
the speed of thought
the only trouble
is at destinations
our thought balloons
are coated invisible
no one there sees us
and we can’t get out
to be real or present
phone and videophone
are almost worse
we don’t see a journey
but stay in our space
just talking and joking
with those we reach
but can never touch
the nothing that can hurt us
how lovely and terrible
and lonely is this

Les Murray



His career was a shocking request for action, for love, to restore old memories, embrace young faces, to regret and move forward. He wasn't ashamed, just bewildered. The mark of the devil had been upon him. All was not lost, but he was shattered by the changes that had occurred, not just in his own physical form but in the way people related to him, for the activity that was being discouraged, for the shattered flints that made up each waking moment. The traffic jam was 20 miles long, he swore. Thankfully they were heading the other way, in a taxi coming back from an inquest. He was talking animatedly to a very beautiful woman who, to make her more exotic, had grown up in Hong Kong of hippy parents. The shadows were fleeting, now that they were moving at 110 ks an hour, the legal limit.

And on the other side they weren't moving at all. They had the same conversation he had been having for days. Something has gone wrong. With this city. With the fabric of things. This sour city. If he mentioned it, people immediately knew what he was talking about. What is it? They would ask. It's just too difficult to live here anymore; we're grossly over-regulated and making a living in this place is becoming more and more impossible. There were shadows everywhere; fleeting in the trees, running away from them as they sped past. Imagine being stuck in that, he said to her? pointing to the traffic queue which stretched as far as they could see, literally. They had already passed the accident; there were ambulances and police and crushed cars, but he didn't see any bodies.

Astonishingly, as they continued to soar down the highway at 110ks an hour, the queue on the other side remained locked. All the way from the outskirts to the city's core. It would take any of them hours to get home. They had all paid their toll for the honour of sitting in the queue. Shadows were everywhere, glancing in the air. Cold, cold, he felt like reaching out and touching her, until she mentioned her partner and the conversation veered off into raising children and mad exes, vindictive women and appalling behaviour. It was all correct. The driver remained immune. Minute after minute passed, and still the line of traffic on the other side of the highway did not move. He shuddered but there was nowhere to go with it. Peace was not an option.

He felt like reaching out and touching her and felt like a thousand things could crush him. He was shocked by the rate of the spread of the disease. Someone had warned him, long ago. How very beautiful she was, suddenly, in the back of that taxi, the mind blowing traffic jam on the other side of the highway still stretching into infinity. The inquest into the death of the boy in the Blue Mountains, the apparent staggering indifference of the 000 operators to the repeatedly desperate calls of the severely dehydrated David Iredale, the emotion of it was so gripping, so draining, the parents sitting in the court room, the mother quietly weeping as the horrific details of multiple incompetencies continued to pour out. We were always going to be there. We were always going to be witnesses to this tragedy.

Their conversation spread rapidly across multiple topics, the inquest, of course, work, of course, other journalists, their copy, their determination, their quirks, as we struggled with the logistics of our own tight deadlines. Hers were looser than his, and she was happy to engage. They talked about her partner's two year old boy, who he had majority of custody of. The multiple sick tactics from multiple angles. They talked about life in Hong Kong; cities which were coming to a standstill because of traffic like that beside them, of the increasing impossibility of living in this sour city. How cut throat, how angry it had become. She told me the story of the people in her Camperdown Streets after she got out of the cab the previous evening; angry, violent, out of it. The city was crumbling, that was how everyone felt. There was no end to it.

There were people all around him descending into the quagmire, yet every day brought brighter lights. On the corner each evening in recent days a fight breaking out on the corner, the aboriginal women screaming. First thing in the morning as he walks out the door he sees this scene unfold: a white man is being bundled into the back of a police van. Nearby an aboriginal woman is screaming at the police. She is joined by two of her friends, who are shouting both at the police and each other. Groups of ten or more police had combed the suburb the previous evening with sniffer dogs. Their secret places were all busted. He sipped lemon squash in the beer garden of the local hotel and listened to outrageous stories. The pain of his infected tooth kept returning, making him irritable, even confused, exhausted by the antibiotics. But in moments in the back of taxis, with someone beautiful and intelligent and highly entertaining, every shadow vanished and in his destiny lay happiness. At the end of the journey, when the 20 mile long traffic queue merged with the city gridlock, they shared cigarettes in embarrassment that they hadn't quite given up altogether yet, neither of them should have smoked; and the twirls of stories they had been telling each other vanished into the asphalt and the night ahead, the story ahead.




THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/25/2552504.htm?section=justin

Tens of thousands of people have lined the streets of Australian towns and cities to cheer on veterans and their families taking part in this year's Anzac Day march.

Umbrellas decorated the parade ground at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra as war veterans and current servicemen and women marched past the Stone of Remembrance.

Governor-General Quentin Bryce delivered the commemorative address, saying the day was about coming together to pay respects and give thanks.

"We come to pay our respects and give our thanks to reflect deeply on what their offering means," she said.

Ms Bryce then joined Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and other dignitaries in the laying of wreaths.

The RSL says more than 20,000 veterans turned out for today's march in Sydney.

While the ranks of some units are thin, they say the descendants of some veterans are marching at the back of the group.

Many of the World War Two veterans, now in their 80s and 90s, are unable to walk, but are travelling in taxis and jeeps along the route of the march.

One of them, 84-year-old Stilton Woodhouse, says it is a day to remember those who never came home from war.

"It's not an occasion of celebrating war but of thinking of those that we lost during the bad times, when things were really bad," he said.

At the end of the march a commemoration service will be held at the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park.

Thousands also lined the streets of central Melbourne to watch the march through the city.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?bl&ex=1240804800&en=00c6c1fd04ee13be&ei=5087%0A

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — As the Taliban tightened their hold over newly won territory, Pakistani politicians and American officials on Thursday sharply questioned the government’s willingness to deal with the insurgents and the Pakistani military’s decision to remain on the sidelines.

In Pakistan’s Buner district on Thursday, a barber looked at the “Shave is forbidden” warning that the Taliban wrote on the window of his shop. The Taliban now control the region.
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Some 400 to 500 insurgents consolidated control of their new prize, a strategic district called Buner, just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, setting up checkpoints and negotiating a truce similar to the one that allowed the Taliban to impose Islamic law in the neighboring Swat Valley.

As they did, Taliban contingents were seen Thursday in at least two other districts and areas still closer to the capital, according to Pakistani government officials and residents.

Yet Pakistani authorities deployed just several hundred poorly paid and equipped constabulary forces to Buner, who were repelled in a clash with the insurgents, leaving one police officer dead.

The limited response set off fresh scrutiny of Pakistan’s military, a force with 500,000 soldiers and a similar number of reservists. The army receives $1 billion in American military aid each year but has repeatedly declined to confront the Taliban-led insurgency, even as it has bled out of Pakistan’s self-governed tribal areas into Pakistan proper in recent months.

The military remains fixated on training and deploying its soldiers to fight the country’s archenemy, India. It remains ill equipped for counterinsurgency, analysts say, and top officers are deeply reluctant to be pressed into action against insurgents who enjoy family, ethnic and religious ties with many Pakistanis.

In the limited engagements in which regular army troops have fought the Taliban in the tribal areas and sections of the Swat Valley, they not only failed to dislodge the Taliban, but also convinced many Pakistanis that their own military was as much of a menace as the Islamic radicals it sought to repel, residents and analysts say.

http://www.independentweekly.com.au/news/local/news/general/ian-plimer-a-question-of-faith/1495699.aspx

History is littered with grand mistakes. Columbus thought the West Indies looked distinctly oriental, Hitler and Napoleon believed the Russian winter would defrost like a fridge held open, and IBM chairman Tom Watson was convinced there’d be a world market for about five computers.

Then there’s the question of faith: that is, the belief in gods and deities. The world once had thousands of religions, and to challenge these beliefs meant death. Ancient Greeks built temples which started at Aphrodite and ended at Zeus, animists believed that plants had souls, and ancient hunter-gatherers held that rivers and mountains were created by giant crocodiles or snakes.

A giant cod did not dig the River Murray, and we know that because of the work of geologists and geographers. Since the beginnings of religion 300,000 years ago, science has challenged faith. Science is evidence, not belief, and scientists don’t burn other scientists at the stake because they disagree with each other. But the belief in human-caused global warming, says one scientist, has become the new religion.

“The history of the world is written in the rocks,” says Adelaide University geologist Professor Ian Plimer. “We can tell when the earth was born, when the atmosphere developed and the gases which comprised it. We know that continents drift and mountains uplift and erode. If you know the alphabet, if you can read the rocks, you can go back 4.567 billion years to the formation of the world itself.”

Plimer is a genial man, 62 years old and with the energy of a new-born gazelle. He’s rushing from television interviews to appointments on radio. He’s been to his printers and publishers and he’s in Adelaide between trips to Broken Hill and Wagga Wagga. It’s a busy schedule.

In the boot of his Mercedes he has a box of books, his new opus Heaven and Earth. He parks the car on a steep hill in Beaumont, hands a copy of the book to his passenger while he meets his wife Jill and a real estate agent. As he inspects the house for sale, the real estate agent’s parked car rolls down the hill and stops with a crunching noise at the first solid obstacle, which the rear of Jill’s car. The professor is unfazed.

“There’s space in that house for a library,” he says gleefully. “I’ve got 75 linear metres of books and Jill has the same. We need a house with space. The cars should have been parked with their wheels turned into the gutter on a slope like that but - there’s space for a library.”

And then the professor moves heaven and earth, literally and figuratively. The book, 500 pages of literature, is an argument against the belief or the faith, as Plimer sees it, that human activity causes global warming. A posse of critics from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, environmental groups and scientists from other disciplines are now out to lynch him. The mild-mannered professor’s Heaven and Earth is figuratively tearing his world apart.

“Start with science,” Plimer says. “Ignore faith. Science is evidence, not belief.” And then he starts with his history of the planet, beginning at the beginning and ending far into the future.

“The world’s climate has always changed and always will,” he says. “The speed and amount of modern climate change is neither unprecedented nor dangerous. The temperature range observed in the 20th century is in the range of normal variability.”

This sounds heretical. Don’t the world’s eminent scientists agree that humans are burning fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate, that this combustion is releasing carbon dioxide at a similarly unprecedented rate, and that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas? Won’t human-made global warming cause wild and unpredictable weather, melt polar icecaps and fry polar bears? Aren’t Pacific Islanders going to be flooded out of house and home? Won’t there be malarial mosquitoes up and down the high latitudes? Aren’t we doomed?

Plimer weaves the Mercedes through the traffic on the way to his next appointment. “Methane is the most potent greenhouse gas,” he says before answering. “The effect of driving a diesel car 10,000 kilometres is equivalent to the amount of methane a cow produces in a day.”

Yes, but what about polar bears? They don’t drive and they don’t chew cud.

Plimer stares through the windscreen, wondering where to begin. A starting point may be his previous book, A Short History of Planet Earth, published by ABC Books before the climate change debate really heated up. It talks about earth’s encounters with the killer asteroids, the rise and spread of the continents, the appearance of life, mass extinctions and really major climate changes that shaped the life and look of earth.

It even makes a passing reference to some minor animals known as hominids.

“For 80 per cent of the earth’s 4600 million years, our planet has been a warm, wet greenhouse planet. Greenhouse conditions are normal. Polar ice caps are abnormal,” he says.

“Even 2000 years ago the earth was considerably warmer than now. The Romans were scantily clad, and growing oranges and grapes in northern England.”

In Plimer’s geological timeframe, 2000 years is less than a modern meteorologist’s mini-second. Plimer sees the climate change much as we see changes in daily weather; it can be freezing in the morning, warming up towards noon with an afternoon thunderstorm, then rain and hail followed by a starry night with another frost.

To a man whose scientific discipline measures millions of years, the world’s climate is always changeable and variable. The reason we don’t notice is our incredibly short lifespan as a species and our incredibly short lives as individuals. If we’d been around as long as algal mats called stromatolites, like those at Shark Bay in West Australia which haven’t changed in 2724 million years, we’d have a truer perspective.

“The Dark Ages between 535 and 900 AD were a terrible time to be alive,” he writes in Heaven and Earth. “Sudden cooling took place. It was cold, there were famines, war, changes of empires and stressed humans succumbed to plague. Around 540 AD it was so cold trees almost stopped growing. This was a global event because it is also recorded in tree rings from Ireland, England, Siberia and North and South America.”

The Black Sea froze. Ice formed on the Nile. South America was gripped by drought; the Mayan civilisation collapsed.

The Dark Ages ended as quickly as they began and the world began to warm. This was the Medieval Warming from 900 to 1300 AD.

“The amount of land devoted to agriculture increased and fields crept up to higher altitudes where farming had not previously taken place. Europe was warm and rainfall was higher. New cities were built and the population increased from 30 million to 80 million. At the same time the thousands of temples at Angkor Wat in SE Asia were built. In China these warmer conditions led to a doubling of the population in 100 years. The Medieval Warming was the zenith of Muslim imperialism, culture and science. Economies boomed.”

And then came the Little Ice Age, and it all went wrong again. As Plimer tells it, the world warms and cools as quickly as a steaming hot bath goes tepid. He writes of giant undersea volcanoes spitting out more carbon dioxide than people have released since the start of the industrial revolution, of terrestrial volcanoes like the Toba eruption on Sumatra a mere 74,000 years ago which threw so much acid aerosols and dust into the atmosphere that the human population was reduced to as few as 4000 individuals. We were nearly wiped out, just like 99.99 per cent of all the world’s species have since life began. Becoming extinct is something most plants and animals do, and which the rest are still practising.

Unlike the ancient Greeks or the Stone Age hunters, Plimer doesn’t believe that gods or beasts created the earth or its life. Nevertheless there’s something of a missionary zeal about the man; he’d love to convert the listener. He talks of glaciers reaching down to the shores of the Mediterranean, of their retreat and the spread of hominids to the very north, of Viking settlements on a lush and pleasant Greenland. All these changes, hot and cold, happened well before Man started his lawn mower, before the internal combustion engine, before the Industrial Revolution or Emissions Trading.

So why is his voice seemingly the only one to argue that humans aren’t responsible for global warming? How can he be right and all the other scientists wrong?

If Plimer is irritated by the question he doesn’t show it. In fact, a smile spreads across his worldly face.

“Now that’s very interesting,” he says. “The media went into years of brouhaha about global warming and fellow travellers boarded the bandwagon at every opportunity. The cause became fashionable especially among climate experts such as Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep and numerous other show business folk. Al Gore went from strength to strength and even compared ‘true believers’ such as himself to Galileo. Those who had other scientific views were attacked.

“The international panel on climate change gathered many climatologists, meteorologists, environmentalists and political activists. Its first report was in 1990. Three working groups had authors who contributed to a series of chapters under the guidance of lead authors. These people are touted as the 2500 scientific experts who constitute a consensus. In the 1996 report on the impact of global warming on health, one contributing author was an expert on the effectiveness of motorcycle helmets. That author had also written on the health effects of mobile phones. Other authors were environmental activists, one of whom had written on the health effects of mercury poisoning from land mines. If a land mine explodes, the last thing one thinks about is the health effects of mercury poisoning.

“The IPCC process is related to environmental activism, politics and opportunism. It is unrelated to science.”

There is much in Plimer’s book which could make the blood boil, if not the oceans evaporate. According to the geologist, deniers of human-caused global warming have become the new sceptics, the distrusted, the heretical.

IN THE EARLY 1980s, a team of palaeontologists and archaeologists was excavating a cave on the banks of the Franklin River in Tasmania. They found there evidence of Stone Age man dating back 22,000 years, the most southerly people on the planet at that time.

“Tasmania then was much colder and drier,” explained ANU archaeologist Dr Rhys Jones during the dig. “People had walked across a flat plain from what’s now Victoria to what is now Tasmania. They arrived in the (Tasmanian) south-west and sheltered in this cave, using it for more than 7000 years.

“Then the climate became much wetter and warmer. The grasslands on which the people depended gave way to thick, impenetrable forest. The forest squeezed out the people, and they were forced to leave.

“The scale of that warming was very quick, and the flooding of Bass Strait incredibly rapid. It would have been possible for a grandfather to sit on the shore of Tasmania, point across the vast sea that’s now Bass Strait, and say to his grandson: ‘I walked across there.’ It flooded in a generation.”

Now that’s climate change. Archaeologists have found the remains of villages on the bed of what’s now the Black Sea before it was either black or sea. There are rock paintings of people herding cattle in what’s now the Sahara Desert. Just a few hours north-east of Adelaide is the Mungo Lakes national park, where there’s evidence of some of the earliest hominid occupation on Australia around what was once a huge inland sea. There was a time when Lake Eyre and Lake Torrens were fresh, when the Murray River flowed out to sea near Port Pirie. And if you really want to imagine climate change, think of the Himalayas as a boring flat plain or of South America smacking into North America and stopping equatorial currents between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

The story of climate change is the story of the earth itself, of life beginning and often ending, of asteroids and comets smacking into planets and wiping out up to 96 per cent of all marine genera. Were it not for climate change, we might still be shrews scurrying in the night to hide from carnivorous reptiles. Climate change, argues Plimer, is driven by the sun, by eccentricities in the earth’s orbit and rotation, by geological and astronomical forces so strong that humans’ influence is relatively puny.

But Plimer’s latest book, its kindest critic will acknowledge, stays away from sweeping adventures in geology. Desperate to avoid generalities, eager to explain every scientific nuance, it’s packed with 2311 footnotes, almost all of them scientific. Al Gore’s film is Muzak compared with Plimer’s symphony.

“Most scientists are anarchistic, bow to no authority and construct conclusions based on evidence,” he writes. “Matters of science cannot be solved by authority or consensus. Scientific evidence is unrelated to politics, ideology, popular paradigms, world views, fads, ethic, morality, religion and culture. If you are a Buddhist, Baha’i or Baptist, the speed of light is still about 299,792.5 kilometres per second. If it is dark, the speed of light is still about 299,792.5 kilometres per second.”

And that’s about the speed that human-caused climate change believers will respond to Professor Plimer’s tract. Few arguments ignite the passions as much as this. Religion comes close, and that too is a belief system where adherents of one faith are so convinced of their own god’s supremacy that they will go to war to win converts, is the most grievous mistake to litter history.

Just above Plimer’s own basement office at the University of Adelaide is more salubrious accommodation of Barry Brook, who sits in the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change. They argue, they disagree, and they are equally stimulated by the other’s debate.

After all, we now know that the world’s circumference is three times the size Columbus thought it was, and that a northern summer will be followed by a Russian winter.

And we know IBM’s Tom Watson was wrong. Five computers will never be enough, even just to do climate modelling.



Historic; function with the Australian cricket team and former Prime Minister John Howard at the Sydney Town Hall. Taken from the balcony.