Home

*

The red lights on the sky scraper behind them blinked in the early morning dark, a warning sentinel soaring over their house. Strange statue shapes on the corner of its upper tiers gave it a certain Gothic feel, while he could feel every shadow in the streets around, hear every moto-cie as they puttered off to work. There were haunted lovers too, in all those sounds, sheets through the glass, muffled shapes, dignity abandoned. That house could have been mine, if only I hadn't made a mistake. Many mistakes. Pass away, pass away. Unrequited, these things were for another era, or from another era. Harden your heart. What would you tell your best friend to do? Stay away, stay away. And so, little evil on the blessed land, he became someone else in order to survive. He was attracted to chameleons, people who were different every time you looked at them, a princess one minute, a butch little lad the next, masculine, dripping compromise, all bowed under layers of conformity. He had taken to using an old Peter trick when dealing with recalcitrant bureaucracies: just start ranting, I've worked hard all my life and nobody... Etc etc etc. Drives them mad.

Just like winging to the old ex when she came sniffing around for money. A winging drone can drive just about anybody away, and so became an effective weapon in the armoury of survival. The blokes seem to pick up the nicest girls at Electric Blue, he advised, although what would he really know, girls not being his forte right this minute. But he could see, as he descended into the morass of another culture, the descending wave of a western hand. I can feel you are awake through the ether; and the vibration on his mobile phone confirmed his psychic recognition. Heading to the streets. They used to always say: "It's down, down, down as Jack from the Cross used to say". Jack was dead now and every day rolled over anew; the world blessed with a rising sun and a million deaths, a corporate body constantly renewed. His own visit was short; glorious at times, despairing at others. There had been too many mistakes. His health suffered. Instead of rising to the occasion he fell to earth. The mud was like glue.

And then once again survival forced him to perform. He rose to every occasion and twisted in the air like a dervish. Constant waits were nothing compared to fatal obsessions. What would you tell your best friend to do, that's great advice, I've been thinking about it all day, Shaun said. An old sponsor used to tell me that, he replied, at least I think it was him, someone. Let's meet up in Italy, go shopping, have lunch, said a loud American woman. They went everywhere and saw nothing. He marvelled at the way they treated the world as a homogeneous unit, as an occasionally exotic background for lunch. Complaining if everything wasn't exactly the way they liked it. The water cold, condensation dripping down the side. Everything was wide off the mark. He had been missing so badly. Lured into circumstance. Lured into paradise. A nice house. A nice boy. A nice garden. And yet if he still had the physical stamina to be stumbling out of the clubs at dawn with some wretched little thief he would have probably opted for the latter. I just like getting trashed, he whined, what's wrong with that? Well nothing much except it's unsustainable. Greed is good, the woman seemed to be saying, telling us all she was alert, wide awake, conscious, on the edge of her seat. All you blokes, you need to share your thoughts with woman. They can help you. And later Andrew laughed: she's preaching to the wrong set of blokes. They're all survivors of divorce here. And he agreed: we've all survived some of the most toxic hurricanes the female gender can produce. We don't trust them. Full stop. A little misogyny is natural, at least amongst this group, Andrew said.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/obama-takes-his-daily-dose-to-defend-his-presidency-20101028-175sl.html?from=smh_sb

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama has defended his first two years in office, targeting young voters during an interview on a popular satirical TV talk show, urging them to keep faith with his legislative program.

Less than a week before Tuesday's midterm congressional elections in which Democrats are expected to be punished for America's tepid economic recovery and high unemployment, Mr Obama ticked off key achievements, namely that his administration had staved off a second Great Depression while posting historic healthcare and financial regulatory reform.

But the President told The Daily Show host, Jon Stewart, that it would take time to fulfil all of the pledges made during his 2008 presidential campaign.

''When we promised during the campaign 'change you can believe in', it wasn't 'change you can believe in, in 18 months','' he said. ''It was change you can believe in but, you know what, we're going to have to work for it.''

When Stewart pressed, asking whether the rhetoric of Mr Obama's election pitch had over-inflated expectations of an audacious legislative program, (''You wouldn't say you'd run this time as a pragmatist? It wouldn't be, 'Yes we can, given certain conditions?'''), the President conceded he would be inclined now to modify his mantra with a qualification: ''Yes, we can: but it's not going to happen overnight''.

It was the first time a sitting president has appeared on the show in which Stewart, a former stand-up comedian whose zany take on current affairs has drawn a cult following, often skewers guests by exposing hypocrisy.

Stewart will lead a ''Rally to restore sanity'' tomorrow in the National Mall in Washington as an antidote to the rallies over the northern summer that drew thousands of Tea Party and other conservative supporters.

The Obama interview ran for almost 30 minutes. But apart from occasional banter, Mr Obama remained serious, determined to push the Democratic cause, while taking issue with Stewart's characterisation of some of his legislation as ''timid''.

Clearly rankled, Mr Obama responded: ''Jon, I love your show, but this is something where I have a profound disagreement with you … this notion that healthcare was timid.''

Mr Obama added that ''the assumption is we didn't get 100 per cent of what we wanted, we only get 90 per cent … so let's focus on the 10 per cent we didn't get''.

On the economy, Mr Obama said: ''If you told me two years ago that we're going to be able to stabilise the system, stabilise the stock market, stabilise the economy and, by the way, at the end of this thing it will cost less than 1 per cent of GDP … I'd say: 'We'll take that'.''

But he dodged Stewart's next question about whether he would accept that same outcome had he known that unemployment would be near 10 per cent.

At another point, Mr Obama acknowledged voters' frustration and impatience. ''Over and over again we have moved forward an agenda that is making a difference in people's lives each and every day,'' he said. ''Now, is it enough? No. I expect, and I think, most Democrats out there expect that people want to see more progress.''

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=11997550

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's election led many political pundits to predict the popularity of American satirist Jon Stewart would wane. After all, mocking Republicans was his bread and butter.

But two years later with the nation just days away from an election expected to shift the balance of power in Washington, Stewart and his Comedy Central stable mate Stephen Colbert are growing ever more successful.

On Saturday, the pair mount their most audacious stunt -- rallies on Washington's National Mall. Stewart's is a "Rally to Restore Sanity," while Colbert, whose show mocks conservative punditry, holds a rival "March to Keep Fear Alive."

Organizers haven't disclosed what exactly the rallies will be, but they will no doubt build on Stewart's huge following for "The Daily Show," which typically features the comedian commenting on the day's news in a faux anchor format and conducting interviews with top newsmakers.

"We all thought he would have less fun after (President George W.) Bush left office but that's not been the case," said Michael Musto, a culture writer at New York's Village Voice.


"There are still plenty of Republicans to poke fun at, and Obama's ratings are so low that he can now poke fun at Obama and the Democrats too," said Musto. "It's twice as much fun."

Experts say the explosion of Internet news, opinion and blogs and the 24-hour cable television news cycle have created a cacophony of shouting pundits. That, they say, allows Stewart to poke fun at overheated rhetoric on both sides.

Media and Society Professor Richard Wald of New York's Columbia University said Stewart is evocative of Will Rogers, known for such cutting satire as: "I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat."

Picture: Ashley Lock.

A Neutron Bomb

*

They say that home is where the heart is. Having no heart, just a sad little collection of collapsing landscapes which passed for a splintered consciousness, the saying had never meant much to him. Oh to be normal. To have a craven heart. But thus it was that he found himself wandering the streets of Sydney after having been away all year, shocked and appalled, well shocked and astounded anyway, at how quiet the streets, how quaint the signage. Ten thirty at night and already the streets were deserted. No wonder I was so lonely here, he thought, and that, briefly, was all he could remember, the long spooky walks at 2am, with the mist dripping from the trees amidst signs of collapse, the well walked dog scurrying ahead, the pain of a restless spirit. Always, always, walking far and wide. There was never anybody there. He sat in alcoves in the cliffs, gentle overhangs, on tops of buildings, in deserted early morning parks, in the way of the truth and the light, holding to some stubborn, perhaps noble principle, aching, disconsolate, always the same.

So he abandoned the job which had become such an over-arching nightmare and headed off to Thailand, where juvenile dreams on the Coca Cola trail had left him with the impression that he could be happy there, he didn't know quite how or why, under a palm tree, on a beach, in a cheap house in the mountains with sweeping views down the valley. It wasn't what happened at all. Instead he discovered that Western men with a couple of bob in their pockets didn't have to sleep alone; and so he determined that was exactly the circumstance. And instead settled in a peaceful, read beautiful, house in the heart of Bangkok. Where everything slid and collapsed and he was the feudal lord, accepting of his status. Lights burnt through the long warm nights. In the early hours he could hear every movement of a motor cycle, their gurgling cries, their strange emphases, as if heading your way, a lost obsessional love who could tell you, too, were awake and sleepless, pomh kow choi passah thai nick noi karb, I understand a little Thai thank you, and knew, deeply, lohp luen, that he had been deceived, was being deceived, and some criminals could never change their spots, never not rip off a foreigner, never act with any degree of kindness or integrity.

And so it was that in the aching hearts, in the strange things that had happened to him, he developed a certain survival wisdom. Strange then that he would have made such a simple mistake as to take a Thai national to Australia. They don't travel well, he had already heard, but he had no idea how badly. If a plane flew overhead the boy would look up plaintively and bleat: Thailand. Once he had discovered a Thai restaurant with authentic cuisine and staff who spoke Thai he refused to go anywhere else. He looked at Bondi Beach, one of the world's most famous and most beautiful beaches, and sighed: falang mak mak - lots of foreigners. As if it had never occurred to him that there might be lots of foreigners overseas. If he wasn't on Skype talking to friends back in Thailand or headphones on listening to Thai music he was under a doona pretending to be asleep, shutting out the outside world, so full of foreigners and incomprehensible social behaviours. Nor was the reaction from others very helpful. Dad, you gay, the kids said. Number one daughter declared, all in one sentence: he's obviously a gold digger dad, I need $500 for my formal dress. Number one son, quite the ladies man by his own reports, officially declared he was now disowning both his parents. His mother declared that by wilfully defying God's word and living such a dubiuous lifestyle he was throwing away his greatest asset, his access to the keys to the Kingdom of God by duty of being her son, a loyal servant and one of the Lord's chosen ones. They would all much have preferred he continued to sleep alone. Well, he wasn't going to do that, not for now, that was for sure. And Peter put it succinctly enough: that's why we all build lives far from our families.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/renegade-premiers-workplace-deal-angers-pm-20101014-16lwf.html

JULIA GILLARD has threatened to use federal powers to force NSW to comply with uniform national workplace safety rules after the Premier reneged on a deal as part of a raft of concessions to the union movement.

Business, industry and the federal government were united in anger yesterday after Kristina Keneally said NSW would not honour the deal it signed with other states and the Commonwealth last year to introduce uniform occupational health and safety laws.

The agreement, which required significant concessions by business and unions, was cited by Ms Gillard as one of her greatest achievements as workplace relations minister.

Advertisement: Story continues below ''A deal is a deal and the federal government requires this deal to be honoured,'' Ms Gillard said.

She said nothing was being ruled out as she sought departmental advice ''on what options are available to the federal government to ensure that the NSW government honours this deal''.

Ms Keneally, who is seeking union support before the March 26 election, will not honour the national agreement unless union-friendly provisions that were part of NSW law are included. These allow unions to prosecute for workplace safety breaches and put the onus of proof on the defendant.

Ms Keneally also demanded an exemption from the federal Fair Work Act so her government can cut a separate ''project agreement'' with unions to guarantee the $6 billion Barangaroo redevelopment will be completed on time and on budget. She also declared Easter Sunday a public holiday to ensure workers are paid more on that day.

The Unions NSW secretary, Mark Lennon, said yesterday was ''a sweet day'' for workers, and was backed by the ACTU, which claimed the changes would maximise workplace safety.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/40128.html

What a week this has been. A week of high emotion and smouldering passions, where the glorious triumph of the human spirit was tempered by the depths of human depravity, and we all longed for a return to the days when politics was marked by dignity, respect, and non-bastardry.

The name of the game this week, of course, was Afghanistan, or at least that’s what Julia Gillard would say, as she has demonstrated clearly that she regards the actions of our brave fighting men and woman defending our freedom as a game, to be played for political points.

It was an unedifying way to behave in a week when Abbott, putting his graceless rival to shame, did in fact go to Afghanistan, to reassure the troops that not only did he fully support them, he was quite willing to join them personally.

“Bitch says I don’t like the troops?” he snarled. “I’ll show you how much I like the troops! Give me a gun! Give me a tank! Let’s go get those terroristers! Bang bang bang! Check out my pecs! Look how much I can bench-press! I will fight the prime minister ANY TIME SHE WANTS! BRING IT ON” And so forth.

Having gone to the theatre of war, Abbott was at great pains to emphasise this tendency of the PM to use defence policy as a political weapon, before going on to emphasise it a bit more, and then proceeding to hammer home his emphasis in case we hadn’t got it yet.

Some might have questioned why, after last week’s gaffe in which he claimed he couldn’t visit the troops because he wouldn’t have time to put his face on for dinner with the Tories, Abbott insisted on continuously drawing more and more attention to it by bringing it up at every possible opportunity for days on end like some kind of gibbering excuse-chimp. This however would betray a total misunderstanding of the reality of politics, as Abbott himself explained, telling us all that:

“One of the things that so disappoints me about the election result is that I am the standard bearer for values and ideals which matter and which are important and … as the leader of the Coalition, millions and millions of people invest their hopes in me and it's very important that I don't let them down. When I am unfairly attacked, I've got to respond and I've got to respond in a tough way.”

And the Australian people, once they had got up off the floor, wiped the tears from their eyes and taken a few deep breaths to overcome the crippling stomach pains that are such a common consequence of hearing Tony Abbott describe himself as a standard-bearer for values and ideals, nodded in understanding.

Indeed, we do not want Tony to let us down, and that is why, whenever anyone is cruel or nasty to him, we see the necessity for lengthy, protracted, hyperbolic defensiveness. It’s what we all want in a potential prime minister.

What we don’t want in a prime minister is Machiavellian bastardry, which is, as Abbott helpfully explained, what Gillard was guilty of, and Labor is expert in. The plot hatched by the prime minister was deceptively simple, but fiendish in its ingenuity: laying a trap as skilfully as any French-Canadian furrier, she cunningly invited the Opposition Leader to accompany her to Afghanistan, and sat back to watch the carnage she had wrought.

It was such a callous, vicious piece of passive-aggressive thuggery it took the breath away. To be so calculating as to actually invite an Opposition Leader to a war zone, knowing full well that due to security requirements Abbott would have no choice but to say something unbelievably idiotic, was a ploy worthy of Lucretia Borgia herself.

No wonder it drew such a sharp rebuke from the Shadow Minister for Taking One To Know One, Christopher Pyne, who – lip trembling at the injustice of it all – pointed out that Gillard was guilty of “back-alley bitchiness”, almost certainly accompanying his statement with a clawing hand gesture and soft hiss. Pyne declared that Gillard was unfit to be prime minister, a stinging blow to the PM: if even the Opposition doesn’t want her in office, what must the voters think? Especially after she flagrantly and shamelessly declined to offer any further comment on the matter in a deliberate and transparent attempt to further smear Abbott’s character by making him look like he was talking to himself.

http://www.coreideas.com.au/wp-content/bondi-beach-dust-storm.jpg

A History Never Written

*

The ocean was inky black, the black beyond dark matter and petroleum spills, when the only light was the faintest sliver of a moon in a starless sky; and everything was absence. This was the dream that kept recurring and he didn't know why. Black on black, uncanny, beautiful of course, in all its mystery and power, the vast sea, a distant shore, a profound lack. The chaos of the Bangkok streets, the busy stalls, the choking traffic, the crowds of office workers so heavy he had to step out on the road to pass their slow moving masses. That was the world he mostly inhabited. Yet it wasn't the world he really wanted. He wanted a different place, as if the beauty of the present was too much to bear without distorting and simplifying it with science fiction clichés. So instead there were times when he cycled back through former mistakes; and other times when the present situation seemed too perfect to bear. It was just that he wasn't used to things going well. Rather it had become a custom to stumble from crisis to crisis, to regroup just enough to survive and then to move on to the next appalling deconstruction, the next painful embarrassment, the next success which didn't feel like a success because inside he was so deeply hidden from the truth, so carefully tucked away, that nothing real would ever impose itself.

Inebriated forms, withered away from lack of contact with the light, went scurrying away under the stairs when ever a carpet was lifted, when ever an attempt was made to change the debate. And so he couldn't be fair to anyone. He couldn't mask the futile attempts at failure. All he could do was step forth in tatty clothes and swirling cloaks, in medieval garments and the garb of senior servants of His Majesty's court; but in the end it was the villager's humble clothes he wore most securely, which made most sense to him. Do not step out into the light. Do not step out into the day. Take away everything we stood for. Counsel the wicked that they shall be reborn. Put a petting hand on the children's heads; for comfort. If there was such a thing in this bewildering place. Certainly not for him, that time had passed, but perhaps for others; blessed with ignorance and a simple, gullible face, a perfect, natural joy in the day. Oh how he envied them their natural positivity, their easy good looks, their perfect charm. Gawky, every faint was an alarming fraud, based in little but assumption and pretence. Every pose stood as a natural way to die; fleeting, unimpressive. Money cushions every blow. Do you think they would care who I was, if I couldn't pay my way? he asked. The boy, a cast back to a former age, barely understood the flow of English, but nodded eagerly, hoping to sympathise.

So here he was, for no particular reason that he could understand, perfectly at home in the most charlatan of cities, the most treacherous of places. Where if as a foreigner you weren't being ripped off it was a miracle. This city, as one Thai author noted, once known as the Venice of the East and now clogged with stagnant, smelly canals and covered with a scion of highways and whispering places, traffic jams that made venturing anywhere during the day a major assignment, ribbons of roads soaring passed buildings long abandoned or resumed, home to nothing but ghosts and rats and the memory of children who played there long ago, the couples who were once happy together, or bore each other's company with a timeless malignancy. Something human this way came, but was then lost in the hordes that had overtaken the earlier, more romantic years. We were clogging up our past. We were searching for a future. But perhaps it was those empty shells of buildings next to the free ways that most clearly exemplified the Bangkok of his imagination; full of an evocative sense of something that had already passed, of the mystery of lives carried out in crowded places, of a simplicity and magnitude which could never be summoned because it had already passed, lithe forms, the sunny smile of a pretty girl, the companionship of the men sharing the moment, of a history never written. He admired their crumbling forms in the cool of the pink air conditioned taxis of the present, a master of the universe, able to afford a taxi fare in one of the world's most quixotic cities, their masterful decay a perfect rejoinder to the soaring blocks of modern condominiums in the middle distance; and the skyscrapers spiking the horizon.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/world/asia/05gibbs.html

BILLINGS, Mont. — Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs called to say he did not kill Afghan civilians for the thrill of killing. Nor did he toss severed fingers at the feet of his fellow soldiers to scare them into silence.

“All he said was, ‘I don’t know where these guys are getting this stuff,’ ” said Eric Thomas, a childhood friend here, shortly after speaking with Sergeant Gibbs by telephone one recent evening. “He said none of it actually happened. He said for some reason the other guys were scared. He doesn’t know where it comes from.”

“Calvin Gibbs is not a murderer,” Mr. Thomas said. “I don’t want people hearing about finger bones and thinking they know Calvin, because they don’t.”

Members of his unit in Afghanistan paint a devastating picture of Sergeant Gibbs, 26. He is one of five soldiers facing potential courts-martial on charges that they killed Afghan civilians for sport, planting weapons near them to fake combat situations, collecting their body parts and taking photographs posing with their corpses.

Documents in the case obtained by The New York Times, including statements by soldiers and investigators, portray Sergeant Gibbs as the ringleader in three separate incidents involving the murder of civilians near Kandahar, Afghanistan, this year, and as the force behind intimidating other soldiers in his unit to keep quiet. Soldiers said Sergeant Gibbs threatened at least one subordinate with death if he ever disclosed the killings. Other soldiers not accused in the deaths say he mocked them for not meeting his standard for men on patrol.

“He told me the type of soldier he was looking for was the type that could kill anybody without any kind of regret,” Pfc. Ashton Moore told an Army investigator in May.

When Private Moore, who faces other charges, told Sergeant Gibbs that he would not kill someone without cause, he said the sergeant responded: “And that’s why you’ll be stuck in the truck the whole time. The guy I’m looking for is the guy that would shoot the dude just because he could shoot the dude.”

The case has prompted the military to review all combat deaths with which Sergeant Gibbs has been involved, including those during deployments to Iraq as early as 2004.

Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock, also accused in the Afghanistan deaths, said Sergeant Gibbs had openly discussed how he might kill Specialist Adam C. Winfield, another one of the accused, who he worried would report the killings.

“There were two scenarios SSG Gibbs told me about taking his life,” Specialist Morlock told Army investigators as part of the investigation into the five soldiers. “The first scenario was going to take him to the gym and drop a weight on his neck. The second scenario was SSG Gibbs was going to take him to the motor pool and drop a tow bar on him.”

Geoffrey Nathan, a lawyer for Specialist Morlock, criticized the Army for allowing Sergeant Gibbs to lead troops in combat. He said his client “could serve the rest of his life in prison for being in the throes of Gibbs.”

Several soldiers recalled Sergeant Gibbs and Specialist Morlock tossing severed fingers in front of a soldier who had reported the widespread use of hashish within the unit. That soldier, Pfc. Justin A. Stoner, later told investigators that he feared being killed the same way Afghan civilians had been, as if his death had happened in combat.

“It wouldn’t be hard for them to take me out and do the same to me and blame it on the Taliban,” Private Stoner told investigators.

Here in Billings, Sergeant Gibbs’s friends say he was just performing his duty. “How could they put him in jail for doing his job over there?” Mr. Thomas asked. “I’m sure some people were shooting at him, so he shot back at them.”

Not long before he was deployed to war zones overseas, Sergeant Gibbs was a struggling teenager in Billings. “No ambition,” said a neighbor. His father worked in maintenance for the Mormon church and his family was active in the faith. He barely attended high school, earning just 1 of 20 credits necessary to graduate. In his high school yearbook during his sophomore year, he wore a T-shirt bearing the brand of a skateboarding company, “Independent.”

Sergeant Gibbs played defensive end on the football team as a high school freshman. At 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds, he was “the strongest kid I ever played against,” Mr. Thomas said. The friends played video games and rode skateboards, often spending time at the Gibbses’ house because friends said his parents were nice. Friends say all he ever wanted to be was a soldier.

His parents sent him away to an alternative school in Montana that often steered its students into the military. Sergeant Gibbs received a graduate equivalency degree from the program in the fall of 2002, having already enlisted in the military. He had dreamed of being in the Marines but, without a high school diploma, entered the Army instead.

A lawyer for Sergeant Gibbs declined to comment, as did Sergeant Gibbs’s parents. A sister began to cry when she was asked about him and said her brother had requested that she not speak to reporters. Friends said they did not believe the charges.

“People get messed up in the head,” during combat missions, said Paul Thomas, Eric Thomas’s older brother. “But not Calvin. He was always a rock.”

Paul Thomas is a former Marine. He said he had not seen Sergeant Gibbs since 2006. Since then, Sergeant Gibbs has served two tours in Afghanistan after serving one earlier in Iraq. Now, more than one soldier who served with him described him or his actions as “savage.”

Private Stoner said Sergeant Gibbs “associates with skinheads online.” Specialist Morlock said Sergeant Gibbs had “pure hatred” for all Afghans. Fingers he is accused of collecting are now part of the evidence in the case, as is a tooth he is said to have pulled from a dead Afghan and bones other soldiers said he dug up.

Sergeant Gibbs has refused to speak to military investigators. But during fingerprinting and photographing in May, he was required to show his tattoos. On his lower left leg was an image of crossed pistols and six skulls. He told an investigator, according to an investigation transcript, that the skulls were “his way of keeping count of the kills he had. The skulls that were in red were the ones from Iraq and the other three were the kills he had in Afghanistan.”

Soldiers interviewed by investigators say Sergeant Gibbs had alluded to previous crimes he committed in Iraq, including one in which he shot into a car carrying an Iraqi family with children. By early this spring, as Sergeant Gibbs and others were being investigated, military investigators were widening their inquiry, specifically asking about a possible shooting in Iraq in early 2004.

“How many deployments has SSG Gibbs had?” investigators asked. “Need to determine if there was any suspicious incidents or investigations during all deployments.”

At least one soldier has said Sergeant Gibbs had photographs of bodies from his deployment to Iraq. A spokesman for the Army’s central Criminal Investigations Division in Virginia said he could not discuss whether Sergeant Gibbs had faced previous criminal investigations or charges.

Before Sergeant Gibbs invoked his right to a lawyer during an interview with investigators in May, investigators say he told them that “all incidents where he has been involved in are exactly how they are reported, meaning he was attacked and he then responded with his M-4, killing the local national. When questioned on whether any of the incidents were staged, SSG Gibbs stated that was offensive.”

Pfc. Adam W. Kelly, who is accused of assaulting Private Stoner along with several other soldiers, as well as possessing hashish, told investigators that he admired Sergeant Gibbs, as did others in their platoon, from senior officers to subordinates, and that he “displayed solid tactics.”

“I believe that because of his experience that more people came back alive and uninjured than would have without him having been part of the platoon,” Private Kelly said.

Sgt. Gibbs is married to a soldier based in the United States, Pfc. Chelsy M. Gibbs. They were married in a Mormon church in Billings. In 2008 they had a son, Calvin Richard Gibbs Jr. On her MySpace page, Private Gibbs listed her husband as one of her heroes, “for putting up with me, but mostly for the sacrifices he makes for our country.”

Barbara Gray contributed research and Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Port Aransas, Tex.

Bangkok, Thailand.

Get Out Of The House

*

Well he wasn’t prepared for anything. Look at that face. You could have drunk for 30 years. He woke up in a mood and thought it was best to get out. The visions were all jumbled in on top of each other, the crowded dreams. He couldn’t remember what they were about; except they seemed so urgent, as he woke several times, a mix of Asia and Australia. He was going to be blessed. We were marching forward. Into the abyss. Into a time of stillness and sinking wells. There were so many different ways of looking at it. He could be compromised, answered, all at once. There doesn’t seem to be an answer. Why should I open myself up to attack from that pack of c...s? He demanded to know. Peak experiences anonymous, that’s where he belonged. But how did he recover from half these things. How did he wander through the empty halls and still retain some sort of sanity? Why did they frisk him at the entrance? Nobody trusted anybody here. They liked to boast about their rock bottoms. How they weren’t really low level drunks at all. Mine came while reading a book, Wiliam S Burroughs. Get out of the shit house before it blows up, I read. And it was some of the best advice I’d ever had. So that’s what I did, one rotund creature said. Bully for you, he thought.

He’d had a fight with the gardener, Mr Booh, who he appeared to have acquired along with the new property, and with no consultation. So suddenly he found himself with an aging Thai man on his front lawn, gazing intently at the trees for hours, trying to decide which leaf to trim, making work for himself. They came to words when the lawn mower started up while they were lazing around watching Avatar in Thai for the umpteenth time, this time for the benefit of some of the boy’s infinite number of country relatives. Mai mai mai, Pung knee, Pung knee, no no no later later, he angrily declared, before storming back into the house, dismissing the man’s apology with an angry wave of the hand. Nobody had bothered to ask him if he would like to have the lawn mowed; and that was that, time to be boss. As it happened, he liked it the way it was. He didn’t want to live in a manicured paradise. He was from Australia; and they liked a bit of garden chaos there. Wild, overgrown, with the streets shining everywhere through demented, tilted glass, street lamps burning holes through the early morning fog, a dangerous creature just out of peripheral vision, an edge to things. The crowds spilling out of the early morning bars. An angel face trodden into the mud.

And the gardens winding everywhere, drifts of leaves, secret nooks, nothing trimmed at all. Hedges were nothing but blizzards of green. And even now the subject of green could propel him back to the worst of times, before he became himself, while they tried to beat him into submission. But these things were not the concern of an old man, not now. Sometimes they were in danger of coming alive, of saying what they really thought. Of being “patently unclear”. New York Maria had gone to the coast for the weekend to walk her dog. She had a nerve to complain about her life. Work did not seem to figure highly in her preoccupations. He had got through the worst of dismissing coffee and cigarettes out of his life, those annoying low grade drugs he would sometimes relapse on to, as if trying to energise something in the quicksand of consciousness. It never worked, but he should have known that by now. The internet was still not on, and he couldn’t for the life of him find the wi-fi switch on the computer. He made as if to say no; but that wasn’t what was happening. I need a purpose, a goal in my life, Shawn said, having failed in their agreed bid to give up cigarettes together and having gone and bought a packet. He’d been listening to the racket of the washing machine for months; the quote for every occasion, the catalogue of colourful experiences, and ignored his rationale for failure. If you’re going to have a bust, do it on something decent he advised, stop frigging around on the lower levels. The cigarettes will kill you. Everyone knows that. They might have been a fashion statement when we were kids, the ultimate cool. Now they just spell l-o-s-e-r.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/six-killed-in-iraq-violence-20101005-164lu.html

Six people were killed in violence in Baghdad and central Iraq on Monday, including a journalist for a US-funded television station, medical and security officials said.

Tahrir Kadhim Jawad, a cameraman for the al-Hurra satellite channel, was killed when a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to his car detonated in the town of Garma, 50 kilometres west of the capital, police in nearby Fallujah said.

International press watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned Jawad's killing, calling for "urgent protection to be provided for the country's journalists and ... (for) authorities to speed up the conclusions of the investigation".

RSF said last month that the Iraq conflict has been the deadliest for the media since World War II, and in October 2009 ranked Iraq a lowly 145th place for media freedom out of 175 countries.

According to the Impunity Index released in April by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, Iraq has the worst record of any country for solving the murders of reporters.

Also on Monday, a convoy transporting Fuad al-Mussawi, a deputy minister of science and technology, struck a bomb along a road in the upscale neighbourhood of Jadriyah, in the centre of the capital.

The minister was unharmed, but the early morning blast killed one of his guards and wounded four other people, said an interior ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Also in central Baghdad, an employee of a telephone exchange was killed and another wounded by a bomb that detonated near Al-Alwiyah communications centre in Karrada.

And in Diyala province, north of the capital, a bombing killed three people in the ethnically mixed town of Jalawlah, in a tract of disputed land claimed both by the autonomous Kurdistan region and Iraq's central government.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/turnbull-says-65-a-month-will-keep-most-off-broadband-20101004-164ek.html

The ''extraordinary'' cost of accessing the national broadband network will limit the number of people who choose to use it, the opposition spokesman on communications, Malcolm Turnbull, has warned.

Mr Turnbull, who has yet to finalise the opposition's policy on broadband, signalled the Coalition was unlikely to make any dramatic change to its approach to rural broadband in response to the federal election result. Yesterday he challenged the government's central argument that the broadband network would benefit consumers and competition.

The government-owned NBN Co is likely to charge retailers about $35 a month. He predicted this would result in customers paying an average of $65 to $70 a month.

''That is higher than most people are paying now. So there is no reason to believe that the NBN will deliver cheaper broadband. It certainly will deliver faster broadband than many people are getting at the moment, but at an extraordinary cost,'' he said.

At network test sites in Tasmania, retail prices range from as low as $30 a month for entry level plans to $140 to $160 a month for plans with higher speeds and download limits.

While the government says the network will increase competition between retailers, Mr Turnbull argued that creating the government-owned monopoly could stifle competition from other types of technology.

A spokeswoman for the Minister for Broadband, Stephen Conroy, said the experience in Tasmania showed that competition was already increasing.

''As experience in other markets has shown, the introduction of genuine competition will lead to more choice, more affordable prices and higher quality services,'' she said.

The government-owned NBN Co is due to release details of its business case shortly, but Mr Turnbull accused the government of overestimating both the revenue it would raise and the number of customers who would be willing to sign up.

Bangkok. Near MBK.

Life Is Long

*

He didn’t take the calls. He didn’t answer questions. He was becoming used to his new status. He didn’t have to answer to anybody. Stray winders, stray thoughts, that’s all they were. Nothing clear, but it didn’t have to be. The previous evening they had waited for the rain, plohn tok, to stop before wandering around to the restaurant in a neighboring soi. Today a squirrel ran along the electric wires in the morning sun. His new life seemed astonishingly luxurious, even if it was cheaper than the previous incarnation. Life is long, he had told that demented group, mentioning things about his early years he wished he hadn’t, because everything was about status here and it was important not be seen in lower terms. Come the rain, all would be well. So he acted carefully. Worked hard. Could see the clouds coming and going. Wanted to know, what was the answer? Private gay tours of Bangkok? Wait for the guardian angel to provide inspiration. Come and get cooked. Ignore the ice pipes for sale in the street. Take a bus to God knows where. Or enjoy the day, just enjoy the day. Settle petal; as they used to say.

All will be well, one of the many voices said, but he hadn’t believed it for a long time. He thought an early death and a failure of all organs more likely. Now the morning sun shining on the leaves in his very own Bangkok garden, well it was rented but hey nothing is permanent, could only guarantee the passing of another glorious moment. He was desperately prone to heart attacks. To diving off the slender ledge of sanity. Of finding himself in places where he was too old to be. Of embracing massage boys when everything was for sale. He wasn’t going to make the trek to Sukhumvit for the sake of a meeting he didn’t like. Just hang in the new neighbourhood. Be peaceful at heart. Be a classic older gentlemen. Make love in primitive, bestial, rapid ways. Or enjoy, that was entirely the wrong word, the two hour full service massages on offer, with mirrors and naked boys and anything you could devise. It was all too much. A service economy. A place in the heart. Even he had grown to accept it as his due. To take heart from strangers. To be fully aware there was nothing that could change the past; and everything that could change the future.

Well it had been an adventure, in the strangest of ways. And now he was heading back to Australia for three weeks. He didn’t want to be emotionally confronted. It was perhaps why he was unlikely to bother seeing his father while he was there. It was expensive. It would not be appreciated. And doing the right thing could easily become doing the wrong thing, when you were constantly walked over, constantly dismissed. And now he was old himself; and nobody could walk all over him unless he let them. Where have you been? New York Maria asked. None of your business, he replied. I knew you wouldn’t tell me, she said. And they kind of laughed. The sunlight seeped in from everywhere, blinding them. They agreed the place was full of dogs; and nothing could be relieved. You only did what you could. And let the time pass. Sanity restored; they called it. Well he didn’t want their style of sanity; that was for sure. But at least now in the beckoning twilight he could see things more clearly. Perspective, dear, old Jack said. The dry old queen who used to pop into his head drunk. Well dear, there will just have to be another exorcism. Just not today. Just for today, everything is alright.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/04/3029136.htm

A bloody street brawl involving up to 100 people in central Adelaide has brought unwanted focus on South Australia's African community.

Four young men were stabbed in the violence overnight, while four other men, mostly from interstate, have been charged.

Many of those involved in the fight were in the city for a Miss Africa beauty pageant.

South Australian police say the brawl is the result of factional tensions that had been building up over the weekend.

African community leaders are now worried that those problems could destabilise the community in the state.

Revellers in Adelaide's East End were confronted with a violent scene on Sunday night as people brawled off the Rundle Street restaurant strip.

Chief Inspector John Gerlach says some of them were armed with weapons.

"Certainly knives, because most of the injuries were stab wounds, but there was tyre levers, clubs [and] makeshift batons. It was described to me that one even had a post off a bed," he said.

"They were grabbing any sort of weapons they could and clearly they had prepared themselves with some weapons in the event that they did come together, which in fact occurred."

Four men from Adelaide aged between 19 and 21 were stabbed.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/gillards-first-appearance-on-international-stage-as-pm-20101004-1644u.html

The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has made her first appearance on the international stage, meeting the head of NATO, Anders Rasmussen in Brussels.

Dressed in a white, short jacket and dark trousers she arrived at the security organisation's headquarters just after 9am European time and was ushered in by Mr Rasmussen, the former Danish Prime Minister and now NATO Secretary General.

Ms Gillard arrived in Brussels early yesterday morning amidst heavy security as Europe and the UK brace under heightened alerts of a terrorist strike.

The leaders of the 27 member, European Union are in the Belgian capital with 18 of their Asian counterparts for a two day summit which aims to foster and build on the centuries-old economic and trade ties between the two continents.

Australia, New Zealand and Russia will take a role at the round-table talks for the first time this week.

The fragile European Union, now set to embark on a grim austerity program to reduce burgeoning sovereign debt, is now looking strategically to its eastern neighbours to boost trade and support many of its more vulnerable economies still in the early stages of a tentative recovery.

Ms Gillard began her day with a breakfast meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, followed almost immediately by face-to-face talks with NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

A press conference was due to be held at 10.15 European time. She was due to meet with the EU President, Jose Manuel Barroso afterward.

Ms Gillard is also due to deliver a keynote dinner address tonight and is scheduled to meet with the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the next 24 hours.

She has not yet said if she will meet with the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao.

Ms Gillard said that this was the first time that Australia has had a seat at the ASEM summit, a meeting which provided the opportunity to talk to more than 40 of the world's leaders.

A Bangkok Scene.

Staring Out The Window At Siam Paragon

*

That was all they found, a sporadic array of voices, tough shots walking. You no good. You not same same me. Insert Name of Boy. Name of nothing. Girlfriend. Obsessions followed to their ultimate conclusion. His lungs ached after he had briefly relapsed on the cigarettes. Too old, too old now. Configure that, baby. As if all else had failed. As if nothing belonged where it was placed. As if his own good fortune deserved no quarter. As if the myriad landscapes were blessed with demonic brilliance; and his abandoned state was destiny itself. You’ve done nothing but get stoned and hide out in your room; and you expect me to give you money, to rescue you, he thought, as he walked away from the classic Bangkok apartment block, all cheap rooms and cheap floors and people coming home from work. Well that wasn’t going to be his solution. He wasn’t going to make out on the carpet. He wasn’t going to rescue him this time around. He would pay for certain services and that was that. Life was tough in a big city without money. Particularly when you weren’t bothering to get up and go to work. And wasted every last cent you ever got.


He walked away for the hundredth time. Pallid intellectualism, Ian had snorted. And now he was settling into his new gigs. A mansion by any standard, well his standards, anyway; and cheaper than the modern apartment he had just left. Pay to take care. He could hear the argument raging somewhere; and decided to stay well away. Broken lives were not his to mend. The Cambodian boy rang yesterday. I miss you, I want take care of my family, can you send me money. He thought about it for awhile but did nothing. One too many people had asked him for money lately. Maybe he needed some rich friends who could take care of themselves. It was insufferable. He heard the mattresses thumping on to empty floors. He saw the inside of empty buildings. He heard what could have been rats scurrying just out of reach. He made as if to answer, but there had been no question, just disjointed scraps floating in the ether: you no good, take care, take care, you no good. Bury me not, on the lone prairie. Country song, Thai country song, many year old, they said, when he expressed admiration for a folk tune. Hah sip bee, 50 years, came the response, when he asked for details. And outside the city collapsed; indifferent to their fate.

He found himself in these private reaches without even knowing why. Now there was a different place, the sound of a suburb waking. Even the sound of a rooster. Doors closing. A moto-cie in a nearby soi. An aching heart. A promise unfulfilled. Flesh rung out. Desire drained. Every excess ignored, fading into normality. As if he cared anymore. The future was not bright, how could it be? Not when you’re old. Only one destiny awaited all of us. So he heard the house next door awakening and the sound of early morning birds. It had been a while since he had noticed that; not in the grey and steel condo with its dedicated fax lines and high speed internet, air-conditioning in every room and sleek black TV. If you should only ask, I’d be there for you. But every love had decayed into convenience; and so now he embraced convenience as a source of comfort. There weren’t going to be any great heights of passion. Or obsessive little sex secrets. Just convenience, comfort. A nice house. Good company. Everything taken care of. A walking dynasty, having passed through so many lives. Life is long, he assured the crazy girl, who couldn’t stop the path she was on. Same same me sometime, before, he said. But he walked away from the giant decay that was the apartment block and their disordered, descending into chaos lives, and woke up looking at his own garden in a quiet back soi near Bangkok ‘s business district and thought; sometimes in life you get what you deserve. But whether he deserved this comfortable house; and they deserved their gloom laden chaos, he was not sure. Just walk away my friend. Good morning, the current boy declared cheerfully, you hungry? Nick noi, a little, he answered, and they smiled together for what they had built together; jaw clenched dawns infested with shivering pleasures and profound despair were for someone else entirely.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Labor lost a vote on the floor of the House yesterday - and not for the last time in this term.

Tony Abbott has come out swinging this morning, defending his plan to "wreck'' the National Broadband Network and the Wild Rivers legislation that he has proposed.

On the Wild Rivers legislation ("a nonsense, an insult"), which is designed to overturn Queensland Government legislation and has the backing of Indigenous leader Noel Pearson, the Opposition leader said, "we have to give indigenous people more control''.

The "reality check" that is the 43rd parliament is dominating the political correspondent's coverage in the papers today following Julia Gillard losing a vote on the floor of the House: Phillip Coorey's take here, and Matthew Franklin's take here. Phillip Hudson says the parliament is fragile. Annebel Crabb says parliament was polite after "the preceding 24 hours [when] a multilateral pestilence of stiffings and welshings".

On the NBN, Labor is defending its plan after Mexican telecommunications billionaire Carlos Slim Helu hit out at the network. Mr Slim said the cost of $7000 for every home was far too high.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and his shadow, Malcolm Turnbull, went head to head over the National Broadband Network on Lateline last night.

And Lucy Battersby writes that Telstra chief executive David Thodey was not ''transfixed'' by the government's $43 billion broadband project and would get on with life if it was cancelled.

Graham Richardson, meanwhile, has stood by his claims that Julia Gillard has been forced to keep two cabinet ministers she wanted to dump.

***Sign up to Capital Circle - all the news that's fit to email***

The wrap of the papers starts with David Uren, who writes “LABOR should expand its resources tax to other minerals and consider increasing the GST as part of a strategy to manage the mining boom."

Tim Colebatch's is here: “AS HOME owners brace for an expected rate rise next week, the International Monetary Fund has challenged the Reserve Bank's forecasts that the economy faces a boom ahead, and implied that it should wait and see before acting.”

Andrew Clennell writes “THE spending habits of poker machine players would be tracked by their fingerprints and memory sticks under a proposal to tackle gambling addiction.’’

Clancy Yeates writes “AUSTRALIA'S population growth has fallen to its slowest rate since 2007, after a sharp decline in migration levels continued into the first quarter of this year.’’

Sid Maher writes "JULIA Gillard has again declined to commit to a timetable for introducing a carbon price.'

Dylan Welch writes “THE analyst who blew the whistle on dodgy pre-Iraq war intelligence and was labelled by the Howard government as ''dishonourable'' and ''unreliable'' may soon be sitting on the nation's most secret parliamentary committee.”

Michael Sainsbury writes “Beijing is angry that Julia Gillard has snubbed China by visiting other Asian nations as Prime Minister first.

Nick Butterly writes “The Federal Opposition says the Government should consider sending attack helicopters, tanks and another 360 troops to Afghanistan after claims Diggers are undermanned and lacking firepower.’’

Lanai Vasek writes “THE first indigenous MP in the lower house used his maiden speech yesterday to thank Kevin Rudd for apologising to the Stolen Generations.’’

Lauren Wislon writes “A JOINT select committee to tackle problem gambling was established yesterday by Labor.’’

THE charging of Australian commandos over the deaths of six Afghan civilians headed off an international investigation into the killings, Dan Oakes writes.

Tom Arup writes “THE Auditor-General has savaged the handling of the government's axed Green Loans scheme but exonerated former environment minister Peter Garrett, who received ''incomplete, inaccurate and untimely briefings '' by his department.’’

Dan Harrison writes “THE Gillard government appears set to overturn laws that banned universities from charging compulsory student union fees.’’

Caroline Overington writes “GREENS MP Adam Bandt says The Australian intends to do all it can to bring down the Gillard government. That's because the newspaper is both immensely powerful, and peeved, he claims.’’

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/welcome-to-the-real-world/story-e6frg71x-1225931993259

NEW Greens MP Adam Bandt says in an interview on the web that his party must now "enact what we believe in".

We reject many of their policies but we certainly agree it is time for Mr Bandt and his colleagues to be judged on their platform. Having long avoided the scrutiny that is routine for other political parties, the Greens are now enjoying the full glare that comes with their pivotal parliamentary role. But based on that interview with The Monthly, Mr Bandt is still adjusting to life in the big school. The member for Melbourne says it is wrong for The Australian to suggest the Greens be voted out at the ballot box. He says we are partisan and that we, in effect, verballed him on September 4 when we wrote that the Greens would introduce a private member's bill for same-sex marriage. Yet Mr Bandt was quoted as saying that "removing the discrimination facing same-sex couples" was among his three campaign priorities. The MP can't have it both ways, campaigning on gay marriage then complaining when this is reported, especially when one of the first things the Greens did this week was introduce the bill. Rather than attacking the media for doing its job, he should get on with his job of explaining his policies to voters. We understand political responsibility comes as a shock to the Greens. But that is the price of power.

Staring out the window at Siam Paragon.

Post The Apocalypse

*

They had long wanted to talk about the chaos that had enveloped their lives in a sixty day period; the time between visa runs. And so they did. With the boy's new girlfriend, a result of a strange series of coincidences which he himself had accidentally initiated, while he was bound by a time frame of pretending to be home all night to his current boyfriend. They both had new partners, in other words, and life had moved on dramatically. Sometimes sophisticated in their calls, sometimes barren in their hopes, theirs was a new found glory. Tum pid=plahd went the line, I make a mistake. I don't love her 100 per cent, the boy admitted. Sometimes only 60 or 70 per cent, sometimes 80. Well we all make compromises, he said in a too wordy English, which meant much of what he said was not understood. If you gave 100 per cent you would be giving your life away, surrendering to another. Something like that. Choirboys in quicksand, went the song, In the land of hungry ghosts. Choirboys, choirboys, choirboys in quicksand. Kah kah kah went the girls outside the bars, their calls meant to entice but to a foreigner were as much like crow calls as calls to the divine. Massage boys didn't do much but smile if you went slow, or beckoned. He'd got used to the fact now that foreigners were often regarded with repulsion. They were large, smelly, stupid and drunk and undeservingly had far too much money.

Cute little muscly teenagers dressed in black hung around the back sois. Young boy, dirty boy, went the touts. Young girl, dirty girl, you like young? they pestered. Sometimes he knew he had landed in a very different place. An imperial drone. At other times he was shocked by the malevolence of the fabric of things. I can't sleep with them for more than a few days, they make me sick, I get an allergy, like to a cat. No allergy to the money, however, he noted, as the demented vicious sick little queen filled his boy's head with advice on how to get gold out of a foreigner and how to make sure you didn't walk away with nothing. These things were breaks in time. The ritualised, stylised sex shows, demonstrating how little they liked change, or perhaps even genuine eroticism, for the West seemed to demand some sort of affection lust or love between the combating combining partners to make it all work, whatever it was, the shows and the hard-ons and the music and the movements, even the bashful smile as one of them ejaculated in front of the crowd, were all things you didn't see in Sydney but you certainly saw in Bangkok. Rhythmic, powerful, hypnotic, at the end of the show more than a 100 boys in tight white underpants took to the stage, parading their wares around the perimeter. Number 50 is very handsome, he commented, and noted later that the boy had gone to a customer in the first cull, while others, perhaps more personable, were there to the bitter end.

You baby, you don't understand Thailand, his friend had snapped some months back when he had suggested the tired looking sex worker was complaining she had a baby at home. Let's just send her home, he had said. You baby, mai kow chaie mon Thai, some men will pay more for breast milk, she's just trying to fool you. Don't believe half of what you see or half of what you hear. It was around then that his brain clicked around in the barrel, and he realised how thoroughly alien and quixotic was this place; how treacherous and shifting the sands, how little honesty had to do with anything. They could hardly let themselves go, let themselves be free. They couldn't even see the dancing minstrels. Tired days when the daylight made no sense at all. When he caught cabs into the infinitely complex city on strange assignations only he would undertake. When there was always somebody asking for money. This morning it was the boy from Cambodia. You want me to come visit you there, he asked. It would be very awkward right now, he replied. Besides, there was always somewhere else to go. Home town boy. Country boy. Sophisticated parlance. Yet another club, where they had been before. I hear the Funky Monkey is very entertaining, he said, just for something useless to say. The music pounded out without the usual Thai melodies, and being a Monday night only a scattering of Thais danced between the whisky laden tables. They didn't stay long. They remembered everything, every nuance. The bottle of Black Label the boy had consumed almost entirely on his own. I'm happy you're happy, the man at the next table had declared. But things were never as they seemed. That he had discovered. There was always an angle. There was always a desire for money. Status. Ambition. Confidence. A niche in a poverty stricken world. So he didn't tell them what they wanted to hear. Instead, he smiled an exhausted smile out of his washing machine head and declared: Let's go off to our respective partners, our respective lives. Lets act like civilised men. An hour later he noticed the missed call.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/greens-make-first-move-with-same-sex-marriage-legislation-in-senate/comments-fn59niix-1225931687793

THE Greens have wasted no time flexing their new parliamentary muscles, with senator Sarah Hanson-Young set to introduce same-sex marriage legislation into the upper house later today.

The move comes as the House of Representatives prepares to debate and adopt new standing orders that will establish a new committee to scrutinise legislation before it enters the house and rule on whether it is controversial.

The new bills committee is part of the suite of parliamentary reforms that all sides of politics agreed to earlier this month - at least initially.

But Senator Hanson-Young will not wait to have the same-sex legislation introduced into the house, saying she was fulfilling an election promise by introducing the same-sex marriage bill.

The next step, she said, was to push the major parties to allow a conscience vote on the matter.

Julia Gillard rejected the idea of legalising same-sex marriage earlier today, a move the Greens senator said the Prime Minister would have to explain to her party and the community.

“The ALP is not united on this and neither are the Liberal Party. The Tasmanian Labor Party in their policy platform has that they support marriage between same-sex couples,” she said.

“Julia Gillard will have to be clear about how she explains that to the community, they didn't accept her answers to this question during the campaign. Stonewalling isn't going to be accepted by anyone, not the community or within the ALP.”

Earlier today Ms Gillard confirmed she would not allow a conscience vote on same-sex marriage.

“The Labor Party has a clear position on the Marriage Act, that is a party position, so you should expect to see the Labor party voting as a political party, in unison, if that proposition comes to the parliament,” she told ABC radio.

“I'm saying the word `if' deliberately. Of course, there are members making suggestions about what private members' propositions they are interested in thinking about pursuing.

“The parliament will then collect those up in a proper process, bills will need to be drafted and then obviously choices and selections will need to be made about what goes forward.

“There is only so much parliamentary time. We've got to deal with government business as well as private members' business so there will be some clear selections about which bills get parliamentary time.”

But Senator Hanson-Young said the “new paradigm” meant a less-strict adherence to party lines was needed.

And she called on people to lobby their individual MPs in the coming months to demand a conscience vote.

The Greens will look to have the bill passed through the Senate and then moved to the lower house.

The Greens have also promised to introduce a private member's bill on euthanasia and the Prime Minister has promised a free vote on that legislation.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gKQgVdBxfhWneF-UNXpCJfoEDcPgD9IH8C500?docId=D9IH8C500

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — Gen. David Petraeus trudges across a gravel helicopter landing area with his aides, looking purposeful but a bit grim, as he reaches a village outpost in the violent Afghan province of Helmand. He's here to chart progress, or lack thereof, in a war that's running at the pace of a horse cart, in a world that runs at the speed of a text message.
The only time the 57-year-old commander's smile reaches his eyes are a couple of brief moments when he stops and chats with troops. He poses for snapshots that memorialize his first months in command here, fighting a long war that he knows the American public, not to mention the White House, wants done yesterday.
Petraeus does not snap when a reporter asks him a question he has answered 50 times before, and will at least another 50 this year: Do you see progress?
When he replies, the pressure weighing on him shows in his voice — quieter than when he was in charge at U.S. Central Command in Florida, or earlier in Baghdad and Mosul — and it shows as well in the slightly hunched set of his shoulders, leaning on one arm of the chair.
There is none of the showmanship described in magazine profiles that sketched a megawatt four-star commander who outmaneuvers his adversaries with political and media savvy.
Instead, there is a solemn professor, patiently getting through the next order of business in a day scheduled down to the minute. To answer that "progress" question, he asks his aide for a stack of charts, leafs through to the chosen page, and then walks the reporter through his vision of the war, like a tough calculus problem he keeps having to explain over and over.
Yes, there is some progress, but only some, Petraeus says. No, he will not be drawn out on whether it's a trend. Yes, things are going according to plan. But no, he won't give the plan a timeline, because yes, he knows NATO has overpromised before.
His favorite expression is "only now do we have all the right inputs in place," as in only now do the United States and NATO have all the tools, from manpower to surveillance platforms to all the logistics and air support needed to fight the military side of a counterinsurgency conflict. That encompasses "stressing" the enemy through capturing and killing, and moving Army units into contested Afghan neighborhoods, to win them back from the Taliban.
He's got a chart showing those "inputs," too, including one called "People," which lists Gen. Stanley McChrystal — the man dismissed from the post Petraeus now occupies, after quotes embarrassing to the White House appeared in a Rolling Stone article. If you ask an aide why the chart hasn't been updated to say "General Petraeus," instead of "General McChrystal," the aide says: "McChrystal's name is there because the boss wants it there." McChrystal put everything into place, he explains.
True to that, Petraeus brings up McChrystal's name in nearly every conversation, mentioning how everything that's happening now was jointly planned by him and McChrystal last fall.
Petraeus says the burden of convincing the American public that this war is winnable is not his job — he advises the White House on how to prosecute the war, nothing more.
Yet when pressed about the dour headlines of diving public opinion polls back home, he turns to his computer and digs out the latest statistics on violence in Iraq — only six incidents thus far that day, compared to roughly "220 a day back in 2007," which is proof, he says, that his counterinsurgency strategy worked once and will again. You get the sense the tired general keeps an eye on that rearview mirror as a touchstone, to remind himself as much as the journalist sitting before him that no one believed he would turn around that war, either.
And he is keenly aware that few are convinced he can turn this one.
The NATO commanders he is to visit that day do report incremental progress, mapped out in spreading blotches of color overlaid on village maps, showing where once no-go zones have been turned into safe areas. In the U.S. Army counterinsurgency manual Petraeus helped author, these blotches of territory where troops establish security are called "inkspots." The plan, a standard counterinsurgency tactic for nearly 100 years, is that the inkspots grow to meet each other.
The commanders Petraeus visits explain the slow pace is because Afghans will work with NATO troops only if they see "Hesco" barriers go up. Those are the steel cages wrapped in a tough canvas burlap that troops station around their more permanent bases, filled with rocks and earth to stop car bombs and the like.
In the one area on the map the general visited Thursday — in and near the town of Lashkar Gah — these "Hesco inkspots" had indeed grown over the past year. The barriers are a symbol, Petraeus later explains, that the NATO troops and the security they provide are there to stay, presumably to be replaced later by Afghans.
Opponents of Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy have raised doubts about whether Afghan troops will be ready to take the lead from NATO by 2014 — Afghan President Hamid Karzai's stated deadline.
And NATO officers, like Petraeus' predecessor McChrystal, have openly admitted that the local government-in-a-box that was supposed to backfill NATO efforts is not yet providing adequate services. U.S. and Afghan officials privately complain that Afghan officials extorting bribes from the people they were hired to serve also remains commonplace.
Questioned about some of those obstacles, Petraeus said it was too soon to guess how much progress would be made on security, or governance, over the next year.

From: www.squidoo.com
From the movie Reign of Fire.

Celebrating Ordinariness

*

They were crucifying themselves, swirling in, regulation upon regulation, ache upon heartache, sea breeze in an infinite dawn, all that was breaking, heart open, crystal shore, these places were the beginning of new things and old, and he emerged like some primordial life form coming out of the swamp, almost laughing as the water streamed from him. I'm just a garden gnome alcoholic, the next three speakers said, the only time he ever said what was truly going on in his head. So instead he became friends with Maria from New York and they made jokes about the library card set - as in, I knew I had to do something about myself when I lost my library card. Fell off a bar stool. Got done for Driving Under the Influence. He could hardly be marshalled into believing. That just wasn't the way to corral him into anything. Neatness freaks and Jesus freaks. Dusty streets. I might go back to morning meditation. Or splatter myself against the sky, he said to Jaan on the Skype system. There were so many methods of communication these days. Shadows hovered like limpid belief systems. They weren't going to shrug this one off.

I'm American, from New York, Maria declared in her inevitably large, loud voice. What a mean ass junky she would have made. Never guess, would you, he said to the antique dealer. From Denmark. Everyone was truly from everywhere, here. He wasn't going back, that he knew. There were other things to be grateful for. Salvation. Oblivion. A hankering after a costly place. A costly state. Just that, frustration. A hankering after a divine place most mortals never knew, could never pine for, could never afford. These were darkened days; as if the shadows were waiting just around the corner. But at the same time he couldn't believe his good luck, good fortune, and should have embraced everything with a great deal of fervour. Just one happy year in Bangkok, that's all I want, he said. But already he worried about two or three years hence, as if it mattered; and the divine march? Well that was the way of it. Kah Koon Kahb. Thank you. How are you, I am fine, the boy parrotted. Sabadee mai kahb. How are you? Said to a friend, you care about the response, the guide book said. They walked across the Railway of Death on the River Kwai, another bunch of gangly tourists. And later the driver went into a great exposition about how the shop keeper had given them a discount just because he spoke a few words of Thai. They still spoke as if he didn't understand, but were more wary now.

The future was a troubled place, that he knew. So he just surrendered to the present and grew in depth. There were many opportunities awaiting abroad. And he maintained the joke, although it wasn't really a joke. Be careful with money, he would tell the boy, if I run out of money we have to go and live in India. Aek no India, tih nih degwahr, here is better, he would protest. And they would kind of laugh, as if it was really a joke. Someone would die, but would that really make things any better. Sometimes he was classified a ruin. Come and view. Come and see me, now! Let the girlfriend clean her gun. Let the security guards shuffle uncomfortably, or laugh outright. Let the gossip circle and the carrion birds fly. Let the crows hop from branch to branch above his head. Let the sinister trails reach out through what they knew to be their own. Make house. Make sure. Make a noble role of a noble house, noble life. Let's stand tall and say: at least I had a go. At least I lived. At least I watched the foreign climes collapse in sheets of profound colour; marking desire and longing and emptiness all at once; there in the tropical heat. He couldn't stop gazing out the window at the view, even when he was nowhere near the place. Well, that was it, they were moving to a new place. The boy was very busy.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/pm-uses-carbon-carrot-to-woo-green-vote/1953563.aspx

Prime Minister Julia Gillard hopes to take Greens supporters with her all the way to the next election by putting a price on carbon via a policy strongly influenced by the minor party.
To determine that policy Ms Gillard, at the request of the Greens, has formed an exclusive committee whose members must accept that a carbon price is the only way to tackle climate change. That rules out Coalition participation, with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who prefers direct action measures, already knocking back an invitation for two of his members to join.

Ms Gillard detailed yesterday the line-up and terms of reference of the new committee charged with investigating ways of putting a price on carbon. It will canvas various methods, including through a carbon tax, an emissions trading scheme, or a hybrid of several measures.

Ms Gillard will chair the body herself, while Climate Change Minister Greg Combet and Greens senator Christine Milne be co-deputy chairs.

Treasurer Wayne Swan, Greens Leader Bob Brown and Independent MP Tony Windsor will also sit on the committee, which will be supported by a panel of four expert advisers led by climate change economist Ross Garnaut.

The committee will function as a Cabinet committee, with all its deliberations and advice papers to be kept secret until the Government decides otherwise.

For more on this story, including details of a public forum to be conducted during the life of the committee, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/keep-open-mind-on-climate-windsor-20100928-15um9.html

Key independent MP Tony Windsor is encouraging members of a new multi-party climate change committee to bring an open mind to their deliberations.

But he has expressed concern about the impact a carbon price might have on agricultural land use and food production.

The parliamentary body will be chaired by Prime Minister Julia Gillard and includes Mr Windsor and representatives from Labor and the Australian Greens.

The Coalition has declined to join the committee despite an offer from Ms Gillard.

"I'm going in with a completely open mind," Mr Windsor told reporters in Canberra today.

"I suggest it's probably time most of us did that rather than have a closed mind at the start of the process."

However, the rural-based MP wants to ensure an "inevitable" move to a market-based carbon abatement scheme does not impact adversely on food production.

"We need to understand what we're potentially doing if we start to introduce a favoured economy over the food economy."

Independent senator Nick Xenophon said he'd like to be part of the new committee.

"I need to negotiate my way through on that," he told reporters, suggesting emissions trading as the "most efficient" way to tackle climate change.

"I guess I have to talk to the powers that be, [including Climate Change Minister] Greg Combet and others."

One of the first tasks of the committee will be to assess the worth of a citizens' assembly, proposed by Labor during the election campaign.

Mr Combet said that the committee would discuss the assembly in the context of how best to go about promoting discussion and debate in the community.

"We don't want to get hung up about the mechanisms too much," he told ABC Television.

Mr Combet said the desired outcome was improving the level of community debate and a better understanding of the options to address climate change.

His opposition counterpart, Greg Hunt, said the committee would be one of the most secretive bodies ever created in the Parliament's history.

Politicians could not sit on the committee unless they signed on for a preordained outcome and a belief test, he said.

"It's contrary to parliamentary practice, it's contrary to good democratic practice and it closes down rather than opens up debate.

"We think there's a better way - direct action, start immediately, clean up the power stations."

Liberal backbencher Dennis Jensen said the committee was discriminatory.

"I don't believe in a carbon price, it's as simple as that," he told reporters.

"There are things that you can do responsibly without needing to go to a carbon price."

The opposition's junior environment spokesman Simon Birmingham said Ms Gillard had "totally backflipped" on a carbon price.

He also defended the Coalition's decision not to take part in the committee.

"We are not going to sign up to something where we fundamentally disagree with the outcome," he told reporters.

"This is not a committee that's open to deliberations [or] the public ... this one starts with predetermined conclusions."

Greens climate change spokeswoman Christine Milne defended the make-up of the committee.

"The fact is climate change is real; acting on it is urgent; we've had that debate," she told reporters.

"There's no point in going back to square one," adding that there would be space for people on the committee to change their minds.

"And come up with a position that's different from all the original positions, people may have taken into the discussion."

From the web.

Cascades Dismembered

*

In Bangkok, you're always right at the borderland of the mundane and the supernatural. I mean, here's a city with fax machines and smog and expressways and buildings shaped like giant robots and the world's highest concentration of shopping malls and all that, but the twentieth century's just skin deep, scratch it and you're in the primeval past. I love it. Keeps my mind working. I was musing on all these things as I gazed at the sleek, sleeping young body of....

S.P. Somtow

The crisis was real enough. The ancient battlefield was dying off now, the fizzing lights cascading into the mud disappearing into another neuronal network. But every waterfall cascading down cliffs was full of faces trying to get out; shrieking, sometimes, swirling in the froth, just trying to escape. We were cemented in our positions. Fragile in intent. Sitting in backstreet sois. Easy companionship. Every corner store, every tiny restaurant, offered easy conviviality. The rain bucketed down and the lightning flashed around the skyscrapers, here where it felt like home now, although nothing was responding as it should. He sat through another meeting, this time at Soi 43 off Sukhumvit, the PIE, Psychological Initiative Enterprise, or whatever it stood for; and people from all over the world told little drabs of their stories or promulgated the gospel according to them; and as always he said nothing, letting them all wash over him. And even now, if they had pointed to him, he would have said: I have nothing to say, now more than ever. The silence is deafening was a cliché of foreign form, yet all that came to their attention, the misery, the laughter in a daughter's eye, truly meant nothing, not now, not ever.

They were coming around. They were telling each other there was a solution. The darkness was encroaching and yet that, too, meant nothing. Sometimes he thought of risking the girlfriend and her gun. Sometimes he was happy with the happy face of the current boy. Hello darlingk, he said, thinking it was a great joke, a parody of Sexy Sar, the woman who broke his friend's heart, as they sat in the back of the taxi on the way to the River Kwai. My darlingk. My darling I want some money went together like wedded gloves. All the time, every time, he was seeing things more and more from their point of view. He was a miserable old man. They could dance in the street without end. They were moving to a beautiful new house. All was shifting, in the fatal sands. Messages received which were never received. Times and conventions and convenience, a television glaring in the distance, voices of those he had loved murmuring down long corridors; aching desire relegated to another dimension; a fist in time, a jerking convenience, and then all went quiet.

There was a disturbance in the force. His kidneys ached. Then he went back to meetings and said nothing. Then he debated whether to have his hair dyed. Some said yes, some said no. The boy said, then you no falang, you Thai. He saw their achingly beautiful forms lined up along the cat walk. He left Ian in a go go bars with girls pole dancing, with everything neat and tidy and ready for the armada. Some things were better left unsaid. The trouble was he left everything unsaid. His kidneys ached and he collapsed on the bed and an hour disappeared. There wasn't any money coming in when it should. You can see the notes. You can do your taxes. You can feel the population stirring, from silence to silence, from evasion to evasion. Him baby. Mai kowh chaih mon Thai. He don't understand Thailand. The falang came and went and the population lapped at the base of the stone stairs, twisted, molding, the Gulf waters full of rubbish; a land of magic and skyscrapers and whispered intents; of times pure and simple. Yet achingly so. Sure of intent. Sure of purpose. Climbing out of a hole. Al Pacino collapsing to the ground. Cicero's Way. We were in a different era again now. He got out of the joint and asked: what happened to the clubs, what happened to all that marijuana? Now it's all glistening platforms and cocaine. Well, now it's something else again. Demented and exultant, crazy and intent. Ice took over where cocaine left off; and shook another generation. If only he could live forever; and suffer no consequence.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/gillard-moves-into-the-lodge-20100926-15s2x.html?from=smh_sb

Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her partner, the first bloke Tim Mathieson, have finally moved into their new digs at The Lodge in Canberra.

Ms Gillard deposed her predecessor Kevin Rudd in June but refused to set up camp in the prime minister's official residence until the people formally elected her to the top job.

With Labor having just scraped into power and parliament about to resume, she was chauffeured up the pebble driveway today as The Lodge's first ever female prime ministerial occupant.
There is no news about what will happen to Ms Gillard's Altona property in Melbourne's west or the apartment in Canberra's inner south, but one would imagine her days of civilian living are gone, at least for now.

Despite the sumptuous setting, the prime minister collected her own bag from the boot of the car, before being greeted at The Lodge's front door and welcomed inside by one of the household staff.

Ms Gillard and Mr Mathieson then re-emerged to take a stroll around the lush gardens, popping with spring pansies and camellias.

Hand-in-hand they headed towards the private pond, where Ms Gillard spoke of wanting to find a "big fish" in its waters.

But knowing there were even bigger ones to fry inside, she didn't stop to smell the roses but made a beeline for her home office.

"I'm actually heading towards the study to do some paperwork but it's a great privilege to be here," she told waiting reporters.

However, Mr Mathieson's top priority was finding out whether there was a decent coffee machine on the premises.

"I don't know whether there is one here, so I've got to check it out soon," he said.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/kevin-rudd-tells-united-nations-to-improve/story-e6frf7lf-1225929566613

THE United Nations stands on the brink of irrelevance, Australia's foreign minister Kevin Rudd has warned.

Mr Rudd delivered a scathing assessment of the world body's track record during his formal address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York yesterday, listing a string of recent failures on poverty, climate change and nuclear non-proliferation.

"We do not need another grand plan for UN reform," Rudd told an assembly chamber that was two-thirds empty.

"We need to summon the political will simply to make the UN work."

Only three days ago, Mr Rudd talked up the merit of Australia's multimillion dollar campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council in 2013.

Yesterday, he urged the UN's 192 member states to work harder at fixing the world's biggest problems.

"If we fail to make the UN work, to make its institutions relevant to the great challenges we all now face, the uncomfortable fact is that the UN will become a hollow shell," he said.

About 200 world leaders and their staffers witnessed firsthand Rudd's 20-minute address, which he delivered before boarding a commercial flight back to Australia yesterday afternoon.

Delegates from the US, the UK, China and India were in the room while Rudd spoke but few Pacific and South American nations heard his call to action on climate change and deforestation.

"The unconstrained carbon emissions of one state impact on the long-term survival of all states," he said.

"Climate change is no respecter of national or geographic boundaries.”

The biggest threat to Australia was not organised crime and people smuggling but natural disaster, he told the assembly.

"The most immediate and pressing threat to the physical security of Australia’s wider region lies in the scourge of natural disasters," he said.

Promotional photograph: The River Kwai.