You Weren't Allowed To Think

*



The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

September 1, 1939 WH Auden



That was it, the crumbled ashes, cruelty discarded, an astonishingly selfish generation, self obsessed, indifferent, a callow and dishonest decade, the phrase keeps going through his head. I love you, the alcoholic shouted at the aboriginal woman, her face puffy and distressed, as drunk no doubt as he was. I LOVE YOU, he shouted at her again as they stumbled down the road. All around them the office workers, the cars, the traffic, the polluted air. I - LOVE - YOU he shouted again, giving each word great emphasis. They stumbled down the road together. They must have been on the sting; metholated spirits and orange juice. You can't get that drunk in the pubs these days, it's illegal.

He turned to watch. A face out of the crowd. Another condoning or condemning glare, filtered through so much chaos, their failure, their dark lives, their journey into hell. He had interviewed so many of them. I can't stop, the battered woman said, tears flowing down her face. Have you ever thought of going to detox? he asked; and she looked up at him knowingly; a glimmer of a different person from a long time ago, a gloomy self awareness. They don't work for me, she said. He felt comfortable in his own skin, and so unusual was this he felt disoriented as a result, unsure of who he was. Where did all the angst go? Did it disappear with his teeth? Was there no solution?

She peered at him through her puffy eyes, there in Belmore Park where he always assumed he would die, a chronic alcoholic, the ambulance crying through the streets as his spirit departed, up up into the skyscrapers, past the drones in their offices, past the bastards in management, past the air conditioning ducts on the ceilings. Maybe you should try again, he said, they work for all sorts of people. I know it's a bastard, he said, but what's the choice? She looked at him, she looked at the flagon, about a fifth still left, and said, clear and lucid as any professional: I've made my choice. And then she started crying again.

So he thought of that other woman, who he never saw again, as he turned to watch the pair in the street, the man bellowing as he moon walked: I-LOVE-YOU. And he thought of all the other couples he saw every day, drizzling down from the Housing Commission blocks, waiting outside the doctor's surgery, scheming and scamming and yelling at each other. These were the dross days of loose ends and unconnected thoughts. These were the days when he repeated often: I wish the day was over. When he felt tired for no accountable reason and the constant pain finally ate his soul.

When all was lost and the barren artifices of the lift, the crowds crushing in, each individual trying to ignore everyone else, the silent lawyers, the gifted typists, the scrabbly creatives and the advertising types, all crushed into a common destiny while the city swirled around them. All the news was full of an impending depression. Lost jobs, lost opportunities. Your job is not safe, the Prime Minister warned. Lapping up his own luxury, defending the indefensible, chief bureaucrat atop a pointless pile of paper shufflers.

Down here in the real world, each day was a chore. The periodic flashes of exhilaration he had always known, those gifts from the universe, the savage bliss, all of it floated away as he turned to stare. I-LOVE-YOU the man shouted yet again, bellowed like an old bull, moon walking because the earth was so unsteady, and he looked across the acres of different paths and the threads of other lives, the 24 hour pub largely empty now the government, in all its wisdom, had made being drunk in public an offence, thereby destroying any chance for the populace to get together, to compare notes, plot their overthrow, to realise the farce that had been imposed upon them. Finally he turned away, but could still hear the occasional I love you bellow as he waited for the lights to change, as he dutifully walked across the crossing with everybody else, as he waited for the bats to wheel in the dark night, for the evening to suck him into quietness; to forget, briefly, the challenges and changes that were going to confront them all, the grim times the pundits were warning were coming our way.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/27/2502659.htm

Govt cops flak for 'closing the gap' report card

The Federal Government is coming under fire over its first annual report to Parliament on efforts to improve the living conditions of Indigenous Australians.

The Government's report card shows significant gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in health, education and housing.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says progress is being made , but the Opposition's Indigenous Affairs spokesman, Tony Abbott, is not so sure.

"There are no statistics in there to show there has been any significant improvement," he said.

"Indigenous disadvantage is just as great as it was 12 months ago."

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert agrees.

"The Government has not delivered on the promise of the apology," she said.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma says he is pleased the report sets out a long term framework for improving living conditions, but says an ongoing sticking point is the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act.

"It's just not acceptable that we have differential treatment," he said.

"We still have one of our basic human rights protection mechanisms suspended."

The suspension allows the Government to quarantine the welfare payments in Indigenous communities.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25112828-5013871,00.html

KEVIN Rudd has taken the fight against indigenous disadvantage to the cities, promising free health checks to urban Aborigines to detect disease early, and appointing a director-general to cut through red tape and get action on the ground in remote areas to close the 17-year gap in life expectancy.

In his first progress report on closing the gap since last year's historic apology to the Stolen Generations, the Prime Minister said there had been progress in bringing the living standards of indigenous people closer to those of the rest of the population.

"Some say that little has happened in the year since the apology, but that is not the case," Mr Rudd insisted. "Progress has been made."

The Prime Minister's "report card" on closing the gap with indigenous Australia received an immediate fail from the Opposition and former indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough, who sparked the intervention into the Northern Territory.

Mr Brough said Mr Rudd had failed to use Howard government legislation to force states to provide details of school enrolments and to cross-check with Centrelink records to find children who were not going to school.

"I think they've got a miserable fail mark," Mr Brough said.

"It's a sad reflection of a lost opportunity over the last 12 months."

ALP powerbroker and indigenous leader Warren Mundine urged patience. "We weren't expecting anything great in 12 months," he said.

"But I think the framework is there. I think the focus is now a lot clearer, but we have to drive more employment and economic outcomes."

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25107298-661,00.html

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has splurged close to $3.4 million on overseas travel since coming to power.

The figure makes him one of Australia's most extravagant jet-setters.

The globe-trotting PM has racked up one overseas trip every month on average - and spent close to one in six days on foreign soil.

Taxpayers have paid a hefty price for Mr Rudd's 15 global trips, but the PM is stoutly defending the amount of time he spends meeting world leaders.

But with the Government now forecasting a hefty budget deficit, the Opposition has slammed the travel costs an "absolute disgrace" and branded the PM "Emperor Kevin".

One 18-day odyssey to the US, Belgium, Romania, Britain and China cost a whopping $640,749.

Five-star accommodation and meals cost just over $100,000 while commercial airfares for Mr Rudd's advance team hit $52,000.

Mr Rudd took 11 of his personal staff and wife Therese Rein, along with a flotilla of public servants, security personnel and his personal GP.

Another big spending visit - to Japan and Indonesia last June - cost taxpayers $547,000. The PM's entourage spent $32,000 on hospitality alone.

In total, Mr Rudd has spent $137,368 on hospitality while overseas, while accommodation and meal expenses have soared to nearly $300,000.

It Just Didn't Exist Anymore

*



I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.


September 1, 1939
by W. H. Auden



Whole swathes of the landscape were breaking away, constipated, the groaning ice sheets, the crystal world of ocean and ice, we were reflections then, emerging into a bright bright world. He didn't understand. He didn't know what their motives were. He formed a rigid self, unaccustomed as we are. He stood tall and strong, unaccustomed as we are. All around the war played out on television screens, the subject of an endless news feed. Their own lives were tiny now in contrast to the magnitude of world events; and the giant personalities that had once populated the mythical village of his childhood, that place hundreds perhaps thousands of years ago, that place from whence his historical memory had come, they had all disappeared in the crowded, congested river of modern times.

His depression had lifted and he didn't know who he was any more. It was cruel; and he expected once more to be draped in a terrible psychic pain, to wrap his despair around him like a comforting cloak; familiar. His dogged personality was bound to fight its way through, to survive. But suddenly there was nothing to survive. He simply wasn't depressed any more. The cowering dwarf ducking behind shadows, ashamed, desperate to hide, was no longer there. Following, perhaps, the deformed little bunny hidden behind seven screens which had been his real self, impossible to get to, maintained by a steady diet of chemicals and frequent attempts at obliteration, a steady diet of secrecy and despair.

These things had disappeared in an organic flash. The screens had collapsed when they had carried him into a detox, and he had paced endlessly up and down the shabby corridors of the old hospital. He wasn't a detox virgin, he had been there on several occasions, living out the week, pacing, pacing. The malevolent trees which dotted the Rozelle lawns had grown larger and come closer over his frequent admissions. The staff changed. The ideologies of rehabilitation changed. But he didn't. They couldn't get to him; not behind so many screens. Abolish one, break down one in those endlessly intense interviews, and there was always another to slip behind.

No one was going to get to him because he was ashamed of what was there. That face, that deformed little face, the shrunken, naked body, deformed of heart and deformed of soul, cowering behind there, still frightened despite all the walls protecting it, still desperately sad, achingly lonely, there in that strange nether world. He was convinced there would be no happy ending; that it was simply a matter of survival. And the best way to survive was to hide. The day it all collapsed, this elaborate infrastructure, he didn't know what to do.

He could see the walls collapsing; bang, bang, splintering onto the floor; not just the first wall but all the walls, bang, bang, bang. And then standing naked in the dazzling light, there exposed for the very first time, was the strangest, ugliest, most malformed of creatures; naked and frightened. And then the light streaming in acted just as effectively as a bucket of boiling water across naked skin, and it ran around in tight little cicrcles screaming, and then moments later just disappeared. Never to be seen again.

What was next - the creation of new structures? Here in a solipsistic universe where other characters were only slow to form; fresh armour, fresh coating, the clown, the fool, the quiet, the wise. The laughable. He shrugged, they all shrugged, these tiny
threads of sanity, of continuous thought, an agglomeration of traits. New paths always splintered into white light, barely five metres distant. He couldn't see very far at all. This was the new path, so quiet, so humble, so astounding. Adventure piled upon adventure, travel against travel, and he found a new way to enjoy the day. I was a miserable sod, someone said, saying they had never known any one so consistently sad. That was it; it just didn't exist anymore.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/500-firies-battling-daylesford-blaze-20090224-8g16.html

500 firies battling Daylesford blaze
February 24, 2009 - 7:19AM

About 500 firefighters are battling to contain a 2,800 hectare bushfire burning northwest of Melbourne.

Eight aircraft and 96 tankers were in place near Daylesford and surrounding communities, a Country Fire Authority (CFA) spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

The Muskvale Hogans Road fire is burning five kilometres south of Daylesford in an easterly direction

Meanwhile, firefighters have contained a 300ha blaze near Upwey, about 40km from Melbourne's CBD, which started about 2.30pm (AEDT) on Monday and spread through the Birdlands Reserve.

The CFA and Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) confirmed on Tuesday that no houses had been lost in the blaze, but two sheds were destroyed.

"We bombed that fire heavily from the air and managed to save all houses," DSE spokesman Stuart Ord told the Nine Network.

"Today we'll sit on that, we'll make sure everything is blacked out and really get that one totally controlled."

Two firefighters suffered minor burns while battling the Upwey blaze, one fire truck was destroyed and another was damaged.

Mr Ord said both firefighters were taken to hospital and one had been released.

He said it was crucial that other fires burning around the state, including the blaze near Daylesford, were brought under control before Friday.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25097878-2702,00.html

DEMANDS from Opposition MPs that Australia's proposed emissions trading scheme be shelved because of the global financial crisis have overshadowed growing unrest in government ranks about climate change policy.

As pressure on Malcolm Turnbull over the issue escalated yesterday, Kevin Rudd renewed his pledge to introduce an ETS amid tension among some of his key political allies in the Labor Party's NSW Right faction who fear the scheme will be political poison and cost jobs.

The backbench nervousness emerged yesterday after the Opposition Leader said on Sunday he would deliver policies for carbon emission reductions greater than those proposed by the Prime Minister, who intends to begin an ETS next year.

While Mr Turnbull named no particular target for reductions, he said his plans to promote more efficient building design and to store carbon emissions in the soil would deliver greater emission reductions than carbon trading alone.

The Government proposes reducing carbon emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 and up to 15 per cent if other nations also commit to reductions. Several Coalition MPs told The Australian yesterday Mr Turnbull needed to be more cautious on climate change, with several calling for the ETS to be shelved.

Former Opposition leader Brendan Nelson said putting a price on carbon was the equivalent of creating a new tax -- an action that would be madness at a time of global economic recession.

"Many Australians are losing or are going to lose their jobs, and almost all Australians are quite concerned about the security of their employment and keeping their home and being able to feed, clothe and house their children," Dr Nelson told The Australian yesterday. "If, to use the Prime Minister's words, this ( crisis) is the equivalent of a rolling national security crisis ... would you seriously introduce into that a tax?"

http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/3384/236/

Media Credibility, Not Ice Caps, In Meltdown Print E-mail
Written by Peter C Glover, American Thinker
Monday, 23 February 2009
wilkins_ice_shelf.jpg
Wilkins Ice Shelf

Eco-warriors and media hype aside, the fact is, as we head into 2009, that the world's ice mass has been expanding not contracting. Which will surprise evening news junkies fed a diet of polar bears floating about on ice floes and snow shelves falling into the oceans. But if a whole series of reports on ice growth in the Arctic, the Antarctic and among glaciers are right, then it is truth in the mainstream media (MSM) that's in meltdown not the polar ice caps.

The problem for the MSM is that it long ago nailed its colors to the climate alarmist mast. No ice cap meltdown, no rising waters. No disappearing islands, no reason for alarm. No alarm, no story. Worst of all having called yet another global apocalypse wrong: No credibility. So the MSM has a significant stake in running highly selective warm-mongering headlines. Not to mention disparaging those scientists who have the temerity to disagree as 'holocaust deniers' and 'pseudo-scientists'.

There's nothing more the climate alarmist media loves than a 'melting Arctic' ice cap story. So why not stories from the far larger expanse of ice that is the 'melting' Antarctic? Well it might have something to do with the fact that the Antarctic ice grew to record levels in 2007 - and continues to grow.

The Antarctic

Climate scientist Dr Ben Herman, past director of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and former head of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona, notes that for the media, "What happens in the Arctic may be an indicator of what will happen in the rest of the world. How about what happens in the Antarctic then? Since its ice area has been increasing, is this also an indicator of what might be happening in the rest of the world?" The FACT is that the majority of Antarctica has cooled over the past 50 years and ice coverage has grown to record levels. Take the well-publicized collapse of a 160 square mile block of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica in March 2008. For the alarmist media this was conclusive proof of the dramatic global warming effects. The Los Angeles Times ran, 'Antarctica Collapse' referring to the "rapid melt of the Wilkins Shelf". The Sydney Morning Herald ran 'Ice Shelf Hangs By a Thread' and the Salon online news site had the absurd headline 'Bye-bye Antarctica?' But Joseph D'Aleo, first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and Chief Meteorologist at Weather Services International, was more prosaic. On his IceCap website, D'Aleo wrote that the collapse was the equivalent, given the enormity of Antarctica, of "an icicle falling from a snow and ice covered roof." He added, "The latest satellite images and reports suggest the ice has already refrozen around the broken pieces. In fact the ice is returning so fast, it is running an amazing 60 percent ahead of last year when it set a new record." Noting the ludicrous media hype, D`Aleo laments, "Yet the world is left with the false impression Antarctica's ice sheet is also starting to disappear."

Before The Alcohol Ate His Body

*




He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

In Memory of W. B. Yeats
by W. H. Auden



Well we were crippled by the side of the mountain, away from the beach, as if we had been walking towards the desert but failed. For across the mountain lay another mountain, and no one from our village had ventured further. In stories, that was all, there were men on horseback and privileged fights, carousing in sophisticated taverns, away from the quiet, incestuous village life. We released the dog and gazed after it lovingly, our substitute child we had loved so much. Everything to us in the cold London winters. A long way from the outpost from whence we came.

The speed they scored down Chelsea Road kept them all awake, the toxicity of their pleasures raising no doubts, for there was no tomorrow, only the dawn, the embrace, the inappropriate randiness, the knives drawn if you threatened to leave. It was so vivid and yet so shameful. So many had promised to cure him; and failed. He could see the whack whack whack of the crystal light in the turgid dark of the London suburbs; densely populated, aching with history. He was always the emissary, the one sent out to score. Out in the streets when no one else wanted to be out; haunting Vauxhall when the snow piled in the corners of the streets and the pubs, which they rarely had money to venture into, churned out a foreign world of which he would never be a part.

Richard was always there, at two am, when everybody else was asleep, downing shots of Drambuie or Tia Maria or some exotic cocktail he had lifted from his place of work, speeding of his head, always happy to see you, his old mate from Australia, his dark mentor, the one that had introduced him to William Burroughs and the merry dance; the plain sacrifice, the glass raised; his handsome face, his dark limpid eyes, always part of our fantasy and our lives. He was beautiful, simply beautiful, in his unadorned way, and we all adored him. He would embrace us, not knowing what he did to our hearts, and that would be the end of it, as they shuffled into the crippled dawn.

Richard is dead now because they're all dead now. If it wasn't AIDS it was overdoses, and in his fragmented self, in the shadows where he had once lived, that face resonated as the spirit of adventure, as a beloved man, as everything we held dear. Him and Stephen drinking in the bar at the London School of Economics, drinking the afternoon away and laughing in delight at their shared jokes. And he flitted past, even then not able to drink in the same quantity. They laughed and share their jokes, and greeted him as the writer, sure that one day he would write their story too, the silent observer, the court poet.

They could see from the bar windows into their backyards, the Hollyhocks in astonishing bloom, here in the centre of London, ten minutes from Trafalgar Square. He was shadowed in his own guilt and felt as if he was being followed, always, about to be exposed for the criminal he was, a fraud more interested in being plastered than in producing the lines of lyricism they all expected. Every now and then something was published, as he interviewed famous author after famous author, lunching with Joseph Heller, wrinkling their foreheads at the antics of Norman Mailer, being welcomed into Gore Vidal's room at Claridges. Please don't be overwhelmed, he said in his sweeping way, welcoming them in.

And yet they sat on the balcony of that bar and pissed the afternoons away. And everything they thought they were going to achieve never happened. The book he had laboured so hard over fell flat on a spike of rejection slips. Stephen worked as a nurse and all his various enterprises, playing the harp, becoming an osteopath, creating a home for wealthy queens, none of them were happening yet; the days when he was to become a doctor far off. And as for Richard himself, the centre of our entrancement, he drank and he drank in those days when he could still be fabulous, in those days before the alcohol ate his body and the pills left him a mumbling wreck, and those affectionate embraces he reserved for his loyal circle of friends; they became the embraces of a dying man, a tragedy within themselves. He excused himself and wenwt back to the typewriter; something had to work sometime.





THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25090812-5001030,00.html

NEVER has an Oprah audience been more besotted.

Even with his shirt on, Hugh Jackman had the women melting faster than the chocolate on the Tim Tams he handed out to them as he explained the Aussie tradition of dunking them in a cup of tea and sucking out the middle.

Breathe out slowly . . .

Mark my words, today he will have a worldwide television audience of half a billion eating out of his hand as he brings some much needed gentlemanly charm to that glitzy, ditzy, weary and dreary ceremony they call the Oscars.

Gallery: The heavenly Hugh Jackman

Special section: Hugh Jackman - life, career, more pictures

Why? Well, importantly, the reigning sexiest man alive is not an American, although you would think he was being appointed President and not just host of the entertainment world's most scrutinised gig if you listen to some critics.

The Aussie hunk has copped a lot of crap on American blog sites from people wondering why, in such tough economic times, such a crucial job should be given to a colonial and not an American.

Witness the dismal displays of try-hard homegrown US hosts to see why they need to break the mould. The 80th anniversary of the Oscars last year was the lowest- rated and least-watched since the awards were first telecast in 1953, hitting a low of 32 million Americans.

Special Section: Oscars 2009 full coverage and try our Oscars predictor

Gallery: The Oscars nominated actors and actresses

Lighten up bloggers - this is not the real world, it's showbiz.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/22/AR2009022200867.html?hpid=topnews

BEIJING, Feb. 22 -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's blunt and unadorned style of diplomacy has been evident throughout her maiden voyage the past week in Asia. She questioned the efficacy of sanctions against the repressive junta in Burma, spoke openly about a possible succession crisis in North Korea and admitted that she expected to make little progress on human rights in China.

To a certain extent, these comments crossed taboo lines in international diplomacy. U.S. officials generally do not say their sanctions have failed, or speculate about the future government of another country, or suggest that a carefully watched human rights dialogue is largely a farce.

Clinton's willingness to speak frankly -- combined with an extensive effort to get beyond ministerial meetings in order to hold town hall meetings and conduct local TV interviews in the countries she visits -- suggests she will put a distinctive personal stamp on the Obama administration's foreign policy. What is emerging is something less rigid, less cautious and more open.

Before her meetings in Beijing, for instance, Clinton said she would raise human rights issues with Chinese officials. "But we pretty much know what they're going to say," she said.
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Clinton's comments have stirred outrage in the human rights community, where she was once viewed as a hero for having confronted the Chinese government, in 1995, over its record. Activists say that without public, sustained international pressure on human rights issues, nothing will change in China.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25092106-5006785,00.html

AFTER two weeks of 12-hour night shifts helping to co-ordinate the fight against Victoria's bushfires, Deb Sullivan could have been forgiven for being unenthusiastic at the Princess Royal's visit to Melbourne's Incident Emergency Control Centre.

But Ms Sullivan, 48, a duty co-ordinator, was still shaking with excitement after spending several minutes talking to Princess Anne yesterday.

"I was a bit nervous, but if you'd spent a bit more time with her, she would have really relaxed you because of her genuine interest," she said.

"We were excited but we didn't think she would engage as much with us as she did, which is wonderful."

Dressed in a dark navy blue jacket and matching knee-length skirt, a sombre Princess Anne dropped in to personally thank emergency co-ordinators whose unseen work has been key in getting firefighters, trucks and helicopters where they are supposed to be.

Bent over a map of the area of Australia's worst bushfire disaster, Princess Anne listened intently as chief fire officer Ewan Waller explained where the fire had ripped through tinder-dry bushland, leaving more than 200 dead.

The Stranger

*



I am exhausted from carrying these things.

There is The Quiet Half. We all possess a Quiet Half. Here are our sins and transgressions, our crimes and iniquities, our lapses of reason and faith and honesty, our voices and misdeeds and every time fell from grace...

The Quiet Half haunts; it follows like those proverbial shadows, and then it waits with unsurpassed patience and fortitude. What do they say? Ultimately everyone dies from wongdoings and shortness of breath.

I carry enough for one man. Truth? I carry enough for three or five or seven.

R.J. Ellory A Simple Act of Violence.



Well we were criminal in our intent, long before we knew the nature of crime. Splintered moments, blank skies, anything to take him back. Crawling back, not just through the time tunnel. Hiro from Heroes chirps brightly: I can move through time and space. He laughs in delight at his own powers. But there is no laughter here, no shadows, no mirth. He stepped out from the school playground and all was fear. The trees themselves were loathsome in their intensity. He knew his own heart would die racing, that there was no solution. We were here on the planet for short specks of time; and his ancient spirit, inherited from past lives, was determined to take him back to unresolved dilemmas from thousands of years ago, his death, his murder in the catacombs.

And so it was that as an apparently ordinary Australian school boy, dressed in shorts and socks and with fearsome middle class parents hidden behind bland walls, he would walk out of the school playground and into the park each afternoon after school. Fractured heavens. Why was he the only one who could find them, these catacombs, beginning as they did at the rock entrance beside the swings. Every night in his dreams he was walking down there, comfortable, perhaps, in familiar surrounds, damp mist, clammy rocks, naked men lurking in corners.

Maybe it was here his death occurred. Maybe this was the reason these false memories had been implanted. Surely they were false, surely it could not be occurring. But he would have sworn blind that the square stone entrance really was there beside the swings; that he and anyone else could walk down those ancient, mossy steps into this strange, subterranean world. Out here in the suburbs; near the beach, amidst the screeching cicadas of summer, the smell of gum trees, the littered ground. Out here where the waves curled in an endless, cruel succession and the surfy boys paraded with their boards and their girl friends in the mercilessly bright sun.

Only he found his way into this dank, misty world, and stood as a school boy watching the mysteries of adult males, unable or unwilling to decipher the tensions in the air, the strange looks. The approbation of the villagers outside; their knowing winks, their dirty laughter. He emerged two thousand years ago into a sunlit place, the villagers, the sunlit columns, he emerged full lit into a world of embarrassment and disgrace, coated in guilt, still sore from the ramming, their brutal love; their memories, their actions, their grunts and ugly passion, all his, the receptacle, their servant. impassionate, compassionate, the feel of their semen still on him, the royal whore.

He knew they whispered as he passed, pig ignorant villagers in dark lanes. Ugly as. He strode with elegant long legs and his head held high; he didn't mince, not exactly, he walked tall no matter what they thought. He walked tall and could hear the sniggers in his wake, could see the merry laughter of the boys playing ball games in the dust, could feel the heat of the day on his musky skin, away from the cool, muffled murmurs of the catacombs, away from the sin and disgrace and forgetful passions; away from the highlights, his most beautiful self, the peak of his physical form.

Away from it all, drained through time, telescoped he knew not how into another time and place, in the head of an Australian school boy walking home from school, heightened in his alertness, almost bouncing on his feet he was so aware of everything around him. Here in the screeching sunshine; the too bright colours; away from the coherent beauty of his old town. Here what appeared to be enormous houses, almost mansions, clung to hills amongst vivid green trees. And then the impossible happened: and he saw, once again, the entrance to the catacomb, the large stones shaping the dark hole, the stairs leading down into the nether world that had once been his entire domain. And so he took the steps and walked there, thousands of years after he had lived, here in the mind of a frightened school boy. And that boy would never forget the strangeness of the catacombs, there next to the swings, the catacombs that strangely only he could see, although he was convinced most days they were really there, waiting for him each afternoon, waiting for the stranger inside his head.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/22/2497865.htm

Australians will today observe a national day of mourning to honour the victims of Victoria's bushfires.

Services will be held across the country, with the largest taking place at Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena at 11am AEDT.

The Melbourne service is expected to draw up to 100,000 people, and will be broadcast live on ABC1 and ABC Online.

ABC Local Radio will also broadcast the service, with a program to start after the 10.00am (AEDT) news.

Choirs and orchestras will play, while those gathered at Rod Laver Arena will hear from political leaders, religious figures and other dignitaries.

Princess Anne will attend on behalf of the Queen.

The service will include words from bushfire survivors and will end with a speech by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Victoria's Premier, John Brumby, says it will be a chance for everybody to grieve together.

"[It's] a magnificent opportunity for Victorians and Australians to come together ... to show our mourning, to show our grief, to show our respect," he said.
http://www.fayettedailynews.com/article.php?id_news=3062

Syndicated columnist George Will’s recent column on global warming and the so-called man-made warming phenomenon should be required reading.

Will actually takes the experts to task for continuing to shove the global warming theory in our faces, since, as he writes, evidence seems to be mounting that these experts have it all wrong.

According to the University of Illinois Artic Climate Research Center, the global sea ice levels are now equal to those of 1979. This fact contradicts the claims by those who say global warming, as evidenced by the melting polar ice cap, is happening and may be unstoppable.

Will points out that 30 years ago the fear expressed by climatologists was that the Earth was entering a sustained period of global cooling and we were headed for another Ice Age.

I have made that point on a number of occasions, citing a program hosted by Leonard Nimoy called In Search of the Coming Ice Age.
And I don’t plan on falling for the same scare tactics that those who espouse the theory of man-made global warming want us to believe. And I don t want our elected representatives to do that either.

I don’t trust our government. And I’m not alone in that.

A recent release survey found that there is a wide level of distrust and dissatisfaction of government across the board among the people of America.

That is a sad state of affairs. We elect these people to represent us on the local, state and federal level, and still we do not trust them.

Time and again we are faced with public servants who put their own interests above those of their constituents. Is it any wonder that our trust level is so low?

And so it goes with global warming. Those leaders in our state and federal governments who continue to preach that man is not only causing, but can actually do something about global warming, refuse to look at all the facts and instead choose to rely on information from skewed sources.

Will’s column points out that the United Nations World Meteorological Organization says there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade, or one-third of the space since the global cooling scare.

Try to get a global-warming fanatic to listen to that finding.

Or try to get some member of Congress who has already closed their mind to another opinion to listen.

Bet you can’t.

(Kerlin is a veteran journalist whose family roots go back for generations in the community)

http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/3333/218/

Dark Green Doomsayers Print E-mail
Written by George F. Will, Washington Post
Saturday, 14 February 2009
chu-steven.jpg

A corollary of Murphy's Law ("If something can go wrong, it will") is: "Things are worse than they can possibly be." Energy Secretary Steven Chu, an atomic physicist, seems to embrace that corollary but ignores Gregg Easterbrook's "Law of Doomsaying": Predict catastrophe no sooner than five years hence but no later than 10 years away, soon enough to terrify but distant enough that people will forget if you are wrong.

Chu recently told the Los Angeles Times that global warming might melt 90 percent of California's snowpack, which stores much of the water needed for agriculture. This, Chu said, would mean "no more agriculture in California," the nation's leading food producer. Chu added: "I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going."

No more lettuce for Los Angeles? Chu likes predictions, so here is another: Nine decades hence, our great-great-grandchildren will add the disappearance of California artichokes to the list of predicted planetary calamities that did not happen. Global cooling recently joined that lengthening list.

Speaking of experts, in 1980 Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford scientist and environmental Cassandra who predicted calamitous food shortages by 1990, accepted a bet with economist Julian Simon. When Ehrlich predicted the imminent exhaustion of many nonrenewable natural resources, Simon challenged him: Pick a "basket" of any five such commodities, and I will wager that in a decade the price of the basket will decline, indicating decreased scarcity. Ehrlich picked five metals -- chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten -- that he predicted would become more expensive. Not only did the price of the basket decline, the price of all five declined.

An expert Ehrlich consulted in picking the five was John Holdren, who today is President Obama's science adviser. Credentialed intellectuals, too -- actually, especially -- illustrate Montaigne's axiom: "Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know."

As global levels of sea ice declined last year, many experts said this was evidence of man-made global warming. Since September, however, the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began. According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.

An unstated premise of eco-pessimism is that environmental conditions are, or recently were, optimal. The proclaimed faith of eco-pessimists is weirdly optimistic: These optimal conditions must and can be preserved or restored if government will make us minimize our carbon footprints and if government will "remake" the economy.

Because of today's economy, another law -- call it the Law of Clarifying Calamities -- is being (redundantly) confirmed. On graphs tracking public opinion, two lines are moving in tandem and inversely: The sharply rising line charts public concern about the economy, the plunging line follows concern about the environment. A recent Pew Research Center poll asked which of 20 issues should be the government's top priorities. Climate change ranked 20th.

Real calamities take our minds off hypothetical ones. Besides, according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade, or one-third of the span since the global cooling scare.


Put arrives for APEC meeting in Sydney 2007.

As I Walked Out One Evening

*




As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.


As I Walked Out One Evening
by W. H. Auden



He felt as if he had been permanently deleted. With each tooth went swathes of memory. Catastrophe was always imminent. But in reality he had got up and gone to work for years. Swathes of memory, festooned with the dead. Shadows of the population. A relentless ground. Yesterday he had to move his car three times to avoid the ever present parking police; those pestulant forces preying on a defeated, disarmed population. If it's not a word it should be; the vile evil that this city had become. No one was happy any more, except the young and the frivolous. The appalling hierarchy. The hole into which he had fallen. The gifts of the gods. The sacred arch; in this world nothing but the plastic yellow arches of MacDonalds.

All the way, all the way, he shivered, he remembered their love, you are my north, my south, my east, my west, my Monday morning and my Sunday rest, infatuation. Now he was too old for the ones he fancied; and jerked like an ancient puppet on the periphery of social scenes; eclipsed. We really love you, he said, and in the depth of it he wondered what had happened to all those past images, those self beliefs, the ancient, appallingly sick fishman blinking in and out of reality, hid artfully behind the seven screens, flailing at himself with syringes, so desperately sick, so totally hidden.

We went to see Rachel Getting Married, Joyce and I, about a woman - Anne Hathaway - on weekend release from a rehab in order to attend a wedding; all the family intensities. We thought it was a comedy but it was closer to a tragedy, intense, draining, the utter selfishness of the addict. She seems to be getting worse, he said to the kids, when one of them referred to their own mother as a psycho. Yes, they nodded. That scene last night, he said, referring to a tear filled lounge room spurt when the complex rave, I couldn't possibly go to work, you get that don't you? spilled over on to the floor and made little sense at all.

It had been such a long struggle; and now it was virtually over. Sammy turned 18 two days ago. The catastrophic burdens that he had carried with him; they too had been blasted away. Let it go, Mick had said, holding his hand, promise me, let it go. And he wouldn't let his hand go until he repeated after him: Yes, I promise, I will let it go. This burden, these pains. You've been self-medicating all these years, the psychiatrist said. It all came together in that strangely therapeutic moment, that peculiar, unique singularity. Let it go. Repeat after me.

All his life the right people had shown up at the right time; and here it was again. He was in shadows. He was fighting for his life. And then suddenly the sunny up lands - here you go then, the wind and the music and a friend and I, leaving from very strange stations of the cross, from the uncharted uplands of the spirit. But quoting, inaccurately, long dead poets, in this case Michael Dransfield, dead, young, the tragic poet, the person he thought he was going to be, short, brilliant, doomed, would get you nowhere. This was an entirely different era.

A curmudgeonly old thing, the world was doomed. They wrapped their loins in preparation for the coming depression. Shocked faces of normally bland, lying politicians, gave away the real story. Suited officials from the Reserve Bank assured the populace that Australia would not be hit as badly as the rest of the world. A dark alloy formed at the base. The Coalition disintegrated. Shocked passages passed them by. The x-ray trees on burnt ground retreated into memory. The death toll was revised, closer to 200 than the 300 originally feared; still Australia's worst natural disaster. The howling wind; the cars that spontaneously burst into flames ahead of the fireball, the houses that disintegrated; and now, the survivors, thousands of homes lost; turning on the media; just leave us alone.

Their suffering had been thoroughly exploited; and it was time to leave the stage.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/fire-accused-a-target-over-facebook-photo-lawyer-20090217-8aa2.html

ACCUSED arsonist Brendan James Sokaluk has become a focal point of community anger, his lawyer told a court yesterday, as Premier John Brumby appealed for calm.

Lawyer Julian McMahon told the Supreme Court he was concerned for Sokaluk's safety after his photograph and "vicious" comments, including calls for him to be tortured and killed, were posted on social networking website Facebook.

Sokaluk, 39, of Churchill, is accused of lighting a fire in his town that killed at least 11 people.

Magistrate Jonathon Klestadt lifted a suppression order on his name on Monday, when Sokaluk was charged with arson causing death, arson and possessing child pornography.

Mr Klestadt said it was unlikely that people in the close-knit community did not already know who he was, but suppressed Sokaluk's street address and image in a bid to prevent vandalism or violence.

Thousands of Facebook vigilantes defied the ban by publishing his photo and address, accompanied by violent threats.

Mr McMahon, who appeared for Sokaluk during a Supreme Court bid by the Herald Sun to lift the ban on publishing his image, said at least one threat had also been made against one of Sokaluk's relatives.

The "vicious" material about his client on the internet meant community anger suddenly had a focus, Mr McMahon said.

The mother of a woman previously linked to Sokaluk and whose photograph was published in the Herald Sun , released a statement through police saying she feared that her daughter's job and community standing was now at risk.

"Our family has already experienced harassment and community ill-feeling as a result of the media linking our family with the accused," she said. She said her daughter was "a guileless and not-worldly person" who needed support.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25071148-601,00.html

MALCOLM Turnbull's attempts to recast the Liberal Party, including knocking off the sitting federal president, are threatening to throw the organisation into the turmoil and divisions of the disastrous Howard-Peacock rivalries of the 1980s.

The Opposition Leader is determined to revamp the Liberal Party but he is being accused by party members of doing away with links to the Howard-Costello years and behaving like a corporate raider in a company merger.

The Liberal leader approached former Liberal federal president Shane Stone to replace Alan Stockdale, a former Victorian treasurer in the Kennett government, as the party president.

Although he agreed to act in the "best interests of the party" and assume office once more, the former Northern Territory chief minister and party treasurer refused to be part of a scheme to knife his friend in the back.

Mr Stockdale told The Australian last night he would be re-nominating for the presidency of the Liberal Party at the federal council meeting in Canberra next month.

"I believe when you take on this job you should serve a full term," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2494077.htm

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 17/02/2009

Reporter: Conor Duffy

After years of drought, farmers in many parts of the country are now dealing with flooding rains. In Queensland's gulf country, a number of towns have been shut off for more than six weeks and are running low on supplies. And in New South Wales, a number of towns in the north and west of the state are also under water, and more rain could be on the way.
Transcript
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: After years of drought, farmers in many parts of the country are now dealing with flooding rains. In Queensland's gulf country, a number of towns have been cut off for more than six weeks and are running low on supplies.

In New South Wales, large areas of the north and west of the state are now underwater and more rain could be on the way. Conor Duffy reports.

CONOR DUFFY, REPORTER: The lush dairy paddocks around Bellingen on the NSW mid-north coast have become giant puddles with small pockets of dry land. In the town itself, the Bellinger River rose so high, the only bridge to the outside world disappeared.

MARK TROY, BELLINGEN MAYOR: Floods are a fact of life in our part of the world, but this particular one did - the river rose extraordinarily fast during the night. There was enormous amounts of rain in the upper river catchments. Some areas recorded 250 mls overnight.

CONOR DUFFY: That left thousands stranded.

PETE GALLAGHER, RESIDENT: The water here was a metre deep and it was just gushing down into the paddock.

ANDREW SENSE, RESIDENT: Last night and yesterday, it just continually poured. Yeah, all day, yep, all night. Couldn't believe it when we got up this morning.

All Is Not Safe

*




Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

WH Auden



As if everything was lost, the mellow squiggles, he held himself tight and laughed; they were a perennial outrage, on the edge. They liked their own difference, their sense of separation, the entre into a secret club. In Melbourne we stayed with Don Dunstan, then Tourism Minister for Victoria, an appointment Labor had made as a loyalty gesture. We were in town from Sydney, which wasn't the toxic dump it is today. It wasn't the place we all love to hate, snakes crawling over each other, dogs rounding on the wounded. The only way to establish rapport with a taxi driver is to moan about how Sydney just isn't the place it used to be. And that, my friend, is very true. The malaise that has destroyed this once wonderful place, this Amsterdam by the sea, the party town of the Pacific, the smell of frangipanis and white terrace houses under cloudless blank blue skies, has many origins, not least the rapid growth in population. Places like Fairfield in the western suburbs have 70% of the population born somewhere else.

There's no natural, organic sense of community. There's dog eat dog and ethnic group eat ethnic group; all it will take to turn this dispirited mess of warring factions into a conflagration is for a Lebanese gang member to rape the girlfriend of a Vietnamese gang member and whoosh, away we go. Try and find out a simple thing: how many Christian churches are vandalised in Sydney each year? Strangely, the statistic is unavailable. They do their best to conceal the truth. They do their best to peddle the official lies; that multiculturalism is an unalloyed success; this gift of ideology from the Canadian left, their gift, as they say, to the world. Thanks guys. Thanks for undermining the culture that was. Thanks for creating a new world, with its many pluses and minuses. Babel has arrived, for good or ill.

The official version howls down the idea of a white retreat; as old timers in once unremarkable working class suburbs cower inside, while outside flash families from all over the world, loaded up on the welfare dollar, drive past in their big black or silver four wheel drives. As the upper classes embrace the greater variety of restaurants and the routinely educated middle classes embrace the difference, dismissing, as their professors have told them to do, the past as a painfully narrow and bigoted monoculture, they cower, they despair, dismissed as old, as racists, as white.

But more fundamental than these demographic changes is the absolute contempt the population feels for their governing bodies. As they sit in the choking traffic and despair at the parasites feeding off them; the endless tolls, the parking cops, the fight for survival. The ill health that threatens them all. The mind boggling incompetence of a state government rolling in billions of GST dollars; feeding their Labor chronies, their mates. In the cafe Steve quotes the Bible at him; Revelations I think. No one will be able to trade without the marki of the beast; on hand and head. The hand for action, the head for intellect.

You will be stained with belief; and if you do not believe, if you are not a Labor convert, you will be ostracised. You will be persecuted through every available channel. Through the darkness and the light and the quivering dawn; through a tender, tentative embrace. The malformed images that had dominated his brain had dissipated. Let it go, let it go, promise me, Mick said, holding his hands and insisting, in a country where men do not hold hands, repeat after me, I will let it go, I will let it go. I don't deserve this. I never deserved the beatings, the brutality, the injustices. The shadows that had stalked his every waking moment. The fear that they were out there, determined to get him. As the conservatives crumbled into a disappointing heap; and everything we had ever worked for vanished. In traffic, in chaos, in the feeding frenzy of the tax collector, drunk on their own excesses, bus lanes, noise cameras, constant monitoring.

And as the crowds sit in their miserable cocoons, on the trains, on the buses, their faces blank, unwritten, as they gaze out the window with a unique blankness. And anyone who can think wants to escape. No one in this city has the slightest faith in their government, local, state or federal, although Rudd gave the population a brief flush of hope; at least he wasn't Howard. Howard who betrayed himself and the country and left the conservatives in a tragic mess; Howard who took us into an immoral and unpopular war in Iraq, Howard who spread the tentacles of bureaucracy into everybody's life; far more than any left wing government could or would ever have dared to do. With the GST every single financial transaction except the black economy now attracts a tax. The spread of welfare into the middle classes means Centrelink now has a relationship with more than 90 per cent of families.

The once proud independence of the population is lost. Yet they are expected to believe in governments so bad they virtually defy description. And so people go about their dreary lives, the snail trails we all form in this rotten town in order to make life bearable, the putrid platitudes of morning television hosts glossing over virtually everything, chattering in the background, shuddering at the hatred building up in the population. This deep discontent. This darkening psyche. The dipping morale. Be careful, he warned, all is not safe.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/nelson-quits-seat-and-calls-on-liberals-to-renew-themselves-20090216-89dh.html

THE former Opposition leader Brendan Nelson has delivered the Liberal Party its second shock in one day by announcing he would quit politics at the next federal election.

Only hours after Julie Bishop stepped down as shadow treasurer, Dr Nelson told a meeting in his safe North Shore seat of Bradfield that it was time the party renewed itself.

Dr Nelson was a minister in the Howard Government, holding the education and defence portfolios. He beat Malcolm Turnbull to become Opposition leader after the Coalition's 2007 election defeat.

Mr Turnbull deposed him in September last year. Dr Nelson eschewed an offer to serve in shadow cabinet and went to the backbench.

His decision to retire paves the way for a preselection battle in Bradfield, and it will place pressure on other Howard government veterans occupying safe NSW seats, such as Philip Ruddock and Bronwyn Bishop, to make way for new blood and allow the party to rejuvenate itself.

It will also cast the spotlight on Peter Costello in Victoria, who most expect will seek preselection again.

The Liberal Party is alive with suspicion that Kevin Rudd could go to the polls as early as the end of this year, rather than late next year as scheduled.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25064492-5006785,00.html

THE man accused of lighting a bushfire that killed 11 people has made an insurance claim for fire damage.

Brendan James Sokaluk, 39, lodged the claim with the RACV a day after fires ravaged Victoria.

Mr Sokaluk's identity was revealed yesterday after a magistrate said it was likely many already knew who the accused was.

But the magistrate continued a ban on Mr Sokaluk's photo or street address, saying it was likely to lead to attacks on his property.

Magistrate Jon Klestadt yesterday lifted a suppression order on Mr Sokaluk's identity.

The Churchill man chose not to appear at the brief remand hearing in Melbourne Magistrates' Court, and last night was in protective custody.

He is alleged to have sparked the horrific Churchill blaze by setting fire to a timber plantation on February 7.

In lifting the suppression, Mr Klestadt said it was likely many people already knew Mr Sokaluk's identity.

His social networking page was disabled late yesterday.

Mr Sokaluk was an enigma in the town where he grew up, but yesterday everyone was talking about him.

"Everywhere you go people are talking about it, even at the shops," one resident said.

Despite all the talk, few people have penetrated Mr Sokaluk's private life.

A loner who went to a special school, he tried to become a CFA volunteer for years but was always knocked back.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/17/2493099.htm

Police have appealed for patience as they work to establish the final death toll from the Victorian bushfires.

A further eight people were confirmed dead on Monday, taking the number to 189.

The latest figure includes 128 killed in the Kinglake fire, 10 at Churchill and 43 in the fires at Marysville.

Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe says it may be some time before a final death toll is known.

"We have been working closely with the Coroner's Court to enable us to get to this point tonight," he said.

"The families and friends of bushfire victims would expect us to ensure that we get this right and that we treat the victims with the dignity and the respect that they deserve."

Mr Walshe says Disaster Victims Identification teams are focusing on the area around Marysville, where 43 people are known to have died.

"It's a difficult issue there because most of the work there is building searches, so building searches will take a more lengthy period of time than the open areas to actually locate remains," he said.

Police say the death toll from the bushfires will continue to rise as more bodies are identified in the devastated areas.


The kids at Lunar Park when they were younger.

Aftermath

*



Sorted by relevance Sort by date Sort by date with duplicates included

More Australian arsonists hunted
BBC News, UK - 3 hours ago
Australian officials suspect arsonists were responsible for starting fresh fires in Victoria, as a dozen bushfires continued to burn in the state. ...
Warning system wouldn't have worked: Brumby
ABC Online, Australia - 4 hours ago
Fates sealed...changing winds caused the fires to speed up before a warning could have been effective. (User submitted: Chris Mulherin) Victorian Premier ...
The rebuilding work begins after Victorian bushfires
NEWS.com.au, Australia - 5 hours ago
AN army of tradies and engineers will flood into Victoria's fire-ravaged communities in coming months as part of the government's promise to rebuild every ...
Crisis survived, we must quickly apply the lessons
The Australian, Australia - 6 hours ago
A NATION reveals itself in a crisis. The artifice is stripped away, the finery and the fashion disappear. Here is the nation in its true form. ...
Victoria bushfire body count could hit 300 - Christine Nixon
Courier Mail, Australia - 6 hours ago
VICTORIA'S Police Commissioner Christine Nixon has warned the state's coroner to prepare for as many as 300 bodies, with many unlikely to be identified. ...
Climate models predicted Australian bushfires
New Scientist, UK - 1 hour ago
AUSTRALIA may have just had a horrifying preview of what climate change has in store for its people. Even early warning couldn't stop last weekend's bush ...
Together, we will rebuild
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia - 6 hours ago
IT is impossible to convey the full range of emotions stirred by the bushfire disaster in Victoria. There is deep, unbearable sadness at so many lives lost. ...
Australian residents return to scorched homes
Deutsche Welle, Germany - 3 hours ago
Residents of some towns devastated by the worst wildfires in Australia's history have begun returning home. Some fire-wrecked locations remain off limits as ...
Australia braces itself grisly discoveries
Financial Times, UK - 10 hours ago
By Peter Smith in Sydney The death toll in Australia’s worst bushfires is expected to climb past 200 in the coming days as forensic experts examine the ...
Federal MPs united over Vic bushfires
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 8 Feb 2009
Federal politicians arriving at Parliament House have put aside their differences to express sympathy and support for those caught up in the Victorian ...
PM warns of 'frustrations' as fire crisis continues
ABC Online, Australia - 14 hours ago
By Online parliamentary correspondent Emma Rodgers Australia remains in a fire crisis with the threats moving to a new stage, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has ...
Fire advice was right - Premier
The Australian, Australia - 21 hours ago
Article from: Australian AP VICTORIAN Premier John Brumby says the stay-or-go bushfire advice to householder will stay in place while the royal commission ...
Architect calls for bunkers in fire zone homes
ABC Online, Australia - 20 hours ago
An architect says fire bunkers should be included when rebuilding communities affected by Victoria's worst bushfires. Retiring Victorian Police Chief ...
Manage bush better so climate won't matter
The Australian, Australia - 6 hours ago
LAST year the Wilderness Society published a six-point action plan to "reduce bushfire risks and help to protect people, property, wildlife and their ...

Fire aftermath 'too distressing'
BBC News, UK - 16 hours ago
Australian police are stopping some residents of bushfire-hit areas from returning to their homes, saying the scenes would be too gruesome. ...
Victoria bushfires stoked by green vote
The Australian, Australia - 9 Feb 2009
VICTORIA has suffered the most tragic bushfire disaster to have occurred on this continent throughout its period of human habitation. ...
Don't build in the fire's path
The Australian, Australia - 10 Feb 2009
A DANGEROUS cocktail of increased fire risk and higher populations is emerging on the periphery of many Australian cities and regional centres. ...
Hunt begins for arsonists as Victoria bushfires toll rises
The Australian, Australia - 9 Feb 2009
POLICE will pursue anyone who has deliberately lit fires that have ravaged Victoria, Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon says. ...
A history of fatal Australian bushfires
The Australian, Australia - 7 Feb 2009
Feb 7, 2009 - Sixty-five people confirmed killed and fears of more fatalities in bushfires across rural Victoria. Dec 30, 2007 - Blaze kills three truckers ...
At least 84 dead in Victorian bushfires
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 7 Feb 2009
The death toll from Victoria's bushfires has risen to 84, police say, in what has officially become Australia's deadliest bushfires disaster. ...

Victorian bushfires now worst in Australian history
The Australian, Australia - 8 Feb 2009
By Sandra O'Malley | February 09, 2009 Article from: Australian AP PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has told the nation to prepare itself for worse news as the ...
Bushfire toll 'to rise well over 200'
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 9 Feb 2009
Victorian Premier John Brumby says the death toll from the bushfires will rise well beyond 200 and the coroner had conceded as much. ...
Australian arsonists likely to be young and male
Reuters - 8 hours ago
By James Grubel CANBERRA (Reuters) - The arsonist Australian police suspect lit one of the weekend's deadly wildfires is likely to be a young male who could ...
Victoria's day of 'tragedy, courage and sheer luck'
The Australian, Australia - 9 Feb 2009
AN emotional Julia Gillard yesterday described the bushfires as "one of the darkest days of Australia's peacetime history" as she led a condolence motion in ...
Army called in to help battle Victorian bushfires
The Australian, Australia - 7 Feb 2009
By Greg Roberts | February 08, 2009 Article from: Australian AP THE Australian army will be brought in to help in the worst bushfires in Victoria's history. ...
States send firefighters to Victoria
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 8 Feb 2009
States and territories stood shoulder to shoulder with Victoria in a show of interstate mateship, promising help to the state reeling from killer bushfires. ...
Police track arsonists responsible for Victoria bushfires
The Australian, Australia - 9 Feb 2009
VICTORIAN police are starting to shift their focus from the fires and the victims to tracking down the people who started them. Chief Commissioner Christine ...
14 dead in Victorian inferno
ABC Online, Australia - 7 Feb 2009
Tragedy ... police fear up to 40 people may have died in today's horrific fires. (AAP: Andrew Brownbill) Fourteen people are dead and at least 100 homes ...
181 dead as bushfires continue to wreak havoc
ABC Online, Australia - 9 Feb 2009
Firefighters are battling 25 bushfires across Victoria, as the death toll rises to 181, making it the country's worst bushfire disaster. ...
NZ pledges to send firies to Australia
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 8 Feb 2009
Prime Minister John Key says New Zealand will dispatch firefighters "very soon" to help tackle the devastating Victorian bushfires, which have killed more ...

Google News 6.53am 12 February 2009.

*



It's still the same bonhomie. Our Nicole donated $500,000 yesterday to the bush fire appeal, coming on television to announce the gift. Husband in tow. Skin polished to an inch. Clairvoyant, dark, the crumpled houses and x-ray trees dominate every image we see; distressed people embracing each other; the horror of the burnt. The only way you could tell they were children was the size of their skulls, one said. We sink into this media saturation; other people's pain. The government tries to pass the economic stimulus package. It doesn't do enough for the Murray Darling Basin, said Xenophon. They are crippled by their lack of belief; the utter amorality of it all.

Tiny voices raised in dissent; while the so-called Great Dissenter, who spent his life being surrounded by the applause of the left, Michael Kirby, the so-called champion of the people, the oppressed, openly gay, the first, has left the High Court, as always surrounded by applause. Try taking an unpopular or unfashionable position and holding to it; and then see how much applause you get. The telaphon's are running on television now; an astonishing $74 million raised last time he looked. Interspersed with reports from the fire zone. We're crippled, desperately sad. And we look at this catastrophe in our neighbouring state; and are both kind and cruel, going about our daily lives.

Let it go, let it go, Mick said, and the things he couldn't write, the enormous burdens, these things too washed away, like history itself. Already there was something historic about the events. The bush fire stories you have to know.
The suffering you have to see. Shattered lives. They pick through the ashes of their homes; astonished at how little is left. The fireball ate everything. Two cups, a woman displayed, that was it. All the normal things you don't associate with burning, fridges, freezers, lounge rooms, laundries, all of it fed the fury of the fire ball. That giant, burning heat, incendiary, whoosh whoosh, the fires were burning in everyone's dreams, people screaming in their last terrifying moments.

The horrific nature of the events took everyone back. A sombre air settled across the crowd. The bodies burnt in the houses; naturally incinerated, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Identification, they said, would be difficult in many cases. There was so little left. Pale patches on burnt ground. Entire villages burnt to the ground. People who wanted to get away from it all, living in the forest. There was more fuel around than there had been for 30,000 years, some of the commentators said. The greenies policies of not burning off had created a disaster. The climate change mob were baying frantically, never let a chance go by.

It's true, every time you go to a fire most of the locals, particularly those who have lived in the area for a long time, complain bitterly that the greens on the council are stopping them from burning off. Prior to European invasion, the aborigines regularly burnt off, flushing out wildlife for food and leaving open woodland, ideal for kangaroo grazing. Now they all want to revert to some pre-human state, wild, primitive, locked up forests. They talk about the wild beauty of nature; its savage brutality. They count the dead. Even trying to compose lists of the dead and missing is proving an enormous headache.

So we mourn, we sympathise, we donate. We mist up in sympathy at the images on television. Familiar faces report from the fire zone. The country coalesces around its own heartland; a common sense of decency. We're all in this together, say the millionaires. We shudder at the hypocrisy, yet it seems briefly true. All the parasites, the politicians, the lawyers, the parking cops, the bureaucrats, briefly all is forgiven, the common man rises. And woman. As they embrace tearfully. All is forgiven and they unite in common sympathy; and he watches distanced the x-ray trees, the blackened hills, the collapsed villages, the burnt out houses, sheets of tin all that is left. He can barely absorb the stories of heroism and survival; the breadth of the disaster, our own shattering insignificant against the scale of other people's suffering, grief, their enormous loss.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/10/2487743.htm

Firefighters are battling 25 bushfires across Victoria, as the death toll rises to 181, making it the country's worst bushfire disaster.

Victorian Premier John Brumby says he expects the death toll from the disaster to exceed 200, with more than 50 people still missing, thought to be dead.

The blazes have burnt through more than 3,000 square kilometres - entire towns were wiped off the map within 24 hours at the weekend.

More than 900 homes have been destroyed and 7,000 survivors have registered for assistance with the Red Cross.

The Bunyip Ridge fire that has burned through 25,000 hectares is no longer threatening homes.

But CFA Incident Controller Chris Hardman says the blaze is far from being brought under control.

"The perimeter of this fire is about 65 kilometres so it's going to take a number of... maybe even a couple of weeks to get this fire contained," he said.

"But we're going to be working really hard to focus on those areas that have the greatest risk of escape, so at this stage that's on the north-western and north-eastern side of this fire that's where we're putting all of our activity."

The fire had destroyed several homes in Labertouche, Jinviick West and Drouin West.

Urgent threat messages were issued for residents near Currawong Drive, East Beenak Road, and Pack Track in Gembrook.

Southerly winds are also fanning the Murrindindi-Yea fire burning near Alexandra.

Residents in the vicinity of Yarck, Caveat, Taggerty, Cathedral Lane and Rubicon, Connellys Creek, Acheron, Crystal Creek, Crystal Creek Road, Narbethong, Scrubby Creek and along Whanregarwen Road from the Maroondah Highway near Alexandra through to Molesworth are urged to remain vigilant.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25032976-5013871,00.html

AN emotional Julia Gillard yesterday described the bushfires as "one of the darkest days of Australia's peacetime history" as she led a condolence motion in federal parliament.

Parliamentary business was suspended as a mark of respect to those who died.

The Deputy Prime Minister told through tears stories of tragedy, including that of Rebecca Buchanan, who lost her 15-year-old son "Macca" Mackenzie, nine-year-old daughter Neeve and her brother Danny Clark, 37.

"That's perhaps the greatest tragedy, that children were involved," she told the House of Representatives.

Ms Gillard said the bushfires were blacker than the human tragedies of Black Friday of 1939 and Ash Wednesday of 1983.

She said February 7, 2009, would be remembered as a day of tragedy, courage and sheer luck.

"As a Melburnian and a Victorian, the reality of the loss took on a familiar face with the death of the revered Brian Naylor and his wife Moiree at their Kinglake West home," Ms Gillard said.

"But of course Brian and Moiree Naylor are just one set of parents, friends and neighbours lost in these tragic events."

Malcolm Turnbull said the Coalition fully supported action taken by the Government to help those affected by the tragedy.

The Opposition Leader spoke of the harsh reality of living in such a beautiful country.

"Surely it is a terrible beauty and we have seen the full terror of that beauty in the last few days," Mr Turnbull told the House of Representatives. "Last Saturday was such a day, freakishly high temperatures, ferocious winds, a savage brute of a day, the like of which Victorians have never seen and would hope never to see again. That is the cruel paradox of the land in which we live."

MPs paid tribute to the remarkable courage of those people who battled the blazes, among them two firefighters whose own families perished as they fought to help others.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7883970.stm

Australian officials suspect arsonists were responsible for starting fresh fires in Victoria, as a dozen bushfires continued to burn in the state.

State Premier John Brumby said he was aware of "several" fires being lit deliberately in the Beechworth area northeast of Melbourne late on Tuesday.

More than 180 people have been killed in fires since Saturday.

Bodies are still being retrieved, prompting police to bar residents from returning to some towns.

They said the sight of the burned bodies would be too distressing for residents.

See map of fires

Amid on-going firefighting plus a wide-scale investigation into the country's worst fire disaster, Mr Brumby said of the most recent outbreaks: "There seems little doubt that these were deliberately lit."

Arson investigators said they had found six main sources of Saturday's fires. They had found one case of foul play near the town of Churchill, about 90 miles (140km) southeast of Melbourne, and a suspect was being sought.

Four other fire sources were not suspicious and one, the Marysville fire, was not yet determined, investigators said.

Difficult identification

In Marysville, which remains cordoned off, Mr Brumby said 50 to 100 of the town's 500-odd residents could have been killed. Only eight have so far been confirmed dead.

"There are still deceased persons in homes," he said. Police, fire officials and soldiers had still not been able to identify and remove all bodies, he added.

The Bureau of Meteorology said the temperature on Saturday - the worst day for the fires - reached 46.4 Celsius in Melbourne, a hotter day than 13 January 1939, when bushfires killed 71 people.


Sydney Tunnels; this is probably the M5.