Dark night ends for Hester

What is it that makes people go the extra step? Last night I listened to Rachael Kohn talking to Thomas Moore (abc) about his new book Dark Night of the Soul and about the importance of all things grey and bleak. If only Paul Hester had listened to it. (Audio clip here).

How is it that some people opt for the ticket to nowhere. While others plod alone finding a sort of solace in the grim, a kind of way to rejoice in those long dark teatimes of the soul. I don't mean faking optimism or pretending things are sweet when they're bitter sour and juiceless as dry rotten limes, I just mean some people survive knowing it's ok to say "my life is bitter sour and juiceless as an old dry lime" and then take the dogs for a walk without winding up hanging from the branch of a tree. While others just don't seem to think it's worth sticking around to toy over grim realities and choose the tree.

Poor bugger. To think he imagined his life that worthless.

Hester hanged himself
March 28, 2005 - 10:29AM smh

Former Crowded House and Split Enz drummer Paul Hester hanged himself in a Melbourne park, authorities have confirmed.

Hester, 46, the father of two girls, was found dead at Elsternwick Park in Brighton on Saturday afternoon.

He was last seen walking his two dogs on Friday night.

Why? It's just odd, you know. Famous musician, taking his dogs for a walk - then phfut. Just like that. Victorian police are not treating the death as suspicious. My inner dark night mourns. My inner skeptic wonders why police aren't treating the death suspiciously. It's not very comforting, to think you can just be found hanging in a park without investigation.

What how?

Sentience; the readiness to perceive sensations; elementary or undifferentiated consciousness. (onelook)

Is sentience just awareness of sensation, or is it a greater understanding of wider environs - of our impact on others and environment rather then simply environments impact on us?

Therein maybe lies a key to unlocking peace. We all strive to survive, most of us anyway.

A destructive survival mechanism might reason; "we are unhappy living this way, we would be happier living another way, and to get there we destroy such and such". A creative survival mechanism might reason; "we are unhappy living this way, we would be happier living another way and to get there we make such and such". On the face of it, one looks destructive and the other constructive. Except that how do we know that what the creative mechanism creates is not going to require the destruction of some other thing?

Can sentient beings evolve on constructive thought alone?

Or is sentience typified by progression - where destructive thought becomes critical, then expressive and finally creative. Is a cyclic flow inevitable - returning to destructive and repeating through critical, expressive and creative over and again. Can we stem the damage by introducing less destructive arenas for destructive tendency?

Is sentience simply sensory, or is it more. And if is more, is it wholistic - an awareness of reciprocal impact.

Who knows, I was just wondering.

Letting it go

If you are looking for peace and understanding you had better visit another blog today because I am having a little clearing out of cobwebs right now. I have seriously had a gutsfull of other people's crap and today is my turn to have a rant.

If there's one thing reading blogs revolving around Iraq can teach, it's how demanding and self-centered humanity is. When those first few blogs following Salam and Raed's intermediary foray began leaking out of Iraq, despite circumstance there was a general air of elation, and hope, and perhaps even faith. It soon turned sour for me. I read and watched the blogs and commenters and more often then not left the page feeling appalled. How selfish the audience was, how "me, me, me". "Give us comments!!!" "give us rights" "give us freedom" the largely western audience seemed to clamour. The irony being, a predominantly western audience's chance at public speaking was being hosted by other people who had lived under dictatorship for decades and whose country was currently occupied and under fire. Commenters became parasites and more often then not ineloquent ones - who'd have thought those western commenters issued from democratic regions. Worse was to come.

If you've lived through any politically oppressive regime, you need time out from other politically oppressive regimes. Be the regime on whatever scale - national or family. You need a chance to come to grips with the past in a neutral space. A chance to discuss experience, if you chose to, without a cacophony of crows squawking "ours! ours! Believe in our system now". It sickened me, it really did. The few who risked describing what they actually saw or felt, stark reality and all, were largely reviled by a foreign audience who didn't and couldn't understand that their own leaders actions are causing loss of life, limb and dignity and have opened a window of opportunity for all diabolical means and ends. And so the few who did not describe so graphically their surroundings almost became beholden to a new regime - a regime in which one must never express pain but only satiate ones audience with hope. A regime in which one could agree with ones audience but not guide it. Not once, did I see one of those daubed "optimist" defend another human being defiled with the rudest most abysmal and petulant commentary I have ever seen anywhere on the web. Not once. And in a sense, it was like Saddam all over again. Instead of having an opportunity to recuperate, spiritually, in a neutral virtual sphere away from horrific reality, bloggers were catapulted into yet another regime demanding unswerving allegiance to it's new doctrine.

And this reverberated throughout other media. Case in point - elections. For the first time in decades voting in Iraq was not compulsory. Under Saddam, not only did everyone have to vote for Saddam - everyone had to vote fullstop. The alternative being viewed with an eye to treason and subsequent punishment. People had to vote for a system they didn't necessarily believe in. And yet when finally that system came to an end, and people supposedly had choice, people were again ridiculed and reviled for choosing to voice dissatisfaction with a system they did not trust. What was so bad about saying "I don't believe this election is legitimate and this is why I'm not going to vote". I mean, wouldn't that sound like a perfectly logical statement to make in a system where people are supposed to be able to speak freely?

You would not believe the kind of crap that has turned up in comments in some places. I don't care who spins it, or who they think they are getting at - it's just plain sick. And the sickest part of all is that when presented by their illness few are willing to take responsibility for it. I tried it once. I had just had an absolute 'nough. A comment showed up from a known source who'd emailed me before, so I forwarded it to his inbox, with brief statement of dissatisfaction attached. I also forwarded him one or two other randomly selected pieces of crap from that days deluge. He didn't want to know or hear. He could not accept that his narky snideness compared to all the other arseholes, be they who they may. He totally went ape. Which is ironic really, seeing as his was the first piece of shit for the day and set the tone for all that followed. God knows whose blog he thought he was commenting on - maybe he just didn't get that there he is on his comfy wellpadded arse with wireless 24hr hookup giving shit to other people living in a city with it's infrastructure in disrepair, approximately 8 hours electricity a day and surrounded by madness. Because war is a madness. Violent, extreme, surreal and mundanely hellish. And there he sat, a snarky little well-heeled New Yorker taking potshots at someone living in a war zone. What an arse.

So seeing as this whole blog thing is supposed to be about reality - that's it for you. It is just as horrid as any other reality. People are dickheads, people play shitty little games, and people- though this is supposed to be an arena for debate we can't have elsewhere - are actually unwilling to hear another's views. I've seen the loudest and brashest declarations completely go into denial when someone returns it or calls them on their pontificating. It's all very well to make provocative statements and bollock on about democracy - but what's the point when you can't take criticism in return? Because most right wing American bloggers can't take criticism in return for that they deal. And that's what makes them so predictably run of the mill drearily dull. I mean seriously lacking in even humour. Oh sure they can laugh - at their own jokes, so long as they're making fun of someone or something else. But at themselves? No way. Too puffed up with ego.

Further, there is a school of thought among certain minority ideologues that picking fights and stirring up shit helps "recruit" people to "the cause". We are well aware of this and it sucks. You are doing more damage then good, and if you don't watch your back one day it's going to backfire on you.

Venting

A pox on trolls - I don't care who they are or what their intent, if any. They pollute every effort at decency and aspire only to ever greater peaks of stupidity. Call it counter black-op call it what you will, it's authors belong to the same billious fiend.

May sentience one day touch the net, when minds actually evolve from the muck.

Unearthing the living

Again and again his head smashed into the post. One crunching sickening thud after another.

Across the room she was thrown with a force that astounded her more then anger.

It's eyes bulging out. It's thin possum scream scratched by fear.

A boy grew up murdering himself with rage.

In broad daylight in the evening and at midnight war re-lived. From one hand to another raised like fingerprints embossed on flesh. I loathe it.

People who have never grown up with the remains of war will never understand. Will never know what it is to see children as adults still battling with visions. Will never know what it is to be the real transposed with remembered nightmare. Will never have seen parents fighting fear. Forty years later. War is not a tap that can be turned on. And off.

These are the stories no one wants to know. The living that we bury. Oh you take your hope and your ism and you choke on it's sweetness, gorge yourself on it. Go on. While the thin waste away on memory. You and your war. Your war carriers so few, and so prolific. War propaganda may bury us but soil means nothing to the haunted.

Every social order under the sun, burnt. Every account under the 52 points in debt. None of your grand plans mean anything, to children.

Small antennae under larger radar

Dear little No-war blogger,

You might think it's all too big and you can't change a thing - there you would be mistaken. Even the smallest diaries have influence, in the way rain falls on lakes or plankton coats the ocean. Each word somehow finds it's way into the greater whole, like throwing salt in a potion. The smallest grains effecting flavour. And so I will continue cooking up potency in small doses.

Leave the loaves and fishes to simile and stadium. Give me metaphor that I may change, things. In small ways.

Having cake

Nationalism is a scourge, in that every national thinks it's problem unique. Poor things. Prey to ego. "No country could have suffered as mine!" "No people suffered as ours!". Oh really. Oh really. Oh really. But what can you say? Deprive the weak of comfort blanket? Or let them have it. Let the sightless keep self pity. "No place is as hated as our nation". Ah, let him have it. Let him have his cot and the shawl he pulls over his eyes. He will only throw a tantrum if you expose him to the draughty uninspiring truth.

Who wants to know the grass is just as dry on the other side, as it is on this?

Nationalism is a scourge, in that every national thinks it's valour unique. Poor things. Prey to ego. "No country could have valour as mine!" "No people brave as ours!". Oh really. Oh really. Oh really. But what can you say? Deprive the weak of comfort blanket? Or let them have it. Let the sightless keep self delusion. "No place is as triumphant as our nation". Ah, let him have it. He will only sulk if you take it from him.

Who wants to know the grass is greener near the septic tank?

Tiring observations the night never tires of making

This will that humanity has, in imposing system on itself. So dull and un-extraordinary except in it's insistence. System, whatever the sake. Each to fall in it's own way.

To cruelty
To artlessness
To appetite and carelessness
The ideals you had
The vanity
Your system would not fail us
Could not fail us

And yet each has. One toppling itself after another. Fools to system. You had too much faith in yourself. Too much faith in your liberality. Too much faith in your money. Too much faith in your clothes. In that name. In your word. No system is safe, from humanity.

How do the wrongdoers feel? They don't. Diabolism has no conscience.

The wicked always will be wicked
The heretic always a voice alone

Every compass point lost
But the south
To false magnetics.

Being. Blunt.

Odd. Remembering a US push for Iraqi elections "on time" in January, despite many citing safety concerns. Afghan elections have just been delayed till autumn. With barely a murmur. And the reason ? "Fragile security situation".

Very very smelling like rats.

Afghan elections put back to the autumn
Declan Walsh in Kabul
Friday March 18, 2005, The Guardian

Afghanistan's much delayed parliamentary elections have been put off until the autumn, it emerged yesterday as the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, visited President Hamid Karzai...

The fragile security situation has raised fears for the elections, which were meant to take place last year, and had been put back to May.

Reading along...

Mr Karzai then announced that voting for parliament and the provincial councils would take place in September. Although the day has not been set, diplomats and electoral officials said that the middle of the month was most likely.

September.

...Ms Rice's six-hour visit was sandwiched between meetings in neighbouring Pakistan.

"This is not the Pakistan of September 11..." she told reporters, praising the military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf more.

Aha. So that's what it is eh. Let's bet when September 11 rolls round in the US that there'll be plenty of talk about how far the Bush administration has come, followed conveniently by Afghanistan's elections. Too crude. Democracy for the whitehouse PR calendar.

Oh well, there are some things to be learned in this. Next time anyone needs to delay something, just make sure your alternative date works in with a US feastday.

Telling it the dull way. Just how we like it.

You know why I never supported war? Because it's just dumb. A whole lot of bombs and bullets and chemicals and people all killing each other. And I guess that's why I'm not much a fan of mass revolts either. It's just all too sweaty and noisy and loud. Oh yes, I will sit here merrily writing my passage into oblivion, but take to the streets? Alright, occasionally - but not without observing the streets are just another side show. It's like thinking the point of democracy is voting when the real point of democracy is using my/your/our head every day of the year. The point of unity is not just going out every once and a while to all wave banners together, it's about managing to tolerate each other's differences every hour of my/your/our life.

I know the voting and the marching is all inspiring and everything - but these things are just the window dressing. You know, like public holidays. People can't rely on election alone and people can't rely soley on demonstrations to bring about peace. Yes, these things can bring about change - except too often people seem to have no idea about what to do next and are only too happy to leave the next bit up to a handful of other people. Which brings us right back to spot one again. And we can't just go on endlessly holding counter-demonstrations to resolve that - it's too expensive. And people's feet get sore with all the pavement pounding. And their voices get hoarse from all the declamations. And sometimes people end up all disappointed if their hopes are pinned on this one event and it doesn't pan out as expected. This is what gets me in the poo with everyone. By saying things people don't want to know and asking things people don't want to hear.

Unfortunately, it is my best quality, so I'm afraid you're stuck with it.

Turning mud into frogs

Where was I? Started writing a post about one thing and ended up writing about another.

Oh yes. Was just thinking about having an imagination. Sometimes some people mistake this for neutrality. Sometimes. Until they get to know you. Anyway, some people mistake it for a kind of middle ground. But really, having an imagination means being so far out on the margins that even the extremists look like centrists. If you extend far enough past people, past all the petty little nuances and nose thumbing which the web so often seems to support these days, past all the carnage, you will eventually find yourself in outerspace. Say, for example, back in your room all of a sudden. Or way way way out beyond the stratosphere looking down on the earth and watching all those ants bellowing at each other like bulls in a flea circus.

Then, if you look about you, you may notice yourself surrounded by stars all of sudden. It is a very humbling experience, to be a minor composition of blood and bone amoung bodies of light. For a while. Before it's time to go back down there, and start croaking again.

The trouble with hindsight

There really is no such thing as foresight. Well, there is sort of. But mostly it's just hindsight made good.

Anyway, the trouble with it is, nobody really much is enchanted with what actually happened. Most people would rather hear something that has a moral, or something to raise their spirits, or something that supports their view of the world, or something that entertains them. Most people require meaning. So, the best way to get yourself lynched - is to tell it like it is. To just say how meaningless and illusory it all was. And forever will be, to some degree or another. You see, you just can't tell people that life is an utterly pointless exercise, always has been, always will be. Or can you?

I would rather be a planet then a nail

When will humanity see the light. Will it ever.

I guess the trouble with light and humanity is, we are all stuck on the earth and have no choice but to revolve with it as it turns about the sun. Which means when the daylight shines upon us, we cannot see the stars, and when the stars shine upon us, we cannot see the sun. This is a minor dilemma. While some of us on one side of the world can see one thing, those of us on the other side must wait our turn until the earth has moved.

This is fine, so long as we are patient. And seeing as it only takes 24 hours and we live on average much longer, there is no real issue.

If only human change were as benevolent.

The world might be a more peaceful place, if every night before every person goes to bed they think of the people on the other side of the world, waking up. And if every day when every person wakes up, they thought for a moment about all the other people going to rest.

I am sure this would work.

From Jacobin to George Bush - republican fear and the Mujahideen

The pro-war republican's fear is founded in intuition, having everything to lose and knowing it.

Five or so years ago most governing bodies, both eastern and western, tyrannical and less tyrannical, appeared securely entrenched. Or so we thought. Although more wars then ever were waging in other parts of the world prior 2001, western civilians had been relatively removed from it all. The west was still a "beacon of hope" to the asylum seeker. Albeit a dim light in the distance.

Then came fire, war, the largest demonstrations ever recorded in earth's history, and flood. And numerous topplings of various leaders and a growing anxiousness that all order seemed generally to be evaporating. Along with human rights.

Understandably, most middle of the road ordinary peaceful people in the west were kind of stunned by the fire and brimstone thing. But, being unassuming, life just seemed to carry on for your average western no-war punter, if a little worse then before. To the republican however, a potential catastrophe was unfolding. Suddenly an enemy had materialised. A faceless nameless enemy, all the more fearful for it's anonymity. The republican administration set about creating a head for it's enemy - all the better to spit in it's face. And so various antagonists were named and a deluge of mug shots appeared in our media.

You know the rest, so I don't need to go on there.

The interesting part, is how enemy-fearing republicans have identified an innate part in their own inner psyche in understanding their situation. It is important to say at this point that I am writing about pro-war republicans, for I believe some of them have serious misgivings with the whole thing and would as soon try out peace instead.

Back to point one. The US's pro-war republican administration, as an incumbent, has everything to loose and knows it. After having been manipulated by it's own fear and by others into unleashing anarchy in Iraq, the republican administration now finds itself faced with restoring a semblance of order in the wake of rapidly dissolving regard for electoral result (globally). Not because the republican party really cares about anyone else's democracy, but because it cares about it's own seats. It fears an imagined tide of frustration that could quite as easily wind up in it's own streets.

In short, every peasant and her pony has a drum to bang now (and my is she enjoying that). This is scary, if you're the one in the house on the hill.

So in attempting to avert it's own demise, the pro-war republican US administration turns to it's French exemplars and in winding back time's clock (to just between US independence and Paris' massacres) seeks to pre-empt an insurgent reign of terror by creating it's own. Unfortunately, this inversion of order means that a once democratic institution has now become anti-democratic. Thus we see the dissolution of conventions protecting the civilian and the rise and rise of ever more violent extremes - administered by an incumbent party. The more this party veers towards arms and terror the more it seals it's own fate - for the greater reason it gives opposition to ferment.

So if you're still with me and you haven't got bored by reading what you're already experiencing, I'll just interrupt with a little cut and paste from 1792.

the beginning of the Massacres, September 2, was timed to coincide with the elections to the Convention. The Parisian electoral college, on its way to vote, was marched right by a pile of bleeding corpses. Understandably, their deliberations, which took place at the Jacobin club, resulted in an all-Jacobin slate of delegates being sent to the Convention

... Collot d'Herbois, a future member of the Committee of Public Safety, said "The 2nd of September is the first article of the creed of Liberty. Without it there would be no National Convention." Danton, one of the foremost enemies of the monarchy, both explained the Massacre and laid out the program for the future: "France is not republican. We can only establish a Republic by the intimidation of its enemies."

The National Convention was not, therefore, a body that represented public opinion in France. Rather, it was a group of the most zealous believers in the Revolution. Their real claim to power was their leadership in a movement of national regenereation.

Thus the proceedings of the Convention became a continuing competition in virtue and radicalism, with each set of winners taking a bloody revenge on the lastbunch, and becoming the targets of new, even more radical leaders. The struggle within the Convention, and its ruthlessness are explained by several factors. The revolution was in real danger, both from foreign armies and from a variety of disaffected people at home.

Paris was still short of affordable food, which made the popular agitators impatient with any delay in finding and punishing those whom they held responsible for such subversion. SM, Nipissing Uni

Basically your administrative US republican today is trying her and his damnedest to undercut the Mojahideen by building a guillotine first, allegorically, and cutting the head of any liberality it ever had.

So peaceloving and equitable brethren - let this be a cautionary tale to us all, and also one of hope. For we are on the brink of change and our brave new world is at a cusp - a splitting point. A time of milk and frogs. A politically alchemical time. A branch in time where ones past could become an alternative future or where ones past informs one. A time where history spurs on the search for new ways to change, for peaceful ways strengthened by foresight, free of war and fallen head.

Ode to the noble blogger

Took a break from the trolls today and watched a telly reality show. And I was stricken, by the exhibitionism of it all. By the self indulgent self gratifying lack of dignity in the whole affair.

Which gave me pause to reflect for a moment upon the modest blogger. For the modest blogger is happy to compose in relative anonymity, with nothing but pen name and internet connection. The modest blogger requires no celebrity status, clothing or daily manicure - the modest blogger is content to merely imagine these things as she or he sits pyjama'd in uncelebrated repose making observations upon the day . Oh modest blogger, such a noble creature of conscience.

Catalyst

I am so over listening to US anti-peace rhetoricians trying to convince themselves that dropping bombs and tearing lives apart and detaining and torturing people left right and center has somehow made Bush a catalyst for Mid East democracy in the wake of Lebanese demonstrations and elections that would have happened anyway.

Lebanon is governed by a constitution written in 1926 and has been holding independent elections since 1948. Lebanese women triumphed with the right to vote in 1953 (some sources quote 1952).

Bush trying to claim responsibility for Lebanese autonomy isn't even gatecrashing the party - it's turning up 57 years late.

Or, you know, US rhetoricians trying to credit themselves with "democracy in Iraq". Yes, we have all heard about the many hundreds of people who made their way fearlessly to the polling booths, and good on them., but credit is due also to their counterparts who campaigned - independently - for legitimate elections. The boycotters.

The factions in Iraq who chose not to vote have been roundly vilified by almost everyone - left and right. And yet the factions in Iraq who chose not to vote demonstrated independence with an in-action that gained more media impact then settling for an unknown minority party list number ever would have.

The people in Iraq who didn't vote chose a clear unified way to state their case - that elections were unacceptable unless held legitimately.

These people campaigned openly before elections, clearly stating their cause - candidate and voter safety, access to information, the opportunity for all areas to vote (if so and so isn't given ballot papers then we're not voting either) and the presence of non-partisan election observers. Election boycotters vocally drew attention to many weak areas and as a result, other factions with an interest in elections proceeding in January made an effort towards more accountability. Perhaps most telling of all has been the involvement of not-voting parties after elections. What does this tell us? It tells us that people can work together democratically, that the election was as farcical as it sounded - and that Iraq is building its own democratic process independent of western preconceptions.

Bush's armory the catalyst for Mid East democracy? One might as easily claim Osama Bin Laden's pilots lit the fuse.

Changes in the Mid East have zilch to do with Bush, almost nil to do with toppling towers, and everything to do with ordinary people wanting to live peaceful lives free of war, occupation, torture and economic sanctions.

Meantime in the west. While the Mid East is creating its own freedom, somebody else is snatching away ours. Our elections are rigged, our constitutions crumbling and our women's rights slipping. Fortunately, our administration's rhetoric is slipping too - hardly anyone believes it anymore, so it shouldn't be too hard to out-speak it.

Taking liberties

The United States has asked Israel to stop making statements about the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon. Washington believes these comments undermine American interests in the area - Hareetz via AA

Yes, much better to have it appear it was all Bush and Rices production (as if). Otherwise people might get it in their heads that anyone can demand any troops leave.

One can't help feeling the toys have came to life on their own while the puppet master wasn't watching.

Books I may not get around to reading

I guess it's just a matter of waiting. For The Plot Against America. Until it gets published some place where we can have a read of it without holding up other people in the bookshop.

Oh great, It Can't Happen Here - available online !!!

It Can't Happen Here

A Novel by Sinclair Lewis

A project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Also The Iron Heel Jack London.

A shell to form long left

In a way, I pity the American Republican voter - for he appears to have painted himself into a corner.

I say he, for online discussion with the republican voter would tend to indicate that he is almost exclusively male - as he so often likes to remind me, or more tellingly himself.

Apparently women of their ilk are scarce. Perhaps there are no women republican voters at all. Or perhaps the female republican voter is busy holding the household together while the republican male lounges about in online forum with other republican men, retrieving masculinity.

Either way, I pity them all. For they have sold their souls. The republican voter is doomed to forever agree with his dear leader, so completely has his soul been sold. And though his party may sacrifice human rights to it's ever decreasingly larger cause, and though his party may burnish the lumpen complexion of democracy infested beneath the cuff of white collar crime, and though his party may reward the diligently blinkered with platitudes and chilling gel eye blind folds, the republican voter can never protest. For the republican voter has flushed dissent away with reason.

Oh yes, I pity him.

And so it is that I from my outpost rejoice in my own imaginings. For I am free, unfettered by the constraints of party dogma. Free to commiserate with the impartial rogue and discuss the shortfallings of complicity with the compassionate left. Complicity and it's price. Ah, but the poor miserable republican is only on the precipice of learning these things. And so I feel compassion, for the poor self-censored valet.

And I rejoice in my despair. For I am free in my despair where others are bound to vote and vote and vote again for the predetermined ghouls of their own mares, all the while with a grimace plastered to their faces "I am good" says the grimace "enjoy" the grimace seems to remind itself through gritted teeth and clenched jaw. "Enjoy" as though the word had almost lost meaning, a shell to form long left.

Emperors clothing...

Tempest ponders size;

1-Size doesn't matter when you have to import protesters from other countries

2-Size doesn't matter when you force people (complete schools, in some instances) to join the protest

3-Size doesn't matter when protesters don't really have a choice.

The trouble is, once one begins questioning the legitimacy of one demonstration - one begins questioning the legitimacy of all demonstrations!

One begins questioning the very foundation of democracy itself, Tempest, when one begins asking such questions. One tampers with the fabric of society, one does.

If one unravels the weft, the warp falls apart. And what then will one wear Tempest - strings? Being the eternal cynic, I have had doubts about both demonstrations. I find solace in the fact that there are two different demonstrating groups who have so far managed to go about there respective protestations without firing upon each other (crossed fingers).

Your other dawning I tutterly and otally relate to;

Then it dawned on me... It's for these selfsame pro-Syrians that we're protesting. We have breathed Lebanon's free air, we have walked unchained, we have marveled at the greatness and beauty of our land. We were fighting for them, so that one day, they could stand up on their own. So that one day, they could be free.

I often feel this in my encounters with pro-war partisans online. It's odd, they chew the hell out me on other sites and yet in some leftover way I feel my peaceful dissent is their protection.

New world order

One senses wilderment in certain quarters. And earplugs in others.

The combined effect has one imagining the book keeper look up from tables to wonder aloud in an empty room "where have all the jews gone?"

To the ovens book-keeper. The chambers you sent them to.

I, feel like a jew? Hardly surprising.

While my predecessors might not have believed in father christmas, it appears my crime is not believing in democracy. Or any form of rule for that matter. There is no-thing that can protect any rule from betrayal and hypnotism, other then a certain stoic adherence to compassion.

The only way to order the world is through ones heart.

The clot thickens

How not very odd. Being hardly surprised by much at all these days.

While the White House amplifies it's volume on a steadily receding soap box (what is that roar - could it be real people taking advantage of camped up dissent? More importantly, what is that silence - could it be real people peeking behind the facade?) and tries to pretend to evict Syrian troops from Lebanon (anything to divert eyes from its own occupying troops) one detects an ill concealed bent card up torn sleeve.

As George and Leeza wave limp banners at Syria in rapidly dispersing hot air, one chances upon more records pertaining to outsourced detention. Oh yes, it's that dirty laundry airing itself again.

In 2002, the United States...Transferred Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, to Syria after having detained him in New York as he was en route from Tunisia to Montreal. On November 4 in Ottawa, Arar publicly asserted that, while held in Syrian prisons for 10 months, he was repeatedly tortured by being whipped with a thick electric cable and threatened with electric shocks. more and more and more and more.

For years the US has been sending people to US funded regimes to do the dirty work that a US constitution can not (would not?) allow. So, why the sudden "clamp down" on partners in crime. What can we surmise from this. If George and Leeza are threatening to take out Syria does that mean the US is going to offload interrogations onto one of the other many regimes that Bush's father compliantly seeded? Or does it simply mean the US has interrogative means closer at hand. Within it's own borders.

Western governments have been quietly outsourcing detention and interrogation for decades. It is a practice manifest at the upper levels of administration, conveniently out of sight of many mid level "public servants" who'd otherwise be appalled, had they any inkling their positions existed within such a framework.

Republicans go Banana

Vote Fraud. Election hacked. Teresa Heinz lifts lid on can (worms).

Hackers may have won Bush office; Kerry's wife
March 10, 2005 - 6:45AM SMH plus backup link.

The US presidential election could have been computer hacked, the wife of Democrat candidate John Kerry has claimed.

Teresa Heinz Kerry is openly sceptical about George Bush's victory some four months after the election, questioning the legitimacy of the optical scanners used in some states to record votes.

"Two brothers own 80 per cent of the machines used in the United States," she said during a fund raising event in Seattle.

They are "hard-right" Republicans, she claimed, arguing that it was "very easy to hack into the mother machines".

Heinz Kerry urged Democrats to push for accountability and transparency, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"We in the United States are not a banana republic," she said. "I fear for 2006. I don't trust it the way it is right now," she added, referring to mid-term elections.

PA

Why am I not surprised.

I wonder how Bush's advisors are going to keep this one from him. He really thinks he won that election.

oh. my. gawd.

Trainspotting in Baghdad.

I wish I could just leave the TV and close my eyes and try to doze off. But I can't do that because I'm using the electric generator which I have to turn off before I go to sleep. And it's not that I'm scared of the dark, but I get anxious...

it gets better, in morose kind of way...

Nahida has been moody ever since I got back. I hope she stays like that, I can't stand her most of the time when she's perky. Her brother got sent to jail by the Americans shortly after I left... I once spent a few days in an iraqi jail. It wasn't traumatising, I think everybody around me was bribed. Nahida brought me my meals every day. When I got sent there I was very drunk and woke up with a terrible hang-over. Those were the days I used to pop...

it just goes on...

...but the toilets weren't your regular stools. Nope it had to be... the dreaded hole in the ground deal. Uptil then I had somehow avoided making use of them. So with a full fledged hangover and my pants pulled down I crouched above....

and on....

These nicotine patches seemed to work in the beginning, but now I'm having my doubts. Maybe it's because of the cheap cigarettes that contain really nasty additives made in a place with no regulatory body supervises...

and on...

...A couple of days ago I heard that barbers have been threatened if they use their hair plucking with a string technique... They use the technique to remove the upper cheak of a man's beard, I tried once...

best blog i have read in ages.

Back from the laundrette

Beautiful sunny autumn Sydney day today. Day after Mardigras. Clear blue sky, sunshine, welcome chill.

So. What to blog. It's been a while. Week is an eternity in blog days. Reminds me of those kids books, where the children step into a magical new world and time passes five times quicker and before they know it they've matured into adults. Then the door beckons and back to reality they go. Oh well, here I am stepping through the door again.

Bush and Rice are so farcical they're beyond satire - doing well enough at ironyising themselves without my assistance. A US president and secretary of state endlessly replaying "Syrian troops and intelligence out" through various media outlets while Iraq is still crawling with US troops and intelligence is hardly worth blogging about. The comedy is baudelaire enough as it is, to shine a blog torch on it would do little other then play for a shadowy moment with grotesque distortions that already exist.

So I'll blog about China instead.

China's leadership has been killing, torturing, sending to forced labour camps and generally trampling all over it's own population en masse for decades - but do we hear US president or secretary of state championing war-driven "pro-democracy" campaigns against Chinese officialdom? No. We do not. And why is that - well, because China is huge and war with China would result in a bloody mess. Messier then Iraq I mean. A US driven offensive against China would result in severe global chaos. Almost definitely a full blown third world war and most likely nuclear war.

So what does the pentagon (and it's financier) do instead? It disables smaller surrounding targets by de-activating small-nation weapon programs via UN weapons inspection teams, by crippling small nation economies with UN sanctions, by occupying small nation territories with UN "peace-keeping" forces and ultimately by moving in with war apparatus a'la Afghanistan, Iraq and now perhaps Syria.

Those tiddlywink manipulators in the Whitehouse seriously think that occupying the Mid-East and controlling Mid-East oil fields is going to give them the upper global hand in the event of possible future clashes with China.

In the meantime foreign trade officials turn a convenient blind eye to human rights abuse in China, while foreign diplomats arrange grand sporting occasions with China's diplomats. Because in the meantime China is a cheap western production house (balanced perilously on slave labour) with an unknown but by all indications fairly capable nuclear arsenal. Because China is the third cold-war bit-player, a possible ally and a possible antagonist. Because China is going along with the US "war on terror" by holding it's own mock trials and subversions of justice in the name of national security. "Strike hard" urges Luo Gan, and strike hard China does. Imprisoning and executing it's population for public holiday entertainment.

Yes this is all related. We ordinary people simply cannot move forward and build a peaceful world unless we are willing to denounce all war and focus not only on our own misfortunes but on the misfortunes of other ordinary people in other lands. The desire for peace and human rights is the desire of any global citizen. We are all, ordinary people, in this together. Let us not lose sight of the fact that while a handful of fraudulent pro-war miscreants attempt to create disruption through confusion, that most of us just want to get on with our lives, freely and peacefully.

No War. Human Rights for All.