Bangkok Burning

*

Triumphant tinkling. Rivers coursing through veins. Shadows flickering. Entering a hyper-real world. He watched the tiny frogs jump across the green green grass. He watched the monitor lizards, or whatever they were called, primitive, moving at the edge of the lake in Limpini Park in the heart of Bangkok. He walked past boys town and thought of nothing but the pleasures of release. Come hither, come sit with me. There wasn't any easy answer. The citadels of capitalism, those giant glistening malls, were coming awake again. He was shadowed by a past he had entirely eschewed; and if he tried to make sense of anything it was a voice crying on the phone: dad, come home, come home, I've got no one to talk to. But shadows were everywhere and nowhere. We will help you. You have proven yourself; you have been here every morning; and each watch, each trial; pain is temporary like life itself; each adventure into a different realm, different heavens in different skies, meant the journey beyond the border of the real had taken on an entirely separate dimension; not what had been, the pallid has-been living in an inverse world, sickening with its yellow colours, frightening in its bilious intent; all of that was gone now and he couldn't have felt more at home; listening to the boy utter those magic words, condo, Si Lom. DVD player.

There were skies and slender faces and every day, as the past vanished and the last few months came into some sort of perspective, you ripped me off at every opportunity and I put up with it for God knows what reason, loneliness, obsession, a past where he had done exactly the same; where the deaths of so many of his lovers was shrugged off; fancy expecting anything from anyone so young, how ridiculous. The flash cars the flash apartments, the infinitely dismissive shrug, he had done it all, just as it was being done to him. He couldn't say; I understand. He couldn't do the things he did to anyone else. He couldn't wake up sandwiched between sex workers and reach for the bottle while the indolent Thais slept through the day; he couldn't sleep and while they stopped drinking during the day, being entirely nocturnal animals, he drank around the clock. Promise me, the new boy said, don't have another cigarette. I love you. Promise me. He coughed the cancer cough and made the promise. It was ten days now since he had had a cigarette. Perhaps I can explain. There is a boy in every port. There are handsome young men wherever you look. Money talks and money buys everything, anything. He had no intention of ever sleeping alone again while ever he had two cents to rub together. It had been too long.

There were dark reaches where he remembered the streets that had been his home. But here the streets were never dark. There was always a throng, or a possibility, somewhere that was open. Now he slept and the doors walked; growing legs, an army of opportunities, doorways to step through marching marching in sequence down Si Lom Road, beneath the concrete flanks of the BTS, the Bangkok Sky Train, past Patpong, the fading red light district which had been so much a part of everything that was seedy about Bangkok, past the crying shame and the woman pulling on her legs, past the blind man being led by his children, past the boy brothel and the boy massage parlour, into the park and the sunrise gathering up the sky, spreading colour into every domain. They were nesting, that was all there was to it. Plants appeared on the balcony, what fun he had had negotiating with the vendor, three flowering trees for 600 baht, $25, and somewhere he could reach down and touch, I love you, I love you, the voices said, and his old heart had prickled with a kind of possessive love. Everyone knows Baw is too crazy, drinks too much whiskey, to have a relationship with, his sister had told him, there on the veranda of the Bangkok Hotel, but he hadn't known, not even then, when it was obvious to everybody else that the merry dance was destroying him, utterly.

So he grinned and embraced every opportunity. He made sure he had money in his pocket, just in case. You never know, in this city of dreams, in this place where everything was gone and he struggled to explain that he couldn't go back to his place because his friend was there and he didn't want to upset him; where loyalty was overshadowed; where every mistake he had ever made, the handsomest boy in the village, I am very sorry not sleep with you tonight, to the Chiang Mai guard: I am honoured, happy to sleep with you tonight. To the times when his heart was destroyed and he had some of the worst days of his life. To the days when the cheap, poor quality yabba sent him instantly crazy; to the times when everything was saved and everything was lost; when the dawn opened up outside the dance club and the final remnants, the never say die party goers, spilled out into the open air, shocked at the cold, the light gathering above, the ancient buildings that spelt a history of desire and conflict and peace and erotic love, I want to come back with you, we want to come back with you, we have nowhere to sleep, we've lost our keys. As if. As if everything was ever going to make sense. As if love in any western sense ever existed here amongst the sex workers and paid for flesh of Thailand. As if he could truly seek redemption in the flesh. A heroin habit would have been cheaper; more true to form; but it was only the welcoming, sickening, universal despair that he felt after wards that was keeping him in check. These were the days. A path to a better life.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Rudd's downfall: he never really got it

By Barrie Cassidy

Extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary. Kevin Rudd, who won the heart of a nation with an apology to the stolen generations, is no more.

Kevin Rudd, who achieved the highest approval rating of any prime minister ever, is history.

Gone in the blink of an eye.

Yet as one dramatic minute after another unfolded in Canberra, few observers were left wondering about why it had happened.

The contrasting news conferences after the party room showdown said it all.

Understandably, Rudd was emotionally drained, still in shock and hardly in the mood for generosity towards the victor; and there was none.

But even so, he presented as a politician who couldn't for the life of him, figure out what had gone wrong; why somebody who had achieved so much according to his own near-endless list, could possibly have been rejected by his own party.

Did he really think it was all about an ungrateful party that didn't appreciate how much he cared? And that it all went pear-shaped only in one crazy and frenzied day in Canberra?

It helps to cast the mind back four months to the end of February when he went on Insiders and said he would never walk away from climate change.

He said this: "When our kids look back in 20 years and ask the question of this generation, 'were they fair dinkum or did they walk away from it?', I'd rather say that I threw everything at it, threw absolutely everything at it, to try and make it work, and to try and deliver an outcome at home and abroad.

"We think we've got to act, and act appropriately. That's why we don't walk away from this one bit."

Then two months later, he walked away.

And when he did, according to Newspoll on May 4, Labor lost a million supporters in a fortnight. Every measure was disastrous. On a two-party preferred basis, the Coalition led the government for the first time since Rudd took control of the Labor Party. The primary vote slumped to 35 per cent and Rudd's own popularity took a hammering.

Peter Hartcher wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald: "Australians will never see Rudd in the same light again. Every policy will now be seen as just another piece of clever politics. What's the point of Kevin Rudd? Australians don't know anymore."

What's the point of Kevin Rudd anymore? It was a devastating critique, one that would have caused more than a few marginal members to think of Julia Gillard.

Yet Rudd never got it and never respected the response that such a collapse demanded; right to the end.

On Friday of last week, the party's national secretary, Karl Bitar, went to Rudd's Parliament House office with internal party polling that showed just how bad the situation had become in marginal Queensland seats. He wanted to present the material to the prime minister himself. Remarkably, Rudd's 31-year-old chief of staff, Alistair Jordan, didn't allow that to happen.

He told Bitar to lock the polling away and show it to nobody.

An astonished Bitar told Jordan the polling didn't belong to the prime minister; it belonged to the Labor Party, and he left the office.

I suspect that was the same polling that showed up on Andrew Bolt's Herald Sun blog last weekend.

Jordan then made phone calls and walked Parliament House trying to get a sounding on the support within caucus for Rudd, a task that would ordinarily fall to MPs, and experienced ones at that. And ordinarily, it would not have happened unless there was at least a sniff of a challenge from somewhere.

Then the fires were stoked when his efforts turned up as a front page story in the Sydney Morning Herald. Gillard was particularly affronted by that development, seeing it as loyalty rewarded by treachery. The episode was compounded just before Question Time when Rudd walked around to Gillard's office and confronted her personally on her own patch. Apparently, the words that were exchanged left Gillard upset but nevertheless determined to revisit the subject much later in the day.

What followed was a torrid three hours in the prime minister's office, with the Infrastructure Minister, Anthony Albanese, particularly robust in his condemnation of Gillard.

Now to Gillard's news conference.

Former power broker extraordinaire, Graham Richardson, said on Network Nine that she had gone from zero to 100 in seconds.

And she did tick all the boxes. She:

* held out the prospect of quickly resolving the super profits row with the miners and dramatically offered to call off the advertising war.
* talked of a commitment to a price on carbon and the need for community consensus on climate change.
* spoke of Kevin Rudd's apology moment: "... a man of remarkable achievement, who made wonderful history."
* acknowledged past players from Hawke and Keating through to Howard and Costello, and ultimately Rudd.
* tackled the mandate question by saying she would go to the Governor-General and ask for an election in months; and eschew the lodge until she did.
* and she cut the ground from under the Coalition by conceding "a good government had lost its way."

In other words, she put out a plan to rid the party of some messy issues and quickly move on to her own agenda.

Still, Tony Abbott is not without material and no doubt he will try and portray Gillard as a puppet of the factions. It is true that the Rudd experiment is over; that which allowed him and his office to run the country. The factions - and the unions - are back in control of the Labor Party - and that is the way that it had always operated up until Kevin07.

Rudd's only faction was the Newspoll faction. While it soared, he thrived. When it dived, he was all alone.

Barrie Cassidy hosts Insiders and Offsiders on ABC1.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/293992

Former Thai Prime Minister denies funding 'Red Shirt' protesters

Lawyers for the Thaksin family denied accusations made by Thai authorities that they funded the recent bloody confrontations between the government and the "Red Shirt' protesters.
Yahoo news reports:

Thaksin, his ex-wife Pojaman, and two of their three grown children are among 83 people and companies suspected by the government of funding the so-called Red Shirt protests. The 10-week rally crippled parts of central Bangkok and left 89 dead, mostly protesters, and some 1,400 injured. The rally was dispersed by an army crackdown on May 19.

The Department of Special Investigations, Thailand's equivalent of the FBI, has not yet pressed charges against any of the 83 suspects but has frozen their bank accounts and summoned all to report for questioning.

The government says Thaksin was a key instigator and financier of the protests.
Thaksin' s lawyers specifically denied the accusations saying the funds of the former prime minister has been frozen by the present government.
"How could my clients fund anything when their accounts were frozen since June 2006," said lawyer Kittiporn Aroonrat.

The lawyers for the exiled former prime ministers claims that the charges against their clients are politically motivated.

Thaksin was ousted in a 2006 military coup but has wide support among the Red Shirt protesters whose rallies in the capital began peacefully in March but disintegrated into deadly street clashes.

The fugitive Prime Minister had openly criticized the Thai government led by Abhisit Vejajjiva of mishandling the political unrest which resulted in the death of close to a hundred people and injury to thousands who have participated in the violent confrontation.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/15/xin_542040614001920307011.jpg