The Beast In Me

*

The beast in me
Is caged by frail and fragile bars
Restless by day
And by night rants and rages at the stars
God help the beast in me

The beast in me
Has had to learn to live with pain
And how to shelter from the rain
And in the twinkling of an eye
Might have to be restrained
God help the beast in me

Sometimes it tries to kid me
That it's just a teddy bear
And even somehow manage to vanish in the air
And that is when I must beware
Of the beast in me that everybody knows
They've seen him out dressed in my clothes
Patently unclear
It's New York or New Year
God help the beast in me

The beast in me

Johnny Cash

These were the battlefields, lit up, trails of light blazing in flaming tracks, shocking in their intent, dismal in their finality, the ruined fields, the overwhelming sense of disappointment. And yet it was these very same battlefields which marked an entirely ruined consciousness. The lights were all cascading downwards, barely lighting the ground before dying like fireflies. The disruption was intense. The sense of longing intense. We were being called for a greater purpose, but nothing was so profoundly devastating as to look across these places, see what was meant to be, realise that everything had aged, call forth great squadrons, light up every corner of a silicon network, feel the flesh corroding as he walked; it wasn't fair. But nothing was meant to be fair. Fireflies. That's all they were. But fireflies who could imagine greater things; battlefields, corroded places, things which were of infinite longing, which held no place, which said, yes you were, my darling, darlingk, darlingk, I want money. Pappa, I want money. They all laughed. ATM, the girls laughed at my friend, painting the letters across his forehead. They all thought it a great laugh his girlfriend had ripped him off and he was devastated.

What on earth did you expect? Ian has finally left; leaving the lobby very impressed, well laughing anyway, at the number of girls he managed to squeeze in during such a short stay. My God, the boy said. Lady, lady, lady. Well the old one wasn't performing very well and Ian wasn't going to let any chance go by, not when he was returning to the "sexual desert", as he calls Sydney. They parade their enormous forms. I want to go, Sahr said, after she came to pick up her picture and other things the day after Ian had departed and sat, wondering whether she was going to get any more money. He was slow enough to reach into his pocket that she didn't stay. Enormous times. You were fast forwarded through what happened to me over a number of months, he said, but Ian was having none of it in the eternal wrestle for dominance. Intellectual poverty, he snorted, to make such a comparison, but it wasn't anything of the kind. Nothing came close to the wild devastation he had gone through. Nothing was going to be incidental to these crimes. He was getting old now. Could he be tiring of the boys? That's what they all said. You grew tired of the whores, the easy availability, beauty at a price.

They all wrestled with what was on display. They were all seeking a quiet time in a quiet place. They were all going to be displaced at one time or another. He wasn't prepared to answer their questions; as if he knew any answers. Be courteous to the traveller, kind to the stranger. That was about it. Have some common decency. Pass through the eye of the needle. Despair and be born again. Collapse realities. Take the easy way out. Try and let the battlefield go; although the extremity of those falling lights, the beauty of the desolation, the intensity of chaos, they were all things he didn't want to let go. A naked form, a fumbling intent. A body into which to seek oblivion. But we always woke up. There was always another day. There wasn't any way to keep up this excess. So profound, so deeply profound. That was why he loved it so much; that battlefield full of cascading lights, the muddy surface, the night sky flashing neurotically, the silvered, slivered intent. And so it was that he came full circle. And said goodbye. Not just to Ian. To things he should never have been attached to in the first place. Said goodbye and went to live in a nice quiet house. And sought a full blessing. Begin again; a new life. Take care, they said. Words from the English which had entered the Thai language. Take kae, they cooed. Take good kae. Taking care of Pappa. Duty over desire. Money over lust. These things were small and passing. He was about to enter a new domain.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/gillard-picks-up-where-rudd-left-off/story-e6frg9if-1225929099425

KEVIN Rudd set a new benchmark in the annals of Australian politics. He became the first prime minister to be worse than Gough Whitlam.

His colleagues seemed to agree with this judgment, denying him even the opportunity which Whitlam -- and indeed all previous prime ministers -- had to defend his/their first election victory. True, their judgment was more that Rudd would be worse than Whitlam for them personally. The damage he could continue to wreak on the nation was an entirely secondary consideration. White cars and other perks always trump the national interest.

Now, before she has even entered the Lodge, his successor Julia Gillard has embarked on challenging that new "Rudd benchmark" by picking up precisely from where he, so to speak, left off.

Two things among many cemented Rudd's grasp of the prime ministerial dunce's cap. The Emissions Trading Scheme and the $43 billion National Broadband Network. The first constituted a direct and utterly pointless attack on the foundation of not just this nation's prosperity but its very existence. Our vast resources of coal in general and its use for power generation in particular.

The second constituted -- constitutes -- perhaps the greatest waste of resources in our history. It at least equals the great railway building binge of the closing decades of the 19th century, which it most closely and disturbingly matches. Indeed, with politicians across the eastern states now also "feeling a fast train coming on", the NBN might well be a return to that sort of 19th century hard-wired waste in the 21st century.

One alone would have won the "accolade" for Rudd; the two together rendered certain his position in the pantheon of prime ministerial disasters. Now they were both bad enough when committed to by a nascent Rudd government. First a prime minister setting out to directly attack his own country through the ETS. None dared call it treason, for it was, to misquote either Ovid or John Harington, more simply stupidity.

And second, the biggest infrastructure project in the nation's history, which was completely uncosted initially -- the billions probably didn't even get the courtesy of an envelope's back, just a prime ministerial enthusiasm. Neither then nor now has there been any rigorous analysis to identify the claimed benefits against the very real costs.

How much worse is it now to persist with the NBN and to go back to an attack on our greatest national asset, this time via a carbon tax, when we know so much more about the context for each?

Rudd's insistence that the ETS be adopted before Copenhagen was bad enough. Now we know Copenhagen turned into Hoppenfloppen. Any move towards a unilateral carbon tax is that much the more irresponsible and stupid.

Similarly and even more so with the NBN. Back when the enthusiasm for the fixed NBN took hold, the iPad was barely a gleam in the eye of Steve Jobs. It was certainly not the, ahem, apple of his eye, as it didn't exist. Why the iPad? Because it captures the rapid, unpredicted and unpredictable shift to broadband mobility. Yet the government, and now Gillard as PM, is mandating the immobility of a fixed broadband network.

The 19th century railway splurge is a telling and -- should be -- uncomfortable precursor. For in the space of two generations most of those fixed lines were rendered obsolete by the car and its pervasive adoption, as a matter of deliberate choice because of its flexibility, by every family in Australia.

Now the railway builders did not and could not anticipate the car. Apart from the more basic reason for many of the lines -- pure political pork -- rail networks made sense in their context. But imagine if they had known the car was not just coming but was already here? How much worse would a decision to nevertheless pour billions into fixed rail networks have been.

That is exactly the position with PM Gillard. She now knows the iPad exists. Rudd didn't. Because two years ago, it didn't. Further, in Ziggy Switkowski's warp-speed world, we won't be waiting two generations.

To persist with the fixed NBN with that knowledge of the iPad and what it portends, is beyond folly. Indeed further, the way its birth and subsequent explosive growth should tell us there is a myriad of known unknowns, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, jostling to the surface behind it.

Of course we remain on pretty safe ground to argue that we need a fixed fibre core. But probably of much more limited extent than we might have thought when FTTN (fibre-to-the-node) was "the solution". That might mean wiring up the nation to regional centres. Funny about that: much like we still have with railways.

But then the continuing communication capillaries to the homes should be some mix of wireless and the good old telephone cable. And the Foxtel and Optus cable in the capital cities. The telephone cable because it's there and works perfectly well for what most consumer need and want. To stress, what they want now. Wireless because it's cheap and either upgradeable or disposable, and what consumers want.

There were actually two reasons for the enthusiasm for the Rolls-Royce upgrade to the $43bn FTTH (fibre-to-the-home). It was the second which brought competition tsar Graeme Samuel inappropriately into the government's tent. An attempt to break Telstra. More specifically, it's monopoly hold on the nation's infrastructure. So we saw Samuel move on from his job of regulating competition and applying the rules, to trying to mandate the very structure in which competition would occur.

Now the real point is not whether this is desirable or appropriate; simply that it's become irrelevant and unnecessary. Telstra's monopoly hold on our telecoms core is eroding as rapidly and as surely as its share price. And it's doing so mostly because of that switch from fixed to wireless. We don't need to build a pervasive fixed NBN to get greater competition. So, we have a Gillard government proposing to plough-on, bullheadedly building the most expensive white elephant in our history; and also embarking on a direct attack on our nation's prosperity, knowing that the first is silly and the second crazy. Do we have to wait three years to pass the accolade from her predecessor?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iFCUoD_iGBrFwchNJDxcmY6phsRg

NEW YORK — Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said Friday that early elections could take place early in 2011 if the opposition Red Shirts prove they can remain peaceful.
"We believe that six more months of continued stability... should be able to set the scene for a possible early election next year," he told a think tank in New York, where he was attending the UN General Assembly.
"But that very much depends, still, on how the opposition and the Redshirts respond," Abhisit added in the talk at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"If they would prove that they are interested in democratic movement, peaceful assembly and rejection of any illegal activity -- and of course violent activity -- then I think we should be on course to achieve a solution."
Early elections are a key demand of the opposition Red Shirts movement.
Abhisit, the British-born, Oxford-educated head of the establishment Democrat Party, does not have to go to the polls until the end of next year.
He had proposed holding polls this November but shelved the plan when opposition protests in April and May ended in a bloody government crackdown and riots in Bangkok.
Ninety people died and nearly 1,900 were injured in the army assault to clear away the protestors on May 19.
The protesters were campaigning for elections they hoped would oust the government, which they view as undemocratic because it came to power with the backing of the army after a court ruling threw out the previous administration.
Most of the Red Shirt leaders are now in jail or wanted on terrorism charges for their roles in the two-month-long mass rally.
Abhisit insisted that elections could take place, but only once stability had returned. "I don't believe in elections where there can be intimidation, threats or use of force," he said.
He acknowledged that "we cannot claim to have returned the situation to complete normalcy," but said that "ordinary people are not affected" by the continuing emergency rule.
He also defended himself against accusations of damaging media freedoms, saying that only outlets which "incite violence" had been closed.
"I'm not sure whether you'd allow any special station for Al-Qaeda here," he told his mostly American audience.
Sporadic violence continues to afflict the country. A small bomb hidden in a rubbish bin exploded in a residential area of Bangkok on Friday, wounding three people, police said.
Despite the instability, Thailand's economy is performing strongly, the premier said. GDP is projected to grow eight percent this year and exports are growing at 30 percent a year, he said