BLACK IMAGE WAVES
Courtesy Imagekind.com
So little had been seen, or shaken. Craven is as craven was. Nothing would be the same again. So in shock, in distance, they came crawling out of the past. Nasty, yes. Disconsolate in their own mornings, before the drugs and greed took over. So they were shambles and shadows; and corporate entities and thrusting wannabes, and savage sailors lost, hanging over the side of their ships. It's in their DNA, Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey declared of Labor's gendency to run up deficits, the five biggest deficits in Australian history, Abbott declared in the debate last night; lambasting the "government" for its incompetence.
The worst government in Australian history had a certain ring; as people looked back across the wasteland of had once been a scenario full of hope and excitement.
How sick of Howard people had become. After 11 years, the man had come to seem intermidable. His faith in the people, in his God given right to be there, in his own, severely tarnished rock star status, was all misplaced in his last shambolic term. But he would not step down. "Let me tell you why I want to be Prime Minister." To which they answered: Let us tell you why we don't. And he lost his own seat.
Kevin Rudd, too, could lose his own seat of Griffith. There were shadows in the makefall. We were coming close to winning, whoever "we" were, the people. There was no "we", there never had been. There was an unforgiving place and that was that; a harsh fall, a gathering dust, replaced temporarily by lust. But whatever he had thought, it was not true. They could trail him for as long as they wanted, they trailed themselves. "I thought they were nice at first, the Thais," the intelligence officer said. "But they weren't."
No, they weren't. He could have told them that.
Their professed, sorrowful concern, was nothing but spite; a pathetic attempt to cover their own trail, their own thieving and lying, their own celebration of deceit; of one of their folk heroes. Someone they had made a folk hero at a foreigner's expense.
The heat hit 45C every day; and as the temperature climbed past 40, most activity ceased.
He walked from one hotel fan to another. He struggled to finish a book. He walked through ancient graves. He heard the voices of the long dead, of Buddha's disciples. "You have interesting problems," the temple spirit declared. "Most of the people who have come here over the centuries have been villagers, with their own problems, sickness, death, children, love, crippling disabilities, human things. They hope I can help them and I usually don't; I am kind, but I let their lives take their course.
"I will help you, for a short time, help you to help yourself. I cannot go with you. I cannot stay with you. I am rooted in this place."
"You knew the Buddha?"
"I was one of his disciples. When I was you, when I was flesh and bone, I was always laughing."
"That is why you're images are always laughing, or smiling, as if they know some secret denied the rest of us; and we are the subject of great mirth?"
"Yes."
"What are you? Spirits."
"No, we are what we are. We are always here. You would be amazed."
And yes, no doubt he would be.
Just as he was amazed by the voices dropping out of the crowd: "You are out of conrol."
They would follow him here, to Lumbini? They were that great a travesty in their own malicious souls they would follow him to Buddha's birthplace; and think nothing of carrying a personal vendetta on to holy ground?
Of course. There is no end to the travesty of self interest.
And then these voices were gone, into the mists and shifts and shields of other places.
THE BIGGER STORY:
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There is rising momentum among Western governments for a military intervention in the Syrian conflict over what the United States, Britain, France and others have called undeniable evidence that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces used banned chemical weapons on civilians last week, killing hundreds. Following is a brief Q. and A. about why the United States appears headed for a new involvement in the Middle East.
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The Obama administration has sought to reduce American military entanglements abroad, withdrawing forces from Iraq two years ago and moving to do the same in Afghanistan next year. So how has it come to pass that we are now moving toward another military entanglement, this time in Syria?
The Syrian conflict affects American foreign policy in a number of ways, but the Obama administration has approached it cautiously, not only because it wants to reduce American military engagement overseas but also because the conflict is complicated and quickly shifting. The rise of sectarianism and the slow collapse of the state in Syria poses a danger to the Middle East as a whole. Millions of refugees have fled to neighboring nations, including Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, destabilizing them and inflaming sectarian tensions. Violence has also sporadically spilled over into Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey and even Israel, raising the specter of a broader conflict.
Last week, the Syrian government is believed to have killed hundreds of civilians in a chemical attack on the Sunni-majority suburbs of the capital, Damascus, violating international law and crossing what the Obama administration has called a “red line.” It is believed to be the largest chemical weapons attack since Saddam Hussein of Iraq used a gas attack on the Kurds in 1988, and some observers, including senior Israeli officials, have argued that allowing it to go unpunished sets a dangerous precedent for Syria and its main ally, Iran, suggesting that the use of chemical agents could be tolerated in the future.
KEVIN Rudd's electorate of Griffith and a swag of marginal Brisbane seats would be the big winners from the Prime Minister's plan to relocate Australia's main east coast naval base to the Queensland capital, a move that would rip thousands of jobs and billions of dollars out of Sydney.
The proposed move to Brisbane, which would cost at least $6 billion and involve the transfer of 4000 jobs, was first raised in March last year in the Force Posture Review prepared for the Gillard government, but it was rejected in May this year in the Defence white paper on cost and environmental grounds.
The move to scale down Sydney's Garden Island, Australia's oldest and largest naval base, and transfer its operations to Brisbane was met with outrage in Sydney, where NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell confronted Mr Rudd and condemned him for his lack of consultation. "A phone call would have been helpful," Mr O'Farrell told the Prime Minister as they crossed paths near Mrs Macquarie's Chair at Sydney Harbour. "Four thousand jobs. Your predecessor could share, you should learn to share. Four thousand jobs are going to be thrown on the scrapheap all to try and save some Labor seats in Queensland. It's outrageous."