Caught On Open Ground

*

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise
influence and not authority: There is no worse heresy than
that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
Lord Acton

And so it was that he was caught out in the open, systematically despairing, cowering under the heated air, shivering at all that had happened. He wasn't calm. He wasn't frightened. He was beyond any normal human emotions, beyond the systematic disputes of his masters, beyond family disputes and core assignations. He was being stifled as he spoke. He was caught out in the open and he didn't like it one little bit. On either side, crumbling skyscrapers loomed high against the apocalyptic scene. He had thought he would be able to make it from one to the other, to be a sailor and a trooper and an ordinary hard working soul. It wasn't to be.

He thought he would be safe on the crumbling freeways, dodging broken concrete blocks, running past the shells of cars, eking his way into a different future. Starvation had set in inside the building; long before he set out on the road that led out of the city. Long before he spent his days dodging Hooray Henry's and found love in the most unexpected way. He knew everything had collapsed around him. He knew none of his friends were left; no one there to share his story, to tell his story. He knew the apocalypse had finally come; the moment when they were all scared to death and final ports were all that he could find.

It wasn't easy to remember a time when he had been happy, when he had been surrounded by women and young children and captured by the noisy, comforting gossip of the neighbours. A time when flickering screens sat in the corners of every one's lounge room, when entertainment was piped into the home of even the most humble paupers. The democratisation of wealth had begun as such a noble ideal. It hadn't ended that way. Already he could see shapes moving in the distance, aware of his presence. He stepped over a recently dead dog, flies buzzing around the congealed blood where it had been bashed on the head.

He stepped over the smell, inhaling death, and looked around, alert, fearful, waiting for the end. It had seemed a good idea to make the dash; and now he had no choice but to keep on moving. The sky was raining pollution. Surreal strings of moss hung from the wreckage of everything that he passed. The silence was unbearable. He could see himself being set upon, flashes of his own end. Barbarity had resumed; taken over the planet. He was worried and fearful and not yet ready to die; and so he quickened his pace, noting the three or four hundred metres until he was back under cover.

Back under cover and caught in the gloom, and facing yet another set of dangers. The sky was grey and his heart was broken; but in a dreary, mauling sense, the heat that pervaded everything. He didn't want to shed his own skin. He didn't want to feel the pain that would be surely inflicted upon him. He was being shadowed; haunted, pushed into another realm. If only it was that easy; if only he could slip behind the screen and find a safer place, as he had so often done before. But this was a new circumstance, a different world; this was the future he had always feared.

Sometimes their laughter had been unbearable, the drunken crowds gathering around fires in the evening, their ragged clothes giving off a stench that was almost visible. He had been watching them for days, from the window of the apartment he had cornered as his own. He wasn't brave enough to ask for water, much less food. He wished, so dearly wished, he had never come back to the city; that place once so full of hopes and dreams and energy. He wished he was back in the village of his birth, high in the mountains, far, far away from this terrible place.

And then he spotted the dogs tracking him, loping, almost casually, off to his side. He knew he was dying. He had not had a drink of water for three days and was already slipping into delirium. Yellow eyes in the caked dust. Shadows of collapsed freeways. Asphalt barbaric, nothing but loss. All the phones, the activity, the chaos of his youth, it all belonged to a different age. Their fantasies had been so easily manufactured; and nobody he had known in what now seemed a wonderful past would have recognised him, gaunt, grey, clothes hanging off him, running between derelict buildings; praying for survival.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/16/2517190.htm

A scam is underway to steal the Federal Government bonus payments from people throughout Australia.

People are receiving phone calls claiming to be from the Australian Taxation Office, asking them to confirm their details for the next round of bonus payments.

Alastair Double, who lives on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, recently received such a phone call and says that while he did not fall for the hoax, it is a very elaborate plan.

"They'd get enough information from you, date of birth, your address, your PO box number and your tax file number and, if possible, a bank account number," he said.

"What they would then do is call back the taxation office with enough information to identify you and change the details of the mailout of the cheque and basically pocket your bonus cheque."

A fake 1800 phone number is provided for people if they have any questions.

Over 10 million Australians are expected to receive payments of up to $950 from the Government's $42 billion stimulus package.

Families began receiving their bonus payments last week, while workers will receive tax bonuses in April.

Melanie Spong from Queensland's Office of Fair Trading says people should be wary of the scammers.

"The tax office will not be contacting anyone to confirm details," she said.

"If you get this sort of phone call ... the idea is to hang up, don't release any of your details over the phone.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/19/2520484.htm?section=justin

Health Minister Nicola Roxon has lashed out at the spirits industry's offer not to take back $300 million in tax collected from the Government's alcopops tax increase, accusing them of "paying a bribe".

The Government will be forced to pay back the funds after its 70 per cent tax hike on pre-mixed drinks was voted down in the Senate yesterday, with Family First Senator Steve Fielding siding with the Opposition to defeat the law.

The tax rise has been in force since last April, with around $300 million already collected.

The spirits industry lobbied heavily against the law but is not calling for the funds to be refunded.

But Ms Roxon says the distillers are "playing a very cute game".

"After having written to all their distributors and others saying keep your receipts because if it fails in the Senate you can get your money back - are now, understanding that of course there will be some public disapproval of that," she said.

"The distillers are almost at the point where they're paying that as a bribe.

"They're putting it on the table to say you can keep your $300 million as long as we can get our billions of dollars of profit into the future and we weren't prepared to agree with that."

The Opposition attempted to amend the bill so the revenue already collected could stay in the hands of the Government and health spokesman Peter Dutton says the Government should take up the offer.


http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/3543/218/

Why, oh why, can't Mother Nature cooperate so we can promote our global warming agenda? That pretty much sums up the attitude of global warming alarmist and documentary filmmaker, Gabriel London. His frustration came about over the fact that lately the very cold weather we have been experiencing has made the public more skeptical than ever over global warming. London explains in his Huffington Post blog why he is irked by the cold weather:

In a case of bad timing, last week brought with it more below average temperatures in New York coupled with another chorus of headlines from scientists spelling out dire warnings about global warming. As scientists gathered in Copenhagen for an 'emergency meeting' reported that climate predictions of the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from two years ago are being outdone by worst case scenarios -- ice melting!, seas rising!!, rainforests disappearing!!! -- I, along with the rest of New York, was looking at the calendar trying to remember when it gets warm. It's been a long, cold winter here and Spring has barely even registered, so my feeling is, there go hopes that we as a people will get out in support of Congressional legislation and a new UN treaty on climate change. It sounds trite, but here's my hunch: beliefs in global warming rise and fall with, well... the mercury. And that spells trouble for those of us who believe we need to make changes now to head off global warming.

Shame on the public for noticing what the weather is actually like and not paying attention to the IPCC theoretical predictions.

We in the temperate world have the luxury of waiting to act as long as catastrophe isn't affecting us personally, but according to the scientists who met in Copenhagen last week, we need to look beyond our own experience to an array of fast changing global realities. They produced some very alarming evidence, but so far their alarm call is not being met with action. These scientists, after all, research and report using a global perspective, but as far as my fellow New Yorkers and me are concerned: it's time for summer!

Gee, Gabriel. Perhaps the 700 international scientists who are skeptical about global warming are correct after all. However, any such skepticism is ignored by London who worries about the effect of what a mild summer would have on his sacred theory...