Cling To Your Average Day

*

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

W.H. Auden

The entire civilisation was collapsing. He kept getting up and going to the office, but he had no faith anymore; no faith that his taxes were being spent correctly, no faith that the government knew what it was doing, no faith that they were destined for anywhere but hell. He passed, as he did each working day, the group of aboriginal men clowning around at the top of the Block, ready to begin the days routine of dealing and stealing. They watched the office workers rushing to work either with complete indifference or as if they were prey, searching for vulnerabilities in the herd. None of them worked, or had ever worked. They had no intention of going to work for "whitie"; and regularly called the passers by "white c...s". It happened every day and the locals accepted it as normal.

But there was nothing normal in the complete societal decay he was seeing all around him. Not only were thousands and thousands joining the dole queues every day, but the entrenched welfare culture sponsored by the left and maintained by the right, too cowardly to confront the disaster staring them in the face. They complained bitterly that the dole was not enough to live on, that the housing department wouldn't fix their back door or upgrade them to a better house. But the connection between life and work had been entirely cut. And they were smarter now, briefed by the social workers, and did not pour out their hearts to any stray journalist about the inter-generational unemployment which had left them so directionless and without hope, so addicted to alcohol, so dependent on Horizon cigarettes.

She greeted me at the door at 9am with a middle glass of wine in one hand and a ciggie in the other. The place smelt of dog shit ground into the carpet. He tried to take a breath of fresh air before stepping inside and failed. It was too much, too derelict, even for him and his love of inspired insanity, and he fixed her back door within about 20 minutes, dashing out to his truck for extra tools and trying to get the job done before he threw up from the smell. They were surrounded by sycophants. And the ones that did work, the lawyers, the bureaucrats, the politicians and their thousands of hangers on, all sneered at the capitalists out there generating wealth. Gated communities had come to Australia. Wealth was unfashionable but universally desired. Global warming was yesterday's fad. He knew there were worse things, cancerous things, eating away at this place.

She was declared insane but the hospitals were full, or closed. The Richmond report 30 years ago had emptied the mental health wards, creating rosy pictures of people with disabilities living happily together in group homes, surrounded by a caring community. It was all crap of the very first order; and had left the streets chaotic with people who never washed. Some days they were all talking to him. Even this morning a man had shouted, and he had looked up, thinking he was talking to him, only to realise he was shouting at no one, that nothing would change, that the parasites who fed off the reeking carcass had won the day. There was nothing left. The only thing to do was to isolate, to build the mote, to ensure his own survival.

Life was so short and he wished he could start again. That was the problem, there was no training run. He shuddered with the impact of all he had done to himself, and wept quietly at the loss of everything that had once seemed so important. Everyone had become used to a culture, a city, a place, which simply didn't work. Operators were rude. Trains were overcrowded and never on time. People sat in long traffic queues to go to pitiful paying jobs which left them slowly going backwards. The government looked after its own most loyal followers, dishing out money to their beloved "working families", and the right wing curmudgeon that had arisen inside him flickered with discontent, with outright hostility at the shadows lurking behind every door.

He didn't know why he hadn't stopped. He didn't know why the lunatic queen, drunk to the core, kept trying to rise within. He looked at the masses and saw the betrayal of his own dreams. All those fantasies he had once held so dear, the betterment of mankind, the nobility of the common man, dedicating his life to the greater good, all of it had shattered, debased in the basement of defeated dreams. Because when he woke up he realised what most people already knew: that most people were not nice, that the venality of the welfare class, the working class that never worked, had become so extreme with each passing generation of dependency that their souls were dirty, grimy, ridden with filth and walked on. So Gersch finished the job as quickly as he could, holding his breath each time he was forced to go inside. The dogs never stopped yapping. The woman never stopped talking. And he knew now that there was no faith, no solution, that everything he had dreamed was wrong; and the only way out was to truly get out, because there was nothing left here worth having.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25345852-29277,00.html

THE cause of a deadly explosion on a boat carrying asylum seekers off northwest Australia is unlikely to be known for some time, Immigration Minister Chris Evans says.

Navy and police are investigating the explosion that killed three people and wounded dozens more near Ashmore reef yesterday morning.

West Australian Premier Colin Barnett claimed the wooden boat was doused with petrol by those on board before the explosion occurred.

Senator Evans said it was too early to speculate.

"We're not going to know that for some time,'' he told ABC Radio.

"One thing we learnt from the children overboard affair is that politicians shouldn't be making claims about the things they don't know.''

"I think it would be wise if everyone stopped pretending they knew.''

The boat was carrying 49 people, mostly men believed to be from Afghanistan.

Thirty-one of the injured have reached the mainland for treatment in Darwin and Perth.

Senator Evans said all would be processed as normal on Christmas Island once they had been treated and had recovered from their injuries.

"We will treat these people as we would any other arrival.''

Senator Evans said the government had not reduced its border security arrangements.

"We are not at all going to allow Australia's borders to be threatened.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/us/politics/17detain.html?hp

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department made public on Thursday detailed memos describing harsh interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency, as President Obama said that C.I.A. operatives who carried out the techniques would not be prosecuted.

One technique authorized for use by the C.I.A. beginning in August 2002 was the use of “insects placed in a confinement box,” presumably to induce fear on the part of a terror suspect. According to a footnote, the technique was not used.

The interrogation methods were among the Bush administration’s most closely guarded secrets, and what was released on Thursday afternoon marked the most comprehensive public accounting to date of a program that some senior Obama administration officials contend included illegal torture.

The memos were released after a tense internal debate at the White House. Saying that it is a “time for reflection, not retribution,” Mr. Obama reiterated his opposition to a extensive investigation of controversial counterterrorism programs.

“In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carrying out their duties relying in good faith upon the legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution,” theWhite House statement said.

One memo showed that a top Justice Department lawyer issued a legal opinion in 2005 saying that C.I.A. officers were allowed to use a combination of interrogation methods to produce a more effective result.

“Interrogators may combine water dousing with other techniques, such as stress positions, wall standing, the insult slap, or the abdominal slap,” wrote the official, Stephen G. Bradbury.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/17/2545180.htm

Federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has brushed aside criticism the Government's proposed emissions trading scheme is so flawed, it may be better to dump it.

The Government's former climate change adviser, Professor Ross Garnaut, says that unless there are significant changes to the proposed scheme, it might be better to start from scratch.

Professor Garnaut yesterday told a Senate inquiry, it was a "lineball" call whether it would be better to push ahead with the proposed scheme with its flaws, or start from scratch.

Opposition Climate Change spokesman Greg Hunt says the Government cannot ignore the criticism.

"Professor Garnaut was Kevin Rudd's hand picked high priest of climate change," he said.

Greens Senator Christine Milne says the Government needs to take notice of the criticism.

"The Rudd Government's credibility is very much on the line," she said.

But Senator Wong says starting again is not an option.

"People have their own opinions. The Government's made decisions in the national interest," she said.

"Going back to the drawing board on emissions trading would significantly increase business uncertainty."

However, she says the Government will consider a suggestion from fellow Labor senators to amend the proposed legislation to make sure voluntary action by the community to reduce emissions is taken into account when setting targets.

The Government wants the scheme operating by mid next year.