The Cold Morning Sun

*

Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shit out through wholesome
American guts.


Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin' lawmen,
feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for
Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where
nobody's allowed to mind the
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories-- all right let's see
your arms!

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

William Burroughs, Thanksgiving Prayer.

There was a spiralling wrath, a way forward, next, next, come into my parlour. They were marching forwards. There were threats on every side. But there was also hope. They were challenged in their fundamental beliefs. They crucified the darkness and welcomed the light. They were shadows flickering past in a crowded life. He could barely remeber the personalities who had played out so many years ago, why he had thought them so iimportant. Now, in the midst of a crack down, with police squads and their dogs roaming the street, with the Public Order vans parked prominently like a tinge of South America, Mexico, Argentina, places where crowds were bashed into submission and riots were not permitted.

The streets were dull, he couldn't deny that. The population was discontent. But more than anything he wanted to complete his mission; and now was confused by the sheer dreariness of the day after day routine. What happened to lurching from crisis to crisis? What happened to never growing old? I tell you life's different when you hit your eighties, a man said in the doctor's surgery. He looked up, happy enough to talk, to engage with anyone really in this day full of lonely holes and steady routines; voices which barely made it past the edidermus. And then he was proud, gathered, touched, they shared, as he had always shared, vulnerabilities rather than strengths, strange decays of thought and routine, collapsing lives.

But in fact things had never been so stable. This was the problem, perhaps. The kids were older and didn't need him so much. Suzy rang from Moree and sugested a visit, but they laughed, as if there couldn't be anything worse, anything duller than the Australian contry side and the troubled, dying towns which characterised the place. Heat, dust, the sides of roads. Flat countryside that stretched as far as anyone could see. And the urban shadows, the crowded ghosts which kept crowding in around him, as if a thousand people had died in these old houses, as if all their voices were coming back, their souls had not left. The land out there was full of ghosts of a different kind, ghosts the kids were immune to, would never believe.

But the ancient terraces they lived in in Redfern were equally riddled with ghosts; unhappier ones. Some just old, having lost the good fight and gone to the cemetery. And others who just lurked, virtually in the chimneys sometimes, looking on at a world they couldn't understand either. Everything had changed so fast. The ancient spirits which had survived the concrete were hard to access; reluctant to appear, almost dead. Their faint thoughts only came in moments of extreme clairvoyance. This wasn't going to be fun anymore. No wonder the old retirement age was 55. Where was the fun now, what was there to do? Would he just keep marching on until the tap on the shoulder.

Well all was not well. There was a sickness out there. In the present time in the present realm. A sickness of man's own making; and not the polluting mytho-poetic global warming ideologies which gave credibility to the most lunatic of the old hippy's drop out instincts. But they, too, grew old and everything they ever believed was swept away in the corroding dust. And so he smiled; his shattered, broken teeth, his aging face, his crumbling will to create. The antibiotics had worn him to a thin shred. Another day be brave; he said; and the bishop swang holy water at him and the first rays of sunshine hit the cold streets; an alley cat watched as he passed and soon enough the streets were once again full of strangers passing each other, bubbles of thought uncompromised. And he realised: he wasn't ready to die, yet. He didn't want to die at all. And the long dreams that threaded out into the future; that future which had rushed up so rapidly it was like being gusted in the wind from one decade to the other; he shivered in that first cold sun and headed straight for a morning coffee.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/26/2552728.htm?section=justin

The Federal Government says it will take up to four days for a Navy ship carrying a group of asylum seekers to reach Christmas Island.

The boat carrying 54 passengers and two crew was intercepted by HMAS Albany yesterday in international waters about 900 kilometres from Darwin, south-west of Ashmore Island.

The Navy found the boat after workers onboard an oil rig tender vessel saw it and contacted Customs.

The group boarded HMAS Albany voluntarily.

The Federal Government has not released details about their nationalities.

Meanwhile, 32 Sri Lankan men are being processed by authorities on Christmas Island after arriving there yesterday.

They had been on a boat which was intercepted near Barrow Island off the Western Australia coast on Wednesday.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/heavy-clashes-in-afghanistan-20090425-aitp.html

THE Department of Defence says Australian troops have inflicted heavy casualties on the Taliban in a series of operations in southern Afghanistan over the past month.

The Australian Defence Force released broad details of the fighting yesterday, five weeks after the operations began. The ADF statement included belated official confirmation that Australian special forces are fighting outside Oruzgan province, their normal area of operations.

Taliban forces were routed by special forces in fighting in Helmand province, while Australian troops supporting Afghan soldiers inflicted "numerous insurgent casualties" in Oruzgan, the statement said.

Release of the statement coincided with an Anzac Day visit to Afghanistan by Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon. He was accompanied by Keith Payne, 75, who was awarded a Victoria Cross in the Vietnam War.

The ADF said special forces had been involved in "major combat operations" in Helmand since March. They operated inside a Taliban stronghold for 26 days, and were involved in 11 major fights. On April 1, they faced determined resistance in a day of "heavy and sustained" fighting, but in the end the Taliban were "seriously routed".

One Australian serving with the special forces, Sergeant Brett Till, was killed on March 19.

Elsewhere, Australian mentoring and reconstruction troops were involved in intense fighting in Oruzgan province. The statement did not say when the clash occurred, but said it happened 12 kilometres north of the main Australian base at Tarin Kowt.

The Australians called in support from Dutch and US aircraft during the fight against almost 40 insurgents.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/burningIssues/idUKTRE53O23A20090425

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Saturday urged Iraqis to overcome their divisions as a spate of suicide bombings revived fears of a renewed sectarian war when U.S. troops withdraw.

Making a brief visit to Baghdad, her first since becoming secretary of state, Clinton sought to reassure Iraqis of U.S. support as Washington prepares to withdraw all its troops by the end of 2011.

The top U.S. diplomat arrived on a military transport plane a day after two female suicide bombers blew themselves up outside a Shi'ite Muslim shrine in Baghdad, killing 60 people in the deadliest single incident in Iraq in more than 10 months.

It was the third major attack in two days, bringing the death toll since Thursday to at least 150 people.

The attacks have fanned fears of a resurgence in violence as the United States prepares to pull its combat troops out of Iraqi cities by the end of June, to end all combat missions in August 2010 and to bring all forces home by the end of 2011.

At a meeting Clinton held with about 150 Iraqis at the U.S. embassy, an Iraqi journalist bluntly said many Iraqis were afraid of what would happen when U.S. troops left, and that people did not trust Iraqi security forces.

"There is nothing more important than to have a united Iraq," Clinton replied. "The more united Iraq is, the more you will trust the security services. The security services have to earn your trust but the people have to demand it."