Criminal Issue
*
O the valley in the summer where I and my John
Beside the deep river would walk on and on
While the flowers at our feet and the birds up above
Argued so sweetly on reciprocal love,
And I leaned on his shoulder; 'O Johnny, let's play':
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.
O that Friday near Christmas as I well recall
When we went to the Charity Matinee Ball,
The floor was so smooth and the band was so loud
And Johnny so handsome I felt so proud;
'Squeeze me tighter, dear Johnny, let's dance till it's day':
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.
Shall I ever forget at the Grand Opera
When music poured out of each wonderful star?
Diamonds and pearls they hung dazzling down
Over each silver and golden silk gown;
'O John I'm in heaven,' I whispered to say:
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.
O but he was fair as a garden in flower,
As slender and tall as the great Eiffel Tower,
When the waltz throbbed out on the long promenade
O his eyes and his smile they went straight to my heart;
'O marry me, Johnny, I'll love and obey':
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.
O last night I dreamed of you, Johnny, my lover,
You'd the sun on one arm and the moon on the other,
The sea it was blue and the grass it was green,
Every star rattled a round tambourine;
Ten thousand miles deep in a pit there I lay:
But you frowned like thunder and you went away.
The yellow flowers were in the field, surrounding the old cemetery. It was one of the most profound moments of his life, yet hidden, embarrassing, something better forgotten. He had made such a fool of himself. Their smug faces, their pornographic lives, their hugely entertaining sex romps on the wide beds, their laughter. He had been in love and failed to declare, and when he chanced his hand in a land of multiple partners and shifting alliances, of old allegiances, it was simply the wrong thing to do. He had come from such a lonely space, there in the early hours, unable to sleep, his time. He had swept up out of infancy and his psychic abilities had blossomed. Turn around, turn around, he would say to the grey head on the bus into town, and sure enough they would turn around. He could hear them thinking. He could feel their multiple presences. And in the dense, crowded air, he could even recognise their personalities, the ghosts crowding in upon him.
She was infinite in her beauty, the ancient, corrupted fingers which ran down his cheek, the spark of amphetamines which were already beginning to rot his soul. Oh ancient lover, ancient one. Where have you been? He couldn't tell fact from fiction anymore. And he was the wild one, the one who had been born again, thrown down through the millennia into a world he barely even recognised as human, so much had changed. As a young man those thoughts had been so distinct: he bore the shadows of a former time, past lives, of the catacombs and Roman baths. Here in suburban Australia, his head full of books, his life a one step agony, cowering in corners as the belts snaked out. In the years to come abuse would become a fashionable topic; in his childhood there was no escape. No escape at all. He would never recover from those beatings. He never spoke of them again.
"Don't think I don't remember," he felt like saying, when he finally spoke to his father after decades of absence. Don't think I don't remember you waiting in the kitchen with the belt spread out across the table, neatly arranged across the hard plastic top. As a 15-year-old he would alight from some queen's car at 3a.m., already shuddering from tip to toe at the beating he was about to receive. "It will be alright, you'll get through it," the queen would say, as if they really cared. It wasn't happening to them. They had got what they wanted. They'd be called paedophiles these days. They'd be arrested. He would walk down the steep slope towards the house, could see the light in the kitchen, his father waiting. All around was the great silence of the bush, the sleeping houses of the neighbours. No one knew what he was about to suffer. No one cared. No one intervened.
Because no one stepped in to help, although it must have been common knowledge that he was being badly beaten, he learnt to internalise every last hope, every thought, every aspiration. Fear of ridicule was almost as strong as the fear of the beatings. If he ever had children, he swore he would never do to them what was done to him. As his father laid into him as hard as he could. The monster. What pleasure he must have got! As the belt rained down, as the welts began to form, as he cried in a sign of weakness and he beat him harder, joyful at the tears. The cringing animal. It was a wonder he didn't kick him, but his father stuck to the belt. And he would hobble off to school the next day, sore from the welts, bruised from the beating. And he would never tell a soul. Not until the next time, the next 3am the following week, when the same queen, or another gay man, would emphasise briefly as he told of his fears at returning to that house, and then peck him goodbye and be gone, the sound of their car disappearing around the winding bends.
Each time, as he walked down the path to that front door, and could feel the first tears prickling even before the first belt struck. "Don't think I don't remember," he thought, decades later when, after the beating and subsequent suicide of his youngest half-brother, the brother who "even looked like you", he began talking to him again. The capacity to forgive was nothing short of astonishing. But he didn't really forgive. He simply tried to move on. To forget it ever happened. To make a fool of himself amongst the yellow flowers of the cemetery, so survive as a malformed creature in an oxygenless environment, the air the heavy mercury of his homeland so long ago, so many lives ago. The human frame was weak and he could not stay long. There was danger in the crossings, danger of being lost. And so he detached, that was the word, from his own body as often as he could, the loose knitting of the components haunting him, the sterile world which he so feared. Beaten black and blue, he had retreated into fantasy. And there, for many many years, until all the walls collapsed and left him shrieking in the shocking light, he stayed.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/support-for-turnbull-sinks-in-new-polls-20090629-d1f5.html
Senior Liberals have dismissed speculation of a leadership challenge after Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull's disastrous showing in a series of opinion polls.
Mr Turnbull's personal approval ratings plummeted in the wake of last week's ill-judged call for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's resignation over his relationship with a Brisbane car dealer in the OzCar affair.
While Labor increased its lead over the coalition, the polls released on Monday also found a majority of voters thought Mr Turnbull was arrogant and not altogether honest.
Mr Turnbull made no public comment on the polls, while a number of his frontbenchers spoke in his defence.
Opposition leader in the Senate, Nick Minchin, acknowledged they'd had "a pretty tough week" but he said they would be competitive at the next election, due late next year.
He said the polls were a rollercoaster and urged his colleagues to keep their feet on the ground.
"I don't want an opposition leader who's too scared to get out of bed in the morning," Senator Minchin told Sky News on Monday.
"Malcolm is a risk-taker and sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don't and when they don't you get a bad poll."
Senior Liberal Tony Abbott also stood behind his leader, saying the opposition had a bad week but Mr Turnbull would be leader going into the next election.
"Just as Malcolm didn't flinch last week it's important that the party doesn't flinch this week," Mr Abbott said.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2009/s2610915.htm
There are reports out of Los Angeles that a second autopsy on the body of Michael Jackson has been completed as the family tries to find the cause of the pop star's death. Over the weekend the Reverend Jesse Jackson, no relation to Michael, said the family was suspicious about the role Jackson's doctor played immediately before he died. The doctor has been interviewed by police but they say he is not a suspect.
TONY EASTLEY: There are reports out of Los Angeles that a second autopsy on the body of Michael Jackson has been completed as the family tries to find the cause of the pop star's death.
Over the weekend the Reverend Jesse Jackson - one time presidential candidate and no relation to Michael - said the family were suspicious about the role Jackson's doctor played immediately before he died.
John Shovelan reports.
JOHN SHOVELAN: After a second interview that lasted three hours, Los Angeles Police found no evidence the one person who was with Michael Jackson at the time he collapsed, cardiologist Dr Conrad Murray, had committed a crime.
The Los Angeles Times reported police found "no red flag" or "smoking gun" that would indicate a crime had taken place.
An attorney with Doctor Murray's legal team, Matt Alford says they have been assured by police their client is under no suspicion.
MATT ALFORD: Homicide division has assured us that Dr Murray is not a suspect of any kind in Mr Jackson's death. He is just a witness that the police want to talk to to get the facts out to help fill in some blanks that they have as to the events leading up to Mr Jackson's death.
TONY EASTLEY: Dr Murray who performed CPR on Jackson at his rented home and who travelled in the ambulance to the hospital had, according to his legal representatives, assisted police identify the circumstances around the death and clarified inconsistencies.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12376
By Viv Forbes Saturday, June 27, 2009
Australia’s EPA (Environmental Protection Authority) has been negligent in listing carbon dioxide (CO2) as a pollutant without conducting an independent public review of the scientific evidence to support that decision.
The Garnaut Doomsday report, the CSIRO Scare forecasts, and the Cap-N-Tax Scheme of Senator Wong are all based on faulty foundations. Like trusting children following the Pied Piper, Senator Wong follows the EPA, which follows CSIRO and Garnaut, who follow the US EPA, which follows the IPCC, which follows the Pied Piper of Gore, whose movie has been found to contain many untruths. Only a few key people in this Conga Line of gullibles know where they are going and why. Even fewer have checked the scientific basis of the Global Warming Theory.
They are all following the completely outdated IPCC AR4 report. This report was published in 2007 but relies on scientific papers at least 3 years out of date, and some such as the NAS 1979 study are 30 years old.
Now a critical draft report has emerged from inside the US EPA. It was written by very competent EPA staff, warning that organisation that their classification of CO2 as a pollutant was too heavily based on the latest IPCC report “which is at best three years out of date in a rapidly changing field.” This EPA report has been suppressed for months.
The comprehensive 98 page report details six areas where important new findings demand re-assessment of the EPA ruling. These include the end of the warming trend that is now obvious, the gross failure of IPCC forecasts of temperature and CO2 emissions, the lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature, and the “strong association between solar/sunspots/irradiance and global temperature fluctuations.”
The report also finds that the assumption of positive feedback from water vapour that underlies all global warming models is “not supported by empirical evidence and the feedback is actually negative.”
Finally, in a statement that demolishes the key argument for the Cap-N-Tax Scheme, this suppressed EPA report notes: “Changes in greenhouse gas concentrations appear to have so little effect that it is difficult to find any effect in the satellite temperature record, which started in 1978”.
