Killing Parking Cops

*

I had the choice to do something more pleasing if I had wished, and I was paid, if not munificently, at least adequately. I chose the disagreeable neighbourhood in which I practiced because, medically speaking, the poor are more interesting, at least to me, than the rich; their pathology is more florid, their need for attention greater. Their dilemmas, if cruder, seem to me more compelling, nearer to the fundamentals of human existence. No doubt I also felt my services would be more valuable there: in other words, that I had some kind of duty to perform. Perhaps for that reason, like the prisoner on his release, I feel I have paid my debt to society. Certainly the work has taken a toll on me, and it is time to do something else. Someone else can do battle with the metastasizing social pathology of Great Britain while I lead a life aesthetically more pleasing to me.

Theodore Dalrymple.

There were so many days flying by, he was shocked at the way his life had disappeared. Where were all the great works? Why had everything disappeared in clouds of smoke? Literally. From the grand days of the Aquarius Festival, when it felt as if the world was turning on its axis and he was at the centre of it, a part of a greater movement, sent by the Divine to record all that was, all that ever would be. Now he was a doddering old man with a limited life span. And everything was going down the chute. There wasn't enough time in one day to do everything he wanted. He walked and he walked: taking seriously the old maxim, if you can't talk it out walk it out. That was very important to him. There in the cold of the pre-dawn, on the mostly deserted streets, Major the dog scuttling along in front or behind him. He could feel them sleeping in their houses; and they would never know how he had lingered over them like some damp, evil spirit, watching jealously their simple physicality, their uncomplicated embrace of life.

He saw Don from the Kincumber Spiritual Retreat, all wound up, critical of the pack mentality of the group, running, clustering, in fields of gold, our spirits united across divine dysfunction, shadows and shallows and distorted hope. He was sure he was going to fail. Nothing made sense anymore. All the old dreams had vanished. He was fearful he had become one of those leached out people he had never wanted to be, those vacuums of charisma without ambition, without goals, seemingly without talents. What do you want to be? Nothing. Did you ever have any childhood dreams? No. Wasn't there anything you ever aspired to? No. They sat in their vacuums, their bodies giving off the smell of death even though they had recently washed, their hair still damp. Doesn't anything happen in that damned head of yours, he felt like shouting, standing up and stepping towards, strangling. You can't be that much of a dead head. You can't be so totally vacuous.

Get a proper job dog, he shouted at the parking cop, who had only just caught him after the malfunctioning metre ran out early. This was a disgrace; and they could never be wise. The tyranny of the parking police have destroyed Sydney as a reasonable place to live, wasted thousands of man hours as people are forced to move their cars constantly, and led to the employment of cadres of working stiffs, goons coating the streets, lurking around corners, watching every move of the populace, totalitarian in their instincts. While the left wing counsellors held extravagant lunches for themselves on the proceeds of ordinary working people who couldn't find somewhere to park. It was a disgusting disgrace getting worse as other sources of revenue for councils dried up. The tyranny became ever present. The only alternative public transport: crowded, dirty, full of the smells of the unwashed crushed together. Why was there no way out?

He took it personally, the destruction of the city he had once loved. He couldn't just go and visit a friend in Paddington without confronting a major drama about where to park, coins for the metres, constantly having to check his car. He would cheerfully have exterminated the parking police from the planet, just as sometimes he would have liked to have the power to make the traffic in front of him disappear, hundreds of people daily disappearing without explanation, their families, if they had families, searching for them fruitlessly. When the true story was they had vanished because they had got in his way; and his car drove down the highway making everybody in front of him disappear. How irresponsible. How fascistic. And yet the ever growing power of the state was already doing much the same, crushing the spirit of the populace. He couldn't resist. The fight was bigger than just one person.

That others didn't share his passions and hatreds he never understood. Why didn't everybody fantasise about killing parking police? Of obliterating them from the planet? Their very ordinariness was mirrored all around him, and he thought there were ways to cure what was clearly a costly disease, these people, totalitarian scum who had become the instruments of the state, did not deserve to exist. They could persecute others with impunity, clearly with no conscience. Their shackles, their controls, deserved to be cast off. They themselves deserved the most miserable of deaths. He saw the parking cop scuttling away from him as he approached his car, ashamed, as if the ticket he had left on his wind shield was really excrement. Get a proper job dog he shouted as loud as he could, startling the office workers queueing for a bus opposite. The inspector never looked up, scuttling away in embarrassment. Shouldn't he be the one embarrassed for going off like a chook in public? Not for one second. He ripped the ticket out from under his wind shield wiper, screwed it up and threw it on the ground in disgust, not even bothering to look at the amount. May ill health, tragedy and a terrible sadness follow you all the days of your life, he chanted in an evil incantation, aiming his hatred at the rapidly disappearing back of the parking cop. I don't understand why someone doesn't go around murdering them, he said, I'm sane and I hate them. The person he was talking to, a random walking past, raised a questioning eyebrow. He got in his car and drove off, gunning the engine to express annoyance. As if anyone, in this ruthless, totalitarian place, could care less how he felt.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8159788.stm

Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab's confession took everyone by surprise - even his own legal team.

As news of his confession spread, the Mumbai courtroom became packed with reporters.

The shock came on Monday morning, when the court was in the process of recording evidence. The suspect told the judge he wanted to say something.

After speaking to his lawyer very briefly, Mr Qasab said: "I accept my guilt."

Judge M L Tahiliyani asked him to what was he pleading guilty. Mr Qasab admitted that he had carried out the firing at Mumbai's railway station in November 2008.

The judge then heard arguments from prosecution and defence lawyers over whether a confession could be recorded at this stage of the trial.

When it was noted by the court that he could indeed make the confession, Mr Qasab proceeded to give a detailed account of how he and nine others came to Mumbai from Karachi last November, and the training that led up to it.

Speaking for several hours, he first described what happened when he and accomplice Abu Ismail entered the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) railway station.

"In CST, Abu Ismail and I started firing at the public there with our AK-47 rifles. Ismail was throwing grenades also. I was firing," he said.

"We went ahead towards the hall. The police caught up with us at the time and started firing at us. We retaliated. Ismail took position behind the trains which were parked. I took position behind him. I fired at the police."

He then described how they left the station and headed to the Cama hospital - confronting four people in one of the wards.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/21/2632077.htm

The Aboriginal Legal Service in Western Australia is calling for a ban on police stun guns after a petrol sniffer caught on fire in the state's far east yesterday afternoon.

Police say the 36-year-old man burst into flames when he was shot with a Taser at the Aboriginal community of Warburton in Goldfields.

It is alleged the man was threatening officers with a container of petrol and a cigarette lighter.

The man was flown to Royal Perth Hospital with third degree burns to his face, arms and chest. He is in a critical but stable condition.

Senior police say an investigation is underway, but it is unlikely the Taser started the fire.

Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Dennis Eggington says there is mounting proof that Tasers are dangerous.

"I think that the jury's still out on whether or not Taser is a lethal weapon in itself, particularly if you've got a part of the population that is very vulnerable to this type of electric shocks," he said.

Mr Eggington says the man was a petrol sniffer, and Tasers should not be used on Aboriginal people who suffer from a range of health problems.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/20/space.apollo.anniversary/

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The first man on the moon marked the 40th anniversary of his historic achievement with characteristic understatement Monday, calling the program that put him on the lunar surface "a good thing to do."
President Obama welcomes, from left, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong.

President Obama welcomes, from left, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong.

Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong joined crewmates Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin at the National Air and Space Museum, capping a day of commemorations that included a stop at the White House. During brief remarks at the museum, he said the mission was the climax of a "staggeringly complex" endeavor that "required the very best in creativity, determination and perseverance that could be assembled in the American workplace."

"Those successes were very impressive 40 years ago, but they were not miraculous," Armstrong said. "They were the result of the imagination and inventive minds of the people in the Apollo project since its inception eight years earlier."

The July 20, 1969, moon landing followed four test missions and came just two years after a fire that killed the first Apollo crew. Six lunar landings followed. A seventh flight, Apollo 13, was forced to abort its landing after an oxygen tank explosion crippled the spacecraft; the crew used its lunar lander as a "lifeboat" for much of their harrowing return to Earth.

Armstrong called the Apollo program "a superb national enterprise" that "left a lasting imprint on society and history."

"Our knowledge of the moon increased a thousandfold and more," he said. "Technologies were developed for interplanetary navigation and travel. Our home planet has been seen from afar, and that perspective has caused us to think about its and our significance. Children inspired by the excitement of space flight have come to appreciate the wonder of science, the beauty of mathematics and the precision of engineering."

He concluded, "Apollo was a good thing to do."

Sydney Universtiy.