Helicopters overhead

Only the whirl
of thousands of blades slicing my dreams
like screams, splattered guts, stinking burns
like the same roaring scene played over and over
on thousands of nights, even days, even when
cool silence calms memories, buries visions
like a simple traffic helicopter overhead
wakes the dead over and over.

Judith Cody

"The war he found himself participating in was not the campaign against terrorists and evildoers he had expected. Key tells of the human rights abuses he saw: Iraqi civilians beaten and shot, killed or maimed for little or maimed for little or no justification; the casual desecration of bodies of the dead. He tells the heart-rending story of a seven-year-old girl he saw killed while attempting to scrounge leftover army rations for her family. After seven months in Iraq, Kay went home on leave, and knew he could not return, knew he could no longer serve his country."
The Deserter's Tale.


The strong and the powerful are all here; the most obvious sign the helicopters hovering overhead. Motorcades slice across the almost empty city. Today is a public holiday and with the heads of some of the world's most powerful economies, including Russia, China and the US in town, every body's been encouraged to stay out of town. The politicians have all grabbed on to climate change as something to make them feel busy and important; yet recent figures show that the last decade was the coolest since the 1930s. Go figure. Is it real or not? Welcome to our wagon; I've always found it hard to believe.

The helicopters throb in the distance; carrion birds. We sentence you; we double cross in the policy rivers and care only for our own backsides. These are fragile weeds in the murky pond; the secruity helicopters making their way purposefully across the sky while others hover over the city's luxury hotels. Particularly the Intercontinental; where Bush is staying. This is one for me, they shout. I couldn't breathe life into lost causes, I wanted to be free.

We should make the move. The targets are ready. The protesters are locked out. Nothing can go wrong. Only a few more days and it will all be over. Howard is desperate for some platitudinous cover-all statement about climate change; but why should so much money be poured into something which not even the scientists can confirm is real? I'm not sure that I spoke positively about you; they certainly didn't speak positively about me. These strange disembodied thoughts rising into the thromb of the helicopter blades; as the caravans of the powerful, surrounded by intense security; kept in their privileged positions by the taxes of hundreds of millions; thread through the city. All hope of compassionate, equitable outcomes, are smashed to pieces by the swirling, frightening machines.

THE BIGGER STORY:

USA Today

SYDNEY — Australia's natural wonders — the Great Barrier Reef, the vast Outback, Tasmanian rain forests — disguise a dirty fact: The country known for kangaroos and crocodile wrestlers is one of the world's worst polluters, at least on a per-capita basis.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has put the environment at the top of the agenda at the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting of 21 Pacific Rim countries that he is hosting this week in Sydney.

At APEC, Howard is promoting a new approach to fighting global warming, one to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012. He and President Bush released a joint statement Wednesday calling for a long-term program to reduce emissions "consistent with economic growth, poverty alleviation and improvements in living standards." They emphasized the use of technology and nuclear power and didn't mention energy taxes or mandates on industry.

Bush said China and other developing countries have to do their part to cut emissions. "China needs to be at the table," he said.