Reverse Order

"The past is smoke. When necessary, blow it away."
Ralph Binyen


"Most of our perceptions were forged in a fire that is now history. A fire long gone cold. We are the ones who must decide whether the power of the past will grow or go."
Larson & Hegarty

Collapsing tunnels, accordians of effect; where the mushy vistas of the day are impressed on other voices. And we go and we go. Stuck in tin cans miles high with the smells of other people making him sick. The clouds of events boiled far below; and it was all a part of being here. We couldn't blow it away; we couoldn't even start to understand it.

The undertow was present again; and he fought to stay sane. We lived on the cusp of ever greater madness. And the concrete, vigorous colours of the harbour city, they never matched. There are hundreds of handsome faces in the crowd; this year's crop ever more beautiful than the last, although he could remember thinking the same last year. His head jerked around; trying to drape itself in the lives of others; other stories, other events; and his own sad condolences were met with laughter.

How could you? they asked, a grimy old man, coated in the past. When it truly did seem all the good times were gone and there was nothing to look forward to. Jolting himself into the beauty of the day; that wasn't so easy. These collapsing stands of images; these vigorous story lines, all he could do was watch. Say goodbye to mummy, the father ordered, as three kids swarmed all over him and she strode with a friend to the plane. Have a good time girls. He was fit, he was handsome, his wife kissed him and the kids affectionately; and these were time warp narratives he would never be able to grasp, or live, again.

THE BIGGER STORY:
Monsters and Critics:

Seven Iraqi policemen were killed in a suicide attack Friday on an Iraqi checkpoint in Bayji, pan-Arab al-Arabiya news broadcaster reported.

Bayji, 180 kilometres north of Baghdad, had repeatedly been attacked, mostly by al-Qaeda terrorist network in Iraq.

Sunni tribal leader Abdul-Sattar Abu-Risha, who had joined forces with other tribes in western Iraq to fight al-Qaeda, was meanwhile buried, a day after being killed by a bomb.

Two Iraqi government ministers and National Security Adviser Muwaffak al-Rubai attended the funeral in Ramadi in the western province of Anbar, al-Arabiya television reported.

Abu-Risha's brother Ahmed was chosen to replace him as head of the Anbar Salvation Council.

Abu-Risha, who met US President George W Bush 10 days before his death, had formed the council last year to coordinate fighting by local tribes against al-Qaeda militants in Anbar after the Sunni locals turned against the brutality of the Sunni militants.

Jojo:

I believe that the troop splurge is succeeding. According to the president over 1500 hundred enemy are killed each month. That is a
kill ratio of at least 10 to 1 in favor of the US. At that rate
total military victory is at hand a few years or so from now, as long
as we continue to kill enemy. After the mission is accomplished
in Iraq, we can take over Afghanistan from the taliban once again,
and destroy the narco-terrorist state they have created there in recent
years. Right now we can overlook the fact that Afghanistan is producing
records amounts of opium and refined heroin with the help of Pakistan.
After military victory in Iraq in a few more years, we can then hunt
for osama bin laden, even though it doesn't matter that he is hiding
under the protection of Pakistan and laughing at us, and taunting us with
porographic videos he is produing in his multi-media recoding studio.