Rush

"They had begun as defenders of liberal values and human rights, and they evolved into the defenders of bigotry, tyranny, superstition and mass murder. They were democratic leftists who, through the miraculous workings of the slippery slope and a naive rationalism, of all things, ended as fascists.
Long ago, you say? Not so long ago."

Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism.

"Indeed not. If people assume that everyone on the Left is good, if they can't tear their eyes from abuses close to home to see the darker world beyond, if they pretend that they are not taking sides when they opt for neutrality and then compound the fault by believing that the irrational has rational causes, then disgrace inevitably follows."

Nick Cohen, What's Left?


There were fountains in the darkness, a lurking unease, insecurity within, an undertow of despair and humiliation that was almost depression; and the brightness of these days seemed so confined, so short. I was only coming forward to face the crowd. I was only being brave because history and circumstance had thrust me into this situation. Despite the timeliness of some of my saviours, I was left embarrassed through the contempt of yet others. I was getting old. The bones creaked. Pain came where it had never been before. The centre of the universe had moved on, leaving us to eke out a living on the outer rims. The villages were small and in decay.

These times were meant to be the best times, cowardice was not meant to live here anymore. Courage, strength, determination, integrity; they were the values that had come to live in my psyche. But in the slipstream craven despair, the junky sadness, the self-destruction and personal neglect; shooting up drunk and waking up in public toilets; drinking whole bottles of whisky till I passed out in the street; nice bloke pity he drinks so much and the final flush of consciousness joining the trees and skyscrapers surrounding Belmore Park, where I had died a street alcoholic, these things were never that far away.

The behaviour of crowds had fascinated me all my life. But now petty sociological analysis seemed as much a subject for despair; the behaviour of the crowd just sickening. The mainstream media had drawn a veil across reality; pretending that everything was working when it simply wasn't. The few voices who spoke out, the few independent thinkers, were themselves most commonly parrotting the fashions of the left or the right; and little of it was original. Beneath the surface there was so much tragedy, so much dysfunction, so much suffering from bureaucratic and judicial arrogance and sheer, unadulterated bastardry; but instead of writing the truth we slapped bylines over press releases and regurgitated the given world, media concretising the floating world; we never looked beyond the veil.


THE BIGGER STORY:


New Zealand Herald:


Australian Prime Minister John Howard has warned the Iraqi Government that unless it makes faster progress towards resolving the country's political differences, it faces the prospect of Australian and other Western troops withdrawing.

In a letter to his Iraqi counterpart Nouri al-Maliki, Howard urged the Iraqi Government to speed the sharing of oil wealth among all Iraqis, including the minority Sunnis.

Howard warned that if Iraqis failed to make progress, public support for Australia's military deployment to Iraq may not be sustainable.

The clear implication in Howard's letter, which was sent last week, was that US public support would also falter without substantial political progress in Iraq, the paper said.

ABC:

Mr Howard said as Australia is one of the few countries with troops in Iraq, he had a right to send the letter.

He said the Government is not threatening troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Mr Howard says Iraq has a responsibility to foreign troops who risk their lives for the Iraqi people.

"[It's] recognition that there are 1,500 Australian men and women of the Defence Forces in one way or another involved in the Iraq theatre," he said.

"Now I'm not threatening their withdrawal. We remain committed in the same way as in the past but that doesn't stop me saying that I don't think enough domestic political progress has been made by the Iraqis."