Sick Bastards

*

One sick eff, that's all they could say. He was covered tattoos. He spent most of his tims e in his room; too much time in jail over too many years. He was most comfortable in a confined space. One sick eff. There was not a kind word in his heart, not one. Sucker, he would say dismissively of anyone he had ripped off. There was a long queue. There were many tails, of high, dangerous times, of very flash cars and significant amounts of money, all of it illegal. There was an inappropriate Buddha tattooed on his chest. An aging gangster, wheezing from too many cigarettes, nothing sadder.

When the times had passed, when he found himself in the future, when a million voices had overlaid and overwritten his past actions, leaving no trace of what they had once thought of as pioneering, sharman like activities, the Byronesque quest, he was left as one tiny pinprick in a very crowded world, with nothing to say and dread in his heart; the churning disease. It had seemed so adventurous, so important. Now they lay in the stifling heat. Now they were middle aged men. Now they listened to each other's weary, salacious tales, laughing, diverted, spoilt from money they did not deserve.

He watched the Thai workers in the morning, some already with their yellow caps on, despite the early morning heat, trudging in groups towards the construction site where no doubt a hard day lay ahead. It was a very hard life. He drank his morning coffee as he watched them pass, a falang in an entirely different world. How many baht for a days labour? Not many. A couple held hands, similar in their slim wiry frames and dark work uniforms, the man cocky with his yellow cap perched on his head. He drank his coffee and paid his ten baht and wandered back through his own empty halls.

It was evil what had happened, the neglect he had shown for his own welfare. It was as if he thought he would be young forever. As if the laws of physics and human physioklogy had no hold on him; as if time hadn't passed at all. Captured by his own illusions, self deceptions, ridiculous sense of destiny, he finally reached out to help someone else. And they sang on the Bangkok Streets and high above the traffic on the Sky Train platforms: apple bottom jeans, fur topped boots, when she hit the dance floor everybody looked. Low low low low low low...

They were very clever some of the people he met, old Asian hands, people who had escaped their own cultures, loose spirits skipping across the strands of fate, the vile carriage, the thin belief, the easy days, the gathering sickness and alarm, the old time soldiers, the passing parade. He smiled and grinned and waved, as if a celebrity, at the merest acknowledgement. Or sat quietly, grim faced, as the dominant personalities took over. It was shattered and difficult. It was simple and triumphant. At least it was different. Ill health beckoned and he turned his back. There was hope, of that no doubt. He shook his shoulders and prepared for his morning coffee, his morning voyeurism, watching the life of others.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://australianetworknews.com/stories/201002/2821114.htm?desktop

Thailand's army has been put on a heightened security alert after two failed bomb attacks in Bangkok.

The army has moved to a level three security alert and has set up checkpoints in sensitive areas throughout Bangkok.

It comes amid growing fears of increased unrest in the run up to a high profile court case involving ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

At the end of the month the Supreme Court will decide if the state can seize more than $US2 billion of his assets.

On the weekend, plastic explosives were found near the court and judges have been offered accommodation in safe houses.

The Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, has also upgraded to a bullet proof car and guards with machine guns are stationed outside his home.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/16/capture-taliban-leader-pakistan-karachi

Pakistan's powerful military is ready to move aggressively against the Taliban, it was claimed tonight after news broke that the organisation's top military commander, Mullah Baradar, had been arrested in a dramatic operation in Karachi.

The shift in Pakistani policy could help nudge western countries towards a peace deal in Afghanistan, analysts and diplomats said, even if the idea of talks with the Taliban is in its infancy, with British and American policy still focused on fighting and splitting the movement.

The Pakistani military's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) and the CIA arrested Baradar, 42, in a joint operation on the edge of the teeming port city on 8 February, security sources in Karachi said. His capture is a major coup for the US, which is currently leading a sweeping anti-Taliban operation across the border in Helmand.

Baradar is a leading light of the Quetta shura, the Taliban governing council that directs the insurgency from the western Pakistani city of the same name. He is considered second only to the insurgents' one-eyed fugitive leader, Mullah Omar.

Sample computer pictures. Laptop stolen.