THE MALICE OF MEN
The South Coast, NSW, Australis
Where he had thought he would be safe, he was not safe at all. Where he hoped to find friend, he found nothing but new gangs of thieves. The Royal Thai Tourist Police joined in the malicious hunt of the Bangkok mafia as if born to it, and whoever he spent time with robbed him with malicious glee. On and on it went, as he thrashed and grew more miserable by the day, more isolated, more distressed. More open to be feasted upon by the malignant. He had thought Chiang Mai would be a haven, somewhere in the Thailand he liked so much where the mafia and their corrupt friends in the local police would not reach out to get him. But they couldn't leave him alone. They just circled and circled. At first he thought Laurie, who owned the guest house and did volunteer work for the Royal Thai Tourist Police, would be helpful. But he turned out to be just as dishonest, just as unpleasant, as everybody else. And so his mood sank further and further. He might be 60 years old, and frail and disturbed from the decades of work, the physical pain that wracked his body, and the psychological torment he had endured, but that wasn't going to stop any of them. The Bangkok mafia were out to get him; and the police were more than happy to assist.
And so, obsessively, he had kept his thoughts to himself. Watched their antics. Got pissed when he could bear his head no longer. Slept with prostitutes who invariably robbed him. Made ancient moves on an ancient chess board. Could hear the mocking in the distance, as he wasi meant to. Could not believe that even here they were malicious enough to set up blinds, to keep up their mocking, to alienate the local population. To encourage them to join the queues of those who had robbed him during his time in Thailand. That country which he had hoped would offer peace, and had turned into a nightmare. As it had for so many other foreigners who, in their so-called sunset years, sought peace and refuge, deluded by the advertising slogan, The Land of Smiles, or deluded, as he had been, by fond memories of the country 40 years before.
But if the friendliness of 40 years before had been even remotely sincere, it was no longer. He braved his way through another step. He kept time and emminence at bay. He made the point that the mafia, employing their little armies of thieves and liars, tricky boys and tricky girls, should clean up their act to interact with tourists, rather than just blatently and routinely robbing them at every opportunity. That it was bad for the counbtry and bad for their industry, bad for the reputation of the police and the reputation of the country itself, to so systemically steal from people who were, after all, customers. But any criticism incensed the Thais. It was a common saying amongst themselves, Bangkok police same same Bangkok mafia, but for an outsider to say it was considered a disgrace. And so they kept up their haunting, crossing every boundary of reason, decency, good taste. They just kept planting their cameras, and in their vicious haste, made fools of themselves as much as they made a fool of him.
That they had come back into his life more than a year after he had left the wretched circumstance, indeed for what he could be forgiven for thinking was a wretched place, showed their arrogance, stupidity and the remorseless nature of their group hatred just like that. He had loved Thailand, the ravishing beauty of their music, the superb food, the fascinating vistas, the colour and movement of their peoples, the fascinations of their customs, their different ways of thinking about the world, the way, once upon a time, he had been able to relax. But when he had objected to being robbed by one nasty little rent boy, it was as if he had accused them all of being thieves. If the hat fits, wear it, and they wore it in throngs. But who was a foreigner to say such things, to make such objections, to dare to speak out. So they followed him everywhere, not just within Thailand, but across borders. In their endless pursuit. In their endless lies. In the end, caught in their own ridiculous traps, because they had to prove a journalist with decades of experience didn't know what he was talking about; and had no right to say what anyone could so easily observed. And what, in different ways, so many others had already said. Instead, by the day, the howling of the hunt had just grown louder, whether it was in Chiang Mai, where he had first spent a month in 1975, when there had been virtually no hotels and no tourists, and it had just been an idyllic town full of flowers and the sound of rickshaw bells, or wherever else he went. But even if he had been the ugly, unpleasant person they claimed him to be, how did that justify robbing him? How did that justify turning themselves into thieves. Discobeying the precepts of the Buddha. That, he never understood.
THE BIGGER STORY:
Kevin Rudd could have pulled off an unlikely election win if he had quickly gone to the people after regaining the leadership in June, says the man armed with the polling data at the time, Labor's campaign director George Wright.
He said with hindsight Mr Rudd should have pulled the election trigger sooner after replacing the unpopular Julia Gillard, because there had been a moment shortly after the changeover when Labor's polling suggested it had a chance.
But the factionally unaligned Mr Wright also acknowledged something of the chaos within Labor's re-election push, revealing for the first time the dumping of Ms Gillard in late June had crippled his internal campaign machinery with as many as 110 of 150 head-office campaign staff quitting in protest.
Delivering the traditional post-election campaign analysis to the National Press Club in Canberra, Mr Wright paid tribute to the much greater discipline of the Coalition's campaign, describing it as, if not brilliant, then ''brilliantly disciplined''.
He said by contrast Labor had made itself the story.
''Labor didn't so much lose the election as lose government,'' he said, ''and we lost it because of a lack of unity and too much infighting.
''We put the Liberals 10 goals up when the political year started. The crucial thing that [federal Liberal Party director] Brian [Loughnane] and his team had in spades, and ruthlessly drove home their advantage with, was the biggest thing that Labor's team lacked - discipline.''
He said by the time the election was called, the ALP's market research was identifying it was not just the carbon tax or even the long-running asylum-seeker problem hammering Labor's standing with voters, it was the then government's bitter internal squabbles.
Among the most telling revelations was Mr Wright's certainty that while the switch to Mr Rudd had not saved the government, it saved as many as 25 Labor seats.
He said the ALP had faced the prospect of retaining as few as 30 seats in the lower house rather than the 55 it came through with.
''In the second quarter of 2013, our polling was telling us Labor was looking at being reduced to as few as 30 House of Representatives seats,'' he said. ''Western Sydney looked like it would become a Liberal heartland.''
Instead, Mr Wright said, the party got away with ''a solid loss'', likening it to the Dunkirk landing. ''We pulled off Dunkirk, suffering a major defeat, but managing to escape with our army intact.''
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-obama-healthcare-website-20131030,0,1315422.story
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apologized today for the botched rollout of the government's healthcare website, acknowledging it was a "debacle", while also blaming insurers for cancelling coverage for hundreds of thousands of people.
Sebelius, testifying at a congressional hearing on the troubled website at the heart of Obama's healthcare overhaul, vowed to win back the confidence of millions of disappointed Americans.
"Hold me accountable for the debacle. I'm responsible," Sebelius said in response to questions from Marsha Blackburn, the Republican U.S. Representative of Tennessee, about who was responsible for problems that have prevented people from signing up for healthcare insurance plans.
Two weeks was not enough time to test healthcare.gov that launched on October 1, Sebelius said.
She said while all the various components of the website were tested and verified, they were not put together until late September.
"We did not adequately do end-to-end testing," she testified.
Sebelius also said "everyone" was concerned that there were risks associated with launching a complex, integrated website.
Sebelius said she will not ask for the resignation of a top official at the agency overseeing the implementation of the health insurance exchange. Asked if she would call for the resignation of Gary Cohen, the deputy administrator and director at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, Sebelius said: "I will not."
Technical glitches have dogged healthcare.gov since its launch, preventing many people from signing up for insurance plans. But critics of Obamacare have seized on the hundreds of thousands of Americans due to lose their current plans because they fail to include essential benefits required by the law and are asking whether Obama misrepresented the law.
Sebelius, the cabinet official spearheading the implementation of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, drew intense criticism from Republicans including Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Upton accused Obama of breaking a 2009 promise that people with insurance could keep their current plans.
"They are now receiving termination notices, and for those who lose the coverage they like, they may also be losing faith in their government," the Michigan Republican said.
Sebelius defended the administration by describing hundreds of thousands who have received cancellation notices as the victims of a market long known for discriminating against the sick, cancelling policies and selling inadequate insurance.
"The individual market ... anywhere in the country has never had consumer protections. People are on their own. They can be locked out, priced out, dumped out," by insurers, Sebelius said.
Sebelius said Obama had not broken his promise because plans that have existed since the law was signed have had the option of remaining unchanged.
Democrats on the committee rallied to the administration's position by pointing out that insurance policies being canceled would be replaced by better plans that meet higher standards under Obamacare, many of them at lower costs.
"I would urge my colleagues to stop hyperventilating," said Representative Henry Waxman of California, the committee's top Democrat.
Sebelius has become a political punching bag for Republicans who have repeatedly called on her to resign over the flawed rollout of the website. The White House continues to support her.
"I am as frustrated and angry as anyone with the flawed launch of Healthcare.gov," Sebelius testified. "So let me say directly to these Americans: You deserve better. I apologize.
"I'm accountable to you for fixing these problems. And I'm committed to earning your confidence back by fixing the site."