Wasted Ways

*

Who shall aid and protect us when the blood-streaked dawn we meet?
Will England, the hated of nations, whose existence depends on her fleet?
Who, because of the deer-parks and game-runs where her wheat-fields and pastures should be,
Must bring food for her herded thousands and shepherd it over the sea?

The beak of the British Octopus, or the Bosses within our reach
Who spend the hot days on the Mountains or summer at Manly Beach!
The thousands of paltry swindlers who are fathoms beneath our scorn –
Or the army of brave sons grown from the children who should have been born!

The wealth you have won has been wasted on trips to the English Rome,
On costly costumes from Paris, and titles and gewgaws from "home".
Shall a knighthood frighten Asia when she comes with the hate of hell?
Will the motor-launch race the torpedo, or the motor-car outspeed the shell?

Keep the wealth you have won from the cities, spend the wealth you have won on the land,
Save the floods that run into the ocean – save the floods that sink into the sand!
Make farms fit to live on, build workshops and technical schools for your sons;
Keep the wealth of the land in Australia – make your own cloth, machines, and guns!

Clear out the Calico Jimmy, the nigger, the Chow, and his pals;
Be your foreword for years: Irrigation. Make a network of lakes and canals!
See that your daughters have children, and see that Australia is home,
And so be prepared, a strong nation, for the storm that most surely must come.

Henry Lawson, Australia's Peril

Someone else would come along in a different era. Wasted ways. They would seize all this; make sense of another's life. How quaint things look in history; before the greatest crime of the modern era became racism, or sexism, opr, it often seems, independent "thoughtism". Think not your way to triumph. Think not as one of the pack. So how damned cruel was that? If in ancient times there had been other solutions; then was not now. Irradiated with new technological inventions, the Information Age now upon us had changed everything. While the Industrial Age, with its grim images of smoke stacks and D.H. Lawrence villages in the north of England, this era glistens with computer boxes and shining screens, smart cars and savvy attitudes.

And spoilt creatures tottering down streets, gossiping girls barely drawing breath as they enter the crowded lift, dolled to the nines for a day at the office, who knew where the job could take you? Up, up and away, into the bosses lap and into the back of his limousine. We were all so intelligent now. Information on almost any topic imaginable lay just at our fingertips. Google had taken over the world, providing services which would have seemed like science fiction only a few years ago. When he was a lad. When the days were old and we thought we held the future in our hands. Such arrogance. Such benighted self obsession. Such naive faith. We thought we were the centre of everything, and found out through cruel experience we were nothing but a fleck on the outer outer rim of the earth's consciousness.

Such as it was, these thoughts were of no use now. His children laughed at his fumbling use of the new technology, downloading, i-pods, just click and drag his friend said, it's easy. It would have been science fiction to think that everyone in the world could have their own web page, like this, for nothing. You had to be cruel to be kind. Exterminating self was not an option, or only one option. Day followed day and he clung to some internal terror as if it was a familiar friend, an old cast, a talking tea pot, nonsense images to stave off despair. Oh come all ye faithful; joyful and triumphant. Well, that wasn't it, there wasn't any easy way to bring forth a new you, to rewrite history, to rewrite the person he had been.

He was too sophisticated to try keeping on beyond his use by date, to pretend to be something he wasn't, to make foolish mistakes from an old man's memories. They felt conned and he felt conned; and so he called the police. They've taken my laptop, I want it back, he told them. I don't appreciate being threatened, being held up against a wall. He no longer felt safe. Idiots ruled, inside and out. Wild dogs roamed the street. Fantasies evaporated. Old men went walking. Loud Americans watched the passing of the days. Stories crowded in, a tumult in their own fashion, but none of it was earth shattering, these ordinary lives, these humble units filling the suburban shopping malls, those places of utter ordinariness, utter defeat.

J.D. Salinger wrote and wrote, every day for decades, without publishing, and what was there? The greatest tales. Mountainous works of art? Gibberish? Ordinary tales of ordinary lives could easily be wrapped up into art; made to appear more profound than they really were. Because they were just lice on the planet surface. He watched idly, at least for a moment, a fat plain thick-as-a-plank woman talking non-stop to a shop assistant she appeared to know in some way or other. Out there were the most profound events, historical shifts, Obama who? In here the gossip was minute, what who had said to who outside the school while the mothers waited for the bell to ring. For the flood of children. For the day to be over. Under the fake light of the mall, these people's lack of depth became even more obvious.

There was no fashion. They were all on Centrelink payments. Their lives revolved around daily routines; each more mind numbingly dull than the last. But he was the one who was unhappy. They bumped into each other and chatted happily as if a day out at the shops was a grand thing. He drank to dream ever greater dreams; and even now wished those dreams would transport him, take him sailing away on a quixotic cloud. The grand design. The grand works of art. The noble purposes. The mystery of creativity. He saw another plain couple sitting on a bench, overweight, most of them were overweight, and thought: how could they lie next to each other every night? Their fat flesh. Their lousy smells. Their alleged happiness. How was it possible to survive this level of utter dreariness?

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/liberals-turn-on-opposition-finance-spokesman-barnaby-joyce/story-e6frf7l6-1225826912575

BARNABY Joyce is under fire from his own colleagues, who say he is a ticking "bomb", and the Federal Government, who have branded him a "freak show".

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott slapped down his finance spokesman's suggestions that foreign aid could be cut and public servants axed.

There is growing anxiety in Coalition ranks about the high-risk choice of Senator Joyce as a member of the Opposition's economic team.

Economic credibility will be an important election issue, and some say his views put the Coalition's economic credibility at risk.

Others insist he is a breath of fresh air who is cutting through with voters.

Treasurer Wayne Swan described Senator Joyce as "Barnaby Rubble", living in the Stone Age, and Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner said he was "a freak show".

One MP said colleagues cringed when Senator Joyce stumbled over millions, billions and trillions at the National Press Club on Wednesday.

Another Liberal MP said: "There is not a single colleague in the Liberal Party that has any faith (in Senator Joyce). Everyone is just going tick, tick, tick, tick."

Another Liberal said: "If he keeps on going it is going to be a real concern. He can't go around the place talking about (budget) cuts that do not reflect party policy."

A fourth Coalition figure was equally blunt: "Barnaby still operates as a loose cannon. And his comments on foreign investment are seen as too racial."

Senator Joyce was unapologetic when contacted by the Herald Sun, declaring that he would continue to press for savings to rein in debt.

He also denied being counselled by members of the Coalition leadership team.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6130IP20100204

China's outrage over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and President Barack Obama's planned meeting with the Dalai Lama has shown that, in the wake of the global financial crisis, Beijing is growing pushier in public.

In past decades, a poorer, more cautious China greeted U.S. weapons sales to the disputed island with angry words and little else.

Not now, as China enters the Year of the Tiger in its traditional lunar calendar cycle of talismanic animals.

The Obama administration last week announced plans to ship $6.4 billion of missiles, helicopters and weapons control systems to the self-ruled island Beijing calls its own. China threatened to downgrade cooperation with Washington and for the first time sanction companies involved in such sales.

Beijing this week also condemned Obama's plan to meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader reviled by China.

China's loud ire adds to signs the country is becoming surer about throwing around its political weight, growing along with an economy soon likely to whir past Japan's as the world's second biggest, though it will still trail far behind the United States.

Behind this assertiveness are domestic pressures likely to make it harder work for China's leaders to cool disputes with Washington and other Western capitals.

"There is this paradox of increasing confidence externally and lack of confidence domestically," said Susan Shirk, a professor specializing in Chinese foreign policy at the University of California, San Diego.

"There's also what I consider a serious misperception of the country's economic strength and how that translates in power."


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/former-pm-john-howard-pumped-up-water-grants/story-e6frg6nf-1225826894599

FORMER prime minister John Howard overruled his own department by granting nearly $100 million in taxpayer funding to questionable water projects in marginal electorates, an audit revealed yesterday.

The Australian National Audit Office report into the administration of the $1.6 billion Water Smart Australia program shows how Mr Howard had intervened to award funding to projects that failed to meet the selection criteria.

They included the $40m NQ Water project to upgrade Townsville's water supply, and South Australia's $20m wastewater recycling scheme and $34.5m "Waterproofing the South" program.

The report shows that Mr Howard's own Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet had advised him that the NQ Water project was, at best, "only marginally competitive".

The National Water Commission - which was set up as part of the PM&C portfolio - had advised that the SA Wastewater proposal was "poor quality . . . and would not be recommended for funding if it were not an election commitment".

"In the absence of an election commitment, the proposal would not be recommended for funding on merit as it is not particularly innovative, the magnitude of environmental and other public benefits is difficult to determine and the value for money is uncertain as a result," it advised.

The ANAO report found that 11 water projects, unveiled as election promises for the 2004 and 2007 polls, were awarded total funding of $548m.

It reveals that Mr Howard - who was the minister responsible for water during the first three years of the program - gave out more money than the NWC had recommended for some programs.

His government boosted funding for Brisbane's water recycling scheme from the $247.6m recommended by the NWC to the full $408m sought by the Queensland government.