Melbourne Victoria Australia Protest at Weapons Show day, today

Australia isn't so good at urban pacification. I find both the Thai and the Hong Kong Police much more civilised and advanced.

If someone wants to take-over a weapons selling expo day in the city of Melbourne, well you draw back all your police, and you let the protestors take the building. Because Australian Police should not hurt Australian people. The Prime Directive. Don't hurt your own people. They are very upset about something. Let them make their point. This is real democracy. Australian police should not be in the business of hurting Australian people.

What are the protestors going to do after taking over the expo place anyway? Then you surround the expo, turn off the electricity, TV, water and internet, and just wait. No contact. Play scary music late at night. Psychological operations. You isolate them without touching or hurting them.

The protestors, They've got to go home one day. They have jobs and universities and big mortgages, etc to go back to, & they have nice families to return to. They won't like being there for very long, especially without being able to leave, & especially without good coffee, and with no wifi.

When they do beg to go home after a day a week or a few weeks, you just pick off the defined leaders on the way out, and give the rest free bus rides home. Thus you've identified and incarcerated the leading characters and been kind to everyone else.

Australia, like America, is very bizarrely primitive, and amazingly violent, in terms of urban pacification. They are equally so destructively pride-full. We both have much to learn from Asia. Asia deals with these social issues in a much more effective way, and with much less harm done. Otherwise it's all just about government pride and police pride and prestige...yuck. That doesn't work if people are really upset with the government...and the police. That doesn't do anyone any good, ever. Relax and relent, and after awhile they and you, and all of us, we, can all go home to our lovely families. Rather than amassing police to cause harm and trouble, you just stand back. It's intelligent. In essence, what are they going to do? Hurt someone's feelings?

Is it just me, or is it odd?

It is odd that Ukraine is selling tons of brand new American weapons to support their side of a rebel uprising in Mali, in Africa.

They've always been the Entrepreneurs of Central Europe, whether it be child trafficking, weapons, or drugs...which is why no one really likes them.

My Sweet Reason

Living the Day-Off Life:
Mrs Fitz is at work, it's about 6.30pm and time for me to prepare some food.
I have 2 big pieces of Rib Eye steak that I hope will be okay to rapid-barbecue. I'm quite suspicious of meat, in general, and 'good steak' in particular.
The pieces I have, for me, are a bit too Wagyu looking, with the veins of fat, without actually being sold as Wagyu. I don't trust Woolworths. Who can? Prices for everything are what one used to pay just last year in a super pricey elite Deli...and that's for everyday food now.
Pricey.
So, I will try...I'll get them out of the fridge, let them sit until room temperature, light the barbecue, & leave it for 10 minutes til super hot,
then rapid BBQ, 5 minutes one side (as they are thick) and 3-4 minutes the other side. Maybe 3 minutes.
See what happens.
Slice it into thin pieces
Have it with some BBQ onion, and English mustard, and some Japanese horseradish,
and a salad of some simple kind...like a bowl of coleslaw/saurkraut.
Some bread? Well, yeah.
Some wine? well, probably some local merlot.
See how it goes.
If it's good, I'll put the other big cooked piece aside for Mrs Fitz's splendid return from work after midnight.
We are quite good at loving each other after all these years. I'm very happy with us, who we are, and how we are so different. I'm the old, happy enough, toothless, easy going, rotund 70 year old Australian, you know. Not someone all that easy to love...although I can cook some things quite well sometimes.
She's my joy. She's my... as Patrick White once said of his life lover...She's my Sweet Reason.
Enough said. Off to the late shop for some merlot and sauerkraut now.

The Paramedics of Palestine/Praise

I used to donate about $50 a pay to the Volunteer Red Crescent Ambulance Drivers in Gaza/Palestine, until the Australian Government stopped me from doing that. I re-directed the funds some time back to the UN Fund for Refugees, and I hope it did some good.
Imagine being a Palestinian Paramedic Ambulance Driver...they are accredited Paramedics, just like ours, and all Volunteers. Poor bastards, go out to help shot kids with all your skills and get shot in the back or the brain or blown up in your ambulance when you haven't even had breakfast, for doing it, and they are still going out and still doing great things every single day. We are all honoured by their existence, their remarkable clinical and adaptive skills, their heart-breaking love, and their total professional dedication. The real Heroes in all this Genocidal Horror.
"Good job, young men, well done. That's exactly, and only, how it's done."

Said the vague and loved and distant God.

Quite a Choice

I look at the Great Contenders for the next American Presidency, and there is one who is a known liar, thief, and great charismatic manipulator who believes that God is actually, really, protecting him; and you look at the other contender, the present facile demented President who is directly responsible, along with every person in Israel, for the 30,000 deaths of innocent men women and a hell of a lot of children in Gaza, good Lord, so many many children,

and the USA people are drawn to choose, to vote for one or the other come November?

That's not a free vote.

That's not a democracy.

That's not an election.

That's nuts.

That's a Failure to Thrive.

That's an unholy abortion of everything decent on earth.

winter poem

 Poem: A Winter Night Poem: A Dreaming Night

A dreaming night inside our warmed home.
Outside are all vestiges of storm and bleaking bleating bleakness
and the wind is wild as wild, then wilder than, til wilderness.

Winter is here, in its spades of sharpened warped clinking darkness. A karaoke of ice and menace.

A world away from here there are ribbons of warm light on the circumference
of a tropical and coconut harbour somewhere with nothing to pay
and palm trees, or so they say,
but not here.

They there will have to find their own dreams tonight.

Perhaps they will dream of us,
here in the determined parabolic warm breathing snug.
They are all respiring out, or sigh, whilst we inspire within or die.

Poem 2024. Still Gratitude

Still Gratitude

a poem by John Fitzpatrick in 2024

...

With a soul that did not grow

A mind that moved so slow 

and no grace at all to show.

Still gratitude.

For time that's out and in
For the ancients and for sin
With nothing false and nothing thin
Still gratitude.

For the love within the core
For myself and nothing more
For the wine about to pour
Still gratitude.

For the journey meant to end
The golden boy
On the river's bend
For the damaged joy
that Israel cannot end
Still gratitude.