Novichok, spies, Korea etc

We'll never know the chicanery between the powers, we'll only know a few tales here and there. Nothing of substance.
When one considers the lot of a double-agent, well, one can understand that this isnt an ideal career in the long term, and you won't ever know who comes to get you, but someone will.
I recall a news piece about a British spy who was found dead in a suitcase in a bath and the official response was that there were no suspicious circumstances at all.
As for korea, well, it seems less on the brink of mad war with itself than it has for some years, so that's a good thing.
I expect the US Navy with its nukes etc is still tripping around the coast off Korea and China much to the chagrin of those countries and the Americans I guess will keep doing that out of habit. It is an expensive habit...and something could go wrong, of course, but we won't know.
Wishing people find reason in peace. If you can't destroy someone, perhaps peace is better and cheaper than war overall.

Grumpy kids. "Why isn't my life perfect, Dad?" "Well, my darling, that's simply because you aren't perfect. Get used to that. I've had to."

Scott Morrison as prime minister of Australia, just someone else we'll have to forget. Might as well check the washing on the line, and see if the clothes are still wet.

We are one but we are many and from all of the lands of earth we come apart from syrians and iraqis on manus island... and we stick their hopes and children up New Guinea's bum. we hope they enjoy the smell and scenery so like us, as convicts we begun to suffer the pain and live the heart ache of us like them, we both are scum. they are shit and lack our racial meaning we are girt by cash and girt by dumb and they shouldn't have come, and shouldn't have come.

Oh, Jesus, AUSTRALIA...if I turn on ABC TV once more and there are all these clowns singing "We are one, but we are many" I'm going to fucking cut loose with an AK47 of invective tirade. Enough is enough of patriotism. Patriotism is very bad. It's the worst thing at the best of times. It becomes a horrible thing in these hard times. Patriotism has always has been like that, always will be. "we are here, and there are a few of us, not so many as most other places, and we are different, this and that, and overall things are usually kind of okay... "we turned up and here and now we are being screwed out of our money by selfish business owners linked to the bizarre dysfunctional Liberal government, seeking to destroy every wage we get..every breath we take..somehow, now, every cent we earn...is somehow...their's." That's the truth in the pudding. The rest is atmospheric bullshit advertising. Times are hard, they will get harder. The current government could help you, but won't help you, by choice, because that's just the kind of self-absorbed cunts they are. Put that in a song on the ABC. It's the truth. that's the real Anthem for us here and girt by sea. The fact is simply that the Liberal/National Coalition Government of Australia, The Retarded, have taken over the liquor store.

Strawberry Fields Forever:Strawberry Fields Forever: One of the things to consider regarding the nefarious criminal putting needles into strawberries in australia as a disgruntled employee would, naturally, be to look into the matter of the strawberry farms paying employees full award wages, giving permanency of employment, superannuation, sick leave, long service leave, paid holidays, etc as is required by law, and, if not, why not? Do you have a problem with complying to the Law of the Land?

After 18 months settling into Melbourne, how would you describe the experience? Well, after successfully integrating into the local community and culture, using the succinct Australian vernacular, Melbourne is pretty well a dud-root of a place. My job is good, usually, but the pay is poorer than equivalent rates in Queensland by a few dollars every hour...and I've had an easy time compared with most. I wouldn't recommend Melbourne to anyone I liked. I landed a permanent job at 64 because I'm very lucky and kind of ...um...brilliant... so I can't really complain about that. If one hits town at 23 years old, I'd expect it'd take 50 years to start to make a living beyond the massive costs of the place. If one doesn't need to come here, then one should not come here. If 2 people are coming to Melbourne to start a life, unconnected to anyone here, to rent a place, find jobs etc I'd suggest having around $60,000US in cash. If buying a place etc, then about $1.8 millionUS. If you don't have that, then it's best stay where you are. If you depend on starting up in the Uber-type economy, then expect $8 an hour, no superannuation, no sick leave, no holidays, no future...and you are stuck here. I wouldn't advise it to anyone I loved, liked, or even disliked. This is a hard town.

We had The American Century here in Australia, thus the movies, the views, the way things are set up etc in this long ago outpost of England. Like the time when the English got weak, we now face the weakness of the American empire. In its place is New China. China is a much more powerful and long lasting entity than England or the US and thus will make a bigger impact here financially, socially, artistically and culturally, over the next couple of hundred years. This is natural for a small vassal state like Australia. This is not The Asian Century at all...this is the China three century period and its been building up for 30 years already. This is not the Asian century that Australia has hated to be part of. The other countries of Asia don't really matter. The other countries in Asia are simply border towns. China IS Asia.

Australia is a Sick Fuck of a Country. A few years back Australia, the rich First World Nation, was in negotiations with East Timor, the poorest and newest tiny country in South East Asia, regarding gas drilling rights in the sea between Timor and Australia. So Australia, using its massive technical capacities, bugged the East Timor Government's meeting rooms and passed on the information to the gas and oil drilling companies... we, and our government, did do that. It has been proven. We screwed some of the poorest and most destroyed people on earth to the wall and cheated them of their future...and even then, the resultant profit didn't flow to Australia at all, but rather to the international oil and gas drilling companies. We did that...our security apparatus, asio, asis, our federal police and asd, did that to the poorest country in south east asia...our nearest neighbour. That's the kind of country Australia really is. Now, the courts in Australia are seriously prosecuting the poor whistle blowing bastards who came out and said 'hey! this is wrong!' and those guys are going to go to gaol for a long time. This is Australia. This is what Australia does. This is what Australia is.

A few years back Australia, the rich First World Nation, was in negotiations with East Timor, the poorest and newest tiny country in South East Asia, regarding gas drilling rights in the sea between Timor and Australia. So Australia, using its massive technical capacities, bugged the East Timor Government's meeting rooms and passed on the information to the gas and oil drilling companies... we, and our government, did do that. It has been proven. We screwed some of the poorest people on earth to the wall and cheated them...and even then, the resultant profit didn't flow to Australia at all, but rather to the international oil and gas drilling companies. We did that...for them. that's the kind of country Australia really is. Now, the courts in Australia are seriously prosecuting the poor whistle blowing bastards who came out and said 'hey! this is wrong!' and those guys are going to gaol for a long time. This is Australia. This is what Australia does.

When you look around the world you see a bit how things have changed these past ten years. America, Australia and the UK have always been basically both intolerant and dependent upon immigrants. Now Europe is becoming intolerant of immigrants. Now, if America, the UK, Australia and Europe hadn't bombed the fuck out of them to make them have to run away from their burning homes, maybe things would be different, but we did exactly do that and for no good reason at all, except for our own sense of moral righteousness and money. Now, we have to work things out... because we have to...and we have to share more than we used to do...because we have to...because they are us now.

On Passings, as they are called now.

Looking back

as we do

puts us in

the memory stew

of tears and fears

and funny ears

and everything to do.

Looking ahead, Phil,

you see you're ill

and so buy insurance

for those you filled.

But they've made their own way

and made their own pay

and should be happy

to foot your bill.

And if they're not

just hang around

and be a problem for a pound

like a noisy tomb

as they grieve and weave

and lounge the leaving room.

poem for daughter:light on light, the sailor's light, to look out bright upon the water, to see the stars and see the sight and hold in arms a perfect daughter. where will you go, what will you see, when clouds are on the water? i will love you all through the time that gails upon the border.

Men & Women: I don't really know women. I can't know women. I have loved some women and they have loved me, just as unknowingly and blindly as I have loved them. In that loving blindness we grew good families. At almost 65, Life remains a remarkable and beautiful mystery to me...and yet I know 'me' very well now, but the rest of the Mystery and Majic of this, my simple one life, amongst my comrade collective billions of absolute equal beings, continues within me and then without me. I'm happy to be here. I'm relatively sane. I have a good heart and a fair mind. I have no idea how any of that ever happened. No idea at all. In the great scheme of things... there is no great scheme of things, but it is a good thing, and I think the best thing, along the way, to have a sweet long kiss (with a tongue or two) and to wish each other well. The world is for all and there is plenty of room in it for all of us, otherwise we wouldn't be here at all.

2 indigenous young boys in Perth died last night, drowned themselves in the Swan River, escaping from police who wanted to know why they were climbing fences through people's yards at night and tinkering with their windows and door knobs, as the people who lived there were concerned, so called the police. The boys families are blaming the police. The Racist police. True. Grief is like that. Why did the US invade Iraq when Iraq was the only bastion against Al Queda who caused the trouble on 9/11? Grief is like that. Grief is primal. Grief doesn't exist to make sense to us. The role of grief is to teach us how to survive the future, and we usually don't learn that at all. We react with hate instead and remain more primitive than arcane grief, the great teacher, itself. As Dylan Thomas noted: We are not wholly bad nor good we, any of us, who live Under Milkwood.

Peter Dutton, the Australian Parliamentary Member for Home Affairs & Au Pairs, noted today that "I am a person of high integrity." Now, usually, a person of high integrity is known as such because everyone believes that person to be a person of high integrity, but, importantly, only when they are dead. Peter, alive, just doesn't get it. You can't actually say that about yourself. Belligerent, callous, bullying, unfair, unethical, cruel, small minded, vicious, selfish, power mad...and... an idiot. He's got it all...but, as for Integrity, well, I think he has a way to go.