BLACK SWANS

The impact of the Highly Improbable seemed about right.

"You are under my protection," the old man said, author of Abduction to the Ninth Planet.

And that was when he relaxed; and did the work he had to do.

But it was after that, after he had finished, that nothing made sense and he was more lost than ever.

There should have been a direction, an easy path, but instead he just regretted the loss of a base, the confusion he felt at so many things, the torment that would not let go. But most of all the loss of a base; a home.

"They were the military, we're here to clean up their mess," said one. 

But they always reported back, and he didn't trust anyone, and so he just went into hiding; being something he was not, someone who was not, and walked the beach.

In Vietnam he broke into a heat prickling rash. 

In Australia they had gone quiet, there was no more pursuit, or minimal pursuit. A problem shared is a problem halved, a problem recognised is a problem resolved. He didn't know about that. But he knew there were swirling days of discontent.

And everything would come out reaching. And the quiet walks churned inside him. And the black swans, protective spirits of old, were barely present. And the ache had set in all over again. And there was no solution. It was impossible to clean up the past, and he could not reorient to the future. 

And so he just kept going. Follow the path, persevere, they said, but he couldn't see the path and his heart sank further with every passing day. It was a ridiculous torment. As if bright cheer was not just around the corner; as if a myriad of solutions did not present themselves at every turn.

He would pick up the phone. And do what had to be done.

THE BIGGER STORY:


http://www.afr.com/news/politics/fairfax-ipsos-poll-malcolm-turnbull-puts-coalition-ahead-20151017-gkbt8y

The Coalition has surged to a commanding lead over Labor under the leadership of Malcolm Turnbull whose own personal ratings have soared to heights not seen since Kevin Rudd was at his zenith. 

In a crushing poll for the Labor opposition, Mr Turnbull also beats Bill Shorten in every one of 10 positive character attributes, trouncing him in terms of trust, competency, strength and vision, and even taking away the Labor leader's long-held lead on social issues.

The Prime Minister is the first leader to best his rival lead in all 10 attributes since they were first tested 20 years ago.

The latest Fairfax/Ipsos poll, the first taken since Mr Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott a month ago, shows the Coalition leading Labor on a two-party-preferred basis by 53 per cent to 47 per cent. This is the largest lead the Coalition has held in the poll since it won the September 2013 election by the same margin.

TO THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION

He hadn't made the most of his time in Hanoi. But something was telling him to start up the blog again, and so here it was. Once the book Terror in Australia was finished, he hadn't known what to do with himself, or quite why he was in Vietnam. Part of him had never expected to return; that he would fall promptly on his feet, find some job, a glorious house by the river; and never return.

But he was no networker, and so instead of making himself known, he had done everything he could to be invisible, contained within a single square block, abandoning even walks to the park; just going around and around, sleeping, despite his natural claustrophobia, in crowded dorms to avoid the marauding empaths, doing everything he could to suppress his natural abilities, to avoid detection. His kind had been hunted to the edge of extinction, not only on this planet, and he wasn't going to be found by anyone, no professional, military trained operatives, no one. He didn't care how mad such thoughts might make him appear.

"He would have been welcome," a voice said; and he promptly replied: "I didn't know who to trust."

The only image, the only shout out loud statement he had wanted to make at the time, was that before this species was even born, in a world of dinosaurs, they had survived as the tiniest of mammals; and that had required a high degree of avoidance.

They could laugh at him now. He didn't care.

And so instead of doing what was expected of him, what, perhaps, he should have done, he just became invisible. Glanced across rooftops; and could not take in what was happening inside the houses. It was the language for a start. Vietnamese bore little relationship to other languages that he either knew or had some familiarity with; and their way of thinking, at least in the North, was very different to what he was accustomed to.

And so he did what many people did in their own lives; found little snail tracks through a city, familiar pool tables, familiar situations. He didn't eat for several days; and the loss of his own place in the world, the loss of his home or what had passed for a home, despite the over-surveillance, meant that once again he was on the roam, disheveled, upset, angry at the fact that he had been so closely tail-gaited it amounted to bullying. Nothing was going to stop him. And nothing did. He did not respond well to bullying. He had not acquired the resistance he should have.

But there was no use crying about it not being fair, because it would never be fair. None of it mattered now. Everything was an evasion. There would be a new recourse, or no recourse, and that was simply that. Time passed all too quickly in such frail frames; and the next one was not yet ready.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-18/typhoon-koppu-makes-landfall-in-the-philippines/6863662

Typhoon Koppu has slammed into the main Philippines island of Luzon, killing at least one person and displacing more than 23,000 people, disaster agency officials say.

Key points

• Typhoon Koppu strikes the Philippines killing at least one person and displacing 23,000 people
• At least eight people have been reported missing as several villages are flooded
• Koppu is moving slowly and is expected to linger over the island for three days

The category-four typhoon made landfall around 1:00am (4:00am AEDT) on Sunday near the town of Casiguran in Aurora province, where it remained near-stationary for seven hours and whipped the area with gusts of up to 210 kilometres per hour.

A teenager was crushed to death as the powerful typhoon tore down trees and houses and unleashed landslides and floods across a wide area of the Philippines, injuring at least four others.

At least eight people have been reported missing and rescue operations are underway in the rice-farming province of Nueva Ecija where rivers burst their banks and flooded several villages, regional authorities said.

Picture of the Day: Fishing on Sydney Harbour

Fishing on Sydney Harbour

Picture of the Day: Sydney Botanic Gardens Spring Walk

Sydney Botanic Gardens Spring Walk

Picture of the Day

Sydney Harbour

Landscape of the Day Australia's South Coast

South Coast of NSW, Australia

WE WATCH WITH INTEREST

The Liverpool Plains, Australia

The haunting might be over, the dangerous gangs of mafia thieves that prey upon Thailand's tourists might have dissipated, the hysterical howling mobs might have moved on to more sensible pursuits than ridiculing foreigners, but still, hyper-aware, he caught fluctuations in the ferment he wished he did not. When the tumult and the shouting dies down, he was fond of saying to himself, adapting Rudyard Kipling's famous line, but he heard it still some days: "We had no idea..." 

The bodhivista in the form of a drunk. There were wild ways, and wild days. He was 61 now, and often enough in this historic part of town, he would think back to the days when he could reverse the digits, and was 16. As the midnight to dawn copyboy on The Daily Telegraph he had walked through or past the same area on many a night, frightened, in a sense, overwhelmed by the size of the city, by the urgency of having to know everything there was worth knowing. For he had to embrace a greater destiny. Past the alcove under the Bridge, long gone now, where the drunks and rough sleepers would gather each night, smashing bottles and laughing in some sort of chilling display, Mordor cutting through into the bright colours of the harbour city.

Disturbed, he had still sought oblivion whenever he could, passing out in odd spots. Under-age, it was difficult to get bottles of alcohol, but he achieved it with a kind of despairing precision. He remembered his 16th birthday, when he had ended up at a gay party in an apartment on the cliffs of Bronte, and the host had kept the heaters on, so that people felt obligated to take off their shirts. It had all seemed very daring in contrast to the silent nightmare from whence he came. It hadn't been too many weeks later when he had passed out in the gutter directly in front of Circular Quay. He could still remember looking up from the pavement to see the office workers stepping over or around him, heading home to their comfortable north shore homes after a day at the office.

And then some "old" queen picked him up, made him take a shower, gave him a blow job and $20 and sent him on his way. That sort of thing was always happening to him. Services rendered. Huh. He wouldn't lift a finger. Well that wasn't entirely true. Who knew what went on between men, in the dark, in those late night spaces. In a comfort driven places where loneliness and inhibition disappeared. 

In those moments they were as much driven by love as the greatest romantic. 

Michael never passed out in exactly that same spot ever again. As if the herds of groaning animals which had almost trampled him had moved on to better plains of indifference. And as if he, too, had developed better methods of self-preservation. 

The only astonishing thing was that he was still alive.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/28/us-thailand-protest-idUSBREA0R07G20140128

(Reuters) - Thailand's embattled government is pushing ahead with a general election on Sunday despite warnings it could end in violence and the country left without a functioning administration for six months.

The decision to go ahead with the polls came at a meeting between Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and Election Commission officials and cast further doubt over any quick resolution to months of protests aimed at ousting the government.

The demonstrations are the latest eruption in a political conflict that has gripped Thailand for eight years, broadly pitting Bangkok's middle class and royalist establishment against the mainly poor, rural supporters of Yingluck and her brother, ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

The protesters reject the election that Yingluck's party will almost certainly win.

They want to suspend what they say is a fragile democracy commandeered by former telecoms tycoon Thaksin, whom they accuse of corruption, and eradicate the political influence of his family by altering electoral arrangements.

As part of their campaign, the protesters have been disrupting election preparations and early voting. In some constituencies, candidates have been unable to register and there might not be a quorum to open parliament and choose a government.

"The election result might not yield enough seats. It might take four to six months to convene parliament," said Somchai Srisutthiyakorn, an Election Commission official.

The Election Commission said it would hold by-elections until all parliamentary seats are filled. That could take up to six months and leave Thailand with a government that cannot pass laws or a budget.

In particular, it means Yingluck will struggle to find the funds to pay a mounting bill for a costly rice buying scheme which won her party huge support in the rural north and northeast of Thailand, which is her political power base.

Yingluck has been heading a caretaker government with very limited powers since dissolving parliament in December to call the election in the hope of defusing the protests.

FEARS OF CLASHES

Underscoring the risk of violence, while the meeting between the prime minister and election officials was going on at an Army Club complex, two people were hurt in a shooting where about 500 anti-government protesters had gathered in the same complex but some distance away.

At the weekend, one anti-government protest leader was shot dead and 10 people were hurt when clashes broke out as protesters prevented early voting in much of the capital.

The Election Commission has argued that the country is too unsettled to hold an election now.

"We fear that there will be clashes on election day," said election official Somchai.

The government declared a state of emergency last week and has issued an ultimatum to protest leaders that they face arrest by Thursday if they do not give up areas of Bangkok they have taken over.

However, a Bangkok criminal court rejected the government's request for an arrest warrant for 16 protest leaders, including leader Suthep Thaugsuban.

Suthep has threatened to shut down the agency in charge of the emergency decree by Wednesday morning.

There are widespread fears that violence could escalate in the increasingly divisive dispute and that the army might step in. It has staged or attempted 18 coups in 80 years of on-off democracy but has tried to remain neutral this time.

Yingluck is Thailand's fifth prime minister since the populist Thaksin was toppled by the army in 2006 and went into exile two years later to escape a jail sentence that was handed down for abuse of power.

(Editing by Jonathan Thatcher, Alan Raybould and Robert Birsel)