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At the Widening of a War
Everyone was frightened of the sky.
Each night, Mars emerged at the zenith.
A bleb of pure rage tore off the sun.
For days, the living and the dead
hung in the air like dust
whirled aloft from tired roads.
The fuselage of a lobster lay abandoned.
The Isles of the Blest were receding
to their sailing distances
and the gunfire of tourist shoes was stilled.
Sports stadiums and crowds loomed from another age.
The blow struck now
would be weaker than the blow withheld.
Les Murray via Southerly Buster
Margo Kingston Latham puts Iraq on the election table (with 113 comments and more flooding in) Ach, Victorian Barista serves one observation which will go down into the annals of the election history (wooden smile)

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Bombers planned to kill minister
Indonesia's police chief has revealed that the same group that bombed the Australian embassy planned to assassinate President Megawati Soekarnoputri and Australian dignitaries three days before Indonesia's first-round presidential election last July.
General Da'i Bachtiar said the group intended to kill Australian Justice Minister Chris Ellison, Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty and other foreign guests.
• Matthew Moore Bali bomber Ali Imron: What we have to do now is to determine how and when
• · David Burchell, there are two kinds of pragmatism: House to House Fighting through the Institutions
• · · To achieve political goals, you control people's actions. And in the process, you not only fail to achieve your goals, but you make the people worse off than they were before. The Sims as Political Metaphor ; [Don Arthur: Gary the Rat: As animated comedy it's a bit stale but as allegory it's as irresistible as hot melted cheese ]
• · · · Christoph Reuter My Life is a Weapon Suicide Bombers: Weapons of Mass Terror ; [One of the salutary lessons of the Cold War was that ordinary people coped with the threat of global nuclear annihilation by getting on with their lives: There may be a lesson in that for us A huge explosion reportedly rocked North Korea's Ryanggang province on Friday, triggering a mushroom-shaped cloud near the country's secret underground military base]
• · · · · Jonah Goldberg What's wrong with you people?