Stranger Than Fiction OR “Oh my God, That’s F#@%ed!!!”
by Roger Hanney
The title of this regular section is starting to feel redundant.
Who’s running New South Wales this week’ And who gets so excited by a state budget that they throw a party’ Let alone in their underpants. Elsewhere, the usual abortions-that-lived argue that we should keep killing the planet because it’s the cheapest option, yet they keep their jobs, their readerships, or their elected offices.
Meanwhile, thanks to the emergence of Sarah Palin the most significant presidential race in modern history has become a ‘bad Disney movie‘ to quote Matt Damon. And what’s going on when actors speak more truth than newspapers, forecasting a scenario where a Jesus-loving, wolf-shooting, abortion-banning hillbilly ends up eye-to-eye with Vladimir Putin in a potentially nuclear situation.
And as for our own situation, the influence of Christian ideology and growing popularity of moral outrage seems only to have paused, rather than abated, when John Howard left the stage. Kiddie porn in art galleries, Vodka Cruisers, petrol tax ‘ didn’t you know these things are destroying the very fabric of your being’ And that the only salvation is through censorship, more tax, and a centre-right devotion best expressed as What Would Jesus Legislate’
Perhaps in keeping with this trend, from now on this column shall just be titled ‘Oh My God, That’s F#@%ed!!’
I mean it.
Psycho Therapy
The Herald’s September 10 edition reported at length on a programme being trialled at Cornell University for Americans with post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from 9-11. Using a virtual reality video display and headset, Dr. Judith Cukor is overseeing the 12-14 week pilot programme.
The initial group of 50 survivors are being individually reimmersed in the events of that day through sound and vision of the day. The paper reports that in 2006
‘New York’s World Trade Centre Health Registry, which monitors the health of 70,000 survivors ‘ found that 11 per cent of evacuees from damaged or destroyed buildings near Ground Zero screened positive for probable serious psychological distress in 2004.’
With all due respect for the horror that New Yorkers and America experienced on that one particular day, the World Health Organisation estimates that at least 150 000 Iraqis died violent deaths in the first three years following the US invasion. That doesn’t include 2007-08.
The globally respected Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in the same year reported 655 000 Iraqis dead for the same period. Lead researcher Les Roberts claims that unlike the WHO study, Hopkins researchers can produce a death certificate for every violent death in their tally.
Either way, Iraqis have lived through America’s psychotic response to 9-11 every day for more than 5 years now. Where’s their video game’
They’re all wearing the blue dress now’
To adapt a phrase – when America has a migraine the world gets a fractured skull. Truthout.org has just reported the possible ‘caging’ of 600 000 voters in Ohio. Ohio is one of those electorally crucial knife-edge swing states that will probably prove critical in picking the next US administration.
Truthout reports that election officials are sending out ballot papers and election materials in envelopes marked ‘do not forward’. Of course, this has resulted in many being returned to sender in the case of registered voters being on holiday, changing address, or simply not collecting their mail.
Technically, nobody is meant to be removed or ‘scrubbed’ from the electoral rolls within 90 days of an election. However, by taking this preemptive action, election officials can ensure that many hundreds of thousands of votes will be able to be ‘caged’ ‘ set aside on Election Day and possibly subject to legal challenge.
This legal challenge will not come from election officials, because they must appear to be above political bias. But on past form, the challenges will come the Ohio Republican Party. In 2004, they reportedly used this tactic to target 35 000 votes. In 2006, they challenged 77 000 votes.
The strategy is part of the Republicans’ ‘Ballot Security Program’. Truthout reports that this program was used nationally in 2004 to legally challenge 1.6 million ballots ‘ largely cast by minority voters. More than a third ‘ almost entirely for the Democratic candidate ‘ were disqualified.
Roll on, November’
