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Allergic to what?
Andy Wharhol's 15 minutes of fame came to 19 year old Ashleigh Morris on the Channel 9 Current Affair program aired on 10 March 2008. Channel 9 has been pranked by Ashleigh who has managed to achieve her 15 minutes of fame at their expense by claiming to be allergic to water. Ashleigh is said to have suddenly developed the "allergy" at the age of 14. Regardless of the fact that the human body is mostly composed of water, Ashleigh is allergic to her own perspiration. Remarkably enough Channel 9 was able to locate an idiot medical practitioner who actually supports the diagnosis though never having seen it before herself. The doctor's medical qualifications should be carefully inspected. Ashleigh manages to lead the naive Channel 9 reporter in a merry dance through her shower. "Soon, "she tells him, "it will begin to hurt and the pain will become excruciating". We are not shown the allergy or the associated skin changes that arise from this. Photographs are provided which indicate that Ashleigh has been pinching her skin in various places but no sign of the typical rash associated with allergies or, indeed any of the other systemic features.
Poor Ashleigh has trouble lying next to her boyfriend because of his sweat. We can only assume that their relationship is celibrate.
Congratulations Ashleigh! You can certainly fool some of the people some of the time.
Religious Wars
The notion that Religions are responsible for a host of evils including war, imperialism, colonialism, discrimination is fundamentally flawed and based on the premise that a belief conveys a quality. In simple terms this is equivalent to saying that if I believe in Marxism or communism I am a bad person and if I believe in the Christian doctrine or the Jewish doctrine I am a good person. People are not judged on their thoughts but only on their deeds. Public speech, either as printed word or words to an audience is a form of deed which is why incitement to hatred and violence is considered offensive. Whatever I may think and whomever I might hate, provided I do not act on these notions I should not be judged.
The Whig view of history asserts that history is an inevitable progression and ascension towards a higher plane, the pinnacle of which is the British Constitutional Parliamentary system. Following this to its logical conclusion, people become more enlightened as societies develop. Ancient societies were barbaric and admitted the institution of slavery, mass slaughter, the oppression of women and justified these iniquities on the basis of their religious beliefs. It is presumed that once we have become more enlightened we see that there can be no philosophical or ethical justification for these. But ancient voices cried out against slavery and conquest growing more shrill until the Roman games were closed. Modern voices have not succeeded in ending boxing.
The Whig view of history is demonstrably false especially as democracies long preceded the existence of the Parliamentary system. Slavery has not been abolished from the world and there are arguably more slaves than there have ever been. If we look at the conditions of the men who are forced to dig for diamonds in Sierra Leone, the people of China who produce cheap products or reduce the waste of the computer industry, the children rug weavers of Pakistan, the sex slaves of Tel Aviv we can see that the Western World has not changed its attitude to slavery, it has merely been successful in hiding it.
The Christian religion, however much God has been evoked before all sorts of battles, has never in its doctrine or its creed sanctioned slavery, the oppression and conquest of other nations or the abuse of women. The same can be said of many other religious faiths. The fact that people have blessed their slaughter or mouthed the liturgy of religious faiths after conquest does not in any way make those creeds responsible for the crimes committed in the name of God. Increasingly we are seeing in books like The Gob Delusion by Richard Dawkins fanatical antitheism dressed up in the guise of Scientism. Something erected by faith cannot be torn down by reason.
American writers detail for the first time the nature and extent of the “American Empire”. “Nemesis” is the third work of Chalmers Johnson’s great Trilogy, the so-called centrepiece of the American Empire Project. Now, for the first time Johnson has been joined by luminaries Zbigniew Brzezinski and Dennis Ross, senior Middle East envoy both for the older Bush and Clinton, in pointing out the disastrous direction taken by the American Administration within the world(1).
It must seem remarkable to the inhabitants of the United States of America that the rest of the world has come to see them as something akin to the Death Star that floats menacingly around the virtual set of Star Wars. But that is exactly what has come to pass. Cited below are the findings of a survey carried out on Australian citizens recently. Australia has been without exception America’s foremost ally, involving herself in more wars on the side of the US than that other keen English speaking nation, Great Britain.
The telephone survey of 1,213 Australians by the Australian government-funded U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney on defence, foreign and economic issues revealed a string of negative statistics about views on the United States, including that most people don't like President George W. Bush...... The survey found 64 per cent of respondents oppose Australia's involvement in Iraq, compared with 33 per cent who support it and three per cent who are undecided.(2)
Chalmers Johnson compares America with that other great Empire, that of the Romans. He notes that like the Romans the Americans prefer to exercise their power through friendly regimes and, if regimes are not friendly to American interests, they are deposed.
There are 737 US military bases in foreign countries around the world existing in 132 of the world’s 190 member states of the United Nations. Johnson believes this number is an underestimation and that are, in reality, many more. He believes there are at least 1,000. The 38 largest military establishments around the world match Rome’s 35. There are at least 325,000 US military personnel deployed abroad. They live with their dependents and families in tiny islands of America containing Burger King, satellite television and multiplex cinemas. There are 200 military golf courses around the world and 71 learjets dedicated to flying American Generals and Admirals around the world.
The US base in Baghdad is 104 acre compound, six times the size of the UN and bigger than the Vatican City and it cost $592 million to build. It has its own electricity supply and is defended by a network of ground to air missiles.
America as empire is graphically detailed in John Pilger’s latest movie “War on Democracy.”This movie chillingly details the part that America has played around the world and especially in South America in destroying democratically elected governments and replacing them with genocidal dictatorships from Chile to Greece in the sixty years since the last World War. “War on Democracy” is now available on YouTube in all of its ten parts and makes compelling viewing. Pilger demonstrates that the “Evil Empire” of America through the CIA makes that of the Soviet Union and its instrument the KGB look like a party at Charlie Brown’s.
What do our American contributors make of all this? Orble begs to know.
(1) Freedlan J., Bush’s Amazing Achievement New York Review of Books. June 14th, 2007 pg 16-22.
(2) Really Long Link
Where is the news about this? Hold on to your horses it is about to break. Last night Michael “The Great” Katsidis realized his dream of winning the world light weight boxing title at Wembley Stadium, London in front of 12,000 boxing fans when he defeated the “Earl of Luton” Graham Earl to claim the coveted WBO title. The title has been vacated by its incumbent champion who has indicated that he may return to contest it, though this is not likely. Katsidis is so far undefeated. The fight was a grueling one but Earl clearly was losing from the first round when he was knocked down twice by Katsidis. Although Earl actually made it back to force Katsidis to his knees at one point, the fourth and last round was a pathetic spectacle of Earl against the ropes enduring 100 punches in rapid succession until his side threw in the towel. Earlier they had done this but the referee threw it out again
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It has been estimated that each candidate in the next American Presidential campaign, 2008, will spend US$500. It will be the first billion dollar campaign for the American President. Who will the candidates be? Some republicans have formally filed with the party, John Cox of Illinois (more about that state later) and Michael Smith of Oregon. Who are they? More famous persons have formed exploratory committees (more on those later). These include Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. Newt Gingrich has expressed serious interest. Buried within “serious interest” is an oxymoron somewhere, at least as far as the tadpole is concerned
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