The appointment of RFK jnr to the health portfolio in the Trump administration is sending ripples of joy through the conspiracy theory driven anti-vax crowd. The joy that autism will finally be eliminated because, as every one knows, vaccinations have led to the explosive rise of autism among children.

There is nothing quite as powerful as a good conspiracy theory to drive the population apocalyptic.

Predictably, when I began thinking and researching vaccinations and the link to autism, I got a flood of links to the dangers of vaccination, how all those needles newborns get has led to a spike in autism. On and on it goes, we really should go back to the dark ages, before vaccinations became a thing.

What makes it doubly scary is that tomorrow morning I have a doctor’s appointment, a quick run down on the results of an annual blood test and a second shot in the arm for something or other.

I can feel the autism coming on.

Fear is a wonderful thing.

OK, reality check time.

How come there are now 8.2 billion people alive on earth today compared to about 2 billion a hundred years ago? How come the world population had stayed around 2 billion for several hundred years despite families having far more children than today? A hundred years ago women were having an average of about 8 children, today that figure is about 2 children… and yet the population continues to grow, estimated to peak at around 10 to 11 billion by the turn of this century. Infant mortality was such that of the eight children birthed, on average, five died before they turned five.

There are several factors driving down the birth rate, one is that life has changed very much in the last century or so, life expectancy has changed from 47 years to present day 86 years, infant mortality has changed from 40 per 100 births to less than 4 today.

Some of the reasons for the lower life expectancy was based on the number of infectious diseases which swept through communities, including small pox, measles. mumps, rubella, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, cholera, hepatitis, influenza to name a few. Add to that the occasional epidemic such as the ‘Black Death’, bubonic plague which wiped out almost half the population of Europe from 1346 t0 1353, or more recently the devastation of an ebola outbreak in Liberia a decade ago.

And some of the major changes that have led to longevity have been in health services including vaccinations. There are other factors too, like the reduction of poverty, better infrastructure providing clean water, sewerage, electricity, but for this we focus on the provision and changes in health services.

Why has there been such an increase in the reported rate of autism? Is it because of the vaccinations newborns are subjected to or could there be something else at play?

A couple of things happened, firstly there was a fake article in The Lancet of February 1998 which claimed a link between autism and the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination given to infants but was retracted and the author de-licensed by the British medical authorities for his deceit and ‘callous disregard’ for children in his care. Those were the early days of the internet and as social media grew in the new century, the article resurfaced and the anti-vax conspiracy grew legs.

The second influencer was the publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders which includes a diagnostic list to identify Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder in children, and the checklist is easily accessible on line. So a parent looks at the behaviour of their child, identifies some ‘problematic’ issues as on the DSM checklist and decides the kid must be autistic or ADHD, and the kid was immunised against all sorts of things, so that must be the problem, vaccinations cause autism. And then convinces a doctor to prescribe some mind numbing cure-all to ‘normalise’ the child’s behaviour. Simple really.

(Autism and ADHD share many symptoms.)

R F Kennedy jnr also wants to remove fluoride from drinking water.

I remember years ago when fluoridation of water was commenced. Arguments raged over the perceived benefits and dangers of such a radical move and sceptics here still voice objections, preferring to drink bottled ‘natural spring waters’ marketed by the largest soft drink corporation in the world, paying premium prices for non fluoridated water in disposable plastic bottles.

Yes, fluoride is a dangerous chemical. Used in excess in drinking water or as part of oral health, using toothpaste with fluoride, it can cause dental fluorosis, skeletal fluorosis, arthritis, bone damage, osteoporosis, muscular damage, fatigue, joint related problems and chronicle issues according to the National Centre for Biotechnology Information of the US government.

Used at levels which are higher than recommended, fluoride becomes a problem, however the benefits of fluoride in drinking water, at the minute levels used include better oral health with less tooth decay, preventing cavities which are a common childhood disease. That fluoride reduces tooth decay leading to improved general health outcomes.

Tooth decay has more to do with diet than fluoride or lack of fluoride. Sweet tooth satisfaction with copious amounts of sugary drinks, sweets, chocolates and delicious desserts can quickly overwhelm the benefits of .07ml of fluoride in a litre of drinking water. Doesn’t do much for the blood sugar count either, but that is a separate issue.

The other main health issue Kennedy is noted for is his campaign promoting raw milk instead of pasteurised milk. Likewise here, there is a growing interest in raw milk, citing the dangers of altering a natural product, principally as a marketing tool.

Why was milk pasteurised? Oh, it had something to do with people getting ill and dying from drinking raw milk… and has that problem gone away? Is raw milk healthier now that RFK jnr will head up the US Health department?

Pasteurisation kills harmful bacteria that can lead to diseases such as typhoid fever, tuberculosis, diphtheria, listeriosis and brucellosis. Many of those diseases have virtually disappeared today. Do we want them back?

The power of social media and some of the influencers who peddle their thoughts and fear-mongering are being seen as knowledgable people, the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry are seen as money making organisations whose only desire is to make more money. Cynicism abounds and trust has been eroded, and people put their health and well-being at risk.

It really is time to stop being lazy, absorbing all the easily obtained misinformation and find and apply critical thinking to the health debate. Research a topic, even just a little bit, see if there is some peer reviewed information out there, weigh up the various sources of information before making up your mind.

By Nicholas Beelzebub Lucifer

By Daniel Raynolds

A fierce debate has been ongoing within the international community both in favour and against the UN Chief’s attendance at the BRICS summit in Russia.*

Critics, like political scientist Professor Alexander J. Motyl, argue that the UN Secretary-General’s cordial engagement with Vladimir Putin compromises the moral authority of the UN, and the call for Secretary-General’s resignation underscores a belief that leaders must take clear stances against tyranny to uphold justice and accountability.

Conversely, risk analyst Bahauddin Foizee defends the UN Chief’s approach as essential for fostering dialogue and potential peace. He posits that engaging with controversial leaders is necessary to avoid sidelining key players in conflict resolution efforts.

His argument emphasizes the complexity of global diplomacy, where rigid moral positions can hinder meaningful progress.

The contrasting perspectives on Secretary-General’s actions at the summit raise critical questions about the UN’s role in a fractured international landscape: Should the organization be a moral arbiter, or prioritize pragmatic engagement?

*”The BRICS is a forum for cooperation among a group of leading emerging economies. The BRICS includes 9 countries – Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Russian Federation, South Africa, United Arab Emirates.” (International Labour Organisation).

By Maria Millers

With the Spring Racing Carnival in full swing this week horses are the stars. These magnificent, powerful creatures have captivated people’s imaginations for centuries, from myths and legends they have left a significant mark in various contexts: warfare to literature culture and sport.

So when these animals show up in our dreams, they carry deep symbolic meaning that often represents raw instincts, sexual energy, inner power, or a need for freedom and escape.

In the realm of dreams, they come,
Horses with manes like waves of silver moonlight,
Hooves that scatter stardust, tails that sweep the night.
They carry us beyond the bounds of reality,
Into worlds unseen, unexplored, unknown. (Mystic Companions by Dan Higgins).

The relationship between horses and people is rich, deep, and ancient. Think Bucephelus Alexander the Great’s beloved steed or Seabiscuit, the American thoroughbred of unimpressive lineage that during the Depression brought hope to millions happy to see an underdog succeeding. And similarly, our own Phar Lap was a source of pride for struggling Australians. Nor to be forgotten is the bravery and loyalty of horses on the front lines providing companionship and strength to soldiers in past wars.

Horses have also played a major role in transport, food production and industry. Whether pulling the ploughs in the fields or working as pit ponies in mines. Not that very long ago milk was still delivered in some areas by a horse drawn vehicle.

In The Man from Snowy River, Banjo Paterson illustrates the bond that existed between Australians and their horses, portraying horses as more than just animals; they are loyal partners and trusted companions in a challenging environment.

“So he went; they found him later, at the bottom of the hill,
In a clump of trees and scrub, all gaping wide;
And the man from Snowy River never haggled at a hill –
For his horse could climb a mountain that an alpine goat would shirk,
And he counted on his horse, his friend, his only hope and work.”

This week as the Spring Racing Carnival unfolds reaching its peak with the Melbourne Cup there are mixed feelings abroad. Victorians are undoubtedly happy to enjoy a holiday, but not all see this event in a positive light.

The increasing commercialization of the event and the expanding international influence has in many minds make it appear as detached from the roots of Australian culture.

But for government and business the Melbourne Cup generates more economic benefit than any other sporting event in Australia.

Still the groundswell of critics is growing.

Foremost is concern for the welfare of the animals. Those in the industry will argue that race horses are the most pampered animals cared for by teams of, grooms, farriers, nutritionists, veterinarians, behaviourists and physiotherapists to make sure they are in peak health and condition.

Many like Australian philosopher and animal rights advocate Peter Singer argue that horse racing is ethically unjustifiable as horses are often subjected to significant injury and suffering primarily for human entertainment and profit.

There is the selective breeding and discarding of those that early show a lack of racing potential. And then there’s the practice of overtraining young horses often leading to injuries making them no longer profitable for racing. This raises disturbing questions as to what happens to them? Some are ’rehomed’ with families, farms or charities but the ugly fact remains that slaughter of thoroughbreds is legal in Australia and that is the fate of many.

For many the use of the whip is unacceptable. There are now restrictions on the use of the whip but it still allows the jockey to inflict pain when the guidelines only stipulate that the whip be used in a way that is humane and to avoid sensitive parts.

And horse injuries and deaths still occur regularly.

It’s worthwhile to remind those who justify extreme training and racing by believing that horses like their human counterparts are elite athletes and therefore happy to undergo rigours of training etc. The difference is that the human athlete made a choice to become one, whereas the horse was not given that choice.

“The horse is, like man, the most beautiful and most miserable of creatures, only, in the case of man, it is vice or property that makes him ugly. He is responsible for his own decadence, while the horse is only a slave.” (Rosa Bonheur, The Horse).

The economic boost of the Cup spans numerous sectors, including retail, hospitality, and tourism. It seems more and more that this is an event about corporate branding with so called celebrities, influencers and affluent socialites promoting outfits ranging from the extreme to the bizarre and dining and wining in magnificent marquees while the general public is confined to lawn areas and General Admission Stands. Often the traditional elegance of the past has given away to unfortunate fashion choices, excessive drinking and questionable behaviours.

Overall, while the Melbourne Cup is a celebrated event bringing people together, the social divisions are evident in the way attendees engage with the event, their attire, and the areas allocated.

While many participants and businesses involved in the Melbourne Cup profit, the racing clubs, sponsors, and betting agencies often see the most significant financial gains overall.

Overall, while the Cup might not consistently lead to the same high-frequency losses that everyday gambling venues do, it still represents a substantial risk for those susceptible to gambling harm, especially given the heightened media coverage and huge focus on the race.

For those who look forward to the Cup as their one flutter for the year, I wish you all the best of luck. But be mindful that behind the glitter and glam there is the reality And spare a thought for the horses.

An excerpt from At Grass by Philip Larkin reflects on the lives of horses after their racing careers, depicting them as they graze in a pasture, free from the pressures of their former lives.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowd and cries –
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a field glass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies:
Only the grooms, and the grooms boy,
With bridles in the evening come.

Maria Millers is the founder of The Woorilla Poetry Prize. The Woorilla Poetry Prize Event will be held at 2pm on November 17th at the Hills Hub. Delightful afternoon of performances, music and great food.

By James Moore

My mother almost died from an abortion.

There were already six children in our little 830 square foot house, and a seventh one was not acceptable to my father. Joyce, who I called Ma for all her days, had earlier decided to take control of her life away from, James, my violent and abusive father. After five kids, Ma underwent a tubal ligation to prevent another pregnancy but the surgery failed and my youngest sister was born. The problem might have never materialized had Daddy been willing to use birth control but his refusal led to a seventh pregnancy. Ma was fearful of what his reaction would be to the news, and her emotions were justified.

“We ain’t havin’ no more damned kids,” he said. “I can’t afford ‘em, and I don’t want ‘em.”

“Well, what do you suggest I do?” Ma asked. “I didn’t do this by myself.”

“You get rid of it, that’s what you do!”

He did not immediately have an answer for how she might accomplish that, but Daddy got a payday loan for $100 and came home from work and gave it to Ma with strict orders how to use it.

“Take this and find one a them doctors or whatever they are that get rid of babies before they are born,” he said. “I’m going down to Mississippi to see momma and when I get back, I want that baby gone.”

My father was not an irresponsible man. He worked hard every day of his life and did what he could for his family without an education or privilege. He was, however, mentally unstable, and had harmed his wife, and, sometimes, his children, with outbursts of anger. His lack of concern for his wife’s safety in a cultural era where abortion was illegal and practiced in backrooms and alleyways still disturbs me after more than a half century.

Ma did not want another child, either. She wanted a divorce but was afraid her husband would beat her again if she suggested the idea. We do not know how she found an abortionist, but she left on a Friday evening and told only her second oldest child, Beverly. Through contacts at the restaurant where she was a waitress, Ma was connected to an abortionist up in Saginaw. I always assumed one of the truck drivers who stopped in where she worked gave her a name, but I only got pieces of this story much later in life. Ma did not ever speak about it directly with me; my sisters did.

“She was gone Friday and Saturday nights,” Bev told me. “And I had no idea where she was, only what she went to get done. But when she didn’t come home Sunday, I started thinking about calling the police. But what would I tell them?”

I have never been able to comprehend what my mother must have felt, arriving alone at a motel in a factory town, meeting a stranger who was about to perform the most intimate and personal procedure imaginable. I doubt she knew or considered the danger but I am certain she was fearful. I know my mother would have grieved the unborn child, but she would have been equally frightened about adding to her family with a man she no longer loved, and who was prone to fits of rage. She had been forced into a frightening, and even life-threatening position by men who had enacted laws that made no sense, and by the man who had impregnated her by his refusal to use contraception in his marriage.

Ma nearly bled to death in a rundown motel room. I was told she was barely conscious when she was discovered by a housekeeper. We did not hear details of what medical care she received but Bev said she was pallid and fragile looking when she had returned. The fear of Daddy’s temper and any threat of violence she might have faced for having another child had been exorcised.

A few weeks after Ma had the procedure, whatever it might have been, the local newspaper ran a story about an abortion doctor in Saginaw who had been arrested for running a clinic out of a motel. Pictures were of dark filthy rooms with trash and rumpled blankets and tossed bloody towels. I do not know if my mother ever saw the story in the paper because she had gone back to work right after returning home. She had no choice. Perhaps, it was a different abortionist who had been arrested. Those people moved constantly and were proliferating across the landscape, making money and killing women, in a time when the law was unbearably absurd.

My parents had been caught up in the optimism of that age, though. Using his VA benefits, they got a mortgage to buy our little house, which had been set in a former bean field with a few hundred others of similar design and construction. The white Dixie diaspora filled up the neighborhood where every home had a cedar sapling in the front yard and a flowerpot below the large picture window. They were opaque coverings, though, for the psychological and physical hardship of making it in America during that era.

I think my father had been broken before reaching manhood. One morning while chopping cotton at age sixteen, he had a nervous breakdown and was driven to Memphis by his parents, put into an asylum for six months, and ignored. Leaving for the European Theater of World War II must have felt like liberation but walking across France and killing other young men certainly did not improve his mental stability. He brought my mother home to the South with him from Newfoundland and they spent four years as cotton sharecroppers before surrendering to economic realities and going north to look for work in the factories as part of the Great Migration.

James Clinton Moore, U.S. Third Army Infantry, Sharpshooter

“No running water or electricity in that shack in the cotton fields,” Ma told me. “I had never even seen an outhouse before, son. We could see the stars at night between the slats in the roof and we tacked newspapers over the spaces between the wall boards when it got cold in the winter. You know I thought I was going to a big house with white columns and a balcony, and I figured your dad managed a giant farm or plantation or whatever. I was glad to leave.”

I do not know where my father’s violence originated but suspect it was an anger at the difficulties he constantly confronted. When we were just kids, he was institutionalized three times and endured 24 electroshock treatments and was once taken out of the house in a straight jacket after he had thrown the kitchen drawers through the living room windows. I remember my little brother kneeling in the broken glass, picking up forks and knives and spoons and trying to place them back in their proper trays as if he had the ability to return some order to our lives. That was the incident that brought their troubled 21 year marriage to an end.

My sense has always been that I repressed the details of this fight in my memory, but I began to recover images and language when I spoke about it with my sister Beverly, who was at college when this happened.

“… ain’t gonna put up with your goddamned lyin’ about it no more…”

Daddy had on his fresh work clothes and looked like he was ready to leave but had decided to stop and attack his wife before he punched in on the time clock at the factory.

“I didn’t do anything, Jimmy,” Ma held her hands up to protect her face against her husband’s slapping and punching.

“Stop it, damnit. Please. You’re hurting me.”

My little sisters and brother were screaming and crying behind me, “Daddy, stop. Don’t hurt, Mama.”

I was between them by the stove, scared and stunned by my father’s great animosity. He grabbed Ma by the shoulders and slammed her back against the wall. Her head hit with enough force that it could have dented the sheetrock. I ran to Daddy and pressed against his waist and started swinging my arms and fists against him.

“Don’t hit my Ma, Daddy! Stop it. Please stop it.”

He pushed me away, backed off from Ma, and grabbed the broom from next to the back door.

“I don’t gotta put up with your cheatin’ and lyin’ no more,” he said.

Daddy held the broom handle at both ends, lifted his knee, and cracked it in two with a loud snap. The pieces had sharp, pointed edges to the wood, and he took the one without the brush on it and moved slowly toward my mother, raising it up in a threatening manner.

“Jimmy, Jimmy, my god, what are you doing?”

She had barely recovered her senses from being slammed against the wall when she saw him coming at her with the pointed broom handle and wielding it like a knife.

“You ain’t lyin to me no damned more.”

My father was almost growling. Ma moved to get away and he caught her with one of his big arms. I could not stand the sound of her fear and jumped up again at my father, hitting him in the stomach with my small ten-year-old fists. He ignored me, and when I looked up at him with my pleading face, I saw him bring down the wooden broomstick like a knife just as Mom raised her arms to protect her face.

This stabbing action plunged the wooden shiv several inches deep into the soft flesh of her forearm, and a gusher of blood rushed out and down to her elbow and the floor. I remember her scream as a howl and Daddy pulled the broomstick free from her arm and stepped backwards with me still clinging to his belt. He hit me with his open hand and knocked me to the floor and slammed my head against the stove, which put me in and out of consciousness. I heard Ma and the girls crying and saw Daddy’s feet as he left the room.

“I thought your dad was going to kill me that day,” Ma told me when we finally talked about the incident. “I don’t know what made him stop. Maybe it was just the blood. I don’t even know what started it all. I think he was accusing me of being with one of the customers at the restaurant or something. I was scared of what was going to happen next because I always let him back into the house after we fought, even when the police came.”

She had regained enough composure to call the police and tell them she needed an ambulance, and she used a wet washcloth to hold over the flap of loose and bleeding flesh that Daddy had dug out from the bone in his anger. I rode with Ma to the emergency room and while her arm was stitched back together, I was checked for a concussion. The police also asked Mom if she were ready to file charges this time against Daddy; especially since his offense was so horrid, and to let him get away with such behavior might be putting her life and the lives of her children at risk.

Mom remained hesitant. She had come of age as a child raising children and had no guidance from anyone other than the husband who had hit her. I do not think she knew what her best choices were. Like many abused women, she probably kept hoping my father would change and she would never again be hit, and they could begin to build their happily ever after. More than fifteen police calls to the house did not seem to cause her to waver, until Beverly convinced her there was no hope for her marriage.

My mother found the courage to file for divorce after Daddy was arrested and sent back to the state hospital for more treatment. She did not falter, though, as a parent raising her six children. Mom got a loan to buy a small coffee shop and became a businesswoman in the early sixties, a relatively uncommon experience for the time. The restaurant required 14–16-hour days, though, and the factory workers who stopped by daily introduced her to Benzedrine to stay awake and work. An eventual addiction led to her collapse, and she was later diagnosed with a debilitating form of cancer, and she lost her restaurant. I came to feel as though every dream she ever had fell away from her, except for her children.

Elizabeth Joyce Hiscock Moore, Businesswoman, single mother of six

In a grotesque fashion, the national politics of this part of my life have set me to thinking much about my mother in recent days, and of the other women who, even today, are enduring such dangers. Trump, and the radical conservatives who kick their jack boots to salute his political whims, are the type of people, generally white males, who nearly killed my mother with absurd laws robbing her and all American women of their rights. Women confronting problem pregnancies do not need to be driven to unlicensed butchers and dead-end shamans because of the religious beliefs of a minority. I might have lost her. My brother and sisters might have lost her, and all because one man thought he controlled her body and other men made laws that exercised that control. My mother’s problems were horrendous and beyond my understanding, but probably not that uncommon. Families are often a mess, marriages frequently imbalanced. Countless times, they become traps.

My father seemed to slowly achieve a kind of grace with his electroshock and the shame of his own behavior disappeared from his memory. He went home to Mississippi to listen to the woods and grow tomatoes and corn, but he bought two burial plots up in Michigan. Behind his uncontrollable rage, there lay the interminable connection to the only woman who had ever shown him love, and, in the end, he wanted her beside him, eternally.

Mom refused his offer into her early eighties, but as the lights of the world dimmed for her, she began to think differently, and let it be known she wanted to be next to the handsome soldier who had come into her house out of the cold in Newfoundland. She was put to rest beside him, and just walking distance from the little house where they started out dreaming.

I wish they had another chance.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

By Andrew Klein

Only the ignorant can speak with absolute certainty. This can be a dangerous folly when it starts to spread.

Today the western media model does not provide ‘News and Information’ that can be relied on to make informed decisions. Facts are often confused with opinion pieces or items prepared by the ‘Doctors of Spin’.

This would be amusing if not for the fact that countries live and die depending on the capricious whim of media owners and agenda-driven editing. People are either newsworthy or they simply slide onto to back page into the pulp fiction of history. Ignorance of World Affairs, ignorance of humanity in general allows people to be manipulated to suit short-term political agenda.

Absolute certainty about one’s’ worldly neighbours creates whatever image these pedlar’s of truth desire. Having created these images they can be justly attacked, destroyed and wiped off the face of the earth.

Once you fight images, you forget that they are also human. Mainstream Media is dead. The world really cannot afford the spread of ignorance.

Long live the alternatives and citizen journalism and all those speaking truth to power, such as @AusIndiMedia @BelindaJones68 @independentaus and @johnmenadue.

By Tim Dixon

So Donald Trump and the GOP have told us – inadvertently – about what will happen during the 2024 election. You can tell by the troop buildup, ie, an increase in GOP (read MAGA) influence in local electoral councils. These are the groups that ratify electoral results in every county in the US.

In Australia we have one Electoral Commission that oversees all elections in this country. While in the US, every one of the over 3 thousand counties has a council that is set up to ratify the result of voting in those counties. These councils are made up of partisan political constituents… there is a shit fight as to whether these councils are dominated by Democrat or Republican representatives, and these people are not paid, they are volunteers. They can come from any walk of life… so unlike the AEC, who may not employ you if you are partisan to any political party, the overseers of local electorates in the US are overseen by totally partisan electoral councils, and there is a huge fight to be a part of these councils.

Moderate Republicans have been ejected in the last few years in favour of MAGA representatives, and in red states, Democrats are hardly given a say.

The bottom line is that these local electoral counties have always ratified the results of their counties, it’s what by law they have to do, and it happened in 2020; these counties ratified their results and these feed into the overall state results that are then sent to the electoral college.

Donald Trump tried to steal the election by denying that the results of the electoral college were valid in 2020, but by then the horse had already bolted; Pence did the one great thing of his political career by ratifying the Electoral College votes, even though he and his colleagues had been under fire (literally) in the capital earlier that day to not do this.

In 2024, Trump and the GOP are far smarter; they have inundated certain electoral counties in decisive counties to favour MAGA, and I say MAGA on purpose – these are no longer Republican-held counties, even though they are in name. So even though it is the directive of these local counties to ratify the election results as they pan out, because MAGA have stacked these councils with their followers, it is possible, no, inevitable, that these councils will fail to ratify results that they disagree with, ie. Trump losses. This is unprecedented, and can mean that these council members can be arrested and face court. But what it will no doubt mean is Trump’s favourite way of operation; endless law suits, and it means that state results will not be sent to the electoral college by the December 11 deadline, which in turn means that unlike in 2020 when the results showed that Trump had lost the electoral college because the results were in, there may not be any state results known in the decisive states, because the local electoral councils have not ratified results…

We know that Trump and the GOP will do this. We have known for years that they have been stacking electoral councils, so why is it that we are so focused on Harris and Trump being locked together as far as polls are showing. It is moot… we may not know who has won or lost due to the currently illegal failure of counties to ratify results… especially if Trump looks like losing the decisive states.

Further reading: What to Know About the Looming Election Certification Crisis

The preamble to the American Declaration of Independence opens with, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But what is happiness?

What would make you happy? Is it more than ‘feeling happy’?

More than walking around with a smug look of satisfaction?

More than having all the things you have?

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) wrote that happiness is “Being well deceived; the serene peaceful state of being a fool among knaves.”

The American author Willa Cather (1873-1947) defined happiness as the state of “Being dissolved into something complete and great.” Both definitions have an air of surreality about them, a sense that happiness is illusionary, yet the quest for happiness remains one of life’s great challenges. With Swift, being a fool among knaves, deceitful, dishonest, unscrupulous people, where as with Cather, the idea of something complete and great is really a very nebulous concept, it could be for her completing a great novel such as the Pulitzer Prize winning One of Ours, set in World War 1, or it could be for a terrorist that a mass killing is is something complete and great, flying two aircraft into the twin towers in New York 9/11/2001, something complete and great.

Or happiness could be winning an event, putting some-one you are in conflict with in their place. Your team winning the season’s Grand Final, your horse coming in as the winner of the Melbourne Cup, your favoured candidate winning an election, any number of ‘wins’. But for every win, there are others who do not share that happiness, for them the event was a loss.

Happiness doesn’t need to be about winning a contested battle, it can be a sense of satisfaction, in Positive Psychology, happiness is defined as ‘an enduring state of mind consisting not only of feelings of joy, contentment and other positive emotions, but also a sense that one’s life is meaningful and valued’.

The bit about ‘enduring state of mind’ is interesting. Can we be happy all the time, can life be so good that it is filled with ‘joy, contentment and other positive emotions’ all the time, or is are there times when the sense of happiness is challenged?

Does happiness come to us from external influences, or does it become something intrinsic? The consideration of the ‘sense that one’s life is meaningful and valued’ becomes part of the equation. How does that work?

These questions are not just some esoteric ramblings of a old man with too much time on his hands, they are important in considering not just our own happiness, but the quality of lives we can influence.

Would it make Vladimir Putin happy if Ukraine gave up its quest to remain independent and allowed Russia to take control of its people, its economy and its culture, or would that be just a stepping stone to find other parts of eastern Europe to subsume into Greater Russia. Would it really make Benjamin Netanyahu happy if Hamas and Hezbollah surrendered to the Israelis, continuing the ethnic cleansing of Israel to realise the promise made to Abraham after his fight with God as told in the Biblical book of Genesis.

They are big questions which we, as very ordinary people cannot answer, but what we can answer is how we deal with those within our sphere of influence, the family, friends, work colleagues and other people we meet socially or through other connections.

And so much of that depends on how we view ourselves. How we answer the Socratic question, What sort of person should I be? It’s not a question of telling others what sort of people they should be, it is very much a personal question. It flows into a series of sub questions including ‘What kind of life should I lead?’, ‘What values should I live by?’ ‘What should be my aims in life?’ and ‘What really matters?’

I had a work colleague who plays an ancient stringed instrument, the oud, and when ever he performs with one of the two ensembles he is part of I go to listen to their performance. About a year ago, I sensed that his music was free-er, more confident than previously, and when I told him what I thought, he said he understood that he would never be as good as the professional player he idolised and tried to emulate, that he should play for his own enjoyment. He had judged himself by a standard that he imposed on himself, it restricted him, it tied him down. Up until he released himself from that bond, he never felt quite good enough, now he is blossoming. I have seen him three times since then, and the joy he has from playing is so very evident, and it has reflected so much on other aspects of his life.

And that is part of our problem isn’t it, when we are set the standards by some external force whether imposed or by choice?

In relationships, to allow our partners to be who they are, that we can be who we are, that we do not ask for change from our partners but we accept them for who they are. Isn’t that what the initial attraction was about?

How high is the bar that religion places on us, read the bit in Genesis about the fall and banishment from the garden of Eden. For having dared to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil all humanity, all the descendants of Adam and Eve are punished. Read the Ten Commandments in Exodus and Deuteronomy, read the minor laws given to the Israelites after their escape from Egypt, these are the foundational laws, rules that religions place on us. As part of those laws, relationship issues, sex, are included, the matter of adultery, the matter of homosexuality. Interestingly, I believe homosexuality is mentioned twice, but I am ready to be corrected, while adultery is mentioned more times that I care to count, yet the focus of most religions is on homosexuality, with the occasional reference to adultery. But the expression of guilt, the cloud hanging over the pew sitter is one of condemnation except through you know who, but the layers of guilt are built on, week after week, sermon after sermon, the whole idea that we are just not able to live up to the standards laid down. Those who revel in the ‘forgiveness’ of Christ become at times a bit sneeringly judgemental at those who refuse to be ‘washed by the blood of Jesus’.

Those external forces are not limited to religion and politics; materialism is a great driver of unhappiness, the quest to have it all, to never be satisfied with what we have, to be on the lookout for the latest fashion, the newest furniture, the latest gizmo. To be like or preferably better than ’the Jones’s’

For the power-brokers, be they religious or political, the condemnation they bring for their sense of happiness has seen rivers of blood through the ages, and they continue today, the sense of superiority because of their self-righteousness devalues lives which do not conform to their criteria. The conflicts, especially between the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam continues today in the Middle East, the superiority once the claim of being of God’s People means that throughout the European colonisation of Africa, the Americas and Asia, indigenous lives were valueless.

Christopher Columbus befriended an indigenous leader in what is now Haiti, managed teach him basic language and wrote in his journal that he could ‘Christianise him and take him back to be a slave for the Queen’. The quest for the newly ‘discovered’ lands over the next five hundred years have seen indigenous populations decimated through war, kidnapping for enslavement and mass deaths through diseases such as small pox.

The plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza and in the West Bank is treated with the same contempt.

But we cannot solve those problems, they really are not ours to solve, except as one person said to me this morning over coffee, that we should allow more refugees in, we need to be more humane. We can carry that burden as we talk to our politicians, and hopefully they will listen.

So coming to what we can influence, what we can do to be happy, to have happiness.

We can ourselves the Socratic questions, and in the at times heated discussions we can have over the political issues which can divide us, remember that the greatest unifiers that we have are the arts, music, dance, art, literature, love.

Ultimately there are four things that mark our lives, that impact on how we live our lives, our state of happiness:

Death: The great inevitable.

Love: The great desire.

Meaning: The great mystery.

Happiness: The great hope.

How we answer the Socratic questions for ourselves determines how we will live and deal with the four ‘greats’.

By Noel Wauchope

Peter Dutton is the leader of Australia’s opposition party – the Liberal-National Coalition.

Which is pretty noteworthy and important, anyway. But of course, he would be more important if he is elected as Prime Minister in 2025. But is that enough fame for him?

Dutton aspires to a greater, global, significance. He would be the first world leader to introduce the commercial, peaceful, advanced nuclear industry to not just a country, but to an entire continent. And not to some “third-world” “undeveloped” country “in need of charity” – but to a prosperous, privileged, purportedly well-educated, and still mainly white population.

For the global nuclear industry – that would be a first! And not just any old first, but an extremely timely one. Just released this week, The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2024 describes an industry on life support. Even back in 2016 Former World Nuclear Association executive Steve Kidd spoke to this problem, noting that “the industry is essentially running to stand still.”

For Australia to adopt a government-run nuclear industry involving both large and small nuclear reactors across a continent – what a wonderful shot in the arm for the global nuclear lobby. And Dutton – what a hero!

Dutton would be famous not just in Australia, but world-wide

Is this why Peter Dutton is promoting his nuclear policy?

I can’t think of any other reason.

Australia, especially in the State of South Australia, is becoming a world leader in renewable energy use – particularly in decentralised household rooftop solar, but also in large solar and wind programmes. Of course, Australia’s mining magnates are pretty happy with Dutton’s plan, as it will mean more mining, not just of uranium, but of coal and gas in the decades before nuclear power actually comes into use.

So – look – it’s a winner for Dutton’s fame.

And if that doesn’t work, there’s fame in another way

The last Liberal Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, is a great contender for the worst Prime Minister in Australian history. Just a few of his achievements to merit this award were:

• By 2022, Australia’s gross national debt was 42.5 per cent of GDP (Peak Whitlam government was 24.5. Peak Hawke-Keating was 24. Peak Rudd-Gillard Government debt was 20.)
• Notorious for taking a holiday during Australia’s 2019–20 bushfire season.
• Signed Australia up to the costly AUKUS nuclear submarine deal
• Secretly appointed himself to five ministerial positions without the knowledge of the public or his own government.

Economically, the nuclear power programme, added to the continuing AUKUS nuclear deal, could pretty well bankrupt Australia. Although Dutton claims that nuclear power will be cheap, he’s given no costings, and the over-riding opinion of energy and economics experts is that nuclear power would be the most expensive form of energy for Australia.

Environmentally, Dutton’s plan includes advanced nuclear reactors, which will require plutonium or enriched uranium – so this brings virtually eternal radioactive pollution into Australia (something that has been nearly avoided up until now). It also brings the hazards of nuclear weapons proliferation, and terrorism targets.

So – it’s a bold venture for Peter Dutton, to centre his election campaign on promoting the nuclear industry. He is to be commended for bravery in taking such a big risk.

If Dutton carries this through, as Prime Minister, he will rapidly gain world fame.

But also, as far as Australia is concerned, he could beat Scott Morrison into history as the nation’s worst Prime Minister.

Dutton’s big risk is that he might not get elected in 2025, and vanish very quickly from history.

I remain conflicted. Which might be a good or a bad thing. Or perhaps neither.

Others have attempted to muse philosophically in the open press. It usually results in a communications train wreck. The reader is not happy. The author doesn’t really say what they wanted to say. An editor confronts a barren comments section. Everyone remains unsatisfied.

But, sometimes the frustration fair boils over. I just want to scream loudly, existentially, and utterly inarticulately, in the ear of every media commentator and journalist in the country that ‘fuck fuck fuck nuance and fuck!!!!!!’

But the problem is with me, not the press. To blame the press for my own personal dissatisfactions regarding the state of the current media discourse would be stupid and futile.

So, I am confronted with a philosophical dilemma. Which is the worst sort of thing to ever try and write about. Because my philosophical dilemma might very well be your philosophical dilemma, most reasonable and well-adjusted people will stop reading right about now. After all, nobody sane needs to go looking for brand-new things to worry about.

(Still there?)

You see, like you, I don’t expect much of any given part of the modern media. However, when we abandoned sharing an anticipation of there being such a thing as a ‘mainstream media’ environment, it seems that we also swam out into new and dangerous waters, filled with a range of largely uncharted shoals and narrows – and there doesn’t seem to be any clear boundaries in sight?

In this new mediascape, while the talking heads commonly use words and tell stories that are readily recognisable, in the main they generally seem to be talking about a (one or another) world that none of us actually inhabit. But then you and I (apparently) don’t mind too much. After all, just like you, I am now a ridiculously sophisticated, post-modern, multi-media, audience member. (And we are all uniquely hard-etched against the modern skyline; articulate, intelligent, sophisticated media consumers, one and all.)

So, just like you, I apply a critical analytical lens to every utterance I encounter. First, I dissect it with heartless logical precision, then I nibble upon only those particular parts of the carcass that I find personally appealing. Moreover, it is therefore accepted that the media personalities and systems that interlink to create our modern media utopia all recognise that the consumer is now king. Consequently, they all happily narrowcast their thousand-and- one weird but pleasing (and mostly wrong) ideas – and it is now up to us -the audience – to be discerning and sort it all out.

I am not suggesting that it is possible or preferable to aspire to returning to some mythical past where the press was ‘objective’ but I am pointing out that we have sort of thrown the baby, the bathwater, and the entire bath, out the window. I just looked out the porthole people: it appears we are now flying at an unknown altitude, over unfamiliar territory, with no one in charge. I am not saying that I am not currently quite comfortable but… (dilemma).

Of course, we all desire a wonderfully black and white world. It is human nature to demand elegantly simple answers. Religion was our first and worst attempt at simplifying everything. Then came the theatre, politics, fan-fiction, a stock exchange, and finally the quaint idea of an objective press who are reporting on the ‘news’. These are all elegantly wrought systems that serve to simplify chaos by inventing understandable urgencies, desires and answers. They serve as ways of simplifying and rendering a dangerously changeable universe into understandable and compelling narratives that all variously help us as we make our way to work on a train.

Additionally, I love our full-blown-modern-multi-media-paradise.^TM I long for a mythical past where there was colour in the reporting and people acknowledged their own our corporate limitations. Yet I also know that there never was such a time. I was simpler once, not the past. And on the net a presenter has to stand out. A simple message, advanced forcefully, is essential. Doubt is a downer. Indecision is weakness. Equivocation is ill-informed. Ignorance is unappealing. So in this new snap-chat world I feel sometimes that I am drowning in black and white. But my relief valve then lets out an existential scream (see above) and then I feel marginally better. It solves little but does clarify exactly how utterly stuffed we are, collectively, and also how futile and silly it is to even embark on trying to write an article like this one.

… (time and coffee)

Nevertheless, I am stuck.

I am a post-modern cool-guy with a post-apocalyptic preset. I get ‘it’. Fuck: I helped jointly create ‘it’.

But as a discerning consumer I am also getting bloody tired. I have no right to whinge about a desire to go back to some woolly conception of a mainstream press or express a whimsical desire to inhabit a world where we can all agree on a basic set of facts and what is important. The place ever existed. I was once simpler: the world has always been chaotic and ridiculously complicated. Get over it.

BUT, with all that being said… What about a bit of care and self-doubt? How about a bit of not knowing things? What about dissipating the illusion that there are always simple answers, or good or viable answers? I sometimes long for a press where authors sometimes – just sometimes – frame a question and then admit that it has them stumped; that there seems to be no viable answer in sight.

In our brand-new multi-media paradise, the media narratives still generally continue to be all about recognisable goodies and baddies, all doing recognisably good and bad things. With most stories a simplistic layering of opposing ‘good’ and ‘bad’ narratives. Trump good or Trump bad. Israel good or Israel bad. Right good, left good, radical bad, conservative bad. Etc. Progressive, liberal religious capitalistic… Pick your cause or demographic.

Simplistic contrasts and emphatic statements seem to be everywhere. And everyone is ever urging me to ‘take a stand’ and make my voice heard. But I remain conflicted.

It just ain’t that black and white.

And I got nothing new to offer.

Except maybe to scream into the void every now and again.

(And no, it doesn’t make me feel better. Nor should it. This is philosophy, not journalism.)

I did warn you this was going nowhere. I might go get coffee…

‘Mum & Dad just got home… ’

Aussies can be forgiven for failing to appreciate exactly how and why Harris and Walz have had such a massive and immediate impact.

The psyche of Aussies and Yanks is similar yet different. A difference that is well reflected in the sorts of people who run for president and the way that they commonly present themselves. Or it has been up until Clinton v Trump.

Prior to the arrival of Trump, American Presidents were not just a political figure. For all of the modern era (until recently) the US president was expected to not only act as the head of state but also act as the defacto daddy for the country. Their family was considered by most to be a living, breathing example for how a good wholesome traditional American family should behave.

This is why the President and his family would enact their Christmas, Easter and other celebrations in a very public and orchestrated fashion. Where Aussies commonly see this as being cheesy, Americans lap it up. It talks to both their love of country and their common mythology in a way that is largely opaque to the rest of us. When they look at their First Family smiling for the cameras it evokes an appreciation that Mummy and Daddy are in the White House, the fire is burning in the hearth, the garden is well tended, the table set, the great republic continues to dominate the world, so we can all kick back and relax.

The covid crisis caused all sorts of emotional and financial problems and many, many deaths. But Americans are harder than us pussies in Aus. They are used to a dog-eat-dog society. Guns are everywhere. Gun deaths are common. War is an accepted and eternal part of the American way of life. So, the real gut punch to the American psyche that has been inflicted by the recent years of political and social argy-bargy has little to do with covid, or political unrest, or January 6, or even the overturning of Roe. American politics went off the rails for two presidential terms simply because their political leaders veered wildly off-script.

Both Hillary and Bill Clinton lost because Bill couldn’t keep it in his pants. Slick Willy Clinton commenced his incumbency as an overtly traditional family man – as with every other presidential hopeful before him. And for him as with all before him, the test for a President was as much a moral as a policy challenge. This is because the job of being the national American Daddy has always been considered as one that can be filled by only the most moral and ‘normal’ sorts of people. (People who don’t strap dogs to the top of cars when they go on holidays. Or keep a mistress. Or order criminals to burgle an office.)

So, when Hillary fronted to try and ‘crack the glass ceiling’, while there is no doubt that the American public were ready for a woman to be President, they were not ready to elect a ‘failed wife’. When you look at the figures, Trump beat Hillary on the votes of the suburban women of America. Trump was a strong virile man while Hillary was somehow insufficient. Her Daddy was playing the field. And fractured marriage would simply not work…

Then suddenly the real Trump appeared out of the haze of the election and the American political argument was suddenly ungrounded. Where once the excesses of the executive were restrained by the requirement to model a perfect family for the rest of the country, Trump decided that all of this was hoo-ha and could be dispensed with. Slavishly, the conservative media followed him. But the rest of the American polity and press were suddenly caught flat-footed.

The Republicans had unilaterally declared that the rules had changed. They were all now stating and constantly reiterating the proposition that the ends do justify the means. That a President need not be a ‘good guy’ at all. As long as he was strong and ‘one of us’.

And so we arrive where we are today. President Biden won because he resembled a good helpful grand-dad, not because anyone cared a jot about what he believed. By the time that the last election had arrived, that huge group of middle America who do not really pay much attention to politics were dead sick of twenty-four-hour Trump. His cult was as strong as ever, the Dems were still in disarray, but middle America turned against him. Not his policies but rather his chaos. The country decided Grandad Biden would do because he was a recognizable person.

Yet this still left the American Presidency detached from the traditional ethos of the leadership. Then when Joe started faltering, it so hurt the soul of middle America because they were watching their national GranDaddy failing. The charge that Joe is too old for the Presidency bit so deep and bled so readily simply because every person watching could empathize with the charge. We have all watched people we love being slowly reduced as they age.

Then suddenly, the events of the last few weeks seem to have caused a lot of middle America to once again engage with their political traditions and mythologies. This sudden and massive re-engagement has occurred simply because they have once again been provided with a model of a loving family to emulate and empathize with. The Stories being told in the convention are recognizable and uplifting. The candidate loves her husband and he loves her dearly. They both smile a lot. Everyone is happy.

In simple terms, America has so rapidly reacted to the arrival of Harris and Walz simply because they appreciate it as a return to tradition. A return to something that is immediately recognizable. Normality has once again started to reassert itself.

I have the popcorn out and I am huddled on the couch. For the last few outings I was really confused. Nothing about the unfolding drama was recognizable. Odd things were happening, for reasons that were unclear, all over the shop. But this time – along with millions of Yanks – I am really enjoying the show.

Right now, it looks like Mommy and Daddy are preparing to move back into the White House, and everyone is smiling, but this plot is moving quickly. I may have to duck out for more snacks…

Cool bananas

By Noel Wauchope

The latest news from Germany really shows up this problem. IF conditions are ideal a decision on a site for Germany’s underground nuclear waste repository could be made by 2074.

• That’s – 50 years to find a site.
• Then 20 years to build the underground dump.
• Then many decades for transporting and storing thousands of casks.