Another day. More news. It's endless. Like my love for you. And my love for this GIF.
News
Does Australia have a Government yet? Now, I don't want to freak anybody out, but by the time you read this, the answer may well be yes. With the confirmation that
Crook will indeed back the Coalition (the least surprising turn of events since the decision of the Greens to back Labor) and the final agreement of both Labor and the Coalition to Oakeshott's proposed
Parliamentary reforms (a long, long overdue set of changes and perhaps the best thing to have come out of this extended session of policy prostitution), the final stated impediments to the independents' decision have been removed, thus paving the way for an announcement at some point today. Bringing to an end 16 days of medium grade political drama, low grade political scrying and an overall mood amongst the populace that could perhaps best be described as "eh". I mean, does anyone even remember what the election was about? I certainly don't. Something about a talking cow... No, wait, that was a re-run of
Rocko's Modern Life. But those five weeks of campaigning - so arduous, so dispirited - seem almost an irrelevancy after the past fortnight of behind closed doors negotiations. Indeed, it's hard to know what either Abbott or Gillard will do when/if they assume the Prime Ministership. Have a nap? I, for one, would be bang up for 24 hours in which every single news outlet refused to publish a single word about Australian politics and/or this godforsaken election. Just one day. Instead we could enjoy the other things that make newspapers great. You know, catch up on
Wizard of Id comics. Read the
letters section of the Herald Sun. Get angry at
Janet Albrechtsen. Give your infant
something to destroy. Finish off lists with self-referential jokes. Yes.
New South Wales joins the storm damage fray, dams in South Australia are
full to overflowing and Victorians in the north of the state
continue to eye rising water levels warily. Meanwhile, New Zealand looks across the Tasman as if to say "You call that a natural disaster? Pish. Our earthquake was so epic it
actually made women give birth".
Although, speaking of natural disasters -
Pakistani floods: worse than Victoria's! This almost bankrupt country has also spent the week struggling to deal with the Pakistani Taliban, which has
killed over 100 Shia Muslims in seven days in the country's north-west, as well as dealing with the revelation that large swathes of their cricket team are being
accused of match-fixing by the ICC. If I were Pakistan, by this point I'd have locked myself in a darkened room, where I'd drink a big glass of whiskey, stare blankly into the distance and wait for all the awfulness to just go away...
The Taliban are also stirring things up in Afghanistan, trying to disrupt the upcoming parliamentary elections in fairly direct fashion by, well, killing candidates. So far they've taken out three people standing for election and seven campaign workers. Steven Fielding take note:
that is how you remain politically relevant while pushing an extremist agenda.
Belgium may be about to split in twain. Yep, that Belgium. The land of... things. And, uh, people... Always refreshing to see how a country without any obvious political, economic or cultural exports can be so riven by internal identity conflicts that it teeters on the edge of dissolution.
Features
A recent piece on Radio National regarding the
cultural specificity of mental illness and the psychiatric drive to export the American version of the human mind. Good for those of you who think that perhaps pharmaceutical companies aren't always the most altruistic of entities.
Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on the
true cost of the Iraq War - $3 trillion at the very, very least. One gets the feeling this money could have been spent better elsewhere. Hell, you could have blown $3 trillion on cupcakes for the Iraqi people and it probably still would have been a better investment.
Oddities/Curiosities
Further suggestion that the idea of repressed memories may be
entirely false. Made-up memories, on the other hand, all too real.
And Iraq shows it has a true talent for the LOLs by producing a reality TV show where
false bombs are planted in the car boots of local celebrities who are then arrested by "police" and told that they're going straight to jail for crimes against the state. Hilarious. That Ashton Kutcher needs to lift his game.
Video
Mi amigos? Mi amigos?!