I lost interest in everything and didn't want to do anything anymore. I had no goals or future. I hated myself and what I'd become.
I bought a car and ended up selling it a few months later and used all the money on drugs. I had stopped seeing Milton so I had to pay for my own drugs.
I moved out to the country to get away from Nan and Pops as I had no intention of going to school or work. I ended up doing anything to get heroin. I still fell guilty as I introduced a few of my friends to drugs. They are no longer using but that guilt still remains with me.
I've worked out I wasted at least $25,000 per year for ten years on my drug habit. And I have wasted almost 14 years of my life. And I don't plan on wasting another year.
Victim impact statement, Milton Orkopoulis case.
Nothing could be further from the truth than much of what we believe; floating in a world of received images, of media derived information. No one drills down to the original core of ordinary people's working lives. No one questions the received wisdoms. We are inflicted with a ceaseless stream of crises and obsessions; the obesity epidemic, global warming, domestic violence. Once it was drugs and Reds. Once it was zero population and the coming ice age. Why is no one ever cynical about all this garbage in which we float; the whispering shadows of truth in which we dive. Why does no one even seem to care?
Almost nothing that parrots forth from their mouths is even true. Far above are the torture taxis, droning through the night, their cargoes of terrified men strapped up with plugs and diapers, treated in a way that no civilised country should ever treat anybody. Yet Australia, this far off, unimportant place, was party to it all. Our former Prime Minster John Howard, duchessed like a provincial governor by the almighty George Bush, wagged his tail and was patted on the head, his chest bursting with pride at the special balls and 21 gun salutes. While now, only a few months later, Obama's words ricochet through the universal psyche, this is our time, this is our moment.
So many hope it really is true. So many hope the days of cynicism really are over. How can anyone believe the nonsense we are fed, the obesity crisis, global warming, the domestic violence epidemic. All these manufactured crises benefit only one thing: the ever increasing control of government into our lives. There are laws for everything, now, in the multiple tiers of government that are strangling this country, draining it of funds and initiative. Every last cent, as I have said before, has been hoovered off the populace, and now we are dying, settling into a gloomy European style communism. Initiative is gone, entirely gone.
Someone my age has already lived through a string of manufactured crises, zero population growth, the coming ice age, the terror of drugs. Domestic violence was meant to be ripping our communities apart, despite the statistics saying the exact opposite, and now on a motherhood issue vast bureaucracies peddle their myths. Global warming was meant to be the greatest moral challenge of our age, and now looks barely plausible as everyone goes silent, talking instead of climate change after the global warming myths have been so effectively punctured.
Why, he wondered, were populations so easily manipulated? Why did who populations swallow the nonsense that was spewed forth by self justifying bureaucracies. Why did politicians lie so easily. The torture taxis droned high overhead. Terrified men strapped into jump suits could only welcome their own coming insanity. The brutality of their captors defied belief. His skin crawled at the thought of the pain and punishment, the brutal cruelty, that was being dished out in our name. The captors laughed as they turned on their helpless victims. These people were so cruel, Hitler would have been proud.
All done in our name. As we swim in a sea of received images. And he listened to younger generations parrot nonsense they so fervently believed. Who felt so noble, so one of the crowd, for adopting all the right beliefs, for being so modern and progressive. He was crusty and old, out on a limb, grumbling and discontent as he shot ineffective barbs into the amorphous cauldron that was the society's belief system. They couldn't have skewered us, they couldn't have cast us out in the cold, just for thinking, just for believing outside the square, could they?
Oh yes they could. The pack was easily riled. The pack mentality of the left easily turned vicious, turning on anyone who dared to disagree with the current wave of preferred ideas. There was no pay off for being out of step. In the glimpsing moments that were a lifetime, daring to rise out of the wispy sea, to breach above the grey amorphous mass, was not rewarded. Multiple attacks, like piranas latching on to a whale, attacked the minute the life form flopped back into the sea to breath. How cruel it was, how lonely that giant whale. But their could be no compromise. It couldn't survive and lie at the same time, such a path just wasn't open to it. And so, as lonely as a cloud as the old saying went, it continued to breach, swimming towards the horizon, sandwiched beneath a grey sky and an eternal sea, the grey light glistening off multiple surfaces, glinting off its wet hide.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/06/2267832.htm
Often in politics one issue dominates. It captures the focus in the Parliament and in the media and pushes everything else to the background.
For the last couple of weeks, the dominant issue has been the price of petrol - the Coalition's proposal for an excise cut and the differences of opinion in the Liberal Party about that, and the Government's price monitoring program, FuelWatch and the differences in the Government.
The often furious debate about petrol died down a little this week and some other issues started the slow boil to prominence.
The Government began the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. It worried about hikes in childcare fees and how to deal with them when they happened.
There was a debate about whether Australian aid money should fund programs which provide advice on abortion.
A Senate committee was told some public servants had worked through the night on the FuelWatch legislation.
The first opinion poll since the petrol debate came out and it showed while Prime Minister Kevin Rudd took a bit of a battering, the Government is still well ahead of the Coalition, and Mr Rudd's approval figures are still pretty high.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2008/June/opinion_June29.xml§ion=opinion&col=
A furious debate about the soaring price of petrol has ended the political honeymoon of Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.
He has bumbled his response and now looks the shakiest since he took over the leadership of the Labor Party 18 months ago. He freely admits his administration will cope a "whacking'' in forthcoming public opinion polls, in which he currently has a huge lead. Motorists in Australia are very concerned about weekly fluctuations in petrol prices, especially big hikes that occur just before a long weekend when families are filling their cars for a short break from work.
The federal government appears powerless to stop this pricing pattern. Also, Rudd knows he can do nothing about the cost of petrol rising in Australia, due to international markets.
He is proposing a national "fuel watch" system which would force petrol stations in major cities to lock in their prices for 24 hours at a time. The prices would be available on the Internet to allow motorists to search for the lowest price in their area.
Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson, grasping at populism to get media attention, proposed a five cent a litre cut in the retail price of petrol. Disaster struck for Rudd when a cabinet submission from the resources minister was leaked to the media. It revealed the minister opposed the fuel watch on the grounds the scheme could force up prices in some areas.
It's suspected a public servant whose sympathies lie with former PM Howard could have leaked the confidential dossier.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23823912-661,00.html
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd denies he's a bad boss who makes public servants work too hard.
Mr Rudd, dubbed Kevin 24-7 by hard-pressed staffers, says he won't slow down.
One group of public servants worked 35 hours straight to draft the FuelWatch legislation and there were rumblings others were unhappy at the demands being placed on them.
Mr Rudd appeared surprised yesterday when asked if he was a bad boss.
"We were elected with an ambitious program of responsible economic management, investing in the future and implementing pre-election commitments," he said.
"That requires a huge amount of effort, a huge amount of work, and requires a huge amount of dedication.
"We receive all those qualities through the staff who work in the Prime Minister's office and through the Australian public service."
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