Everyone at my school was celebrating this afternoon, because word had filtered through that Obama was about to win the election. They were still counting at that time, and at least half the states hadn’t yet been called, but based on projections Obama had twice as many electoral college votes as McCain. Twice as many. He appeared to have the presidency in the bag — as, we discovered later that evening, he did. Even before waiting that long, my year level got into the celebratory mood, running and crying, “Have you heard? Obama’s gonna be the president! The black guy’s gonna be the president!”
From next January, the US will have its first-ever black president. This is undoubtedly a historic moment for the US. They’ve come a long way from segregation, and before that, from slavery. It’s a big symbolic event. I’m not even sure how to describe it. I suppose it’s a sign of reconciliation, in a way. African Americans were long mistreated, or regarded as inferior, to white Americans, but now everyone is equal. And not only that, but everyone accepts that everyone is equal, and that there is no problem in electing an African American to be the president.
Awe-inspiring as this is, race is not the reason I was supporting Obama. Read on…
Something which has appeared on the BBC a couple of times now, but not once that I have seen in our own local media, is the Rudd government’s plan to erect a firewall to block Australians’ access to certain websites. The “cyber-safety plan” apparently comprised part of the 2008-09 budget, but was unfortunately overlooked by the Liberals so they could complain about taxes on luxury cars. The plan’s stated aim is to “help protect Australian children from the dangers of the internet” (as seen on the DBCDE website). Sounds good, right?
Well no, actually, it’s not good at all. I don’t care how many government-appointed consultative committees there are, how much they educate young Australians on how to be “responsible cyber-citizens”, how many different groups they insist they will be “working with”, nor how many excuses they offer as to why a mandatory firewall is necessary. Plainly and simply, it is not. This plan is an erosion of our rights, nothing more and nothing less — and should be opposed.
Read on…
Somewhere near Geneva, approximately three hours from now, scientists are planning to test their machine that will collide particles together and replicate the Big Bang. No one really knows what the consequences of this experiment will be — if they did, after all, it wouldn’t be necessary to conduct the experiment in the first place — and certain fearful people believe the consequence will be a black hole engulfing the earth, killing everyone on it. At my school, the year 11s and 12s decided that today was the day they were finally going to read the newspaper. They read that it was potentially the end of the world, and have gone absolutely ballistic.
Today, I’ve had to reassure so many people that they’re not about to die. People are really freaking out about it, and it’s quite disconcerting. A certain subset of the year 12s are not helping at all — they’re continually approaching international students and reminding them of their impending doom. Read on…