An unwelcome blast from the past

Anybody who has been a true victim of abuse knows the kind of ghosts that can be revived over time, even when there is the slightest of contact with the abuser. This has happened to me because I spent two of the unhappiest years of my school life at OLSH Bentleigh in Victoria Australia.

Out of the blue the Alumni Association of that disgusting school (in my opinion) attempted to make contact, and this is after a more than 40 year break since I left that hell-hole. I can list my real friends during my 2 year stay at the school on my fingers. There was Pam H, Elizabeth K, Marie H, Patricia B, and Patricia M. I was very close to Marie H and Patricia M, and had a good relationship with those remaining ones I have mentioned. As for the majority of the rest of them, they were out and out bitches. One of the legacies from that school that I continue to bear is the arthritis that has formed in my left ankle.

The first year at the school was smoothe until Sr. N showed up and took over in religious studies. There were clashes that started immediately and she took something away from me, probably out of spite. The following year that bitch was my form teacher and she was the woman from hell. Ok so I was not perfect and I hit back, but what she did, such as finding out my faults from previous teachers meant that she was then free to push my buttons. I clashed and I spent one hell of a lot of time crying over what took place.

I did not appreciate having my desk pushed to the back of the classroom. In the end I had to get glasses because I had astigmatism and I could not see the blackboard. Yet that bitch deliberately moved my desk about and had it placed at the back of the classroom. The bitch loaded us with lots of homework which required more than 4 hours of work each night at home, meaning that we had no real life outside of school. We also had homework in our other subjects and it was a very heavy burden. However, there is this one time where the bitch had absolutely no right to treat me as badly as she did…. it was the day after my eldest niece was born. That night I had accompanied my other sister on the train and to the hospital so that we could visit and see our new niece. Obviously, with the workload of homework I was not going to get the English modules completed. So the next day when I had to admit that the work was not completed, I was not allowed to explain and got treated like shit… with lines….. stupid bitch.

Then there was this other occasion where the bitch tried to humiliate me in front of the whole class. I precipitated what took place because I laughed as she walked in the room. When she asked what I was laughing at, I had replied “At you”… I would not apologise. I had to stand at the front of the room, and the sorry that I gave when the class finished was extremely insincere. It did not end at that point. She then insisted that I write 100 lines (actually she wanted 200 lines)… I must not laugh in school.. and I cannot remember the other lot. Well she did not get what she wanted. I am of the bent that at first I wrote it out once… and tacked on “100 times” at the end of the sentence. In the end I wrote out each 50 times. It did not end there…. she sent me to see the headmistress.   The bitch…..   At least the headmistress Sr. Anne was kind and gentle… not like that bitch Patricia L otherwise known as Sr. N.

I have outlined the worst of the clashes, but these clashes were almost on a daily basis and that woman made my life a living hell.

The other incident involves how I have ended up with arthritis in my left ankle… and I might add a left ankle that is constantly sore and blows up like a balloon. I was not good at sewing and one particular day the other girls stole my sewing from my locker. I chased after them, and as I did so another girl (someone I knew, and who hated me) put out her foot and tripped me on the stairs of the school. It was the first time that I had sprained my ankle. Two more sprains happened in rapid succession… and then they happened again and again and again…….

I am not close to any of the girls that were in my class. Since I left that hell-hole I have been in contact with only 2 of them. I very briefly met my best friend Marie H… she had a child at the same pre-school where I had a child, but she lived in another suburb and I was in the process of getting ready to move to the USA. It was a brief meeting at the gates of the pre-school in Mt. Waverley. I have had brief contact with Patricia M in recent months. Other than that, I have not heard a single word from any of the bitches who were my classmates. I have no desire to reacquaint myself to any of them… I do not want any literature from the school… and I have absolutely no intention of donating any kind of money to the Old Lady Shit House.

Having anyone from that school attempting to contact me has only succeeded in opening the old wounds that continue to fester. It has taken me a very long time to get over what that bitch Sr. N did to me. I do not need that kind of reminder of my past. It is over, finished. It is a chapter in my history that needs to remain buried.

Who is Heartland Institute?

The only answer to this question is that it is a libertarian think tank. Being libertarian does not in fact mean that the organization is a right wing one. In fact the term right wing is a bit of a misnomer.

What brought Heartland Institute to my attention was a bit of news that there were some alleged leakage of documents and that Anthony Watts from WUWT was given a donation of $44,000 for a project that is yet to be completed. The little trolls have been crawling out from under the rocks, and they have been leaving their evil droppings all over that blog.

Since the news first broke it has emerged that the main document that has caused one big hullabaloo was a fake…. no real surprise when one analyses the content of the document. As a result of that fake document the trolls have their knickers in a tight bunch as they not only attack Anthony Watts, but also claim that Heartland Institute is not ethical… but one should always go to the source to find out why they claim lack of ethics not over the CAGW crap but over the claims about second-hand smoke causing cancer.

Even though I believe that second-hand smoke is harmful, I am a bit cynical about the notion that it causes cancer or that it has even caused 5000 cancer deaths. It would take a lot of exposure to second-hand smoke to cause cancer in my view. On the other hand it can cause an increase in asthma cases amongst children, have a deletrious effect on people with a compromised immune system (not from HIV) including breathing difficulties that are not actually asthma.

What was raised by the report at the Heartland Institute was the legitimacy of the research behind the push by the EPA and the FDA over cigarette smoke. It appears that the cancer scare comes into the category of junk science because the samples were not big enough to draw any real conclusions. I wonder if the results were ever replicated.

I have to take issue with the belief that second-hand smoke is a cause of lung cancer. I have doubts that it is the case. On the other hand, I think that there is some evidence that second-hand smoke contributes to the severity of asthma in young children, it contributes to breathing difficulties in adults, and it can cause throat problems for staff who are waiters, waitresses, and of course entertainers. There is evidence that second-hand smoke has caused damage to the throat of at least one singer. 

Cancer is a very strange disease because many assume that cigarette smoking alone somehow triggers cancer in patients. This is why even in the case of women who get breast cancer there is that censorious question regarding: do you smoke? They do the same with other diseases  such as rheumatoid arthritis. It is not just with breast cancer but with other forms of cancer. It also seems that people will say “but he does not smoke”  or when someone who smokes gets cancer, you will hear “he is a smoker….”. Yet, that information can be irrelevant in some cases. The problem is that the medical profession has taken to pigeon-holing and they have taken to what are in fact consensus ideas that are quite literally wrong.

This is why I do think that the Heartland Institute report that I read, or at least I read a snippet of the report was actually quite correct. The science behind the trashing of smoking habit is junk science, and for that reason the results of any research done to date needs to be replicated with larger samples. Since cancer comes from cells not behaving themselves it could always be that there are other triggers, cigarette smoking is but one trigger.  At the same time I think it would be helpful if the researchers did a lot more investigation into the effects of smoking pot, and the second-hand smoke from pot….. it is just as likely to be the trigger for lung cancer in non-smokers as it is for cigarettes.