A few days ago, I was flicking through the newspaper and saw that very soon it will be illegal in the state of Victoria to smoke in a car when there is a child present. At first glance this may seem like a fantastic leap forward towards a truly smoke free world coupled with the protection of vulnerable children against cigarette smoke. However, I don’t see it that way.

Discussing this with my partner and a friend last night, a number of interesting issues came up, sparked by my initial concern. My concern is that a car is one’s own private property and one should be able to do in one’s car exactly what one wishes. My friend then brought up the issue of drink driving. It is your car, you should be allowed to drink alcohol in it then drive. He had a point. Governments legislate strong anti-drink driving legislation in order to protect others on the road from harm, if not death. He believed that same ethic applies here. A child is immersed in smoke, they could have an increased chance of health problems. The government is purely protecting the child.

Smoking hazards are not the point here though. The government is telling us what we can and cannot do in our own cars. If we say nothing to this, then governments may legislate for smoking to be banned in our private houses as well. What if they were braver and decided to legislate that adults cannot have sex in their homes when a child is in the house? Would that be ok? We want to protect the innocent child don’t we? Catching Mum, Dad or anyone else in the love tango can be very traumatising for a child and scar them for life, causing potential relationships difficulties in the future. You may think I am drawing a long bough here, but this is an issue about what governments have the right to interfere with and what they don’t.

A public place is a public place. Fair enough. Governments can regulate as much as they like. But I think they are delving into murky waters when it has to do with non intrusive matters performed within our homes or on our own personal property. Laws are in place to protect, but if we allow our governments the ‘keys to our private lives’ then where will it stop.

The governments new plans for internet censorship could be brought up here but that’s a whole different can of worms I’ll save for another post. Stay tuned.

Enjoy your day

I once studied to be a Catholic priest. Hard to believe I know. The year was one of the most tumultuous years in history; 1989. In that year the Berlin Wall came down, Mikael Gorbachev’s  Soviet Union was staring down the barrel at democracy for the first time, Chinese students were doing their utmost to have the same things happen in China, and F.W. De Klerk was dismantling apartheid and releasing political prisoners in South Africa. All in all, it was victory for liberalism. It seemed narrow minded conservative values were becoming a thing of the past. Even in my close dealings with the Catholic Church at the time, conservatism was waning, and – heaven forbid – the Catholic Church wasn’t a bad institution to be a part of.

However what I am finding some twenty years later is a return to narrow right wing values we all thought were gone forever. We have seen evidence of this since the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, with the right wing rising up with scaremongering tactics like accusing the President of having a ’socialist’ agenda. Even before his election, George W Bush and his henchman Dick Cheney narrowed the field of thought and discussion tremendously.

The Catholic Church, more so since the election of Pope Ratzinger in 2005, has firmly put the locks on the windows of the Church that Pope John XXIII tried to open way back in 1962. Russia has a Prime Minister who has more power than the President and who is taking Russia back to the evil days of the KGB. Even the French, known for their liberal attitudes toward their bodies, are favouring covering themselves up whilst sunbathing these days, whereas before, everything was encouraged to ‘let it all hang out’. The French now supposedly encourage modesty and decorum. Interesting.

Why is there this need for conservatism? Why do people seem to be favouring narrowness of thought to more free thinking and a range of ideas?

I believe it is because people in general like to be told what to do. We can’t be bothered thinking for ourselves. I am hopeless when it comes to choosing from a menu at an asian restaurant. The choices are so many, I get lazy and ask friends to order what’s good. Is this the case when it comes to being a free thinker or a follower? Are there so many choices and options with liberalism that we would prefer Mr. Authoritarianism to spell it out for us and tell us which way we should think?

Singapore is a harmonious little country, mainly because Singaporeans as a people, let the benevolent dictatorship that is Lee Kwan Yew’s dynasty to decide how best they should live and how they should think. Singaporeans are repressed, censorship is strong, and they have no real choices when it comes to electing who governs them. But Singaporeans are lazy and apathetic; sort of like me staring at the menu of a thousand choices. It’s all too much work to think through it all, and they would rather let someone else think for them.

The downside to all this apathy is we are quietly, yet forcefully, destroying all the hard work those who came before us have put in. They did it so those of us who followed them would be free to be who we wanted to be, not who we were told to be. It also does not help those of us (me included) who have liberal views, as we are now facing a tide very quickly turning on us. It could take decades for us to get back to those heady days of the late 60’s, or at the very least, 1989.

Enjoy your day

PS. For those who have missed my posts, I am happy to say I am back writing again after a long hiatus.

Why is it that when some people try to do good, others simply want to dismantle that good? When someone tries to promote peace, others are ready to stir up trouble and unrest. It’s almost like peace and tranquility are dull and boring and disturbance is exciting and fun. What we are seeing in the United States at the moment is not just a case of the mischevious school child being sneaky behind the teacher’s back. What we are seeing is nothing short of promoting and inciting a new civil war.

Under former President George W Bush, we saw eight years of incompetence, abuse of human rights, centralised control and an attempt at totally disempowering the ordinary citizen. George W Bush himself is trying to get on with his life, probably quietly happy that he can just be George the ‘good ‘ole boy’ again. Dick Cheney, however, is coming out guns blazing at attacks against his policies towards detainees at Guantanamo Bay. It is this strident chest beating that has inspired the right wing to ‘rise up’ and defend Cheney and all that he stood for. Leading this charge is right wing broadcaster Glenn Beck.

Mr. Beck likes to state that he just wants politicians to be ’straight’ with the people, whatever side of the political fence they sit on. He tries to make out that he favours neither Republican or Democrat, but he does have a show on the FOX News network, which is unashamedly right wing, and he believes Sarah Palin is more real than most politicians. But more dangerous is his encouragement of the American people to have what he calls ‘the ‘civilest’ of wars’.

Did Mr. Beck ask people to rise up when George Bush was in power? Did he ask people to ‘rise up’ when Cheney and Rumsfeld made torture an acceptable form of interrogation? Did he ask people to ‘rise up’ when we found out that the war on Iraq was started on a myth? I have searched high and low for comments from him that criticise the Republican party and for the life of me I can’t find one. But now, with President Obama in the White House, we find Mr. Beck on the warpath against a President who is trying to bring back credibilty to the United States for the first time in eight very long years.

Are the Democrats perfect? Of course they aren’t. No politician is. But to incite civil unrest simply because the new leader does not have the same ideological thinking as you do should be a punishable offence. President Obama has barely been in office five months. He has ideas in his head of where things should go, and has put in place some of those ideas, but if he dropped dead right now, his Presidency would be forgotten in history. It is way, way to early to tell how these policies will pan out in the long run, and the long run is what creates Presidential legacies. Bush’s legacy is not pretty, and barely has a flicker of credibility in it.

The point here is the United States government, under the ‘care’ of Bush/Cheney, have emphasised the importance of ‘national security’, and were at pains many times to warn us all of threats to that ’national security’. It became such a buzz phrase that now everyone around the world uses it. Robin Williams even made a joke of it once:

They couldn’t call it the Department of Fatherland Security, because they would have old German men saying “Zat’s very goot.”

If we are serious about protecting our citizens and our countries, then it is vitally important we put a stop to this ‘civilest of wars’ nonsense, because that threatens national security. If something, God forbid, happens to President Obama or his family, will the right wing stand back and say, “It wasn’t anything to do with us?” It sure as hell will have a lot to do with them. With people like Glenn Beck putting seeds of paranoia into the minds of his faithful, it is only a matter of time before the bomb goes off in someone’s head and the safety and well being of the President will become an issue.

Let me leave you with Glenn Beck on ‘The View’. What is absolutely priceless about this is how Barbara Walters pins down Beck and exposes him as a man who does not check his facts, and makes stuff up in order to get a reaction. If he does this when relaying a minor incident such as the one you will now hear about, what ‘facts’ is he presenting to the narrow right wing audience that watch his show?

Whoopi and Barbara? You go girls!

Enjoy your day

The title for this particular post is a question that has been posed to scientists and others for many years. We have no idea when the world will end, but I am sure each of us has thought about it. Will it simply die out whimpering or will it end in an enormous flurry of activity?

For at least the last fifteen or so years, we have been told that if we do not change our ways and fix the environmental problems of the world, our world will become terminally ill and die. I myself went to a lecture in about 1993 by a scholar of creation centred spirituality. Fr. Matthew Fox, then a Catholic priest, told us that this planet has 20 years left before we are at the point of no return. That was sixteen years ago. I may be bad at Mathematics, but I at least know that we have four years left! If you think we are going to change the minds of the entire world, co-ordinate world environmental policy, and have every country and every citizen in line to fix things in four years, you are severely dillusional my friend.

So do we just let the earth die; let it get to the point of no return? I’m afraid if that prognosis in 1993 is correct, then we may just have to. The phrase ‘Too late, too late she cried…’ is a pretty obvious fact at this point. But this is where we have a choice between whimpering or going out with a bang. The mobilisation of people all around the world is quite amazing. Plastic bag use is dropping dramatically. People are using public transport more, and we are quite simply getting off our collective backsides to make our world a better place.

Will it stop the polar ice cap from melting? Probabaly not. Will we save our environment as a whole? I hardly think so. But the original question is all about whether we are going to let this earth die in it’s sleep, or are we at least going to give it a fighting chance to live, albeit in a different form. That’s the real issue. This world is changing, as it has millions of times before. Will it be the same as we remember it? No. Will our children and our children’s children enjoy this planet in the future? Yes, of course they will. But it will be a different world, and their activities will be different activities. They will learn to live with changing weather conditions and everything else that comes with a planet in flux.

I have been watching and listening very carefully to all the ‘climate change’ talk that has gone on these last 15 years. I believe the science. The world is changing, and in a lot of ways, not for the better. But I also feel the science can have a detrimental effect on people’s attitudes. If the world does really have only 4 years left before it’s goodnight Irene, people will try their hardest until that point, and then will simply give up, and return to doing all the things that caused the destruction of the planet in the first place. Why? Because they will simply see no point. That’s surely not what we want. Those of us who are recycling, reusing, planting trees, catching the train to work and driving hybrid cars are determined not to whimper. If this planet is going to die, it will die fighting a damn good fight.

We have to realise that countries like China are not going to stop the environmental heresies it is involved in. Poor third world countries barely have the energy to care about living day to day. They don’t care about ‘carbon footprints’. Plus, you have to remember that their are millions of people who do not even believe the science, and call the whole thing a ‘beat up’. If they don’t believe it, they won’t be on board to assist those of us who do.

You might think what I have written is a ‘give up, lay down and die’ approach and I am advocating a ‘whimper’ standpoint. I am not. All I am saying is we need to continue to do what it is we are doing to save our environment as best we can. In that way, the earth won’t have as many problems as it would have if we did nothing. Will we turn it around completely? No, that’s imposible, no matter how much you love Al Gore. It’s very similar to the argument a slightly overweight person said to me when I asked why they continue to diet and watch what they eat when clearly it isn’t working. She told me, “If I didn’t perservere, I would be the size of a house!”

Same too with our environment. This world will be a wasteland if we throw in the towel in four years. We have always been told to ‘go out with a bang’ and that’s just what we should be doing.

Reduce. Reuse. Recyle. Give the planet a fighting chance to retain at least some of it’s former glory. We can’t save the whole planet, but we can mend at least parts of it.

Enjoy your day

Last Tuesday evening, Melbourne billionaire businessman Richard Pratt died of prostate cancer. There has been a mixed reaction to his death and his achievements. Some have applauded all the philanthropic work that he has done and how he was the ‘migrant success story’ ,whilst others have been more realistic and stated his major downfalls, some of a moral nature. The question is, what negative parts of a person’s character do we forgive in order to recognise the positive parts? Should they be forever tarnished for ‘crossing the line’ ethically, professionally and morally, or is there a point where their indiscretions are put to one side and their significant contribution is celebrated?

Richard Pratt was fined $AUD35 million a few years back for price fixing. Until last Monday, he still had a perjury charge against his name. One charge was proven, one wasn’t. It does however cast a cloud over how Mr. Pratt did business. The corporate world is a dirty one, and some would argue that Richard Pratt was one of the dirtier players in the world of business. He also had a string of mistresses that made themselves known along the way, much to the embarrasment of his long suffering wife Jeanne.

But Richard Pratt is being remembered for the charitable works that he did, and for his endless energy in helping those who needed it. He is seen as a role model for other migrants who are wondering whether one can make it in Australia with nothing but the clothes on one’s back.

Wayne Cary was an Australian Rules Football player. He has been up on charges of violent behaviour and has brought himself, his family, and his former football club into disrepute. He has caused incidences not only in Australia, but also in the United States. He is a loose cannon. He gave what was seen as a ‘heartfelt apology’ recently for all the trouble he has caused and they say he is ‘trying’ to make amends. The debate is now on as to whether Carey should be inducted into the Australian Football League Hall of Fame for his outstanding contribution to the game of Aussie Rules. The question again rears its head: Should his personal transgressions cancel out his right to be recognised as a great within his sport, when the award is not about morality, but about his ability as a football player.

Finally there is Australian cricketer Shane Warne. This is yet another case of someone who was creating scandal off the cricket pitch through inappropriate text messaging to a woman who was not his wife. A very public infidelity was being watched by those countries that enjoy cricket as one of their national sports. But Shane Warne continues to contribute to the cricket world and very little was made of it. There is even a musical named after him; ‘Shane Warne The Musical!’ Not only has he been forgiven, but the whole sorry tale is being laughed at and treated like a joke.

I remember teaching with a colleague who had an uncanny knack of separating behaviour from ability when teaching the children in her care. Some of those kids drove her nuts, but she could still acknowledge their talents and their strengths academically. She did not judge them purely on their behaviour. That is a skill in itself.

Is that what we should do with these three individuals? I am sure no matter where in the world you come from, you could name people who fit into the same category. Should their ability be recognised and not their behaviour? Many argued when former President Bill Clinton admitted that he did cheat on Hillary that he should: 1) not be able to continue as President and 2) be seen as a bad President, along the lines of Richard Nixon. There were others who believed that the cheating was between him and Hillary and we had no right to judge his ability to lead a country on a purely personal physical issue. However, the umbrella over this issue was the fact that he didn’t just lie to Hillary and to his daughter Chelsea, but also to the American people. If your leader lies to you, how can you trust him or her to lead you?

This is an issue that is like all other types of moral issues that end in a ‘nil all draw’ such as abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research. But this issue keeps coming up and we are faced with the fact that we are all human and none of us are perfect. Both sides have valid arguments, and both sides are right in some way.

I suppose it gets down to the question of, ‘How do we want to be remembered? For our ability or our behaviour?’

Enjoy your day

“You should have seen her breasts, Jesus, they were amazing!”

It continues to astound me that those who claim to be holier-than-though, or have that direct hotline to Jesus are the ones who are the furthest away from what they claim to be. Mel Gibson’s latest over the top drama is testament to that, but is is by far not the most hypocritical that I have seen over the years.

Before I launch into Mr. Gibson and his penchant for Russian girls named Oksana, let’s take a trip down evangelical memory lane and see just how faithful to ‘the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’ these people actually are. Our first stop, if you’d care to look out the left side of the tour bus, is the home of none other than Jimmy Swaggart, American TV evangelist, liar and cheat.

1988: TV evangelist quits over sex scandal

Jimmy Swaggart, America’s leading television evangelist, has resigned from his ministry after it was revealed he had been consorting with a prostitute.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/21/newsid_2565000/2565197.stm

We all have our times of weakness, that is true enough, No one is perfect, but Mr. Swaggart hailed down all sorts of foul accusations on fellow evangelist, Jim Bakker, who was shagging his secretary. Low and behold, Swaggart is found shagging outside his marriage too, but Swaggart stayed away from the predictable secretary sex, and went straight to the bottom of the barrel and shagged a cheap whore. Oh, what class!

So now we have our own modern day scandal. Mel Gibson’s latest woes wouldn’t be an issue if he were anyone else in Hollywood. Marriages fail. A new woman comes along. They turn up together at a movie premiere. Sounds pretty much standard Hollywood to me. However, there is one really contradictory part to this story. Mel Gibson proclaims to be a devout Catholic. Not just born a Catholic and then forgot about it. Not a lapsed Catholic. A devout Catholic. You know, Church EVERY Sunday, Rosary beads, the whole shabang. But it doesn’t stop there. He has built his own church on his property in California and he practises a form of Catholicism that went out of style in around 1962. He is a traditional Catholic, which means that he goes to Mass that is said in Latin, which has very old fashioned and outdated values attached to it as well.

Obviously, being Catholic means that one does not believe in divorce, and infidelity is simply out of the question. Not to mention if his new girlfriend is pregnant, there is the dilemma of whether abortion will be considered(definite no no) or will it be born out of wedlock and brought up a Catholic (an even bigger no no).

Throughout his career, Mel Gibson has made no secret of his staunch Catholicism. Several years ago, he told the press: ”I go to an all-pre-Vatican II Latin mass. There was a lot of talk, particularly in the ’60s, of ‘Wow, we’ve got to change with the times.’ But the Creator instituted something very specific, and we can’t just go change it.”

http://ask.yahoo.com/20040405.html

So here is Gibson, being Captain Catholic, and making sure the world knows it. The right wing love him because of his staunch traditional views. Now we see him cavorting with young hotties on the beach. It would make things look a bit better for him if this was a mature woman, and the relationship ‘developed’ after the divorce, say a couple of years down the track. It would still go totally against what he preaches, but at least people would go a little easier on him.

When will these people learn to keep their high and mighty self righteous views to themselves, so one day it doesn’t come back to bite them on the arse? None of us are perfect, but at least most of us have the guts to say it. I once worked with a woman who was a devout Christian. The way she treated the people around her was appalling. She was vindictive, nasty, not to mention incompetent. But it was us who were blamed for her incompetence. She would humiliate staff and then go off to teach God songs to the children. But hey, she went to church on Sunday, so that’s alright.

 I have no issue with people being devout in their religion. It’s the hypocrisy that stuns me. Plus the fact that they persecute others for not believing what they believe. I have always said that if Jesus himself came back to earth, these two bit holier-than-though types would be the ones Jesus would least likely want in his close circle. They are just so dillusional, that they believe they would be the ones who would elbow everyone else out in order to get a private audience. Sad, really.

I think atheist Christopher Hitchens got it right when he named his book ‘God is Not Great – How Religion Poisons Everything’. Unfortunately for the right wing, they forgive their own a little too easily. Pity they don’t have that compassion for every other member of the world community.

Enjoy your day

I remember an American friend saying to me a few years back that Australians could not possibly appreciate their freedom, as they have not fought for it like other countries. Fighting for one’s freedom supposedly makes one appreciate it more. According to my friend, Australia needs either a full on civil war, or needs to militarily defend its territory from an invader in order for patriotism to truly stick.

Today Australia and New Zealand commemorate ANZAC Day. On this day, brave young Australian and New Zealand men fought side by side against Turkish troops at Gallipoli in Turkey. The ANZACS  lost dismally, but the spirit of the friendship formed has only grown stronger these last 94 years.

If you were to ask any soldier what makes them emotional on this day, it is not the battles they fought. Those who have seen armed combat are the soldiers who don’t want to talk about it. Only the ones who had a nominal military role are the ones full of hot air about fighting for one’s country. The emotional moments are always about friensdhips formed, and more importantly than friendships, emotional and almost spiritual bonds that happened out of what is always an horrific example of humanity at its worst; war.

War should always be the absolute last option, and it disgusted me more than anything, to see former President George W Bush go to war on a whim. How does one answer a terrorist attack on US soil that killed 3,000 citizens? Send at least 3,000 more to their deaths so one man can settle a score his father failed to do. Will the war in Iraq make us a proud world? Did it do anything to truly advance freedom?

When we see the Taliban rearing its ugly head in Afghanistan and Pakistan, this is a time when we need the spirit of the ANZACS. This is a regime that is the worst kind of scenario for any country. I see no point in the war in Iraq, but I do see a point in the war in Afghanistan. The common theme that is spoken when discussing war, and probably what my American friend illuded too, is that war needs to occur in order for true freedom to be protected. If the Taliban get hold of Afghanistan and Pakistan, it will create a massive problem in the Middle East, much more of a threat than Saddam Hussein ever was or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ever will be. The Taliban are a nightmare, and a dangerous nightmare. If you have ever read the book ‘The Kite Runner’, you will know that this is not just a regime that has no respect for women. This is a regime hellbent on vicious, violent control, and they will stop at nothing to get it. It is up to us to band together, like soldiers before us, and rid the world of this true threat to humanity.

In my last post I argued that the politics of fear that the right wing wax lyrical about, has to stop. Their aim is to destroy everyone who does not see eye to eye with their ultra conservative, evangelical Christian views. They are a danger in themselves. We may very well need another civil war in order to rid the world of them. When I refer to the Taliban, I am pointing out to the world what is a real threat, not an imagined one, that is on the move into countries beyond Afghanistan. Adolf Hitler was not a perceived threat who we thought might do something. He was on the move, and his practical efforts at poltical domination were very evident. Ahmadinejad talks a lot, but if he was ever going to be a realistic threat, he would have made his move by now. Saddam Hussein was a dictator, but apart from a half cocked attempt to control neighbouring Kuwait back in the 1990’s, he was easily ‘contained in a box’ as former President Bill Clinton once said.

If we ever have to send out soldiers into harm’s way, let it not be a repeat of what those that landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula suffered in 1915. An ill prepared battle resulted in one of the most disastrous military failures of all time, and an enormous loss of life. Iraq is America’s Gallipoli, but Afghanistan need not be. It has the backing of the world community. We see a real threat to the security of our world, not just the Middle East. Most importantly, we see what true freedom will be like for both Afghanistan and Pakistan at the end. That is something we still do not see in Iraq after all these years.

On this ANZAC Day, my thoughts are with all service men and women, regardless of nationality, and the service they give to their country. But most importantly, let us all remember those who have laid down their lives for their country in any of history’s conflicts.

“…at the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.”

Lest We Forget.

Enjoy your day

As we wander through the swamp that is the ‘economic downturn’, we see life around us change. But one aspect of our lives is changing forever. Print media, especially newspapers, are taking a big hit, and some smaller newspapers in the United States have had to shut down. People are getting their news online for cheaper and without the need to waste paper. The smell of the newsprint is no longer as enticing as it once was.

There are a number of issues that we could discuss here. The pros and cons of newspapers disappearing, how journalism will be forever changed if everything goes ‘online’, as well as simple quality issues of the material presented. I was listening to a forum today on radio about this and a number of issues came up, but there were two particular ones that had me thinking.

I am a blogger, living alongside millions of other bloggers. In some circles there is a dislike toward the blogger, as we supposedly see ourselves as ‘pseudo journalists’. This was one of the issues raised in this forum. The newspaper is no longer the only source of news anymore. People can access news from a variety of different sources depending on what type of content they are looking for. The downside for us going to a ‘non-journalist’ for editorial comment? Journalistic integrity and a code of ethics do not exist. As we bloggers are not journalists, we do not feel we need to abide by the same rules. To us, this is just ranting and banter. To a true journalist, every word needs to be researched, and every accusation needs to be backed up with evidence, otherwise you are liable to be sued. The other criticism of bloggers is that their content is rumour and gossip, or at best unsubstantiated statements, which may well be true, but have no basis in fact. Sources they quote from are unreliable, or just downright rubbish. That hit home to me, as I regularly use Wikipedia as a source. Reading one of my comments highlighted this to me, as one of my readers stated that you cannot use Wikipedia as a reliable source as it can be edited by any man and his dog. Very true. Hence I try not to use it anymore, or if I have to, I use it sparingly.

But being a blogger, I need regular newspapers as my source of evidence to back up what I am saying, or who said it. Am I a lazy man’s journalist? In a way I am, but I am not here to break a new story. I am here to have an opinion and the quality journalists who fill our world’s newspapers help me with that opinion. Which leads me to another observation about the future of newspapers; online delivery.

If I ever use a quote in my blog post, it is usually from an online news source. I try and go for quality newspapers or news services, and not trash, although I am still not sure where CNN stand in this debate. The forum I was listening to today discussed how newspapers are moving to online delivery, and how that can have its problems. The delivery online is not the problem, it’s just that what is delivered online is not what the reader comes to expect of that newspaper. In essence, the newspaper has ‘dumbed down’ for its online audience, or is ‘not true to its masthead’. It has even been described as ‘news porn’.

So where does that leave print media and what responsibility do journalists have to make sure their newspapers survive in paper form or online? Is there a greater pressure on me, as a blogger, to take on more of the journalistic ethics and responsibility, especially when backing up my claims?

I still love reading the newspaper. I still love connecting with the print. I subscribe to a magazine and love laying back on my bed and devouring its contents, even if it takes hours. If newspapers all die out and we are left with cheapened online versions of what were great papers and great journalism, then we all suffer, and I as an opinion based blogger dependant on the news of the day will suffer, which means all my blogs and blogs similar to mine will end up being are simply rants and babble. Blogger and Journalist Katie Allison Granju says it best:

I still believe in real journalism. The business model that built the newspapers shutting down today will no longer support that kind of journalism, and the new model isn’t completely clear yet. But despite the scary times in this industry, I remain a true believer. The great journalists of tomorrow will work online, not in newsprint, and they won’t operate out of abundantly staffed newsrooms, but they will be here, and they will matter just as much to our democracy as the great print bylines of yesterday mattered.

But I will always miss the smell of newsprint.

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/granju/2009/02/ill-miss-the-smell-of-newsprin.html

Enjoy your day

When is the Catholic Church heirachy ever going to be called to account for their own crimes against humanity. This week saw a Catholic Cardinal excommunicate the mother and the doctors of a nine year old girl, after they went ahead with aborting the foetuses that grew inside of her as a result of rape.

Cardinal Giovanni Batista Re believed that the unborn twins being carried by the nine year old, and I quote, “had the right to live and could not be eliminated.” If you are not shocked and appalled by the decision by now, you are simply not human.

Brazil only allows abortion in the case of rape and when the pregnancy poses a threat to the mother and/or the child. This couldn’t be more clear. The girl was raped by her stepfather and doctors had obvious concerns about what carrying twins full term would do to the child’s health. What this case demonstrates is the humanity and compassion of the doctors and the lack of any humanity on the part of Cardinal Re, and the heirachy of the Catholic Church. To say I am angered is an understatement and this form of public condemnation is the least I can do.

The girl was raped by her stepfather. Was he excommunicated? Of course not, and here is why:

Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, the conservative regional archbishop for Pernambuco where the girl was rushed to hospital, has said that the man would not be thrown out of the Church, because although he had allegedly committed “a heinous crime”, the Church took the view that “the abortion, the elimination of an innocent life, was more serious”.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/church-excommunicates-mother-of-9yearold-rape-victim-ndash-but-not-accused-rapist-14218389.html

Rub your eyes and read it again and again if you have to. Those words are there in black and white. A rapist stays within the fold of the Catholic Church, but a doctor who cares deeply about the health and wellbeing of a little girl is excommunicated and shut out from his church. It doesn’t get any more pathetic and embarrassing for the church than this.

Or maybe it can. The current Pope, Ratzinger I, has also made his own faux pas this week, by reinstating a number of Bishops from the ultra right wing group ‘St Pius X’. This is a group of priestly nutters who still believe that we should be attending Mass in Latin, and that it is still 1945. The Second Vatican Council meant nothing to them, and they have refused to tow the party line. Pope John Paul II excommunicated them and their founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, twenty years ago. Now we find that this pontiff wants them back in. Surprise surprise. Whilst he was Cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger was nothing short of an inquisitor who made it his place to witchhunt every dissenting voice he could find, and used his powers freely. Now we find, as Pope, he is rewarding those who have done nothing but divide communities and offend people at every turn. What makes this reinstatement even more potent is that one particular Bishop, Richard Williamson, has denied certain aspects of the holocaust, which therefore goes against what the Second Vatican Council said in 1964:

Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.

‘Nostra Aetate ‘ (Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions) , Vatican Council II, 1965

Surely a Pope with a history of being in the Hilter Youth would steer well away from someone like that. But instead he embraces him and all his views. Makes us all now wonder whether we really do believe that Joseph Ratzinger was forced into the Hilter Youth or whether he actually had a jolly good time there.

The Vatican said Saturday that Benedict rehabilitated the four as part of his efforts to bring Lefebvre’s Society of St. Pius X back into the Vatican’s fold.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/24/bishop-richard-williamson_n_160598.html

Isn’t it amazing how certain favoured sections of the Catholic Church, namely the ultra right wing, have generously been cut some slack in relation to their transgressions. This Pope has obviously bent over backwards to grant them concessions and do anything he can to get them back snuggled beneath the bosom of Mother Church. But those with more liberal, or should I say, human views, are cut loose by the church and made a spectacle of. It is a crime, even according to the definition of ‘Crimes Against Humanity.’

“are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings.

This girl, if the Cardinal had his way, would have been forced to go through a pregnancy at nine years old, which in itself would have irreparably damaged her young body internally, not to mention the fact that she would always know that what is inside her is the result of abuse, which would scar her mentally if the rape itself has not done that already. She would then have to go through the pain of giving birth to not one, but two children. To even suggest that she go through that, and to disregard her physical and mental wellbeing, is ‘humiliation’ and ‘degradation’, and a ’serious attack on human dignity.’

 In essence, I am at a loss to understand the logic of this entity called the Catholic Church, but I do find this present Pontiff the absolute wrong choice to lead the church into the 21st Century. I had close associations with the church some twenty years ago, and I find it more conservative now than it was then, and that is frightening. Pope John XXIII commenced the Second Vatican Council back in 1962 and firmly believed that he needed to ‘open the windows of the church and let some fresh air in.’ What we have seen since, especially in the last twenty years, and in particular since the election of ‘God’s Rottweiler’ as head of the church, is a massive effort to close all the windows Pope John opened up. It is a shame, not to mention a snub, to all those courageous men and women who stepped up to the challenge in the the conservative late 1950’s and early 1960’s, and stood up for progress and forward thinking.

Just like it is not inappropriate to say to Israel that what they did to the Palestinians in Gaza a month ago was wrong, it is also time we made serious complaints to human rights groups about how the Catholic Church treats its people. In Matthew’s Gospel there is a very simple quote attributed to Jesus.

“Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do unto me.’ (Matthew 25:40).

Put these two incidences into the context of the words of Jesus and see where you sit.

Enjoy your day

Please remind me, there is an economic downturn, yes? Economic stimulus packages are being put together quicker than I can make a sandwich. Banks and financial institutions are being slammed day after day for creating what has become the biggest financial mess since God knows when. So what do we hear in the last couple of days? CEO’s of two major corporations being rewarded with the very thing that got us all into this mess in the first place; massive retirement packages and pay rises that could buy a small island nation. Something tells me we ain’t learning nothing here.

A few days ago, we received the news that the CEO of Pacific Brands, Sue Morphett, is to receive a 170% pay rise. No, I haven’t got it wrong. I did write 170%! Now that wouldn’t be so bad, except Pacific Brands has just made a whole heap of people redundant. Why? Well, I suppose they couldn’t afford to keep employing them. Things are tough, you know. But hang on. If the company can’t afford to keep paying people, then where did Sue Morphett’s pay rise come from? No, you don’t need to have a Ph.D in Economics to see that, at the expense of her employees, Ms. Morphett has pocketed the money she couldn’t pay them!

Australia’s top union boss has launched a scathing attack on the chief executive of Pacific Brands, labelling her 170% pay hike last year “obscene” and a “corporate crime”.

It’s been revealed the total remuneration for Pacific Brands’ 13 directors more than doubled last year as the company planned to sack more than 1800 workers.

Chief executive Sue Morphet’s pay jumped from $685,775 to $1.86 million.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/articles/2009/02/27/1235237880074.html

But hold on. Ms. Morphett’s employees are not going away empty handed. They will get a handsome redundancy package. One such employee was ever so willing to share his financial joy.

FORTY-THREE years ago Ray Wade started work on the knitting machine at the Bonds factory in Wentworthville. This week, he was made redundant. His whole working life ended, unexpectedly, reduced to a payment of $200,000.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/ray-wade-43-years-200000-payout-20090226-8j9b.html

That’s alright isn’t it? Morphett receives $1,174, 225 and Mr. Wade receives $200,000. Gee, I don’t know why people are jumping up and down! Sounds fair to me! This is simple hard proof that the high end of town still do not care less about the little guy, and the economic problems affecting ordinary citizens does not even register on their radar. Unions are up in arms, as they should be, and are preparing some tough action to bring this CEO to her knees. But she will just wipe that off as union thuggery. Well, it’s no different from the corporate thuggery that she has demonstrated in accepting this massive pay rise.

But enough of Ms. Morphett. Let’s turn our gaze to Mr. Sol Trujillo, CEO of Telstra. Mr. Trujillo has been heading Telstra since 2005 and is now heading back to the United States to live a happy and contented retirement. That will be very easy for him once his $20,000,000 cheque clears.

OUTGOING Telstra boss Sol Trujillo will head home to the US with a payout estimated at more than $20 million.

The man who boasted about personally axing 10,000 Telstra jobs will quit as CEO in June.

Telstra’s share price has slumped from just over $5 when Mr Trujillo took over the company in 2005 to yesterday’s price of $3.68 – a decline of more than 25 per cent.

Mum and dad shareholders who bought T2 shares for $7.40 are way below the price they were enticed to buy the shares and barely breaking even on the $3.60 T3 float.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25113002-664,00.html

If a ‘golden handshake’ is meant to be a reward for what one has done for the company, then what has Trujillo done, apart from axe jobs, destroy shareholder profits and watch the share price plummet by 25%?

US President Barack Obama’s stimulus package, as with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s, centres around creating jobs. I am no economist, but the word ’stimulus’ conjures up images of ‘arousal’, ’stirring’, and ‘awakening’. It was the greed of the corporate world and their hunger to keep as much money for themselves, or to create as much personal wealth as they could, that got us into this mess in the first place. Governments all around the world are now patching up the mismanagement of the past and, God forbid, making the wealthy start to pay a little more, as they have the funds to take up the slack more than the average worker.

What these two CEO’s in particular are showing to us is that they still don’t care. But what is more frightening is the conservatives of the political world are jumping up and down and arguing against putting money into infrastructure such as Health and Education. They want to see a continuation of tax cuts for the wealthy, as they see a ‘trickle down’ effect, which will eventually get to the less fortunate. Well, you tell me how a 170% pay rise and a golden handshake of $20 Million is going to trickle down to anyone except the immediate family of both these CEO’s.

Just like the latest efforts to reduce carbon emissions are landing on critical ears of the wealthiest businesses, so it seems is their role in stimulating our economy. The wealthy are looking after the wealthy, and the poor and middle class are left to fend for themselves.

“It’s obscene,” ACTU(Australian Council of Trade Unions) president Sharan Burrow told ABC Television.

“Corporate Australia, it would seem, has lost its moral compass.”

Ms Burrow said the Bonds owner was cynically moving offshore to increase profits, despite receiving $15 million from taxpayers over the past two years to reskill and retool.

“It’s a crime, it’s a corporate crime, there’s no doubt about that.”

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/articles/2009/02/27/1235237880074.html

The rot needs to stop. And only governments and lawmakers can make that happen. President Obama rode in on a wave of ‘changing the way things are done in Washington.’ Corporate heads need to be put on notice, no matter how powerful they are, and be made to justify any form of pay rise or retirement pay out. If our governments don’t do this for us, then, as former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating stated in 1986, we are in danger of becoming a Banana Republic, because the elite will call the shots and will continue to have control over the lives and the financial future of not only this country, but many others.

If that happens, then God help us.

Enjoyyour day