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Politics RightsCategory Archives

The right to life – I have it.

The Way It Was | Mother Jones.

This article has made me angry. So angry, i am going to open very far too fresh wounds.

I don’t miscarry. Five times, the fetus died. Five times, this longed for child died before twenty weeks. Some early, two, very very late.

Once I gave birth to a little girl I grieved over, too tiny and perfect for life.

The rest of the time, I had a D&C. The fetus, long dead, had to be removed, as my body was not letting go, as my heart was not. It was killing me. I could have died of septicaemia.

With the law changes in the US, I WOULD have died. My subsequent miracles, my youngest children, never born. My equally cherished older children motherless too soon.

The pious arrogance of the anti abortionists. If they are all so pro life, why are they so willing to sacrifice mine? And my youngest two children, who would not have even had a chance to live? 

And all the women who must make the terrible, awful choice, whether the fetus is viable or not, to end a pregnancy. What cruelty is there in choosing for them. Choosing a way of vast expense and pain. Of almost certain death at the hand of backyard butchers. For these desperate women, often trapped in violence and poverty, frequently trying to protect other already born children, unable to access affordable contraception with the obscene lottery of health insurance (unless for the gift of Planned Parenthood, who do far more to prevent unwanted pregnancies than to end them), or perhaps young, vulnerable and scared, with parents who would not understand, or who would rage and throw them out, or with the consequence of death and revilement from their community, hard lined with religious intolerance, mocking the very words of their religious ethos – how dare ANYONE condemn women to this? Their children left motherless, often already fatherless, consigned to foster homes that may scar them in too many ways. The women dead or broken, from one awful episode left unable then to ever have that child they may have wished more than anything they could have had, who perhaps died, or meant the death of them? Or that they could have had if older, supported, or not abused?

People like these so called right to lifers make me sick with their sanctimonious hypocrisy. They seek only to preserve the narrow definition of life. All life is not sacred to them. ONly that which gestates. 

Those people have blood of far more on their hands than any abortionist. Those people are murderers far more vile.

Angelina Jolie and her film on the Bosnian War

This film sounds like it evokes the horrors of war in a way that many films have not ever capture – the female horrors of rape, child loss. It is different from male horrors experienced. And as rending, heart breaking as it sounds, that is a valuable voice to hear.

[Jolie] took this focus and directness, this earnest approach to her new film, In the Land of Blood and Honey, which opens in the U.S. this month. She told me that when it came to the technicalities of making a film, “I wasn’t afraid to ask the DP [director of photography]. And I listened to my cast, most of whom lived through the war. I listened to their stories and tried to incorporate it into the work.” Against the backdrop of the war, she has created a moving and surprising love story of a Serbian soldier and the Bosnian woman he reencounters ambiguously during the war. It is difficult not to admire Jolie, particularly after watching her film.

via Angelina Jolie Directs a Film About the Bosnian War – The Daily Beast.

Disabled in Australia, 2011.

I can walk, but not much, or far, before a spinal injury incurred in an accident that was not my fault decides that no, one step too far – stop. Pain. Pain like you can’t imagine. Like you don’t want to imagine. Sometimes it means my leg doesn’t work, the sciatic nerve screaming in agony, the muscles of my lower back spasming beneath my hand as I desperately try to settle it somehow, supporting the aching expanse of pain that has become the lower right hand side of my torso.

So I am mobility impaired – as I believe is the current term. I will also say crippled, because I am. I am not differently abled. I use a walking stick for small distances – my current limit is halfway down my block  - four houses – to the shop and back again. Then a lie down to settle the back a bit. But I keep trying. The rest of the time, a wheelchair. New in my arsenal, a scooter. Currently an old model, I am looking at buying a new one to replace the wheelchair. Because then – then I am independent. With the right model, and some clever ramps and devices, I can get it in and out of my power steering blessed automatic station wagon and get myself up that steep ramp, through the length and breadth of the shopping mall. Cope with the travel I do for work.

Because I have not let this stop me – as a matter of fact, I am doing far more than I could have dreamt of – starting my PhD studies, travelling overseas every two months Okinawa, Hong Kong, and Atlanta in the US under my belt in last three months already:) ) Working and studying and living. Like any normal person, I want to be able to strive, to work, to dream and dare, to live.

And when I use normal, it is different to many. Normal means anyone self aware. We all, as  humans, wish to strive and work and attain and hope and dream and do, and most of all, to independently achieve, not rely on others helplessly, feel a burden.

But I have to say, society often makes it damned hard. Oh, it isn’t deliberate. The world isn’t made for us, really. So things like this register. And I know, I know. We are supposed to be grateful for any advance. We are so often voiceless, or disempowered or disenfranchised, that any advance is good, right? Hey, you people never had it so good.

Yeah. Thanks and all. Really. Thanks for thinking we might want access to entertainment. Or planes. Or taxis. Or doors we can open. Little things you tend to take for granted – unless you are disabled in some way.

I know I sound ungrateful. I just am not grateful. If you think about it for a while, you may understand why.

 

This week’s Angry Cripple column is written by Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes. It’s a celebration of all the great work done for, by and on behalf of the disability sector as well as a slap across the face for all those who could and should have done more for the cause.

via Disability 2011: The good, the bad and the patronising | Article | The Punch.

One lone woman taking on an airline industry that thinks disabled people shouldn’t inconvenience them…

Yay for people like the marvellous Sheila, fighting for the rights of disabled Australians. She is an inspiration to this disabled traveller…

Sheila King, a spunky 75-year-old woman from a small regional town with post-polio syndrome, is taking on Jetstar in a disability discrimination claim in the second highest court in our country. 

Ms Kings claim is that she was refused access to a Jetstar flight because there were already two passengers using wheelchairs on the flight she wished to board.At great financial and personal cost to herself, she is not seeking any personal gain from this case.

Rather she wants Jetstar to change its policy of imposing a limit on the number of people with disabilities who it will take on each flight.Rather than quietly enjoying her retirement, Ms King is doing this because she wants to see Australians with a disability be able to get on a plane, in the same way as any other Australian. 

Unequal access to air travel limits the ability of people with disabilities to participate fully in work and leisure activities. With these practices occurring its no wonder that workplace participation rates of people with disability are lower than most other OECD countries.

Indeed, Australia is alone in allowing its airlines to limit the number of passengers with disability.

via David and Goliath battle over disability discrimination

Power and abuse

Map of Texas highlighting Aransas County

Image via Wikipedia

I know people who have struggled to have a child, and your heart aches for them, you know what amazing wonderful parents they would be.

Then there is this utter douchebag – a judge beating the hell out of his disabled daughter with a belt – then coming back to do it a second time. With the collusion of the mother. Damn.

He is bitching now that the daughter, who secretly videoed the ongoing abuse, has ’caused trouble for him’. There are no words i can use in public for the depth of my loathing for people like him. Let us just say i lose my normal live and let live approach and turn old testament about it all.

Those who abuse the powerless, especially their own family, are evil, vile monsters. i can sort of understand snapping once (just) and living with the regret of that, trying to be a better person, but this sick b*st*rd really got into this. Sick doesn’t cover it, actually.  And she has a younger sister still living at home, so i can understand her releasing it.

Watching this video breaks my heart. It should break everyone’s heart. And i bet this evil man gets away with it – after all, a Texan judge?

The Internet is blowing up with a video allegedly posted by the daughter of an Aransas County judge that she says shows him beating her.

Someone who says she is the daughter of Judge William Adams posted the 2004 video only recently. The hard-to-take clip shows a man whipping her with a belt because she was downloading music from the net.

“Bend over the fucking bed!!” he screams as he belts her while she tries to squirm away. At another point he threatens to hit her “in your fucking face.”

At another point a woman, who the poster says is her mother, comes in and tells her to bend over “like a 16-year-old and take it.”

via Texas Judge William Adams Allegedly Beating Daughter: Horrifying Video (UPDATED) – Houston News – Hair Balls.

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Never fight a land war in central Asia…

Kabul Kids

Image by mknobil via Flickr

A quote form The Princess Bride that still resonates with truth. Maybe more politicians should have sene that classic and paid some attention.

The media has been engrossed in the saga of Qantas quite understandably – greedy execs! evil unions! country to hostage! weary travellers! sound bites! tension! outrage!

Perfect camera fodder.

There was, however, other main stories happening. One tragically huge one.
Three young men were gunned down, shot in the back by an Afghani soldier, someone they had treated as a comrade, someone who they believed they were helping train to defend his country. It sadly turned out his idea of that defence and theirs were polar opposites.

The lack of media involvement with this sad case, overwhelmed by the more media glamorous, and,  to be fair, quite genuine upset of the travellers, does question how much consideration was given to real victims of long term suffering, the families left behind by these latest deaths. And how many more families, and how much longer are we there for…isn’t it time we stopped berating yet another greedy CEO and ask these questions for a while? The CEOs will obligingly still be opportunistic parasites, and thus will be there after we have tried to find solutions to this particular disaster.

As we mourn the death of three young men and their wounded comrades, perhaps we should be spending more time reflecting on how and why it is that they won’t be coming home. Surely it’s as important as showing us a middle-aged man angrily waving a Qantas frequent flyer card and berating the fact that he’s suck in the Qantas Club at Bangkok airport for an extra day.

via When your journey’s not just disrupted, it’s ended – The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

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Where does the crisis lie? The bingo of destructive practices..

Ironically, while populationist groups focus attention on the 7 billion, protestors in the worldwide Occupy movement have identified the real source of environmental destruction: not the 7 billion, but the 1 per cent, the handful of millionaires and billionaires who own more, consume more, control more, and destroy more than all the rest of us put together.

via Population crisis: blame the 1 per cent – The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Two Occupy updates, same protest, different cities, opposite results…

The Guardian has an update on the case of Scott Olsen, the Iraq war veteran who suffered serious head injuries after being hit by a projectile fired by police during the Occupy Oakland protests Tuesday night via Scott Olsen, Iraq veteran injured at Occupy Oakland, to undergo brain surgery – Boing Boing.
Giles Fraser, a canon at London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, has resigned his job and given up his church residence in protest of the plan to forcibly evict the Occupy London protesters camped in St Paul’s Square. via Canon of St Paul’s resigns over plans to evict OccupyLondon – Boing Boing.

One shows humanity and a rational response to the desperation and anger many are feeling at the inequity and corruption around them. One is cowardly, ham handed over reaction leading to violent oppression. Which leader do you admire – the Mayor f Oakland, or the Christian putting his beliefs to work?

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Today Tonight – yet more proof ratings is more important than integrity or decent reporting.

The cynical lies and beatups are nothing new. The gross violations of both privacy and journalistic standards are becoming sadly more common. But even in this all too common sphere of journalistic beatups, this is a stand out piece of ratings based exploitative garbage, designed to fan the flames of racism and ignorance against genuine refugees…I urge you to read the article, and the linked fuller breakdown of the footage.

On Monday, Media Watch included a critical analysis of a report aired on October 10 on Seven’s Today Tonight. For a full transcript, click here.

I’ve spent four years in the Media Watch chair – and in all that time I have never seen a more mendacious, deceptive and inflammatory piece of ‘journalism’.

via Today Tonight: refugees from journalistic decency – The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Death of this innocent means death of social innocence?

Well, indeed…this one has torn me up. That poor child. But don’t we all feel a twinge before robustly denouncing the Chinese, before claiming it would never happen here, wherever our here may be? Can any of us be totally sure?

How can I be proud of my China if we are a nation of 1.4bn cold hearts?

The death of the two-year-old run over as passersby ignored her is symptomatic of a deepening moral crisis

via How can I be proud of my China if we are a nation of 1.4bn cold hearts? | Lijia Zhang | Comment is free | The Observer.