Trouble and strife among the slaves or lets declare the CPS a terrorist organisation

Cats, ah well I have a sort of grudging respect for their ability to enslave the people that they live with. heck I have even been known to acknowledge how handsome a particular feline may be to their servants but I find all of the squabbling amongst members of Victoria’s  Cat Protection Society absolutely hilarious:

Why do cats lick their own genitals? Because they can comrades

Ms Fedrizzi and Ms Watts stepped down after the society voted to oust director Jasmine Alexandra, who had called for more to be done to reduce the group’s kill rate for cats and kittens, which rose from 63 per cent in 2008 to more than 90 per cent last year.

Cats believe in capital punishment, especially for slaves who are late with their dinner

Ms Fedrizzi said board members should not be stopped from asking pertinent questions.

”I believe that members should in fact be encouraged to do this without fear of backlash or repercussion from within the group,” she said. Ms Fedrizzi said the society had to be more transparent when it came to the reporting of statistics and information.

Ms Alexandra claimed the society had lost its way. ”How can an organisation which claims to care about cats and has millions of dollars in the bank let their adoption rate fall every year?” Ms Alexandra said. ”I worked as hard as I could to increase the number of cats being adopted out and not killed, which resulted in me being thrown off the board.”

Ms Alexandra, dumped after a special general meeting on October 18, said the society had become complacent. ”It’s important the general public understands what’s going on,” she said. ”These cats are being killed because of complacency, a lack of effort. I think homes could be found for these cats, certainly more cats than are currently being adopted out.

Click for source

 

 

As I see it there is a classic conflict between those who want to keep the enslavement of humanity to a manageable level and those who want to increase the numbers of people who will worship at feline feet. Cats  do it, not with whips and chains but  by getting into their victims with the underlying “cuteness” of cats and Kittens:

It is so sadly ironic that so many of our Latte-sipping™ brethren are so  in the thrall of their feline masters that they don’t even realise the reality of their enslavement. Cats are just that sneaky and  evil. But getting back to the Cat Protection Society woes, perhaps this country  would be better off if we declared that the CPS a terrorist organisation and that cats themselves should be declared a prohibited species to be rounded up and humanely executed. Oh I know that  some of their slaves will object some might even try to mount legal objections to their own  liberation but for the love of humanity this is something that has to be done. Heck we may even be able to turn the 90%ers  in the CPS around to the notion that with just a little more effort they can go for a full 100% kill rate…

You know this makes Purrrrrrrrfect sense Comrades

Relax, it’s just sex (or missogony or rape, take your pick)

I'm buying one for Laura

The T-shirt that shocked Queensland

Some people want to ban this T-shirt showing a woman bound & and gagged with the slogan: “Relax it’s just sex.”

They say it promotes violence against women.

But there are some pretty mixed views  (and mixed-up ones too) about this garment.

Let’s take a look and see who is right and whether this Tshirt is all bad, neither here nor there or f*cken great!

Queensland’s Minister for Women, Karen Struthers, wants shops to stop selling it: 

“There’s nothing good here. It’s not erotic, it’s not pornography, it’s just absolute violence,”

But Matt Rooke the Oz distributor says it’s just for people who like kinky sex. Max reckons Ms Struthers is just being a prude and “ridiculous” by demanding shops remove his best seller. He says politicians should not tell people what they can wear (obviously he’s never heard of Cory Bernardi the Liberal MP who wants to publically derobe Muslim women):

“We don’t advocate any sort of violence against women, or anybody for that matter,” Max said. “It’s a bondage T-shirt, which is just certain people’s own interpretation of sex.”

Back to Ms Struthers:

“… we’ve got to actually draw a line here about what becomes violence and what portrays women in a way that says violence against women is acceptable. And that’s what this does.”

“The evidence shows that the more women continue to be portrayed in the media and advertising as objects of sexual gratification, as objects for physical violation, the more that produces attitudes in young boys, young men, older men that it’s OK to physically violate and sexually violate women. The evidence is very clear.”

And feminist academic Catharine Lumby of UNSW is “concerned” (but confused!):

“I’m concerned about any sort of T-shirt or banner or poster or any public form of expression that is encouraging people to view women as sexual objects, or as objects to be attacked,” she said.

But Professor Lumby says it is a mistake to think that banning T-shirts can stop sexual assaults.”Do I think that those things cause sexual assault? No.”

“What causes sexual assault are attitudes and they might be reinforced by T-shirts or banners, but they start much younger,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter what the woman’s wearing. It doesn’t matter what the man is wearing or what videos he’s watching. What matters is behaviour and attitudes towards women – they are the things we need to change. What matters is getting very good education into schools about sexual ethics.”

Huh? So does she want them banned or not? This is chicken & egg stuff - I think we just have to make up our own minds. I dunno if you can ban Tshirts but I guess if you ban Burqas like Cory wants to then you have crossed that line into the fashion fascists police and we will be having our cops going round ripping clothes off people in public and exposing their breasts instead of handing out speeding fines and raiding bikie gangs like they should be doing.

I would not wear this Tshirt and I reckon any bloke who does is kindar making a statement about one thing or the other. I mean, if you went to the pub wearing one you are not going to have much luck with most chicks you try to chat up. Its a bit of a giveaway that you are either a rapist a missoginist or a sexual deveant.

Well At least you’d know that any chick who likes your fashion style is your kind of gal. And if one actually chats you up Ii reckon you would know shes ready and willing to popbackhome for a bit of hardcore S&M. It pays to advertise.

But if you wore it down the local supermarket you might as well carry a sign that says ‘out of my way - I am a sicko’.  on the plus side you are gunna be given a pretty wide berth in the isles and not have to fight your way past old ladies and mums with their screaming snottienosed kids.

Then there is the issue of is this another example of the pornification of society that is desensatising the minds of males and teaching young kids and old farts too that its okay to portrait women this way as sex objects?

The antiporn arguments have been attacked and shot down by some bloggers who say its an “anything goes” world of porn. They say censorship of any kind is bad but porn is good and does not hurt nobody. But some of those same bloggers also say we should not demeen women as sex slaves to the lusty desires of men so they would be contradicting themselves if they say this Tshirt is okay and people have a right to sell it and a right to wear it.

And then there is the argument put forward above by the minster and the feminist academic that it is not pornographhy but violence against women that the T shirt is portraiting and encouraging as an acceptable norm. It depends on your perspextive I suppose. We see a lot of violence on TV and on computer iphone games too. Chopping off peoples heads and kicking the shit out of them is everywhere. 

Its a very vexed question and I dunno about this Tshirt and what to make of it. But I might by one for Laura – she likes to being tied up.

To Give or not to give, that is the question…

Giving is not simple

I have been known to mock Damian Doyle (aka Toaf) because he seems to spend an inordinate amount of time  looking for one new disaster or human tragedy so that he can suggest that we should all either feel terrible guilt that we are living in plush western affluence, or a deep shame that we don’t automatically divest ourselves of all worldly possessions and give money till it hurts. I like to suggest that his interest in  world wide suffering makes him a fan of “disaster Porn”.

Personally I tend to think that charity begins at home and I am far more inclined to support causes that are  more local. Yet it is the malaise of the modern left to think that their guilt chips can be made quiet by the constant giving of alms.
So I found the piece in today’s age rather interesting it rather neatly lays out the dilemma inherent in our interconnected world, caused in part by the 24 hour global news cycle. Not a week goes by without there being news of some new natural or man made disaster. I think that it is only natural that we all eventually become rather immune to the images of suffering on the TV. Likewise I have absolutely no time for the constant calls from charity organisations seeking donations I have developed a standard replay along the lines of “As a matter of policy I do not donate to any organisation who cold call me” and it seems to give them the message with out being too nasty that I don’t appreciate their begging. Anyway this ramble is by way of an introduction to the OP  Ed piece that I found in today’s age by Maria Tumarkin:

 

Maria Tumarkin

But wait, should you be giving money to the Pakistan appeal when you walk past homeless people in your city every day, when eight young indigenous people killed themselves in the Northern Territory recently, and when traumatised children have been exposed to intolerable levels of anxiety, distress and self-harm in detention centres?

Actually, should you be giving money to strangers (assuming a part of your donation reaches those strangers in the first place) when your own sister cannot pay rent or your own grandparents are struggling on a government pension? Is this not the height of hypocrisy to look away from the needs of those closest to you, to judge them less pressing and serious than the needs of people on the other side of the world?

AND I am not even going into the serious critiques of foreign aid as a whole, such as the one recently put forward by economist Dambisa Moyo in her book Dead Aid (Oprah loves it!). Moyo is hardly the first to argue that societies become trapped in aid dependency, which perpetuates disempowerment and endemic corruption, and gives rise to more poverty and dependency still. (In the same way Noel Pearson, love him or hate him, has argued that welfare dependency has trapped and poisoned indigenous communities across Australia.) In his recent public lecture Against Charity, philosopher Slavoj Zizek proclaims that in the West charity has been swallowed whole by cultural capitalism (see, for instance, the rise of the so-called philanthrocapitalism) and altruism has been subsumed by consumerism so the two can no longer be pulled apart – buy Starbucks coffee and support free-trade coffee producers; choose organic and save the planet; shop here and say a decisive no to child labour.

 

In my younger days there were probably no fewer natural disasters, no fewer wars and definitely no more instances of individual suffering its just that the news of events and the vision of that disarray and the faces of the starving are there in our living rooms day in and day out. Oh I know this is sort of the opposite of the “If a tree falls in the Forrest“riddle because we hear the sound of suffering so much that  so much we no longer seem to notice any individual instance of pain.

Anyway Maria Tumarkin’s column is thought provoking and worth reading

Cheers Comrades

 

 

 

 

Starship repairs: get the manual

You have to admit that this is a cute idea and a very clever bit of publishing:

The Haynes team even hired famous graphic designer Michael Okuda, who produced a technical manual for Star Trek scriptwriters to make sure the technology was consistent throughout the shows.

The Star Trek version looks just like every other Haynes manual

‘We’ve tried to capture a bit of Star Trek magic,’ he said.

Each iteration of the Enterprise comes with a full-ship cutaway and details of the bridge, the transporter room and engines. Even the space ship’s crew quarters

Each ship’s systems are analysed in detail and key developments from one version to another are discussed at length.

The 160-page book even covers technologies such as defensive shields, deflectors and computer systems.

Derek Smith, editor at the Book Division at Haynes Publishing said: ‘We’ve had a lot of success with our manuals on classic historic aircraft, such as the Spitfire and the Lancaster, and also with our manual on Apollo 11.

‘So we started looking for other iconic subjects to cover.’

Haynes has manuals on the ‘Titanic’ and the Space Shuttle as well as a Wallace And Gromit contraptions manual due to be released.

Mr Smith told the official Star Trek website: ‘Haynes Enterprise Manual covers the various Enterprises – some in more depth than others – at a level that is accessible to anyone.

‘So it was really about getting the level of technical detail just right.

‘What’s also important is that the book shows how the design of these ships evolved from NX-01 through to NCC-1701-E.

‘Along the way we go into more detail about the key technologies used on board. People want to know how warp engines work. We explain that. People want to know how transporters work. We explain that.’

The U.S.S Enterprise manual will be published as a hardback and priced £19.99.

Just to make sure that when you boldly go you don’t end up with a broken down star-ship in some intergalactic lay by and no idea how to re-align the warp coils.

Make it so Comrades

Sub-plot or story arc?

One of the ironies of my blogging is that despite my not visiting Victoria for many years I seem to be eternally drawn into talking about the politics of the place. This is probably an artefact of plain dumb luck or fate I don’t know which but I find myself reading the online iterations of the Age and the Herald Sun before I read the Courier Mail or the Brisbane Times in the morning. So I am rather aware of the upcoming  state election  and the continuing implosion of the ALP in the face of the Greens successfully poaching those who have previously given Labor a hall pass despite their reservations that the ALP were not “progressive ” enough. This of course makes for a very interesting dynamic with the preferential voting system:

It’s a peculiarity of compulsory preferential that once you get a three-party contest in a seat, who finishes third will determine who wins. It’s like an Olympic bronze medalist determining who wins gold and silver.

All this has ignited a debate in the Liberal Party in recent days on whether the Liberal Party should recommend preferences to the Greens. The Greens finished 15-20% behind Labor in inner-city seats in 2006, though the gap was less than 2% when the Greens won Melbourne at the Federal election in August. It is still unlikely that the Greens will outpoll Labor on first preferences in inner-city Labor seats, which means the Greens would need Liberal preferences to win.

Some Liberal members, the Nationals, and business, are asking whether it is wise for the Liberal Party to help elect Green MPs? One way to look at the issue is ideologically, why should the Liberals help elect Green candidates’ whose politics are to the left of Labor? A second question is strategic, helping elect a Green might makes life harder for the Labor Party, but shouldn’t the Liberal Party be trying to extract a pound of flesh from the Greens as a quid pro quo for Liberal preferences, like a deal on Green preferences in a marginal seat, or at least the Greens issuing an open preference recommendation or two?

In 2006 the Liberal Party dallied with this issue. Initially the Liberal Party lodged open preference tickets for inner-city seats, but by polling day recommended preferences to the Greens. It is unlikely the Liberals will make any formal announcement before polling day, as to do so would lift the threat to Labor in inner-city seats and allow Labor to direct resources to marginal seats they are defending against the Liberal Party.

Antony Green

As a conservative myself I can appreciate the dilemma that  the opposition finds itself in, do they “help” the ALP defeat the greater evil of the Greens or do they sit back and enjoy the pain of their more traditional enemy? Its the one aspect of the election campaign that I will be taking a real  interest in. To Victorians it may be just a minor sub-plot but for this observer its the centrepiece of the story arc

Cheers Comrades

Should Hicks be allowed to keep the money from his book?

Ok, just a quicky this morning, hands up all of those who think that Hicks should be allowed to keep the money from his book?

In clause 2d of his plea agreement, Hicks agreed to assign to the Australian government any proceeds he may be entitled to, in connection with any publication or dissemination of information relating to the illegal conduct with which he had been charged.

When questioned by the US military commission, Hicks said he understood that the agreement meant he would not “circumvent this assignment to the government of Australia”.

He agreed when it was put to him that if he failed to assign any book profits to the Australian government, it would provide a basis for civil action.

Senator Brandis said the commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions should be taking legal action against Hicks under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland was last night considering Senator Brandis’s remarks.

 

Personally I think that every cent of any money Hicks  is given by the publishers for his self-serving book should be forfeited to the crown, in the first instance because he is seeking to profit from his vile  past and secondly because he willingly entered into a contractual agreement with the government to do precisely that.
Cheers Comrades

 

 

An Indigenous woman speaks out

I have just read this great post at Club Troppo and I repost it here under the terms of its “creative commons ” licence definitely worth reading !!!

Cheers Comrades

Posted by Ken Parish on Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Bob Durnan is an old ALP colleague who has worked in Indigenous communities in central Australia for the best part of 30 years.  Like me, he has witnessed the tragic deterioration of living conditions in many if not most remote communities and town camps in the Northern Territory over that period of time.  As such Bob is a strong supporter of many aspects of the Howard government-initiated NT Intervention, especially the income management system.

Bob has just emailed me a copy of what I think is a very important speech delivered to the Australian Alliance of Lawyers last Friday in Alice Springs by Bess Price, a senior Warlpiri woman from Yuendumu.

The background is the release last week of the Bath Report into children’s services in the NT, which revealed that not much had improved in that area since the “Little Children Are Sacred” report which triggered the Intervention in 2007.  NT Minister Kon Vatskalis said last week:

“The communities out there are in total collapse. There is a crisis in the communities,” Mr Vatskalis said.

“Yesterday, I was thinking, I said where is the person like Martin Luther King to come out and say ‘I’ve got a dream?’, because I can’t see anybody in the Indigenous community at the moment coming out and saying ‘I’ve got a dream’ and lead the communities. There is no leadership.”

Ms Price is certainly an Indigenous leader whose voice needs to be heard more widely.  Her address is over the fold. Please read it.

More ‘Pointless Petulance’ from Crikey

Yesterday – for some unexplained reason – a Pure Poison Petulance author thought it was “worthwhile” coming over here to make the following condescending comment clearly aimed at yours truly:

The point I was making is that it’s the first worthwhile post that anyone’s pointed me to here in quite some time, especially compared to the previous one about this incident from cowards’ corner.

Gee, coming from someone who writes boring, nitpicking, whiny posts that are mainly about “What Andrew Bolt said was wrong” – like this stunningly mindless effort today - criticising the value of Iain’s blog and the worth of what others write is a bit rich.

Its also hypocritical considering a crap comment like that one would definitely not be allowed at PP where personal attacks on the thin-skinned authors are strictly forbidden.

Anyway I dunno why he would say something so shitty but this TV ad might help him (and a few others) to harden the f___ up. He obviously needs to:

In the theatre of justice the rituals have to match the expectations of the audience

I am reminded of our debate about Halal sausages when it comes to this next topic because it seems that the execution of  Jeffrey Landrigan has been delayed because there is a shortage of the particular drug that begins the three stage process of lethal injection.

There are plenty of Americans who think that Jeffrey Landrigan should have been executed at 10am local time today, but it seems that Arizona has run out of a legal supply of sodium thiopental, one of the drugs used for lethal injections in 34 states. Today, blogs are full of offers by volunteers who would like to take the task upon themselves – whether with a gun (“There’s no shortage of lead”), a baseball bat or their own cocktail of poisonous liquids.

However, yesterday federal judge Roslyn Silver stayed the execution. There is only one legal source of sodium thiopental in the United States, which is the pharmaceutical company Hospira. The drug is only the first step in a three-stage process but, according to the supreme court, “[i]t is uncontested that, failing a proper dose of sodium thiopental that would render [a] prisoner unconscious, there is a substantial … risk of suffocation … and pain from the injection” of the two subsequent drugs. Hospira recently refused to play any further role in capital punishment, insisting that the company is in the business of saving lives, rather than taking them.

Like the Halal question in the earlier post the issue here is avoiding cruelty to the condemned and there is some merit in that but it strikes me as being slightly ridiculous that the state of Arizona does not have a backup method should anti-Capital punishment activists make the supply of the necessary drugs difficult. Done correctly death by hanging is almost instantaneous and it requires nothing that can’t be bought at your local hardware store. But I suspect that the attraction of lethal injection has more to do with it leaving an unmarked corpse than it being a more humane method.After all in the theatre of justice the rituals have to match the expectations of the audience.

Cheers Comrades

Is she talking about him?

Marieke Hardy says on the Drum un-leashed :

 

Marieke Hardy

Certainly there’s an element of showoffy dick-swinging amongst the internet community, with each published tweet at times being the equivalent of that one goofy kid with the overbite and beanie who appears behind every single weatherman ever on live news bulletins** (Look! There’s me! On the telly!). Tweeps celebrate when their work appears on screen, bemoan others who get there first with a less-interesting joke and scheme to make themselves more visible/amusing/first the following week.

Which I read just after looking at our learned friend’s post about getting one of his tweets on to the Q&A screen :

Well, if I can't get any questions or comments about things that actually matter up there, I suppose I'll have to be satisfied with the image of Howard's mouthing off to the nation overlaid with my insult. Better than nothing, I suppose. (a learned friend)

I’ll leave the association between the two to the imagination of our readers
Cheers Comrades

Howard haters remind us of ex-PM’s integrity and rationality

 

The angry leftist's throwing of his own shoes at the calm and well-mannered former PM left few in doubt that reason was on Howard's side.

 

It was good to see John Howard last night on Q&A, in spite of the controversies which Iain and Sockpuppet have mentioned, because it was powerful reminder of how logical and consistent the man who was our Prime Minister only three years ago was and is.

Unsurprisingly, Howard has not wavered in any of his beliefs. Throughout the session, he was defending his position on controversial issues such as asylum seekers, the Iraq War, Children Overboard and the leadership dispute with Peter Costello. The steadfastness of his beliefs was a refreshing contrast to the numerous inconsistencies of the views of Rudd, Gillard, Abbott et al, particularly on the issue of climate change.

The leftist who threw his shoes at Howard did himself and everyone else a huge disservice. After asking Howard a hostile question on Iraq and then interjecting when Howard gave his reply, the young man confirmed that he could not match Howard in rational debate by resorting to throwing his Doc Martens at the former PM. It may be that the young leftist comes to the realisation in a few years that Howard has a fairly good Prime Minister, and may regret making such a fool of himself on national TV.

David Hicks (who has recently published his own book) made a surprise appearance to ask Howard about whether his incarceration without charge and whether he was treated humanely. Howard immediately pointed out that it was great that Hicks had the opportunity to ask such questions in public, in sharp contrast to the regime that Hicks supported in Afghanistan. Howard then went on to talk about how Hicks was fighting for a foreign enemy, and had therefore betrayed his country, as well as the important fact that Hicks pleaded guilty to materially supporting terrorism.

On the apology, Howard repeated his opposition to saying sorry on the grounds that to say sorry is to accept responsibility for some occurrence, when Howard was never personally responsible for the Stolen Generations. The former PM also emphasised the importance of ‘practical reconciliation’ in truly assisting Australia’s original inhabitants.

A question about Children Overboard didn’t faze the ex-PM, who pointed out that he was advised that there were children overboard, and it was the advice that was later proven wrong. On Iraq, Howard pointed out that the intelligence at the time suggested Saddam did have WMDs and argued that in any event, the importance of the US alliance and the evilness of the regime there meant that Australia’s participation was correct.

Howard also emphasised the economic achievements of his government, although he also gave Labor credit for its achievements during the Hawke/Keating years. He repeated his view that Kevin Rudd would have won the recent federal election and stated that whilst Rudd was a disappointing PM, it was too early to judge Julia Gillard’s performance.

In short, it was the return of the Howard of old. A politician who was forthright and unwavering in his beliefs and who was able to explain his position logically and with great clarity. A man whose views are reasonable and fair, and whose manners are modest, in sharp contrast to the angry leftists who loudly hated him throughout his Prime Ministership, and judging by last night’s session, still harbour an intense dislike of the man who advocated and introduced conservative policies throughout his political career. In short, it was a reminder that Howard was and is in a different league to the politicians who have succeeded him in Parliament.

Hicks not a hero

I suppose it should have been expected that the darling of the Latte Sippers™ would front up on the Q&A program last night , after all he is trying to promote his memoir, No I’m not talking about John Howard I’m talking about the hero of our friends with the milky residue on their top lips…

The wide-ranging interview focused heavily on the more controversial aspects of Mr Howard's tenure. (ABC)

He … received a video question from former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks, who asked him if he stood by his support of the system that saw Mr Hicks imprisoned for over five years.

A video question from David Hicks in Five Dock, NSW: Hi, I’m David Hicks. When you were Prime Minister you left me in Guantanamo Bay for five and a half years. During that time I was detained without charge for a long time. I was denied a fair trial. I was tortured. Do you believe that I was treated humanely and that the military commission was a fair system? Thank you.

But as with many of his answers the former prime minister held firm on his actions regarding Mr Hicks.

“In relation to the military commissions, we put a lot of pressure on the Americans to accelerate the charges being brought against David Hicks, and I remind the people watching this program that David Hicks did plead guilty to a series of offences,” he said.

“David Hicks trained with Taliban, David Hicks was associated with groups that were behaving in a manner that was completely opposed to the interests of this country, and the idea that we should see him as a hero is very misplaced.”

What our Latte sodden friends seem to forget is that Hicks willingly supported one of the vilest regimes in the history of the world, they deeply misogynistic, and Anti Semitic Talliban regime in Afghanistan.On top of that as a captured irregular combatant he was no civil criminal to whom the concept of habeas corpus ever applied. His status was at best problematical, and he should thank is lucky stars that he did not face summary execution.

I was willing to suggest that Hicks have an opportunity to live out the rest of his life in quiet obscurity on the assumption that he was truly contrite about his crimes and gross errors of judgement but for him to come on to the Q& A program and omit any suggestion that he was the author of his own fate in his question suggests that maybe he does not deserve the benefit of any doubt after all.
Cheers Comrades

The shoe-throwing d*ckhead

The dreadlocked rats tail says it all - dickhead!

This is the mindless git who threw his shoes at former Prime Minister John Howard  on the live ABC Q&A show last night.

He missed.

Well, to be fair, it was a pretty limp-wristed effort and he didn’t seem to be aiming.

My guess is he’s a Greens supporter. Whatever – he’s an idiot and has just set the cause of the left backwards.

And I’m not the only one who thinks it was inappropriate. 

Regardless of what you think of Howard sending us to Iraq - which was the git’s reason for throwing his shoes – this is Australia, dickhead, and unlike Iraq we are civilised over here and we don’t go around assaulting our politicians.

Do it with words, not with your stinking Dunlop Volleys or whatever they were.

Coburg West State School and the continuing story of the Halal sausage sizzle

Coburg West state school

One of the very nice things about blogging is the way that you get to meet and interact with different people and sometimes the people who you read about in the news stories actually give you feedback on the posts that you have put up on your blog. Back in march I wrote this post about the insistence of the Coburg West state school Parents and Friends association serving Halal sausages at its functions. The controversy has not  gone away  which I learned from Diane Rees when she sent me this email:

Dear Iain,
I read your blog about the school that would only serve halal sausages at sausage sizzles. Well I am the parent who was the topic of conversation and just wanted to update you on the situation. The Parent and Friends Association (PFA) have refused to buy non-halal or even advertise in the school newsletter that they will only serve halal.

I am at a standstill with these ignorant, PC parents who make up the committee and the principal, David Kilmartin, has washed his hands of the whole debacle, saying its up to the PFA.
I wrote a letter to the PFA, outlining my views on the cruelty of halal and the fact that as a secular school, why are we serving halal. Muslims account for 9% of the total population in our area of Moreland, with an estimate of about 2% at our school, Coburg West Primary.

Basically, my kids don’t attend the sausage sizzles and have to miss out on the social aspect of it and I am so angry with the attitudes of some people at the school, I’m treated like a pariah by some parents, in fact one mother has banned her son from playing with my son because of our halal views, its just nuts!

Glad I blew off some steam there.

Regards
Diane

Discussing the issue with Diane it appears that The main problem that this issue can’t be resolved has to do with the president of The PFA one Mr Peter Sharples who seems to have  a very large dose of the Political correctness disease. Diane goes on to explain that she has been savaged because of her campaign against the use of Halal meat  at the school by stealth:

Iain,
thank you for replying and of course you have my permission to quote my email. I have also attached the letter I wrote to one of the PFA parents who has been badgering my friend, Louise, to meet with me over the halal issue. He read the letter and was fuming. He approached my friend after school yesterday and said that no way was he going to advertise in the school news letter that the sausages were halal. We are at a loss to fathom what his agenda is by not informing people that they are halal, its a bizarre situation. I have written a letter to the education department because I will not be held to ransom over a bloody sausage by some politically correct parent who has decided he holds the cards over what kind of sausages the school serves. You can imagine how frustrating it is, its comical really when the solution is quite simple. Another bugbear is that the school has probably 5 muslim kids, out of 500 and its supposed to be secular*. I haven’t had a reply to my letter from Peter Sharples from the PFA and the principal, David kilmartin is a waste of time, he just gives you this poker face and has passed it over to the PFA.

A few parents have commented that I’m being racist but they are ignorant as to what halal is, they assume its the praying and have no idea of the cruelty involved. Aside from the cruelty aspect, I am really annoyed that we are expected to eat Islamic food when they would not eat ours. What is wrong with me wanting to eat a normal sausage, I’m not Muslim, my family are Welsh Methodists, and religion aside why is everyone conforming to the minority in this country? We couldn’t go to Dubai and wander about in a singlet and shorts and eat pork sausages yet these people choose to live in our country and we stupidly pander to them.

A quick phone round of local schools yesterday resulted in every school, including the predominantly muslim school of Coburg North, saying that they served only non-halal and the muslim families brought their own food along, thats interesting!

Keep in touch
thanks for your interest
Diane

I suggest that readers might find the text of Diane ‘s letter quite interesting as it shows just how hard she has been trying to be reasonable and fair to all parties here.But also its clear that for Diane the issue here is a desire to ensure that all animals killed for meat are dispatched in the most humane manner possible, rather than any objection to Islam or its adherents.

24 October 2010

Dear Peter,
I am writing in response to a telephone call from my friend, Louise Davey, who has told me that you are interested in having a chat with me in regard to the halal sausage situation at Coburg West. I am studying a full time post grad, with exams in three weeks and have absolutely no time to spare with my friends, let alone time to discuss the PFA’s refusal to serve non-halal meat so thought I would put my views on paper.
I queued last week for sausages for my two children as Louise had spoken to Mr Kilmartin earlier in the day who assured her that non-halal would be on offer. I asked you if there were non-halal sausages and you said no, followed by a woman serving next to Louise telling me that you would have to have two barbeques to accommodate both.
The meat that my family eats comes from animals that have been stunned before slaughter in a humane and painless way. I find it morally unacceptable for myself and my three children to eat meat that is ritually slaughtered according to Islamic law. There are many studies and authorities that testify that the halal method is cruel. The Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) in the U.K. advises the British government on how to avoid cruelty to livestock and reports that halal causes severe suffering. With halal meat, Islam dictates that animals are to be killed by a Muslim and allowed to bleed to death. Their jugular vein and carotid arteries are severed whilst the animals are fully conscious and in my opinion this amounts to animal cruelty. Cattle can take between 2-3 minutes to die. There is no religious justification to this method of kill as many Islamic authorities now accept stunning prior to slaughter, so long as the animal is not killed. Nowhere in the Koran does it state that the animal has to be conscious before slaughter so the method in many countries is just cultural practice.
Its funny how we are horrified to hear of acts of animal cruelty such as that puppy last year, Buckley, having his ears cut off, fox hunting in the U.K. or a recent story in the Herald Sun about a horse that was slaughtered in his paddock in Melbourne, yet we tolerate the cruel slaughter of our livestock for food and when people like myself and Louise bring it to other peoples attention, we are seen as causing a fuss, I find it incredible!

I have the utmost respect for other peoples religious beliefs and totally understand their decisions to feed their families halal, or whatever food forms part of their beliefs. However, it is not my belief, both religiously and ethically to feed my family halal and I cannot understand why the school will only provide halal meat. Why am I expected to eat halal? Why can’t Muslims eat my preferred non-halal meat? There would be an uproar if the school advertised they served only non-halal meat, why are we then not outraged that the meat is only halal? The reason is ignorance, people have no idea what halal actually means and if people like me speak out against it, I am labelled as making a fuss and being racist.
I have had to tolerate the ignorant, bigoted parents of this school calling me racist and one Muslim parent actually banning her son from playing with my son because of our halal beliefs when I wrote a letter to the Herald Sun earlier this year highlighting the issue with the sausages. I work with a Muslim lady who finds it outrageous that we are not offered the choice of non-halal for our kids, why does the school not feel the same way?
A solution to this problem is to first of all, find out if parents actually know that the sausages are only halal. When I told some parents a while ago they were totally ignorant to the fact and just assumed the sausages would be regular non-halal. In fact many parents that I have canvassed have asked why is the school buying halal when it is predominantly a non-Muslim school? That’s a question I would like to have answered too. Another point to keep in mind is that most people don’t even know what halal actually means; they think it’s the praying over the meat towards Mecca, they have no idea of the cruelty involved. The survey should state what halal actually means and people should be given the choice. I would be happy for my children to eat “cruelty-free halal” if there is such a thing in Australia, I know it is widely available in the U.K. where 80% of halal is certified “cruelty-free“.
If the school, as I’m led to believe, is secular then why are you serving halal food? I would estimate that Muslims make up about 2% of the school population, yet the PFA insists on buying halal? Who made this decision to only buy halal? The school is multi-cultural and I stress MULTI – cultural and if the school is going to continue to serve halal then all cultures and religious denominations must be catered for otherwise you are discriminating.
I hope that you will take into account my views and hope that there will be non-Halal meat or certified “cruelty-free halal” on offer at Coburg West Primary at future BBQ’s. Unless it is advertised as so in the newsletter I will not waste my time again queuing at the next sausage sizzle.

Sincerely,

Diane Rees

Diane has done her homework and I admire her courage in standing up to the sort of PC nonsense that not even the Muslims in her community support. The most worrying thing of all is that the public are not being informed that all of the sausages being served are Halal. There is a malaise that comes from trying too hard to be accommodating to minority groups within our society it embarrasses the minority and ends up alienating the majority. I suspect that Peter Sharples thinks that most people won’t care and that by insisting on a Halal only sausage menu that he is being “inclusive”. If you read this post Mr Sharples then please illuminate us with your reasoning because it seems to me that you are doing more harm than good  for community relations with this strategy.

To Diane Rees I say keep up the good fight and don’t let this PC nonsense blight the experience of sending your children to what seems to be an otherwise good primary school.

Cheers Comrades

* my bold

 

 

 

Madeleine Madden’s vid, aimed at the wrong people?

It has long been my belief that after a certain point members of any disadvantaged group have to accept responsibility for the own future, they have to embrace education and disavow nihilism.Thanks to our friends from the left many of our indigenous Australians are not as educated and  clearly articulate like 13 year old, Madeleine Madden is in this vid.

So as well intentioned as I think this video is I think that it is aimed at the wrong people. A well groomed and well educated young woman like Madeleine Madden would have no problem getting any position that she sought. While I think that there is still some residual distrust of ingenious people in the wider community there is also an awful lot of good will out there. So perhaps the young Madeleine Madden needs to tell her own people that getting and education and embracing the mainstream culture is more of a key to the future than continuing the culture of self pity and complaint that is  fostered by their latte sipping so called friends.

Cheers Comrades

 

Hat tip to Auntie for this story