I think they'd have been safer with the aborigines (click on image to enlarge)

What a bizarre thing to happen on Australia Day:

Dozens of police have escorted Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott from a Canberra restaurant that had been surrounded by angry protesters from the nearby Aboriginal Tent Embassy.

The Prime Minister stumbled as she was rushed to an awaiting vehicle and was helped up by police who were confronted by the protesters.

It appears the mob was incensed by remarks made by Mr Abbott earlier in the day in which he said he thought it was probably time to reconsider the relevance of the embassy.

The protesters gathered outside the restaurant near Old Parliament House where Ms Gillard was handing out medals to emergency services representatives. Mr Abbott was also inside the building.

At least 50 police, including the riot squad, were called to the scene shortly after 2.30pm (AEDT). The protesters, involved in an event to mark the 40th anniversary of the embassy, banged on the three glass sides of the restaurant chanting “shame” and “racist”.

The two leaders, protected by police and security officers, escaped out a side door after about 20 minutes. Protesters chased their car down the road, banging on its roof and bonnet.

There had been false reports that the Prime Minister had been tackled. Ms Gillard’s office confirmed she slipped as she was leaving the building.

Words fail me. Not over the incident but over the groping of the PM.

Abbott took it like a man though – have a look at him in the photos, he’s scared shitless!

Our fearless leaders.

He's just a bloody actor!

Just what has actor Geoffrey Rush ever done to deserve such an honour?

The 60-year old Academy Award winner was named Australian of the Year for 2012 a short while ago by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, ostensibly for his “contribution to the arts”.

But, apart from being a highly paid and self-serving movie star, Rush’s only other claims to some sort of noble status are being an ambassador for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and UNICEF Australia, as well as patron of the Melbourne International Film Festival.

Big f …ing deal.

WTF has this bloke ever done for his fellow Australians? Oh, he opposed a shopping centre development in the Melbourne suburb of Camberwell because, you know, shopping developments should be built in the poorer suburbs, not in wealthy Camberwell where Rush lives. Dick. Head.

Gillard can’t get anything right, but that’s no surprise. In my opinion the Oz of the year should go to someone who has served others, selflessly. If it could go to politicians I’d give it to Queensland Premier Anna Bligh for her outstanding leadership during last year’s Queensland floods & cyclone events. But apparently politicians are not eligible.

How about the parents of Daniel Morcombe, who have campaigned tirelessly for better child protection since their son was abducted and murdered about a decade ago? They are very deserving people.

Who do you think should have won it? I dunno, but giving it to Rush is almost as bad as the year they gave it to country music singer Lee Kernaghan. What a joke that was.

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We finally have an end in sight for the awful government of Anna Bligh:

click for source

Cheers Indeed Comrades

Although Australian medical authorities have given a firm thumbs down to routine (prophylactic) circumcision of male infants and boys, the practice persists among a shrinking minority of parents. They are urged on by a small but vocal coterie of circumcision advocates, who blur the issues by referring to “male circumcision” as though the operation is the same in all contexts. Here I argue that circumcision is like sexual intercourse: legitimate in some circumstances, illegitimate in others.

What is circumcision?

Circumcision refers to the surgical removal of part of the external genitalia; in males it means the excision of a component of the penis known as the foreskin; in females the term refers to a wide variety of surgical procedures, ranging from a slight scratch to the amputation of the clitoris. To talk about the acceptability of circumcision in general makes as much sense as to discuss the ethics and acceptability of sexual intercourse in general. Sexual intercourse with consent is fine; sexual intercourse without consent is rape.

To determine whether circumcision is a legitimate intervention, the context must be specified: surgery that may be permissible when performed on an adult who has given informed consent is not necessarily permissible when imposed on an infant or child who, by definition, cannot give consent.

Here I shall consider the most common form of circumcision practised in Australia today: medically unnecessary circumcision of normal male infants and boys, performed either in the belief that it will reduce their risk of contracting certain diseases to which they may be exposed at some future date; or because their parents, for various social reasons, prefer them to be circumcised.

No evidence that circumcision has improved child health

The principal argument for circumcision has always been the promise of better health. Since the 1850s a small stream of Anglo-American medical opinion has urged the necessity for early circumcision, in a campaign that I have characterised as the “demonization of the foreskin”. In my book A Surgical Temptation, I argue that their efforts have failed – there is no proof that child health has been improved by the imposition of widespread circumcision.

In Australia, reports by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in 2004 and 2009 found substantial improvements in child health in the 20 years from 1983 to 2003. This was the very period during which circumcision all but disappeared, falling from around 40% of boys in the early 1980s to less than 10% in the mid-1990s. If circumcision was as essential to health as its promoters claim, you would expect to find evidence of worsening child health in these surveys. In fact, the opposite occurred: as circumcision declined, child health improved.

To take another example, a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2009 on child health outcomes found that on many measures the United States scored so badly that it was on a par with Turkey and Mexico. Since circumcision is almost universal in Turkey, rare in Mexico, and in the United States is still imposed on about 50% of boys, it is plainly irrelevant to child health outcomes. The countries that scored best were northern Europe and Japan, where circumcision is practically unknown.

If circumcision does not noticeably improve child health, it should not be recommended as a health precaution, should not be performed as a routine and should certainly not be funded through Medicare.

These studies did not specifically cover the particular diseases that circumcision is supposed to prevent. But a recent article in Annals of Family Medicine subjected the claims of the circumcision lobby to an exhaustive review, and concluded that its value for child health is close to zero. When the literature is considered as a whole (rather than cherry picked for papers supporting a particular thesis) there is no proof that circumcision provides any significant protection against urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted infections or cancer of the penis.

The only evidence for prophylactic efficacy was African data suggesting that adult males who got circumcised had a slightly lower risk of contracting HIV through unprotected intercourse with an infected female partner. But as the authors of the paper comment, Africa has unique health problems. Since the circumcision trials were on adult men the results cannot be applied to children, nor can the World Health Organisation recommendations for the underdeveloped world be transposed to developed countries. In Australia, unlike Africa, AIDS is not a heterosexual epidemic, but a relatively rare disease confined to specific sub-cultures – homosexual men and injecting drug users. These groups can derive no protection from circumcision at all. In any case, because it is a disease of promiscuous adults, children are not at any risk of infection with HIV or any other STIs – unless, of course, by surgery. When they become sexually active boys are old enough to understand the issues and make their own decisions about how to manage the risks of sexual activity with others.

The Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations has stated that circumcision has no relevance to Australia’s HIV problem, and their conclusion has been endorsed by a paper in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, which argues that circumcision is not a surgical vaccine and is not appropriate as an HIV control tactic in Australia.

The consensus of medical authorities

Because it is a highly emotional subject, arousing deep passions on both sides, the literature on circumcision – both for and against – is vast. Like the Bible, you can find a statistic for any claim you care to make, and if you go back to the nineteenth century you can find medico-scientific evidence that the foreskin is complicit in, and circumcision can prevent, anything from epilepsy, tuberculosis and polio to bed-wetting, pimples and brass poisoning. There may be an avalanche of evidence in favour of its benefits for health, but on closer inspection much of it turns out to be dross.

Nonetheless, task forces set up by medical authorities in countries where routine circumcision became established (Britain, the USA, Australia and Canada) have attempted to sift through the piles of mullock and reach an overall conclusion as to whether it is good, bad or indifferent. They have all concluded that that circumcision as a precaution is ethically questionable and medically unnecessary, and that it should not be performed unless there is an injury, deformity or disease that cannot be treated in any other way.

The most recent statement from the British Medical Association comments:

“There is significant disagreement about whether circumcision is overall a beneficial, neutral or harmful procedure. At present, the medical literature on the health, including sexual health, implications of circumcision is contradictory, and often subject to claims of bias in research. …

“Doctors should ensure that any parents seeking circumcision for their son in the belief that it confers health benefits are fully informed of the lack of consensus amongst the profession over such benefits, and how great any potential benefits and harms are. The BMA considers that the evidence concerning health benefit from non-therapeutic circumcision is insufficient for this alone to be a justification for doing it.”

The current policy (October 2010) of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians states:

“The frequency of diseases modifiable by circumcision, the level of protection offered by circumcision and the complication rates of circumcision do not warrant routine infant circumcision in Australia and New Zealand.”

Summing up the pros and cons of circumcision, the statement continues: “The decision to circumcise or not to circumcise involves weighing up potential harms and potential benefits. The potential benefits include connectedness for particular socio-cultural groups and decreased risk of some diseases. The potential harms include contravention of individual rights, loss of choice, loss of function, procedural and psychological complications.”

Since the harms appear to outweigh the potential benefits, and many adult men resent having been circumcised, it follows that the only person entitled to make the decision is the one who must bear the lifelong consequences. The statement agrees with the Royal Dutch Medical Association that leaving the circumcision decision to be made by the boy when he is old enough to make an informed choice has the merit of respecting individual autonomy, preserving everybody’s options and respecting the “open future” principle.

Their bottom line is that (routine) preventive circumcision of minors offers no significant health benefit, carries significant risks, has an adverse effect on sexual sensation, is an affront to personal autonomy, is a violation of the right to bodily integrity, and should not be performed.

6. Medical ethics and human rights

Circumcision advocates refer to the objections to circumcision on medical ethics and human rights grounds as “nebulous”, but I suggest that these issues are central to the whole question. No matter how great the benefits of circumcision may be, the fact remains that the foreskin belongs to its owner as surely as his fingers, toes, ears, liver and any other organ. The only health-related situation where it can be ethically removed without consent is in a life-threatening emergency, or in order to address a deformity, injury or disease that has not responded to conservative treatments after reasonable efforts.

To be ethically acceptable a medical intervention must pass the five tests proposed by bioethicists Beauchamp and Childress:

1. Beneficence – Does the proposed procedure provide a net therapeutic benefit to the patient, considering the risk, pain, and loss of normal function?
2. Non-maleficence – Does the procedure avoid permanently diminishing the patient in any way that could be avoided?
3. Proportionality – Will the final result provide a significant net benefit to the patient in proportion to the risk undertaken and the losses sustained?
4. Justice – Will the patient be treated as fairly as we would all wish to be treated?
5. Autonomy – Lacking life-threatening urgency, will the procedure honour the patient’s right to his or her own likely choice? Could it wait for the patient’s assent?

Non-therapeutic circumcision of minors fails all these tests. It is not beneficent because it provides no therapeutic benefit (nor even a relevant prophylactic benefit, since a child is at zero risk of STIs). It is malefic because it diminishes the genitals. It is disproportional because the net gain (if any) is out of proportion to the loss, harm and risk of complications. It is unjust because adult preferences show clearly that if he had a choice in the matter the boy would refuse the operation. And it fails to respect the boy’s autonomy and preserve his future options as an adult individual. It has been strongly argued that such unwarranted interventions are unethical, violate the individual’s right to physical integrity, and are of borderline legality.

Conclusion

Even if all the benefits of circumcision claimed by its promoters were true, they would only amount to a case that might persuade a cautious adult to elect the procedure for himself. The case was never sufficient to justify doing it to children without consent. Individuals are entitled to make their own choices about how they manage their health, and should not be deprived of normal body parts merely because somebody else thinks they would be better off without them.

It may be justifiable to perform circumcision on adults who have given informed consent, and even on children who cannot give consent in situations of therapeutic necessity (i.e. to correct a pathology that has not responded to conservative treatment); and it is arguable that it is justified if the parents are devout, conscientious, practising adherents of a religion which holds that children must be circumcised. Like sexual intercourse, it depends on the circumstances: with the consent of a person above the legal age of consent, sexual intercourse is justifiable; without consent, or if the person is below the statutory age, it is sexual assault or rape. There is no reason why the rules for permanent bodily alterations, particularly in such a physically and psychologically sensitive area as the penis, should be less strict than the rules for sexual activity.

Filed under: Blogging Tagged: Africa, Australia, circumcision, circumcision advocates, external genitalia, HIV, male circumcision, medical authorities, Public health, Robert Darby, sexual intercourse, Sexually transmitted disease, United States, unnecessary circumcision, World Health Organization ]]> http://iainhall.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/circumcision-in-australia-neither-needed-nor-ethical/feed/ 0 iainchall http://iainhall.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/the-only-good-cat-is/ http://iainhall.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/the-only-good-cat-is/#comments Sun, 22 Jan 2012 23:07:46 +0000 Ray Dixon http://iainhall.wordpress.com/?p=15438 Continue reading →]]>

A Victorian gun group is pushing for the right to shoot stray cats

I am in two minds over the proposal for the Victorian Government to declare ‘open season’ on the shooting of stray cats. Firstly, I am anti-guns and I don’t think there are any valid reasons for people owning them. However, I’m no great fan of stray cats either, that tend to breed like bloody rabbits:

HUNTERS would be allowed to shoot cats that stray from houses on to public land under a controversial plan being pushed by a Victorian gun group.

The Sporting Shooters Association of Victoria wants the State Government to change the law to allow hunters to kill any cat it considers a risk to native fauna.

The push to legally destroy family pets and feral cats is among a range of changes the group is seeking.

They include new hunting seasons for cockatoos and galahs, the vulnerable crested pigeon and new regulations for slaying of eastern grey kangaroos.

In a report requesting amendments to wildlife regulations, the association says destruction of native wildlife in Victorian forests could be “partly mitigated if there was a provision to destroy cats within specified distances of dwellings.

“Cats within 200 metres of dwellings or on public land should be considered a danger to native fauna. Such animals within these areas should be able to be legally destroyed,” the report says.

The cat killing push has angered animal rights groups and comes as Bendigo residents were warned last week to keep pets inside after threats on public notice boards vowing to trap cats after dark and tan their hides.

Upper House Greens leader Greg Barber said the cat owners would be horrified shooters had their pets in their sites: ” … this shows they are out of touch with community values and they don’t care about people because it would be absolutely devastating to people if they lost their cat in this way,” he said.

The report is expected to be given to the Baillieu Government mid-year.

I think there’s something of an oxymoron in the term “Sporting Shooters”. I mean, is killing animals really a sport? I know that gun owners will defend their ‘sport’ to the death but, really, shooting defenceless cats, what kind of sport is that? It might seem that it requires a fair bit of skill to hit such a small target but with today’s sophisticated weaponry, I don’t think it’s much of a challenge. This is killing for killing’s sake disguised as a sort of public service. You know, “we’ll rid the community of these pests – we’re doing you a favour”.

I reckon ‘Sporting Shooters’ (i.e. those that think shooting wildlife is a great pastime) simply have a blood lust. It’s thrill seeking and the thrill is in the kill. I know from talking to one of our regular guests at GG, a deer hunter, that when he tells me his stories of blowing kangaroos in half he gets a really excited look on his face. It’s the kind of look you’d expect to see from someone describing a great sexual encounter - not a bloody roo cull – so maybe he gets off on it?

Then again, we are only talking about stray cats here and they are indeed a genuine pest. We recently had one that decided to call our property ‘home’ and promptly set about killing off many of the native birds that frequent our gardens, and scaring off the rest. Then, when it needed an alternative food source, it decided to wipe out the dozen or so large blue tongue lizards that were living around the property. They’re all gone now and that’s a loss because the blue tongues are actually a bonus for control of insects, etc.

We tried the council and the RSPCA for help in ridding us of this stray cat but all they would offer in the way of assistance was to say, “catch it and bring it in and then we’ll euthanase it.” So, they end up dead anyway. Somehow though, I don’t think that putting a soft-head bullet in a small animal like a cat – that will literally blow it to pieces - is the kindest and most humane way to achieve the same objective.

This proposal is surely too bizarre, controversial and potentially dangerous to be accepted. Then again, nothing that the Baillieu Government decides to do would surprise me and it’s just possible that some form of the idea will get up. How long though, before someone gets killed by a stray bullet from some idiot prowling the neighbourhood for any cat that dare strays from its home base? It’ll happen for sure because every year many people are killed by ‘Sporting Shooters’ out on the hunt.

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Maybe this is how the most extreme silvertail socialists get their crappiest ideas. For the cat loving Lefty the brew would have to be a wet dream come true (click for source)

Cheers Comrades

Wilkie is only the most recent person to be betrayed by Julia Gillard.

So Julia Gillard has reneged on her pokies agreement with Andrew Wilkie, and Wilkie has responded by withdrawing his support for the government. This was always likely after the government installed Peter Slipper as Speaker, and therefore no longer needed Wilkie’s support to survive.

In my last post I referred to a small possibility that the government could yet fall over this year. That possibility is now greater. If Craig Thomson get charged, or some Government MP retires due to ill-health or dies, we will likely be back at the polls.

Whilst I agree with Wilkie when he says that “We should be able to trust our politicians to keep their word”, he didn’t feel that was such an imperative when he voted for the carbon tax that Julia Gillard promised pre-election that she would never introduce.

In short, Gillard betrayed the Australian people by legislating the carbon tax. Now she has also betrayed Wilkie. He shouldn’t be too surprised.

Does Julia Gillard’s words mean anything? Consider the number of times she has been unable to keep her word in just the last two years:

1) Said that she’d sooner become full forward in the AFL than roll Kevin Rudd, a few weeks before she did so

2) Said that “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead” just before the 2010 election. The following year she changed her mind.

3) Promised to Wilkie that we would have mandatory pre-commitment nationwide before breaking that promise as well.

Here we have a Prime Minister who has consistently chosen what is in her short-term political interest over keeping her promises and other moral principles time and time again. The result is that she is regarded as unscrupulous and untrustworthy by many voters, and is desperate to avoid an election where voters will be able to pass judgment.

Ultimately, Labor will have to get rid of Gillard before the next election. This latest episode confirms that she is damaged goods and will only sully the government’s image. Labor must change leaders like one changes one’s clothes after rolling in the mud. A new leader will to some degree provide a fresh start.

In terms of policy, however, Gillard reneging of her agreement with Wilkie has positive unintended consequences. Obviously a pre-commitment trial is a wise step, as it would be reckless to implement mandatory pre-commitment nationwide at great expense without being confident that it will substantially reduce problem gambling.

click for source

Well here we have another fine example of the “religion of peace” living up to its reputation as the most loving and caring of the three great faiths which claim Abraham as a foundational author. They are clearly showing  the world just how they  can being the peace of the grave to unbelievers with their particular brand of spiritual soap powder.

Isn’t that just the most inspiring example of the ecumenical spirit?

Yep it Mo’s way or its the fast lane on the highway to hell:

Oh my bad That “religion of peace”don’t do music or fun either its all about supplication to their vision of the deity. I have but one simple question though, why on earth would any deity want or need the supplication of the faithful? Surely a supreme and perfect deity would not need such an ego boost or the power trip, HMM maybe its just another example of the face of the deity being created in the image of its prophet.

Cheers Comrades

I am a survivor, yep I have managed to get through my children’s early years and I survived the “evil” that is popularly known as the Wiggles. Frankly I was over them before may son was into them but the Hoo Harr about them giving Sam Moran his marching orders so that Greg can put the yellow skivvy back on is rather amusing and many of those aghast that Sam Moran  should be dumped seem to be forgetting that its all about business and that bands are very rarely some sort of communist collective. Usually they have a very clear commercial structure and no band as big as the Wiggles would just give away a one quarter share of the business  to a replacement singer when the original is unable to preform because of illness.

Sam Moran has been very well paid for the gig and now the gig is over I for one reckon that’s just the way it goes and its nothing to get upset about.

Cheers Comrades

Hmm At least Hi-5 had some eye candy for grown-ups to enjoy

I know for a fact that at least some Labor operatives believe in promoting the party’s candidates without much mention of Labor when the ALP’s brand is not popular. So I was very interested to see this flyer for the local elections arrive in my mailbox.

Note also that the candidate's email address and the campaign's website are all in the candidate for lord mayor's name rather than anything to do with the ALP.

This would seem to confirm what many here suspect: that Labor is currently on the nose in the Sunshine State and will likely to thrashed in both the State and local elections, not to mention the federal election due next year.

This trend started a few years ago, when the conservatives came closer to winning office in that state election than the three state elections before it. The following year, Queensland swung hard against Labor federally, delivering the vast majority of seats in the state to the LNP. If it was up to Queensland, Juliar Gillard, Kevin Rudd and the rest of federal Labor would have been relegated to Opposition nearly two years ago.

That’s not to say of course that Queenslanders are usually ill-disposed to Labor. The ALP has won every election in this state since 1989, and governed for all but two years in that period. And of course, it was the Pineapple State that delivered for Kevin Rudd in 2007 in what was a massive swing towards Labor that year.

In terms of the state election, there’s no doubt that the government’s longevity is one of its biggest electoral problems in spite of the fact that the government hasn’t been too bad. But many voters would still be angry with the fact that Anna Bligh promise not to privatise before the last election, and subsequently did so, in spite of Bligh’s strong performance during the floods. And of course, the electorate is currently in love with Campbell Newman, who is running from Premier from outside the Parliament.

As I said, it’s going to be a big year for politics in the Sunshine State.