Observations

All victims of violence and abuse deserve services and support

2009-11-25T14:30:00.000+11:00

Up to one in three victims of sexual assault and at least one in three victims of family violence and abuse is male (perhaps as many as one in two - please refer to the website http://oneinthree.com.au for more details). While many services have quite rightly been established over the past three decades to support female victims of family violence, the needs of male victims remain largely unmet.
Historically government policies have been based on the assumption that all perpetrators are male and all victims are female, and the policies of current governments are still based on this erroneous position. Indeed, regretfully, the National Council to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children did not include male victims in their otherwise laudable March 2009 recommendations. Their report, Time for Action: The National Council's Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, 2009-2021, states:
"Why is the Plan of Action focused on women and their children? While both women and men can be perpetrators and/or victims of sexual assault and domestic and family violence, research shows that the overwhelming majority of violence and abuse is perpetrated by men against women... This Plan of Action... focuses primarily on the rights of the majority of victims of domestic and family violence and sexual assault, women and their children."
Why a large minority of victims - at least one third and possibly one half - doesn't deserve support is never explained. The report focuses only on the needs of women, neglecting the government's legal and moral obligation to provide services and support for the substantial male population of victims of sexual assault and family violence:
"Violence against women and their children is wrong. It is a fundamental breach of human rights... No woman should be a victim of sexual assault or domestic and family violence... Australian women and their children have a right to protection from violence... Services [are required to] meet the needs of women and their children."
Using this rationale, Governments would stop providing services to female victims of heart disease or to females who need occupational health and safety programs (as the minority of heart disease and workplace illness and deaths are female). Sensibly they don't do this, so why ignore male victims of family violence and abuse just because they might be in the minority?
The Time For Action report is being enthusiastically supported by the Federal Government, which has so-far allocated 41.5 million dollars to meet the needs only of women. This funding for women is of course laudable, but men need funding for services and support too. This conscious neglect of males is in itself a form of social violence – the Australian Government's human rights obligations require it to cater equitably for the needs of all, regardless of gender. One in three is enough to reject the politics of ideology. It is time to care for all those in need, whether male or female. Now is the time for action by politicians and community leaders to recognise that a comprehensive approach is required to combat the scourge of family violence.
To Governments and the relevant Departments, I urge you to consider making all services, programs and campaigns for victims and perpetrators of violence and abuse targeted equitably to all that need them - whether male or female.

Britain presses on with Big Brother telecoms database

2009-11-11T09:43:00.001+11:00

RICHARD EDWARDS

November 11, 2009
LONDON: Every phone call, text message, email and website visit made by Britons is to be stored for a year and will be available for monitoring by government bodies.
All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by British law to keep a record of every customer's personal communications, showing who they have contacted, when and where, as well as the websites they have visited.
Despite public opposition, 653 public bodies will have access to the data, including police, local councils, the ambulance service, fire authorities and even prison governors.
They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to obtain the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority.
Ministers had originally wanted to store the information on a single government-run database, but chose not to because of privacy concerns. But the Government announced this week that it was pressing ahead with privately held ''Big Brother'' databases that opposition leaders said amounted to state spying on the public.
It is doing so despite its own research showing that it has little public support.
The law will increase the amount of personal data that can be obtained by officials through the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which is supposed to be used for fighting terrorism.
Although most private firms already hold details of private calls and emails for their own business purposes, most do so only on an ad hoc basis for a period of several months.
The new rules will not only force communications companies to keep their records longer, but also to expand the data they keep to include details of every website their customers visit.
While public authorities will not be able to view the contents of emails or phone calls, they will be able to see the internet addresses, dates and times and identify recipients of calls.
Firms involved in storing the data will be reimbursed at a cost to the taxpayer of £2 billion ($3.6 billion) over 10 years.
Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said: ''The big danger in all of this is 'mission creep'. This Government keeps on introducing new powers to tackle terrorism and organised crime which end up being used for completely different purposes. We have to stop that from happening''.
Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, has criticised the amount the scheme will cost for what he said is in effect ''state spying''.
''It is simply not that easy to separate the bare details of a call from its content,'' he said. ''What if a leading business person is ringing Alcoholics Anonymous?''
The proposed law will not come before Parliament until after the general election. But the Home Office insisted it would push it through.
Telegraph, London

Windows even works BETTER on a Mac!*

2009-11-08T20:04:00.000+11:00

Better the broken Windows than life with the Mac monks

2009-11-03T17:25:00.000+11:00

Please do not give me credit for this article. It was written by the undersigned Charlie Brooker from the Guardian Newspaper. I am an iZombie who was tickled by the truth and accuracy of the Article.

CHARLIE BROOKER
November 3, 2009 - 2:43PM

Using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981. And don't change it.
I admit it: I'm a bigot. A hopeless bigot at that: I know my particular prejudice is absurd, but I just can't control it. It's Apple. I don't like Apple products. And the better-designed and more ubiquitous they become, the more I dislike them. I blame the customers. Awful people. Awful. Stop showing me your iPhone. Stop stroking your Macbook. Stop telling me to get one.
Seriously, stop it. I don't care if Mac stuff is better. I don't care if Mac stuff is cool. I don't care if every Mac product comes equipped with a magic button on the side that causes it to piddle gold coins and resurrect the dead and make holographic unicorns dance inside your head. I'm not buying one, so shut up and go home. Go back to your house. I know, you've got an iHouse. The walls are brushed aluminum. There's a glowing Apple logo on the roof. And you love it there. You absolute monster.
Of course, it's safe to assume Mac products are indeed as brilliant as their owners make out. Why else would they spend so much time trying to convert non-believers? They're not getting paid. They simply want to spread their happiness, like religious crusaders.
Consequently, nothing pleases them more than watching a PC owner struggle with a slab of non-Mac machinery. Recently I sat in a room trying to write something on a Sony Vaio PC laptop which seemed to be running a special slow-motion edition of Windows Vista specifically designed to infuriate human beings as much as possible. Trying to get it to do anything was like issuing instructions to a depressed employee over a sluggish satellite feed. When I clicked on an application it spent a small eternity contemplating the philosophical implications of opening it, begrudgingly complying with my request several months later. I called it a bastard and worse. At one point I punched a table.
This drew the attention of two nearby Mac owners. They hovered over and stood beside me, like placid monks.
"Ah: the delights of Vista," said one.
"It really is time you got a Mac," said the other.
"They're just better," sang the first monk.
"You won't regret it," whispered the second.
Leave me alone, I thought. I don't care if you're right. I just want you to die.
I know Windows is awful. Everyone knows Windows is awful. Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's grim, it's slow, everything's badly designed and nothing works properly: using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981. And I wouldn't change it for the world, because I'm an abject bloody idiot and I hate myself, and this is what I deserve: to be sentenced to Windows for life.
That's why Windows works for me. But I'd never recommend it to anybody else, ever. This puts me in line with roughly everybody else in the world. No one has ever earnestly turned to a fellow human being and said, "Hey, have you considered Windows?"
Until now. Microsoft, hell-bent on tackling the conspicuous lack of word-of-mouth recommendation, is encouraging people — real people — to host "Windows 7 Launch Parties" to celebrate the release of, er, Windows 7.
To assist the party-hosting massive, they've uploaded a series of spectacularly cringeworthy videos to YouTube, in which the four most desperate actors in the world stand around in a kitchen sharing tips on how best to indoctrinate guests in the wonder of Windows. If they were staring straight down the lens reading hints off a card it might be acceptable; instead, they have been instructed to pretend to be friends. The result is the most nauseating display of artificial camaraderie since the horrific Doritos "Friendchips" TV campaign (which caused 50,000 people to kill themselves in 2003, or should have done).
It's so terrible, it induces an entirely new emotion: a blend of vertigo, disgust, anger and embarrassment that I like to call "shitasmia". It not only creates this emotion: it defines it. It's the most shitasmic cultural artefact in history. Watch it for yourself.
Still, bad though it is, I vaguely prefer the clumping, clueless, uncool, crappiness of Microsoft's bland Stepford gang to the creepy assurance of the average Mac evangelist. At least the grinning dildos in the Windows video are fictional, whereas eerie replicant Mac monks really are everywhere, standing over your shoulder in their charcoal pullovers, smirking at your hopelessly inferior OS, knowing they're better than you because they use Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard. I don't care if you're right.
I just want you to die.
GUARDIAN

Compare and Contrast....

2009-03-23T10:46:00.003+11:00

The case of a former High Court judge who went to albeit extraordinary lengths to avoid a $97 speeding fine, and at 80yrs old, with Prostate cancer, having lost his reputation and credibility, after a lifetime of service, got two years jail. I would have thought what he has lost publicly was more than enough, without placing him as a former Criminal Prosecutor, among heavy crims......

And then there is the case of a Mid-North Coast man, who while drunk, broke into a home in the middle of the night, raped a four year old girl, and got 3yrs Supervision.....

Enough said......

Popularised Mental Illness?

2009-03-21T14:08:00.000+11:00

One of the trends in recent years, especially by the Rich & Famous, Celebrities, and Sports figures has been the new "Trend" towards the public exposure to their discovery that they suffer from Bi-Polar Disorder.

This more often than not follows their poor behaviour with Alcohol or Drugs reaching Media attention. Complicit in this of course are the Mental health Professionals involved, who rather than explore the fact that the individual involved was utilising Drugs/Alcohol in extreme proportions long before the "Symptoms" of the MH Disorder reared its ugly head, chose to take the "easy way out" and make the Prognosis. This avoids confronting the issues of Addiction with the client, and also creates an easy out for the individual involved.

Never mind that Bi-Polar symptoms can be produced by Drug/Alcohol Addiction/Abuse, and by addressing the primary problem of the Addiction/Abuse, can also be alleviated in most cases........lets just provide an excuse for the client, one which neither addresses the Addiction/Abuse issue or the underlying Psycho-Social issues, lets just medicate them with Lithium or another of the Psych drugs and let them continue their lifestyle......

This method of Diagnosis does neither the individual involved, their Family, or the Mental Health Profession any favours. It serves to provide reason for the individual to avoid responsibility for their behaviour and Addiction, and invariably condemns the client to a life of disorder when when the issues may well have been resolved......