There’s an old saying, ‘The whole world’s going crazy!’
Well, when I look around me at how politics has gone lately, I’m inclined to agree and not think it is mere hyperbole.
You just have to look at a few recent examples from around the globe to see what I mean.
Let’s start with the most ridiculous first.
‘Swaziland media had reported Monday that the police had banned women from wearing miniskirts & midriff-revealing tops, saying they were provoking rape.’ With an example given of one woman who was told by her, male, boss to go home from work and get changed after wearing a ‘mini skirt’ to work, which was 1cm above the knee!
What is it about ‘a sense of proportion’, ‘being reasonable’, self-control & keeping it in their pants, that these men do not understand? Why the overweening urge to control women because they can’t control themselves?
It’s just crazy to think that women have to be blamed, again, in the 21st century, for what men might do to them.
Luckily, in this instance, sanity has prevailed in the government of Swaziland, and a spokesman has said that, “Government has not deliberated and taken any position to that effect in recent times or any other time, nor has it ordered the arrest of anyone wearing a mini skirt.” He said, “The National Constitution of the Kingdom of Swaziland(2005) protected the freedom and rights of women in the country such that no custom may be imposed on them in which they were in conscience opposed.”
Still, it was a close-run thing, and it’s not to say that there aren’t many governments now around the world who aren’t reimposing paternalistic and stiflingly authoritarian controls over the women in their society. Saudi Arabia, Iran, and possibly Egypt now too, to name just a few. Plus, if you’re Homosexual in Uganda, forget about being ‘Out Loud and Proud’.
From The Guardian of November 26:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/26/uganda-anti-homosexuality-bill
However, as a gay Ugandan blogger sardonically points out:
‘In fact, if you re-read your anthropology, [Madame Speaker], you will find that homosexuality was tolerated before the White Man came to Africa with his Bible-that foremost foreign import that our detractors love to subjectively, but liberally, quote from.’
http://sebaspace.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/a-letter-to-rebeccakadaga-from-a-supportive-gay-ugandan/
However, what is most interesting here is that this Bill has links back into the vaulting ambitions of the powerful and ambitious men & women of America who make up the Religious Right.
That is, the same Religious Right who are waging a Christian Crusade to take back control of women’s bodies again, on behalf of the males who run the powerful organisations which make up the Religious Right, the Conservative women who facilitate their zealotry, and the political parties, mainly of the Right, through which they seek to express themselves & imprint their agenda upon the national psyche. And which leads to outbreaks of craziness such as this in America recently:
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/hobby-lobby-will-defy-federal-requirement-p
‘Hobby Lobby Will Defy ACA Requirement for Free Contraception’
Though it’s not really ‘free contraception’ but a requirement under the US’s ‘Affordable Care Act'(‘Obamacare’) that an employee’s Health Insurance payments, taken out of their wages by the employer, must include coverage for contraception in the plan the employer uses.
However, owners of the Hobby Lobby Group do not want to comply with that mandate because THEY are devout Christians. Even though, to refuse to comply, opens them up to fines of up to $1.3 million/day.
Just crazy stuff. However, the Religious Right have deep pockets and they have obviously decided on the fight they want to pick with the President, his ‘Affordable Care Act’ and the mandate to provide contraception coverage in the Health Insurance Plans for employees.
But it’s delusional and offensive for the following reasons:
- why should any employer seek to control the sexual health of their employees?
- Since when did contraception, the Pill, essentially, become ‘an abortion-inducing drug’, as these over-bearing religious zealots are trying to claim?
- And as one of their commenters so cleverly put it-
Stupid Git — 12/29/12 10:06am
I’m sure these same people would have no problem with CEO’s from companies like PIMCO and Ethan Allen telling employees what they can and can’t do based on their Islamic beliefs, right? I’m sure this isn’t just another case of the Christian Persecution Complex because they can’t live in the theocracy of their dreams. In fact, let’s make exceptions for all employer’s religious ideals:
If you work for a Jehovah’s Witness: no blood transfusions will be covered.
If you work for a Christian Scientist: No modern medicine at all.
If you work for a Scientologist: No psychiatric coverage.Did I miss any?
Finally, where will it end? Because these religious control freaks never stop at one success. They always want to keep pushing the envelope further. Pushing back against the hard-fought gains that women, minorities & the LGBTI community have made.
You only have to look around the world, as I have shown, with only a few examples, to see where they may take us if we don’t push back.
Which leads me to the Australian leg of our world tour, because I read the other day that Australia’s own religious extremists, ‘The Catch the Fire Ministries’, have started their own political party.
You wouldn’t read about it, a Sri Lankan immigrant to Australia ‘has launched a new Australian political party opposed to multiculturalism’!
However, he says it’s not a racist party it’s just Anti-Muslim(apparently he thinks Muslims are demons), and has a strongly pro-Christian ideology. Goodness knows what he thinks about godless Atheists! But he thinks it’s OK to want to impose his beliefs on government, and to prevent others from attempting to do the same, via government.
Which, of course, brings me to our Alternative Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. Another deeply religious individual.
It’s why I can’t help wondering, when I reflect upon all these other religious ideologues from around the world & in our own country, just what would Tony Abbott try to impose on Australia & Australians as PM of our country?
He says he won’t impose his religious beliefs on the nation, but he just won’t be able to help himself I believe. Already there are examples, too numerous to list here, from his time as a Minister & Senior member of John Howard’s Government, and since as Opposition Leader, which have demonstrated that Tony Abbott’s belief is that his core religious values are the ‘right’ ones, therefore right for the country.
This is why I thought it important to lay out just a few examples of where this type of thinking is taking the world of politics, and the world in general, at the moment, and thus why I think it is so important to defeat Tony Abbott at the next election in 2013.
I want Australia to be an island of sanity in a sea of political madness which is threatening to swamp us.
President Obama’s re-election has provided a bulwark, and Australia needs to join him in the fight against the sort of people who think it’s factually accurate to build theme parks which have humans riding dinosaurs, Fred Flintstone-style. We just can’t let Post-Enlightenment reality be subsumed by cartoon Christian craziness, with all the evil undertones that come with it.
As a scientist, I cannot.
As American, Pulitzer Prize-winning author & MIT Professor, Junot Diaz, put it so succinctly about the Republican Party(but the same goes for all political parties like them):
“The current GOP is ‘a shelter for a lot of messed-up & toxic paradigms’.”
And, might I add, these parties are a shelter for a lot of toxic & messed-up individuals.
They must be prevented from poisoning the political well here in Australia too.
And Professor Diaz puts it so well, encapsulating what I have been trying to put into words here, when he says:
“And what is happening to communities, is not racist but specifically white supremacist oppression.”
Except, I might add, that the 21st century ‘white supremacists’ have co-opted a lot of people like Danny Nahliah, who definitely aren’t White, but who have evolved a sort of symbiotic power relationship with the ‘Middle Aged Conservative Old White Guys’, based around their religious zealotry and the defined benefits riding on their coat-tails brings to them. They’ve sniffed the wind and they know which way it is blowing.
But again Junot has a neat explanation for this:
“The racial system that has sort of got this planet under a grip, a racial system that begins with the concept of coloniality, the racial system that sort of operates, whether it’s the Dominican Republic or the United States(or Uganda, Swaziland or Australia), isn’t called racism, technically, it’s called white supremacy”, he said. “We don’t like to call it white supremacy, because folks get real, like, iffy. They’re like ‘argh’. But technically, it’s that…So whether it’s the privilege of money, the privilege of gender. I mean try to get boys to talk about misogyny & patriarchy. Boys don’t want to talk about that. Why? Well, because, ‘Darn, if I talk about that, that’s a threat to my privilege’.”
And that’s why Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s ‘Misogyny Speech’ was so powerful and one of the most important speeches given by any politician around the world this year. It spoke directly to these themes, and she said it directly to the man who is the embodiment of White Supremacy, Patriarchy, Privilege and Misogyny in Australia today. Tony Abbott.
THE PUB 
Possibly a small cheer for Joe Biden?
Ezra Klein @ezraklein
Joe Biden is much more important to this White House than he’s typically given credit for.
Seems you’re right spinebill.
‘We’re a very rich country. Even the poorest of us live lives others (probably the majority of humanity)wouldn’t dream were possible.’
Yep. Yesterday my son was telling me about a conversation he had with some Irish backpackers a few days ago. We get a lot of international backpakers here, and a lot of them are Irish. They love it here and many would love to migrate if they had the chance. One of them explained why. He said ‘But you are all rich in Australia’. Son, who has a reasonable job and owns a very nice car but thinks of himself as definitely not ‘rich’ asked why. ‘Because you all have cars, everyone has at least one TV set, you all have plenty of food and there’s lots of work’. Then he chatted on about the lovely weather and the beaches.
It seems things are not that good in Ireland. No wonder the Irish are one of the biggest groups of immigrants. If only Australians would stop listening to the constant whining of Abbott and Hockey and their shills and start realising how good we have it. Even on a Centrelink payment life has to be better here than it is for many of those overseas.
And Joe Biden also has the job of bringing some concrete proposals to Obama on gun control by the end of this month.
Fiscal cliff stuff will be easy compared to this.
Leonetwo I’ve heard it said Oz is the best place in the world to be poor…
leonetwo
Thirty years ago, one of my friends abroad hooked up with a guy studying law at Oxford. He comes from Old English Money – spent his childhood in boarding schools, etc etc.
He came out on a visit.
They picked him up at Tulla and drove him home.
“Well,” he said, “I haven’t been here more than thirty minutes, but I can tell we’re in one of the better suburbs – detached houses with big gardens, two cars in every driveway….”
Broadmeadows.
The Repugs in the Congress have refused to allow the $60b emegency aid for Hurricane Sandy as part of the Fiscal Cliff legislation. Sparks are flying.
BK:
No problem, they can just have a few sausage sizzles to raise the money!
We could send them CanDo to sort it out.
This talk of $35 a day for the dole reminds me of a short stint I had on the dole in the 70s – at the time the payment was $35 a week.
The good news was that the forerunner to Centrelink was pretty slack with a range of things in checking circumstances etc. Quite a few people had their $35 cheques sent to their postal address,
c/- Poste Restante, Kuta Beach, Bali, Indonesia
Yes they arrived, and were cashable with the local money changers.
Spinebill – Yesterday you posted a tweet about the Americans in the lead-up to the Falklands.
The US SOS clearly told the Argentineans that it was OK to do it.
When the Task Force left Southampton 3 days after the landing the Americans were at sixes and sevens.
They are very paranoid about losing warships and didn’t believe that the Brits would actually sail Hermes and Invincible into an area where they would be under attack from some very good well-armed Land based aircraft.
What went on would be an American ‘Military Nightmare’ – SeaDart proving to be useless against low level attack and therefore the Type 42’s and 22’s getting hammered (Woodward’s placement of the carriers and the pickets is a thing of beauty) and the loss of all the helicopters would have seen them all in a ‘rubber room’.
The Americans don’t mind how many people they waste but the idea of ‘equipment’ getting trashed is way too much for them.
CTar
Well, thanks :).
It’s not really funny, because it’s often the poor Southerners who join up.
sprocket
Ah, those were the good days!! Lots of hippie businesses were given their start-up with dole money.
At least they were happy.
Leonetwo – Your son is right. We are all comparatively wealthy in Oz even if our name is not Packer or Rinehart. I certainly live the life of Riley.
I must confess that the life of briefly battered wife, single parent and desperate chasing after bits of paper while somehow juggling babysitters in the seventies now seems a million miles away. Even then though it was all comparative with the real hunger, threadbare clothes, chilblains and harsh poverty of war time outer London, which I was born in to and thought was the norm. Herr Hitler blessed us with the doodlebug which demolished our slum terrace, and brought us rehousing, separation from our boozie Dad and a munitions factory job for Mum. I was further blessed by Clement Atlee’s deal with Winston resulting in the 1944 Education Act leading to an unlooked for scholarship for me to the local grammar school. I certainly appreciated second hand shoes, clothes and satchels through my teens and I never thought twice about how to manage on a uni student allowance provided by the state and supplemented by chamber maid work or waitressing.
Like Zoomster, knowing I can eat, dress and generally live reasonably well has always been enough for me. But he has friends who can’t manage on $100K pa! As you say there’s no one solution. Character, experience, family expectations all play a part. Timing’s big factor. A 1974 Court grant of the familty home to me with its $2,000 equity in a $10,000 Dianella monstrosity has been transformed by four decades, many house moves, and shovelling spare cash into repay the mortgage which banks would willingly augment if I’d been foolish enough to accept has given me a decent home in Freo. So I’ve been blessed.
But the best thing ever given me was a decent education, which I didn’t seek out, but was somehow already equipped before birth with genes which enabled me to use it. Of course it’s been an up hill and down dale journey with mistakes made and much still to learn, but reading and writing is the start. So what occupies my thinking these days is how best can we organise the world we live in to give a fair go to as many individuals as our planet can best cope with. I think Julia Gillard and Labor are on the right track for Oz to play its part and we have to keep them there.
spinebill – The Yanks still don’t get this.
Witness the Cumberland at 22 knots twice broaching the dock in Benghazi Harbour early last year with pennants fluttering and with a full formal best dress armed anti-boarding party mounted while the Americans waited off-shore.
It’s called dash, style and calculated daring.
The Americans don’t have any of the three.
patriciawa,
[Herr Hitler blessed us with the doodlebug which demolished our slum terrace, and brought us rehousing, separation from our boozie Dad and a munitions factory job for Mum.]
In Cripplegate residents still refer to the Luftwaffe as the “German City Planners” and we often wish they’d return to take things over from the Corporation.
😀
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-02/us-house-votes-to-approve-fiscal-cliff-deal/4450338
US House votes to approve fiscal cliff deal
Updated 10 minutes ago
The US House of Representatives has passed a bipartisan deal meant to prevent Washington from pushing the world’s biggest economy over the fiscal cliff.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/the-fiscal-cliff-deal-that-almost-wasnt-85663.html
The fiscal cliff deal that almost wasn’t
By JOHN BRESNAHAN, CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN, MANU RAJU and JAKE SHERMAN | 1/2/13 12:21 AM EST
House Speaker John Boehner couldn’t hold back when he spotted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the White House lobby last Friday.
It was only a few days before the nation would go over the fiscal cliff, no bipartisan agreement was in sight, and Reid had just publicly accused Boehner of running a “dictatorship” in the House and caring more about holding onto his gavel than striking a deal.
“Go f— yourself,” Boehner sniped as he pointed his finger at Reid, according to multiple sources present.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/the-fiscal-cliff-deal-that-almost-wasnt-85663.html#ixzz2GnIaYgtU
For those that don’t like seeing cellphone towers.
http://twentytwowords.com/2012/08/13/15-cell-towers-disguised-as-trees/
BK,
What the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over 🙂
Afternoon all
Did you sleep in this morning CTar1?
My daughter is travelling to the land of the Free tomorrow morning. I am a nervous nellie, but at least the fiscal cliff has been averted 🙂
6P – I got up especially to send you on your way.
But you obviously beat me to it.
I was going to do “Lights on the Hill” but thought … Hmmmn … BB might ban poor old Stonkers for that!
Weather up there? Poxxey here.
I assume you’re floating in the pool with a stubbie.
Weather Hot,
Pool just got out,
Stubbie yes
Unfortunately 1 less bunnie in Aust. today. Hate it when it happens.
Ctar
Don’t you DARE do “Lights on the hill” for joe. That always makes me cry. Too real.
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/peter-slipper-did-not-sexually-harass-james-ashby/
Peter Slipper did NOT sexually harass James Ashby
Posted by admin in Law, Politics on 2 January, 2013 4:23 pm
Don’t be misled, Justice Rares made it very clear in his judgement that Peter Slipper did not sexually harass James Ashby. Margo Kingston corrects the record.
Am I a horrible person if I don’t mind the odd rabbit copping it in the neck from a B Double? I think I’m a good Australian actually because I believe 1 less rabbit is one less breeder of more rabbits that are taking back the countryside again. Twisted logic I know, but there you go. 🙂
Joe’s an old time softie. I am too. We hate killing things. Rabbits eat grass. They don’t know they’re classed as a pest.
“Bright Eyes” – Watership Down
As we are talking about cutting our financial cloth to suit our circumstances today, you may be interested in this article about people who do it on purpose because they have given up on the ‘Aspirational, I Want It All & I Want It Now!’ lifestyle:
http://grist.org/living/living-large-in-small-houses/
6P – I assume you’ve seen this:
There are lots of native animals that eat grass too. 😉
CTar1,
Here’s Joe 6 Pack with a better Truckie song. Take it away Joe.
In commemoration of it being ‘How Hard It Is To Live On The Dole Day’, I have decided to make the Dole Recipients Special for dinner tonight. Yep. Spag Bol. 😀
C@t
I have killed my fair share of Australian Fauna. It really is a horrible feeling for me,I see it coming and If I can avoid I will but when it’s 50t v any animal it isn’t much of a contest .
At least it was quick
Am I a horrible person if I don’t mind the odd rabbit copping it in the neck from a B Double?
When I see them and foxes on the road I go out of my way to try to hit them.
MY Favorite and most remembered Landing.
HK Kai Tak
Sadly No more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PCOcyt7BPI
joe – Hitting live stuff on the road is very regrettable but unavoidable.
I once scored a dead kangaroo and a fence post about 15 miles short of Brewarrina at dawn while passing a fast moving bus.
Torana GTR and I speared across the landscape.
Solution: A pair of pliers and a convenient fence provided enough 8 gauge to tie the ball joint back in and limp into town.
Ten o’clock couldn’t come soon enough.
What sort of drivers have we got around this joint? 😀
Good luck with that one confrssionss cannot. See mr boweallowing
Any. One. Else to moderate his blog
Iwas rather hoping a benafactor. Stepoed in. Here
Joe6pack, BB and C@t.
I’m a softie as well but having seen and lived with the absolute devastation those cute little bunnies do to the land means I have little sympathy for them, even though I could not harm or hurt them in cold blood. Seeing the awful consequences of myxomatosis and the calicivirus pulls at the heart strings so that I take some comfort in the sudden and rapid death of a roadkill.
Judge ‘n Jury rocket @sprocket___
Jenny Macklin has fought harder, and achieved more, for disadvantaged Australians than all of twitter and MSM combined. #justsayin #auspol
must be a slow news day, or people are looking for something to be indignant about.
As Kev would say, Fair suck of the Sauce Bottle.
Done that .
Sadly no more
sprocket:
Abbott has said many more extreme things about unemployment.
leroy 😆 Tears ensue.
New thread
(sorry it’s taken so long – lots of visitors…).
scorps – Dave Dudley?
Someone will hunt you down for that!
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/world/asia/beate-gordon-feminist-heroine-in-japan-dies-at-89.html
Beate Gordon, Long-Unsung Heroine of Japanese Women’s Rights, Dies at 89
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: January 1, 2013
Beate Sirota Gordon, the daughter of Russian Jewish parents who at 22 almost single-handedly wrote women’s rights into the Constitution of modern Japan, and then kept silent about it for decades, only to become a feminist heroine there in recent years, died on Sunday at her home in Manhattan. She was 89.
LOL, c@momma.
Just come home from shopping…over a kilo of chicken legs, $6, over a kilo of mince $8.
At least three main meals for four of us in that lot (with some veggies for the chook legs and pasta and tomatoes with the mince).
But tonight will be cold turkey sandwiches (post Xmas specials!)
Anyone else notice the duplicitous and hypocritical criticism of Jenny Macklin that the Opposition have cooked up?
They are saying that Jenny Macklin is ‘Out of touch’.
I guess that means they think that she is being disingenuous when she says she could live on $35/day.
So, joining the dots which the Opposition have left hanging in mid-air, does that also mean that they think Newstart should be increased from $35/day to enable recipients to be able to live better on it as it is ‘Out of Touch’ to think that it is a reasonable amount to live on, as Jenny Macklin does?
If the answer to that question is, ‘Yes’, then will they say so to the electorate and, how will they pay for it?
Hi all, happy 2013 to you.
I tuned into News Radio this morning, and it seems the ABC has morphed into the Greens publicity unit. When did that happen? I haven’t seen such an outpouring of sympathy for single mothers for a long long time. Or such sincere concern for the living conditions of the unemployed. I guess they have to take their “look over there!” moments as they find them.
I’d love to see the Greens do something practical to improve something in this country, instead of just telling us how wonderful it would be if they were running the show. But Bandt’s little stunt doesn’t give me much hope. If he’s more concerned with a little victory over Macklin that’s his concern I suppose. If he wants to do something useful about Newstart payments, all I can see this achieving is an opening up of the divide in opinions.
And, as noted elsewhere, it does seem the MSM are allergic to the Ashby story. Funny that – they were besotted by it until a few weeks ago.