There is a kid (13 years old) in Florida who has been told by the courts that she is too young to make the decision to have an abortion! She is in care in the State, and the Child Protective Services Department went to court to prevent her from having the abortion. ACLU is on the case, but I have to ask the question, how did this child end up pregnant? I mean I know what she did, but how come she wasn't better educated about pregnancy, and where were the CPS when she was running around getting into trouble? The story is available on the BBC at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4500245.stm Now I realise that it might be a sweeping over generalisation to say that kids in care aren't really cared for, but we read more and more about how kids in care are not properly looked after. And it was the Florida CPS that "lost" that girl a few years ago. I am also reminded of a case in California (I think it was) where a 14 year old girl got pregnant and her parents refused her consent to have an abortion, then just a few months after the baby was born the girl was arrested for child endangerment, because the baby was found cold and hungry in a crib on its own. The parents had left that 15 year old to deal with the baby on her own after having made her have the child! Her life is ruined because of their narrow mindedness. That will probably happen to this kid in Florida too, if she even allowed to keep the baby! And isn't that worse? Turning her into some kind of incubator for another couple. She isn't emotionally mature enough to make the decision to have an abortion and yet she is emotionally mature enough to have a baby, and care for it? Give me a break. And that doesn't even take into account the physical dangers of her having a baby at such a young age. This kid will be scarred for life as a result of the stupidity of Florida state law. The Governor should intervene! Oh wait, he is a Bush, NO CHANCE! I will be interested to see if he even has comments on this, after his disastorous meddling in the Terry Shaivo case. I am just glad that I am living away from that place now. A state where they make a law and then just when everyone has settled into a new way of thinking, they retract the law. Look at the gay couples being allowed to adopt children as one example! They pass a law saying that gay couples can adopt, and then a few years later retract the law. So making all those gay couples who adopted kids in the meantime, criminals! I guess they didn't prosecute the couples, we would have heard about it, Rosie is after all a resident in Florida, but this is just one demonstration about how screwed up the whole issue of human rights is in the USA, especially in red states like Florida.
I just hope that when the ball drops, they don't all try to immigrate to Canada.
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Terri Schiavo
For some time now this case has bothered me. It bothered my in several ways. Mainly because it is my belief that Terri was treated in a way that should be considered inhumane. Imagine the scenario, a woman is discovered locked in a room, shackled to the bed, starving and thirsty, her husband has deprived her of food and water for 13 days. What do you think would happen to the husband? Of course he would be locked up in prison for all kinds of different offenses, not least abuse! What happens when that room is a hospital bed and the husband is the doctor? Nothing. Nothing! Ok, that is one scenario. Look at it another way, a dog is discovered, starving and thirsty. The owner is prosecuted! Another way? Ok, a dog is injured in an accident and is to all intents and purposes dead although it can still move its eyes and whimper. Does the vet recommend that the owner put the dog on life support? No of course not! The vet kindly suggests it would be the best thing to put the poor dog out of its misery. So when it happens to a person, do the doctors suggest that the person be put out of their misery? Oh no! That wouldn't be fair! Let the poor person live on, struggling to communicate their wish to die for fifteen years! Fifteen years!!!! How *dare* her parents over rule the agreement that Terri made with her faithful and loving husband? And why the hell did the PTB allow for this case to drag on so long? If it wasn't bad enough that this was going on, for it then to become National News, International News, turns it in to some kind of freak show for the world to stare at. It horrifies me that something like this happened. Scares me that if I was in an accident which resulted in a persistent vegetative state that the agreement that I have made with my partner could be over ruled by my mother. Well I know that wouldn't happen, but in theory it could!
Then today I read a brilliant article by a BBC correspondant who lives in the US, that has given me hope that something good has come out of this horrendous case.
The URL is http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4415595.stm
This is one of the paragraphs from that article "They were emotionally blackmailed but refused to budge, were told that their deepest held religious beliefs should push them in one direction, but thought for themselves and thought differently." The article goes on to say "If you can convince the courts that you are legally in the right, then no politician, even the president himself in his pyjamas and on his high horse, can stop you.
Michael Schiavo, Terri Schiavo's much vilified husband, did convince the courts.
He believed that his wife would want to die and they agreed.
It is a lesson the Republican party, which has allowed itself to become very closely allied with the religious right, will reflect on in the months ahead.
Already moderate Republicans are talking openly of re-capturing their party from the social conservatives.
It is possible at least that the high watermark of social conservatism has been reached. Its limit set by the will of a silent liberal majority.
The founding fathers must be watching from their heavenly perches and wondering at the power of the constitution they created. "
I sincerely hope that America learns from this lesson and that the religious zealots of that country have a looser grip. There is too much integration of church and state, it is one of the reasons I left America. If you do not believe in God you are still expected to pledge your allegiance to him, and that God can be any God I realise, but what if you are like me, a Pagan who believes not in a single deity, but in the ruling of nature over all things? No matter how fervently religious you are, you have no right to force your beliefs on me, and yet American's don't seem to even realise that that is what is happening to them. Now with this Terri Schaivo case, perhaps they are beginning to wake up to the fact that GWB is intent on making everything run to his own rule book, and that book is the Bible, interpreted by him (someone who can't even pronounce nuclear).
As an endnote, dying of thirst is one of the worst ways to die, drinking water is one of the major instinct for humans, and to deprive someone of water until they die is cruelty in its worst form. It is one of the reasons why the water torture is the most effective form of torture. Terri Schiavo should have been allowed to die a painless and dignified death once the decision was made that she wanted to die.
Then today I read a brilliant article by a BBC correspondant who lives in the US, that has given me hope that something good has come out of this horrendous case.
The URL is http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4415595.stm
This is one of the paragraphs from that article "They were emotionally blackmailed but refused to budge, were told that their deepest held religious beliefs should push them in one direction, but thought for themselves and thought differently." The article goes on to say "If you can convince the courts that you are legally in the right, then no politician, even the president himself in his pyjamas and on his high horse, can stop you.
Michael Schiavo, Terri Schiavo's much vilified husband, did convince the courts.
He believed that his wife would want to die and they agreed.
It is a lesson the Republican party, which has allowed itself to become very closely allied with the religious right, will reflect on in the months ahead.
Already moderate Republicans are talking openly of re-capturing their party from the social conservatives.
It is possible at least that the high watermark of social conservatism has been reached. Its limit set by the will of a silent liberal majority.
The founding fathers must be watching from their heavenly perches and wondering at the power of the constitution they created. "
I sincerely hope that America learns from this lesson and that the religious zealots of that country have a looser grip. There is too much integration of church and state, it is one of the reasons I left America. If you do not believe in God you are still expected to pledge your allegiance to him, and that God can be any God I realise, but what if you are like me, a Pagan who believes not in a single deity, but in the ruling of nature over all things? No matter how fervently religious you are, you have no right to force your beliefs on me, and yet American's don't seem to even realise that that is what is happening to them. Now with this Terri Schaivo case, perhaps they are beginning to wake up to the fact that GWB is intent on making everything run to his own rule book, and that book is the Bible, interpreted by him (someone who can't even pronounce nuclear).
As an endnote, dying of thirst is one of the worst ways to die, drinking water is one of the major instinct for humans, and to deprive someone of water until they die is cruelty in its worst form. It is one of the reasons why the water torture is the most effective form of torture. Terri Schiavo should have been allowed to die a painless and dignified death once the decision was made that she wanted to die.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Don't mess with me
Why is it that people resort to being rude and abusive when they know they are losing an argument? Recently I had a discussion, via email, with someone who, in my humble opinion, wasn't doing his job properly and it was affecting me. That is something that I hate with a passion. I couldn't care less if you don't do your job properly, unless it affects me, in which case I will go out of my way to make sure that people know that you aren't doing your job properly! So anyway. This guy wasn't doing his job, which is to keep a website up to date. I had sent him some updated information to be changed on the site back at the beginning of February. It didn't get done, so two weeks later, enough time I felt, I resent the information. Oh and at the time I cc'd someone else to let her know that I had sent the updated information. The site still wasn't updated. So two weeks later I wrote to offer my assistance in keeping the site up to date. No response. So then I talked to the lady I had cc'd, to ask if there was anyway to get the information updated other than emailing this one guy. The guy in question was there at that meeting (as were 150 other people) and came over to talk to the other lady, so she introduced us and he was all friendly at the time. To cut a long story short, he wrote to me asking if I knew how to make a searchable database that could be put on the site. I said no, but if he wanted to work on that while I kept the current pages up to date I was happy to help. He wrote back and said that I Couldn't be of any help. Ok fine, but please update my information! He wrote back, cc'ing a whole bunch of other people who (to my knowledge) had no idea what was going on and basically said "who the hell do you think you are?" to which I replied with my official titles for the organisation to let him know that I did hold office. Well that let the cat out of the bag in no uncertain terms. So I hope that the jerk realises that he shouldn't mess with me! I will not be referred to in such derogatory terms by anyone, and the fact that he included an audience when he chose to "put me in my place" was a big mistake.
Now four other people, whom he cc'd, have come forward to say that they too are fed up of the information not being updated in a timely manner, so he has lucked out in thinking that he will get support from others for his position. HA HA! He has also been telling people that it takes hours to update the pages, so I just wrote to one lady telling her that I am a professional web designer and that I *know* how long it takes. People who are not good at what they are doing take hours to do things, and people who are too lazy to do it quickly, tell people that it takes hours, but those of us who are good at what we do, and do things in a timely manner, know damned well that it would take less than one hour to updated information that shows up on 5 different web pages in the site. If it even took an hour. It would of course depend on the program that you use to make the pages. But if you *are* using a program the process should be even quicker! I personally use notepad and write the code from scratch, which might seem more laborious, but it makes the pages simpler (by design) and easier to update in the future.
For the future, I will continue to complain about people who don't do their jobs thereby affecting the way I do my job, because I feel that I shouldn't suffer because of the inadequacy of other people! In a way I am kind of hoping that he resigns in a petulant fit. Because I would happily take over the site, I would make a much better job of keeping it up to date, and without boasting (my nana doesn't like people who boast), I know I would make a better design for the site too.
So there dickhead! :D
Now four other people, whom he cc'd, have come forward to say that they too are fed up of the information not being updated in a timely manner, so he has lucked out in thinking that he will get support from others for his position. HA HA! He has also been telling people that it takes hours to update the pages, so I just wrote to one lady telling her that I am a professional web designer and that I *know* how long it takes. People who are not good at what they are doing take hours to do things, and people who are too lazy to do it quickly, tell people that it takes hours, but those of us who are good at what we do, and do things in a timely manner, know damned well that it would take less than one hour to updated information that shows up on 5 different web pages in the site. If it even took an hour. It would of course depend on the program that you use to make the pages. But if you *are* using a program the process should be even quicker! I personally use notepad and write the code from scratch, which might seem more laborious, but it makes the pages simpler (by design) and easier to update in the future.
For the future, I will continue to complain about people who don't do their jobs thereby affecting the way I do my job, because I feel that I shouldn't suffer because of the inadequacy of other people! In a way I am kind of hoping that he resigns in a petulant fit. Because I would happily take over the site, I would make a much better job of keeping it up to date, and without boasting (my nana doesn't like people who boast), I know I would make a better design for the site too.
So there dickhead! :D
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