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Monday, March 30, 2015

Renovations at the Tavern

Some modest renovations have been made.

We now have a post box on the left side of the Tavern so spammers can 'communicate' their displeasure directly to the Tavern Keeper instead of feeling the boot of the Bouncer.



Mind you, I don't run the postal service. That's in Hillary's Village.  I can't guarantee delivery time. And I might reply or not. But you post your queries and take a chance.

Oh, and  we have a counter too, to celebrate the recent 100,000th drinker served. Not a new bartop. 




Pax.




Sunday, March 29, 2015

Cosplay, Bread and PhDs

All PhDs are the same. Cutting edge stuff is the bread and butter of the PhD. The people who gain them are 'Top of the Range'. We get lots in the Tavern.

Some earn by their bread by breaking new ground in Physics or Medicine, Engineering or Womyn's Studies. We don't get many of the last lot in here though.  We have a University at the bottom of the Mountain in Hillary's Village and our 'young people' are encouraged to go there. The State provides cash for the lecturers and cattle trucks for the students, although the students have to take out loans for the fare. 

We get lots of pretty girls up here too. Many are students; some from Japan. They are noticeable from their colourful, non-traditional costumes. They usually find their way here after having a few sticky buns at Ross, up-Island from here.

One of our State-of-the -Art PhDs has written a thesis about them. But it was young Emma Hope who dropped in to explain all the stangely dressed gals in the bar, cluching their BYO cakes.

It was Dr Craig Norris who wrote his ground breaking work. He specialises in media, popular culture, and globalisation with a focus on Japan and Australia. His current research interests, apparantly, include media tourism and fan pilgrimages, video games, and cosplay which relates to his earlier research on the cross-cultural appropriation and spread of manga and anime (Japanese comic books and animation) in Australia.
The Doctor is in: Put your kit on.
These are vitally important in our multicultural, multi-age age.  
?
Craig teaches subjects which cover a variety of qualitative and quantitative approaches to media and culture, including case studies from youth media, cult media, and Japanese popular culture as well as honours level seminars in media theory, methods, and current issues.

Worth the cattle trucks and debt, I'm sure.

Wouldn't you, as a parent, just really want to spend your hard earned income on sending your kids to study with Craig?  Craig's case study included some of my customers.

On the other hand, Kirsty Lloyd-Bostock and Carl Crosby run a bakery. No PhD needed and the cost to customers is far and away less. They tell me: 
We're in the heart of Tasmania's finest Heritage Village.
We're a comfortable 1830's coaching inn with creaking stairs, cosy bedrooms with en suites and a log fire in the guest lounge.
You can wake to the smell of fresh bread from our own wood-fired oven.
We serve a unique bakery breakfast, with hot bread, croissants and pastries straight from the oven to your table. Don't worry if you can't eat it all - you can take it away for your morning tea.
Ross Village is the best ½ way stopping point between Hobart and Launceston, and only one hour's easy drive to the East Coast.

All sound great to me. I might outsource some of our fine dining needs to them.

 The Ross village Bakery is Ross' original bakery and has been operating on the site for over 100 years. The wood-fired oven is a unique piece of colonial history - a traditional semi-scotch brick "3 bag oven" - with the capacity to bake 300 loaves at a time. 

They take the oven temperature up to over 700° F at the start of the day and bake pies, pastries, breads, buns and cakes as the temperature gradually falls. On busy days they often fire the oven again in the late morning and use on average about a barrow load of firewood each baking day. 


Kirsty and Carl have not (yet) been targetted by homosexuals looking for a fight. 
They say:
Sometimes the old fashioned way of doing things really is still the best - and we believe this is true of bread. The solid even heat produced in a full brick wood-fired oven is the best environment for baking bread. We use unbleached flours and old-fashioned recipes to make a variety of crusty breads; many of our loaves we bake straight on the oven floor, which gives them an all round crust. 

Take away or take a seat. We're open every day in summer for light meals and the best espresso coffee (and tea) on the Heritage Highway. On fine days we serve outdoors in our garden courtyard.
The University does not have a baking faculty. They have failed dismally to attract bakers, unlike the Ross Bakery which attracts customers all the way from Japan. 

As Emma tells:
Stopped by for a drink, with very nice BYO Buns.
This is not Emma.
EVERY year thousands of Japanese tourist make the pilgrimage to an obscure bakery in a small rural town in the middle of Tasmania, captivated by its likeness to the setting of one of Japan’s most popular anime movies.


Anime movie Kiki's Delivery Service is a Japanese classic.

Fans are spellbound by the uncanny resemblance of The Ross Village Bakery to locations in the 1989 movie Kiki’s Delivery Service, a production of the premier Japanese anime creator Studio Ghibli and its founder Hayao Miyazaki — known as the western versions of Disney and Walt Disney.
“It’s like discovering Hobart is the setting forSnow White or Cinderella,” said University of Tasmania lecturer Dr Craig Norris, who has done a thesis paper on the phenomenon.
Dr Norris said is was fascinating because the story had been going for about 15 years.
“The startling thing is how its so persistent, so immersive and so successful.”
Ross bakery co-owner Carl Crosby said he welcomed at least 50 Japanese tourists every day, usually more and often by the busload.
Some — known as cosplayers — even wear costumes to emulate their anime idols.
Not looking joyous, but then the Japanese are known for being inscrutable.
“Seeing the looks of joy on their faces when they walk in, some squeal and jump up and down,” Mr Crosby said.

“Some of them will come in their little costumes, with their bow in their hair and their little red shoes, and they want to stand in front of the oven and take a multitude of pictures.
“They usually have something to eat and a coffee, usually a vanilla slice or a scallop pie.”

No one is sure where the folklore started but it has endured and is gaining momentum.
On a Studio Ghibli blog post, one of the animaters talks about receiving daily emails from fans about the Ross bakery. But none of the animaters have ever been to Tasmania.

Visitors to Ross bakery are overwhelmingly young woman who identify with Kiki and her story of a witch travelling from an urban space to a small community to come of age.
“You read in the guest log stories like a Japanese girl who has come to Australia, she just broke up with her boyfriend, her job hasn’t worked out but then she’s in the bakery and it all kind of makes sense now. She’s found a sanctuary and relief, much like the story of Kiki herself, overcoming challenges and adversity,” Dr Norris said.

“I think the atmosphere of Ross resonates really strongly with the atmosphere of the movie this idea that it’s a nice regional country space, with coffee and treats and you feel welcomed.”

An upstairs loft area in the bakery has been decorated to look like Kiki’s room from the movie after constant requests from tourists.
Dr Norris said the connection was not one created or enforced by the bakery owners, rather “it’s a grassroots, bottom-up phenomena developed by the fans”.
The cartoon Kiki in her bakery.

He said as well as travelling half way across the world, fans went to extraordinary measures to visit.
"I'm gorgeous, so watch it !"
“There are stories of tourists who fly in to Launceston or Hobart and then get a taxi to Ross not having any idea how far out of the way it is.”


 Dr Norris said since writing his research paper on Ross Bakery and Kiki’s Delivery Service he had been inundated with interest.“Since writing that article I’ve been invited to Japan to present on it,” he said.
“There’s a lot interest in this real oddity of having a cherished Japanese movie with a connection to Tasmania, an unlikely location.”


Personally, I think it is Kirsty and Carl who should get the invitation. 

Meanwhile should either of them be in the vicinity of the Tavern there are drinks awaiting them. I shall make a point of dropping by their bakery next time I am in Ross.

Will we see Nippombashi Street come to Main St Ross soon?

Perhaps in time for next years Mensa BBQ by the river in Ross.



There might be quite a few strangely attired young folk about. Mind you, the locals could give them some competition.


Pax (and a piece of cake).




Saturday, March 28, 2015

Guns and Butter..... and Nutters

Drink deep of Grace. The Tavern has plenty for all who would sup from the cup.

But Time is finite.

Put butter on your bread while you can because there are guns and nutters aplenty and their numbers increase.

The world is short of Grace.

It is also short of Statesmen.

It is essential to defend against an enemy. But what if everyone is the enemy? 

What if it becomes impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys. 

We live in an age of 'Rights'. Well, in the soft West it seems. What if might turns out to be the last 'Right? 

History is written by the victors, it is said.  Also, it is said, "And the meek shall inherit the Earth".  

Or what is left of it.




China has the largest army in the world, by several orders of magnitude.




Russia. Remember them? They are still around, hunkered down for a while but building.



In the air too.



China has been quiet for a long while sorting itself out, getting ready to take it's place. It is every bit as powerful as any.




Bureaucratic Europe only seems to have lagged. They have not. NATO is huge.



The capabilities are far greater than butter.


There are 'smaller' nations with immense power. Not quite so immense as the Big ones. But when they sit on the powder keg with lighted matches.........

Putin: The Mafia Thug. Obama: the half-white ant. Hoo Say So; the Chinese Politburo man of the moment. Iranians. ISIS, Israeli, Tory, Labour, Democrat, Republican, Nationalist, National Socialist, International Socialist, Democratic Socialist. People's Democratic Socialist, Liberal........ 

Abortionist.

It used to be that a nation under threat could talk of 'Win', and 'Victory'.

That was Yesterday.

A new dawn may be different.

Tomorrow, perhaps today, it is more a matter of being Personally Good vs being Bad. There may be no 'National' win.


For you, Personally, PAX DEI.

For the world?





Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Demolishing Cant

Standing behind the bar I get to hear all sorts of conversations. Some, quite frankly are rather dull, the usual bar-room chatter, but others are of such High Quality that I just listen in modest Awe.

That happened today. So, not for one moment do I hesitate to bring this conversation here. 

In this short discussion the arguments for abortion, sex education, and the usual 'modern' gamut of crass and destructive policies were spelled out systematically and repeatedly.... and completely demolished by logical thought, cogent reasoning and a sound moral sensitivity. 

What has happened to that sensitivity?



It is clear that in our rush to abandon (specifically) Christian Morality we have produced an 'ignoranti class' that cannot think their way out of a paper bag, resort continually to  popular 'mantras'  that should embarrass a 14 year old and who devalue not simply morality as a concept but human life as an objective reality.

Peter Hitchens took issue with one such.



Again I repeat a passage seen here before:


Human existence contains only two defining instants,
 which are conception and death.

 And this is not a matter simply of religion but of biology.

All other milestones, no matter the name given to it, 
be that Zygote, embryo, foetus, baby, toddler, teenager, 
adult, old person or ‘disabled’,
no matter how dramatically recognized in society,

 simply amount to transitional phases in the human life cycle.

So despite all of the grandiose but empty oratory,
 any individual who does not advocate the defence of all innocent human life
 between those two landmarks
 is an individual who holds no regard for the sanctity of human life on the whole.



Pax Dei.

Pray for the babies..... and Yourselves.









Tuesday, March 24, 2015

How's that Revolution going?

Not a soul worldwide is unaware of the causes of the American Revolution. (Except maybe half the American population). It was to get rid of the King and all the flummory and hoity toitiness. Well, after so long it ought to be time to take stock.

Several folk in the P&B did that today when Mark Steyn came by with a mate for a couple of jars. He jarred a few of our American cousins a bit, I can tell you.

It was his mate Mike Shull who set the balloon up for the pins. He said:
Prince Charles was in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky today. 
About an hour ago, he stopped by our downtown Cathedral, where I occasionally attend Mass, to give a brief speech. This is only 2 blocks from my office, so after a late lunch I walked over to see his arrival.
As a reader of your work, I had in mind your past comparisons between the British Royal Family's entourage and that of the president and other politicians. I nonetheless still amazed at the modesty of Charles' cohort.
The attached picture shows the moment he stepped from the car. And the car was not even a limousine. The entire motorcade consisted of only two police cars, Charles' towncar, and one additional vehicle. The other (empty) police cars visible across the street are not there for the prince. They are parked there every day because City Hall is just down the block.
As you can see from the picture:
1. they did not even close the street off for his arrival, not even for a few seconds. Motorists are still going by on the left.
His car stopping there made no more disruption to traffic that a pizza delivery guy or UPS driver parking on the curb for 30 seconds to make a delivery.
2. the sidewalk is not roped off at all.
3. there were no "advance guard" or phalanx of other cop cars that preceded him that simply are off camera. What you see is really all there was.
And the men who look like Secret Service there are actually just church parishioners who were helping direct what little traffic was there. I attended the Vice Presidential debate between Biden and Ryan in 2012 at Center College here in Kentucky. There were at least 50 police cars, maybe 100, and several "decoy" type black Chevy Suburbans for Joe Biden.
You are correct that the monarchy America rejected years ago is now practically Joe Lunchbox compared with the grandiose, prima donna treatment demanded by our elected "public servants".
Putting aside the fact that the President's 40-car motorcade is nothing to do with security - as we see everywhere from the Secret Service hookers in Cartagena to the vast entourage required to get Obama to Mandela's funeral only to stand him three feet away from a violent schizophrenic convicted of "necklacking";

and putting aside the ever more absurd impositions on the citizenry, such as maintaining the street's closure for hours after the Presidential procession has passed so that pregnant women and injured persons are not allowed to cross the thoroughfare to get to the hospital on the other side; 
and putting aside that I strongly dislike the Prince of Wales and regard his Grand Thoughts on "climate change" as witless and inappropriate;

putting all that to one side for the moment:
One of the advantages of monarchy in a democratic age is that it comes with a built-in grievance factor: There's always a certain percentage of the people that is chippily resentful of even the most footling expenditure on the Royal Family's so-called pampered parasites - as a casual glance at the papers in Her Majesty's realms will reveal. So a prince or royal duchess can't go around closing streets and draining police manpower because some republican pol on the make will be all over the news whinging about it. 
And putting aside that the President doesn't even wear a friggin seat-belt.
One has to wonder. Is someone trying to kill the President? 

Kill Obama? 

Why on earth would his huge security detail think that?

He is beloved, shirley? 
That's very healthy, and one consequence of it is the entourage you saw in Louisville this week. 
HRH The Prince of Wales is the heir to the thrones of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Barbados, Tuvalu, Belize, Papua New Guinea, etc, etc, but when he travels to Kentucky he takes only what he needs.
This is how Royalty visits.
By the way, that's also way cooler - as my daughter pointed out when she and I saw the Queen in Glasgow in her Diamond Jubilee year. HM and the Duke upfront, and one car behind. And that handful of guys are on their game. Whereas, with a 40-car motorcade, only the Cartagena hookers are on the game.
But the bigger point is that a 40-car motorcade leads to a 40-car motorcade political culture - 
- with a ruling class on the inside of the perimeter, and the rest of the schlubs on the outside. They don't live where you live. They drive through it, and you glimpse them through the glass darkly as you wait for the royal procession to pass and daily life to resume.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been entouraged to the hilt for almost a quarter-century, is a near parodic example of the entitlement this breeds. What length do you think the motorcade's going to be by the end of her reign?

So, one has to ask. 


How is that revolution going for you? 

From here it looks like it has revolved right around.

I just hope that future Presidents take a good look at the farce they present and cut the motorcade down to reasonable size.

Although.... my friend Joyanna points to a worrying trend and there may be a need to add a few cars to stop all the 'self abuse' hurled the President's way.



By the way, do you think my opening remark was a tad unfair? Half the American population would not know? Hmmmm


OK. It is a very small sample.

Let's try another.



These are the best educated kids in the world (or so they claim).

By the way, both the younger Royal Princes are 'Warriors' who have seen active service as Officers in their military branches. Their dad, Prince Chuck has an honourary military role now as he is getting on in years. English Princes do as they have always done.

How many Presidential sons are soldiers defending their country?

Drive carefully.

Pax



Monday, March 23, 2015

Profit and Doom: Lee Kuan Yew

A great man, perhaps one of the most effective in the past 70 years, passed away yesterday. He was a Dictator. A Patriarch. A Leader and driver of his people. He will be remembered.

Lee Kuan Yew and this Tavern Keeper crossed paths in my youth, when I was a mere squire and he a brand new Prime Minister-come-BossMan of the new Republic of Singapore. The Eminent man enjoyed having the rich and powerful join him for dinner, and it was such an occasion which propelled me into Knighthood. Someone had to 'stand-in' while the Big Nuclear Cheese in the Far East was the guest of honour. 



My Knighthood was marginally lower than his 'God Calls Me God' GCMG, but we both tip the hat to the Saints. Except he does it in their presence now while I pull pints and mop the floors.

You can read a full 'bio' of this man here:

Not many people these days know that Singapore was nearly killed in the womb. 

Britain had conceived Singapore but just as it was about to be born as an independant little nation, Indonesia tried to kill it. 

It was a sort of attempted national late-term abortion. But Britain prevented that. British Knights and Squires, yoemen and cooks and bottle-washers  patrolled outside the abortion clinic of the far east and even went through the doors to hunt the staff and throw them out into the street. 

I was there. We saved baby Singapore.

(That is an analogy, by the way. Just in case you thought ......) Anyway...

Singapore is a 'model' of a capitalist society - and a warning. From Lee's early days when it was a rather smelly, swampy place, it has grown and developed under his firm hand to be a powerhouse.  

Not only, but a clean, well ordered, fair and sensible place in most of its practices. Indeed, it is a beautiful place that manages to treat its citizens well. Lee was the Big Father to his people. Firm, yes, but also for their best interest.



Singapore is one of the richest per capita places on the planet. It trades with everyone. It is at a 'cross-road' in Asia. It is a financial 'super-city'. If you are looking to profit from hard work and smart thinking, look to Singapore.

But for all it's and his success, a darker legacy may well become apparant. Michael Cook  sank a few bevvies with us and pointed it out. And that led to several further discussions arising.
Great men make great mistakes

Lee Kwan Yew was a visionary statesman. 
But his vision for Singapore's population may have doomed the prosperous city-state.

Lee Kwan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, died this morning. On many counts he was a great man: he took a poor city with no natural resources, not even its own water supply, and turned it into one of the most prosperous and best-educated countries in the world. 
But the gleaming buildings and immaculate streets of Singapore distract visitors from a desperate problem: a lack of young people. The birth rate is possibly the lowest in the world. 
This could undo everything the great man dreamed of. 
(The MercatorNet article below was published in 2012 but has lost none of its currency, as his Lee's son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong,acknowledged last year.) 

Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister of Singapore, is one of the great statesmen of the 20th century.  A man of steely resolve, he turned a tiny, defenceless, impoverished, racially and politically divided island with no natural resources into an economic powerhouse. 

Today Singapore is a leading financial centre, is the world's easiest place to do business, is ranked number 8 in foreign exchange reserves, has the world's top-ranked education system, and is the world's least corrupt country. 
Economically Singapore is a miracle 
....and Lee Kuan Yew is its wizard. 

But there is a cloud over Singapore's existence. Although it is situated in a volatile part of the world, the threat is not war or tsunami or cyclone. 
It is its own imploding birth rate. 
In finances, Singapore is at the top of the league table; in fertility, it is at the bottom. 
With a birth rate of 0.78 it has been ranked by the CIA World Factbookat 222 out of 222. To compensate for the falling number of babies, Singapore imports people. About 35 percent of Singapore's workers are foreign-born and about 23 percent of all residents. 

In short, like the great man himself until yesterday, Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore is slowly dying. The government is trying desperately to boost the birth rate with generous benefits, dating services and louche advertisements. And still the birth rate falls. 
Lee is watched this tragedy with tears. Speaking at a National Day celebration dinner on Saturday, [11 Aug 2012] he sounded desolate: 

"If we go on like that, this place will fold up, because there'll be no original citizens left to form the majority, and we cannot have new citizens, new PRs to settle our social ethos, our social spirit, our social norms. So my message is a simple one. The answer is very difficult but the problems, if we don't find the answers, are enormous… 

"Our educated men and women must decide whether to replace themselves in the next generation. At the moment, 31 per cent of women and 44 per cent of men are opting out. Not leaving a next generation. 

"So, just ponder over it and you will know the solution is not simple. But we've got to persuade people to understand that getting married is important, having children is important. Do we want to replace ourselves or do we want to shrink and get older and be replaced by migrants and work permit holders? That's the simple question."
Perhaps it's rude to ask this of a man mourning the mortal illness of a child whom he conceived, dandled on his knees and coached through adolescence, but who is responsible for this disaster? 
The answer is Lee Kuan Yew. Great men make great mistakes. 
In the 1960s and 70s he worried about the Population Bomb and enacted stern population control policies. He encouraged sterilisation, urged Singaporeans to "Stop At Two", and imposed harsh financial penalties for those who didn't. 
By the late 80s, the government had panicked and changed its tune to "Have Three or More (if you can afford it)". A future prime minister was already warning Singaporeans that "passively watch[ing] ourselves going extinct" threatened national survival. 
It was too late. 
Singaporeans had acquired a taste for shopping and small families. Now their country's future belongs to immigrants and workers from nearby China, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. Singapore has to face the possibility of cashing in its chips. 

Singapore's woes may be of its own making but there is a lesson here for the rest of us. In a small nation, the impact of an ageing population is felt more keenly and more swiftly than in larger countries. Singapore has to face the possibility of cashing in its chips. But demographic trends are inexorable everywhere. When birth-rates fall below replacement level, as they have throughout the developed world, migrants with very different cultural values replace the native-born. 

Going extinct is no fun at all. Just ask Lee Kuan Yew. 

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet. 
Michael is quite right of course, and generous in his praise despite warning of the inevitabilities.  But what do we onlooking nations think? What are our national attitudes to the great birth control issues?

Well, we all know the answer to that. We in the West are in the same slippery slope as Singapore.

We have been on the contraceptive boom ever since the 60's: the abortion boom since the seventies; and the sexploitation of everyone from the age of three upward since the eighties. Hedonism rules. We have abandoned morality and promote sodomy as a population plan. Not only has morality suffered but even thinking has. Feminism, cultural marxism, homosexuality, gay friggin' marriage, the 'entertainment' industry. Our society is disintegrating before our eyes.

This is most notable in the abortion debates. 

We had Peter Hitchens sitting down with a free supply of Fine Ale and a couple of godless brainiacs today. Now, I have to say this but even with quite smart people he can be cutting. Here though he tore apart the abortion arguements just like an abortionist tearing a baby to pieces. It was messy !

The atheist pro-baby-killing chap was left legless and armless. Unfortunately not harmless though. His arguments are 'current wisdom'. Wrong, but official cant.



Despite all the knowledge we have from the very 'science' that such pro-abortion people seem to rely upon, the pro-baby-killers completely ignore the relevant.

So here are some 'discoveries', 'clear pronouncements' etc I won't put all of them here. You can follow the link for all 41.
41 Quotes From Medical Textbooks Prove Human Life Begins at Conception

“The life cycle of mammals begins when a sperm enters an egg.”

Okada et al., A role for the elongator complex in zygotic paternal genome demethylation, NATURE 463:554 (Jan. 28, 2010)

*****
“Fertilization is the process by which male and female haploid gametes (sperm and egg) unite to produce a genetically distinct individual.”
Signorelli et al., Kinases, phosphatases and proteases during sperm capacitation, CELL TISSUE RES. 349(3):765 (Mar. 20, 2012)
*****
“The oviduct or Fallopian tube is the anatomical region where every new life begins in mammalian species. After a long journey, the spermatozoa meet the oocyte in the specific site of the oviduct named ampulla, and fertilization takes place.”
Coy et al., Roles of the oviduct in mammalian fertilization, REPRODUCTION 144(6):649 (Oct. 1, 2012) (emphasis added).
******
“Fertilization – the fusion of gametes to produce a new organism – is the culmination of a multitude of intricately regulated cellular processes.”
Marcello et al., Fertilization, ADV. EXP. BIOL. 757:321 (2013)
******
National Institutes of Health, Medline Plus Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary (2013), http://www.merriamwebster.com/medlineplus/fertilization
The government’s own definition attests to the fact that life begins at fertilization. According to the National Institutes of Health, “fertilization” is the process of union of two gametes (i.e., ovum and sperm) “whereby the somatic chromosome number is restored and the development of a new individual is initiated.”
Steven Ertelt”Undisputed Scientific Fact: Human Life Begins at Conception, or Fertilization” LifeNews.com 11/18/13
******
“Human life begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoo developmentn) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo).”

Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2003. pp. 16, 2.

******

“In that fraction of a second when the chromosomes form pairs, the sex of the new child will be determined, hereditary characteristics received from each parent will be set, and a new life will have begun.”
Kaluger, G., and Kaluger, M., Human Development: The Span of Life, page 28-29, The C.V. Mosby Co., St. Louis, 1974.
******
An embryology textbook describes how birth is just an event in the development of a baby, not the beginning of his/her life.
“It should always be remembered that many organs are still not completely developed by full-term and birth should be regarded only as an incident in the whole developmental process.”
F Beck Human Embryology, Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1985 page vi
******
“It is the penetration of the ovum by a sperm and the resulting mingling of nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the initiation of the life of a new individual.”
Clark Edward and  Corliss Patten’s Human Embryology, McGraw – Hill Inc., 30
******
“Although it is customary to divide human development into prenatal and postnatal periods, it is important to realize that birth is merely a dramatic event during development resulting in a change in environment.
The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology fifth edition, Moore and Persaud, 1993, Saunders Company, page 1
Why do people just not take notice?  

I could go on, but instead ask you to continue at: 



Clearly some food for thinking there. It can be washed down with some of my servings from the bar.

Place your orders.

Pax.







Saturday, March 21, 2015

Violence Against Women's Rights

Put aside for a moment that violence against anyone is generally frowned upon, and let us consider Violence Against Women. Or rather their rights.

No-one ever mentions it. It is hidden. It happens to so many women that it should be a scandal occupying a billion column inches and hours on the TV. And adverts. Yet no-one even mentions it.

How dare anyone violate their rights.

AS IF !

Thank goodness for the United Nations. The highly efficient and modestly paid officials, committee members, bureaucrats, 'Ambassadors' of 'causes' as well as Ambassadors of Nations, have been pulling their fingers out lately.  They see what is going on. 
And the U.N. has its hand right up the Media. 
The UN has wriiten several reports about Oz and our way of acknowledging 'Rights', and we have come under severe criticism for the way we have stopped Refugees from drowning themselves.  Some of those were women.  Quite a few in fact.

And because we have reduced the number of children (anyone under 25 it seems) illegally here and therefore in custody while we sort out carefully where to place them, from well over 1500 to just over 200. It seems we are to be criticised not only for not encouraging more to be sent to sea from other countries in leaky boats but also for trying to avoid having any in custody at all. 

And of course their mothers who are separated from their husbands / boyfriends and housed in the community with their children while the men are behind barbed wire. It is violence against women's rights ! 

I rather agree, personally.

They have the right to be treated equally, and enjoy the same privileges as the men.

But we in Oz simply ignore those women's rights.

Dreadful. 

They (the U.N.) even sponsored a young, white, English woman actress, whose entire enormously highly paid life has been devoted to the cause of portraying a teenage witch in films, to get men onside in recognising the problems that women face. She is so wealthy that no-man would dare to offer to 'privilege' her, which enables her to date a modestly hunky footy-thug and live in hope.
Not even allowed to wear modest clothes !
Poor little rich girl.
She is fortunate not to fancy other women and date one of them. It seems that around 70% of  domestic violence is initiated by women, according to Harvard University.  She actually stands less chance of being thumped by a footy-thug than by a fellow lady actress.  No doubt she will raise that unequal discrimination at the United nations.

With their (the U.N.s) practice in investigation, using the internationally recognised, worlds-best-practice  advocacy methodology, the U.N, saviours have turned their attention on the hidden horror of violence against women's rights. And they have a result.


And surprise... they are not blaming men !!!!!

Anne Bayefsky delivered the news and read it out while I poured her a drink. Heck, I am never violent toward women, let alone against them ! Their rights are just the same as mine and any customer's.
Top violator of women's rights around the world? 
It's Israel says UN
Guess who is the number one violator of women’s rights in the world today?  
Israel.  Violating the rights of Palestinian women.
At least that is the view of the UN’s top women’s rights body, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). 
CSW ended its annual meeting (yesterday Friday, March 20 )by condemning only one of the 193 UN member states for violating women’s rights – Israel.
Not Syria. Where government forces routinely employ rape and other sexual violence and torture against women as a tactic of war. Where in 2014 the Assad regime starved, tortured and killed at least 24,000 civilians, and three million people – mostly women and children – are refugees. 
Not Saudi Arabia. Where women are physically punished if not wearing compulsory clothing, are almost entirely excluded from political life, cannot drive, cannot travel without a male relative, receive half the inheritance of their brothers, and where their testimony counts for half that of a man’s.
Not Sudan.  Where domestic violence is not prohibited. There is no minimum age for “consensual” sex.  The legal age of marriage for girls is ten. 
88% of women under 50 have undergone female genital mutilation. And women are denied equal rights in marriage, inheritance and divorce.

Not Iran. Where every woman who registered as a presidential candidate in the last election was disqualified.  “Adultery” is punishable by death by stoning.  Women who fight back against rapists and kill their attackers are executed. The constitution bars female judges. And women must obtain the consent of their husbands to work outside the home.
In fact, not only is there no possibility that the UN Commission on the Status of Women will criticize Iran, Iran is an elected member of CSW.   
Sudan – whose president has been indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity – is currently a CSW Vice-Chair.
The 2015 CSW resolution on Israel will repeat, as it does every year, that “the Israeli occupation remains the major obstacle for Palestinian women with regard to their advancement, self-reliance and integration in the development of their society…” 
Not Palestinian men.   
Not religious edicts and traditions. 
Not a culture of violence. 
Not an educational system steeped in rejection of peaceful coexistence and of tolerance. 

Instead, the fault for a UN statistic like this one – an average of 17% of Palestinian women are in the labor force as compared to 70% of Palestinian men – lies with 
the Jewish scapegoat. 
That fact comes from one of only nine official documents produced by the UN for the 2015 annual CSW meeting.  Eight were procedural or general in nature, and one was entitled:  “Situation of and assistance to Palestinian women.”
By comparison, there was no report on Chinese women and girls, half a billion people without elementary civil and political rights, who still face the prospect of forced abortion and sterilization.

There was no report on women in Somalia, where female genital mutilation is ubiquitous, sexual violence is rampant, and women are systematically subordinate to men.
There was no report on women in Yemen, where the penal code goes easy on the killers of women for “immodest” or “defiant” behavior, there is no minimum age for “marriage,” and women have no equal rights to property, employment, credit, pay, education, or housing.
And the women’s rights scene is not the only liberal sham at the UN.
The UN’s top human rights body, the Human Rights Council (HRC), will wrap up a major session next week by adopting a minimum of 
four times as many resolutions slamming Israel than any other country on earth. 
Condemnations of Israel will include a resolution demanding Israel immediately give back the Golan Heights to Syria – the place where Syrians run from their own government for life-saving Israeli medical care.
Tallying all the resolutions and decisions condemning a specific state over the history of the Human Rights Council, one-third has been directed at Israel alone. 
Remember Ukraine? In the past year, there have been at least 5,500 confirmed killed – with recent reports from Germany suggesting the total may be as high as 50,000 dead – in addition to a million people displaced.  But the score is 67 Council resolutions and decisions attacking Israel and zero on Russia.  
So who is calling the shots at the Council? 
A closer look at its members reveals human rights luminaries like Qatar – that bankrolls the terrorist organization Hamas – along with China, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
It is impossible to add this all up and conclude that the UN’s treatment of Israel is anything but wildly discriminatory. 
In the twisted language of UN rights, the means is the verbiage of equality, while the end game is prejudice.
 
I think we can see. It has nothing to do with Rights', Women's or Human. No wonder we missed all those column acres and TV ads. No-one in the lefty media wants to even mention Israel. (Nor men).
Anne Bayefsky is director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust. Follow her on Twitter @AnneBayefsky.But at least Oz gets a mention from the U.N.

Only no publicity is bad publicity.  And no publicity of men's rights is what we have.

Pax.