This Tavern is a place fit for Heroes and Saints. Heck I said so myself. So one can expect that Nelson Mandela should be welcomed here, considering the outpouring of praise from the News and Commentators, politicians and the usual suspects in our Universities. He is after all being touted as being due to take a seat somewhere closer to the left side of God Himself than Jesus occupies.
So just as any Saint has his or her life looked at fairly carefully and all claims are put to some scrutiny, we should take a look. That pen-ultimately is St Peter's job, of course, and I doubt that the old Saint at the Pearly Gates is going to appreciate the sort of snow-job that we are getting down here.
He is not easily accessible for comment, however.
So, we asked one of our more clear thinking and deep-digging earthly Tavern regulars to take a squiz.
Stefan Molyneux did just that.
As is not unusual, Blogger is slow on uploading the video so you will have to click the link:
A grand bunch of guys from the past gathered in the bar today, reminiscing on their Glory Days. I knew some of them. Colleagues from a previous life. Some were quite young when I was coming to the end of my time.
Military types tend to do that from time to time. Those that stay in the saddles and even those Knights that take to Tavern Keeping in their later years.
Men go their own way.
I have many friends on the 'Men's Rights Movement' and amongst them the talk often turns to the 'single man's life'. A Life which for many is a necessity in a society where women seem to reject so much of the normal masculinity of good men in their hurry to escape their own fantasies of the small minority of not so nice men.
It is difficult to be a Good man in today's society and even those that are 'Good' teeter on the edge of the Abyss sometimes. Every military man knows this. His lot in life is to stare into that abyss from time to time.
Some fall in.
I will talk of this and more in a moment but first let us recall. Let us see the Knights of today and listen to their refrain.
Fabulous music. Apposite too.
Men have always gone their own way. Men of action and devotion, that is. Adventurers, discoverers, inventors. Unlike many of the young men in the MGTOW branches of the MRM they plan, they study, they take great self-discipline and skills which are wrest from long experience and effort. They search for the talents and the abilities in themselves and make Character.
They do something more than just useful to themselves. They serve. They take a strong position on the great waves of life.
See the modern Knight in his cockpit, before battle.
In a previous era the Knight on his steed with lance and sword could wreak havoc against similar foes. Today's Knights have steeds of steel that fly and have lances with warheads thrown instead of held and with warheads that can devastate a town.
See them.
They sit: some pray: some meditate on what they have to do today.
"Please God, let me do 'Right'. "
It is so easy to do wrong.
They are thinking men.
Thinking.... "I may die today".
Some might hear the echo of his Viking ancestors.
'It is a good day to die'.
Will a Good man die today?
Few of those older models of MGTOW ran from anything. Few were 'driven away'. They were not afraid.
Many were Good men. But as I said before, some teetered on the Abyss, as do so many men in the military.
With great Power comes a great temptation to do evil.
Some do that.
The Abyss stares back and draws them in.
The power to kill confers special responsibility and demand on Character.
History is replete with fallen heroes.
I commanded men in my day. I used to tell them..." You must kill the enemy, but not hate them.They are men, boys, just like you."
Today it is anyone who gets in the way and one's aim must be surer than ever.
But it is not the life or death of the enemy that matters.
We all die sometime by some means. No. It is the State of your Soul that matters. His too.
Life is hard whether one is good or bad. Or lazy. Life gives so much opportunity to engage with the world. But every engagement also provides the grist for the mill of Character creating. And for choice.
I have dealt with 'choice ' before.
The 'main' choice is between Good and Evil. In our own hearts and minds.
Our young men face choices. Too many excuse their choices by blaming someone or something else. 'Twas always this.
Your life is made by the world you live in.
You are made by You.
You will lose your life one day.
When you have stared into the Abyss and walked back from it, not fearful or blaming, but having chosen, then you have earned the Glory.
You can go to your rest knowing that you won the battle.
If I had a pint (to resell of course) for every time I had to remind an argumentative customer that "He didn't actually say that", I would be rolling in clover. Tavern Keepers are forever intervening to set records a bit straighter and 'keep the peace'.
But newspapers and TV hardly ever step up to correct statements. They much more often perpetrate inaccuracies themselves. One might ask if they do it deliberately.
Take the Pope for instance. He came in for a whacking the other day for mentioning 'Capitalism' in a critical manner. The lefty, anti-Christian news and commentariapparachik mob leaped to strike blows, going where Angels and even prudent chaps do not go.
“Pope Francis attacked unfettered capitalism as ‘a new tyranny,’” reads the lead of the Reuters story by Naomi O’Leary describing Francis’ work.
This led to the propagation of headlines such as by NBC: “Pope Francis attacks ‘tyranny’ of unfettered capitalism”.
Or by the Daily Kos: “Pope Francis: Unfettered Capitalism Is ‘Tyranny’”.
Or by the Nation: “The Pope Versus Unfettered Capitalism”.
Or by Bill Moyers: “Pope Francis Calls Unfettered Capitalism ‘Tyranny’”.
Even the Wiki warriors posting on Wikipedia fell for it, apparently forgetting to cite a primary source, writing under the “Capitalism” entry, “Pope Francis described unfettered capitalism as ‘a new tyranny.’”
Robert Romano dropped in to do a bit of peace keeping and correcting. I put a pint on the bar for him as he let rip against the stupid and feckless 'news'. And he gave a small economics and political 'straightening' too.
All too often people drunk on their own power to manipulate, create 'Straw men' to knock over.
It is an old ploy showing Intellectual Dishonesty.
Did Pope Francis really lay a broadside into what he called “unfettered capitalism”?
That is certainly what headline writers the world over would have you believe. Well, at least the ones that picked up Reuters’ account of the Pope’s new apostolic exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel,” a news story that was then syndicated globally. So prevalent were the headlines, they even convinced conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh that the pontiff had actually written it.
“This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope. Unfettered capitalism? That doesn’t exist anywhere. Unfettered capitalism is a liberal socialist phrase to describe the United States. Unfettered, unregulated,” Limbaugh told his millions of listeners.
And he might have been right.
There is, however, one acute problem with the quote.
Francis never actually wrote that.
Naomi O’Leary did.
Search the document for yourself and search for the words, either “unfettered” or “capitalism.” They’re not there.
The actual phrase “unfettered capitalism,” ironically, was apparently coined in 1942 by economist Joseph Schumpeter, himself a critic of communism — he even had a chapter entitled “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”
An even greater irony is that the phrase has since been adopted by various socialist and Marxist writers as a pejorative against capitalism’s supposed excesses.
But before returning to Francis, let us pause on Schumpeter for a moment, for it was he who famously argued that capitalism, after raising standards of living in a way no other system had ever before in history, would eventually fall, but not through violent uprising.
Instead, it would succumb as a victim of its own success that “undermines the social institutions which protect it.”
That, through the passage of time it would morph into what he termed a “corporative state.” It would become “bureaucratized,” and since the system “by its very achievements, tends to automatize progress, we conclude that it tends to make itself superfluous — to break to pieces under the pressure of its own success.” It would give way, he wrote, to socialism.
The entrepreneurs would be replaced by bureaucrats, and then, when the daggers came out and government stepped in to take over, those very bureaucrats would simply surrender.
Just look, he wrote, at the manner in which these “capitalist interests… as a whole behave when facing direct attack. They talk and plead — or hire people to do it for them; they snatch at every chance of compromise; they are ever ready to give in; they never put up a fight under the flag of their own ideals and interests.”
In short, it “absorbs the slogans of current radicalism and seems quite willing to undergo a process of conversion to a creed hostile to its very existence. Haltingly and grudgingly it concedes in part the implications of that creed.”
One need look no further than the experience of 2008 through 2010, the bank bailouts, the seizure of AIG, the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government purchase of GM and Chrysler, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing programs, and then Obamacare, the takeover of the student loan industry, and Dodd-Frank’s financial regulations to conclude that Schumpeter at least in this narrow regard was indeed prophetic, even if he would have quibbled with the idea he was making any sort of prediction.
Most of this is of course quite recent. There have been some pretty dreadful 'Leaders' in this and the past generations but few can match the current crop of 'Statesmen'.
Not that this Taverner sheets all the blame onto Obama. His predecessors started the ball rolling, but at least did not try as well and as successfully to 'flannel' the public with his mendacious 'Hope and Change'.
These were all episodes in a very short span of very big businesses — and their supposed representatives in government on the right side of the political spectrum — seemingly ceding their own interests, making way for
unbridled state control of whole industries
and even going as far in some cases as to argue in favor of it.
This societal transformation, a revolution to be sure and still ongoing, is being achieved without firing a shot.
Which brings us back to what Pope Francis actually wrote.
He criticized those who “assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.”
Here, Francis’ discussion of the so-called “free market” is very much misplaced. For, nobody paying any level of attention can look at our current system and call it a “free market.”
The housing bubble that brought about the current recession is a case in point, where government-directed finance to achieve self-styled “affordable housing goals” found its way to millions of borrowers who it turned out could not afford the homes they were purchasing.
Trillions of dollars flowed from the Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, driving the market with little more than a printing press.
This was no “autonomy of the marketplace,” or simply “financial speculation,” as Francis described.
It was an asset bubble the likes of which had never been seen in economic history, and without government-created debt — without the backing of the federal government — it would never have been possible. Never.
Francis is right that there is a “crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system,” which he called “a new tyranny.”
But Francis’ critique really should lay at the feet of the corporatists Schumpeter described, and the central planners they have long since surrendered to.
For it is they who bear responsibility for the consequences of their own policies, including those who now suffer under them.
Francis accurately described the “masses of people [who] find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape… the outcast, the ‘leftovers’” living under what he called “a globalization of indifference.”
Observe high youth unemployment throughout Europe and rising here, too, to get an idea who he is talking about. Those being excluded from opportunity today, an entire generation, are no figment. This is a real problem.
Overall, Francis is pointing to the rot of the system that Schumpeter had 71 years ago foreseen.
But, no one should be confused that the rot is a “free market” phenomenon, when instead it is the corrosion caused by decades of central-planning and in particular government-directed credit creation.
This is the necessary destruction brought about when government, not markets composed of individuals acting in their own self-interest, makes such sweeping economic decisions.
Now. Are you all quite clear?
Have a drink of clarity and honest criticism.
Oh, and a smack on the bottom for Mz O'Leary and then some prayers for her Soul. If she apologises I might even let her mop the floor in the Crypt.
Well, Naomi for one !
The best bet for 'Hope and Change' will come from Individual Integrity.
It is that time of the year when the Tavern gets visited by people who pick up things that have 'fallen of the back of a lorry'. Of course the honesty and integrity of my customers preclude any thought of buying such goods but that still says little about their tastes.
The most astonishingly bizarre presents seem to be available to Santa's helpers and year after year the range grows. A small selection is presented here for your inspection. Many are specifically designed for the modern world and its 'diverse' people, for whom we must have tolerance.
Many customers found them hilarious.
First, for the Garden. As befits the season down here:
Now they should put the wind up obstreperous neighbours (yes that word again) and they are NRA approved. But maybe they should point their automatics at the companion-piece....
Yes, the Hollywood Zombie plague has affected even concrete. I am waiting for a feminist zombie gnomette but they seem to be mostly in Argentina attacking chaps praying around Cathedrals.
For such ladies who like a tipple on hand to fuel their inner Furie, a personal wine cask, not designed for the hand but mother's milk to some.
And while she is busy contemplating the housework, the baby can help actually do it for her with this smart suit.
If she does have to stir herself, she might like to couple a cup of coffee with an iron. Why waste the heat and let the coffee get cold?
The single mum can even sleep it off with a gentle reminder of the baby's daddy, whoever and wherever he is.
Ahh, there he is, out an about doing fantasy Patriarchy things to bring the bacon to the C$A so they can take some rashers before sending the rind on to the sleeping gal. All he needs is his Unicorn mask to complete her fantasy façade.
He may need a tipple too. But he has limited opportunity to hide his cask. But wait.....
His sandwiches are always being stolen at work so just to deter the thieves, he can use the latest range of sandwich bags that pretend to hold decaying food.
And a manly umbrella may be needed out there in the cold heartless world.
And he can make sure his car makes a damned fine statement during the month of Movember, the one time when attention is paid to a male cancer, which the 'Economist' magazine has condemned as 'sexist'.
And if someone nicks his parking spot....? He can leave an appropriate card. (There are cards for all occasions).
And let's not forget presents for the pets. We can't have them being 'unsafe' around the baby, so a muzzle is in order. But like the girls, the dogs just wanna have fuurn too.
And for the home that has many sharp corners......
The world outside is swarming with sharks. Why not have one inside and under control?
And if all that makes you brain hurt, comfort it with this nice cap. Just right for wooly-headed Mensa-infiltrating Trolls who take offence.
There are more ideas for bizarre pressies to be found at :
A chap cannot be shut-up in a Tavern all the time. He can live where he wishes and where his heart desires.
This old Knight hankers sometimes for a 'Gentleman's Residence' with a difference; and an occasional - OK, daily - plaything. One can dream.
Something different from my old Castle and Joust.
And here is the ideal 'Gentleman's Residence'. A Bachelor Pad with wings that can make good use of the Island's lakes and bays.
Room inside for a nicely appointed 'bed-sit' with bay windows, a galley and ablutions. Just the ticket. Go wherever and whenever he chooses. Room up front for a valet too.
And a plaything? Sporty, like a car but also like a jet-ski. With wings.
I put my towel down today but did not 'throw it in'. On the contrary. I deliberately broke the Law.
I have mentioned several times before that Tasmania, the small, quiet Island where the Tavern is located, has introduced a vicious Law that not only enables the killing of babies but will jail anyone who speaks out against it.
It is Anti-Life
It completely ignores the Declaration of Human Rights which specifically calls upon legislators to protect the unborn.
It is anti-Freedom of Speech.
The new Abortion Act here allows magistrates to fine a person $9750 and or Jail them for a year for daring to voice their sadness, objection, warnings and even prayers against abortion.
It is Totalitarian
St Augustine was the first to make it very clear that breaking an immorallaw is a DUTY, although Aristotle, who gave his life much earlier in such a circumstance is famous for alluding to this 'fact of Life'.
“It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.” ― Aristotle, Selected Writings From The Nicomachean Ethics And Politics
Which do I choose? Good Man or good little citizen?
Which do you choose? To do what is Right or do what some misguided, perverted, evil politicians tell you to do? With threats of force.
Some time ago I wrote to all the Legislators in both Houses of the Tasmanian Government and told them clearly that were they to pass this awful law, I would break it.
A Knight has to do what a Knight has to do.
Even when his Knightly days are past and he is a simple Tavern Keeper.
Today, I sat outside the abortion clinic, at 'ground zero' of the 'forbidden zone', and said the Rosary.
A quiet Prayer. 60 odd in fact.
I walked across the road (still within the zone) to the nearest MP's office, Lisa Singh's, and reported to her staff that I had just broken the Feminist-Socialist, unGodly MP's awful law.
I will do it again next Tuesday.
I will pray the Rosary for the mothers facing such an awful choice;
for the Fathers who are already denied any voice;
for their babies who may be legally torn to pieces as if they had been condemned by a medaeval Queen;
for the Doctors who care more for money than for life and disregard their oath to 'do no harm';
for the nurses who do such wicked things to their sisters;
for the Politicians who are so devoid of empathy and understanding, so blind to reality and life that they think they can defy God's Law and force me to obey theirs.
I pray that Grace comes to them to change their minds, seek repentance and forgiveness and heal their Souls.
I will do so until a Police'person' with a Gun comes against me.
Violence is all that Governments, especially Socialist governments know.
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”― Martin Luther King Jr.
“One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” ― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
“There is a heady sense of manhood that comes from advancing from apathy to commitment, from timidity to courage, from passivity to aggressiveness. There is an intoxication that comes from standing up to the police at last.” ― David T. Dellinger, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter
“if we don’t rebel, if we’re not physically in an active rebellion, then it’s spiritual death.” ― Chris Hedges
“If you're not going to use your free speech to criticize your own government, then what the hell is the point of having it?” ― Michel Templet
“If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
“It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.” ― Tariq Ali, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad
“When EVIL men make bad laws,
righteous men disobey them."
Pastor Butch Paugh” ― Tarrin P. Lupo
“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.” ― Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law” ― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.” ― Howard Zinn
I was a soldier for many years. The Nuremburg Trials sent a strong message to all soldiers.
OBEYING ORDERS IS NO DEFENCE
A Soldier MUST disobey an unlawful or immoral order.
We don't permit fighting in the Tavern. We send obstreperous folk outside where they can pull one another's hair.
But some are firmly of the view that such firmness is too masculine and they prefer to knit.
As did one young lady, a feminist (yes, Virginia, we do let them come into the bar) who dropped in to knit one and pearl a few to see if we would stop being violent to women.
She is 'Empowered'. She refuses to be a 'Cultural Lemming' and become a 'Parent'. Ughhh !!
"Well, there's a bit of hope for us all, at least", someone said.
There is a bottomless pit of ideas for ‘art’ these days, and going down to where the bottom is found, and other orifices in some, the mind will boggle at what can come forth.
Women have choices. She could have chosen her other nether orifice for a different colour palette. It would have made little difference apart from the hue and the phew. But we dissuaded her.
We loudly showed our appreciation.
We also had Mr Paul show his efforts in a similar artistic manner.
We loudly appreciated his efforts too.
We all had a drink. But the lady left for some reason after we warned her about the carpet rules. Mr Paul stayed.
Big day. First day of December and the first Sunday. I go down to the cellar in few hours. Yes it is time attend to the Crypt.
I have come in for a bit of flack recently. Someone said I was 'Sanctimonious'.
Hah!
I am a sinner on the road to redemption like everyone else. I just know it.
And the Crypt is where I do humble work, mopping the floor and getting the grime out from between the flagstones with a toothbrush. Thank goodness for modern equipment. The Keeper keeps the Grail's place tidy.
I like a bit of music to set the mood.
And when it is done, a proper Latin Mass.
Kyrie Eleison. Lord Have Mercy.
Pray for the Mothers, the Fathers, the Babies, the Children.
They may not be, but by the Lord Harry they make damned fine Mayors. They can kick-start like nobody's business. And this Tavern welcomes such sleeves-rolled-up men who become Guardian Angels well before their time.
I speak of one here; one who dropped in to tell us what he DID, to save his town, his kids, his Soul. And were we pleased to see him.
Dale
Williams is Mayor of Otorohanga, in New Zealand. Crikey, even in Christchurch they had never heard of his motorbike business. In Auckland, the Capital, his small town barely registered in the maps office.
But he put it on the map.
Take your helmets off and listen to what he had to say. You will be as pleased as all in the Bar. I'll pull a few pints for you.
Small
town big change: Dale Williams at TEDxAuckland
(Until You Tube and Blogger sorts out which is which you will have to click the link)
Youth Unemployment is a real problem particularly when so much 'Government' strips kids of Parents who can give them the support they need. Not to mention the 'skools' being Dominated by female teachers (he carefully avoids mentioning that) who haven't a clue.
Let's all drink to Dale. A Man who rolls his sleeves up and puts a ring-spanner to work.
Updated: see at the end. I turn my back for a minute and all Hell breaks loose. A week actually. I went off to Perth last week to attend a conference of highly intelligent folk - which includes this ancient Tavern Keeper - and returned to find that half-wits and Orcs have run amok in our State Legislature.
And Hells gates were opened.
I flagged this before from previous conversations in the bar, that our lefty-feminist-green wreckers were building up to mayhem, wanting to extend the Killing Fields into our pleasant land.
I have a history of armed conflict. I have never ran from battle. I have slain enemies. But they were always fighting back, with weapons. A Truwe Knight does not kill unarmed people, especially children. He does not disembowel mothers just to kill the child they are carrying.
But this Knight is not a Feminist or a Lefty or a Green.
Those people are sick. And despite every wish to extend compassion to them, they are also deliberate and cruel: Wicked even. So it has to be the sword.
This is just the Ticket. Look at the gleam on that blade.
Out with the whetstones.
If Mothers do not care enough,
the Fathers will have to Kilt-up.
Tasmanian lefties and feminists were insanely jealous of their sisters in Victoria, across the moat. That State introduced wicked legislation to kill innocents and jail anyone who objected. Tasmanian feminists conspired with the anti-human Greens in the Village to go one or two better. Or should that be worse. Their 'proposals' were well past wicked. Now they are reality.
Paul O'Rourke dropped by to explain.
Sorry baby, your removal is just another medical procedure.
Tasmania is the first State in Australia to ban peaceful protests within 150m of an abortion clinic.
Those who dare to interfere with a woman’s right to terminate her unborn child and injure herself, risk a
$9750 fine or up to 12 months imprisonment.
So, just how does peacefully praying 149 mtrs away 'interfere'?
I intend to 'test' this.
And just how does a Priest or a Congregation in either of the two Christian Churches closer than 149 mtrs 'interfere'?
One small matter that is almost risable is the omission of the location.
I had better show it to you and tell you where it is.
It is on the corner of Macquarie and Victoria Streets. Just 100 mtrs from St Joseph's Catholic Church, one way, and 100 from the Anglican Cathedral.
Nice positioning, eh?
Look what it is called.
Does it remind you of 1984?
There is a nice seat just over the road. Its called a seat.
By a majority of nine to five, the Legislative Council approved last week abortion-on-demand to 16 weeks, and thereafter to term with the consent of two doctors who can take into account a woman’s physical, emotional and psychological circumstances.
After months of debate and submissions, the Upper House agreed with the Legislative Assembly ....
that abortion is just another medical procedure, and that unborn children deserve no special protection.
That statement, despite the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights (1947-8) which SPECIFICALLY mentions the unborn being in need of Special Protection by Legislators.
That Declaration to which Lefty Governments frequently Kow-Tow.
When it suits.
From sources including The Australian, The Mercury and Launceston Examiner.
The legislation passed nine votes to five with Windemere MLC Ivan Dean, Launceston MLC Rosemary Armitage, Elwick MLC Adriana Taylor, Montgomery Liberal MLC Leonie Hiscutt and Rumney MLC Tony Mulder voting against.
Abortions beyond 16 weeks, including to term, will require the consent of two doctors who can take into account a woman's physical, emotional and psychological state.
Health Minister Michelle O'Byrne, who sponsored the legislation as a private member's Bill, said it was a "hugely significant piece of reform" and brought Tasmanian law into the 21st century.
It is a "win" for government's social reform agenda
....after the failure of voluntary euthanasia and same-sex marriage legislation.
Does it strike you, as it does me, that the 'New-Speak', "Health Minister" is a 'DoublePlus True' representation of this evil woman's job? Like the 'Specialist Medical Centre'.
How about 'Social Reform'? I can just hear Hitler shouting 'social reform' to his hordes.
She cares not a jot for 'Health' in the crumbling Hospital system for which she is appointed to oversee, and is spending her taxpayer-paid time bringing in Private Member's Bill to serve the financial purposes of a Private sector Doctor who does not even resides in the State but flies in from the Mainland. He flies in, kills babies, and flies out again.
In America she would be called a 'Democrat'. Here she crawls under a Labor Values banner, is a rank Feminist and seeks to kill babies.
She cannot claim to be Christian in any sense. One has to wonder about all those who voted for the Bill as well.
Pembroke Liberal MLC Vanessa Goodwin and Apsley MLC Tania Rattray supported the reforms after changes were made to the obligations for doctors and counsellors who have a conscientious objection to abortion to refer the patient to another health service.
"It's a compromise, it's not my preferred option, but given that significant changes have been made I will support it," Dr Goodwin said.
The upper house scrapped a proposed $32,500 fine for counsellors (it was watered down from $65,000) who don't refer, specified that a doctor would fulfil their referral obligation by handing out a pamphlet listing appropriate services and clarified that a doctor could continue the consultation despite their objection, so long as they were open about it.
Ms Armitage said the clause was still unnecessary and placed an unreasonable burden on affected doctors, who would still feel complicit.
`I think if you can get pregnant, you can Google abortion and find a clinic,'' she said.
It also reduced penalties for protesting within a 150 metre access zone around a clinic from a maximum $65,000 fine to a $9750 fine, but the maximum jail term of 12 months remained.
By the Lord Harry. Isn't that a 'compromise. !!We are only to be fined just under $10,000 for exercising our Free Speech.
Free Speech is suddenly to cost a lot in Tasmania.
"Free", no more.
However most MLCs said access zones were necessary.
"No woman accessing a legal health service should be subject to any vilification from anybody," Western Tiers MLC Greg Hall said.
We already have Laws against 'villification'. Even they are stupid in that no 'villification' may be intended, it only requires someone to 'feel' villified.
Such is the dilution of Law and Meaning in our 'Progressive' society that is being brought into the late 21C.
A move by Mr Dean to reduce the 16 week threshold to 14 weeks failed, as did a move by Ms Hiscutt to only partially decriminalise abortion by keeping terminations that did not fit the criteria laid out in the Bill subject to the Criminal Code, and its maximum 22 years imprisonment.
Meanwhile over in Victoria the 'worst scenario' is playing out and a Doctor who exercised his Conscience is being subjected to 'the Law.
Victorian Govt to rethink abortion law 8th Nov 2013 Henrietta Cook, told us:
It comes as pro-life advocates run a concerted campaign to repeal a section of the Abortion Law Reform Act, which requires doctors who have a conscientious objection to abortion to refer a woman to someone with no such objection.
When asked if there would be any changes to the act, which decriminalises abortion and was passed by parliament in 2008, a government spokesman said it respected the decision of the parliament on "this important issue".
Mandy Rice Davis was heard far away saying, "Well he would say that wouldn't he?"
As Mandy had a pub in Jerusalem (I have been there) and is therefore , technically, a Tavern Keeper too, I will raise a glass.
Pax Dei. We are in need.
Update
A Troll took umbrage at this post and left several quite nasty comments, both here and on another post.
