Showing posts with label Disease.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Disease.. Show all posts

Friday, 15 October 2010

Blog Action Day on WATER : Global Handwashing day - The Wiggles & Nelson Mandela



To-day, as you can see from the post below is Blog Action Day and the theme for this year is WATER. I am trying to kill two birds with one stone so I am combining the Water theme of Blog Action Day with a little soap because to-day is Global Handwashing Day.

A little water and a little soap can make a huge difference in saving lives and helping us to ward off disease.  I love the emphasis on the kids because we want them to grow up strong and resilient, don't we.
The first Global Handwashing Day was in 2008.
Our very own Wiggles wrote a special tune.
It is catchy and easy to teach to your kids.
And here is the video for 2010

Please value water.
It is our life.
Please support the human right to water and its understanding.
In Australia, water was unbundled from land
This made water a tradeable commodity -
when once it was part of the Commons -
it belonged to all of us.
This definition of water rights comes from Wiserearth:
Definition: Water rights are the legal rights that define ownership of water and water sources (surface and subsurface), the use of water and the priority of water use. Water rights allocate water to different users and can be contentious in areas where water supplies are insufficient for the demands upon the supply, and where people are denied or deprived of access to water. The right to water is increasingly considered as a basic human right that has to be reconciled with legal water rights already in existence.  Unfortunately, privatization and commodification of water often undermine this right by cutting off supply to those who cannot afford to pay.

Related reading:
 If you go here, you will find books and other material
from Rous Water about water, including Aboriginal stories.
Rous Water is the regional water supply authority
providing potable water in bulk to the Council areas of 
Lismore (excluding Nimbin), Ballina (excluding Wardell), 
Byron (excluding Mullumbimby) and 
Richmond Valley (excluding land to the west of Coraki).  
~~

 Stand Like Mountain, Flow Like Water: Reflections on Stress and Human Spirituality Revised and Expanded Tenth Anniversary Edition W


Waters of Eden: The Mystery of the Mikvah 


 Water (Quiet Spaces: The BRF Prayer & Spirituality Journal) 

 Sacred Waters: Stories of Healing, Cleansing and Renewal 

 Sacred Water: The Spiritual Source of Life 

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Thursday, 5 August 2010

Sheryle Moon, Tobacco Corporates and the Corridors of Infamy

The death-mongers are at it again.  Nothing must go unchallenged when it comes to cigarette smoking, it seems.  British American Tobacco Australia and Philip Morris Australia are hiding behind the skirts of a woman, namely one Sheryle Moon, in a trumped-up tricked-out organisation called the Alliance of Australian Retailers.  Now, I will bet this brand new organisation is not a registered organisation of employers as other retailers organisations tend to be.  Perhaps this one should be registered as a political party - and is it on the Federal Government's list of lobbyists?

For information on tobacco companies operating in Australia, please go here



Whenever I think of British American Tobacco Australia, I think of the drawn, ill face of Rolah McCabe and the images of her children in all that followed and flowed from that dreadful court case.  

Russell Crowe as Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider

And when one thinks of corporate creeps, who can forget The Insider starring Russell Crowe as Jeffrey Wigand.  Go to this link (pdf format) to read the May 1996 Vanity Fair article (original VF format with ads, etc) that was the basis for the movie.  Or...better still go to Jeffrey Wigand's own site where you will see that the campaign goes on still.


Lastly, a few words for Sheryle Moon.  You too will enter the Hall of Fame - or should I say the Corridors of Infamy.  You will be remembered as the woman who could not respect Rolah McCabe.  You will be remembered as someone who followed in the footsteps of Clayton Utz and the shredded documents.  You will be seen as someone who respects only money and your own fifteen minutes of whatever and who disrepects life.  You have made your bed, courtesy of a free society, with the purveyors of death and destruction.  You have nailed your colours and the colours of a fake organisation in a civil society to your mast.  What a legacy, Sheryle!

Related Reading:

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Monday, 2 August 2010

HYPOTHERMIA AND HEARTBREAK: SUFFERING AND VOYEURISM AT DANDENONG POLICE STATION

This word scares the living daylights out of me -
ever since the events of 18 September 2009.

When I - and a lot of others - thought about hypothermia,
we thought of a scene like this...
Who would think it possible to get the first symptoms
sitting, singing and chatting with a group of people
around this...
But that is what happened to me one September evening
on a property 15 minutes out of Bungendore, near Canberra.

I thought I was going to die.  So did my friends.  The paramedics were called. I am a diabetic and, when told of this, the paramedics believed my symptoms were consistent with a hypoglycaemic attack.  They gave me an injection and sweet stuff out of a tube and I began to come around - although I felt I had been run over by the No. 10 bus.  Next morning, I went to the GP in Bungendore.  He checked for everything - and everything was OK.  He also became the first in a line of medicos to tell me that, whatever it was, it could not have been a hypoglycaemic attack because that was impossible due to the medication I was on. IT NEVER HAPPENS, they all said.

Eventually, a specialist diagnosed hypothermia with a great deal of certainty - even though she wasn't present at the time.  I have come across two cold climate people who, when I tell them the story and the symptoms, nod knowingly when hearing of the hypothermia diagnosis.  So there you are.  Since coming from the tropics to live in Melbourne six years ago, I have never acclimatised to the cold and its - more likely than not -accompanying gloom.  Now, since the events of last year, I am terrified of the cold and of being cold.  Absolutely, appallingly, horrifyingly terrified.

So please imagine my horror and my heartfelt empathy when I read this story in The Age to-day relating to hypothermia and a man who had been held in police custody in Dandenong and then chucked out into outer darkness where there was nothing but the gnashing of voyeuristic police teeth.  

Who were the police who looked on so callously at the suffering of this man?  Blood relatives of the guards in Nazi concentration camps? Had they been trained in Abu Ghraib?  Clearly, they have flunked Human Rights 101.  Clearly, they should get due process and procedural fairness - and then be sacked.  Not demoted, sacked. 

They should be sent to where bad policemen and policewomen go
 and from where they can never return ever to harm or hate people again.

Related Reading:
Hypothermia Frostbite And Other Cold Injuries: Prevention, Recognition, Rescue, and Treatment


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Saturday, 31 July 2010

The gall bladders of public figures


My mate Denis from The Nature of Robertson lets off political steam on his blog, The Body Politic.

This morning he has posted on the genre of the body politic about Kevin Rudd's gall bladder operation.  BTW it must be the season for public figures and their gall bladders, coz Chrissy Nixon has been hospitalised too recently.  And since things have a habit of happening in threes, who will be the third public figure.

Anyway, Networkers, pop over here for references to gall bladders and pancreatitis and bile and assorted matters in The Body Politic.

And I don't mean to be morbid but the topic of public figures and their assorted gall bladders got into my head and I googled politician gall bladder and turned up an interesting site.  Over at The Political Graveyard there is a whole list of politicians who have died of gallbladder ailments.  Talk about things you didn't know and forgot to ask your mother!

And I have just discovered another thing.  You might not need surgery!  If you grab hold of this li'l ol' e-book you can find out how to pass your gall stones naturally!  But does it hurt, I ask.  Does it depend on how big they are!  Ooh, the thought!

Public figures on foreign shores who have taken their gall bladders to surgery in 2010 include Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian President, andJohn Murtha, American Congress Representative (died of complications).  Miss Eagle invites notifications for addition to this tiny list.

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