Hi there folks. I've decided to move this blog over to Wordpress simply because Wordpress formats for mobile devices and it makes it so much easier to read when out and about.
The new url is:
https://prolifeprolove.wordpress.com/
So please adjust your bookmarks folks.
All the post and comments here have been transferred and comments here are going to be closed. See you over at the new place people.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Because nothing sells like sex
I first read about this on The Hand Mirror and I have taken the photo from Luddite Journo but this issue is so important I wanted to focus attention on it too.
The New Zealand Police have had a "rough time" of it in the last few year. Police officers have been charged with raping very young women. Two, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum, were convicted of raping and kidnapping a 20 year old woman. She was gang raped by five men and two of them, Shipton and Schollum, were police officers at the time. Other women said that they were raped by police however their cases did not result in a guilty verdict. The justice system decided that their group sex was consensual, or at least they couldn't bring a judgement of guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
So... you get the picture. The police need to work on their behaviour and their public perception - they need to be seen as trustworthy officers of the law. They need to be seen to be people who you can trust and be safe with, especially if you are someone who has suffered a sexual assault. This means that the police should be bending over backwards to present themselves as having purged the sick corruption that led police officers to feel comfortable with having group sex with teenage girls (whilst in police uniform and using police handcuffs and batons) and kidnapping and gang rape.
Therefore, why would the New Zealand Police run advertising like this?
Dear New Zealand Police,
I know advertising executives will use sex to sell everything, from beer and burgers, to music and motorbikes, but if you want to "sell" the New Zealand Police as a career for young people it might pay to lay off the creepy adverts that insinuate you want to have sex with them. This is especially important given police officers have had a habit of groups sex with young girls and even on occasion have raped them.
Please fire your advertising agency and maybe run some focus groups with some women since you can't seem to work out when you are being sleazy.
Just an FYI.
Yours hopefully,
Muerk
The New Zealand Police have had a "rough time" of it in the last few year. Police officers have been charged with raping very young women. Two, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum, were convicted of raping and kidnapping a 20 year old woman. She was gang raped by five men and two of them, Shipton and Schollum, were police officers at the time. Other women said that they were raped by police however their cases did not result in a guilty verdict. The justice system decided that their group sex was consensual, or at least they couldn't bring a judgement of guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
So... you get the picture. The police need to work on their behaviour and their public perception - they need to be seen as trustworthy officers of the law. They need to be seen to be people who you can trust and be safe with, especially if you are someone who has suffered a sexual assault. This means that the police should be bending over backwards to present themselves as having purged the sick corruption that led police officers to feel comfortable with having group sex with teenage girls (whilst in police uniform and using police handcuffs and batons) and kidnapping and gang rape.
Therefore, why would the New Zealand Police run advertising like this?
Dear New Zealand Police,
I know advertising executives will use sex to sell everything, from beer and burgers, to music and motorbikes, but if you want to "sell" the New Zealand Police as a career for young people it might pay to lay off the creepy adverts that insinuate you want to have sex with them. This is especially important given police officers have had a habit of groups sex with young girls and even on occasion have raped them.
Please fire your advertising agency and maybe run some focus groups with some women since you can't seem to work out when you are being sleazy.
Just an FYI.
Yours hopefully,
Muerk
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
From my favorite blogger comes this.
"Welcome to modern life. Introducing kids as commodities:
The man bringing together this disparate group is Rudy Rupak, chief executive of PlanetHospital.com LLC, a California company that searches the globe to find the components for its business line. The business, in this case, is creating babies"
"PlanetHospital’s most affordable package, the “India bundle,” buys an egg donor, four embryo transfers into four separate surrogate mothers, room and board for the surrogate, and a car and driver for the parents-to-be when they travel to India to pick up the baby.
Pricier packages add services like splitting eggs from the same donor to fertilize with different sperm, so children of gay couples can share a genetic mother. In Panama, twins cost an extra $5,000; for another $6,500 you can choose a child’s gender.
The couple made payments as the pregnancy progressed, with the final amount due at birth. Of the $35,000, PlanetHospital keeps around $3,600. Another $5,000 goes to the egg donor, plus another $3,000 or so for travel expenses. The surrogate gets $8,000. The rest, around $15,000, is paid to the clinic.
Packages. For human beings. If you’re not sick yet, this should just about close the deal for you.
“Our ethics are agnostic,” Mr. Rupak says. “How do you prevent a pedophile from having a baby? If they’re a pedophile then I will leave that to the U.S. government to decide, not me.”"
"Mike Aki and his husband, a Massachusetts couple, confronted this question. The couple planned on having two children. But their two surrogate mothers in India each became pregnant with twins.
At 12 weeks into the pregnancies, Mr. Aki and his husband decided to abort two of the fetuses, one from each woman. It was a very painful call to make, Mr. Aki says. “You start thinking to yourself, ‘Oh, my god, am I killing this child?’”"
He didn’t think of his decision as an abortion, but as a “reduction,” he says.
Read more.
Does anyone remember those hellish sci-fi works about people factories? Yeah, well it isn't science fiction anymore, it's our evil reality.
The man bringing together this disparate group is Rudy Rupak, chief executive of PlanetHospital.com LLC, a California company that searches the globe to find the components for its business line. The business, in this case, is creating babies"
"PlanetHospital’s most affordable package, the “India bundle,” buys an egg donor, four embryo transfers into four separate surrogate mothers, room and board for the surrogate, and a car and driver for the parents-to-be when they travel to India to pick up the baby.
Pricier packages add services like splitting eggs from the same donor to fertilize with different sperm, so children of gay couples can share a genetic mother. In Panama, twins cost an extra $5,000; for another $6,500 you can choose a child’s gender.
The couple made payments as the pregnancy progressed, with the final amount due at birth. Of the $35,000, PlanetHospital keeps around $3,600. Another $5,000 goes to the egg donor, plus another $3,000 or so for travel expenses. The surrogate gets $8,000. The rest, around $15,000, is paid to the clinic.
Packages. For human beings. If you’re not sick yet, this should just about close the deal for you.
“Our ethics are agnostic,” Mr. Rupak says. “How do you prevent a pedophile from having a baby? If they’re a pedophile then I will leave that to the U.S. government to decide, not me.”"
"Mike Aki and his husband, a Massachusetts couple, confronted this question. The couple planned on having two children. But their two surrogate mothers in India each became pregnant with twins.
At 12 weeks into the pregnancies, Mr. Aki and his husband decided to abort two of the fetuses, one from each woman. It was a very painful call to make, Mr. Aki says. “You start thinking to yourself, ‘Oh, my god, am I killing this child?’”"
He didn’t think of his decision as an abortion, but as a “reduction,” he says.
Read more.
Does anyone remember those hellish sci-fi works about people factories? Yeah, well it isn't science fiction anymore, it's our evil reality.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Pike Memorial was blessedly Christian
As I live in Greymouth and I know men who work at Pike my family attended the memorial service for the men lost at Pike. I was praying that rain wouldn't come and I think that would go for everyone here on the Coast, thankfully the weather was perfect. The thing that impressed me most was how obviously and publicly Christian the service was. Jesus Christ was talked about with no apologetic embarrassment. The service was led by Anglican minister Rev. Tim Mora, who did my husband's grandmother's funeral in his little church in Cobden a few years ago. Our parish priest Fr. John Morrison said a prayer and our church choir sang.
I'm not a Coaster by birth (my husband is), but I know many of the people personally including Peter Whittal. He is a man I trust and I know how hard he is working and the toll it is taking on him and his family. Seeing thousands coming together to pray and mourn was a special experience and I truly believe that the West Coast is a slice of Eden.
But it isn't Eden from before the Fall. There is danger and pain here. My husband's family worked at Strongman Mine during the disaster in 1967 and Pike has brought back memories and grief for his family. In the end suffering can bring about good if we let it turn us back to hope and faith in God. Rev. Tim spoke about the deaths at Pike being a tragic accident and not willed by God. It wasn't those men's time, it was just a terrible, horrible accident. He also said that Jesus understands our loss, he too wept for his dead friend.
Greymouth will keep on keeping on and we won't forget the men who lost their lives deep in Pike River Mine and we will hold them in our prayers.
I'm not a Coaster by birth (my husband is), but I know many of the people personally including Peter Whittal. He is a man I trust and I know how hard he is working and the toll it is taking on him and his family. Seeing thousands coming together to pray and mourn was a special experience and I truly believe that the West Coast is a slice of Eden.
But it isn't Eden from before the Fall. There is danger and pain here. My husband's family worked at Strongman Mine during the disaster in 1967 and Pike has brought back memories and grief for his family. In the end suffering can bring about good if we let it turn us back to hope and faith in God. Rev. Tim spoke about the deaths at Pike being a tragic accident and not willed by God. It wasn't those men's time, it was just a terrible, horrible accident. He also said that Jesus understands our loss, he too wept for his dead friend.
Greymouth will keep on keeping on and we won't forget the men who lost their lives deep in Pike River Mine and we will hold them in our prayers.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Ban on contaceptives proposed
Senator Hokkons Baules of Palau has introduced a bill calling for contraceptives to be banned in the island nation. The bill, the "Population Growth Act of 2011", is hoped to turn the tide against the shrinking population. Palau has a population of around 20 000 people with a growth rate of 0.3%.
Read more.
Idiot Savant of No Right Turn has harsh words for the bill:
"Palau is trying to ban all forms of contraception. The reason? To boost the country's population. Too many Palauans have been choosing to have smaller families, and those who measure the success of their country by the size of its population (the ideology of a cancer cell) want to put a stop to it.
Quite apart from the obvious liberal grounds for objecting to this decision - what people do in their bedrooms and how many kids they have are simply none of the government's business - there's also a large degree of simple revulsion at such barbarism. Contraception is a fundamental, transformative technology which frees us from nature. Banning it is taking people back to the dark ages and making them slaves to circumstance again. Its like banning sewage systems. Or literacy. If people want to live like that, or live in impoverished parts of the world where such technologies are out of reach, that's one thing (and the latter, we can work to fix). But forcing them to is simply abhorrent.
[my emphasis]
Yes, nature can be barbaric, red in tooth and claw, but if Palau doesn't start promoting the next generation of citizens it is going to cease to exist. What people do in their bedrooms is absolutely the government's business. If it wasn't why have marriages recorded by the state with specific rules about who can and can not be married to each other? We are not mere individuals, we are families and communities. Our actions have an effect on our wider society and Palau is trying to stop itself from a population implosion.
No matter how the Western world tries to run from the laws of nature we can never escape. Societies must have babies if they are to continue. Contraception and abortion have changed the landscape of human experience, they have made marriage an optional extra and our families are less stable for that.
Read more.
Idiot Savant of No Right Turn has harsh words for the bill:
"Palau is trying to ban all forms of contraception. The reason? To boost the country's population. Too many Palauans have been choosing to have smaller families, and those who measure the success of their country by the size of its population (the ideology of a cancer cell) want to put a stop to it.
Quite apart from the obvious liberal grounds for objecting to this decision - what people do in their bedrooms and how many kids they have are simply none of the government's business - there's also a large degree of simple revulsion at such barbarism. Contraception is a fundamental, transformative technology which frees us from nature. Banning it is taking people back to the dark ages and making them slaves to circumstance again. Its like banning sewage systems. Or literacy. If people want to live like that, or live in impoverished parts of the world where such technologies are out of reach, that's one thing (and the latter, we can work to fix). But forcing them to is simply abhorrent.
[my emphasis]
Yes, nature can be barbaric, red in tooth and claw, but if Palau doesn't start promoting the next generation of citizens it is going to cease to exist. What people do in their bedrooms is absolutely the government's business. If it wasn't why have marriages recorded by the state with specific rules about who can and can not be married to each other? We are not mere individuals, we are families and communities. Our actions have an effect on our wider society and Palau is trying to stop itself from a population implosion.
No matter how the Western world tries to run from the laws of nature we can never escape. Societies must have babies if they are to continue. Contraception and abortion have changed the landscape of human experience, they have made marriage an optional extra and our families are less stable for that.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Internet poll re: killing child apparently real
A Minnesota pro-life husband and pro-abortion wife have admitted they are the couple behind the BirthOrNot.com site, which featured a poll asking visitors to decide whether they should keep their unborn baby or choose abortion. Many have expressed shock, and some have even alleged that the site is a pro-life publicity stunt, but the truth is stranger than that.
Pete and Alisha Arnold, thirty-something Minnesota suburbanites are expecting a baby, which is in its 18th week of gestation. They set up the shocking Internet poll to ask readers, “Should we give birth or have an abortion?” The site went viral last week and prompted a great deal of outcry from both those in the pro-life and pro-abortion camps.
Read more.
This is an action so strange, so unreal that Kiwi blogger Boganette was convinced it was a hoax. Frankly I agreed with her, no one would actually poll strangers on the Internet about continuing with the life of their baby. But no, it seems (and I say seems because I still can't really fathom it to be true) that it's not a hoax and a genuine web page.
I'm just flabbergasted.
This is what we have come to thanks to the creeping menace of reality television, both homemade and commercial. People are seeking their 15 minutes of fame and the concept of the private and personal has just flown out the window with it. Why would any sane couple ask strangers on the Internet about the most important decision of their lives? What would possess someone to think that was a good idea? Asking family or best friends I can understand, but an open poll?
One of the things I try to hammer into my kids is that once something is on the Internet it can't be taken back. It is there forever. So that embarrassing photo, those ill considered words - forever inscribed on a hard drive somewhere, never to be deleted. Always think carefully about sharing something you might not want to be public. But I just can't understand why someone would place such intimate, personal issues into the public space. For what purpose?
Just... ugh.
UPDATE -
This case just gets weirder. Pete Arnold told CNN that the poll was hoax.
Meh.
This whole thing is just negative and wrong IMO. If they did it to convince women to keep their babies alive then they have missed the mark. Yes, it's highlighted abortion, but then we all knew about abortion anyway. I can't believe that this stunt made women who were previously prepared to terminate their children suddenly change their minds. Really what is going to do that is to help people understand the humanity of the unborn and for people to be prepared to put their child's life first.
Pete and Alisha Arnold, thirty-something Minnesota suburbanites are expecting a baby, which is in its 18th week of gestation. They set up the shocking Internet poll to ask readers, “Should we give birth or have an abortion?” The site went viral last week and prompted a great deal of outcry from both those in the pro-life and pro-abortion camps.
Read more.
This is an action so strange, so unreal that Kiwi blogger Boganette was convinced it was a hoax. Frankly I agreed with her, no one would actually poll strangers on the Internet about continuing with the life of their baby. But no, it seems (and I say seems because I still can't really fathom it to be true) that it's not a hoax and a genuine web page.
I'm just flabbergasted.
This is what we have come to thanks to the creeping menace of reality television, both homemade and commercial. People are seeking their 15 minutes of fame and the concept of the private and personal has just flown out the window with it. Why would any sane couple ask strangers on the Internet about the most important decision of their lives? What would possess someone to think that was a good idea? Asking family or best friends I can understand, but an open poll?
One of the things I try to hammer into my kids is that once something is on the Internet it can't be taken back. It is there forever. So that embarrassing photo, those ill considered words - forever inscribed on a hard drive somewhere, never to be deleted. Always think carefully about sharing something you might not want to be public. But I just can't understand why someone would place such intimate, personal issues into the public space. For what purpose?
Just... ugh.
UPDATE -
This case just gets weirder. Pete Arnold told CNN that the poll was hoax.
Meh.
This whole thing is just negative and wrong IMO. If they did it to convince women to keep their babies alive then they have missed the mark. Yes, it's highlighted abortion, but then we all knew about abortion anyway. I can't believe that this stunt made women who were previously prepared to terminate their children suddenly change their minds. Really what is going to do that is to help people understand the humanity of the unborn and for people to be prepared to put their child's life first.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Families and the Pike River Mine tragedy
Yesterday we heard the news of the second explosion at Pike River. Another explosion was always on the cards, we knew that it was the risk that held men back from entering the mine. And yesterday what we all dreaded, what we all prayed and hoped would not happen, did. Greymouth today is just so quiet, everyone is grieving. People shopping in the supermarket are hushed. The media pack aren't outside our boys' school this morning. You can feel the sadness everywhere.
One thing has struck my though all of this - the vital place of the family within the community. The people I know involved in the tragedy have all reached out to their families. Individuals don't make up community, families do and right now families are hurting. It's not just the twenty-nine families who have lost one of their own, it's also the families of the people who work at the mine and the families of men who go underground at the other mines in the area who are suffering. I know a wife who worries herself to pieces when her husband comes home late from his shift at a different mine.
I don't think family is acknowledged enough in our culture. The emphasis is on the freedom of the individual, yet what is best for the family is what comes to the aid of the individual. Strong, functional, loving families are the best place for children to be nurtured, for elderly to be cared for, and it creates a safe place for emotions, like grief, to be worked through.
One thing has struck my though all of this - the vital place of the family within the community. The people I know involved in the tragedy have all reached out to their families. Individuals don't make up community, families do and right now families are hurting. It's not just the twenty-nine families who have lost one of their own, it's also the families of the people who work at the mine and the families of men who go underground at the other mines in the area who are suffering. I know a wife who worries herself to pieces when her husband comes home late from his shift at a different mine.
I don't think family is acknowledged enough in our culture. The emphasis is on the freedom of the individual, yet what is best for the family is what comes to the aid of the individual. Strong, functional, loving families are the best place for children to be nurtured, for elderly to be cared for, and it creates a safe place for emotions, like grief, to be worked through.
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