The American Right & Disability

Nothing reveals so clearly the moral bankruptcy of the American Right as the Republican Party’s stance on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

In this single action, paranoia trumps compassion, common sense yields to cynicism, and hope gives way to fear.

To quote from the report - Supporters (of the legislation) dismissed those fears as paranoid, noting that the treaty would change nothing in U.S. law without further approval from Congress.

It has nothing to do with reality – it’s all about seeming and posturing.

When seeming and posturing is more important than the rights of the most vulnerable in the community, you know you have a problem.

Looking at the map, it puts the Yanks in interesting company.

With this decision, their colour is now red (not signed).

Rate of Groth

The Australian has coined a new term to describe stuff happening in the economy.

Well, that's consistent.

It's about as creative as most of what else appears in Murdoch's Pravda.

Update - 
They've fixed it. Spoilsports.

Rejoice

Soon it will be Christmas.

That's not why I posted this.

Ii's my favourite Carol. Hat tip to my music teacher sister who remimded me about it.

An Embarrassment of Itches

Perhaps I’ve been lucky, but I haven’t had much to do with the medical profession.

I’ve only been hospitalised once (to have my tonsils and adenoids removed when I was five) so my encounters with members of the profession have usually been related to issues with other family members.

I also have a brother who is a GP and a niece who works as a paediatric registrar, so there is a different sort of family connection.

Today, however, I had to see a dermatologist as my GP had referred me because of a mysterious rash and a couple of lesions on my back he wasn’t happy about.

Apparently the specialisation of dermatology is prized amongst medicos. When I asked my brother about this he said simply – “Nobody calls you at 2am because they’re worried about bad skin. Fair enough….

Turns out the lesions were quite benign (frozen off with some sore of weird hand-held contraption), but I’ve been inflicted with something called Grover’s Disease in the form of a rash on my back and trunk that itches something fierce.

Getting this diagnosed was a fascinating experience. I was ushered into a treatment room which contained only one item of furniture (besides the doctor’s desk and chair) – a height adjustable plinth. I became intimately familiar with this item of equipment because I was left unaccompanied for about 15 minutes waiting the arrival of the Dermatologist.

I was at the point of rolling the doctor’s chair out from behind the desk to sit in it because the plinth was not exactly comfortable – there was no other chair in the room – when a nurse type person wafted in and asked me all manner of questions.

That was the first wave.

Next came two people, both female, and wearing the same uniform as the first one.

They were the second wave.

One I think was an intern, and she asked me to remove my shirt and lie face down on the plinth. 

For reasons unknown, another slightly shorter wait transpired before the actual Dermatologist arrived. Perhaps I was being vetted to make absolutely sure that I was actually worthy of the attention of this rare and esteemed person – an actual real live specialist.

He breezed, rather than wafted in, although he was also wearing the corporate garb also. Then followed a series of events straight out of the Doctor movies.

He proceeded to give a tentative verbal diagnosis complete with history, pathology and prognosis. It was thorough, but it was directed at the intern, not at me. It sounded like a tutorial, and also like I was simply an interesting exhibit, not a living breathing patient. Being discussed in the third person in your own presence is a weird experience.

This was given in a completely hands-off fashion. He didn’t actually touch any part of my anatomy during the examination. Perhaps he’s had bad experiences with contagion.

He explained that Grover’s disease was not named after the Sesame St character that lived in the rubbish bin, but was indeed called after the doctor who discovered and described it. Given that this Dr Grover never did work out caused it, or what the cure is, I wonder why he was considered worthy of naming rights.

I was told is it benign and self limiting. I think this means it won’t kill you, and eventually clears up all by itself. This is comforting, but less comforting was the information that it can hang around for 12 months or more.

12 months of excruciating itch – not fun.

Anyway, the specialist breezed out again after prescribing two different topical (no – nothing to do with news – not that sort of “topical”) products, and I thought we were done.

Not so.

The intern announced that she was going to remove 4mm of skin from my back for a biopsy. Obviously, the specialist wasn’t totally confident with his diagnosis. This procedure took a little bit of time, as a local anaesthetic was necessary, and also cost $86.20.

I know that because it was on the invoice.

So I ended up with my wallet lighter by a total of $300, a hole in my back, and some not-so-good news.

The sight of the specialist’s Bentley Continental Coupe in the doctor’s car park did nothing to lighten my mood. Reflecting that f I had just contributed half the cost of a new tyre to his favourite set of wheels didn't help..

I wonder if you need a thick skin to become a Dermatologist?

Update - 

Received the results of the biopsy. It's not Grover's disease, but a rash called pityriasis rosea. I doagnosed this myself and told my GP. He didn't believe me and sent me off to the specialist. I reckon I should get my money back.

DON'T stop the boats. Stop the hypocrisy.

Photo courtesy Herald Sun

The asylum seeker debate continues. It has gone, since the days of the Tampa, from election eve opportunism through cynical political manipulation to outright national tragedy. 

Perhaps it’s time to revisit the issue.

I'll quote from Paul Syvret's excellent piece - 

 It is not the trickle of barely seaworthy fishing vessels and their desperate human cargo that poses a threat to Australia. It is the rank dissembling, crocodile tears and dog whistle bigotry that presents far more danger to our social fabric.

Remember how getting tough was going to solve the problem?

Now that the differences between Labor and Coalition policy are almost indistinguishable, it’s clear that getting tough has made no difference at all.

Two facts are indisputable. The first is that no amount of “getting tough” is going to “stop the boats”. The second is that the costs (both human and financial) are not worth the benefit.

Banging these people up on Nauru and Manus has made no difference. The cost of running these gulags is astronomical.

As Burnside points out, the projected costs of Nauru and Manus ($15 billion) would cancel all HECS debt.

How do you feel about that, uni students and recent graduates?

Staying with the costs of it all, keeping refugees onshore costs between $150000 and $350000 per year per refugee. Releasing them into the community, even if they went on the dole, would cost between $10 and $20 thousand per year.

Are you happy about your tax dollar being used to slowly send people insane whilst it’s costing you so much?

Then there’s the issue of how our political leaders use the issue to garner support. It’s a simple three step process.

First, you demonise them. This is achieved by the use of language. Calling them “illegals” is one strategy, followed most recently by Tony Abbott.

SEEKING ASYLUM IS NOT ILLEGAL.

Sorry about the shouting, but sometimes I despair that this simple fact will, by some, never be acknowledged.

Then you construct a narrative. The one most favoured by the Coalition is the macho “we decide” story popularised by John Howard.

Labor use that one, but also demonise the people smugglers. They also use the compassionate “we will stop the drownings” meme. The logical weirdness of this one is clear. Protecting people from a danger already past is bizarre. By definition, they’re not in danger until they get on the boats. They’re still getting on the boats. No matter how tough you get, they will continue to get on the boats.

After all, if you’re a Hazara, and certain death in Afghanistan is weighed up against a risky boat journey with detention at the end is the choice, you’ll opt for the boat every time.

The last dodgy narrative is about queues. Excuse me whilst I shout –

THERE IS NO QUEUE.

As Burnside eloquently points out, if you were a Hazara in Kabul trying to find this fabled “queue”, you’d have a few problems.

The first one is that the location of the Australian embassy in Kabul is a secret for security reasons. Check the DFAT website…

Actually, I was wrong with my three steps narrative. There’s a fourth – “they’re not genuine refugees”.

A fact or two tends to mess with this story.  During the last twelve months, 90% of those arriving by boat were found to be genuine. Those arriving by plane and overstaying were found to be 20% genuine.

    

Funny that…

Paul Syvret sums it up pretty well. It has nothing to do with compassion, border security or “no advantage”.

It’s all about the lowest and grubbiest form of politics. It makes me ashamed to call myself Australian.

Okay, now that I’ve got that off my chest – what’s the solution?

Before you have a solution, you need a problem. I don’t believe we have one. Compared to many other countries the flow of refugees to our shores is infinitesimal.

As Burnside points out, all the arrivals so far this year would equal two weeks worth of our national population increase due to the birth rate.

If however, you believe this trickle of “boat people” is a problem, how about considering a real solution to this non-problem?

Short-term, detain them for only as long as basic security and health checks are done. I reckon this would be a month or two. If there aren’t enough resources to do this in a timely fashion, spend some of the billions saved by closing offshore processing centres on exactly this process.

Release these people into rural and regional communities with the proviso that they must carry a specific and unique form of ID - unique to asylum seekers, that is. Allow them to work, and send their kids to school. Specify that they must reside in designated asylum zones. This is where the ID comes in.

These specified zones would be situations in rural and regional Australia, where the courage, resilience and enterprise exhibited by refugees down through our history are valued. There would be no problems created by creaking urban infrastructure. The income earned by these people would stimulate regional economies and maybe help to arrest the decline of some bush communities.

I've seen first hand what the injection of the work ethic and enthusiasm exhibited by Vietnamese kids has done to schools in Charleville. Afghan kids would be no different.

Don’t tell me this designation of zones and carrying ID is an infringement of human rights, and locking them up in offshore gulags isn’t.

Afghans in particular make great rural workers. It’s been done, and it works. It works with Vietnamese also, as my own observed experience in Charleville has shown. There's talk about establishing an abattoir in the north to help solve real problems in the live meat export trade. One solution to two problems, perhaps?

Long-term, make collaboration with Indonesia and Malaysia an urgent priority. Move heaven and earth to come up with a cooperative agreement that makes their approach and our approach indistinguishable. The successful model provided by the Vietnamese boat people is worth looking at.

This may involve anointing a high profile ex-politician to do some shuttling between Oz and our Northern neighbours for a year or two. Maybe Phillip Ruddock would be the man? Or perhaps Alexander Downer?

It’s pretty simple stuff.

The novelty would be our national leaders putting humanity before politics.

Will we ever see it?

I can hope…..

Three Ring Circus

The Courier sums it up

The old enmities are emerging.

Newman is having trouble paying off all the favours he owes.

When you consider that the LNP is a bit like the Monkees in that it was a product of a marketing strategy rather than political conviction, none of this is surprising.

Queensland has always been good value when it comes to political spectacle.

You ain't seen nothin' yet......

Authentic Aboriginals

First Dog has a particularly pithy view of authenticity when it comes to aboriginality.

Very droll - and very clever...