Violence against women and its link with sports – HT @JackHockman

SAY NO TO MAYWEATHER
IT IS TIME ALL SPORTING CODES SAID NO MORE
Just when you thought the disrespect from sporting codes for women could get no worse we get the announcement of Floyd Mayweather to tour Australia. He surely is the poster boy for Violence against women a history of violence, that not even incarceration could change his attitude to women. As a boxing fan the shame that he and those grubby promoters behind this tour bring to the sport is beyond belief. At a time when boxing in Australia is on the verge of a new revival led by so many who do the right thing with dedication, hard training and respect for others that we should go down the road of disrespectful charlatans who put themselves before all others is a disgrace. I have e-mailed the Immigration Minister Peter Dutton urging him to not allow this tour to happen and I urge you to do the same. The address is minister@immi.gov.au

It is not only boxing that has this type of Issue it is virtually every sporting code and it is time we all played a part in the changing of that attitude. This is not just about respect for women but also about what we want our next generation of men to be by stopping Mayweather coming to Australia is a message that our youth need to see. As I said it is not just boxing it is all codes that must change and that change must start with us the fans following is a few examples and my thoughts of changes that must happen to help end the cycle of violence against women. Sports people should never be the role models, parents should be, however if children observe their parents and society cheering these people who should be pariahs then we will see the cycle continue.
Where to start when looking at other codes would seem obvious with the actions of the NFL this year. Where there were so many cases and different often bewildering responses to domestic violence and other issues. Most would of seen the Ray Rice incident where he knocked his then fiancé now his wife out in an elevator well Ray Rice is free to play again in the NFL after his appeal was upheld. The fact that initially his suspension was only 2 weeks should be the commissioners reason to resign, however this won’t happen as neither he nor the NFL ownership groups have any respect for women, Other than as a revenue source or as trophies for these billionaires and millionaires to display.
All codes have histories of protecting the perpetrators of violence against women and victim blaming at their core. The fact that the worst offenders are also the major codes in their countries or provinces from NFL in the USA, to Association football in many countries, and shamefully, in Australia, the NRL, and AFL. All of these codes have sham Womens days or rounds where they in an attempt to drag more $$$$ into their pockets claim to show respect for women.
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So where does the responsibility lie, with the Judiciary, leagues, broadcasters, sponsors, clubs, players, or in truth the fans. All are culpable in their willingness to defend the star player while trampling on the dignity of all women.
For the Judiciary it should be easy prosecute and sentence when found guilty. Unfortunately it doesn’t happen that way. Fan boy judges have made a mockery of the legal system to such a point that I could not use the term justice system, as for women who have been abused and subjected to violence by players there is no justice.

For the leagues themselves it is time they realized that their continuing to allow those who commit these acts to have the privilege of playing must end. The excuses used to justify these offenders to continue to play would be laughable, but assaulting women is no laughing matter. The parade of players who‘s wives girlfriends withdraw or don’t press charges is endless, and the pressure put on these victims is a disgrace.
The Broadcasters while ever they continue to have a blokes culture and jobs for the boys mentality, the story will remain the same. Watch most shows based around the players and ex-players and if you get ten minutes in without having at least one sexist comment I would be amazed.
The advertisers and sponsors must be made to see that endorsing abuse of women by allowing their corporate brand to be associated with Leagues and teams, who condone this abuse, will eventually leave a stain on their brands too large to ignore.
That clubs in the week that they were endorsing White Ribbon Day were signing or in the throes of wooing offenders to their clubs. This far more than their empty words show the true nature of the clubs opinion of women and where they stand in the game.
The players again so many players made statements on White Ribbon Day of No to Violence against Women. These same players who happily play with offenders, and so quickly anytime that one of their teammates offend leap to his defense, while just as quickly sowing the seeds for victim shaming so that their thug mate walks free.
The fans are perhaps the worst of all, for if the fans stop accepting this behavior from all the preceding groups change will happen. If a Player offends or is happy playing with offenders don’t cheer them. If your club plays offenders don’t buy memberships or merchandise. If advertisers and sponsors are unwilling to make a moral stand don’t buy their products. If broadcasters refuse to change their practices change the channel. If leagues won’t take action simply don’t go to games in particular rep football, where it clearly falls on the league, if they allow offenders to play at that level. The judiciary here to we the fans can make a change, let Governments know that we will not accept sentencing that is of another standard for players. These Judges must be held to account and the only way we can ensure this is through the ballot box if governments don’t act.
3 / 3
It is clear that all of us are to blame, in some way judges, leagues players, fans and the rest but in all this there is one group not to blame nor should they ever be blamed and that is the Victims.
Say no to Violence Against Women say no to Victim Shaming.

I like this comic.

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Here’s Why Steve Jobs Didn’t Let His Kids Use iPads And Why You Shouldn’t Either

Here’s Why Steve Jobs Didn’t Let His Kids Use iPads And Why You Shouldn’t Either

If you fall within the Gen-Y era like us, chances are you’ve given a bunch of thought as to how you would raise your own children in this day and age (assuming you don’t have children already).

Especially with technology, so much has changed since our childhoods in the 90s. Here’s one question: Would you introduce the technological wonder/heroin that is the iPod and iPad to your kids?

Steve Jobs wouldn’t, and for good reason too.

In a Sunday article, New York Times reporter Nick Bilton said he once assumingly asked Jobs, “So your kids must love the iPad?”

Jobs responded: “They haven’t used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”

Especially in Silicon Valley, there is actually a trend of tech execs and engineers who shield their kids from technology. They even send their kids to non-tech schools like the Waldorf School in Los Altos, where computers aren’t found anywhere because they only focus on hands-on learning.

There is a quote that was highlighted in The Times by Chris Anderson, CEO of 3D Robotics and a father of five. He explains what drives those who work in tech to keep it from their kids.

“My kids accuse me and my wife of being fascists and overly concerned about tech, and they say that none of their friends have the same rules… That’s because we have seen the dangers of technology firsthand. I’ve seen it in myself, I don’t want to see that happen to my kids.”

If our current addictions to our iPhones and other tech is any indication, we may be setting up our children for incomplete, handicapped lives devoid of imagination, creativity and wonder when we hook them onto technology at an early age. We were the last generation to play outside precisely because we didn’t have smartphones and laptops. We learned from movement, hands-on interaction, and we absorbed information through books and socialization with other humans as opposed to a Google search.

Learning in different ways has helped us become more well-rounded individuals — so, should we be more worried that we are robbing our children of the ability to Snapchat and play “Candy Crush” all day if we don’t hand them a smartphone, or should we more worried that we would be robbing them of a healthier, less dependent development if we do hand them a smartphone? I think Steve Jobs had it right in regard to his kids.

So the next time you think about how you will raise your kids, you may want to (highly) consider not giving them whatever fancy tech we’ll have while they are growing up. Play outside with them and surround them with nature; they might hate you, but they will absolutely thank you for it later, because I’m willing to bet that’s exactly how many of us feel about it now that we are older.

Originally posted on The Mirror Post
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10 Early Warning Signs of Domestic Violence for Men

10 Early Warning Signs of Domestic Violence

How do you know if you are in an abusive relationship—or headed down that certain path? Trust your instincts. Survivors of domestic violence say that they knew something wasn’t right, but ignored the following patterns of behavior that they later recognized as potential early warning signs that the person they were dating would turn out to be abusers.

Someone who exhibits the behavior outlined below is either abusive or could become so.

• Rages out of control and is impulsive
• Gets angry so easily that you feel like you’re “walking on eggshells”
• Calls you names such as “stupid” or “dumb,” “arsehole”, “wanker” or tells you that you are “crazy”
• Wants to move too quickly into the relationship
• Is excessively jealous and wants to know where you are all of the time
• Takes no responsibility for her behavior and blames others
• Grew up in an abusive or violent home
• Insists that you stop spending time with your friends or family
• Insists that you stop participating in leisure interests
• Hits walls, drive dangerously, or does other things to scare you

National counselling helpline, information and support 24/7 1800RESPECT

#HeyPal is a conversation starter about Men’s Mental Wellness and Suicide Prevention. A simple Hey Pal is all it can take.

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This has been adapted from “10 Early Warning Signs of Domestic Violence” and you can read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/11/23/10-early-warning-signs-domestic-violence-157971

#Introverts 1-10 “Solitude matters, and for some people, it is the air that they breathe.” – Susan Cain

1. We withdraw in crowds.
2. Small talk stresses us out, while deeper conversations makes us feel alive.
3. We succeed on stage — just not in the chit-chat afterwards.
4. We get distracted easily, but rarely feel bored.
5. We are naturally drawn to more creative, detail-oriented and solitary careers.
6. When surrounded by people, we locate themselves close to an exit.
7. We think before they speak.
8. We don’t take on the mood of their environment like extroverts do.
9. We physically can’t stand talking on the phone.
10. We literally shut down when it’s time to be alone.

“Solitude matters, and for some people, it is the air that they breathe.” – Susan Cain

A Gay, Aboriginal, Introverted Male (And Not At All What You’d Expect That Means)

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The Harmless Homophobic Tweet or the Selective Blindness of Rape Culture.

When violence is entrenched to the point of invisibility

The Harmless Homophobic Tweet or the Selective Blindness of Rape Culture

The Kissing Sailor, or “The Selective Blindness of Rape Culture”

Most of us are familiar with this picture. Captured in Times Square on V-J Day, 1945, it has become one of the most iconic photographs of American history, symbolizing the jubilation and exuberance felt throughout the country at the end of World War II.

For a long time, the identity of the pair remained a mystery. It certainly looks passionate and romantic enough, with many speculating that they were a couple – a sailor and a nurse, celebrating and sharing their joy. This year, however, historians have finally confirmed that the woman is Greta Zimmer Friedman, a dental nurse at the time, and George Mendonsa, a sailor.

Greta’s experience:

“It wasn’t my choice to be kissed. The guy just came over and grabbed!”

“I did not see him approaching, and before I knew it, I was in this vice grip.”

“You don’t forget this guy grabbing you.”

“That man was very strong. I wasn’t kissing him. He was kissing me.”

More here at Huff Post

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Ten Solutions to Poverty – education and employment are but two.

1. Employment generation

Carefully and extensively planned employment programs funded by the government can spur growth in jobs. Industries requiring substantial labour forces can also be given significantly larger aid from the government. Focus should be placed on developing companies that offer sustainable and long-term jobs to the community. Companies should also budget sufficiently for employee training and related community programs, so that employees and prospective employees can keep their skills relevant and up-to-date.

2. Drawing on various social institutions to fund poverty fighting programs e.g. charities, research institutions, U.N. , non-profit organizations, universities.

Money funnelled from every organization available adds up to powerful sums that can produce tangible change. When organizations develop an interest, albeit vested, they tend to be more strongly motivated. Organizations that have a concrete goal to achieve with strict project plans are able to efficiently concentrate their efforts into producing change. For this reason charities with numerous middlemen organizations should be discouraged to ensure money reaches those in need. Importance should be given to organizations that follow the teach a man to fish ideology rather than the give the man a fish one, unless in extremely dire emergency circumstances.

3. Transparency in government spending

Where and how a government chooses to spend taxpayers’ money and its own revenue should be visible to the media and the common man. This makes governments accountable for their actions and inaction becomes easier to pinpoint and address. It also discourages corruption in government systems. For example, transparency will be especially beneficial to civilians whose government might be allotting money to its nuclear weapons program instead of to its poverty programs.

4. Cancelling impossible to repay world debts

Many developing countries are trapped in the cycle of constantly repaying debts that are impossible to pay off. This ensures that they never get a chance to develop and become self-sufficient. The priorities of these countries are therefore unnecessarily skewed and the citizens of these debt-ridden nations are devoid of any hope for a better future.

5. Prioritizing programs that target fundamental human rights

Every individual should have access to housing, food, clean water, healthcare and electricity. Technically governments should only move on to other projects after they have made sure that programs that provide these basic amenities to their people are up and running. This might prove to be the hardest step yet.
6. Taxing the rich more and the poor less

Redistribution of wealth will be an imperative step in eradicating poverty. The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Taxing methods need to be tailored to an individual’s financial bracket to ensure that upward social mobility becomes an absolute possibility.

7. Building self-sufficient economies

Creating reduced dependence on oil, external financial aid and imports will help to ensure that alleviation of poverty remains on an upward but permanent curve, as opposed to a temporary revivalist injection in a dying economy. Steps in this area include investment in local infrastructure, transportation and schools that keep the ball of development rolling. Projects to launch new industries and businesses will also need monetary encouragement.

8. Education

As much as poverty is a social condition it is also a mental and psychological cage. With education, impoverished populations are able to visualise their way out of poverty and are able to work towards it in an organised and reliable manner. Education provides training to tomorrow’s workforce and thus fortifies the economy against poverty. Education in rich populations about poverty invokes sentiments of compassion and a sense of responsibility to the misfortunes of the rest of the world. Education also has the power to bring about social changes such as fights against racism and sexism – both conditions that happen to be linked intrinsically with poverty.

9. Involvement of the media

The media has the power to draw the eye of the global conscience to issues of poverty. It becomes too easy to forget the state of the less fortunate when the world is advancing at lightning speed. With effective media coverage of poverty-related catastrophes, the demand for social change rises collectively all over the world.

10. Microfinancing

Microfinancing makes financial services like insurance, savings and loans available to individuals in developing nations who wish to run their own small businesses. These individuals, suffering from lack of employment opportunities and financial backing from governments or banks, are able to create a profitable means of survival through microfinancing. Flourishing small businesses, in turn, create jobs, provide much needed services to their communities and help stimulate the economy for the long run.

via Arbitrage Magazine

 

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[Book review] Creating agency in Aboriginal health by Dameyon Bonson

Reflections / Book reviews
Creating agency in Aboriginal health

Dameyon Bonson
Med J Aust 2014; 201 (9): 540.
doi: 10.5694/mja14.01096

PAT ANDERSON, chair of the Lowitja Institute, Australia’s National Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research, provides generous praise to the authors of this work for their valuable contribution to research and practice of empowerment in Aboriginal health (http://www.lowitja.org.au/promoting-aboriginal-health-family-wellbeing-empowerment-approach). When you read this text you will find that the praise is well deserved.

The full contents of this page are only available to subscribers.

https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2014/201/9/creating-agency-aboriginal-health

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Malaria kills nearly one million people each year – Public Health Poetry

Malaria Poems by Cameron Conaway

Malaria kills nearly one million people each year. Hundreds of millions more are sickened by the disease, and many of them are permanently disabled. Billions are spent each year to understand it. Researchers know the molecular details of the interaction between the mosquito and our own red blood cells, and the myriad ways in which malaria impacts the global economy and the advancement of humanity. But what of the public? Though its story is told in thousands of articles and in hundreds of books, many in the developed world are unaware of how prevalent malaria still is. “Malaria, Poems” testifies to the importance of bridging the chasm between science and art. It adds thread to a tattered and tragic global narrative; it is poetry’s attempt to reawaken care in a cold case that keeps killing. According to Cicero the aim of the orator is threefold: to teach, to delight, and to move. Poets during the renaissance embraced this idea, and Malaria, Poems reinvigorates it. Allen Ginsberg called for a poetry of social consciousness, a “bare knuckle warrior poetics.” Cameron Conaway, a former MMA fighter, offers” Malaria, Poems” both as a response to Ginsberg’s call and as a new call to contemporary poetry.

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“When indigenous (sic) is a disclaimer not a qualifier” an example. Happenings in Broome.

Sent to me via email copied from Broome Community Notice Board.  “Community Meeting tomorrow night”

The original post from *Xxxxx that kicked this meeting of

I am indigenous, and I am here to say I am sick and tired of reading some of the drivel that comes out every time someone complains about unacceptable behaviour in this town. People regularly bitch and moan about dog owners letting their dogs poop on the beach, we have whinges about backpackers washing their clothes and their body parts in public facilities, and of course there’s humbugging at Coles and the recent brawling in Anne Street.

What I am most sick and tired of is that any time someone complains about unacceptable behaviour from indigenous people, it is immediately branded a racist attack by some indigenous people. I am appalled that some of the responses from my indigenous brothers and sisters to the Anne Street brawl includes not only justifications for punching on in the street, but attempts to minimise the seriousness of these events and the damage this causes to kids watching by saying “well, it’s been happening for years!”

Yes, we know it’s been happening for years. Does that make it acceptable? Does that mean that nobody is allowed to stand up and say “this is feral behaviour?” Does this mean that anyone who says it is unacceptable is a racist just because the individuals involved happen to be indigenous?

If a group of any other race, colour or creed started doing the same, they would be justifiably condemned by the public, who are entitled to be going about their lawful business driving down a street without being confronted by a big group of brawlers and onlookers fighting, screaming, and smashing glass on the street.

Some of the people who have commented here say it needs more funding, it needs more leadership, it needs more understanding of trans-generational trauma, and that may well be true. But what it DOES NOT need, is the constant making of excuses for what is simply anti-social behaviour.

Every single time you blame something like trans-generational trauma, or social disadvantage, or the cops, or the white invaders, instead of the individual in front of you who is drunk, off his head and wanting to punch on in the street, you condemn that person to a life of low expectations and mediocrity. Every time you say, well, that’s just the way we are, you condemn generations of indigenous kids who are full of potential to never achieving theirs.

Every time you come to the defence of your countrymen because somebody complains about the behaviour of some individuals who happen to be indigenous, instead of actually looking at why the behaviour is unacceptable, you just keep the myth going that black people are incapable of being better than that.

Every time you spread the idea, directly or subliminally, that it’s ok to be anti-social and under-achieve at everything because there is a whole raft of other things to blame that are beyond your control, you create another victim. The poor-bugger-me syndrome. It’s time to put it to bed and demand a higher standard for all of us, and that can only come from within.

We ARE better than that, we know we are better than that, why don’t we demand that everybody acts like they are?

_______________________

From *XXXXX XXXX

Hi everyone,

I’m looking forward to meeting a lot of new faces and getting some good ideas thrashed out.

Please have a read through this before you come along, print it out and bring it if you can.

Notes and Agenda for informal meeting of interested parties – Broome Fishing Club – 29 October (6pm start) 

Although being held as an informal meeting, there are some things I want to achieve as a result. To aim for anything less means it is nothing more than another talk fest. 

1. Opening – *XXXXX XXXX
2. All attendees invited to share their thoughts on something concrete they would like to achieve to bring about change in Broome.
3. Discussion centred around the thoughts shared, with a view to narrowing them down to
4. A short list of problems and/or issues needing to be addressed in Broome
5. Realistic assessment of whether they can be achieved
6. If so, how do we go about it?
7. Formation of a committee to drive the necessary actions to address the issues.

My preliminary thoughts about things to discuss include the following:

• Itinerant drunks and troublemakers in Chinatown
• How do we make service providers, govt agencies and Aboriginal corporations more accountable for actually delivering services to the people that need them (I will expand on this more on the night, but it comes in the light of what is happening at Kennedy Hill, One Mile and elsewhere.)
• Drug and alcohol issues, can we address problems for addicts, with suppliers/dealers etc?
• Is there a place for things like a basics card, alcohol free house declarations, alcohol restrictions of some sort. Bring your ideas.

*De-identified

 

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