Hey, we can say it

An attack has been made on the Australian media from the front page of Life Decisions International (LDI), whose domain name is the far more accurate fightpp.org (PP being the USA’s Planned Parenthood, the family planning organisation that offers comprehensive sex education and pregnancy services including abortion for those who choose it). The LDI are upset that somebody noticed an association between them and serial ministerial bungler Kevin Andrews.

Australian Media Shows No Regard For The Truth

It is not unusual for pro-abortion activists to use their allies in the media to attack pro-life leaders and lawmakers. But some in the Australian media are taking the practice to a whole new level. LDI has issued a response to an attack on an Australian lawmaker.

When we go to the response, the target of our media’s attack is made more explicit (the weird hyphenation of some words is in the original):

Australia Media Shows No Regard For Truth In Attack On Pro-Life Minister
8.6.2007

WASHINGTON, D.C.–It’s nothing new. Pro-abortion activ-ists work with their allies in the media to attack pro-life leaders and lawmakers. The most recent vociferous attack is against the Honorable Kevin Andrews, a Member of the Australian Parliament and Minister for Immigration and Citizenship.

“It is obvious that some pro-abortion zealot was in the United States or was searching the Internet in an effort to find something that could be used to attack Mr. Andrews,” said Douglas R. Scott, president of Life Decisions Interna-tional (LDI). “They eventually discovered that Mr. Andrews and his wife, Margaret, are members of our Board of Advi-sors. To pro-abortion activists, one may as well be a mem-ber of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Filed under: Politics, culture wars, ethics, religion, sexuality

Why so offended? It’s not like I said any bad words!

“Oh, the civility!” is of course the catchcry of pearlclutchers everywhere, especially on that subset of socially-conservative blogs where a bit of cussing is viewed as inherently and self-evidently an order of magnitude more offensive than calling someone a pervert or a traitor.

Here’s a couple of comments from another blog which point out just how much this “civility” standard is rank hypocrisy, which cuts right to the heart of our Civility Guidelines here at Hoyden About Town.

Rheinhard:

Consider 2 pieces of writing:

1. A lengthy screed written by lawyers and statisticians explaining, with numerous polysyllabic phrases and data extrapolations galore, the benefits that would accrue to the national discourse, the economy, and morality in general should the polity choose to put all of the citizenry who happen to be of Jewish extraction into cleansing facilities (which, it is explained in a technical footnote, will contain only the most humane and sanitary of gas chambers and crematoria)

or

2. A short flyer posted on lamposts telling the Nazi Punks to F**K Off.

Which set of writers would you prefer to dine with?

Filed under: blogging, conservatism, culture wars, ethics, moral panics, peeves

Milking it in California

Edited to add: Two other blogs have now picked up on this story.

The Lactivist notes “The International Breast Milk Project in the News Again“.

And MamaBear at breastfeedingsymbol.org has done some ringing around – directly to the iThemba Lethu orphanage. Her post You’re Going to Want to Read This details the fact the the numbers are still just not. adding. up:

Since the IBMP made their promise to send 55,000 ounces of donated breast milk, they have sent the one shipment of 5,343 ounces in May 2007. Their rate of shipments to Africa is about two shipments a year so far.

Why is it important to know all of this? Because the International Breast Milk Project got 55,000 ounces of donated milk because of Oprah. On Oprah’s show, it was stated that the donated milk would go to Africa, not 25% of it. The IBMP promised that all those 55,000 ounces would be sent to Africa, and that thereafter, 25% of what is donated would be sent. At the current rate and quantity that the IBMP is sending milk (an average of two shipments a year), it would take almost five years to send the originally promised 55,000 ounces to Africa.

MamaBear also notes ways to contribute that don’t line anyone’s pockets: you can donate milk and/or money directly to iThemba Lethu, or to non-profit milk banking or milk sharing networks in your locality.

~~
The O.C. Register today carried this story: Rancho realtor donates breast milk to Africa.

You might recall that I’ve written in the past about the close ties between breastmilk-for-profit Prolacta and the “International Breastmilk Project”. The Oprah-advertised “charity”, supposedly independent from Prolacta, was outed as providing 75% of milk donated for African orphans directly to Prolacta for sale within the United States:

Feed the wo-orld… one baby, anyhow.

Salon’s “Milk Money”: media scrutiny of the IBMP-Prolacta partnership

At the time, I held the opinion that this “collaboration” was essentially a push for Prolacta to gain a supposedly arms-length “non-profit” front for its milk collection activities. And the exploitation of the image of sick black starving babies doesn’t hurt, either. This is nothing new for Prolacta. Prolacta has dubbed its commercial milk-collection arm the “National Milk Bank”, with an “org” suffix (nationalmilkbank.org). When it was first set up, Prolacta-NMB claimed openly on its webpage to be a non-profit organisation. (The claim has since been removed).

Unsurprisingly, women are more likely to donate milk when they feel it is going to a good cause, rather than when they know that they’re being exploited for massive profits by venture capitalists.

Of course, my concerns were dismissed by the IBMP founder. No, she said, we just have this little arrangement with Prolacta, they’re helping us out with processing. We’re not Prolacta, we’re totally independent. Prolacta are being all altruistic in all this, and by the way, aren’t they lovely to donate all these resources for the greater good? Don’t they deserve some good publicity for it?

So guess who’s the director of the new Californian branch of the “International Breastmilk Project”? April Brown. Daughter of Elena Medo. Who’s Elena Medo? The CEO and founder of Prolacta.

Arm’s length arrangement, my arse.

*** If you’re in the USA or Canada and wish to donate milk to a real non-profit organisation, check out HMBANA, the Human Milk Banking Association of North America. ***

Filed under: breastfeeding, ethics, obstreperation

“God didn’t make any junk”

So said Tammy Faye Messner (once Tammy Faye Bakker) once when asked her opinion on homosexuals and whether they could be part of the Christian family. She died yesterday of cancer aged 65.

I’m not a fan of televangelists as a breed. That’s not just because I’m an atheist. The judgemental authoritarianism seems to be generally too close to the surface, and too many of them have been proven fleecers of their flock for person gain, persuasive hypocrites and liars motivated by greed and hunger for fame.

The general impression of Tammy Faye seems to be that she was a truly warmhearted and generous woman, who although she enjoyed fame wasn’t actively involved in the fraudulent fleecing of the PTL Ministries flock, but who still must have been deliberately closing her eyes to the shadiness of Jim Bakker’s dealings rather than being truly totally ignorant.

That’s a pretty huge flaw, let’s say it. But at least she never bought in to the party line of bigotry towards same sex attraction that so many other evangelical Christians, whether they’ve got a TV station broadcasting it or not, spout every day. Good for you, Tammy Faye.

Filed under: Life, ethics, religion

Recklessly supplying a SIM card

Curmudgeon of the Day goes to the caller I heard on ABC702 talkback radio this morning (paraphrased from memory):

What a ridiculous charge?…How do you even do that? Tie it to a brick and chuck it at someone?

He’s talking of course of Dr Mohammed Haneef, who was yesterday granted conditional bail by a Queensland magistrate on charges laid against him of recklessly supplying resources (said SIM card) to a terrorist organisation (what other people would describe as passing on a UK SIM card he could not use in Australia to his cousin when he left the UK).

The call was in response to news of the decision by Federal Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews last night to preempt judicial due process and the presumption of innocence. Andrews used his ministerial oversight powers to revoke Haneef’s visa and consign him to the Villawood Detention Centre pending further investigations and the resolution of his court case.

Shaun at LP has a great post and links round-up on opinon about Andrews v. Haneef, and quotes Peter Wilkinson most aptly:

Indiscriminate repression is totally incompatible with the liberal values of humanity, liberty and justice. It is a dangerous illusion to believe one can ‘protect’ liberal democracy by suspending liberal rights and forms of government.

Filed under: authoritarianism, ethics, islamophobia, law

Fundiewatch: a Catholic prenatal diagnosis “counselling service”

Two of our local Catholic hospital networks have collaborated to offer a new so-called “counselling service, dubbed “Mamreh”. These two hospitals combined have a lot of community credibility already, as they provide the vast majority of private-hospital maternity services in this State. Baby-catching (or baby-cutting-out, for over half the births in these hospitals) is big business around here.

Mamreh has been taking out full-page ads in the local medical rags pushing their “counselling service” to doctors. The advertisements make no disclosure of the Catholic-medicine rider that the service operates under – which means no condoning, recommending, or counselling on termination of pregnancy, except in cases where the mother’s life is at substantial risk.

This service’s stated purpose? Counselling on prenatal genetic screening and diagnosis. Stating the bleeding obvious, the ad I’m looking at says, “Prenatal genetic screening and diagnostic test information can have profound medical, psychological, and social implications”. No kidding. It goes on, “To add to this there is often only a limited time in which to make critical decisions about a pregnancy.”

This window of defencelessness is crucial. Fundies want to ensure that women are rapidly bustled by their trusted doctors or midwives into a “counselling service” whose primary goal is to hide information from them. The ultimate goal of this type of counselling is to obfuscate information on options and to coerce women into continuing a pregnancy whether they wish to or not – or at least, to delay them just long enough so that the window for a readily accessible termination of pregnancy closes.

Fundies have been pulling this crap in Australia for years, first with tacit government approval and now with open government funding and encouragement, thanks to our papist Health Minister. Attempts to get fraudulent “unplanned pregnancy counselling services” to declare their “faith-based” bias up front have thus far failed.

And now these malignant woman-hating godbags are expanding their vile game to even more vulnerable women – those who are in the initial throes of learning that their fetus has a severe medical problem.

The Mamreh ad veers from there into outright sleight of hand:

“Mamreh Counselling Service explores self, motivations, beliefs and faith in the context of a patient’s own personal, cultural and social situation.”

Would you read this as saying that if your belief system allows termination of pregnancy in the event of severe congenital defect, the service would offer unprejudiced counselling on, and referral for, termination of pregnancy? Well, stop right there. This is not the case. Not remotely.

Do NOT go to this service, or any service like it, unless your goal is to be railroaded into continuing your pregnancy come what may. If a friend or relative has been referred to this service, make sure they know what they’re in for BEFORE they cross the threshold and the forced-birther brainwashing and guilt trips begin. A woman in this awful situation needs absolutely unqualified, unconditional support throughout her decision-making process.

Lying lies and the lying liars who tell them. We hatesss them, we does.

Filed under: ethics, fundies, medicine, obstreperation, reproductive freedoms

Simple changes could end discrimination for thousands of Australian couples

This press release from the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), dated 21 June 2007, has largely gone off the media radar due to Howard’s Indigenous Emergency plan hogging all the limelight:

Changing the definitions describing de facto relationships in relevant federal laws could help end daily discrimination suffered by more than 20,000 same-sex couples in Australia, according to a report by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), tabled in Federal Parliament today.

The Same-Sex: Same Entitlements Report, being officially launched in Sydney tomorrow by Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes AM, found that 58 federal laws denied same-sex couples and their children basic financial and work-related entitlements available to opposite-sex couples and their children.

“As one man told us during our Inquiry – same-sex couples are first class tax-payers but second class citizens – and we have certainly found this to be true,” Mr Innes said.

Filed under: ethics, law, moral panics, sexuality

Feminist ethics and digital communities

A discussion in another blog reminded me that I hadn’t yet got around to HTMLifying my exploration of feminist ethics in digital communities. I’ve put it up here.

I’m particularly interested to hear responses to these questions:

In a blog comment community, who has the right to participate in the production and enforcement of norms, and how are those rights allocated? Should the blogger, who has the power to pull the plug, have the ultimate right over their “own” space, including a comment community? Under a traditional ethical system, she would retain this absolute right, and that right would prevail, in a conflict, over commenters’ rights to be heard and to participate in community norms. From a feminist ethics viewpoint, the situation is less clear-cut. Rather than focussing on bloggers’ rights, the feminist ethicist looks at the responsibilities of bloggers and commenters. To what extent do (or should) bloggers feel a responsibility to care for their comment community as a shared social space, to encourage connections, to facilitate a more democratic production of social norms? What value does a blog hold without its readers, commenters and linkers?

And going back a step, do you feel a sense of community in digital spaces? Which ones and why? How would you evaluate whether participants feel a sense of community?

Filed under: blogging, ethics

1Q: How relevant are motives in assessing the public policy stance of a politician or commentator?

This week’s One Question is from Harry Clarke, who writes in an earlier post:

In assessing testimony in a court of law motives are important. Elsewhere they are less so but they pervasively affect our attitudes. Some have argued that the ‘The Motive Fallacy’ (specifically, believing that exposing the motives behind an expressed opinion shows that the opinion is false) is so common in politics that serious policy debate is almost nonexistent.

…The problem with falling prey to the Motives Fallacy in a political debate is that attention is turned away from the analysis of policy consequences. Policies just become part of a political game that seeks to establish who might win or lose. The specific effects of policies remain unanalyzed by the person who says ‘X is only just saying that because of Y’ where Y has nothing to do with the effects of the policy.

My fellow 1Q contributors have largely concentrated on current events, and made many of the best points (teach me to get weighed down and be late). I plan to look back at how motives have been weighed as to relevance in the past, and particularly the roots of the idea of weighing motives in a truly ancient debate, albeit a debate that probably long predates its first recorded pithy summation.

“Cui bono?” (to whose benefit?) were the words flung by the orator Marcus Tullus Cicero repeatedly at a jury in Rome, words he attributed to the consul and censor Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla, as he defended a client charged with murder and succeeded in vindicating him. As Harry alludes to above, the principle of cui bono? forms the basis of criminal investigations today, in determining who is a credible suspect, and in weighing the strength of various motives according to the benefit derived. Whether the benefit is tangible, intangible or even delusional, the belief in a benefit to be gained through committing a crime underpins our concept of what constitutes a motive.

But the political arena is not susceptible to the same simplifications and controlled microinvestigation as the criminal court, and political policy decisions have ongoing ramifications and ripple effects that a single concrete criminal act does not.

Filed under: 1Question, Media, Politics, ethics, history, skeptics

Engage obstreperal lobes

Lauredhel has updated her post from last month about the lack of transparency surrounding ProLacta’s International Breastmilk Project with the latest news. As thought, they couldn’t lie straight in bed.

Feed the wo-orld… one baby, anyhow.

UPDATE (8 June 2007) by Lauredhel: Salon has taken up the story.
Milk Money

After May 31, however, IBMP will send 25 percent of all donations received to Africa, and 75 percent will be sold to Prolacta for $1 an ounce. What kind of profit margin does this mean for Prolacta? Potentially a motherlode. If, as Elster told me, the average donation runs around 180 ounces, then that would mean that 135 ounces (75 percent) “sold” to Prolacta would generate around $4,725 (at $35 an ounce) for the company, or about $3,890 after subtracting the expense of donor processing (about $700 per donor) and the cash payment to IBMP.
[...]
Is giving 45 ounces of breast milk at a cost of $135 to African babies really a good exchange rate for a commodity that can deliver $3,890 to a for-profit company?

Filed under: activism/charity, breastfeeding, ethics