Peter Short "Fade to Black" movie trailer - Dying with dignity (video)

Peter Short died a while back, in the process drawing attention to the plight of those who wanted to end their lives at the time of their choosing. Rather than going through intolerable suffering both for them and their families helplessly witnessing it. 

I'm sure I'm not the only one who can relate to that. Long time readers here will know what my wife went through as she died slowly whilst they tried to keep her alive. Her suffering made the grief of her passing so much worse. The saying "God never gives you more than you can bear" is complete bullshit. As it was both for my wife, my (at the time) teenage daughter, and me.

Peter turned an unpleasant death journey in to a meaningful and unforgettable statement about the right of an individual to end their suffering at a time of their choosing. 

It's coming out shortly the movie about Peter Short here in Australia. I couldn't figure out how to embed the video (the Vimeo link didn't seem to work) so I posted it on twitter and embedded the tweet below  :s

You can buy tickets to see the movie at theatres across Australia here. 

You can read Peter Shorts blog detailing his journey to death here.

Watch “Fade to Black Trailer” on #Vimeo https://t.co/5AFWQFlpOz

— Peter Hiv (@HivPeter) July 15, 2017

First images of Jupiter's red spot - Juno flyby

From just under 14,000 kilometres up (*click to enlarge)

Raw images have started coming in from the Juno spacecraft's fly by over Jupiter's great red spot, a storm that has been storming for over 300 years. These raw images have begun to be processed by citizen scientists, giving the most detailed and colourful view man has ever seen of the red spot from only a few thousand kilometres up. Amazing 😍

You can find more at the link.

From just under 10,000 kilometres up (*click to enlarge)

Al Gore Aussie interview - An Inconvenient Sequel (video)

Al Gore is in Australia at the moment. Here he talks about climate change, the economic sense of renewables, and Adelaide's world leading Telsa battery renewable storage.

NZ actor talks of being Caesar in "War for the Planet of the Apes" - video

My daughter wants to take me to see the new movie War for the Planet of the Apes. Not many people may know but Caesar (the lead ape character) is played by New Zealand actor Andy Serkis.

There's an incredible clip included in this interview showing how Serkis acts as that acting is transferred to the computer generated Caesar. Anyone who thinks that those doing the voices are just doing the voices is truly mistaken. As he says, now an actor can play anything.

He also played Gollum  in Lord of the Rings.

Malta gets marriage equality - Australia waits.... (video)

Malta has legalised marriage equality, again highlighting how Neanderthal the Australian Lieberal party is. There was only one person  who voted no in the parliamentary vote.

Australia continues to wait.

David is half Maltese. His mother has never accepted him being gay. Another case of immigrants having been in Australia for decades and not realising how their homeland has changed. David and his mother don't communicate at all anymore.

MALTA’S parliament has voted to allow same-sex couples to marry, three years after passing a law permitting civil partnerships in the overwhelmingly Catholic nation.

The breakthrough comes just weeks Taiwan and Germany legalised gay marriage, leaving Australia in the dust.

Malta, the EU’s smallest nation, becomes the bloc’s 15th country to legalise same-sex unions. Only one politician out of 67 in the Maltese parliament voted against the legislation, signalling its broad support on the island nation. News.com.au

US Attorney General and "Alliance Defending Freedom" - shades of Abbott (video)

We LGBT long remember when our ex-prime minister Tony Abbott went to New York and spoke at a gathering of the US based Alliance Defending Freedom, bagging us LGBT as not worthy of his acceptance of us being married.

Now the US Attorney General is having some sort of secret bla with the ADF and the Americans are horrified darlings. Being as the US is pretty much politically far right lunatic fringe dwellers, it's rather telling that even they find much to do with the ADF and their leaders sucking up to them entirely horrifying.

This is the lunatic fringe that the US has become.

This is the lunatic fringe that Abbott already was as our PM but found and outlet in the US ADF. This is the sort of person Abbott is.

The fact that a few other lunatics in the Lieberals actually think he can come back and be PM again says huge amounts of the backwards demented nature of the current Lieberal party. Anyone who could vaguely even countenance such an insane thought is certainly not with the electorate.

The Alliance Defending Freedom is the largest of the Religious Right legal groups, engaging in culture war battles against LGBTQ equality and reproductive choice in the U.S. and increasingly around the globe. So why would the address of the attorney general to ADF, a group not normally shy about taking credit for its work, be closed to the media?

 We took a look at the ADF’s website. There’s a series of blog posts explaining why laws protecting people against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are a threat to free speech and religious freedom. There’s some crowing about winning a recent Supreme Court case that could undermine church-state separation. There’s a recent post about how intolerant the Left is. But there’s no information about the summit. Ditto for ADF’s Twitter feed @AllianceDefends. The events tab on its Facebook page says, “Alliance Defending Freedom does not have any upcoming events.” Googling the conference turns up only a mobile app for the summit, but after downloading it, we ran into a password wall. Right Wing Watch

The Australian newspaper rigged plebiscite polling

The Australian ( gov bugle) had another bullshit plebiscite poll, pulling the wool over the eyes of the poll answerers. 

"Should the issue be resolved by a national plebiscite" is an out and out lie. A plebiscite is nothing more than a glorified opinion poll that doesn't require the gov of the day to pass what has been voted on. Indeed there are ministers in the gov who have publicly said they'll vote no for marriage equality even if the plebiscite was yes.

In short a plebiscite won't "resolve" the issue. A parliamentary free vote will.

Why the fuck is the paper still talking about a bloody plebiscite? It's dead. Kaput. 

The question The Australian asked was, “should the issue be resolved by means of a national plebiscite or by politicians voting in parliament.” (my emphasis)

 It makes it sound like an either/or proposition. But it is not. A plebiscite is not an alternative to a vote in parliament, just an expensive add-on.

 People thought they were being asked if they wanted a public vote that would actually change the law – ‘resolve the issue’, as the paper put it, instead of a parliamentary vote. But there is no way to do that in the Australian system. Laws can only be changed by politicians voting in parliament.

 A plebiscite has absolutely no effect: it’s just a great big bloody expensive opinion poll that politicians can ignore if they like. As many of them have said they will.

 The issue can only be ‘resolved’ by politicians voting in parliament, whether or not a plebiscite – which is nothing more than a $160m taxpayer funded opinion poll – is held first.

 We have been here before: this is the same lie the last time the government tried to foist a plebiscite upon us. But when it was explained to people that a plebiscite would not be binding, and would cost more than $160m, support for the idea fell dramatically, as we wrote here: 70% do NOT support a plebiscite.

 The last poll which explained all this found only 25% supported a plebiscite.

 A plebiscite resolves nothing. And when people know that, they do not support it. The Stirrer

Daily Terrorgraph newspaper has LGBT listed as a health concern

link

*Update: sign petition demanding apology.

The Terrorgraph has a report in it today pointing out the health problems of young people (of which "they only have themselves to blame" for). See above picture.

In the full page splurge of terrible problems is listed same sex attraction. WTF?

And how on earth do they have "only themselves to blame" for who they are? That's no different than some high and mighty white person saying that black people "only have themselves to blame" for being black. LGBT can't change who they are any more than someone can change the colour of their skin.

How offensive can you get! 

To lodge a complaint about the Tele's dangerous rubbish go to Australian Press Council: https://t.co/b8s0Ec0UJdhttps://t.co/Xsm4XoZbik

— Jill Stark (@jillastark) July 12, 2017

We've reached the prescription free list already :)

Centrelink

Far out that was quick. We were thinking Sept or Oct, but only just over half way through the year we're already there. Between us we've clocked up 60 prescriptions since the beginning of the year. And that doesn't include my HIV pills which are free anyway.

For those overseas, people on pensions here pay only $6.30 per prescription, up to a maximum of 60 per year, after which they're free. That 60 is spread across a whole family too; meaning 60 prescriptions total for the whole family. As David and I are a couple (albeit still waiting for marriage) that 60 includes both of us.

So for the rest of the calendar year all our prescriptions are free. Hooray! Thank you Medicare.

Jonathan Pie from UK rips into Trump re G20 - video

I saw this guy a while back in his video about corporations paying no tax or something. He's pretty funny. Here he pretty much says what everyone is thinking :)

78yr old and 13yr old gays compare notes on LGBT history - video

An interesting little discussion about how things have changed from so many years ago. For example, who could imagine now the police coming in to your home and charging you for sleeping with your partner?

Trump's G20 scathed by Aussie media - (viral video)

Just look at that picture above. What a disgraceful capitulation of a western leader.

A long time salesman years ago told me about how the salesman should shake hands to unconsciously impose authority over the other person. The hand on top thing by Putin is a classic example of this.

The media here in Australia has been contemptible of Trump at the G20. Chris Uhlmann of the ABC, usually in my opinion anyway a rather right wing reporter, has had his criticism of Trump go viral over the weekend according to The Washington Post.

See video below:

The Washington Post

Gov wants Sickness Allowance recipients to become jobseekers :s

The AIM

Among many other things I should add, as the AIM article reveals (including drug testing welfare recipients).

Perhaps because I spent two months getting Sickness Allowance back when I was on dialysis with acute kidney failure, this makes particularly no sense. Sickness Allowance is payable to you if you get sick and have a job to return to (ie your boss says he'll keep you on when you get better). It's used for things like recovering from a broken leg for example, or an operation. 

It pays the same amount as the dole. But at least it's something, even though it wasn't even enough to pay my rent.

My point is it's paid to people who're demonstrably sick. Likely even in hospital. How on earth could you turn this Sickness Allowance into a jobseeker payment? 

What's more you're only eligible for it if you have a job to return back to. How then are you supposed to be a jobseeker?

The legislation is currently before parliament and hasn't entered the senate yet. Much more at the link.

Secret plan revealed for marriage equality - amongst Lieberals

Gay WA Lieberal MP Dean Smith

*Update: "Let's see the devil in the detail" - The Stirrer

Well this is going to get the far wing wingnut's feathers flying in an almighty hissy fit.

An openly gay Lieberal MP from Western Australia has revealed a secret plan for marriage equality in this term of gov. He has been drafting, on the sly, a private members bill to legalise marriage equality in Australia . He plans to take the bill to the party room soon to push for a parliamentary conscience vote on the issue.

Personally I'd be extremely surprised if the likes of Tony Abbott and Dutton were rolled on the issue, although with such disaffection amongst the Lieberals towards out of control wrecker Abbott lately you never know.

WA Liberal Senator Dean Smith has for the first time revealed he is secretly drafting a private members’ bill to legalise same sex marriage in Australia, declaring “the time is now” to resolve an issue which he says has become an “embarrassment” for the nation.

 The bombshell confirms weeks of speculation in Canberra that there were new attempts within the federal Liberal Party to bring about a conscience vote on same-sex marriage in the parliament, despite Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s insistence it would be determined by a plebiscite.

 Senator Smith, an openly gay politician, said the bill was well advanced and he intended taking it to the party room for discussion in the near future, after which he hoped a parliamentary vote would be taken before the end of this year.

 He said the bill would allow exemptions for religious and other celebrants who did not want to allow two people of the same sex to marry.

 “The bill is important because it will allow the Liberal Party to revisit the issue of marriage once and for all before the next election,” Senator Smith told The Sunday Times.

 “I don’t doubt the complexity same-sex-marriage presents for some Liberals, but I am not asking people to change their mind on the issue.

 “Instead, we should allow everyone the right to vote according to their own conscience. The coalition’s position is clear – a plebiscite – so people should not underestimate the challenge of securing a free vote on the issue. Perth Now

The only thing "complex" about marriage equality is the knot the Lieberals have tied themselves up in over it. 

Of course the whole push from within may well fail with the consequence of the Lieberal party self immolating again over it, and providing yet another display to Australians of their sheer incompetence on such a simple issue. 

Will the bigoted homophobes yet again torpedo the push, or will sense prevail? Once again the ball is firmly in their court....

US health care via Trumpcare - video

Listen up Australia.....

We don't want this shit the Lieberals worship as the way to go for health care. Hawke bought in Medicare (WTF has this gov done? Apart from trying to dismantle it). President Clintin tried to reform their health care in the US after they studied Australia's Medicare system. The whole thing failed because whatever over there.

The Lieberals are edging slowly towards such a system, where private companies can decide if you can get health care according to your condition. If you're too sick the premiums are so high as to deny you health care/insurance.

Australia works the same with private heath care. I couldn't even afford basic private health care  because David and I are poor. And I have so many conditions the premiums wouldn't be basic anyway. So I rely on Medicare. The saviour of us poor!

I go to my HIV GP professor doctor, a director at the health care centre where those that earn a decent wage get charged $85 for seeing a doctor there. I see him for free. I see for free lately the kidney specialist as my kidney dramas increased a bit. I've been seeing since 2009 my psychologist for free (currently once a month).

The US system is expensive and horrifying. It's all based on private insurance pretty much. 

When you take a car in to be fixed here in Oz, the mechanic will ask you if it's an insurance job or not. If it is they pump up the price because they know they'll be paid by the insurance company.

Hence the US health system....