Letters To The Editor
Nobody's perfect
By any measure the late Vicar of Rome was a man of considerable stature. Compared with his dubious predecessors he stands out, deserving credit for many shining achievements on the world stage.
So, could one really object to singing his praises? Certainly not - great men deserve to be praised (not to mention what my mum taught me, that you shouldn't speak evil of the dead). But an appropriate "singing of praises" doesn't equate to blind mass hysteria. That (which we have had in quantity since his death) only serves to cheapen the currency of praise.
I can't help thinking of Arthur Miller's stunning play Death of a Salesman. Paul from Poland was some salesman! So brilliant was he at selling his view of things that since he died barely a soul has had the temerity to say aloud what we surely all know about him. Which is that he was a deeply flawed man. A mortal man, morally flawed like the rest of us.
At the enormous risk of offending some of my Catholic friends I have to plead for a little bit of truth to be injected into this matter. If Paul really was the "Great Pope" his adoring fans make him out to be, surely he'd want the truth to be told, wouldn't he?
I spent many of the best years of my life living in Africa. Today there are few images that more move me to tears than to see African mothers and babies dying - day after day and in their countless thousands - of the HIV-AIDS that could have been avoided with appropriate information and prophylactic help. And I cannot forget - or forgive - this man in Rome who must have their blood on his hands because of the grotesque inhumanity of his anti-condom doctrines.
Nor, as a father myself, can I forget the millions of mothers and babies of every race who have died through botched backyard abortions for precisely the same reason; that this intransigent man refused to let them choose whether or not to conceive a child.
Nobody is totally evil, but equally no ordinary mortal is totally good. And the very best men and women are always those who would wish their lives to be remembered honestly, not painted into a caricature of false sanctity.
I hope that in respecting and farewelling this very fine leader, those who loved him (and those like me who watched on with qualified admiration) will remember him with something of the honesty that he would (presumably?) have wished to be granted to his memory. And, with all his merits - and despite all his faults - Requiescat in Pace.
Lee Andresen
East Ballina
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Help find Mittie
On February 24 my parents and I attended the funeral of a dear friend. During the few hours we were away our sweet, six-month old female collie-cross dog "disappeared" from the farm. This has caused much anguish.
Mittie was being trained to be my elderly mother's special companion dog and to accompany her on her walks. Mittie is also a very good watchdog as my mother doesn't always hear well. I have tried many ways to find Mittie.
She is a creamy beige colour with longish soft fur with a blue-grey undercoat. She has dark fluffy ears, dark marks on her face with a pointed nose (she looks a bit like Lassie).
Mittie has a lovely nature and a gentle playmate for a very old dog I have. If anyone has found Mittie or knows where she is, or can give information to find her, please phone 6667 1181 or 0432 306 083. A very generous reward will be given.
Deirdre Lane
Casino
Rogue elements
The citizens of Casino should be made aware of a couple of rogues who are preying on the sick and elderly.
They are members of the local church and are involved in other community activities. They can't be named, but a lot of people in the church know them and what they are doing.
A close friend of mind passed away recently, and had the misfortune of letting these people into his life. They helped him out at first with various things, but he was becoming very frail, and was 92 years old and riddled with cancer. The sicker he became, the more demands they made of him and tried to fleece him for everything.
He had a crystal vase that held sentimental value to him and she pestered him so much for it, he ended up giving it to her so he would be left alone.
She put her name down as next of kin at the local hospital, even though she is not a relative, and never contacted his family to inform them of his condition or hospitalisations.
They tried to get him to leave them his house in his Will, which he refused. Near the end, whenever they would visit, he would tremble with fear.
A few members of the church eventually contacted his family and made them aware of the situation.
After his funeral, outside the church, I watched as a young man (who can't be named) abused the niece and nephew of my friend for not thanking these rogues for everything they had done for him. He asked then why they wouldn't thank them. I hope I have answered his question.
I hope this story will encourage people from the church, who had the decency to speak up, to speak to the authorities, as we have, and have these two stopped before they strike again.
Name and address supplied
Toilet training
Dear dog-owning neighbours,
If you are in the habit of "exercising" (toileting?) your pooch along a residential street, could you please consider taking a supply of plastic bags with you?
It's really quite a simple matter to pick up your dog's s--t in the bag, tie it up and put it in your bin when you get home.
I know it's simple because I do it several times every day on the nature strip in front of my house, and I don't even have a dog.
Thank you for your thoughtfulness.
Rosie Gibbons
Lismore Heights
Flood fears
In flood time, Coraki becomes isolated with no connecting road to Woodburn/Casino/Lismore - Ruthven Straight and Wyrallah Road under floodwater also.
So how do people get emergency treatment over the period the town is cut off?
With Lismore's untried new levee system, the waters could cut off Coraki with no warning in a matter of hours - especially if both the Wilson and Richmond rivers are receiving large quantities of water.
What does Chris Crawford (and Bob Carr) suggest? That at the first sign of heavy rain, anyone who has a cold etc land in Lismore Base Hospital, in case they have need of urgent treatment over the ensuing week or so of inundation? Of what value will cardiac catheterisation be if flood waters delay a person for 5-7 days before they can reach a larger hospital? More and more deaths could be on their heads. (But would they care?)
Floods in this area are a reality and reasonably frequent; sufficiently so to require a hospital fully serviced to be available to the stranded inhabitants.
Name and address supplied
The awful truth
Last Thursday the Federal Treasurer denied that the Liberal Party or its campaign team had received a letter from the Reserve Bank of Australia expressing that the inclusion of its name on election material of the party caused it concern. Such a letter was written to that member of Danna Vale's staff referred to as 'the General in the field!'
How then can the Treasurer defend the purported truth of his statement?
Even more seriously, how can ordinary votes place their value on electoral accountability if the media - regrettably including the ABC - does not complete its challenge of such outright political lies? The media, particularly the ABC, will need to emplace a specific mechanism to ensure that claims such as the Treasurer's are clearly rebutted, despite the intervention of a weekend. I've written to the ABC asking them to do just that!
Charles Lowe
Lismore
Support for clean water
Fay Bogg's letter (Echo, April 7) pointing out the ineffectiveness of sedimentation basins designed by the RTA to catch run-off pollution from highways was well and truly illustrated last Thursday night. The official rainfall recorded for Ballina that night was 142mm. Ballina shire residents should take note that, if the RTA does not consider an alternate route away from the Emigrant Creek dam catchment for its proposed 4-6 lane highway, a rain event such as occurred on Thursday night would have caused significant pollution to have entered their drinking water.
In its annual report 03/04 Rous Water stated that it had launched the "Healthy Catchment Program" in the Emigrant Creek water catchment area. It further stated, "The program is premised on the fact that the quality of the water ultimately provided by Rous Water to its customers is dependent upon the quality of the water draining to the storage from the catchment area."
I'm sure we, as customers, will support Rous Water to resist any bully tactics by the RTA to force a huge pollution-generating highway through our precious drinking water catchment area.
K Brady
East Ballina
Money for nothing
Please can Mr Carr explain why the NSW State Government has no money for roads and hospitals, yet it has plenty of money to throw at the Red Fox Threat Abatement Plan to protect pied oyster catcher numbers on northern NSW beaches. These shorebirds are not threatened by any stretch of the imagination, and are in great abundance in other parts of Australia.
If the pied oyster catchers are considered to be "threatened" in parts of NSW because they don't want to breed where Mr Carr and the national parks people would like them to, perhaps Mr Carr can explain why there is no Wild Pussy Threat Abatement Plan to stop cats eating waterdragons?
The Red Fox Threat Abatement Plan involves throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money at contractors to lay baits along endless kilometres of beaches for nearly five months of the year. The contractors inject chicken heads with 1080 poison and bury them at bait stations on beaches where children play. It's an absolute disgrace to waste public money in this manner, not to mention the danger to human life.
What price for a fox or pied oyster catcher? About $1500 for every fox killed and $2400 for every pied oyster catcher fledgling hatched! Isn't it time the Red Fox Threat Abatement Plan was abandoned and the money allocated to roads and hospitals instead?
Come on, Mr Carr, we're all after you! Just spend the money where it gives greatest benefit - on roads and hospitals.
Cr Margaret Howes
Lennox Head
An enlightened Echo
I recently watched a documentary on SBS about the rise of extremist Christian fundamentalist groups in America called the Promise Keepers and for the first time in many years felt compelled to write to my local 'alternative' newspaper, the Nimbin Good Times. The focus of my letter was about the danger of women losing their basic human rights through the lobbying of these types of exclusive male clubs. I also made the point that the Earth, or Mother Nature, was for millennia the main object of worship for humanity all over the world and was worthy of consideration as a deity. In order to accentuate this idea, I placed capital letters on words connected with the Earth, just as Christians and Muslims etc do for their gods.
I was shocked and disappointed to read the heavily censored version of my letter in our village paper the following month. Not only had all the necessary capitals been changed but the entire content had been altered. I hardly recognised this rehash of a letter as my own.
I rang the editor with my complaint and he had the nerve to tell me he had only omitted what he called the sexism of my letter. I presume that this was because I wrote that the groups of Promise Keepers were entirely male, which they were! There were no other statements which may have been considered anti-male by some of the more self-defensive men in our counter culture in the letter.
What possesses someone like him to censor and rewrite a letter to the editor in this way? I can only assume that he is an apologist for these dangerous men and is a man not sure of his own 'alternative' nature.
I consider his religious and sexual discrimination of my letter as a slap in the face, not only to me, but to all women and the Earth we live on. I suggest Mr Dooley catches up with the events in the world before he edits it out of existence.
I commend The Echo for not displaying these editorial characteristics and in future will confine my correspondence to more enlightened publications such as yours.
Sophia Hoeben
Nimbin
The drug of a nation
'If you have control of the media then the creation of public opinion is totally yours'.
But to do that it takes a lot of precious time and the change-agents and social engineers don't have too much left. So fluoride is just the right ingredient for the job at hand.
Regarding the discussion by the Lismore Council about the fluoridation of our water supply - sodium fluoride, a hazardous-waste by-product from the manufacture of aluminum, is a common ingredient in rat and cockroach poisons, anesthetics, hypnotics, psychiatric drugs, and military nerve gas. It's historically been quite expensive to properly dispose of, until some aluminum industries with an overabundance sold the public the terrifically insane but highly profitable idea of buying it at a huge markup, injecting it into our water supplies, and then drinking it.
Independent scientific evidence repeatedly showing up over the past 50 years reveals that fluoride allegedly shortens our life span, promotes cancer and various mental disturbances, accelerates osteoporosis, and makes us stupid, docile, and subservient, all in one package.
Do you have diabetes or are you likely to contract it? Since many diabetics drink more liquids than other people, then according to the Physicians Desk Reference you probably shouldn't drink fluoridated water, because in doing so, you'll receive an excessive dose of fluoride.
Do you have kidney disease or are you likely to contract it? Kidney disease, by definition, lowers the efficiency of the kidneys, which is your main route of fluoride elimination. So people with kidney disease shouldn't drink fluoridated water.
Many truly independent scientists who've spent a large portion of their lives studying and working with this subject have been subjected to a surprising amount of character assassination from strong vested-interest groups who profit from the public's ignorance as well as from their illnesses.
Nadir Martello
East Lismore
Support the unborn
Re the "don't go there" debate on abortion.
Some of the comments presented brought to mind the dear old ostrich habit (so they say) of thrusting its head firmly into the sand in the belief that its refusal to heed serious danger, by blocking out reality, is the way to go!
All the trumpeting of sex education for the young and the glut of technical info, hailed as the second enlightenment, has obviously been a wretched failure!
The absence of vital moral and spiritual formation attached to this explosive info has been like a game of "catch" with a live grenade. Unfortunately, the insidious assault of info technology, especially the mixed blessings of the internet, along with valueless movies by the score and the ubiquitous music videos, teetering on the brink of pornography, have all contributed to our loss of a sense of decency.
Now, the majority of female singers (near naked) must be 'nasty girls' who bump and grind their way to fulfilment, whose sole purpose is to keep the male (fully clothed) partner in a constant state of excitation. The overview is one of stimulation and simulation (of sex) and the total severing of love from this "sex" results in a distorted "ideal" i.e. an obsessive, no-holds-barred, lifelong sexual marathon - hopefully sterile! With such 'role models' for the young (and not-so-young) it is not surprising that there is an inordinate number of affairs and divorces along with unwanted pregnancies. Few there are of us who do not know some undervalued girl or woman who, for whatever reason, seeks a furtive abortion believing (mistakenly) this decision to be the only answer for her 'problem' when in fact it will just add to her problems long term.
On the other hand how can we not be alarmed to learn that over 100,000 humans a year are being 'culled' in this country! What the hell is going on? Has abortion become an acceptable form of contraception?
Where is the impartiality of the media - in this debate regarding this scandalous situation, when "community outrage" is front page with the blurb "senseless attack on a defenceless animal" (kitten). At the same time an appeal to "save precious lives, help people", regarding organ donation. How do tiny humans get on this list? They don't!
Where is Amnesty International? I have seen greenies hugging condemned trees crying out "I feel your pain!" What? Do you honestly believe tiny humans don't feel pain when they are prodded with a needle, some being dismembered then vacuumed from the uterus, simply because of their size? Get real!
Immediately after the liberation of those in concentration camps in Germany (WWII) many local Germans were forced through these mills of death (still pleading ignorance) and confronted with the truth of what was happening to the "unwanted".
The caring members of our community are now at the front line, picking up the pieces of our holocaust and trying to salvage lives, those born and as yet unborn. They deserve our urgent help and support - not contempt.
Mary B Mason
Lismore Heights
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