city2surf

Went on my first St John's duty on Sunday to the City2Surf. Just for the record, it was pretty quiet, probably because we got the innermost bed. Most of the people who came in and treated for heat exhaustion were men (or boys).

Have still not quite recovered from having to get up at 5:30am for that ==;;;;



Just in case I forget tomorrow

Happy 21st jezjezjezza

For tomorrow.

the best MS parody ever

The classic of all Mary-Sue parody classics

Requires working knowledge of what happened in Fellowship of the Ring (movie knowledge sufficient) and concept of Mary-Sue.

Finally manage to dig this link up out of the dust XDDD It's still funny the fifth time around.

Organ harvesting in China

Someone you love is dying from liver failure. Would you condone the actions of a doctor who offers to take an organ, without consent from a political prisoner whose only crime was their ideology?



About a month ago, a former Canadian Secretary of State and a human rights lawyer jointedly published the results of their preliminary investigations into the allegations against China of harvesting organs from political prisoners.

This report almost coincided with the annual Australian-Chinese human rights dialogue - which probably not many people know exists, even though it has just marched away from the anniversary of its first decade.

At the press conference following the dialogue, only 3 media groups seemed vaguely interested in questioning the organ harvesting claims. In fact, not many media outlets reported it. Sydney Morning Herald had about 2 articles on it, and ABC radio interviewed an Australian doctor, who agreed "that organ harvesting has always been known to happen in medical circles".

The report itself admits in the introduction that no concrete evidence has been gathered that can solidly prove either side of the allegations or denials. The second hand evidence it has gathered - through interviews, primarily with secondary witnesses, either by association to perpetrators or victims, or independent journalists who obtained offers of organ donation from hospitals - appeared sufficiently alarming for this report to be published.

To remove this discussion from the actualities and messiness of the entire organ harvesting business itself and the silent consent that seems to occur in some medical circles, let's look at the circumstances surrounding this case.

- The number of organ donations available for transplant increased enormously from early 2000 compared to pre-1999 rates. The Falun Gong persecution began in late 1999. It is well-known outside China that a large number of Falun Gong practitioners were arrested in their appeal process and their locations since have not been disclosed by the police. This is not to say, of course, that Falun Gong practitioners are the only victims, as political prisoners comprise anyone from qigong practitioners to devout Christians who refuse to recognise the Communist-run church to democratic activists.

- The immediate and sustained response from China is to deny these allegations. The allegations first came out in MARCH 2006. The Chinese government, apart from denying everything, promised to implement a law in JULY 2006 banning organ transplants. This is a sickening farce. If it's serious about banning organ transplants, the law should have come into effect immediately. What exactly is forgivable about these crimes that a "phase-in" period is allowed?!

- The newspaper which first came out with these allegations was The Epochtimes. Accusations of it being a tabloid newspaper aside, in the week immediately subsequent to this exposure, 2 separate offices of The Epochtimes were broken into - one in America and one in Japan - and the computer hard drives removed. No other valuables were taken. If these allegations were completely untrue, if there is nothing to be found, why the fearful tactics?

- To date, independent investigations has been denied access to the hospitals in question. China has, however, taken a group of American officials to the site, and obviously found nothing. If a murderer leads the police into his house, he'd be a mental retard if they found dead bodies lying in the lounge room. The visit proves and disproves nothing.



I'm sorry this post is so long, but I think it's something that needs to be told. I don't want to point fingers and say, "See, China is harvesting organs" - even though there seems to be quite a lot of people who agree, "It's been happening for a while now". The report suggests that it has been, at least before the law came in, an active industry regularly committing such heinous crimes and generating enormous amounts of profit for the associated hospitals.

On Thursday afternoon, one of the cowriters of the report, David Kilgour, and the current serving Vice President of the European Parliament, Edward McMillan-Scott, will be present at a forum to discuss this very issue. By his own admission, McMillan-Scott has accessed Falun Gong practitioners, who, along with his interpretor, were arrested for the contact, and one of them has not been heard from since.

Location: The Theatrette, Parliament House, Macquarie Street
Time: 17^th August 2006. 5:30-7:00pm

Go and find out why two high-profile politicians (well...one ex-politician) would volunteer so much of their time and effort for a bunch of allegations that the Chinese government has so far unwaveringly dismissed as "fabricated and baseless".