US Secretary of State, H. Clinton, wants the UN Security Council to “send a clear message of support to the people of Syria”.

i.e. to get rid of President Bashar al-Assad and have him replaced by somebody else.

Who else?

Recent history shows that each time the US and its Western friends involve themselves in the internal affairs of Middle Eastern nations, things get worse.

* * *

President Obama praised last year’s Egyptian uprising saying it reflected the people’s yearning for “a government that is fair and just and responsive.”

What did they get? A People’s Assembly dominated by the “Freedom and Justice Party” — the Muslim Brotherhood under another name.

15 million Coptic Christians live in fear — killed on the streets, their women abducted.

In Libya, thousands of NATO air strikes resulted in — what?

A National Transitional Council whose draft constitution states that “Islam is the religion of the state and the principal source of legisation is Islamic jurisprudence (i.e. Sharia Law)”.

Already polygamy has been re-legalised.

* * *

If Bashar al-Assad goes, the Sunnis will take over Syria.

There will be a blood-bath.

(see this blog, 10 December 2011 and 13 June 2011)

Tenth anniversary of suicidal planes crashing into the towers in the USA.

They call it “9/11” – but surely that means the 9th of November.

Why not 11/9?

* * *

Anyway, to kill hundreds of innocent people is terrible, and committing suicide is dishonouring to God.

The whole event is depressing to think about and remember.

But massacres of such dimensions are not uncommon.

They happen perhaps every day . . . perhaps not quite that often.

Is this one special because it was mainly Americans who were killed?

* * *

One is reminded of the “Holocaust” in which Jews and others were killed by the German Nazi government.

Was that special because Jews are special?

If one stated that Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, Joseph Stalin etc. killed fewer people than is popularly claimed, would one risk arrest?

No. But, in Europe, people suggesting that the conventional accounts re the Nazi gas chambers may be exaggerated are arrested and punished.

* * *

It is not popular in some circles to suggest that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.

But there is evidence enough to convince hundreds of millions of people.

If it is true – then his crucifixion is infinitely more special than either “9/11” or the Holocaust.

And if he rose from the dead and awaits us in heaven (if we obey him) . . . .

 . . . then that fact should be absolutely life-changing for every human being.

Greens Party MP, Colleen Heartland, is again pushing a resolution to legalise euthanasia in Victoria.

It recommends that the Attorney General “refer the matter of end of life medical treatment and patient choices in aid in dying to the Victorian Law Reform Commission for inquiry, consideration and report by September 2012”.

Those familiar with the Victorian Law Reform Commission know how committed that body is to undermining the sanctity of human life.

Only 3 years ago, Victorian Parliament rejected a similar attempt by this same MP to legalise “assisted suicide”.

The Greens Party endlessly keeps pushing its culture of death.

So far, every time MPs in Victoria and other states have debated this issue, they have rejected it.

A while back, after NSW Parliament rejected a bill to legalise euthanasia, Concord Hospital Palliative Care Specialist, Dr Ghauri Aggarwal, commented that, at that time, only one third of dying patients in NSW had access to Palliative Care.

About the same time, a Roy Morgan Poll found that 80 percent of Australians don’t know what euthanasia is.

They think euthanasia means letting people die.

Unfortunately the euthanasia lobby has SOMETHING ELSE in mind for them.

* * *

P.S.  Today’s online Channel Ten “Can of Worms” Poll is asking: “Do you believe euthanasia should be legalised?”

At 6.20am today (31-8-2011), the scorecard was running at Yes 25.5, No 74.5.

On Thursday night, three ABC broadcast staff died in a helicopter crash near William Creek south of Lake Eyre.

They were Paul Lockyer (journalist), John Bean (photographer) and Gary Ticehurst (pilot).

They had been filming a documentary about the lake and intended covering yesterday’s official opening of William Creek airstrip.

The airstrip opening went ahead, but was more like a memorial service.

* * *

The priest, Father Paul, read from Saint Luke’s gospel, chapter 10, the story told by Jesus about the Good Samaritan – a story of undiscriminating love, an attribute which Australians admire and aspire to have:

A man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho was attacked by robbers who stripped him, beat him and went away leaving him half dead. A priest who happened to be going down the same road, seeing him, passed him by on the other side. So too, a Levite, coming to the place, passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came near and took pity on him, bandaging his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then, putting him on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and cared for him. Next day he gave two coins to the innkeeper, saying,  ‘Look after him and when I return I will reimburse you for any extra expense.’

“Which of these three”, asked Jesus, “do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The teacher of the Law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “You go, then, and do the same.”

When bad times come, God calls us to show neighbourly compassion, even when there is sacrifice involved — or even danger.

* * *

God does not only want us to be kind.

He wants us to put worshipping him first, above all else.

The story of the Good Samaritan is not the end of chapter 10.

The following section shows how, although practical kindness is important, there is something else at least as important — if not more so.

Look it up.

The new (2013) edition of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), will label people suffering from grief lasting over 6 months, as being mentally ill.

They will be diagnosed as suffering from “Adjustment Disorder related to Bereavement” — to be distinguished from depression etc.

Professor Richard Bryant (University of NSW) says this diagnosis will include 10 to 15 percent of people in the community.

His plan is to submit them to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – a technique currently fashionable, but not quite proved to do any good.

* * *

The DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

This, in itself, raises one’s suspicions.

Is not the APA prone to reflect modish ideas and fancies, rather than what is traditional and well-tried?

Did not the APA, in 1973, as the result of no particular new discoveries or scientific evidence, declare that homosexuality — hitherto, since the year dot, recognised as an abnormality — was suddenly normal?

A 360-degree reversal of the very definition of what it is to be human – imposed by means of a well-organised, bloodless, but menace-filled coup.

A new fundamentalist dogma, dropped from a great height on practitioners — which few have had the fortitude to resist.

Anybody resisting, medico or otherwise, is dubbed a homophobe, and accused of hate-speech.

* * *

Like everything else that matters, these issues are basically religious.

It is God who determines what is, and what is not, normal (a point touched on in yesterday’s post).

What is normal is that which draws us nearer to God.

Grief is something good. It expresses our inadequacy to cope with reality unless God helps us.

It is necessary to accept what God sends into our lives, and to look for the lesson that can be learned from it.

It can be hard, terribly hard.                                           

Following a television show depicting cruel treatment of cattle exported by Australia in Indonesian abattoirs, the whole industry has been shut down.

When will it get going again?

Nobody seems to know.

Senator Xenophon is introducing a private member’s bill to phase the industry out permanently.

He says this is in response to “thousands of representations from people who are concerned about the issue of animal cruelty”.

* * *

Back in 2008, the Brumby Labor government passed legislation making all abortion right up to full term legal in Victoria.

A number of amendments were suggested. All were rejected.

One amendment rejected was that some form of anaesthesia be used so that the baby being destroyed would feel no pain.

The answer given was that such babies feel no pain anyway because they are immature.

However that is a lie — as has been known since the 1980’s.

For example:

“Cutaneous sensory receptors appear in the perioral area of the human foetus in the seventh week of gestation . . . and to all cutaneous and mucosal surfaces by the twentieth week”. *

Connections between these receptors and the central nervous system (spinal cord and brain) develop stepwise.

It is not known for sure exactly when pain is first truly felt, but it cannot be later than twenty weeks.

Where such a doubt exists, any compassionate person would want to err on the conservative side.

But our politicians don’t do being compassionate.

Not if it means getting on the wrong side of the politically powerful feminist/pro-abortion types.

* * *

Australia, as a society, shows more concern about preventing pain in cattle than about preventing pain in members of our own human species.

*   (Anand & Hickey, NEJM, 19/11/1987)