a long time coming...

it's a time to celebrate for the sisterhood - julia's prime minister... like her or not, it's groundbreaking (or should that be ceiling-shattering?!) herstory in the making here in australia - we finally have a female in the 'top job' - she's intelligent, articulate, and has a good sense of humour - she's from a working class background, is proud of her heritage and believes in social equity - she was the national president of the australian union of students, then became a solicitor with slater & gordon ("... a law firm focussed on servicing the needs of unions and their members, in particular in the area of workers compensation.") and after 3 years became a partner in the firm - it was here she earned respect from the unions as an advocate for people's rights (and still maintains their support) - she was appointed chief of staff of the victorian opposition in 1996 and moved into the federal sphere in 1998... she is a supporter of womyn's rights and is pro-choice... she's not religious, nor is she married - she is very much her own person - she certainly appears to have more going for her than any of australia's previous male prime ministers or any current challengers!!!!

but unfortunately she hasn't been voted in by the people yet, although with an election just around the corner she may just romp it in - labor's approval rating has already risen since she became pm!!!

why has it taken so long to vote in a womon? since obtaining the vote in 1902 (thanks to the committed suffragists) it took until 1921 for edith cowan to be elected to an australian parliament when she won a seat in the western australian legislative assembly...

it then took another 22 years for womyn to be elected to federal parliament when dorothy tangney became senator for western australia and enid lyons was elected to the house of representatives in 1943...

since then there have been numerous womyn elected to federal politics, but it's taken far too long for us to place a womon in 'the top job'... for a once politically progressive country, we've been lagging a tad behind in political gender equality here in australia, as this list of womyn who have attained the highest office in their respective countries attests:

Sirimavo Bandaranaike, prime minister of Sri Lanka - 1960, 1970, 1994

Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India - 1966, 1980

Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel - 1969

Isabel Peron, president of Argentina - 1974

Elisabeth Domitien, prime minister of Central African Republic - 1975

Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Great Britain - 1979

Maria da Lourdes Pintasilgo, prime minister of Portugal - 1979

Lidia Gueiler Tejada, prime minister of Bolivia - 1979

Dame Eugenia Charles, prime minister of Dominica - 1980

Vigdis Finnbogadottir, president of Iceland - 1980

Gro Harlem Brundtland, prime minister of Norway - 1981, 1986, 1990

Milka Planinc, federal prime minister of Yugoslavia - 1982

Agatha Barbara, president of Malta - 1982

Maria Liberia-Peters, prime minister of Netherlands Antilles - 1984, 1988

Corazon Aquino, president of Philippines - 1986

Benazir Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan - 1988, 1993

Kazimiera Danuta Prunskiene, prime minister of Lithuania - 1990

Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, prime minister of Nicaragua - 1990

Mary Robinson, president of Ireland - 1990

Ertha Pascal Trouillot, interim president of Haiti - 1990

Sabine Bergmann-Pohl, president of German Democratic Republic - 1990

Khaleda Zia, prime minister of Bangladesh - 1991, 2001

Edith Cresson, prime minister of France - 1991

Hanna Suchocka, prime minister of Poland - 1992

Kim Campbell, prime minister of Canada - 1993

Sylvie Kinigi, prime minister of Burundi - 1993

Agathe Uwilingiyimana, prime minister of Rwanda - 1993

Susanne Camelia-Romer, prime minister of Netherlands Antilles - 1993, 1998

Tansu Ciller, prime minister of Turkey - 1993

Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, president of Sri Lanka - 1994

Reneta Indzhova, interim prime minister of Bulgaria - 1994

Claudette Werleigh, prime minister of Haiti - 1995

Sheikh Hasina Wajed, prime minister of Bangladesh - 1996

Mary McAleese, president of Ireland - 1997

Pamela Gordon, premier of Bermuda - 1997

Janet Jagan, prime minister of Guyana - 1997

Jenny Shipley, prime minister of New Zealand - 1997

Ruth Dreifuss, president of Switzerland - 1999

Jennifer M. Smith, prime minister of Bermuda - 1998

Helen Clark, prime minister of New Zealand - 1999

Mireya Moscoso, president of Panama - 1999

Vaira Vike-Freiberga, president of Latvia - 1999

Tarja Halonen, president of Finland - 2000

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, president of the Philippines - 2001

Mame Madior Boye, prime minister of Senegal - 2001

Megawati Sukarnoputri, president of Indonesia - 2001

Maria das Neves, Prime Minster of Sao Tome and Principe - 2002

Beatriz Merino, prime minister of Peru - 2003

Luisa Diogo, prime minister of Mozambique - 2004

Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany - 2005

Yulia Tymoshenko, prime minister of Ukraine - 2005

Michelle Bachelet, president of Chile - 2006

Micheline Calmy-Rey, president of Switzerland - 2006

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, president of Liberia - 2006

Han Myeong-sook, prime minister of South Korea - 2006

Portia Simpson Miller, prime minister of Jamaica - 2006

Pratibha Devisingh Patil, president of India - 2007

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, president of Argentina - 2007

Borjana Kristo, president of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzogovina - 2007

Zinaida Greceanii - prime minister of Moldova, 2008

Dalia Grybauskaite - president of Lithuania, 2009

Laura Chinchilla - president of Costa Rica, 2010

Kamla Persad Bissessar, prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, 2010

and of course Aung San Suu Kyi should have been prime minister of Myanmar in 1990, but the military government refused to recognize the results of that election!

there's a lot of herstory there - and Julia Gillard finally adds australian representation to that list - way to go sister!!!!

unfortunately all i can see is the same labor party that sold out their rank and file decades ago - once considered the left-wing alternative, it's definitely moved much further to the right these days - could julia change that? but it is scary to think what the right faction of the party might expect of her in throwing their support behind her and getting rid of one of their own!! all i can hope is that she's strong enough to not sell out for the sake of the position, and is able to maintain her leftist politics and social conscience - and her own identity... it will no doubt be an interesting political time ahead!!!

but unless there's a dramatic change in the federal political scene it will be hard to entice me to vote - perhaps the newly established and soon to be registered animal justice party  could be part of  the change i've been waiting for - unless of course julia and the labor party choose to end animal cruelty, put a stop to animal abuse and exploitation, support the universal declaration on animal welfare - and then there's social justice....

political and pleasurable...

i had a work colleague around for dinner last night - she's vegan, around my age and an animal lover (which definitely went down well with Allie and Shadow - they loved being caressed by her!!!)... what an enjoyable evening - ideals, beliefs and experiences shared with someone with similar politics - not having to explain or justify ourselves, as vegans and vegetarians so often have to, because there was understanding... refreshing...

I love a good, positive political conversation - and a really deep conversation with someone who shares your views is always rewarding - an expansion and validation of your beliefs - really encouraging - and all too rare... it does the mind a wealth of good... you feel less like a "stranger in a strange land"... yes, it was a good night!!!!

i made a delicious ratatouille with rosemary baked potatoes and garlic - Den brought crusty rolls to sop up the yummy juices, and we shared a delightful organic semillon sauvignon blanc... she also brought a lovely bunch of daffodils and irises that complimented everything... very thoughtful - and the colours look great with the maroon venetians as their backdrop!!!


mind you, finding wine that vegetarians and vegans can drink can be a tiresome process... reading all of those labels - so many wines are 'fined' with non-vegetarian/vegan friendly substances - blood, egg whites, egg albumin, casein (milk protein), gelatin (derived from bones), isinglass (derived from fish), chitin/chitosan (derived from the shells of crabs or lobsters) and I must have read 20-odd labels yesterday before I found a suitable organic one.

like me, Den doesn't go out often these days - yeah, our age has something to do with that - but so does the still limited vegetarian restaurant choice - let alone vegetarian dish choices in 'standard' restuarants - and then there are the odors of rancid decaying cooking flesh that can be overpowering, nausea-causing even - and let's face it, once something dies it starts to decay immediately!!!

there's also the constant having to explain your vegetarianism to people who can't quite grasp the concept, and the graphic descriptions they give you of their carnivorous habits - 'we' really don't want to hear your favourite dead animal recipe or where you get the best cut of dead animal from!!!

from the blog "Provoked... by the way we use animals"

and then there's the wearing of 'leather' products - some vegetarians and vegans find this a hard thing to do away with - but how do they justify it to themselves - how is dead animal as food source different to dead animal as clothing source - the animals suffer and then die - it's all part and parcel of the same industry - the death industry... and then there's the other abusive, inhumane practices - the feed lots, the battery farms, the farms that provide no shelter or water (and there are so many - just take a drive in the country!!!), the transportation, the abattoirs, the pain, the suffering - and that's not even touching on animal experimentation - the list goes on...

there seems to be an inability to understand that 'our' vegetarianism is an integral element of us - who we are - our morality - our belief in the complementarity of nature - our respect and compassion for other species - our non-belief in human superiority!!!

it's a hard choice to make - to live on the outside of what's considered 'normal' takes determination and strength - always having to 'qualify and quantify' your beliefs can wear you out - so can the jokes and jibes about vegetarians - and the disrespect to animals - it also takes time, energy, and lots of research - you have to read everything - time-consuming and frustrating - it's a way of life...

so, like a lot of vegos, i find myself thinking - "what hope for animals, when humans don't even respect or have compassion for their own species"??!!

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. ~ Paul McCartney

Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal. ~ Ingrid Newkirk

We all love animals. Why do we call some "pets" and others "dinner?" ~ k.d. lang

Think of me tonite
For that which you savor
Did it give you something real,
or could you taste the pain of my death in its flavor?
~ Wayne K. Tolson, from "Food Forethought"


quotes from Quotegarden

a win for women globally...

ever heard of the Global Gag Rule (a.k.a. Mexico City Policy) - it prohibited family planning programs in other nations that receive US aid from using non-US monies for abortion counseling, advocacy, and referrals... can you believe the power america has...

well, Obama's lifted the ban... that's a good thing for women everywhere... but, Clinton already did it, then Bush came along and undid it... Obama's done it - but when is someone going to make it 'unchangeable' or is it going to be able to be undone again some time in the future??? let's hope not... women deserve better... they deserve to know where they stand rather than being pawns in some high-powered male chess game!!!!

of course 'the church' (in all it's forms and denominations) isn't exactly ecstatic by the decision... but all that can be said to them is...

closer to home...

it's January 26th - mean anything in particular to you???? invasion day maybe? survival day or australia day (sounds like an invasion to me!!)...

I'm of the 'invasion day' persuasion... so here's some music to go along with my beliefs...

oooohhhhh... sorry, i just get lost in YouTube.... all those songs from my youth - i just have to listen to them... I was lucky that my early life was part of a really political time - the 60s and 70s were full of change, change and more change - consequently it takes me a loooooooooong time to get a playlist together...

but i hope you enjoy... goanna, yothu yindi, the oils, the masters apprentices (now there's a micro-story... Jim Keayes and Glenn Wheatley (when he was spunky - before he was a 'businessman' who didn't pay his taxes - and as you've no doubt have been able to gather, i don't break the law!!!! ha!!!!!) had to wake Irene and me up out of a 'mandy' induced 'coma' (mandrax, the best gutter drug you could ever have experienced - forerunner to sarapax - but oh, sooooo much better! - you could drop it, smoke it, snort it (and who knows what else!!!!) - we were in a laundromat, they wanted the washing machine - pub bands didn't make much money in those days - we all lived in the same street, we all had to do the same shit no matter what state we were in - ahhh, life in suburbia!!!! life was just sex, drugs an' rock'n'roll then.... i think the emphasis was on drugs at that time)... ruby hunter, archie roach... etc. etc. etc.

the 60s... where do I start???

I was five years old, television (b&w thank you) had been introduced and embraced wholeheartedly by the aussie public... by the end of the 50s it was estimated that over two-thirds of families in Sydney and Melbourne owned a television set.

"Television transformed the way Australians received information. It soon became Australia's dominant form of mass communication, taking over from radio and cinema and posing a challenge to print media.

Television transmitted ideas into Australia faster than ever before. Australia's awareness and experience of the rest of the world changed rapidly. Television exposed people to other cultures and world views and provided information that would play a major role in shaping popular public opinion." Interested? read more here.

And this is what we were watching in 1960... according to the Logie awards anyway...

Program Of The Year: 77 Sunset Strip
TV Highlight Of 1959: Shell Presents Series
TV WEEK Special Award: GTV9/ATN7 Interstate TV Link for Test Cricket
Best Male Personality: John Royle
Best Female Personality: Ruth Nye
Best Program: The Phil Silvers Show
Best Male Personality: Don Bennetts
Best Female Personality: Brenda Marshall
Best Program: Father Knows Best
Best Male Personality: Graham Kennedy
Best Female Personality: Panda Lisner
Best Program: In Melbourne Tonight

Menzies was STILL the prime minister, but an election was coming up in 1961 - could he be ousted??? Social change was unstoppable, but political conservatism was stubborn. We were cutting the umbilical cord with England, but we were being heavily influenced by America - and manipulated - 'we' were soon to be fodder in the Vietnam war - but not this year!!!

Women were (as always?!!??) fighting for equality. They were paid only 75% of the 'average' wage. In 'women only' professions such as teaching and nursing women were only getting two thirds of the male wage!

In 1960 equal pay for work of equal value was awarded, although specifically female work was not included and the issue of equal pay for women remained a source of 'hot' debate throughout the 1960s.

Women wanted more than domesticity and motherhood!!!!

Women wanted to experience life - they were sick of living in the background of men's lives.

Women wanted to be seen as - oooh, shock, horror - people in their own right - not someone else's doormat - not a slave, not a wife, not a mother!!!

In 1960 THE PILL was 'released' in the States, and of course that meant it wouldn't be long before it arrived in Australia (January 1st, 1961)!!!

The pill was about to change women's lives - but being 'released' didn't necessarily mean giving access to women - that was dependent on the attitude of the doctor writing the prescription - so it wasn't going to be readily available to unmarried women!! There was still a way to go - and the fight for free safe abortion was still to gain momentum...

The 60s was such a rich, complex, exciting, vibrant decade - so much was happening - people were expanding their consciousness, they were questioning, they were starting to live their lives differently... it was definitely the era to be growing up in!!!

So my 60s post appears to have expanded to a saga!!!!

stay tuned for the next instalment...

#18 - Online productivity tools

I've played around in Zoho Writer and Zoho Show ... all these tools take a while to learn though... playing around is very time-consuming - but I guess once you've worked it all out then the time factor isn't so important...

Being able to do something from anywhere, have others check it out and then be able to edit remotely by choosing who can collaborate on the presentation would be extremely useful for those of us that work in different locations regularly, or who like to 'perfect' things from home. It does appear to have limited templates to use though... haven't been able to work out how you would create your own background in the programme - or whether you even can.

Here's a presentation I put together in PowerPoint and uploaded to Zoho Show... yes, you can import your own stuff but you don't have the same editing ability you do if you create within the programme!!! If you upload you need to make sure it's right... otherwise you have to edit in the original document and upload again... that's not a good way to create a presentation if you want others to have input!

But it was good for my purposes. This way I could create a background that I wanted. This is a condensed version of an assignment I wrote when I was undertaking the Diploma of Library and Information Studies (Library Technician's) course at Swinburne a few years back. It's something I feel strongly about and it fits in with my blog's theme perfectly.

These are the Zoho Services you can access:
Zoho Sheet
Online spreadsheet service.
Zoho Meeting
Zoho Meeting - Web Conferencing
Zoho Show
Online presentation tool
Zoho Writer
Online word processor
Zoho Notebook
Online Note Taker
Zoho Creator
Online web applications creator (one I'll definitely have to check out sometime!!!)
Zoho Planner
Online organizing tool.
Zoho Wiki
Online Wiki with public, private & group permissions
Zoho Chat
Instant messaging and group chat tool