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Help save our wildlife

By Ruth Ostrow on 24 June 2011 in All Posts, Animal Welfare, Weekend Magazine Columns

WIRES animal rescue group is struggling due to lack of donations.

A STRANGE and surreal story. I was woken last week by the screeching of birds. Such a cacophony that I had to put two pillows over my head. But it wouldn’t stop.

I glanced up to see that my cat, usually the cause, was asleep. Suddenly I heard my cleaning lady, Eva, cry: “Ruth, what is it?” She was shaken, standing on the veranda of my little Bondi house. “Ruth… it moved,” she said, nervously pointing at what looked to be a large, stuffed toy perched at my front door. She’s from Hungary and had not seen anything like it before.

It was a tawny frogmouth – a nocturnal bird often mistaken for an owl. Continue Reading →

Censorship How Dare They!

By Ruth Ostrow on 24 June 2011 in All Posts, My Daily Raves

Writing to you about something very unsexy. The move by Telstra & Optus to ban internet

The move by Telstra and Optus to voluntarily censor hundreds of internet sites which it deems unfit for us to view under the emotive pedophile argument is outrageous. It’s a story that has largely gone under the radar, and I’m not sure why. It is the biggest threat to civil liberties and free speech in this country we’ve ever experienced and we should be outraged. Within 2 weeks we’ll all be boiled frogs. Some of the sites banned include an anti-euthanasia site and other political sites unsavory to the Government. The service providers are voluntarily following the Government’s hugely unpopular recommended list which means half the country will have their legitimate adult content censored alongside other political sites; all to allegedly stop pedophiles who largely don’t operate out in the open anyway.

Here is a snippet of what ran in yesterday’s The Australian: MOST Australian internet users will have their web access censored next month after the country’s two largest internet providers agreed to voluntarily block more than 500 websites from view. Read also this Courier Mail newspaper’s commentator.

Who the are these two companies to dictate what I watch in the privacy of my bedroom? Change Servers!

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this one is really important.

All I want is a little RESPECT

By Ruth Ostrow on 22 June 2011 in All Posts, My Daily Raves

I hate that people don’t show each other respect. What ever happened to common courtesies like returning phone calls or even emails?

It’s not unusual in my profession to wait days for calls or emails to be returned or to have to ring and ring again. The reason is obvious, I am the journalist and i want something out of you the inerviewee. Therefore it is accepted that I am the groveller not the grovellee. I am naturally on the back foot. And if I do want to have your time then the onus is on me to get hold of you. Fair enough. But in daily interactions based on equality the groveller/ grovellee situation doesn’t work. I know friends who only ever wait for you to contact them, or people who are “too busy” to return calls – as if we aren’t all busy.

In my view it is courteous and respectful to drop someone a one-line email saying, too busy to write now, will get to you by the end of the week; or leave that message on the mobile. It is easy enough for the busiest of us to set time aside each day just to show respect. It is about acknowledging others and making them feel seen and heard even if we don’t want to deal with the issue they are contacting us about.

It makes people feel like they are invisible if we leave them dangling, This one really makes me mad. What about you?

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Activist blues

By Ruth Ostrow on 21 June 2011 in All Posts, My Daily Raves

Sitting here this morning at my computer, just read that they are to resume live exports to Indonesia within weeks. Industry lobbying against the move to ban exports is too strong. Both Governments and opposition are in favour of resuming trade. They have promised to closely monitor the Indonesians but the minister announced today that forcing Indonesia to use stunning is impossible. What has been achieved?

How do we as an apathetic or simply busy group of people get these archaic horrific practices stopped. I just feel so weak and powerless. Even with all my readers and media clout there is nothing much I can do. I’m at a total loss. I wonder how those incredible activists in the past who’ve won civil rights for so many minority groups around the world have found the time and passion to change their worlds?

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Plastic poison

By Ruth Ostrow on 17 June 2011 in All Posts, Weekend Magazine Columns

I hate lights left on all night in city buildings, glossy junk mail, plastic bottles. Share your pet company waste hates here and let’s try to make a difference!

ONE of my readers made a disturbing comment on a blog I wrote which showed a distinctly defeatist view about taking a stand. It was in relation to the story about animal exports to Indonesia.

To paraphrase, he said: “If we don’t supply them someone else will. And then our farmers will be the only ones who get hurt.”

I replied that history is too often tragically shaped by silence. As philosopher Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” One person has to step forward and say: “No more!” Continue Reading →

Four Corners animal cruelty

By Ruth Ostrow on 4 June 2011 in All Posts, Animal Welfare

Help stop the horror of animal export. Please post comments for a protest letter to the Government.

The Government is cracking down on live exports to Asia after horrific footage shown on Four Corners taken by an animal rights activists, blew the lid on the unspeakable cruelty that is going on under our noses.

But farmers are already putting the heat on the Government hoping for a backdown, according to The Australian. We must remain vigilant in our efforts to ensure that such needless suffering is stopped. Please help by raising your voices.

Use this blog to express your feelings!

Pet Friendly

By Ruth Ostrow on 3 June 2011 in All Posts, Animal Welfare, Weekend Magazine Columns

Landlords continue to discriminate against pet owners. Often it becomes “the dog or the home”. Should bias be illegal?

I MET a woman recently who’d just moved to Sydney.

She’s a single mum with a dog, currently staying with friends while looking for a place to rent. I knew the drill as she started to tell her story. Her tired face said it all. I remember moving back to Sydney a few years ago and the nightmare I had trying to rent with two cats. I was always banished to the back of the queue.

“Friends said I should lie,” she admitted. “But he’s a sheep dog. How can I hide him? It has come down to a home or the dog,” she said, almost in tears.

I wonder why such discrimination is still possible, especially since landlords can take bonds to cover pet damage. Surely animals don’t do any more damage than young kids (or teenagers for that matter, after their drunken parties). Continue Reading →

Is it time to legalise medical marijuana?

By Ruth Ostrow on 28 May 2011 in All Posts, Weekend Magazine Columns

U.S father has claimed marijuana helped save his 2 year old son. Is it time to take the drug seriously?

EARLIER this month, a father in the US state of Montana claimed that medical marijuana had helped save the life of his two-year-old son.

Mike Hyde, 27, said he slipped a little cannabis oil into his toddler Cash’s feeding tube behind his doctor’s back in desperation after the boy stopped eating for 40 days. Chemo treatments were making him too sick to eat.

“Not only was it helpful, it was a godsend,” Hyde told American’s ABC News. Marijuana boiled up with olive oil allowed the dying child to regain his appetite enough to recover. Hyde also believes it contributed to the overall cure. Continue Reading →

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