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In case anyone hadn’t noticed, APEC – the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum – is taking place in Sydney, Australia, this week. A number of national leaders are there, including US President George Bush, Australian premier John Howard, China’s Hu Jintao, and eighteen others.

We will never know what is discussed. There will be press releases from time to time, but what they want us to hear is all that will ever be broadcast for public consumption.

Sydney is a city under lock-down. Part of the rail network is closed, as are many roads. A huge, three mile long, metal barrier has been erected shutting off Sydney’s business district where the leaders will be staying. Over 5,000 police and troops are on duty patrolling the streets.

From whom are they being protected, these twenty-one world leaders?

Terrorists with bombs?

Not at all. While terrorism is a slight threat, the reason for this mammoth security operation is to protect these world leaders from their own citizens. In other words, ordinary people like you and me.

Protesters from all over the world have gathered in the Australian city. A Sydney court is deciding whether a planned march by 5,000 people and organized by the “Stop Bush Coalition”, can go ahead on Saturday. Members of the banned One Sydney brothel is offering an Apec special called The Presidential Platter, which apparently includes a variety of pleasures.spiritual movement Falun Gong, have traveled from China to hold vigils protesting human rights abuses in that country.

While, no doubt, rent-a-mob will infiltrate many of the protests and try to create mayhem, most of the people protesting in Sydney this week are just ordinary members of society, like you and I.

It begs two questions: 1) what does it say about our leaders, and 2) what does it say about us?

The answer to the first question is easy. It takes no mental effort to calculate that our leaders have no interest in our welfare. Our only use, in their eyes, is as economic units. We won’t ever know what they discuss this week in Sydney, but we can sure it will not include plans for making more agreeable the lives of ordinary people, like you and I. They have proved themselves unwilling to assist the plight of millions in Darfur, Palestine, and other areas of conflict around the world. They have created the situation in Iraq purposefully to obtain economic advantage. The opium (heroin) crop in Afghanistan is the highest this year on record, since US and NATO forces took over the country.

All in all, our so-called ‘leaders’ are totally unfit to lead.

Nevertheless, the toil and sweat of heady negotiation this week will be well assuaged by the “laid-on” entertainment. In fact, the term “laid-on” is highly apt, given that Sydney’s brothels and sex providers have geared up for a busy week.

According to a BBC report:

“One establishment said it was expecting business to boom and had been receiving overseas telephone inquiries for weeks.”

The report continues:

“The big question that prospective brothel clients from overseas have been asking is not about the price but how discreet a visit could be during this high-profile international conference.

A brothel industry spokesman said complimentary services would not be available but suggested that there might be an Apec discount.

One Sydney brothel is offering an Apec special called The Presidential Platter, which apparently includes a variety of pleasures.”

The second question begged was: what does all this say about us?

I’ll leave you to answer that one.

BBC report on APEC HERE.

BBC report on Sydney sex trade HERE.

Filed under: Best failures

……..a great and glorious sound that reverberated around this planet. It lifted the soul; brought tears of joyous emotion; lightened the heart, search and captivated the mind.

Now, thumb it has gone forever.

Rest in Peace, unhealthy Luciano Pavarotti.

Filed under: Great artists

It goes without saying that many people – not just in America, but throughout the world – will throw up their arms in horror at the very suggestion of scientists producing an embryo part animal-part human. The heated debate still rages over the use of human stem cells for scientific research. Any attempt to combine animals and humans in embryonic form will be greeted by them as – well, in much the same way as “Ken”, an anonymous writer on the BBC website, reacted:

“This is so inherently evil and immoral a path, how can a scientist not recognize that there are things that should not be followed?”

It’s a pertinent question, but there is another, equally relevant: how can a scientist view the suffering of those with Alzheimer’s disease, and other debilitating illnesses, know there is a way forward towards finding a cure, yet refuse to follow that course of research?

The moralists and religious might respond with another question: where will it all end?

That is the crux of the matter. So far as this writer is concerned, those who condemn out of hand the use of human stem cells for medical research, solely on the grounds it is taking or denying human life, are narrow-minded, egocentric, bigots totally out of touch with reality. Given the amount of human life legally taken by governments every minute of the day in wars and executions, it is ludicrous to complain about an odd embryo or two. But then, no doubt there are still some who consider masturbation a form of murder.

It is, however, right to be concerned about the manner in which scientific research is conducted. Governments regularly exhibit their inability to regulate all manner of important matters, and it is up to voters to ensure their feelings are known and acted upon by those they vote into office.

Thankfully, the British government has shown itself a little more capable than its American counterpart in both allowing stem cell research and regulating its use and purpose. Its recent decision not to ban research using human-animal embryos is to be applauded, provided sufficient safeguards are in place to prevent abuse.

In a BBC report, Dr Lyle Armstrong, Head of Human Genetics at Newcastle University said of the matter:

“……it’s not our intention to create any bizarre cow-human hybrid, we want to use those cells to understand how to make human stem cells better.”

In contrast, Dr Helen Watt, from the Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics, called the technique:

“a further violation of the rights of the embryo. The embryo is deprived not only of its life in the course of the experiment, but of any human parents. It is further dehumanised by the very method of its creation.”

Josephine Quintavalle, a campaigner for the group, Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said:

“Using hybrid embryos has never been acceptable – it offends the dignity of humans and animals.”

Are these people totally out of touch with reality? They are discussing the rights and dignity of something invisible to the human eye; microscopically tiny. Certainly, we would all jump up and down with righteous indignation were some crazed professor to suddenly produce an Angelina Jolie with huge milking udders, or a Brad Pitt sprouting magnificent bull horns, but some members of our species seem ready and willing to lose their sense of proportion very quickly when it provides them with a bandwagon. Maybe, just maybe, that’s one reason why so many shout so loudly about embryonic dignity and rights.

For most, objections are based on ‘religious’ rather than humanitarian grounds. After reading, on the BBC website, of two goats ritually slaughtered on the tarmac at Katmandu airport last Sunday, by officials of the state-owned Nepal Airlines, this writer can find little sympathy with any ‘religious’ objections to anything. The goats were sacrificed to a Hindu god because a Boeing 757 had developed a fault that technicians seemed unable to correct.

Frankly, as a species, we suffer from an inordinate lack of both dignity and commonsense. It seems unlikely even the most crazed scientist could ever produce a monstrosity weirder than Homo sapiens.

The BBC report on embryo research is available HERE.

The BBC report on the slaughter of innocent goats is available HERE.

Filed under: Weird species