links for 2009-01-15

• Country patients paid for travel (in WA)
  West Australian CANCER patients in the country will benefit the most from an overhaul to the Patient Assisted Travel Scheme announced by the State Government today. The service is used to help more than 50,000 country patients travel from their homes to access specialist medical services.

  COMMENT: This is one of the most essential servises for those of us who have to make trips to major centres to access cancer treatments not available in local or regional areas. Here, in Victoria, I have been refunded $70 petrol money for two round trips to Melbourne and I can also access over $1,000 (up to $100 /trip) in taxi fare rebates which is pretty redundent when you live 50 Km from the nearest town. Still, it is encouraging to see that WA has been able to improve their transport service costs for terminally ill patients.

• Barack Obama: A Letter to My Daughters
  Next Tuesday, Barack Obama will be sworn in as our 44th President. On this historic occasion, PARADE asked the President-elect, who is also a devoted family man, to get personal and tell us what he wants for his children. Here, he shares his letter to them.

  GREG’S COMMENT: I found this piece of Obama oratory worth recording. It comes across as being genuine and, no doubt, will be recalled as the new President tries to change the world into a better place.
• ‘War on terror’ misleading and mistake
  “Seven years on from 9/11 it is clear that we need to take a fundamental look at our efforts to prevent extremism and its terrible offspring, terrorist violence,” Mr Miliband wrote in an opinion piece for the Guardian newspaper. “Since 9/11, the notion of a war on terror has defined the terrain.

  GREG’S VIEW: I have been confused how any nation can declare a war without defining the enemy. Declaring the ‘war on terror’ and then demanding of the rest of the world that, ‘If you are not with us, you are against us’ was a terrorist act in itself. As an Australian recognising our defence dependency on the U.S.A., I have felt aggrieved at that association throughout the last seven years.

  We hear of the rules of war and surely there is a rule defining the actual declaration and the identification of the enemy. The validity of the war itself has proved erroneous and it is now up to the new administration to bring about changes that we can all feel comfortable with.