Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"Teenage suicide rates have been doing more rising than falling across the world for the past decade or more and Australia is no exception. In fact we have frequently managed to have a suicide rate which ranked as the highest of all of the industrialized nations." Roslyn Ross.

"In a world where water can only become rarer and more precious, it seems foolish in the extreme to allow it to become a commodity; something to be bought and sold where the only motive is profit. In this instance it is not so much a case of ‘selling our souls’ but of ‘selling our lives’ and watching our future drain away through those ‘golden’ corporate ‘fingers’.": Roslyn Ross

"There will always be vulnerable people in our society and there will always be people who seek to profit from them. The only way that we can protect them and protect society by extension, is to have laws which can moderate and control behaviour. Making something illegal merely pushes it underground and into the hands of criminals." Roslyn Ross

"Happiness is something we all want but what is it exactly? The dictionary defines it as a 'state of wellbeing'. But is that something which any of us can have all of the time?": Roslyn Ross

"During the 1948-49 war and throughout the 1950’s some 500 Arab villages and cities were destroyed and almost all were razed to the ground by the Israeli Army. One of the worst massacres of Arabs took place at Deir Yasin in April 1948 and it is on this land that the official State of Israel holocaust memorial, Yad va-Shem, now stands as well as the City of Jerusalem cemetery. There’s something seriously tasteless, or sublimely arrogant, about building a memorial to the suffering of your own people on land where you have committed a war crime!" Roslyn Ross

"No well balanced parent would encourage their child to pull the wings off an insect because it bites, string the kitten by its paws from the clothesline as punishment, or nail the dog’s tail to the floor to stop it stealing food from the table. Such violence and cruelty would be seen as unhealthy at best and seriously dysfunctional at worst. And yet the signs are increasing that there has been a lessening of opposition to the use of torture on human beings. The term ‘torture lite’ has entered the lexicon as if something like torture could ever be less than what it so awfully is." Roslyn Ross

"Africa received $520billion in aid between 1960 and 1997, the equivalent of six Marshall Plans, and finished up even poorer than before. For some 50 years, foreign aid programmes have been a standard feature of Western dealings with the Third World in general and Africa in particular. The ‘goal’ was defined as assisting modernisation and development. Half a century on Africa remains a basket case with levels of poverty rising, not dropping, virtually across the entire continent." Roslyn Ross

"Fear is probably the first human emotion that we experience and sadly, for some, if not many, it is also the last. And while Fear has always been a part of the human condition, there are times when it becomes most of what we are instead of a  very small part of what we can be." Roslyn Ross

"We already know that the greater freedom and equality a woman has then the better the society functions. Education is often the first benefit that women receive when they are recognised as equals and that translates into fewer babies, better health, improved diet and increased incomes for families. Everyone wins in a world where females get the same opportunities and benefits as males." Roslyn Ross

"The Japanese are six times as rich as they were in 1950 and they aren’t any happier and neither are Americans who are twice as rich as they were in the 1970’s. Across the world it seems clear that instead of getting happier as they become better off people become more frightened. Expectations are raised at the same pace as incomes and happiness is always just a little out of reach." Roslyn Ross

"The Government may have acted quickly last year to quash any backbench discussion about banning headscarves from public schools but it is an issue that needs to be discussed in depth, not only for the sake of the children involved, but for the sake of our society in general." Roslyn Ross

"Aborigines, like many indigenous peoples in the world, have become something akin to insects ‘pinned’ into a specimen box. The community at large feels ‘guilty’ about the fact that our ancestors conquered and dispossessed them and so we try to make amends by believing that the best thing we can do is ‘help’ them to hold on to their culture; to ‘pin’ them into a place that diminishes our guilt and supposedly helps to ‘right the wrongs’ of the past." Roslyn Ross

"And the French smoke as well to add insult to injury. But then tobacco, which is a plant, and also a herb, at one time was considered to be good for asthmatics and prescribed as such. The problem these days is more likely to be the chemicals used in the manufacturing process rather than the plant itself. Nicotine has also been found to be useful in the treatment of intestinal conditions like Crohn’s disease because it has a calming effect. This explains why soldiers in war and people who work in crisis environments tend to smoke. In years to come we may see doctors prescribing cigarettes made from organically grown tobacco." Roslyn Ross