Wednesday 20th March 2013
THIS WEEK'S MEETING
Maleny Hotel at 6:30 for 7:00pm with Guest Speaker Eric Kiernan – Positive Ageing Pilot Program.
APOLOGIES
Please tender apologies to Lionel Tilley by noon Tuesday.
DUTY ROSTERS
Mar 20 Apr 3 Apr 17
Duty Officer Sherryl G Bernice McL Malcolm B
Registration Chris B Malcolm B Paul F
ADO & Scribe Mike G Paul F John McL
Fellowship Debra L John McL Bernice McL
SAUSAGE SIZZLE ROSTER
30th March
13th April
Sherryl Gregory (Leader) Mike Gregory Brian Allen
MINUTES OF MEETING OF 6TH MARCH
President Karen inducted Robin Thorne into the Club with the classification Agriculture – Beef. Robin comes to us from the Rotary Club of Kawana Waters and she received a very warm welcome.
Peter was born in Japan in the late twenties to a German father who was a theatre owner on secondment to Japan and a Hollywood actress mother. His father was responsible for starting the theatre industry in Japan and when his contract ended they took ship to return to Germany. But, presumably because of the start of WW2, they ended up in Shanghai where he was enrolled in the English school – naturally he was bullied for being German. However, the German embassy officials insisted he go to the German school (even though he did not speak German) and enrol in the Hitler Youth – naturally he was bullied because he did not speak the language! On leaving school Peter worked in the Shanghai radio station until the Americans arrived when he went to work for ALCAN as the pay was much better. As the situation deteriorated with the victories of the Red Army, all the Europeans began to leave but his family could not get visas for Australia where they wanted to go, so he was the last European working at the factory. Eventually he was able to obtain sponsorship from his mother’s sister in Australia but they would not accept his parents so at the last minute he escaped from Shanghai to Hong Kong with a generous handout from his employer.
So when he got to Sydney he was able to buy a house and go to work for the same company where he became the leader of the local Ironworkers Union. Later on he went into business for himself as a freelance carpenter, moved to Brisbane and, eventually Maleny. He had always been interested in making movies and used to show them at work so when he arrived with the only film projector in town he was eagerly snapped up by the film society. Recently his films of Maleny events have been digitised as they are such priceless records. He has a one hour film of an interview where he gives much more detail of his extraordinary life story and he is happy to loan this to anyone interested. Peter ended by saying how honoured he was to be asked to speak at the Rotary Club.
Peter was thanked by Chris for his very interesting presentation and for his extensive voluntary work in our community.
IN NIGERIA, POLIO VACCINE WORKERS ARE KILLED BY GUNMEN
THE KILLINGS AT TWO CLINICS, WITH SIMILARITIES TO ATTACKS THAT KILLED NINE WOMEN IN PAKISTAN, PRESENTED ANOTHER SETBACK FOR THE GLOBAL EFFORT TO ERADICATE POLIO.
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. The New York Times
A four-day vaccination drive had just ended in Kano State, where the killings took place, and the vaccinators were in a “mop-up” phase, looking for children who had been missed, said Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, one of the agencies running the eradication campaign.
Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s minister of state for health, said in a telephone interview that it was not entirely clear whether the gunmen were specifically targeting polio workers or just attacking the health centres where vaccinators happened to be gathering early in the morning. “Health workers are soft targets,” he said.
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| Hooded assisins |
No one immediately took responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group that has attacked police stations, government offices and even a religious leader’s convoy.
Polio, which once paralysed millions of children, is now down to fewer than 1,000 known cases around the world, and is endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Since September — when a new polio operations centre was opened in the capital and Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a special adviser for polio — the country had been improving, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization. There have been no new cases since Dec. 3. While vaccinators have not previously been killed in the country, there is a long history of Nigerian Muslims shunning the vaccine. Ten years ago, immunization was suspended for 11 months as local governors waited for local scientists to investigate rumours that it caused AIDS or was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That hiatus let cases spread across Africa. The Nigerian strain of the virus even reached Saudi Arabia when a Nigerian child living in hills outside Mecca was paralysed.
Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who tracks vaccine issues, said the newest killings “are kind of mimicking what’s going on in Pakistan, and I feel it’s very much prompted by that.” In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan
killings. In its effort to track Osama bin Laden, the agency paid a Pakistani doctor to seek entry to Bin Laden’s compound on the pretext of vaccinating the children — presumably to get DNA samples as evidence that it was the right family. That enraged some Taliban factions in Pakistan, which outlawed vaccination in their areas and threatened vaccinators.
Nigerian police officials said the first shootings were of eight workers early in the morning at a clinic in the Tarauni neighbourhood of Kano, the state capital; two or three died. A survivor said the two gunmen then set fire to a curtain, locked the doors and left. “We summoned our courage and broke the door because we realized they wanted to burn us alive,” the survivor said from her bed at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital. About an hour later, six men on three-wheeled motorcycles stormed a clinic in the Haye neighbourhood, a few miles away. They killed seven women waiting to collect vaccine.
Ten years ago, Dr. Larson said, she joined a door-to-door vaccination drive in northern Nigeria as a Unicef communications officer, “and even then we were trying to calm rumours that the C.I.A. was involved,” she said. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had convinced poor Muslims in many countries that Americans hated them, and some believed the American-made vaccine was a plot by Western drug companies and intelligence agencies. Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”
Dr. Pate said the attack would not stop the newly reinvigorated eradication drive, adding, “This isn’t going to deter us from getting everyone vaccinated to save the lives of our children.”
Aminu Abubakar contributed reported from Kano, Nigeria.
FUTURE MEETINGS & EVENTS
22-24 Mar District Conference at Twin Waters - registration now open.
27th Mar Masonic Hall at 7:00pm for Project Meeting.
3rd April Maleny Hotel at 6:30 for 7:00pm with Guest Speaker Sam Archer of Bank of Queensland.
10th April Board Meeting at Masonic Hall.
WEDDING ANNIVERSARY FOR MARCH
6th John & Beth
BIRTHDAYS FOR MARCH
2nd David Binstead 5th Judy Tilley 17th Lloyd Larney 23rd Paul Fisscher 26th Rick Vickers
NOW FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT
A CAUTIONARY TALE WHICH IS IN NO WAY RELATED TO BILL'S VISIT TO SYDNEY OVER THE MARDE GRAS WEEKEND
THE GAY COWBOY...
A successful rancher died and left everything to his devoted wife. She was a very good-looking woman and determined to keep the ranch, but knew very little
about ranching, so she decided to place an ad in the newspaper for a ranch hand. Two cowboys applied for the job. One was gay and the other a drunk. She thought long and hard about it, and when no one else applied she decided to hire the gay guy, figuring it would be safer to have him around the house than the drunk.
He proved to be a hard worker who put in long hours every day and knew a lot about ranching. For weeks, the two of them worked, and the ranch was doing very well. Then one day, the rancher's widow said to the hired hand, "You have done a really good job, and the ranch looks great. You should go into town and kick
up your heels." The hired hand readily agreed and went into town one Saturday night.
One o'clock came, however, and he didn't return. Two o'clock and no hired hand. Finally he returned around two-thirty, and upon entering the room, he found the rancher's widow sitting by the fireplace with a glass of wine, waiting for him.
She quietly called him over to her. "Unbutton my blouse and take it off," she said.
Trembling, he did as she directed. "Now take off my boots."
He did as she asked, ever so slowly. "Now take off my socks."
He removed each gently and placed them neatly by her boots.
"Now take off my skirt."
He slowly unbuttoned it, constantly watching her eyes in the fire light.
"Now take off my bra." Again, with trembling hands, he did as he was told and dropped it to the floor.
Then she looked at him and said, "If you ever wear my clothes into town again, you're fired."
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