Centro Internet Segura Apresenta websérie «Net Com Consciência»

Exame Informática

Há um conjunto de vídeos dedicados ao público juvenil e que aborda temas como o cyberbulling, sexting, privacidade online e muitos outros temas tecnológicos. Agora, vai poder ser usado nas escolas.

A iniciativa foi organizada pelo Centro Internet Segura e coordenado pela FCT. O objectivo foi apresentar em vídeo explicações sobre vários temas tecnológicos como cyberbulling, sexting, privacidade online e muitos outros. Estes conteúdos foram disponibilizados durante o Verão, no YouTube e vão agora ser oferecidos em pack para utilização pelas escolas, com adaptações também para os alunos com necessidades educativas especiais, explica o comunicado de imprensa. Os vídeos vão ter versões com áudio descrição, língua gestual portuguesa e legendas em português e inglês.

No total, são dez episódios que caracterizam os comportamentos online mais frequentes entre os jovens e os riscos a que estes estão expostos se não fizerem uma utilização responsável da Internet e das tecnologias. Os vídeos contam com participações dos actores Alexandre Silva, Pedro Górgia e Tiago Aldeia e, durante a apresentação marcada para hoje, os protagonistas saem do mundo virtual para interagir com os participantes.

Veja todos os vídeos no canal do YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9fadgexIKzm8sZqUmyWnaA

Consulte o programa completo aqui.

http://www.internetsegura.pt/evento/marca-diferen%C3%A7a-por-uma-internet-melhor

Destacado jornalista australiano condena pressão para a eutanásia Paul Kelly teme que se vai mudar o país para sempre.

Paul Russell, Mercatornet, 3 de Outubro de 2016

One of Australia’s most respected journalists, Paul Kelly, has kicked back against what some of his journalistic colleagues have been treating as a rising tide in favour of euthanasia. Kelly is a former editor of The Australian, a television pundit and the author of eight books on Australian politics. Politicians will listen carefully to what he says.

«Legalise euthanasia and compassionate society dies too», published in The Weekend Australian, is a serious look at euthanasia in the places where it has been made legal. Kelly concludes that society is irrevocably damaged by the introduction of the practice of doctors killing people.

He opens with an emotional plea:

«If you love your parents, respect your children, care for your society and think compassionately about your world then it is time to open your hearts when a jurisdiction legalises killing or, as it is called, euthanasia.»

That there is renewed public interest in euthanasia in Australia at the moment cannot be denied – partly because this month marks the 20th anniversary of the first euthanasia death under the short-lived Northern Territory law (the first of its kind anywhere in the world) and partly because some journalists have been beating the drum.

Over these last 20 years, the arguments against euthanasia have not changed. What has changed is the effectiveness of palliative medicine in eliminating pain and suffering. Kelly correctly cautions, however, that «this is a critical trend but cannot conceal the fact painful deaths still exist and become the main argument for legal change. But euthanasia should not be seen as a substitute for palliative care – that would be a medical and moral blunder.»

Kelly's second point is to cite the developments in who gets euthanasia and the rise in the numbers in Belgium and Holland to conclude that, «where euthanasia is legalised the record is clear – its availability generates rapid and ever expanding use and wider legal boundaries. Its rate and practice quickly exceeds the small number of cases based on the original criteria of unacceptable pain.»

He makes his point by posing a series of questions which actually chronicle the progress of euthanasia in Belgium and Holland:

«If you sanction killing for end-of-life pain relief, how can you deny this right to people in pain who aren't dying? If you give this right to adults, how can you deny this right to children? If you give this right to people in physical pain, how can you deny this right to people with mental illness? If you give this right to people with mental illness, how can you deny this right to people who are exhausted with life?»

«Culture and values will change to justify the death process,» says Kelly as he introduces to readers of The Australian to the story of Tom Mortier and the death of his mother. Kelly uses quotes from Belgian euthanasia supremo, Wim Distelmans, to note some of his more outrageous comments that, frankly, raise no eyebrows in his homeland.

Kelly quotes Mortier when responding to Distelmans' claim that giving a lethal injection is an act of «unconditional love»:

«I loved my Mother for more than 30 years and I wanted her to live; Dr Distelmans loved her so much – 'unconditionally' – that after a few brief consultations over six months he gave her a lethal injection.»

The leading voice for Australian euthanasia at the moment, Andrew Denton, once commented to me about Tom Mortier's situation saying that, sad as it is, it was after all his mother's decision – it was her choice. No person who has read Tom's story could dismiss what happened so easily – unless they had an agenda. But Denton's words actually uncover one of the most significant changes that euthanasia laws create that, ultimately, become the driver for cultural drift and euthanasia expansion. Kelly writes:

«The trend and logic is unassailable; once legislated the principle of euthanasia is settled and the practice of euthanasia is widened, if not by law then by administrative laxity and de facto regulatory sanction. Of course, many euthanasia cases are never declared.

«A 2012 report by the European Institute of Bioethics said: ‘Initially legalised under very strict conditions, euthanasia has greadually become a very normal and even ordinary act to which patients are deemed to have a right.

«Many advocates in Australia use the rights language. Once this takes hold, then holding back the tide is nearly impossible.»

Denton and others are in denial of this reality; most likely because they realise the potency of the argument.

The «rights» argument is also present in the questions posed by Kelly. It is the denial of human nature: «Experience in other jurisdictions leads to the unambiguous conclusion: the threshold event is the original legalising of euthanasia. After this there is only one debate – it is over when and how to expand the sanctioned killings.»

Kelly is highly critical of the Victorian Parliamentary Report on end-of-life choices and cites the dissenting report by Daniel Melino MLC (Victoria) which, contrary to the style of the main report, is written in a scholarly manner and is exceptionally well-referenced.

He calls the main reports assertions that a law could be written with «robust eligibility criteria» and their denial of the «slippery slope», heroic optimism:

«It is echoed on nation after nation, year after year. It testifies to the deepest humanist conviction that mankind and wise governments can introduce euthanasia regimes with the necessary legal safeguards and the necessary regulatory protections to manage the promotion of death to ensure only net gains for the social order.

«It is surely extraordinary that people sceptical of the ability of governments to get trains running on time fool themselves into thinking they can confidently manage a regime that sanctions the termination of human life.»

Kelly goes on to quote the new head of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), Dr Michael Gannon and Liz Callaghan from Palliative Care Australia, who both content that euthanasia does not have a legitimate place in medicine and palliative medicine. Kelly also notes the push from within the AMA for that body to adopt what is known as a neutral position on euthanasia, a tactic that has been tried in a number of jurisdictions and is likely to fail once more in Australia.

The pro-euthanasia movement know that once the peak medical body «goes neutral» it can no longer express an opinion either way. Would we want the AMA to adopt a neutral position on Medicare or on government health policy? Not likely. They are the peak body whose members, charged with our care, know the reality far better than anyone else. We need them to express an opinion on all sorts of health-related matters, euthanasia being one.

Kelly closes by returning to a personal appeal to his reader:

«If we proceed then life will change, there will be a ‘slippery slope’, your relationship with your doctor will be different, the vulnerable will have a reason to feel uneasy, the push to make euthanasia a right will be inevitable, the frail will feel obliged to volunteer and our values as a community will shift more quickly than you appreciate.»

Paul Russell is director of HOPE: preventing euthanasia & assisted suicide, which is based in Australia. This article has been edited and republished from his blog with permission.

Eutanásia: aprender com os erros do Canadá Agora que os médicos podem matar, as pessoas vão ter medo de cuidados paliativos...

Will Johnston, Mercatornet, 5 de Outubro de 2016

The Carter decision to allow assisted suicide and euthanasia claimed that Canada could avoid abuses through careful guidelines and screening. Medically facilitated elder abuse by greedy relatives and medicalized suicide for the depressed – a grim reality where this practice is legal -- were supposed to be avoidable, said the judge because of a superior medical culture in Canada. The abuses of Belgium? Not for us.

Experience proves otherwise.

According to the new law, it will be five years before Canada's assisted suicide and euthanasia regime has to report back to the nation. Two stories offer reasons why that report will fail to reveal those depressed patients, far from death, who are steered to suicide by others and by their untreated mental illness.

A friend, herself dealing with advanced ovarian cancer, heard from a neighbour that his wife was going to get assisted suicide. The neighbour said they would be going to a doctor in Vancouver to get this done. This baffled my friend, who had seen the woman outside her home, gardening. The husband made other comments suggesting that his wife would be dead soon. She had heart trouble.

My friend tipped off her own nurse to get community services involved and the suicidal woman's depression began to be addressed by a nurse and social worker. This apparently able-bodied woman did not go to Vancouver right away – but she had been invited, as soon became clear.

I will let my friend's words testify to the end of that story:

«A few days later the husband came over with a clipboard and a pen. He started by saying, ‘Damn government did not pass the bill.’ He asked me to sign a form – that he needed two signatures for the doctor in Vancouver. He stated that none of their family and friends would sign. I almost passed out!

Seriously. I told him I would not sign. He assumed that it was on religious grounds and I said no it was experiential. He said ‘OK, then I will ask your husband.’ I told him he had better not even bring it up!

We went on a two-day visit to the grandsons and came back on June 7 (the designated day of the euthanasia) and his balcony was draped in black crepe.

Several days later I bumped into him at the mailbox and he complained that none of the neighbours had given condolences even though he made it obvious that [his wife] had ‘passed.’ I asked him how he was and he said that his wife had a nice last day, that she liked the walk around the seawall.

He also told me that he felt sorry for the poor doctor because she was so tired because she had so many euthanasias that day. He and the boyfriend are now residing together in a big new travel coach parked elsewhere in the same trailer park and the Mustang has become the vehicle of preference and he sold his house. No one talks to him...»

This appears to be medical homicide as a solution to depression, apparently facilitated by a husband with other interests.

Several weeks ago I was contacted by the wife of a young man with a neurological disease. The man had been assured by a euthanasia-performing doctor in Vancouver that he qualified for an assisted suicide. He was depressed and never ventured outdoors.

At the patient's invitation I visited him in his shared room in a dingy nursing home, a place once described to me as «a prison.» He told me about his struggle to find a cure with massive doses of vitamins. He was less disabled than, for instance, Walter Lawrence, who works in Vancouver as an inspiring peer counsellor to spinal injury patients and others.

But this patient had lost hope for the future and felt his existence was meaningless and that death was the only solution. This death-focused tunnel vision defines a suicidal depression, and any able-bodied person would be given psychological help to relieve it. This disabled man, who was nowhere near dying, was instead killed by a Vancouver physician.

The physician's rationale for circumventing the law, reportedly given over the phone before she met or examined the patient, was that he could easily get bed sores and then die of infection, so that his death «was reasonably foreseeable.»

What surprised his wife was «how easy» it was for her depressed, self-isolated husband to be killed under the new regime. What seems obvious is that the whole nature of this death is not going to be reported to the Minister of Health or the Minister of Justice – there is no transparency to this system.

Five years from now, the mandatory report is going to be full of bland and self-justifying statistics presented by the very doctors who have done the killing. By sanitizing these medicalized suicides and homicides with the now-familiar euphemisms about «medical aid in dying,» the uninvolved public will be reassured that nothing has gone wrong.

Canada has simply created a system which offers, and completes, suicide for people whose personalities, disabilities and personal situations put them at high risk for it. Well over a hundred real people have died in the few months since the old law was discarded. To complain that this was repeatedly predicted is to indulge in powerless understatement.

And next, we have the unfolding tragedy of palliative care. That medical specialty has always struggled to reassure fearful dying people that palliation has nothing to do with «mercy killing» and assisted suicide. Reluctant families have been truthfully promised that hospice nurses and doctors are not self-appointed angels of death.

Sadly, palliative care wards and hospices across Canada are, right now, in a hailstorm of administrative edicts to perform euthanasia inside their walls, in whispering range of those families and patients who had been promised a refuge of care.

Violating the principles and purposes of palliative care is in no way required by the new law. The thoughtless imposition of this radical shift needs to be halted. Hospital administrators can and must provide other locations for those few final minutes.

Our Minister of Health and her provincial colleagues would be wise to act quickly on this. The principles of suicide prevention have been betrayed. It is not inevitable that the principles of palliative care must be next.

Dr Will Johnston is a family physician in Vancouver. This article has been republished with permission from Huffington Post Canada.

Mãe coragem

P. Gonçalo Portocarrero de Almada, Observador, 8 de Outubro de 2016

Heróis são a Liliana Melo e os seus filhos. É o Tribunal Europeu dos Direitos Humanos, que agora condenou o Estado português, por este incrível atropelo dos mais elementares direitos fundamentais.

Já lá vão mais de quatro anos desde que o Tribunal de Sintra mandou retirar, a Liliana Melo, sete filhos, com idades entre os seis meses e os sete anos. A implacável decisão judicial, que apanhou de surpresa a mãe, incapaz de se opor a uma tão dramática medida, foi executada com requintes de especial crueldade: a casa familiar foi cercada por polícias e os filhos que nela se encontravam – um dos sete conseguiu, felizmente, evitar a captura, encontrando-se desde então em casa de outros familiares – foram levados para diversas instituições, para adopção.

Sem meios económicos ou outros, Liliana Melo começou, nesse mês de Maio – em que, por cruel ironia, se celebra o dia da mãe – a percorrer a sua via-sacra. Não é difícil imaginar a sua angústia quando se viu só, num país que não é o da sua naturalidade, proibida de ter consigo os seus filhos e até de com eles contactar. Tratada pelas autoridades judiciais e policiais como se fosse uma criminosa, Liliana é responsável pelo crime de ser mãe de muitos filhos, com as agravantes de ser cabo-verdiana, muçulmana e pobre.

Mas Liliana Melo não desistiu. Graças a Deus, não lhe faltou, desde a primeira hora, o apoio de duas corajosas advogadas, que assumiram pro bono a sua defesa. E foi com surpresa que verificaram que, ao contrário do que seria de supor pela brutal decisão judicial, não constava a ocorrência de maus-tratos, abusos, violência doméstica ou grave negligência, que justificasse não só a retirada forçosa dos seis filhos, mas sobretudo a sua separação.

Mãe coragem, Liliana Melo teve que esperar três anos para ver, de novo, os filhos que a justiça portuguesa não só lhe roubou, como impediu de contactar. Graças a uma decisão provisória do Tribunal Europeu dos Direitos Humanos, de Fevereiro de 2015, o Estado português foi obrigado a pôr termo à separação dos irmãos, bem como à proibição que, até então, impediu a mãe de estar com estes seus filhos.

Vale a pena recordar esse primeiro encontro, três anos depois da dolorosa separação da família: «as crianças chegaram à sala e não houve nenhuma palavra trocada. A mãe apenas abriu os braços e estiveram a chorar, agarrados uns aos outros, durante largo tempo».

Mesmo já autorizada a visitar os filhos nas instituições que os acolheram, Liliana ainda teve que sofrer não poucas humilhações. Por exemplo, no aniversário de um deles, fez-lhe o bolo que sabia ser do seu especial agrado, meteu-se no comboio e foi ter com o «menino dos anos». Mas, ao chegar à referida instituição, foi-lhe dito que não lhe era permitido entregar ao filho o seu bolo preferido, mas que podia compra-lhe outro. Liliana confidenciou que, nesse dia, voltou para casa a chorar: eram muito diferentes o bolo comprado numa pastelaria e aquele que ele mais gostava, feito pela sua mãe!

Se a mãe nunca desistiu dos seus filhos, os filhos também nunca desistiram da mãe. Dois episódios. Um dos pequenos perguntou uma vez, a uma das advogadas que tratavam do caso, quando é que acabava o «para sempre», porque tinham-lhe dito que ia ficar «para sempre» na instituição e ele supunha que, depois, poderia voltar para casa … Outro filho, que Liliana Melo foi buscar à escola, fez questão de levar a mãe à sua sala de aulas, para a apresentar, orgulhosamente, aos seus colegas!

Nesta história há muitos vilões, nomeadamente o Estado português, alguma da sua justiça e alguma da sua Segurança Social que, embora exemplares em geral, neste caso, em vez de ajudarem uma família com necessidades, tudo fizeram para a destruir.

Também o foram, por omissão, os políticos, de esquerda ou de direita, que andam sempre a encher a boca com as causas sociais, mas depois nada fazem para resolver os casos concretos. Andam a brincar ao Robin dos Bosques, à frente das câmaras da televisão, exibem a sua indignação sempre que têm um microfone pela frente mas, depois, não mexem um dedo. Uma certa comunicação social, mais atenta às causas fracturantes do que às pessoas fracturadas, foi também cúmplice, pelo seu silêncio, quando era sua obrigação informar sobre estes casos de inadmissível prepotência estatal.

Heróis são a Liliana Melo e os seus filhos, finalmente reunidos na casa que nunca devia ter deixado de ser a sua. É o Tribunal Europeu dos Direitos Humanos que, em acórdão recente, recomendou a reunificação de toda a família e condenou o Estado português, por este incrível atropelo dos mais elementares direitos fundamentais, obrigando-o também a uma pesada multa que, contudo, não paga o sofrimento desta família durante quatro longos anos. São as advogadas Paula Penha Gonçalves e Clotilde Almeida, que deram a esta mãe e aos seus filhos o apoio do seu muito saber e do seu imenso trabalho, sem outra recompensa que não seja o consolo de ver, de novo, a família unida. Foi também o jornalista José Manuel Fernandes que, numa exemplar reportagem, teve a coragem de denunciar este caso. Bem-hajam!