When my colleague Hannah Levintova mentioned she was reporting on the suicide of Alex Kearns, a young Robinhood trader, I instantly took note. It’s a tragic case, where a trade involving a complex financial instrument that had been translated into a slick phone interface went bad. The trading app with a self-described mission to “democratize finance for all” notified him that he was $730,000 in the red. Robinhood didn’t respond to his panicked emails. There was no obvious live chat or customer service phone number. He took his own life, leaving a note explaining he hoped it would save his family from crushing debt. But Robinhood’s notification—and that negative cash balance—was all a grave misunderstanding, as Hannah wrote this April:
Media personalities like Andrew Bolt generate a lot of negative public stereotypes and an atmosphere that promotes bullying and psychological alienation. Alienation that children haven’t the resilience to deal with. Vilifiers of any kind have a lot to answer for in promoting negative images that have the unintended consequences of encouraging bullying and entrapping children in their negative world view . (ODT)
Tragically, the child suicide toll discriminates. Proportionally, suicide takes more Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children than it does non-Aboriginal children. Suicide also takes more migrant children from non-English cultural backgrounds. I work in trauma recovery with suicide affected families — Aboriginal, migrant, everyone. At least one-quarter of these children would still be with us had it not been for bullying and relentless psychological and emotional abuse.
Migrant Australians comprise more than one-quarter of the harrowing Australian suicide toll. Newly arrived migrants from linguistically diverse backgrounds are the most at-risk. The majority are impoverished and face upon arrival, imposts of economic stressors and a divide borne of incidental isolation and inequalities and many instances of the “isms”.
Sco Mos most embarrassing moment Boomgate Dutton’s tasteless joke and Abbott’s laughter (ODT)
In truth, the move by Dutton is more about ambition and payback on Turnbull than shoring up the conservative base, with polling consistently showing that the punters don’t hate Turnbull – they just hate the instability of the Liberal Party… i.e. they don’t like Tony Abbott, or his brand of wrecking politics.
Had Abbott had left politics gracefully, it’s entirely possible Turnbull could have enjoyed a Howard-esque like domination of Australian politics, such was his broad appeal when he first took the reigns.
Instead, Abbott stuck around and sniped, and wrecked, and plotted and schemed. And Peter Dutton is now poised to exact Abbott’s revenge, and pave the former PM’s way for a return to the front bench.
Worth a Read The Nordic Theory of Everything compares the meaning of Individual Freedoms in USA with the Nordic North. It brings into focus the social model Australia takes for granted is irrationally following. Do we invest in the well being of our most valuable resource Australians? (ODT)
I don’t have much to say, myself, today. I’ll leave most of the talking to others. A ten-year-old girl committed suicide yesterday. She was Aboriginal. The “why” of suicide is never something that can be easily answered, or perhaps answered at all. But it would be foolish at best, and certainly pig-headed, to ignore what Indigenous people have to say about this.
Australian governments are deliberately contributing to the deaths, suicide, homelessness, domestic violence and mental illness of Australian Defence Veterans — both young and old.
These sustained and bureaucratically controlled ‘Wattle on Green’ attacks are as treacherous to Diggers on home turf, as the infamous ‘Green on Blue’ attacks on Coalition forces in the Middle and Wider East.
Time and again, in rapid fire betrayal, pensioner veterans have been promised paltry pension increases and time and again in our name, they have been publicly humiliated and their begging bowls filled with soiled matter and rotting promissory notes.
We might as well bury alive our returned service personnel.
Wednesday morning’s gut-wrenching report by Ashley Hall on the ABC’s AM program is a shameful indictment on how Australia treats its returned soldiers with blatant contempt.
It makes a mockery of the political expediency and duplicitous hollow words of successive political leaders who deliver sonorous and patriotic eulogies on the likes of ANZAC Day, during Turkish dawns and over the flag-draped coffins of those killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, whilst basking in the stolen heroic glories of those who lay down their lives for this country in squalid wars mounted upon squalid lies.
He said a lot of parallels could be drawn with Vietnam:
…There’s a lot of parallels we can draw here with the Vietnam generation because everyone in Australia knows what happened to Vietnam veterans.
If you look at mental health, suicide and alcoholism – including in their families – well we’re seeing that play out again in my generation.
We must not capitulate to the will of successive governments and ignore our older veterans in favour of younger veterans.
Both groups must be treated as the first among equals.
Just as there is no space for a generation gap amongst the dead, none must be allowed amongst the living.
I urge everyone to stand shoulder to shoulder on this.
Post-traumatic stress is an insidious and parasitic worm that can, if left unchecked, entirely consume the body, mind and soul of its host.
Because some of our diggers are older, does not mean that their illnesses and horrible predicaments are less real or less worthy than those of younger diggers.
It is clear that successive governments are holding off on compensating older diggers in the hope they will die off and thus avoid any payouts of illnesses contracted through exposure to Agent Orange and other poisonous toxins — as well as giving them fair and honourable increases in their pensions.
On next week’s second Tuesday in the month, long after the hooves of The Melbourne Cup are stilled, some permanently, millions around the nation will again hold their breath on Remembrance Day and observe a minute’s silence on the 11th day of the 11th month to acknowledge the 96th Anniversary of the Armistice of the First World War as well as the sacrifice made by the dead, the living and the living dead who walk amongst us, in all wars and conflicts.
For several years, Independent Australia has campaigned and written about the shameful plight of our veterans.
“It is a strange way to reward ADF members for their dedication and hard work especially as the Government has just dispatched a new contingent to the ongoing Middle East conflicts.”
It is time that DFWA Patron, His Excellency General, the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC (Retd), now Governor General, did what he should have done when he was chief of the Army and when he was chief of the Defence Force — publicly recommend that Australia’s returning defence personnel be accorded pensions worthy of their sacrifice and commitment.
There is fresh blood on the yellow wattle, spilling onto the green of our national colours and national returned veterans.
From wounds and heartbreak caused by successive and callous home-grown Australian governments, whose continuing war against our veterans is such that they are taking no prisoners; dead or alive.
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.