Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson has been found guilty of concealing child sexual abuse in NSW.
Updated
via Archbishop of Adelaide found guilty of concealing child sexual abuse
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It’s as if the NRA is one step from saying ‘schools are the problem in America close them’. All the paid for Right solutions can be heard on FOX NEWS. Leave the other media what’s Left. (ODT)
In a tweet at the time of his election, NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch called North a “total warrior for freedom” and “the last person that anti-gun advocates would want as the new president of the NRA board.”
via Pro-gun lobby blames ‘drugged’ students and abortion for shootings
The president of the hard-right wing Carlingford Branch, George Popowski, says he wants to “straighten out the law and order system” by pushing the state back to colonial times with measures described by others as “Sharia-law style punishment”.
via Bring Back Beatings and Ban Immigrants, demands NSW Liberal Party Branch President
Australia has defended its role as one of only two countries – along with the United States – to reject a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution to investigate the killings of dozens of Palestinians in Gaza on the grounds it prejudged Israel.
Australia and US were the only countries to vote against the resolution to send a commission of investigators, but it passed with the backing of 29 members of the 47-nation UN human rights body. Another 14 countries including Britain, Germany and Japan, abstained.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told Fairfax Media the resolution prejudged the outcome and failed to acknowledge the role of the Palestinian group Hamas in inciting the protests in Gaza. Some 62 people were killed by the Israeli military’s response.
“Australia voted against the Human Rights Council resolution because of our principled opposition to resolutions that fail the test of balance and impartiality,” Ms Bishop said.
“The UNHRC resolution pre-judged the outcome of an inquiry into violations of international law in the context of large-scale civilian protests in the Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem.
“Nor did it refer to the role of Hamas in inciting violent protests.”
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via Australia defends voting against ‘unbalanced’ United Nations investigation into Gaza killings
For the past 11 years, Israeli journalists have been forbidden from entering Gaza. This has affected not only their reporting, but also the way fellow Israelis understand what is happening there.
via How do Israeli journalists report on a place they can’t reach? | +972 Magazine
Police or soldiers fire live ammunition at unarmed protesters demanding equal rights, killing or seriously injuring many: Sharpeville, South Africa, 21 March 1960; Soweto, South Africa, 16 June 1976; Gaza, Israeli-controlled Palestinian Territory, 14 May 2018.
Similar violence, similar system?
![Palestinian demonstrators are seen during a protest marking the 70th anniversary of Nakba in the southern Gaza Strip May 15, 2018 [Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2018/5/16/b5c43629ce0149288d6248dd32d90f8b_18.jpg "Gaza is Israel's Soweto")
The UN human rights chief has slammed Israel’s deadly reaction to protests along the Gaza border as “wholly disproportionate”, backing calls for an international investigation.
Opening a special session of the UN Human Rights Council that could set up a commission of inquiry into recent Israeli violence that has resulted in deaths of more than 100 Palestinians in six weeks, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein warned that “killing resulting from the unlawful use of force by an occupying power may also constitute wilful killings, a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
He went on to say that Israel has systematically deprived Palestinians of their human rights, with 1.9 million in Gaza “caged in a toxic slum from birth to death”.
![The largest demonstrations coincided with the move of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem on Monday, which saw Israeli forces kill at least 60 Palestinians [AFP]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2018/5/15/21741b99731c4cf3854b5344de5114e9_18.jpg "UN rights chief backs calls for inquiry over Gaza killings")
via UN rights chief backs calls for inquiry over Gaza killings | News | Al Jazeera
Yesterday, AECOM, an international corporation with assets worth almost $6 billion, confirmed it had “demobilised” from Adani Group’s project, joining a growing list of partners and investors who have walked away from the venture.
In the lead up to the next federal election, every Australian who values our ABC must take the fight to their local MP and actively campaign for a restoration of support to one of our most critically important democratic institutions. There is too much at stake, and no time to lose.
via Only the support of the people can save the ABC now | Emma Dawson | Media | The Guardian
War on Terror from September 12, 2001, through fiscal year 2018. That figure: a cool $5.6 trillion (including the future costs of caring for our war vets). On average, that’s at least $23,386 per taxpayer.
Keep in mind that such figures, however eye-popping, are only the dollar costs of our wars. They don’t, for instance, include the psychic costs to the Americans mangled in one way or another in those never-ending conflicts. They don’t include the costs to this country’s infrastructure, which has been crumbling while taxpayer dollars flow copiously and in a remarkably—in these years, almost uniquely—bipartisan fashion into what’s still laughably called “national security.”
via America’s ‘War on Terror’ Has Cost Taxpayers $5.6 Trillion | The Nation
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Israel’s blockade of Gaza—where trapped Palestinians for the past seven weeks have held nonviolent protests along the border fence with Israel, resulting in scores of dead and some 6,000 wounded by Israeli troops—is one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. Yet the horror that is Gaza, where 2 million people live under an Israeli siege without adequate food, housing, work, water and electricity, where the Israeli military routinely uses indiscriminate and disproportionate violence to wound and murder, and where almost no one can escape, is rarely documented. Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen’s powerful new film, “Killing Gaza,” offers an unflinching and moving portrait of a people largely abandoned by the outside world, struggling to endure.
● Starting Tuesday, May 15, “Killing Gaza” can be seen at Vimeo On Demand.
via Killing Gaza
Australia’s energy watchdog will investigate suspicions that electricity networks and gas pipelines have overcharged consumers by $400 million a year to cover their corporate tax bills.
Network charges have been the single biggest factor in rising household electricity bills over the past decade. The charges cover the cost of the “poles and wires” used to transmit and distribute electricity.
via Fears of $400 million-a-year power price gouge trigger probe
Since March 30, when the Gaza protests began, 101 Palestinians have been killed and well over 10,000 wounded, many maimed for life. Not a single Israeli injury and not a single rocket fired at Israel, even as Israel has bombed Gaza several times in recent weeks.
via We are all accomplices to Israel’s massacre in Gaza | +972 Magazine
Occupied East Jerusalem – Tens of thousands of Jewish settlers, surrounded by police protection, have marched around the Old City, celebrating Jerusalem Day on the eve of the US embassy move from Tel Aviv.
The annual event, which commemorates the Israeli annexation of occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, is regarded by the city’s Palestinian population as a deliberate provocation.
Past events have seen Palestinian-owned stores smashed up and Palestinian counter-protests being viciously suppressed by Israeli police.
![Israeli forces heavily restricted Palestinians' access to Jerusalem's Old City [Ammar Awad/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2018/5/13/77bca0d262a84309ac29dd4e5974f3aa_18.jpg "For Palestinians, US embassy move cements occupation status quo")
via For Palestinians, US embassy move cements occupation status quo | Israel News | Al Jazeera
Seven in 10 Australians believe a strong, independent public broadcaster is critical to a healthy democracy, according to a poll by the Australia Institute. Photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP
A majority of Australians believe a strong, independent ABC is critical to a healthy democracy and oppose a cut to ABC funding, according to a new poll.
The Australia Institute poll found 70% of people wanted a strong ABC and 60% agreed the ABC needed a “boost to long term funding”.
via Majority of voters oppose budget cut to ABC funding – poll | Media | The Guardian
Letting the Foxes into the hen House despite the Royal Commission (ODT)
“The Government will change the annual audit requirement to a three-yearly requirement for self-managed superannuation funds with a history of good record keeping and compliance,” it states.
Budget 2018: Winners and losersAccording to the budget papers, it’s all about reducing red tape for the trustees of self-managed funds.
When the pot is calling the kettle black on journalism and government regulation. Murdoch looks to governments to step in but not on News Corp (ODT)
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has been waging war against Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook for a while now, arguing, with merit, it is hurting journalism.
Since they fundamentally believe that God gave the land of Israel to the Jews, most Christian evangelicals take an uncompromisingly “pro-Israeli” stance. That stance has in turn become the default position of the Republican party. The upshot is that the Israeli government’s profound and growing hostility towards Iran, which it sees as the primary threat to its security, has been mirrored on the American right in general.
via Why does the American Right hate, despise and abhor Iran so Much?
A NASA program that cost $10 million per year to track carbon and methane, key greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, has been cancelled, a US space agency spokesman said Thursday.
The end of the program — called the Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) — which tracked sources and sinks for carbon and made high-resolution models of the planet’s flows of carbon — was first reported by the journal Science.
“Now, President Donald Trump’s administration has quietly killed the CMS,” the report said, describing the move as the latest in a “broad attack on climate science” mounted by the White House.
via Trump kills NASA program to Track Greenhouse Gases that cause Global Heating
Even this story is about the black person where are the photos and the story behind the White girl? (ODT)
It seems the story has been told a hundred times before.
A white person sees a person of colour doing something they disagree with. They call the police. The videos of the police encounter show up on social media and soon it appears on news outlets across the world.
Lolade Siyonbola is a black postgraduate student at Yale University. She shares a common room with other students that live in the same hall of residence.
On 8 May, a white student living in the Ivy League university’s hall of graduate studies saw Lolade napping on a sofa in the shared room.
She called the police.
via Police called after black Yale student fell asleep in common room – BBC News
Pell, the Vatican’s treasurer, has previously dismissed the science linking greenhouse gas emissions with climate change, calling it “hysteric and extreme claims” and “a symptom of pagan emptiness”.
His presence at the dinner is likely to raise eyebrows in the Vatican following Pope Francis’ declaration in 2015 that the science is “clear” and climate change is a “moral issue that must be addressed in order to protect the Earth”.
via Why George Pell dined with under-fire EPA’s Scott Pruitt in secret
Related Story: Gas company ‘knew it was causing damage but allowed it to continue’
Related Story: Linc Energy workers told to drink milk and eat yogurt to avoid acid burns, court told
Related Story: Linc Energy ‘did nothing’ to stop its alleged contamination continuing, court told
Related Story: ‘Unusual’ trial against Linc Energy over alleged contamination in Queensland
Tony Abbott is not an original thinker
Indeed, it has become undeniable that Trump’s overriding goal on immigration is to reduce the number of immigrants in the US to the greatest degree possible.
As Eric Levitz notes on nymag.com, Trump moved to end Temporary Protected Status for various groups with no credible rationale for doing so and even though US diplomats have warned that it is dangerously bad policy. And as Trump’s “shithole countries” comment confirmed, his main driving impulse on immigration is white nationalism – rolling back the current racial and ethnic mix of the country at all costs – and that this is shaping policy.
A Commonwealth Bank loans officer who perpetrated a $3.5 million fraud on the bank and spent up big on cocaine, “lots of girls” and fine dining, was never reported to police, allowing him to continue working in the financial services sector.
via Cocaine, girls, million-dollar fraud: What the Commonwealth Bank lender did next
Supporters of Israel among Britain’s ruling elite tend to recite mantras about the two nations sharing the same values.
If theft and plunder were regarded as values, the mantras would have a ring of truth to them.
Expecting full honesty and transparency from Theresa May’s government would, however, not be realistic. So it comes as little surprise that one of her cabinet colleagues has wished Israel a happy 70th birthday, while trumpeting its commitment to “justice, compassion, tolerance.”
The greeting – from Gavin Williamson, Britain’s defense secretary – was delivered at a time when unarmed protesters were being massacred in Gaza.
Britain’s ruling elites have never atoned for their role in enabling the 1948 dispossession of Palestinians. Rather, they have prolonged and exacerbated the suffering of Palestinians, while pretending to believe in justice.
via How Britain enabled the ethnic cleansing of Palestine | The Electronic Intifada
Why are we becoming soooo American just look at the condition they are in and that’s where the LNP wants to take us. (ODT)
via It’s time to stop blaming the poor – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The National Rifle Association on Monday named as its next president retired US Marine Colonel Oliver North, a conservative commentator best known for his central role in the 1980s Iran-Contra affair.
via NRA names Oliver North, known for Reagan-era scandal, as president
Personally, I find the status-consciousness of our culture repellent. It saturates the society, soaking every institution and even the public spaces between institutions, as in the value-judgments we constantly make (even half-consciously) about others’ clothing or looks or confidence. In a sense, status-consciousness fuels our world, determining our behavior through its implicit presence in social and institutional norms. (For if we act contrary to norms, we’ll have a lower status.) This is to say that anti-democracy fuels our world, for the principle of respecting status/authority/power is opposed to that of respecting the equality and potential rationality of all people. Moreover, as I just noted, the people we end up admiring are usually precisely those who don’tdeserve to be admired, given the qualities it takes to succeed in a capitalist world. To quote the historian Albert Prago, “in an amoral society, the amoral man is best qualified to succeed.”
Just how many Cabinet Ministers and LNP Politicians are paid up menmbers of the IPA Fifeild is ? Why can Murdoch’s Pay to view Channels be allowed to also take in advertising revenue and when is it obvious that programs are little more than advertorials? (ODT)
You’d think the relationship between News Corp and the business lobby was cosy enough already. But the Business Council of Australia wanted more favourable coverage of its campaign for big business tax cuts. After talking to, but not using, Cambridge Analytica to improve its campaigning style, the BCA began raising funds and locked in the support of News Corp Australia.
As part of its political campaign, For the Common Good, the business lobby inked a media deal with News Corp and Sky News for which it paid Rupert Murdoch’s empire a reported $1m.
For the cash the business lobby gets coverage of its agenda in the form of a series of television programs over 12 months, newspaper articles and community events to promote the “positive contribution of business” to the nation.
via News Corp taxes David Speers with pro-business roadshow | The Weekly Beast | Media | The Guardian
Social connections drive board appointments and more than two-thirds of directors in the 200 largest public companies are on the board of multiple companies. So whoever replaces ex-AMP chairwoman Catherine Brenner will likely be drawn from a small pool of people.
This violates discrimination legislation that states recruitment should be open and accessible, based on clear assessment of skills, training and relevant experience.
The use of closed networks in the recruitment and selection of board members also creates other problems related to “group think“. Group think creates a situation where board members are more concerned with being a liked and connected member of a particular social group.
As a result members will conform to the status quo, which guarantees them membership perks, such as highly paid directorship roles.
A direct outcome of the group think mentality are boards signing off on questionable business practices as we currently see in the banking sector. Coupled with a self-regulated system, this is a recipe for disaster.
For those of us who wonder what this government has actually achieved, the Liberal Party have provided a handy list of “key achievements”.
via The Liberal Party’s list of “key achievements” – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Over 7,000 Palestinians took part in Friday’s demonstrations in five different locations along the Gaza-Israel border. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, over 43 protesters were wounded, including three critically, in the clashes with Israeli forces. A total of 45 Palestinians have been killed on the border since the march began.
via Israeli army opens fire on Gaza protesters sixth week in a row | +972 Magazine
ratings that castigate Afghanistan and some other poor countries as hopelessly “corrupt” always imply that the United States is not corrupt. This year’s report from Transparency International puts the US on a par with Austria, which is ridiculous. All kinds of people from politicians to businessmen would go to jail in Austria today if they engaged in practices that are quite common in the US.
via Top Ten Signs the US is the most Corrupt nation in the World (2018 Edn.)
US President Donald Trump’s new lawyer Rudy Giuliani says the President repaid his personal lawyer Michael Cohen for a $US130,000 ($179,000) payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Trump reimbursed the money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, according to GiulianiTrump had told reporters that he was not aware of the payment and that he didn’t know where Cohen had gotten the money.
Giuliani made the revelation during an appearance on Fox News’ Hannity.
via Donald Trump reimbursed Cohen for $130k payment to porn star: Giuliani
Harold Bornstein tells CNN Trump wrote letter saying he would be ‘healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency’
via Trump dictated note saying he was ‘astonishingly’ healthy, doctor says | US news | The Guardian
Florida’s mangroves have been forced into a hasty retreat by sea level rise and now face being drowned, imperiling coastal communities and the prized Everglades wetlands, researchers have found.
In March, the Business Council of Australia released a letter signed by 10 senior executives saying the tax plan was “urgent and vital” for keeping Australia competitive.
The irony is that five of the companies who were represented in the letter paid no tax in 2015-16. Legally.
Whilst a rate of 30% is at the higher end of the scale, the average rate of corporate tax in Australia is much lower at 17% and the effective rate (ie the average rate at which pre-tax profits are actually taxed) is lower again at 10.4%.
The real problem facing this country is not company profits – they are at record highs. The issues holding us back are wage stagnation and inadequate welfare. Households have dangerously high debt levels, energy prices continue to soar, and housing is unaffordable where the jobs are.
In a speech to the National Press Club, even Deloitte economist Chris Richardson, a man the government often quotes, said that fixing “unnecessarily cruel” dole payments is a more urgent priority than budget repair.
The BCA agrees, or at least they used to. In May 2013, Jennifer Westacott called for an urgent review of the Newstart payment, arguing the payments must be increased to avoid trapping jobseekers in entrenched disadvantage.
via The dishonesty of the company tax cut debate – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Big Business hasn’t just decided to get into the political game, as some have claimed, it has been influencing our politics forever. But as managing editor David Donovan says, the methods it has lately adopted are highly troubling.
‘The Business Council of Australia (BCA), the lobby group representing Australia’s largest companies, has decided to do politics.’
So wrote Laura Tingle in an ABC online article accompanying her debut ABC 7.30 piece on Monday night, 30 April 2018.
Really? They have just decided to “do politics”?
Of course not. The Business Council has been doing politics every day since it was formed in 1983.
Indeed, the Business Council’s stated reason for existence is
‘… to give the business community a greater voice in public policy debates about the direction of Australian society’.
via EDITORIAL EXCERPT: The Big Business takeover of Australia
Demographers tell us that the United States of America will sometime, in the next couple of decades, become the first nation on Earth to be majority minority. For many of us, that is a cause for celebration. It is, in part, what makes this country so unique and miraculous.
For many Americans — particularly those white Americans who have in one way or another benefited from the privileges that come with their particular skin tone — this is a very scary thing. It’s becoming more and more difficult to say with certainty what it means to be “American.” As everyone knows, the easiest way to identify yourself is in opposition to another. Thus, a large swath of Americans feel as though their very identity is under attack. They are desperately looking for scapegoats, for opposing forces to help them define who they are.
via Fired CNN host Reza Aslan: “It’s time to treat Donald Trump as an enemy of the state” | Salon.com
Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 2 May 2018
Shooting practice at an Israeli school: targets set up by police depicted figures wearing the Palestinian kuffiyeh headdress.
Israeli police planned to teach children how to shoot at Palestinians as part of a training exercise in a school.
The incident in the Menashe Regional Council, near Haifa in northern present-day Israel, was brought to light in recent days when Palestinian citizens of Israel took photos of what was happening.
Jamal Zahalka, a member of the Israeli parliament from the Joint Arab List, is demanding an investigation into the training sponsored by the Israeli police and the education ministry, which he said “prepares students psychologically to kill Arabs.”
One photo shows a person – most of their body blurred with a black marker – using a paintball gun to fire at cutouts of men and women wearing checkered kuffiyeh headscarves that are associated with Palestinians.
via Israeli police teach schoolchildren how to shoot Palestinians | The Electronic Intifada
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a notorious warmonger, serial liar and supremacist racialist who used to lead the closest thing Israel has to a fascist party until parties even more extreme got elected to parliament, is attempting to bamboozle the clueless Trump into getting on a war footing with Iran.
via Netanyahu: Don’t look here where we’re shooting children, look over there at Iran
“The biggest barrier is the upper year 11 and 12 curriculum which is so favoured toward tertiary entrance.
“Fixing up secondary school and allowing kids to achieve ‘excellence’ even if they want to be a panelbeater or a barista or a chemist is something that we’ve never had on the table in Australia.”
A rethink was “pretty damn critical”, Professor Hattie said. His University of Melbourne colleague John Polesel, whose research in this area was cited by the Gonski 2.0 review, noted Australia was well behind Denmark and Germany, where about 25 and 50 per cent of their respective high schoolers undertake an apprenticeship.
“The reasons they work well are because the employers actually play a role in designing and delivering the courses and also providing that workplace experience, so that young people are actually learning on the job,” Professor Polesel said.
“That doesn’t come cheap. For those employers to do that, they actually have to bear a short-term cost. But the short-term costs of training them are worth it in the long run because … you end up getting a skilled employee who can actually do what you want them to do because you’ve taught them how to do it.”
via ‘Pretty damn critical’: Education experts urge big business to step into the classroom
Between the 4th August this year, the earliest an election can be called and the 19th May next year, the latest, there is a minefield of events that the Coalition will not want to compete with, in its attempts to stay in power.
The most difficult are the Victorian state election in November and the NSW state election in March 2018. Throw in the AFL and NRL football finals in late September/early October, Christmas, School holidays and Easter and it’s obvious.
Politically speaking, this August or early September is the only clear-air time realistically available for the government to try to redeem itself.
via Get ready! An early election is coming – » The Australian Independent Media Network
When you have an inequitable distribution of the country’s wealth it is obvious that people will be divided by income if nothing else. In 2013, the then Treasurer Wayne Swan wrote an essay about the ever-increasing inequality that had invaded our society.
The right-wing Murdoch press and conservative politicians immediately attacked his piece as class warfare.
So what the hell is this class warfare everyone talks about? I would have thought that there was less class distinction in Australia than in most countries. At least on the surface.
We do however have an attitude known as “them and us” syndrome. This phrase speaks of the wealthy who are privileged beyond conscience and then, well there’s us.
Those we refer to as them have all the wealth but “us” collectively spend more than “them.” Consequently, we pay more tax.
Let me tell you a few deplorable things that happened in America this weekend. Nearly 43 million people woke up in poverty in the richest country in the world. And 3.2 million Americans woke up without health insurance. A further 36 people died because of gun violence, bringing the total number of gun deaths in the US this year to 4,627.
They believe that their great wealth entitles them to rule over the many. For decades, they’ve been running a surreptitious assault on the rules that protect the majority of us from their abuse. From whacking our voting rights to busting unions, their intent is nothing less than to pull a coup on democracy, installing a government of, by, and for the superrich.
via The Koch Brothers’ secret Coup on behalf of the Billionaire Class
Research shows that poor people in the US are 20 times less likely to believe hard work will get them ahead than their (poorer) Latin American counterparts – with white Americans particularly pessimistic. What’s driving their despair?
via Is the American dream really dead? | Inequality | The Guardian
Inequality isn’t all about income. Here’s a guide to different ranking systems – from wealth distribution to the World Happiness Report – and which countries rate best and worst under each
via Inequality index: where are the world’s most unequal countries? | Inequality | The Guardian
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