“No democratic Australia could ever impose penalties on refugees which could match the terror from which most of them flee. Our policies need to change. I believe the major parties’ policies are extreme.”
click here for piece in full at the Guardian
Category: news
There’s a whopping great full page ad from Lockheed Martin International in today’s Murdoch owned national rag, the Australian, (02/03/13 p5).
Headline copy:
“Introducing Lockheed Martin International”
Partnering for Protection and Prosperity.
“We never forget who we’re working for”
A heck of a lot of space for a three-liner…
At the interpretOr, we never forget who they’re working for…nor does AlterNet…
"While contracts for supplying weapons for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a significant part of Lockheed Martin’s business, the new company that has taken form since the merger boom of the 1990s has a far wider reach. These activities include everything from involvement in interrogation and police training to profiting from the new post-9/11 wave of domestic surveillance activities. Of all the new ventures that Lockheed Martin has undertaken, the least well known may be its role in interrogating prisoners at U.S. facilities in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The fact that employees of private companies are even allowed to interrogate terror suspects came as a surprise to most Americans when it was revealed in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal. The revelations of the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”—many of which were viewed by human rights analysts as torture plain and simple—rocked the world as pictures of naked inmates threatened by dogs and subjected to other serious abuses were disseminated in print and electronic media. The damage to the reputation of the United States as a country governed by the rule of law is still being felt, even as accountability has been limited to the low-level military personnel involved directly in the abuses."
William Hartung reveals how Lockheed Martin’s presence in the U.S. military goes far deeper than mere weapon supplying, AlterNet (11/01/11)
In These Times is an independent, nonprofit magazine…”dedicated to advancing democracy and economic justice, informing movements for a more humane world, and providing an accessible forum for debate about the policies that shape our future.”
2013 FEATURES
Food Fight: Feminists and Femivores
Is slow food about politics, privilege, or oppression?
By Rebecca Burns
Geoengineers Gone Wild
Techno-entrepreneurs are funding sci-fi solutions to global warming.
By Anthony Mangini
In Defense of Dessert: The Case Against Austerity
Why cutting down doesn’t pay off.
By Chris Lehmann
The Expendables: How the Temps Who Power Corporate Giants Are Getting Crushed
Hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers are stuck in low-wage temp jobs, despite working for America’s largest companies.
By Michael Grabell, Propublica
Obama’s Dirty War on Journalism
Despite a facade of openness, the president has sought to crack down on ‘inconvenient’ reporting.
By David Sirota
Humanity’s Oldest Story
The White House claims unprecedented authority over drone strike assassinations.
By David Sirota
WORKING IN THESE TIMES
The Supervisor From Hell Gets a Pass From SCOTUS
The Supreme Court decision that you didn’t hear about—and how it could make life much more difficult for workers facing harassment on the job.
By Michelle Chen
UPRISING
The Public Broadcasters’ Revolt
This month, with zero debate, the Greek government shut down the only public broadcasting station, but the workers haven’t left.
By Kristen Han
Current issue: July 2013
… what Brazilians want; why the Turks are protesting; Syria’s growing tragedy; Kuwaitiswithout a name; Portugal, where is the sun?Greece, what next for the left? US, get in, then get on; South Korea special – Samsung, a state in itself; cashing in Gangnam-style … and also the online ads we helped create; footie figures it out … and more…
…just click the pic to access…
Booz Allen Hamilton: What You Don’t Know About Snowden’s Former Employer
Submitted by TommyPaine
Let’s take another trip down the rabbit hole, shall we? Lost in the Edward Snowden debate is a critical look at his former employer, the company doing the spying on Americans in the first place: Booz Allen Hamilton.
Booz Allen Hamilton is a government contractor, with 99% of its revenue coming from the US government. Not only does it receive money from the NSA, but also the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, US Marine Corps, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and … the IRS. In addition, Booz Allen is heavily connected to the CIA.
Booz Allen Hamilton is owned by…the Carlyle Group.
One of the big investors in the Carlyle Group was the Bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia. Yeah … THAT Bin Laden family. And instrumental in being the “go between” for Carlyle/Bin Laden was a guy by the name of George H. W. Bush. Maybe you’ve heard of him?
The CEO of the Carlyle Group (remember, they OWN Booz Allen Hamilton) is Frank Carlucci. Mr. Carlucci has quite a resume:
Nixon Administration – Director of the Office for Economic Opportunity (the “War on Poverty” — and a great place to decide who gets government contracts)
Reagan Administration – National Security Advisor and Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld is Carlucci’s protoge)
He is or has been with the Project for a New American Century and a member of the Board of Trustees for the RAND Corporation, a CIA front that develops policies that the Military Industrial Complex then carries out.
Among the individuals involved in running BoozAllen Hamilton, we have:
James Clapper – current Director of National Intelligence (DNI), head of NSA, the man who lied to Congress about the fact that NSA is actively spying on Americans, is a former executive
Mike McConnell – a current executive of the company, had Clapper’s job (DNI) during George W. Bush’s administration (keep it in the family, eh?) — he worked for Booz Allen before Bush, then worked for Bush, then back to Booz Allen after Bush
James Woolsey – former CIA Director, current executive (see Jan Helfeld’s interview of Mr. Woolsey where it becomes clear that Woolsey has no interest in discussing principles, only war)
Melissa Hathaway – former executive, also worked for McConnell during the Bush administration
Ian Brzezinski – former executive, son of Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, central figure in the NWO crowd, and mastermind of Operation Cyclone
Dov Zakheim – this character is … unbelievable:
1993 – His company, System Planning Corporation, had a subsidiary called Tridata Corporation, which was the company that “oversaw” the investigation of the 1993 WTC bombing
2000 – Part of the neocon Project for a New American Century, he is co-author of “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” in which he is credited with the infamous line, “… some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
For more on this story, click through here to Daily Paul…
AlterNet / By Max Blumenthal
Exposing the Dark Forces Behind the Snowden Smears
Who is planting anti-Snowden attacks with Buzzfeed, and why is the website playing along?
Since journalist Glenn Greenwald revealed the existence of the National Security Agency’s PRISM domestic surveillance program, he and his source, the whistleblower Edward Snowden, have come in for a series of ugly attacks. On June 26, the day that the New York Daily News published a straightforward smear piece on Greenwald, the website Buzzfeed rolled out a remarkably similar article, a lengthy profile that focused on Greenwald’s personal life and supposed eccentricities…
…click here for piece in full @ Alternet…
Revelations of the past few weeks confirm the existence of a mass surveillance programme, ‘PRISM’, created by the US government.
According to Reporters Without Borders, these revelations confirm that journalists, bloggers and netizens need not only to circumvent censorship but also to master tools and techniques that will help shield them from mass surveillance, both in countries that are Enemies of the Internet and in the leading western democracies.
Reporters Without Borders has published an Online Survival Kit on its WefightCensorship.org website that has tools and practical advice that will allow you to protect your communications and data.
You don’t need to be an IT engineer to learn how to protect the content of your emails and remain anonymous online. The tools and techniques presented in this kit do not require advanced knowledge of computers and programming.
Agence France-Presse reporting Snowden’s ‘safe exit from Hong Kong’ this eve assisted by WikiLeaks…
The advent of new supercomputers that can use algorithms to trade thousands of shares in a blink of an eye or read the transactions of slower computers and human traders and benefit by buying the sought shares more quickly and on-selling them to those purchasers, have subverted the market and destroyed its value to society. It now means that those more wealthy organisations that have the fastest access to shares have a considerable advantage over ordinary investors. It is in fact super speed insider trading.
More importantly as these algorithmic transactions take over more of the market share, trading will become increasingly for speculation and enhance the ability of these super speculators to manipulate the true values of companies and therefore be able to destroy productive businesses for a quick share profit.
These algorithms will not be calculating the loss of jobs or the disruption of communities. Neither will they calculate the impacts on life systems like the quality of the air we breathe. The non-monetary impacts of tornadoes and floods, droughts and rising temperatures on people outside the air-conditioned board rooms in New York, London and Beijing mean nothing to super computers.
There is a growing disconnect between the real world and real world impacts and share trading and the market system itself. The market is working for the wealthy priests of the temple of Mammon and sucking the life out of world communities and the planet. It has an overwhelming influence on society to the extent that it has become society’s master.
If there is no benefit to society in this type of trading the question arises whether society should continue with this type of market system or change it for something more sophisticated? A system that meets the material and social needs of humanity and maintains the biological world they live in.
— for more on this story, click here for an infographic on ‘Trading @ the Speed of Light’ —
…Presenting the award June 20th in London, John Pilger, the veteran war reporter described the bureau’s work as ‘extraordinary’ and ‘truly pioneering’.
The prize honours Martha Gellhorn, a renowned war reporter and humanitarian. She was one of the first reporters in Vietnam to reveal what she called ‘a new kind of war against civilians’. Her long career included reporting on the rise of Fascism in Europe and accompanying the first American troops into Dachau concentration camp during the Second World War, as well as filing dispatches from Panama, South Vietnam, Nicaragua and Brazil.
Judges look for reporting that reflects Gellhorn’s pioneering journalism. The prize seeks to recognise journalism that tells an ‘unpalatable truth, validated by powerful facts’ and in so doing exposes what Gellhorn described as ‘official drivel’.
Pilger said of the Bureau’s work on drones:
‘This was extraordinary work on Barack Obama’s lawless use of drones in a campaign of assassination across south Asia. Woods, Ross and Serle stripped away the façade of the secret drone ‘war’, including how it is reported and not reported in the United States: how civilian casualties are covered-up and how rescuers and funerals are targeted…
…as important, in many respects, as the recent leaks from inside Washington: remarkable work in the highest tradition of investigative journalism.’
The short-list was made up of seven other journalists including Andy Worthington, a London-based independent journalist and filmmaker who has covered the ongoing detention of over 100 individuals at Guantanamo Bay and Yemen-based Iona Craig.
Previous winners of the award have included Robert Fisk of the Independent, Nick Davies of the Guardian and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. In 2010, an additional award was given to the late Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times.
The Bureau’s work on drones and the covert war can be read here.
…Earlier interpretOr drone posts include…
doodlebugs tO drones: terror from the sky
…just click above to access…more drone news too in our Fear Trade section…
“…Top European officials are demanding more information about the controversial US Internet surveillance program known as Prism. But new information has revealed that the EU weakened privacy regulations in early 2012 following intense US lobbying.
…European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding vented her fury over the US data spying program known as Prism. The far-reaching online surveillance operation, which saw the US National Security Agency spying on users across the globe, clearly demonstrates “that a clear legal framework for the protection of personal data is not a luxury, but is a fundamental right,” Reding told SPIEGEL ONLINE…
The Australian Greens will introduce a Bill next week to strengthen regulation of data collection on Australians, returning normal warrant procedures to law enforcement agencies accessing peoples’ private data…
“This is the first step to winding back the kind of surveillance overreach revealed by the PRISM whistleblower,” Greens communications spokesperson Senator Scott Ludlam said.
“Law enforcement agencies – not including ASIO – made 293,501 requests for telecommunications data in 2011-12, without a warrant or any judicial oversight.* Under the Telecommunications Interception and Access Act, that’s entirely legal.
“Vast amounts of private data are being accessed – including the precise location of everyone who carries a smartphone – without any recourse to the courts. A law enforcement agency simply fills out a very basic form. My bill will return to the system where they will need a warrant.*
…for more on this story, click through HERE to Scott Ludlam’s site…
|
FEATURES
Guilty in Guatemala
The U.S. owes more than empty apologies in Central America. By Noam Chomsky The Dirty Wars, Abroad and At Home Aloha, Workers’ Rights! Where Unions Went Wrong on ‘Right to Work’ Obama’s SEC Cop-Out Mad Professors Growing Up Under Goebbels Out of the Pen and Unrepentant How China Changed After Tiananmen Square COMMENTARY Rethinking American Exceptionalism Time for the Democrats to Go Nuclear WORKING IN THESE TIMES Chicago Demands Justice for Wal-Mart Workers UPRISING Photojournalists Fight Replacement by iPhones |
Ever heard of Prism? It’s heard of you.
The Australian Government should immediately disclose whether or not it has access to private information on Australian citizens using the PRISM program used by US intelligence agencies to access the servers of nine major US tech companies including Apple, Google and Facebook.
The revelations are contained in a presentation leaked by an NSA whistleblower to the Washington Post, which notes that ‘much of the world’s communications flow through the US’ and goes on to list a menu of content that the US intelligence community can access via the PRISM program.
“A number of the tech companies are denying that they’ve ever heard of PRISM or that US intelligence agencies have installed ‘backdoors’ in their servers,” Senator Scott Ludlam, Australian Greens communications spokesperson said today.
“Australians use these services to the point of ubiquity. Does the Australian Government believe it is appropriate that the US intelligence agencies appear to be engaged in warrantless realtime surveillance of the entire online population? Does the Australian intelligence community have access to this material? And is this the reason the Attorney Generals Department have been so insistent that Australian ISPs institute a two-year data retention regime?
“This is a major example of the important role whistleblowers play, and it is unfolding with the trial of whistleblower Bradley Manning under way in the United States, and just one day before the anniversary of the publication of George Orwell’s 1984. It wasn’t intended to be an instruction manual,” Senator Ludlam concluded.
Senator Ludlam intends to submit Questions to the Attorney General’s department later today and has sought input and additions from Australian internet users alarmed by developments in the United States.
http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/content/questions-notice/draft-ques…
excerpt of…
…Joint Doorstop Interview, Queanbeyan
Posted on Tuesday, 4 June 2013
QUESTION:
In 2001, what happened when your department knocked back a request from Telstra to provide compensation for those affected by asbestos?
TONY ABBOTT:
Look, I’m not going to comment on decisions that the department made. What I can do is certainly defend my own record when it comes to asbestos. One of my early acts as Minister for Workplace Relations was to commence the process for banning the importation and use of Chrysotile asbestos. As Health Minister I committed $6 million to establish a national research centre into asbestos-related diseases. So, the record is there for all to see and my plea to the Government now is please, please, given what we know about asbestos, make sure that the roll-out of the National Broadband Network doesn’t add to the asbestos hazards that the Australian people face.
QUESTION:
But as Minister were you aware of that decision?
TONY ABBOTT:
I’m just not going to comment on who said what to whom, when, what document might have gone to what person when. The fact is you can always ask the department what the department did back then…
Sri Lanka, June 2013: intolerance and fear
“…A climate of intolerance and fear continues to sweep the island as the government’s stranglehold on the population grows ever tighter. In March, Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake was impeached after declaring a government bill unconstitutional.
Lawyers working on torture and other human rights cases have been targeted and harassed. Meanwhile, the cases of Kumar, Poddala and the many activists who have disappeared have not been independently or credibly investigated.
Yet the authorities claim that their human rights record has improved – a claim reinforced by their selection as hosts of the November meeting of Commonwealth leaders. It is a whitewash of immense proportions, says Poddala.
“I can’t understand why the Commonwealth has decided to do this,” he told us, “because no civil society organization is allowed to function there. There are no human rights in Sri Lanka.”
…for more on this story, click through here to Amnesty International…
June 2013
…just click above to access in English…
Plus…
“Wrecked lives for another ten cents’ profit”
-
Bangladesh’s exploitation economy — Olivier Cyran
Before the collapse of Rana Plaza, which killed over a thousand people, most of them textile workers, there was the fire that killed a hundred at the Tazreen factory. A major cause is western companies’ greed for profits.Translated by George Miller -
A tale of two fires — Olivier Cyran
Translated by George Miller
JUNE 2013
The paradox of knowing
Why do we have greater insight into others than ourselves? David Dunning outlines some intriguing research.
Big Picture: Personal space – Letters – News – Digest – Reports from the Annual Conference – Society – Careers – Reviews – New voices: An ecological approach to audio description – Looking Back: Freud and the British royal family – One to One… with Stephen Murgatroyd
‘…In normal times, an arithmetic mistake in an economics paper would be a complete nonevent as far as the wider world was concerned. But in April 2013, the discovery of such a mistake—actually, a coding error in a spreadsheet, coupled with several other flaws in the analysis—not only became the talk of the economics profession, but made headlines. Looking back, we might even conclude that it changed the course of policy…’
…click here to go through to the piece in full & free at The New York Review of Books…
Here in Australia, as we head towards September’s federal election, conservative politicians are once again spruiking their mantras of fear and loathing, in conjunction with a “delusional” misreading of basic economics.
As the Abbott/Hockey rhetoric demands that all Australians “be afraid, be very, very afraid…of, look, at the end of the day, err, everything…” at the interpretOr, we’ll be beavering away across realms digital to find evidence to the contrary.
As an introductory antidote to such neoLiberal gobbledigook, here’s Paul Krugman in a recent Guardian interview…
....(Paul Krugman's) following is a reward for battling the conventional wisdom that austerity can foster a recovery. From the moment Lehman Brothers was allowed to crash, it seemed that only Krugman, his compatriot Joseph Stiglitz, another Nobel prizewinner for the liberal cause, and New York professor Nouriel Roubini, who had loudly predicted the crash, consistently confronted the "austerians" in Washington, Brussels and the UK Treasury. More than four years on, austerity is being questioned as never before, not least because most countries implementing a deficit-reduction policy have failed to grow. Krugman, his blog and comments on Twitter, have become the focal point for objectors worldwide. Speaking to the Guardian to publicise the second edition of his book End This Depression Now, he argues that his battle will go on until policymakers realise that their reliance on deficit reduction is a "delusional" misreading of basic economics. But despite his persistent criticism, austerity remains the default position for most western governments.
Oh, and here’s a local fear-buster from Russell Marks at THE CONVERSATION:
Public debt in Australia is not a problem. The ratio of public debt to GDP is about 27%, compared with an average of about 90% for developed economies. And Australia is well down the list of effective taxation rates among OECD nations. Indeed, on standard economic measures, Australia is not only performing better than the rest of the world, but performing better now under Labor than it was when Labor took office from the Liberal-National Coalition in 2007. Since then, GDP per capita hasclimbed 13%. Real wage levels have increased 27%. Household savings have more than doubled. Labour productivity is now at an all-time high, and is a clear eight index points higher than in 2007...
Special Report by Center for Media and Democracy and DBA Press
The report reveals for the first time:
- How law enforcement agencies active in the Arizona fusion center dispatched an undercover officer to infiltrate activist groups organizing both protests of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the launch of Occupy Phoenix– and how the work of this undercover officer benefited ALEC and the private corporations that were the subjects of these demonstrations.
- How fusion centers, funded in large part by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, expended countless hours and tax dollars in the monitoring of Occupy Wall Street and other activist groups.
- How the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has financed social media “data mining” programs at local law enforcement agencies engaged in fusion centers.
- How counter terrorism government employees applied facial recognition technology, drawing from a state database of driver’s license photos, to photographs found on Facebook in an effort to profile citizens believed to be associated with activist groups.
- How corporations have become part of the homeland security “information sharing environment” with law enforcement/intelligence agencies through various public-private intelligence sharing partnerships. The report examines multiple instances in which the counter terrorism/homeland security apparatus was used to gather intelligence relating to activists for the benefit of corporate interests that were the subject of protests.
- How private groups and individuals, such as Charles Koch, Chase Koch (Charles’ son and a Koch Industries executive), Koch Industries, and the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council have hired off-duty police officers– sometimes still armed and in police uniforms — to perform the private security functions of keeping undesirables (reporters and activists) at bay.
- How counter terrorism personnel monitored the protest activities of citizens opposed to the indefinite detention language contained in National Defense Authorization Act of 2012.
- How the FBI applied “Operation Tripwire,” an initiative originally intended to apprehend domestic terrorists through the use of private sector informants, in their monitoring of Occupy Wall Street groups. [Note: this issue was reported on exclusively by DBA/CMD in December, 2012.]
The report is authored by Beau Hodai, DBA Press publisher and Center for Media and Democracy contributor.
Read the full report and Appendix Sourcewatch.org.
Read the full report on DBA Press here and view the document archive on DBA Press here.
In addition to the report, PR Watch will be publishing articles extracted from the report throughout the week at PRwatch.org.
Forget Big Brother. Companies and countries are discovering that algorithms programmed to scour vast quantities of data can be much more powerful. They can predict your next purchase, forecast car thefts and maybe even help cure cancer. But there is a down side. By Martin U. Müller, Marcel Rosenbach and Thomas Schulz more…
Australian surrealist poet ‘Gina’ has wowed Melbourne audiences with her debut performance of “ATM”.
Appearing on stage, in her ‘signature’ guise – that of a cross-dressing middle-aged bank manager aka “Mike”, Gina’s rendition included the memorable lines…
I am not an ATM.
am not an ATM.
not an ATM.
an ATM.
ATM.
.
ATM.
an ATM.
not an ATM.
am not an ATM.
I am not an ATM.
To a standing ovation, ‘Gina’ thanked her Melbourne audience, exiting stage RIGHT…
Clive Hamilton warned us of ‘Growth Fetish’ back in 2003 – a decade on, and the advance of the rapacious continues unabated. Below a couple of snippets from George Monbiot’s disturbing, yet fascinating piece…
‘…Governments today have no vision but endless economic growth. They are judged not by the number of people in employment, let alone by the number of people in satisfying, pleasurable jobs, not by the happiness of the population or the protection of the natural world. Job-free, world-eating growth is fine, as long as it’s growth. There are no ends any more, just means.
In their interesting but curiously incomplete book, How Much is Enough?, Robert and Edward Skidelsky note that “Capitalism rests precisely on this endless expansion of wants. That is why, for all its success, it remains so unloved. It has given us wealth beyond measure, but has taken away the chief benefit of wealth: the consciousness of having enough. … The vanishing of all intrinsic ends leaves us with only two options: to be ahead or to be behind. Positional struggle is our fate.”(9)…’
To find out which billionaire megalomaniac has a throne in his 747 (sic), please click here to go through to the piece in full @ George Monbiot.
Economic determinism is a hungry beast; ugly too.
On 1 May 2013 a 35 yr old man arrived to Christmas Island with his 9yr old son. Hours later he complained of feeling unwell and died in the local hospital shortly later.
ChilOut fully expected the Dept of Immigration to act swiftly and bring this boy to the Australian mainland where family members await his arrival and are ready to care for him. Six days later and with no response to our request for information to the Minister’s office, we have gone public in the hope that bureacracy moves faster to support and help this little boy.
Following the 2010 Christmas Island boat tragedy, young Seena was orhpaned. A debacle played out around his treatment, re-detention, funeral attendance and more. We thought that lessons would have been learnt and procedures would be in place to act immediately in the best interests of children in such a tragic situation. Seemingly not. Click here for ChilOut press release
ChilOut is an Australian group that formed in 2001. Their position is that “all children regardless of race, religion, class or immigration status should be covered by child protection laws. There should never be a loophole for child abuse or neglect. ChilOut does not usually undertake individual advocacy but exceptional circumstances warrant it.”
Below is an extract of a recent opinion piece by Bruce Haigh, who has very kindly given the interpretOr the okay to cite and link to his pieces…
…To my mind the issue which has defined federal governments over the past decade and a half is the manner in which both major parties have chosen to handle refugees. Fearful of polls and lacking the quality most needed in politicians, that of leadership, they have chosen to demonise and bully the weakest amongst us, the one group requiring our care and compassion – asylum seekers.
Howard, Rudd, Gillard and Abbott have all used bullying as an instrument of politics. Their policies toward asylum seekers were and are not designed to protect and embrace those most in need, but rather to deter asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat.
The rhetoric of the Gillard government has been to claim that they are trying to break the people smuggler business model, and to assist they appointed an ‘expert panel’ to come up with policies to back their exclusionist boat policy. The government and opposition claim they want to stop people taking dangerous sea voyages, yet they stubbornly refuse to consider the option of processing on Indonesia for fear of encouraging more arrivals.
Current policies harm people. The victims are victimised, some incarcerated without hope of release because of fear they may engage in acts of terrorism. Advice tended to ASIO by a discredited Sri Lankan government, who happened to be the winner of a cruel civil war. The deal being if we detain their nominees they will prevent asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat. How low can we go as a nation?
Deterrence amounts to an unconscionable and prolonged act of state bullying…
…This piece can be read in full at Bruce’ site – just click here to go on through…
Dr Dennis Jensen MP
Federal Member for Tangney
Electorate Officer B
Propaganda Officer
Applications are invited for the above position based in Perth, Western Australia
The duties of the position include: responding to constituent enquiries, liaising with Liberal State Government departments and other organisations, preparing and coordinating propaganda, liaising with News Ltd, organising functions and AWB memorabilia.
Applicants should possess the following skills and experience:
- Ability to work as part of a white, male dominated hierarchy
- Exceptional New Media Vision and Imagination – roll VCR!
- An understanding of Apartheid models and parliamentary processes
- Excellent oral and written communication skills – fluent Afrikaans preferred
- Well developed office hygiene skills and familiarity with TupperWare systems
- the ability to suspend disbelief going forwards…
A commencing salary between $5,284 and $5,285
A probationary period of 3 years will apply.
Applications setting out details of experience and the names of two referees should be forwarded to jensendp@aph.gov.au
Applications close on Friday May 13 2013. For further information please contact Sean Terre’Blanche on (08) 9354 9633.
Email: Please click the ‘Apply Now’ button below.
...I have gone through a difficult time, through a life or death situation really. I have been injured and detained, my studio was destroyed and they fabricated a sky-high tax bill for me. So I am not representing myself but a certain cause. This is about justice. It is about people who have no voice or are too shy to use it. I have become a symbolic figure for this anti-authoritarian attitude -- not just in China, but in any country that is dominated by such a political or economic power, also in the so-called free world...
Ai Weiwei in conversation with SPIEGEL, May 2013.
...Please click here to go through to piece in full...
Here at the interpretOr, we view Ai Weiwei as a courageous and decent person who fell foul of the CCP when he highlighted the tragedy of thousands of Chinese school kids dying in recent earthquakes - crushed by collapsing school buildings...
Cosgrove L, Krimsky S (2012) A Comparison of DSM-IV and DSM-5 Panel Members’ Financial Associations with Industry: A Pernicious Problem Persists. PLoS Med 9(3): e1001190. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001190
Introduction
All medical subspecialties have been subject to increased scrutiny about the ways by which their financial associations with industry, such as pharmaceutical companies, may influence, or give the appearance of influencing, recommendations in review articles [1] and clinical practice guidelines [2].
Psychiatry has been at the epicenter of these concerns, in part because of high-profile cases involving ghostwriting [3],[4] and failure to report industry-related income [5], and studies highlighting conflicts of interest in promoting psychotropic drugs[6],[7].
The revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), scheduled for publication mid May 2013 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), has created a firestorm of controversy because of questions about undue industry influence. Some have questioned whether the inclusion of new disorders (e.g., Attenuated Psychotic Risk Syndrome) and widening of the boundaries of current disorders (e.g., Adjustment Disorder Related to Bereavement) reflects corporate interests [8],[9]. These concerns have been raised because the nomenclature, criteria, and standardization of psychiatric disorders codified in the DSMhave a large public impact in a diverse set of areas ranging from insurance claims to jurisprudence. Moreover, through its relationship to the International Classification of Diseases[10], the system used for classification by many countries around the world, the DSM has a global reach.
…this open source article continues by clicking through here t0 PLOS Medicine…
“One who stands up for the underdog, who refuses to tolerate oppression and injustice…”
(Green Left Weekly on the character of Jock Palfreeman, an Australian man currently imprisoned in Bulgaria for an act of conscience…of courage…)
Saturday, May 4, 2013By Peter BoyleA rally for Jock Palfreeman was held in Sydney on April 30.“In a different world — in a better world — Jock Palfreeman would not be in a jail serving a 20-year sentence. Instead he’d be awarded a medal for great courage, principle and instinctive support for victims of racist violence.
He would not be locked away in a jail in Bulgaria. He’d be toured around as an example of the sort of person we should all aspire to be. One who stands up for the underdog, who refuses to tolerate oppression and injustice.
His extraordinarily brave act in coming to the defence of two Roma men being attacked by a violent gang one dark night in Sofia, Bulgaria, would be discussed and studied in schools all over the world — as I believe it is studied in his old school, Riverview…
…click here for the piece in full @ Green Left Weekly…
Published in ON LINE OPINION @ BruceHaigh.com.au
Australia was founded as a penal colony by Great Britain two hundred and twenty five years ago. There were no expectations on the part of colonial Britain that it would ever amount to much more. However, enterprise and greed, on the part of administrators, soldiers and released convicts saw commercial activity and farming gradually established; all at the expense of the original Aboriginal inhabitants who not unnaturally saw the move to permanent settlement as an invasion.
There was no concept of civil liberties relating to the Aboriginals and the convicts. Industrialisation in Britain saw social upheaval within a class structured society; the acquisition of wealth was a means of moving upwards in the structure. As the colonies began to prosper, some viewed migration to them as an easier way to gain wealth and status, others as the only way to escape poverty.
Wealth bestowed certain rights to the new elite in the Australian colonies, but that was the extent of civil liberties. Some cite the gold rushes as bringing people, mainly men, to Australian with a more independent outlook and a notion of the ‘rights of man’. They cite armed protest on the Victorian gold fields in December 1854, known as the Eureka Stockade, as proof of this and Republicans in Australia employ the symbolism of the event and the flag used by the protesters, as a prop in their campaign. However the uprising, as it romantically referred to, was a protest of frustration at the imposition of mining licence fees and police harassment involved with the collection of these fees.
White miners killed and injured Chinese miners, most seriously at Lambing Flat near Young in NSW but also on gold fields in Victoria. There was no notion of civil liberties relating to the persecuted Chinese, on the contrary fear over the loss of white jobs led to The White Australia Policy, in force from the 1880’s to the 1960’s.
Cheap Labour was introduced to Queensland sugar fiel…
…Bruce Haigh’s piece continues here @ BruceHaigh.com.au…
Former diplomat Bruce Haigh spent years in some of the world's hotspots where he saw and did some extraordinary things. In South Africa he befriended the legendary dissident Steve Biko. In Afghanistan he took pictures of Russian military installations. In Pakistan he flirted with Benazir Bhutto, or perhaps it was Benazir flirting with him...
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Of China's young artists, Zhao Zhao, 30, is one of the most provocative. For a long time, he worked together with Ai Weiwei. A new show of his work opened over the weekend at Berlin's Alexander Ochs Gallery. SPIEGEL conducted a brief interview with the artist shortly before the opening of "Zhao Zhao: Nothing Inside II".
“Eleven miles by ferry from Perth is Western Australia’s “premier tourist destination”. This is Rottnest Island, whose scabrous wild beauty and isolation evoked, for me, Robben Island in South Africa. Empires are never short of devil’s islands; what makes Rottnest different – indeed, what makes Australia different – is silence and denial on an epic scale…”
...click here to go through to Pilger’s piece in full @ the guardian...
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