From this week's news

I'm going to start this post with an article analysing the political cost of abusing human rights, based on the CIA's kidnapping and torture (aka "rendition") programme. The article found that there was a cost, but: 

"Political scandals that reveal large discrepancies between a party’s public commitments and their behavior behind closed doors threaten their credibility and survival in office."

Thus, left-of-centre governments suffered more from participating in the CIA's abuses than right-of-centre. 

While it is easy to say "yes, that ties in with expectations", the reality is that, while one expects right-of-centre governments to be conservative, one should not expect them to participate in, condone, or promote human rights violations. 

Historically, conservative governments have made human rights advances - for instance, it was a conservative government in my home state that legalised homosexuality, small-l liberals (a distinction that needs to be made in Australia) have advocated for rights such as free speech and abolition of child labour, and even Bob Menzies did a few admirable things: the problematic associations began when the neoliberalism nitwit ideology got its claws into the conservative psyche (soul?) from the 70s onwards. 

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Next, as a follow on to a recent article on the shortcomings of the CCP, here is an article ("Our souls are dead") on the dehumanising, brutalising and brainwashing experiences of the CCP's Cultural Revolution-style "re-education" camps which are part of its genocide against the Uyghur people. 

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Next, as reports that 80% of Australians suffered burnout last year as a result of more intense and longer hours working at home during the pandemic, a questioning of our attitudes to work: "Are we in  an abusive relationship with our jobs?"

And on the other hand, this article reports on those companies successfully adopting shorter working weeks.  

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A gravely concerning incident that raises questions about professional ineptitude and incompetence as human beings of unimaginative/authoritarian bureaucrats and police, and questionable decision making of a family (to not be aware of how quickly events have been changing in this pandemic AND WHY is naive and, given the last year, challengeable), that led to a woman miscarrying beside a road - and some of this was clearly the result of necessary actions to contain the pandemic, and some was the shortcomings mentioned previously, but there was NO excuse for the inhumanity shown by police - particularly female police - and hospital staff. It should also be noted that one of the - sympathetic - comments in response to this found that other police were sympathetic and supportive, so police ARE capable of being better as human beings. 

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Climate change denial fantasists are changing tactics to - along the lines of what soft drink manufacturers did to avoid responsibility by pushing for "Clean Australia" campaigns instead of refundable bottle deposits - blame individuals and advocate for "inaction": "Fossil fuel interests are trying to blame climate change on individuals while also sowing division".

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Finally, on Trump's attempted coup in the USA: 

• more information on the failure to give heed to warnings - which are being repeated now in relation to President-elect Biden's inauguration. In my opinion, this reinforces the questions about infiltration of police - globally - by right wing / authoritarian influences, possibly aided by the scarring of their emotions, psyche and soul as a result of the duties we expect them to perform (on that, looking for identifiable mental illness is a mistake: the damage is low key and incremental), as well as the obvious questions about professional competence/incompetence; 
• "‘Never Forget’ Those Who Enabled Trump"; 
• "How The Threat Of Violence Has Haunted Politics In The Trump Era" - see also here, which states many lawmakers in the US Congress made what they expected to be their last calls to their families, and here; 
• a call for public discussion by experts of the mental health of key public figures: “Whenever the Goldwater rule is mentioned, we should refer back to the Declaration of Geneva, which mandates that physicians speak up against destructive governments,” Lee says. “This declaration was created in response to the experience of Nazism”; 
• a reminder that Trump's social media ban is in NO WAY comparable with the censorship of the CCP; 
  
• the "white male effect" which shows reduced perception of risk in many areas ("including handguns, abortion, nuclear threat, and capital punishment") which was so evident amongst both the predominantly white male insurrectionists and the predominantly white male republicans who supported them afterwards;
  and
  
• the charges continue to be made ...
  

The fallout from the coup includes lies from MPs in Australia - MPs who I consider incompetent as human beings - who were enabled by our contemptible PR Minister.

On a more constructive note, interesting thoughts on citizenship.