Cross posting: Post No. 1,660 - In this week’s news

 This post originally appeared on my main blog at https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2020/09/post-no-1660-in-this-weeks-news.html. 

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Black Lives Matter!

Stay safe - wash your hands, practice social distancing and wear a face mask in public, and follow informed medical advice - and be considerate towards those at risk or in situations of vulnerability (including economic) while the COVID-19 pandemic is a problem.

To counter despots, abuses of human rights and incompetent governance, and enable responsible, inclusive and participatory democracy, which is the ONLY sustainable basis for liberty and freedom, all people must embrace, instead of fearing, uncertainty, and commit to clear and objective/dispassionate thought, goodwill, and competence at being human, including having emotions.

This is a new, very cut down series of news aggregation posts based on some observations on matters that struck a personal note: unlike the former “Gnwmythr’s News”, it is not trying to convey key events. Also, being an Australian, I am now going to start referring to specific Australian states using accepted abbreviations. Editorial comments / personal opinion by me in grey.

Content Warning: the linked articles and their descriptions here may be about violence, abuse, hate, and other problems.

 

My Articles this week include:   ideas vs. despots;   some thoughts on governance.

On Personal / Spiritual Matters:   “confusing cultural norms with eternal truths”.

Reading/Viewing I found interesting this week included:   a call for more tact;   an opinion that “uncertainty is not to be overcome but understood”.

 

Overall Commentary on this week’s news:
   this week has seen impatience / taking things into one’s own hands for good and bad - mostly bad, including violent vigilantism and vicious vilification, but also the fight against hate, xenophobia, greed, selfishness, and intolerance, and against unethical behaviour and abuses of power (including seeking convenient responses ahead of what is right, and denial of the pandemic and climate crises). Conspiracy fantasies, macho competitions and - like the king ordering the tide not to come in - trying to enforce revanchism have also been apparent, but so too has learning from and regret for mistakes, holding those with power to account, refusing to bow to the corruptor, the abuser, or the ignorant or flawed. We face ongoing problems, including wars, violence and the problems of poverty and inequality which robs our species of so much, but there is a growing underswell of change for the better.

 

This article deserves to stand on its own: thoughts about life of a young man dying of cancer during the pandemic.

 

In This Week’s News:
   concerns that a multiple car crash was a violent response to vigilantism;   declining rites of passage (see also here);   concerns by long standing residents of a town after a mining company that has been there for only a few decades tries to get them to leave over dust issues;   a boat was found after it slowed in response to propeller damage and was reported overdue (and irresponsibly had no way of communicating with anyone);   the integrity of Melbourne's AFL media and some fans has been left in tatters after public vilification in response to a possible COVID-19 infection led to a foreign-born player returning home;   Russian hackers are at it again;   the EU has demanded that the UK “drop a planned law that breaches [the] Brexit deal” (and maybe international law);   concerns by long standing residents of a town after a mining company that has been there for only a few decades tries to get them to leave over dust issues;   a boat was found after it slowed in response to propeller damage and was reported overdue (and irresponsibly had no way of communicating with anyone);   the integrity of Melbourne's AFL media and some fans has been left in tatters after public vilification in response to a possible COVID-19 infection led to a foreign-born player returning home;   a call to reduce the trauma of medical diagnoses.

 

In the Environmental Arena, where we have been fighting World War III for some time now:
   a Guardian Australia exclusive reports that a “prominent scientist [has slammed a] forestry association for dismissing logging links to bushfire risk” - see also this, on the suppression of science;   there has been a 71% decline in koala numbers in bushfire affected areas in NSW;   a stolen oil tanker is still rusting off Yemen;   the oil industry is lobbying to be able to dump plastics in Kenya;   an LNP conspiracy fantasist has shot the party in its environmental toe (it’s not as much as a foot, yet);   Africa’s Great Green Wall is disturbingly behind schedule;   an oil spill in Ecuador;   a group of young Australians is taking legal action to stop a coal mine;   a political  disagreement over changes  last year to how koalas are protected in NSW ended with the coalition holding;   a ban on single use plastic;   Zimbabwe will protect elephants by banning coal mining in national parks.

other environmental matters have occurred in:
   Australia;   China (good news);   Tibet;   rewilding;   lack of urgency in communication leading to this;   forests;   east Africa;   Kenya (good news).

 

This week on the Protests in the Despotic USA and associated protests/issues elsewhere:
   “the violent defence of white male supremacy”;

in Australia:
   “aggressive” arrests by police - without warning - at a BLM protest in Qld.;

Internationally:
   Senegal/France;

Police:
   senior police where a man died of asphyxiation after being arrested have resigned;   “bloodshed eases in Brazilian favelas after court ban on police raids”.

 

On Human and Animal Rights:
   “Australia has never been good at acknowledging its troops have been guilty of acts of inhumanity” (I can vouch for some of this: I had an uncle who was one of the choco’s in PNG during WW2, and he said they sometimes killed prisoners [there are also incidents that, although deplorable, are not war crimes - as a vet I knew from the British Eight Army in north Africa said, war is terrible);   the challenges facing the USA on human  rights extends beyond lyin’ 45 to also include previous administrations’ “double standards”;   burma has erased the name of Rohingya villages;   social media platforms;
   the Philippines mass murdering president Marcos-lite has pardoned a man who murdered a trans woman;   support for LGBT people inside Poland;   a call for a national ban on so-called conversion “therapy” in Australia;   lyin’ 45 ending anti-racism training has also encouraged homophobes / transphobes to come out of hiding;   a radio newsreader has been ordered to pay a transgender activist $10,000 compensation for discrimination over social media comments;
   a school and the education system missed opportunities to support a bullied student who died (what about counselling to fix the bullies?);   warnings after a suicide is posted to a social media platform used by children;   priests in Qld must now report child abuse;   a man who murdered two of his terrified children had a 30 year history of domestic violence;
corporate leaders in the “Male Champions of Change” group have called for an end to non-disclosure agreements silencing victims of workplace sexual harassment - meanwhile, a CEO has apologised to a victim of sexual harassment at his company, but claimed there was no systemic problem - despite changing the system for handling complaints . . . ;   the inventor in 2008 of genital reveal parties - by using a cake - now, after several fires (the latest has burned 40 square kilometres, and one in 2017 burned 190 square kilometres) and one death, regrets them;
   the CEO of a company that destroyed Indigenous sites has resigned after being criticised by angry shareholders;   “Indigenous cancer patients to be ‘wrapped in culture’ as they undergo treatment”;
   yet another hack of a government data site;   privacy concerns over information from smart power meters being “shared in a partnership between New Zealand utility company Vector and Amazon Web Services”;   more concerning developments in facial recognition;
   problems preventing stopping problem gamblers.

Genocide matters (good and bad) in:
   burma, with two soldiers admitting to the crimes they say they were ordered to do;   an entertainment company;

Torture, Disappearances and Execution/Killing matters (good and bad) in:
   Bangladesh;   Mozambique;   South Sudan;

Refugee, immigration, and migration matters (good and bad) have occurred in:
   music;   hundreds of Rohingya refugees have reached Indonesia after six months at sea;   “five years after the migration crisis, Merkel, not [lyin’ 45], seems vindicated”;   the Mediterranean Sea;   fire has forced the evacuation of a refugee camp in Greece;

Racism/caste based matters including land rights (good and bad) have occurred in:
   boarding schools;   Ukraine;   Uganda;   Brazil;   Chile;

Child Abuse/Trafficking/Slavery & Extreme Worker Abuse matters (good and bad) have occurred in:
   Lebanon;   Spain;   Qld.;   Italy/fashion;   South Asia;   Thailand;   Russia;

LGBTIQ+ matters (including internalised homo-/bi-/trans-phobia/hate) (good and bad) have occurred in:
   Qld.;   a neochristian church school (but the neighbours were decent human beings);   homophobia in the USA has become surreal;   UK (good news);   rebuttals here and here of the stupidity trotted out against trans women in sport;   Nigeria;   Bangladesh (good news);   NSW;   New Zealand (good news);   China;   Taiwan;

Sexism (including internalised sexism), misogyny/misandry and domestic violence matters (good and bad) have occurred in:
   a soldier is being court-martialled in Australia for alleged indecency;   UK;   Mexico (good action);   Zimbabwe (good news);   Turkey (social media);   CAR;   Egypt;   Chechnya;   Switzerland;

Disability matters (good and bad) have occurred in:
   a business at the centre of a degrading death has been raided by police after refusing to cooperate with police;   a blind student who was dragged out of a debating chamber has won compensation;   Nepal;

Freedom of the Press / Expression matters (good and bad) have occurred in:
   Egypt;   a formal warning from the EU to the UK;   Ethiopia;   Iraq;   South Sudan;   Morocco;   Bahrain;

Privacy/Surveillance matters (good and bad) have occurred in:
   UK;

Repression/Oppression / reduction of democracy and other civil & political rights matters (good and bad) have occurred in:
   Tibet;   Cambodia;   Saudi Arabia;   Zimbabwe;   Tibet;   the “justice” system in Bolivia;   burma;   Uganda (the repression also includes deploying the military/police);   Rwanda;   Libya;   China;

Other animal and human rights matters (good and bad) have occurred in:
   USA (housing).

 

Risks or occurrences of Atrocities, Mass Violence and/or War(s) this week in:
   Mali;   Nigeria;   Tunisia;   DRC (good news);   Syria;   burma, Libya and the International Day to Protect Education From Attack;   DRC;   Mali;   Mozambique;   Somalia;   Somalia;   the arms embargo on Libya is being flouted by the UAE, Russia and Turkey;

And:
   the long running insurgency in Nagaland in India may be close to a peaceful resolution;   Pakistan is no longer influencing the misogynistic rebels in Afghanistan;   ECOWAS peacekeeping troops will leave Guinea-Bissau.

Other atrocity/violence matters have occurred in:
   Australia.

 

On Disasters this week:
   a typhoon in Japan and South Korea;   floods in Senegal;   a fire in Beirut’s port;   floods in Sudan and other areas in Africa;

And:
   “nearly 1.2 million Afghans have been internally displaced by natural disasters such as floods and droughts since 2012”;

Bushfires have occurred in:
   USA - see also here;   USA - see also here;   Siberia.

 

On Humanitarian Aid and Development:
   “social enterprises are five times more likely to support vulnerable groups than profit-first businesses”;.

 

In the Democracy, Governance, Politics, Public Ethics, and Society arena:

General Matters:
   protests are continuing in Belarus as the UK is embarrassed into stopping military aid, a protest leader is kidnapped and threatened by masked men (and others disappear), and an assessment of Russia’s attitudes suggests democracy has a chance;   Russian hackers are at it again;   a debunking of four conservative myths about poverty, inequality, and the economy - and another about so-called cultural Marxism in academia;   yet another report pointing out that tax cuts help the rich without stimulating the economy;   concerns over an alleged conflict of interest in the corruption investigation into Israel’s PM - see also this;   concerns over technology monopolies;

in Australia:
   criticism of the national neolibs proposed law to override state agreements;   older Australians are dying before aged care packages arrive;   a call for relationships and sex education to become mandatory in Australian schools;   an examination of problems (including the growth of outsourcing, staff numbers cap, hiring people as “good and services” instead of as required by the Public Service Act, etc) around the growing use of private contractors in the Australian Government;   “calls for right-wing extremists to be put on terror register” - see also this, and this, on US right wingers trying to hide their influence in Australia;   “Australian strategic decision-makers need lessons in our once-grand ambitions – and accomplishments – in world affairs”.

The Unexceptional (and despotic) States of America:
   criticism over the seven month delay in a famed, respective and ethical journalist reporting that lyin’ 45 knew he was lying over the lethality of the pandemic has been explained by the journalist as time to check his facts (I think this revelation being closer to the election is more likely to help cause a change of US President, so I’m actually in favour of it - just as I thought the impeachment was far too early) - but lyin’ 45’s “self-contradictory style of communication keeps everyone guessing, all of the time . . . Politically, for Trump it's been remarkably effective. his critics can always find a contradictory comment from the President's own mouth, or thumbs, to try and make him look silly. By the same token, his defenders can always dig up a comment he's made as they try to disprove any accusation on any given day. It's enough to make a lot of voters tune out”;   lyin’ 45 has been an inspiration to far right haters in Germany - see also this, from the USA;   citizenship delays will prevent voting;   an examination of possible demographic influences;

other democracy, governance, politics, public ethics, and society matters have occurred in:
   WTO;   burma;   Chile;   civil society.

 

Internationally:
   more on Russia’s use of poisoning to intimidate dissenters;   lyin’ 45 has offered help to Grand Tsar Putin over fires in Siberia;   the EU has demanded that the UK “drop a planned law that breaches [the] Brexit deal” (and maybe international law);

on China’s Communist Party (CCP) Regime and the reinvigorated  ideological Cold War this week:
   two Australian journalists have been evacuated after initially being prevented from leaving by China - see also here, here, here, and here on journalists as pawns, Australia’s investigation of two Chinese journalists, and the dispute has now also included denied  strident accusations of interfering with a police investigation (the journalists comments make it clear the “investigation” was a farce - a political tool) and revocation of academic visas;   violent suppression in Hong Kong has included several police gang tackling a 12 year old girl;   as India’s army rescues three Chinese citizens, Chinese soldiers have abducted five Indian citizens - and see here on the border dispute between India and China in Tibet;   the global tech industry;   revisionism in Hong Kong;

on Israel’s intended Annexation of the West Bank and other matters:
   building invader homes will resume;   the EU has warned Serbia and Kosovo that their membership aspirations would be set back if they move their Israel Embassies to West Jerusalem (I agree with the EU: there needs to be a Two State solution, with administration of Jerusalem split);   human  rights  abusing and repressive Bahrain has recognised Israel.

 

In Africa - Democracy, Governance, Politics, Public Ethics, And Society and International Relations:
   ECOWAS is pressuring Mali to go back to democracy -see also here;   protests over living conditions in Libya;   security concerns over malware in phones;   “Nigerian President Muhammadu  Buhari has warned fellow West African leaders not to violate their constitutions to stay in power”;   as one region holds them anyway, Ethiopia’s government says it expects elections within one year;   Tanzanians are now facing a growing authoritarianism;   “Ivory Coast on edge as high-stakes election looms”;   “Moroccan-brokered talks between Libya's two rival administrations have led to agreement on the need for compromise” (yes, this is small, but it is a vital step);   Somaliland has established relations with Taiwan;   an ANC delegation has been sent to mediate in Zimbabwe.

 

On the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus (there are other novel coronaviruses) (seven major risks to watch here, and seven sins of thought to avoid here), and Wear Masks!!!):
   our neolib nitwit national government repeated fake news - and later backtracked;   concerns over a claimed loophole in JobKeeper;   the original and utterly disastrous use of ”keep calm and carry on” during the 1918 pandemic before World War One had ended;   “a city near Beijing is being designed with rooftop farms, 3-D printing facilities and ample space to work from home” to reflect the lessons from the pandemic;   a call to speak more softly;

   medical aspects:   although multiple vaccines may be found and made available, politicians have been accused of raising false hopes -but “the chief executives of nine companies developing vaccines against COVID-19 have pledged to ‘uphold the integrity of the scientific process’ ”;

 

Human Rights Aspects (crisis . . . running summary of impacts on elections here):
   a bigoted politician has shown their utter cluelessness - and there are questions about a nearly equally clueless bureaucrat;   after being told “spraying of disinfectants on humans causes both physical and psychological harm”, India’s Supreme Court has asked why that practice has not yet been stopped;   disabled people in Rwanda are bearing the brunt of discrimination;   a couple who flew to Ukraine after a surrogate gave birth cannot get back to their children in Australia - see also this;   imminent cutbacks in social security will force people to skip meals and medicines and put one million children at risk of poverty;   a TV soap could highlight the problem of DV during the pandemic;
   also including

racism:
   USA;   Australia;

suppression of journalism:
   Malaysia;

 

In My Home State:
   wow . . . the utter unbelievability of some conspiracy fantasists;   improved contact tracing;   more concerning revelations about hotel quarantine;   our careful planned - but sexist -  journey  out of lockdown;   the extended lockdown is welcomed by experts although some are concerned over mental health, and another is calling for a more locally-based approach;   more than 80% of deaths were in aged care: of those, more than 40% were in only ten facilities;   a group of doctors have started doing their own contact tracing;   a debate over curfews -which have been used elsewhere (and make sense to me, given the amount of social interaction at that time);   calls to reopen those regional Victorian areas with no active cases (that is allowed for in the roadmap, but there has to be certainty);   a report that early calls for aged care homes to introduce masks were ignored;   commonwealth  regulated  aged care;   wastewater testing has been in use for some time;

Australia:
   fortunately, state Premiers are in charge, not the neolib PM;   a call for NSW to copy my home state’s planned route out of lockdown;   cases in SA;   most Australians support facemasks in public;   reduced stringency at a quarantine facility in the NT;      after our anti-asylum seeking (despite international law allowing that) and border blocking neolib Prime Minister has a dig at Qld’s border closures some facts - namely, that exemptions are the responsibility of the Chief Health Officer;

Internationally:
   doctors and the poor are being hit in India;   Malaysia;   limited social gatherings in the UK - see also here;   South Korea;   a curfew is imminent in Israel;   young people in Europe;   Indonesia denies it is running out of space to bury COVIOD-19 victims;   Guam, USA;   contact tracing tokens in Singapore;   Canada;   Israel;   France;   workers were not protected in the USA;   South and Central America;   Gaza;

Africa:
   doctors in Nigeria.

WLNGRHDMT

And finally . . . Black Lives Matter!

Some thoughts on governance

Let’s begin this with what would seem to most people to be an absurdity: a family that is run as a business is.

In this absurdist example, children are not cherished and nurtured, they are “held to account” for the amount of profit they make - they have to reduce their costs, and generate increasing amounts of income. Children are not a joy: they are a burden to be brought to productivity as soon as possible. The profit does not stay within the family, it goes elsewhere - maybe previous generations living in other houses, or, if we were to extend this analogy to include takeovers, those who owned the family being considered in this absurdist example (i.e., slaves).

It would be psychologically abusive, unhealthy, destructive, and - to use a weasel word - “inappropriate”. It would not be a family, which is about enabling its members to achieve their human potential and a meaningful, rewarding, and enriching life.

And yet there are places in the world where physical survival is such a major problem that some families still see children as a benefit because of the labour they can contribute - whether in the fields, or by aiding in making bricks/carpets/etc. I am thinking particularly of places like Zimbabwe, where Mugabe and his accomplices stole the nation’s sovereign wealth for decades, and robbed the nation of from its human potential - which is the ultimate wealth of all nations - as all poverty does.

There have also been historical cultures where families are considered the greatest importance of an individual’s life - thought to be what one should be loyal to above all else, above nation, above personal wellbeing, above personal choice. I can’t say whether that error has been eliminated completely or not, but I know there are still families that, for instance, are homo-/bi-/transphobic, which makes the families abusive, as well as robbing those families of the human wealth that is the person being expelled.

In the early stages of human evolution, we probably lived in a more tribal situation than a family - or even an extended family. In those days, I would suggest the focus was on survival - skills and ability, not whether individuals met particular rules. Most of the revulsion people claim to feel about sexuality - or used to try to deny about their views on races, in the case of white supremacists - is taught. Given that it robs that family of human potentially, it is an example of self sabotaging "governance" - the sort of behaviour that would have a businesses owners up in arms and demanding resignations.

Families are meant to be about emotional and psychological security, which is crucial to human health and wellbeing, and the achievement of the human potential of children - for their own sakes, not the sake of the family. Families should be about love, not physical profit.

Businesses are often portrayed as being about profit in today’s hyper-capitalist world (incidentally, I still can’t find many of the claims that are made about Adam Smith’s writings in Smith’s writings, but they are very dense and boring, and I haven’t read them all yet . . . I still wonder how much is interpretation placed on the books - or from other material I haven’t come across yet), but the issue of human potential is actually recognised by good businesses - there are plans for ongoing development of staff, businesses care - to some extent - about staff attitudes to the business (although that is in good part because the business does not want to lose the investment they’ve made of training), we have - in some nations - sick, carer’s/parental and annual leave.

The business still has to make a profit, or it will cease to exist, but modern businesses recognise that its staff are, ultimately, one of - if not the - greatest asset the business has (some - a very few - companies may have intellectual property [IP] that is more valuable economically than staff).

In saying that, what is clear is that attitudes matter. The business wants to sell its internal policies as being good (and many, these days, are good - for instance, on inclusion and diversity) to current and potential staff. Businesses care about reputations - and have started to understand the importance of that more as the concept of social licence has been promulgated. (And many business leaders have a comfort with emotions that belies the incompetence of previous generations of rigidly despotic heads of businesses [and families]. A good example of this is the statement this week by "Male Champions of Change" against non-disclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases.)

Some handle this badly - and we’ve seen changes at a senior level of a mining company in Australia this week as a result of some poor decision making (that infringed indigenous rights); others handle it well.

Some of the courses I’ve done on LinkedIn cover crisis management and communication (which largely aligned with what I’d seen and come to appreciate as a result of living long enough), and it is “interesting” to see which businesses handle that well, and which don’t.

Of course, there is still room for improvement in the business world: they’ve been slow to realise the risk of the climate crisis (some still don’t), some businesses have not embraced the concept of social licence sufficiently to act against modern slavery in their supply chains (which may as a result of the limited realisation of the human potential of its managers, perhaps? In other words, they need to be helped to develop as humans to the extent that they are comfortable accepting working with such “emotional” issues, I suspect), and there is a tendency to see the education system as preparing people for their economic roles.

That latter attitude is wrong: education is about ensuring society sees the development and realisation of the human potential of students - which is of benefit to society as a whole (especially in realising the next generation of developments, such as personal computers, the green revolution, agriculture, the making of tools, and domesticating fire), businesses (more capable and creative employees), and those students. 

This week I came across a quote (wrongly, it appears) attributed to Einstein: 

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

Education includes passing on knowledge, and developing skills, but also - in my opinion - taking on a backstop role and making sure that problems caused by the crushing evil of poverty, poorly functioning families, and flawed ideologies (such as racism, homo-/bi-/transphobia, etc) are overcome - for the sake of society, or the greater good, if you will. It must make sure that we do not make the error of "judging fish by their ability to climb trees".

Good economists recognise that robbing society of 50% of its human potential by discrimination against women was wrong; so too is robbing society of its human potential by discrimination against other minorities.

From a human potential perspective, no-one has a right to abuse their children by limiting their potential through inculcating hate and bigotry any more than they do by deliberately cutting off a leg or hand. My opinion is that parents teaching their children to hate is an act of child abuse.

And now I’d like to turn to the topic of governance - specifically, that of the Morrison government and their key Murdoch media conglomerate backers, which I will refer to as the Morrison-Murdoch regime.

The Morrison-Murdoch regime is:

• acting against the interests of Australian society by robbing it of its human potential in LGBTIQ+ people, immigrants (especially refugees, who are typically highly motivated and likely to contribute more than their share to nations that welcome them), and others who may not vote for them;
• harming the perception of Australia - in a sense, harming our nation-level social licence to operate - by creating an image of Australia as a nation of backward (including technologically inept) haters;
• creating future costs by denying the reality of the climate crisis and failing to take proper action to manage the climate crisis;
• further restricting Australia’s achievement of its potential by limiting education, and recreating Australian a a regressive, backward, behind the times nation (I grew up when the concept of cultural cringe was being debated; in a few years the current cultural cringe will have become widespread); and
• robbing Australians of their personal human potential by creating fears, false perceptions and xenophobia that is the nation equivalent of the child abuse of teaching a child to hate.

The Morrison-Murdoch regime is, in my opinion, like the business manager who is struggling to comprehend (a) that modern human slavery is real, and (b) that they have a moral and business obligation to act against that.

If a business’s leaders operated as badly as the Morrison-Murdoch regime, their shareholders would revolt; if a school was as inept, it would find itself without students; if a family’s parents were as bad, child protection services would step in.

Fortunately, we have a backstop: it is called an election.

The problem is, many voters seem to be in the grip of the paralysing fear of neoliberal, revanchist and xenophobic illusions.

How to deal with those emotions is crucial to enabling our nation’s backstop to be effective. 

 

Ideas vs. despots

Last night I came across this interesting statement in "The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam" (Amazon), by Barbara  Tuchman, who also wrote "The Guns of August" (Amazon; my review here):

"Prison does not silence ideas whose time has come, a fact that generally escapes despots, who by nature are rulers of little wisdom."