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Tree by tree and hollow by hollow, regional coastal villages are being made over into the almost sterile landscapes of distant metropolises North Coast Voices
All up and down the NSW coastal zone local residents are involved in conversations like this and, as in this case, local government staff are well aware of what is happening.
Concerning DA 2022/0100 - tree removal and erection of a shed - at 35 and 37 Riverview St, Iluka, at the mouth of the Clarence River estuary:
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News Corps blurring of news and views damaging society Independent Australia
Failing to distinguish journalism from commentary and opinion is making News Corp a danger to our society, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.
IN NOVEMBER 2020, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull berated The Australians editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, for the newspapers record of promoting climate denial.
Despite Rupert Murdoch having previously denied his news outlets deny climate science and action, Kelly implied his newspaper did hold an opinion on climate change when he responded:
We have many publications that are dedicated to promoting the cause of climate change and radical action on climate change, so that's okay, is it? It's okay to be a propagandist for one side, but if one is a critic or sceptic about some of these issues, that's not okay.
Kelly admitted that News Corp presents news about issues like climate change in a style that more closely resembles commentary and opinion rather than factual analysis.
When journalists become commentators and commentators call themselves journalists, the public loses trust in the authority of real journalists to tell it what is happening in the world. News Corps melding of facts with opinion is not only degrading the cultural authority and strength of the news media industry but is also degrading Australian democracy.
The medias differentiation between facts and opinion used to be like a wall between church and state. Printed newspapers made clear where the news pages ended and where the opinion pages began so that readers knew when...
The government of doing nothing No Right Turn
Last week, Labour chickenshitted out on a wealth tax, with Prime Minister (for now) Chris Hipkins ruling it out as long as he holds office (which sortof suggests a solution, doesn't it?) But taxing wealth to build a more equal Aotearoa wasn't the only thing they chickenshitted out on - they also refused to break up the rapacious supermarket duopoly which is robbing us blind. Why? Largely it seems because they'd get the blame if it went wrong, and so they'd rather let Foodstuffs and Progressive keep screwing us than do anything about it. And today, there's the icing on the cake: a consultants report advising that the government's current half-measures are ineffective and will condemn us to another 20 years of supermarket robbery:
The Governments much-touted reforms of the supermarket industry are unlikely to result in a material improvement in competition, according to its own advisers.Crushing the supermarket duopoly and limiting its excess profits is something that would have a huge effect on the cost of living, and on poverty. But Labour just won't do it, because they're chickenshits afraid of upsetting the status quo. "In it for you"? You be the judge...Instead, without additional action, consumers can expect little to change for the better over the next 20 years, with a risk that the variety of products stocked by the supermarkets will continue to reduce and that supermarkets gross profit margins will continue to rise, ministers have been told.
Hindutva Goes to Washington: Narendra Modis US Visit The AIM Network
Again, he was at it, that charming show on two legs, playful and coy. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been burning the charismatic fuel of late, making the necessary emissions in visiting friendly countries. Each time, he seems to be getting away with more and more, currying (pun intended) favour with his hosts and
The post Hindutva Goes to Washington: Narendra Modis US Visit appeared first on The AIM Network.
Institutional cruelty exposed by three royal commissions Independent Australia
Recent inquiries have brought to light the lack of accountability from government institutions engaging in cruelty and human rights abuses, writes Max Costello.
TWO PRESIDING officers Federal Court Justice Bernard Murphy in the case of Mostafa Moz Azimitabar, and Robodebt Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes recently said damning things about the ethics of major Australian institutions and their senior office holders. Similar words were said in 2018 by Banking Royal Commissioner Kenneth Hayne and in 2017 by Justice Peter McClellan, chair of the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse Royal Commission.
So, how to prevent, punish (and thus deter) such embedded cruelty in the behaviour of both government and non-government institutions? In pub test terms, it seems amazing that no institutions have been prosecuted and no senior officers gaoled.
On Thursday 6 July, Justice Murphy found against a civil claim, lodged by Kurdish refugee Moz, that his detention in two hotel APODs (alternative places of detention) was unlawful. Yes, it was lawful, Murphy decided. But, he added in post-decision remarks, that did not imply his approval of Mozs treatment by the Government.
Murphy said:
I can only wonder of the lack of thought, indeed the lack of care and humanity, in detaining a person with psychiatric and psychological problems in the hotels [for] 14 months.
Last Friday, the report of Robodebt Royal Commissioner Hol...
A Traded-off Life. freef'all852
A traded-off life.
Would it be wiser to act the fool,
And be graced with effusive public bravos!,
Than to be a keeper of inherent knowledge,
And be shunned, scorned in the shadows?
For what benefits an actor who diligently practices his lines,
To be upstaged by a pretentious mummer ad-libbing atrocious strine?
The same for the exacting pedant, research wise,
Entangled by a buffoon practised in compromise.
And why mock the woman, choosing to stay in the home,
Seeking no confected career, but as mother to her bairns,
More than the unskilled female, labouring ,
Wasting her life in dreary, low-paid slaving,
To prove a point of managed social-equality in the making?
Or the young person choosing a skilled trade,
Over facile delusion of E-Commerce; a beggar-man made?
Perhaps we all have been taken for a ride,
By some low-brow, middle-class philosophic pap,
With that promise of healthy, wealthy and happy,
When all the while turning us into parasited patsies,
Thrown onto THEIR dole when they close THEIR factories.
Perhaps there IS only one final solution,
That is to enact a Chairman Mao-style cultural revolution,
Expel from governance all middle-class non-producing schemers,
To be replaced with skilled-trades educated workers,
And be rid of those opportunist, entrepreneurial fools,
To recreate a life full-lived by more equitable social rules!
An old-style post-title for an old-style post! Che Tibby returns to blogging with The Apocrypha of Noah - which so far, seems to be looking at climate change.
Capitalism a death knell for democracy Independent Australia
Neoliberalism and corporate greed are destroying the idea of a fair and equal society, dividing classes into 'us versus them', writes Dermot Daley.
ECONOMISTS SUCH AS Reserve Bank (RBA) governor Philip Lowe think that economics is almost a science, but in effect, there is no more correlation between economics and science than there is between astrology and astronomy.
The following is an opinion and as such, it carries no more weight than any other opinion. Although it probably has greater validity than when Lowe opined that interest rates would not change for several years and then progressively increased the rate to address inflation without evidence that his actions were having the desired effect.
Mr Lowe has since moved on. One might hope that the new governor of the RBA will more closely examine the inflationary effects of unearned benefits, such as executive salaries and middle-class welfare, on the markets compulsion to gouge the cost of household goods and services.
Modern economists believe that their career path was founded by Adam Smith in his seminal work, The Wealth of Nations; however, Smith was a sociologist before the word economist was coined and his thinking referred to the need for sound fiscal management to nurture the whole of society. He was, after all, living in the Age of Reason.
By the third quarter of the 20th Century, socialism and democracy, the two prevailing ideologies, had lost their way. Socialism linked itself to communism (whereby some are more equal than others, which proved dysfunctional except where practised in arcane religious orders). Simultaneously, democracy, with its sibling free enterprise, had been hijacked by capitalism.
The death of democracy was sea...
In which the pond offers up a Killer Kombination of Killer and Katerist, with bonus Major Mitchell musings ... loon pond
The pond has noted before, and no doubt will note again at some point, the way that talk of climate, or even the weather, or the climate and weather together, has been disappeared, or shunned in best Amish style, by the reptiles of the lizard Oz...
While real world events go on unheeded or ignored, climate science denialism still flourishes, and none is more versed in the art than the quarry waters whisperer himself, regularly on hand on a Monday to do what he can to prevent any meaningful action being taken...
Climate Change State of Play in 2023: as seen from Yamba, Australia and the rest of the world North Coast Voices
Yamba (pop. est. 6,388) at the mouth of the Clarence River estuary on the NSW far north coast, has an official weather station ID: 058012 which has been recording observations since May 1877 from a headline on the northside of the town.
What this relatively long history, of measuring air temperature, humidity levels, wind direction & velocity along with rainfall, is currently indicating is that from January to June 2023 monthly temperatures have been hotter than the 145 year averages.
While over the same period rainfall is so far below monthly averages that by June - the first month of Winter - rainfall was est. 125-127mm below the 145 year average for that month and occurred across only 7 of the 30 June days.
Yamba, like much of the Clarence Valley and 23.3% of the North Coast has been classified as Drought Affected on the NSW DPI Combined Drought Indicator (CDI).
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Big four gouged $10b over a decade and kept taxpayers in the dark Pigs Fly Newspaper
The numbers are staggering. In the past decade Australias state and federal governments have forked out more than $10 billion on the big four accounting firms money that could have paid for 200 schools, 10 or more prisons, four world-class hospitals or a third of the annual Medicare bill.
Theyve been described as an infestation. They sit in government departments on secondment, occupy hundreds of boards across Australia and earn billions of d...
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This short story is an *IA Writing Competition (fiction category) entry.
The warm day was but a chimera of Spring, however, the discovery of a new word was the real motivation for Bazzas walk on the beach.
A passage he had read, moved him, and had ended with the word "saudade". He had researched the highly emotive Portuguese term and was further intrigued by the fact it defied a single word translation to English. He twirled the word around in his mouth numerous times, enjoyed elongating the syllables and sought to experience "saudade", by way of a walk on the beach.
From the base of the headland, Bazza squinted across the gently wrinkling sea, admiring its silent power, as it pushed off the next queued wave. He followed it as it devoured a lonely rocky outcrop, before coughing it up in a swirl of white foam. Closer now, the wave flexed and then smashed, kamikaze like, into the headland, throwing shards of ocean high into the air.
The cliff was resolute, but it was more a pyrrhic victory for this moment, as the much scarred headland attested. It could only brace for the next pound and pause, pound and pause, night and day and slowly surrender to the power of the sea.
Bazzas eyes traced the rest of the same wave as it now massaged and shaped the inevitability of the contest between headland and sea the beach before him.
The conflict between sea and shore sparked memories of lifes travails and Bazza shook his head:
"Saudade? Bloody hope not.
He half-laughed to himself.
The two sets of footprints in the wet sand before him switched his thoughts and he began to follow the steps. Perhaps it was the loneliness of the beach, the timeless nature of the surrounds or his love of a mystery that had him thinking of the dinosaur trackway, southwest of Winton in central western Queensland. Scientists had used the clues from thousands of footprints to piece together the theory of a dinosaur stampede on a single day 95 million years ago. Clever buggers, he mused.
One set of footprints before him were about the same size as his own and the strides equivalent. He surmised they belonged to a man. For the most part, the footprints followed an energy conserving and economic straight line. He smiled at that thought.
The other footprints were tiny. They zig zagged and danced around the male prints and at times darted between them, but always in a defined orbit. There...
Albanese Government must take action against Robodebt masterminds Independent Australia
The Albanese Government's future popularity may rest on the action it takes against the architects of the Robodebt scheme, writes Michael Galvin.
ANTHONY ALBANESE has 320,000 followers on Instagram and I am one of them. Instagram is a great way to keep track of what people like the Prime Minister choose to say and show about their lives.
Albanese is so far ahead of the other Party leaders in Australia that it is not funny. The numbers of Instagram followers tell their own instructive story:
Clearly, in the political firmament, Albo is a bit of a rock star. I have been following him for the last couple of years, and especially since he became Prime Minister. No doubt his staff do the routine work for him, but he would probably average about two posts a day, every day.
And this is the thing: he always looks so damned relaxed and comfortable! Clearly, he is capable of doing the job, genuinely likes the people he meets, and works hard. These are good things. And polls consistently show that about two thirds of people approve of his performance, while about one third do not. I suspect a sizeable minority of those disapproving come from his left rather than his right.
For this group, not only is Albanese far too relaxed and comfortable in his job, he is also far too conservative, too cautious, too risk-averse, a...
A Sixpenny Secret. freef'all852
A Sixpenny Secret.
It was a simple little ditty,
Mum would chant to me,
When I would fall from my trike,
Or would come to her with a scraped knee..
Well..I WAS a little tacker then, seeking sympathy,
And Mum would comfort me with these words,
In a humming melody..;
A penny for your thoughts, my dear,
Threepence for a song,
Sixpence for a secret,
A shilling if you keep it long!
And she would wipe the tears with this balm,
And press a coin into my palm..
But it was never a shilling,
And that was in the telling..
For I would invariable whine,
This is not a shilling, its just sixpence,
And she would ask; how many sixpences in a shilling?
Two! I would answer keen and willing,
Correct.. Mum would tap my nose and say,
Then, Mr. Smarty-pants, Ill owe you another some day.
*
It is so many years ago that Mum has passed away,
Gone, her comforting words..now my life too, is closing, aye..
I went to where my mother rests, to clean and dust the grave,
For so many leaves and twigs, had there in time accrued,
And a couple of buckets of white gravel also needed to be spread.
It was while immersed in this work, that little ditty I recalled,
Took a while to get it straight, as to me she had then told,
And I repeated it quietly as I attended to her grave..
A penny for your thoughts, Mum,
Threepence for a...
AUKUS deal shows Australia's subservience to U.S. dictates Independent Australia
There is great community opposition to the Labor Governments embrace of AUKUS and its proposed spend of $368 billion on acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.
That opposition is spreading to the Labor Partys own rank and file branches. The ALP leadership is undeterred by this opposition and one must ask why? Does fear of intervention if they deviate from U.S. foreign policy explain their dogged commitment to these policies?
The Albanese ALP governments embrace of AUKUS and a $368 billion spend on nuclear powered submarines, both policies of the previous Liberal-Coalition government, surprised some and angered many. That anger has spread from community groups, peace organisations, academics and trade unions to the grass-roots of the Labor Party itself.
A grass-roots Labor against War organisation has emerged in NSW making the following statement:
LAW is a grassroots network of ALP members and unionists opposed to Australia being dragged into another U.S.-led war. We oppose involvement in the AUKUS alliance and the acquisition of nuclear submarines. AUKUS is against the interests of the Australian people. The Australian Labor Party and Australian unions have long opposed Australias involvement with the nuclear industry and in wars of aggression. We will not be dragged into a war against China.
Resolutions opposing AUKUS and the acquisition of nuclear submarines have been passed by a number of ALP branches and the 2023 Queensland Labor Party Conference adopted the following motion:
The Queensland Labor Party categorically opposes the manufacture/construction of nuclear-powered/armed submarines or vessels in Queensland, including but not limited to Brisbane or any other Queensland port current or future port facility. This opposition is based on concerns over safety, environmental impact, and public sentiment.
One has to ask why the ALP leadership are so adamant...
In which Polonial intermarriage saves the day, there's a little Jennings of the third form, and instead of "Ned", the bromancer provides the Everest this day ... loon pond
The dog botherer laid down the gauntlet yesterday...
... and today prattling Polonius accepted the challenge and picked up the glove, though in an inimitable way, as only Polonius could manage ...
Fadden federal by-election, Saturday 15 July 2023 - vote count begins at approx. 6:30pm North Coast Voices
Australian Electoral Commission vote count in the Fadden by-election in Queensland begins after close of polls at 6pm, Saturday 15 July 2023.
The rolling ballot count should be available at:
https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-29422-159.htm
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Electoral Commission |
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Fadden by-election live The Tally Room
11:31 Im finished for the night. We are still waiting for the two-party-preferred figures from Helensvale pre-poll centre and otherwise have all the results wed expect tonight. The 2PP swing is sitting on 1.7% at the moment. Really quite modest.
I probably wont be preparing any more content on Fadden but stay tuned for more election coverage soon. Ive got another podcast lined up two weeks from now, and will be posting the first part of my federal election guide in the next few weeks. And Ill be sure to update my federal by-election dataset to include Aston and Fadden once the Fadden results are finalised.
Thanks for tuning in.
10:53 We might get slightly more results tonight but were getting close to the end so I thought I would wrap up the race.
At the moment, the swing to the LNP is sitting on 1.6%, but that may well change as the remaining votes are counted.
I dont think the result is particularly remarkable, although I expect there will be attempts to swing it in both directions. Governments generally dont do well in opposition by-elections, and a modest swing in the other direction is nothing to write home about.
The other story of interest is the Legalise Cannabis result. They are currently sitting on 7.88%, with the Greens down 4.1% to 6.4%.
That has been largely interpreted as Legalise Cannabis taking votes off the Greens, and Im sure thats partly true but Im sure there are votes moving all over the place. Legalise Cannabis did not run for Fadden in 2022, but the party didnt do this well in the seat for the Senate in 2022, so it does seem like a good result.
It seems like another chapter in the story of the emergence of minor parties of the left in general and Legalise Cannabis in particular challenging territory that the Greens once had to themselves.
Legalise Cannabis has already won seats to upper houses in three states and were the best-polling parties to not win a seat at the 2022 federal election.
I think there may be a story about seats like Fadden being better suited to a different type of left minor party than the Greens. I dont think the Greens need to worry much about these other minor parties in their heartland areas, but I dont think the competition is about to go away.
10:21 The results for tonight are petering out, but Ive got a map here showing the two-candidate-preferred swing and percentage. It shows really clearly where the swing was most heavily concentrated.
...
Commonwealth Bank: Shifting goalposts and shutting doors Independent Australia
Banks are closing, despite an assurance given to the Senate Inquiry by the Commonwealth Bank that it would not close regional branches until the Inquiry concludes at the end of the year. Dale Webster reports.
THE COMMONWEALTH BANK is at it again.
While to be congratulated on its decision to put a three-year moratorium on regional branch closures in place, the Commonwealth Bank has dragged its co-publisher of the quarterly Regional Movers Index report into an embarrassing situation again by refusing to count its top destinations for regional migration as regional.
The Regional Australia Institute (RAI) uses Commonwealth Bank data to compile the report, which has listed the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Geelong as some of its most popular destinations for people choosing to leave city life behind in preference for a regional location.
But the Commonwealth Bank confirmed that when it comes to branch closures, it is choosing to follow a Bureau of Statistics classification that conflicts with the classification it uses with the RAI in the Regional Movers Index.
The decision leaves Australias three biggest regional cities Geelong, Wollongong and Newcastle as well as the Gold and Sunshine coasts and places such as Bateau Bay, Gosford, Maitland, Murwillumbah, Raymond Terrace, Katoomba, Bacchus Marsh and Mandurah, still vulnerable to the loss of their Commonwealth banks until 2026.
They are among 490 branches the Commonwealth Bank could choose to close at any time (see map below)
View Commonwealth Ba...
Dutton Decides On New RBA Governor The AIM Network
First, I read the headline: Dutton rules out two frontrunners for RBA governor. Then I read that Mr Dutton had said: Weve made it clear to the government we dont believe it should be somebody who is familiar, if you like, to the government, somebody who has been working very closely with the Treasurer, or
The post Dutton Decides On New RBA Governor appeared first on The AIM Network.
Loathsome Amiability: Why Watching Utopia Hurts The AIM Network
Lets be frank: watching Utopia hurts. It involves stinging your eyeballs, tearing your hair, and taking yourself to the ledge of a skyscraper to call the whole thing off. The fact that the characters are meant to be faux pleasing is no excuse not to loathe them. This Australian satire on bureaucracy, specifically featuring the
The post Loathsome Amiability: Why Watching Utopia Hurts appeared first on The AIM Network.
Taylor Swift fans filled with Tay Tay ticket heartbreak Independent Australia
Four million people signed up to get Australia's half a million available Taylor Swift tickets. There was bound to be heartbreak... This and more from IA's music man David Kowalski.
BIG FUSS and unprecedented fervour surrounded the purchasing of tickets to Taylor Swifts "Eras tour" this week. So much so that we even saw respected Australian psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg giving advice on how to soothe children who missed out!
If not directly experienced, most of us have heard stories about hours of precious time sucked away while waiting on the Ticketmaster app to try and score concert tickets.
That said, the number of people who have said to me, Whats so special about Taylor Swift, anyway? As though this hysteria is a new phenomenon.
John Hewson asserts that Scott Morrison should resign Pigs Fly Newspaper
The Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme has identified appalling dishonesty and lapses in government processes that had serious consequences for the innocent, and their families, who were hounded for non-payment of fictitious debts. The final report clearly documented the poor performance of several government ministers and senior public servants, who quite frankly should have known better than to embrace what the Federal Court concluded to be an illegal and shameful scheme to the detriment of nearly 500,000 Australians, leading to tragedy with the loss of at least two lives.
A combination of key elements made this scandal possible. The first is a Coalition culture, an ideology almost, that leads them to so easily assert that welfare recipients cheat, and that unemployment benefit recipients are dole bludgers. The Human Services minister at the time, Alan Tudge, was saying exactly this when he appeared on A Current Affair in 2016 with a message to anyone who owed Centrelink money: Well find you, well track you down and you will have to repay those debts and you may end up in prison. This general attitude reflects a complete lack of understanding of and empathy for low-income earners, the disadvantaged and those in need. It is perceptible in the Coalitions strategy to oppose the Voice a most derogatory view of First Australians.
Second, a group of public servants lost sight of their basic job, namely to give full, frank and fearless advice, to assist ministers in delivering their policy platforms and good government. Some have argued that, in the end, they must do as instructed by government. But there is an important qualifier here: only if what they are asked to do is legal. This poses the obvious question as to why all players were not focused on legality right from the ou...
Coles and Woolies have you on camera: Say 'cheese'! Independent Australia
Coles and Woolworths supermarkets have increased security technology in self-checkout areas, leaving many customers feeling undervalued and untrustworthy, writes Tom Tanuki.
THE SELF-SERVICE checkout at the local Coles was showing me a video of myself buying a lemon and a Lebanese cucumber. The video was a true and correct interpretation of events. I really did buy a lemon and a Lebanese cucumber.
While observing this footage made me aware my purchasing decision was being viewed, I wasnt its intended audience. It was mostly being played for the Coles self-service machine attendant whose job it was to use it to assess my honesty.
Cameras at self-service checkouts were first introduced in 2019 to stop us Australians from stealing from our duopolistic supermarket giant overlords: Coles and Woolworths, the two-headed beast bleeding the life out of local competition, town by town, year by year.
Were more broke than ever, with the consumer price index rising much faster than our wages. A lot of that increase comes in the form of food price bumps with food prices at the supermarket giants alone increasing by 9.6 per cent in the past year. That primarily seems to be so that the two-headed beast can deliver record profits, though, with Woolworth's banking over $900 million net profit in 2022-2023.
So if we're broke but want to eat the same amount as usual, we'll just have to steal more food. Right? The supermarket giants have realised this increased risk. And their solution is to start employing more workers to staff their stores again, reversing the self-service trend. Just joking! Their solution is...
Our political swamp will not be cleansed by the disgracing of Morrison Pigs Fly Newspaper
There is a danger in the ongoing humiliation of Scott Morrison that he becomes a convenient fall guy for a wider system failure.
Morrisons conduct in office, and his subsequent refusal to accept the conclusions of a library shelf of damning reports into his misuse of power, is an extreme example of a political culture that created and enabled him. He reflects the worst instincts of an entitled generation of politicians, both Liberal and Labor, who believe that an election victory affirms their right to rule. It confers no such right. It gives them the privilege to represent the Australian people, and the responsibility to protect our democratic institutions.
In which the pond becomes increasingly desperate, and neither the dog botherer or the Angelic one are much help ... loon pond
In recent times, pundits have had much fun noting Clarence Thomas's inability to fill out forms correctly or conduct himself with the slightest sign of integrity, while at the same time purporting to offer deep and meaningful originalist interpretations of the law of the land. There's been much hand-wringing WaPo style ... (paywall)
But SCOTUS in its current form is a joke and a disregard for forms and ethics is a standard ploy.
Even so, and despite this careful training, the pond was knocked down to discover that an alleged prof and top commentator for the lizard Oz, the oscillating fan, didn't bother to read contracts... (Graudian away)
If there was any justice in the world, the oscillating fan's legitimacy should be at risk for proudly and defiantly revealing he's a blithering idiot.
Not only did he not read the contract he signed, he also apparently had an imaginary conversation, a kind of recovered memory from the murky recesses of a fetid swamp mind.
The pond was reminded why it rarely paid any attention to the oscillating fan in the lizard Oz, and lo, there he was again today ...
...
Tweet of the Week North Coast Voices
Hes a potent danger to democracies across the world. Watch our film about Rupert Murdoch pic.twitter.com/7rlAlVaBGy
Led By Donkeys (@ByDonkeys) June 21, 2023
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Links 14 July 2023 "IndyWatch Feed Politics.us"
Biden announces that the US has finished destroying its chemical weapons stockpile and is now in compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention.
How Maria Vargas Llosa came to abandon socialism and turn toward liberal capitalism; Fidel Castro's arrests of his critics and general turn toward authoritarianism was a key event.
The history of titanium, which remained a research curiosity until 1951 when the US government got heavily involved. Useful link to have on hand next time some libertarian tells you governments never create anything.
Young people are fleeing Bhutan for Australia; at last count 1.4% of Bhutan's already tiny population had emigrated, almost all of them young adults.
Not sure that this is real, but it seems when you play trolley problem with ChatGPT4 it will save Elon Musk over the rest of humanity.
Hoard of Civil War-era gold coins found in Kentucky, possibly hidden to protect it from Confedreate raiders.
A group of authors sues OpenAI and Meta, saying that their books were used to train those companies' AIs without their consent. (...
How to address escalating violence in PNG "IndyWatch Feed Politics.pg"
There is currently a serious problem with tribal fighting and gang violence in some of the Highland provinces of Papua New Guinea. In many areas, the violence surrounding the July 2022 election has essentially continued as a series of rolling fights. The most recent violent event to hit the news is a kidnapping of women and girls in Hela Province. They were brutally raped and subjected to other unnamed horrors before being released.
The problem seems so intractable, widespread and repeated that it is hard to know where to begin. The dominant outcome is impunity for perpetrators. Impunity is justified by reference to difficulties of access and transport, of communication, scarcity of government resources, and the considerable firepower of the feuding parties and gang members. All these are truly difficult logistical obstacles.
But, they are less insurmountable obstacles if we stop viewing the incidents as isolated events, and start seeing them as repeated patterns of behaviour. Paying attention to the systemic and cyclical nature of intergroup fighting highlights two much underused resources in the intervention armoury: timing of interventions, and networks with local communities.
In regard to timing, we use as an illustration a tragic recent case in Enga Province that personally affected one of us. Williams father was murdered, along with three other men, when he attended a peace mediation talk between two clans. This gave rise to immense pressure for payback from Williams clan, but there were many level heads within the clan of the deceased who realised that this could trigger an ever-increasing cycle of violence. They put enormous efforts into containing the forces crying out for revenge channelling their own resources, oratory skills and charisma towards this objective. Against all odds, clan and community leaders managed to stop the violence for 14 days while the haus krai and burial occurred. The immensity of this feat should not be underestimated.
The leaders knew that this temporary peace had an end date; they alone were not strong enough to permanently stop the violence. So they actively sought out the states police force to help them and, they hoped, take the burden from their shoulders by arresting the perpetrators of the original four murders. Unfortunately, the police did not intervene as hoped.
The force of those speaking for peace was eventually overwhelmed by those thirsting for war, and cycle after cycle of attack and revenge occurred, drawing in old conflicts from two or three decades ago. It turned out to be one clan who spoke for peace, against 18 others who mobilised for violence. At the height of the conflict, the state finally sent police and military personnel who were on the ground. They were quickly overwhelmed, as by that stage the violence had escalated...
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