A couple of items in the news that caught my attention in an ever changing and sometimes confusing world :
Coalition to stop using Orwellian Doublespeak [for the time being]
In his novel, 1984 George Orwell introduced political doublespeak – using language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words to disguise the truth. Examples include the Coalition’s Ensuring Integrity Bill that has been languishing in the Senate.
Scott Morrison told the Canberra Press Club that the government has decided it “will not pursue a further vote in the Senate” on its Ensuring Integrity Bill.
He also told the Press Club that the coalition had not abandoned its commitment to “lawful behaviour of registered organisations”, and it would reconsider the “simplest, fairest and most effective statutory form” to give effect to that in the future – there’s another example of doublespeak.
So, in effect he has not abandoned the union bashing legislation but as he can’t get it through the Senate without Jacquie Lambie’s vote he has withdrawn it until another statutory format presents itself : Lambie was unlikely to support the coalition on this one having been dudded by Dutton on the Medevac repeal law – once bitten twice shy is our Jacquie.
There are still several dozen refugees and asylum seekers locked up on one floor of the Mantra Hotel in Preston, Vic. in indefinite detention limbo after receiving urgent medical attention under the Medevac law – they’ve been there for six months.
Off to Court – maybe !
The Israeli courts have found that former Melbourne teacher Malka Leifer is fit to stand trial for extradition to Australia, where she is wanted on paedophilia charges.
The ruling in the Jerusalem District Court came after a long legal battle to get the ex-principal, who is accused of sexually abusing students, returned to Australia – she was spirited out of Australia in 2008 after accusations were made against her.
Ms Leifer, 52, faces 74 charges of sexually assaulting female students during her time at the ultra-Orthodox Adass Israel school in Elsternwick in Melbourne’s south-east.
Leifa has used every trick in the book to avoid justice including her own mental capacity to stand trial. All have now been quashed by the court but that doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s on her way back to Australia to face justice : the extradition application has yet to be approved.
No doubt our own Kathy Jackson has been watching this news with interest as she considers her next move in trying to further delay her day in court on criminal charges of having allegedly misappropriated union funds from the Health Services Union (HSU) where she had been national secretary between January 2008 and February 2015. In a civil action mounted by the HSU in August 2015, Jackson was found to have misappropriated union funds and was ordered to repay $1.4 million in compensation – that cheque is still in the mail evidently.
Jackson has already tried the mental health excuse to delay the criminal case against her as well as the the dog ate my homework [in this case a flood damaged documents apparently]. She also needed to apply for legal aid having transferred her assets to her partner after the civil case – and having petitioned for bankruptcy. Then she called for a further delay whilst she instructed a new lawyer for her defence. With jury trials now having been suspended due to COVID-19 matters, it is unlikely that she will see the inside of a courtroom this year.
They say that justice delayed is justice denied and there is no doubt that our Kath has tested the patience of our justice system. The question is, will she succeed in getting the case permanently stayed because she and her sixty-eight witnesses have been prejudiced due to the six year delay even though the bulk of the forensic evidence had already been uncovered by the civil court and the delays have been largely part of her tactics. Or will the long arm of the law eventually catch up with her ?
Trumping
Twitter has decided to flag Tweets from President Trump (and others) that are either defamatory or outright perversions of the truth.
It came to a head when Trump Tweeted misleading and deceptive information on the California election arrangements for mail-in voting – much like the postal voting system in Australia. Trump is opposed to postal voting as he considers it puts him and Republicans at a disadvantage. Too much democracy is not good for the Republicans it seems.
The Twitter policy was introduced on 11 May and applied hours after Trump’s tweets initially went out because they violated Twitter’s “civic integrity policy”. The integrity policy bans users from “manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes”, such as posting misleading information that could distort the voting process and in some cases discourage people from participating in an election.
Trump responded with a pair of tweets that repeated his false claims about voting and accused Twitter of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election”. “Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!” he wrote.
The question is : can you think of another global media outlet that will publish and disseminate right-wing lies and ideological perversions without question ?
It’s in the Bag !
On 8 May NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller received an $87,000 pay rise taking him to $649,500 a year and one of NSW’s highest paid public servants. Yesterday (27 May) NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced a twelve month pay freeze for all public servants in the state.
If I were Mick, I’d buy a Lotto ticket, he’s on a run.
So there you go !
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The Kathy Jackson thing is really quite extraordinary,it beggars belief that someone can dodge justice for so long & with such obvious fabricated excuses.It is hard not to think she is somehow in protection.
Has anyone heard anything from James Ashby since he abuse a senator in the foyer of parliament house before Christmas?
Why haven’t politicians taken the same pays cuts as the commercial world has demanded especially when the Federal Parliament has not sat since the lock down commenced. “We’re all in tis together” ….. except the politicians, who remain with full pockets while casual, part-time, contract, 457 visa workers and foreign students wonder where the next meal will come from for their families.
On the subject of doublespeak.
We all know the term freedom of religion and lately the issue of religious freedoms has become a big concern in Australian politics, even though no one can think of any actual examples of religious freedoms other than the freedom already covered by freedom of association and the somewhat dubious freedom to impose a religion on your children. (Which implies that Jewish parents are free to raise one of their children as a Christian, another as a Muslim and yet another as a Scientologist).
The problem is that religions aren’t freedoms. They are obligations and restrictions. Thou shall do this and thou shall not do that. If you are religious you are bound by your faith and restricted by the tenets of that faith. If you don’t allow yourself to bound by your beliefs you cannot claim to be religious.
The word religion is derived from the Latin word ligo meaning bonds. Religion means bondage. The Latin word for tying up is religati. Though to be fair, some Latin speaking Catholics prefer to think the word bond refers to a relationship with god. The problem is the relationship is one of submission and not of freedom.
Religious cake sellers want the privilege to discriminate against homosexuals because their beliefs don’t allow them the freedom to treat homosexuals with the same respect they give to their other customers.
The Religious Freedoms Bill is doublespeak for a Religious Privileges Bill. Under such an act, religious people would be permitted to discriminate against homosexuals while homophobic atheists would not. One rule for the religious, another for everyone else.
The bloke at the top who sits in an office schmoozing with pollies gets a pay rise.
The people out there in the trenches doing the heavy lifting get shafted.
Situation normal in LNPland.
Trump’s going to go ape-shit when he wakes up in the morning and finds out that one of his tweets was removed today for “glorifying violence.” 😂😂
Police in the USA are just racist thugs. The riots in Minneapolis and elsewhere rival and exceed HongKong in violence, but WE focus on HK because it suits the USA. And the crocodile tears for the Muslims in ‘retraining camps’ in China coming from the country that gave the world Abu Graib and Guantanamo and accepts anything Israel chooses to do to Palestinians is utter hypocrisy, and we support it.
A great potpourri today waltz absolutely perfect for the dawn of meeting my grandchildren from down south as soon as I can fly them up.
Are pollies not public servants? No the man of the bottle of red passed the act of 2013 denying the would serve the public.??
the evils of profiling:
I whinge at seeing racism in my page but when I read this it reminded me how weak and pathetic is my knowledge of black and white fear.and how little I understand America.
https://www.stevelocke.com/blog/i-fit-the-description…
Compare Hongkong with Minneapolis – and sundry other cities – this morning, and convince me which society is the safer…
Jack Cade – settle down. Because ‘open carry’ is legal in Minneapolis (with a valid permit/license), the locals will sort it out soon enough. Save many from dying slowly via COVID-19.
Only in America. And it applies to so very much. Something about exceptionalism.
First of all, I cannot open any AIMN stories on my Iphone – I get a ‘bad request’ message or similar.
Anybody know why?
Second, whilst acknowledging my anti- US bias, the more the ‘Mandarin Moron /Tangerine Twat’ rages about
the virus being made in Chnia, the more I’m convinced it came from Fort Detrick.
When Douglas Adams sold the rights to ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ to the US’, the negotiator, after signing the deal, said “Can I ask you a question? What’s this ’42’ stuff mean?”
Anybody who reads any of the questions posed on Quora would be entitled to say ‘Its the Intelligence Quotient of three quarters of the United States.’
Adams said ‘I just stared at him.’
Jack Cade and Matters Not: “How can’t thou remove the mote which is in thy brother’s eye without thou first remove the beam that is in thine own”.
Which applies equally to Australia when it comes to human rights, equality of opportunity and social wellbeing.
The degree of nefariousness my vary, but the trends and determination of those in power are plain to see.
DrakeN
Amen to that.
Whatever that means…
In the article about Jones retirement, most MSM papers have a photo of the Rancid old quean between Latham snd Abbott…the three vile monkeys
See evil
Speak evil
Do evil
QED
N.b. I think QUEAN is the correct spelling for toilet travellers