HAVE THE GREENS LOST THE PLOT OR DON'T THEY WANT VOTES ANY MORE?

It is difficult to know where to start at a time when a state election is almost upon us and the two major parties - or if you look at it from a left/right perspective, and we then have one party with a right wing and an ultra-right wing - and you know you can't vote for what they represent and you wonder who you will be able to vote for, and you thought maybe the Greens provided an alternative which would be viable and then the following:

Philip Nitschke slams 'shut-out by Senate' in euthanasia inquiry

Date

October 15, 2014 smh

·                      

Vanessa Desloires

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Controversial euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke has accused the  Senate of shutting him out of an inquiry into a proposed Dying With Dignity law.

Dr Nitschke said that neither he nor his recently formed Voluntary Euthanasia Party were asked to speak at a hearing for the inquiry in Melbourne on Wednesday, despite representing the "largest and only national pro-euthanasia organisation in Australia".

The founder of Exit International blamed Greens senator Richard Di Natale, who has proposed the Dying with Dignity Bill, for the exclusion, and was angry that groups who had made "uncharitable and incorrect statements" about him in their submissions were invited to speak.  

It comes after the Medical Board of Australia suspended his licence to practice medicine due to concerns he supported the suicide of a man who was not terminally ill.

He was also recently criticised by The Australian Medical Association, Dying with Dignity Victoria and beyondblue.

So the Greens are a failure on the Euthanasia issue - and what else have they collapsed on? Think of Palestine/Israel and think of Lee Rhiannon and her pro-Palestinian support while she was a New South Wales state parliamentarian. Then she became a senator for the Greens in the Commonwealth parliament and joined the right-wing of the Greens in no longer supporting the Palestinians.

Where does it leave you as someone looking for a group or party to vote for?

Well as one of those voters it leaves me feeling it is all a waste of time and effort and as someone with a sense of humour is quoted as saying - don't vote - it only encourages them!

 

Voting In Britain For War. Take Your Pick

The following article by John Pilger appeared in "Information Clearing House" and is reproduced here in full:

Voting In Britain For War. Take Your Pick

By John Pilger

May 06, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Staring at the vast military history section in the airport shop, I had a choice: the derring-do of psychopaths or scholarly tomes with their illicit devotion to the cult of organised killing. There was nothing I recognised from reporting war. Nothing on the spectacle of children’s limbs hanging in trees and nothing on the burden of shit in your trousers. War is a good read. War is fun. More war please.

The day before I flew out of Australia, 25 April, I sat in a bar beneath the great sails of the Sydney Opera House. It was Anzac Day, the 95th anniversary of the invasion of Ottoman Turkey by Australian and New Zealand troops at the behest of British imperialism. The landing was an incompetent stunt of blood sacrifice conjured by Winston Churchill; yet it is celebrated in Australia as an unofficial national day. The ABC evening news always comes live from the sacred shore at Gallipoli, in Turkey, where this year some 8000 flag-wrapped Antipodeans listened, dewy-eyed, to the Australian governor-general Quentin Bryce, who is the Queen’s viceroy, describe the point of pointless mass killing. It was, she said, all about a “love of nation, of service, of family, the love we give and the love we receive and the love we allow ourselves to receive. [It is a love that] rejoices in the truth, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And it never fails”.

Of all the attempts at justifying state murder I can recall, this drivel of DIY therapy, clearly aimed at the young, takes the blue riband. Not once did Bryce honour the fallen with the two words that the survivors of 1915 brought home with them: “Never again”. Not once did she refer to a truly heroic anti-conscription campaign, led by women, that stemmed the flow of Australian blood in the first world war, the product not of a gormlessness that “believes all things” but of anger in defence of life.

The next item on the TV news was an Australian government minister, John Faulkner, with the troops in Afghanistan. Bathed in the light of a perfect sunrise, he made the Anzac connection to the illegal invasion of Afghanistan in which, on 13 February last year, Australian soldiers killed five children. No mention was made of them. On cue, this was followed by an item that a war memorial in Sydney had been “defaced by men of Middle Eastern appearance”. More war please.

In the Opera House bar a young man wore campaign medals which were not his. That is the fashion now. Smashing his beer glass on the floor, he stepped over the mess which was cleaned up another young man whom the TV newsreader would say was of Middle Eastern appearance. Once again, war is a fashionable extremism for those suckered by the Edwardian notion that a man needs to prove himself “under fire” in a country whose people he derides as “gooks” or “rag-heads” or simply “scum”. (The current public inquiry in London into the torture and murder of an Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baha Mousa, by British troops has heard that “the attitude held” was that “all Iraqis were scum”).

There is a hitch. In the ninth year of the thoroughly Edwardian invasion of Afghanistan, more than two thirds of the home populations of the invaders want their troops to get out of where they have no right to be. This is true of Australia, the United States, Britain, Canada and Germany. What this says is that, behind the media façade of politicised ritual – such as the parade of military coffins through the English town of Wootton Bassett -- millions of people are trusting their own critical and moral intelligence and ignoring propaganda that has militarised contemporary history, journalism and parliamentary politics – Australia’s Labor prime minister, Kevin Rudd, for instance, describes the military as his country’s “highest calling”.

Here in Britain, the war criminal Tony Blair is anointed by the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee as “the perfect emblem for his people’s own contradictory whims”. No, he was the perfect emblem for a liberal intelligentsia prepared cynically to indulge his crime. That is the unsaid of the British election campaign, along with the fact that 77 per cent of the British people want the troops home. In Iraq, duly forgotten, what has been done is a holocaust. More than a million people are dead and four million have been driven from their homes. Not a single mention has been made of them in the entire campaign. Rather, the news is that Blair is Labour’s “secret weapon”.

All three party leaders are warmongers. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats leader and darling of former Blair lovers, says that as prime minister he will “participate” in another invasion of a “failed state” provided there is “the right equipment, the right resources”. His one condition is the standard genuflection towards a military now scandalised by a colonial cruelty of which the Baha Mousa case is but one of many.

For Clegg, as for Gordon Brown and David Cameron, the horrific weapons used by British forces, such as clusters, depleted uranium and the Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of its victims’ lungs, do not exist. The limbs of children in trees do not exist. This year alone Britain will spend £4 billion on the war in Afghanistan, and that is what Brown and Cameron almost certainly intend to cut from the National Health Service.

Edward S Herman explained this genteel extremism in his essay, The Banality of Evil. There is a strict division of labour, ranging from the scientists working in the laboratories of the weapons industry, to the intelligence and “national security” personnel who supply the paranoia and “strategies”, to the politicians who approve them. As for journalists, our task is to censor by omission and make the crime seem normal for you, the public. For it is your understanding and your awakening that are feared, above all.

www.johnpilger.com

THE AGE HAS SACKED PAST EDITORS - TIME TO SACK THE CURRENT EDITOR!!

On Wednesday 5 May 2010 the following announcement appeared at the end of the letters page - underneath a letter of complaint about Catherine Deveny:

EDITOR'S NOTE: Catherine Deveny's column will no longer appear in The Age.Ms Deveny's comments on other media are not in keeping with the standards we set at this newspaper.

This is an absolute disgrace. Has the editor been approached by the rabid right-wing reactionary religious bigoted establishments to deny Catherine a voice in The Age?

What are the comment on other media to which the editor has taken exception?

We won't get an explanation, but we will be censored because Catherine dares to mock our society and in the process to give us something to think about and to have a laugh.

The Age has became a pathetic shadow of its former self - editors like Michael Gawenda and Andrew Jaspan haven't help lift the standard of what was once a great newspaper.

How art the mighty fallen??

Time to get rid of the current editor and try to restore some balance to this pathetic rag - now only one degree better than the other daily rag, but plumbing the depths of that one by publishing - or not - what it thinks its delicate readers ought to read.

Newspapers are rapidly sinking below the horizon, and it is easy to see why, after this effort to silence one of its better journalists who is not afraid to open her mouth. Pity all those others who have to shut up because their livelihoods depend on working for these disgusting people who control the media.

AND THANK GOODNESS FOR THE WORLD WIDE WEB AND ITS GREAT INVENTOR WHO HAS ENABLED US TO GET WHAT WE NEED IN THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY FROM AROUND THE WORLD!

--------and all this in response to a letter by Nicholas Yallop - who? I hear you ask? Oh, yes, Nicholas's father had some involvement with The Age some time ago. Here is Nicholas's letter:

Calculated to raise a profile - and offend

FOR someone of her experience in the media industry, Catherine Deveny seems quite naive to the power and reach of her insensitive Twitter comments.

The Age may employ her for her controversial and allegedly funny commentary, but I think many readers see her as an intellectual imposter doing nothing more than indulging her warped view of the world.

While she occasionally makes valuable points, Deveny seems intent on making them in the most vulgar manner. Just as with her disgusting attacks on Anzac Day, Deveny's comments regarding Rove McManus and Bindi Irwin were crude, thoughtless and merely said to provoke a reaction.

In her defence, she described Twitter as some form of intimate social networking platform, akin to ''passing notes in class''.

That is rubbish. Politicians and celebrities are using it to shape their brand and Deveny appears to be no different. Every tweet seems to be a calculated attempt to promote her shock-making ways, which are often nothing more than offensive.

Nicholas Yallop, Surrey Hills

ALEPH LETTER TO JEWISH COMMUNITY COUNCIL OF VICTORIA (sic)

Aleph has kindly given me permission to reproduce their letter to the Jewish Community Council of Victoria. In my earlier blog I reproduced an article from MCV in which this issue was discussed. However at that stage I did not have this background information and now it will help to make the issue of child abuse in the Jewish communities much clearer.

Of course it all ties in with homophobia which Jewish communities perpetrate no less than other communities around the world. Jews used to like to think of themselves as more tolerant than other communities but events have shown in recent years that they can be just as intolerant as the next man, woman or child in the street!

Attention: Geoffrey Zygier - Excecutive Director JCCV / John Searle - President JCCV
January 8 2010

Dear Messrs Zygier and Searle,

Over recent months it has been brought to the attention of the JCCV numerous times
that any intolerance and oppression of same-sex attracted youth, whether due to
religious reasons or otherwise, has been directly linked to serious mental health issues
such as depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide.

In October 2009 the JCCV released a statement during Mental Health Week
acknowledging the critically high rate of suicide in same-sex attracted people caused by
intolerance of their sexuality.

Back in April 2008 the JCCV, under the presidency of Anton Block, called for a swift
response to allegations of sexual abuse in the Melbourne Jewish Community, as reported
in the Australian Jewish News.

It may not have been impressed clearly enough upon the JCCV as to the gravity of the
nature of the abuse that same-sex attracted youth experience directly as a result of
religious intolerance of their sexuality. By forcing a person into a state of depression or
contemplation of suicide because they are told homosexuality is sinful, unacceptable,
abnormal and contrary to religious beliefs constitutes psychological abuse. When this
occurs in a child it becomes psychological child abuse. People who perpetrate this abuse
are child abusers.

The community does not tolerate sexual child abuse. The community does not tolerate
physical child abuse. The community continues to tolerate psychological child abuse.
People who are aware of perpetrators of sexual or physical abusers of children are
obligated to take action to prevent this harm. The community is obligated to stamp it
out. People who do not take action against this harm are complicit in the ongoing
perpetration of the abuse.

The situation is the same when it comes to psychological child abuse. People who are
aware of the abuse are obligated to prevent the harm against the children and the
community is obligated to stamp it out. Currently the community remains silent on this
abuse perpetrated by intolerance of homosexuality. This is completely unacceptable.
The JCCV has a solid track record of taking swift action when it becomes aware of
damaging or harmful situations in the community. It has responded to sexual abuse
claims, under-age drinking, anti-semitism, fundamentalist extremism etc. To date the
JCCV has remained consistently silent on the matter of psychological child abuse
perpetrated by intolerance of homosexuality. There is no excuse for this.

The JCCV lists amongst it's goals:
• Facilitation of harmony and positive relationships between the various
elements of the Victorian Jewish community and between our community
and the larger community
• A positive perception of Jews in Victorian society
• A thriving local Jewish community
• A safer local Jewish community

The JCCV needs to achieve its goals and fails to do so by not speaking out against this
terrible abuse. It fails it's members and it fails its community.

The JCCV has been aware of the extreme risks of intolerance of homosexuality since at
least October 2009. It has not made a single statement specifically speaking out against
the abhorrent practice of intolerance of homosexuality and lack of unconditional
acceptance of same-sex attracted youth since then. It is now long overdue for a
statement from the JCCV speaking out strongly against this specific psychological
abuse. The entire Jewish community would benefit greatly by having a statement issued
before another week goes by.

The President of the JCCV John Searle and other community leaders will become
complicit in this ongoing psychological child abuse if they don't acknowledge the harm
and speak out immediately.

Sincerely,
Michael Barnett.
Aleph Melbourne.

JEWISH COMMUNITY COUNCIL OF VICTORIA - "UNREPRESENTATIVE SWILL" - TO QUOTE PAUL KEATING

The Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) does not represent the Jewish community of Victoria - never has and never will. The name is of course a total misnomer!

Aleph - the gay Jewish group - has approached the JCCV numerous times to become a member of that "organisation" for want of a better word!

JCCV has refused every time and made nasty homophobic excuses which should be unacceptable at any time.

The question is, why does Aleph wish to be a member at all? Unless it is a question of funding, it seems to be an exercise in futility to even attempt to hold dialogue with such a group of nasties.

Aleph has functioned for many years without affiliation to JCCV, and if it has done so in the past, why not in the future? Unless it has some religious or zionist reasons for wanting this relationship, there seems to be no valid reason for any connection between the two organisations.

Here is the article which was in the MCV issue470 of 7 January 2010:

Jewish reference group questioned
Written by Ron Hughes

Plans for the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) to set up a GLBT Reference group have been met with scepticism from GLBT Jewish group, Aleph.

In a press release, JCCV president John Searle stated that on December 16 members of the Jewish GLBT community had agreed to setting up the group to “bring disconnected Jews back to [the Jewish] community”.

Michael Barnett of Aleph Melbourne accused Searle of being disingenuous.

“The decision to set up a reference group was taken at a meeting to which Aleph wasn’t even invited,” Barnett told MCV. “We had a meeting on December 3 which turned out pretty horribly. Subsequently Searle emailed me and said he didn’t want to deal with me any more.”

In the email – seen by MCV – Searle accused Barnett of continuing to “criticise, undermine and discredit the JCCV”.

“At our meeting Searle plainly stated that the Jewish religion had one specific viewpoint on homosexuality – it doesn’t condone it,” Barnett said. “That completely ignores the diversity of opinion among conservative and progressive Jews.”

Barnett said he believed Searle was in an “unfortunate situation”.

“[Searle] is trying to do his best by everyone, it seems, but really he’s trying to do his best by the orthodox community, which is where most of the funding comes from.”

Barnett said until the issue of orthodox intolerance was addressed things would not improve for GLBT Jews.

“It’s not about bringing people back into the fold, it’s not about being nice to us,” Barnett said. “It’s about tackling a huge issue [intolerance].”