She/Her Pronouns
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x4 ... *face twitch*
Okay. I'll try and set aside my anger at that for a second, and explain why she's doing that.
So, in Catholicism Confession is when you confess your sins to the priest to receive forgiveness from heaven. The Church will sometimes say that God will forgive you through prayer, but you're still supposed to see a priest about it anyway. The priest will then assign to you some task to do penance (usually prayer).
However, its also a super duper huge deal, being a Sacrament. And as such, one of the points is that it is supposed to be between you, God, and the priest. So, priests are not supposed to give away anything told to them during confession, even capital crimes, because that may lead people to not confess it and forgo doing the Sacrament the Church wants you to do. As such, this would be an extension of the whole "sealed lips" thing going on.
However, in largely Secular countries, "but my Sacrament" is not a good enough reason to avoid giving away vital information in investigations such as this, especially because it contradicts the actual Secular law of the land. Thus, the bill.
So, in a move of stunning brilliance, this particular lawmaker decided to compare priests being compelled to follow the law like any other person with the fucking murder of 50 people, victims of a hate crime perpetuated against a religious minority less than a week ago. Using one of the most egregious stretches of the Slippery Slope Fallacy I've seen recently, no less.
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer
Oh, bother.
Admittedly not too related to politics, but I already posted something animal related here.
Giant sunfish washes up on Australian beach: 'I thought it was a shipwreck'
On a side note, it's kind of macabre that this article is under the "Food" section of The Guardian.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Servant of the Omnissiah
In the name of being honest
Mark Latham is expected to win a seat on the NSW Legislative Council.
Edited by eagleoftheninth on Mar 23rd 2019 at 10:27:17 AM
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)
Standing for One Nation no less.
Well that's some unwelcome news. I don't know much about NSW's government but they're saying he got about 5% of the vote?
Proving once more that they are complete and utter scum, there has been an expose on One Nation's attempt to court America's NRA.
In the name of being honest
First, "Say nothing." If media queries persist, go on the "offence, offence, offence". Smear gun-control groups. "Shame them" with statements such as - "How dare you stand on the graves of those children to put forward your political agenda?"
This was the advice the US's most powerful gun lobby gave Australia's One Nation party, according to an Al Jazeera investigation, when representatives of the Australian far-right group sought guidance from the National Rifle Association (NRA) on loosening the Pacific country's strict gun laws.
The NRA's playbook on mass shootings came to light during the course of a three-year undercover sting by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit. Rodger Muller, an Australian undercover reporter who infiltrated the gun lobbies in the US and Australia, used a hidden camera to record a series of meetings between representatives of the NRA and One Nation in Washington, DC in September last year.
The secretly filmed footage provides a rare inside view of how the NRA deliberates over mass shootings and seeks to manipulate media coverage to push its pro-gun agenda.
Australia's One Nation party, led by Senator Pauline Hanson, has long sought to relax the country's gun laws, which bans almost all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. The rules, some of the toughest in the world, were introduced in 1996 after a gunman with a semiautomatic rifle killed 35 people in the town of Port Arthur.
Since then, Australia has had no mass shootings where the attackers did not know their victims. However, the NRA has denounced Australia's laws as "not the definition of common sense".
'The graves of those children'
Muller, Al Jazeera's undercover reporter who posed as a gun-rights advocate, introduced One Nation's Chief of Staff, James Ashby, and the leader of its Queensland branch, Steve Dickson, to the NRA, and travelled with the pair to Washington, DC last year.
Ashby and Dickson were hoping to secure up to $20m in political donations from supporters of the US gun lobby.
In meetings at the NRA's Virginia headquarters, officials provided Ashby and Dickson tips to galvanise public support to change Australia's gun laws and coached the pair on how to respond to a mass shooting.
The best method to handle media inquiries in the wake of a massacre was to "say nothing", according to Catherine Mortensen, an NRA media liaison officer. But if inquiries persisted, she recommended an offensive communications strategy.
That included deflecting public concern by smearing supporters of gun control.
"Just shame them to the whole idea," said Lars Dalseide, another member of the NRA's public relations team. "If your policy, isn't good enough to stand on itself, how dare you use their deaths to push that forward. How dare you stand on the graves of those children to put forward your political agenda?"
Dickson responded: "I love that, thank you".
Then, explaining how the NRA manipulated media coverage, Darsedie told One Nation to enlist the services of friendly reporters.
"You have somebody who leans to your side that worked at a newspaper, maybe he was covering city hall or was a crime reporter," Darseide said.
"We want to print up stories about people who were robbed, had their home invaded, were beaten or whatever it might be and that could have been helped had they had a gun. And that's going to be the angle on your stories. That's what he's got to write. He's got to put out two to five of those a week."
'Outrage of the week'
Another NRA tip was to ghost-write columns for pro-gun law enforcement officials.
"We pitch guest columns in the local papers," said Mortensen.
"A lot of the times, we'll write them for like a local sheriff in Wisconsin or whatever. And he'll draft it or she will help us draft it. We'll do a lot of the legwork because these people are busy. And this is our job. So, we'll help them and they'll submit it with their name on it so that it looks organic. You know, that it's coming from that community. But we will have a role behind the scenes."
As for social media, the NRA recommended producing short videos that highlight how useful a gun is for self-defence.
"These are hugely popular and they're short little snippets. You know, 'Joe Blow', cashier at the local convenience store, had his firearm with him and protected himself," said Mortensen.
"Those are good because they're short and they kind of get you outraged. We call it like 'the outrage of the week'."
During the same meeting, Dickson told the NRA that "African gangs imported to Australia" were committing rape and burglary in the country, including "coming into the house with baseball bats to steal your car".
To that, Dalseide advised the following: "Every time there's a story there about the African gangs coming in with baseball bats, a little thing you can put out there, maybe at the top of a tweet or Facebook post or whatever, like with 'not allowed to defend their home', 'not allowed to defend their home'. Boom."
The NRA officials named in this report, One Nation, Dickson and Ashby did not respond to Al Jazeera's requests for comment.
Gotta hand it to them for finding a way to squeeze in the 'African gangs' trope, wow
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)
Servant of the Omnissiah
This is One Nation we're talking about. They'll find some way to squeeze it in.
As for the NRA - big surprise. Also amusing, given how they're likely to fall flat on their asses for that effort.
I hold the secrets of the machine.
Just another reason to hate groups like them.
The One Nation Senators at the heart of the expose are now blaming the fact that were drunk for when their most damning statements were made.
While a very... Australian... excuse, even if it is true there's definitely a bit of "in vino veritas" going on there.
Edit:
So this situation is clearing evolving and the expose that exposed One Nation's attempts to woo the NRA, now we have footage of Pauline Hanson things the Port Arthur massacre was a setup (the Port Arthur Massacre being Australia's worst mass shooting and what prompted the massive tightening of Australia's gun laws.
Edited by KnightofLsama on Mar 27th 2019 at 9:31:23 PM
Welp it's happening. Federal Election called for May 18
What's the outlook?
In the name of being honest
Labor is still ahead in the polls, though they'll need to keep the endemic infighting in check if they don't want to implode like the Liberals did over the past few years.
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)
wak
They might not have Australian citizenship, but it's their homeland. Deporting indigenous Australians who haven't been granted citizenship would be all shades of fucked up.
Let's look into why these indigenous Australians don't have citizenship before we even consider kicking them off the land that their ancestors settled, lived on and were pretty much massacred off of.
Come sail your ships around me, and burn your bridges down.
In the name of being honest
...Well. Looks like a literal lump of coal is gonna be the next PM.
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)
Disasturbator
Where were they thinking of sending them?
New theme music also a box
Who?
Edited by Swanpride on May 18th 2019 at 6:25:20 AM
Seems like the incumbent Liberal premier has succeeded at keeping a majority.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
In the name of being honest
Most of the Indigenous-descended people involved are citizens of New Zealand or Papua New Guinea by birth, so presumably to those countries.
Scott Morrison is keeping his seat... for now. Australia's ruling parties have been especially prone to infighting for the better part of a decade now, with a bunch of PMs taking power in leadership spills; ScoMo got his seat after Malcolm Turnbull was forced to give it up last year.
Queensland is swinging hard to the right, partly because of contentions over the Adani Carmichael coal mine. The project's supporters claim that it's going to generate upwards of 10,000 new jobs, though it's also projected to displace a large number of protected species and Indigenous land. Most critically, it's going to include an expansion of the port facilities at Abbott Point, which would involve large-scale dredging operations that might as well kill off the Great Barrier Reef. It also looks like a good number of voters in the state also went for Katter's Australian Party, a right-wing populist party that booted out Fraser Anning last year for saying the quiet parts out loud.
Some minor consolations: Anning and Tony Abbott are both losing their seats. Bill Shorten is also stepping down from the Labor leadership.
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)
The big turner was palmer and One nation sapping votes away from Labor and Labor preferring independents. The two preference the Coalition and thus they all flowed back there. Could end up being a hollow victory, with either a minor part or hung party, time will tell. Hopefully. Take what small victories I can though Abbott and Anning have left the building!
I will confess myself a little surprised at the votes. Not so much Morrison getting back in. I did consider that a possibility, I just didn't expect it to be quite so... fast. I figured that it wasn't going to be call sometime this evening Australian time. (And of course the Senate votes always take a while to compile).
Tony Abbot losing his seat though is definitely good news. (And truthfully Scott Morrison must be breathing a sigh of relief at that news too. If Abbot had gotten back in I honestly believed he would make another leadership run in the near future).
I pretty much saw this coming. Queensland has always lent right, but it's only gotten worse.
Seeing it in your own family members really hurts, though.
Fraser Anning got the boot: https://twitter.com/annabelcrabb/status/1129730964417056770
It's honestly no difference from requiring mental health staff from reporting any criminal acts confessed to them in confidence.
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)