Open Thread – Wed 20 Sept 2023
1,548 responses to “Open Thread – Wed 20 Sept 2023”
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Adolph wasn’t an atheist. At least, he said he wasn’t.
What did he say he was then?
He may have said he wasn’t, but historians believe that was said for political purposes.
You also made an earlier comment that those nasty atheists were Marxists. Atheism has to come first in order to lay the foundation for Marxism.
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Atheism has to come first in order to lay the foundation for Marxism.
Atheism isn’t a foundation for Marxism. These days many Marxists claim to be Christian. The current pope, for example. Marx was an atheist, but that wasn’t central to Marxism. He built on Hegel and basically claimed to have developed a science of society. Not that he had the faintest understanding of science.
Adolph made various claims to religion. He seemed to favour the old religion of the Norse gods at times. But he never claimed to be an atheist.
Marx spoke of religion being the opiate of the masses, but Marxism has all the features of a religion. There is no god, but the state is offered as a substitute.
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Atheism isn’t a foundation for Marxism.
Of course it is.
These days many Marxists claim to be Christian.
Don’t confuse Marxism with socialism. The Catholic pope is a socialist, but I wouldn’t call him a Marxist at least not yet.
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Marx was an atheist, but that wasn’t central to Marxism. He built on Hegel and basically claimed to have developed a science of society. Not that he had the faintest understanding of science.
The foundational belief of atheism and Marxism is materialism. Atheism has to come first.
More tomorrow.
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Adolph made various claims to religion. He seemed to favour the old religion of the Norse gods at times. But he never claimed to be an atheist.
He was more into gnosticism.
TIK has picked up on this in a ham fisted way but a few have gone into this before.
The problem is to really go into his battiness on religion & gnosticism, it means reading/listening to a lot of analysis of Mein Kampf (TIK got that part right). -
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Glenn Greenwald reviews the Russell Brand allegations.
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The gist of what Hitler believed (according to the gnostic theory) is that he didn’t believe in the christian god.
He believed in the gnostic “super-god”.
Whenever he referenced god in Mein Kampf or speeches, he was referring to this super-god.
All his fruity nazi buddies bought into it (probably not Goering but most of the rest).
And the super-god power/energy/chi only flowed through aryan blood.
Similar to scientology, you only found out about the super-god once you were high enough up the food chain.
That’s the gnostic super-god Hitler theory.Very f*cking fruity.
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Telling shot on Sky last night when the amazing Marrickville houso was being questioned about the Qatar corruption.
There, standing behind his shoulder was the organ grinder – Andrews.
He was always Andrew’s cypher.
His arrogant pronouncements and sneering dismissils of opponents or rare questioners are straight out of Andrew’s playbook. -
I was on the phone to the harvest and trucking contractor for our sorghum operation up on the Gregory.
He said that a couple of the blackfellas in his team have been copping rather robust abuse for working for whitey and not promoting the Voice.
He claimed that the abusers weren’t locals. Race relations up there, as opposed to on the coast, have always been excellent, unnoticeable. Good relations extend way back to pioneer days and there is lots of employment and business relations, and of course sport.
He claimed that these blokes were from Townsville which sounds about right – a s’hole. They must be keen. It’s a long long drive.
He believed that they were from JCU. Everyone up there hates JCU, so that is probably a suspect assertion. -
Telling shot on Sky last night when the amazing Marrickville houso was being questioned about the Qatar corruption.
There, standing behind his shoulder was the organ grinder – Andrews.
He was always Andrew’s cypher.
His arrogant pronouncements and sneering dismissils of opponents or rare questioners are straight out of Andrew’s playbook.You could be right bons but all of the Labor/Green set are nasty individuals.
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His arrogant pronouncements and sneering dismissils of opponents or rare questioners are straight out of Andrew’s playbook.
That stuff only works when you have a Cabinet of mushrooms and the Victoriastan Lieborals in Opposition. Mr 32% has at least a couple of colleagues with ice picks and Spud isn’t doing a bad job. The SloMo factor is already history.
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The ACT is a far-left sewer, which should be smashed to smithereens by a Coalition government…
Bruce Lehrmann matter goes from bad to worse
JANET ALBRECHTSENWhen it comes to the nation’s most controversial scandal, the Lehrmann matter goes from bad to worse. There are further disturbing signs of institutional failure in the ACT.
So far there is no indication that the ACT government will take any action against the territory’s former chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold despite the public board of inquiry’s damning findings against him. The ACT Greens-Labor government didn’t even sack him, instead allowing Drumgold to resign.
Based on the findings of the Sofronoff report, the ACT government could be demanding that Drumgold be charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice or the common-law offence of misconduct in public office.
‘He has a lot to answer for’: Bruce Lehrmann says Shane Drumgold’s head is ‘still in the sand’
These governmental failures were compounded in recent weeks by other institutions dragging their feet. The ACT Bar Association and the ACT Supreme Court, likewise, have shown no signs of upholding the integrity of the legal profession and the court system, respectively, after the former director of public prosecution’s misbehaviour during the nation’s most controversial sexual assault trial.
The people of the ACT are still waiting for the Bar Association to do what it is charged to do under the Legal Profession Act 2006 – to promote and enforce the professional standards, competence and honesty of the legal profession, and provide a means of redress for complaints about lawyers.
Bruce Lehrmann complained about Drumgold’s behaviour to the ACT Bar Association on December 9 last year – before the ACT government announced a public inquiry.
Lehrmann is still waiting for some sign of action. Nine councillors sit on the ACT Bar Council, the body at the top of the ACT Bar Association that “is responsible for regulating the professional conduct” of the practising barristers. The Bar Council wrote back to Lehrmann in May.
In a profession that charges by the hour, it pays to be unhurried. But, still, that doesn’t explain why it took the Bar Council five months to tell Lehrmann it needed more information on one matter, and as to the other issues raised by Lehrmann, including that the DPP “did not fulfil the prosecutorial obligation to ensure a fair trial” – the Bar Council would wait for the final report of the Sofronoff inquiry.
The Sofronoff report was released on July 30. A week later, the ACT Bar Council said the findings “will receive careful consideration in the context of its role as the professional regulator of the ACT Bar”. It is September, and it’s crickets – still.
There is no indication that the ACT Bar Council has considered the report or intends to look at Lehrmann’s complaints against Drumgold.
Not unreasonably, this past weekend Lehrmann wrote back to them asking for an update.
“The findings of the report touched on some areas I raised in my complaint but uncovered alarming new examples of misconduct by Mr Drumgold that many were unaware of including further examples of deceit and non-disclosure to the defence team,” wrote Lehrmann.
The former Liberal staffer who has always maintained his innocence suggested the council “should adopt the inquiry report as evidence to support any investigation under way of Mr Drumgold”. While the council has power to reprimand a lawyer and order compensation, Lehrmann said those actions would be “woefully inadequate” given the serious findings in the Sofronoff report.
Instead, the ACT Bar Council should be referring this matter to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal, the body with the power to recommend the ultimate sanction, that a lawyer be removed from the roll of practitioners.
Indeed, the Bar Council has the power under section 411 of the Legal Profession Act to refer this matter to ACAT – without starting or finishing an investigation, if the council is satisfied there is a reasonable likelihood that Drumgold would be found guilty by ACAT of unsatisfactory professional conduct or professional misconduct.
What is the ACT Bar Council waiting for? What more does it need than the Sofronoff report for it to act?
There were a number of tax scandals in the 1990s where lawyers who engaged in misconduct handed in their practising certificates. The relevant ruling bar councils said that was not enough to signal the seriousness of the misconduct, and instigated proceedings to have the lawyers removed from the roll of practitioners.
Walter Sofronoff KC found that the ACT’s chief prosecutor knowingly lied to the Supreme Court, engaged in serious malpractice and grossly unethical conduct, “preyed on a junior lawyer’s inexperience” and treated criminal litigation as “a poker game in which a prosecutor can hide the cards”.
Had Drumgold succeeded in dishonestly preventing Lehrmann from obtaining material that could have helped his defence, any conviction would have been set aside on the ground of a miscarriage of justice, Sofronoff found.
What further prosecutorial misconduct is required for the ACT Bar Council to step up?
Lawyers are also wondering why the Chief Justice of the ACT Supreme Court has gone so quiet, apart from spruiking her commitment to social justice a few weeks ago in a YouTube clip for the University of NSW.
There are no signs that Chief Justice Lucy McCallum, the winner of the 2023 Alumni Award for Professional Achievement, is proposing to take any against a chief prosecutor who was found to have lied to her during a trial where a man could have gone to jail.
The Legal Profession Act makes it clear that nothing in the Act disturbs the inherent jurisdiction of the ACT Supreme Court. In other words, the court has the ultimate supervisory jurisdiction to deal with misconduct by lawyers.
The Chief Justice could initiate contempt proceedings, through the registrar of the Supreme Court, against the man who was found to have made false claims to her in court.
McCallum could initiate proceedings through the registrar of the Supreme Court to have Drumgold removed from the roll of practitioners.
In 2018, the prothonotary (a posh word for registrar) of the NSW Supreme Court took action to have disgraced former Labor MP Craig Thomson struck off the roll of practitioners.
The only discernible action taken at the ACT Supreme Court in relation to this matter is this: on September 14 the court set up an online file to make it easier for the media to follow Drumgold’s application for judicial review, launched last month to have the Sofronoff findings quashed.
To sum up, then, the ACT Supreme Court has taken no action against a prosecutor who was found to have lied to the Chief Justice but has taken action to assist the media in following Drumgold’s legal claim.
What makes this doubly weird is that the ACT Supreme Court didn’t offer the same ease of access to the media during the Lehrmann trial.
During the latter part of the public board of inquiry, Sofronoff sent Drumgold a notice of possible adverse findings against him. One was that Sofronoff could have found the DPP was not a fit and proper person to remain on the roll of barristers, or to remain in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
In response Drumgold’s lawyer, Mark Tedeschi SC, said those decisions were not part of Sofronoff’s remit.
And Sofronoff agreed. Instead, the judge set out the facts, made serious findings and left it to other institutions to do their job.
Those other institutions entrusted by the law, and by citizens, with upholding the administration of justice have done zip.
It would be unfortunate if this inaction leads people, not just lawyers, to wonder whether there is widespread institutional failure within the ACT, from the government to the legal profession to the judicial system.”
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FMD get a load of this headline from the Hun:
International Association of Academicians for Peace Oceania report says Indigenous elders should be brought into schools
So guessing there are other Academicians on the other continents. Article by Susie O’Brien:
Indigenous elders should be invited into schools to share their “values and wisdom” with students, global leaders say.
Rejecting a “back to basics” model of education, the international experts argue for a “renaissance in values education” in Australian schools and tertiary institutions.
So let’s not worry about the 3 Rs. What will these enlightened beings teach?
This includes the teaching of civics, citizenship, sexual ethics, cultural sensitivity and community engagement.
Mmmyes go on.
A report from the International Association of Academicians for Peace Oceania says strategies for teaching values could include bringing Indigenous elders into schools, along with the promotion of healthy attitudes to sex and the safe use of digital technology.
My parents and other elders around town wouldn’t know how to send an email. Like my manager at work.
One of Australia’s top education officials promoting values education is David de Carvalho, chief executive of the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority, the body that runs NAPLAN tests.
Mr Carvalho is quoted in the report as saying “we have much to learn about values education from our First Nations peoples” because of their “universal values” going back thousands of years.
He said there was a need to “recognise the central role that Aboriginal histories and cultures have played and continue to play in our wider history”.
Mr Carvalho also said the sexual assaults in the Australian parliament as well as the testimonies from “thousands of brave young women educated at some of our most prestigious schools” showed that values education was needed.
So asking elders of a culture who had child brides is the answer according to Mr Carvalho.
La Trobe University researcher Anna Urban, a former principal of St John’s College Preston, said most schools had values “but it’s not much good if they are little more than publicly displayed artefacts”.
“Are they known and understood; are they shared?” she said.
“Are they applied on the ground rather than just accepted as abstract concepts?”
Ms Urban said values “could also be used as reference points if things go wrong”.
Another researcher, Terry Lovat, is quoted in the report as saying testing regimes such as NAPLAN were standing in the way of values education.
“We used to go to principals’ meetings and people would be talking about the values and the wonderful imaginative things happening in their schools,” he said.
“Now we are talking about their NAPLAN results, basic literacy and numeracy skills development, and a kind of testing regime, which is frankly killing good education, and this sort of thing is happening all around the world.
He’s serious.
“We need to stop.”
I see. Another academician pipes up:
Universal Peace Federation Australia vice-president John Bellavance, lead author of the report, said values education led to enhanced social and emotional wellbeing as well as significant academic improvement.
The research draws on 51 values in schools projects running over four years that involve 312 schools, 100,000 students and 5000 teachers.
So don’t expect to send your kids to school for an education and learning math or science, oh no. Values and sexual ethics from Aboriginal elders. FMD.
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Coming on the heels of the Lyle Shelton legal win, in further good news….
Anti-trans sport campaigner claims win as AVO withdrawn
Clarissa ByeA conservative campaigner against trans players in female sport says she feels vindicated after an AVO taken against her by police on behalf of a Sydney transwoman soccer player was withdrawn in court.
Mum of three Kirralie Smith believes this is the first case in Australia where police apprehended violence orders were used in response to a social media post questioning a transgender woman playing in a female soccer competition.
Ms Smith, 52, was forced to hire top lawyers to defend her at Burwood Local Court — including former NSW Attorney-General Greg Smith, SC, to argue on free speech on constitutional grounds, and police withdrew the AVO in court at the last minute.
“It’s a win for free speech,” Ms Smith, a director of Binary Australia, said.
“It should never have been brought against me. It was ridiculous, I am one of the most polite, tamest Twitter users there are.”
Police served the AVO on behalf of Riley Dennis on the basis of a tweet Ms Smith posted critical of the fact the player was the highest goal scorer in the Football NSW League One Women’s first grade competition at the time.
In her tweet she did not name Ms Dennis but described the player as a male and questioned how fair the competition was.
Police served the AVO on behalf of soccer play Riley Dennis (dark uniform), who was the top goal scorer in the First Grade FNSW League 1 Womens competition.
After a complaint by Football Australia (FA), police visited Ms Smith and issued the AVO, preventing her from approaching or discussing Ms Dennis or visiting FA’s offices, despite Ms Smith living 300km away on the NSW north coast.
“She’s never met this person, never contacted this person, they didn’t email each other, they didn’t talk on social media,” Ms Smith’s solicitor Kyle Kutasi said.
“All she did was point out there were men playing women’s football and that was enough for Football Australia to bring a complaint to NSW Police on this person’s behalf. It’s highly extraordinary.”
Ms Smith said the AVO was taken out because her post incited violence but she said all she did was “repost publicly available information from Football NSW”.
“Our argument was going to be firstly, it doesn’t reach the standards of violence, and an AVO is an inappropriate use of that law,” she said.
“If that failed, we were going into a constitutional argument about implied freedom of political speech.
“I should have every right to use public information to inform the public about males playing in female sporting teams. The process of all this is the punishment.”
Ms Smith still faces more court battles over other social media posts, including a test case before the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal for “misgendering” the player.
Football NSW and Football Australia have been approached for a response.”
Nice to know that the NSW Police do the bidding of transperverts.
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Ms Smith, 52, was forced to hire top lawyers to defend her at Burwood Local Court — including former NSW Attorney-General Greg Smith, SC, to argue on free speech on constitutional grounds, and police withdrew the AVO in court at the last minute.
It should be noted that AVO’s & DVO’s are rarely contested & withdrawn even more rarely.
The threshold is just so low.
For the plod to withdraw it (as in this case) or a magistrate to set one aside demonstrates how fanciful the claims were. -
Makes you wonder! .. William Tyrell getz a headline media run every 3 weeks for years yet these 4 kids don’t get more than a mention half way down the media pages .. missing nearly a week and yet no media outcry, no plod appeal(s) ..
Reminds me of that 3 years old girl who disappeared out of a bedroom window she wasn’t tall enuf to reach in Leumea all those years ago .. no real outcry back then just aparagraph or two in the 3 day cycle …….
Makes you think that ROP kids disappearing, never to be seen again, is a fairly common event ……
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12533751/Children-missing-Doonside-Mother-shares-heartbreaking-plea.html -
Mr 32% has at least a couple of colleagues with ice picks and Spud isn’t doing a bad job. The SloMo factor is already history.
Those colleagues might have ice picks ready but given the leadership rules brought in by KRudd in 2013, unless he resigns he’ll be hard to get rid of. Sleazy and his Squeezy are enjoying the trappings.
I do agree that Dutton is doing a reasonable job, it’s Dutton who has the ice pick, and he’s slowly and very surely picking away at Sleazy.
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I received this email last night, from ADVANCE
The Yes campaign is spending MILLIONS
Dear XYZ,
Make no mistake:
This referendum is going down to the wire.
Last weekend, the Yes campaign revealed it is unleashing a $20 million advertising campaign*, backed by the mainstream media and big companies like Qantas.
They have big money and big celebrities on their side and they are letting us know it.
They have hit the ground running, with all guns blazing for the final weeks of the campaign.
But you and I know Australians want to be united under our Constitution, not divided by a Voice.
And that’s why I believe you and I can still win this.
Still, it’s going to be close.
The Yes campaign needs to spend big across the country, but in South Australia and Tasmania – the states you and I need to win to defeat the Voice – they will only spend about $3 million on TV and radio advertising.
Which means you and I can still match them by getting your powerful ‘no’ message out to as many people as possible in the key battleground states where the outcome of this referendum will be decided.
We need resources on the ground to win every vote we can.
Your fully tax-deductible contribution to the Fair Australia No campaign will go straight to the frontlines and help meet a crucial $3 million campaign funding target that will be critical for victory.
And your gift today will be DOUBLED by a $250,000 Matching Fund – thanks to Simon Fenwick, a generous supporter who wants to win this campaign for a FAIR AUSTRALIA by matching your gift dollar for dollar.
The full $250,000 Match Fund will only be released if friends like you respond to this challenge by midnight on Friday 22 September, which is why your support today is so important – whatever portion of the fund is not matched will be lost!
By investing your $500 today, thanks to the Match Fund your gift will be doubled to become $1000.
This is the only way we can come close to matching the Yes campaign’s advertising in South Australia and Tasmania.
This is how you can make sure the fight is in full force every single minute until the polls close on October 14.
Because you and I know Australia needs this referendum to be defeated.
The cost of waking up Sunday morning with the Voice enshrined in our Constitution is just too great.
Your contribution will strengthen the fight and make sure ‘no’ stays within striking distance as the race tightens ahead of referendum day.
This is your chance to win this fight.Grateful for you,
Matthew Sheahan
Director, ADVANCE*The Sydney Morning Herald, ‘“Will I live as long as other Australians?” Yes launches last chance $20 million ad blitz’, September 15, 2023.
If Cats would like to contribute, they can do so here.
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The morning newspaper tells me that Top Men at the Bureau have declared an El Nino and that Dangerous Heating will occur in Meanjin this afternoon – 29°, rising to an unbearable 33° tomorrow.
While cleaning the Webley at the breakfast table, I assure Mrs Faustus that I won’t let her or the dogs suffer.
Grand lass that she is, she tells me it will all be fine and puts on a great show of getting ready for work as usual. Of course, she’s trying to take some of the burden from me.
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Dr. John Campbell interviewing Mr Ches Crosbie, National Citizens Inquiry administrator. Canadian authorities have not held any enquiry into their Covid response.
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Near Penrith atm.
37 on Mon, 35 yesterday & 36 today. On Monday exiting ferry at Circular Quay sun was hot but soon as we went into the shade didn’t feel like 30, more like 25 with a cool breeze. Even western suburbs are bearable. However in 3 months time if this keeps up be like the summers of the early 1980’s that I remember as a schoolchild. Maybe get tar melting as well…
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The true enemy of America is the Republican Party surprisingly. The Democrats will always complain, grift, cheat, and gleefully ignore the law. Who will stop then? In a real two-party system it would be Republicans, but they are weak, milquetoast losers who do nothing but talk.
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Steve trickler
Sep 20, 2023 2:00 AM
Brilliant.‘Dancing On The Ceiling’ – An Old School Mash Up
Dammit Steve, now you’ve got me watching wholesome dancing videos to 80’s hits.
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Darren J. Beattie
@DarrenJBeattieCharging Ray Epps now for “disorderly conduct” is not going to make the Feds’ credibility problem go away
It’s too late for them. This is just making them look desperate
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Nice to know that the NSW Police do the bidding of transperverts.
This next story is a mystery, a really inscrutable mystery.
Dire NSW cop shortage forcing detectives back on the beat (DT, 18 Sep, paywalled)
Detectives across the state are being pulled off investigations and put back into uniform to cover shortages on the front line due to a staffing crisis in the NSW Police Force.
Maybe if they stopped persecuting righties on social media they’d have more time to chase crooks? It’s a thought.
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The Redheaded libertarian
@TRHLofficialAll Russell Brand’s accusers went through the media, not the courts. They made a documentary, they didn’t file a police report. Convince me they want Justice, and not money.
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YouTube demonetized Russell Brand over an unproven sexuaI assault allegation
How many of Jeffrey Epstein’s Hollywood clients did YouTube suspend?
How about Bill Clinton, a man who visited pedophiIe island and is accused of rape?
How about Joe Biden, who groped girls on camera and is accused of rape?
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Apropos of the No campaign email at 7:37 AM:
Cats should note how active the YES maggots are. Making a concerted effort, which also happens to be well funded.
On the other hand, I detect significant complacency on the NO side, thinking they’ve already won, so, just coasting on this one.This is why Leftards win: commitment to the cause AND sustained, almost fanatical amounts of effort. This despite the extensive support of the MSM.
When one adds the potential for AEC vote-rigging..I hope I am wrong.
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And thanks for the discussion on Hypatia, and the contemporary political life of Alexandria.
If in Egypt, worth a look at the city, and of course the new library.
There’s a lot of bull surrounding the lady, all viewed as usual through the modern lens and not the brutal realities of life in the final days of Rome. We do like to make our heroines thoroughly modern women, #metoo pioneers.
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Pretty sure there’ll never be a Nipponese book
declaring the Yamato race were black. -
Grattan Institute says Bowen’s nuclear figures are dodgy.
However, “There is also a lack of a social licence to support a nuclear industry in Australia at the moment and there would need to be work done to develop community support…”
Expect that “social license” to be granted come the blackouts.
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The Pom’s online safety bill has passed its final reading.
If social media platforms do not comply with these rules, Ofcom could fine them up to £18 million or 10% of their global annual revenue, whichever is biggest – meaning fines handed down to the biggest platforms could reach billions of pounds.
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“Now we are talking about their NAPLAN results, basic literacy and numeracy skills development, and a kind of testing regime, which is frankly killing good education, and this sort of thing is happening all around the world.
No, it is only happening in the degenerate western countries. China, Russia and other grown-up Asian countries know what is a good education. It is development of literacy and numeracy skills that advances humanity, not learning how to gender transition or glorifying long discarded Stone Age practices.
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Yet Again I refer to Melbourne 1968
Get your Weather Station Number from here
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/lists_by_element/alphaAUS_122.txt
Insert station number having selected Daily Maximum Temperature with
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/index.shtml
Select 1968 & Days Above 30C
Melbourne 30 Days above 30C for Jan-Feb-Mar 1968
1968 Days above 35C
Melbourne 19 Days above 35C for Jan-Feb-Mar 1968
1968 days above 40C
Melbourne 4 Days above 40C for Jan-Feb-Mar 1968
It’s called Summer in Australia and it is no hotter today
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Measures tried so far have included free breakfasts, a bus from the kid’s door to school, making the curriculum “relevant” – whatever that means – and teaching in the kid’s local language:
Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney will expand on what she will seek advice on from the voice, citing the remote school attendance strategy as a Canberra-developed program that “isn’t working”.
More than $270m has been spent on the strategy since 2014 but in very remote areas Indigenous students’ attendance has gone from 67.9 per cent in 2014 to 52.2 per cent last year.
“(The program was) developed with good intentions, but without listening,” Mr Burney will say, according to a preview of her speech to a CEDA forum in Perth on Wednesday.“Across the 84 schools in the program attendance has actually gone backwards … even before COVID. It’s what happens when governments make policies for Indigenous communities, not with communities.
“As the Minister, I will go to the voice and say: ‘this school attendance program isn’t working, help me to get the best possible advice to fix it from every corner of the country – about how we can do better’.”
How about closing down the concept of a community where adults model what’s best by having no job and yet getting money from the government?
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Hi calli, saw your comment about the latest outrage against the work of The Divine Agatha.
Whoever it is in charge of administering her literary estate should hang their heads in shame. The insertion of ‘woke’ themes and characters in the TV adaptations is bad enough, but this latest one is plain ridiculous.
They are also censoring the books to comport with the current ‘progressive’ agendas, which is vandalism, pure and simple.
Knowing what I do about her as a personality, I find it impossible to believe that she would be OK with this stuff if she were still alive. And let’s face it, it’s not as if she needed the money.
A pox on these intellectual and moral midgets, say I! 🙁
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Another piece at the Oz about how universities are indoctrinating trainee teachers, with a heavy emphasis on all the Woke stuff.
Fortunately, apparantly, some of these trainees are complaining that they would prefer to be taught how to keep order in class and how to actually teach the children how to read and write.
No wonder our school children’s education is going backwards.
Universities deliver ‘woke’ degrees to trainee teachers who demand more practical training
“Woke’’ universities are instructing trainee teachers in gender theory, climate activism and race relations, as young teachers demand practical classroom skills.
One in five teachers has warned the federal Education Department that universities failed to teach them all the practical skills required to teach children to read and write, or to manage classrooms.
Up to one-third of recent teaching graduates from some universities declared their degree had failed to prepare them for the classroom.
Teachers-in-training have been lectured on “postmodernism, existentialism and reconstructionism” in the University of Canberra’s initial teacher education degree.Course materials sent to students show lecturers have critiqued the “social and political content’’ of the Australian Curriculum, mandated by the nation’s education ministers for teaching children from primary school through to year 10.
A lecture slide notes “we aren’t even doing a very good job”, tallying up 19 references to social justice, Aboriginal rights, invasion, colonisation, the Stolen Generation, assimilation, social justice and racism.
The course material includes a slide from CNN, with the title “Our World Today’’, linking climate change to aggression and violent behaviour, depression and anxiety, farmer suicide and forced migration.Thousands of students skipped school on Friday to march in “School Strikes 4 Climate’’ protests in Brisbane, Darwin and Melbourne.
One protester brandished a misspelt placard declaring “I’M MAD AND DISSAPOINTED”.
Two of Australia’s most eminent scientists – Nobel laureate and Australian National University vice-chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt and former chief scientist Dr Alan Finkel – this week criticised the poor levels of literacy and numeracy among school students and called for greater focus on schools teaching the basics of English and mathematics.
One-third of school students failed to meet the minimum standards for reading, writing and numeracy in this year’s NAPLAN (National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy) tests, with students twice as likely to fail than to excel in the tests.
But many teachers are struggling with literacy and numeracy themselves, as universities fill their teaching degrees with lectures on social justice.
The federal Education Department revealed on Tuesday that many teachers fresh from university feel their degrees failed to prepare them for classroom teaching.
“A lot of students talked about the need to have more practical on-the-job training as part of the course and some suggested something along the lines of an apprenticeship model,’’ said Lisa Bolton, director of research and strategy for the department’s Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching survey of university graduates.
“They wanted to know more about classroom behaviour management, dealing with parents and dealing with students with particular learning needs.
“They said the placement was too short, the course was too theoretical and even a bit outdated. A few had made comments about wanting the lecturers to have more recent teaching experience in schools.’’
One University of Canberra final-year student told The Australian the education degree was “teaching us to indoctrinate students’’. “It teaches about gender diversity and critical race theory rather than drilling down on the fundamental skills so we can be really effective teachers ourselves,’’ the student said.
“I’m pretty irritated by all the politically correct and woke stuff.
“We could learn more in a school classroom than in the university … and save ourselves and the taxpayer a lot of money.’’
At the University of Canberra, a lecturer’s slide about “postmodernist writing’’ includes a rambling and incomprehensible 92-word sentence: “The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.’’
A University of Canberra spokeswoman said the student’s complaints “do not accurately represent’’ the quality and content of its degree. She said trainee teachers were given practicum placements in schools, ranging from a week in the first year to 30 days in the fourth year of study.
“Taken together, all units of study that focus on a key learning area of the Australian Curriculum – mathematics, English, science etc – represent approximately 50 per cent of the total units studied by students in an undergraduate course of initial teacher education,’’ the spokeswoman said.
“The other half of the courses focuses on educational and developmental psychology, classroom and behaviour management, the use of data to improve learning, designing learning for diversity and inclusion, and the development of a professional identity well-informed by policy, theory, appropriate sources of professional learning and codes of conduct and practice.’’
Federal, state and territory education ministers have given universities until the start of 2025 to update their degrees to focus more on classroom management, children’s brain development and the teaching of phonics-based reading and writing, as well as mathematics.
The detail of what is taught in existing university degrees is kept secret: universities must submit course content to state and territory teaching accreditation bodies for approval, but most only publish a broad outline on their websites.
The Australian sought the universities’ course materials from the Queensland College of Teachers but was told they could not be released “for privacy reasons’’.
The University of Queensland’s website shows that teaching students spend the first six weeks of their degree learning about “sociological ideas and concepts needed for understanding the complexities of schooling and the social processes that often go on within them”. “We delve into the history of knowledge production in sociology, and explore the need to decolonise, expand and diversify what we know about schools and the processes that go on in them,’’ it states.
Students are assessed, in part, on a 10-minute verbal presentation explaining concepts such as “decolonising knowledge’’, the “myth of meritocracy” and “deficit discourses’’. Another lecture is about “expanding notions of sex, gender and sexuality’’.
At Victoria University, the very first subject in its teaching degree aims to “develop understanding for the cultures, histories and languages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and to use this knowledge in the promotion of reconciliation”.
The teaching of science, maths and reading is not covered until the second year, and students must wait until the final year of their four-year degree to specialise in subjects such as biology and humanities, or to integrate the use of digital technologies in lessons.
Charles Sturt University’s course handbook for its Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood and Primary) has a list of 11 outcomes for its graduates.
The top priority is for graduates to be “agents of change’’’.
“Graduates from this course will teach for social justice and equity,’’ it states. The fifth priority is that “graduates from this course will teach for student learning’’.
At the University of Adelaide, an introduction to Australian history “treats the development of Australian society to the present through the lenses of Aboriginal deep time history; convicts and colonialism; war and conflict; migration and multiculturalism; landscape and the environment, and; the development of democratic institutions”.
Despite 13 years at school and four at university, 7 per cent of the 20,000 final-year trainee teachers failed to pass the mandatory literacy and numeracy test in 2021.
The Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education Students was set up as a guardrail to keep poorly trained teachers out of classrooms.
The test includes questions that could be answered by primary school students, such as correcting a spelling error or answering: “This year a teacher spent $383.30 on stationery. Last year the teacher spent $257.85 on stationery. How much more did the teacher spend this year than last year?’’
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Bowen is running out of time and options on power
Chris Bowen is proof that Australians are likely to pay a high price for ideological purity when it comes to energy.
By The Australian EDITORIAL
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basic literacy and numeracy skills development, and a kind of testing regime, which is frankly killing good education,
This can be fixed, by bringing in abo elders to our schools and inspiring the kids with their stories of the noble savages out in the community,hunting and gathering, looking after their families and making yuuge contributions to our society.
This will really prepare them for their working future.
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‘Barrelling towards catastrophe’ as extreme heat flares
– AAP
‘El Nino threat stalks beaches and beyond’
– The Australian
‘Fire weather on steroids’
– Daily Telegraph
‘El Nino announcement comes with grim climate warning’
– New Daily
‘‘Extreme’: Brutal Aussie summer declared’
– Yahoo news
‘BOM’s wild map after big summer call’
– news.com.au
And they wonder that kids have mental health issues.
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Confirmation of something I thought was happening:
EV Sales In Decline To Private Buyers (19 Sep)
However, the number of [battery] electric cars bought by private owners has fallen from more than one in three of the BEV market to less than one in four in just a year. … The vast majority of new BEV registrations this year — more than 75 per cent — were with fleets and business owners
It’s companies and fleets that are buying them, ordinary people aren’t so much. Got to do the ESG virtue signalling rituals! And the few that private buyers do actually buy probably reflect the looney green end of the political spectrum, which is a very limited market. And even then they’re likely to be second cars for high income people who also have a ICE car as well.
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Measures tried so far have included free breakfasts, a bus from the kid’s door to school, making the curriculum “relevant” – whatever that means – and teaching in the kid’s local language:
There are children in some of the remote communities that have English as a third or fourth language. I’m sure being fluent in a dialect that probably about thirty other people on the face of the earth also speak is really going to help in the twenty first century.
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The main BEV (Battery Elec Vehicles) issue for private buyers is the residual value. Dealers are reluctant to take a Tesla as a trade-in as second hand Teslas don’t sell without a huge price reduction. Dealers have been burnt over the last 1-2 years. Tesla owners are being advised to sell privately. That’s when outdated tech and recent price reductions flow on to the Used Car market….reality bites the Tesla owner and it bites hard.
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Another piece at the Oz about how universities are indoctrinating trainee teachers, with a heavy emphasis on all the Woke stuff.
Credentialization is also rampant.
Teachers With MAs Don’t Know How to Teach Children to Read (19 Sep)
When teachers with MAs can’t figure out how to teach children to read, that’s a devastating indictment of a failed system. If we want more kids reading, we need fewer MAs.
If teachers in training are kept in the university system for four, five or even six years then they are nicely sorted into a lockstep-lefty cohort. Righties either won’t endure the ideology for so long, or they will be failed by their progressive professors.
The article is US-centric, but fits well with the article in the Oz.
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Top Ender
Sep 19, 2023 10:40 PM
Universities deliver ‘woke’ degrees to trainee teachers who demand more practical training“Woke’’ universities are instructing trainee teachers in gender theory, climate activism and race relations, as young teachers demand practical classroom skills.
Ooops, I didn’t read back far enough. Sorry.
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The Nice YES People Continue with the Nastiness
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2023/09/respect-albanese-style.html
and
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Rollout rage: power struggle and a ‘shocked minister’
[unlinkable OZ]Infrastructure Minister Catherine King joined farmers, councils and environmentalists in attacking consultation on the Victorian-NSW Interconnector transmission project, which will plug renewables into the grid and help achieve Labor’s 2030 emissions reduction target.
Amid growing concerns in regional Australia about transmission line upgrades and offshore wind turbines, Ms King told the Australian Energy Market Operator to “engage thoroughly and honestly with impacted communities … from project conception, to construction and beyond”.
Ms King’s extraordinary intervention heaps pressure on Energy Minister Chris Bowen to urgently address rising community anger over government consultation on renewable projects and massive transmission lines integrating solar and wind farms into the electricity system.
A Minister with integrity throwing her career on the line in the National Interest?
In her submission to AEMO, which is overseeing a project plagued by delays and cost blowouts, Ms King said parts of her electorate would be significantly impacted if a Western Renewables Link transmission station was built by VNI West north of Ballarat.
Perhaps not.
Appears that Farmer Gez has yanked the big lever marked ‘Self Interest’ into the ‘Panic’ position.Technical Note: The AEMO Clown Circus is turning out to be Shitweasel Bowen’s most dangerous political enemy.
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Bruce of Newcastle
Sep 20, 2023 8:37 AMAnother piece at the Oz about how universities are indoctrinating trainee teachers, with a heavy emphasis on all the Woke stuff.
Credentialization is also rampant.
Teachers With MAs Don’t Know How to Teach Children to Read (19 Sep)
When teachers with MAs can’t figure out how to teach children to read, that’s a devastating indictment of a failed system. If we want more kids reading, we need fewer MAs.
If teachers in training are kept in the university system for four, five or even six years then they are nicely sorted into a lockstep-lefty cohort. Righties either won’t endure the ideology for so long, or they will be failed by their progressive professors.
The article is US-centric, but fits well with the article in the Oz.
The Old Teachers College Scholarship seemed to work well
There were 600 students and thirty-odd staff members at Teachers College in 1962. Most of us had only just turned sixteen when we started at Armidale, and would be out in front of classes by the time we turned eighteen.
At college, we learnt how to teach all the theory subjects, as well as choosing several options seen as being part of our general educational enhancement. It was like an American campus, in that everything took place on site and we were housed in segregated student accommodation colleges within walking distance of the college on the hill. There was little chance of sexual misconduct in those days, as we had to be inside by nine o’clock during the week and eleven on weekends.
One of my options was Philosophy with Miss Margaret Mackie. (See the tiny stockinged figure in the bottom far-right of the student and staff photo). She was a brilliant teacher. An inspirational teacher. She taught me how to think. It was during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet bloc. We discussed issues to do with the atomic bomb that made it less frightening for us.
Miss Mackie made me realise that you could have different opinions from the rest of the crowd without feeling like a renegade.
She made us all think. I even loved doing her syllogisms.
She taught us about Socrates and Plato and regaled me with stories of the Delphic Oracle.
Despite having studied with other fantastic lecturers in universities both here and overseas, no-one surpassed Margaret Mackie for sheer pedagogical brilliance.
The Deterioration of Teacher Training
From the early 20th century until die late 1960s teacher training was conducted
mainly in small teachers’ colleges, controlled by State Departments of Education.
The colleges trained primary teachers in two-year courses. Secondary teachers obtained a university degree and then completed a one-year Diploma in Education
course given at a college. The colleges had close contact with the schools and devised their courses to suit the local school system. The lecturers were recruited
from successful teachers in state schools. The students held Departmental scholarships and in return signed a bond to serve in government schools, usually for threeyears, wherever required. After the probationary teachers had taught for three
years, inspectors, aided by school principals, confirmed that they were of adequate
standard.The constant shortage of teachers from 1941 to 1975 made it hard to set very
high entry standards, and some poor-quality candidates were recruited. On the
other hand, the shortage until the 1960s of alternative jobs, in a pioneering society,
for educated men and women ensured that many entrants into teacher training had
fairly high academic qualifications. By and large, this centralised, state-dominated
system produced ‘fair average quality’ teachers. -
However, “There is also a lack of a social licence to support a nuclear industry in Australia at the moment
The last episode of Q&A had some young bloke from QLD putting forward the case for nuclear – or at least pointing out the nonsense of Bowen’s position.
Here is a clip of Chris Kenny interviewing him including snippets from the program.
What I noticed was that when the kid made his points he was applauded. And this is Q&A, with its audience balance of 80:20 left v right. That would seem to bespeak something about social license.
(Okay, in fairness ‘social license’ was only ever a made up thing meant to be separate from the views of society at large. Bob Brown might have made it up, I think.)
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‘Fire weather on steroids’
– Daily Telegraph
‘El Nino announcement comes with grim climate warning’
– New Daily
‘‘Extreme’: Brutal Aussie summer declared’
– Yahoo news
‘BOM’s wild map after big summer call’
– news.com.auAnd they wonder that kids have mental health issues.
Why do we need the BOM or media weather reporters? Let’s go straight to the top poultry expert “The Sky Is Falling”.
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