Рок-н-рольная правда-матка
25 minutes ago
Saturday 14 May 2011
Hey Preacher! Leave those kids alone
In Australia we have an ostensibly secular and progressive government, which also claims to be fiscally prudent. It’s just blown $220 million on a program which is offensive to the principle of state independence from religious influence.
The reason: having avowed her atheism, Julia Gillard is now desperate to appease the Christian lobby. As such, one of the biggest new spending measures in what was unconvincingly billed as a tough-minded post-disaster budget will see chaplains running about in 3500 public schools, filling kids’ heads with what many people regard as fantastic nonsense.
The measure is outlined on page 33 of Tuesday’s Budget Overview document under the headline “Making Every School a Great School.” Speaking from personal experience, the headline jars with the reality of what these school chaplains provide.
My daughter finished up last year at a fantastic K2 (kindergarten to grade two) public school in Sydney, where she and other students were taught what was called scripture once a week. Being a fairly ambivalent type of atheist, and one who is uncomfortable with the derisive atheism of writers such as Richard Dawkins, I didn’t think scripture classes would necessarily be a bad thing, provided they served as a generalised kind of religious education which also provided some familiarity with the Bible.
My presumption was wrong. Most of what was taught in these classes was absurd, framed around the conceited dogma that it is impossible to become a good person unless you believe in God, and choose the right God to believe in. None of this was the fault of the school, which like so many others has no involvement with the “services” external chaplains provide.
Their evangelical mindset was best evidenced by the exercise books the kids were given, which on one page asked students to put a tick (for good) or a cross (for bad) next to drawings of children who behaved in certain ways.
There was a girl who always packed her toys away. Tick. There was a boy who used bad words. Cross. There was a boy who prayed every day. Tick, apparently, because as we all know, any kid who doesn’t pray to God daily is destined to burn in eternal hellfire, and it’s important that children know this from the age of seven.
It is probably more important that from the age of seven every student reads well and has a good grasp of numbers. At a time when many students can do neither, the $222 million would be better spent on specialised teacher positions, added features for the MySchool website, more Smart Boards, books, sports equipment – or not spent on anything at all.
What is also important is that the Federal Government respects the rights of parents who have selected a secular education for their children. Religion should be a private choice. The chaplaincy program places it in a public setting. It means that parents who are troubled by the idea of some unknown vicar waffling on to their kids about the almighty and the afterlife must decide whether they want their children to take part or not. They have to choose between the rigmarole of explaining to their kids why they’re being excluded from a class most other students are attending – or just shrugging their shoulders and letting their kids go anyway, even if they think it’s a meaningless waste of time.
Another flaw with the system is that the chaplains are laughably instructed to avoid sermonising but to talk in general terms about concepts such as kindness and charity and issues such as bereavement. This approach is in direct opposition to the training they have received. The entire basis of their work is theological. It’s like asking someone with dental training to work as a general practitioner.
One of the strongest critics of the chaplaincy program is former NSW Premier Bob Carr who has attacked the scheme on his excellent blog, Thoughtlines. I spoke to Carr yesterday who was disappointed and angry that the Gillard Government had chosen to extend the scheme.
“I think it is indefensible that all taxpayers are required to support a program that is gradually becoming church evangelism,” he said.
“There is enough feedback now to show that quite understandably chaplains cannot confine their activism. Evangelical work is their lifeblood and it’s naïve to expect them not to pursue it around young people. They can’t because of their training. They can’t approach these matters from any other perspective.
“As a result we have got breaches of what should be a very thick wall between church and state.”
Carr is dead right. Conservatives who deride state schools as being valueless, and regard the chaplaincy program as an attempt to introduce some values into the state system, are besmirching public schools and denying the rights of parents and children. State schools already teach values – kindness, tolerance, sharing, working for charity, helping the less fortunate. They should continue to do so in a manner devoid of religion.
It’s a private choice for parents who send their kids to those schools as to whether they want to bring their children up in a religious framework outside of school, or not expose them to religion at all. The Government shouldn’t be making that decision for us, especially at a time when it’s talking about fiscal restraint. As the French revolutionaries would say this is one program which should be put to the guillotine.
David Penberthy @'The Punch'
The reason: having avowed her atheism, Julia Gillard is now desperate to appease the Christian lobby. As such, one of the biggest new spending measures in what was unconvincingly billed as a tough-minded post-disaster budget will see chaplains running about in 3500 public schools, filling kids’ heads with what many people regard as fantastic nonsense.
The measure is outlined on page 33 of Tuesday’s Budget Overview document under the headline “Making Every School a Great School.” Speaking from personal experience, the headline jars with the reality of what these school chaplains provide.
My daughter finished up last year at a fantastic K2 (kindergarten to grade two) public school in Sydney, where she and other students were taught what was called scripture once a week. Being a fairly ambivalent type of atheist, and one who is uncomfortable with the derisive atheism of writers such as Richard Dawkins, I didn’t think scripture classes would necessarily be a bad thing, provided they served as a generalised kind of religious education which also provided some familiarity with the Bible.
My presumption was wrong. Most of what was taught in these classes was absurd, framed around the conceited dogma that it is impossible to become a good person unless you believe in God, and choose the right God to believe in. None of this was the fault of the school, which like so many others has no involvement with the “services” external chaplains provide.
Their evangelical mindset was best evidenced by the exercise books the kids were given, which on one page asked students to put a tick (for good) or a cross (for bad) next to drawings of children who behaved in certain ways.
There was a girl who always packed her toys away. Tick. There was a boy who used bad words. Cross. There was a boy who prayed every day. Tick, apparently, because as we all know, any kid who doesn’t pray to God daily is destined to burn in eternal hellfire, and it’s important that children know this from the age of seven.
It is probably more important that from the age of seven every student reads well and has a good grasp of numbers. At a time when many students can do neither, the $222 million would be better spent on specialised teacher positions, added features for the MySchool website, more Smart Boards, books, sports equipment – or not spent on anything at all.
What is also important is that the Federal Government respects the rights of parents who have selected a secular education for their children. Religion should be a private choice. The chaplaincy program places it in a public setting. It means that parents who are troubled by the idea of some unknown vicar waffling on to their kids about the almighty and the afterlife must decide whether they want their children to take part or not. They have to choose between the rigmarole of explaining to their kids why they’re being excluded from a class most other students are attending – or just shrugging their shoulders and letting their kids go anyway, even if they think it’s a meaningless waste of time.
Another flaw with the system is that the chaplains are laughably instructed to avoid sermonising but to talk in general terms about concepts such as kindness and charity and issues such as bereavement. This approach is in direct opposition to the training they have received. The entire basis of their work is theological. It’s like asking someone with dental training to work as a general practitioner.
One of the strongest critics of the chaplaincy program is former NSW Premier Bob Carr who has attacked the scheme on his excellent blog, Thoughtlines. I spoke to Carr yesterday who was disappointed and angry that the Gillard Government had chosen to extend the scheme.
“I think it is indefensible that all taxpayers are required to support a program that is gradually becoming church evangelism,” he said.
“There is enough feedback now to show that quite understandably chaplains cannot confine their activism. Evangelical work is their lifeblood and it’s naïve to expect them not to pursue it around young people. They can’t because of their training. They can’t approach these matters from any other perspective.
“As a result we have got breaches of what should be a very thick wall between church and state.”
Carr is dead right. Conservatives who deride state schools as being valueless, and regard the chaplaincy program as an attempt to introduce some values into the state system, are besmirching public schools and denying the rights of parents and children. State schools already teach values – kindness, tolerance, sharing, working for charity, helping the less fortunate. They should continue to do so in a manner devoid of religion.
It’s a private choice for parents who send their kids to those schools as to whether they want to bring their children up in a religious framework outside of school, or not expose them to religion at all. The Government shouldn’t be making that decision for us, especially at a time when it’s talking about fiscal restraint. As the French revolutionaries would say this is one program which should be put to the guillotine.
David Penberthy @'The Punch'
Nine and a quarter hours of Rhythm + Sound with Tikiman live
Live sets from
New York
Detroit
Moscow
Barcelona
and somewhere in Switzerland...
One of the many missing posts that Blogger say they will restore...
Hmmm!
Friday 13 May 2011
Thursday 12 May 2011
Wednesday 11 May 2011
Cultural Revolutionaries
HERE
National Jukebox: Historical Recordings from the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives.
HERE
WARNING: Historical recordings may contain offensive language!
See - Nothing has changed!!!
HERE
WARNING: Historical recordings may contain offensive language!
See - Nothing has changed!!!
@zunguzungu I dream of a day when people can distinguish between (a) X deserves a trial and (b) X is not guilty #Pipedreams
zunguzungu Aaron Bady
@ggreenwald The idea that "justice" would mean prioritizing legal process over GET EM NOW is unthinkable.
Silent footage of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, and others in New York, Summer 1959
The location is in and around the Harmony Bar & Restaurant at E 9th St. and 3rd Ave. Others seen are Mary Frank (wife of film-maker Robert Frank) and children Pablo and Andrea, as well as Lucien's wife Francesca Carr and their three sons, Simon, Caleb and Ethan.
From the New York film archive.
Banksy's Tesco Petrol Bomb
All proceeds will go to the Peoples Republic of Stokes Croft and associates.
Via
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says whistleblowers cannot trust any website other than his own
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has warned whistleblowers to steer clear of rival whistleblowing sites set up by mainstream media outlets, saying that almost no website other than his own could be trusted.
The Australian freedom of information activist said people considering leaking sensitive information could not trust confidential sites such as a new one created by the Wall Street Journal, saying that Wikileaks was one of just a few that could be guaranteed to protect their sources.
Before taking the risk of giving a media outlet confidential information whistleblowers should check whether the organisation had secure technology and a track record of standing up to authority, he said, insisting that the Wall Street Journal "doesn't measure up on any criteria."
The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corporation, which also publishes The Australian, but Mr Assange did offer some support to the Rupert Murdoch-led media group by defending its British Sunday newspaper, the News of the World over its phone hacking scandal.
Mr Assange launched a withering attack on the Guardian newspaper for its exhaustive coverage of the News of the World scandal, which has seen one reporter jailed and others questioned by police for tapping into the mobile phone voice messages of celebrities.
Newspapers which highlighted the phone-hacking scandal were threatening the free flow of information by making it difficult for media outlets to publish the contents of intercepted telephone calls, said Mr Assange, who claimed that the Guardian and the New York Times had partly been motivated by their corporate rivalry with News Corporation.
Siding with the tabloid newspaper famed for its scoops about the private lives of celebrities, Mr Assange said "a middle-class moral majority that embodies itself in the Guardian" had derided such stories.
In a surprisingly strong defence of populist journalism the internet activist said the media's test of what was in the "public interest" should be shaped by what the public or "the proletariat" was interested in.
Mr Assange has had bitter fallings out with the Guardian and the New York Times, which worked closely with him last year before eventually criticising some of his methods and reporting extensively on allegations that he had committed sex crimes in Sweden.
Mr Assange's defence of the tabloid newspaper came at a ceremony in London to award him a gold medal from the Sydney Peace Institute for his whistleblowing work.
"When organisations like the Guardian write over 100 articles on the News of the World being involved in putting in default passwords into voice mailboxes - because that is what we are actually talking about here - they are taking space from other things and they also have other agendas at work," he said.
"The other agendas at work are attacking newspaper rivals in the same market, it is their biggest rival in the same market, it should be obvious to everyone."
"The New York Times became involved because similarly it wants to attack the Wall Street Journal in its market."
Mr Assange said that Wikileaks had aired some major political issues in Peru by publishing leaked intercepts of telephone conversations between politicians and business leaders.
For the Guardian and New York Times "to engender a climate where that is hard to do is extremely dangerous."
"The British press should be very careful what they are doing in relation to spending time on that as opposed to all the other injustices they could be spending their time on."
Mr Assange said the media "misuses its power in approximate proportion to the size of the particular industrial grouping and News Corporation is a very large industrial grouping and it uses it power accordingly" but that did not justify the attacks on the News of the World.
To criticise stories about the private lives of celebrities "is to say that the interests of the proletariat which are the readers of the News of the World are insignificant and are not important and that the middle-class moral majority that embodies itself in the Guardian is to be the arbiter of what is important and what is not important."
"And if the reality is that the readers of the News of the World, and there are very many, find a particular thing to be of significance, a particular character or personality to be influential to their lives, the information about how that person truly behaves is also influential to their lives."
"It also seems to me it is a way to get into the Guardian news about celebrities and about the tabloid salacious rumours, you can just report on what the News of the World has done."
"So generally I say that the public interest is to be determined by what the public is interested in because otherwise...who is going to determine the public interest if it is not the public, is it going to be a self appointed committee of people?
"Well who appoints those people, who appoints that committee... how do we know that process won't become corrupted?"
Mr Assange said he applauded the idea of media organisations such as the WSJ and the broadcaster Al-Jazeera setting up their own sites to confidentially receive whistle-blowing information but the reality was that whistleblowers should be careful about who they trusted.
"So for the WSJ and for similar organisations that whistle blowers are thinking about dealing with it is not just the technology it is a combination of the technology and the people. The technology is opaque and very complex and sophisticated if done right so how are you to assess whether technology has been done right?"
"How are you to assess whether these people will sell you out, as the WSJ permits in its terms and conditions to sell you out any time they like?
"You have to look at the people who are running the organisation, what is their history and their experience. Have they stood up to pressure before and have they managed themselves well before so there is actually very, very few organisations. "There are almost no organisations other than us that have that track record.
"On individual journalists there is just a few with a track record of not buckling when they receive pressure and so I would advise everyone who is thinking a bout disclosing confidential information to look very closely at the track record of the people that they may be dealing with - but don't google their name from your home."
Peter Wilson @'The Australian'
Gaza Strip (2002)
In early 2001 I spent three months in Gaza filming material for this documentary, GAZA STRIP, working with local fixer and translator, Mohammed Mohanna. The second Palestinian uprising against Israeli military occupation had begun in September, 2000, and there had already been large numbers of deaths in Gaza when I started this project.
Though the period this documentary covers includes the election of Ariel Sharon as Israeli Prime Minister and large incursions by the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza, in retrospect the time depicted here is one of relative quiet. More recent Israeli attacks against Gaza have been far more destructive and deadly than what falls into the scope of this film.
The time since the release of this film in 2002 has seen many changes, including the evacuation of illegal Israeli settlements inside the Gaza Strip and the election of Hamas. However, the occupation and attacks against Gaza continue, and the blockade of Gaza has intensified. It is my hope that this film will provide a partial introduction to Gaza for those who have come to the subject recently, and also serve as a document of its time.
I am making this film available completely free, however those who wish to contribute to my future filmmaking efforts may do so via PayPal or mail on my website:
daylightfactory.com/gaza_strip.html
Thanks!
James Longley
Director, Camera, Editor, Music, Producer
Japan: MSF Continues Psychological Services for Earthquake Survivors
Japan 2011 © Yozo Kawabe/MSF
MSF staff supervise construction of a temporary shelter by local evacuees at Baba-Nakayama.
Two months after a massive earthquake and tsunami hit northeast Japan, a team of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Japanese psychologists are continuing to work with survivors as government-led recovery efforts expand across the region.MSF has also designed, provided materials for, and managed the construction of a temporary housing shelter for 30 people in Baba-Nakayama in Miyagi prefecture. Completed May 4, the temporary shelter will alleviate overcrowded conditions at the town’s main center, thereby strengthening infection control and decreasing stress-related disorders among evacuees.
During the planning phase, many evacuees expressed a strong desire to be involved in the construction of the center. When building got underway, 25 local people took part—workers at the site were provided with safety gear and supervised by MSF staff—and the facility was completed well ahead of the original schedule.
“There was a very positive atmosphere at the building site, with a lot of laughter and smiles among the workers, many of whom have been living in tents, cars, or half-destroyed houses due to overcrowding at the evacuations centers,” said Yozo Kawabe, the MSF logistician in charge of the project.
“They were really happy to play a hands-on role in the construction activities and the whole process was very therapeutic psychologically because these survivors of the disaster could unite towards a common goal and regain a sense of self-reliance.”
Medical authorities have requested that MSF continue to provide the three doctors currently supporting local clinics in the area. However, as the local medical infrastructure stabilizes, MSF is shifting the focus of its intervention towards providing psychological assistance to particularly vulnerable survivors of the disaster, including elderly evacuees, single parents, and those with physical disabilities and chronic diseases.
The team of six national psychologists is also providing educational activities at an evacuation facility in Minami Sanriku to help survivors living in the center identify those in need of psychological support and individual treatment. An open booth provides information on mechanisms for coping with stress, recognizing mental health issues, and finding additional assistance. Specialized information tailored for parents and evacuees taking care of the elderly is also available.
MSF established a café at the Bayside Arena Clinic in Minami Sanriku to function as a space where evacuees can interact with MSF staff directly in a less formal, more social environment. This provides opportunities to meet the population directly, build trust, and identify vulnerable cases for further referral and therapeutic treatment.
“Most people lost everything in the disaster, including family, colleagues, and friends, and the future is difficult to imagine,” said Ha Young Lee, a Korean psychologist who has previously worked with MSF in Indonesia following the Asian tsunami in 2005 and with North Korean refugees in Seoul. “Many of the evacuees are depressed and feel helpless, and many are also going through a mourning process while coping with living in particularly challenging physical circumstances.”
As the initial shock of the disaster recedes, families must now address the process of moving forward and dealing with relocation and financial issues. “The need for psychological services is only going to increase in the months ahead as survivors begin to face the challenges of rebuilding their lives,” Ha Young added. “They are already vulnerable and deeply emotionally traumatized, and stressful issues related to compensation and relocation are likely to trigger more serious mental health problems that need to be addressed.”
MORE
@'Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières'
AC/DC Say Their Songs Will Never Be Available For Download; Rest Of Internet Laughs
Capitalist Lion Tamer points us to the news that the band members of AC/DC are standing firm in saying that they will never allow authorized versions of their music to be sold online for download. The logic here seems to be entirely lacking. The band claims that it's because they want people to listen to the whole albums, not just tracks, but if that's the case then they should just release the whole album as a single track. The fact is that anyone who has their albums can choose to listen however they want. And any time one of their songs is played on the radio, only one song is heard -- yet you don't hear them talk about boycotting radio. But, of course, the bigger issue is that it's silly to not offer an authorized way for people to pay you for your music, when the alternative that plenty of people will choose, instead, is to simply download unauthorized versions where the band has no say at all.
Mike Masnick @'techdirt'
Mike Masnick @'techdirt'
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