Ridly Scott’s historical movies always need to be taken with a grain of salt. I love Gladiator, but as a history lesson, no. Kingdom of Heaven was dire, both as a movie and as history. Alien (not a historical movie, obviously!) was very good. Prometheus less so, and annoyingly riddled with unnecessary scientific inaccuracies.
But I am looking forward to Napoleon. As long as there are no egregious attempts to preach, and no obvious anachronisms in attitudes, it will be possible to overlook any minor inaccuracies, and just enjoy it as a movie.
Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Linda Burney has made emotional appeals for Australians to agree to the Voice, a constitutionally enshrined extra body of representation for people of a particular race, on the basis that this will resolve problems in aboriginal communities.
She says the Voice is necessary to resolve problems of health, housing, jobs and education. But some $30 billion per year is allocated to aboriginal welfare, including these areas. This is more than either Medicare, which provides health services for every Australian, or the NDIS, which provides support and care for people with a disability.
People claiming aboriginal descent make up about 3% of all Australians. Nine percent of members of government have aboriginal heritage. Aboriginal people have the same voice in government as every other Australian. If there are still problems in aboriginal communities, how is an additional layer of bureaucracy in Canberra going to help?
Secondly, there are already multiple bodies which represent aboriginal issues and which provide advice to government. Chief among these is the National Indigenous Australians Agency, which receives funding of some $3 billion per year, to do exactly what Linda Burney claims she wants the Voice to do. If considering issues relevant to aboriginal people and lobbying on their behalf is not being done adequately, most Australians would want to know why, and what has happened to the vast amounts of money those agencies have received.
Finally, while proponents of the Voice claim to represent most aboriginal people, it is becoming very clear they do not. Aboriginal leader Warren Mundine says the Voice is not what aboriginal people want.
“Let’s start with the supposed claim that 80 per cent of Aboriginals support the Voice based on an Ipsos poll in January. The poll was commissioned by the Uluru Dialogue, the lobby group for the Uluru Statement. And it surveyed only 300 people. I guess it depends which 300 people you speak to. I’ve personally spoken to well over 300 Aboriginals from all over Australia, including from remote and regional Australia. Almost without exception, all have told me they either oppose the Voice, don’t understand it (or haven’t even heard of it) or are deeply cynical about it.”
Part of the delegation the Voice refused to hear
A large group of aboriginal people from around Australia travelled to Canberra to meet with Voice proponents. They wanted to explain that they did not want to be separated from other Australian by race, and that they believed the Voice would nothing for them or their communities. Labor leaders and other Voice proponents refused to meet them. No wonder Jacinta Price has said that they do not need another voice, that what they needs is ears.
The article below is from Spectator Australia. Too important not to read. Do the right thing and visit the Speccie. If you find it interesting, subscribe. You will disagree with some of the articles, but you will learn from and be challenged by almost all of them.
As well as the cases discussed in Andrew Urban’s article, Presumption of Evil, Not Innocence, I have serious concerns about the case against Rolf Harris. All of the allegations were dredged up during Operation Yewtree, which actively sought allegations against well-known people, often with hints of compensation. All of them concerned events alleged to have happened in busy working studios, with dozens of people around, and no privacy. Yet no one saw, heard or suspected anything, at any time, over the course of dozens of years.
The allegations, or at least some of them, may be true. But in those circumstances it is hard to see how an objective consideration of the facts could conclude they were proven beyond reasonable doubt.
How can it be that a man of impeccable character in his late 70s is convicted of 28 nasty sexual and physical abuse offences between 1964 – 1973, simply on the say-so of half a dozen late middle-aged women who were juvenile delinquent inmates at an institution?
Because if you are named in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, you are guilty, right? The legal process is just a formality. From the start you are referred to as an abuser and the complainants as victims.
From being so named in the Royal Commission to being charged, tried and found guilty by a jury, the process is guilt by accusation. It replaces the presumption of innocence with the presumption of evil.
The law relating to sexual abuse allegations is now so deformed as to allow such miscarriages of justice to occur with ease. The innocent get shoved in with the guilty.
That is what happened to Noel Greenaway, now in his mid-80s, sentenced (in 2020) to 20 years in jail. Attracted by the promise to be believed, some unscrupulous women joined the thousands of genuine abuse victims to claim rewards (tangible or otherwise) on offer.
On 8 February 2018, Malcolm Turnbull made a short statement to Parliament about the Royal Commission’s work. ‘Reading some of the witness statements, it’s clear that being heard and being believed means so much to the survivors, so much more than many of us would imagine. Three words: “I believe you,” coming after years, often decades of authorities’ denial of responsibility.’
On 23 October 2018, Scott Morrison apologised to victims of child sexual abuse in a speech in Parliament. ‘I simply say, I believe you, we believe you, your country believes you,’ he said.
On 22 October 2020, Anthony Albanese echoed that sentiment in Parliament: ‘We will always hold in our hearts those who didn’t live to hear the words, ‘We hear you. We believe you.”’
Bill Shorten added his voice to the chorus of shame: ‘But know that today Australia says sorry. Australia says we believe you,’ he said.
The sentiment is right and commendable, but the application of it has led to other injustices.
Notorious Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s undoing as a serial abuser of women set off the rush to ‘believe all women’, with society licensing the courts to reverse the onus of proof from the accuser to the defender. But there was an important element in the Weinstein case that has been abandoned by the courts in recent years, notably in Noel’s case.
That was the testimony from supporting witnesses. The purpose of such witness testimony was ‘to show when the disclosure was made to someone, that a disclosure was made, and that it was made against the defendant,’ as the Weinstein prosecution argued. There was no such testimony in Noel Greenaway’s case. On the contrary, the claimants all said they never told anyone at the time in the 1960s, when they were youngsters, or since. Until the Royal Commission.
Greenaway’s life began to unravel on the eve of ructions that would catapult sexual abuse to the top of the world’s consciousness. What the Royal Commission started, the #MeToo movement turbocharged. Like a volcano building up its explosive load, the topic engulfed corporations as well as institutions and the Catholic church, until it blew its top in 2017, ejaculating Harvey Weinstein.
Under current rules in Australia, when it comes to sexual abuse, it is innocence that must be proved, not guilt. Innocent men have become collateral damage. Teen Vogue columnist and outspoken feminist Emily Lindin came under fire on social media in November 2017 after tweeting that she was ‘not at all concerned about innocent men losing their jobs’ over false allegations of sexual assault or harassment.
In his summing up to the jury, the judge at Greenaway’s trial explained: ‘The evidence comprises the answers that witnesses gave to questions asked of them. So the evidence then is the answers that the witness gives in the course of their evidence and the exhibits that you will have with you in the jury room. On that material, and on that material alone, you arrive at your verdicts.’
Greenaway writes from his prison cell, notepad on his knees: ‘The prosecution of individuals was also designed to appease those in the community who were naïve enough to believe the fabrications, lies and general criticism which was designed by ex-inmates and their supporters to name individuals out of revenge and to enhance their chances of claiming redress for concocted crimes committed against them.’
The Board of Inquiry into the Justice System in the ACT, chaired by Walter Sofronoff KC, was established in the wake of the abandoned prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann, accused of rape by Brittany Higgins. Chief Justice Lucy McCallum was critical of the intense media response and that much of the material had ‘obliterated the distinction between an allegation and guilt’. Police told the inquiry that they have been operating under ‘victim-centric’ guidelines for some time. Perhaps it’s time to amend those guidelines to urge investigations to be ‘evidence-centric’.
It was lack of evidence that has kept the fires of outrage burning against the conviction of then 56-year-old Sue Neill-Fraser, charged with the murder of her then 65-year-old partner Bob Chappell. She was arrested 14 years ago this August, sentenced to 23 years, and released on parole in October last year.
Long story short, their brand new yacht was found without Bob on board on the Derwent River in Hobart on Australia Day 2009. His body has never been found – yet at trial, the prosecutor speculated about what sort of injuries might have been found on him.
The prosecution could not establish a credible motive. The prosecution speculated how Bob might have been killed with a wrench. No wrench was produced in evidence. The prosecution could not place her on the yacht at the relevant time – because it had no evidence as to when Bob Chappell was murdered – or even if he was dead. The prosecution speculated how Neill-Fraser would have dragged the body up from down below deck (where she had left him at work before she went ashore for lunch with his sister), bundled him into the dinghy, and then dumped him in the water. Somewhere. On her own. The trial judge went along with the prosecution’s case. (He mentioned the imaginary wrench six times in his summing up to the jury.)
There was DNA found on the deck, traced to a then homeless 15-year-old girl. Clinging to the Crown’s case theory and fearing the DNA would upend its case, the prosecution dismissed the DNA as a red herring. They had their suspect. The only suspect.
She was characterised as cold and scheming because the prosecution case demanded it. But the prosecution’s presumption of evil doesn’t comfortably fit Neill-Fraser. Like Noel Greenaway, she has impeccable character references and lived an average, middle-class life free of blemish.
Lawyers have challenged the conviction – and the judges’ 2:1 decision to dismiss her appeal. A former Hobart prosecutor felt obliged to challenge his ‘legal family’ to correct ‘this injustice’. It hasn’t gone down well with his ‘legal family’.
A report co-authored by a lawyer and a barrister about the police investigation tabled in Parliament in 2021 reveals incompetence and withholding of evidence.
To add insult to injury, Tasmania’s Attorney-General has resisted many calls for a review of the case – preferably a Commission of Inquiry – making excuses that don’t hold water.
Greenaway and Neill-Fraser are but two sorry examples of a criminal justice system trampling the rule of law. There are plenty more. The criminal justice system spends little effort to repair the damage caused by wrongful convictions. In many cases, the appeal system actively hinders efforts to correct mistakes.
As someone once said, ‘Justice won’t be served until those not affected are as outraged as those who are.’
My brother Andrew has a mortgage broking business in Ipswich, Queensland. He has lived in Ipswich for more than forty years and knows local property, real estate agents, and banks. He is a hard-working and genuinely honest person.
If you need a personal loan or a home loan, loan consolidation, or you are not sure you are getting the best value from your existing home loan, give him a call. There is no obligation, and all his services are free to you.
Even though he is based in Ipswich, he can help with home loans anywhere in Australia. Visit the website, or call him now. His mobile number is 0432 947 182.
US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer dissented from the recent Court decision that a Christian web designer cannot be forced to create websites for gay marriages.
“Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.”
But she is wrong. The decision grants no such right. No business can discriminate against a member of the public because that person is black, gay, Jewish, white, short, a communist, a Muslim, or a member of any other class or group. The Court’s decision does not alter that. Nor was that the basis of the plaintiff’s claim.
Lorie Smith specifically stated she was “willing to work with all people regardless of classifications such as race, creed, sexual orientation, and gender” and “will gladly create custom graphics and websites for clients of any sexual orientation.”
Lorie Smith did not object to the people. She was happy to work for them, and is happy to work for anyone. What she objected to was being forced to produce work that expressed views with which she disagrees deeply.
The majority decision of the Court made the same point. Refusing to serve people because they are in some class or belong to some group or hold some views you don’t like is not acceptable. Declining service because offering that service would mean you were forced to pretend you believe something you do not believe, or express views you find offensive, is a completely different thing. Forcing people to comply or to pretend to agree with what they do not believe is bullying.
It is as if a print shop owned by a gay couple were asked to print brochures claiming God hates fags. Or a black bakery being asked to make a cake that celebrated the KKK. Or a Muslim butcher being asked to make pork sausages for a party.
No one is entitled to refuse to serve people, or to refuse them admittance to a club or a country, because of their sexual preference, race or political views. Everyone is entitled to refuse to provide services which contradict their faith or values.
As at the current patch (1.0.4.42942), there are three major world bosses in Diablo 4:
Ashava the Pestilent: Ashava looks like a dragon but deals mostly poison based damage. She most commonly spawns at Caen Adar in Scosglen. Stay out of the spin attack!
Wandering Death: This skeletal monster will usually spawn in the Crucible in Fractured Peaks. He is a ranged attacker who uses a variety of bone-based attacks to weaken his foes. Stay out the green waves/beams!
Avarice the Gold Cursed: Avarice is an ugly demon who uses heavy melee attacks. He will normally found in Saraan Caldera in Dry Steppes. Watch out for charge and for sweep attacks with his hammer and chained loot box. This boss drops the most loot, in my experience.
Although these bosses have their preferred location, any of them can spawn at any of the following places: Caen Adar in Scosglen, the Crucible in Fractured Peaks, Saraan Caldera in Dry Steppes, Seared Basin in Kehjistan, and Fields of Desecration in Hawezar.
If you have completed the campaign and are in game, you will get a notification with a 30 minute countdown alerting you when a world boss is about to spawn. If you have not completed the campaign, you can still fight them, but you won’t get the alert or see them on the map.
You can defeat world bosses as a solo player. The bosses scale according to the number of players and their level. The only disadvantage is that if you solo, you won’t get any respite from attack – the boss’s attention will always be on you. Playing with at least two other players will make the fight much easier. You will almost always find ten or more players lined up and ready at the spawn site anyway.
As with most other gear, you can share loot you win with your other characters by placing it in your store. I have won gear with my tier 3 Necromancer, for example, which was little use to him, but provided a good boost for my tier 2 Sorcerer.
World bosses do not appear at specific times, but spawn at intervals of between five and seven hours. The Twitter account @DiabloParagon tweets alerts whenever a boss is about to spawn, giving the real world spawn time in various time zones including AEST.
You might find it helpful to re-spec to single target abilities for these boss fights. Changing gems may also give a boost, for example socketing anti-poison gems (Emeralds) in jewellery when fighting Ashava. Using elixirs appropriate for each boss can also give you an edge, perhaps Iron Barb for Avarice, and Precision for the other two.
Helltide
Once you begin to play on tier 3 (Nighmare), Helltide will occur every couple of hours, and last for one hour. This means Helltide is taking place somewhere in Sanctuary about half the time.
Helltide appears in red on the map of Sanctuary. There will be a higher than normal number of demons. Other enemies may also be more powerful, and they drop slightly better loot.
Helltide can occur in any of the following locations:
Scosglen
Fractured Peaks
Dry Steppes
Kehjistan
Hawezar
The purpose of fighting in Helltide zones is to accumulate Aberrant Cinders. You do this by killing enemies, though they will sometimes drop from ore deposits. The random red barrel-like chests that appear in Helltide zones may also contain Cinders. Always open these if you see them.
Aberrant Cinders must be spent before that session of Helltide expires. They cannot be accumulated. You spend them by opening chests to obtain Tortured Gifts. These chests appear at various locations within the Helltide Zone.
If a world boss spawns in a Helltide zone, and you have time to complete the boss before Helltide expires, do it. Bosses drop larger numbers of Aberrant Cinders. There will usually be one or two chests in the boss area, so if time is running short at the end, you will still be able to spend your Cinders.
Chests may contain:
Tortured Gift of Protection. These are armour; boots, chest, helm, gloves, or pants. These chests require 75 Cinders to open.
Tortured Gift of Jewellery (125 Cinders)
Tortured Gift of Weaponry (150 Cinders)
Tortured Gift of Mysteries (175 Cinders)
Each chest can only be opened once by each player during each session. Chests containing Tortured Mysteries are hardest to find, but may contain very powerful unique items. Icy Veins has an interactive map showing their location.
Helltide zones also contain the rare herb Fiend Rose, essential to some high level gear crafting.
Maybe think again. You have to have an Instagram account to sign in to Threads. If you then decide you want to cancel your Threads account, the Facebook/Threads/Instagram umbrella corporation will only allow you to do this if you also cancel your Instagram account.
In addition, as both Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk have noted, signing up to Threads demands access to almost every aspect of your life. Everything you post, no matter how private, and all the data gatherable from that post; where you are, who you are with, health, financial, and family information, is Meta’s, and Meta can do with that information whatever it likes.
Finally, straight out of the block, Threads is implementing Meta’s practise of censoring and ultimately cancelling people who post ideas with which it disagrees. That’s great if you agree with Meta and prefer to live in an echo chamber. For those who are happy with diversity, happy to engage, and live in the real world, not so good.
Disney had a go at the Narnia stories several years ago. The first movie, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe didn’t really have a heart. Despite this, Lucy was lovely, and the movie wasn’t bad as far as Hollywood movies go. The next episode, Prince Caspian, spent the first ten minutes making the audience dislike, and therefore not care about its lead characters, and went downhill from there. Disney’s final attempt, the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, was a vile schmozzle from beginning to end.
The movies did not engage the huge potential audience of people around the world who love the Narnia books, because they did not convey what Lewis wrote the books to convey. They were washed out, and ultimately boring.
Netflix now owns the movie rights to the Chronicles of Narnia. So new movies. Yay! Right? Probably wrong.
To direct the new movies Netflix has appointed the director of the eviscerated 2019 version of Little Women, Greta Gerwig. This version removed the Christian faith which was the heart of the books, the faith which gave the Little Women their hope, courage, and resilience. Greta replaced this with feminine strength and independence. This resulted in a movie which is atheistic, anachronistic, preachy, and dull. Greta also directed the recent live action Barbie movie. Of this, the less said the better.
No doubt the new movies will include lots of dramatic action, impressive CGI, and repeated failed attempts at humour. What they will almost certainly not include is any real understanding of CS Lewis and his faith, the faith explained in and evident throughout the Chronicles. And consequently, like Disney’s versions, and Amazon Prime’s Rings of Tedium, they miss the whole point, and will fail.
Variations of this image have been posted on social media many times. Yet Western countries continue to import people whose cultural values are simply incompatible with notions of equality, rule of law, freedom of religion, etc. See recent riots in France. All races are equal, but not all cultures are equal.
In addition, immigration programmes need to take account of available infrastructure including housing. Leith van Onselen at News Ltd explains why the current housing crisis in Australia is largely due to unprecedented levels of immigration.
Sensible immigration means ensuring that, except in absolute emergencies, those who come to our countries share our values and want to live according to our laws. It also means limiting numbers so that undue strain is not placed on water, road, housing medical and educational facilities.
I am a migrant. I came to Australia in 1978. I have worked or studied since then, have paid taxes, have never been on a government benefit. People who come wanting to be part of society and willing to work make a long-term positive economic and social contribution. Australia and the USA would not be the successful countries they are without their long history of welcoming immigrants.
At the same time, unreasonably high levels of immigration cause difficult to manage short term demands on services, pain to existing residents, and generate long term problems including alienation and consequent ill will, dependence on benefits, and higher crime rates.
This Spotify playlist – New Rock Royalty – is a collection of newish rock, featuring Australia’s hottest new Band, Two Times Shy. It is updated every week or so, is safe for family and work, and will always have Two Times Shy’s latest releases. If you enjoy it, please like and share.
I keep seeing people posting on social media that they have been hacked. Hacked is when someone gets into your account without your permission, and can post and change settings. This can happen, but it is not common.
Far more frequent is being cloned. This is when they don’t have your password or access to your account, but create a copy of your profile, often using your profile pic and publicly available personal information. They do this to make it easier to scam your friends. The more friends you have, and the more personal information anyone can see, the more attractive your account is to cloners, because that gives them more chances to rip people off.
You can’t stop this happening. But you can reduce how attractive your profile is to cloners by making your personal information and friends list private. If they can’t see your personal information it is harder for them to fool your friends, and if they can’t see who your friends are, they won’t know who to send friend invites to.
I went for a seven kilometre run yesterday afternoon at a nearby conservation park. I took this photo of the Brisbane River from the Moggill ferry on the way home.
I don’t watch much commercial TV, but my Dad is staying with us for a few weeks, and he likes to watch the news. Last night I saw for the first time one of the taxpayer funded advertisements for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
I was appalled at its dishonesty.
It began by saying the Constitution is 123 years old, and “still doesn’t recognise indigenous people.” How shocking! How racist! Except it is nothing of the sort. The Constitution still doesn’t recognise white people, or Chinese people, or Italians, or middle-aged redheads with bushy eyebrows. Why am I excluded? ☹
The reason people of my ethnicity are not recognised in the Constitution is that no race is specifically mentioned in the Constitution. To repeat; the reason people of Irish, African, Vietnamese, or Australian Aboriginal descent are not recognised in the Constitution is that no race is specifically mentioned in the Constitution. This is not racist or exclusionary. It the exact opposite. No race is singled out for recognition or special treatment because we have a commitment as a nation to treating everyone of every race and background as equal before the law, with equal rights and obligations.
The ad, paid for by you whether you like it or not, continued by saying the Voice would give indigenous Australians a say in their own future. But they already have a say. In fact, lots of says.
According to the 2021 Census, people of aboriginal descent make up about 3.8% of Australia’s population – an increase of 30% since the previous census in 2016. But people claiming aboriginal descent make up nearly 8% of elected representatives in our Federal Parliament. In addition there are multiple bodies which claim to lobby for and represent the interests of indigenous people.
The National Indigenous Australians Agency says its purpose is to be: “responsible for whole-of-government coordination of policy development, program design, and service delivery for Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people, who are grouped under the term Indigenous Australians.”
This body is funded by taxpayers to the extent of over $1 billion per year. It is one of many.
Despite what the ads tell you, aboriginal leaders are far from unanimously supportive of the Voice. Voice advocates in Canberra flatly refused to meet with a group of aboriginal people who had travelled from around Australia to talk to them about concerns they had about being separated by race, and about additional layers of bureaucracy in consultation and delivering services.
Aboriginal leader Warren Mundine has visited and talked to people in Aboriginal communities around Australia. He says most of them are suspicious of the Voice, regard it as another white-fella feel good scheme, and do not believe it will do them any practical good. Jacinta Price says the last thing most aboriginal people want is to be singled out by race, and that what is needed is not yet another expensive “voice’ but ears which are willing to listen.
Sadly, listening is something Voice advocates still seem unwilling to try.
The story of a ninety-five year old NSW nursing home resident being tasered by police has generated lots of clicks (and therefore advertising revenue) and created an outcry on social media.
It does seem shocking. It also seems like the “outrage on demand” stories that appear almost daily on social media.
Outrage is a very satisfying feeling. We should be wary of it; the encouragement it gives us to think ourselves superior, the easy excuse to think others evil, and the way it justifies words and actions which may be cruel and have consequences worse than the event about which we were told to outraged.
The lady in the news story may have been threatening another resident with the knife she was wielding. Or may have been on the verge of stabbing herself. Or police may indeed have acted precipitously to protect themselves. All we really know is that experienced staff called police because they were not able to resolve the situation safely.
Let’s delay both judgement and outrage until we know what really happened. And don’t hate just because the media tells us to.
