Shared with permission from Charles Waltz | #FansMASKUP
traverselife
Sharing thoughts on ethics, integrity, values, motivation, career development & education
Monday 16 October 2023
#SaveDavidTennant Comic Con NY 2023
Shared with permission from Charles Waltz | #FansMASKUP
Wednesday 16 August 2023
Racism has real life consequences
This open letter to Annabel Crabb was written by Su Dharmapala in response to an episode of Kitchen Cabinet.
Su said "I would really appreciate it if you amplify this message so that I can have some kind of dialogue with Annabel"
I asked Su if I could share her letter here so that it might reach people who don't use X (formerly Twitter) or Facebook.
Su kindly agreed.
...
Dear Annabel, I know you probably get thousands of emails on any given day. Some, full of hate and abuse, and probably others that are nice and complimentary. This will be neither. You need to know that this is the first time I have ever been tempted to reach out to a journalist to express my deep horror about anything. And your commentary that Peter Dutton has 'muscular' politics that is affronting to people has truly driven me to a state of despair- both as a woman of colour and as a mother of son who has been on the receiving end of racism in this country. Just for clarity - my name is Su Dharmapala and I am both an author and a start-up founder. I came to Australia on 21 November in 1989 at the age of 15 with my family from Singapore. I am ethnic Singahalese but was born and raised between Singapore and Sri Lanka before I immigrated to Australia. I was in Sri Lanka during the 1983 Black July riots and I have seen first hand what inter racial violence can lead to.
Su's original post and the responses can be accessed:
https://twitter.com/SuDharmapala/status/1691240888541097985
...
A couple of personal comments:
We need to call out racism everywhere, and particularly when it's gifted a platform on the national broadcaster.
Our families, friends and communities are endangered when intolerance and "muscular" brutality is amplified, normalised and sanitised.
As a result, racists feel empowered, especially when the damage and danger it encourages and unleashes is minimised or ignored, in the name of balance.
...
Democracy In Colour offers a range of bespoke workshops for organisations and as interventions in key moments in society – such as bystander intervention trainings, anti racism at work and more.
https://democracyincolour.org/
https://twitter.com/democracycolour?lang=en
Monday 18 April 2022
The Bin fire of Vanities: A gaffe? No A GAFFE
https://twitter.com/RonniSalt/status/1515861054328168448 with thanks.
The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is the most widely-used global corruption ranking in the world. It measures how corrupt each country’s public sector is perceived to be, according to experts and businesspeople.A country’s score is the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean.
progress against corruption cannot be taken for granted – especially not when human rights and democracy are under attack. In the last year alone, high-level corruption scandals, fresh allegations of misused COVID-19 funds, and deliberate efforts to weaken institutional and societal checks on power show that vigilance is needed across the board.
Transparency International’s analysis reveals that in 2022 our societies will need to be on particularly high alert in nine countries.
1. AUSTRALIA
Australia (CPI score: 73) is one of the world’s most significant decliners, having dropped 12 points since 2012 to hit a record low this year. Its deteriorating score indicates systemic failings in tackling public sector corruption. Despite public calls and previous promises, last year Australia missed a landmark opportunity to establish a national anti-corruption agency with broad powers to investigate corruption.
As Australia heads into a federal election, anti-corruption commitments – and a firm resolution to follow through on them – will matter more than ever. The establishment of a strong anti-corruption commission, which is long overdue, should be a top priority. link
Interest shown by the bulk of Australian media about this worrying information? 🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗
For some of our excellent Independent media see: https://traverselife.blogspot.com/2020/01/list-of-australian-independent-media.html
Friday 7 January 2022
15 minutes and six lifetimes.
This thread was compiled by Sam Connor (Twitter: https://twitter.com/criprights) and is reproduced here with permission.
It's an ordinary thread, about ordinary people, chatting in an ordinary waiting room after managing to receive their booster injections during these extra-ordinary times.
Sam's writing is exquisite.
Yesterday I received a booster shot. I was at the doctors and he said if I came back in the afternoon about an hour after they started jabs, I’d almost certainly score a cancelled appointment. I was with five others, all elderly. We spent the next fifteen minutes together.
Fifteen minutes with a stranger is a long time. After the nurse gave us our boosters, we waited in chairs, lined up in the clinic. Three older women, two older men. As you do when thrust together, we began talking.
The woman with the walking frame was Deaf and her companion was mad because she kept having to shout. Finally in exasperation she said, don’t you have your hearing aid on, Sylvia? ‘What?’ Sylvia bellowed at her. Eventually she understood. ‘I can’t hear through these masks!’
My mother was Deaf. I said there were masks with clear panels - she was clearly a lip reader. Her companion pointed to her own ear. ‘I have a cochlear implant,’ she told me. ‘When they turned it on for the first time…’ She must have been at least 70. Her grin was dazzling.
One of the men was impatient. ‘Do you have a watch?’ he asked me. ‘I have a phone.’ He looked unimpressed, because he didn’t ask for a phone. I told him I would tell him when time was up. Small talk, they used to call it. Nothing important, nothing deep. Just talk.
Sylvia’s companion told me that Sylvia had a cousin who lives in Toodyay. Sheila, her name is. She likes horses, she told me. ‘Do you know her?’ she asked. Perhaps by face, I told her. Mostly a lie. I don’t recognise people by their face. I don’t know if I know Sheila.
Sheila was my mother’s name. I wondered how many children and grandchildren these people had between them - how many jobs they had held, how many houses they had built, beds they’d laid in and loved in. I wondered what that hole in the world would look like if they left it.
Small talk. I remember all the words, but nothing really was said. A cousin called Sheila who liked horses, masks with clear windows. A minute to go, I told the impatient man. He got up immediately. ‘Not yet, not yet!’ said Sylvia gaily. He smiled at her, left.
Just a small group of people, faces I’ll never recognise again. I wondered if Scott Morrison
Small talk, but an enormous loss to the world if taken before their time. And yes, they were old, and yes, many have lived their lives - but preventable deaths are NOT ‘God’s will’. If you believe in a God, you also believe He gave you the ability to make others safe.
Not make others rich. I wonder what Sylvia would have thought of our PM, with his Humpty Doo barramundi from a fish farm who had more than thirty million in grant funding. I wondered if she’d know him if she saw him in the street. If she knew he sees her as collateral damage.
Small talk but a gaping hole in the world when any one of us leaves, regardless of age, fitness, disability or race. Those people, combined, have paid more taxes in their lives than Scott Morrison ever earned, I’ll bet. And now, apparently, they are regarded as less than.
I am tired of us being regarded as Minus People. We are worth as much as any other Australian. And I reject the idea we should not be treated as human. We have the right to be treated fairly and equitably BECAUSE we are human. That’s why they call them human rights.
This tweet doesn’t say anything much. It’s like small talk. But I wish I could carve out those few minutes and stitch them together like a quilt, as a reminder of the worth of humans, humanity. I wish I could wear it like a priceless cape that nobody would ever want to buy.
Thankyou Sam
Saturday 23 October 2021
Eight hefty rorts not covered by Australia's mainstream media. Why the silence?
Twitter: @vogrady2132
https://twitter.com/vogrady2132/status/1449179721946701826
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I have wanted to express this for the last three days. Here goes.
I am disgusted at the lack of Integrity and the dishonesty of the Main-Stream Media in Australia. Because they have been nobbled by the Coalition generally. This week they have been discussing Labor Branch stacking Ad infinitum in Victoria. Branch Stacking is NOT an offence. It is a manipulation of the Internal Labor Party rules.
What might be an offence is the fools of MP's who used employees on the public payroll to do this manipulation. I agree that that needs to be addressed. If those MP's have committed offenses against State or Federal laws, then they should rightly suffer the consequences.
The press have been spending an inordinate amount of time discussing this this week, YET they have totally ignored another outrage perpetrated by the sitting Federal Coalition Government.
The reporting of the rorting of the latest round of the BUILDING THE BETTER REGIONS FUND ROUND 5. This was reported in the Guardian and The New Daily within days of it being released. I was one of the people who analysed it.
One: Here is a graph of the uneven distribution of the funds:
I cannot understand how this is not Newsworthy, especially in light of the following other analyses done and hardly reported by the press.
Two: Sports Rorts. Value $100 Million
Three: Community Development Grants 2013 - 2019 Value $1.1 Billion.
Four: Regional Development Programs 2013 to 2019 to the value of $714.5 million
Five: Community Development Grants in 2020 for a value of $392.3 Million
Six: Building the Better Regions fund in 2020 for a value of $158.4 Million
Seven: Female facilities and Water Safety Stream Grants worth $135.75 Million
Eight: The Commuter Car Park Fund. Worth $704.39 Million
Newsworthy?
You'd expect so, but not covered by the bulk of Australia's media.
Why is that?
Who benefits from the lack of analysis and coverage?
Who loses?
Is the above pattern of funding in the spirit of the Australian "Fair Go"?
How can we make informed decisions about who to vote for if we don't have relevant information?
Get involved!
Murdoch Royal Commission
https://murdochroyalcommission.org.au/
Read and subscribe to some of our excellent Independent Media!
https://traverselife.blogspot.com/2020/01/list-of-australian-independent-media.html
More information:
Does your political rep vote the way they say they do? Or is what's presented in gushing enthusiasm a ruse to get your vote? How do they vote on: Vaccines, Aged Care, Education, Financial support during covid, water & food security, foreign ownership to name a few?
Is your vote being used as YOU want it to be? https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/
https://www.thevogfiles.com/in-the-news.html
Wednesday 6 October 2021
Media Manipulation & gaslighting. Why would a media org run articles with opposing views on the same day?
A. Based on a tweet this morning (September 10, 2021) about why a media organisation would run 2 pieces today with completely opposite points of view on lockdowns, here’s a thread about why they do this.It’s absolutely crucial to understand this if we want to demand (and get) better media in AUS.