So here's an interesting (and sad) story about a woman who isn't able to travel outside Australia because her ex put her on a family flight watch list.
The watch list is designed to prevent divorced partners leaving the country in custody disputes, yet there's outrage when a man uses it to prevent his ex taking their children overseas.
The reality is that women leaving the country with children and never coming back (otherwise known as 'International Child Abduction') make up the majority of cases, which is why I think this isn't considered a crime (it's usually a breach of court ordered visitation rights, but not a crime). Many sites like to claim that every one of those women are doing so to flee domestic violence, but that isn't always the case, and they rarely have anything more than anecdotal evidence to back it up. But if a man does the same thing, he's portrayed as an evil man.
I paid particular notice when they go into the details that she's spending thousands of dollars on legal fees to fight this, but "he's getting legal aid". How many men have to pay thousands of dollars on legal fees in custody battles when their former partners get legal aid? Apparently there's outrage when the genders are reversed. Maybe she's got lots of money (maybe she got the lot in the divorce) and he's left broke. Legal aid isn't available to people who have money, so stating that he's using it when she has to pay is indicative that she has money and he doesn't.
When the media starts reporting on all the divorced fathers who can't afford to mount a challenge to visitation rights because their ex is using legal aid but they have to find thousands just to appeal what they consider unfair access, then I'll feel sorry for this woman.
In closing, I'm not saying that this particular guy is or isn't guilty, but if there's one thing we've learned in the last year, it's that the media chooses which stories to report and which ones to hold back, which stories to beef up the details and which stories to leave out what they consider 'unimportant details' and which groups to hold up as the 'usual suspects and bad guys' and which groups should be given a free pass.
Given my recently acquired (in the last couple of years) skepticism of the media, I'm not inclined to take any case at face value until they start reporting crimes between men and women equally. They can pretend all women are great and all men are evil all they like, but those of us who live in the real world know that both men and women exist at all ends of the good/evil spectrum.
Thursday, July 6, 2017
Monday, July 3, 2017
Police searching for woman who abducted 6 year old girl
I guess it's hard to hide that a woman was involved in a serious crime like abducting a child when the only person (of three) who is known is a woman.
Notice how it's not until the 3rd paragraph that it's identified that they're looking for a woman primarily.
Not much is known about the situation, but given that someone knew the name of the woman, but not the men, suggests that the woman was known to the family, but the men might have been hired muscle.
Personally, I would have lead with "a X-year-old woman named Y and two men are wanted for the abduction of a 6 year old girl", not this pussy-footing around about "we're searching for a girl... she may be at significant risk... oh, and the main person we're looking for is...".
A little girls safety (and possibly life) is at stake here. Can the media put down their PC agenda for ONE FREAKING MINUTE and get the message out there NOW. As it stands, a person has to actually click on the link to the article to get the photo and name of the woman in question.
Notice how it's not until the 3rd paragraph that it's identified that they're looking for a woman primarily.
Not much is known about the situation, but given that someone knew the name of the woman, but not the men, suggests that the woman was known to the family, but the men might have been hired muscle.
Personally, I would have lead with "a X-year-old woman named Y and two men are wanted for the abduction of a 6 year old girl", not this pussy-footing around about "we're searching for a girl... she may be at significant risk... oh, and the main person we're looking for is...".
A little girls safety (and possibly life) is at stake here. Can the media put down their PC agenda for ONE FREAKING MINUTE and get the message out there NOW. As it stands, a person has to actually click on the link to the article to get the photo and name of the woman in question.
AFL Diversity Manager coward punch
Only time will tell if the AFL does anything to their Diversity Manager because of violence.
I guess like his brother, the former CEO of Australia Post, there aren't going to be as much scrutiny as there would be if a white person had done the exact same thing.
By the way, in my opinion what the CEO of Australia Post got away with in terms of being able to get a 'donation' paid to a foundation run by his family is far worse than hitting someone. Although, hitting someone when you're supposed to be setting an example is always worse than if you're just some guy.
A bit like how the media holds up Right-wing politicians to higher standards to Left-wing politicians. It's almost like having standards means you are going to be held to them.
Maybe that's the problem here: nobody has any standards and, therefore, they can't be held to anything.
I guess like his brother, the former CEO of Australia Post, there aren't going to be as much scrutiny as there would be if a white person had done the exact same thing.
By the way, in my opinion what the CEO of Australia Post got away with in terms of being able to get a 'donation' paid to a foundation run by his family is far worse than hitting someone. Although, hitting someone when you're supposed to be setting an example is always worse than if you're just some guy.
A bit like how the media holds up Right-wing politicians to higher standards to Left-wing politicians. It's almost like having standards means you are going to be held to them.
Maybe that's the problem here: nobody has any standards and, therefore, they can't be held to anything.
Thursday, June 29, 2017
North Korea's mineral reserves
Here's an interesting article detailing the vast amounts of valuable raw minerals that North Korea is sitting on although I disagree with the term stockpile. A stockpile is usually used in the sense that they've mined the minerals and is holding them somewhere ready to offload.
North Korea isn't holding them anywhere, they just can't (or maybe isn't willing) afford the infrastructure needed to mine the various minerals.
Even if they could, they'd have trouble selling the minerals on the open market at their true value.
The biggest thing I take away from the article is not what the author is trying to relay, rather it's the arrogance that minerals in the ground somehow 'belong' on the open market and North Korea is somehow depriving the world of a valuable minerals.
Like it or not, North Korea (or at least it's leader) are choosing what to do with the country and are choosing not to pursue mining. Perhaps if the country were desperate enough, they'd come to the world table and broker a deal, but right now it is their RIGHT to choose not to tap into those resources.
Let me put this another way. Uluru (Ayers Rock) is predominately made up of iron ore. As it currently stands, it brings in more money as a tourist destination than it would being mined for it's contents. You can only mine it once for what would be a pretty small payday, but tourists could probably come for another 100 years just to see it. More important than the tourist element, Uluru has a cultural significance to the Indigenous population of the country, so any business case to mine it would be very quickly shut down for both Cultural and Tourism reasons.
Let's imagine, for a minute, that those mountains in North Korea aren't just a resource parking lot, that they have been part of the country as long as time and there's possibly even ancient stories about them passed on from generation to generation. We don't really know because we're only being told one angle.
The current leader may be thinking that in 50 years time his country will be the only untouched region of the world with such untouched beauty, which would make a much better tourist attraction than lining the vaults of the country with money for a finite time. Maybe North Korea's Great Leader has a longer-term vision than most Westerners, who only think as far as next year (some only as far as next weekend).
The leaders of North Korea might really want to tap into them, but feel that they'd compromise on their personal beliefs, either culturally or simply because they don't trust big world governments not to take advantage of them. In this regard, can we blame them after all the accusations against the Clinton Foundation for helping to set up the fleecing of Haiti's gold (and possible child trafficking) whilst on a supposed mercy mission after a major earthquake.
I'm not a Greenie, but if a mining site on a potentially culturally significant site were being pushed on a region for profit anywhere else in the world, there'd be outrage, but since it's from a country people deem as despotic, it's apparently ok?
I say if the leaders of North Korea choose not to tap into those minerals FOR ANY REASON, then that's their decision and it should be respected.
North Korea isn't holding them anywhere, they just can't (or maybe isn't willing) afford the infrastructure needed to mine the various minerals.
Even if they could, they'd have trouble selling the minerals on the open market at their true value.
The biggest thing I take away from the article is not what the author is trying to relay, rather it's the arrogance that minerals in the ground somehow 'belong' on the open market and North Korea is somehow depriving the world of a valuable minerals.
Like it or not, North Korea (or at least it's leader) are choosing what to do with the country and are choosing not to pursue mining. Perhaps if the country were desperate enough, they'd come to the world table and broker a deal, but right now it is their RIGHT to choose not to tap into those resources.
Let me put this another way. Uluru (Ayers Rock) is predominately made up of iron ore. As it currently stands, it brings in more money as a tourist destination than it would being mined for it's contents. You can only mine it once for what would be a pretty small payday, but tourists could probably come for another 100 years just to see it. More important than the tourist element, Uluru has a cultural significance to the Indigenous population of the country, so any business case to mine it would be very quickly shut down for both Cultural and Tourism reasons.
Let's imagine, for a minute, that those mountains in North Korea aren't just a resource parking lot, that they have been part of the country as long as time and there's possibly even ancient stories about them passed on from generation to generation. We don't really know because we're only being told one angle.
The current leader may be thinking that in 50 years time his country will be the only untouched region of the world with such untouched beauty, which would make a much better tourist attraction than lining the vaults of the country with money for a finite time. Maybe North Korea's Great Leader has a longer-term vision than most Westerners, who only think as far as next year (some only as far as next weekend).
The leaders of North Korea might really want to tap into them, but feel that they'd compromise on their personal beliefs, either culturally or simply because they don't trust big world governments not to take advantage of them. In this regard, can we blame them after all the accusations against the Clinton Foundation for helping to set up the fleecing of Haiti's gold (and possible child trafficking) whilst on a supposed mercy mission after a major earthquake.
I'm not a Greenie, but if a mining site on a potentially culturally significant site were being pushed on a region for profit anywhere else in the world, there'd be outrage, but since it's from a country people deem as despotic, it's apparently ok?
I say if the leaders of North Korea choose not to tap into those minerals FOR ANY REASON, then that's their decision and it should be respected.
Sunday, June 18, 2017
Media claims we should be grateful for foreign buyers
So here we have the media actually acknowledging the existence of wealthy foreign buyers in the Australian Real Estate market, however one author writes that we should be grateful for them.
Now, the author might be correct, had the glut of apartments not been built specifically to cater to the demand of foreign buyers and only if foreign buyers were ONLY buying apartments.
In any economy there are multiple cycles going up and down at any given time. In engineering, the perfect storm with salaries occurred just before the GFC when many industries were all peaking at the same time, putting a premium on engineers which, when the various industry cycles bottomed out at about the same time, ended with heaps of engineers all looking for work at the same time.
The same is true of property. Of residential property, there are many sectors and sub-sectors. Just because you've got a great 1-bedroom apartment in Newport isn't going to mean a thing if what's booming are 3-bedroom houses.
So the housing prices are in a completely different cycle to apartments, which are usually home to singles or couples without children. Apartments don't come with a lot of land, making them less attractive to speculators due to the need for high returns and the risk that another 300 apartment block opening up next door that will compete for the relatively few tenants.
Claims that we should be grateful that foreign buyers are keeping the prices of apartments from collapsing (something that only the developers would really worry about and would normally stop creating more supply if they're unable to unload the last lot of apartments they built) are pretty stupid when it's the price of housing the average Australia cares about, NOT the price and vacancy rates of apartments.
The people already living in houses want them to only go up, the people trying to buy them would like to see them come down (at least long enough to get into the market).
Ultimately I think what the Media and the Politicians all ignore or avoid is that young people don't want any sort of unfair advantage, they simply want a level playing field, but the media is so bent on trying to remain positive about immigration that it's ignoring the fact that it's selling out locals for the security that higher house prices brings people who own their own home.
When a young couple from China in the 20's is able to buy a house in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne for over $1 million IN CASH, when they haven't got the sort of income needed to service a loan of that size, then we're not playing on a level playing field. Anyone who claims otherwise is either lying to themselves or just to you.
Now, the author might be correct, had the glut of apartments not been built specifically to cater to the demand of foreign buyers and only if foreign buyers were ONLY buying apartments.
In any economy there are multiple cycles going up and down at any given time. In engineering, the perfect storm with salaries occurred just before the GFC when many industries were all peaking at the same time, putting a premium on engineers which, when the various industry cycles bottomed out at about the same time, ended with heaps of engineers all looking for work at the same time.
The same is true of property. Of residential property, there are many sectors and sub-sectors. Just because you've got a great 1-bedroom apartment in Newport isn't going to mean a thing if what's booming are 3-bedroom houses.
So the housing prices are in a completely different cycle to apartments, which are usually home to singles or couples without children. Apartments don't come with a lot of land, making them less attractive to speculators due to the need for high returns and the risk that another 300 apartment block opening up next door that will compete for the relatively few tenants.
Claims that we should be grateful that foreign buyers are keeping the prices of apartments from collapsing (something that only the developers would really worry about and would normally stop creating more supply if they're unable to unload the last lot of apartments they built) are pretty stupid when it's the price of housing the average Australia cares about, NOT the price and vacancy rates of apartments.
The people already living in houses want them to only go up, the people trying to buy them would like to see them come down (at least long enough to get into the market).
Ultimately I think what the Media and the Politicians all ignore or avoid is that young people don't want any sort of unfair advantage, they simply want a level playing field, but the media is so bent on trying to remain positive about immigration that it's ignoring the fact that it's selling out locals for the security that higher house prices brings people who own their own home.
When a young couple from China in the 20's is able to buy a house in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne for over $1 million IN CASH, when they haven't got the sort of income needed to service a loan of that size, then we're not playing on a level playing field. Anyone who claims otherwise is either lying to themselves or just to you.
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Lindt siege psychiatrist stood down
So the disgraced psychiatrist who was advising police during the Lindt siege in Sydney is now claiming that it's the escapees fault that Monis killed people.
Like a true little liar, he's putting responsibility anywhere but himself.
He's quoted as saying (in other articles) that he wasn't aware that IS had put a callout for Lone Wolf attacks at the time the siege took place.
So, I guess he's blaming:
Now, most normal people would feel guilty for how this whole thing played out and would have to live with it for the rest of their lives.
Not this guy. No, he's absolved himself of any responsibility because the events weren't allowed to play out how he thought they should and that he wasn't aware of the bigger picture.
In my line of work, if I'm making calls without considering ALL the information, including LOOKING UP information that may be applicable, I'm still liable if things go wrong. Legally if someone dies, professionally if it costs my organisation money (no pay rise for the guy who blew our profit margins when he forgot to allow for a $1 million piece of equipment in the tender!).
I guess psychiatry is a bit like being weather forecasting: there's no accountability if you're wrong because you missed an important variable in the equation.
Except this time the psychiatrist made calls that got people killed, which is why I applaud him being stood down.
I also note that nowhere do they mention the radicalisation of Islam as a cause. I guess this "non-terror attack" has found its scapegoat and the gods of public opinion have been appeased.
Like a true little liar, he's putting responsibility anywhere but himself.
He's quoted as saying (in other articles) that he wasn't aware that IS had put a callout for Lone Wolf attacks at the time the siege took place.
So, I guess he's blaming:
- The people who escaped, to save themselves;
- The lack of knowledge of the overall situation; and
- Anyone but himself.
Now, most normal people would feel guilty for how this whole thing played out and would have to live with it for the rest of their lives.
Not this guy. No, he's absolved himself of any responsibility because the events weren't allowed to play out how he thought they should and that he wasn't aware of the bigger picture.
In my line of work, if I'm making calls without considering ALL the information, including LOOKING UP information that may be applicable, I'm still liable if things go wrong. Legally if someone dies, professionally if it costs my organisation money (no pay rise for the guy who blew our profit margins when he forgot to allow for a $1 million piece of equipment in the tender!).
I guess psychiatry is a bit like being weather forecasting: there's no accountability if you're wrong because you missed an important variable in the equation.
Except this time the psychiatrist made calls that got people killed, which is why I applaud him being stood down.
I also note that nowhere do they mention the radicalisation of Islam as a cause. I guess this "non-terror attack" has found its scapegoat and the gods of public opinion have been appeased.
Monday, June 12, 2017
Another car jacking, no description of perpetrators
So here we have yet another case of a violent crime in which the description of the suspects is deliberately withheld.
Is that because they're trying to be sensitive? Or is it simply assumed that from here on out all violent crimes are to be assumed to be by people "of African appearance" unless otherwise advised?
Is that because they're trying to be sensitive? Or is it simply assumed that from here on out all violent crimes are to be assumed to be by people "of African appearance" unless otherwise advised?
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