Australia

The strike on 1 April killed charity workers from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) from Australia, Canada, Poland, the UK and the US, as well as their Palestinian colleague.

The review, released on Friday, concluded that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) failed to follow procedures and made identification and decision-making errors.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the Australian government would "press for full accountability" for those responsible for the incident, "including any appropriate criminal charges".

"The military advocate general of Israel is still to decide on further action," she said in a statement on Friday.

The IDF had launched an internal investigation amid intense international pressure and sacked senior officers after acknowledging that the strike was a "serious failure" and a "grave mistake".

The charity's team had been authorised by the Israeli military to help transfer aid supplies from the coast to a warehouse. The convoy was hit in the Gazan city of Deir al-Balah when drone operators did not follow rules and thought WCK's cars were carrying Hamas gunmen, the IDF's inquiry said.

WCK founder José Andrés had accused Israeli forces of targeting his aid workers "systematically, car by car".

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/15321355

Archive is background info via this BBC post from 2023, but that's just one piece. Yeah, a lot of us have seen the photo, and maybe some of us know it was during the Viet Nam War, during Civil Rights protests in the U.S. and not that long after the assassination of MLK. Maybe you even know that Muhammad Ali lost his belt and was banned from boxing in the U.S. for refusing the draft to Viet Nam:

"Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?"

I did not know the Black Power Salute got all 3 athletes BANNED from the Olympics and pretty much ruined their lives. From NPR post for 50th anniversary:

Both men received hate mail and death threats. There was discussion of stripping them of their medals. Many Americans shunned them for their silent gesture: For years, they struggled to find good jobs. Their marriages suffered under that strain. Their children were bullied at school. Employers shied away from them.

And Smith and Carlos were banned from future participation in any Olympics for life. (They were in their early 20s in Mexico City, and this effectively prevented them from competing in other races in Munich and Montreal.) There were no offers of the complimentary stadium tickets usually offered to medaled athletes.

(Peter Norman suffered many of the same indignities when he returned to Australia. He was ostracized, never allowed on an Australian Olympic team again, despite qualifying in several national trials.[...]

Which gets us to The White Man In That Photo (from 2015 -- long and worthy of a full read):

Norman was a white man from Australia, a country that had strict apartheid laws, almost as strict as South Africa. There was tension and protests in the streets of Australia following heavy restrictions on non-white immigration and discriminatory laws against aboriginal people, some of which consisted of forced adoptions of native children to white families.

The two Americans had asked Norman if he believed in human rights. Norman said he did. They asked him if he believed in God, and he, who had been in the Salvation Army, said he believed strongly in God. “We knew that what we were going to do was far greater than any athletic feat, and he said “I’ll stand with you” – remembers John Carlos – “I expected to see fear in Norman’s eyes, but instead we saw love.”

Smith and Carlos had decided to get up on the stadium wearing the Olympic Project for Human Rights badge, a movement of athletes in support of the battle for equality.

They would receive their medals barefoot, representing the poverty facing people of color. They would wear the famous black gloves, a symbol of the Black Panthers’ cause. But before going up on the podium they realized they only had one pair of black gloves. “Take one each”, Norman suggested. Smith and Carlos took his advice.

But then Norman did something else. “I believe in what you believe. Do you have another one of those for me”? he asked, pointing to the Olympic Project for Human Rights badge on the others’ chests. “That way I can show my support for your cause.” Smith admitted to being astonished, ruminating: “Who is this white Australian guy? He won his silver medal, can’t he just take it and that be enough!”.

So they all go to the podium in solidarity and the U.S. winners give the salute and suffer the aftermath. More from 'white guy':

As John Carlos said, “If we were getting beat up, Peter was facing an entire country and suffering alone.” For years Norman had only one chance to save himself: he was invited to condemn his co-athletes, John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s gesture in exchange for a pardon from the system that ostracized him.

A pardon that would have allowed him to find a stable job through the Australian Olympic Committee and be part of the organization of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Norman never gave in and never condemned the choice of the two Americans.

He was the greatest Australian sprinter in history and the holder of the 200 meter record, yet he wasn’t even invited to the Olympics in Sydney. It was the American Olympic Committee, that once they learned of this news asked him to join their group and invited him to Olympic champion Michael Johnson’s birthday party, for whom Peter Norman was a role model and a hero.

Norman died suddenly from a heart attack in 2006, without his country ever having apologized for their treatment of him. At his funeral Tommie Smith and John Carlos, Norman’s friends since that moment in 1968, were his pallbearers, sending him off as a hero.

Note that the 'white guy' article talks about a commemorative statue built in 2005 of just Smith and Carlos -- no Norman. Norman approved that artistic choice. Transcript from Democracy Now where Carlos himself explains how he called Norman to hear him say so (part 1 and part 2):

JOHN CARLOS: Yeah, “Blimey, John. You’re calling me with these blimey questions here?” And I said to him, I said, “Pete, I have a concern, man. What’s this about you don’t want to have your statue there? What, are you backing away from me? Are you ashamed of us?” And he laughed, and he said, “No, John.” He said—you know, the deep thing is, he said, “Man, I didn’t do what you guys did.” He said, “But I was there in heart and soul to support what you did. I feel it’s only fair that you guys go on and have your statues built there, and I would like to have a blank spot there and have a commemorative plaque stating that I was in that spot. But anyone that comes thereafter from around the world and going to San Jose State that support the movement, what you guys had in ’68, they could stand in my spot and take the picture.”

The U.S. (but not just the U.S.) has a woeful history of treating those who protest Injustice horribly. There's always an excuse for it, too. From the above articles, we can see that the Olympic head allowed the Nazi salute for the ~~Munich~~ Berlin games but expelled Smith and Carlos in 1968 with the rational that the first was a national salute and therefore acceptable whereas 'Black Power' was not.

More recently, Kaepernick kneeling got him in trouble with the NFL but they were fine with Butker's speech that, "denounced abortion rights, Pride Month, COVID-19 lockdowns..." and suggested women should be homemakers instead of using their newly earned college diplomas. Supposedly the 'difference' is that Kaepernick's silent protest was on the NFL's time but Butker spoke on his own time so it was fine ... but they can always find a difference and it is never as valid as simply siding against injustice.

Edit: Correction (Berlin games not Munich).

Final edit: Sorry guys, this got out of hand as I feared and it would take too long to answer everything properly and it would just offend more people.

I got some nice tips for finding places and learned more about Australian's views on the subject. I should have been more careful with what I said. It changed my opinion somewhat but people here would still not like it, so I'll keep it to myself.

Thanks for the very civilized and nice answers and I'm sorry if I didn't answer. I would like to, but in private, or this could become a witch hunt. I do not wish to offend anyone or be attacked because of that. As someone commented, I am the problem here.

Hi everyone, I’ve been lurking for a long time and decided to try to ask something I can’t find out.

First, please be tolerant about the question. I am an Australian citizen, but from a foreign background, so cultural things that seem sacred and unquestionable here are not the same to me. I wouldn’t be crazy to post this on reddit (though I deleted my account ages ago) because I know all the posts would just be attacking me (if you don’t like it, leave, are you defending terrorists?, and so on), instead of helpful comments. Hopefully it will be different here.

The question is: is there any Australian town free from military worship? I mean monuments everywhere, pools and parks named after it and so on. Somewhere I can forget and pretend that this is not how the rest of Australia is.

I’ve been traveling around trying to find a place I would like to settle. I found many small towns I liked, but it seems that the smaller the town, the higher the military worship. They may not even have a public toilet, but they will have a military worship statue that seemed to have cost more than all the town to build.

I love Australia, specially the outback, but the military worship issue is so big that makes me think of looking for another country. I know my taxes are being used to send people to kill whoever the US doesn’t like, and the country prides itself with this history. But if I can ignore that, I can pretend to myself that it’s not true and live happy. I tried to fight the issue for a long time but it makes no difference except to me, sacrificing my well being for nothing. But if I keep being reminded every time I go to do groceries trough the park “invasion of foreign country divine pride park”, it will be impossible. I already try to avoid news and ABC, so it should be possible.

I’m sending a picture of some of the places I’ve been to, without much luck. Funny enough, the town I liked the most, Roma, is the worst, with military trees every 10 meters.

Anyway, that’s it. Maybe I’ll get downvoted to oblivion, but let’s try…

By the way, I don’t know if I am posting this correctly, on the right place and everything. It’s my first lemmy post as well. It's very confusing to know the community to post. It shows everything everwhere!

Edit- I posted this before, thought it was in the wrong place, deleted and posted again. Now I see 2 of the posts and the deleted one has 2 upvotes. This is so confusing...

Edit2 - Before I get any comment, I dislike military worship from any country, not just Australia. Military may or not be necessary in modern societies, but worship and praise should never be acceptable and is specially dangerous when applied to a group with power. Citizens should always be skeptical of their military group, its uses, powers and permissions. It should be like owning a gun. You may be allowed to have one but should be constantly proving you are not doing anything wrong with it. The definition of what is "wrong" or "right" should be constantly questioned as well.

Edit3 - just a reminder, that I do not wish to change anyone's point of view. It's your tradition and culture and I respect, but I don't have to like it and I would like to figure out how to avoid it. It is all. I would like to stop Australian involvment in American wars, but besides that I don't mind if Australians like military or not, but I would like to avoid being exposed to that, assuming that is possible, which is the reason for the post, so I can find out.

I stumbled across a sports article from a US publication and thought it interesting that it showed the USA leading the medals table.

Instead of the regular table that gives weight to Gold, silver and bronze, they just see total medals.

I sorta like it. Celebrating all medal winners equally is nice. It feels a little like fudging the numbers, though.

And another one bites the dust — this time it's Rex.

It's a real shame, because (at least from my experience) their staff were far friendlier and more accommodating. And their prices were reasonable.

(They also never seemed to sell all their business class seats, so a seat up the front could be yours for $50 extra if you wanted it.)

I wonder whether Qantas or Virgin will pick up the regional routes?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-30/rex-airlines-enters-voluntary-administration/104155898

#airlines #Rex @australia #business #auspol #airline #bankrupt

"The predicted arrival time of the solar storm is uncertain, with a variance of twelve hours either side, which is typical for solar eruptions like these," said Dr Brett Carter, a specialist in space weather prediction at the RMIT University school of science.

To help you decide whether it is worth heading out to catch a glimpse, Carter suggests keeping track of incoming space weather data via the BoM, as well as social media feeds.

I think they mean the relevant sub-division (?) of BoM: https://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Aurora

Strange scenes from Channel 9 who are copping widespread criticism for their disastrous handling of the Olympics while their journalists are on strike after the bosses were sure they don’t need to pay the journos properly.

Callum feels the familiar vibration of his mobile phone. Another text from Sportsbet.

...

Callum hasn't placed a wager for more than a year. Sportsbet is still trying to lure him back into action with an almost daily stream of text messages.

...

I actually had the opposite experience to the complains in this article..

I'm not really a gambler, but I did fire up SportsBet for my first ever bet in my life during State of Origin. I put in $50 and lost $10 on Queensland. Then I found the horse bit and selected some random horses and apparently I'd won $100 so I took out my original $50, then threw away the rest on random horses and greyhounds, and Queensland at State of Origin again.

Outcome? Zero dollars lost, and a couple of games worth of funsies thinking I was going to become a tenionaire with my 1.xx odds win.

Sportsbet sent me one SMS, and I replied STOP.

Sportsbet sent me one email, and I hit unsubscribe.

I haven't received any communication since - no sms, no email, no push notifications, no anything.

Not sure I'm fully on board with people claiming its all SportsBets fault they're gambling and being preyed upon IN THIS SPECIFIC WAY.

I do say their constant spam during any sports match of any kind on free to air television is an absolute disgrace though.

Don't cross the virtual picket line at Nine Publishing.

From 11am AEST on Friday, July 26 until 11am AEST on Wednesday, July 31, we will join the virtual picket line in support of the #MEAAmedia members at Nine Publishing on strike.

That means we will not share or click on any articles from Nine mastheads, Sydney MorningHerald, The Age, Financial Review, Brisbane Times and WA Today, and won’t buy the papers.

The article isn't entirely clear to me, but it seems that her pressure was unsuccessful.

Seriously? Why is this an issue?

Sounds like the coach has a known personal connection with the Korean swimmer, and was showing support and solidarity with his international friends and competitors.

From my reading his behaviour sounds very Australian. And good on him. Sure maybe he could've just wished him well, but in the excitement and business of the day who can blame him for being a little over the top.

We aren't really a country that expresses a win at all costs attitude, but thats the impression i get about the other team members quoted in the article. Their comments seem a bit un-Australian to me.

A year ago, the government instigated an independent review of the national multicultural framework.

As more than half of Australia’s population is either born overseas or has one parent who was, this policy is important. It underpins how multiculturalism works in almost every part of life. It aims to ensure equity and inclusion for people from minority groups, and attempts to whittle away at structural racism.

The review recommends bold changes, like dismantling the Department of Home Affairs. It remains to be seen how much the government will enact.

Bill Shorten has confirmed the Government will ban access to sex workers via the NDIS, saying it is ‘unnecessary’ when so much of the NDIS is designed to fuck recipient.

“It’s inadequately funded, overly complex and under-resourced, so I can assure you people are getting very fucked, very regularly. Shorten” said. “The fucking is built into the system, there’s no need to pay extra for this”.

(title semi-censored to attempt compliance with swearing-in-titles guidance)

The Australian passport is now among the top five most powerful [based on visa-free access to countries], according to the latest rankings, which also show a Southeast Asian nation has retained its top spot. Here's how our little blue book fared.