Was a quick MS Paint job, but I think you get the point.

Hartcher (and others) have been running story after story (see picture for just how bad that is) on nothing but rumours (that never seem to eventuate).

The relentless anti-Gillard tirade of Peter Hartcher. Pretty much a one trick pony.

I only hope they’ve only been paid for the one article – because that’s all they’ve been turning in for months now.

I understand blind pro-Coalition rhetoric from the band of plutocrats/ex-coalition MP types the SMH gives ample coverage to (e.g. Vanstone, Henderson) but political editors should be somewhat more balanced. There’s absolutely no balance in the political coverage that Peter Hartcher is providing.

This scripted coverage is called “The Narrative” and the rules of it at a high level are simple:

• talk down the ALP as incompetent/unstable and bury achievements,
• talk up the Liberal Party as competent/stable and bury failures.

It explains why we hear little of the coalition/journalist/Ashby scandal, know nothing of the cost of Abbott’s 1.5% baby leave tax or the less-than-Broadband NBN alternative – those things do not help The Narrative or the coalition.

This is why the current media self regulation needs more accountability – Journalists need a push to step away from the comfort of “The Narrative” and do real journalism again. Otherwise – I suggest we just replace these people with an automated Gillard hate text generator – I could replace half the political writers in the country for a fraction of the cost.

PS A look at Harcher’s wikipedia bio suggests he may have something to gain by Rudd getting back in – his publishing efforts around Rudd would be worth more.

Freudian slip?

But of course we know now the true soul of Barangaroo is to give James Packer the chance to build a casino.

Rest of the story found here: Barangaroo asbestos path closed

Jamie Jackson “Brutality” and “I did nothing wrong”

This is in response to the recent social media outrage about a policeman throwing a suspect to the ground. Turned out however that the guy had been violent before and it appeared from the audio and movement that some violence was kicking off again which prompted the policeman to put the guy on the ground. Whole lot of accusations of “unnecessary” and “brutality” – but completely without the on-the-ground context of the policeman and seemingly operating under the assumption that what was said in the commentary was factual – that the guy did nothing and the police had slammed his head on the ground and that the police weren’t going to do anything about it.

Footage with hysterically inaccurate commentary

People watching just the footage and listening to the hysterical girl in the footage might have thought the incident started then and that he had already been roughed up by police – but now we’ve got more of a picture and those people watching must have been blind not to see the guy kicking and punching police. The police are the ones that got roughed up and as far as I can tell the cut on Jamie’s head was probably due to him writhing around on the ground kicking policemen – perhaps there was glass on the pavement as a policeman appears to move something away from his head in one of the videos.

People in the original video were saying guy had done nothing and had his head smashed in the ground and Jamie continually insisting that he had “done nothing wrong”.  It appears that’s bullshit being a bit loose with the truth.

Damsel in distress

The emotional commentary by the girl and crying etc does start to trigger a bit of white knight syndrome. That is the rushing in to defend/assist a girl in distress – of which there was an abundance of emotion charged wavery/wailing voice in the first video. So instead of physically rushing in – they rush in to defend her statements/position about the event.

Now distress is very understandable, violence is like that – particularly while drunk or under the influence of substances – but watching the subsequent videos – the same girl (I believe) was screaming out he did nothing immediately after the police had been punched and kicked. You can’t seriously insist the person is doing nothing wrong when they’re laying in to policemen.

I did nothing wrong! What’s his name?!

Well Jamie “I did nothing wrong” Jackson – I’m pretty sure kicking police in the head and punching them is “something wrong” mate. At least by my standards.

“What’s his name?” – so you know who it was you were punching and kicking in the head by any chance?

Pull your bloody head in – you had many points during the night at which a bit of maturity and common sense might have meant doing something different: e.g. NOT fighting with police, NOT struggling when they put the cuffs on, NOT swearing at the police, NOT trying to kick them again etc. Hell, I’ve had more nights out than this guy’s had hot breakfasts – and I’ve never managed to end up in a fight with a policeman. If I discount the time a guy tried to mug me in Barcelona (who ended up a little roughed up as I took back my phone) and the time I had an altercation with a road barrier I hurdled on the way home in London (Nathan=nasty looking bruise on his leg, Barrier = no damage) – I’ve never been in a physical fight on a night out.. And that’s despite my ongoing asking to get my head kicked in by some yob “good Samaritan” efforts in breaking up domestics, street fights and telling people off for publicly pissing on people’s doorsteps.

A Current Affair – Always a bad idea

Then there’s the decision to go on trashtime TV to play the victim card and complain about the potential risk you thought you were in as you were dumped on your stomach to prevent you from kicking anyone else. Yet as we later find out he not only kicked at policemen’s heads, but punched one in the head as well.

Where was Jamie Jackson’s concern for their safety, or their right not to be abused on the night by a drunk/high little brat as they patrolled the post parade scene. As it looked at 30 seconds in on the SMH article’s video link – someone was either whacking Jamie or the Police with a light stick. Not sure what that was all about – but perhaps that was what kicked off the later altercation that lead to the policeman dumping him on the ground.

Police do not deserve this crap.. On many levels

But hey, if kicking and punching to the head is “doing nothing wrong” then you are a bit of a little sociopath. The police are not there to be someone’s punching bag when some idiot gets drunk or high.

So many people were commenting that he could do no harm or was cooperating – there was no point up until the second he was dumped down that he was cooperating or even listening to the police whatsoever.

Homphobia? Hardly!

Perhaps the protesters trying to play the “victim of homophobic policeman” card can take some time to understand the greater context of the situation: violent offender kicking and punching, refusing to follow directions, kicks off violence again – policeman already wary of having struggled to contain suspect earlier despite having another policeman assisting, took no chances and put him roughly down as quickly as possible. This wasn’t some sort of “police gay bashing” it was a “gay who was bashing police” – let’s get that straight (no pun intended).

Suspect was unharmed, although emotional (which is understandable given he looked a bit off his dial and then got unceremoniously dumped on his stomach on the ground after assaulting police) – but it was probably because it was the first point in the night he’d stopped to realise what he was doing.  Which is a huge contrast to the earlier rage and assault on the police – we should be complimenting the policeman for managing to finally subdue the violent offender without him suffering any harm.

A bit of empathy for the police involved and credit where credit is due

If someone was kicking and punching at you  - would you have shown as much restraint as the police did? Probably not – but that’s where their training kicked in and the fact that Jamie escaped any real injury despite his attacks on police is proof of that.

Sure – it looked like a rough slam to people who haven’t had to deal with that garbage day in day out like the poor police – but it wasn’t “head first” as some claim – and he didn’t come out of it with anything other than wounded pride by the sounds of it. Bleeding on the back of his head was probably when he was kicking at the police and scraping his head over debris on the ground.

Bigger picture

The other part of the context is of course the ongoing drunken violence that police deal with every Friday and Saturday - see the 4 corners story “Punch Drunk”.

Anyhow, hopefully this can all get left to the investigation now and the trial by social media can put its outrage back in the box for a bit.

Young people not enrolled

From the AEC twitter account.

Anyone else have some good ones?

Incidentally I got to see some of this in action about a year ago up in Papua New Guinea where my father and I were doing some volunteer work at Tinsley District Hospital, which had a vaccination centre funded by AusAid.

Incidentally also: Tony Abbott’s mob had a discussion paper talking of cutting $800m out of overseas aid to fund Gina Rinehart’s great Northern tax scam for foreign mining companies.

Amazing amount of good – but still a lot more to do.

But this should have some house cleaning of repulsive discrimination exemptions for religious organisations.
Currently (for some ridiculous reason) we fund religion in this country – the Catholic church for instance is the biggest sponge of an organisation in the country – they contribute nothing to the tax system and take billions. Now with the exemptions they have – they can take billions of tax payer funding and decide to use what that funds as a way to punish sinners – essentially misusing public funding to punish those it has an irrational hatred toward. Essentially we are funding anti-discrimination efforts to the tune of millions a year and then funding efforts to promote misogyny, homophobia and discrimination to the tune of BILLIONS a year.

If you are to receive publi c funding as a religion – it should not be allowed to fund discrimination. That should be the deal. This would mean that before a dollar is funded – they must be in alignment with the discrimination laws that every other company operates under.

The second point I’d like to make is that we are supposed to be a secular country – and that would mean that we do not fund religious operations. Currently we divert billions away from funding the public services (education, healthcare, job services) – and hand it to religious organisations to promote their backward ideology. Whether someone believes in sky gods is completely irrelevant for the ability to teach maths/science (in fact it would be an advantage to NOT believe in sky gods for science) or sweep the floors in a taxpayer funded religious branded facility.

Please examine the funding of religious organisations – as the funding is forcing a tithe upon all people with the largest recipient being the catholic ch urch. Most people in the country do not believe in the catholic values of misogyny (bans on women priests), paedophile coverups (illegal and immoral), superstition (cookies become flesh, wine becomes blood) and homophobia (majority are in favour of marriage rights – even the majority of christians support this). Currently we have no transparency around how much goes to each religion – although it appears Catholicism is the established state religion if funding % is the case.

We do not permit religious groups to follow all of their religious directions – stoning women who are not virgins however has been illegal since year dot. Death sentences for disobedient children is not allowed either. Nor are any of thousands of cruel and unfair punishments/discriminations and the like. We should simply adjust the laws to be the social norms around not treating gay people and unwed mothers as “sinners” and they will work within those restrictions as they do the existing bans o n death penalties for “sins”.

Please do not leave the bill as is with its grotesque exemptions from fair behaviour- it should be promoting fairness and equal treatment and demanding religious organisations adhere to the same standards we expect from every other organisation.

regards,
Nathan Lee

The above was my letter sent via the Getup – campaign about the anti-discrimination laws. I’ve mentioned it in an earlier post if you want the background..

But this story: Gay teachers in Catholic schools hide sexuality really brings it into the spotlight just what we’re doing by our “no conditions” tax-system funding of religion.

We are publicly funding organisations that require people to live a lie and pretend to be a different sexuality in order to keep their jobs. This is appalling.

”We set up our house with two bedrooms so if any colleagues came over we could pretend we were just flatmates,”

It seems that being immersed in the catholic system has somewhat altered the language this guy uses “lifestyle”.

”He’s not able to take a day off work if I am sick. He has to be very guarded as to who he reveals his lifestyle to.”

Wow. That’s not like keeping it a secret that you choose to vote for Tony Abbott or prefer dogs over cats – that’s having to keep your entire sexual preference a secret lest you lose your job.  I know that a lot of gay people keep their sexual preference kinda quiet with new workplaces because they might not know the people – but they have protection under the law if they received any sort of discrimination or harassment in the workplace. But in the Catholic sector (education/health/finance etc), funded by Australian taxpayers via an enforced tithe, they can freely choose to harass or outright sack you for being gay. That’s on top of the usual Catholic coverups of child abuse via various “pioneering” non-legal means.

Religious freedom is ability to persecute sinners by misusing government funding. From this reddit post.

Catholic hit-list of “sinners”

It’s not just gay people either:

• bisexual people
• transgender people
• unwed mothers
• unwed fathers
• divorcees
• anyone engaging in out of wedlock sex (e.g. essentially the whole adult population)
• atheists
• people of other religions (too many to list here – but let’s say around 2/3 of the people on earth do not share a Christian faith)

So what ANY of the above has to do with your ability to teach maths in a school is beyond me. What someone’s sexual preference has to do with their day to day tasks in any job other than someone writing an auto-biography on a gay person really.. and even then, you could call it fiction and be done with it.

What can you do?

Currently there’s an attempt to replace the state level discrimination laws with a national approach. It’s already come under fire and some wording has been scrapped - so there’s a GetUp campaign to put pressure on ministers to fix the wording in the discrimination laws. I will post up my letter as a separate post.

You can refuse to fund religion (but this doesn’t cut off the billions they get a year via direct govt funding and via tax free concessions) – and if you have kids in a religious school – write to them and bring it up at the P&C meetings that discrimination of this nature is completely unacceptable.  If you are involved in Church circles – raise it with them to condemn such discrimination and to write to MPs/Nicola Roxon urging action to remove this from the National discrimination laws.

You can raise awareness of the current shameful discrimination exemptions – as most people don’t know about them and how they’ve already been used to sack pregnant women.

Here it is:

Cairns city council: Add fluoride back into the water as per advice of medical/dental experts

A ban on fluoride means more cavities. Simple as that.

Don’t let the tin-foil hat crazies dictate public health policy – listen to the experts.

From the page:

The Australian Dental Association has said: “Water fluoridation has been one of the most widely studied and endorsed public health measures of all time”. The CSIRO and various Australian health departments all recommend fluoride treatment of water supplies continue.
There are conspiracy theorists who disagree, but their assertions are based around misinformation and fear-mongering. Those people can easily opt out of fluoride via buying bottled water or a home filtration system.
Please do not condemn the population (in particular the poorer households who have least access to dental treatment) of Cairns to poorer dental health due to the conspiracy theories of the vocal few ignorant people – please listen instead to medical experts.

and the letter text:

To:
Cairns city council
Please add fluoride back into the Cairns water supply as per advice of medical/dental experts worldwide.

The addition of fluoride to the drinking water has been universally praised by health organisations and science groups worldwide as an effective measure for reducing dental cavities/caries.

The unscientific concerns of a vocal few conspiracy theorists have been more than addressed by experts in the relevant fields and should not be taking a priority in policy decision making. Organisations such as the Australian Dental Association, CSIRO and state public health departments should be consulted on matters of health and science and these organisations have supported the fluoridation programmes.

Please heed the advice of experts over non-experts in this matter and restore fluoride to the water supply of Cairns.
Sincerely,
[Your name]

Key to happiness
The way to blend a happy life with a meaningful life was proposed about 2300 years ago by the Greek philosopher Epicurus (”A Sad Life is not a Bad Life”, smh.com.au, January 24) . He said the highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain, that life should be organised to serve the pursuit of happiness for yourself and your fellow creatures. But, in order to achieve happiness you had to give meaning to life and that, he said, was done by living prudently, honourably, justly, courageously, temperately, magnanimously, making friends and being philanthropic. Not easy, I agree. But happiness alone is simply narcissism.
Bruce Bland, Rose Bay

Somewhat at odds of today’s Plasma TV Proletariat living wastefully, selfishly, greedily, short-sightedly, cowardly, excessively, ignorantly, shunning others outside and complaining about anyone getting money/welfare unless it’s you.

Pursuit of pleasure is misdirected toward pursuit of stuff (e.g. consumerism).

Serious looking fellow that Epicurus.

If an Epicuran solution to the woes of today is to be a serious contender, we may have to reconsider “happiness” over “greed” as an overall goal however. That’s a tough one given we’re in the consumer version of the military industrial complex – held hostage to it at every level of our lives. I wonder what Epicurus would think of the McMansion and the suite of apple products. He’d be one on my list for a hypothetical dinner party with anyone from history.

So it seems the latest placebo merchants to adopt an identically rubbish, $30 placebo product are “Mojo Futuretech” – their website is here: http://www.mojofuturetech.com/

Just like placebo balance.. erm Power balance – they appear concerned that someone might be selling “fakes” of their genuine-fake product.

Fake Mojo futuretech? They’re all placebos, nothing more.

So just like before – these things are placebos – they have no “technology” other than human gullibility and the concept that you can stretch further the second time you to the test.

Same shit, different similar name

Rather than “future technology” – these things are a blast from the past. A reminder: power balance is banned from using the phrase “Performance Technology” in Australia because there’s no technology in their product.

They even have the exact same type of marketing: “Balance Strength Endurance” – I can’t seem to find it on the power balance site, but I’m sure there was something in there at some stage that seemed very VERY similar.

How does it work?

Although unlike power balance who at least attempt to explain why they think their product works – there’s not a single reference to why their product works that I can find. About as deep as it gets is “products that use holographic technology” – what the hell does that mean? Are holographic stickers so revered in quack circles now that they are like homoeopathy in that they just assume people are gullible enough to swallow anything?

Far easier when you don’t make any real claims as to why something is working – although you have to wonder about something when it doesn’t mention how it works anywhere.

So I fired up the wayback archive and went back to the first page put up on the site (that’s in the archive at least) – Feb 2010. AHA! Here’s how it works.

The holographic discs used in MOJO energetic wristbands are programmed to work with your body’s natural frequencies resulting in peak performance and instant results for most people.

So it’s natural frequencies huh.
Rolling forward to when the site looked more like a site rather than a placeholder:

MOJO Performance wristbands are embedded with holographic technology that has been used by elite athletes for years. Now, this performance enhancing technology is available for the rest of us!

The holographic discs used in MOJO energetic wristbands are programmed to work with your body’s natural frequencies resulting in peak performance and instant results for most people.

So sticking with the “natural frequencies”.
A bit of digging revealed a link to an old PDF brochure that gushes with bullshit. Seriously – it’s hilarious.

Brochure of how the mojo futuretech bracelets upload/download information via meridian lines.

Zeta potential and blood impacted by a hologram. Where did stuff come from? Oh, that’s right – from quacks talking about “alkalizing” trying to sound science-y.

So much bullshit. It’s actually a pity they hid that away and are now not making any claims – I like their theory that the thing will affect your blood clotting. Shit – they should have a warning that it should be used to treat strokes instead of asprin.

Anyhow – Mojo Futuretech is identically nonsensical as power balance, or perhaps slightly more crazy if the claims it made in the past are anything to go by. Save your money – get someone to slap you in the face for being stupid instead – that will increase blood flow, adrenalin and energy levels guaranteed and you don’t need to line your meridian lines up or communicate with anything.

Most people would just look at this and think “Overwhelming majority say to cover up”

Clearly you’d see all that green and think that only a small percentage differ from the masses.

But if you look at the percentage figures – 56% to 44% – that should look a lot closer than it is.

Let’s see what the figures would roughly have to be to look that way on a doughnut chart (it’s rough because I have only that picture to go off (thanks to another redditor - thetoethumb for the side by side idea). There’s another view of this at the source.

But what ARE the stats that the herald sun is using to get that bad a graph?

How the figures would have to be dodgied to look like that.

The visual representation is that of 80/20% results – or less than half the dissenting votes. So around 70 votes say “no”, 300 say “yes”. That’s a bit of a difference from 206 saying yes. About 100 different.

I think that’s pretty damned deceptive.

Here it is:

Capital ideas

Stephen Miller (Letters, November 15) wrote about the NIMBY. Spare some consideration for the lesser known but populous types of whinge-beast roaming wild in Australian society.

NOTEs (”Not Over There Either”) are creatures that extend the backyard range of NIMBYs. BANANAs scale up to ”Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything”. Among BANANAs you can find property-value obsessed FRUITs (”Fear of Revitalisation Urban-Infill and Towers”), identifiable by their insistence that any increase in density is to be met with a cry of SOBBY (”Some Other Bugger’s Back Yard”). Those familiar with the gambling/mining-interest-sponsored politicians would know about NAMBIs – ”Not Against My Business or Industry”, which is why we appear to have a difficulty in rolling back rorts or regulation/tax changes, meaning someone might pay more/profit less, even if that’s logical and fair.

I’d like to suggest a new term: NAMEs – ”Not Against My Entitlements”, who are most visible during talk of reduction of baby bonus, private education funding, removal of negative gearing, means testing welfare or, shock horror, suggesting said beasts live within their means. Once upon a time, though, they were all simply called ”SELFISH”.

Nathan Lee Surry Hills

There was a comic that went with it from John Shakespeare:

This letter of mine was in response to a letter from Stephen Miller:

Fed up with whingeing NIMBYs

I am not going to complain about the government, the railways, aircraft noise, development, in fact about anything that most people complain about. I am going to complain about NIMBYs.

These ”Not in my Backyarders” are people who complain about anything that impacts on their lives. Basically they can’t think of anyone but themselves.

They stall the construction of new highways but yell loudly if they’re caught in a traffic jam. They’ll happily drive around on ugly roads all day but complain at the construction of a new railway station. They’ll complain about the construction of a new school but overlook overcrowding in their local schools. They halt development, force bus companies to take the long way round, and restrict the operation of goods trains and aircraft to certain periods of the day.

They’re quite happy to have coal-fired power stations going 24 hours a day but they’ll halt construction of wind turbines. Basically they halt progress and, for that matter, employment; they delay the construction of infrastructure that our entire world needs. They restrict the operation of amusement parks and museums, which can force them to close, taking the fun out of people’s lives.

We have been affected by the complaints of whingeing NIMBYs. They ought to think about what they’re saying and its impact on the world around them. They have to realise that if you move near an airport, you must expect aircraft noise; if you live in a modern city, one of the costs is that you will have to live with the noise created by the environment around you – it’s a part of living in a progressive world.

If they don’t want to put up with noise at all, they should go and live in the middle of the Simpson Desert.

Stephen Miller East Maitland

And there was a follow up the next day:

In a short note

Nathan Lee’s list of acronyms (Letters, November 16) missed out on one of the most important: NIMTOFF (Not In My Term Of Office).

Bruce Hyland Daleys Point

Ladies and Gentlemen – can I present to you Richard Leder – a senior (e.g. partner) Corrs Chambers Westgarth lawyer who proudly sports a bio boasting about his skills & involvement with the most paedophile scandal plagued organisation in Australia (and indeed the world); the Catholic church.

Screenshot of Richard Leder’s public web profile showing the inappropriate dual roles – paying off victims of catholic church’s child rape victims and on the board of a Children’s hospital. No, I’m not kidding.

Richard’s name crops up time and time and time again in the media as he boasts that he handles the dirtiest of dirty work of the Catholic church as their legal representative, keeping many cases out of the courts via those “pioneering” non-legal responses one would presume. I’m wondering how a lawyer writing legal sounding “threats” of legal action and filling out contracts to sign is “non-legal” – but then again, I’m not a lawyer.

As an aside, since we’re talking “non-legal” stuff, when there’s a crime committed and the intent is to conceal it from police/courts a recent case was about it being less “non-legal” and more “illegal”. Just a thought, now back to the techniques that this pioneer of Catholic abuse settlements works on.

Take the money.. Keep your mouth shut and no one gets a legal “threat”

According to this article (Let’s loosen the lock on these secrets) the pioneering Catholic “non-legal” process sounds a bit like something the mafia would use: take the money, keep quiet.. or else. A “threat” was the description.

From the article:

The letter also enclosed a modest offer of compensation to Emma. Archbishop Pell’s words, and his offer, were genuine, but the church is a business and employs expensive experts to protect its interests. Like Royce.

In the same envelope, Emma received another letter, dated August 31, 1998. Its tone was different.

Signed by Richard Leder, a respected partner of law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth, it contained what, in my opinion, was a threat: The compensation offer provided “a realistic alternative to litigation that will otherwise be strenuously defended”.

So Richard Leder’s letter to a victim of child abuse contains a polite warning to take the cash or else see what a ruthless multi-billion dollar organisation means by the term “strenuously defend”?

Gee, the heart on this man on behalf of his paymasters showing such understanding to a victim of one of the worst crimes humanity has on offer – surely a man of such compassion and empathy should be involved with a children’s hospital or something.

From child abuse to charity

Now the legal work for the Catholic church’s globally-mobile and prolific predators might keep any mere mortal lawyer busy enough – but no – not the “fine intellect” of Mr Leder. He’s also apparently got time for other child matters – namely sitting on the board of a Children’s hospital foundation.

No, I am not writing an article for the Onion. This is deadly serious. The Victorian Catholic Church’s number one lawyer for child abuse settlements – sits on the board of a children’s hospital charity. Why it’s almost as sensible as having him on the board of a press club when his company is constantly taking the press to court for reporting stuff.

Anyhow, here’s the Royal Children’s hospital foundation page listing the board members listing a Richard Leder, partner, Corrs Chambers Westgarth. And again here.

Aah, there’s our pioneer in “non-legal” abuse claims – sitting on a Children’s hospital foundation board. Poor taste selection?

Seriously? You’d have a guy involved in what can be described as diverting away true justice for child victims of the most awful crimes from police via settlement negotiations on the board of a children’s hospital foundation?

Now it may be that he’s doing fine work on there – but it’s a little like having a “pioneer” in backyard dogfights sitting on the RSPCA board in his spare time.

This has to be a contender for worst decision – the only “Royal” child thing this man should be involved with is a Royal Commission into child abuse – that’s if there’s anything left in his filing cabinets that hasn’t been put through the shredder (if the police allegations of Catholic church hindering and destroying evidence are on the money).

What paediatric research is this group funding? How best to destroy kids for their entire lives (if they don’t commit suicide after the abuse they suffered) and then “threaten” them with protracted legal action when they finally have the courage to speak up? Or is it more about psychological studies to determine the minimum amount of cash combined with the “threats” of tough defence legal action (I presume including such tactics as dragging a victim’s reputation through the mud in court) that can be offered to rape victims to get a signature on the dotted line?

Quality legal advice surely includes “report the matter to police”?

You’d have to think that with his lawyer background and the fact that he is (allegedly) a human being (allegedly) with some remaining morals – he would have suggested that the church refer at least ONE case to the police while he’s drafting up papers to threaten rigorous defence of victims? According to a recent article there have been zero referrals to police despite 300 people compensated as “victims of sexual abuse” and “86 offenders” identified.

Not one.

Somewhere in there you’d think there must have clearly been a matter for referral to police because a crime appears to have been committed. I mean I’m sure the Catholic church doesn’t part with money willy-nilly – they’re more on the “take” side as far as contributions (tax and otherwise) go. Most businesses would get legal advice to inform police of any crimes within their walls. Govt organisations would call ‘em in too. Shit, I’ve called the police a bunch of times about things going on in the street – and that’s without the crime I’m observing being so serious and without legal representation or months to think about it.

Perhaps the Catholic church needs a better lawyer if this guy has been at the helm of their legal decisions for at least a decade or more and still apparently zero reports to police.

Compensating for compensating

To be fair to Richard Leder – perhaps he’s just trying to compensate for his role in helping ensure that the Catholic church remains out of the papers and courts. Blood on his hands would be pretty thick these days via his “pioneering” work in (mis?)handling abuse cases. A decade of dealing with the worst the catholic church has to offer would take a terrible toll on any decent human being.. Or perhaps it was a suggestion from a confessional when unloading his sins – say ten hail marys and get involved with a charity to do with kids.

I guess if I was helping avoid a scum-bag organisation off admitting responsibility for their culture of paedophile protectionism/self interest – I’d be wanting some sort of charity work to try and justify in my head what I was doing for a living was somehow mitigated.

Richard Leder and team’s allegedly  “sometimes aggressive” involvement in this dirty Catholic abuse pay-off scheme isn’t cleansed that easily in my opinion. Perhaps if tomorrow he turned all his files over to the police and took the stand as a whistle blower – maybe that might in some part make up for what he’s helped with over the years.

I think that if what people like Richard Leder & the Catholic church do to divert victims away from police/courts isn’t illegal (these self described “non-legal” out-of-court “hush-hush payment” contracts) – it bloody well should be if we’re at all serious about child abuse prevention/justice.

Perhaps the hospital was just confused when he said he was a specialist in dealing with the “difficult issues” of child abuse and thought he might have been someone doing some good – like a rape counsellor, psychiatrist or a doctor? Nope: sorry, this guy is the lawyer that helps enable the Church to get away from the “difficult issue” without police, courts or media getting involved.

To be fair – there are lots of other people involved in this with far greater evidence and proximity to the abuse who should be getting a spank before Mr Leder – the people who first dealt with the victim’s complaint, the people who were their bosses. The people who decided to shuffle on the predator. And there need to be lawyers defending the very worst in society – but perhaps I’m a little unsure on how boasting about such things right next to boasting about working with a children’s hospital charity is tactful or smart.. Street smart or otherwise.

Why is he on the board of a Children’s hospital foundation?

If you’d like to ask them about why such a man sits on a board of a children’s hospital foundation: http://www.rch1000.org.au/contact-us.asp  might be one place to start. I’m a little confused as to why they can’t find someone with a less distasteful day-job.

This guy sitting on a children’s hospital foundation is nearly as bad as giving the Catholic church billions a year to run schools and childcare facilities with special exemptions to discrimination laws and apparently letting them operate (so far) as a law unto themselves.. We wouldn’t do that now would we?

Contacts that actually help in such cases (unlike Corrs Catholic Church legal advice and Richard Leder)

I think about the last place to go would be the Catholic church or their legal team. That we have a royal commission under-way is down to the fact that they do not deal with these matters with the victim in mind – still clinging to the rights of a predator over those of the victim.

• BeyondBlue suicide counselling/hotline – http://beyondblue.org.au – ph 1300224636
• Lifeline suicide counselling/hotline – http://www.lifeline.org.au – ph: 131114
• NSW Police – http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/ – ph: 131444 or local police contact here.
• Victorian Police – http://www.police.vic.gov.au – find local police contact here.
• SA Police – http://www.sapolice.sa.gov.au – ph: 131444 or find local police contact here.
• WA Police – http://www.police.wa.gov.au/ – ph: 131444
• NT Police – http://www.pfes.nt.gov.au/Police.aspx – ph: 131444
• Tasmania Police – http://www.police.tas.gov.au/ – ph: 131444
• ACT Police (federal police) – ph: 131444
• Qld Police – http://www.police.qld.gov.au/ – ph 131444

Or there’s the recently announced Royal Commission that has almost universal support with 95% of those polled in favour of finally, FINALLY getting some accountability from the Catholic church. Meanwhile however the Catholic church still receives billions of dollars from the tax system, is not a legal entity, pays no tax and its leadership continues to play the victim. So business as usual.

Students with their Urine powered generator at Maker Faire Africa in Lagos

Now on the face of it it ticks a lot of boxes – developing nation ingenuity, young kids sticking it to the energy companies and the green credentials (hey – urine’s a renewable resource right?).

But I’m not so convinced.

The claims

The claims is that “1 Liter of urine gives you 6 hours of electricity.”

Wow, 1 Litre of urine and 6 hours of electricity.

The following is on the site explaining it.

The system works like this:

Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which separates out the hydrogen.
The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.
The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.
This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator.
Along the whole way there are one-way valves for security, but let’s be honest that this is something of an explosive device…

What is in Urine?

Going to that bastion of semi-reliable information (wikipedia) – I find that:

Urine is an aqueous solution of greater than 95% water, with the remaining constituents, in order of decreasing concentration urea 9.3 g/L, chloride 1.87 g/L, sodium 1.17 g/L, potassium 0.750 g/L, creatinine 0.670 g/L and other dissolved ions, inorganic and organic compounds.

Ok, so nearly all water – and 9.3 g/L of urea. Hrmm.. On the face of it and with limited research into the chemical energy in urea – that’s not sounding like something that is likely to power a generator with a 10-40% efficiency (and that’s being very generous with the range).

The apparatus

Let’s take a look at the picture from here.

The setup

Now it looks to me like a very daggy looking battery (the “electrolytic cell”), several water filter holders, a modified gas cylinder, some tubing, clamps and a generator. The bit from the generator to the electrics is pretty non-contentious – have seen similar things – a light to provide some load/indicator that energy is getting through and some powerpoints to plug the stuff in you want power to.

The “electrolytic cell”

Can’t really see what’s inside that or how it is filled up with urine etc – but keep in mind it’s got to be well sealed enough to pressurise the gas cylinder via the water filter thing in between. Also curious about the wires leading from it to the generator. What’s up with that?

Close-up of the battery and generator

Have they just hooked up the battery to an inverter perhaps? Surely people will expect the generator to be running while it is powering the lights. Or is it supposed to close the loop on supplying power back to produce hydrogen?

Water purifiers

Next in the chain is the first of the water filters. What’s it for? “The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.”
Ok, let’s go with that. First up it has no filter in it. Next up: it’s not pushing liquid through and a “water filter” only makes sense if you’re pushing water through it – I’m not sure what the point of it is – surely the gas would just bubble straight through to the exit? e.g. the liquid in it is irrelevant like blowing into a glass with a straw not in the water – the air doesn’t magically go down into the water – it just stays at the top. If you filled it to the top you might get a bit of water blown out initially but then it would have cleared a path. If it had a hose down it you’d get a sheeha/bong type result – but how it is currently I don’t see how it does anything. It’s ok, these kids don’t hang out with the drop-out pot-heads enough to know how to fashion a bong out of an Orchy bottle. Even if you tipped it upside down during operation it would proceed to blow out all the water until it was clear and then the gas would flow straight through.

Here’s how they are usually set up to filter water:

Water filter.

So water comes in – is pushed or pulled through the filter – and then flows out. If you don’t have the filter there – the water just flows straight out.. If you tried blowing air through – it’d just flow straight to the exit.

So you could take that out of the system – a sign of many “perpetual motion” and “free energy” machines where they stick a big coil, magnet or a mystery big resistor or something in there.

The gas bottle
There’s some things wrong with the gas bottle too.

Some suspect bits on here too

No clamp on the “input” – which I’m not sure what that is and how it works. Looks like a repair job, but not sure what that other bit is – looks like a plug or something on the side of it. The corrosion might be because they welded the wrong metal on there? But generally you don’t want too many valves/openings in your tank as it is a point of failure – certainly not a big drain sized opening or whatever that is.

Another water filter

Then there’s the next bit – don’t have any idea why you would have filters on the stuff going out to the atmosphere (I presume that’s what that is).

What is all this on the end?

Huh? Why would you care about filtering whatever comes out that bit – either they’ve hooked up their sham rig incorrectly (e.g. this stuff with the filters should be hooked to the electrolyte cell or to the gas tank or somewhere that makes sense. Double filtering something that is going nowhere – why? Again, those could be removed for the same impact.

And finally – 6 hours of running a generator on a litre of petrol is probably pushing the friendship a bit – 6 hours of running a generator on 95% water content – unless it’s uranium or fairy dust disolved in it is probably a stretch.

Conclusion

While I’d love to believe the story – I just don’t buy it. There’s either something very wrong with their setup or it’s just pointlessly complex for no apparent reason.

I’m labelling this a quack gadget – in line with the perpetual energy machines, magnet only motors.. Urine powered generators are in good company.

But happy to be proved wrong and we can finally harness the grubs who piss in the street and the urinal at the pub could run the lights.

Anyone else got any thoughts?

Edit: article talking about potential for using urine talks about needing electricity to separate the hydrogen. I don’t buy that this will be capable of producing the volume and the pressures required. And another talking about batteries – but again, that was just a chemical reaction like any battery. And another talking again about electrolysis of it being a bit easier than water – but that all needs power.