20 minutes ago .. Rudd apology to indigenous Australians for the policy behind the Stolen Generation .. a lady on radio now .. "it is very emotional .. my uncle was taken and we've never found him to this day" ..
Rudd's apology revealed
Stephanie Peatling February 13, 2008 Latest related coverage
The wording of the apology Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will make today to the stolen generations has been revealed.
"The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so move forward with confidence to the future," Mr Rudd's apology says.
The statement also contains the word 'sorry' which indigenous leaders said must be included.
"For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry. To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture we say sorry," the apology says.
The apology will be made at 9am today, but the full text was tabled in Parliament yesterday evening.
The full apology:
"I give notice that, at the next sitting, I will move:
That today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations - this blemished chapter in our nation's history.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.
A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.
A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.
A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia."
Page 1 of 2 Europe in the house of war By Spengler
Violence is oozing through the cracks of European society like pus out of a broken scab. Just when liberal opinion congratulated itself that Europe had forsaken its violent past, the specter of civil violence has the continent terrified. That is the source of the uproar over a February 7 speech by Archbishop Rowan Williams, predicting the inevitable acceptance of Muslim sharia law in Great Britain.
Not since World War II has British opinion been provoked to the present level of outrage. Writing in the Times of London, the editor of the London Spectator, Matthew d'Ancona, quoted former British Conservative parliamentarian Enoch Powell's warning that concessions to alien cultures would cause "rivers of blood" to flow in the streets of England. Times columnist Minette Marin accuses the archbishop of treason.
Coercion in the Muslim communities of Europe is so commonplace that duly-constituted governments there no longer wield a monopoly of violence. Behind the law there stands the right of the state to inflict violence, and the legitimacy of states rests on what German political economist and sociologist Max Weber once called "the monopoly of violence". Once this right is conceded to private groups, the legitimacy of government crumbles. No one appreciates this more than the British, whose tradition of protecting individual rights under law is the oldest and strongest in the West, excepting the United States, which inherited English Common Law.
By proposing to concede a permanent role to extralegal violence in the political life of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury pushed his phlegmatic countrymen over the edge. No one is better than the British at pretending that problems really aren't there, but once their spiritual leader admits to an alien source of coercion and proposes to legitimize it, they understand that a limit has been reached.
Williams' exercise in what might be termed the Higher Hypocrisy shows how deeply Europe has descended into the Dar al-Harb, or the "House of War" in the Muslim terms for all that lies outside the "house of submission", or Dar al-Islam. Europe's governments refuse to rule, that is, refuse to enforce their own laws because they fear violence on the part of Muslim immigrant communities who refuse to accept these laws. "No-go" zones proliferate that non-Muslims dare not enter. In the United Kingdom, according to evidence presented by respected journalists and public-interest organizations, Muslim community organizations, Muslim police officers and medical personnel collaborate to stop women from escaping domestic violence.
The erring spiritual leader of the Church of England persuades me that Europe's Man of Destiny is the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who for two years has lived in hiding under constant police protection for the crime of criticizing Islam. It is a measure of the degradation of Europe's body politic that is only one means to expose the motives of Williams and his ilk, namely to draw fire from Muslims who overtly threaten violence against any public figure who questions the authority of Islam.
Contrary to his critics, Wilders is not provoking violence. The violence is already there, a matter of workaday fact in Muslim enclaves throughout Europe. In an act of great personal courage, Wilders is enticing violent elements out of the tall grass in order to expose them to public opprobrium.
It is triply hypocritical when Williams, the spiritual leader of the Church of England, speaks of sharia law as if it were a private matter of conscience between consenting parties, rather like the use of rabbinical courts by Orthodox Jews. First, he admits outright that Muslim communities combine to coerce women but pretends that this is not relevant to sharia. Secondly, he offers concessions to sharia in the first place to appease the threat of social violence on the part of Muslims. As a final insult to conscience, he cites as his authority on sharia Professor Tariq Ramadan, who notoriously refuses to condemn the stoning of women for adultery, precisely because Muslim legal rulings specifically endorse such violence.
There is overwhelming documentation that Muslim entities in Britain wield the threat and fact of violence against dissenters, particularly the most vulnerable, namely young women. The fact is so scandalous that in his February 7 address, Williams felt compelled to address it directly, in order to insist that the subject fell entirely outside the issue of law - a conclusion he must know to be false.
Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the bishop of Rochester, warned on January 7 of the spread of "no-go" zones in England that non-Muslims dare not enter. As a result, Nazir-Ali has received death threats against himself and his family and requires protection.
The British authorities will take measures to protect bishops from the threat of violence, but they leave to their own devices thousands of Muslim women. According to a February 2008 report by the Center for Social Cohesion, Islamist groups and individuals frequently link ideas of honor with the welfare of the Muslim world. By using words such as Ird and Namus in a political context, they imply that by protecting the chastity of Muslim women, the security and collective honor of Islam and Muslim states and individuals can also be defended. This politicization of women's bodies helps create an environment where the abuse and control of women is tolerated.
Muslim communities, the report documents, terrorize women who refuse arranged marriages or otherwise break with social norms:
Almost all refuges dealing with Asian women report on the existence of informal networks which exist to track down and punish - with death if necessary - women who are perceived as bringing shame on their family and community. In many cases, women fleeing domestic violence or forced marriages have been deliberately returned to their homes or betrayed to their families by policemen, councilors and civil servants of immigrant origin.
Muslim coercion against women extends to psychiatric hospitals, the Times of London's religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill reported on February 7 (cited in Rod Dreher's indispensable Crunchy Con blog, .) Glenhill quoted a women's rights advocate as follows:
The men get tired of their wives. Or bored. Or maybe the wife objects to her daughter being forced into a marriage she doesn't want. Or maybe she starts wearing Western clothes. There can be many reasons. The women are sent for assessment to a hospital. The GP [general practitioner] referring them is Muslim. The psychiatrist assessing them is Muslim and male. I have sat in these assessments where the psychiatrist will not look the woman patient in the eye because she is a woman. Can you imagine! A psychiatrist refusing to look his patient in the eye? The woman speaks little or no English. She is sectioned (committed to a psychiatric ward). She is divorced. There are lots of these women in there, locked up in these hospitals. Why don't you people write about this?
That brings us back to the archbishop of Canterbury, who acknowledged the fact of coercion of women in his February 7 address, but insisted that because it belonged to "custom" rather than "religious law", he preferred to change the subject:
Recognition of "supplementary jurisdiction" in some areas, especially family law, could have the effect of reinforcing in minority communities some of the most repressive or retrograde elements in them, with particularly serious consequences for the role and liberties of women. The "forced marriage" question is the one most often referred to here, and it is at the moment undoubtedly a very serious and scandalous one; but precisely because it has to do with custom and culture rather than directly binding enactments by religious authority, I shall refer to another issue.
Malcolm Turnbull, new opposition leader (Liberal) in Australia.
With Nelson gone, Turnbull switches to attack By PHILLIP HUDSON - SMH 16 September 2008
TURNING TACTICS: Malcolm Turnbull has used his first press conference as the new leader of Australia's Liberal Party to accuse Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of policy recklessness.
Malcolm Turnbull has used his first press conference as Liberal leader to accuse Kevin Rudd of policy recklessness and displaying a failure of economic leadership.
Mr Turnbull also said that, while Opposition policies would be under review, he would keep Brendan Nelson's plan to cut petrol excise by five cents a litre, oppose the Government's Medicare changes and maintain the policy on an emissions trading scheme.
He began the battle to claw back the Liberal's economic credentials by attacking Labor's claim to be fiscal kings.
He said the Government was not dealing well with the fallout from the economic crisis in America and the "massive collapse" on Wall Street.
"Labor claims to be superior economic managers. We are presently facing, probably, the gravest economic crisis globally in any of our lifetimes," Mr Turnbull said.
"We are seeing a collapse in global confidence. All year, from my very beginning as shadow treasurer, I have said to the Government their role is to lead.
"What Australia needs is real leadership. It needs strong leadership. It needs leaders that say this country is strong and can do anything. But we need confidence.
"We are suffering from a global collapse in confidence and instead of having a Government which talked up Australia, which spoke of our strengths, which spoke passionately about what we can do and why we are different, we've had a Government all year that's talked this country down."
He said that, when the subprime crisis started to hit and caused credit problems in Australia, the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, mismanaged the response.
"He begged the Reserve Bank to put up rates," Mr Turnbull said. "He created an environment where the Government of the day - and this is unique in the history of our country or indeed any country - exacerbated inflationary expectations. We have had a total failure of economic leadership in this country."
On emissions trading, Mr Turnbull said the Coalition's policy would remain to support a properly designed system to begin in 2011 or 2012.
"What we've seen from Kevin Rudd so far ... is an emissions trading scheme that will destroy Australian jobs. It will do economic harm with no environmental benefit," Mr Turnbull said.
He said the focus on the Liberals' position was "a little overdone" and what would matter was the position it took to the next election.
He said Mr Rudd was asking the public "to buy an emissions trading scheme without telling them what it will cost".
"Kevin Rudd is forming an emissions trading scheme for purely political grounds without knowing what will happen at the Copenhagen summit in 2009, without knowing what the new US president will do. It's an extraodinary act of political recklessness."
Mr Turnbull said the Liberals would stick with Dr Nelson's policy to cut petrol tax by five cents a litre - a policy he did not initially support.
He said the Liberals would also oppose the Government's Medicare levy surcharge changes, saying it was a Labor "act of retribution" designed to undermine the private health insurance industry and would most hurt those http://www.stuff.co.nz/4694848a12.html ////////////////// Between regulators, senior executives, accountants, lawyers et al, failing to do there jobs honestly and job honestly and conscientiously with neither fear nor favor, we have the same problem.
ANDREW MAIN: They made huge mistakes in the UK - probably lost $1 billion there - huge mistakes in the US, about the same amount.
KAREN PERCY: Investment bank Goldman Sachs oversaw HIH's takeover of FAI in 1999.
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