Correction: Last week's All the News That Fits quoted a story by the
Financial Review which gave some figures on the call centre industry.
The Financial Review seems to have made a mistake with them.
This week's stories: Australian Soldier Charged Over East
Timor...Nursing Home Crisis Continues...Australian Government Works With
Iran To Return Dissidents...Marriage Dangerously Close to Being up to
the People Concerned...Space Shuttle Disaster May Have Had Familiar
Cause...Quotes of the week.
A former member of the Australian SAS has been charged with abusing a
corpse while on duty in East Timor. Investigations are continuing into
allegations of mistreatment of prisoners.
The Age, February 22.
An 87 year old patient at an aged care centre was assaulted at least
four times by another patient. Anastasia Sdrinis says she also found her
mother smeared with faeces several times. Other relatives of patients
at the Kingston Centre say that emergency buzzers in some wards were
broken, dementia patients were often unsupervised and toilets were in a
"disgraceful" condition. A worker at the centre has been suspended after
removing genital hair from fourteen patients with either dementia or
serious mental illness, without consent or authorisation.
The Age, February 22.
The Australian government is negotiating with the Iranian government, to
return 190 Iranian citizens who are seeking asylum in Australia. 22 of
the asylum seekers are children.
Among the 474 people officially listed as executed by the government of
Iran in 2002 alone are people killed by stoning, throwing off a cliff,
by public mutilation of limbs, and eye gouging. Most of these
punishments were carried out before a public audience.
Hundreds were arrested during recent anti-government demonstrations,
with the fate of many still unknown. The body of a female student, Leila
Nourgostari, was found dumped in a street a few days after her abduction
by the government in Shiraz.
In January 2003 , a 15 year old girl was condemned to be flogged. It is
normal practice to include children under 18 to be sentenced to
punishments such as execution, amputation of limbs and flogging in public.
On December 28 2002, a member of the powerful Guardian Council said:
"[death by] stoning cannot be replaced by any other form of punishment
and its validity is not subject to the [considerations of] time and place."
Commenting on a possible bill to abolish stoning, a pro-Khatami Majlis
deputy Elahe Koulaii said: "This is a lie. No proposal to abolish
stoning has been submitted to the Majlis." (State-run Khorassan daily,
December 17, 2002).
press release by refugee advocates, January 20.
The government tried to have the courts declare that a marriage between
a woman and a female to male transsexual was illegal, because they could
not have children. The government unsuccessfully argued that a principal
purpose of marriage was having children, and therefore the marriage
should be invalid. A spokesperson for Attorney-General Daryl Williams
said that the case raised "serious issues" about "the role of Parliament
in determining the meaning of marriage".
The Age, February 22.
The space shuttle disaster may have been a result of privatisation. The
space shuttle program has been 92% privatised and is now run by
aerospace companies Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Over the summer a
retired 36-year veteran of NASA called on President Bush to enact a
temporary moratorium on all space shuttle flights because of safety
concerns, but was ignored.
SchNews news report, February 7.
Quotes of the Week:
"We would never have had tax reform if I had followed the opinion polls
on that issue".
Prime Minister John Howard, explaining why he will keep supporting war
with Iraq regardless of public opinion.
"The fracturing of the Western alliance over Iraq and the huge antiwar
demonstrations around the world this weekend are reminders that there
may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States
[government] and world public opinion".
The New York Times.
"For a man leading Australia closer to a war possibly against the wishes
of the majority, John Howard seems remarkably at peace with himself. He
is absolutely sure it is the morally correct course of action".
The Age.
[The United States government is] "about to betray, as it has done so
many times in the past, those core values of self-determination and
human liberty".
Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya, who at first supported war with Iraq,
after seeing the US government's plans for Iraq after the war. Reported
in the Age.
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