EcoRadio

Author: Geoff Ebbs

  • Are the righteous nastier?

    Are the righteous nastier?

    Child Abuse Commission
    Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

    It is tempting to think that faith in a higher being leads naturally to a sense of righteousness as a precursor of cruelty.

    • Watching Salvation Army welfare workers begrudgingly dole out food vouchers to women imported as mail-order brides and then dumped might lead one to make this connection.
    • Observing Catholic family counsellors pressure women into carrying unwanted babies full-term causes one to think so.

    Both recent, real-world examples lead one to reflect on both the hardness of heart involved and its inverted relationship to the universal exhortation of every religion to be hospitable and merciful.

    Suddenly we are not too far from:

    • nuns whipping boys to force them to lick up their own vomit,
    • priests spanking young girls for the sin of being penetrated by them minutes earlier,
    • managers handing bodies of young orphans to the gardener for disposal in the rose bed.

    I am not making this up, these are not rhetorical flourishes, this is what the Royal Commission into institutional abuse has just reported that our church welfare groups have been doing for sixty years and more.

    Of course, we must not pay these criminal gangs one more cent to continue this abuse. That is an argument which we must all stand up for until we win.

    That must not make us anti-theist. The self-righteous do not represent the full spectrum of those who follow a religion.

    There are thousands of religious communities that are graceful in their humility and empowering in their openness. Many of has have visited them, even if only for an hour or two. Some of them are Australian.

    So this is not an anti-religious sentiment, it is simply a call for secular support for the community sector that has worked so hard for so long to build the framework of community, independent of the interests of religion.

    Ponder this as you next take up your burden. May righteous anger leaven your pain.

     

  • Criminal Gangs

    Criminal Gangs

    Criminal Gangs
    A complete tax holiday PLUS welfare payments to organised crime?

    Why pay billions of taxpayer dollars to christian welfare groups when they have been exposed as Criminal Gangs. Not only has the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Sexual Abuse identified the repeat offending of those organisations, it has shown that they abused their political influence and closed ranks to protect their members from prosecution. We can no longer involve these gangs in providing welfare to our most vulnerable.

    The evidence thrown up at the commission is more than enough to justify kicking a large proportion of the so called Christian operators of schools, orphanages and other institutions out of welfare for ever. We must curtail the power they have abused by taking welfare out of their hands and putting it in the hands of the community. Right now, the opposite is happening. The community sector is being starved of funds and the money is being poured into the churches.

    This argument is not anti-theism.

    For a start, my targets are the institutions not the faithful. It is the institutions that have the money and the power to hire managers and staff of the organisations that purportedly house the homeless, protect the vulnerable and feed or clothe the poor.

    Second, my charge is not that religious institutions have no place in welfare. That place, though, should be limited to the wishes of its members and their capacity to fund those wishes. To put the church in charge of taxpayer funded programs of government is to grant them inappropriate privilege. To do that at a time when they have failed their flock so criminally is simply insane.

    Third, I am not arguing that organisations should be denied funding on the basis of their belief patterns. That would be discrimination of the worst kind. It is appropriately discriminating, however, to conclude that legally incorporated bodies that have repeatedly broken the law and used their institutional power to avoid prosecution are inappropriate bodies to receive public funding to deliver public services.

    I am not claiming that religion is evil. Indeed, greed and lust for power is not the exclusive province the christian church. Private operators in the welfare sector have been notorious since Dickens penned Oliver Twist and were no less prevalent prior to that unwelcome notoriety. The religious institutions that are now exposed for harbouring the most heinous criminals while also being largely responsible for the welfare sector reflect the make-up of Australian society. Had the penal colony been founded by Zoroastrian imperialists, I am sure we would be reflecting on the institutional cruelty or the Zooastrian clergy.

    Our problem is not the religiosity of these institutions it is that they are being handed ever more money and power as the ideological drive to get rid of the public service pushes more and more victims into their care.

    Ponder this as you next take up your burden. May righteous anger leaven your pain.

  • Subs ain’t subs: WooMembers bundle

    Subs ain’t subs: WooMembers bundle

    Despite being the darling of IT developers, the failure of WooCommerce Subscriptions to support traditional content developers
    has serious implications for WooCommerce’s reputation in the wider community.

    With 2 million stores using WooCommerce it is by far and away the most popular solution for ecommerce in the world. It has been gaining market share from other similar platforms over the last five years and remains almost ten times bigger than its main rival, Shopify, which is aimed at the absolute beginner market happy to use a hosted shop to sell a handful of goods.

    It is little wonder then, that the official WooCommerce stamp on Woocommerce Subscriptions has seen it race ahead of its rivals in the market and attract a significant volume of business. Its role as one of the lead components in the Woocommerce Membership package has not hurt its reputation either.

    The WooCommerce Members Bundle retails for $299 per year and provides a membership solution, subscriptions, management of downloadable files, a stripe payments gateway, a bidding system (Name your Price) and a bunch of themes.

    It is billed as the complete solution to managing a commercial memberships site and we compared that with Memberpress and a number of other comprehensive products in the market before recommending it as a suitable solution for our client.

    All the products making up the bundle claim to be comprehensive but as you get down to the nitty gritty, they are generally designed for a purpose and have been stretched and st

    WooCommerce Subscriptions, by Prospress, is ideally suited to software developers who want to monetise their tools and widgets by extracting regular payments from customers who, a decade ago, would have downloaded the product once and then reluctantly paid for support or upgrades every five years or so.

    It is not quite so well suited for content developers, though.

    Ebono Institute
    Clear thinking, clear communication: Brilliant results

    Content sales do not work

    The challenges emerge when you want to use it to do what every magazine and newspaper publisher in the world does, that is, sell content to some people under different packaging arrangements. In this world, a subscription generally means an advance payment that gives you access to content that other people have to purchase.

    For example, I might sell memberships to a certain class of customer using the integration between Subscriptions and Memberships to manage the renewals of the membership sales. As soon as I assign any content to that group of customers, though, it becomes their exclusive property and everyone else is simply told they have to buy a membership to see it.

    The first line of challenge is that WooCommerce Subscriptions are supported by Prospress , Memberships by SkyVerge and Subscriptions Downloads by the WordPress Woocommerce team known as Automattic. You very quickly start to get referred around in circles unless you can identify a specific problem as “belonging” to one or the other of the three parties.

    The second problem is that the “support” that is offered is really just pre-sales hand holding. Any one who can read the basic manuals provided can answer the questions most people will have on installing the product and setting it up.

    As soon as your request crosses the line of “our product does not do that out of the box” you are directed away from the support area to the advanced users forums and facebook pages, where there are lots of traps for young players. On one hand, the more straight forward enquiries tend to be met with, “I hate to be the a..hole, but can you explain what is advanced about that question?”

    On the other hand, as soon as the question has any serious content the standard responses tend to be “Why don’t you get yourself a developer?”

    We quickly gathered a library of comments at both end of the spectrum.

    Most of those problems we found workarounds to, without any support from the software companies but some support from independent freelancers who know woocommerce well.

    Once we started to delve into GitHub and the code itself, to get some serious answers to the more pesky questions, though, we realised there are some really serious problems with this software.

    Bugs and denial

    Our problems quickly fell into a couple of areas.

    Missing functionality

    Automated emails Despite being advertised as a complete commercial solution for managing a membership and subscription system with lots of glowing descriptions of the automated emails that would relieve your admin staff of every having to work again, it turns out you have to buy an additional product Follow Ups to get all but the most basic email features. Neither Prospress nor Automattic deigned to answer our email suggesting that it was an unreasonable exclusion given the marketing hype around automation.

    Import export The Subscriptions developer, Prospress, offers a beta version of an import feature which failed to carry out a number of functions. We eventually got it to work on a basic subscription but it failed to deal with the variable subscriptions our client was selling adequately. A commercial product by Xadapter, worked well but did not handle subscription downloads. On being advised of this, Xadapter had a working solution within 48 hours.

    WooMembers bundle
    A product is charged for each time a file is attached to it

    Good old fashioned bugs

    Xadapter responded to our bug report without missing a beat. Yes you are right our product does not do that and it should, we will notify you when it is fixed, and then it was fixed.

    Automattic, on the other hand, has been sitting on the report of a major bug for two weeks and despite regular contact has not once provided a road map for repair, or acknowledgement that the problem is serious. And it is. If you have a subscription product with three files attached, that product gets listed and charged three times in the renewal. This means that customers are getting invoices for multiples of the price they agreed to pay.

    Undesirable behaviour

    These are always the hardest problems to fix, because one customer’s core business may be on another customer’s wish list and a long way down the developer’s forward plan.

    We understand that, and indicated a willingness and a desire to be pointed to the right areas of the software to make the changes ourselves.

    We have already tweaked the system to allow subscriptions to filter the available product by date (not out of the box) and to prevent downloading of streamable content (get yourself a developer) and to bypass the restrictions that woocommerce downloads places on audio and video players (we did not even ask).

    The main problem is one that affects all content developers who sell content as individual products but would like to package it as part of a subscription as well. I have already talked about the failure of the Membership system to differentiate between a free and a paying customer, with the subscription system it gets worse.

    I can sell someone a subscription and then supply them with free content during the life of their subscription that other people can buy at the same time.

    A $149 subscription renews at thousands of dollars

    So far so good.

     

    The nightmare occurs when it is time to renew the subscription.

    Now the system checks what products form part of the subscription and charges the customer for the renewal of their original subscription, plus ALL the products that have been given to them during the life of the subscription. When this is compounded with the bug that causes the multiplication of the number of products by the number of files each product contains, our client has subscribers who are being charged $7,000 for what they thought was a $149 subscription!

    This is a serious PR disaster.

    Is WooMembers bundle for you?

    If you are a software developer monetising your products this product works perfectly. It was built for people like you, by people like you.

    If you are a content developer looking for something to manage your business model make sure that your development cycle allows you to test your business model in this software within the 30 day money back period. You can achieve this by thinking hard about what your business model is, and then setting out a plan to implement a test case of this before you download and install the software on a trial basis. Once you have verified that it will do what you need, then you can take the time to work through the cosmetics and the customer messaging.

     

     

     

  • Religious tax-exemption protects the state

    Religious tax-exemption protects the state

    From Nic Forster

    There are good reasons why we don’t tax religions:
    1. They would mostly claim charitable status anyway
    2. It opens up the possibility of a government making discriminatory or punitive anti-religious policies
    3. As tax-paying institutions, they would earn the right to engage in politics
    4. It undermines the separation of church and state & damages constitutional secularism

    Tighten rules by all means; but don’t mash our political safeguards!

    Don’t forget The Cross earlier posts on this topic

     

    and some of the comments

    William Bryant Scrivener The safeguards don’t seem to prevent the infiltration of theocrats into Australian politics.

    Ashley Locke These safeguards also appear to have done nothing to stop religions from comport in themselves like businesses and engaging in unregulated and unethical conduct that would NEVER be lawful for any private enterprise.
     Ryan Lee If the churches stop using their tax free money to influence the politics, if religious people stop hurting the lgbtiq community, if we can get the bottom of child sex abuse done by churches. I would not care tax church or not. It is not possible to taxthe churches anyway as the churches have the majority support in Australia.
    Nic Forster : they do, however, prevent religions themselves from engaging directly in political activity. Abbott, Abetz, Bernardi and Hanson are more products of Australia’s political failings than anything else.
    Neil Cotter The Anglicans gave $1 million to the No campaign. Hillsong hosts conservative politicians regularly. There is nothing stopping churches from engaging in politics at present, certainly not their tax-exempt status. The Catholic Church was behind the DLP for decades, and continues to influence both major parties to this day, most obviously the ALP via the SDA.
     Michael Thorp What about your hyper-profitable juggernauts like Hillsong. How do you feel about a tax-free threshold of sorts to prevent obviously highly profitable businesses hiding under the banner of a cross from making an extra 30%?
    Neil Cotter 
    1. If they can claim charitable status for their activities anyway, let them do that. I think you are over estimating the proportion that they can do so, but I don’t see why taxpayers should subsidise proselytising or religion generally.
    2. What does tax exemption have to do with “discriminatory or punitive anti-religious policies”? The government discriminates between religions and beliefs at present by not giving some tax exemptions.
    3. Churches are already engaged in political activity. Unlike other charities they are not being targeted by the government for this.
    4. The status quo is undermining church and state separation by giving privileges to churches rather than just treating them like any other association.
  • Russia’s corporate army in Syria

    Russia’s corporate army in Syria

    Russian PMC in Syria
    Russia’s corporate army is on the streets of Syria

    Source: Al-Monitor 

    As the civil war in Syria officially draws to a close, the imperial states withdraw with much media fanfare. Their influence, though, remains in the form of corporate armies paid by national governments to maintain the pressure where their interests demand. Russia maintains a significant corporate army in Syria, though it has stepped back a little from a direct combat role after suffering significant casualties.

  • The John James Newsletter 209

    The John James Newsletter 209

    The level of atmospheric carbon dioxide we observe today is the minimum level we’ll see for at least the next 1000 years Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,

    Global warming has passed a “tipping point” and that habitat loss associated with the warming of the planet will condemn the human species to extinction within 20 years

    Guy McPherson

    Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market analyst who shepherds his flocks in the ways that suit him

    Marshall McLuhan

    Free enterprise is a system of public subsidy and private profit, with government intervention to maintain a welfare state for the rich 

    Noam Chomsky

    You do not have to be apolitical pundit to realise that the new axis of evil – the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia – are preparing joint military actions against Iran and Hezbollah

    Dan Lieberman

    The orchestrated hostility toward Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea protects the $1,000 billion annual budget of the military/security complex 

    Paul Roberts

    The most dire turn out to be the most accurate

    The most extreme estimates of the effects of global warming are likelier than more optimistic predictions. With the current level of greenhouse gas emissions remaining steady, researchers say, there is a 93% chance that the planet will be more than 4C warmer. Earlier estimates held that there was only a 62% chance of this level of warming.

    https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/07/most-dire-climate-change-predictions-warns-new-study-are-also-most-accurate

    An Open Secret: Washington was Behind India’s Brutal Experiment Of Abolishing Cash

    Without warning, the Indian government declared the two largest denomination bills invalid, abolishing over 80% of circulating cash. Amidst all the commotion and outrage this caused, nobody seems to have taken note of the decisive role that Washington played in this.

    http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/12/08/a-well-kept-open-secret-washington-is-behind-indias-brutal-experiment-of-abolishing-most-cash/

    Private military companies: Moscow’s other army in Syria

    The weakness of Syrian security forces, combined with Russia’s need to downsize its overtasked military in Syria, has left security gaps in the fragile country. Filling these gaps with PMCs is a plausibly deniable, economically feasible, politically viable, sustainable and flexible option for Moscow.

    https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/11/turkey-russia-private-army-in-syria.html

    Why the Democrats Will Run Michele Obama in 2020

    Michelle already knows the drill,  that’s what makes her the perfect candidate. She knows the president is a meaningless figurehead. She knows the whole thing is a charade. She knows that the rich will get richer while working people get stomped on. And now its her turn to shine, her turn to take center-stage and lead the conferences, and meet the foreign dignitaries, and spar with the press, and hold meetings in the Rose Garden, and languish in the big leather chair in the Oval Office. Michelle’s day is coming, and the party leaders are already licking their chops.

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48324.htm

    Chickens are helping the elderly tackle loneliness

    A scheme to introduce hen keeping to the elderly is turning out to have a miraculous effect on their wellbeing by reducing isolation and depression  The idea came in early 2012, when a man at a dementia care centre nearby kept telling staff he missed his ‘girls’.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11198410/Chickens-helping-the-elderly-tackle-loneliness.html

    Power of community – The Blackheath Alliance

    In an era that is being defined by adversarial politics and short term thinking, the Blackheath community is demonstrating another approach –and one that’s proving to be extraordinarily effective. By working collaboratively, with the long game in mind, they’re proving that their strategy is clearly worth emulating.

    http://thebigfix.org/291-local-government/blue-mountains/blue-mountains-towns/blackheath/407-the-blackheath-alliance

    Climate change starts to take its toll on housing market

    “Disaster on the horizon: The price effect of sea level rise” – the conclusion is that homes exposed to sea level rise sell at a 7%t discount relative to observable equivalent unexposed properties equidistant from the beach. This discount has grown over time.

    http://reneweconomy.com.au/climate-change-starts-take-toll-housing-market-46485/

    Killing the Biosphere to Fast-track Human Extinction

    The sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history is now accelerating at an unprecedented rate with 200 species of plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects and reptiles being driven to extinction DAILY. For a taste of the vast literature on this subject.

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48334.htm

    Did American Missile Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia?

    It’s hugely significant that the Saudis fired five times at the incoming missile and missed. An analysis suggests the missile’s warhead flew unimpeded over Saudi defenses and nearly hit Riyadh’s airport. The warhead detonated so close to the domestic terminal that customers jumped out of their seats. The Iranian-backed Houthis, once a ragtag group of rebels, have grown powerful enough to strike major targets. And they underscore longstanding doubts about missile defense technology, a centrepiece of American strategies.

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/04/world/middleeast/saudi-missile-defense.html?smid=tw-share

    The disappointing truth about US plans to shoot down North Korean nuclear weapons

    The premise is simple: Once the US detects a missile launch with a variety of radar systems, it will shoot its own interceptor into the sky. After the enemy warhead separates from its rocket booster, a defensive interceptor, or “kill vehicle,” separates from its own booster and attempts to crash into the warhead. Executing this manoeuvre during a roughly twenty minute window against a warhead moving faster than the speed of sound is extremely difficult – the Saudi experience suggests far less than 1 in 4.

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48345.htm

     

    151 UN states vote to disavow Israeli annexation of Jerusalem 

    The resolution stated that “any actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the Holy City of Jerusalem are illegal and therefore null and void and have no validity whatsoever.”

    http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/UN-disavows-Israeli-ties-to-Jerusalem-515730

    Global supertanker to fight Wildfires

    https://futurism.com/videos/specialized-airplane-fights-wildfires-from-skies/

    The secret world of Australian energy contract prices

    We know that the cost of solar is plunging across the world. The publicly released results of solar auctions in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and north and Latin America tell us this. The wholesale market – worth $16 billion – is almost completely opaque. Regulators and private analysts can barely make head or tail out of the retail market. It is a perfect cover for the big utilities to profit from ignorance and confusion.

    http://reneweconomy.com.au/the-secret-world-of-australias-solar-and-energy-contract-prices-46139/

    Energy regulator smashes illusion of “cheap” coal power in NSW

    Last summer the state very nearly lost its grip on supply as two big coal units and the two biggest gas units failed in the heat wave – nearly causing the lights to go out were it not for the presence of vast quantities of solar, and some voluntary and not-so voluntary load shedding.

    http://reneweconomy.com.au/energy-regulator-smashes-illusion-of-cheap-coal-power-in-nsw-83167/

    States and cities sign up for electric vehicle fleets

    To develop a plan to increase the share of EVs in their fleets and to consider how to use their combined market power to promote the public uptake of electric vehicles. They agreed to coordinate the strategic planning and construction of infrastructure for EVs and to seek to align states’ standards and incentives.

    https://www.governmentnews.com.au/2017/12/states-cities-sign-electric-vehicle-fleets/

    Genetic feedback and  Human  Population  Regulation

    Population growth is a primary cause of ecological destruction and, if  left  unchecked, will threaten human survival.  It  has  been  demonstrated  that  genetic feedback  is  the  mechanism  by  which  species  achieve ecological balance. The analysis shows  the  applicability of this mechanism to human population regulation.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225581823_Genetic_Feedback_and_Human_Population_Regulation

    China’s growing footprint on the globe threatens to trample the natural world 

    President Xi Linping promises that the Belt and Road initiative will be “green, low-carbon, circular and sustainable”, but such a claim is profoundly divorced from reality. China’s infrastructure tsunami will open a Pandora’s box of environmental crises, including large-scale deforestation, habitat fragmentation, wildlife poaching, water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. China is the most aggressive consumer of minerals on the planet, and the biggest driver of tropical deforestation.

    https://theconversation.com/chinas-growing-footprint-on-the-globe-threatens-to-trample-the-natural-world-88312

    China Has Launched the World’s First All-Electric Cargo Ship

    China is now the proud owner of the world’s first all-electric cargo ship and has already put the vehicle to use. The 2,000-metric-ton ship was launched in the city of Guangzhou last month and runs in the inland section of the Pearl River. It can travel 80 kilometres after being charged for 2 hours, which is roughly the time to unload the ship’s cargo.

    https://futurism.com/china-launched-worlds-first-all-electric-cargo-ship/

    Traffic fumes in city streets largely wipe out exercise benefits for the over-60s

    The air pollution  on a high street in London removes any health protection produced by exercise outdoors. Pollution, in large part related to traffic emissions, has an immediate adverse effect on those with chronic diseases

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/05/traffic-fumes-in-city-streets-largely-wipe-out-exercise-benefits-for-over-60s

    America’s own climate refugees 

    Trumps inadequate relief efforts after Hurricane Maria force Puerto Rico exodus

    Maria downed trees, homes and power lines in a 12-hour rampage with winds of up to 247 kph. Much of Puerto Rico remains without power and 15% has no running water more than a month later. It is the longest blackout in US history, and the overall hurricane damage could range from $45 billion to $95 billion on an island already mired in an 11-year-long recession. No wonder they are emigrating.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/11/09/hurricane-maria-puerto-rico-debate/850820001/

    Trump slashes national monuments in Utah: “I’m a real estate developer”

    The gutting of the national monuments, unprecedented in more than a century, amounts to the initial stages of a land-grab by the oil, gas and mining industries.

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/12/07/monu-d07.html

    The Uzbekistan story

    Putin said two years ago, the sanctions were the best thing that ever happened to Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. They forced Russia to develop their agriculture again and bring her defunct industrial apparatus with science and research up to cutting edge technology, at par or above that of the west.

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48359.htm

    World’s scientists turn to Asia and Australia to rewrite human history 

    it appears that the long sought after answers to some of the central questions in human evolution studies may finally be answered here.

    https://theconversation.com/worlds-scientists-turn-to-asia-and-australia-to-rewrite-human-history-88697

    Meet The Israeli Paid Millions To Hack Our Phones

    The Pegasus software suite uses similar techniques to the CIA for hacking an iPhone: Anything you can do on the phone, Pegasus can do on your phone. Turning on the camera and watching somebody in the room, turning on the microphone and listening to somebody. It can even do some things that you can’t, like put files on the phone and take files off, to manipulate data.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-05/meet-israeli-cyber-weapons-dealer-paid-millions-governments-hack-our-phones

    The Art of Keeping Guantánamo Open

    What the paintings by Its Prisoners Tell Us About Our Humanity and Theirs. The man whose painting I saw has been held for nearly 15 years without trial, without even having charges filed against him.

    http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176358/tomgram%3A_erin_thompson%2C_curating_guantanamo/

    The exhibit “Ode to the Sea: Art from Guantánamo” is on display in New York City 

    They paint the sea again and again although they cannot reach it.

    https://www.artfromguantanamo.com/