Most people in gaol are innocent ... if you believe them
Of course.
Problem is, there are way too many who are telling the truth.
Plenty of information out there....and its not even something i follow strongly. Its too depressing TBH.
Watch....Making a Murderer. The Staircase. .....listen to the innocence podcast (IIRC)
Get the conviction....bleed them dry and hope they run out of money to clear their own name.
My late brother was a barrister who specialised in criminal law and he represented several clients who were on the margins of the gangland killings. He reckoned that all of his clients were guilty but it was his job to get them off or, if that wasn't possible, to get the shortest sentence possible.
I left home at 1300 and caught the VLine train from South Geelong. It was a leisurely trip, so leisurely that I missed our first two goals.
One of the things I noticed walking from the station to the G was how few cars were parked in Yarra Park; fuel prices are biting.
I haven’t listened to any commentary on the match, read any reviews or posts here, watched replays and I haven’t seen any stats or votes. What follows are my own impressions, as flawed as they may be.
We played damn good footy in the first quarter and it seemed that we were going to give the Dees an old-fashioned shellacking. The only concern I had was that Max Gawn was all over Pitto and Skull.
The second quarter was much the same, although we weren’t getting the results on the scoreboard and big Max stepped his game up a notch.
I braved the crush in the Legends’ Lounge at half time and enjoyed a glass of Balter XPA.
At the start of the third quarter two thirds of the G was bathed in sunlight and it looked magnificent. I thought that you couldn’t get a better day in Melbourne, if only our team could continue on. Half way through the third quarter, the sun began shining directly into my eyes and my shady seat was roasting. Mistakes were creeping into our game and Gawn had stepped up another notch. Kosi Pickett was making his presence felt too.
We started the last quarter well and my confidence was restored ... momentarily! Melbourne lifted again and it was like we’d lost all confidence and cohesion and were resigned to losing.
It’s probably unfair to single players out but I thought that Kemp had an absolute shocker. He seemed to be far more concerned about his opponent than he was about leading and making his defender work. Our youngsters – Dean, Smith, Carroll, Byrne and Skull - all made rookie errors. That’s to be expected but it’s still momentum sapping. And, speaking of momentum sapping, the holding the ball free against Hewett was critical … and the Dees seemed to get more than their fair share of critical frees.
Lij Hollands was mercurial at times and the usual suspects plugged away, but we had no answer to big Max and Kosi.
Forget about Daicos and the Bont, Max Gawn is the best footballer going around now. Apart from his ruckwork, the outcome of virtually every kick down the line was a foregone conclusion.
The train trip home was morose and strangely quiet. I spoke to a Melbourne supporter who was getting off at South Geelong too and he said, “I can’t work out how we won, or how you lost.” I think the answer is between the ears.
I got home just after 2030; a long and pretty dismal day.
It's not semantics, it's fact. Australians have never owned other people,
Does the government count as 'Australians'? They are in charge of prisons. Are people in prison free? Are people in prison forced into labour with repercussions if they do not?
Prisoners are incarcerated under our judicial system and they're not owned by the government. Prisoners are paid between $30 and $70 for a 30 hour week. Advocates maintain that's "slave labour" but with their board, lodging, education and training costing around $3,000 a week, it's not a bad deal.
Ah I see, we argued an out on a different definition of slavery to argue we never had slavery even though the evidence runs contrary to that.
So we can argue semantics, you are right, and I am wrong, we never participated in slavery despite the evidence showing otherwise. Is that it?
It's not semantics, it's fact. Australians have never owned other people,
Some of the old ladies I worked with early in my career were trained as domestic servants on the missions and were employed on pastoral stations - employed being the operative word. They were paid - not very much - and some of them were treated very badly - but they were paid and could leave if they wanted to.
I'm not arguing that Indigenous Australians and Melanesian indentured labourers weren't treated badly, far from it, but they weren't owned, bought and sold or considered to be property.
Modern slavery may take in slavery-like offences, such as forced labour, debt bondage and human trafficking, as I mentioned previously. However, Australia is still bound by the 1926 International Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery and its definition of slavery.
The Australian Government follows the definition set out in the International Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery of 1926, that is 'the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised'. Almost all nations follow the 1926 convention.
There are slavery-like offences, such as forced labour, debt bondage and human trafficking but none involve ownership and, therefore, aren’t slavery.
It’s fine to take an academic perspective and argue that indentured labour is slavery but, legally, it’s not.
It's one of those situations where both options can be correct
Very true!
It's also one of those frequent occasions when Taco departs from the topic under discussion and rambles about something irrelevant, like the disastrous ballroom. His coping mechanism when he can't remember what he's supposed to say.
And he's flanked by Rubio and Hegseth grinning like village idiots but ever alert to give him a nudge when he dozes off.
Taco's recent press conference was notable for his rambling sidebar about how he did away with the ceremonial pens used for signing bills or orders. He claimed that the original pens cost $1K each but he had them replaced them with "Sharpies" after calling the manufacturer, Newell Brands, and asking them to make "Sharpies" with his signature and the facade of the White House. Taco claimed the Newell Brands offered them gratis, but he insisted on paying $5 each.
Within 24 hours Newell Brands denied ever having a conversation with Taco about providing the personalised "Sharpies".
some of our first nations people were slaves. This country is half built on it.
First Nations people were massacred, exploited, confined to missions and reserves, incarcerated, underpaid or not paid, but they weren’t enslaved.
The closest Australia came to slavery was the blackbirding that brought Melanesians here to work in the cane fields. It was indentured labour rather than slavery and they were paid a pittance and returned home when their “contract” ended.
Australia wasn’t “half built on slavery”, it was probably closer to three quarters. Rather than direct slavery, the wealth that drove the development of the pastoral industry and commerce in 19th century Australia was largely derived from the Transatlantic slave trade. British families that made their money through the slave trade or through slave labour invested in Australia and the other British colonies.
We'll miss Coop but our forward looks more potent with Frankie and Byrner - if the latter can bring what he showed in the practice matches.
Who plays all the midfield minutes that Lord was playing? Have to think Evans will play some....who else?
I would've brought someone like Acres in to allow our wingers to play more midfield.
Lord was basically our defensive or run with midfielder and I think that whoever has that role has to be set for it, rather than part timers sharing it. Of course, Melbourne's midfield isn't as strong as it was and we may not bother with a defensive mid other than Hewett doing his normal stuff.
Most of our general forwards are spending time in the midfield but I'd expect Lij and Williams to do the lion's share. Byrner could get a go too if he's coping with the pressure and tempo.
According to Taco, Iran "gave us a present, and the present arrived today. It was a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money. I'm not going to tell you what the present is, but it was a very significant prize."
He then revealed “They said to show you the fact that we're real and solid, and we're going to let you have eight boats (sic) of oil, eight boats, eight big boats of oil. This was two days ago, and they'll sail up tomorrow.”
He provided more clarification, "They said, to show you the fact that we're real and solid and we're there, we're going to let you have eight boats of oil, eight boats, eight big boats of oil. I guess they were right, and they were real, and I think they were Pakistani-flagged... It ended up being 10 boats." He said that the two additional boats sent by Iran were "to apologise for something they said."
Unfortunately, shipping data for the Strait of Hormuz shows that five vessels have passed through the Strait since 23 March. Not ten, not eight, just five. And none of them are headed to the USA. Three are sailing to India, one is going to China, and the fifth is destined for Singapore.
If you're going to tell porkies, it's best if you don't embellish the story as you go and it's essential that they're not easily fact-checked.
With that in mind, cast your mind back to 4 March when Taco announced that the US International Development Finance Corporation would offer insurance “at a very reasonable price” for tankers and other ships in the Persian Gulf. He also said, “if necessary, the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as soon as possible”. And, with his trademark caps lock, posted on social media, “No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD.”
It must be difficult to be the Bone Spurs in Chief of a complex military campaign with global implications when you have trouble understanding anything more complicated than a real estate transaction and find it hard to know what's real and what's imaginary.
Australia was one of the 52 nations that abstained and that has drawn criticism from the left. However, I think that there's merit in Britain's argument that it is wrong to "create a hierarchy of historical atrocities"...............................
I think we need to be wary, as per the Trump/Jacinta/Albanese comparison, of falling into the trap of false equivalence. The list of atrocities by humans is seemingly endless, but some are indisputable worse than others. The point that "all slavery is bad, why should slave trade x get the attention", has been discussed a lot. In scope, duration, contemporaneous and enduring trauma and devastation caused, and a whole bunch of other effects, the Euro American slave trade is without equal.
I'm not sure that it's quite so clear cut, and that's why I don't think that a hierarchy is appropriate.
It's estimated that at least 10% and probably as much as 25% of the Scandinavian population were slaves during the Viking age and the vast majority of those captured by the Vikings were sold on to slave traders from the Middle East. Mitochondrial DNA studies of the Icelandic population indicate that more than 60% of the initial colonising female population were Gaelic and most likely slaves. Then there's the Arab or Trans-Saharan slave trade that endured from the 7th to the 20th century and involved the enslavement of an estimated 9M Africans in the Middle East.
Interested to see the results of the recent vote in the UN to declare the Transatlantic slave trade "the gravest crime against humanity." 123 states voted in favour, 52 abstentions, and 3 states voted against.
The three nations that voted against the resolution were the USA, Israel and Argentina. The USA's vote is predictable in that sanitising slavery is one of MAGA's core objectives. Israel simply doesn't want anyone else to take the focus off the Holocaust and Argentina's foreign policy is virtually in lockstep with the USA and Israel.
Australia was one of the 52 nations that abstained and that has drawn criticism from the left. However, I think that there's merit in Britain's argument that it is wrong to "create a hierarchy of historical atrocities".
The Transatlantic slave trade was undoubtedly a crime against humanity. But so was the abduction and enslavement of more than 1 million Europeans between 1530 and 1780 in a series of raids by North African pirates that depopulated coastal towns from Sicily to Cornwall, and as far away as Iceland. Of course, the medieval Viking business model was based on the abduction and selling into slavery of whoever they could get and particularly Irish, Welsh, English, Franks and Slavs - and the word slave is derived from Slav. Slavery in all of its forms is a crime against humanity and the belief that humans can be owned is an abomination.
A friend and former colleague is involved in the Western Australian Legacies of British Slavery Project that has looked into slave wealth and culture as a significant and ongoing historical force. You can look at their research here:
One thing that I didn't realise was that when the British Government abolished slavery in 1833, it granted £20 million of taxpayers' money to be paid by British taxpayers to former slave-owners in compensation for their loss of property.
Compulsory work for those serving prison sentences is a legitimate part of judicial punishment. It's not slavery as there's no legal ownership of prison inmates by governments.
