Showing posts with label A.C.A.R.A.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A.C.A.R.A.. Show all posts

Monday, March 28, 2016

Notes: Friday, January 1-Monday, March 28, 2016

1. Some changes to this blog's sidebar

Just before posting this issue of "Notes", I added
  • a "Search services" section, containing links to Google and to Trove, between my "Discussion links" and "Reference links" sections
Labels: blogs

2. Mr. Alexander on two theories of how political authority is transferred from God to the sovereign:
… Ever since Suarez and Bellarmine, this theory[, that is, "the theory of the social contract and the transfer of power by the people as a whole",] had been the subject of violent dispute between the partisans of the formal and conservative interpretation of the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas which found the origin and the bearer of state power to be in the state community, and the partisans of a realistic interpretation and its further development in the tradition of Suarez and the others. According to the first concept, the people in a state are only indirectly the bearers of political power and all they can do is to designate (designatio) or elect the immediate bearer of political power to whom this power is then transferred “by the grace of God.” According to the second concept the people in a state are themselves the bearers of state power which they transfer directly (delegatio) to the organs of the state in the name of the natural rights of the people, whereby they do not by any means dispose of these rights permanently by the contractual act of delegation, but on the contrary remain the perpetual and original possessors of political power. This difference between the so-called “designation theory” and the “translation theory” has significant consequences for the doctrine of the social contract and the active, i.e., revolutionary, right of resistance. Those who hold fast to the designation theory necessarily reject the democratic theory of the social contract and people’s sovereignty and, by the same token, deny the existence of a direct right to resist and to make revolutionary constitutional changes. Those who believe in the translation theory, on the contrary, not only defend the Suarist concept of people’s sovereignty but also deduce from it the right of active resistance. …
[my ellipsis symbols and square-bracketed interpolation,
pp. 506 f., sub-section 2. "The Doctrine of the State", section 2. "The Political Doctrines", Chapter VI "Political Doctrines and Social Theories", in "Church and Society in Germany. Social and Political Movements and Ideas in German and Austrian Catholicism 1789-1950" by Edgar Alexander, translated by Dr. Toni Stolper; "Church and Society in Germany" is Part IV of Church and Society: Catholic Social and Political Thought and Movements 1789-1950, edited by Prof. Joseph N. Moody in collaboration with twelve others, published by Arts, Inc., New York, 1953]
Labels: morals, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Thomas Aquinas

3. Mr. Smith on Mr. Nile's involvement in the New South Wales Parliament's extension, to all shops, of permission to trade on Boxing Day 2015 and ’16:
… You[, that is, Shop, Distributive, and Allied Employees' Association, New South Wales Branch (S.D.A.N.S.W.) "members, Delegates and supporters",] sent in thousands of emails and made hundreds of phone calls to the Rev Nile. Every major Christian religious group wrote letters of support calling on Parliament to leave the day for families. Despite all of this, the Rev Nile broke his election promise to you and he voted with the Baird Government to allow all shops to trade on Boxing Day.
[my ellipsis symbol and bracketed interpolation,
"A Challenging Year Draws to an End", by Mr. Bernie Smith (S.D.A.N.S.W. Secretary), p. 3, SDA NEWS (the "OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE SHOP, DISTRIBUTIVE AND ALLIED EMPLOYEES’ ASSOCIATION, NEW SOUTH WALES BRANCH"), Summer 2015, available at the S.D.A.N.S.W.'s website here:

https://www.sdansw.org.au/news/sda-news-summer-2015-edition

Or go straight hither:

http://issuu.com/sdansw/docs/sda_news_summer_2015_so?e=9746493/31899528]
But see also the Media Release "Boxing Day Trading – Let’s Keep with the Facts", dated November 12, 2015, downloaded from the Christian Democratic Party's website here:

http://www.christiandemocraticparty.com.au/media-releases/boxing-day-trading-lets-keep-with-the-facts/

In particular, in connection with Mr. Smith's statement that "[e]very major Christian religious group wrote letters of support calling on Parliament to leave the day for families", see the message from the leader of the Sydney branch of the Anglican sect, available for download at that Media Release's webpage, or go straight hither:

http://www.christiandemocraticparty.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/151110-Archbishops-letter-to-FN-and-PG.pdf

Labels: Fred Nile, work

4. In the conclusion to H.H. The Pope's brief homily during a New-Order Mass (the Solemnity of the Baptism of Our Lord, January 10, 2016), His Holiness "invited mothers to feel free to feed their babies in the Sistine Chapel if necessary."

The quotation in that headline comes from the item "Baptisms in the Sistine Chapel: offer your children the legacy of faith", dated January 10, 2016, in the Holy See Press Office's Vatican Information Service daily e-mail bulletin of January 11, 2016, Year XXVI, No. 5; that item is available online under the same headline and with the same date at News.va:

http://www.news.va/en/news/baptisms-in-the-sistine-chapel-offer-your-children

An English version of the text of the homily in question is available here:

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2016/documents/papa-francesco_20160110_omelia-battesimo-signore.html

and in what was presumably its original Italian here:

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/homilies/2016/documents/papa-francesco_20160110_omelia-battesimo-signore.html

Labels: breastfeeding, Francis Bergoglio, morals

5. Five points of interest in connection with the Safe Schools Coalition's All of Us "teaching resource"

The text immediately after each of the following bullet points is a quotation from the article "Sexual politics in the classroom", by Natasha Bita, on p. 17 in the "INQUIRER" section of The Weekend Australian, February 13-14, 2016, First Edition, No. 15961, ISSN 1038-8761, published by Nationwide News Pty. Limited. I transcribed the quotations myself (though the article is also available online (behind a paywall, which you might be able to circumvent if you Google part of one of the following quotations and click the resulting link), at The Australian's website, under the headline "Safe Schools Coalition: sexual politics in the classroom", with the same author, dated February 13, 2016, here); each dash is the result of a word spanning two lines, and any bracketed interpolations are mine.
  • Victoria has ordered all govern-ment schools to sign on[ to the "Safe Schools Coalition program"] by 2019[ sic—twenty nineteen].
  • Taxpayers are funding the pro-gram, which the Safe Schools Co-alition devised based on advice from a “curriculum consultant” and a group of Melbourne teach-ers
  • Safe Schools Coalition national pro-gram director Sally Richardson tells Inquirer the Federal Edu-cation Department approved the All of Us teaching manual
  • The de-cision to target the teaching to the youngest high school students, she[, namely Sally Richardson,] says, was made by education con-sultant Janice Atkin, a former Aus-tralian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority project officer who managed the develop-ment of the national health and physical education curriculum.
  • “We worked closely with the federal Department of Education and Training to ensure all the les-son plans and videos were appro-priate for years 7 and 8,” Richardson says. “All of our re-sources are being fully funded by the Australian government.”
You can download the All of Us unit guide from the Safe Schools Coalition's website here:

http://www.safeschoolscoalition.org.au/all-of-us

or go straight hither:

http://www.safeschoolscoalition.org.au/app/theme/default/design/assets/all-of-us/documents/unit-guide.pdf

On seeing Mr. Marco Fink credited (under his assumed named "Margot Fink") on p. 2 under "DIRECTOR", "EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS", "SPECIAL THANKS", "PHOTOGRAPHY", and "CAST MEMBERS", I couldn't help but think of Little Britain's parody of Dennis Waterman refusing to accept work on a T.V. show unless he could "star in it, write the feem toon, sing the feem toon".

Regarding H.M. Victorian Government's putative plan to make all State-run Victorian schools take part in the Safe Schools programme: Two possible sources for that piece of information are the Media Release "All Victorian Government Schools to Be Prouder, Safer", dated February 2, 2015, downloaded from the Premier of Victoria's official website here:

http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/all-victorian-government-schools-to-be-prouder-safer/

and "Victoria’s 10-year mental health plan", authorised and published by H.M. Victorian Government, Melbourne, November 2015, available here:

http://mentalhealthplan.vic.gov.au/

According to the "SNAPSHOT OF ACTION" on p. 4 (p. 3 in your reader) of the latter,
We have increased support for the resilience and wellbeing of young people through:
• expanding the Safe Schools program to all secondary schools across the state
and according to the former,
a successful program that creates safe and supportive classrooms for same-sex attracted and gender diverse students will be implemented at every Victorian Government secondary school.
(and the "successful program" is "The Safe Schools Coalition Victoria program".) It was also interesting to see, under the sub-heading "Quotes attributable to Deputy Premier and Minister for Education, James Merlino", 'respectful relationships' popping up again:
this program is about working with teachers to provide a respectful and safe environment where every young person can belong.
Labels: A.C.A.R.A., education, G.L.B.T., sex ed, Victoria

6. Pius XII. on world federal government

See the text of the French-language Allocution of April 6, 1951 to the delegates to the fourth annual congress of the World Movement for World Federal Government in Acta Apostolicæ Sedis 43 (A.D. 1951), pp. 278-280 (to which the index refers on p. 891):

http://www.vatican.va/archive/aas/documents/AAS-43-1951-ocr.pdf

The text of that Allocution is also available in HTML format here:

http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/fr/speeches/1951/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19510406_confederaz-mondiale.html

Apparently, an English translation, though with no translator credited, was printed in the "THIS CHANGING WORLD" column (no byline) on p. 4 of the Sydney Catholic Weekly, Vol. X, No. 480, Thursday, May 10, 1951:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/17409103

Labels: morals, Pius XII. Pacelli, U.N.O.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Easter Monday, A.D. 2016
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

"the Holocaust [will] now be included in the mandatory world history overview for years 9 and 10 in the new national [Australian ]curriculum"

See
  • "Study of Holocaust mandated for schools", by Anna Patty, dated December 8, 2012, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/study-of-holocaust-mandated-for-schools-20121207-2b10k.html?skin=text-only
    That article came to my attention via the version published under the same headline and with the same byline on p. 7 of the main "NEWS" section of the Weekend Edition of The Sydney Morning Herald, December 8-9, 2012, No. 54656, ISSN 0312-6315. Note that the first paragraph of the print version differs from that of the current online version. This is my transcription of the first paragraph of the print version:
    THE study of the Holocaust will become compulsory for all NSW school students in years 9 and 10 after a lobbying campaign by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies prompted the state government to include it in the syllabus.
    Google searching indicates that the websites of some of Fairfax's regional mastheads still carry the original version, but, oddly, when I went to the web-pages for the first three of those newspapers to come up in the results, the first paragraph was the new one.
    I'm not sure why Fairfax made that 'clarification'. Perhaps the Jewish Board of Deputies did not alone prompt the curriculum change, but surely it was indeed a factor (and perhaps the decisive one) in the prompting of that change? Maybe the Herald made the 'clarification' because the Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority (A.C.A.R.A.) is a Federal rather than a State organ, and the Jewish Board of Deputies' lobbying was of the New South Wales (State) organs, the Board of Studies and (State, not Federal, judging by the context) Department of Education. But that would just mean that the influence of the Jewish Board of Deputies over the Federally-set curriculum was indirect—passing by way of the aforementioned State organs—rather than direct; but then, the 'clarified' first paragraph still says that "the Jewish Board of Deputies lobbied the state government for the curriculum change" (my emphasis), and it's the Federal organ, the A.C.A.R.A., which sets the curriculum, which (curriculum) New South Wales, and presumably the other States and Territories, implements through new syllabuses.
Mr. Benson was one of the participants in "the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies’ annual Journalists Mission to Israel" last November. Another participant in that "study tour" was the editor of the Herald for the day on which Ms Patty's article was published, namely, Judith Whelan. (The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council was also involved with that tour, though it was the N.S.W. Jewish Board of Deputies, not the A.I.J.A.C., which sponsored Ms Whelan and Mr. Benson. (The A.I.J.A.C. sponsored other journalists on the same tour.)) As for Mr. Govorcin, the only person named as a source in his article, namely, Anthony Cleary, was a couple of years ago a recipient of "a scholarship from the Gandel Foundation and Yad Vashem" for attending an international programme in Jerusalem in order "to develop a greater understanding of the Holocaust which he can then share with teachers and students in Australia".

Here is how I would summarise the information in the three articles:
  • From 2014, it will be mandatory for all Australian Year 9 and 10 History pupils to study "the Holocaust … as a major world event along with World War II in the 20th-century world history curriculum."
  • That comes after private lobbying of a very favourably-disposed New South Wales Board of Studies and Department of Education by the N.S.W. Jewish Board of Deputies for at least about three years, concluding in November 2012, though the Board of Deputies made no public submission to the Board of Studies during the consultation phase for the drafting of the new New South Wales syllabus (by which New South Wales, and presumably the other States and Territories, mutatis mutandis, implements the new national curriculum).
  • The mandatory inclusion means that Australian classes "will mirror compulsory Holocaust classes in most US states, the UK and many European countries".
  • The N.S.W. Jewish Board of Deputies "is now calling on the Gillard government to join about 28 other Western nations and sign up to the Task Force for International Co-operation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research."
  • As for nominally Catholic schools, the mandatory inclusion "has the capacity to try to advance genuine inter-faith dialogue and relations, says Anthony Cleary, director of religious education and evangelisation for the Catholic Education Office Sydney."
  • Mr. Cleary also says that “The Catholic Education Office has a wonderful working relationship with the NSW Board of Jewish Deputies and we consider that this would be another project that we could work in partnership on.”
Finally, here are a few links to related material which I found through Google, together with their respective excerpts of interest in the present context:
  • http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/schools-failing-to-teach-on-holocaust/story-e6frg6nf-1111116872017
    The only mention of the Holocaust in the NSW syllabus for Years 7-10 is in the beginning, with the rationale for the course starting with a quotation from a Holocaust survivor about the importance of learning history.[ … ]The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies said yesterday it had been concerned for some time about the omission of the Holocaust from school history, and was working with the education department and the board of studies on the issue.
Reginaldvs Cantvar
9.I.2013
Posted by at 5 comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, October 8, 2012

Notes: Thursday, August 30-Monday, October 8, 2012

1. On Wednesday, August 29, 2012, Ms Gillard launched "Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development", which is an initiative—reportedly a personal one of hers—for propagating Feminism throughout the Pacific Islands at a cost of $320 million (over a decade) to Australian taxpayers, part of which sum will be spent on "reproductive health (including family planning) education, awareness and service programs".

My source for saying that Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development is a "personal initiative" by The Hon. Jullia Gillard M.P. is the article "PM gets lift on way to raise status of women", by Daniel Flitton, dated August 30, 2012, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/pm-gets-lift-on-way-to-raise-status-of-women-20120829-2512n.html?skin=text-only

My inference that part of that $320 million will be spent on "reproductive health (including family planning) education, awareness and service programs" follows from the identification, in the "PACIFIC LEADERS GENDER EQUALITY DECLARATION" (Annex 1 to the "43rd Pacific Islands Forum Communique"), of "[e]nsur[ing that] reproductive health (including family planning) education, awareness and service programs receive adequate funding support" as one of the "specific national policy actions to progress gender equality in the areas of gender responsive government programs and policies, decision making, economic empowerment, ending violence against women, and health and education"; one can also infer it from Ms Gillard's media release of Wednesday, August 29, 2012 titled "Addressing gender inequality in the Pacific", which says that
We know that violence against women and poor maternal health outcomes persist in this region.

Promoting gender equality is about addressing these injustices. …
See also this AusAID web-page and the downloadable brochure there:

http://www.ausaid.gov.au/Publications/Pages/brochure-pacific-women-development.aspx

and "‘Shaping Pacific development', speech at the Pacific Islands Forum", given by Ms Gillard, Wednesday, August 29, 2012, downloaded from the "Press Office" section of the Prime Ministerial website:

http://www.pm.gov.au/press-office/%E2%80%98shaping-pacific-development-speech-pacific-islands-forum

Labels: abortion, contraception, Julia Gillard

2. "Greater Exposure to Sexual Content in Popular Movies Predicts Earlier Sexual Debut and Increased Sexual Risk Taking"

The quotation in that headline is the title of an article (doi: 10.1177/0956797611435529) by Ross E. O'Hara et al. in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science; that article's abstract is available here:

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/9/984

(That article came to my attention via Adam Taor's "PULSE" column on p. 5 of the "HEALTH" section of the "WEEKEND PROFESSIONAL" supplement in The Weekend Australian, September 1-2, 2012, First Edition, No. 14901, ISSN 1038-8761, published by Nationwide News Pty. Limited, a version of which column is available on-line, but behind a paywall, here.)

Labels: films, vice

3. "Israel and Taiwan are the biggest national supporters of trips by Australian politicians, recording 44 and 16 partly or fully funded trips respectively."

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "All the little extras in an MP's grab-bag", by Stuart Washington, Tom Allard, Lawrence Bull, and Frances Mao, dated September 1, 2012, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/all-the-little-extras-in-an-mps-grabbag-20120831-255mu.html?skin=text-only

(That article came to my attention via the version of it, with the same headline and by the same authors, which was printed on p. 3 of the "News Review" supplement in The Sydney Morning Herald, Weekend Edition, September 1-2, 2012, No. 54572, ISSN 0312-6315.)

Labels: State of Israel

4. "only 2 per cent of the population is gay"

The quotation in that headline was attributed to "Andrew Grulich, head of HIV epidemiology and prevention programs at the Kirby Institute at the University of NSW," in the article "Suicide a bigger danger to gays: health experts", by Adam Cresswell, dated September 13, 2012, downloaded from The Australian's website:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/suicide-a-bigger-danger-to-gays-health-experts/story-e6frg8y6-1226472976036

For more on the homosexual proportion of the (Australian) population, see the "Sex in Australia" report in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, April 2003, Volume 27, Issue 2, pp. 103–256, available on-line here, the most relevant—in the present context—parts of which are "Sex in Australia: Sexual identity, sexual attraction and sexual experience among a representative sample of adults" and "Sex in Australia: Homosexual experience and recent homosexual encounters", both of which have Prof. Grulich as one of their co-authors.

(Those "Sex in Australia" U.R.L.s came to my attention via the Frequently Asked Questions page at the Australian Marriage Forum website. (And the Australian Marriage Forum came to my attention via the opinion piece "Gay marriage is not the cure", by Dr. David van Gend, dated Sepember 14, 2012, downloaded from The Australian's website.))

Labels: demography, G.L.B.T.

5. "''When they're younger both men and women tended to aspire to a larger family size. When they were older they tended to revise down their expectations,'' Dr[. Daryl] Higgins[", the deputy director of research at the Australian Institute of Family Studies,"] said."

The quotations in that headline come from the article "Just your average couple: one for mum, one for dad … and none for the country", by Stephanie Gardiner, dated September 14, 2012, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/just-your-average-couple-one-for-mum-one-for-dad-8230-and-none-for-the-country-20120913-25v8x.html?skin=text-only

Labels: contraception, demography, families

6. On recent Russo-American relations

See the article "Russia boots US aid out amid accusations of meddling in elections", by Alan Cullison, dated September 21, 2012, and the comment piece "Vladimir Putin doesn't want to be buddies", by Tony Halpin, also dated September 21, 2012, both downloaded from the The Australian's website:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/russia-boots-us-aid-out-amid-accusations-of-meddling-in-elections/story-fnay3ubk-1226478359601

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/vladimir-putin-doesnt-want-to-be-buddies/story-fnb64oi6-1226478312416

Labels: Russia, Vladimir Putin

7. "When [equally ]well-educated families were compared, marriage lifted a child's chance of avoiding poverty by 75 per cent."

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "Stability a big factor in poverty", no by-line, p. 15, the Sydney Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, September 18, 2012, Vol. 1, No. 2646, ISSN 1038-8745, published by Nationwide News Pty. Ltd. That article is not available at the Tele's website, but a longer version of it is available at the British Daily Mail's website under the headline "Growing up with married parents is as important as a good education to escaping poverty", by Simon Caldwell, dated September 16/17, 2012:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2204263/Growing-married-parents-important-good-education-escaping-poverty.html

The report on which those articles are based—"Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty", by Mr. Robert Rector for The Heritage Foundation, dated September 5, 2012—is available here:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/09/marriage-americas-greatest-weapon-against-child-poverty

See also the LifeSiteNews.com article "Marriage is the most effective weapon to fight child poverty, study finds", by Ben Johnson, dated Thursday, September 13, 2012:

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/marriage-is-the-most-effective-weapon-to-fight-child-poverty-study-finds

Labels: marriage, poverty

8. "Bottle-fed infants experienced a 4.6-fold higher risk of PS[, i.e., pyloric stenosis,] compared with infants who were not bottle-fed."

The quotation in that headline comes from the abstract of a Pediatrics article titled "Bottle-feeding and the Risk of Pyloric Stenosis" (doi: 10.1542/peds.2011-2785) by Camilla Krogh et al. That article is available on-line here:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2012/08/28/peds.2011-2785

(That article came to my attention via the second item in Adam Taor's "PULSE" column on p. 47 of the "HEALTH" section of the "WEEKEND PROFESSIONAL" section in the "SPORT" pages of The Weekend Australian, September 15-16, 2012, First Edition, No. 14913, ISSN 1038-8761, published by Nationwide News Pty. Limited. According to Dr. Taor, pyloric stenosis is "a narrowing of the opening from the stomach to the first part of the small intestine", and it "can cause severe vomiting." (Apparently, that installment of "PULSE" is not available on-line.))

Labels: breastfeeding

9. "Schools in sex education revolution"

The article "Schools in sex education revolution", by Natasha Bita (national social editor for the Sydney Daily Telegraph (among other newspapers?)), dated September 17, 2012 is available at the Tele's website:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sex-educaction-gets-physical/story-e6freuy9-1226475402901

(It came to my attention via the version of it which was published under the heading "Sex ed revolution in schools", by the same author, on p. 03 of the Sydney Daily Telegraph of Monday, September 17, 2012, Vol. 1, No. 2645, ISSN 1038-8745, published by Nationwide News Pty. Ltd.)

See also the article "Puberty lessons to begin in grade five", no by-line, dated September 17, 2012, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/puberty-lessons-to-begin-in-grade-five-20120917-261yd.html?skin=text-only

Labels: A.C.A.R.A., education, sex ed, vice

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Bridget, Widow, A.D. 2012
Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)