Campbell J. Brice ✝️ 🌻 • 🍐 🇺🇦

Sure, sometimes people intend for others to suffer, but even then this may be an expression of contempt, which like carelessness, is a failure or refusal to recognise another’s worth.

Text: The were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was the kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

This quote has been all over online the last couple of days (due to a 1920s themed ball held at the White House while the Administration is refusing to fund food stamps).

Carelessness—indifference to the effects of your actions on others—is more often the root of evil than outright maliciousness.

Speaking of the ‘liberal international order’, here’s an excellent little primer on what it was, why it’s now history, and where we might be headed.

Is the US going to war in Venezuela? There has been a menacing military build-up around the regime of Nicolás Maduro

Even if war is not the outcome, this sort of behaviour is reckless and further buries the liberal international order. It is a gift to those regimes who wish to dominate or subjugate their neighbours.

FYI for clarity don’t confuse ‘the motion was carried’ ✅ with ‘the motion was passed’ 🧻.

The Land of the Free.

Millionaire Tax That Inspired Mamdani Fuels $5.7 Billion Haul in Massachusetts A millionaire levy in Massachusetts that New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani holds up as a model for taxing the rich has generated $3 billion more in revenue than expected without forcing...

WELL HOW ABOUT THAT

"A millionaire levy in Massachusetts has generated $3 billion more in revenue than expected without forcing significant high-profile departures from the state."

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The White House is asking people not to share pictures of the East Wing because it’s even worse today.

‘Those who are present are the ones who shape the outcomes and resolutions of meetings.

‘May the Lord enable us to continue walking together, to the highest degree possible, in the footsteps of our Lord and Saviour.’

‘All Anglican churches are likewise invited to shape the Instruments of Communion, which rightly evolve over time, as those gathered seek to discern what the Spirit is saying to the churches. …

The Secretary General of the Anglican Communion shares a pastoral letter Anglican Communion News Service

‘At every level of the Church (local, regional, and global), we cannot “neglect to meet together” as it says in Hebrews 10:25, whenever possible. …

I was mystified by the design when it was first launched and continued to be bemused at why anyone thought it would work.
If you really want to give people with disability independence, you need to give them the freedom to decide what supports they need.

'I was so cross': NDIS participants blast 'nonsensical' spending rules A year after a controversial NDIS change, advocates are growing increasingly concerned that "counterintuitive" and "nonsensical" funding decisions are reducing participant independence.

The poor design of the NDIS was always going to result in the bureaucratic mess we have now where arbitrary decisions are driven by the political imperative to keep costs down not people’s needs.

It’s been kinda wild this year to discover that I believe in the US more than a sizeable chunk of its own citizens do.

More to the point, I think that, if it’s anything, ‘America’s an idea’, but it’s clear many US folks see it primarily as a particular ethnic or cultural heritage.

Time to move the United Nations HQ to Singapore I reckon.

Close up photo of re-enactors in Roman legionary armour in testudo formation, crouched behind and beneath their red rectangular shields, which they are holding in front and above their heads.

I’m preaching this Sunday at Inner West Church on the armour of God from Ephesians 6.

Come along! 9:30 am at 12 Brighton Street, Flemington.

YouTube video by The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart How Social Media Exacerbates Disaster & Disinformation | The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart calls the algorithmically served social media ‘content’ that poisons civil discourse and fuels polarisation ‘ultra-processed speech’. It’s an apt metaphor.

YouTube video by British Comedy Russian Invasion - Salami Tactics | Yes Prime Minister

Thinking of this scene today.

You or a family member could easily fall victim to such scammers or hackers, who themselves are likely trafficked persons held prisoner.

As much as we may try to wall ourselves off from the chaos of the world, it finds ways of reaching us.

Revealed: the huge growth of Myanmar scam centres that may hold 100,000 trafficked people Operated by crime syndicates and fostered by the country’s military junta, the number of vast complexes such as KK Park on the Thai-Myanmar border has doubled since 2021

Here’s a reason to care about the dramatic cuts to foreign aid and the decay of the post-WW2 liberal international order. Scamming/hacking is now an international industry that thrives in lawless corners of the world entwined with autocratic regimes.

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Yes, there are those for whom our system brings comparatively little benefit. But it brings a great deal more than the alternatives.

Let’s not to throw away what we have because it’s not all it could be.

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Where the state and law serve those in power, corruption and exploitation are features of the system: if power is about benefiting yourself and your allies, and punishing your enemies, there is no such thing as an abuse of power.

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Yes, our country has corruption and exploitation as do all nations of the liberal democratic West, and, yes, the West frequently fails to live up to the ideals it proclaims, but these are bugs in the system.

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Some people try to convince me that because our system does only imperfectly reflects the will of the people and injustice still occurs, it is little better than countries where democracy and the rule of law are not valued.

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One of the things I learnt from living for a bit outside the west was how weird liberal democracy and the rule of law are.

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—and they’re now starting to discover what it’s like to have a president like that of other nations.

I fervently hope Australians do not follow this path.

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‘“You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”’ 1 Samuel 8:5.
The voters of the US demanded a president like that of other nations—

All-in-all the system appears to be designed to subsidise the cost of healthcare of the middle class who use it occasionally and not to meet the needs of those who use it the most.

If the system isn’t designed to provide timely and effective primary healthcare to disability pensioners, who is it for?