Screwed by the brood

A growing number of older people are finding themselves struggling to pay their children's mortgages.

And the problem is set to worsen as banks encourage families to collaborate financially to circumnavigate tightened lending criteria.

During the last housing boom, many parents helped their kids get into homes.

Financial adviser Kathy Jarrett says often they were convinced by their children's mortgage broker, real estate agent or banker, ignoring advice from their own advisers.

Commonly they mortgaged their own homes and gifted loan proceeds to their children on the understanding that the kids would be responsible for the repayments.

Untruth by omission

First, it looks at how racially liberal attitudes have, paradoxically, paralleled escalating dysfunction in many remote indigenous communities. Second, as its subtitle suggests, the book explores the collapse of the 70s liberal consensus that a rights agenda -- from a treaty to a formal reconciliation agreement -- would empower the most troubled Aboriginal settlements. Sutton caustically observes: "This unscientific mumbo jumbo beggars belief."

Sutton's third -- and most contentious -- theme blasts open a little-explored frontier in the contemporary indigenous affairs debate, taking the discussion to a new level of candour and maturity. He analyses how many seemingly intractable problems indigenous people confront, from low life expectancy to high rates of domestic violence, arise from "a complex joining together" of post-conquest factors and "a substantial number of ancient, pre-existent social and cultural factors that have continued, transformed or intact, into the lives of people living today".

Through his observations and careful marshalling of historical and anthropological evidence, Sutton demonstrates how traditional approaches to violence, hygiene, sorcery and child-rearing persist in many indigenous communities. He argues that together with recent, destructive impacts such as welfare dependence and substance abuse, these cultural practices often have a detrimental effect on indigenous health, housing and wellbeing.

Yet he discovers that the complex question of culture is still being quarantined from discussions of indigenous disadvantage through what he calls "untruth by omission". For instance, debates about poor indigenous educational outcomes commonly cite problems such as students' hearing loss and undernourishment, but neglect to mention truancy, "stupendous as it has so often been". He concludes: "One of the obstacles to effective debate in the present context is that so many people are still in denialover the need for cultural change."

Accounts of indigenous domestic violence usually disregard how violence and fighting were common features of traditional life. Sutton notes how colonial observers and anthropologists witnessed high levels of male-on-female violence "at the earliest moments of external contact", while analysis of archeological human remains that predated colonisation reveal an unusually high degree of skull injuries among Aboriginal women.

He believes physical aggression is tolerated in many remote communities today, and that modern scourges such as alcoholism exacerbate the problem. He reveals how some indigenous child-rearing practices encourage children, especially boys, to be aggressive. In a practice known as "cruelling", parents intentionally hurt their kids, including babies, and teach them to retaliate physically: a behavioural echo, perhaps, of the days when clans were often at war and children needed to protect themselves.

Mosques closed in China crackdown

THE normally bustling mosques of Urumqi, in China's Xinjiang province, have been ordered to shut on the main Islamic day of prayer, Friday. At the same time, police were out in force to prevent new outbreaks of ethnic unrest. The region's Uighurs said they had been directed to pray at home, as armed forces saturated the streets of Xinjiang's capital five days after clashes that authorities said left 156 people dead.

"The Government said there would be no Friday prayers," said a Uighur man named Tursun. He was outside the Hantagri mosque, one of the oldest in the capital, as about 100 policemen carrying machine guns and batons stood guard nearby. "There's nothing we can do … the Government is afraid that people will use religion to support the three forces," he said.

A Chinese Government term, the "three forces" refers to extremism, separatism and terrorism, forces it says are trying to split the remote Xinjiang region from the rest of the country.

Crikey! Broadsheet accuses tabloid of being tabloid

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the accusations this week that a British tabloid newspaper had routinely hacked into the cellphone messages of celebrities, sports figures and politicians is how widespread, even accepted, such dubious journalistic methods are in Britain.

“They will go to any lengths to get material: pretending to be someone they’re not, dressing as the gasman to get into someone’s home, paying neighbors, going through trash bins, convincing relatives that the person has given them permission to talk,” the anchor of Channel 4 News, Jon Snow, said of British tabloid reporters.

The focus this week has been on a particular paper, The News of the World, which is owned by News International, the British subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. The paper was accused by another newspaper, The Guardian, of hiring private investigators to hack into the cellphone messages of thousands of people.

The Guardian also reported that The News of the World had paid more than $1.6 million in out-of-court settlements to three people whose phones had been hacked into. One of them was identified as Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, who, The Guardian said, received $1.1 million. On Friday, The Guardian identified a second person, Jo Armstrong, a legal adviser for the soccer group, as another recipient.

Inside France's 'Barbarians' trial

Mr Fofana, a gang leader from just outside Paris, stands accused of the murder of Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man who worked in a mobile phone shop. It is alleged that Mr Fofana instructed a female gang member to lure Mr Halimi into an empty apartment in Bagneux, where he was attacked, beaten and drugged. Mr Fofana is said to have targeted Mr Halimi because he believed that "Jews are loaded".

During his three-week ordeal, Mr Halimi's family were sent harrowing images and video recordings by his captors who demanded a ransom of 450,000 euros ($600,000; £405,000) for his release. The victim was eventually found naked and tied to a tree near a railway. He had been stabbed and set alight. He died on his way to hospital.

We have infiltrated party: KKK

THE Ku Klux Klan says it has infiltrated an anti-immigration party preparing to contest seats at the next federal election. David Palmer, (attention-seeker extraordinaire), the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in Australia , said several Klan members had secretly joined Australia First, a far right party that announced yesterday that it had the numbers to register as a political party. "We aren't interested in actually registering as a party," Mr Palmer said. "Our main idea was we would move in and take back what we consider our Aryan parties. [The Klan] is a white pressure group; a white social group for white families. But also a reserve in case the ethnics get out of hand and they need sorting out."

When he made similar claims about the infiltration of One Nation, the party formerly led by Pauline Hanson, two of his associates were expelled from the party. The NSW director of Australia First, Jim Saleam, vehemently denies his party has been infiltrated by the Klan.

Right-wing genie out of the bottle

THE party faithful gathered in "the bunker". In a room decorated with Heidelberg School art posters and Ned Kelly figurines, Jim Saleam, the NSW director of the Australia First Party, recited the Eureka Oath.

The father of far right politics in Australia told the dozen people gathered around a plastic trestle table - a group too small to entertain registration as a federal political party - that they were on the cusp of return. "We are a genie in the bottle," he said. "When the system itself says it's in trouble we must welcome that.

"For, Australia, we are now moving into the most extraordinary of times."

Five months since that meeting in a former shop in Tempe, the genie is out of the bottle: today Australia First will announce itself as the first anti-immigration party since One Nation to gain enough members to contest a federal election. The party finished signing the 500 members on Monday and expects its application to be lodged in a fortnight - five years after it was last deregistered and four years since One Nation lost its final federal seat.

Massacres in Tehran, Darfur, Xinjiang,Tibet, Sri Lanka

Midway through his five-year term, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says he isn't concerned that he's not a household name. What matters, he says, is making the United Nations "a more trusted, efficient, and effective organization" that can help the world's needy, protect civilians trapped in conflict, and keep key issues like climate change in the global spotlight. Critics say Ban has worked too much behind the scenes, not using the bully pulpit of the U.N. as his charismatic predecessor Kofi Annan did to publicly pressure wayward regimes. They criticize him as ineffectual and colorless, and say he's capitulated to the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France — whose support is essential for him to get a second five-year term.

In a recent interview looking back on the first half of his term and ahead to the second half which started this month, Ban defended himself, arguing that he is battling against the ingrained culture of a massive bureaucracy. He said he's still working on his priority goals — mobilizing world leaders and people around the world to support a new treaty to tackle global warming, changing the working culture of the United Nations, and promoting peace in Darfur and other conflict areas, mainly in Africa.

The Uighurs have a right to decide their fate

AS AN ethnic Uighur, I am horrified by the riots, deaths, injuries and arrests in Urumqi, the city my parents call home. I have lost contact with them, and rely on reports filtering out of Xinjiang. I have to accept the Chinese Government figures of 156 people dead, more than 1000 injured and more than 1400 arrests.

Of course I am sceptical about such figures. I was a student leader in the 1989 protests; I am still waiting for reliable government figures as to how many people died at the weekend. It makes me wonder why today — when so little has changed politically in my homeland and I, like many others, remain in exile — the numbers are so high and so exact.

The only conclusion I can come to is that the Government wants to send a brutal zero-tolerance message to the Uighur people of Xinjiang, to the greater Chinese population and to the outside world that Uighur dissent will be met with force. Beijing also no doubt expects that, when it releases statistics on the civilians it has shot in the streets, it will have the support of China's predominantly Han population. The broad consensus is that the Han Chinese occupation of formerly Uighur and Tibetan territories has brought prosperity and liberty from feudal regimes to the subjects of "liberation". In this sense, all opposition to Chinese cultural dominance and rule is viewed as a kind of betrayal.

China should return Rio execs to Australia

AUSTRALIA is facing a major crisis in relations with China after Beijing yesterday dug in over its detention of four employees of mining giant Rio Tinto, saying it had evidence they had stolen state secrets. Four days after Australian iron ore sales executive Stern Hu and three Chinese colleagues were taken into custody, the precise nature of any charges against them and their whereabouts remained a mystery. But in an ominous signal from Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang yesterday made no concession to outside demands for their release.

"Competent authorities have sufficient evidence to prove that they have stolen state secrets and have caused huge loss to China's economic interest and security," he said. He warned Australia against making a big issue of it. "It's improper to exaggerate this individual case or even politicise it, which will be no good to Australia," Mr Qin said.

Russia should return the Schneersohn collection

During the 1990s, the world was seized with stories of Nazi plunder and heirless property from the Holocaust era. Stolen bank accounts, looted artwork, confiscated real estate and payments for slave labor made front-page headlines, were the talk of congressional hearings and became the subject of international diplomacy.

By the end of the decade, billions of dollars had been returned to Holocaust survivors and their heirs. Ten years later, however, the problem remains unresolved.

Survivors received a measure of compensation for their loss and suffering, but some countries -- like Russia -- could be doing more, particularly by returning the vast collection of books and manuscripts of the late Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn.

At the end of June, experts met in Prague to discuss the continued restitution of Holocaust-era personal assets, cultural and religious objects, Jewish cemeteries and other objects. Delegations from around the world attended, and at the end of the conference a consensus document was issued concerning property.

China's ethnic tinderbox

The recent Urumqi and Lhasa riots have shattered the myth of a monolithic China, writes China and Uighur expert Professor Dru Gladney.

Foreigners and the Chinese themselves typically picture China's population as a vast homogeneous Han majority with a sprinkling of exotic minorities living along the country's borders.

Uighur women protest at the arrest of their menfolk

This understates China's tremendous cultural, geographic, and linguistic diversity - in particular the important cultural differences within the Han population. More importantly, recent events suggest that China may well be increasingly insecure regarding not only these nationalities, but also its own national integration.

The unprecedented early departure of President Hu Jintao from the G8 meetings in Italy to attend to the ethnic problems in Xinjiang is an indication of the seriousness with which China regards this issue.

Across the country, China is seeing a resurgence of local ethnicity and culture, most notably among southerners such as the Cantonese and Hakka, who are now classified as Han.

For centuries, China has held together a vast multi-cultural and multi-ethnic nation despite alternating periods of political centralization and fragmentation. But cultural and linguistic cleavages could worsen in a China weakened by internal strife, an economic downturn, uneven growth, or a struggle over future political succession.

Let’s have a bonfire of the quangos

‘If you have a look at democracy it hasn’t done a lot of good for many countries - including this one.’ (1)

Formula 1 motor racing boss Bernie Ecclestone got into hot water this week when he took the opportunity of an interview in The Times (London) to express his admiration for despots. The context was the accusation that the former head of Formula 1 - Max Mosley, son of Thirties fascist leader, Oswald - had been behaving like a ‘dictator’ before he recently stepped down. Ecclestone chose to throw the accusation back at Mosley’s accusers: ‘I prefer strong leaders. Margaret Thatcher made decisions on the run and got the job done. She was the one who built this country up slowly. We’ve let it go down again. All these guys, Gordon and Tony, are trying to please everybody all the time… Max would do a super job, he’s a good leader.’

It was Ecclestone’s implication that Hitler was doing a good job before he got sidetracked by others that really caused controversy: ‘In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people able to get things done.’

It’s hardly a surprise that a 78-year-old multi-billionaire might have some unpalatable and cantankerous views about the world. But Ecclestone should have known better than to talk of Hitler with even a shred of sympathy.

Tribunals convict 330 of al-Qaeda links

SPECIAL security courts in Saudi Arabia have convicted a number of militants of plotting attacks inside the country with al-Qaeda, the state news agency SPA has reported. The militants were convicted today on charges of conspiring with al-Qaeda, plotting to disrupt national security and financing terrorism, the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution said.

Altogether 330 people were convicted in the secret security tribunals, with one sentenced to death, according to Al-Arabiya television which has close links to the Saudi Government. The Bureau of Investigation gave no details on any individuals, but they are believed to be among 991 suspected militants arrested during an al-Qaeda campaign of attacks and assassinations of both Saudis and foreigners around the country between 2003 and 2006.

Well over 100 people were killed in the attacks before they were halted by an intense Saudi crackdown. The trials of the militants are believed to have begun in early 2009 but were never officially confirmed.

French politicians begin hearings on whether to ban burka

FRENCH politicians have opened hearings on whether to ban the burka, calling in experts who said France should act to discourage Muslim women from wearing the head-to-toe veil.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has proclaimed the burka "not welcome" in secular France, drawing a warning from al-Qaeda's north Africa wing that it was ready to "take revenge for the honour of our daughters and sisters."

Home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority, France has set up a special panel of 32 politicians to consider whether a law should be enacted to bar Muslim women from wearing the full veil, known as a burka or niqab.

At the first hearing on Wednesday, two academics described wearing the burka as a throwback to a form of archaic Islam and a type of cult-like behaviour, incompatible with modern France.

Islam expert Abdennour Bidar called the full veil a "pathology of Islam" embraced by hardline Salafists who tell Muslim women to cover themselves as a way to "get back to their roots.

Celebrating aboriginal culture

ABOUT 110 adults, students and children attended the Whitsunday Neighbourhood Centre NAIDOC Week celebrations on Tuesday.

NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia each July to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This year's theme for NAIDOC Week celebrations was 'Honouring our Elders, nurturing our youth.'

The event started with an address by local Elder Irene Butterworth who welcomed everybody on behalf of the Ngaro people of the Whitsundays.

Mrs Butterworth said she was very honoured to speak to such an interested group of people at Tuesday's event.

She also said she was pleased to see such a great turnout.

“It turned out to be a wonderful day.

BS, weasle words and Rudd-speak

In Berlin for a five-day European tour, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd challenged German translators with his "Rudd-speak". While addressing German press and Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr Rudd said it was unlikely any progress would emerge from the Major Economies Forum (MEF) "by way of detailed programmatic specificity".

The line had German translators scrambling for a meaning. When asked about the Prime Minister's choice of words in Perth today, the Opposition Leader said Mr Rudd would be better to use clear, plain English. Mr Turnbull admitted he personally had "no idea what (programmatic specificity) means". "As I understand it, I heard part of his speech was not only incomprehensible in English, but so incomprehensible the German translators were unable to translate," Mr Turnbull said.

"Mr Rudd has a way with words. I just hope he knows what he's saying because a lot of what he says is incomprehensible to most people when he gets into that jargon. "I think clarity and plain English would be a good remedy for Mr Rudd's linguistic problems."

Obama's targetting tactic

American drone strikes are finding their targets in Pakistan through a series of infrared homing beacons, Al Qaeda alleges in a new online publication.

The American and Pakistani intelligence services credit U.S. unmanned aircraft with decimating the ranks of terrorist and insurgent operatives in Pakistan. “Very frankly, it’s the only game in town in terms of confronting and trying to disrupt the Al Qaeda leadership,” CIA director Leon Panetta said in May. The unmanned aircraft have supposedly carried out 28 attacks on suspected militants, just since the start of the year. Hundreds have been killed, including as many as 45 more people in a series of strikes today.

But how the killer drones find their targets has been a matter of some dispute. Local Taliban commander Mullah Nazir, himself an occasional target, says they’re guided by SIM cards, installed in militant cell phones. Area tribesman talk of homing devices, planted by informants, that are capable of signaling American aircraft. In The Ruling Concerning Muslims Spies, an internet-distributed book written by self-styled theologian and emerging Al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi, warns readers of American infrared devices which he claims directs the attacks on Al Qaeda and its allies.

“These result in the firing of the murderous and destructive missiles whose wrath is inflicted on the Mujahedeen and the weak,” he writes. Then he provides “photos of some of the devices the spies painstakingly transport to the targets they are assigned by their infidel patrons.”

The pictures of the “chips with 9 volt batteries” provided in the book (see photo, above) bear a sharp resemblance to the Phoenix and Pegasus models of infrared flashing beacons made by Cejay Engineering. The devices are used by the U.S. military, among others, to identify friend from foe, mark drop zones, and outline perimeters.

The gadgets use LEDs, powered by a 9 volt battery, to emit beacons of infrared light that are visible only through night vision equipment. A six-second memory can be programmed to flash in Morse-type codes and other sequences. The lights can be seen at “distances of over five miles and can also be seen through clothing and underwater,” according to one distributor. from a distance of up to five miles. They can weigh as little as a half-ounce, are as small as an inch-and-a-quarter, and have a battery life of nearly 100 hours. The Phoenix family of infrared beacons have been in use since 1984, making them the “the most widely used electronic Combat ID system in the world.”

American Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft are both equipped with infrared cameras, making such beacons a natural drone signaling mechanism. And because the devices are relatively simple and cheap — less sophisticated models can be purchased online for as little as $25 each — they can be handed out to informants, without fear of compromising clandestine, sophisticated American technology.

“Transmitters make a lot of sense to me,” former CIA case officer Robert Baer previously told about the general notion of beacons guiding in drone strikes. “It is simply not possible to train a Pashtun from Waziristan to go to a targeted site, case it, and come back to Peshawar or Islamabad with anything like an accurate report. The best you can hope for is they’re putting the transmitter on the right house.”

In April, 19 year-old Habibur Rehman made a videotaped “confession” of planting such devices, just before he was executed by the Taliban as an American spy. “I was given $122 to drop chips wrapped in cigarette paper at Al Qaeda and Taliban houses,” he said. If I was successful, I was told, I would be given thousands of dollars.”

But Rehman says he didn’t just tag jihadists with the devices. “The money was good so I started throwing the chips all over. I knew people were dying because of what I was doing, but I needed the money,” he added. Which raises the possibility that the unmanned aircraft — America’s key weapons in its covert war on Pakistan’s jihadists and insurgents — may have been lead to the wrong targets.

Low-end house prices 'to fall 10pc'

THE end of the Government's first-home buyers grant boost and various state-funded benefits could force down lower-end house prices by up to 10 per cent.

The warning from CB Richard Ellis coincided with Australian Bureau of Statistics figures issued yesterday that show the number of dwellings bought by owner-occupiers in May was 29 per cent higher than in October, when the federal boost was introduced.

CBRE manager of residential research Erin Rolandsen said first-home buyers were responsible for 95.2 per cent of the increase, The Australian reported.

"The fact that first-home buyers have been driving this boom leaves the sub-$500,000 market particularly vulnerable once the boost is reduced from September, 2009," Ms Rolandsen said.

Uighurs claim 400 killed in unrest in western China

POLICE killed 400 Uighurs in the capital of China's Xinjiang region during ethnic unrest there, exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer claimed yesterday. Ms Kadeer said Uighur sources within "East Turkestan", the separatist name for the northwest region, had told her 400 Uighurs had died "as a result of police shootings and beatings" in Urumqi since violence erupted there on Sunday.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal Asia, the president of the World Uighur Congress said unrest was spreading across the region and unconfirmed reports indicated more than 100 Uighurs had been killed in Kashgar, another major city in Xinjiang. Chinese authorities have said 156 people died in Sunday's violence in Urumqi. They have not made clear how many of the victims were Han Chinese and how many were Uighur, or how they died.