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Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Minister for Women and Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family ViolenceThe Honourable Shannon Fentiman

Attorney-General and Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence Shannon Fentiman is inviting women to come forward and talk about their experiences dealing with the criminal justice system.

The Attorney said public submissions are now open to the Womens Safety and Justice Taskforce chaired by former judge, the Honourable Margaret McMurdo AC.

The Taskforce is another of the ongoing measures addressing violence against women in all its forms.

This is a significant step forward in tackling violence against women in our community, Minister Fentiman said.

Our Government has made significant progress to prevent and respond to domestic, family and sexual violence in Queensland, but we know there is more work to be done.

The work of the Womens Safety and Justice taskforce is crucial in looking at what barriers women face when they report on violence committed against them, and to look at laws that will keep women safe and hold perpetrators to account.

The information shared will allow the taskforce to look into areas of reform, including attitudinal change, prevention, service response, training for first responders and legislative amendment, with a trauma approach.

Submissions can be made through the secure portal on the taskforce website at http://www.womenstaskforce.qld.gov.au to assist with its wide-ranging review exploring not only womens experience with the criminal justice system, but also the issue of coercive control and consideration of this behaviour as a specific offence of domestic violence.

We thank the women who will come forward to tell their stories and we respect that for some women for whom this is not possible, that their experience is acknowledges, Minister Fentiman said.

The Chair of the Womens Safety and Justice Taskforce, the Honourable Margaret McMurdo AC, said all Queensland women had the option to submit their personal experiences if they wished to do so.

This is just one of the ways the Taskforce will reach out to hear the voices of Queensland women and girls as we carefully examine the challenges they face, Ms McMurdo said.

Anyone can make a submission to inform the Taskforces work.

You may be a victim or survivor of domestic, family or sexual violence, a friend or family member, or a woman accused or convicted of criminal offences. We want to hear your views as we look into possible areas for reform.

Members of the public wishing to make a submission to the taskforce can submit written or typed documents, or upload voice recordings.

Announced in March this year by the Palaszczuk Government, the Taskforce will also undertake consultation with relevant advocacy groups, domestic, family and sexual violence service providers and networks, the judiciary, and prosecution and policing agencies before making recommendations to the Government.

Those making submissions of their personal experiences can rest assured that this can be done confidentially and with the knowledge that it will assist the taskforce with its work to create change to keep women safe, Ms McMurdo said.

The taskforce will also release discussion papers in late 2021 aimed at seeking the experiences of women in the state, including those of culturally and linguistically diverse people as well as those with disability.

Forums, with appropriate COVID measures in place, will also be held in the future for those wishing to participate.

Further information about the Womens Safety and Justice taskforce, its consultation and engagement activities, and how to make a submission can be found at: http://www.womenstaskforce.qld.gov.au.

*If anything in this statement has brought up concerns, contact DVConnect Womensline on 1800 811 811 (24 hours, 7 days per week), Sexual Assault Helpline on 1800 010 120 (7.30am to 11.30pm, 7 days), or Lifeline on 13 11 44 (24 hours, 7 days).

ENDS

Media contact: Inga Williams 0439 949 719

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Queensland women's voices on DFV to be heard - Media Statements

The US has partnered with more than 1,000 Indian healthcare facilities to strengthen preparedness, including training of over 14,000 people on infection prevention and control, it said.

The US has also helped keep more than 213,000 frontline workers safe by imparting risk mitigation training for doctors, nurses, midwives, community volunteers, sanitation workers, and others actively responding to COVID-19 in India, the White House added.

It has also launched joint public messaging with UNICEF on COVID prevention that has reached more than 84 million people and provided 200 state-of-the-art ventilators to 29 healthcare facilities in 15 states to care for critically-ill COVID-19 patients, it said.

In its fact-sheet, the White House said that for 70 years, US public health experts from across the government, including USAID, HHS, CDC, FDA, and NIH, have worked in partnership with Indian officials to improve the health of India's most vulnerable communities.

Over the last 20 years, US foreign assistance to India has exceeded USD2.8 billion, including more than USD1.4 billion for healthcare. The two countries and other partners have worked together to reduce new HIV infections by 37 per cent between 2010 and 2019, it said.

Since 1998, the United States and India have worked together to combat tuberculosis (TB) through improved patient-centred diagnosis, treatment and prevention, helping treat 15 million people with the disease.

In the last five years, the United States has helped 40 million pregnant women receive vital health information and services, the White House said.

The United States, in partnership with the government of India and the World Health Organization, has supported initiatives at the district, state and national levels to build frontline disease detection capacity.

The two countries are also working together to advance global health security and fight outbreaks before they become pandemics, the White House added.

See more here:
US delivering supplies worth over USD 100 million to India; first flight to land on Thursday: White House - National Herald

He rounded off with The results of this are all around. As a famous band once sang, If you plant ice, youre gonna harvest wind. This (Covid-19 second wave) is a whirlwind. Maybe he had read an excerpt from Indias Power Elite: Class, Caste and a Cultural Revolution by Sanjay Baru, media advisor to Manmohan Singh when Singh was Prime Minister. Narendra Modi used Indias media elite for his own advantage, says Baru, hardly being original!

Mind you Sanjay Baru is no less media elite. Baru knows it, too, the clout that comes with being "media elite." His book is that of an insider taking us through the maze of press, power and politics. He breaks the essentials down to basics. Do medias close links with politicians give it clout or deprive it of credibility? he asks, and then answers with: It would appear that almost every media group takes a trade-off between the two sacrificing some credibility for either money or power.

Baru in his role as media advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must have been keenly aware of this trade-off. He did not cotton to certain journalists, especially to the one who, he says, is idiosyncratic and unabashedly partisan and pro-Modi, who is otherwise a thorough professional and personally amiable fellow. The amiable fellow is easily identifiable.

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On the defensive, PM Modi shifts gears and with 2024 far away, hopes to get out of the hole he has dug - National Herald

India's COVID numbers have far outstripped countries like the US and Brazil, which have been the poor performers till now. More worryingly, the number of positives to tests are now more than one out of five, more than four times what it was a few months back, indicating that the actual numbers of infected could be even higher.

What went wrong with the central government's handling the epidemic? The government was unprepared for the second wave which started its steep climb about a month back. The central government and its experts believed that the COVID-19 pandemic would be over by February 2021, and the country would go back to normal after that. The Modi government truly believed its propaganda of the so-called Department of Science and Technology supermodel and was busy chest-thumping on its great success in fighting the pandemic. It was preparing to convert its "success" into electoral victory in the next set of state elections when the second wave struck.

As the numbers started rising, instead of trying to work out a cooperative plan on a countrywide basis to combat the epidemic, the BJP went on an offensive. The central ministers blamed the state governments for not doing enough and the people for having abandoned the safety norms of masks and social distancing. This, notwithstanding that the central government had itself signalled a return to normal with public rallies, election campaigns and huge religious gatherings such as the Kumbha Mela. If people did relax the Covid-19 norms, they were only following what the leaders on the dais during ralliesNarendra Modi and Amit Shah includedwere doing.

The first COVID-19 wave had peaked around mid-September, touching nearly 100,000 new infections. It had gone down to half of that in one month, and from mid-October onwards, the numbers dropped even further till February end. This nearly four months of respite should have been used to strengthen the public health system in the country: increasing hospital beds, ICU facilities, building a supply chain for oxygen, and preparing protocols on how to handle the next wave.

Strengthening the public health system, introducing clear guidelines, getting the state and local governments to function together is the first line of defence in handling the pandemic. The tragedy is that the central government, which has centralised all powers under the Disaster Management Act, refused to prepare either itself or the states for this second wave in the belief that the pandemic was over.

See the article here:
New Delhi centralised power but blamed the states and abdicated its responsibility - National Herald

WATCH:How To Use The Terms "Socialism" vs. "Communism" Previous Next What is socialism?

Socialismhas three main meanings:

1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.

3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

Socialism is a social theory makes sense. It theorizes that a collective cooperation of citizens will make all governmental institutions public. For example, no one will receive a healthcare bill when going to the doctor because they, and everyone else, have paid a hefty amount in government taxes. Thats where the collective cooperation comes in.

Communism, on the other hand, is a branch of socialism. Its similar in that its still founded on the idea of collective cooperation, but differs in that communists believe that cooperation should be run by a totalitarian government made up of one and only one government.

Russia gave communism a bad name when it reigned as the USSR. It was here that thousands who were seen as threats to the stateartists, authors, intellectuals, even those who practiced religionwere sent to be slaughtered or exiled uh, yikes. I guess you could call it socialism gone bad.

Although the USSR fell way back when, Russia is still very communist culturally, though economically theyre a capitalistic system. Countries like the Peoples Republic of China are certainly more communist than Russia, where all things are nationalized up to the point that citizens cant even make full use of the internet due to the governments fear of free thought.

So, although communism is a form of socialism its definitely the rotten egg of the two.

Democracy is a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. The Greek demokratia is derived from demos, common people, and kratos, strength.

Basically, in a democracy, the head of state is usually a president, and the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote (which is then exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them).Capitalismis part of democracies (not communist or socialist countries). The community as a whole does not own all of the property and wealth in a democracy.

Our modern ideas of socialism and communism tend to come from what Karl Marx outlined inThe Communist Manifestoand what was later implemented in Russia by Vladimir Lenin and his followers (theBolsheviks). Marxs manifesto called for a complete overhaul of capitalist systems of the time. It advocated for the working class(theproletariat) to uprise against the aristocracy and other elites (thebourgeoisie), followed by the implementation of a new society where everyone was equal. That sounds great on paper, but the way it played out in Russia was a bloody revolution (including the arrest and execution of Czar Nicholas II and his family). In the 1920s, Joseph Stalin took over, and he established a completely totalitarian regime. Stalins government was marked by widespread famine, poverty, and death.

Modern-day Russia is neither socialist, nor communist. That ended in 1991. However, today, North Korea self-identifies as socialist, and it operates in a very similar way to Stalins USSR. China went through a Communist revolution not long after Russia did, and today they self-identify as socialist with Chinese characteristics.

Its not all doom and gloom, though. Many Nordic countries operate associal democracies. This means they blend a lot of socialist policies (like providing state healthcare, social security, and workers compensation) with certain capitalist features (like private property and the democratic process).

To read more about other government words, take a look at our slideshow!

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Socialism vs Communism: Do you know the difference ...