Who were welcome, who were not welcome at the funeral of Republican Senator John McCain in the USA

Phoenix, Arizona: An African American NFL legend, the first openly gay Republican congressman to address a national GOP convention, and a registered Democrat who runs an investment firm helping low-income Latinos. It's hard to imagine a trio that more firmly stand in contrast to the vision espoused by President Donald Trump.

And those are just a few of the tributes in the Phoenix portion of John McCain's nearly week-long memorial services. Intentional or not, the late Arizona senator and his family have put together, right down to Saturday's gospel reading at Washington National Cathedral, a set of services that will serve as a symbolic final rebuke of Trump and his presidency.

By the time McCain is buried on Sunday at the US Naval Academy, the parade of those paying tribute to the 2008 GOP presidential nominee will include two ex-presidents who have publicly feuded with Trump; a Russian dissident; a former GOP senator who disavowed Trump near the end of his 2016 campaign; and the former mayor of Trump's hometown who is actively supporting Democrats this fall.

McCain had a large input into the services as he slowly lost his battle with brain cancer over the last six months, giving him time to reach out to former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to ask them to give eulogies at Saturday's service.

Those two have periodically opposed Trump's policies, particularly when his administration was separating migrant families at the border. The Bush family, like the McCains this week, declined to invite Trump to the funeral for the late first lady Barbara Bush earlier this year.

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Can oil and water mix? Mormons and the Liberal Party of Australia?

According to Australia's 2016 Census data, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) forms 0.3% of the population.  Mormons have been more or less invisible on the political landscape.  I have been politically active for most of my long life and I can't recall any members of any Australian parliament who were/are Mormons.

I can't even recall them being politically active i.e. active in political campaigns, door knocking, public statements, etc.

Until the last few years. 

In recent times, a program has come about called Safe Schools Coalition Australia and http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/programs/Pages/safeschools.aspx.  This program has caused angst and outrage among people on the political right and out of the woodwork has come some people who are Mormons.  

These people have found a home and consolation within the right wing of the Liberal Party of Australian (Victorian Division).  To clarify the political spectrum in Australia, the Liberal Party in Australia is a party more like the Republicans in the USA and the Conservatives in Britain.   There would be some true Liberals in Australia's Liberal Party but there are also Conservatives and people on the Far Right of the political spectrum. So if Mormons joined an Australian political party it is highly unlikely that they would join the Australian Labor Party (which is the equivalent of the USA's Democrats). 

In the wake of the scare campaigns run by the Right and the Mormons in relation to the Safe Schools program, Mormons have been acquiring strategic influence in the Victorian Liberal Party - and, in some quarters, this is causing concern. 

http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/programs/Pages/safeschools.aspx?Redirect=2

The Religious Society of Friends, Peace and Social Justice

This article has come from the journal, The Friend, which is published by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain.

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‘Conchies’ play goes to Edinburgh Fringe

31 May 2018 | by Rebecca Hardy

A play about a community of conscientious objectors will be performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

A scene from the play. | Photo: Courtesy of Ian Sharp.

A Lincolnshire pacifist community that included several Quakers 

is the subject of a play being taken to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August.

Ian Sharp’s play Remembrance, which premiered last year, tells the story of a community of conscientious objectors (COs) that grew up around the villages of Legsby and Holton-cum-Beckering during the second world war.

The production will be presented at Edinburgh Meeting House and has Quakers in the cast, including the ninety-nine-year-old sole surviving CO of the community, Donald Sutherland.

Playwright Ian Sharp told the Friend: ‘The play is based on several interviews I did with surviving members over many years and some from the 1980s that I stumbled on. It tells the story of the community, its ideals and how the community broke up, mainly via their testimonies and with other scenes. One of our cast is the son of two “Conchies”. as they were called.’

Remembrance premiered last December at the Broadbent Theatre in Wickenby, where it sold out for three nights. One of the performances was specifically for people with family connections to the conscientious objectors, including musician Damon Albarn, whose grandfather was a member, and the actor Jim Broadbent, whose father Roy founded the Legsby community.

Ian Sharp said: ‘There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.’

Another member was Francis Cammaerts, who later become a key figure in the French resistance movement. His nephew is Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse.

The invasion of the Liberal Party of Victoria

From The Age, Melbourne,Victoria

By Royce Millar & Ben Schneiders

A doctor and senior Mormon who blames ungodly love for HIV, as well as a prominent campaigner against the Safe Schools program, have been elected to positions in the Victorian Liberal Party.

They are among at least five Mormons elected as party officers at last week’s state conference.

Infectious diseases specialist Dr Ivan Stratov won a seat on the party’s powerful administrative committee as part of a ticket of ultra-conservatives and religious activists who are centred around 28-year-old Liberal factional whirlwind, Marcus Bastiaan.

Liberal elders believe Dr Stratov to be the first Mormon to hold a senior party position in Victoria.

Also elected, but in a more junior position as a party delegate, was controversial anti-Safe Schools campaigner, and Mormon, Marijke Rancie.

In her Liberal delegate campaign statement she described herself as a ''lobbyist against the appalling Marxist Safe Schools programs’’.

Ms Rancie, in online videos, called on Victorian parents to get ‘‘really angry’’ about the Safe Schools program, which she said was ‘‘grooming’’ children.

The Department of Education has said a number of claims made by Ms Rancie were false.

Sources confirmed that five or more Mormons were elected as party delegates, including Cynthia Watson and her husband Elliot, out of 79 people elected to party positions.

Where their conservative morality has made Mormons reliable supporters of the Republican Party in the US – especially in their home state of Utah – Australian Mormons have not traditionally been prominent in party politics.

But in recent years in Victoria, key Mormon figures have been active in Mr Bastiaan’s statewide party rejuvenation and recruitment campaign, which has been slammed by his critics as blatant branch-stacking.

The Bastiaan faction’s push for power paid off at last weekend’s Liberal State Council when it won 13 of 19 seats on the powerful administrative committee in an alliance with party president Michael Kroger and Opposition Leader Matthew Guy.

Mr Bastiaan was elected party vice-president.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott also recently met senior Mormons and missionaries in Melbourne where he reportedly spoke of his own experience of training to be a Catholic priest.

Dr Stratov was previously involved in the Family First Party. Alongside Mr Bastiaan, he has actively recruited Mormons and others to the Liberal party.

The Age approached Dr Stratov for comment.

In 2017, Dr Stratov sparked controversy while speaking at an anti-Safe Schools forum in Bendigo, part of his Liberal recruitment drive, when he blamed HIV on lapsed moral judgement.

“I studied a disease called HIV; 35 million people have died from that disease because they all decided they were going to make man’s love, not God’s love,” Dr Stratov reportedly told his audience.

The Age quoted Dr Stratov in 2017 as saying that his task for signing up new Liberal members had been made easier by community anger over progressive policies including the Safe Schools program and the assisted dying legislation.

How many Mormons have signed up to the Liberal party is unclear. One senior conservative estimates there are about 50 across Victoria, others say the figure is much higher.

Some more moderate Liberals see last weekend’s result as an effective takeover of the party by social conservatives likely to lead to more progressive Liberal MPs being replaced.

They also fear that many moderates and progressives may now abandon the party.

Further reading at the links below:
https://bit.ly/2rtS9OO
https://bit.ly/2rtyuj1
Who's behind the Safe Schools videos?
Marijke Rancie on Facebook as Political Posting Mumma
Michael Rancie
Rancie Financial

THE 2ND WORLD MARCH FOR PEACE & NON-VIOLENCE SCHEDULED FOR 2ND OCTOBEER 2019 TO 8 MARCH 2020 STARTING IN MADRID

From Ecumenics and Quakers

21.11.2017 – Madrid, Spain – Rafael de la Rubia

This post is also available in: Spanish, Italian, Catalan

The 2nd World March for Peace and Nonviolence was announced during the Conference for Nonviolence that took place between the 15th and 18th of November in Madrid, Spain.  It is scheduled to start on the 2nd of October 2019 (International Nonviolence Day) and end on the 8th of March 2020 (International Women’s Day).  The March will start and end in Madrid.

The conference was organised by World without Wars and Violence with support from PNND(i), the Peace Culture Foundation, WILPF (Spain), the Spanish campaign “Nonviolence 2018”, Ecologists in Action, Pressenza and the Spanish Peace Research Association among others and was held in several locations of the Spanish capital: from the symbolic Congress of Deputies to the more humble district of Vallecas, passing through the Madrid City Council in Cibeles Square.  The organisers’ interest was to introduce the subject of nonviolence in its various expressions in all social fields, from national, to city and neighbourhood level.  This will be strengthened by the development of the 2nd World March which will try to impact all sectors of society with the subjects of peace and nonviolence.

Global security was the subject tackled on the 15th of November, in the Clara Campoamor Hall in the Spanish Congress of Deputies, including the increasing risk of the use of nuclear weapons and its relationship to the recent Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons(ii) the ratification of which is currently underway in the United Nations but without Spain’s support.  In this session, Congress Deputy Pedro Arrojo(iii) announced that 50 colleagues from the Podemos parliamentary block had joined the PNND network.  There was also a meeting between Congress Deputy Pablo Bustinduy and Alyn Ware(v), the international coordinator of PNND, on the subject of how New Zealand managed to get and maintain a defence agreement with Australia and the United States which respected the decision of the New Zealand people to reject the presence of nuclear weapons on their territory.  Arrojo also announced the activation of an international network of parliamentarians to support the 2nd World March.

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Religious and ethnic organisations unite against plans by the Australian Government to weaken or abolish race hate laws

Tony Abbott is facing a fight against Australia's indigenous, Jewish, Arab, Chinese, Greek, Armenian, Lebanese and Muslim populations, who have united in urging the government not to proceed with announced plans to abolish or weaken race hate laws.

As his first legislative act, Attorney-General George Brandis wants to introduce a bill to change sections of the Racial Discrimination Act that protect ethnic groups against hate speech. He especially dislikes provisions that make it unlawful to offend or insult people on the basis of their race.

Declaring himself a champion of ''freedom'', Senator Brandis has disparaged the laws used against Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt over an article he wrote in which he accused ''white'' Australians of identifying as Aborigines to advance their careers.

The head of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Peter Wertheim, said he could not recall ''any other issue on which there has been such unity of purpose and strength of feeling across such a diverse group of communities''.

''We have read with growing concern that the federal government has plans to remove or water down the protections against racial vilification,'' reads the statement signed by the heads of groups including the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, Arab Council Australia, Chinese Australian Forum, Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Australian Hellenic Council, Lebanese Muslim Association and the Armenian National Council of Australia.

Jewish leaders have combined in a rare joint protest with prominent ethnic and indigenous leaders.

To read more of this report, please go to this link.

Why racial hatred laws are vital to Australian multiculturalism