Boroondara council reform; Palestine-Israel backgrounder; Turkey finally supports Sweden joining NATO; Icelandic women

Published: Tue, 10/24/23

RSA Daily

For atheists, rationalists and secular humanists in Australia

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Rationale, the magazine of the Rationalist Society of Australia

Good morning ,

On Monday, we urged you to watch the Boroondara council meeting to see if the council supported the overwhelming desire of the Boroondara people to modernise its council's procedures to make them more reflective of its non religious population. Well, they did, albeit reluctantly. Watch the proceedings at the 1.05 mark here.

While the RSA is not mentioned in the morning papers' write up of the change (The Guardian here and Sky here - check the difference, particularly in the comments under the Sky article!), we and the Victorian Humanists were active in achieving this change.

Be interesting to see which councillors are elected at the next local council elections.

Lead stories

Councillor Victor Franco triumphs in three-year push to remove prayers | Rationalist Society of Australia

Finally, the community of Boroondara - overwhelmingly non religious - have won, thanks to the perseverence of councillor Victor Franco. But those recalcitrants who opposed a simple reform that would better reflect the clear wishes of their community have not been gracious: "That is abundantly clear. This is a motion that very few councillors want to support but feel they have absolutely and utterly no alternative. That’s where I landed… We’re going to vote for this but with heavy hearts and with grave disappointment." And they tried to appropriate the RSA's intervention to their cause! Read the article to see how.

Understanding the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 5 charts

Timeline of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank (this is crucial!)
Oslo II Agreement boundaries
Displaced persons in UN shelters
Timeline of conflicts in Israel and Palestine
Reported incidents with agencies in Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Other stories of interest

Sagan's experiment a guiding light in the search for life

"A strong case for life elsewhere will likely require a combination of mutually supporting evidence, such as light absorption by photosynthesis-like processes, narrowband radio emission, modest temperatures and weather and chemical traces in the atmosphere which are hard to explain by non-biological means. As we move into the era of instruments such as the James Webb space telescope, Sagan’s experiment remains as informative now as it was 30 years ago."

Icelandic women to stop all paid and unpaid work to protest gender pay gap and violence rates

Icelandic women first organised a strike for equal pay 50 years ago. Now they're striking to protest against gender-based violence as well. And the prime minister, Katrin Jakobsdottir, is expected to participate.

Sweden welcomes Turkey ratifying NATO membership bid

Ending a 17 month stand off...

Hot-button topics may get public attention at the Vatican synod but ..

"The church strongly supports democracy in the secular world .. internally, however, Catholicism preserves a deep tradition of governance rooted in apostolic succession: bishops’ authority descending directly from the Apostles of Jesus Christ .. the legitimacy of their leadership stems from this lineage, rather than a democratic process."

Got a comment on any of these stories?

Write to me at president@rationalist.com.au