Select committee

• We are an independent company publicly traded on the Shanghai stock exchange that operates internationally,” said Norbert Muhrer, President and Chief Sales Officer, Quectel Wireless Solutions.
• He added: “Select Committee leaders also misleadingly state in a press release and on X (Twitter) that they are asking federal departments to “blacklist” Quectel.
• In fact, even if Quectel were placed on the lists the Select Committee suggested – which has no basis – the only impact would be to block U.S. investments in Quectel securities.
• Quectel would not be barred from selling any of its products, in other words would not be blacklisted.

• NEW YORK, Nov. 14, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights today announced that Fran Drescher, SAG-AFTRA president, actor, writer, and activist, will receive the 2023 Ripple of Hope Award in recognition of her leadership advocating for workers' rights.
• The Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award honors exemplary leaders across government, business, advocacy, and entertainment who have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to social change and worked to protect and advance equity, justice, and human rights.
• "Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights has a long history of supporting union activity, and my father worked alongside union organizer Cesar Chavez to protect vulnerable farmworkers," said Kerry Kennedy, president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights.
• "I am honored to be a recipient of the RFK Ripple of Hope Award," said Drescher.

• Quectel Wireless Solutions, a global IoT solutions provider, today commented on the recent letter and response being published by the FCC and the Select Committee of the US Congress questioning if Quectel’s IoT modules represent a potential security risk.
• “We welcome the opportunity to work with the FCC and other U.S. government entities to demonstrate our compliance and best practice device security approach, says Norbert Muhrer, President and CSO, Quectel Wireless Solutions.
• Critical infrastructure is meticulously fashioned with a multi-tiered security approach defined and implemented solely by the device OEM, not Quectel.
• More recently Quectel also retained the security firm Finite State , which is auditing and penetration testing the security of its modules through rigorous security testing, improved software supply chain visibility, and comprehensive software risk management.

• Note of warning: This article refers to deceased Aboriginal people, their words, names and images.
• Words attributed to them and images in the article are already in the public domain.
• Also, historical language is used in this article that may cause offence.

Spotlight on the treatment of Indigenous people

• During the 1830s, slave rebellions in Britain’s colonies and a growing humanitarian movement in the UK pushed the government to abolish slavery.
• The spotlight was then turned on the treatment of Indigenous peoples, both within and on the edges of the rapidly expanding British Empire.
• [had] directed their anxious attention to the adoption of some plan for the better protection and civilisation of the native tribes.
• shewn [sic] himself to be eminently qualified by his charge of the Aboriginal Establishment at Flinders Island.

An aim to convey ‘wants, wishes or grievances’

• Protectors were to “watch over the rights and interests of the natives” and protect them from “acts of cruelty, of oppression or injustice”.
• The protector was also to be a kind of conduit to express the “wants, wishes or grievances” of Aboriginal peoples to the colonial governments.
• Read more:
  90 years ago, Yorta Yorta leader William Cooper petitioned the king for Aboriginal representation in parliament

A failure from the beginning

• The protectorates scheme was also bound up in the supposed superiority of the colonisers’ race and Christian religion.
• The ultimate goal was for Aboriginal people to become “civilised” and Christian – just like white people apparently were.
• It was a paternalistic concept that ultimately turned humanitarian ideals into an even more violent and coercive colonial system.

How this history feeds into failed policies today

• These supposedly moral standards around “protection” and “civilisation” ultimately forced Indigenous people to become less Indigenous.
• These beliefs continue to permeate our government today through failed paternalistic policies such as Closing the Gap.
• Such racialised policies draw on Australia’s history of containment of Aboriginal land and the ongoing colonial violence of “protection”.