[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

[Koumei]

So, still nowhere as important or even interesting as stuff in Europe and Gaza, but kind of funny:

The government has adopted a new "piss them off so much that they'll just drop off benefits and starve instead!" policy when it comes to unemployment. Basically, on top of having to do a certain amount of unpaid work every week, unemployed people need to apply for 40 jobs per month. Yes, even if you live in one of those shitty communities where there are about five places that you could possibly work, none of which has any openings.

Thing is, there are more than 40 governmental positions. You don't have to apply for jobs with actual openings. And nothing is stopping you from applying to the same places every month. So a meme has spread, and every single unemployed person in the country will be spamming the government with 40 job applications per month. Yes, they will receive millions of applications.

Checkmate, motherfucker

(TN: Schneizel just made an illegal move in chess, so it's odd that- wait, wrong anime)

[PhoneLobster]

The unemployment kick to the nuts is rather remarkable actually. What they are openly pushing for is that under 25 year olds get booted right off unemployment to the cheaper starvation "kids" allowance, under 30 year olds (including under 25s?) see cuts to income, and for six months at a time get NO income, then after six months... they lose it again! However they also have to apply for 40 jobs (business lobbies are actively crapping their pants on the potential for spam applications) AND they have to do 25 hours (a week I think?) of "work for the dole". AND they have to work the 25 hours and apply for the 40 jobs a month even during the six months they get paid nothing and if they don't then after six months of starvation... they still get nothing.

Oh, and just in case you wondered, the numbers are in on previous kicks in the nuts for the unemployed youth, turns out "work for the dole" actually reduces your chances of getting a job the more you are forced to do it, so clearly it is a dead policy abandoned by all because of it's obvious empirical fundamental failing... ahahahaha yeah sure! That would require the conservatives to actually be motivated to want people employed, we all know it's just about the nut kicking.

Meanwhile the Australian government has issued the most draconian media gag in the last 20 years "in the national interest" to... cover up an embarrassing corruption scandal involving the reserve bank bribing foreign governments to buy our currency printing services.

But more importantly[/i] in the context of, oh, I don't know being on the internet they are pushing hard to "crack down on internet piracy" in Australia. And what they are pushing for is draconian and abusable to an incredible degree. Essentially they want copy right holders to be required to seek enforcement that ISPs will be required to apply against "suspected" users AND suspected internet sites and on a sufficiently high level of provider that essentially any time any "copy right holder" or "media owner" cares to they can just name vast swathes of internet and every ISP in Australia must just block them all without oversight.

Now the plan is impractical, stupid, unpopular and needlessly punishing. The ISPs hate it, the public hates it, any expert you care to name will describe it as a vast waste of resources that won't actually stop the most active pirating nation on earth. But what it COULD do is produce an opportunity for say... Rupert Murdoch to just name sites he doesn't like/compete with his media empire and just have them all locked out for most Australian users who lack the skills of... internet pirates!...

Anyway. Blah blah blah, all that AND we still run concentration camps and the only thing we know about them is that they are getting worse.

[Koumei]

and for six months at a time get NO income, then after six months... they lose it again!

Yeah, I look forward to seeing what the crime rates become. It should be magnificent. Seriously, crime plays a big part in there being white people in Australia to begin with, I am confident it's waiting to burst out again.

we all know it's just about the nut kicking.

There's also the possibility that they're doing some really fucking weird accounting with this: during the six months of the year that you're not on unemployment benefits, that means you're not "unemployed" for the statistics. And all the people working for the dole? Technically they're working so they're not really unemployed. Given manipulating numbers and spouting bullshit is basically 100% of how they got in, they really think they can go "See? Unemployment is at an all-time low! We are awesome!"

Meanwhile the Australian government has issued the most draconian media gag in the last 20 years "in the national interest" to... cover up an embarrassing corruption scandal involving the reserve bank bribing foreign governments to buy our currency printing services.

Yeah, they put a suppression order on it... then put a suppression order on the suppression order. Because the UK has proved that super-injunctions are super-effective! They forgot that, shitty as it might be, we still have an Internet at all.

But what it COULD do is produce an opportunity for say... Rupert Murdoch to just name sites he doesn't like/compete with his media empire and just have them all locked out for most Australian users who lack the skills of... internet pirates!...

Yeah, it's basically "Come at me bro, I'm behind eleven proxies." Except I'm confident that just using tor and nothing else will probably be enough to completely give them the finger.

Blah blah blah, all that AND we still run concentration camps and the only thing we know about them is that they are getting worse.

The High Court at least did a pretty decent job of stopping us from sending a boatload of people straight back to the people they were trying to escape, and actually forced us to bring them to shore. For a local concentration camp. But that means two things:
1. They have to reset their "days since illegal boat people arrived in Australia" counter.
2. Scott Morrison is actually being reminded he is not above the law. There is the distinct possibility that unless Tony writes him a special "Get Out of Jail Free" card, Morrison will actually be going to jail in the near future - piracy, abduction, child abuse, take your pick. If only the whole lot could be taken to Hague for human rights violations.

[PhoneLobster]

, that means you're not "unemployed" for the statistics

The thing with putting under 25s onto the kiddy payment is almost certainly a measure to count it as flat out impossible for anyone under 25 to contribute to unemployment numbers. The other measures... well lets just say I wouldn't be surprised if they stopped talking about unemployment figures and just started giving numbers of people on unemployment benefits right now.

The High Court at least did a pretty decent job of stopping us from sending a boatload of people straight back to the people they were trying to escape, and actually forced us to bring them to shore.

I hear it was more the Indian Government. The high court did however complain a bit about the government's general lack of prompt co-operation... and then let the government delay until India sent a very pissed official of some form to give the government a stern talking to re. "You think YOU are good at being hyper nationalistic assholes beating on a foreign scape goat for political gain? You feeling lucky... punk?".

1. They have to reset their "days since illegal boat people arrived in Australia" counter.

Are you sure about that? At best they'll just shut up about it until six months from now. But the whole claim was always bullshit, llast time they did a "days since boat arrival... BUT EVERYTHING IS SECRET!" thing under Howard they were lying all along while boats were actually arriving anyway. Even now they only largely managed it by just redefining what they counted as an arrival with the emphasis on semantics revolving around the word "successful".

But the thing is last Morrison press conference I saw the asshole was refusing to count this as a boat arrival. So I suspect you are going to see them wait just a few weeks before they start trotting out bullshit lies about "60 billionity months since last successerfortal boat arrivalance eventertising" as if nothing ever happened because "nuh uh fuck you that one doesn't count, you cheated, and you missed me, blam blam your dead I totally hit you infinity times uh huh! No backsies".

2. Scott Morrison is actually being reminded he is not above the law.

Again, I was more led to believe he turned out not to be above "Look you ass, I represent hyper nationalistic India, we may have citizens on that boat, do you REALLY want to piss us off? Because we already don't like you and YOU could be OUR boat people beating sack. And we are fucking India bitch."

I mean the court thing was going poorly for him, but I'm pretty sure he backed out before there was anything resembling a serious ruling of any kind regarding his accountability in any shape or form.

And now the whole case has been largely dropped in favor of a "now pay them all vast sums of compensation for months imprisoned at sea" which while nice and more likely to succeed won't ever be seen as accountability or even a road bump on the determined path to what one of these days is going to end up being "the final solution".

There is the distinct possibility that unless Tony writes him a special "Get Out of Jail Free" card, Morrison will actually be going to jail in the near future - piracy, abduction, child abuse, take your pick.

Yes, even under local law, he and many others should be facing some serious shit. But hey, they killed a man in detention rather brutally and in the public eye... and no one has been charged with that even though the most immediately responsible scape goats were probably holding the highly powerful and diplomatically immune position of janitor at one of our concentration camps, so yeah... I'm not aware that anyone has even attempted to bring charges against Morrison or anyone else yet.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So. Where and how is the right-wing in Australia getting its mandate? Demonization of minorities? Religious revanchism? Bad economy?

[Koumei]

It doesn't have a mandate, merely claims to. If you mean "How did they get in?" then there are three tricks:
1. Three Word Slogans! "STOP THE BOATS" (racist dogwhistlesfoghorns)
2. Three Word Slogans! "AXE THE TAX!" (because carbon tax is bad!)
3. Flat-out lying. They claimed we had a budget emergency, with Labor "spending us into a debt-spiral that will ruin the country" (note, if anything, they were in danger of not taking out enough bonds and not investing enough in infrastructure). They cooked the books to make it look like their projected budget was so much better (essentially "If we get in, the debt will only grow by X, so our budget comes out as spending X! If they stay in, and are still nonetheless forced to cut the taxes we want to cut, then the total debt would be Y, so their budget comes out as spending Y!")

Oh and also, Rupert Murdoch bought the election. Gina Rineheart helped.

But they have no mandate - they got in by a relatively small margin, and opinion polls are hilariously low, with most of their own voter base going "Oh ffs, I wish we had actually voted for Crazy Clive or something". There are protests basically everywhere all the time, and any time a member of the core Team Tony group goes to do a speech for, you know, students and crap, they pretty much need a full riot team with assault weapons. Note that when previous Liberal PM, John Howard (the short one with the massive monobrow), "took all the guns away", he went in person to the country towns that didn't like it and talked them over. This guy and his posse are terrified of students.

[tussock]

From across the ditch, it looked like the Oz crazy (Liberal/Country) parties won because the Oz trying-to-be-nice-but-actually-not-nice (Labour) party couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery.

Like, they sacked their most popular PM in ever and replaced him with a person who was not popular at all, and they did this to block a mining tax which had massive public support. People hated that. Gross and obvious law-buying corruption. Hated it.

Then they put the mining tax on anyway, just toned down a tiny bit.

Then they run an entire three years worth of laughs about maybe that wasn't a good idea, and we're definitely undoing that mistake, no we aren't, yes we are, no, yes, um, polling, maybe, yes, no, yes right now just going to vote on it, no idea what that man was talking about we never intended any such thing it wasn't even discussed, ... and just before the election, what the hell, change back.

Which involved interested groups within the party publicly attacking each other in the most foul and underhanded ways imaginable. For years. Especially just before the election when they changed back.

Like rabid muppets on speed. Nasty and not well coordinated.


So people gave up on them. How bad could the other side actually be? Leader dude seems really horrible and hateful and all that, and they're obviously going to be bad, but they do at least act like what you'd expect a government to act like. Unlike the Labour government, who were just being muppets.

Turns out the other side is tremendously bad. So Labour, still changing leaders, got one now no one even knows the man's name. Quiet bloke. Super unpopular government, and the opposition is just ... asleep at the wheel, really. No policy alternatives. No attack strategy. Still constant bickering in public. Muppets.


So who do you vote for? The muppets, who are corrupt, without discipline, and still have shitty policies, or the horrible ones who mostly just hurt poor people and foreigners. When you're an Australian, and thus probably really racist and self-entitled, albeit very shy about saying so in public.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So who do you vote for? The muppets [...] ?

Yes. Yes, I would like to vote for Kermit and friends very much. I'm surprised that you even felt the need to ask.

[Koumei]

Gillard actually put heaps and heaps of legislation through - with a hostile senate* no less. There were some big, important changes, but the media didn't bother reporting on those, because they were too busy reporting on how Labor were completely ineffective and in-fighting and couldn't do anything. Basically, Rupert told them they had a story to tell, and they stuck with it, truth be damned. But Americans have Fox News, so you understand what that's like. Except now imagine that "not Fox News" isn't actually an option for half the country, and he owns most of the newspapers as well**.

But if there's a silver lining to this massive, scrotum-shaped cloud, it's that more and more Australians are going "Hmm, do I vote for A or B? I know, how about NONE OF THE ABOVE!" and that isn't a case of pissing your vote away over here. Crazy Clive got in based on that, and yes, everything he does is self-serving, but at the very least he pisses the current regime off. We have a guy from the Motoring Enthusiasts who has a hard-on for renewable energy, preventative-based socialised medicare, and other good things. (Also he likes cars.) The Greens hold seats, and previously held the balance of power in forming a coalition government with Labor. So this means more Australians are at least paying a tiny bit of attention to their own politics, and also, more people are expressing their disappointment with the major parties, and giving more power to minor parties.

This means we'll end up with either the major parties changing and serving the people (unlikely, but there is a chance of a "New Left Wing" of Labor, however small, if they can dislodge some of the old guard), or a bigger influence of lesser parties that people actually like, meaning more and more things will require negotiation at the senate and overall things will benefit people more.

*As in, 127 in her first seven months. Tony has managed eight.

**One NSW place stopped stocking anything owned by him due to him having given up his rights to have any influence on Australia. They had to import papers from interstate.

[PhoneLobster]

There were some big, important changes, but the media didn't bother reporting on those, because they were too busy reporting on how Labor were completely ineffective...

In the end this pretty much sums up the way Tony Abbot got into power.

Sure labor had some issues, bullshit backroom leadership changes, failing to get through the most popular tax ever because they wimped out when their political opponents criticized it. And so on.

But actually... they had major achievements, they handled the global financial crisis better than almost anyone, they lowered taxes for low income workers, they raised income for basically all workers for the first time in decades, they put our education system back on track with funding improvements, the carbon tax was not the end of the world as predicted and instead actually, to an almost surprising degree, worked by every empirical measure available.

But the media reported the stories that helped Tony Abbot, and didn't report the stories that hurt Tony Abbot. And there were plenty that should have, and indeed the fact that a man who defied parliament, and had anger meltdowns vs journalists on air, and responded to dying war veterans in Afghanistan pretty much in person by saying "shit happens" even has a political career is a miracle of media bias at an unprecedented level.

Even now we have the issue of "invisible Bill Shorten", the federal opposition leader who is totally failing to properly exploit Abbots unpopularity with public appearances and media attacks and blah blah blah. And, yeah the man has some failings, but media doesn't talk about them it's just the invisible Bill story is all the media talks up, which is pretty fucking disgraceful since they pointedly ignore all of Bill Shortens public appearances, comments and attempts at getting his attacks on the government any media coverage.

But we can't just blame the media. We have the ABC (The Australian ABC, not your American mess), which while imperfect in avoiding bias (tends to actually favor conservatives vs reality marginally, no matter how much conservatives howl about it not favoring them enough), and we have the internet. People should have known the facts.

People should have known the facts to such a degree that one of the defenses the Conservatives have actually presented for the apparent bare faced lies and dishonesty between their election promises and what they have done (or tried and failed to do) since coming to power has actually been that "People should have known we were lying to their faces, the facts were out there and other people were trying to tell them". And while not in exactly those words... it was actually remarkably fucking close.

So in the end the facts are simple. Australians have a (slim) electoral majority of greedy self centered idiots who can't or won't find information on the internet or free to air public broadcasting (that also present the best news and best anything on free to air tv anyway)
or even when it is told to them to their face by known dirty fucking hippies like myself, environmental scientists, meteorologists, medical associations, all economists ever, computer scientists, the UN, the fucking IMF, and actual fucking business lobby groups no less. Idiots who easily fall for the most incredible lies that conservatives leaders themselves can't believe their own electorate actually falls for, to the point of reprimanding their own voters for falling for their own propaganda and getting angry about reality failing to measure up to it.

It's kind of spectacular in the sheer lunacy of it all. But on the other hand... the conservatives are now basically telling anyone who voted for them that they were stupid to believe them, shouldn't believe them, and that people like me were right about the conservative agenda all along and they should have listened to us. And the dumb ass voter base IS listening to that of all things. In the Howard era the smug fuckers who voted that asshole in NEVER admitted it, they just sat there feeling good about the greed they thought was paying off for them (figures and reality be damned). But the situation is now so extreme that people, as in casual customers at my business, are admitting to voting "for Tony" and now feeling so very betrayed, cheated, and above all stupid for having done so.

Conservative voters are infamously impermeable to reality. But they have internalized the feeling of being duped and betrayed and they are angry and I'm pretty sure the idiots in charge of the movement not only didn't actually expect that but have NO concept of how long their angry voters might hold a grudge against them or what that might mean for them in future. But then, they've never been good at the future.

Seriously, we went from a situation at the election where "pundits" were talking about the death of the left wing in Australian politics due to the "success" of the conservatives in taking power (with ridiculous lies) and inevitable "decades in the wilderness" for the left. To less than six months later those same pundits looking at polls and the situation and talking about the death of the Coalition and inevitable "decades in the wilderness" for the right wing parties. If QLD is anything to go on they will soon be abandoning their own party like rats deserting a sinking ship, while first selling as much of it as possible and attempting to institute an unaccountable totalitarian governmental model for anyone who inherits the sunken ship after them, because WTF?

No really, Queensland is falling the fuck apart. It's even crazier than the federal bullshit right now.

[tussock]

I quite like that rant, PL.

But really, Aus Labour does have serious internal divisions that they keep leaking to the press all on their own (to do with the winner-take-all internal voting system), and they pulled the mining tax initially because Rinehart threatened the mining unions and they switched their votes to Gillard as instructed. Yes, Gina chose the Prime Minister, she does have thirty times more money than crazy Clive after all.

#Queensland. When have they ever not been falling the fuck apart?

---

@Koumei, similarly, there really was in-fighting, even though it wasn't stopping them doing their job. Voters are weak for parties that look like they could flip to a new policy set at any moment, because one can't really vote for anything in particular.

Just like the media can't actually sugar-coat the current bunch of bucket-heads over there. Sure, Murdock is poison, with the
[*]You're a crazed authoritarian villain because you won't apologise.
[*]You're a deceitful bastard because you didn't apologise properly.
[*]You're a wimpy sook of a spineless worm because you apologised.
[*]You're a cowardly focus-grouper for not deciding if you'll apologise.
[*]You're worse than Satan because you hedged what you'd already said.

It's a trap where everything you do is bad, and it's hard on people who's job involves not ever looking bad. But it's also true in some unimportant way, and the proper response is to agree that you did the things you did and not look like a muppet by pretending otherwise, changing your story, or hedging.

But then people have shit to hide, like internal party divisions, and Murdock feeds on that.

---

@Lago, do not vote Kermet, he's just a puppet of the entertainment industry.

[PhoneLobster]

But really, Aus Labour does have serious internal divisions that they keep leaking to the press all on their own (to do with the winner-take-all internal voting system)

So what, the liberals have leadership instability too.

Tony Abbot took his position in an internal leadership spill after more than one attempt to take power from Turnbull. Worse he only won the second attempt (by one vote) when his (minority) voting block basically told the rest of his own party that if they didn't elect Tony they were going to rebel against the party and vote against them on a major issue (climate change) to destroy Turnbull and the party if they couldn't lead it and have their way.

And the moment Tony's polls dropped so low that Turnbull polled significantly higher with the actual general electorate they had their Tony's personal media attack dogs tearing him apart on TV and radio demanding that Turnbull make loyalty pledges and renounce all leadership ambition for all time.

Liberal leadership bullshit just doesn't get the same coverage. It's there, it's significant, and its full of about as much bullshit as the Labor party back room cowardice driven system, just in different ways.

It's like how the liberals depicted Rudd as a "mean boss" with his employees. Rudd. They got traction on the fact that he had such horrible things as high standards and dared to think he was in charge of people. This while having a well known and thoroughly documented sociopath bully like Tony with a history of violent threats and public vandalism who is openly feared by the public service, his own party, and his own personal staff (who he refused to pay a raise to when they went from opposition to government, an unprecedented bit of fuck you to his most direct personal underlings).

[Meikle641]

So, does anybody think someone is going to stop the IDF eventually? I'd like to say the UN, but the UN forces don't have a great track record for stopping genocides, from what I've seen.

[Koumei]

Hasn't happened yet, and they've had plenty of opportunities to do something about it. But as long as the US takes its stance, nobody really can do anything except condemn the IDF with moderately harsh words that still fall short of being threats.

[Meikle641]

Sure as hell won't be Canada either, thanks to that backbirth Harper.

[name_here]

Israel's backing by apocalypse cultists is pretty strong. I wouldn't expect much.

[tussock]

More importantly, Israel has a mid-sized, mid-range nuclear arsenal that they repeatedly threaten to end the world with should anyone succeed in pushing them around.

So, no. No one's going to "stop" Israel doing anything. What might happen is the US stops funding them and they have to make peace instead of war, but that can't happen until the Saudis (and Iraqis now, various other subsidiaries in the region) are out of oil.

So, about 15-20 years from now. Give or take. Until then it's far too profitable as is, keeping the locals uneducated, ill employed, and violently assaulted for daring any socialism. After then the apocalypse cultists could be more of an issue, as there's not going to be much left to lose in the region.

[Longes]

WikiLeaks reveals Australian gagging order over political bribery allegations

[Lago PARANOIA]

What is the current and long-term ALP strategy for cracking open the Coalition and regaining power? From across the Other Pond, it looks like they're just waiting for the Liberal Party to fuck up and then pounce like hungry squirrels on a plate of boiled peanuts.

[PhoneLobster]

What is the current and long-term ALP strategy for cracking open the Coalition and regaining power?

Copy them with watered down versions of popular asshole policies, keep quiet, never go on the attack, don't raise a fuss, don't do anything that looks communist or environmentalist, never form a coalition or even temporary alliance with the real enemy (the minority Greens party) and whatever they do never let the left wing of the ALP have any power or say in anything no matter what the cost, the party can wait an extra 10 years in opposition if that is what it takes.

Brought to us by the "genius" of the "faceless men" of the labor party right.

Edit: I should expand on this.

The ALP is controlled currently by it's right wing faction. By about a 60/40 margin. However among actual ALP membership the right faction only enjoys minority support by about... 40/60. We know this in part because one of the best things Kevin Rudd ever did was institute grass roots voting for party leadership... and then in the first federal leadership vote with that methodology that was the split and the right took power despite the embarrassment of not winning the grass roots vote and by a large margin at that. The only reason they got to win was because the leadership vote was weighted the same as the grass roots vote and they got something like 61 % of that compared to their opponents getting 60% of the grass roots vote.

The right wing of the ALP does not have a long term plan to beat the Coalition. They have not had a plan for a long time now. The right lost to John Howard a sniveling uncharismatic git with shifty eyes who couldn't sell the truth itself as being honest and who fell off podiums. They lost to him for a very long time. They lost to this crazy eyed Abbot who everyone hates (and always have hated, to varying degrees). They are the faction responsible for constant leadership trouble. They are the faction always causing corruption scandals and...

...damnit, I have to go, I'll finish up where I'm going with this later.

Finishing Up : Anyway... the long and short of it is, that the ALP is currently and has for a long time been bent over a barrel by a faction that is border line unelectable and not only has no plan for becoming electable in the long term but actually is actively vandalizing the parties prospects right now, as they have been for the last couple of decades or more.

And I really want to stress this isn't just factional loyalty on my part. The ALP "left" faction are really pretty much centrists and lean way further right than I like anyway. But the simple fact is that the ALP left has strategies the ALP left thinks in the long term the ALP left is not the faction responsible for the endlessly damaging leadership changes. (Seriously pretty much all the leadership changes have been the ALP right saying "oh shit our own hand picked puppet is polling badly after using our I'll have what the Coalition is having strategy, quick lets oust them and put in a new puppet and double down on the I'll have what the Coalition is having strategy".) And the ALP left just short of never ends up being the total fucking idiots and assholes that end up caught up to their eyeballs in corruption scandals, brothels and embarrassing public denouncements of their own party and various minorities they dislike. (Meanwhile the ALP right is always damaging the brand in really stupid and really corrupt and really stupidly corrupt ways).

At best the ALP right has the strategy to "wait until the Coalition loses an election for us". They essentially present themselves as "The Coalition But Not". Oddly this strategy does poorly for them extreme right wing voters vote independent or National (or Liberal in the right seats) and will never vote for the "commie" ALP no matter how right wing they try to appear because over a hundred years of propaganda and branding don't just fucking go away, you dumb fuck ALP "faceless" morons. Wait, I'm not talking to them. Anyway. Sometimes the center right and... whatever is between extreme right and center right... is alienated by the growing extremism of the Coalition, then they swing to "The Coalition But Not" and the ALP right wins an election. But the center right and er... right of center right... always "go home" to the coalition once their short memories hit their used by dates or once the ALP "fails" their right wing agenda in the tiniest (even imagined) way thus proving they are all "commies" like everyone has known for the last century.

Meanwhile the ALP has largely abandoned even the center left. So much so that even Clive Palmer and some senior Coalition members sometimes look more left than actual ALP party policy. The Greens are seen as "stealing" votes that belong to the ALP... but which the ALP shouldn't need to actually do anything to earn (and indeed MUST NOT be seen to do anything to earn because that will TOTALLY mean dumb right wing voters will stop seeing them as the left wing "commie" or "hippie" party ANY DECADE NOW, MORE RIGHT WING, UNDERMINE THE LEFT MORE, ANY DECADE NOW...).

The truth is a little more complex, but basically the ALP and the Greens together get enough votes to pretty much stymie the Coalition of the Liberals and the Nationals and take power. And in those places where that wasn't true, the polls suggest it is NOW true after the debacle called the Abbot government, and in those places where that is still not true it's trending that way fast.

But the Greens alone are a hell of a lot further away from taking government alone. Pretty much anywhere. And the ALP does not want coalition with the Greens, not while under right faction control. They see the Greens as toxic to their long term "Me Too" right wing apologia strategy (and they are), and they see the Greens as their ideological enemies AND (in ways the ALP right does not wish to admit) somehow also the greatest thieves of their grass roots support (which they are). The ALP has been spinning HARD to blame their loss of federal government on the very few mostly backed out of deals they cut with the Greens while in government (which they only got because the Greens supported them).

The ALP and the Coalition are now increasingly in various seats swapping preferences with each other in elections to prevent the Greens from gaining more seats. It's been going on in my local government area for nearly two decades now, and it's seeping up the ladder through state and federal electorates.

In Tasmania the State level ALP government before the election actually was pretty much IN coalition government with the Greens there. Not that they wanted to ever really admit to it being what it was. And their genius fucking ALP right strategy RIGHT before the election? Well they basically agreed with everything bit of bullshit anti-"hippie" propaganda the Coalition had ever spewed against the Greens, broke the coalition, then disowned and denounced the Green party in public.

There is a long history behind the ALP right and it's rise to power and the undermining of it's left faction, all to do with the turning point of Whitlam's outrageous ousting by a combined alliance of the Coalition, the Queen, Rupert Murdoch, our own spy agencies and the CIA (no really).

But in the long term we have basically two likely outcomes. (And I do put emphasis on the outcomes, NOT strategies, the party still lacks those)

1) The ALP Right retains iron grip on party leadership and policies.
Australian politics will continue to be a race to the bottom of the extreme right, the concentration camps will get worse, there WILL be some seriously nasty "final solution" moment, things will go to shit in lots of ways.

Despite growing voter trends towards the left the right will remain in power for decades, but NOT in ALP control for more than the occasional stint, and the ALP will continue to shrink in power and size as a party as it's membership declines and the Coalition continues attempts to essentially ban union participation in politics (or indeed, their very existence).

Eventually either the nation will (literally) burn to the ground or the Greens will eventually take power on their own. But if possible at all that's so far off that the damage before then will be huge.

However long it might take for the Greens to take government alone... it will be significantly lengthened when the ALP goes into Coalition with the Liberals in order to fend off the Greens. By that point the already long since on life support National party will be long dead having been eaten by the Greens and Clive Palmer (or whoever replaces him) respectively depending on which way the fleeing voters swing.

2) The ALP Left faction gains control
The ALP grass roots support and funding will grow, even independent of unions (this isn't just left wing speculation and loyalty, it's pretty much poll driven fact).

The ALP will swing at least marginally left on the concentration camps, at the very least moving them back to the main land, providing actual health services and clothing and food and stuff, and might actually agree to, oh, I don't know, let people out of them EVER.

The ALP might even manage to generally put forth policy more popular than "the same as them but slightly less so". And maybe appeal to voters who haven't already decided to vote for their major opponent.

The ALP will likely still refuse to create a true formal coalition with the Greens but will most likely effectively take government with Green support.

The Coalition will switch from "free win" on most elections to struggling to win almost any election.

The Short Term Is Different
There is however a major problem with all that as a long term prediction.

The Coalition is fucking things up SO hard at state and federal levels right now that almost anything goes.

The ALP right and their plan to "wait until the other guy loses"... are likely going to win with exactly that strategy.

This is a problem in some respects. It's a bad long term strategy[/i] it is a strategy that has failed much more than it has succeeded. But they will see this as vindication.

And vindication at a vital moment in their history. The federal ALP right was seriously on the ropes. They nearly lost control to the grass roots on the first try of grass roots election of party leadership by a TINY margin. They almost certainly were going to lose it next time. Grass roots power was on the rise in the party even if they hadn't yet been able to get it to actually do what they want they WERE leveraging to a situation where they could wrest policy control from the faceless men.

Meanwhile the faceless men and their swapping out of their own choice of leaders constantly in a very damaging way was seen as the downfall of the party. The guy they have in now was seriously their last fucking chance. Hell he was pretty close to the last remotely electable idiot they have left.

Had the ALP lost so much as one more federal election, or even polled badly enough between now and the next election the federal ALP right (and likely by gradual domino effect, the state ALP right) were DEAD. And now... that isn't likely to happen.

Not to say that even amidst remarkable self destruction by the Coalition the ALP's chosen right wing factional puppet in charge isn't polling rather dismally, it's just that the Coalition is doing SO comparatively badly that right now his election is seen as a pretty sure thing.

Still. If anyone can fuck up a sure thing it's the ALP right so... yeah...

[Koumei]

Yeah, we have to remember that when Abbott announced himself number one contender leader of the opposition, everyone thought that was hilarious, because he's a moron, the "mad monk", and he'll never be elected.

But it turns out that the ALP actually can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Left-wing Americans have plenty of legitimate complaints with Obama being a let-down in various fields, but at least he opposed the Republicans as a genuinely better option (and flops his dick out to smack them in the face at elections).

[Red Archon]

Related to the "threat" of Russia. Would Finland joining NATO provoke hostilities from Russia?

[Corsair114]

Is there a snowball's chance in Hell of the U.S. taking direct military action in the Ukraine in opposition to Russian forces?

Is there anything the U.S. would get out of doing so that could possibly balance out the potential for expanding the conflict?

Is there a precedent for the U.S. getting involved (EDIT: more) directly?

[Laertes]

No, no, and no respectively. The old Cold War rules apply here. Kissinger's op-ed on it laid out the Realist position very clearly (and Obama is very clearly of the Realist school): Ukraine is Russia's backyard and therefore America should not get involved. In the Cold War rulebook, intervention of any sort (even via proxies, satellites or arms-length forces) is a no-no when you approach countries that actually border on the other guy.

Kissinger is a downright evil man, of course, and the best way to act morally is simply to invert Kissinger's opinion at every juncture. However, what matters here is that he's a pretty reliable barometer of which way the Washington wind blows. So no. Not a snowball's chance in hell and no precedent when it comes to intervening in countries considered to be Russia's backyard.

In terms of what can be gained, that's a more interesting question because it depends on how heavily you value the following five things:

- The prestige to be gained from a military victory after the inability of American forces to achieve a military victory in Iraq and Afghanistan.

- The gratitude of Ukrainian nationalists and the opportunity to cast the US as a liberator.

- The loss of American lives in yet another foreign country and the potential embarrassment and outrage that will be caused when some dumbass soldiers get caught torturing prisoners or raping locals or massacring civilians (and sadly this is the sort of thing that will always happen during wars.)

- The fact that Ukraine will probably win even without American intervention.

- The nonzero chance that it will lead to a Great Power war and the consequences thereof.

[Username17]

Related to the "threat" of Russia. Would Finland joining NATO provoke hostilities from Russia?

To be honest, I had to check that Finland was not already part of NATO. Not in the usual American "I can't believe there are more than two teams" sort of way, but that in 2005 I was doing disaster relief and I was placed under the authority of a NATO logistics team that happened to be composed entirely of uniformed Finnish soldiers. The extent to which Finland is not already part of NATO is theoretical in the extreme.

Being as Finland is already part of NATO in every sense of the term that makes a fuck width's of difference, actually formally changing their status from "Partner For Peace" to "Full NATO Member" would be entirely ceremonial. A middle finger to Russia, obviously, but a Finnish-sized middle finger. Russia is not going to go to war with NATO over someone in the parliament of Finland saying shitty things about Russia. If that was even remotely on the table, Russia would have reinvaded Finland like twenty times since the end of World War 2.

Finland might see temporary embargoes of their exports, which would make Finlandia amazingly cheap for a while, but that's about it.

-Username17