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Post by tenuki »

Germany has postponed ratification of the ACTA agreement following protests.

Finally getting something right.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

I heard some stuff about Italy undergoing austerity but it's not quite as painful in that country as you'd think because they're mostly targeting the upper class and instituting tax hikes/closing tax loopholes on them. Confirm? Deny?
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Maxus »

Germany's President resigns amid financial scandal.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that Europe just got that much more fucked?
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Post by Fuchs »

No. It's mostly a representative function.
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Post by Username17 »

Maxus wrote:Germany's President resigns amid financial scandal.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that Europe just got that much more fucked?
Considering that Merkel has been doing her best to set the continent on fire with her bizarre market religion, every little crack in her power is good news.

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Post by PhoneLobster »

Anyway. Looks like there is a leadership challenge in federal Labor here in Australia.

It's big news, but bigger than most punters realize.

See the Labor party has in recent years been dominated by an alliance of corrupt back room right wing assholes, these guys see themselves as the political genius puppet masters behind the reigns of power. In reality, as recently proven by their near destruction of the party at the polls at federally and at state levels, they are drooling cowardly incompetents of the worst order. Well nigh EVERYTHING evil, incompetent or just plain diseased in the Labor party at almost all levels of government is basically the fault of this handful of men and their dick head minions.

So anyway their biggest screwing of the pooch in recent times was the ousting of Kevin Rudd, because they saw him as a risk to their internal party power and personal policy preferences, and his replacement with a leader who obediently towed their line... and nearly pulled the entire federal Labor party right under and out of power by doing so.

But as it turns out Rudd is challenging again, for unclear reasons. But one thing SEEMS certain (I sure HOPE it is). He is making noises about internal labor party reform and attacking the "faceless back room men" (who's existence, faces and names everyone vaguely in the loop knows all too well).

This LOOKS like a direct challenge to the disease that is destroying the Australian Labor party, (sadly the appearance does NOT rule out this being simply a mask for another switch of allegiances BY that very disease) but otherwise if it is what it appears to be, AND it succeeds this COULD be the best news in Australian politics since the Greens lucked into the balance of power, possibly better.

Unfortunately everyone is saying odds are massively, or at least substantially, against the Rudd challenge. BUT it's almost close enough... those backroom boys were ostensibly supposed to be backing Rudd back in the day when they turned on him. Their various supporters aren't going to forget they turned on Rudd and could turn on any of THEM, and will do so in total disregard (or at least incompetent lack of comprehension) of even the political success or failure of the very party itself. Their voting block may not be as secure as those politically incompetent "king makers" think. By some counts it would take only about a dozen stray caucus votes. We yet might luck out pretty big down here in Australia come Monday morning...
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

How does/has Kevin Rudd voted in the past? Personally, I'm kind of skeptical that he or anyone would actually attack the behind-the-scenes power structure without a history of doing so.

I mean, shit, Al Franken of all people was going to vote for SOPA. I don't trust no one anymore.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Thu Feb 23, 2012 4:28 am, edited 2 times in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:How does/has Kevin Rudd voted in the past?
Well. The EXACT goings on and affiliations in the Australian Labor party are a bit confusing and remarkably secretive, and they have pretty strong discipline in voting as a block.

PRIOR to his ousting Rudd was, I had thought, considered somewhat of a mainstream Labor compromise. Maybe not the favorite of the back room assholes but certainly acceptable to and thoroughly backed by them.

His eventual replacement, Gillard, was thought to be more of a left wing party ally and significantly disliked by the back room boys.

Rudd pushed his mining tax (excellent policy that still needs beefing up) and he pushed it hard and didn't back down. He also made some rumblings about shutting down the detention centers and putting labor on the attack against the racist "boat people" strategy to undermine the Liberal party's ONE remaining voter draw card.

This FREAKED THE BACK ROOM GUYS THE FUCK OUT. They are cowards and will back down on well nigh ANY policy ANY time if faced with ANY opposition, the fact that big mining companies didn't like the mining tax had them wetting their pants in terror, even as Rudd pushed a fairly populist and highly beneficial tax targeting a sector with insanely high record profits and generally a very poor image with all the rest of the Australian public, because even that even a perfectly framed policy with perfect timing was too hard for them to face.

Worse was the vague rumblings about the detention centers. For like a DECADE the back room boys had pushed a strategy of backing down and "me too"ism on the racist push to needlessly punish desperate refugees with years of illegal imprisonment. Rudds push for an agressive alternative to the liberal's racist "one nation" exploiting strategy was, in the face of casual white Australian racism, a gamble, but it showed alarming promise in some polling.

IF Rudd lost the election... frankly the back room guys would not have cared. They never cared before when any of their other puppets lost elections. As long as it was THEIR puppet.

But if Rudd WON the election after resisting and IGNORING their policies and PR strategies... THAT was a major on going threat directly against their power base. Beyond anything else they could NOT be seen to be proven incompetent on their Me-too-ism and policy cowardice.

Gillard apparently agreed to be an obedient lap dog and to everyone's surprise turned out to be a massively more right wing tool of the back room assholes than Rudd EVER was. They backed her, ran an over night coupe, the end... well, except when she did everything they advised in their "genius political strategy" for winning the election with me-too-ism and policy cowardice... she was massively hated by the public for exactly that and more too boot, and almost lost the election by a hairs breath.

Only the Greens and Independents fluke balance of power has saved her government from being a period of unrepentant failure and massive unpopularity, and even so the few bits of successful and popular Green and Independent agenda that squeeze through are few and far between, and Labor itself brings well nigh NOTHING and even now when she is trying to talk up her failed leadership... she mostly just tries to take credit for items she was arm wrestled into by the Greens as a basic condition of forming government.

So anyway. Rudd's affiliation IS confusing, Gillards certainly WAS. Before the coupe generally the two were considered to be in the REVERSE political positions and factional affiliations to the ones it has actually turned out they are and were in. Since then Gillard has proven to be basically 100% property of the bad guys ameliorated only by the needs of being a non-majority government. Rudd... had been, and seemingly still is, pushing a lot of better variants of numerous policies that have all been stupidly dropped and stomped on since the coupe.

And one thing going for the optimism brigade on this one is that the Australian Labor party is vengeful and petty. In the Labor party personal revenge is considered a major and pretty bloody valid political motivation that can widely be expected to be followed through with given half a chance. He might fail at that, he might half fail but bring his party and enemies down with him, he may well take power take revenge and then turn out to be an asshole in his own right, but the odds of him taking power and NOT taking SOME sort of revenge on a number of key behind the scenes players, well, again, that's just not the Labor way...

Think of it this way. OUR version of the Democrat party is only mildly less craven and conciliatory towards their major opposition party than yours is. But UNLIKE your Democrat party (to my limited knowledge) they bring all the vicious zeal and mindless hateful dedication you ever wish they might bring to REAL politics to their internal party struggles.

It's an odd set of priorities they have but it's certainly a strong and vicious one.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Thu Feb 23, 2012 5:43 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Koumei »

Well, the secret ballot happened, and given it's basically "The people who run the Labour party" who get to vote for that, and not "The residents of the actual fucking country", the lap dog stays.

There's maybe hope in future that Rudd could oppose both parties in the next election by buddying up with the Greens or something. Given how close they were the last time, if their chronically unlikeable leader were to step down and Rudd were to take the reigns there, that could seriously be enough to do it.

In the meantime, we have to accept having a prime minister we didn't actually elect*, and hope she doesn't fuck up so badly that people actually vote for Abbot next election. She's pretty much intolerable as it stands. Any more catering to the minority who vote "Crazy racist right-wing" and she'll be completely intolerable but at least less offensive than Abbot, but him winning would basically mean Australia could qualify as a third-world shithole for immigrant status.

*Yes I know that's not exactly how elections work, but it pisses plenty of people off. Also, I know we actually did re-elect her when she called the snap election, but given the hung parliament, it's clear that really we just elected "Not Abbot".
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Well, it's sad but remember, it was only a potential poke in the eye for the bastards (a nasty and well deserved one, but... far from certain even if he miraculously won it).

And Rudd isn't that great, no one liked him before (when he was taking his turn as lap dog) and it's really a marginally lesser evil thing, possibly a noticeably, but still, lesser evil thing if Rudds rumblings of wanting to stop towing the bullshit "back down on everything" and "me tooism" lines were genuine.

Still. Would have been nice. Instead we get to have more me-toism and backdowns on anything Abbot looks mean at (ie everything) and increased chance of moderate to extreme showers of Mad Monk at the next election.

Only Bob Brown can save us now! ("now" being at a minimum something like 20 years to reach major party status. So not so useful in the short term really.)
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Post by Koumei »

I'm not saying he was great, but he was far less bad than Howard, Gillard and Abbot. And as for not being liked, he's enjoyed more popularity than... just about anyone ever.

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Post by PhoneLobster »

Koumei wrote:And as for not being liked, he's enjoyed more popularity than... just about anyone ever.
Yeah, but only while he was out of power.

EVERYONE (except Howard who seems to live in the bottom of some sort of Saddam like bolt hole awaiting the day we finally come for him), EVERYONE else is more popular out of power than they were in. Hell people just LOVE Keating these days, they go and watch nostalgic comedy musicals about his reign, they HATED the guy when he was in office.
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Post by Koumei »

PhoneLobster wrote:Hell people just LOVE Keating these days, they go and watch nostalgic comedy musicals about his reign, they HATED the guy when he was in office.
I'm going to be honest with you, I wasn't old enough to vote when we ditched Keating for Howard. I was old enough to try to stop Howard getting a second term, but yeah, I fell in that 4-year gap.

And basically paid zero attention to the elections and politics until I was of voting age. What was Keating even like? I'm assuming he was "pretty average/crap, but then Howard came along and it's like Clinton in the Bush years, he suddenly seems like rainbow-coloured, gold-plated, cocaine-infused chocolate in comparison"?
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Keating was indeed a Clinton to Howard's Bush. (that sounds oddly obscene)

Right wing content free labor was already on the rise back with Hawk, a largely apolytical hack put in power as a "likeable drunk" Australians related with.

Right wing labor can't be said to have greatly disliked Keating either, but he DID have his own policy ideas and he pushed them HARD. He was in some regards a good treasurer, and the "Recession we had to have" was, to some degree, correct. His economic policies were far more responsible than any REAL properly Liberal party affiliated conservative's have ever been.

But many of his other reforms were... sorta bad. In themselves sometimes good things or at least not too nasty, but frequently they became MAJOR short ends of the wedge Howard exploited no end. For instance Keating brought in minor largely harmless university fees... and Howard wedged that into massive HECs debts and an increasingly class divided uneducated Australia with a doctor shortage everyone but his medical and education ministers predicted a decade in advance.

Mind you, if I recall one thing good about Keating, he REALLY pushed hard on cultural development, integration with the south east Asian region and an improved more tolerant and rich multicultural Australia. He may have been famous for his quote "Australia is the arse end of the world" but he was very seemingly active trying to um, rectify that.

Howard in contrast was TERRIBLE at relations with Asian nations, and went from a focus on Multicultural Australia, the Smart Nation, economic and industrial development and general cultural enrichment... to race riots and detention camps for swarthy foreign types, and an economy based exclusively on endlessly selling houses in circles with relentlessly inflated prices and digging random crap out of the ground and sending it to be manufactured into useful stuff in real countries and so on.

Sadly while there were any number of reasons for Keating to justifiably be unpopular his push for multiculturalism and "elitist" education and arts and regional diplomacy/economic ties with scary Asian neighbors in an Australia if anything more ignorant and racist than it is even now were some of the main reasons Australians hated him then... and sorta like him now.

When Keating was ousted his line of successors (mostly consisting of fucking useless Kim Fucking Beasley again and again) were basically entirely owned by the at that point fully congealed mass of "me toist" and "back down" labor "strategists" controlling the right wing blocks within the party. As much of a wannabe Thatcher remodelled for an Australian Labor movement as Keating was he also represents pretty much the end of policy minded leadership and idealism inspired ethics in the controlling factions and front men of the federal Australian Labor party. Which is a rather sad way for the party to go out.
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Post by cthulhu »

Vnonymous wrote:The "left wing" party in Australia is run by a bunch of faceless, unelected men who decide everything about the party and are complete morons.
This is stupid. The guys have names aka Mark Arbib, and he was elected a senator by the fine people of NSW. You then specifically reference mark Arbib in the next sentence, so when you are talking 'faceless, unelected men' you are talking about one of the louder and more annoying elected Senators.

The faceless men of the labor party is just a liberal talking point.

I will agree with 'moron' though because that describes Arbib perfectly. But otherwise you manage to contradict yourself several times.
And basically paid zero attention to the elections and politics until I was of voting age. What was Keating even like? I'm assuming he was "pretty average/crap, but then Howard came along and it's like Clinton in the Bush years, he suddenly seems like rainbow-coloured, gold-plated, cocaine-infused chocolate in comparison"?
At the time people hated Keating because it became clear he loathes the Australian public.

The current state of the Australian Labor is disappointing. Its like they are trying to let Abbott Steve Bradbury his way to victory.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

I'm trying to find this Vnonymous quote... but I'm not seeing the source here.

Anyway, it's not JUST a liberal party talking point. It's used within labor to attack them too. AND it is used within labor to talk up how awesome those guys are while licking their boots. Hell in comparison really the Liberals rarely ever talk about these guys and what they get up to.

The "faceless men behind the throne" business is pretty much their OWN wank fantasy they have pushed with the political press in Australia for years.

Or at least that is the strong impression I always got.

And hell, why not let them have it and then attack them with it. Actually, it's pretty typical of their brand of "brilliant political strategy" to hand everyone a weapon to use against them like that.
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Post by cthulhu »

PhoneLobster wrote:I'm trying to find this Vnonymous quote... but I'm not seeing the source here.
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=249441#249441
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Anyone mind explaining the Canadian electoral scandals?
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Yeah, it's been fairly tough to keep up with or find summaries about since it's a big enough deal that internet outlets have been moving pretty quickly from one phase of the story to the next. If you're looking for a quick summary of the core accusations it appears that Conservatives paid Racknine, a call center, to send automated calls falsely warning voters that polling stations had been relocated, which obviously interferes with people's ability to vote.
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Post by Juton »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Anyone mind explaining the Canadian electoral scandals?
It's pretty simple actually. In Canada we have ridings, they are like congressional districts. In a number of ridings across Canada people got robo-calls before the election saying something to the effect that their polling stations had been moved last minute. So people ended up going to the wrong addresses or trying to vote in the wrong precinct in their riding.

These calls only seem to be sent out to ridings that could possible go to the Conservative party, maybe less than 10% of all total ridings. From what's come out no robo-calls went to any of the ridings that looked certain for the Conservatives. It didn't come up earlier because it only happened to a small percent of the population, most voters just assumed they had written down the wrong info I'm assuming.

I'm not sure if this violates any law per se, but Elections Canada, the organization that runs our elections is performing an enquiry. Already a Conservative staffer has resigned, I'm assuming that's a ploy to deflect blame from Conservative MPs, we'll see though.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Juton wrote:These calls only seem to be sent out to ridings that could possible go to the Conservative party, maybe less than 10% of all total ridings. From what's come out no robo-calls went to any of the ridings that looked certain for the Conservatives. It didn't come up earlier because it only happened to a small percent of the population, most voters just assumed they had written down the wrong info I'm assuming.

I'm not sure if this violates any law per se, but Elections Canada, the organization that runs our elections is performing an enquiry.
(emphasis mine)
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Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Koumei wrote: I figured Lago wanted mostly recent things. Hence not mentioning the "They threw their own babies off the boats! No we didn't photoshop that, honest!" incident, or the government selling the infrastructure off as fast as they could. But I suppose the details of Rudd getting backstabbed and a robotginger tosser replacing him are pretty relevant. After all, she still runs the country is Prime Minister.
PhoneLobster wrote: Oh I NEARLY did the whole "history of children over board" starting with the Tampa and rolling through Children over board, that queensland women who had a stroke and was deported to the phillipines, that sydney women with a mental disabillity who was imprisoned and raped, children in detention, and so on and so on and all the enquiries and so on.

You know, a month and a half ago I saw this, noted it, but decided that it'd be unwise to my sanity to press for details. I mean, it's like seeing a partial newspaper headline with 'Several starving children found' underneath a stack of other things. It's like do you really want to know what happened? And it turns out the answer generally is 'no. I saw some good YouTube LPs, I finished my homework early, I scored surprisingly high on a midterm, and I had some delicious pizza. I do not want to know what happened with several starving children'.

But what the hell, I'm in a particularly masochistic mood. Please elaborate.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Koumei »

You'll have to ask PL about that, he could explain it a lot better than I could. Some of that I hadn't actually heard of. As for the stuff you quoted me saying, basically:

1. The Liberal party has a habit of selling the infrastructure to the highest bidder, and then making special deals with them to ensure they have "Fuck the people in the ass" monopoly powers. Note that nobody ever actually says "I will privatise X" as part of their election campaign: they'd lose instantly because it sucks so badly (especially Telstra, though the power companies are gaining hate all the time!) that nobody supports it. Generally they try to justify it at the time with "Well the former government spent too much money so this is the only conceivable option."

Note: you could seriously get elected as PM in Australia if your campaign promise was "I will personally punch every third person in the face. Also, I will nationalise all of the infrastructure, at gunpoint if need be." And when I say "you" I mean even you personally, a foreigner who has spent 0 time (to my knowledge) as a minister or politician at all.

2. Basically, during the elections where Liberal (under John Howard) won their second term, they needed something big to distract voters and to show that their "ALLOW NO FOREIGNERS, WE NEED MINES AND TORPEDOES AND COAST GUARD WITH MACHINE GUNS" position was the right thing to do. So when they went to board refugee ships, arrest everyone and send them to "legal grey area" off-shore inhumane concentration camps, they got some footage and pictures and basically doctored it to look like the refugees were throwing their own babies overboard. To make us hate those evil refugees.

Because, um, that is totally going to help them get into the country, so it makes sense for them to do that? I mean, obviously, those babies would weigh the ship down so you can see why throwing them overboard would cause the ship to zoom away from the coast guard and onto dry land where they benefit from the US "wet foot dry foot" law... hang on...

I may have missed something, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't seem to make any sense because it doesn't actually make any sense. Anyway, enough people believed it that they won a second term, much to the regret of most Australians, and when it came out later that they engineered the whole thing as a lie, the guilty party were charged with serious offences and the election was declared invalid just kidding, they totally got away with it.

Did I miss any major points there, PL? It was a long time ago, and it was insane enough that I couldn't make sense of it then.
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Post by tussock »

About right. The fake story was the refugee babies were going overboard because the brave aussie coast guard would all jump out of their boats to save them, thus allowing the suspect vessel to escape. Because refugees are all horrible, baby-killing monsters, and any government who treats them worse than dogs (literally, you can't do that to dogs in Oz without going to prison) is thus just like Jesus and Superman and Santa all in one.

The real story was the military was rescuing people from a disabled, overcrowded, and slowly sinking ship and instructed everyone to get off before it went down. There was boats in the water right next to them scooping them up as they went in, but the pictures were fuzzed up and had the frame shifted to make it look more distant from the photographer, hide the rescuers, and only show kids being lowered down by their parents. It was an old event glossed up a few days from the election after treatment of refugees seemed to be a key point on people's minds in the deeply conservative (aka: unusually racist even for an Aussie) swing seats. The troops involved were ordered not to correct the story before the election.

Crosby-Texter, IIRC. Rather brilliant PR firm, not so hot on the moral clarity.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
PhoneLobster
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Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by PhoneLobster »

Well dammit. I was avoiding this. Too much like hard work. I've gotta go to like wikipedia and stuff for details and dates and crap you know. This isn't easy.

Right so first of all...

Remember Your Background Here
Australia is fucking racist. And it USED to be worse. Like WAY worse.

We WOULD have been half black, but we murdered all the aboriginals in pitched actual battles with imperial red coats that we don't even talk about anymore.

After the gold rush we WOULD have been half Chinese. But after they did all their work we stole all their stuff and booted the Chinese back out of the country again.

When we felt uncomfortable about Greeks and stuff not being white enough we introduced various perfectly sensible policies, like deporting them if they couldn't translate Japanese to English. And stealing good white English children from poor British families and importing them forcibly to Australia.

We actually honest to god had an officially titled "White Australia Policy" dedicated to making us as white and racist as possible. Even after THAT pretty much within MY life time we had an actual honest to god officially titled "Assimilation Policy" with honest to god Assimilation officers and Assimilation camps and crap to train all those pesky almost white Greeks and Italians how to be proper whites and stop eating all that fucking pasta and olive oil.

This changed a bit, gradually, but the big deal probably came with the Keating government and it's official switch to Multiculturalism. He pretty much just publicly embraced the growing multiculturalism already present in Australia's major cities and said "this is awesome this is what we want and now officially intend, so Pizza and Kebabs for all! The Party is on!"

And I know there are some fucking morons here who genuinely hate on Multiculturalism because they are stupid ahistorical morons. But I grew up before Keating and outside of the multicultural capitals, I have SEEN a mono-culture, worse a white monoculture. And it is NOT pretty. You think you are white enough, mono cultural enough to fit in? Really? Where did your parent's come from? Your Grandparents? This country? This state? This village? Or the next town over?

As a small example, the whole "multiculturalism means good food" may be a joke. But it is genuinely true. When I was a kid around here a meat pie was fucking exotic. Ethnic food was the British style fish and chip shop owned by assimilated Greeks that half the local population didn't shop at because the owners were too ethnic. You could not buy Tomato Paste in the shops. You could not buy Olive oil. You could not buy pre made spaghetti in the shops. Let me make this clear. If you wanted to eat spaghetti you had to make it yourself from SCRATCH, I mean with the basic ingredients you make the noodles themselves out of, and the machines, the elaborate hand wound noodle flattening/cutting machines.

I'm not even all that old. This is recent history. If Koumei were five or so years older and from a rural area she would remember something similar.

Anyway. This changed with or coincidentally/inevitably at the same time as Keating and it was awesome. Then Howard comes along on the anti-Keating anti-scary-changing-food reactionary conservative back lash and sides with the "fuck you no pasta" lobby to get the Hanson "One nation" crazy racist red neck vote because his party cannot win elections without it.

The Tampa Affair
The first Howard Government beat up of scary "boat people" invading us with their massively inferior numbers and bloodthirsty desire to run away from war zones we pretty much created to a life that doesn't involve being dead was not actually Children Overboard. It was... the Tampa Affair.

So anyway. A boat full of desperate refugees is in trouble at sea. The Australian authorities that manage such things in those waters picked up the distress signal and properly requested that any available vessel respond to rescue the crew and passengers of the stricken ship.

A cargo ship called the Tampa rescues them.

The Australian Government is already on a big racism kick and claiming to be tough on "illegal immigration" (which refugees are in fact definitively NOT part of, and which we have much bigger problems involving white illegal immigrants who fly in on planes, but none of THAT ever stopped Howard). They are pulling this to get those racist one nation votes. They have been building up to this for a while and waiting for the next boat in so they can pull a "crack down" media stunt of some kind.

Now this is well into the lead up to an election. They basically are running Tampa as an experiment to see how the polls react, and if it looks good they set an election date and go full throttle on the racism.

So they lobby Indonesia to accept the refugees, which is crazy, because they suck, it's against our treaty obligations regarding refugees and hell just against international law about rescued crews and how they should be taken to the nearest port... which was Australia.

The Tampa picks up the refugees from the nearly sunken boat, including various sick, unconscious and pregnant ones. You know, one and all bloodthirsty threats to our nation and our patriotically limited range of food stuffs. The Tampa starts heading to Indonesia. The refugees say "WTF we demand to go to the nearest port, or anywhere that's not fucking Indonesia" and the captain goes "fuck it, might as well actually follow international law instead of some really weird instructions coming in over the radio from crazed Australians.

So the Tampa heads to Australia. They say "oh hey, international law, also, we are now not seaworthy and lack supplies, facilities and life rafts for the extra 400+ people on our boat so we need to go to the nearest port, Okay thanks!"

To which the Howard government says "Permission NOT GRANTED" and also "We will fucking prosecute the captain of the Tampa for smuggling illegal immigrants into Australia.". They also deny any international law obligations in the matter, and claim that INDONESIA requested the pick up and organized everything, even though they already knew that actually the Australian Authorities organized it all. Which is actually a big deal because the minister lying in front of parliament about that is a MAJOR legal sin here in Australia, or rather it was until the Howard era.

Now the Tampa captain then accedes to pressure and turns to Indonesia again. The refugees, desperate and sick are a bit pissed by this and he decides to turn back toward Australia AGAIN because fuck it they need medical care and supplies and he is afraid of riots and people trying to abandon ship. He BEGS for permission to go to port.

The Australian government... sends in actual armed troops to capture the vessel and forcibly prevent it from even APPROACHING an Australian port. Which becomes another minor credibility problem as their medical staff document the sick refugees which the Australian government... proceeds to deny were sick at all. You know. Despite having their own elite troops documenting it.
The SASR doctor later reported that the rescuees were generally dehydrated, malnourished and unhappy. Many were suffering from dehydration, exhaustion and minor ailments including sixty one cases of scabies, forty six of head lice, twenty four of gastroenteritis. They also attended to four pregnant women.
Now this all creates a major diplomatic incident with NORWAY of all places since it's their damn cargo ship we just seized with armed forces and ordered out of our waters. The Australian government... tries to convince Norway to reach across the globe and take all the dirty refugess home. What with having endeared ourselves so much to the people of Norway so far. (This sort of crazy incompetence was typical of Howard era international relations in Australia, it was really that bad).

Let me just quote this brilliant passage from wikipedia here...
Captain Arne Rinnan received the highest civil honour in Norway as a result of his handling of this difficult incident. Rinnan has been a sailor since 1958, and a captain for 23 years. He said of the incident: "I have seen most of what there is to see in this profession, but what I experienced on this trip is the worst. When we asked for food and medicine for the refugees, the Australians sent commando troops on board. This created a very high tension among the refugees. After an hour of checking the refugees, the troops agreed to give medical assistance to some of them… The soldiers obviously didn't like their mission."
Now as it turns out everything Australia did was, well, basically illegal. Both internationally, and, well, nationally too as it turns out. So the Howard government throws together a desperate late night bid to push through legislation retroactively making every insane thing they had already done completely legal and adding in a bunch of big mean no-backsies clauses denying all recourse to ANY courts of law or applications for refugee status.

Everyone bar the ruling coalition opposes and it is barely scrapped in the senate. But then the Labor Party pulled it's "Me too! I wanna have racists vote for me too!" strategy (which didn't work) and compromised on just excising Christmas Island and basically all Australian island territories... well... sort of from being Australia, for all legal migration purposes. No really. If you are on one of our islands... you aren't really here yet and most certainly are not allowed to apply for protection from an evil regime trying to kill you that you traveled half way around the globe to escape. That would just be too easy or something.

So then all the refugees get shipped off to the non-international refugee treaty signatory Naru where there weren't even proper concentration I mean "detention" camp facilities ready yet. And some get imprisoned and some sent to New Zealand who we actually pay off in cash to take them. (also we paid off Naru, a lot).

Those that DO get Australian visas, you know, instead of just being imprisoned illegally for years and then sent back to Iraq and Afghanistan get crazy three year "temporary protection visas" which deny them most rights given to refugees, and Australian citizens or residents, and which grant the government the right at ANY time to just up and deport them to, again, Iraq and Afghanistan.

During all this there are high court challenges and crap where in the Howard government denies they are even detaining anyone at all and nothing ever happened and they can do anything they want and screw you all if their retroactive legalization bill didn't go through because they did it already and it's too late so it must be legal, no backsies. In the end Labor's fucking stupid co-operation on the excising and Naru strategies also puts through enough me-too legislation to crush the appeals.

And fucking stupid it was. Because the Howard government ends up using the whole thing as a cudgel to hit the labor party with as they rake in the racist mono-dietary moron vote. But NOT before the whole children overboard thing happens.

Also. There are big official major government enquiries... and the Howard governments ministers all go there and deny all knowledge of everything they and their various civil servants knew or did. The ministers who lied to parliament, which again big fucking deal here unlike for you guys, all just pull some of the first uses of the actually-titled-that-no-really "Ministerial incompetence defense". Where they just... never remembered things as they are documented and remembered by senior civil servants. So they never lied to parliament... they were just non-criminally incompetent in their reports to parliament. And so on.

This cycle of lies, questionable legalities, fucked up court challenges, after the fact inquiries unearthing vast amounts of damning evidence and witnesses responded to almost solely with incredible and repetitive uses of the Ministerial Incompetence Defense would become a major defining trait of the entire Howard Government era. And sadly not the thing that eventually lost them power whatsoever.


Children Overboard -
This is taking forever. OK. Let's try this one all quicker like.

Election nearly here. Polls not actually so good. Tampa affair somewhat backfiring with those inquiries and damning evidence and crap. In the last few DAYS before the election, a boat! on the horizon! HURRAY! Howard and co pull a similar attempt at turning it into a media stunt and exercising their incredibly bullshit new me-too granted legislation.

Australian forces turn up... and hook it up to tow it to fucking Naru or something. Only the boat can't stand the strain and it breaks and sinks.
The passengers hold up their children to try and get the Australians to come rescue the children and so they can save the children first. Then everyone ends up in the water. Because the boat fucking sank.

The Prime Minister and his various senior ministers and crap all then run out and accuse the refugees on the boat WE SUNK of the following. They sunk their boat themselves to MAKE us rescue them, those cunning assholes. And they threw their own children into the water we have pictures. We must stop these scum etc... etc... racists of Australia unite and reelect us fucking TOMORROW.

So anyway. As it turns out when you send Australian authorities to a scene and get them to do this sort of thing you get lots of witnesses and documentation and all the information the ministers and government receive... all come from those guys, who along with various senior civil servants tend to again be witnesses to what was reported to who, and all that also gets documented.

And so... again along comes the damning inquiry... well after the Howard assholes won reelection in the racist beat up confusion, and again out comes the Ministerial Incompetence Defence, "I do not recall events as described", "I do not recall that meeting", "I do not recall that report", "I do not recall that desperate phone call in the night asking me what the fuck I was telling the Australian media", "I do not recall..." "I do not recall..."

Years of Detention, Years of rolling scandals -
And so we end up with many years of "detention centers" the failed "pacific solution" (no really we had a plan to deal with unwanted ethnics with the fucking word "Solution" in the title, NO REALLY, very recently, yes after world war II NO REALLY, we are now arguing about like Indonesian Solution plans, no really WE STILL USE "SOLUTION" IN THE PLAN NAMES, as yet though the Liberals and the Mee-Toos cannot settle on an, uh, Final um, plan about a Solution...).

Anyway. We do a lot of things in haste, take a lot of short cuts, employ a lot of private shadey American imprisonment companies to do our work, which is a big deal because OUR prison system for ACTUAL criminals largely doesn't consist of over crowded privatized inhumane shit holes like yours does.

Time and time again ridiculous scandals leak out from the detention system. People are imprisoned without crime or court for YEARS, lots of years, children GROW UP in detention, without proper care, of course, the whole system and the fate of everyone in it run by completely unaccountable immigration department officials recently stacked deliberately with racist inhuman fuckers who say no to anything and everything and live to deliberately lose you in the system or deport you directly back to a waiting firing squad in nations we actually consider so dangerous we are fighting wars in them.

Every glance we the Australian public get into the secretive workings of the detention centers results in a scandal, possibly rioting, and with rolling closures (and re-openings) of detention centers to try and cover the whole mess up.

The first use of high pressure water cannons on peaceful civilian protestors in Australia occurs out in Woomera if I recall. A small but notable foot note.

A couple of notable cases... crop up. I forget a lot of them, there were plenty to pick from and they rarely got the significant media attention they deserved...

Deporting a confused crippled nun with a stroke
... well OK it wasn't QUIET like that.

So anyway in Queensland, there is this woman. Sorta swarthy and asian like.

She gets sick, has a stroke or something. She can't walk, her language is effected, she is very confused.

The authorities pick her up. Much to her misfortune SOMEONE brings in the fucking immigration department nazis.

It is decided that the TOP PRIORITY HERE is not to determine her identity... as it turned out an Australian citizen (or was it resident?) and wife of a Queensland man... nor was it to GET HER SOME MEDICAL CARE... no the TOP PRIORITY was, since she was Asian looking and having trouble with her English, was to DEPORT HER TO A RANDOM ASIAN COUNTRY.

So she ends up in the Philippines. And only survives because a Nunnery takes her in and cares for her. (so actually if I was honest in the title they deported a non-nun... who was a confused crippled woman who just had a stroke, and she LATER became a Nun as a result of the deportation and stuff.)

Her family, with not particularly co-operative help from the immigration nazis, EVENTUALLY tracks her down, and with DIFFICULTY brings her back and then wins various law suits. The whole thing is NOT an isolated case, just, you know, the extreme publicized one with the fucking crippled confused woman with a stroke as a victim, the general indication being there is a culture of this sort of thing and just in most cases with less crippled people it doesn't make the media or win as big with the many court cases.

Imprisoning and Abusing an (Australian) Crazy Women
Another notable and SORT of similar case had... much more disgusting implications.

So. I think it was in Sydney. This woman, Nordic accent and appearance if I recall, probably another one of those trouble maker Norwegians, only with actual Australian Citizenship. Is wandering around.

Turns out she is like, paranoid schizophrenic or something. And she is having a bit of an episode or is off her medication. (not all too uncommon with Howard and friends butchering of the mental health care services, but whatever). (edit: man, actually this story is CRAZY there is like a cult or something involved early on, but whatever, eventually basically there is this crazy woman wandering around, and a lot of this happens in Queensland, again, never go there man NEVER go there)

So she gets picked up. And being paranoid and believing that authorities are part of a government conspiracy out to get her she does not give her ID. This results in what ultimately COULD be described as a conspiracy of government authorities out to get her.

Because with her accent and all... in come the immigration nazis! In a turn up for the books they take action against a white woman hell, I'm pretty sure she was even blond.

They send her to the detention centers. And throw away the key. As they like to do. She never did anything particularly wrong other than have a mental disorder, but bam, indefinite imprisonment.

Eventually the whole thing comes out, again.

But the big shocker comes when they find out what happened to her in detention.

Now at first she just ends up in a prison. And that's bad enough and it's clear to everyone, except anyone with any official capacity she is crazy. her immigration nazi in charge of her case... thinks she is a German tourist who wants to go home, but her story is inconsistent, her name is wrong, the Germans don't know her... and he never even asks any other authorities in Australia if they know who she might be. Now the immigration department SAYS they detain no one because anyone is free to go home and give up and die at any time. But this women does want to go home, to Germany, only that isn't her home and no one wants to take her, so later the government lawyers argue they had the right to... not detain her in detention until "hell freezes over" (their actual words) due to this... contradictory state.

Anyway. Then. For no apparent reason anyone can manage to explain she is told she is being sent back to Germany from the prison. She thinks this is awesome... until they try and make her sign transfer papers to an immigration detention center instead, at which point they end up sedating and restraining her and shipping her there anyway. No really. No one has an excuse or an explanation for that bit. It just sorta happened and no they weren't trying to manipulate a mad woman because they didn't KNOW she was mad (unlike all the prison inmates who KNEW a bit too well how mad she was) honest, trust the immigration nazis!

So she gets carted off to the immigration center. At Baxter.

Baxter as it turns out was the place the Howard Immigration Nazis were dumping the mentally damaged refugees at. Many of these refugees weren't actually mentally damaged BEFORE they went into the system, but these are abusive neglectful prisons, and they get stuck in them for years, after fleeing murderous regimes, with the constant threat of being returned to said regimes. These people are messed up bad. Some have such rare and extreme conditions as psychological blindness we have children in states of psychological catatonia (due to events that occurred IN DETENTION CENTERS), we have people who can't walk or use their legs... and it might be psychological, or it might HAVE been... originally... here let's just throw up a sample quote because an alliance of mental health professionals had been on the tail of this scandal for fucking years already by that point...
To try to explain the severity of the situation at Baxter and the level of officially sanctioned neglect, Jureidini told me a story of a woman he had visited some time before. “She hadn’t walked for two months. Her husband carried her to the shower and she crawled to the toilet … When I went to see her, from the moment she stirred and knew I was there, she started to scream and she screamed for the whole time I was in there. It was only about ten minutes because I couldn’t stand it any longer and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop her. And then she screamed for another ten or 15 minutes afterwards … We eventually got her transferred down to Glenside [a psychiatric hospital] and she had fractures of her ribs from osteoporosis, from malnutrition. She was anaemic and the physician who saw her said she was lucky she wasn’t dead. She hadn’t been in the light for six months. She had a baby. Initially she wouldn’t let the baby away from her. It was dazzled by the light … And this was somebody who’d been judged by the psychologist or health services as being in the right place and as being adequately managed.”
And so this is where they dump this woman. Who they don't admit to being insane and haven't identified or anything.

And this paranoid woman is now locked up in what amounts to solitary detention with CAMERAS EVERYWHERE. She goes more nuts than ever.

There are reports of sexual abuse, like the guards spying on her in the shower, maybe worse, a lot of it's pretty believable, but since it mostly comes from other inmates it's largely been ignored. But even failing the alarmingly credible suggestions that she was sexually abused and possibly raped in Baxter she was definitely just regular abused plenty enough.

Now while she is at Baxter the Germans get back and say "fuck it, seems like she's Australian, have you tried missing persons or circulating her photo to the media or something?". Even an immigration nazi low level agent suggests the same. Memo's circulate... and management deems it not worth acting upon in any way.

Eventually some super depressed detainees pull a roof top protest that draws attention to themselves, others sew their lips together and go on a hunger strike, Howard and co as usual attack the filthy refugees for manipulative tactics and score political points with the racists again. Somehow a couple of activists leverage the whole thing into an independent mental health assessment and like two guys get to go in and interview a handful of detainees.

And basically all of them ask in their interviews "Are you here to do something about Anna?". Because her case was that bad that the guys sewing their lips together and starving on roof tops to draw attention to THEIR own PERSONAL plights uniformly believed her situation was clearly more desperately in need of attention it was that bad.

Her presence and unidentified status starts to leak out. Various officials ostensibly in charge of mental health are outraged, both about the general conditions in Baxter and numerous hideously neglected mental health cases there, but also about Anna specifically. Inquiries to missing persons are finally made, her photo, once released, hits ONE newspaper and she is identified immediately. Prompting...
After four months of lethargy on the Anna front, there was now a sudden urgency. Baxter guards entered Anna’s cell while she was showering. They threw a sheet over her and dragged her out, kicking and screaming. Five months later, Cornelia Rau described what happened to her like this. “I was suddenly transported to a mental institution and the circumstances were very strange. About five people in large clothing came into my room at night while I was having a shower and I hardly had a chance to turn off the tap. I was nude and hardly could get something on to cover myself. They were harsh and forceful. Then they slipped me onto an ambulance stretcher-bed. It was so foul. I didn’t know what was going on …”

What was the urgency about? The answer seems clear. The next day’s media was certain to report on the strange case of Cornelia Rau. When that happened, it was vital that she be “a former detainee”.
So anyway. Que the scandals the inquiries and the denials. This time though... it was bad news for Howard and co. This one really rocked the boat, screw the massive abuses in general at Baxter, this woman was fucking blond. The whole detention mess is in danger of collapsing, Howard even is FORCED to promise that within only TWO MORE YEARS of detaining them they will EVENTUALLY get around to releasing all the remaining CHILDREN they have been detaining!

Also when this whole thing busts and they actually have like one guy make an inquiry into wrongful detention... um... they find like over 200 cases of just plain outright wrongful detention including the one with the crippled nun thing. Which is apparently largely how that one came to light. Oh and the minister responsible got off Scott free of all blame for what was officially recognized as massive systematic and largely intentional failure for basic duty of care for actual human beings. They blamed like her assistant. Then promoted him side ways to a department dealing with Indonesia instead. This is notable in particular because THIS particular immigration minister was largely the woman responsible for "reforming" the department into it's harsh punitive Immigration Nazi philosophy (not that it didn't have that tradition anyway, white australia and all) but she made it far worse, well, so did the guy before her, but it's really her legacy.

Anyway, you can read a lot of her insane story yourself if you can stomach it.


Other Things
Of tangential relation are the scandals surrounding that doctor we called a terrorist, the Australian Wheat Board wheat for oil scandal, possibly the water front dispute, and almost certainly the East Timor intelligence scandal.

Oh and probably like five other scandals that were often based around illegal political beat ups and resulted in the heavy use of the Ministerial Incompetence Defense all by the Howard regime.

But none of the extra ones I remember right now directly involved "boat people", but often did involve a general appeal to racism and nationalism overtone. Or sometimes just plain old corruption.

Did I mention these days almost every major figure from the Howard era, especially Howard, seem to be living in Saddam Hussein style bolt holes hiding all traces of their continued existence from the media? These guys know what they did and are terrified that impossibly, one day, SOMEONE will call them to account. Probably Saddam Hussein style, considering the bolt hole strategy...
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Wed Mar 14, 2012 12:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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