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AusPoliGAF |OT| Boats? What Boats?

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Dryk

Member

wonzo

Banned
ByqowLjCQAIUdVs.jpg:large


all these xbox playing bludgers
 

Fredescu

Member
Good. If the government wants money it can earn it legitimately like everyone else instead of stealing it.

That's a bit hard when they sell off all the good money making business. I personally think lotteries should be completely nationalised. When the NSW state government sold off lotteries I thought it was so fucking stupid, but I didn't see much dissent in the press. Policy seems to be completely irrelevant when it comes to state politics.
 
A

A More Normal Bird

Unconfirmed Member
Good. If the government wants money it can earn it legitimately like everyone else instead of stealing it.
LMAO.

EDIT: Actually on that note you might find this article of interest: Taxes For revenue Are Obsolete. Written in 1945, by Beardsley Ruml, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the "inventor" of PAYG.
 

Myansie

Member
No its not. And its not largely ex iraqi army.

I do think that the current campaign is rather half hearted. Its based on 'bomb and hope the other people on the ground get it together in time'. There should be troops on the ground. A large force that can defeat Isis and the like, and be scary enough that Assad goes for peace with the Free Syria types.

And no, there 'concensus' that the whole thing can be pinpointed to the US invasion is wrong. Its a factor, but it completely ignores all the other factors at play. I know the west is bad and all, but history exists before we enter the scene at any spot.

The leadership most certainly is ex military. The underlings we don't know. And yes this current situation would not exist if not for our involvement.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/world/middleeast/army-know-how-seen-as-factor-in-isis-successes.html?referrer=&_r=0
 

markot

Banned
Good. If the government wants money it can earn it legitimately like everyone else instead of stealing it.

Ohu.

The basis of the conflict starts with the shia sunni split. Its like pretending north Ireland isn't about catholic and protestant.

Isis grew mainly in Syria, the fight between another ruthless 'secular' leader and the many factions in the country. Syrias troubles started with the Arab spring, that had little to do with iraq.
 

DrSlek

Member
Actually the Northern Ireland conflict is about Secessionists vs. Crown-Loyalists. Religion became the focus after English and Scottish settlers were given land in Ulster. By that point the vast majority of England and Scotland were Protestant, while Ireland remained Catholic. So a persons religion became one of the main identifying factors in Northern Ireland as to whether they were Secessionists or loyal to the Crown.
 

Myansie

Member
''At the top the organization is the self-declared leader of all Muslims, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a radical chief executive officer of sorts, who handpicked many of his deputies from among the men he met while a prisoner in American custody at the Camp Bucca detention center a decade ago.

He had a preference for military men, and so his leadership team includes many officers from Saddam Hussein’s long-disbanded army.'' from the NY Times article I linked above.
 

markot

Banned
Actually the Northern Ireland conflict is about Secessionists vs. Crown-Loyalists. Religion became the focus after English and Scottish settlers were given land in Ulster. By that point the vast majority of England and Scotland were Protestant, while Ireland remained Catholic. So a persons religion became one of the main identifying factors in Northern Ireland as to whether they were Secessionists or loyal to the Crown.

Yes you are right. Its nothing to do with the schism and the English split from the Catholic church. That was uneventful in the UK. Theyre just called Orange marches for no reason and dont have anything to do with any hate between Protestant and Catholic.

What do the seccessionists want? Why? how many protestants want to become part of Ireland again?

Stop pretending prime motivators are non issues, when these sorts of issues have driven most of human history.

There is a huge battle between Shia and Sunni to this day. Saudis and co are always worrying about Iranian plots and suspicuous of their shia population. Syria is close tooooooooo....... Iran! So What happened? Well, the saudis and co wanted Assad and co out, so they funded, and paid, and supplied weapons to anyone who was willing to take up arms against Assad.

And the leader of an armed movement wanted military men? quell surprise. That doesnt mean that the Iraqi army makes up even a significant minority of Isis.

What are the main reasons that these former Iraqi military men and such are angry? Because their group, which held an iron grip on Iraq, is now second fiddle to people they consider heretics. They dont like the shias. The basis of Saddams reign, he got support in the Iran Iraq was from sunni sates because he was fighting shia.

During the main split between protestant and catholic, the dutch and spanish were colonisiing the world at the time. They accepted most things that they encountered, sure they were bastards. But there were never more basterdly, when they encountered christian heretics. Being a protestant when the catholics were in charge or vica versa was a death sentence. This blood bath created secularism in Europe.

There were questions from many in the US when Kennedy was running for president, a Catholic?! Would he follow the consitution or the pope?!

Humans can be evil to one another, but we are never more evil then when we see similiarities in our enemies. The Germans detested the Jews because they were getting too German, too integrated, too much like them. The best selling book in Germany before anyone had heard of Hitler was about Jewish blood contaminating Germany.

I come from Yugoslavia. The only difference between a Croat, a Serb and a Bosnian is religion, yet its the basis for ethnic cleansing, and the past isnt this long forgotton thing for text books. The Serbs who committed genocide in Bosnia were invoking the Turkish invaders and memories of that horrible past. When the Croats set up their fascist state in world war 2, they had a phrase, convert a third, kill a third, deport a third, in regards to their Serbian population. The difference between a Croat and a Serb? Which flavour of Christian they were.

Religion and nationalism are prime movers. History isnt forgotton.

It is important to know what motivates people, and that means understanding history, and no pretending that it didnt exist until the US decided it wanted oil in the middle east. Haliburton.
 

Myansie

Member
The effect of 2 trillion dollars worth of US military intervention was negligible because the region already contained conflict? On one hand you're arguing the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan did nothing, while on the other your singing bombs away will save the day.
 

Yagharek

Member
Goddamn political discourse in this country and now this thread is tiring. If people aren't busy playing devil's advocate or arguing based on a law student's perspective they're taking an absolute side one way or the other on the money vs lives discussion (ref last page and a half).

No wonder it's all fucked; these are issues that should have been solved decades ago with a modicum of insight.

I'm done.

about all I got out of this was a few more names to the ignore list
 

markot

Banned
The effect of 2 trillion dollars worth of US military intervention was negligible because the region already contained conflict? On one hand you're arguing the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan did nothing, while on the other your singing bombs away will save the day.

Never said it didnt contribute. I said it wasnt the main factor.
 

Myansie

Member
So why will it be the deciding factor this time? The West is committing just a fraction of the force they did last time. There is no way the US is committing another 300,000 troops.
 
It is important to know what motivates people, and that means understanding history, and no pretending that it didnt exist until the US decided it wanted oil in the middle east. Haliburton.

All that'd do is move the major cause of modern conflict in the region from 2003 to 1918. Big whoop.
Don't quite believe that western powers would allow a new ottoman empire analogue to ever flourish in the region, fwiw.
 

markot

Banned
Blame ABC if Lateline goes

It's wrong to draw a link between budget cuts and the potential axing of Lateline, writes Malcolm Turnbull.


Does politics make people crazy or does crazy make people politics.
 

markot

Banned
'independent professionals'. Those guys are great. The good ones always agree with the people paying for the review. Sometimes they dont and its like 'lol professional?!'
 

r1chard

Member
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-new...nts-weather-bureau-review-20141001-3h0do.html

PM's adviser wants weather bureau review

Tony Abbott's top business adviser says the Bureau of Meteorology is caught up in global warming politics and nothing short of an independent review will dispel suspicions of bias.

"Nothing short of a thorough government-funded review and audit, conducted by independent professionals, will do."


-__-
Oh for fucks sake. The BoM categorically addressed this the last time this ass brought it up. A bloody independent review has already been made into this. Fucking great waste of money to have another review because it didn't come out saying what this idiot wants.
Contrary to assertions in some parts of the media, the Bureau is not altering climate records to exaggerate estimates of global warming.

Our role is to make meteorological measurements, and to curate, analyse and communicate the data for use in decision making and to support public understanding.

To undertake these tasks, the Bureau employs highly skilled technicians and scientists and invests in high quality monitoring equipment.

The Bureau measures temperature at nearly 800 sites across Australia, chiefly for the purpose of weather forecasting. The Australian Climate Observations Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT) is a subset of this network comprising 112 locations that are used for climate analysis. The ACORN-SAT stations have been chosen to maximise both length of record and network coverage across the continent. For several years, all of this data has been made publicly available on the Bureau’s web site.

Temperature records are influenced by a range of factors such as changes to site surrounds (eg. trees casting shade or influencing wind), measurement methods and the relocation of stations (eg. from a coastal to more inland location). Such changes introduce biases into the climate record that need to be adjusted for prior to analysis.

Adjusting for these biases, a process known as homogenisation, is carried out by meteorological authorities around the world as best practice, to ensure that climate data is consistent through time.

At the Bureau’s request, our climate data management practices were subject to a rigorous independent peer-review in 2012. A panel of international experts found the Bureau’s data and methods were amongst the best in the world.

The Bureau’s submissions to the review were published on the Bureau’s website, as were the findings of the review panel.

The Bureau’s methods have also been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Both the raw and adjusted ACORN-SAT data and the larger unadjusted national data set all indicate that Australian air temperatures have warmed over the last century. This finding is consistent with observed warming in the oceans surrounding Australia. These findings are also consistent with those of other leading international meteorological authorities, such as NOAA and NASA in the United States and the UK MetOffice. The high degree of similarity is demonstrated in Figure 1 (above).

The Bureau strives to ensure that its data sets and analysis methods are as robust as possible. For this reason we place considerable emphasis on quality assurance, transparency and communication. The Bureau welcomes critical analysis of the Australian climate record by others through rigorous scientific peer review processes.


For the record, I worked for 5 years at the BoM. They have a whole fucking branch of employees called the Policy branch which is dedicated to making sure they couldn't ever do anything remotely regarded as biased, politically motivated, or even anti-competitive (yes, a taxpayer-funded organisation has to be very careful in a "market" that includes Weather News International et al.)

The reason it took the BoM 5 years from getting their website to putting radar images on the web? Nothing to do with technology - we could do it back in '97 no worries. The Policy branch wouldn't let us - it took them 5 years to formulate the appropriate policy of image quality, etc etc. so the BoM wouldn't get in trouble. We had three-dimensional radar imagery internally. Looks awesome, really good for visualisation, but weren't allowed to put it on the website because it might have been seen as anti-competitive.

Ugh, rant over.
 

markot

Banned
Smokers' generosity 'staggering'

A crossbench senator thanks smokers for the $8 billion they pay in tobacco taxes each year.

Liberal Democratic Party Upper House representative David Leyonhjelm voiced his gratitude to smokers for the $8 billion they provide in tobacco taxes each year.
 

senahorse

Member
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-new...nts-weather-bureau-review-20141001-3h0do.html

PM's adviser wants weather bureau review

Tony Abbott's top business adviser says the Bureau of Meteorology is caught up in global warming politics and nothing short of an independent review will dispel suspicions of bias.

"Nothing short of a thorough government-funded review and audit, conducted by independent professionals, will do."


-__-


PM's business advisor huh, on that's Maurice Newman, let's have a look at his wiki page:

In answer to the question of whether he was a climate change denier he replied: "I am an agnostic and I have always been an agnostic and I will remain and agnostic until I've found compelling evidence on one side or the other that will move me. I think that what seems fairly clear to me is that the climate science is still being developed. There are a lot question marks about some of the fundamental data which has been used to build models that requires caution."[8]

More recently, Newman has called climate change a delusion, stating that the IPCC "progressively has applied mass psychology through a compliant media to spread the delusion that wicked Western industrialists are causing irreparable damage to the climate." Newman wants the current Australian target for electricity generated by renewable sources dumped because he does not accept climate change science and says renewable energy is pushing up prices.[3]

Uh-huh.

His article concluded "But don’t expect help from academia, mainstream media or the public service. They are members of the same establishment and worship together at the altar of global warming. By ruthlessly perpetuating the illusion that wind farms can somehow save the planet, they keep the money flowing. All the while the poor become poorer, ever more dependent on welfare and colder in winter."[12]

In July 2014, Newman was kicked off a wind farm committee after it was discovered he was attempting to restrict speakers from attending meetings.[13]

Oh but he is a climate agnostic.
 

Jintor

Member
OH YES, THE AMAZING GLOBAL ILLUMINATI CONSPIRACY THAT GENERATES MASSIVE WEALTH

YES

NOT THE FUCKING ACTUAL CRAZY COMMERCIAL INDUSTRIES THAT PROFIT FROM EXPLOITING THE SHIT OUT OF THINGS
 

Dryk

Member
More recently, Newman has called climate change a delusion, stating that the IPCC "progressively has applied mass psychology through a compliant media to spread the delusion that wicked Western industrialists are causing irreparable damage to the climate."
Judging from the other quotes he's speaking from experience
 

Dryk

Member
Current rhetoric re: burqas seems to be typical "white man knows best" decision making. There's no empathy for people raised to feel like such dress is the only way to be modest. Because of that most seem to believe that they are trying to liberate women instead of stripping them.
 

markot

Banned
There is empathy. There is no need to pretend it isn't stupid though. People are brought up to do and believe all sorts of stupid things.
 

Dryk

Member
There is empathy. There is no need to pretend it isn't stupid though. People are brought up to do and believe all sorts of stupid things.
Yeah I know. I knew someone who was brought up to be an obedient housewife. But even after years of exposure to the wider world that was still what she wanted to do. From my perspective she seemed indoctrinated into it, but it was what she honestly wanted to do with her life and what made her happy so I can't fault her for it.

The best you can do is ensure that they have all the tools they need to make a free and informed decision about how to live their lives. As we've seen repeatedly in the Middle East, trying to force freedom on people can and will backfire. Hell it even backfired in Europe, all of the women who were actually being forced to cover up by their husbands just ended up locked in their homes out of sight and out of mind.
 

Fredescu

Member
There is no need to pretend it isn't stupid though.

If you were a prime minister, against a backdrop of your own citizens being attacked and abused because of their upbringing, would it kill you to pretend that choosing what you want to wear is fine?
 

DrSlek

Member

mjontrix

Member

WELP ITS ALL FALLING APART!!!

So all along ISIS had the wrong idea - if you wanted to take down a country just take lobbying money from everyone - win elections and within one term you can destroy the entire nation. No need for guns or anything messy like that!

Not sure if it's the same Peter Lewis who according to wikipedia -

2009 mining interests

Lewis owns eight mining leases, as well as interests in Goldus Operations and Mintech Resources. It has been reported that Lewis had sold his iron ore project at Razorback Ridge, 80 km east of Yunta, to Western Australia's Royal Resources for $30 million.[32]
 

Jintor

Member
I wanted to Godwin that appointment but I can't bring myself to do it. I guess my alternative is "It's a bit like appointing a dingo to a child-rearing committee" or something like that? No, that's stupid. Nevermind, forget I said anything.
 

Fredescu

Member
man who was that idiot that said we'd have gay marriage legalised during this govt because the betting market said so? lmao

This took way too long, but I found the post! http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=79920761&postcount=1688


LOL. No. This time, it wasn't me. :p

Just for fun, in the process of looking for that post, and on topic for today, I did find this post of yours betting there would be no changes to the ABC: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=98929157&postcount=5645

Time for water balloons yet? :p
 

markot

Banned
If you were a prime minister, against a backdrop of your own citizens being attacked and abused because of their upbringing, would it kill you to pretend that choosing what you want to wear is fine?
When some one wears something that hides their entire face. Something is very wrong. He also did state that they were free to wear what they wished. But I can't imagine anyone that wouldn't feel uncomfortable talking to a slit in fabric.
 
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