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[Arksy]

People are allowed to find it confronting, it IS confronting when you've never really seen it before.

It should be noted that in Turkey, one of the biggest Muslim countries in the world. The burqa is effectively banned. As is the Islamic Dress for men.

Turkey goes a lot further, actually. You can't even wear the Hijab (headscarf) in government buildings, schools and universities.

But finding something confronting and wanting it gone are two very different things, I was very impressed with the answers on the issue I got from Brandis and Abbott.

 

[Jintor]

i feel uncomfortable talking to a lot of people

 

[Omikron]

People are allowed to find it confronting, it IS confronting when you've never really seen it before.

It should be noted that in Turkey, one of the biggest Muslim countries in the world. The burqa is effectively banned. As is the Islamic Dress for men.

Turkey goes a lot further, actually. You can't even wear the Hijab (headscarf) in government buildings, schools and universities.

But finding something confronting and wanting it gone are two very different things, I was very impressed with the answers on the issue I got from Brandis and Abbott.

So, how does this arrangement sit with you then?

http://www.theage.com.au/federal-po...t-house-public-galleries-20141002-10p8pl.html

 

[markot]

I want it gone. But I would never ban it.

 

[bomma_man]

Coal power plants = good
Wind farms = harmful

Gotcha

Wind farms = blight on a beautiful landscape
Coal power plants = lovely?

At least put effort into your bullshit

 

[Arksy]

So, how does this arrangement sit with you then?

http://www.theage.com.au/federal-po...t-house-public-galleries-20141002-10p8pl.html

Better than banning it completely, I guess...

I want it gone. But I would never ban it.

This.

 

[A More Normal Bird]

Wind farms = blight on a beautiful landscape
Coal power plants = lovely?

At least put effort into your bullshit

You missed the key point: before coal can even be used in power plants it has to be mined from the earth and there are few greater reminders of man's dominion over nature than the sight of an open cut coal mine. By contrast, wind and solar and tidal power generators just sit there passively absorbing slivers of whatever energy comes their way, all meek and hippy like.

If he's anything like me, when Joe Hockey says the wind turbines he sees on his drive to Canberra are a blight on the landscape, he's really just impotently trying to express his rage at the meekness that is inheriting and emasculating this once vital, throbbing nation. A stonking big hole in the ground might be as much of a disruption of the natural vista as a windmill or a field of panels, but that's more than made up for with the ardour it stokes in all great men to see mother nature stripped bare and forced to open herself to the mighty phallus of industry.

 

[jgminto]

How many cases have there actually been of people using burqas to commit crimes?

 

[mjontrix]

Hands up, you got me.

Fire away.

People are allowed to find it confronting, it IS confronting when you've never really seen it before.

It should be noted that in Turkey, one of the biggest Muslim countries in the world. The burqa is effectively banned. As is the Islamic Dress for men.

Turkey goes a lot further, actually. You can't even wear the Hijab (headscarf) in government buildings, schools and universities.

But finding something confronting and wanting it gone are two very different things, I was very impressed with the answers on the issue I got from Brandis and Abbott.

They're living jokes - but that's a discussion for another time. They basically combine corruption, populist and democracy all in one - with humorous results.

I agree that it's a bit discomforting trying to talk to someone wearing a burqa (coming from a Muslim here) mainly because you're used to seeing lips move as someone speaks.

 

[bomma_man]

You missed the key point: before coal can even be used in power plants it has to be mined from the earth and there are few greater reminders of man's dominion over nature than the sight of an open cut coal mine. By contrast, wind and solar and tidal power generators just sit there passively absorbing slivers of whatever energy comes their way, all meek and hippy like.

If he's anything like me, when Joe Hockey says the wind turbines he sees on his drive to Canberra are a blight on the landscape, he's really just impotently trying to express his rage at the meekness that is inheriting and emasculating this once vital, throbbing nation. A stonking big hole in the ground might be as much of a disruption of the natural vista as a windmill or a field of panels, but that's more than made up for with the ardour it stokes in all great men to see mother nature stripped bare and forced to open herself to the mighty phallus of industry.

I was going to mention that but I wanted a like-for-like comparison.

I have a sudden urge to chop down a 500 year old tree.

 

[Dryk]

The new parliament rules seem reasonable, I would've expected them to ban face covering in the chamber outright instead of just sticking them behind glass.

How many cases have there actually been of people using burqas to commit crimes?

In Australia? One that I can remember, and that was a traffic offense. She got off because police didn't see her face when she was pulled over and therefore couldn't identify her in court. That loophole has since been closed and you must show your face to police upon request.

Other than that there is a small smattering of guys using it to rob liquor stores or service stations but it's nowhere near the epidemic people seem to be afraid of.

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

How many cases have there actually been of people using burqas to commit crimes?

None. I find burqas and niqabs distasteful because they represent a relationship between female sexuality and shame that I think is unhealthy, misogynistic and repressive. Putting so a tight a lid on such a vital and important part of the human experience as sex only leads to trouble, for instance when it finds its expression through violent means. It is bad for the individuals involved and it is bad for society as a whole.

However, it being bad for individuals and for society also holds true for things like smoking, binge drinking, reality TV and prostitution. I can sit here not liking these things, but that does not give me the right to ban them or even make such a ban a good idea. There are things the government should be doing, but enforcing culture should not be one of them.

 

[mjontrix]

I think we've all ignored something that the pollies probably didn't think of when rushing to pass this law -

Other immediate changes include the suspension of sponsored passes, as well as photo ID being required to sign in escorted visitors.

Escort businesses report record losses! On the other hand number of public 'servants' as assistants to MOPs to at least triple! #TeamAustralia #TeamJobs

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

I think we've all ignored something that the pollies probably didn't think of when rushing to pass this law -



Escort businesses report record losses! On the other hand number of public 'servants' as assistants to MOPs to at least triple! #TeamAustralia #TeamJobs

Who would be dumb enough to bring a hooker to Parliament House? We have some terrible politicians, but none that stupid.

 

[bomma_man]

I could see iron bar doing it

 

[Arksy]

Wow.

Abbott to kill off religious apartheid thingy.

 

[markot]

Wow.

Abbott to kill off religious apartheid thingy.

 

[Dryk]

Wow.

Abbott to kill off religious apartheid thingy.

They don't stand to gain anything by adding that restriction and he knows it. Anyone attacking parliament knows they won't be coming back out, and that cameras will be on them. There's no reason for them to wear a mask.

 

[mjontrix]

Who would be dumb enough to bring a hooker to Parliament House? We have some terrible politicians, but none that stupid.

Well we said a lot of things about how stupid the Government would be to do x, x being any policy so far but they did do it.

Hookers would be a sort of implied thing they did - heck if Bill Clinton did it (to an intern) then is any politician any different?

And for once Abbott got it right and got rid of this horrible idea. Well, if it includes removing the sponsored pass changes that would actually be the real reason but I think this just involves the burqa.

In the meantime this also happened - http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-02/parliament-passes-revised-welfare-legislation/5784972 Not so bad actually imo.

 

[Dryk]

Pretty good on the whole, not sure how I feel about making it harder for students to move between cities considering fee deregulation is going to force them to go where the placements are.

 

[markot]

I'm just glad those disabled are going to get a good working over. I hate those guys.

The reassessments better involve fake centre link fire alarms.

 

[Arksy]

Pretty good on the whole, not sure how I feel about making it harder for students to move between cities considering fee deregulation is going to force them to go where the placements are.

Well I think it might be to someone from Sydney coming to Adelaide on a scholarship, taking the spot of someone from SA and then fucking off back to Sydney at the end. Depriving SA of someone useful.

 

[mjontrix]

Pretty good on the whole, not sure how I feel about making it harder for students to move between cities considering fee deregulation is going to force them to go where the placements are.

That's probably why.

So we're going into States by Class now - holy crap!

We're really, really trying to take the worst out of every country and combine them into one - maybe this is some sort of social experiment... We'd probably find out after 70 years or whenever the docs get declassified xD

 

[wonzo]

 

[markot]

Hm? He is examining someone who compared Hitler to Christianity as Isis is to Islam. A picture of Hitler isnt out of place.


You just made me defend Andrew Bolt.

 

[jgminto]

Someone who looks at the headline, the image and maybe the first and last sentence before turning the page (most people who read papers) isn't going to get that information from that. They get ISLAM VIOLENT HITLER!

 

[markot]

Someone who looks at the headline, the image and maybe the first and last sentence before turning the page (most people who read papers) isn't going to get that information from that. They get ISLAM VIOLENT HITLER!

No. People who read papers read them. They dont just see a headline, see a picture, take a photo of it to get idiots mad on social media.

 

[r1chard]

Hm? He is examining someone who compared Hitler to Christianity as Isis is to Islam. A picture of Hitler isnt out of place.


You just made me defend Andrew Bolt.

What's his conclusion though? (sorry, I don't have access to the paper and I refuse to give him web hits). I can see that his main thrust will probably be "stupid ABC presenter". That Christianity isn't Hitler ... and Islam? Is that still Isis?

 

[bomma_man]

Is it fair to blame the West for trouble in the Middle East?

The origins of extremism

In his book A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the emergence of Islamism, Dr S. Sayyid describes five arguments that explain the spread of what is commonly called Islamic fundamentalism, Islamism or militant Islamism.

-Islamism is a response to the failure of Arab leaders to deliver meaningful outcomes to their people.
-Lacking opportunities for political participation, Arab citizens turned to mosques as public spaces for political discussion. As a result religion became the language of politics and of political change.
-Post-colonialism also failed the Arab middle class, as the ruling elite continued to hold power and wealth.
-Rapid economic growth in the emerging Gulf States increased the influence of conservative Muslim governments. At the same time, the expansion of the oil-based Gulf economy brought about uneven economic development, the response to which was growing support for Islamism as a mode of expression for internal grievances.
-Finally, the spread of Islamism has also been due to the effects of cultural erosion and globalisation contributing to a Muslim identity crisis.

So the current state of affairs in the Middle East is not simply an outcome of Western intervention and the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Western foreign policy in the region has no doubt influenced the current situation. But the conditions for the spread of militant Islamism have come from attempts to deal with the crisis within: a crisis that is as much political in nature as it is religious.

Filling a power vacuum

In terms of politics, the traditional seats of power in the Arab world have been toppled, creating a void and opening opportunities for other Arab nations to vie for power.

With the decline of Egyptian power and ongoing chaos in Syria and Iraq, the Gulf states have emerged as the most economically and politically stable influences in the region.

Gulf state competition, particularly between Abu Dhabi and Doha, has become one of the defining features of the Middle East. While Doha supports the Syrian revolution as well as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, Abu Dhabi stands guarded against a foreign policy approach that strengthens Islamists.

Qatar, on the other hand, has been known to provide significant financial assistance to violent Islamist groups, including groups linked to Al Qaeda. It has also failed to act on wealthy citizens accused of financing terrorist organisations to the tune of millions of dollars.

Angered by its support for extremist groups, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia all withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar in March this year.

The political struggle for power has also played out as a struggle for religious space in the Arab world. Here, the declining role of Saudi Arabia as the traditional seat of religious authority and knowledge has contributed, as Saudi Arabia also struggles to contain extremist Islamist elements within its own brand of Islam.

Links have been made between Wahhabi Islam that originated in Saudi Arabia and the ideological frame of the jihadist movement. Such accusations have prompted Saudi Arabia to examine the Wahhabi Jihadist connection, leading to a review of religious programs and school curricular in the kingdom.

 

[markot]

What's his conclusion though? (sorry, I don't have access to the paper and I refuse to give him web hits). I can see that his main thrust will probably be "stupid ABC presenter". That Christianity isn't Hitler ... and Islam? Is that still Isis?

I dont know, im not reading it! I based my post on the several words I could read in the photo.

 

[r1chard]

Woah.

"It is time for some high-profile raids on the racists trying to terrorise Muslims" —Andrew Bolt.

Please, someone pinch me.

Of FFS. I read a comment. The very fucking first one is "What’s the bet that the “ADL” is the creation of some loony left wing sympathiser group designed to create the impression that the rest of Australia is just as bad as our local Islamic fundamentalists."

 

[lexi]

Woah.

"It is time for some high-profile raids on the racists trying to terrorise Muslims" —Andrew Bolt.

Cue comic panel of the AFP busting into Bolt's office.

 

[Lafiel]

Is it fair to blame the West for trouble in the Middle East?

Dug this article, not sure if I agree with everything but I appreciate that it didn't go into both extremes of that awful clash of civilizations hypothesis and the "unrest in the middle east is all due to US imperialism!"

 

[Dead Man]

http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/...vernment-deportee/14123448001068#.VDMhSRbVqVp

The Taliban bundle him into a car and after 20 minutes’ driving, take him to a mud house ringed by high walls. They beat him with wet rods cut fresh from a tree, demanding he open his phone. Again they threaten to kill him. Zainullah relents and offers his PIN.

Immediately, they are scrolling through pictures: the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, a video of the new year he recorded in 2014. Speaking in broken Dari, the Taliban tell him, “You from an infidel country.” They mean Australia. “You infidel. We kill you. Why you come to Afghanistan? You a spy.”

The Taliban tortured him for two days. He begged for mercy and his life. They gave him five days to arrange a payment of $300,000, threatening otherwise to decapitate him.

It was thoughts of his daughter that prompted Zainullah to break out. On the second night in captivity, at 10pm, he heard gunfire in the valley. He saw that the Taliban had gone out to fight and locked the gate. He realised it was an opportunity to escape but his feet were chained together. He groped in the darkness, found a rock, and brought it down onto the chain every time he heard gunfire.

At the back of the house, steps led up to a traditional Afghan squat toilet system, a hole above a chamber below. Having broken his chain, he ran for the toilet and dropped into the excrement. The human waste is collected for fertiliser, accessible with a shovel from outside the house’s wall through a hatchway. Zainullah wriggled out through the hatch. For eight hours, covered in faeces, he walked through darkness and early morning. At some point, exhausted, he heard more gunfire – the whizzing of bullets as they passed his ear.

A video captured by Afghan police shows officers firing on him, suspecting him to be a suicide bomber. A voice calling “help” is heard in the darkness. Moments later, three police speaking in Hazaragi are shown in the video, saying in angry voices, “Who are you?” and “Raise your hands”.

In December 2012, Australia’s Refugee Review Tribunal ruled it was safe for Zainullah to return to Jaghori. This was the beginning of the events that almost ended in a Taliban outpost two weeks ago. A week after Zainullah’s disappearance, an Afghan-Australian named Sayed Habib Musawi was killed in the same area. But the tribunal had asserted in Zainullah’s case that “there is a significant population living in Jaghori. His family are living there … [and] as there is a route from Kabul to Jaghori that is secure, there is not a real risk the applicant will suffer significant harm.”

Zainullah is from Ghazni province, the most volatile and dangerous province in Afghanistan at the moment. Of its 22 districts, 18 are very insecure, including Jaghori. In recent weeks, Islamic State supporters have penetrated into Ghazni and in some areas IS flags have been raised. Since last Thursday, the Afghan government has been engaged in fierce battle with the Taliban and the IS in Ajristan, a district bordering Uruzgan province, where Australian troops were based. The insurgents associated with the IS have decapitated 11 innocent men and women in that district and driven many people into the mountains. General Qasimi, a Hazara parliamentarian who survived a recent assassination attempt near his home in Kabul, told me “at least two or three Hazaras are killed in Ghazni province every week by the Taliban”.

Mohammad Musa Mahmodi, the executive director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said: “It’s totally unacceptable to return a refugee to Afghanistan in this critical moment. It contradicts their [Australian] own law not to deport refugees where they face danger.”

Asked about Zainullah’s case and whether any attempt had been made to assess the ongoing safety of deported asylum seekers, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said: “People who have exhausted all outstanding avenues to remain in Australia and have no lawful basis to remain are expected to depart.”

More at the link.

Well fucking done, Australia :/ And well done Morrison and co for that utterly bullshit answer. Lets dump people in a warzone and then wash our hands of them.

 

[lexi]

That is a horrible account but kudos to that guy for escaping, he must have seen Shawshank Redemption at some point.

 

[senahorse]

Shamelessly cross posting:

It was one of the most frightening, powerful images to emerge from counter-terrorism raids across Sydney last month.
As one man was charged with conspiring to behead a random person in Sydney's CBD, police removed a sword in an evidence bag from a Marsfield home.
But the owner of the menacing item has revealed that it is actually a plastic decoration common in almost every Shiite Muslim household.

He said he doesn't know Omarjan Azari, who was detained, along with two of Azari's brothers, when their Guildford home was raided on the same day.
Azari, 22, was charged with conspiring to commit a terrorist act after allegedly speaking to terrorist Mohammad Ali Baryalei via phone and taking orders to seize a random person from the city's streets and behead them.
Dirani was detained and later released without charge.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sword-rem...er-reveals-20141007-10r7nj.html#ixzz3FQYvMesw

 

[Shaneus]

http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/...vernment-deportee/14123448001068#.VDMhSRbVqVp

More at the link.

Well fucking done, Australia :/ And well done Morrison and co for that utterly bullshit answer. Lets dump people in a warzone and then wash our hands of them.

:/ :/ :/

 

[markot]

Sending people back to Iraq or Afghanistan is pretty evil. Well not just those 2 countries.

In fact too many countries to count.

 

[Elaugaufein]

Sending people back to Iraq or Afghanistan is pretty evil. Well not just those 2 countries.

In fact too many countries to count.

Would you say that all countries that people are willing to risk a potentially deadly boat journey,to escape from could potentially qualify as places people shouldn't be sent back too?

 

[Quasar]

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-08/high-court-ruling-upholds-nsw-consorting-laws/5797786

So..we don't have 'freedom of association' after all

 

[Jintor]

Oof. No implied right to political gatherings, further thresholds for legit impositions on freedom of political communication re: 'reasonable' responses to crime. Interesting

 

[bomma_man]

I guess there is only so much you can do with implied freedoms. Their reasoning should be interesting, looking forward to Arksy's interpretation.

Bodes poorly for those ridiculous Tasmanian protest laws

 

[bomma_man]

Link to the judgment.

 

[bomma_man]

for anyone that watched mad as hell last week

 

[Arksy]

The high court fucked up IMO. Completely butchered the point.

Totally legitimate to curb political communication because it's for the prevention of crime? You mean the crime of associating that the government created out of nowhere because you know, that's what they can do?

So by logical extension a law making the criticism of the government a crime would be totally ok because the prevention of crime (that is the crime of criticising the government) is a legitimate curb to the freedom of political communication.

HODOR.

Spoiler

(Not how they put it but they might as well have....and I'm allowed my usual hysterical reaction after a high court case)

 

[markot]

Its pretty terrrrible.

 

[Quasar]

Its pretty terrrrible.

I guess its a perfect example of the need for a bill of rights.

 

[bomma_man]

Shaun Micallef has taken to writing fan fiction

 

[Myansie]

It's nice to see my own opinion on what's been happening in Australia mirrored in the most influential news paper in the world...

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/asia/australia-tony-abbott-isis-muslims.html?_r=0&referrer=

 

[Arksy]

Pretty big benchmark.

SA generates over 100% of electricity from renewable energy sources for a whole working day.