Are you linking this in support of christianity as the most persecuted religion in the world
or to show the source of the sentiment
I can't tell :')
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AusPoliGAF |OT| Boats? What Boats?
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or to show the source of the sentiment
I can't tell :')
Oh god its actually true, numbers wise, always thought it was jewish that were the most persecuted
but christians top it in numbers in the middle east
Still not a pretty good reason to be selective about refugee religion though
A consequence surely of millenia of cultural imperialism. How many cultures have been extinguished by the four major religions I wonder.
Because of this it is entirely natural that the majority of persecuted people would belong to either Christianity or Islam, just as the biggest perpetrators would do as well.
From the journalists or just the comment section?
Comments mainly.
Interesting read, thanks.
As the article points out, the bulk of the persecution seems to come from the homeland of Christianity, so it can't really be blamed on imperialism. This just seems to be state based persecution of beliefs, which is bad, but I guess I don't know a way around it. It seems like an intended function of democracy that if a certain group is in the majority, the laws and the execution of those laws, will favour that majority. If your constitution (ie group of laws that are real fucking hard to change) isn't strong enough, you're just fucked until the state collapses.
D.Lo
Member
Christianity is NATIVE to the middle east. The first Christians were Palestinian Jews and then local arabs and Greeks. Islam came 600 years later. These Christian populations have been there for 1985 years, and the cultures they were in were those of already large cultural empires like the Assyrians and Romans.
The 'cultural imperialism' you're thinking of is partly true of White Anglo colonialism and outreach to Africa and americas and asia. But not here, unless you're talking about cultures from over 2000 years ago that were already mostly destroyed by the Babylonians and Romans.
I don't think it's intentional, but it's definitely a natural consequence of democracy that nobody seems to care about.
People have been concerned about the Tyranny of the Majority for a while tho. It's why we have the idea of inalienable rights and suchlike.
When I say "nobody" I mean "the average person" that doesn't usually think about political theory very hard
not dumb, its a really iconic and down to earth quote, that get proven true every day
There's a lot of research that suggest that is the case... also that large enough groups of people can be modeled as a fluid
EDIT: It doesn't help that the human brain is poorly adapted to thinking about groups on a modern scale
bobnowhere
Member
I like how Lee Sayles asked (paraphrase): All the economic numbers are worse since your took over etc...
Abbott: I stopped the boats, Labor bad, Senate ferals, CFMEU white supremacists, ABC need to get on Team Australia, but Labor, Pink Batts, budget emergency, but Labor ...
He's just a desperate man swinging punches constantly looking for a fight.
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A More Normal Bird
Unconfirmed Member
Boats, mining and carbon taxes (lol). Unnecessary school halls (lmao). Economy isn't bad despite all those statistics because bankruptcies are at a record low (dead).
I think he borrowed that bankruptcy line from Hockey last week when he denied we might go into recession.
Number of bankruptcy's declared at record low. Quite an achievement to boast from this government. When could Labor ever boast a similar feat.
Hmm? The last government? Meaning it's probably a long term trend and not a particular policy of this government. All right then.
Though the interview did demonstrate one very sound Abbott policy. I see why he doesn't do interviews with media who aren't in the tank for him more often.
Number of bankruptcy's declared at record low. Quite an achievement to boast from this government. When could Labor ever boast a similar feat.
Hmm? The last government? Meaning it's probably a long term trend and not a particular policy of this government. All right then.
Though the interview did demonstrate one very sound Abbott policy. I see why he doesn't do interviews with media who aren't in the tank for him more often.
With respect, Legend was saying that Christianity was the most persecuted religion in the world, so my point with respect to cultural imperialism is entirely relevant on that point. It's a simple consequence of numbers.
That is distinct from localised populations of any group anywhere, as we see with certain peoples in the Syrian and Iraqi regions.
I should at least hope it doesn't need to be said that I abhor persecution anywhere, regardless of whom, but I will to avoid any confusion since my last comment was taken to a different context.
Ugh talking like a low dollar and a deficit are inherently bad.
"Intended" was probably a silly word to use on my part. "Endemic to" might be better? Like, I don't see that there's a cure for the tyranny of the majority. Not on the scale of a lifetime anyway.
But don't worry, we're doing what we can by bombing the shit out of Syria! Which is basically the equivalent of trying to cure Ebola by punching everyone and their families who have it in the face.
I don't really think Abbott of all people could take that approach after years of drilling into the public that a government that had run a deficit was a supreme failure.
Best they can do is try to ignore it now.
Why does imperialism even need to be a thing in a modern democracy? What is the deal with American foreign polcy/airline food?
Oh sure, by abbott's own standards he's a failure.
But I hate that the media treat it as gospel. I thought the abc was meant to be free from bias? They are directly endorsing a right wing theory of economics.
???
I feel behind, because I completely missed this
The fun of the two pronged attack on the ABC. Being too academic means being too "left wing" and it should be shut down. Being too populist and they're just like all the others, so shut it down because we don't need it.
So the reality is they have to mix both and sprinkle enough ALP attack documentaries on top to prevent getting shutdown whenever the Murdoch party comes to power.
So the reality is they have to mix both and sprinkle enough ALP attack documentaries on top to prevent getting shutdown whenever the Murdoch party comes to power.
They always go on about the size of the deficit and the size of the debt even though they're only inherently bad according to modern neo liberal economics. By doing so they are lending authority to that point of view.
I don't think questioning a politician about whether or not they've upheld a central policy they ran on is necessarily an endorsement of that policy from the media.
That Abbott has failed by his own standards and the standards he pitched to the Australian electorate is basically the point of the question. And that is the crucial role the media is supposed to play; cut through the bullshit and get the person to demonstrate accountability to the public.
After all, governments change, and the media has to change the sorts of policies they hold people accountable to in order to perform their public service.
No, they're questioning its validity.
A
A More Normal Bird
Unconfirmed Member
No, the ABC regularly represents the view that a budget surplus is an inherent good and a deficit an inherent bad. They also regularly do it with a level of journalistic and academic rigour suitable for a primary school report. The terms foreign debt and public debt are thrown around interchangeably, the fact that the Government has retired all external currency liabilities and exclusively issues $AUD denominated instruments is ignored and so is the reality of voluntary debt issuance regardless of budget balance.
In fact, they often go beyond that and fully embrace the all too common gap in logic that basically treats the economy and the budget balance as the same thing. My respect for Chris Bowen has recently gone up because a number of times in the past weeks he's been asked (on the ABC) how Labor can criticise the government for poor growth and employment figures given they're blocking "reasonable" savings in the Senate and he's actually had the gumption to say "what on Earth are you talking about, cutting spending doesn't increase growth or employment."
The unbiased way to ask these questions is to simply say "what does this policy do to the budget balance in what circumstances and why is that a good or bad thing?" Unfortunately that makes for boring television. But if the ABC wanted some actual balance, not "Labor deficit bad but now Liberal deficit bad," they could start with things like asking Hockey why his long term goal of making Australia's private debt to GDP ratio the highest in the world is responsible economic management, or how he can justify the Howard government's policy of issuing debt for the financial markets even with a surplus given that the Coalition treat every dollar of debt as the moral equivalent of armed robbery against our unborn great-great-grandchildren.
Examples please.
The key here is "in your words". They're weighing Abbott by his own metrics.
The economy is actually much worse under this government, but not because of the public debt and the weakness of the Australian dollar. More because of rising unemployment and falling consumer and business confidence.
It would also make for terrible journalism since open ended questions like that would just give politicians license to waffle. Not that they don't try to do that anyway but asking them something that open ended seems like begging for pablum.
At least attempting to hold someone to their own words (and that is the question Sales asked), banal as they may be or not, is an effective and concise way of measuring how full of shit they are that most people can wrap their heads around.
I will definitely agree however, that the obsession with debt and deficits as concepts, rather than actual economic realities with positive and negative realities has poisoned our political discourse.
I should be clear, it was more of a general comment. It's far more egregious in normal news stories. You're right that in interviews they would just talk shit (although I guess that's part of the problem isn't it?).
I mean, if we want to get into media bugbears here I cringe hard every time I hear someone try to equate public debt with plain old fashioned household debt. Like the finances of an individual and the finances of a country can or should be run in a similar fashion.
Elaugaufein
Member
Hell, the analogy breaks down a lot before. Even medium businesses don't run on the same principles of household debt, they frequently borrow against future earnings (ie go into debt) in order to improve production such that the increased profit is greater than the cost of paying off the debt, Somehow I don't see the bank giving you a loan on those merits to further your education.
Am I right to think it's bullshit that we have a "productivity commission" who are specifically concerned with that one metric? I mean, I don't have a problem with their output per se, I think a lot of their reports have raised good points, points that get frequently ignored by both major parties. But raising that one metric above all else like it's more meaningful than everything else seems rubbish.
It's really just output vs input, so spend a bit of money on inputs and your magical productivity number goes down. Give employees a payrise, lower productivity, invest in infrastructure, lower productivity, sack half your work force but only cut output by 40%, higher productivity, implement literal slavery, higher productivity.
Productivity seems to be used as a weasel word for "pay workers less, give owners a bigger cut". Is that wrong?
Elaugaufein
Member
Productivity in the government sense is a longer term measure. Infrastructure investment usually grows it. As does education investment. But yes it leans toward owners/investors, in capitalism, pretty much all metrics ultimately have too.Because in the absence of personal gain / aversion of personal loss, measures will simply not be implemented. Hence the race to the bottom. In theory that's not a bad thing decreases in wages should go along with decreases in cost. In practice companies geodiscriminate the everliving shit out of the theory.
I think productivity is a lot more than that, I mean. Our productivity is low because we don't actually produce anything of value. We have zero clues about manufacturing even with our bargain basement dollar and that won't change because we haven't got the infastructure or the technical know how to start manufacturing on a large scale within a short amount of time.
Shit, we saw last night that even asking close-ended questions apparently gives them license to waffle.
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