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

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 4:17 am

Now for something that is stupid and funny about Australia. Which is becoming a bit of a joke country - not in the sense of "people don't take its economic/military power seriously" (that was never the case, we're a hanger-on to big players), but in the sense of "Every time it crops up, it's something so stupid it has to be a joke." Like with Belarus.

So senator George Brandis put forward the idea of repealing 18C of the Discrimination Act, which says you can't use derogatory racial slurs intended to belittle, offend, humiliate or intimidate people. In other words, you can't shout the kind of things Australians tend to shout anyway. He defended his proposal with "People have the right to be bigots", claiming free speech.

Tony Abbott was all for this, naturally. It might have actually been one of his election promises ("repeal a thing" being his general idea). So as it stands, we have a senator saying people should be allowed to be racists, and the PM saying that's a great idea. Which is already embarrassing.

(Note that people were preparing to shout "Go home you limey prick!" and such at the PM if it went through.)

But then the PM decided he needed to pass a new anti-terror bill and realised "I need to get those darkies on-side". So he made the political move of shelving his attempts to repeal 18C.

As a result, his BFF in media, a slimy toad called Andrew Bolt, has railed against him - he loves to support Abbott, but seeing as he's already been in trouble a couple of times for being a racist, he was really banking on the repeal. Furthermore, several Liberal senators have actually threatened to quit over this (sadly they're probably not going to follow through), because being a racist is that important to them.

Better still, the IPA (a free-market think tank, you know the kind, America has hundreds of them) was so offended by the idea of not being allowed to be racist that they raised $45K in donations in just a couple of hours, for use in attack ads against Abbott.

Because being a racist is just that important.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 4:49 am

Koumei wrote:As a result, his BFF in media, a slimy toad called Andrew Bolt, has railed against him - he loves to support Abbott, but seeing as he's already been in trouble a couple of times for being a racist, he was really banking on the repeal.

To be fair as far as the repeal was an election promise it was an election promise to a specific individual and that individual was Andrew Bolt.

And "already been in trouble a couple of times for being a racist" needs some clarification. Andrew Bolt is just short of the only person ever to have a court actively rule against him on the basis of these honestly fairly piss weak racial vilification laws. The vast majority of complaints under this law are dealt with or dismissed before ever hitting court through mediation and other minor processes.

Andrew Bolt produced racial vilification so vile that it went to court and the judge basically said "Holy shit, this is SUCH a bunch of racist hate inciting obvious lies that you are getting an actual tap on the wrist and I want to note how fucking unusual and extreme it is that you did something so bad as to make me do this while tapping your wrist"

And for revenge/vindication Bolt got Tony to bro-promise him a personal law change as an election promise. Then Brandis fumbled it through incompetence with the infamously joke worthy "Right to be a Bigot" speech and an ongoing campaign of sheer fail until it failed.

The "um... we need to drop it so we can fight terrorists" thing was a fumbled attempt to pretend they hadn't failed they just like... had more important things to do.

...and then that incompetent joke of an Attorney General Brandis managed to fuck THAT up within like 2 days by making a fool of himself on national television with his apparent total lack of understanding of what meta-data even is and his total inability to explain what he wants to even legislate about it.

Mind you I suspect the back down on the racial vilification repeal was supposed to be an elaborate Trojan horse genius political master stroke.

See because almost on schedule the moment they said that a certain major "independent" (read conservative tool) academic got unaccountably significant media attention writing lots of articles about how NOT repealing racial vilification laws would make us weak against TERRORISMS!

Then also on queue the vile Family First asshole who looks like an elderly joyless Ferris Bueller, put forward the repeal legislation himself.

Now the government was/is supposed to go "well actually we DO need to make bigotry and incitement to racial violence legal TO FIGHT THE TERRORISMS! Which coincidentally is the agenda we announced when we backed down on this repeal, so now we are back on for the repeal only this time it's because TERRORISMS IZ BADZ! (and just in case the terrorism angle seems racist and bullshit it wasn't our words, it was these totally unrelated other guys we totally didn't organise who started it!)".

Only A) that was a stupid fucking plan. B) Brandis fumbled it like the total fucking clown that he is, and C) That was a stupid fucking plan.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 6:17 am

PhoneLobster wrote: Andrew Bolt produced racial vilification so vile that it went to court and the judge basically said "Holy shit, this is SUCH a bunch of racist hate inciting obvious lies that you are getting an actual tap on the wrist and I want to note how fucking unusual and extreme it is that you did something so bad as to make me do this while tapping your wrist"

Yeah, the law doesn't really stop actual racial villification, but it did make Andrew Bolt look stupid just kidding, he always looked stupid! But it made him super angry.

...and then that incompetent joke of an Attorney General Brandis managed to fuck THAT up within like 2 days by making a fool of himself on national television with his apparent total lack of understanding of what meta-data even is and his total inability to explain what he wants to even legislate about it.

Oh right, yeah. "We won't know what websites you visit, just the URL and IP Address". Oh good, that's a relief! They'll only know I went to clownporn.com three times a day, nothing else!

(Yes, eleven proxies meme goes here, and suddenly everyone in Australia does it. Because if you have anything to hide, including "Software piracy", "You just like to piss the government off" or "You look at pornography at all, which while legal could be seen as embarrassing", then you'll know how to type "proxy server" into google.)

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Wed Aug 13, 2014 4:05 pm

Eduardo Campos, the third candidate in Brazil's 2014 presidential race, just died in a plane crash. People will take this sobering moment to lament a senseless death and haha, no. They're starting conspiracy theories already about how the government did it.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Wed Aug 13, 2014 4:24 pm

So instead of arguing that people need to learn to tolerate the existence of racial hatred because of the importance of free speech, they're trying to repeal the speech codes because it's "important to fight terrorism"?

[jaw drop]

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Aug 13, 2014 11:58 pm

In a genius political move, our treasurer, campaigning for his planned increases to fuel tax, with out any prompting from anyone managed to say something which translates approximately to...

"For some reason I don't seem to understand Poor People don't choose to own cars, and when they do they don't choose to buy fuel and drive around very much. Therefore my plan to increase fuel tax won't hurt them and is in fact a progressive tax on the rich!"

... no really. Totally unforced, Entirely off his own bat. Either pure stupidity or part of the "genius" plan to "generate a scandal to smoke screen another scandal" this time probably the corruption one.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 8:46 am

He's pretty sure poor people will just live in cars, not drive them around.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 1:12 am

Our latest political fuckwittery comes not from the Liberal-Nationalist Coalition*, but from Crazy Clive. Basically, anything he does is in his own interest, but he often opposes the leadership to boost his cred as a populist (which was his main drawcard in the election). This makes him wildly unpredictable sometimes (when the leadership want to push through a measure that saves him money, he opposes it for a little while until they're offering him a blowjob, then signs on and says he forced them to negotiate to something sensible for all Australians). But when it's just him, it means you can trust him to do what works best for his own profits. Broadly speaking.

Well, he's been having a spat with China. With one mining company, who has filed suit against him, and him against them, because REASONS, and they are suggesting he illegally funnelled money out of his in-China operations to support his election campaign. This is reasonably likely, on the face of it, and that's more evidence than the Chinese government needs to apply pressure to a foreign entity.

Anyway, he's said we as a country need to take the fight to them and stand up to them "because they are communists who shoot their own people". I can't actually tell you how long it's been since China stopped being communist in anything other than name. And if police violence and the use of the death penalty made a country invalid for trade deals and negotiations, then sorry America! He later claimed he was referring only to the specific company he doesn't like. So it's just an incorporated communist company that shoots its own people, apparently.

Don't worry though: someone else in his party then said we need to arm ourselves with missiles to protect ourselves from the communist threat of China. Is this 1950?

*We put the "coal" in "coalition"!

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 10:11 pm

So why does the Coalition and the (Canadian) Conservative party do so well with East/Southeast-Asian descendant citizens anyway? Granted, in the Coalition's case it's 'significantly less shitty than before', but what the hell happened?

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 7:27 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:So why does the Coalition and the (Canadian) Conservative party do so well with East/Southeast-Asian descendant citizens anyway? Granted, in the Coalition's case it's 'significantly less shitty than before', but what the hell happened?

I have no idea.

But I'll say this. When we had the crunula riots mobs ran down the street yelling "kill the lebos kill the wogs"

Now the original definitive wogs here are probably the Greek and Italian migrants. Yet exactly those communities still had prominent members, even politicians who either supported or would not condemn the rioters and many of the rioters themselves were the children and grand children of Greeks and Italians.

Never underestimate the stupidity and speed of turn around and memory loss of the racist greedy fuck you I got mine vote. Essentially in australia on racist migration wars.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Fri Aug 22, 2014 5:22 pm

Russian trucks with aid SUDDENLY entered Ukraine. My guess is that this is a provocation of the Ukrainian military, to create a reason for military invasion. Or someone just went crazy out there.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sat Aug 23, 2014 11:08 am

"Suddenly": as in they waited a week of doing as they were told, only to get new requirements ad infinitum, said they were going to cross if the bullshit didn't stop, and then the bullshit didn't stop and they crossed. With trucks that the Ukraine had already inspected, and taken half the food out of, so as to claim that the Russian trucks were suspiciously half empty.

Food aid, it's just like Hitler. Only without all the Nazis, because they're all on the other side starving the civilians out for fun and profit, again. What this war needs is more Western Interventionism. Bombs. Big ones. That'll fix everyone right up. No more hungry people.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -memorials

Random cartoon, on Australian reaction to I.S.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Aug 23, 2014 12:14 pm

Actually, having actually worked logistics, some of the trucks almost certainly were half empty to begin with, because when you request 3 palettes of one thing it tends to come from a warehouse that has that thing, and doesn't necessarily magically come from a warehouse that has enough palettes of whatever else you wanted to fill the entire 17 meter truck bed.

In order to get all your trucks full, you'd need to ship all your goods to an intermediate distribution center to consolidate. Since there's no reason for Russia to have done that, there's no reason to expect all the trucks to be full.

The only weird part is where people in the media were acting like that was weird. It's like they've never looked into the backs of a supply convoy. Which it's possible they have not, but you'd think someone would have talked to someone who had.

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Aug 23, 2014 12:59 pm

And miss a story on how mean, bad, war-starting Russia is definitely doing this on purpose to start a fight because this is their fault just like everything else that has ever happened?

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Aug 23, 2014 4:07 pm

All trucks have left the Ukraine, and there was much rejoicing.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 24, 2014 2:18 am

Okay. So, what should the international community ideally do about ISIS running around and mass murdering people? What do you think is going to happen?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Aug 24, 2014 2:21 am

Well I hear that Westborough Baptist Church are heading over there to protest against them, so that's going to work out pretty well.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sun Aug 24, 2014 2:28 am

What they probably should do is put together a big UN peacekeeping force and send it in to smash ISIS's big armies with tanks and stuff and then hang around suppressing its insurgent remnants and coincidentally keeping the Shia militias from going and murdering Sunnis.

I'm betting that what's actually going to happen is that the US, Iran, and assorted NATO members and regional powers are slowly going to get dragged into limited commitments that stretch on and on and eventually air power and arms shipments will let the Iraqi military and Kurdish militias win after a lot more deaths.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 2:30 pm

"The international community" isn't a thing. It's just not.

The primary actors in the region are the USA and their puppets (because crusading worked so well last time), Iran and their puppets (Shi'ite Islam), and Saud family (Sunni Islam).

The USA wants to divide and conquer. That's plan A. It's working. This is what it looks like. The bits with the oil are the ones that now need their aid more desperately than ever.

Iran wants to appear to oppose the US, while actually opposing the Saud family. Their entire form of government is built on a precipice of their people hating on the USA slightly more than they hate on the local clerics, but also on not having the US really want to hurt them. Mostly they're keen on keeping their noisome neighbours the fuck out. They support Assad in Syria and all the mini-states around there, but that's not going so well for them, what with the wall of USA and other crazy people between the two.

Saudi Arabia is funding and arming the Islamic State, as they do with all the militant Sunni folk around the world. Wahhabism is their thing, it's like the Reformation wars in Europe, crazy old-school people following the word of the book and fuck all that modern moral relativism. Only happening now. It keeps the people ignorant and repressed and blaming it on everyone but the Saud family. Exports: oil and crazy.

So, you want ... realistically a new partition plan. Genocide without the death. Have Jordan annex the Sunni parts of Iraq and Syria and do a population swap to get the borders somewhat sensible. Give them the West Bank back at the same time and solve that whole Israel issue too, give or take. Partition Jerusalem. Bus about three million people out of Gaza into the new trans-Jordon or whatever you call it, and give them citizenship. Like peace, only not.

From there, the whole "NSA reads everything" network helps the Jordanian secret service murder all the crazy people in control of the IS movement and everyone else they don't lie for any reason at all. Dirty war shouldn't drag on for more than twenty years or so. Saudi Arabia won't care because they don't actually care about peoples lives, at all.

US gets the oil, Iran gets left alone and the Shia live to fight another day in Syria.

Oh, without the genocide. OK. Uh, go back in time and shoot [MOD EDIT: Wishing death on someone, even someone who is not a regular poster, is forbidden.[/MOD EDIT]. Like, the situation on the ground is incredibly fucked up and people are full-on for hating each other to death on a grand scale, and the millions displaced by the destruction of Iraqi society when Bush figured planning was for pussies, ... this is what it looks like.

When people predicted millions would die due to the US invasion of Iraq, this is what they were talking about. It's still playing out.

Oh, fixing it. Right. You need on the order of five million soldiers from Europe and Africa and shit, just to get peace started. You need to spend trillions of dollars on infrastructure and jobs programs. You need to provide everyone with food all the time for years and years. And you need walking targets for the angry people to shoot at and blow up so you can kill them. No one will do this, it's a fantasy, none of the local actors even want it. But it would work.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 4:54 am

Better Late than never department: Turing receives pardon

Fwib · Post by **Fwib** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 9:40 am

Josh_Kablack wrote:Better Late than never department: [http://www.advocate.com/world/2014/08/2 ... y-pardoned]Turing receives pardon[/url]

Isn't a pardon for someone who did something wrong? Is there a legal concept where someone is declared innocent of something because it was a bad law and should never have been, or would that open a huge bag of worms?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 9:49 am

Pretty sure that's why they took so long making the decision. Because a pardon implies he committed (or was wrongly convicted for committing) something that is now a crime, and it would paint him as being a special case - potentially saying "Broadly speaking, we're fine with the fact that we used to lock benders up, but we shall posthumously erase this man's debt to society because he was personally pretty awesome".

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 10:18 am

Why wouldn't they just pardon the other ~49.000 people?
Is there a high cost to pardoning someone?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 11:04 am

Those people aren't famous, fuck 'em.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Fri Aug 29, 2014 7:32 pm

Why don't they pardon the others? The others don't make their country look bad when they're mentioned, because they're not mentioned. But the persecution Alan Turing faced is mentioned almost every time the man comes up, and given his importance to history, he comes up quite a lot.

It's the same reason why certain famous people are given honorary degrees from major educational institutions, only reversed.