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

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Oh they don't JUST ask. For decades now a lot of top Labor party contenders with a chance of going for PM (or not just a chance, but like 3 failed tries at election) seem to have to have the special qualification of being "Very publicly known as obsessive fans of US history", sometimes WW2 era, but other times the civil war period.

[phlapjackage]

My recent Australia-related story: a friend (Australian) and I were having a "discussion" with another Australian bloke (mid 20s, ethnically Asian), where the guy was swearing that Australia wasn't a racist country and he had never personally experienced racism. He also kept referencing "Dr." Thomas Sowell and the idea of a person generating wealth...

After the discussion my friend just sat there nonplussed - "the idea that someone who grew up in Australia would try to say that Australia isn't racist...wtf"

[deaddmwalking]

There are a lot of countries in the world, and lots of them are racist. It's totally possible to have your racist gauge set on 'South African Apartheid' and fail to consider anything less than that as a problem.

A couple decades ago after I first moved to Iowa I worked night stock at a grocery store with several African immigrants. From their perspective America was a land of opportunity and exceedingly welcoming - some of the challenges that they may have faced may have seemed to stem more from their experience as immigrants than as black. Interestingly, the Africans didn't really get along with the African-Americans. They didn't relate to a history of persecution that is absolutely real possibly because from their perspective the opportunities they found in Iowa City seemed significantly better than where they came from.

If you're judging on a sliding scale I think it's easy for people to call something 'not racist' when it's perhaps 'not very racist. I watched an episode of 'The Muppet Show' today that had a cultural insensitivity warning because the characters Wayne and Wanda started to sing 'Indian Love Song' and a muppet in stereotypical Native American costume appeared. I'm pretty confident that you can find Native Americans who aren't bothered by that at all and some who have a real problem with it. So maybe the question isn't 'is this racist' but more 'how racist is this, and how much of our time and effort should we spend trying to change this'?

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

the idea that someone who grew up in Australia would try to say that Australia isn't racist...wtf

That is absolutely standard. Being in total denial of Australian racism is absolutely typical. And there is no excuse for metropolitan types, they are wildly racist too just in different ways with different targets. Try asking the guy about aboriginals or Lebanese and watch how very alarmingly not racist he has like an 80% chance of being.

Australians will also tell you how much better we are than people in other countries because we are so friendly, unlike every other human on earth, actual polling indicates we are only AS friendly as any other nation's people but ONLY IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY and outside of that we are actually more hostile to foreigners than most nation's people. But Australians do not know that.

We even have this advanced concept of "mateship" we developed here, and is not just stupid nationalism but is infact the proof that we are the only nation on earth where humans have invented and practice the concept of fucking friendship yes people believe that PMs and former PMs keep giving fucking speeches on it.

Australians have their own Australian version of American Exceptionalism, we choose some different and... weird... targets for that exceptionalism but we definitely do it.

Like my sister in law. Who decided to announce she was done trying and disliking weird "foreign" foods and from now on would only eat Australian food that she already liked. Such as MEAT PIES and SCHNITZELS.

Oh and on the more minor end of what I assure you has a significant major end. I had THOUGHT random Australians had stopped asking me "No, where do you REALLY come from?". Nope. It's suddenly back, in numbers. Maybe I was just too isolated last Summer.

edit: and sliding scale my ass we ARE South African Apartheid level racist towards our indigenous people, we are Israeli soccer fan level racist in our Islamaphobia, and we have this whole thing about Asians. Like I keep saying, in most countries I am WHITE very fucking WHITE, but in Australia, "No, you are too brown, where do you REALLY come from?" we are racist as hell out here.

Though I DO live in the objectively most racist electorate in the country...

[MGuy]

Australians are repping Thomas Sowell? Very well known Uncle Tom type. I didn't know we were exporting black conservatism world wide. Crazy how far that shit has traveled.

[phlapjackage]

Some questions are just fundamentally simple and need no equivocation. Is America a racist country? Yes. Is Australia a racist country? Yes. Is Israel doing a genocide ? Most definitely yes. Trying to say that there's some sliding scale bs for this racism question is just veiled whataboutism. "But but but...but what about South Africa !??! They're the REAL racists!"

Australians have their own Australian version of American Exceptionalism, we choose some different and... weird... targets for that exceptionalism but we definitely do it.

I often get the feeling that the exceptionalism involves some component of "at least we aren't America". Which, fair shake and all that. But it also tends to dismiss or minimize or excuse the problems in their own home country.

That whole "where are you really from?" thing...as a white man from the US, I never knew how shitty that was until I married an American-ethnically-asian person. Fucking hate hate hate that whole thing and the mindset it comes from. You start noticing other things like that, like how "American" or "European" or "Australian" without any other descriptors is usually coded as white. Sorry I'm getting ranty now...

Australians are repping Thomas Sowell? Very well known Uncle Tom type. I didn't know we were exporting black conservatism world wide. Crazy how far that shit has traveled.

Yeah I found it very weird, also insisted on calling him "Dr. Thomas Sowell". Stolen valor...

[Thaluikhain]

There are a lot of countries in the world, and lots of them are racist. It's totally possible to have your racist gauge set on 'South African Apartheid' and fail to consider anything less than that as a problem.

Well...yes. But it's totally possible to be wrong in all sorts of ways.

I often get the feeling that the exceptionalism involves some component of "at least we aren't America". Which, fair shake and all that. But it also tends to dismiss or minimize or excuse the problems in their own home country.

Very much this.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I often get the feeling that the exceptionalism involves some component of "at least we aren't America". Which, fair shake and all that. But it also tends to dismiss or minimize or excuse the problems in their own home country.

X Exceptionalism is a lot of things, American exceptionalism for instance is often used to make excuses for war crimes and stuff, "it's fine because when WE do it because it is a good thing because we are the good guys". And Australians do that.

But a lot of more casual exceptionalism seems to be identifying a trait common to, well, humans, claiming it as your own nations exclusive trait in total ignorance of the rest of the world, then praising your nation and your people as exceptional for having that common human trait.

One of my favorite ones for Australia, is how we think we are way better at humility than everyone else (Especially the "Poms" in England, the "Septics" in the USA and the "Wogs" in Europe, we have extra slurs for everyone, that is also our unique super trait no one else has!) and that humility makes us wildly superior to all you guys because you don't have awesome humility the way we definitely do.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Anyway. Now the PM is promising to wipe student debt if re-elected.

Now. This is too late to be a big vote winner anyway, ending student debt in Australia 10 or so years ago would have been big, but younger generations have adapted to just not going to fucking University.

I suppose it would cause some mild economic stimulus.

Honestly it would also be better if they just stopped CHARGING the debt in the first fucking place. No chance of that though.

But even that would be if they were REALLY going to wipe the debt.

They aren't they are only doing it if elected and then it will only be 20% of student debt not even debt for 20% of students, just 20% of the debt. So. You know, I mean, sure, great, but... the students will still be in 80% of their debt, which is alot, and enough to you know, mean there will be NO economic stimulus to counter balance the cost of the plan.

So anyway the Greens said "sure we will support your debt wiping policy, pass it NOW this week, while you are still in power, with our votes it will pass". Labor panicked and accused the Greens of trying to divert the conversation from an unspecified policy to help the homeless which labor literally cannot talk about in the same week as talking about their own student debt relief policy.

[Kaelik]

Can't believe the evil greens would try to help labour do a good thing.

Vile!

Everyone knows you win elections by never doing anything good ever and promising to do a good thing in the future that everyone knows is a lie.

You can tell because it has worked out so well for the Democrats.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I guarantee you that the Labor party currently is livid with the Greens and blames them for all their failures and unpopularity.

One of their two big election promises was a big social housing plan.

Which the Greens opposed. Because they wanted a bigger social housing plan.

Which is fair enough. Because the Labor plan wasn't big, social, or housing.

It was too small, did not involve actually building a single house, it technically involved paying money to private developers to encourage them to build "affordable housing".

But even failed at that because instead of putting money into that fund the money first had to go into an over financialized bet on the markets, which IF it returned money in a year or two would put SOME of the money into the fund to give to developers, only that also had no rules requiring it to pay out ANY minimum amount of money and the developers didn't have to build any houses. Also they've done this bet on the markets thing before and something like 30% of the time it doesn't even deliver any returns anyway, so there might not be any money to go into the actual final fund anyway in any given year especially the first several.

As of yet I'm pretty sure after 3 years of government they have not built one single house.

The Greens ALSO opposed the federal anti-corruption commission, Labors single biggest tent pole policy from the last election.

They wanted it to have more power and hold PUBLIC PROCEEDINGS. Labor wanted less power and secret proceedings. Labor got their way, and three years later... the ONLY thing it did was PREVENT corruption prosecutions for friends of one of the civil servants running it. Well I suppose it also technically investigated itself for doing that in a way that massively damaged the Labor party but also so far hasn't so much as gotten a civil servant fired much less prosecuted.

So anyway definitely all the Greens fault.

[violence in the media]

What is a "Pom",a "Septic", and a "Wog"? Are those general terms for English, American, and European people? Do they reference specific subgroups of people within those places?

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

What is a "Pom",a "Septic", and a "Wog"? Are those general terms for English, American, and European people? Do they reference specific subgroups of people within those places?

These are slurs specifically used by "Ozzies".

Wog is a mess that loosely originates from Gollywog and is about the conflation of anyone with a Mediterranean olive skin with black Africans.

Pom probably has something to do with accusing British people of being pompous.

And Septic has a complex origin in an all too recent era when Australia still had a solid infestation of Cockney rhyming slang. It goes, Americans are full of shit and called Yanks, so they are like Septic Tanks, so you call them Septics. But that dates you to my parents generation, later generations forgetting the origin of the term have modified it further, so my generation and later are more likely to say "Seppos" and have no fucking idea where it came from.

In fact, thanks to the wonders of a rapidly iterating self referential culture obsessed with LARPing as itself generations younger than me are now more likely to combine all three of these groups and call them "[EDITED]" a term also applied to all other external and internal ethnicities and cultural groups, and also just Australians, friends, family members, enemies, the government, vague groups formerly just known as "them", most types of animal, some plants, cars, etc...

[PseudoStupidity]

Martial law was declared in South Korea. I've been lightly following SK news for a while because it seemed like that country was driving head first off a cliff with the whole "run by a cult" thing and their medical system seemingly coming apart at the seams, but I did not expect martial law to suppress communist dissidents (who don't appear to exist?) to be the state's move. Anyone paying attention to South Korea know a bit more and want to explain what the fuck is going on there?

[Kaelik]

1) First off the most recent impeachment of a South Korean President was 2017, over corruption issues. So impeachment, which happened then in the context of massive protests, is very much a live issue.

2) The current president has excercised veto power a bunch to protect various people from investiation for prosecution. He's used it more times then any previous president. Some people protected: His literal actual wife who is accused of doing stock manipulation, a friend of his who also does polling who is accused of faking polls to help boost his approval prior to the election, military officials who tortued and killed a private.

3) He's also done nothing to fix any of the ongoing crisises of neoliberalism, the decaying infastructure, the lackluster economy ect. Just did tax cuts and welfare cuts, like you do.

So this has led to widespread protests mostly about accountability, which then resulted in some push towards impeachment.

The Martial Law declaration was just to shut down the National Assembly and protests because he didn't want any impeachment to happen.

As of now, the National Assembly "illegally" convened a quorum and voted to end Martial Law, which resulted in troops going home from the building.

We will see if they actually carry through with impeachment now, it's pretty likely, because they are mostly not like the US, unwilling and unable to ever impeach a guy.

[PseudoStupidity]

Thanks! And yeah, the martial law order did not take and has already been rescinded (with the President still promising to go after all the secret commies). Hopefully South Korea can ditch this loser and get someone better in charge. This is good news for the striking doctors as well, part of Yoon's martial law order included forcing all striking doctors to go back to work within 48 hours.

[Stahlseele]

How was that an illegal quorum?
He tried to stop them from entering the building using military so they could not veto his martial law edict.
They fought their way in and so completely legally did it anyway right?

[Kaelik]

How was that an illegal quorum?
He tried to stop them from entering the building using military so they could not veto his martial law edict.
They fought their way in and so completely legally did it anyway right?

The quotation marks indicates a skepticism of the claim.

It was an illegal quorum, in that the President declared martial law, and expressly prohibited the National Assembly gathering in the Martial Law Order issued by his general.

If you believe Martial Law is a real thing that should exist, then obviously suspending parliament while you fight a war with North Korea is just a normal part of Martial Law.

Of course, we all know that he declared martial law for the sole purpose of suspending parliament so he could pass his budget by decree and prevent investigations of his corruption and his family's corruption, not to fight a war, and I'm pretty fucking skeptical that anyone should be allowed to declare martial law ever in any circumstances.

I put the "illegal" in quotation marks to indicate that I think technically under the laws of a constitution expressly written by a dictator with only the limits on his power that he felt were needed to keep people from killing him, this blatant transition to dictatorship was legal. But obviously, I don't actually think anyone should care what is technically legal or not in the first place, and acknowledging that the martial law was just an attempted coup of the legislature by the President, it's clearly bullshit and no one should respect it.

[Stahlseele]

Ah i see, thank you for the clarification.

[deaddmwalking]

There's been a civil war for the last 14 years in Syria. A rebel alliance has been fighting against the authoritarian Assad government. With the support of Iran and Russia, the Assad government had pushed the active rebellion to a relatively small portion of the northwest corner of the country. A few days ago this rebel group launched an offensive and seized Aleppo, the largest city. At that point, the government professed calm, indicating that a defensive belt around Damascus would halt the advance.

Last night these rebel forces released thousands of political prisoners and entered Damascus. Government forces disbanded, many discarding their uniforms. Assad has (according to Russia) resigned. It is suspected that he has left the country.

It appears that with Iran focused on conflict with Israel and Russia focused on their war in Ukraine that Assad couldn't rely on his allies for the support they had been providing.

[Kaelik]

It is very fucking Funny the deaddm is talking about the Glorious Rebel Alliance defeating the evil Authoritarian badguy supported by Russia.

The "glorious rebel alliance" are mostly the fundamental islamic extremist militants that are the bad guys everywhere else the US doesn't like. This is literally just Afghanistan in the 80s all over again. In 2-5 years the evil funamentalists will be launching missiles into Israel to reclaim the parts of Syria that Israel conquered and occupied as part of the evil Iranian axis of evil that is constantly decried, and still no one in the US will have learned this lesson.

[deaddmwalking]

I didn't call them a 'glorious' rebel alliance. The main group involved in the 'lightning offensive' derives from Al-quadea and is designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

But I figured nobody here cares which groups the U.S. designates as a terror group at least until such time as they add Israel to the list.

[Omegonthesane]

I didn't call them a 'glorious' rebel alliance.

The term "rebel alliance" evokes the good guys from Star Wars. Referring to the Assad government as "authoritarian" as if the use of force to oppress civilians is not a feature of every state, including every supposed democracy whenever a sufficient threat arises, while evoking the good guys from that movie, rather implies your explicit sympathies are with the rebels.

If you'd gone with "A fundamentalist insurgency has been fighting against the authoritarian Assad government" it would not have telegraphed your reflexive pro-Amerika sympathies, unless people chose to read that into your bringing up that Assad is supported by two states that for various reasons the USA considers to be enemies.

But I figured nobody here cares which groups the U.S. designates as a terror group at least until such time as they add Israel to the list.

That is probably the most correct thing you have posted on this forum in the last 3 months. There is no causal relationship between the US designation of terror groups and the actual actions of groups. If they were to turn around and declare the State of Israel to be a terrorist organisation, this would be a necessary but not sufficient step towards the list being possible to take seriously as a list of terrorists instead of a list of people the US currently officially finds inconvenient.

[Kaelik]

Anyway, super cool that Israel, which famously stole and occupied the Golan Heights as a "buffer zone" to protect them from Syria has, to the surprise of only the most credulous liberals in the world, decided that they need to seize and occupy whatever land they can in the rest of Syria to act as a buffer zone between the Golan Heights and Syria. Since of course, the Golan Heights are just a part of Israel, and also they are going to ethnically cleanse the residents to settle Israelis.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Never look at the Greater Israel map that appears in government Hebrew language press conferences and definitely don't translate them.

All Israeli neighbors just hate Israel for no reason at all or because of the evil gene that all non-Jewish Arabs have and it definitely isn't racist to keep on falling back on that one.