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Whipstitch
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Post by Whipstitch »

It's not brain damaged. You faffed on about a natural right to secede which doesn't exist en route to implying the Confederacy was in the right about an action that would have resulted in human beings remaining enslaved. Go ahead and change the subject if you want but just know that I will never, ever feel bad about calling your post super dumb.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Don't mind him. That is pretty much how conversations with him always go - "if I just pretend everyone else is dumb I won't feel stupid anymore! I'm so glad I thought of this."
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Post by Whipstitch »

Incidentally, this is why so many of us here are skeptical of the notion that natural rights and one-size-fits all dictums are terribly useful. Context matters! Whether it's OK to take your ball and go home depends a lot on if that ball is made of iron and shackled to Dave Chappelle.
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Post by Occluded Sun »

That'd be a more impressive argument if the arguments I'm responding to weren't so mind-numbingly stupid, DS.

Why is the British government suddenly deciding to honor the opinion of the Scottish people? Lots and lots of past governments have simply ignored such things. If they weren't obligated to honor the results of the poll, why did they elect to do so?
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Post by Shatner »

The conservative Cameron government has been doing pretty poorly in the polls for quite a while. The referendum was created a couple years back and only scheduled for tomorrow, with the intention, I think, of causing the liberal Scottish political body to get wrapped up in its own matters while the Tories got on with their blundering. They likely thought that Scotland leaving the UK was such a preposterous idea that'd it'd amount to nothing save some political theater, as the reasonable parts of the Scottish government spent a couple years trying to get the loud, angry parts to stop saying stupid stuff on record. However, the last couple years have been bad, bad, bad and have only made Cameron's government even more unpopular, so this hasn't been treated as a distraction, but a serious chance to jump ship.

That is my take on the politics. I can't speak to the actual wisdom of leaving, nor the particulars of the plan the Scots have should they leave.
Last edited by Shatner on Wed Sep 17, 2014 8:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Occluded Sun wrote:That'd be a more impressive argument if the arguments I'm responding to weren't so mind-numbingly stupid, DS.
I'm personally just tickled pink that you're responding to the accusation that you routinely substitute transparently unsubstantiated mockery for substantive arguments with more transparently unsubstantiated mockery.
Occluded Sun wrote:Why is the British government suddenly deciding to honor the opinion of the Scottish people?
The current conservative UK government is pretty goddamn unpopular in general, and on top of that Scotland leans to the left of Britain on most issues. David Cameron extended the offer a year or two back likely as a sign of goodwill to garner limited political support and enthusiasm, and when he did so the odds of any such referendum passing seemed slight. Unfortunately, Cameron kept right on being unpopular and his incredible levels of suckitude have driven support for independence to new heights.
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Post by Occluded Sun »

So it was sort of a political bluff that backfired? That's hilarious!

Offering an ultimatum that you don't expect people to take, then having them take you up on the offer. Priceless.
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Post by Aharon »

DSMatticus wrote:ly deciding to honor the opinion of the Scottish people?
The current conservative UK government is pretty goddamn unpopular in general, and on top of that Scotland leans to the left of Britain on most issues. David Cameron extended the offer a year or two back likely as a sign of goodwill to garner limited political support and enthusiasm, and when he did so the odds of any such referendum passing seemed slight. Unfortunately, Cameron kept right on being unpopular and his incredible levels of suckitude have driven support for independence to new heights.
IIRC, it was a way to get around concessions for Scotland. The SNP wanted a third voting option granting more rights but remaining part of Great Britain, but Cameron insisted on a straight "Independence? Yes/No", because he figured this was a safe vote.
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Post by Schleiermacher »

Aharon, fix your tags.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

We still has Scotland by a margin of about 10% pending whatever other votes that weren't big enough to change the result.
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Post by Morat »

AFAICT, the SNP's position was "we keep everything we like, and nothing we don't." Which is interesting, since they had no fucking leverage. "We're going to keep the pound and oh, BTW, our power in the Bank of England." Uh, sure. What if the referendum had passed and the UK had told them that they weren't getting anything, including the oil fields? What was Scotland going to do, secede?

OTOH, if the Tories were actually trying to sabotage the No campaign to fuck over Labour, it would be hard to tell the difference from their general incompetence. And now they're going back on their promises re: devolving more power, probably leading to another referendum.
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Post by hyzmarca »

Morat wrote:AFAICT, the SNP's position was "we keep everything we like, and nothing we don't." Which is interesting, since they had no fucking leverage. "We're going to keep the pound and oh, BTW, our power in the Bank of England." Uh, sure. What if the referendum had passed and the UK had told them that they weren't getting anything, including the oil fields? What was Scotland going to do, secede?
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Post by MisterDee »

Stuff like the sea oil wells would be covered under international law (read: tied up in international courts for years.)
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Post by Koumei »

I should have thought to link this when I read it yesterday, now I'm at work so can't go trawling through to find it, but Galt Gulch Chile was a thing. A Randroid decided America wasn't free enough, so went to Chile to buy a chunk of land and turn it into THE LAND OF THE TRULY FREE, FUCK SOCIALISM.

And Libertardians flocked to it and invested in it. And then discovered that he didn't have the right to sell them the land he sold them, and hadn't paid for any of the work to be done. He had set up a pyramid scheme, then decided "fuck the whole pyramid" and just took off with all of the money. Good thing they support the right to do that to them.

It could only be better if it had actually not been a scam, they all went there, and it then fell apart on its own merits.

Also, mere days after the PM of Ausfailia decided we need to curtail civil liberties because TERRORISM, police suddenly captured two ISIS supporters in raids that were massively televised with loads of helicopters and cameras. The people arrested were apparently part of a major cell and had big plans, but in all that filming, no actual good evidence was found.

This government has made me so cynical that I just flat-out assume the whole thing was a media stunt orchestrated by the PM to drum up support. Possibly by going after "ethnic" taxi drivers that have unpaid fines.
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Post by Maj »

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Post by Koumei »

Thanks, Maj!
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Post by Maj »

:maj:
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Post by tussock »

The last fuss in Oz there was to push this shit through their Senate.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... urity-laws

ASIO (the Oz version of the Stazi), now have the right to do whatever the fuck they want, whenever the fuck they want, including the use of force, without warrant or judicial review, and if you tell anyone about what they're up to it's ten years behind bars. They just have to be sure to get the AG to stamp "special operation" on a piece of paper at some point, and then say everything is part of that operation. Done. No laws.

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

It's funnier as a cartoon. In a really grim way, The Greens voted against it, everyone else was all "OMGWTFTERRISMAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!". Good old terrorism. /Gobels.
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Post by Koumei »

Yeah, it appears they have the authority to add stuff to your PC. Such as illegal material. For which you can then go to jail. (And seeing as reporting on such carries a ten year sentence, their involvement doesn't get brought up by the media and everyone just goes "Excellent, another one of those monsters is now locked up!")

This makes it incredibly easy for the .gov to "legitimately" rid itself of people it doesn't like. I mean, this is the kind of thing I'd do if I were PM*, that's how bad it is.

Meanwhile, due to all the wardrum-banging (about a handful of guys in the Middle-East who managed to grab some old AK-47s and are seriously supposed to be a threat anywhere else in the world), the PM's approval ratings have soared by 4%, bringing them to 5%.

*Just kidding. I'd simply have tanks roll through their houses.
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Post by Stahlseele »

So, are they planning camps for unwanted ones and a solution to thei problem they pose yet? because that kind of reminds me of something an austrian did last century
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Post by Koumei »

Well, we've been putting foreign people into off-shore concentration camps for a long time already. If our government weren't "basically British" or "an extension of America" then they'd be facing the Hague already.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Yeah we've been working towards a final solution for our camps of undesirables (at which everything that happens is a giant secret) that the population is encouraged to hate for political purposes for rather a while now.

Notably the PM actually tried to sell the (successfully passed) anti terror laws by LITERALLY telling Australia that it had to give up some freedoms for more security (hm, why does that sound so familiar).

And they pushed it all through amidst a week of heavy press coverage of a giant ridiculous (and by the looks of it somewhat failed) "anti-terror" police operation that seems to have been staged almost purely for the political benefit of a conservative government needing a poll boost.

Essentially on the basis of basically one suspicious phone call intercept, they sent 800 police officers before dawn, with major media camera crews, to search the houses of and bring in anyone vaguely Muslim who ever met the guy on a trawling operation in a giant blind fishing operation hoping they would net something worth some media play.

The entire operation netted two arrests. One guy for "fire arms offenses" which turned out to be owning a poorly licensed stun gun (he got a $500 fine!) and one guy is up on some sort of terrorist like charges (which are secret because fuck you anti-terrorist secrecy laws!), probably more on sending foreign fighters overseas (possibly to fight along side our current allies).

Somewhere between (probably) 5 and 15 people were detained without charge and without acknowledging it to the press for somewhere between 3 and 14 days (details remain fuzzy) under existing batshit terror scare laws (which WERE going to expire, so much for that). Interestingly those anti-terror laws supposedly had "stringent requirements" such that you supposedly COULDN'T hold anyone under them unless you COULD charge them (but didn't feel like it for some reason, because normal rule of law is just so HARD).

So the fact that basically all those guys were released without charge apparently suggests that they were being held illegally even under the existing batshit terror scare laws.

Despite all that large parts of the mainstream media here co-operated, promoted the tactic, and even added in unsubstantiated bullshit scare stories to make it even juicier for the government.

Oh yeah and it's resulted in some crazy bullshit.

So a "Teenage Terror Suspect" went to a police station stabbed a couple of police officers, and in a long tradition of how our police deal with knife wielding maniacs they shot him dead. What DOESN'T get much air play (or any detailed explanation) is the fact that the officers were part of the "anti-terrorism task force" and the guy went to the police station because they "brought him there to talk about his feelings" and for some reason that was happening in the car park. Oh and the media tacked on "threatened the PM on the internet!" and when that turned out to be flat out not true they turned around and "rumored to have shouted threats at the PM before he was shot dead!".

Meanwhile anti-muslim racist attacks are rising massively under government and media scare tactics. (and might I note massively dwarf in numbers basically any and all acts of Islamic aggression this country has ever experienced) And when a knife wielding white guy turned up at an Islamic school THAT guy didn't get labelled as a terrorist suspect by anyone. They arrested him, under regular normal type laws, rather than shooting him dead, under double secret terrorismz laws.

Generally in Australia we don't send 800 police officers to issue a $500 dollar fine and arrest ONE guy for, well ANYTHING. But, it was politically expedient, and like everything in the last year has scary "Early days of the Nazis" stuff painted all over it.

The big question that sends us all the way down the road to Nazi Germany is... Will this shit work? If the electorate eats it up, and polls suggest they are eying it like they might be feeling peckish.

If this works, if the major opposition party continues to bend over backwards and kiss Abbot's ass on this, if the polls rise under it, and if it carries their other policies through senate and their party miraculously back to power at the next election... then we are up shit creek a hell of a long way and won't have seen a paddle for years.
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Post by Stahlseele »

The only thing missing is expansionist desires on the australian governments parts O.o
Which, given how horrible Australia is, does not sound too far fetched actually.
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Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Koumei »

(Just on the TV then: the Treasurer Smokey Joe said job creation is six times as much as it was last year. Then said under Labor, last year they were losing 5,000 jobs per (time unit). Correct me if I'm wrong, but has he not just admitted to multiplying a fuck-up by 6?)

So now we've signed a deal to send refugees to...

Cambodia.

Let's take a look at Cambodia:
1. Second in the world in corruption (behind North Korea)
2. Endemic poverty (see above)
3. They've had the same PM for 25 years (see point one)
4. They're not a signatory to the UN charter on human rights, so it's illegal to send them there in the first place
5. Related to points three and four, said PM was a high-up in the fucking Kh'mer Rouge

That's right. We're sending people to a leader of the former Kh'mer Rouge to be murdered. Remember, if Australia were a German or Asian or African country, our leadership would already be hauled before the Hague.
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Post by erik »

Koumei wrote:(Just on the TV then: the Treasurer Smokey Joe said job creation is six times as much as it was last year. Then said under Labor, last year they were losing 5,000 jobs per (time unit). Correct me if I'm wrong, but has he not just admitted to multiplying a fuck-up by 6?)
Not if that figure was net job creation.

I reckon they're splitting the equation so you've got job creation and job attrition. Sum total of that gives a net of -5,000 jobs. But get 6x job creation and the net amount of jobs may increase.
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