Tony Jowns posted:

Jesus. Even if Australians can't empathise with the Chinese who suffered under Japanese imperialism, he should at least realise that Australian POWs were also horribly mistreated by the Japanese. You know, like my Grandfather for example.

Tony Jowns posted:

Jesus. Even if Australians can't empathise with the Chinese who suffered under Japanese imperialism, he should at least realise that Australian POWs were also horribly mistreated by the Japanese. You know, like my Grandfather for example.

The other issue with electric cars is that the coal we're using in much of the country to produce electricity is so horribly dirty that in Victoria, for example, using an electric car is actually worse for the environment than using a petrol-based one.

Tony Jowns posted:

Jesus. Even if Australians can't empathise with the Chinese who suffered under Japanese imperialism, he should at least realise that Australian POWs were also horribly mistreated by the Japanese. You know, like my Grandfather for example.

hooman posted:

CARBON TAX REPEAL BLOCKED

Guardian posted:

Senate is dividing that the bills be agreed to. It reflects the final vote.

At this stage, the government does NOT have the numbers to repeal the carbon tax.

With govt:
•Day

•Leyonhjelm

•Madigan

•Xenophon

With opposition:
•Greens

•Lambie

•Lazarus

•Wang

•Muir

Government loses 35-37.

Package will have to be sent back to the House of Reps.

SadisTech posted:

WTF Xenophon? What's his thinking here?

Tony Jowns posted:

Jesus. Even if Australians can't empathise with the Chinese who suffered under Japanese imperialism, he should at least realise that Australian POWs were also horribly mistreated by the Japanese. You know, like my Grandfather for example.

The other issue with electric cars is that the coal we're using in much of the country to produce electricity is so horribly dirty that in Victoria, for example, using an electric car is actually worse for the environment than using a petrol-based one.

Gough Suppressant posted:

Xenophon is thinking "I am a piece of poo poo"

quote:

We admired the skill and the sense of honour that they brought to their task although we disagreed with what they did. Perhaps we grasped, even then, that with a change of heart the fiercest of opponents could be the best of friends.

quote:

Prisoners of war [15] were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia.[16] Vivisections were performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases. Researchers performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body. These were conducted while the patients were alive because it was feared that the decomposition process would affect the results.[17] The infected and vivisected prisoners included men, women, children, and infants.[18]

Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss. Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body. Some prisoners' limbs were frozen and amputated, while others had limbs frozen then thawed to study the effects of the resultant untreated gangrene and rotting.

Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus reattached to the intestines. Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners.[16][19]

Prisoners were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects. To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected, often by rape, with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied.

Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around and possibly more than 400,000 Chinese civilians.[21] Tularemia was tested on Chinese civilians.[22]

Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644 and Unit 100 among others) were involved in research, development, and experimental deployment of epidemic-creating biowarfare weapons in assaults against the Chinese populace (both civilian and military) throughout World War II. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes upon Chinese cities, coastal Ningbo in 1940, and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1941. This military aerial spraying killed thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics.[23]

Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions. Flame throwers were tested on humans. Humans were tied to stakes and used as targets to test germ-releasing bombs, chemical weapons, and explosive bombs.[24][25]

In other tests, subjects were deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death; placed into high-pressure chambers until death; experimented upon to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival; placed into centrifuges and spun until death; injected with animal blood; exposed to lethal doses of x-rays; subjected to various chemical weapons inside gas chambers; injected with sea water to determine if it could be a substitute for saline solution; and burned or buried alive.[26]

Mattjpwns posted:

Remember when that bill passed the lower house?





edit:

pretty sure this is happening

Those On My Left posted:

Great news!

I'd like to return to the Japan comment for a bit. Reminder: This is what your Prime Minister said about Japan's activities during World War 2:


Let's now look at a little unit run by the Japanese during World War 2 -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731


such honour

quote:

Many of the researchers involved in Unit 731 went on to prominent careers in post-war politics, academia, business, and medicine.

quote:

As above, under the American occupation the members of Unit 731 and other experimental units were allowed to go free. One graduate of Unit 1644, Masami Kitaoka, continued to do experiments on unwilling Japanese subjects from 1947 to 1956 while working for Japan's National Institute of Health Sciences. He infected prisoners with rickettsia and mental health patients with typhus.

quote:

Japanese discussions of Unit 731's activity began in the 1950s, after the end of the American occupation of Japan. In 1952, human experiments carried out in Nagoya City Pediatric Hospital, which resulted in one death, were publicly tied to former members of Unit 731.

quote:

In 1942, [Masaji Kitano] was appointed the 2nd commander of Unit 731. His predecessor was Shiro Ishii. In April, 1945, he was promoted to lieutenant surgeon general and appointed commander of the 13th Army Medical Corps. After Japanese surrender, August 1945, he was detained in a POW camp in Shanghai. Like all involved[citation needed] with Unit 731 or Japanese biological warfare, he was repatriated to Japan in January 1946.

After he came back to Japan, he worked for Green Cross, a Japanese Pharmaceutical company. In 1959 he became head of the plant in Tokyo and the chief director of that company. He was the chief funeral commissioner of Shiro Ishii, a fellow Unit 731 member.

Readman posted:

I haven't been able to find anything so far - what is the reason for Palmer blocking the Carbon Bill?

Those On My Left posted:

Great news!

I'd like to return to the Japan comment for a bit. Reminder: This is what your Prime Minister said about Japan's activities during World War 2:


Let's now look at a little unit run by the Japanese during World War 2 -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731


such honour

Bifauxnen posted:

Looks like there might actually be some truth to Ricky Muir having an interest in green energy? Anyone who didn't already write him to fluff his newbie senator ego for yesterday's vote against gagging the debate should write him now to praise him for voting down the repeal:

Quickie online contact form from the Parliament website:
http://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members/Contact_Senator_or_Member?MPID=250024

Postal address (thanks QM):

Level 4, Treasury Place
Melbourne, VIC, 3002

Readman posted:

I haven't been able to find anything so far - what is the reason for Palmer blocking the Carbon Bill?

Amethyst posted:

Amethyst posted:

Those On My Left posted:

Where did you get this?

Gough Suppressant posted:

You know what we should do? Commission a report into legislation and then vote on the legislation four loving days before the report comes in.

Four. loving. Days.

Those On My Left posted:

Where did you get this?

quote:

Barring any more sudden Ricky Muir-like surprises, it looks as if the Senate will repeal the carbon tax; so allow us a little gloating. When the Australian edition of The Spectator was created in 2008, we took a leaf out of Bill Buckley’s National Review in 1955 and stood athwart History, yelling Stop. We yelled because, like broadcaster Alan Jones, pundit Andrew Bolt and the Institute of Public Affairs, we hoped to be heard in a conformist climate. These were the days of Tim Flannery’s hysteria, the Garnaut Report’s hype and Kevin Rudd’s ‘greatest moral challenge’.

The orthodoxy held that even though average temperatures had barely changed in recent times we were headed for an environmental catastrophe in a few years, and only drastic changes to our way of life could possibly prevent it. With his poll numbers in the doldrums, Malcolm Turnbull looked like one of those doctors in Grey’s Anatomy who had observed the ailment but misdiagnosed it. Opposition to Labor’s plans for an ETS, he warned, would annihilate the federal Coalition, so Mr Turnbull fell over himself to accommodate Mr Rudd at every turn. But when his successor Tony Abbott challenged this cozy consensus, the political wind turned into Labor’s perfect storm. After Copenhagen, Mr Rudd imploded. Almost overnight, his stratospheric poll figures cratered. The very experts who only a few months earlier had predicted electoral oblivion for an anti-ETS Coalition — Paul Kelly, Laurie Oakes, Peter Hatcher, Michelle Grattan, Lenore Taylor, Mark Kenny — were forced to concede Mr Abbott’s tactical acumen.

Facing a changing (political) climate, Mr Rudd ditched the ETS. In June 2010 Labor’s factional warlords panicked, knifed him and installed Julia Gillard, who had recognised that the carbon tax was so unpopular that she promised not to enact one as a ploy to win votes at the election. After Labor joined with Greens to create a minority government, she went about legislating the very tax she pledged not to introduce. The effect of mounting mistrust had destroyed Ms Gillard’s authority in the lead-up to the 2013 election. She was subsequently knifed — by the very bloke she had backstabbed three years earlier. Back in office for only two months, Mr Rudd pretended he would scrap the hugely unpopular tax, again as a ploy to win votes. But Middle Australia was not to be fooled (again), voting for his much-maligned opponent in a landslide last September. With the new Senate this month, the scene has been set for the repeal of one of the most controversial laws in Australian history.

The lesson here is that voters are not easily deceived when politicians try to conceal the costs of their environmental ambitions. Nor do emissions restrictions grow more popular the more politicians try to sell them. Another lesson is that real leaders are not afraid to challenge a stifling political consensus. When global warming alarmism was dominant in late 2009, Mr Abbott — encouraged by people like us — had the political nerve and moral conviction to provoke people into questioning the religious fervour of carbon pricing. To wit, he has been able to pioneer a new direction in climate policy that has transformed Australian politics. Bring out the champagne!
More carbon follies

Apparently, Australia is about to destroy the world because Tony Abbott will end the carbon tax. Who brands Mr Abbott such a planetary vandal? None other than Lord Deben, a thermomaniac climate-change Cassandra from England. Lord Deben used to be a British cabinet minister, a job he did with little distinction. When minister of agriculture during the mad cow crisis he was so desperate to calm things down, and keep his job, he made his blameless little daughter eat a hamburger for a grotesque photo opportunity. Luckily, the girl survived.

Now he feathers his nest chairing and working for various businesses that exploit fears about man-made global warming to rake in cash. He has no scientific training, but makes up for it with an arresting line in alarmist self-righteousness. His po-faced doom-mongering has long made him a laughing stock in Britain, where not everyone is aware of his financial interest in lobbying for swingeing carbon taxes.

Now, his toxic brand has gone global. Mr Abbott reflects the growing consensus on the futility of carbon pricing. After all, prospects for a binding and enforceable global post-Kyoto deal at Paris next year are about as likely as England winning the soccer World Cup in 2018. Lord Deben is entitled to go money-grubbing at the expense of the gullible, but he should not include us among them. If we ever want his self-serving, propagandising opinions again — and it’s unlikely — we’ll ask for them.

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 12 July 2014 Aus

Kim Jong ill posted:

Very OT, but I could use some advice on suiting in Australia and your posts in the men's suit thread suggest you're the one to talk to. You don't have PMs so is there any other way I can get in touch?

Gough Suppressant posted:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/australia-leading-article/9260971/hip-hip-hooray-2/

The Deadly Hume posted:

There's an Australian version of the Spectator? And it's been around for over five years? And I haven't even noticed?