Auspol August: Half-baked enraged drivel

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V for Vegas: Sep 1, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER

welp, that's it for me and Tim Tams

Crikey posted:

Beetling out new Tim Tams. It seems like Arnott�s waited until everyone was in a food coma from the delight of peanut butter Tim Tams to quietly announce that the standard and double coat varieties of the chocolate biscuit will now include cochineal � making the national biccie non-kosher and non-vegetarian. Cochineal is made from crushing cochineal beetles, which aside from bring gross, means people who keep kosher or don�t eat animal products won�t eat it. Many Tim Tam fans have taken to the biscuit�s Facebook page to complain, but so far the company has responded to just one of the comments. Arnott�s already sends kosher versions of the biscuits to Israel but has told the Kashrut Authority (responsible for certifying kosher products) they aren�t available in Australia. Ms Tips finds Tim Tam discrimination about as unpalatable as crushed bugs, but would likely be placated by a few packets of peanut butter Tim Tams, if they were to be sent to Crikey�s offices �

# ? Aug 7, 2014 04:40

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# ? May 23, 2024 13:47

Doctor Spaceman: Jul 6, 2010; "Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."

Brandis has a very high opinion of himself. There's some very minor scandal about him calling himself a QC despite being told not to.

Murodese posted:

e; when did Latika Bourke leave the ABC? She has Age articles now?

The last few weeks.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 04:41

Amethyst: Mar 28, 2004; I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai

Murodese posted:

More than likely, it'll store protocol headers but not content. ie. it will store all of these things for web requests:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields#Request_Headers

This means they'll be able to see which pages you've visited and generally what you've done (ie. they know you've made a post on somethingawful because headers[location] is 'http://forums.somethingawful.com/postreply.php?9857239875239857623', but not what the post contains. Likewise, they'll know you downloaded a torrent file from http://sometorrentsitehere.com/gettorrent.php?id=495872598 and can find out which one it is. Also referers etc. And that's only for HTTP requests, the vast majority of useful and interesting data about peoples' browsing habits is in the metadata.

e; when did Latika Bourke leave the ABC? She has Age articles now?

Would I be right in thinking https would bypass all logging besides the domain name? Pretty trivial fix, especially when major sites like facebook and google use ssl by default

# ? Aug 7, 2014 04:41

Freudian Slip: Mar 10, 2007; "I'm an archivist. I'm archiving."

Haters Objector posted:

Since we're all offering financial advice:

Now that the First Home Saver Accounts are dead, my partner and I are looking for somewhere to put some money to save for a house deposit, where we don't get scrub-tier savings account interest rates.

Should I just set up a managed fund with regular contributions from Australian Ethical? Is there a better place that I could be putting my money so that it isn't going to fund coal mining and has a realistic likelihood of returns greater than the ~3.5% we can get from a savings account or a term deposit?

The only thing that I would add is when are you planning on buying a home?

If it is longer than 5 years away - then yeah you might be better going with a managed mutual fund as they will perform better than interest over time.

If it is within the next 5 years however - then it would be a gamble. If the market shits its pants you could lose 30-40% of your savings. This is not an outlandish proposition, if the Chinese property market pops then Australia is going to be in the poo poo deep.

If it's within the next 5 years, I would take TOML's advice and put your money in a decent term deposit. It's boring, but it is safe.

Best of luck dude

# ? Aug 7, 2014 04:43

Seagull: Oct 9, 2012; give me a chip

Orkin Mang posted:

I didn't know he considered himself to be intelligent. Every time I hear him speak he sounds like nothing more than a moderately articulate lawyer suffering from late-stage vampirism. His brainless stammering in that Sky News interview was not the performance of a man of any real intelligence or insight.

Someone insulted his intelligence and then the very next day everyone wouldn't stop talking about his mighty intellect because he's a giant baby mentally and physically who threw a tantrum behind closed doors.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 04:46

Murodese: Mar 6, 2007; Think you've got what it takes?
We're looking for fine Men & Women to help Protect the Australian Way of Life.

Become part of the Legend. Defence Jobs.

Amethyst posted:

Would I be right in thinking https would bypass all logging besides the domain name? Pretty trivial fix, especially when major sites like facebook and google use ssl by default

Depends how they do it. There's a good chance they'll force ISPs to perform mitm monitoring, meaning that they still get all that data but web security's chain of trust is completely broken and banks flip the gently caress out.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 04:49

Amethyst: Mar 28, 2004; I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai

Murodese posted:

Depends how they do it. There's a good chance they'll force ISPs to perform mitm monitoring, meaning that they still get all that data but web security's chain of trust is completely broken and banks flip the gently caress out.

How would mitm monitoring work if traffic is encrypted with private ciphers?

# ? Aug 7, 2014 04:50

Synthbuttrange: May 6, 2007

V for Vegas posted:

welp, that's it for me and Tim Tams

Well, sucks if you're a vegan, but it's been a common dye in basically everything for a long time.

quote:

Cochineal is one of the few water-soluble colourants to resist degradation with time. It is one of the most light- and heat-stable and oxidation-resistant of all the natural organic colourants and is even more stable than many synthetic food colours.[31] The water-soluble form is used in alcoholic drinks with calcium carmine; the insoluble form is used in a wide variety of products. Together with ammonium carmine, they can be found in meat, sausages, processed poultry products (meat products cannot be coloured in the United States unless they are labeled as such), surimi, marinades, alcoholic drinks, bakery products and toppings, cookies, desserts, icings, pie fillings, jams, preserves, gelatin desserts, juice beverages, varieties of cheddar cheese and other dairy products, sauces, and sweets.[31]

Carmine is considered safe enough for use in eye cosmetics.[32] A significant proportion of the insoluble carmine pigment produced is used in the cosmetics industry for hair- and skin-care products, lipsticks, face powders, rouges, and blushes.[31] A bright red dye and the stain carmine used in microbiology is often made from the carmine extract, too.[16] The pharmaceutical industry uses cochineal to colour pills and ointments.[21]

# ? Aug 7, 2014 04:52

Mattjpwns: Dec 14, 2006; In joyful strains then let us sing
ADVANCE AUSTRALIA FUCKED

If Bolt can't have his way, he's taking his ball and going home:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/...en_look/#181723

quote:

The Attorney General should not propose tough new surveillance laws when he cannot even explain exactly how they work and how intrusive they will be in checking even your browsing history.

This is terrible explanation of what the IPA�s Chris Berg says is a terrible intrusion - a requirement that internet service providers retain metadata on their customers� online activities:

Mandatory data retention treats all Australians as suspected criminals, storing away records of their internet activities just in case, in the future, they are accused of criminal activity.

Far from a targeted anti-terrorism measure, data retained under the government�s policy will be available for any law enforcement agency pry into.

Metadata is nothing less than a complete record of a person�s internet activities - and through that their personal and business life. Claims that �only� metadata will be collected completely misunderstands the nature of digital communications�

The last few decades have shown us that after these sorts of policies are introduced they are incredibly hard to repeal.

UPDATE

Malcolm Turnbull is right to be angry:

An angry and frustrated Communications Minister forcefully warned the Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues yesterday that they risked being embarrassed over the new terror provisions �because they had taken a decision without full knowledge of the repercussions for internet service providers and the public.

Last night, Senator Brandis, ahead of a meeting today with Mr Turnbull to begin work on a strategy for metadata retention, deepened confusion over whether web histories of private computers would be targeted in the new laws�

On Tuesday, Mr Turnbull bluntly complained to cabinet he found it �strange� that as the Minister for Communications he had not been invited to the National Security Committee of cabinet discussions, which agreed in principle to data-retention plans.

He further complained that the first he knew of the decision was a report on the front page of Sydney�s The Daily Telegraph, which said the cabinet committee had signed off on mandatory data-retention laws.

SPLITS

# ? Aug 7, 2014 04:57

Tokamak: Dec 22, 2004

Cleretic posted:

The worse one to me is still Eureka, though. I didn't know it was a failure until last year, when explaining the name of the Australian mech from Pacific Rim to an American friend of mine. Guillermo del Toro indirectly taught me more Australian history than my actual Australian history course.

The Eureka Stockade is our Alamo.
In true Australian spirit the stockade was built half-arsedly with over turned materials/junk. They were too dumb to keep things organised so the stockade was made to act as a giant line in the sand so that the rebels didn't accidentally wonder off like lemmings :australia:

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:14

Gough Suppressant: Nov 14, 2008

Murodese posted:

More than likely, it'll store protocol headers but not content. ie. it will store all of these things for web requests:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields#Request_Headers

This means they'll be able to see which pages you've visited and generally what you've done (ie. they know you've made a post on somethingawful because headers[location] is 'http://forums.somethingawful.com/postreply.php?9857239875239857623', but not what the post contains. Likewise, they'll know you downloaded a torrent file from http://sometorrentsitehere.com/gettorrent.php?id=495872598 and can find out which one it is. Also referers etc. And that's only for HTTP requests, the vast majority of useful and interesting data about peoples' browsing habits is in the metadata.

e; when did Latika Bourke leave the ABC? She has Age articles now?

I only visit sites with ironic metadata

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:16

norp: Jan 20, 2004; TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP

let's invade New Zealand, they have oil

Amethyst posted:

Would I be right in thinking https would bypass all logging besides the domain name? Pretty trivial fix, especially when major sites like facebook and google use ssl by default

They wouldn't even get that, they would just get the ip and port.

Https is encrypted at the socket layer, the address and so on is in the request that is sent over the encrypted connection so without breaking e-commerce they get nothing useful on https.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:17

I would blow Dane Cook: Dec 26, 2008

Mattjpwns posted:

If Bolt can't have his way, he's taking his ball and going home:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/...en_look/#181723

SPLITS

I swear this Government's entire media strategy is "leak to the Daily Telegraph"

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:18

Ragingsheep: Nov 7, 2009

Jumpingmanjim posted:

I swear this Government's entire media strategy is "leak to the Daily Telegraph"

The Turnbull stuff was leaked to The Guardian and/or SMH first I think.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:19

I would blow Dane Cook: Dec 26, 2008

Ragingsheep posted:

The Turnbull stuff was leaked to The Guardian and/or SMH first I think.

I mean when it's coming from the top, IE Peta Credlin. So much of government policy is being leaked to the Daily Telegraph to the point now that it is in the paper before cabinet seems to know about it.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:23

hambeet: Sep 13, 2002

Cartoon posted:

When I saw the SMH today I was initially happy that finally we might step back from BOATS! but I quickly realised this was just going to increase the racist poo poo fighting.

Remember how NTATA is all about jobs and fixing things so there'd be more jobs and dirty dole bludgers need to be getting one our newly minted jobs!

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6202.0

Unemployment 12 year high.

Thanks NTATA you loving cretin.

A noted twelve year high due to unprecedented growth in the 15-19yo demographic. Apparently more teens are registering as actively looking for work because of anxiety around proposed changes to newstart!

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:24

Mattjpwns: Dec 14, 2006; In joyful strains then let us sing
ADVANCE AUSTRALIA FUCKED

must not.. make.. snarky political jokes.. about current learning institution.. fffududfnjskdlfndsklfn WHY DO YOU TAUNT ME LIKE THIS

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:25

Amethyst: Mar 28, 2004; I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai

norp posted:

They wouldn't even get that, they would just get the ip and port.

Https is encrypted at the socket layer, the address and so on is in the request that is sent over the encrypted connection so without breaking e-commerce they get nothing useful on https.

Right, so switch your DNS provider to a non-Australian server and use https everywhere and they get nothing useful.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:25

Drugs: Jul 16, 2010; I don't like people who take drugs. Customs agents, for example - Albert Einstein

Orkin Mang posted:

I didn't know he considered himself to be intelligent. Every time I hear him speak he sounds like nothing more than a moderately articulate lawyer suffering from late-stage vampirism. His brainless stammering in that Sky News interview was not the performance of a man of any real intelligence or insight.

*He calls himself a QC, despite never having practiced law as one

*He bought two big-rear end book walls for his parliamentary office to show everybody how many books he has read

*He likened himself to Voltaire in a valiant defence of racists and climate change deniers

*He had a huge dummy spit over being wrong about the legality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and forced a bunch of colleagues to give interviews the next day and deliver verbatim testimony as to what a "fine intellect" he possessed

*He attributed his massive failure to sell the merits of racial abuse to Australia to the inability of the plebs to understand freedom at the same level that he, an acolyte of John Stuart Mill, does.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:26

I would blow Dane Cook: Dec 26, 2008

Haters Objector posted:

*He bought two big-rear end book walls for his parliamentary office to show everybody how many books he has read

Don't forget he had to buy the second one because the first one was to big to move.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:31

norp: Jan 20, 2004; TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP

let's invade New Zealand, they have oil

Amethyst posted:

Right, so switch your DNS provider to a non-Australian server and use https everywhere and they get nothing useful.

You would need to encrypt (and/or use a a side band for) your DNS traffic as well or they will be able to match your DNS lookups to the ip addresses you connect to.

In addition there are not going to be multiple services on one IP using https, because the certificate exchange happens before the web request.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:43

Paracausal: Sep 5, 2011; Oh yeah, baby. Frame your suffering as a masterpiece. Only one problem - no one's watching. It's boring, buddy, boring as death.

I haven't read the past couple of pages. But what if I told you goons that police forces in Australia don't presently require a warrant to start collecting metadata, which is also referred to by a dozen other weasel words, of communication devices? Phone companies are also presently storing up to a month's worth of CCR information (metadata) for law enforcement purposes.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:45

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

Those On My Left posted:

The full thing is amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N4vAdS4xT4

C'mon do a proper comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjLK9ug6MB4

Francis Greenslade much more understandable.

In local news, the fallout from Jack Lyons is utterly hilarious:

quote:

FORMER Liberal and Nationals candidates Lisa Ruffell and Steven Oliver won't say if they have been approached to replace Jack Lyons as the Liberal candidate for Bendigo West.

Mr Oliver achieved 21.7 per cent of the vote as the Bendigo West candidate for the Nationals in 2010.

He said his response would be "no comment" as to whether he would run for the seat with the Liberal Party.

"I haven't run for 15 years. My knees are no good anymore," Mr Oliver said.

Three other candidates from other parties are also ruling themselves out, its a mess. But Greg Bickely the Liberal candidate for Bendigo East who spent shitloads and still didn't win in the Federal election added some weirdness in the paper edition that didn't make it online. In addition to saying he'd made comments to the Guardian and The Age in support of the Bendigo mosque (which some were linking to the Jack Lyons disaster), he remarked

quote:

"I made a number of comments about Bendigo's rich multicultural heritage. I'm very proud of it. I don't think it's necessary to reiterate those comments". He said he was not responsible should the publications choose not to publish his comments.

Candidate makes comments no-one reports but :iiam:

why

So 4 months out from an election and we still don't have a major candidate. We have a Greens candidate tho! John Brownstein must be quietly confident.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:52

Lid: Feb 18, 2005; And the mercy seat is awaiting,
And I think my head is burning,
And in a way I'm yearning,
To be done with all this measuring of proof.
An eye for an eye
And a tooth for a tooth,
And anyway I told the truth,
And I'm not afraid to die.

Haters Objector posted:

*He calls himself a QC, despite never having practiced law as one

*He bought two big-rear end book walls for his parliamentary office to show everybody how many books he has read

*He likened himself to Voltaire in a valiant defence of racists and climate change deniers

*He had a huge dummy spit over being wrong about the legality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and forced a bunch of colleagues to give interviews the next day and deliver verbatim testimony as to what a "fine intellect" he possessed

*He attributed his massive failure to sell the merits of racial abuse to Australia to the inability of the plebs to understand freedom at the same level that he, an acolyte of John Stuart Mill, does.

Please do not slander John Stuart Mill in this, no more than using Voltaire.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 05:54

Murodese: Mar 6, 2007; Think you've got what it takes?
We're looking for fine Men & Women to help Protect the Australian Way of Life.

Become part of the Legend. Defence Jobs.

Amethyst posted:

How would mitm monitoring work if traffic is encrypted with private ciphers?

It wouldn't, but it would require both ends to have pre-shared private certificates. Easier option is just to use a VPN for everything, but that introduces a fair amount of latency (since the exit point would have to be outside Australia).

# ? Aug 7, 2014 06:02

You Am I: May 20, 2001; Me @ your poasting

Freudian Slip posted:

And the other great thing is that there is a bunch of finger pointing going on among the Liberal ranks

Liberals blame Brandis' bigots comment for race law failure

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...l#ixzz39fkBPe7I

The fact that there are names attached to all the quotes is also telling

Fuuuuuck Jason Wood is my local member. Wood's a jerk anyway, so doesn't surprise me that he is supporting Brandis.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 06:27

DeathMuffin: May 25, 2004; Cake or Death

norp posted:

You would need to encrypt (and/or use a a side band for) your DNS traffic as well or they will be able to match your DNS lookups to the ip addresses you connect to.

In addition there are not going to be multiple services on one IP using https, because the certificate exchange happens before the web request.

Typically the way I'd anticipate this kind of monitoring being implemented is using something along the lines of cisco netflow. This is placed usually on an edge router and captures (IP,Protocol,Port,Time,Size) tuples for each connection made (on the order of hundreds for a typical modern webpage). ISPs used to use this mechanism for traffic accounting (and this advice, horribly mangled is probably the root of the "no browsing history but your IP addresses" clusterfuck, and maybe also the "ISPs already collect this stuff" clusterfuck). Now, as you can guess, this generates a metric fuckload of data (tens of terabytes per day for a decent sized ISP) so nobody really uses this stuff anymore - they use technologies like ISG, which just keeps running totals of different traffic types for each customer's login session (a bit like a more flexible kind of RADIUS accounting for those here with a bit of technical background).

So, if a netflow style solution were to be implemented then it would still track all your sessions (https or http). A VPN or a tor style connection would of course obfuscate the traffic - you'd just see the VPN endpoint or the tor nodes you're connecting to.

DeathMuffin fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Aug 7, 2014

# ? Aug 7, 2014 06:40

ewe2: Jul 1, 2009

sidviscous posted:

So, if a netflow style solution were to be implemented then it would still track all your sessions (https or http). A VPN or a tor style connection would of course obfuscate the traffic - you'd just see the VPN endpoint or the tor nodes you're connecting to.

It would need to be something like this, but if ASIO wants deep inspection the poo poo hits the fan anyway.

Have a Grundle

quote:

Rundle: Team Australia would love to have free speech, but there's a war on

Welcome now then, Team Australia. Prime Minister Tony Abbott launched the new meme on Tuesday, at the press conference where changes to the Racial Discrimination Act 18c "insult and offend" clause was dropped, and the catch-all spy powers, metadata, surveillance and anti-terrorism bill was introduced. With the new threat to Australia from 150 people who had journeyed to Syria -- allegedly to be jihadis, though we have been given no proof -- we all had to come together for Team Australia, and anything that disturbed that unity had to be ditched -- and that included 18c.

Today we doubled down on that with memorial services for all 298 victims of the MH17 crash/shooting down, with the PM announcing -- on near-continuous loop on ABC morning news -- that "this is a day of national mourning". And on it will go for quite some time.

The truth is that the government's record has been trashed on every single initiative. Every single one. The budget is a mess and is heading for a chaotic showdown, for which the only governmentally sensible course -- but a politically disastrous one -- would be a minibudget. Operation Bring Them Home is becoming a gruesome slapstick version of Antigone, with the area degenerating into an impassable war zone and making it impossible for Abbott to keep his promise. Asylum seekers have landed, briefly, on Australian soil, taking the gloss off that promise. And now, relatively minor but all the more significant as a political defeat, an abandonment of the changes to 18c -- and by that token the defeat of Andrew Bolt and News Corp.

That last defeat has been the pivot on which the government has shifted its pitch. With a measure of desperation it has reached for national solidarity, the voluntary minimising of dissent, state measures as "beyond politics" -- all wrapped up in a green-and-gold Team Australia bow. This is the Right channelling the other side of its politics, the real business -- letting the market and capital run free, while using the heavy hand of the state to impose a single order based on a fantasy consensus.

Mind you, there were pickings for political connoisseurs. I loved the way in which Abbott presented the abandonment of 18c changes as "a luxury we could no longer afford". It managed to evoke both the Blitz spirit of rationing and Churchill's "truth with a bodyguard of lies" remark. A more open public society -- what the Right call '"free speech" -- had been the principle we would stand for, Voltaire, rhubarb, etc -- and now that very principle had to be defended by relegating it to luxury status.

For Abbott, channelling this is easier than most. He's from a tradition -- the Catholic Right -- that was as close to a clerico-fascist/Phalangist movement as Australia came. Abbott's mentor, B.A. Santamaria, was a supporter of both Franco and Mussolini, and the Team Australia rhetoric is simply a mild Australian repurposing of the corporatist-nationalist mindset that underlies those movements. Any self-respecting liberal should gag at the notion that a nation-state can be compared to a sporting team -- yet there this morning at Timmy Wilson's Free Speech Freedom Jamboree, there was Freedom Boy giving the opening address (Brandis was meant to do it but pulled out as following his Sky interview yesterday -- he had appointments all day curled up foetally at the bottom of a wardrobe, weeping) -- and referencing "Team Australia". Ironically? Didn't sound like it.

Like many on the :eft who supported changes to 18c, I got a lot of schadenfreude from the 18c car crash -- actually, together with the Sky interview, car crash doesn't cover it, it's more like those '70s extravaganzas where Evel Knievel jumped a bus over some other buses and failed to -- while also being irritated at the crudity, stupidity and blind self-satisfaction of the government's approach. Brandis killed the bill with his "right to be bigoted" remark (which most heard as "it's all right to be bigoted") and then his reply to Penny Wong: "A lot of the things I have heard you say in this chamber are ... extraordinarily bigoted ...'.

What Wong meant by bigotry was the remark that ruins your day, sends your kids crying from school (or not wanting to go), cuts deep in, and wears you down with repetition, because it is about your embodied self, what you most deeply are. What Brandis meant by bigotry was people saying things he disagreed with about the carbon tax. David Leyonhjelm strikes the same note at the Freedom Jamboree today, saying that he "refuses to be a victim". Oh really, white, male, professional First World man? You've withstood the terrible racism directed at Swedish-Australians, have you smorgy-boy? How brave you are. Well, that's the end of the matter.

This strain of self-pitying, self-satisfied white guy whining that presents as its opposite has been at the heart of the 18c push from the start -- inevitably since it was constellated around Andrew Bolt, who embodies that European petit-bourgeois whining self-pity so absolutely, you'd think there was just a pile of clothes and a permanently on air horn where he sat. It was always going to do badly in a multicultural society -- and the government ensured that would happen by continuing to suck up to multicultural society and treat the speech of individual Australians as something to be controlled by "community leaders". When Brandis went to Muslim leaders to combat "radicalisation", he treated speech not as a thing of freedom, but as an infectious agent, which could seize and transform people in occult ways. The "bacillus" model of "radicalisation" was an even more repressive model than the "material hurt" model of speech that lies at the root of 18c. Once done, that was it. Once you have a multicultural society with anointed "community leaders", you have to have something like 18c -- for you have constructed the social space as one of a negotiation between groups. Conversely, you can only get something like 18c abolished by going up against multiculturalism itself and insisting on the classical liberal notion -- straight out of the 17th century -- that the public sphere should be an open space in which individuals trade ideas like commodities.

You wouldn't want to to underestimate what a defeat this 18c stuff up is for the Right. The 18C clause survived the Howard era because it didn't throw up a major case like the Bolt one and could be left in place. In that respect Howard had helped consolidate major remnants of a model of Australian state and society cemented in the Hawke/Keating era. This was the first major challenge to it, and it needed a Team Liberal who had an understanding of the society they were campaigning in -- and some respect for the claims of the opposing arguments, which derived from liberalism also, albeit of a different kind. They didn't even begin to step up. The survival of 18c confirms -- as a real Australian substantial belief -- the notion that certain types of collective regulation enable freedom. Keeping 18c helps keep plain packaging, helps the push for stronger food labelling, and much, much more.

That is, in effect, what the Abbott government has now switched to -- a Right form of collectivism around nation, based on an external/internal emergency, the enemy within. Whatever special attention is needed to some young men returning from the Middle East, the push for this extreme and omnibus bill is political in nature. So too is the ghastly funeral pomp around MH17. No matter what Abbott says, it isn't a national day of mourning for 300 people in one air disaster once, 40 of whom were Australian. To them I feel a faint connection, for the others simply a fleeting sadness. To bundle the Australian dead into this national process is questionable enough; to say we are mourning 150 Dutch people as a nation is absurd and ghoulish and has cynicism at its heart. It's time someone in the churches -- who get used for this sort of stuff -- started speaking out against co-opted ersatz grief, for it demeans the true thing itself.

In the meantime, we will see how the liberal intellectual Right reacts to this government turnabout. Will the endless bleating about the nanny state find any register for the mass collection and access of metadata, and the criminalisation of anyone travelling to Kurdish northern Iraq -- which is currently running a global tourism campaign for godssake? Rather than the occasional "loyal opposition" piece, will they come out and identify the new reactionary and repressive character of the government they supported? Don't wait up for it. They are, by and large, cowardly and sycophantic people, eager to huddle in corporate-funded lobby group/think tanks, conformists who holler about individuality, market fanboys who have never gained an income in it, people who get more inspiration from Ronald McDonald than from William Wallace. That's why they lost this round and will lose the next. As always, opposition to a new round of reaction will come from the much larger, better organised and more courageous progressive forces around the country.

Also have an editorial by Jeff Sparrow on the Carlton thing

quote:

Fairfax turns on Carlton as we increasingly shoot the messenger

A popular but polarising Fairfax columnist let go after an intemperate outburst on social media.

No, not Mike Carlton in 2014 but Catherine Deveny, back in 2010, dumped from The Age because of some off-colour tweets -- and, more importantly, in the wake of a long-running campaign by the Right.

The cases aren�t identical, of course, but they�re sufficiently similar to enable comparison between the treatment of controversy in the liberal and conservative press. Think of Tim Blair�s recent "frightbat" stunt. As Jane Gilmore notes, Blair -- the sometime opinion editor of The Daily Telegraph -- is "notorious for inflammatory personal attacks posted on his blog, particularly against women with a public profile and strong opinions". Her account of how that trolling has affected its victims makes for a grim read.

But the indulgence Blair�s shown by News Corp seems the rule rather than the exception, applied equally to Joe Hildebrand, Miranda Devine and all the other specialists in the transmutation of online outrage into clicks.

At Fairfax, however, they do things differently. The Carlton case is particularly egregious because of the context: the appalling slaughter in Gaza. What does it say about the Australian media landscape that the most high-profile columnist to denounce the mass killing of children loses his job a week later, whereas all those who cagily hemmed and hawed about the most disproportionate and brutal war in living memory keep theirs? Just where have we arrived, if it�s now beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse to write passionately against the fourth-largest army in the world deploying heavy weaponry on civilian neighbourhoods?

Oh, of course, we�re told Carlton�s offence pertained not to his column but rather his salty interactions with aggrieved readers � but if you believe that, there�s a nice bridge in Sydney you might want to buy. Had Carlton produced the usual liberal boilerplate on Palestine ("really, they want Israel to drop bombs on their kids") and then cussed out a reader who objected, does anyone really suppose he�d now be on the unemployment queue?

There�s a pattern emerging, both here and internationally, where the harshest punishments are reserved for those who expose or publicise crimes rather than those who may have committed them. The same day as Carlton resigned, we learned that police had charged a 21-year-old student for allegedly accessing confidential files pertaining to the scholarship awarded to Tony Abbott�s daughter. The revelations about alleged special treatment at the Whitehouse Institute of Design seem to have had no consequences for the PM -- but now the woman accused of blowing the whistle faces a possible two years in jail.

"We tortured some folks," explained Barack Obama breezily, earlier the same week. But only one CIA agent has gone to prison over the torture program now acknowledged by the president -- and that�s John Kiriakou, the man who revealed what was happening.

These are not times that encourage journalistic bravery. The shortage of jobs and the proliferation of casualisation (much harder to let a columnist go if they�re actually on staff!) encourage what Jay Rosen calls "the view from nowhere": an editorial perspective that settles lazily in the midpoint between polarised views.

Furthermore, as we�ve seen in this case (and as we�re seeing with New Matilda�s coverage of "Daughtergate"), writers who step outside the acceptable consensus will face a concerted attack by right-wing pundits who, unlike their progressive counterparts, are confident of their proprietor�s backing.

Obviously, Fairfax worries about its economic future, as well it might do. But what�s the bigger threat to the ongoing viability of liberal media: the yapping of the Murdoch attack dogs (most of whom have precisely zero influence outside the political class) or the establishment of an editorial blandness that quails at views other than those reflecting the ghastly Insiders mindset?

I've seen some pretty self-righteous poo poo written about Carlton all of which are the worst kind of tone argument to apply: that he was rude and he represented his employer. Ignoring the fact that the gleeful collection by Witchfinder Sharri Markson were all from private emails somehow accidentally on purpose sent to her (gee what a coincidence) and we of course don't know what was sent to generate those responses.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 06:50

Nibbles!: Jun 26, 2008; TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP

make australia great again as well please

Instead of asking for repeals of laws to make Andrew Bolt not racist why don't these groups push for a federal bill of rights to enshrine these rights? The Constitution was originally written with an assumption a Bill of Rights would follow, wasn't it?

# ? Aug 7, 2014 07:08

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Nibbles! posted:

Instead of asking for repeals of laws to make Andrew Bolt not racist why don't these groups push for a federal bill of rights to enshrine these rights? The Constitution was originally written with an assumption a Bill of Rights would follow, wasn't it?

Because for a bill of rights to make it into the constitution, it would be watered down so much in the parliament that by the time it makes it to the people, it will either carry no legal weight, or it won't be worth voting for and will fail.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 07:15

The Before Times: Mar 8, 2014; Once upon a time, I would have thrown you halfway to the moon for a crack like that.

Les Affaires posted:

Because for a bill of rights to make it into the constitution, it would be watered down so much in the parliament that by the time it makes it to the people, it will either carry no legal weight, or it won't be worth voting for and will fail.

Also they only want free speech if it's in their particular interest. They want the right to be a bigot but they don't want people to be able to argue with them re: climate change (see: Brandis' thing about climate scientists bullying climate change deniers). If you look at America, their BoR doesn't do much except for allowing people who shouldn't have guns to have guns. And maybe it gives people the illusion of having rights while they are simultaneously having their rights eroded (Patriot Act, anyone?).

# ? Aug 7, 2014 08:14

Doctor Spaceman: Jul 6, 2010; "Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRO_6lQhxTk

# ? Aug 7, 2014 08:31

Tomberforce: May 30, 2006

Doctor Spaceman posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRO_6lQhxTk

Outstanding

# ? Aug 7, 2014 08:48

Jonah Galtberg: Feb 11, 2009

Say, I feel like I've seen stories like these before...

'Cosmetic' plastic surgery for cancer patients denied or delayed by Medibank posted:

Cancer patients requiring reconstructive plastic surgery have been denied or delayed hospital cover by Medibank because the nation's largest health insurance provider claims it is a "cosmetic" procedure.

Breast cancer survivors requiring nipple reconstructions and treated skin cancer patients and burns victims requiring skin grafts have all had their insurance claims queried by Medibank.

Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons president Tony Kane says the insurance provider implemented a new policy in June.

He says dozens of patients have since come forward, saying the insurance provider may not be able to fund their procedure.

"[Medibank] are looking for grey zones that they can exploit because what they're looking at is the bottom line and trying to control the purse strings," he told the ABC's 7.30 program.

Breast cancer survivor Candi Browne required a double mastectomy and elected to have a full reconstruction of her breasts.

But a second stage of her procedure - the tattooing of her reconstructed nipples - was delayed when the hospital admissions department said Medibank was querying the procedure because a new protocol classed it as possibly "cosmetic".

"I didn't decide to have a mastectomy and have new breasts for the heck of it," Ms Browne said.

"I'm just being put back to what I was before."

After a volley of phone calls back and forth from the hospital to Medibank, Ms Browne's case was eventually resolved.

She had the procedure and Medibank paid.

"All they succeeded in doing was ending up with a distraught client," Ms Browne said.

Medibank says it made the decision to challenge proposed plastic surgery procedures after auditing 1,000 hospital procedures it had paid for and discovering 25 per cent were cosmetic.

"We have a duty and an obligation under the Health Insurance Act and to all of our members to ensure that we can do whatever we can not to pay for cosmetic treatment," Medibank's chief medical officer, Ian Boyd, told 7.30.

He said he was aware of Ms Browne's situation and had apologised.

"Early on in the new process - and this has only been going on for six or seven weeks - we did have some communication issues and some governance issues that caused us to make an error in a few cases," Mr Boyd said.

"If any doctor, hospital or patient out there has any information or any concern that at any time during that process we have unfairly dealt with them or made an error, we're more than happy to review the case.

"I will do that personally."

'Exclusion' clause exempts patients from coverage

The insurer is also under fire for confusion over so-called exclusion clauses, where patients elect not be covered for plastic surgery in their insurance policy because they thought it referred to cosmetic surgery.

Geoff Drewell has skin cancer and required a skin graft following his treatment but was told his Medibank Private policy excluded plastic surgery.

"It makes me wonder why I pay this money per month to have a situation where all of a sudden I'm out on the street unable to have a skin graft," he said.

The Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons says insurance policies lack transparency.

"As a result we're operating on people publicly who have been paying consistently to a private health insurer, at the public's expense," Mr Kane, the association's president, said.

But Mr Boyd said there "was only so much information" Medibank could provide in a website or a product brochure but made an effort to point members to its fund rules.

The insurer's fund rules do not, however, have a definition for plastic surgery.

Mr Boyd said it would be "well beyond what our members expected" if Medibank was to define "every element of what is a complicated and complex health industry".

"If a member looks at the information that's available and can't find what they require, we recommend that they come back and talk to us," he said.

Dr Tony Kane says Medibank's policy change is an attempt to change the doctor-patient relationship.

"What they've done is insert themselves into the doctor-patient relationship and said, 'We don't care whether the patient thinks they need an operation. We don't care if the doctor thinks they need an operation. We don't even care if Medicare thinks it's a rebateable procedure. We want to make a decision as to whether this surgery should proceed'," Dr Kane said.

"Our understanding of top hospital cover is that if it's in the Medicare schedule book, you should be covered for an in-hospital episode. But clearly, that's not the case now."

Private Hospitals Association chief executive Michael Roff said Medibank's decision had caused great distress to patients � delaying their procedures and adding to the hospitals' administrative burden.

He said some patients may consider going overseas for operations or elected not to have them at all.

Australian Medical Association president Brian Owler warned of an Americanisation of the healthcare system by stealth � moving towards a "managed care" style system where insurers have a say in what procedures doctors do.

But Dr Boyd said Medibank was simply making sure it only paid for genuine medical procedures.

"Moving away from cancer surgery and burns, we have, at the other edge of the spectrum, treatments that are really on the edge around improving someone's self image or making someone feel better about themselves," he said.

"I don't think anyone believes that we should be paying for that."

# ? Aug 7, 2014 08:54

CATTASTIC: Mar 31, 2010; ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Medibank posted:

"I don't think anyone believes that we should be paying for that."

Hi, I'm the person who believes you should be paying for that.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 09:02

Skellybones: May 31, 2011; Fun Shoe

Doctor Spaceman posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRO_6lQhxTk

The video is kind of choppy.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 09:15

Nutsak: Jul 21, 2005; All balls.

Shadeoses posted:

The video is kind of choppy.

Don't worry, that's just what happens when "metadata' is being collected.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 09:27

SadisTech: Jun 26, 2013; Clem.

Jonah Galtberg posted:

Say, I feel like I've seen stories like these before...

Hi, PHI employee here. Australian insurers genuinely don't look for reasons not to pay in the same way that American ones do. I would be pretty confident guaranteeing that this is some front-line shmuck interpreting a directive about not paying cosmetic procedures far too literally, and the back and forth communication to get the situation resolved is simply the result of poo poo internal communication processes in the company.

Since I started in the industry the guideline for my particular employer has been "If Medicare contribute to an in-patient procedure we will also cover it. Medicare do not cover a range of procedures they deem to be cosmetic." (emphasis mine) Medicare would surely pay towards reconstructive surgery of this nature, yeah?

Also, exclusions can bite you, but there is always documentation about what particular stuff is excluded under a particular category in the promotional material. Many people don't read the detail and opt for the cheaper cover because "they'll never use that stuff." There are instances where frontline staff don't provide comprehensive enough information about what's covered and what isn't, for sure, but I was in a role where I had to do many, many call recording reviews to check whether a customer's complaint was valid or not, and the sad truth is that the overwhelming majority of the time they were told and they just didn't listen. I'm all for the best possible customer service to prevent people from getting screwed over but there are lots of people who actively screw themselves over by not giving enough of a poo poo to read the details about something they're paying several hundred dollars for every goddamn month.

SadisTech fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Aug 7, 2014

# ? Aug 7, 2014 09:28

SCheeseman: Apr 23, 2003

medibank posted:

"Moving away from cancer surgery and burns, we have, at the other edge of the spectrum, treatments that are really on the edge around improving someone's self image or making someone feel better about themselves," he said.

"I don't think anyone believes that we should be paying for that."

Well I guess they don't think they should cover depression, anxiety, and related mental health issues either?

# ? Aug 7, 2014 09:34

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 23, 2024 13:47

SadisTech: Jun 26, 2013; Clem.

SwissCM posted:

Well I guess they don't think they should cover depression, anxiety, and related mental health issues either?

Where there's an admission to hospital involved, they will pay. Out-patient psychology services are only covered under some ancillary covers, and then only for a relatively limited amount.

# ? Aug 7, 2014 09:36

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Auspol August: Half-baked enraged drivel

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