AusPol: Commemorating 100 years since the Ottomans stopped the boats

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > AusPol: Commemorating 100 years since the Ottomans stopped the boats

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Ragingsheep: Nov 7, 2009

Quantum Mechanic posted:

You could. John Kaye was the one looking into it - there's definitely 20 bn of funding available in Waratah if you do phased borrowing. You wouldn't be talking about grabbing the whole 20 billion from it in one fell swoop, no.

Fair enough.

Still that just raises the issue of the "conservative" estimates for future borrowing rates more though. An additional 50bps over the current rate isn't that conservative as an estimate.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 02:27

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 18:18

Negative Entropy: Nov 30, 2009

Murodese posted:

Telstra's HFC network (which are the plans that go up to 100mbit) get around 15mbps in my area, Optus get around 20mbps. Shared mediums don't work that well

I'm on Optus HFC installed a little over a year ago and i can get a consistent 30Mbit/1Mbit inter-australia, with the option of going up to 50/20 and 100/40 down/up.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 02:31

CrazyTolradi: Oct 2, 2011; It feels so good to be so bad.....at posting.

Kommando posted:

I'm on Optus HFC installed a little over a year ago and i can get a consistent 30Mbit/1Mbit inter-australia, with the option of going up to 50/20 and 100/40 down/up.

Yeah, your modem can sync at those speeds, doesn't mean your throughput is going to be that, however. HFC, as Murodese has said, is a shared medium, meaning you're sharing it with EVERYONE in your street/area. Peak hours it becomes more congested than Coro Drive/Milton Rd and TBH I'd rather have a 20Mbit DSL connection that I don't share than a 100Mbit one that I would.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 02:40

Tokamak: Dec 22, 2004

Kommando posted:

I'm on Optus HFC installed a little over a year ago and i can get a consistent 30Mbit/1Mbit inter-australia, with the option of going up to 50/20 and 100/40 down/up.

For HFC, a street/area is hooked up to single broadcasting unit (similar to the way a broadcast tower services an area). This is fine when you are broadcasting TV, since everyone wants to receive the same signal. For Internet, the cable provider takes a TV channel and instead of broadcasting frames of audio/video, they broadcast frames of data.

The speed of cable Internet is determine by how much data fits inside a data 'frame' divided among the number of people requesting data. If there aren't a lot of people in the area signed up and using the Internet, you will get all of the data in a frame to yourself. But as soon as other people in the area request data (say at 5-10pm), your speeds will go to poo poo since the frame is split between hundreds of other people.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 02:53

Anidav: Feb 25, 2010; ahhh fuck its the rats again

Is there a Netflix speed test?

# ? Apr 2, 2015 02:59

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Internet in Australia is bad. The NBN while expensive and perhaps uncosted would have been a good investment in infrastructure.

It's also been really good to see Gillian Triggs actually hitting back at the government and specifically Ian Macdonald for being terrible.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:01

Negative Entropy: Nov 30, 2009

CrazyTolradi posted:

Yeah, your modem can sync at those speeds, doesn't mean your throughput is going to be that, however. HFC, as Murodese has said, is a shared medium, meaning you're sharing it with EVERYONE in your street/area. Peak hours it becomes more congested than Coro Drive/Milton Rd and TBH I'd rather have a 20Mbit DSL connection that I don't share than a 100Mbit one that I would.

uhh, yeah. I can computer thanks.

Ok, maybe i should specify that I'm getting these speeds pretty constantly throughout the day and last 5 months. Indicating there are probably fuckall people on HFC in my area of Stafford. Or have old DOCSIS2 modems and not using their share effectively.

ofc, I want a FTTH gigabit connection.

Negative Entropy fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Apr 2, 2015

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:02

open24hours: Jan 7, 2001

I was supposed to get the NBN in 2016 under the old plan. The new, faster, cheaper, plan doesn't even bother to estimate the year it might be installed in my street.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:03

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

SMH posted:

The announcement comes as the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed average broadband downloads jumped 33 per cent in the year to December.

Downloads increased by one third in a year after years of double digit growth. loving muppet Government

http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/more-than-158000-nsw-homes-and-businesses-to-be-linked-to-the-nbn-next-year-20150401-1mcgyc.html

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:04

Negative Entropy: Nov 30, 2009

open24hours posted:

I was supposed to get the NBN in 2016 under the old plan. The new, faster, cheaper, plan doesn't even bother to estimate the year it might be installed in my street.

My area was supposed to get FTTH by late 2014 according to the old plan.
but HFC is considered 'adequate' NBN now, so, i guess i should not complain. :v:

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:09

JBark: Jun 27, 2000; Good passwords are a good idea.

CrazyTolradi posted:

Yeah, your modem can sync at those speeds, doesn't mean your throughput is going to be that, however. HFC, as Murodese has said, is a shared medium, meaning you're sharing it with EVERYONE in your street/area. Peak hours it becomes more congested than Coro Drive/Milton Rd and TBH I'd rather have a 20Mbit DSL connection that I don't share than a 100Mbit one that I would.

Or you can have the best of both words, and be on a Telstra RIM like virtually every single new suburb in the Perth area. Low ADSL sync over a shared connection back to the exchange, whee! At least a lot of them have gotten the TopHat upgrade in recent years, though all it really means for many people is that your new 24mbps connection gets 2mbps during peak, instead of your old 8mbit connection getting 2mbps during peak.

I considered my self one of the lucky ones, consistently getting 18-20mbit during peak hours, but my peak speeds have fallen 90% in the past week. I honestly didn't expect that many people in my area to be all over NetFlix, but I guess they are.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:19

SMILLENNIALSMILLEN: Jun 26, 2009

hooman posted:

It's also been really good to see Gillian Triggs actually hitting back at the government and specifically Ian Macdonald for being terrible.

Link please, the character assassination of Triggs is shamefull.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:29

fliptophead: Oct 2, 2006

The weird thing about the Netflix phenomena (not really that much of a surprise) is that critics of the nbn rollout will still use the "why should my hard earned tax dollars be spent on your Netflix watching ability" argument while ignoring the fact their own internet usage is being impacted as well. Maybe when everyone goes back to the old dial up speeds because of net congestion it might filter through but I'm not optimistic about that.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:37

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

Who cares about internet you nerds, footy's back!

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:41

starkebn: May 18, 2004; "Oooh, got a little too serious. You okay there, little buddy?"

Drugs posted:

Who cares about internet you nerds, footy's back!

Pertinent username

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:45

thatfatkid: Feb 20, 2011; by Azathoth

Footy season started over a month ago mate.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:46

Laserface: Dec 24, 2004

Literally nothing else happens on the internet but video streaming of (obviously crap) TV shows so therefore spending any money on it is a stupid idea.

- SMH readers.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:48

Halo14: Sep 11, 2001

NBN Rollout in my area was scheduled for October 2013. Election occurred in September 2013. Yep.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:49

Stoca Zola: Jun 28, 2008

According to the media release here: http://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/media-releases/nbn-co-updates-national-construction-plan.html
My town finally has a date on it, construction should start sometime between now and September 2016. But why release this info on April fools day?! :psyduck:

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:54

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

thatfatkid posted:

Footy season started over a month ago mate.

I was actually referring to football, not "gang-rape-poo poo-on-the-floor-piss-in-your-own-mouthball"

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:00

SMILLENNIALSMILLEN: Jun 26, 2009

Morrison just made his election campaign speech directly to scared pensioners live on ABC lmbo. He looked directly into the camera while doing it, too.
He also profusely thanked everybody for the ideas about aged pension reform and reaffirmed that he's open to any suggestions and wishes people wanted to help because it's important but nobody else has ever had any interest in it before. :shrug:

fliptophead posted:

The weird thing about the Netflix phenomena (not really that much of a surprise) is that critics of the nbn rollout will still use the "why should my hard earned tax dollars be spent on your Netflix watching ability" argument while ignoring the fact their own internet usage is being impacted as well. Maybe when everyone goes back to the old dial up speeds because of net congestion it might filter through but I'm not optimistic about that.

So the same process behind the majority of conservative/fygm thinking? Short-sightedness, spite and ignorance of the interconnectedness of society.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:00

Gough Suppressant: Nov 14, 2008

Drugs posted:

Who cares about internet you nerds, footy's back!

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:02

CrazyTolradi: Oct 2, 2011; It feels so good to be so bad.....at posting.

JBark posted:

Or you can have the best of both words, and be on a Telstra RIM like virtually every single new suburb in the Perth area. Low ADSL sync over a shared connection back to the exchange, whee! At least a lot of them have gotten the TopHat upgrade in recent years, though all it really means for many people is that your new 24mbps connection gets 2mbps during peak, instead of your old 8mbit connection getting 2mbps during peak.

I considered my self one of the lucky ones, consistently getting 18-20mbit during peak hours, but my peak speeds have fallen 90% in the past week. I honestly didn't expect that many people in my area to be all over NetFlix, but I guess they are.

I didn't mention RIMs because they give me flashbacks to when I case managed ADSL faults, but 9/10 speed issues on RIMs are purely due to bandwidth issues and Telstra Wholsesale response was generally "Suck poo poo, it might get upgraded in 18-24 months time.". I was working at Telstra when news of the TopHat upgrades went around internally and couldn't help but laugh and mention to my team leader the real issue isn't the DSL ports in the RIM, it's the lovely X amount of 2Mbit backhaul links they have to the exchange. Usually it's 5-10 from what I saw in the plant and cable records, but I have come across RIMs in metro Brisbane that don't even have ADSL1 DSLAM ports on them. Almost rented a very lovely house that would have been perfect except for the fact that you couldn't get DSL or cable at all there.

RIMs are scourges that need to be set on fire and dragged out of the ground by car, but I would never, ever encourage anyone to consider such an action.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:03

fiery_valkyrie: Mar 26, 2003; I'm proud of you, Bender. Sure, you lost. You lost bad. But the important thing is I beat up someone who hurt my feelings in high school.

Stoca Zola posted:

According to the media release here: http://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/media-releases/nbn-co-updates-national-construction-plan.html
My town finally has a date on it, construction should start sometime between now and September 2016. But why release this info on April fools day?!

I still have no date, however there is work being done near me now. The boundary ends 3 houses down the road from me.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:04

GrandMaster: Aug 15, 2004; laidback

starkebn posted:

That's theoretical, the question is where in Australia has the infrastructure that can really handle it

West Footscray. I have NBN FTTP, and always get a seat on the train during peak hours. It's only 15 mins to Melbourne Central, and there aren't too many heroin junkies anymore.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:08

SMILLENNIALSMILLEN: Jun 26, 2009

Sludge Tank posted:

From the Daily Telegraph... sorry if someone's already posted it but I didn't see it

I cannot possibly imagine that they aren't physically pissing themselves laughing when they write this garbage.

Michaelia Cash is a piece of poo poo as bad if not worse than Morrison. If you've seen her in action, she's a straight up bully and I don't know if she can't control it as well as Morrison or if she's just never felt the need because she has a comparatively low profile. They look to be a rising star in the LNP though so I look forward to people noticing what an rear end in a top hat she is, but not finding out it makes her more popular.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:13

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.

OTOH Cash's hairstyle really reflects the era that the Liberal Party are currently residing in.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:17

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

katlington posted:

Link please, the character assassination of Triggs is shamefull.

Two articles, the first where she chastises the coalition for criticising the findings in totally the wrong way.

"Guardian AU" posted:

Gillian Triggs says Coalition chose to challenge Basikbasik report via media

Gillian Triggs, the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, has said the government has rarely challenged her findings and recommendations, while facing heavy questioning from Coalition senators.

In estimates on Friday, Triggs was again grilled by senators over a recommendation she made that John Basikbasik receive $350,000 for the time he was held in detention without charge following the serving of a prison sentence for manslaughter.

Triggs has faced sustained attacks from the government � including Tony Abbott � in the lead-up to a damning report released by the commission on children in detention.

Triggs told the estimates committee: �My job as president is to make findings and recommendations, which are discussed with government and a report is finally made to parliament, along with scores of other such reports.

�The government has the option of appealing against my findings and recommendations and has chosen not to do so, and in fact very rarely does.�

�Normally it would be for members of parliament to read my reports, to question them if they chose to, and if appropriate, for the attorney to appeal against them.

�That has not been done and unfortunately the choice has been made to do so in the pages of a particular newspaper, where the facts and legal reasoning were grossly misstated.�

Basikbasik is a West Papuan activist who opposed the Indonesian occupation of his country. After being granted refugee status in Australia, he was charged in 2000 with the manslaughter of his partner.

He remained in Villawood detention centre after serving his full sentence, because he cannot be returned to Indonesia.

The Liberal senator Ian Macdonald repeatedly questioned Triggs on the case, and asked her to provide specific details on the length of time of the investigation. Triggs said it �would take months� but she did not believe it had taken years.

She told the committee that after serving his sentence he had now been held for �close to eight years without charge and without trial�.

�While the government of course has an executive power to detain someone � that executive power must be exercised in a way that is necessary and proportionate to achieve a legitimate aim,� she said.

�I think most fair-minded Australians would say that holding someone for eight years after he has served his prison sentence is something that does require at least the regular consideration of his case, and regular consideration of whether or not alternative forms of detention or supervision might be used.�

After the release of the children in detention report it was revealed that the government had sought Triggs�s resignation.

The shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, wrote to the Australian federal police to ask them to examine whether the attorney general, George Brandis, had committed an offence by offering Triggs a job in exchange for her resignation.

Then this where she has finally come out swinging.

"Guardian AU" posted:

Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs hits back at the critics

Gillian Triggs has hit back at critics in the government and the media, accusing Coalition politicians of �profoundly� misunderstanding the role of the Human Rights Commission, and the Australian newspaper of running a concerted campaign to achieve the commission�s abolition.

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Triggs also called for the Coalition senator Ian Macdonald to explain the �badgering� and �belligerent� nature of questions to the commission in the Senate committee he chairs and revealed a new direction for the commission�s future work.

Ongoing tensions between the commission and the government came to a dramatic head in February when Triggs said the attorney general, George Brandis, sought her resignation as its president and Tony Abbott said the government had �lost confidence� in her. The prime minister also labelled the commission�s report on children in immigration detention a �blatantly political, partisan exercise� and a �political stitch-up�.

After eight hours of questioning at a Senate estimates inquiry in February, Triggs and the commission were called back last Friday for a further three hours. Questioning returned to a commission report brought down last June on the case of John Basikbasik, a West Papuan activist and refugee who served seven years in jail for the manslaughter of his partner, who was reportedly pregnant at the time. Basikbasik has been held in detention for a further eight years because he cannot be sent back to Indonesia, but is considered a risk to the community.

Abbott said the commission�s ruling that Basikbasik �be released� was �pretty bizarre� and demonstrated �extremely questionable judgment�. The social security minister, Scott Morrison, said this week the decision was �absolute nonsense�. The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said suggestions that �wife killers should be released back into the community with a cheque from the taxpayer are so far removed from the public view, it is just offensive�.

�We didn�t say Basikbasik should be released�
The commission report found �the failure of the minister to place Mr Basikbasik into community detention or another less restrictive form of detention (if necessary, with conditions) was inconsistent with the prohibition on arbitrary detention in article 9(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights�.

But Triggs told Guardian Australia the basis of this finding was not that Basikbasik should be released, but rather that he was being detained without any regular review.

�We did not find that Basikbasik should be released into community detention,� she said.

�If Basikbasik were to be held forever on the basis that he is a dangerous man, we would not object to that so long as there were regular and independent reviews of his situation.

�We had to determine if the detention was proportionate to the legitimate aim of protecting the community. If alternative types of detention had been at least considered by the minister and then rejected on reasonable grounds, it might have met the test of proportionality.

�But if the minister has not put his mind to it at all, or allowed any review, then the detention becomes arbitrary under international law.�

�I do not think the government is responding to the report on the basis of any understanding of the statutory authority the commission has under legislation. They ignore the reality that no democratic government can hold a person indefinitely without some form of independent and regular review.

�... the key word is arbitrary, which means to hold without regular review, without access to the courts�.

She said the government could have appealed against her report, but had not. It had also ignored the recommendation regarding compensation, which governments almost always did.

Senator Ian Macdonald �has another agenda�

At the February hearing of the legal and constitutional affairs committee, which was primarily about the children in detention report, Macdonald, the chairman, said: �I haven�t bothered to read the final report because I think it is partisan.�

He told Sky news at the time this was because �I�ve got better things to read ... I don�t waste my time reading documents that I am going to take no notice of because, as I said a year ago, I thought the enquiry was partisan, so naturally the report would be and I have to say from bits and pieces that have come up in the last couple of days, that�s been an accurate expectation.�

Triggs called on Macdonald to explain himself.

�He needs to explain himself. He needs to explain his role. He needs to answer why he allows the level of badgering at committee hearings, the length of the hearings and the belligerent nature of the questioning,� she said.

�... it seems they are searching for anything that they can find to damage the commission and me. [Macdonald] consistently allows the senators� questions to be oriented towards attacking the commission.�

And she said the most recent estimates committee hearing �appears to have been set up exclusively to attack us� with other agencies told at the last minute that they would not be required to give evidence.

�There is obviously another agenda here other than the normal role of estimates, which is to make good-faith enquiries into how we manage our budget.�

�Failure to understand� the commission�s role
�There has been a genuine and profound failure to understand that our mandate is in international law and that ministers are implementing domestic law,� Triggs said.

However, she excluded Brandis from this criticism, saying she had had �rational discussions� with the attorney general.

�He has taken a reasonable and lawyerly approach that we should have a stronger emphasis on fundamental human rights, freedom of speech for example, but we both know that the Coalition would never agree to legislation which would give effect to those rights because that would come close to a bill of rights.�

The issue of arbitrary detention, central to the Basikbasik case, is also the reason for other adverse findings by the commission, including in a recent report about two intellectually and cognitively disabled Aboriginal men who were unfit to plead, but held in prison for four and six years.

Taking the commission further into the public arena
Triggs said she did want to concentrate more on �mainstream issues�, for example employment discrimination.

�I think we have to work more in the public arena to demonstrate to thinking Australians that we are working for everyone and to move our work more into mainstream issues like employment discrimination.

�There are a growing number of complaints about pregnancy discrimination, for example, many more than I would have imagined when we began our research. And there are older men who are discriminated against by employers because of their age.

�If we can work with employers and encourage different attitudes in the community it would help national productivity � there is a powerful business case for this.�

The Australian
�There has been a concerted campaign by the Australian to demand my resignation and the abolition of the Human Rights Commission for years.

�It is a very clear campaign by that newspaper and it has been leaping on anything that could be used to try to attract negative public attention. They have been very willing to distort the facts to continue their campaign and that campaign has been picked up by some ministers and some members of parliament.�

The Australian declined to respond to Triggs�s comments.

Macdonald said he was �disappointed with Triggs�s partisan approach� and that the committee had not taken evidence from other agencies last Friday because it was clear it would run out of time to do so after senators had finished questioning the commission.

Triggs said she had no intention to resign from her post, despite the government�s criticism.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:21

Amoeba102: Jan 22, 2010

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-02/nsw-election-no-land-tax-party-flags-legal-challenge/6367210

quote:

No Land Tax Party threatens legal challenge to overturn result

The No Land Tax Party is threatening legal action to force a re-run of the New South Wales election if it does not win an Upper House seat.

"The only way the election won't be overturned is if the judge is on the take or on crystal meth." - No Land Tax Party leader Peter Jones

Counting for seats in the Legislative Council is continuing, with the results not expected to be known until April 15.

The No Land Tax Party fielded candidates in all 93 seats across the state and had thousands of staff handing out how-to-vote cards.

Speaking on Radio National Breakfast, leader Peter Jones confirmed he was currently working on an application to the Court of Disputed Returns to have the state election results overturned.

Mr Jones claimed the party would succeed in having the poll result thrown on the grounds of alleged harassment by the Liberal Party and a glitch in the 'iVote' system.

"The first ground is there was a snafu with iVote system where 18,000 ballots incorrectly issued or issued with mistakes," he said.

"The second ground is we were subjected to an outrageous and unprecedented campaign of dirty tricks and harassment by the Liberal Party."

Mr Jones said he was confident the election results would be overturned.

"I know we'll be successful in overturning this one, it's a dead-set certainty," he said.

"The only way the election won't be overturned is if the judge is on the take or on crystal meth."

ABC Election analyst Antony Green said the party was not going to gain a seat in the Upper House, with the Animal Protection Party the first minor party in line for last seat, but unlikely to get over the line.

He said the iVote glitch did not affect the No Land Tax Party, and a legal challenge would not succeed.

Wages still not paid

The No Land Tax Party has been criticised on social media for not paying election day workers, who were promised $300 on the day.

Mr Jones said 3,000 people were employed to hand out 'how to vote' cards for the party on election day, but 200 had earlier pulled out due to alleged harassment from Liberal Party supporters.

He said he intended to pay the workers next week, which would cost around $1 million.

"They should have been paid this week, but last week when I should have been organising the logistics of their pay, I was running around filling 200 vacancies by people who pulled out because they'd been harassed by the Liberal party," he said.

"We engaged 3,600 but many didn't show up.

"So I'm doing this week what I should have done last week so that means people will be paid next week."

Mr Jones, a former union official, said the workers had been told that "polite and patient people will be paid first and rude and obnoxious people will be paid last".

Campaign run out of Canberra

Mr Jones would not be drawn on who was advising the party as he did not want to "embarrass them", but confirmed that the campaign was being run out of Canberra.

"That's where our campaign advisers and experts are," he said.

When pressed on who they were, he said: "I don't want to embarrass them at the moment."

Mr Jones was then asked why colleagues would consider the disclosure of their involvement in the campaign an embarrassment.

"Not an embarrassment � we've got serious work to do today to make sure these people are paid and the fewer distractions we have, the quicker we'll be able to get that job done," he said.

Mr Jones was asked if any past parliamentarians were behind his party.

"Well there's certainly some people with political pedigree, yes," he said.

"From the Liberal side, definitely from the Liberal side.

"I was asked mainly as a hired gun to give advice to the No Land Tax campaign, for which they've been very grateful. All of them, well almost all of them, are on the Liberal side of politics.

"I was told under no circumstances would we be allowed to prefer the Labor party or the Greens but we had to prefer the Liberal Party and that's precisely what we did."

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:28

Tokamak: Dec 22, 2004

Who is Peter Jones? The guy seems pretty outspoken for being a minor party. It appears pretty transparent that someone had done a deal with the minor party who drew first on the ballot to try and buy a senator.
The quip about polite people being paid first, and rude people last is something a scam artist would say to keep people hanging. I doubt anyone's getting paid if they aren't getting a seat.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:43

Anidav: Feb 25, 2010; ahhh fuck its the rats again

*Be a Judge*
*take Crystal Meth*
*This is reality*

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:43

birdstrike: Oct 30, 2008; i;m gay

Scott Morrison Policy Launch: http://youtu.be/pMfXClVJn6w

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:47

Les Affaires: Nov 15, 2004

Holy poo poo, Rundle just unloaded about depression and anxiety. Worth the subscription cost:

quote:

Good God, when you go to war with Mia Freedman, everyone piles on. Your correspondent made a comment on la Freedman�s piece �I�m finally ready to talk about my anxiety�, and suddenly everyone was there, from la Freedman herself to her Dad to Ageistas-turned-Guardianistas, to (ha) Paul Murray, one of Sky News� resident shock jocks. It was like a Wes Anderson movie, you keep expecting Owen Wilson to come through the door in a silly uniform.

So let�s try and get a bit more light than heat from this conversation, shall we? First off, depression and anxiety are a real thing, individually and socially. Despite being compared to Mark Latham by Freedman (of which more later), I�m emphatically not of the �pull yourself together we didn�t have this in the 1950s� school.

But there are different types of depression and anxiety. Manic depression/bipolar disorder seems a fairly separate condition. Serious or clinical depression, which leaves people unable to function, is separated off (in various different ways, by various categorisation systems) from a more common-or-garden variant. There are various types of anxiety, but one particular type appears to be related to depression � which is why it responds to SSRI (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor) drugs that were originally marketed as anti-depressants (whereas other types, which respond to other drugs such as Xanax and Valium, do not). �Standard depression� and anxiety appear to be on the rise in contemporary society. But are they?

The question is not easy to answer. Some types of subjective disorder/mental illness appear to occur in all societies. The condition we call �paranoid schizophrenia� appears to be constant, with a 1% occurrence in all societies � and is identified as a disorder, even in societies that believe in magic and supernatural forces (which is one thing that marks schizophrenia in a secular-scientific society). Serious clinical depression appears to have a degree of universal occurrence, too � stories of people falling �into a melancholy� lasting for years appear to be a record of this.

But what appears to be new are distinct forms of depression and anxiety spreading over an ever-wider area of social life. For a century or so, a form of anxiety � known for a number of decades as �the nervous breakdown� � has been current. More recently, it was joined, and to some extent superseded by, a persistent form of depression that leaves people functional but feeling utterly hollowed out inside � feelings of meaninglessness, obsessional negative thinking about self, disconnection, lack of pleasure, low energy, fuzzy mind, psychosomatic illness, etc. A certain type of anxiety has a similar structure of circular thinking � extreme hypochondria, panic, etc � to the obsessional negativity of depression.

Whatever the occurrence of other types of subjective disorder across cultures, this condition appears to be very specific to our culture, that of prosperous consumer-oriented, media/image-dominated mass society. Cultures based around smaller intimate societies, pre-capitalist forms of production, strong religious or traditional beliefs, may have all sorts of problems, but they don�t have these ones, by and large. From within the sociological/social-psychological discipline that suggests a root cause � meaningful life in such societies is founded on shared meaning, a lesser role for individuality and choice, and a common belief system. That puts a ground beneath people�s feet. Sadness, even misery, occurs, but they do not become that vague, cloudy but tormenting, depression/anxiety that many modern people recognise.

Further to this theory of the psychology of depression/anxiety is a theory of physical changes created by it. This is the �cortisol hypothesis� � the argument that the long-term occurrence of such feelings elevates levels of the fight-or-flight hormone cortisol, which is eventually depressive in itself, and also lowers the levels of the brain chemical serotonin. Playing a role in many functions, serotonin has a role in regulating mood, chiefly by allowing us to gain pleasure from the presence of trusted others (the �loved-up� effect of MDMA/ecstasy, which creates a serotonin flood, may be, in effect, causing one to identify strangers as loved others). The suggestion would be that persistent depression gets people �stuck� in a physical-mental rut, from which it is difficult to get out of by an act of will or self-determination alone.

Chemical anti-depressants have been known since the 1950s, but they were fairly crude in their effect. In the 1970s, fluoxetine was discovered, the first SSRI. Serotonin fills the �synaptic gap� in the brain � the space between synapses, the brain�s many billions of connection points. The cortisol hypothesis suggests that in depressives, it is reabsorbed too quickly by the �receptors� (like little drains) budded on the synapse. SSRIs have a chemical structure similar to serotonin, but they are not absorbed by the receptors � so they �plug� some of them, and serotonin stays in the gap longer. This appears to produce an immediate lift in many users of SSRIs, but the main effect appears to occur three to five weeks later, when a sustained lift out of depression often (but not always) occurs.

From the time Prozac, produced by Eli Lilly, came on the market, every other Big Pharma company started to bud off variants. Zoloft and Paxil were the two major ones, and Lexapro, the variant Freedman was spruiking, one of the minor leaguers. Such drugs are all minor molecular variants of each other, and they have a 17-year branded patent (after which they can be sold generically by anyone). However, the corporations producing these drugs can extend the patents if they can argue that they treat other conditions � thus Lexapro had its patent life extended as an anti-anxiety drug, and Zoloft was applied as a treatment for �social phobia�, a pretty amorphous condition that the manufacturers argued was a hard medical condition. In one particularly audacious move, Zoloft�s manufacturer tried to have �shyness� defined as a medicable condition.

SSRIs took off in a way that no drug ever had to date. By the 1990s, they were the most -prescribed drugs, earning Big Pharma billions, hitting prescription levels of 10-15% of the population. They were in use for about five years before people began to notice that they were changing the culture, our idea of selfhood � and the actual materiality of the selfhood of people taking them. The argument that mental depression could create a persistent physical depression pre-existed the rise of the market for SSRIs, but it was effectively cemented in place by their success, their vast marketing campaigns, and the capacity of Big Pharma to fund research that tracked in certain directions.

But as SSRIs spread and governments cut back funding for more expensive talking-therapy approaches, the mental-to-physical theory of depression and anxiety began to fall away , and a simpler de facto model took over � depression and anxiety were treated as purely physical/neurological functions, to be directly adjusted by drugs. GPs had preferred to refer troubled patients to psychotherapists, to apply a mix of talking and drug therapy; increasingly GPs themselves began to prescribe the drugs with very little follow-up. They had initially been presented as taking three weeks to work, but it was clear to many that an immediate effect was occurring in many people. GPs want to alleviate suffering, large numbers of depressed people came through their doors, the drugs seemed to work, and GPs tend to be practical types, not prone to cross-cultural analysis. Though other people tried to emphasise the complex nature of depression as a social/psychological occurrence, the de facto physical theory started to win out.

The approach was also attractive to many sufferers too. Depression has many factors, and some of its particular occurrence may have individual factors � dysfunctional childhoods, bad adolescences, physical/sexual/emotional abuse, personality traits useful in some societies (e.g. mildness, gentleness, introversion) that make life difficult in an individualist, market-based society. Committing to therapy offered a longer, more difficult path, one that involved admitting a lack of success in negotiating parts of life, and confronting things that the depression or anxiety might have been an unconscious strategy to avoid. Not only do SSRIs offer an immediate lift, they also offer the idea that one is afflicted with a random physical condition. It not only absolves the sufferer from a more difficult struggle, it gives one the status of the ill, a degree of special dispensation.

But this ever-widening acceptance of the physical approach to depression occurred at the same time as some contrary indications. While it was clear that SSRIs altered the chemical processes of the brain, several studies suggested that there was no difference between SSRIs and a placebo in alleviating depression and anxiety. This in turn has thrown doubt on the serotonin/cortisol hypothesis. This isn�t unusual in this area; for more than half a century, lithium has been used to treat bipolar disorder, yet there is still no authoritative theory of how it works. The placebo effect disturbed many practitioners, which they dealt with by ignoring it (no profession is more practiced in psychological defences than psychological professional practice). There was no real theory applied, but the simplest one would be from anthropology � the pill is a gift, a material exchange of reciprocal connection between doctor and patient. Effectively, it�s an invitation to magical thinking that relieves the patient of the burden of their own afflictions, and thus allows their energy to flow outwards to the world again. �Pick up thy bed and walk� � Jesus, by using a touch of the hand, was one of the first documented short-term psychotherapy providers.

SSRIs have been so lucrative for their patent-holders that they have gone to extraordinary lengths to maintain the market. This has meant playing down some of the serious side effects. Earlier anti-depressants had had general side effects � they left users feeling sluggish and fuzzy. SSRIs had particular side effects � they left most users without side effects, but caused a very dire one in a small number (1-2%) of users, which was a sudden and overpowering surge of suicidal feelings. The simple enough theory of that was that depression had the effect of depriving very troubled people of will (and was thus to a degree protective). Recharged by an increase of energy and purpose, but with none of their psychological issues dealt with, the combination supercharged the drive to self-destruction. There has also been an argument that SSRIs promote homicidal behaviour, for related reasons, and Big Pharma fought court cases all through the �90s to try and head that off at the pass.

Proportionally, these were relatively rare occurrences � though given the numbers of people taking these drugs, the raw figures of suicidality are quite high � but in the 2000s another issue began to emerge, that of habituation and neurological damage from long-term use. SSRIs had been marketed on the claim that they wouldn�t have an effect on people who didn�t have depleted serotonin, wouldn�t diminish in effect over time, and wouldn�t cause receptor damage. But none of this had been tested prior to FDA approval and only emerged after the drugs had been in use for a decade or more. The dangers are obvious � prolonged use could reduce the effectiveness to zero, damage the mood �hardware� and leave sufferers in a worse state than they began in, and with resistance to the drug in question.

That SSRIs are beneficial, life-saving in some instances, and an effective treatment for deep-seated and resistant depression and anxiety seems well-established (though some would disagree). But the level of prescription that goes with the �physical� theory of depression/anxiety is vastly in excess. No one really advanced the simplistic physical theory of depression, bald and unvarnished; it has simply grown up around practice � and then it started to steer the practice and exclude alternatives. But the physical theory of depression ignores the stark fact that many societies that do not have our characteristics simply do not have the levels of depression and anxiety we are experiencing, especially the levels of it in adolescence and childhood.

When we approach it from the other end, the social end, we can say something different about depression and anxiety � that we have a depressogenic society, creating depressed people who would not otherwise be so, and creating a vast amount of unnecessary suffering. But what is it about our society that is creating this depressive excess? As I noted, the clear division is between societies �grounded� by abiding others, shared purpose and work, mutual obligation in close networks and a relatively concrete belief system. Modernity, of any character, is the factor most likely to increase these conditions � scattering villages into cities, replacing traditional culture with mass culture, allowing people to become isolated and disconnected � but that only goes part of the way. After the �great transformation� when we went from �communities� to abstract societies, both the working and middle class re-assembled community in the form of neighbourhoods, associations, congregations, etc.

But, in the 1960s, those worlds were subject to a fresh break-up. A consumer economy, class mobility, liberal social revolutions and a new centrality for mass media put the individual at the centre of social life � with the increased risks of collapse that individualism creates. In the �80s and �90s a further break-up of social networks occurred with the extension of the market into all areas of social life and the absolute dominance of a culture based on a vast stream of images. Beneath this all, a master process ran � working life ceased to be about production for a local community, for each other, and became commodity production, work to produce something with no particular meaning attached to it, to sell on the market.

The result is a society that is supercharged, dynamic, often exciting, and liberating. But it is also competitive, setting people against each other, hyper-individualistic, repeatedly dissolves grounding meanings � where you grew up, how you lived, etc � and all of it driving many people to work very hard with no meaningful purpose. When the going is good, it�s great, when it�s not, you can fall for a long way. It is also afflicted with what one might call the �precursor� of depression and anxiety, narcissism � a see-saw of manic (and defensive) overvaluation of self and a sense of crushing insignificance amid the global image gallery.

That way of life can create outbreaks of depression and anxiety everywhere, but it tends to hit two groups hardest. The first is the powerless � those with little control over their lives, victims of under-resourced education, abusive backgrounds, working-class worlds from which work has been removed, rural areas in serious decline (where community has become attenuated) and the like. Depression and anxiety in these cases are what Martin Seligman called �learned helplessness� � when no choice you could reasonably make could make a difference, you collapse into a vicious circle of defeated and depressive mood.

The other group that seems to be afflicted by depression and anxiety are at the other end of things � culture and media producers. Levels of depression and anxiety appear to be very high amongst this group, judging by the number of articles written about it in media for affluent consumers. There are many particular reasons for this. Culture/media producers work in a world of images, disconnected texts and relentless production of content with no great meaning. It�s like working in a hall of mirrors. Unless you understand that you�re in a hall of mirrors, you are bound to be disoriented. Then there is the particular form of the work. Whatever the many advantages of such work over factory labour, the latter doesn�t ask for your continued passionate engagement; many people in culture and media circles find themselves sucked dry by the continued demand for ideas, opinions, performance, etc. Increasingly this demands a mobilisation of self, drawing on personal experience and attitude to create material for sale. Within an overarching purpose for doing it � political, for example � many people will simply find themselves out of gas. That is particularly so in our era. The great era of liberal media is over, when large organisations were willing to put capital in the service of truth and inquiry. With honourable exceptions, media are now content mills, and media and culture can feel, for many people, a ghastly parody of what they went into it for.So, many people have a desire to believe that their depression or anxiety is nothing other than a physical illness, and a whole medical system is willing to agree with them. But there is also an interest the system itself has in maintaining such a false and simplistic belief. To really address these issues. we�d have to start thinking about social and cultural change � rebuilding a way of life in which there is more possibility for people to live in meaningful interconnection, less set against each other in an isolating manner, and less dominated by commodities, and images. Those who have an interest � even an unconscious one � in the current world continuing are those who have an interest in selling meaning back to a general populace one piece at a time. Such interests cannot but shape their worldview.

In the wake of last week�s article, the critic fielded a number of criticisms, all of them easily dealt with. A persistent one was that �I was not a doctor�, so couldn�t speak. Well, first of all I wasn�t advocating a course of action. Freedman was, pushing a line pretty strongly pro-SSRI, and implicitly suggesting indefinite use. I merely pointed out the side effects. Freedman�s doctor either didn�t point these out, professionally remiss, or Freedman didn�t pass them on, and she was remiss. More broadly, however, the idea that only doctors, or those channelling them, can speak on the topic is to pre-decide the issue as a medical one, and depression/anxiety as a physical disease, which is pretty circular. The most extreme form of that was the argument that to suggest that people with such conditions, think about whether factors in their life might be contributing � like living in the vortex of media-entrepreneurial mania � was to be �patronising�. This seems about the most bizarre application of the medical �physical� model of depression/anxiety around; that you should entirely abandon any sort of reflection on how you live, and simply jack into your brain with a chemical. This is the denial of autonomy and self-determination at its most confused.

Secondly, was the suggestion that a personal article should be above criticism, especially a �brave�, confessional one. But, of course, it wasn�t just a personal article � it was evangelising for a certain type of drug, so to claim immunity would be perverse. And how brave is it to publish another mental illness memoir, really? Nor is contacting the author for more information a feasible option. If you�re going to advocate a debatable course of action based on your own experience, it becomes a public object, to be debated with robustness.

Depression and anxiety have become major topics in the contemporary world because they�ve become major challenges in many people�s lives, either directly or through people they�re close to. But the depression/anxiety memoir, etc, has also become something else � a heroic narrative, something that lifts the reader out of the mundane and tells of overcoming the odds. Frontier narratives for a built-out world, inward ho! They make people feel alive in a deadened world, which is why they are endlessly repeated. Without pushing back against this on a collective level, it will only get worse. It will be worse for your kids, and it will occur in a context not of expanding opportunity and prosperity, but of the narrowing of such. The crisis will come, best prepare for it.

Australia has become a world centre for this. Whether we have more depression and anxiety than elsewhere is hard to quantify, but we sure love to talk about it. We�ve gone from true blue to Beyondblue in a couple of generations. One reason why that might be, is that our culture was so thin in the first place. With old value systems like imperial mission or cultural nationalism gone, we�re just a big suburb on the coast, swamped by the new anti-culture, anti-social media, etc. Depression confessional has become the centre of our cultural life. Politicians, footballers, writers, etc � it never stops. There was a point to it early on, but now it is part of a cultural predicament. And also of diminishing returns, as the discussion never moves forward to what it needs to do, which is to talk about this issue as a social and historical phenomenon. Ultimately, to make the decision to ring-fence a part of your own behaviour as pathological is to make a separation between self and world that can�t help but put your whole subjectivity �in brackets� as it were. For some it may be necessary; for all it should be a last resort. Better to try and avoid the trap altogether than to hack your leg off to get out of it.

Books from which this article was drawn and further reading for those interested:

Rick Ingram (Ed) Contemporary psychological approaches to depression: Theory, research, and treatment;

Peter Kramer, Listening to Prozac and Against Depression;

Peter Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry;

Joanna Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure;

Martin Seligman, Helplessness: On Depression, Development and Death;

John Cornwall, The Power To Harm;

Erich Fromm, The Sane Society and On Being Human;

Susan Pinker, The Village Effect;

Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism;

Pierre Bourdieu, The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society; and

The depression-anxiety film club! Three films by Adam Curtis: The Century of the Self; The Trap; Watched Over By The Grace of Loving Machines.

Over to you, Mia.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:47

fliptophead: Oct 2, 2006

katlington posted:

So the same process behind the majority of conservative/fygm thinking? Short-sightedness, spite and ignorance of the interconnectedness of society.

But that's what I mean, they can't even claim fygm because they haven't even got theirs!

# ? Apr 2, 2015 05:21

Mr Chips: Jun 27, 2007; Whose arse do I have to blow smoke up to get rid of this baby?

Hey Auspol, have a graph I made:

This was made to show a bozo with an MBA why mobile data services aren't going to be obsoleting fixed lines any time soon.

Edit: included handset data and total mobile data.

Mr Chips fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Apr 2, 2015

# ? Apr 2, 2015 05:29

CrazyTolradi: Oct 2, 2011; It feels so good to be so bad.....at posting.

Mr Chips posted:

Hey Auspol, have a graph I made:

This was made to show a bozo with an MBA why mobile data services aren't going to be obsoleting fixed lines any time soon.

This is pretty much what real experts have been saying for ages now, but newspapers will still get "experts" in social trends to tell us how MOBILES ARE THE FUTURE of computing and wireless is the THING that will drive the Internet in this brave new world.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 05:34

Mr Chips: Jun 27, 2007; Whose arse do I have to blow smoke up to get rid of this baby?

CrazyTolradi posted:

This is pretty much what real experts have been saying for ages now, but newspapers will still get "experts" in social trends to tell us how MOBILES ARE THE FUTURE of computing and wireless is the THING that will drive the Internet in this brave new world.

Luckily the latest round of ABS stats came out yesterday. Fixed had another year-on-year of double digit growth, mobile had gone backwards again. If I had more time, I'd look at their collection methodology for mobile, because mobile traffic going backwards is a bit counter-intuitive.

open24hours posted:

I'd imagine it's because it excludes handsets.
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@...2014&num=&view=

I actually read those bits and completely forgot about them.

Mr Chips fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Apr 2, 2015

# ? Apr 2, 2015 05:38

CrazyTolradi: Oct 2, 2011; It feels so good to be so bad.....at posting.

Mr Chips posted:

Luckily the latest round of ABS stats came out yesterday. Fixed had another year-on-year of double digit growth, mobile had gone backwards again. If I had more time, I'd look at their collection methodology for mobile, because mobile traffic going backwards is a bit counter-intuitive.

That might tie into the fact that open/free Wifi networks are becoming more widespread. I used to use a lot more mobile data, but at this point the only time I use it now is between home and uni. Even when I go over to Toowong Village, there's at least 4-5 free networks I can use over there. Telstra and Optus have also been rolling them out in public places a fair bit lately as well.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 05:42

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

Re: the iinet sale, lots of incorrect info in this thread.

Phone posting at the moment so I'll be brief, but it hasn't been sold yet - it goes to a vote in the shareholder meeting in June/July. TPG require 75% of the total amount of shares to be in the hands of people willing to sell at the 8.60 offering price.

The board doesn't decide, they make a recommendation to shareholders. The shareholders then get the final say.

This is why founder Michael Malone is on the warpath. With 5% of the total share holdings, he 'only' needs to convince enough people to make up another 20% of the total amount of shares to vote against the motion.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 05:43

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 18:18

open24hours: Jan 7, 2001

I'd imagine it's because it excludes handsets.
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@...2014&num=&view=

# ? Apr 2, 2015 05:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > AusPol: Commemorating 100 years since the Ottomans stopped the boats

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