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  • Locked thread
Periphery
Jul 27, 2003
...
The end is near!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-15/australian-real-estate-boom-peaks/7030232

Recoome posted:

Official home price figures appear to confirm that Australia's housing boom peaked in winter, while private rental data bode ill for the real estate market's future.

The Bureau of Statistics Residential Property Price Index (RPPI) is not the most up-to-date measure of housing markets, with the latest figures released today dating from the September quarter.

However, it is comprehensive and long-running, and it appears to confirm what more timely private measures have been showing over recent months - that the property market has come off the boil.

Home prices did grow a strong 2 per cent on average across the eight capital cities, but that was down from 4.7 per cent the previous quarter.

Sydney and Melbourne continued to lead the pack for price growth, but both slowed dramatically from their winter booms - Sydney from a record 8.9 per cent surge to 3.1 per cent growth, Melbourne from 4.2 to 2.9 per cent.

The more timely monthly Core Logic RP Data figures show that Sydney and Melbourne home prices actually fell in November, by 1.4 and 3.5 per cent respectively.

While housing markets in the two biggest capitals may have only topped out over the past couple of months, it is a different story in the mining-reliant cities of Darwin and Perth.

On both the ABS and RP Data figures, the two cities are showing annual price declines.

On the official data, Darwin's prices were down 0.4 per cent last quarter and 2 per cent over the past year, while Perth homes declined 2.4 per cent in the September quarter and 3.3 per cent last year.

Those falls only look set to worsen, with the latest monthly rental figures from property data firm SQM Research showing what the company describes as "alarming increases" in vacancies.

The vacancy rate in Darwin is now 3.8 per cent, while empty Perth rental homes now make up 3.9 per cent of its rental stock, up from 2.5 per cent a year ago.

That is showing up in a 7.6 per cent fall in asking rents for Perth houses over the past year and a 7.8 per cent slide for units.

New tenants have been getting even better knock-downs in Darwin, where rents have slumped 20 per cent for houses and 13.7 per cent for units.

The only areas seeing solid rises in asking rents are Melbourne (3.4 per cent for houses and 3 per cent for units) and Hobart, where landlords are asking 8 per cent more for houses but unit rents are falling.

Sydney rents were rising at less than 2 per cent over the past year, and asking rents appear to be falling as the market heads into the seasonally weak summer period.

"We note that 2015 overall has recorded another year of modestly rising vacancies," said SQM's managing director Louis Christopher.

"It suggests the supply side has been running a touch ahead of underlying demand at the national level. As we predicted back in October, I believe rents in 2016 will record only modest rises with the outperforming areas likely to be the Gold Coast and Hobart."

If the rental market remains weak, that is likely to keep further downward pressure on investor demand for housing, which has already been hit by tighter lending rules over recent months.

With property investors having made up around half of the housing market during the recent boom, as they exit the market forthcoming ABS data may confirm that property price declines are spreading beyond the mining towns and capitals.

:getin:

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hooman
Oct 11, 2007

This guy seems legit.
Fun Shoe

"Guardian Au posted:


Myefo: budget banks on 'unrealistic' $13.9bn savings blocked by Senate

Scott Morrison has counted cuts already rejected by the Senate in his budget update, which campaigners say undermine the government’s budget message

The Turnbull government is “banking” $13.9bn in Abbott-era savings rejected by the Senate in a budget update that still shows the deficit blowing out by $26bn over four years since the May budget.

The government announced new savings in the midyear economic and fiscal outlook (Myefo) on Tuesday – including cutting bulk-billing incentives for pathology services and tightening a welfare “crackdown” – to pay for already announced new spending on innovation, the special Syrian refugee intake and processing asylum seekers in Australia.

But a slump in revenue, partly as a result of falling commodity prices, saw the 2015-16 deficit climb from $35.1bn predicted at the time of the last budget to $37.4bn now.

And included in that deteriorating bottom line are old savings included in policies that the Senate has steadfastly refused to pass – which means the budget update counts “savings” that are “wholly unrealistic”, according to the Australian Council of Social Service (Acoss).

Among the “savings” still counted in the budget update despite being rejected are:

* The $4.8bn that would be saved by the latest version of proposed cuts to family payments, even though Labor has only passed $500m of them;

* $3.2 bn from increasing the interest rate for student loans and requiring that they be paid back sooner;

* $1.1bn from cutting university funding;

* $1.3bn for the proposed $5 hike in the PBS co-payment that was supposed to start in January;

* Over $600m in rejected welfare savings, including forcing under-25s to wait a month to receive the dole, which was rejected by the Senate in September.


“Those 2014 budget measures were stalled in the Senate for good reasons,” said Acoss chief executive Cassandra Goldie.

“If the government wanted to give us a realistic assessment of the budget, they should not be booking savings that are wholly unrealistic,” she said.

The chief executive of Universities Australia, Belinda Robinson, said she believed “the community will be concerned that the government, despite one year’s reprieve, intends to pursue the cuts to university funding announced in the 2014 budget”.

And Labor’s health spokeswoman, Catherine King, criticised the government for counting the “savings” from the PBS co-payment despite health minister Sussan Ley saying in May she was not going to “waste time” putting them back to parliament because they would be voted down.

The Myefo does remove $5.8bn from the budget bottom line to account for delays in the Senate and concessions the government has made to try to get legislation through, but still counts the savings from the stalled legislation.

It shows total revenue will be $33.8bn lower than expected over four years, partly as a result of declines in commodity prices since Joe Hockey handed down his final budget in May.

Economic growth has also taken a hit, with the treasurer, Scott Morrison, predicting a lift in real GDP of 2.5% this financial year, compared with 2.75% forecast in the budget. The government has also cut half a percentage point from the expected figure in each of the next few years, with growth now tipped to be 2.75% in 2016-17 before firming to 3% after that.

“The inclusion of this more realistic outlook on domestic growth should be seen for what it is; that is, a statement of confidence in our economy,” Morrison said as he joined the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, in Perth on Tuesday to announce the new figures.

Morrison pointed to improvements in the forecast unemployment rate, which has been revised down from 6.5% to 6% this financial year and is expected to fall to 5.5% by 2018-19.

The government is continuing its budget rule of not cutting to make up for revenue writedowns, but has found offsets for new spending announced since the last budget.

The new cuts in the health portfolio include $650m over four years by cutting bulk-billing incentives for pathology and MRI services, $595m from “streamlining” health workforce programs, and $472m from adjusting aged care funding formulas.

Morrison is also banking on $1.3bn by expanding the welfare payment integrity measure announced in the last budget, which was already slated to achieve $1.7bn, with an increased focus on pursuing discrepancies between the employment income they declare to Centrelink and the “pay-as-you-go” information provided to the tax office.

A further $695m is to be saved from the welfare system by increasing other forms of data-matching. The government will also gain $318m from a new cap on the number of green army projects.

Myefo represented the first major test for the new financial team installed after Malcolm Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott from the top job in September on the grounds the country needed better economic leadership.

The underlying cash deficit is expected to be $37.4bn in 2015-16, a deterioration from the $35.1bn estimated at the time of the budget. The expected deficit increased from $25.8bn to $33.7bn in 2016-17, increased from $14.4bn to $23bn in 2017-18, and increased from $6.9bn to $14.2bn in 2018-19. The new figures represent a cumulative hit to the budget position of about $26bn over four years.

The government is now projecting a return to surplus in 2020-21, one year later than tipped at the time of the last budget.

Morrison and Cormann said the government was not rushing back to surplus because extreme measures “would place a handbrake on household consumption and business investment growth and unnecessarily threaten the fresh new momentum emerging in our transitioning economy”.

The treasurer said: “Despite revenue writedowns of almost $34bn caused by falling commodity prices, a declining terms of trade, weaker global growth and the adoption of more realistic domestic growth outlook, we continue patiently and responsibly on the path to budget balance.”

Morrison stressed it was “a budget update, not a budget” so bigger changes would be considered in May and in the lead-up to the federal election. Decisions on tax changes have also been deferred until next year.

The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, said the government’s budget was “on a road to nowhere with no prospect of improving”.

“Instead of looking at multinational taxation, or superannuation tax concessions, the Liberals are at it again. They are proposing the harshest cuts to the people least able to protect themselves,” he said.

The shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, said Turnbull and Morrison had “presided over a budget deficit blowing out at the rate of $120m a day since the last budget”.

Bowen said: “Deficit reduction and returning to surplus was at the heart of this Liberal government, and it begs the question: if they have no plan to return to balance, what is the point of the Turnbull government?”

Greens MP Adam Bandt said Morrison was following Hockey’s lead by “taking the axe to the old, the sick and the poor while letting the very wealthy off scot-free”.

Recoome
Nov 9, 2013

Matter of fact, I'm salty now.

I just had the biggest "I posted what?????"

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

even the "official" REIWA rental vacancy stats (which are just short of an outright lie) are pretty dire for Perth.

Plus median house sale prices are going backwards.

It's going to be hilarious when all the new blocks of apartments around the CBD (south/north Perth, Vic Park, Mt Lawley) are finished an no-one buys/rents them.

Anidav
Feb 25, 2010

ahhh fuck its the rats again
Lmao you just know they're gonna call an election to specifically pass the Abbott cuts later down the line. They're working backwards. Moonwalking back into the Hockeynomics budget after the election win.

Doctor Spaceman
Jul 6, 2010

"Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."
There's a budget to go before the election.

Anidav
Feb 25, 2010

ahhh fuck its the rats again
And it'll be a softball.

Starshark
Dec 22, 2005
Doctor Rope

Anidav posted:

And it'll be a softball.

The budget or the Leigh Sales interview?

Birb Katter
Sep 18, 2010

BOATS STOPPED
CARBON TAX AXED
TURNBULL AS PM
LIBERALS WILL BE RE-ELECTED IN A LANDSLIDE

Starshark posted:

The budget or the Leigh Sales interview?

Yes

Tirade
Jul 17, 2001

Cybertron must act decisively to prevent and oppose acts of genocide and violations of international robot rights law and to bring perpetrators before the Decepticon Justice Division
Pillbug
DV and road tolls and non-terrorist sieges have a higher body count than racially-motivated violence in Australia so the thread should stop saying Australia has a racism problem.

Wait that's dumb because ideology matters beyond mortality rates.

loving hell auspol.

Starshark
Dec 22, 2005
Doctor Rope

Tirade posted:

DV and road tolls and non-terrorist sieges have a higher body count than racially-motivated violence in Australia so the thread should stop saying Australia has a racism problem.

Wait that's dumb because ideology matters beyond mortality rates.

loving hell auspol.

If only there was another indicator of racism besides racially-motivated violence.

Amethyst
Mar 28, 2004

I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai

BlitzkriegOfColour posted:

Lid and Amethyst seem to be victims of a shifting Overton window.

Or to put it another way: they have heard the lie so many times, they believe it to be true.

The only person who perpetuated a lie here was Cleretic.

Amethyst
Mar 28, 2004

I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai
And yeah I don't think this is an overton window thing. Pretty sure the only place where you'll hear that a terrorist attack in the CBD of sydney isn't a big deal is the Auspol thread.

Solemn Sloth
Jul 11, 2015

Baby you can shout at me,
But you can't need my eyes.

Not a big stretch to imagine that DV committed by police goes under reported compared to DV overall too.

Birb Katter
Sep 18, 2010

BOATS STOPPED
CARBON TAX AXED
TURNBULL AS PM
LIBERALS WILL BE RE-ELECTED IN A LANDSLIDE

Amethyst posted:

And yeah I don't think this is an overton window thing. Pretty sure the only place where you'll hear that a terrorist attack in the CBD of sydney isn't a big deal is the Auspol thread.

Violent, mentally disturbed, known to police woman basher gets terrorist status because :reasons:. Those reasons were not because he was part of Daesh because he sure as gently caress wasn't, it seems to be he used media perceptions of it as an excuse, a crutch, to continue being a violent toss pot. I really didn't think that was such a hard thing to see but obviously I overestimated you.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!

Amethyst posted:

The only person who perpetuated a lie here was Cleretic.

Yeah, sorry about that. I bungled recalling the facts, and of course didn't actually realize it. My bad.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

The reason the cafe siege is on dubious grounds of "terrorism" is because Monis was mentally deranged, had no clear ideological axe to grind and was making it up as he went along. IS claimed him after the fact, but the guy was a Shia and a self-described practitioner of black magic. He would have been executed in Raqqa.

Birb Katter
Sep 18, 2010

BOATS STOPPED
CARBON TAX AXED
TURNBULL AS PM
LIBERALS WILL BE RE-ELECTED IN A LANDSLIDE

freebooter posted:

The reason the cafe siege is on dubious grounds of "terrorism" is because Monis was mentally deranged, had no clear ideological axe to grind and was making it up as he went along. IS claimed him after the fact, but the guy was a Shia and a self-described practitioner of black magic. He would have been executed in Raqqa.

Abbott claimed him as Daesh before they even did.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Yes, well, Abbott

SCheeseman
Apr 23, 2003

For a moment I thought you two were the same person and you were responding to your own posts.

gay picnic defence
Oct 5, 2009


I'M CONCERNED ABOUT A NUMBER OF THINGS

Birb Katter posted:

Violent, mentally disturbed, known to police woman basher gets terrorist status because :reasons:. Those reasons were not because he was part of Daesh because he sure as gently caress wasn't, it seems to be he used media perceptions of it as an excuse, a crutch, to continue being a violent toss pot. I really didn't think that was such a hard thing to see but obviously I overestimated you.
It's only wikipedia, but it seems like there is some pretty good reasons to label him a terrorist.

quote:

On his website, Monis had pledged allegiance to "the caliph of the Muslims", believed to be referring to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and denounced moderate Islam.

Monis was... wearing a black headband with the inscription, in Arabic: "We are ready to sacrifice for you, O Mohammad."

Monis also demanded that a hostage ask all media to broadcast that "this is an attack on Australia by the Islamic State".[37] In addition, he demanded that an Islamic State flag be delivered to him

Hostages were ordered to hold up a Black Standard flag, with the shahādah in white Arabic letters (an Islamic creed declaring: "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of God"), against the window of the café.
There are links to sources on the wikipedia page but I can't be arsed re posting them here.

Seems to me that nearly every definition of terrorism involves promoting a political or religious line, and Monis certainly did that. Whether or not it was caused/contributed to some mental illness doesn't seem to matter, he was using acts of violence to achieve those political or religious goals.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Yeah unless someone wants to buy us all a round of new avatars I think that's going to continue for some time to come

Amethyst
Mar 28, 2004

I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai

Birb Katter posted:

Violent, mentally disturbed, known to police woman basher gets terrorist status because :reasons:. Those reasons were not because he was part of Daesh because he sure as gently caress wasn't, it seems to be he used media perceptions of it as an excuse, a crutch, to continue being a violent toss pot. I really didn't think that was such a hard thing to see but obviously I overestimated you.

Yep :reasons:. definitely a completely arbitrary label. You're a smart guy.

Amethyst
Mar 28, 2004

I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai

Cleretic posted:

Yeah, sorry about that. I bungled recalling the facts, and of course didn't actually realize it. My bad.

Cool we all make mistakes

iajanus
Aug 17, 2004

NUMBER 1 QUEENSLAND SUPPORTER
MAROONS 2023 STATE OF ORIGIN CHAMPIONS FOR LIFE



Sometimes I think that we in the NRL thread got off each with our mysterious benefactor's presents.

Amethyst
Mar 28, 2004

I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai

freebooter posted:

The reason the cafe siege is on dubious grounds of "terrorism" is because Monis was mentally deranged, had no clear ideological axe to grind and was making it up as he went along. IS claimed him after the fact, but the guy was a Shia and a self-described practitioner of black magic. He would have been executed in Raqqa.

Lid has already comprehensively addressed this point, go back and read his posts.

Cartoon
Jun 20, 2008

poop
Until the actual inquest comes to a conclusion I'm not prepared to call it one way or the other.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-26/experts-divided-over-sydney-siege-as-terrorism-or-mental-illness/6726772

quote:

Sydney siege inquest: Experts divided on whether Lindt Cafe attack was terrorism or result of mental illness By Jessica Kidd Updated 26 Aug 2015, 4:35pm

Experts are split on whether Sydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis was a terrorist or whether he was acting as a result of mental illness, an inquest has heard.

Three terrorism experts have given evidence at the inquest into the Lindt cafe siege and all agreed that Monis's mental state played a significant role in his decision to attack in December 2014. Professor Clarke Jones from the Australian National University told the inquest he believed Monis was acting out of a need to belong and had demonstrated this desire when he tried to join the Rebels bikie gang in the months before the siege.

Key points:

Three experts agreed Monis's mental state played significant role in attack
Professor Clarke Jones said Monis acted out of need to belong; Professor Greg Barton said the attack was an act of terrorism
Professor Rodger Shanahan said siege had more to do with mental health than terrorism
"I wonder if they had accepted his membership, whether we would be here today," he told the inquest.

Professor Jones said that may be why Monis claimed he was attacking Australia on behalf of the so-called Islamic State. "I think he saw Islamic State as the one organisation that might accept him," he said. Islamic extremism and counter-terrorism expert Professor Greg Barton told the inquest he believed the siege was an act of terrorism but he said that, compared with other lone-wolf terrorists, Monis was unusual. "Even in the context of lone-wolf attacks, this one was an outlier," he said.

But Professor Barton said that when compared with other lone-wolf terrorists, such as Norwegian gunman Anders Breivik or the American Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Monis was not "consistent in articulating a manifest or position".

I think the state of his mental health was relevant to the siege he carried out and I'm of the opinion it was not a terrorist act. - National security expert Professor Rodger Shanahan

Professor Barton conceded that Monis was suffering from mental health issues and was the kind of person Islamic State sought to exploit. "It goes after anyone who can join, it goes after damaged goods," he told the inquest. "I think we should expect more unstable, complex individuals to emerge." National security expert Professor Rodger Shanahan backed the theory that the siege had more to do with mental health than terrorism. Professor Shanahan told the inquest that Monis would have been under considerable stress in the days before the siege when he lost a High Court application for leave to challenge his conviction for sending offensive letters to the families of dead Australian soldiers. Professor Shanahan said that loss, combined with Monis's schizophrenia and the fact he was facing criminal charges of sexual assault and being an accessory to murder, would have "piled up" on him. "I think the state of his mental health was relevant to the siege he carried out and I'm of the opinion it was not a terrorist act," he told the inquest. "It's a great deal of stress on someone who has a violent past."

But why let mere facts get in the way of what ever mouth spew seems most appropriate :shrug:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-15/martin-place-siege-what-we-do-and-do-not-know/7021524.

Amethyst
Mar 28, 2004

I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai

Cartoon posted:

Until the actual inquest comes to a conclusion I'm not prepared to call it one way or the other.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-26/experts-divided-over-sydney-siege-as-terrorism-or-mental-illness/6726772


But why let mere facts get in the way of what ever mouth spew seems most appropriate :shrug:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-15/martin-place-siege-what-we-do-and-do-not-know/7021524.

Wow, it seems those guys are having an argument over it, just like us!

Laserface
Dec 24, 2004

The housing market "coming off the boil " isn't what we want. We want the cheap Chinese pot it's boiling in to crack and fall to pieces.

Covering us all in boiling water.


Metaphors man.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Can someone give me a rundown of why the economy is going into so much debt? I'm assuming it's a bit more complicated than the trifecta of a squandered mining boom, unwillingness to cut middle class/Western Sydney welfare, and the overpriced housing market?

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007

Obviously it's Labour waste.

Comstar
Apr 20, 2007

Are you happy now?

freebooter posted:

Can someone give me a rundown of why the economy is going into so much debt? I'm assuming it's a bit more complicated than the trifecta of a squandered mining boom, unwillingness to cut middle class/Western Sydney welfare, and the overpriced housing market?

The Greens posted last week(?) that removing the government payments/subsidies to the Miners, Coal, super rich super and negative gearing, the deficient would be 0.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

For a greenie like me stripping coal subsidies seems like a no-brainer, but then... like, why are we giving them in the first place? How much of our electricity comes from coal? Do they actually need those subsidies to run the industry and supply us with power?

I don't want to make assumptions in either direction. It strikes me that there may be a good (if uncomfortable) reason to be subsidising an industry which should really be pretty profitable on its own.

Recoome
Nov 9, 2013

Matter of fact, I'm salty now.

Amethyst posted:

And yeah I don't think this is an overton window thing. Pretty sure the only place where you'll hear that a terrorist attack in the CBD of sydney isn't a big deal is the Auspol thread.

shut the gently caress up

Recoome
Nov 9, 2013

Matter of fact, I'm salty now.

freebooter posted:

The reason the cafe siege is on dubious grounds of "terrorism" is because Monis was mentally deranged, had no clear ideological axe to grind and was making it up as he went along. IS claimed him after the fact, but the guy was a Shia and a self-described practitioner of black magic. He would have been executed in Raqqa.

nope see it's just black and white

this guy was a brown person therefore is a terrorist because he has an arabic sounding name. QED

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.

freebooter posted:

The reason the cafe siege is on dubious grounds of "terrorism" is because Monis was mentally deranged, had no clear ideological axe to grind and was making it up as he went along. IS claimed him after the fact, but the guy was a Shia and a self-described practitioner of black magic. He would have been executed in Raqqa.


Recoome posted:

nope see it's just black and white

this guy was a brown person therefore is a terrorist because he has an arabic sounding name. QED

What is this?

This hadn't come up before all day so want to ask this straight out - are you both of the opinion that the Lindt siege was not a terrorist incident? The second reply I'm only including because it incredibly simplistic and is arguing a strawman against Amethyst considering this is the first time anyone had brought up the argument of whether it was terrorism at all. Up until this point the question was the relationship between politically extreme ideology and mental illness resulting in violence, which had been addressed. No one up until now had claimed that the Lindt siege was not a terrorist act and if that is the claim I want to know where we stand.

For my sake I will say it's pretty clearly a textbook definition of one, and with the details included by gay picnic above impossible to view otherwise without some serious mental gymnastics to try to be so anti-racist to the predominant racism of Australian people to Muslim's that they've gone too far in the other direction and in a case where it is appropriate to label an act terrorist has a kneejerk response of "well it's only because he was Muslim the media said he was a terrorist" as that applies in 99% of these cases, but this is the 1% where it doesn't.

Amethyst
Mar 28, 2004

I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai

Recoome posted:

nope see it's just black and white

this guy was a brown person therefore is a terrorist because he has an arabic sounding name. QED

I explained my reasoning for calling him an terrorist multiple times, but keep slapping away at that straw man like a dweeb idiot all you like.

Anidav
Feb 25, 2010

ahhh fuck its the rats again



Dev reveals that freaks from the survival horror game "Outlast" were modelled after Tony Abbott.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Lid posted:

What is this?

This hadn't come up before all day so want to ask this straight out - are you both of the opinion that the Lindt siege was not a terrorist incident? The second reply I'm only including because it incredibly simplistic and is arguing a strawman against Amethyst considering this is the first time anyone had brought up the argument of whether it was terrorism at all. Up until this point the question was the relationship between politically extreme ideology and mental illness resulting in violence, which had been addressed. No one up until now had claimed that the Lindt siege was not a terrorist act and if that is the claim I want to know where we stand.

For my sake I will say it's pretty clearly a textbook definition of one, and with the details included by gay picnic above impossible to view otherwise without some serious mental gymnastics to try to be so anti-racist to the predominant racism of Australian people to Muslim's that they've gone too far in the other direction and in a case where it is appropriate to label an act terrorist has a kneejerk response of "well it's only because he was Muslim the media said he was a terrorist" as that applies in 99% of these cases, but this is the 1% where it doesn't.

I think it's a textbook example of why "terrorism" can be such a nebulous, difficult and sometimes meaningless word.

I get where you're coming from - the guy put an Islamic State flag up for gently caress's sake. But the Wikipedia page has a long segment on "debate whether this is a terrorism event" for a good reason. When you read about the guy's history it's hard not to think that he wasn't just a fruit loop who, because of his cultural background and personal history, happened to latch onto Islamic extremism as a cause du jour. (Which of course raises the question of how we define mental problems, and how many "terrorists" had mental problems.) But nothing happens in isolation. You can be a Muslim radical (with legitimate grievances!) and also be a lunatic, and that raises the sticky question of how we separate those two when defining the act itself.

I don't have much problem with defining a guy who shoots up an abortion clinic as a terrorist. But his hatred of abortion is no different from the guys who stands outside the clinic waving pictures of dead fetuses but would never dream of laying a hand on a woman. It's the fact that he chooses to express it violently which makes him different - and that compulsion comes from a different part of the brain, the same part which causes young men to shoot up their school for no ideological reason whatsoever.

I guess what I'm saying is that for me, I think terrorism has to be purely ideological, whereas somebody like Brian Martin clearly just has a broken brain. The Sydney cafe siege lies somewhere in the middle.

edit - I need to go to bed, obviously I meant Martin Bryant. And I guess also what I'm saying is that Monis may have been a terrorist, but wouldn't have become one without his clear and extreme mental issues, and it's difficult to separate the two.

freebooter fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Dec 15, 2015

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Laserface
Dec 24, 2004

Anidav posted:




Dev reveals that freaks from the survival horror game "Outlast" were modelled after Tony Abbott.

Did they really reveal that? I posted this like last year with the same thought

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