open24hours posted:

UPF Facebook posted:

For those asking, our mate Dan Evans, who is the chief organiser for the international Patriots rally in Canberra on Feb 6th, was ambushed tonight by several men in Newtown, NSW while with his wife and a friend.
The men reportedly used weapons in the ambush, Dan was rushed to hospital but is talking and eating, he seems ok.
The attack was politically/racially motivated and carried out by Antifa / Anarchists.
We'll tell you more as the info rolls in.

Recoome posted:

From the UPF Facebook page


Honestly it's just as likely that the duder was attacked by rival right-wing ultranationalists as much as it was Antifa.

BBJoey posted:

the ALP doesn't have a supportive media empire ready to wholeheartedly accept and defend any excuse they make, though.

Graic Gabtar posted:

You know I'm going to say it don't you?

BBJoey posted:

no, am I about to be owned (moreso than usual)?

Graic Gabtar posted:

No, just annoyed.

Well, they have the ABC and SBS.

quote:

NSW Police accused of targeting poorer drivers by omitting cocaine swab from roadside tests

The NSW Police stands accused of targeting poorer people by choosing not to test for substances preferred by wealthier sections of society such as cocaine.

The police, who are greatly increasing the use of roadside tests across NSW, test for only three types of drugs: cannabis; amphetamines and methamphetamine; and MDMA, the party drug known commonly as "ecstasy" or "molly".

But it can be revealed that Dräger, the German multinational that supplies police with roadside testing machines, boasts of its capability to detect cocaine and a range of other drugs not currently tested for in NSW.
David Shoebridge MLC wants all drugs to be tested for.

David Shoebridge MLC wants all drugs to be tested for. Photo: Max Mason Hubers

The Greens' Justice spokesman, David Shoebridge, has accused the police of targeting drug users from certain social classes.

"At least part of the answer lies in the fact that cocaine is overwhelming used by those with higher incomes and higher socioeconomic status," Mr Shoebridge said. "If [Premier Mike] Baird extended the flawed roadside testing regime to cocaine he would get a lot of grief in the Liberal heartland of the eastern and northern suburbs of Sydney".

National surveys have found cocaine is used at the same rate in the broader population as amphetamine, by about 2.1 per cent of all Australians in the past 12 months.

But the drug is used at different rates by different sections of society.

The most "socio-economically advantaged" 20 per cent of Australian society uses cocaine three times more than the bottom 20 per cent, according to 2013 federal government research.

Conversely, methamphetamine and amphetamine were found to be slightly more preferred by people in the lowest socio-economic grouping.

MDMA was much more favoured for by the wealthy, according to the survey: 1.6 per cent of the poorest people had used it recently, compared to 2.9 per cent of the most advantaged.

Research has associated cocaine use with reckless decision-making and reduced driving ability.

United Kingdom police have recently begun a national roadside drug testing for cocaine and ecstasy.

A spokesman for the NSW Police said cocaine was "under-represented" in statistics about the causes of road trauma and that police focus was on drugs that were "major, contributing factors".

The spokesman said 3.2 per cent of drug tests collected at roadside incidents and sent away for forensic testing returned a positive reading for cocaine last financial year.

But Mr Shoebridge cited British research that found that cocaine was the drug second-most commonly detected drug in roadside drug testing and studies showing it increased the risk to drivers of a traffic accident. About five per cent of drivers involved in traffic accidents where blood samples were collected tested positive for cocaine, according to statistics from the UK coroner.

Dräger machines can also detect opiates, ketamine and prescription medication, none of which are currently tested for in NSW.

Police run samples of drivers' saliva through testing machines to verify field swabs of drivers' mouths that return a positive reading for illegal drugs.

Despite the wide-ranging capability of its drug-testing machines, police only swab drivers' mouths with tests that instantly identify the three classes of drugs. Swabs with wider capabilities are available.

Arrests from the test have reached 3000 in the past nine months, a doubling from the same period the previous year.

Deputy Premier Troy Grant announced plans to triple roadside drug testing to 97,000 tests each year by 2017.

Mr Grant, a former police inspector in central NSW, has promised to "throw millions" at roadside testing but has ducked calls to expand the tests to prescription medication.

Mr Shoebridge has criticised the police for punishing users for cannabis smoked the day before and which may be latent and detectable and in users' saliva but no longer impairing their faculties.

He has also previously called for testing to be applied to prescription medication, such as benzodiazepines, a class of muscle relaxants and sedatives, most famously associated with the brand name Valium.

""Roadside drug testing needs to be drastically changed to test for all the drugs that are commonly found to impair driving [...] at levels that impair driving," Mr Shoebridge said.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

David Shoebridge MLC wants all drugs to be tested for. 

Mad Katter posted:

I'm pretty sure Shoebridge wants no drugs to be tested for because the current tests don't necessarily prove impairment.

hooman posted:

This is especially dumb in the context of the recent intentional softballing and silencing of critique of the liberal's awful NBN policy.

Laserface posted:

I wonder how court deals with these cases?

hooman posted:

This is especially dumb in the context of the recent intentional softballing and silencing of critique of the liberal's awful NBN policy.

open24hours posted:

As far as I know the law doesn't care about impairment. A positive test is a positive test and there's nothing like the 0.05% limit for blood alcohol. The laws are completely arbitrary and should be repealed. Anyone convicted under them should have their conviction overturned and be compensated.

haetbus posted:

When they had Andrew Scipione (I *think*) on Hack for Triple J last year, he was saying the marijuana testing was because the drug is illegal, not because it impairs driving. This was because the test picks it up days after any potential impairment has passed. His point was you shouldn't be doing it, and this is just another way to catch people who do. He basically admitted it had nothing to do with driver impairment.

Birb Katter posted:

https://twitter.com/ALDIAustralia/status/692889911574155265

Zenithe posted:

What even is marketing.

Birb Katter posted:

https://twitter.com/ALDIAustralia/status/692889911574155265

Twitter posted:

Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!

Graic Gabtar posted:

We're awfully serious in the echo chamber aren't we?

Birb Katter posted:

https://twitter.com/ALDIAustralia/status/692889911574155265

Gentleman Baller posted:

Tony Abbott making a dick of himself internationally and locally is only going to make the people happier with the man who 'saved' us from Tony Abbott. Death status is still certain.


what was it I need to know

Gentleman Baller posted:

Tony Abbott making a dick of himself internationally and locally is only going to make the people happier with the man who 'saved' us from Tony Abbott. Death status is still certain.


what was it I need to know

ShoeFly posted:

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/four-arrested-over-brawl-outside-newtown-service-station-20160128-gmghtf.html

Same fight?

quote:

Bureau of Meteorology issues severe weather warnings for every state and territory apart from NT as supercell storms stalk eastern cities and the season’s first cyclone forms off the coast of Western Australia

quote:

Labor has set up an election year school funding battle by promising to pump $4.5 billion into the nation's schools by fully funding the Gonski funding agreements it struck when last in office.
The party has also pledged, if it wins power, to reverse the $30 billion reduction to school funding over the next decade revealed by the Coalition in its 2014 budget.

Starshark posted:

This wouldn't have happened if we didn't support gay marriage. Tony was right!

SadisTech posted:

Mother Nature is apparently sick of our poo poo and is trying to wipe all of Australia out:

BBJoey posted:

I'm stuck in the Syd airport because of this and I long for death

Starshark posted:

Can anyone with a Crikey subscription post this article: Rundle: right-wing derangement syndrome is spreading

http://www.crikey.com.au/?p=532630

quote:

The conservatoriat has such a deep-seated psychological need for the right to be right, that it can’t feed back accurate information to its own side.
Bring on the stupid. With Tony Abbott now not in a position to provide a piece of daily right-wing, batshit, Catholic crazy, the mantle falls to lesser mortals. The Australian’s Greg Sheridan does not disappoint. His piece on the US election has all the elements of right-wing derangement syndrome: a false equivalence between Donald Trump and social democrat Bernie Sanders; and a dose of hilarious Godwinning.
“Sanders and Trump share an anger on both sides of American politics about the failure and dysfunction of the political system. This anger is well justified. But democratic anger doesn’t always produce a good result. People were rightly unhappy with the failures of democratic politics in Weimar Germany. The outcome of their anger wasn’t very good.”
Good god, the man’s serious articles even echo self-parodic Godwinning: “You’ve got a moustache. You know who else had a moustache?” But wait, there’s more. Who’s to blame for the disastrous situation in which the American right finds itself? Why, it’s Barack Obama! Greg explains:
“So why do I say that Barack Obama was the forerunner of Trump and Sanders? Obama was the first successful pure celebrity candidate for the presidency …”
And it goes from there. No achievements blah, blah, blah, narcissistic, blah, blah, blah … The protest is Psych 101. The catastrophe of the Dubya presidency and Obama’s victories wounded the narcissistic self-regard of the right, that they represented the “real” US — just as Tony Abbott represented the “real” Australia — and they project it back onto him.
The real-world explanation for Trump’s rise on the right might lie with — gasp! — the right. Indeed, a lot of it lies with the global organisation Sheridan works for. It was Fox News, after all, that helped create the right-wing fantasy voter in 2008, mourning the victory of a Kenyan-Hawaiian Communist. It was Fox News that engineered the rise of the Tea Party, and put magical thinking about a “restoration” at the centre of right-wing politics. With “Make America Great Again”, Donald Trump is reaping that harvest, with such success that he can now snub Fox News altogether. Meanwhile, the Democrats have two candidates debating rational, costed policy options. Perhaps that’s due to John McCain. Or something.
Sheridan’s consoling fantasy — the man could put out an anthology of consoling fantasies, simply by collecting his key articles, from 9/11 to now — was replayed in Australia on a smaller scale. The Salo-esque idolatry that the conservatoriat had for Abbott blinded them to his hopelessness, and to the degree to which their politics was isolated. Fox News helped Obama to two victories, and the conservatoriat here bumped Malcolm Turnbull into the Lodge. If he can now diminish the right in Liberal pre-selections, then the Abbott fan club will have achieved the unlikely result of having moved the Australian political spectrum to the left, and left the actual right with a diminished parliamentary base. Quite an anti-achievement.
The fault, of course, was in continuing to employ people like Sheridan, and Albrechtsen, and Devine etc — those who have such a deep-seated psychological need for the right to be right, that they can’t feed back accurate information to their own side. Such papers employ people like Peter van Onselen as a sort of loyal opposition, a sort of reality ombudsman to their political whackadoodle. They’ve got it the wrong way ‘round. They should have, as I noted in 2007, got rid of all but one of the whack jobs, and had the paper rejoin the reality-oriented community. Instead they employed Maurice Newman. Turnbull is the result. Trump is the result. The inability to examine their own politics now seems terminal, a prelude to the collapse of that form of “The Right” as a unified formation.Sheridan is the useful test, a … what’s the word? Dipstick.
Sheridan is a dipstick for that sort of delusion, because he was once and is sometimes still capable of rational analysis. It’s the measure of a mass political fantasy — and I won’t be Godwinning, no sirree, not me — that people eventually find it irresistible. Which would appear to be the case here, there and everywhere. What splendid times these are: the right crazy, Abbott staying in the ring, the Bolt Report gone, and Christian Kerr doing Cut and Paste. And there are another nine months to go …