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RIP Luds, it's been funny seeing how much even fairly non political people I know liked and respected his decision to quit and speak well of him.
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Jun 16, 2018 02:26
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Should Australia develop its own nuclear weapons? It seems an outlandishly radical thought for such a safe country to consider. But a former adviser to Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop thinks it's an idea whose time is fast approaching. In his book Why Australia Slept, launched this week, Peter Hendy says that Australia needs to consider nuclear weapons because "if we could financially afford them, [they] would secure an even more independent foreign policy" for the country. Hendy, a former Liberal federal MP, former head of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and now a consultant, is not the first to raise this delicate subject. The way things are going he won't be the last. Three former deputy secretaries of Australia's Defence Department - strategists Hugh White, Paul Dibb and Richard Brabin-Smith - have mooted the idea in the past year. Till these most recent months, it's been something of a taboo topic in respectable circles. One big reason? Australia already has the protection of the United States nuclear umbrella. Under this system, the US pledges that if anyone should launch a nuclear strike on one of its allies, Washington would retaliate against the aggressor. So to suggest that Australia now needs its own atomic arsenal is to suggest that there has been a fundamental breakdown in trust. In short, that the US alliance is dead. The four fissile firebrands - Hendy, White, Dibb and Brabin-Smith - don't press this as an urgent priority. But they don't want Australia to be caught unprepared if it should become so. But hold on. Why now? Isn't this exactly the wrong time to be laying such plans? Doesn't this week demonstrate that the US can act to deal with a hostile nuclear state? Didn't Donald Trump's summit with Kim Jong-un just reduce a threat for the US allies in the region, including Australia, which falls within reach of Kim's long-range missiles? There are two key points here. First, the text of the brief document that the leaders signed does say that North Korea "commits to work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula". But this is neither new nor convincing. A former US nuclear negotiator with the North Koreans, Republican David Asher, who led the North Korean activities group in the White House of George W. Bush, says: "For the President to say that the nuclear threat has been eliminated is, I think, unwise. If he's wrong, it'll be on him." Asher, a scholar at the Centre for New American Security, says: "I have hope, but after dealing with the North Koreans for 25 years, it's not a promise I personally can have great faith in." Asher has a litany of first-person examples of Kim Dynasty duplicity. The consensus in Canberra is much the same. Although Turnbull has commended Trump for giving it "a red-hot go", he says that we need to see whether Kim actually delivers. The briefings that the security agencies gave Turnbull and other ministers this week were summarised by one participant as "it's complex, we need to wait and see". So the first point is that no one can yet know whether Trump has actually de-fanged a dangerous enemy. But the second point is what everyone does know now - that Trump is prepared to trade away the interests of an ally if he thinks it will help him get a deal with an enemy. Trump announced that he had promised Kim he would stop the big military exercises that the US conducts with South Korea twice a year. This is not necessarily a bad idea and may be a useful concession to show US goodwill. The joint exercises began in 1968 after Pyongyang sent a team of 31 commandos to assassinate South Korea's president in his official residence, the Blue House, in Seoul. They failed but got within 100 metres of their target. The military manoeuvres were designed to show US and South Korean unity, commitment and readiness. The problem? The cancellation was news to South Korea's President, Moon Jae-In. It was news to another keenly interested US ally, Japan's Shinzo Abe. And it was news to Trump's own military commanders, who were in the middle of preparations for the next exercises, two months away. And in announcing the end to the manoeuvres, Trump adopted the language of the North Korean propagandists. Pyongyang has long railed against the exercises as "provocative war games". The US has never called them war games nor described them as provocative; Trump did both. It seems that Kim put the demand to Trump in the negotiating room and Trump agreed on the spot. He agreed to a demand by an enemy without consulting his ally. "It is urgent to make bold decision," Kim told the US leader, in the words of the North Korean official news agency, and Trump bought it. This was greeted with delighted incredulity in Beijing. Because this is precisely what the Chinese Communist Party has sought for many years. Professor Shi Yinhong, of the People's University in Beijing, said that Trump's pledge to halt military manoeuvres was almost "too good to be true" from China's point of view. Why does China care? Because one of its greatest strategic aims is to separate the US from its allies. One of America's greatest assets is that it sits at the centre of a global alliance system embracing more than 40 nations, including most of the world's major economies. China, by contrast, has a only couple of rather unimpressive allies, Pakistan and North Korea. Shi drew the connection: If US troops in South Korea were to stop the military exercises, it could cause allies to lose confidence in Washington and undermine the entire US military presence in Asia, he told America's National Public Radio. For China, this is victory on every level. "We see a clear pattern of Donald Trump turning against his allies," says a close student of Trump foreign policy, Tom Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "He's generally hung his allies out to dry." Just in the last two weeks he has harmed US alliances with Britain, France, Germany and Canada, putting punitive tariffs on their exports and insulting Canada's Justin Trudeau on top, calling him weak and dishonest. He upset his allies at the annual G7 summit by proposing that Russia be restored to the group's meetings, when the G7 is supposed to be ostracising Putin for invading Ukraine. Trump has inflicted so much political damage to America's European and Canadian alliances that "the community of North American and European nations forming the nucleus of the alliance that won the Cold War for the West is closer to breaking up now than at any time since the 1940s" in the assessment of Walter Russell Mead, an American scholar. "And," says Wright, "he completely sidelined Japan" with this week's Kim summit. It seems that there was only one US ally who had been able to persuade Trump decisively to change US policy, and even that has turned sour, says Wright. South Korea's Moon was the one who persuaded Trump to try directly negotiating with Kim, yet in those very negotiations Trump ended up trading away a South Korean interest. "Moon thought he could ride the tiger, control where he went, but didn't realise the tiger goes where the tiger wants to go," as Wright puts it. "He brought Trump into this but then lost control." Why does Trump consistently act against the interests of his allies? Wright, who predicted just this pattern of behaviour before Trump was elected, explains: "In his 30-year history of talking and writing about this stuff, Trump has always been more aggravated by America's friends than its enemies. "He has been consistent about this for 30 years. It's not sophisticated or complex, but he is much more ideological than people think: interdependence is a bad deal for America." Trading partners will cheat America; allies will free ride on America's military budget. Australia has been unscathed so far; Wright says that this will likely change only if some disagreement emerges. Trump isn't so systematic to work down a list of allies he must alienate, but he will "react to what's in front of him. It's possible to sneak on by." The only time he will turn against a US rival is if he thinks that rival is directly threatening the US with attack, according to Wright. Otherwise, he's happy to deal with America's enemies: "He's open to deals, he worries about commitments." Which is how he manages to make concessions to North Korea while sidelining the interests of South Korea. Trump went further, saying that he wanted one day to withdraw the 28,000 US troops that provide an American "trip wire" across the Demilitarised Zone separating North from South. If the North should invade, the US forces will be engaged automatically, the wire tripped, guaranteeing America will come to Seoul's defence. Trump said this was a matter for the future; South Korea's Moon wishes he hadn't raised it at all. If Trump's North Korean gambit works, he will have a serious achievement. If it fails? Says Asher: "The irony of the North Korean denuclearisation deal could be that everybody else decides to go nuclear. If it fails and Kim remains in power and countries doubt our commitment, then what's to stop Japan or South Korea or Australia going nuclear?" It could lead to "mass nuclearisation - it's a very bad position, 20 countries in the region with nukes, like 20 people in a room all pointing guns at each other". These are, of course, imponderables, possible futures that no one hopes for but governments need to plan for. Hendy and White and Dibb and Brabim-Smith may be tending towards alarmism, but they want Australians to think about the world after the American-led alliance system has passed into history. An American journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, writes in The Atlantic this week that he asked a number of unnamed White House officials whether there is a Trump doctrine in foreign policy. One, described as a senior official with direct access to the President and his thinking, replied that there is. And it is: "We're America, bitch." History is in the making.
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Jun 16, 2018 02:32
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australia can't be trusted to roll out a loving telephone network, how can we be trusted with nuclear weapons
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Jun 16, 2018 02:40
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Guys guys how about instead of nuclear non-proliferation we go for nuclear proliferation! What could possibly go wrong?!??
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Jun 16, 2018 02:47
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Lid posted:Should Australia develop its own nuclear weapons? No.
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Jun 16, 2018 02:55
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Aren't we selling shitloads of uranium to make them anyway
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Jun 16, 2018 02:58
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Recoome posted:australia can't be trusted to roll out a loving telephone network, how can we be trusted with nuclear weapons Fission to the node
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Jun 16, 2018 03:04
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Why are political scientists consistently the dumbest people to be held as experts? I can't imagine the kind of mental calculus you would have to come up with to consider nukes a good idea.
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Jun 16, 2018 03:31
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hooman posted:Guys guys how about instead of nuclear non-proliferation we go for nuclear proliferation! We don't need nuclear weapons anyway, we've got Lucas Heights, we've got radioactive material that we're contractually obliged to deal with as we sell our uranium to others. Let's just build a poo poo load of dirty bombs. No need to level a city when we can just decimate countries with the equivalent levels of nuclear fallout instead. It'll go great with our space program, we can literally just rain highly radioactive material from space.
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Jun 16, 2018 03:34
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Jun 16, 2018 03:55
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Starting the construction of Metal Gears would be one way to bring manufacturing back to the country
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Jun 16, 2018 03:56
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Aren't we selling shitloads of uranium to make them anyway Almost all of it, yeah
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Jun 16, 2018 03:58
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Box of Bunnies posted:Starting the construction of Metal Gears would be one way to bring manufacturing back to the country Metal... gear, mate?!
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Jun 16, 2018 04:12
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The Liberal Party’s peak council has voted almost 2:1 to privatise the ABC after hearing calls from members to save taxpayer funds by selling the public broadcaster in the same way icons like Qantas were sold decades ago. The overwhelming vote on Saturday morning was another display of the anger at the ABC in conservative ranks although no Liberals offered any detail on how the organisation could be sold and how much it would be worth. The vote came in a series of debates where federal council delegates, representing Liberal branches from across the country, also voted for an efficiency review into SBS. The council also voted, by a narrow margin of 43 to 31 votes, to relocate the Australian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a highly contentious move opposed by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop during the debate. There are 110 council delegates with the right to vote at the council meeting on Sydney on Saturday. The Institute of Public Affairs and others on the conservative side of Australian politics have stepped up their calls for the ABC sale in recent months, at the same time Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has lodged a series of complaints over its news coverage. Council delegate Mitchell Collier, the federal vice president of the Young Liberals, said he had enjoyed ABC programs such as Bananas in Pyjamas during his childhood but he believed there was no economic case for keeping the broadcaster in public hands. “High sentimentality is no justification for preserving the status quo,” Mr Collier told the meeting.He named Qantas as an example of a company that remained an Australian icon after being privatised, defying critics who warned against the sale in the 1990s. Mr Collier backed the motion, which said: “That federal council calls for the full privatisation of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, except for services into regional areas that are not commercially viable.” “There are several ways we could privatise the ABC – we could sell it to a media mogul, a media organisation, the government could sell it on the stock market,” Mr Collier told the meeting. He also cited a recommendation from Institute of Public Affairs member Chris Berg that would see the ABC sold to a group of employees who would become shareholders. “There is no strong economic case for a public broadcaster in 2018,” Mr Collier said. “Privatising it would save the federal budget $1 billion a year, could pay off debt and would enhance, not diminish, the Australian media landscape.” There was no explanation of how the ABC would have any commercial value to a buyer if the government imposed restrictions on the sale to protect rural services, forcing any buyer to continue operations that might lose money. Mr Collier said the sale would mean other media companies would then compete on a “level playing field” against a private competitor rather than one that was funded by taxpayers. Nobody rose from the federal council floor to speak against the motion. In response, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield reminded the meeting that privatising the ABC was not government policy.“We do have a range of measures that we’re seeking to implement to enhance the efficiency, the accountability and the transparency of the ABC operations,” he said. “We have paired that with an efficiency review to make sure the ABC is the best possible steward of taxpayer resources that it can be.” Senator Fifield also cited the fact that he had made two appointments to the ABC board – Minerals Council of Australia chair Vanessa Guthrie and Queensland rural leader Georgina Somerset – as evidence of action on the way the ABC worked. enator Fifield told the meeting the government was amending the ABC’s governing act to stipulate that it was “fair and balanced” in its coverage and would force it to disclose the names of staff earning more than $200,000 a year. No other members spoke on the motion and it was carried on a show of hands from delegates, with roughly twice as many voting in favour of the motion as those who voted against. No count was taken.
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Jun 16, 2018 04:30
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Catholicism, WOW! http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-16/catholic-church-leaders-refuse-to-report-child-sex-abuse/9877526 quote:Catholic priests have said they are not willing to break the seal of confession to report child sex abuse, and would rather go to jail than abide by the law.  "I would say, 'Come with me now, we will go down to the police station in order for you to show that you are remorseful'" G-Spot Run fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Jun 16, 2018 |
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Jun 16, 2018 05:09
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quote:“There are several ways we could privatise the ABC – we could sell it to a media mogul, a media organisation, the government could sell it on the stock market,” Mr Collier told the meeting.
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Jun 16, 2018 05:26
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My first car was a stick
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Getup trying to oust Dutton. It'd be pretty funny if it worked.
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Jun 16, 2018 05:37
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Nice of the Liberal party to gift for the ALP a campaign issue like that
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Jun 16, 2018 05:42
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Yeah I thought the older lnp voters liked the ABC. I like the ABC 
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Jun 16, 2018 06:45
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The kind of people who join the Liberal party these days and vote on these things are exclusively hardcore churchies or IPA types
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Jun 16, 2018 07:06
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I think on a survey it was predominantly regional LNP that liked the ABC.
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Jun 16, 2018 08:01
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The Australia Institute and Reachtel do surveys every so often on how popular the ABC is, how much funding it should get and whether it should be privatised. And the answers are always very, at least as much as it does now, and no. For almost every demographic they look at. There might be specific shows that are unpopular in the Libs / Nats but privatising the whole thing is political suicide, and they know it.
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Jun 16, 2018 08:18
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Doctor Spaceman posted:The Australia Institute and Reachtel do surveys every so often on how popular the ABC is, how much funding it should get and whether it should be privatised. And the answers are always very, at least as much as it does now, and no. For almost every demographic they look at. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_tactics
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Jun 16, 2018 08:51
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Zenithe posted:I think on a survey it was predominantly regional LNP that liked the ABC. It's one of the only channels that reliably works in a lot of country areas, for one.
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Jun 16, 2018 08:55
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Yeah, exactly. And even then you don't call it a funding cut, you call it an efficiency dividend.
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Jun 16, 2018 09:00
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I have a weird, daggy crush on the ABC, even in it's current cut-to-the-bone incarnation. Especially RN. If they privatise it I'll be devastated.
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Jun 16, 2018 09:08
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My favourite jrpg for the playstation 1 was Salami Tactics.
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Jun 16, 2018 09:14
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Resident Idiot posted:I think their headline is inaccurate - surely Barnaby was the first to return, and Scott Ludlum the first casualty? Does he count as a casualty if he was clearly looking for a way out beforehand?
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Jun 16, 2018 09:16
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Yeah, exactly. And even then you don't call it a funding cut, you call it an efficiency dividend. Funnily enough we can observe salami tactics in current Russian foreign policy and its effect on US, leading to the current "should Australia get nukes?" debate. By alienating every single US ally systematically the US has been isolated from the rest of the world and only finding allies in Russia and Israel (with China incidentally can't believing their luck). As its happened progressively with each ally being hosed over one at a time, its reached a point where th e US hasn't realised the end of the western alliance may be upon us because if Putin were to Press the Button i don't think anyone thinks that Trump will push it back.
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Jun 16, 2018 10:50
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https://twitter.com/Debby_Ng/status/1007503913367400448
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Jun 16, 2018 12:50
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what the loving have you people been arguing about I'm pretty sure that every single person in this thread agrees that: a) we should live in a world where men dont rape and kill women, and b) until that world is realised, it's good to remind people that there are precatuions that they can take to minimise the risk to themselves, and not taking those precations is risky behaviour that will raise the likelihood of somehting bad happening to them why teh gently caress are you all arguing for four pages Analogy: I go to india and take out $300 from an atm and walk down the street waving it in the air, then some guy beats me up and steals my money. Is the solution: a) tell me that im stupid for not putting the money in my wallet, and making sure that noone is watching me take out money from the atm, or b) yell that the government of india is hosed and they should stop all crime fromm taking place anywhere at any given time and im completely faultless and youre a racist pig for telling me that waving money around was a bad iea you loving idiots (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 16, 2018 13:30
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PS in this analogy the money is my vagina, which im waving around because my skirt is so short my lips are hanging out the bottom
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Jun 16, 2018 13:31
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In this analogy waving the $300 is 'being female'. Rapists don't give a poo poo what the victim is wearing. IIRC, they're more likely to target modestly dressed women because they're seen as less confident.
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Jun 16, 2018 13:38
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https://twitter.com/SimonBanksHB/status/1007821438340886528
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Jun 16, 2018 13:43
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thanks for taking my obvious troll seriously the point is, you can take actions that expose you to risk or minimise you to risk and yes its very very unforunate that women have a higher degree of risk to their personal safety and its something we should all be concerned about and try to end but the fact remains that it is there, and you can minimise your exposure to risk, or not, and noone will fault you either way, but you can still say "hey ladies, if you walk home at night with a friend, it has less chance of ending badly for you, sweetcheeks"
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Jun 16, 2018 13:44
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What's the troll?
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Jun 16, 2018 13:45
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The Peccadillo posted:What's the troll? plumpy hole lever posted:PS in this analogy the money is my vagina, which im waving around because my skirt is so short my lips are hanging out the bottom
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Jun 16, 2018 13:46
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... alright?
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Jun 16, 2018 13:49
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I don’t think you know what trolling is
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Jun 16, 2018 13:57
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dixon didn't Have 300 dollars stolen??
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Jun 16, 2018 13:57
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