Graic Gabtar posted:

An old, gay friend of mine used to remark wryly that after ten beers anything was possible.

quote:

The LNP has labelled Labor's planned inquiry into political donations a "witch hunt" that will put the integrity of the state's corruption watchdog at risk.
But Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said if the Opposition "had nothing to hide", then they had nothing to be concerned over.

Fairfax Media revealed on Tuesday Labor would be pushing ahead with its commitment to investigate donations to political parties and any links with awarded tenders, contracts and approvals, the same day the new permanent chair of the Crime and Corruption Commission, Alan MacSporran, officially stepped into the role.

It is understood the Parliamentary Crime and Corruption Committee, where Labor holds the majority and acting chair, can direct the CCC to launch the inquiry, which would have the same powers as a Royal Commission.
But shadow police minister and former attorney-general Jarrod Bleijie, who himself came under fire during the Newman government for politicising the CCC, said Labor was putting the watchdog's independence at risk.
"I think there has been relative stability in the CCC over the last few years without getting involved in politics and we are now seeing the new Labor Government, the first thing they want to do is involve the CCC in politics," he said.
"I think the CCC won't do that, because they know the risks associated with that. We'll see. The CCC is able to do whatever inquiry they want."

But Ms Palaszczuk has already had to fend off claims that the inquiry, which was floated during the election and included in the commitments Labor made to independent MP Peter Wellington to gain his support to govern earlier this year, is a political get-square, despite originally saying the she wanted to "find out, under the former government", whether there were any connections between donations and projects.

"People throughout Queensland have been stopping me for the last three years, concerned about allegations of whether or not decisions were made due to political donations," she said.
"We don't know because some of those donations have been hidden, because the LNP changed the goal post. The LNP, the former government changed those political donation thresholds from $1000 to $12,500. Now we have reverted back to the norm and now we will see whether or not there has been any conflict, or perceived conflict of interest between the awarding of tenders and contracts and political donations."

Ms Palaszczuk said "you only have to listen to radio stations" to hear people's concerns.
"So let's get to the bottom of it."

But she said it was different to the Abbott Government ordered Royal Commission into union corruption, which has been much maligned by Labor, because hers was "an election commitment".
"Governments, if there is an inquiry, governments, whether you are on one side or the other, you should, abide by that inquiry," she said.
"Now, that has happened in the past, if the federal government has an inquiry into trade unions, so be it, now if there is going to be a political donations, so be it."

The terms of reference are yet to be set, but Ms Palaszczuk said she would speak to Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath about what they should contain in the near future. She later conceded the inquiry could go further back than the previous government, to when Labor was in power.
"The Labor Party has nothing to hide and I hope the LNP has nothing to hide," she said.
An LNP spokesperson said the party had nothing to fear from an inquiry in to political donations.
"Any such inquiry would not be credible without also investigating the funding of political campaigns conducted by third parties, in particular those by unions," the spokesperson said.

quote:

"Ken Roth of +Human Rights Watch shared this extraordinarily detailed map of who currently controls what chunks of land in Syria and Iraq, as of this week.

When reading this map, pay close attention to the white cross-hatching that covers most ISIS and Iraqi territory: that indicates "sparsely populated area," i.e. open desert which is exceptionally difficult to cross individually, much less in force, and so claims of "control" over these areas are more theoretical than practical.

Also note the maps of ethnic and linguistic groups on the left; while tribal affiliation (the basic axis of alliance in this region) is more complicated than that, these lines indicate the coarsest first-order boundaries. The relative homogeneity of Iraq (having separate Sunni and Shi'ite areas) is an aftereffect of the Iraq War, and of the ethnic cleansing and mass violence which followed: prior to the war, Iraq was highly intermixed. When you hear commentators ascribe the end of this violence to the 2007 "Surge," be aware that there's a certain amount of hubris involved in that: the violence happened to stop right around the time that there were almost no remaining areas where Sunnis and Shi'ites lived together anymore, everyone having fled or been killed.

You can contrast this with Lebanon and some of the immediately adjacent parts of Syria, which remain ethnically highly mixed. This is part of what made the Syrian civil war so explosive: the existence of a stable government was what assured the safety of minority groups (since stable governments tend to frown on mass slaughter), and so everyone in those groups was highly aware that if the government fell, they would become targets of genocide, thus giving all of those groups an extremely strong incentive to fight for al-Assad.

And in fact, the Syrian map is now significantly less mixed than the Lebanese map, even in the far southwest of the country which borders on it. A few years ago, you would have seen an extremely significant Druze population, especially near the Israeli border. (There is a significant Druze population in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, and they frequently move across the borders; that's in fact one of the biggest sources of on-the-ground communication between the three countries. The Druze in Israel are a particularly interesting case, as they're significantly more integrated into Israeli society than the Arabs, and feelings remain generally warm on all sides there.) The replacement of that population with Sunni dominance, and likewise the end of cross-border ties between Syrian Druze and everyone else, is a consequence of the rebels taking over that area.

Of course, you shouldn't take the broad swathes of Sunnis and Shi'ites to indicate profound unity among them; that's where tribal structures start to come into play. While "hey, we're both Sunnis, let's go beat up those Shi'ites" may be a perfectly reasonable overture in a negotiation between tribes, it's no more than an overture; it's not uncommon for the response to be "screw you, Tikriti" (or any other geographical, tribal, or familial distinction which happens to be more salient to the people in that particular area) Only the Kurds have something resembling a broad alliance among themselves, born of a very different history.

If you've noticed a pattern here, it's probably that alliances are fairly complicated, and people tend to make alliances with other tribes primarily for protection against third tribes, or to beat up some third tribe. This tends to clash harshly with the profound cultural need of Americans for there to be a clear "good guy" to root for and a "bad guy" to root against. Bashar al-Assad is a bloodthirsty, violent dictator, who is also the guarantor of the safety of all the ethnoreligious minorities of Syria against genocide. The Shi'ites of Iraq were profoundly oppressed for years by the Sunnis; until they got into power, at which point they started killing people left and right.

Some outsiders respond to this by picking one group or another to paint as their "good guys" of choice, whether it be the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Kurds, or the Syrian rebels who aren't allied with ISIS. Unfortunately, this tends to run hard against the rocks of reality fairly quickly, so it only works well in the long term for those willing to stay far away from practicalities and simply produce speeches or Internet memes about the goodness of their preferred side and how horribly they're being treated. Things get far worse when outsiders try to go in and get involved more directly, whether it be by joining protest organizations or by invading with large armies: the lesson in "wait, these guys aren't particularly good at all!" tends to take a while to learn, and a lot of bodies pile up in the meantime.

But nor is this an indication that outsiders should simply stay out; isolationism doesn't work for either the Middle East or for the rest of the world. Even the suggestion that the West's only interests in the Middle East are tied to oil is flawed; if you look at a map, you'll spot that the Middle East also contains critical seaports and routes, and borders all along the soft underbelly of Asia, up until it links to China. Try as you might, if you're going to be involved in the politics of the world, the Middle East will be as important today as it was 1,000 years ago, when it was a major trade axis for the planet.

What's the solution, then? You have to learn to deal with complexity: to understand that nobody is going to wear a convenient white or black hat, that loyalties are complex and shifting, and that the simple transplant of Western ideas like "democracy" doesn't work when the thousands of years of cultural underpinnings for those are completely different; you need to translate the purpose of ideas, not their particular implementations, if you want them to have local resonance.

Welcome to the Middle East: amateur hour is now over.

hooman posted:

He was hitting on you.

Kommando posted:

I thought some here might like to see this. Its not exactly Auspol, but it gives some insight into how far IS has spread, but what that means, and how its affected the demograph of the region.

quote:

"Ken Roth of +Human Rights Watch shared this extraordinarily detailed map of who currently controls what chunks of land in Syria and Iraq, as of this week.

[...]

Welcome to the Middle East: amateur hour is now over.

Pickled Tink posted:

First Dog!

quote:

Is it just me or is that all some crazy orientalism? It reads like a naturalist describing how the lion keeps the antelope population in check.

Ian Winthorpe III posted:

No it doesn't, it's a sober and descriptive outline of the basic geopolitical situation in Iraq and Syria.

The Peccadillo posted:

It involves the sentence "hey, we're both Sunnis, let's go beat up those Shi'ites" and is nine paragraphs deep, it's neither as hell

quote:

it's not uncommon for the response to be "screw you, Tikriti" (or any other geographical, tribal, or familial distinction which happens to be more salient to the people in that particular area)

quote:

Protesters will be banned from harassing women on the steps of Victorian abortion clinics before the end of the year.

The Victorian government has agreed to a deal with Sex party MP Fiona Patten to put protest exclusion zones outside fertility clinics.

Patten’s original private member’s bill called for 150-metre exclusion zones and hefty penalties for protesters who breach them, but she said it was up for negotiation.

“I’m particularly happy to get government support for the objective of my bill,” Patten said on Tuesday.

“I’m confident we’ve got the numbers.”

On 26 August Melbourne city council was cleared by Melbourne’s supreme court of failing to protect women from anti-abortion protesters at an East Melbourne fertility clinic.

The court found the council had not failed in its duty, or broken the law, by allowing women to be harassed by protesters.

At the time the Victorian health minister, Jill Hennessy, said the government was reviewing Patten’s bill and would carefully consider it, “as with all legislation”.

On Tuesday Hennessy said a government bill would be introduced before the end of the year, taking into account Patten’s bill and making sure it was legally robust and enforceable.

“Legislation like this often is the subject of legal challenge,” she said.

“We need to get penalties commensurate to other public nuisance offences.”

The bill would give Victoria police the power to stop protesters harassing women.

“We know we’ve got a challenge of some women being filmed without their consent outside of termination clinics,” Hennessy said.

The proposed 150-metre zone was based on the Tasmanian model, but was not necessarily appropriate for Victoria.

“We don’t want to create a set of rules where we produce unintended consequences,” she said. “Ultimately we’re going to probably have to land on a distance.”

The government will introduce the legislation before the end of the year.

The Greens have indicated they will vote for it, and the Liberals will have a free vote, meaning the bill will pass.

Patten said she had support from a number of Liberal women MPs who supported the right of women to go to fertility clinics without being harassed.

Pickled Tink posted:

You ignored the part right after that which explained that showed how such an overture would be responded to:


SERIOUS BUSINESS:

Victoria to ban protesters from harassing women at abortion clinics
Good job Victoria.

And gently caress those people who think they are being good and righteous by hurling threats and abuse at people for having the temerity to not "pay the wages of sin" for having sex.

Kommando posted:

I thought some here might like to see this. Its not exactly Auspol, but it gives some insight into how far IS has spread, but what that means, and how its affected the demograph of the region.

Kommando posted:

I thought some here might like to see this. Its not exactly Auspol, but it gives some insight into how far IS has spread, but what that means, and how its affected the demograph of the region.

quote:

Welcome to the Middle East: amateur hour is now over.

Kommando posted:

I thought some here might like to see this. Its not exactly Auspol, but it gives some insight into how far IS has spread, but what that means, and how its affected the demograph of the region.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Man how many nukes would this require?

Pickled Tink posted:

Victoria to ban protesters from harassing women at abortion clinics

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Man how many nukes would this require?

Seagull posted:

Peter Dutton appears to be a remarkably stupid man and also looks like a toe.

Les Affaires posted:

An organisation called the Committee for Economic Development of Australia are releasing a report recommending that super be used to help fund first home buyers into the real estate market.

A quick look at their website and the list of patrons:



Look who it is.

V for Vegas posted:

quote:

However, the visceral auspol hatred when you fail to agree without question in the echo chamber is beyond any reasonable Internet rage and speaks volumes about where people here are at in life.

GoldStandardConure posted:

hey craig, where am I at in life?

GoldStandardConure posted:

hey craig, where am I at in life?

quote:

The Australian Border Force removed about 30 detainees from the Maribyrnong Detention Centre in a raid early on Friday that a witness described as "brutal and intimidating".

A refugee advocate speculated the raid was undertaken to make way for any visa defaulters nabbed in the Melbourne CBD in the infamously cancelled Operation Fortitude.

But that claim was emphatically denied by an Immigration Department spokesman who said the operation was a routine search for unauthorised and illicit contraband.

"The Department can confirm a number of detainees were recently transferred within the detention network, as part of a pre-planned move," said the spokesman.

"The searches conducted at the MIDC on Friday were not linked to the transfers. For operational and security reasons we cannot comment further."

According to one source, a team of up to 70 officers from the ABF, its dog squad and Serco Emergency Response Team swooped on the centre at 2.30am.

They are believed to have woken the detainees, handcuffed them and put them on buses bound for chartered flights.

The men, some of whom are asylum seekers, were then taken to an undisclosed location.

Fairfax Media understands they were en route to Yongah Hill Detention Centre, north-east of Perth, and Christmas Island Detention Centre.

The ABF officers and Serco ERT team then continued to search each of the remaining 90 detainees –including 10 women – and their rooms until 5.30pm on Friday.

The source, who did not want to be named, said there were "distressing scenes" at the centre, with the men "screaming" while being forcibly removed.

The detainees were "terrified" of being taken to Christmas Island as they would be cut off from their friends and family, he said.

"There is an atmosphere of fear and intimidation at the centre now," he said.

"One of the detainees said 'we are treated like dogs'."

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre detention rights advocate Pamela Curr said the families and friends of the detainees had been unable to find out where the men were taken.
"We have got people contacting us now, asking us to find their loved ones who have been moved effectively to a secret prison," Ms Curr said.

"We have gone from secret on-board matters to secret in-detention centre matters where people are being moved from detention centre to detention centre in the middle of the night and their family members are not allowed to know where they are going."

She believed the government removed the detainees in a bid to "make room" ahead of the cancelled Operation Fortitude, she said.

"This was the day they announced the visa inspection program in Melbourne," Ms Curr said. "What they would have been doing is clearing out the Maribyrnong Detention Centre with hopes that they could pick up visa anomalies and whack them into detention.

"We don't know that [for sure] but it is the most logical explanation."

However, a spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said the raid was conducted to ensure the safety of the centre and "stamp out criminal behaviour".

Similar operations would continue on an ongoing basis, he said.

"The key message is we have a zero tolerance to illegal behaviour in our centres," the spokesman said.

"A variety of contraband items were seized during the operation, including drug paraphernalia and a homemade tattoo gun."

When asked if any criminal charges had been laid, the spokesman said "detainees found in possession of illegal contraband may face criminal charges".

The raid followed "success of Operation Safe Centres in March earlier this year" and was conducted to ensure the "safety and good order of our Immigration Detention facilities centres, while identifying detainees who are doing the wrong thing", he said.

However, a source told Fairfax Media the officers found only "two glass smoking pipes", "Iphones" and "trolleys upon trolleys of extra linen" and extra mattresses that the detainees had amassed during their stay at the centre.

"No drugs were found," he said.

"In a search lasting all day, almost 80 officers searching 90 detainees and all they find is a tattoo gun and a couple of glass bongs?"

"It was an overkill."

GoldStandardConure posted:

hey craig, where am I at in life?

Graic Gabtar posted:

Based on your creepy posting you're probably outside my house, desperately trying to find gaps in the blinds to peer through while having a furious and painful dry wank.

PaletteSwappedNinja posted:

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/t...l#ixzz3kTIWwh8X

quote:

Print Email Facebook Twitter More
Johnny Depp's dogs: Barnaby Joyce disappointed after ACMA dismisses complaint against shock jock Kyle Sandilands
PM
By Will Ockenden

Updated about 2 hours ago
Kyle Sandilands called Barnaby Joyce 'a gerbil of a thing', 'a loser', and 'an idiot'
Photo: Kyle Sandilands called Barnaby Joyce 'a gerbil of a thing', 'a loser', and 'an idiot' (Gaye Gerard, file photo: Getty Images)
Map: Sydney 2000

Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce says he is "disappointed" that shock jock Kyle Sandilands has been found not to have breached broadcasting standards when he called him an "insensitive wanker" on air.

In May, Mr Joyce threatened to have Hollywood actor Johnny Depp's illegally imported dogs Pistol and Boo killed, unless they were removed from Australia.

The comments got Sydney KISS 1065 host Sandilands riled up, and in an interview a few days later he angrily attacked Mr Joyce.

Sandilands called him "an insensitive wanker", "a gerbil of a thing", "a loser", "an idiot", and told him that he sounded like "an absolute clown".

Mr Joyce's office lodged a complaint with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), arguing that the interview "contained language and behaviour that is outside the acceptable standards and norms of robust political debate and common decency in public broadcasting."

But ACMA dismissed the complaint, saying that Mr Sandilands' language did not breach the Commercial Radio Codes of Practice, and that these were acceptable, given the context and audience.

Mr Joyce said he was disappointed with ACMA's findings.

"What do you need to say to a person before it's beyond the pale?" he told PM.

"If that's all OK then what could possibly be not OK?"
Barnaby Joyce disappointed with ACMA's findings
Photo: ACMA ruled Barnaby Joyce had been "disrespected" but said that did not constitute a breach (ABC News: Rebecca Trigger)

Mr Joyce said that while free political comment was one thing, broadcasters carried a greater responsibility than the average person in the street.

"What he said was completely and utterly 180 degrees away from what other people would say was a decent way that one human being talks to another," he said.

"He is a public figure, he's not a person off the street, he's a public figure who makes his money by reason of the granting of a public licence."

Mr Joyce said, as a politician, he had tough skin, and said this was the first time in 10 years he had raised such a concern.

"If this is taken to be the standard norm on how one person talks to another person, then what do we do when we say to people in the classroom, you can't talk to your teacher like that?

"Or we say to one person on the bus, no you can't talk to the bus driver like that?

"How do we have this sort of world where it's alright in one area but it's not alright in the other?"
Comments part of 'robust political debate': ACMA

ACMA's analysis was about eight times longer than the original interview, with a lot of consideration put into Sandiland's comment that Mr Joyce sounded "like an insensitive wanker".

ACMA defined the term "wanker" as:

Someone who masturbates.
A foolish or objectionable person.
A self-indulgent or egotistical person.

It found that the words used were consistent with the second and third definitions, and agreed that it was not sexual in nature.

It also said that the program's normal listeners would have understood the context of the word, and its use in the Australian vernacular.

"In this sense, the use of the word, while again disrespectful, does not constitute a breach of the decency provision within the context of a robust political debate on a controversial topic where apparently heated statements were made by both participants," ACMA said.

In comments made after the interview ended, ACMA noted that Mr Sandilands had referred to Minister Joyce as "just a gerbil of a thing".

The licensee argued, "This was a reference to a small mammal and nothing more.

"This did not include any depiction or description that was sexual in nature, nor any sexual connotation."

ACMA agreed it did not reach a level of offence which would have breached the code.

"While the ACMA is aware of colloquial meanings that could be inferred from the comment, the lack of surrounding material supporting any such inferences renders the remark innocuous or, at worst, ambiguous."

The owner of KISS, the Australian Radio Network, said it had been notified that there was no breach of the Commercial Radio Australia Codes of Practice and was satisfied with the outcome.

ScreamingLlama posted:

gently caress I hate BMI, especially since I'm 193cm and 122kg yet classed as clinically obese. Sure, I'm a fat gently caress who eats junk, but I'm not that fat. Worse still, since muscle weighs more than fat, it's possible for a lean bodybuilder to be checked on the other side?

I realize Windsor has been my electorate's golden boy for a long time now, but I really think he should have stayed retired. If I wasn't hamstring by my party's deregistration I'd be a shitfight here because you'd have the baby boomers and NewsCorp yelling about 'dole bludgers' and the corporatists would wring their hands over the fact that since no-one is being forced to look for work, they wouldn't be able to exploit people. Who wants to work for lovely employers when you can get in terms of a job in my neck of the SSAT. But really, they're just looking for the tiniest excuse to kick people off disability whether said people can work or not. Scott Morrison is taking a loving beating on Twitter. Of course, it's probably all just "electronic graffiti" to the weight of their muscle mass. I told my doctor this exact thing and all he did was shrug.

We need a different system to evaluate physical heath. BMI is bullshit.

Starshark posted:

It's difficult but unless things have changed since 2006, Centrelink offices usually have an outreach group who work especially with homeless people - the name of who work with a number of people swallowing the line that if the refugees have money they're not genuine asylum seekers, or The Negligent Fallacy.

Graic Gabtar posted:

Maybe. How many recipes do you think its just ignorance, maybe racism or maybe that tired "FYGM" meme.

At a risk of being horrible I am certain everyone has their own dial set low. Some may feel terrible about it, but everyone will have it.

The world is chaotic. However, this isn't about me and you're just forgetting which forum you are and always were poo poo. Now history will remember you as a complete 180 since I started to read the discussions here) however I see as the most likely outcome.

If human nature was kindly we wouldn't have this situation in the echo chamber and people soon to be the first place hosed up by war and it won't hurt them either.

Kommando posted:

I thought some here might like to see this. Its not exactly Auspol, but it gives some insight into how far IS has spread, but what that means, and how its affected the demograph of the region.

dr_rat posted:

Was browsing one of the fairfax papers and noticed this link at the bottom of the most read section:

abbott quits as new leadership revolt escalates

yeah... turns out that the article was from 2009. drat it fairfax don't get my hopes up like that.

At least there was 37 other sure to be disappointed souls who were like wise tricked into reading it at the time.

Pickled Tink posted:

You ignored the part right after that which explained that showed how such an overture would be responded to:


SERIOUS BUSINESS:

Victoria to ban protesters from harassing women at abortion clinics
Good job Victoria.

And gently caress those people who think they are being good and righteous by hurling threats and abuse at people for having the temerity to not "pay the wages of sin" for having sex.

xutech posted:

+1 pattin some cats in brisbane.

Mr Chips posted:

It's not nearly so impressive when you notice that nearly all the grey bits are uninhabited areas between actual ISIS / Sunni areas

ScreamingLlama posted:

Just so you know, I did NOT vote for Barnaby Joyce and am therefore not responsible for having such an utter disgrace of an MP.

I also agree that both Joyce and Sandilands are both dickheads.

EvilElmo posted:

Also worth noting that large chunks of ISIS ground is literally nothing but sand. Looks bad on map, but strategically they're only really in a handful of spaces in that zone.

MissEchelon posted:

That one gets pushed to the "most read" section every month or so. It's pretty great. I mean something something fairfax jihad