It’s past time for a new open thread, despite the want of new polling to hang one off. Do observe there are thread below for the New South Wales and Queensland state elections, for those of you who like that sort of thing.
The situation in general
An open thread.
[Its hard to know how much Turnbull is a victim ]
Turnbull a victim? With all that money?
zoomster
Anyway, I don’t want to argue with you.
I think you do a grand job in Indi.
And provide a lot of insight into the netherworld of local government, and state/fed politics.
If I misunderstood you, then that will be the umpteenth time. Perhaps it’s the way you express yourself.
kezza
right. So nothing there about shutting people up because I personally disagree with them.
We get down to a basic misunderstanding of the concept of free speech. Free speech has never – except in the misguided utterances of Tea Party types who don’t understand nuance – been about saying whatever you want to without consequence.
It is commonly accepted that all freedoms have accompanying resposibilities, which not just limit those freedoms but in some cases negate them.
The classic (true) liberal line is not ‘say or do anything you want to’ but ‘you have the freedom to do or say what you want to until and unless it impacts on other’s freedoms.’
In this case (regardless of what I happen to believe) there is a whole heap of scientific evidence that not vaccinating children (and adults) against some diseases causes harm, not just to the unvaccinated individual but to other members of society.
This clearly violates the ‘do no harm’ maxim and therefore a true adherent of liberalism would rule that anti vaxxers should have their freedom of speech restricted.
Nothing to do with fascism, but clearly in line with the whole idea of democracy – of human beings working co operatively together for the greater good.
If you want to spout slogans without understanding them, fine, that’s your freedom of speech in action. But it puts you on exactly the same footing as a Tea Party follower, or Tony Abbott — someone who repeats what they’ve read or heard without trying to actually understand its implications.
Inner Westie
If they had those sort of weapons a much easier and juicy target would be the French authorities helicopters that look pretty think in the air.
thick in the air even 🙁
cud chewer
No, but it might be better if it was the other way around, anyway.
You can find my contact details here —
http://www.alpineshire.vic.gov.au/Directory/Agency.aspx?Mkey=253&S3Key=70
I’m listening to François Hollande talking very earnestly to a large room full of sombre-looking officials. I cannot understand a word of it but somehow that makes it compelling. I assume he’s talking about the challenge of rooting out a homesupn jihadi threat, but he could be talking about the size and shape of his caleçon.
Ta poroti. They’re ‘just making sure’ I’m sure…
FWIW according to twitter Fidel Castro has died.
I await a more reliable source however.
Poroti
The polls are very positive but there are four months to go and the Labour Party has support of the media and the Tories.
Hopefully they will go from 41 to 3 ……..
Inner Westie
I listened to François Hollande on Al Jazeera that included a translator. What a difference from our Oaf. No scare mongering there.
poroti, I’m on the wrong network. Checking out Al Jazeera now…
swamprat
[Hopefully they will go from 41 to 3 ……..]
As many as that ? You softie 😀
[ imacca
I’d be interested to know what you think the Libs can do that would make it hard for Labor to win in 2016. Do tell. ]
Just catching up.Have been dusting off the telescope to get a look at Comet Lovejoy tonight as its pretty clear here. 🙂
WEll, they could come up with a budget that adresses revenue issues, reduces the deficit, and that people think is fair. Its do-able. Yup, they would have to break some more promises but they dont actually seem to have an issue with that and with the MSM on side they could probably get away with it.
At the moment the ALP can campaign on their lies / deceit AS WELL as their economic incompetence and unfair nastiness. If they can neutralize the economic incompetence theme which removes 1 out of 3 vulnerabilities, then it will make it harder for the ALP in 2016, but, maybe not that hard, particuarly if they keep much of their current front bench 🙂
[Possum Comitatus @Pollytics · 9m 9 minutes ago
This Fidel bloke dies more times on twitter than Sean Bean does in movies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxigMPUAQS8 … ]
Right. Fidel’s had more deaths than John Farnham has had farewell concerts.
One of the gunmen tells a visitor to the printing business at the centre of the siege to go away as ‘we don’t kill civilians’. Amazingly, this happened after the visitor had shaken the gunman’s hand, believing him to be a special services police officer.
But what about the slain maintenance worker in Paris. Wasn’t he a civilian?
(Oh dear, why am I expecting any kind of consistency or rationality from extremist killers.)
Poroti
What the Labour/Labor Parties have become in the past 20 years is a great tragedy for anyone who believes in anything other than obscene capitalism.
They are a self indulgent selfish and pretty incompetent disgrace.
Whether the ALP wins in 2016 is totally upto the Liberal Party.
No one would ever imagine the contemporary ALP having 10% of the drive or purpose of the Whitlam ALP.
zoomster
[We get down to a basic misunderstanding of the concept of free speech. Free speech has never – except in the misguided utterances of Tea Party types who don’t understand nuance – been about saying whatever you want to without consequence.]
No, no, and no. The consequence for the Anti-Vaxxers has been to have no venue to spout their nonsense in Australia. As I said last night, the pressure applied by the Vaxxers was a win for the Vaxxers. Yet the anti-Vaxxers still had publicity, but negative this time. And prevented from spreading their shite because of social boycott, not from annihilating their voice.
Yeah, sure, you can do whatever you want unless what you want to do impinges on others – the ‘do not harm’ maxim.
Such a twee line, really, considering so many people have so many lines where they draw ‘impingement, harm’.
[This clearly violates the ‘do no harm’ maxim and therefore a true adherent of liberalism would rule that anti vaxxers should have their freedom of speech restricted.]
Seems such an contradiction – “a true adherent of liberalism” and a belief in the “restriction of freedom of speech” about a belief, cos that’s what anti-science is after all, a belief.
But, according to you that’s not fascism, but democracy – the greater good for the greatest amount – utilitarianism – because it happens to concur with what you believe.
You’re the Tea Party advocate, not moi.
confessions
[. Fidel’s had more deaths than John Farnham has had farewell concerts.]
Following events in Afghanistan and then Iraq I found a feature was how many times various Al Qaeda/Taliban/Resistance leaders were reported by the US as being “killed”. The record holder from what I saw was the dickhead arskehole who founded what morphed into ISIS. Starting off in Iraq he was reportedly killed on no less than 6 occasions before he actually was.
If he was killed six times does that mean he get 6×72 virgins?
Do women martyrs get 72 male Virgins?
Do women want a virgin?
Or do only men go to paradise?
Theology is so complex.
poroti:
That’s funny. I foresee once Castro does actually die they’ll be the inevitable groundswell of disbelief, cry-wolf style.
And in a semi Elvis type denial, there’ll be reports of Fidel spotted in various nowheresville towns across various continents. 😀
[Do women martyrs get 72 male Virgins?]
This is another of those existential ‘fondling the vibrator’ type questions, isn’t it?
[WEll, they could come up with a budget that adresses revenue issues, reduces the deficit, and that people think is fair.]
imacca
Presumably by that you mean requiring the rich to pay their fair share of tax. If so, I really can’t imagine the Liberals doing that. It just doesn’t fit with their ideology.
It’s always been a great source of amusement to me, that self-proclaimed anarchists have “RULES”
He he he
Oooh, and then when that contradiction is pointed out, they quickly say, oh well, we’re really “libertarians”. Ho ho ho.
So, ‘anarchists with rules’ are libertarians.
And by bloody Christ they’ll stick to those anarchist rules unless they get in the way of what a libertarian wants. Like banning the ideas of people who don’t share their views.
How Libertarian is that? No so much.
So that great libertarian, IPA Tim Wilson, is finding his hefty $350,000 pa Human Rights Commiss job just a fucking bit tedious, because he has to deal with all these situations where his ‘freedom to do what the hell he likes’ runs slap bang into all those fuckers whose rights he didn’t give a fuck about.
So, where is he? Nowhere to be found. Not sticking up for anybody whose rights have been violated, but certainly raking in the bucks, and living the high life on the taxpayer. Yay, libertariansim.
Do you think he ponders whether libertarianism, for all its faults and prescriptions, is really fascism in disguise?
Inner Westie
However many he got he went online viral larfed at when raw footage of him firing a captured US weapon came out. He didn’t know how to fire it in automatic mode and a lackey had to duck in to help. For some reason that bit didn’t appear in the propaganda final cut 🙂 Go to the 30 second mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98Mj9TEz8HA
Tim Wilson isn’t a true libertarian, either.
Just because people claim they are something doesn’t make them so.
[ Theology is so complex. ]
I’ve always wondered….virgin whats?? Is it defined or are there Daesh “martyrs” arriving wherever and getting presented with 72 virgin camels of both sexes???
You know, to ensure their prosperity in the afterlife.
kezza
[It’s always been a great source of amusement to me, that self-proclaimed anarchists have “RULES”]
It would really show a bit of courage, and an adherence to free speech, if you didn’t go all twee yourself.
Saying, as I have, that at heart I’m an anarchist isn’t contradicted by my acceptance of rules. What this merely means is that, although I would like to tear down almost everything and start again, I realise that isn’t possible (which I explained when I first made that statement, but of course, you only remember the bits which suit you).
[Like banning the ideas of people who don’t share their views…]
Again, incorrect. That’s your spin.
If you haven’t understood the argument, maybe it’s too difficult for you, and it would be better if you stuck to things you could grasp.
Kezza
The IPA are not anarchist. They are impatient communists.
They support the withering away of the State but BEFORE economic equality.
That is they support the withering away of the State so the 1% stay in control.
Supported by the LNP and hardly opposed by the ALP.
imacca
as I’ve remarked before, it’s a great incentive to not die a virgin.
No. Male virgins are not welcome in paradise. They cramp everybody’s style.
God knows.
That’s certainly not what the brochure says.
Yes. My daughter put on two shows this afternoon (featuring a cast of about a dozen teddy actors). The first was called ‘All the people are lost’, and the second was called ‘All the people are not lost’.
If it is all about virgins:
a) You should be careful what you wish for; 72 women to please; heaven?
b) You would want to be sure the text in question says what you think it says.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/opinion/martyrs-virgins-and-grapes.html
Zoomster
It had never crossed my mind as to whether the virgins are alive or dead……too much information….yuk.. Religion is often an absurd but still powerful idiocy.
poroti @1676
That’s up there with Monty Python!
So it’s not virgins but 72 grapes??
Damn that must be a let down, if you are straight murderer.
As I said, theology is complex.
[An 18-year-old volunteer firefighter in Perth has pleaded guilty to charges of lighting two fires and making seven false emergency calls.
Jayden DJ Parker, who is a volunteer for Bedfordale Bushfire Brigade, appeared in Perth Magistrates Court today.
Between September and December last year, Parker used a mobile phone with no SIM card to ring triple-0 about fires in the Bedfordale area.]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-09/volunteer-firefighter-pleads-guilty-to-lighting-blazes/6009172
As a gay man I have no interest in one Virgin, much less 72, but I happily will never be welcome in a Muslim heaven, being only worthy of death.
[a) You should be careful what you wish for; 72 women to please; heaven?]
Not sure it’s in whatever scripture or wherever that those virgins have to be pleasured.
By the way, there’s a nice symmetry in the prime decomposition of 72: 2332.
html didn’t work… 2 cubed times 3 squared.
Of course if it turns out that a Jihadi isn’t a matyr but a mass murderer, he faces eternity in Muslim Hell, which I understand is every bit as unpleasant as Christian Hell. Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end, as Woody Allen said.
I suppose that someone disposed to Jihad is not the type of person who doubts, but maybe there is something to exploit there. Encourage woukd be Jihadis to ask: “What if you’re wrong?
zoomster
Stop labelling yourself, with your anarchist here, libertarian there, labor-pollie somewhere else.
And, for that matter, stop labelling others.
[Tim Wilson isn’t a true libertarian, either.]
So what or who is a “true” libertarian.” Does Tim Wilson know that’s he’s not?
As for putting people down with your own ineffable brand:
[Again, incorrect. That’s your spin.
If you haven’t understood the argument, maybe it’s too difficult for you, and it would be better if you stuck to things you could grasp.]
perhaps you should take your own advice.
swamprat
[The IPA are not anarchist.]
I agree. They profess to be libertarians.
Re 1692: that goes especially for anyone considering becoming a suicide bomber.
I’m not too interested in virgins, but I would consider martyrdom for an endless feast of beer-battered flathead with lime and roast garlic aioli.
Inner Westie
When he finally rooly (supposedly) did die it was not much better. A vid showed a US drone/aircraft peasant putting 2 missiles into a house he was meant to be holed up in. Completely splattered the house. Audio going “Yaaaay we got ‘im” sort of crap. Then out of the rubble out he crawls .So they sent in number 3.
Unless you are reincarnated as a flathead.
[Unless you are reincarnated as a flathead.]
Please don’t complicate things.
[1672
confessions
poroti:
That’s funny. I foresee once Castro does actually die they’ll be the inevitable groundswell of disbelief, cry-wolf style.
And in a semi Elvis type denial, there’ll be reports of Fidel spotted in various nowheresville towns across various continents.]
Funny you should say that. There was a bloke selling Big Idea in Leederville last week who looked just like Castro. Talked like him too. Would not be quiet. Went on and on about things; completely unintelligible, no jokes….