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Australia is becoming a surveillance state

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Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#371

Post by sk0g »

kwere wrote: post #323
sk0g wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's what, 5 countries that might pay better? USA of course, which has its own share of problems, Canada, England, Switzerland. Maybe one of Netherlands or Germany if you're lucky. No easy choice there, unfortunately.

England? For what i know they have/had enourmous labour offer compared to demand

Sure you get the BBC and all the niceties with the fair coverage and all, but other media is still pretty Murdochy-y, and Brexit takes away the main advantage of why I would want to live in Europe in the first place - the ease of moving around, if needed.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#372

Post by namelessoracle »

FireBeyond wrote: post #365
namelessoracle wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is alot of words that dont actually say anything other than "Georgia" bad. Your position is that a black educator in the Atlanta Public School system that has a black mayor and is defiantly against the mainstream of rural southern politics, decided to segregate the students for what reason exactly? I would venture to guess using this weird thing called "empathy" where i try to look at the other side in good fait…

I didn't imply any such thing. One would think though, that if things were so meritorious, then it wouldn't have been this unadvertised, undisclosed scenario that resulted in discipline and investigations, but instead might have been touted as a worthy attempt to address educational challenges of POC. I certainly wasn't saying that an evil PTA was threatening to lynch the principal if she didn't. But to discount the…

What exact systemic challenge do you think that a black principal in the atlanta public school system suffered that caused them to do this then?

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#373

Post by monkeycantype »

partomniscient wrote: post #173
monkeycantype wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re missing an essential detail, how Australians view the government, Australians don’t believe that the the government is sufficiently competent to be tyrannical, except in small local cases against the powerless edit: we don't believe those in government with the inclination towards tyranny are sufficiently competent. There are individuals, in government in Australia, in the same house even if they're are not qu…

Democracy as implemented is stupid. I want to vote on policy I care about and understand, not a person I've never met who I can't necessarily trust that's meant to represent me. The system has failed. I was horrified to see how far we'd fallen. When COVID hit, I thought they'd at least have some basic model on the shelf to extrapolate a response from. Nope. All that kind of forward thinking seems to have gone along w…

> All the smart people have already left.

I don't believe this, but I empathise with your fury.

There has just been a small Covid outbreak in my town. The organisation of the response (all local - not federal) has been phenomenal, straight up inspiring.

But we are also the inheritors of a long legacy of stupid and brutal, and it can be hard to look around and believe that now is better than it was. How could this possibly be better? The gutting of CSIRO is a tragedy, but it's short term gain for tragedies all the way down.

I think Australia today is different better society than the country a century ago, we are iterating of a base of absolute monarchy and entrenched power, and it seems as we have got comfortable, and many of us are comfortable, many of us have stopped pushing.

There's a book on historical protest movements in Australia by Jeff Sparrow. It was an eye opener for me to see that actually things were even worse a century ago, the way fear of communist infiltration was used to control society, was even more clumsy, and more successful than the garbage we encounter today. The story of the Hilton Hotel bombing in the 70s is so clumsy it would be hilarious if lives weren't ruined. ASIO planted a fake bomb (which they intended to find and they use to justify further funding), which actually blew up, and then the Indian representative (was it the ambassador or the Prime Minister?) declared it was a terrorist attack against him, so ASIO had to find a hippy to arrest, so they did and they got away with it.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#374

Post by handrous »

zepto wrote: post #354
handrous wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You say they are different, but you don’t say why. Sorry, didn't occur to me to note the differences. The incentives, motivations, goals, costs, and resources for a foreign government fighting on your soil are all very from your own government fighting a civil war or dealing with a domestic, guerrilla resistance, are the main things. I remain unconvinced that private arms are likely to be any kind of useful factor…

> The incentives, motivations, goals, costs, and resources for a foreign government fighting on your soil are all very different… That really doesn’t explain anything at all. It’s another way of saying they aren’t the same in various ways. > also unconvinced that they're more likely to be used to that end than in service of the precisely the opposite purpose This is an interesting political idea that bears a lot more…

> It’s another way of saying they aren’t the same in various ways.

Yes, I guess I just... figured it was extremely obvious that a foreign occupation resisted by locals and a civil war or domestic insurgency are very different, largely on those categories. I feel like I'm being asked to defend the statement that bicycles and airplanes are, though both modes of transportation, quite different in a bunch of important ways.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#375

Post by zepto »

handrous wrote: post #374
zepto wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The incentives, motivations, goals, costs, and resources for a foreign government fighting on your soil are all very different… That really doesn’t explain anything at all. It’s another way of saying they aren’t the same in various ways. > also unconvinced that they're more likely to be used to that end than in service of the precisely the opposite purpose This is an interesting political idea that bears a lot more…

> It’s another way of saying they aren’t the same in various ways. Yes, I guess I just... figured it was extremely obvious that a foreign occupation resisted by locals and a civil war or domestic insurgency are very different, largely on those categories. I feel like I'm being asked to defend the statement that bicycles and airplanes are, though both modes of transportation, quite different in a bunch of important wa…

It’s obvious they are different. It’s not obvious what differences would render guns useless, which appears to be your position.

I’m not asking you to arbitrarily explain how they are different. I’m asking you to explain how and why the differences you are thinking of make guns useless for civilians to own.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#376

Post by HKH2 »

refurb wrote: post #151
elevenoh wrote: post #7

>“[These laws] represent, in my view, significant expansions of the existing powers of law enforcement agencies away from a traditional focus on investigation and the collection of admissible evidence of specific offenses to disruption, to attack, to take-over, to take-down,” Dr Mann said. Yikes. This is like government being infested by cancel culture (attack w/ no evidence needed, pile on & take down). What phenome…

I might be entirely wrong, but I wonder if it’s shared culture with other SE Asian countries? Having spend time in SE Asia, I’ve found the “collective mindset” to be inaccurate. People there are just as likely to screw over their fellow man as any other country. What’s different is the deference to authority. When the govt cracks down, people don’t really complain or push back. They accept it much more readily. Not s…

They're collective in that they're strongly monocultural.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#377

Post by HKH2 »

partomniscient wrote: post #183
scoopertrooper wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we just have a lot of faith in our institutions. We just can't believe the state would ever be used as a weapon against us because we've never experienced large scale civil upheaval or suffered under periods of dictatorship. People rattling on about slippery slopes and abstract notions of liberty just seem a bit batty to most Australians. We have a free media, our elections are free and fair, we have routine…

>We have a free media Err, we have a media which is in a symbiotic relationship with the government. I would not consider this free. There are few genuine journalists out there looking for the truth and they have little impact on the masses. The one that did (Assange) has a trial going on as I type this.

> Err, we have a media which is in a symbiotic relationship with the government.

I agree. We should defund the ABC and SBS.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#378

Post by scoopertrooper »

partomniscient wrote: post #183
scoopertrooper wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we just have a lot of faith in our institutions. We just can't believe the state would ever be used as a weapon against us because we've never experienced large scale civil upheaval or suffered under periods of dictatorship. People rattling on about slippery slopes and abstract notions of liberty just seem a bit batty to most Australians. We have a free media, our elections are free and fair, we have routine…

>We have a free media Err, we have a media which is in a symbiotic relationship with the government. I would not consider this free. There are few genuine journalists out there looking for the truth and they have little impact on the masses. The one that did (Assange) has a trial going on as I type this.

> Err, we have a media which is in a symbiotic relationship with the government.

> I would not consider this free.

Some journalists will always trade independence for access. However, I'm not aware of any evidence to indicate that Australian media has been captured by the government. But frankly, you've made a pretty nebulous accusation, followed up by a conclusion that doesn't necessary follow from the premise.

I'd invite you to study the recent happenings in Poland and Hungary to see what a non-free media landscape looks like.

> There are few genuine journalists out there looking for the truth and they have little impact on the masses.

We have a robust media that regularly holds the government to account. The main public broadcaster, in particular, puts out hard hitting journalism with broad reach.

So I don't know what this 'truth' is that you think 'they' are concealing from the 'masses'.

> The one that did (Assange) has a trial going on as I type this.

You make this sound like Assange was arrested for reporting he did on Australia. Wikileaks never made any major disclosures about Australia.

https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Australia

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#379

Post by jestar_jokin »

alvah wrote: post #150
trissylegs wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia's economy is pretty dependent on Coal, Aluminum and Gas. Two of these a hopefully going away soon but the Government is so In bed with mining and they throw more money at elections than every other sector put together that nothing will done about it until it collapses.

Do you understand what you're actually wishing for when you cheer on the destruction of a large percentage of the economy? What comes after will not be so comfortable.

A forward-thinking government would be incentivising a diverse economy, subsidised by the windfall from the currently profitable industries.

Instead, the incumbant governments just subsidise the inumbant industries; or rather, the existing "winners". (E.g. subsidising Murdoch media, mining companies, all pulling in millions/billions in profit.)

Australia has one of the lowest rankings in terms of economic complexity [see #1]. Until the government can subsidise emerging markets, there's no reason for businesses to take risks - the low population can't support it.

Propping up existing industries will eventually be a failing strategy. When Australia's "luck" (exploitable resources) runs out, "what comes after will not be so comfortable". But there's still time to steer away from that discomfort. (Unlike the imminent ecology collapse...)

[1] https://www.aumanufacturing.com.au/astralias-low-economic-co...

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#380

Post by jestar_jokin »

alvah wrote: post #241
jussij wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the OP is wishing for Coal and Gas to go away soon in the hope it can spare the world from the upcoming catastrophe that is climate change. What is stupid, with Europe and the USA both planning a tax on carbon, in just a few decades the OP's wish will most likely come true, yet Australia keeps wishing for a different future.

OP's way of life has been made possible by cheap energy. Wishing it away before renewables are able to provide baseload power in an advanced economy (and the storage problem is, at best, decades away from being solved) is unwise.

South Australia has been doing pretty well with a renewables-backed grid.

There was a smear campaign in 2016 regarding a state-wide blackout, caused by severe weather affecting the distribution & transmission infrastructure. [see #1] The incumbant political party used this as an opportunity to blame the renewable generators (and state government, from the "opposite side" of politics). [see #2]

The same severe weather event would have affected any power generator.

[1] https://www.aer.gov.au/wholesale-markets/compliance-reportin... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Australian_blackout...

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