101–110 of 116 posts
Australia seems to be leading the world in oppression in a way even the US has yet to manage.
Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.
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It's a combination of unprecedented wealth (let's be honest, modern poverty in industrialized countries is nothing like it was back in the '50s) and the continuous rise of asymmetric warfare randomly deployed by psychopaths. In Sydney, the "cafe kidnap" attack is still fresh in everyone's mind. We've had bombs in London and Madrid, plus a number of other scares, and when a population feels threatened, they'll typical…
> We've had bombs in London Did they react this way during the Troubles? I don't think they did. I was in London in '92 and there was a bomb threat called in at the tube station one stop over. It delayed the train for a bit, but that was it and everyone continued on like normal. This time the US freaks out because the world came to their doorstep and they flip out because they have no idea how to handle it. The leade…
On a personal level, that meant if you were Irish you had to expect your passport to be checked very rigorously, expect different treatment from police, and endure a fair degree of social static; back in 1992, for example, people might exhibit a stiff upper lip when it was announced that the tube was delayed, but when I would meet them at work later I'd know there had been a bomb scare because I'd hear a crack about whether I had a bomb in my briefcase or somesuch. furthermore, Irish terrorism was different in a few ways. First, in Northern Ireland it was counterbalanced by unionist terrorism against the Catholic/Irish republican minority, so a lot of the terrorism you'd hear about there was of the tit-for-tat tactical variety. In London, the IRA called in far more bomb threats than it detonated bombs, and it generally avoided bombing civilians but struck political and military targets - with a disproportionate level of effectiveness, which is one reason that London is awash in CCTV cameras. IRA terrorists killed a lot of senior people in the British establishment, from government minister to members of the royal family. They launched very few attacks on civilians on the mainland, and virtually all attacks on the mainland were carried out in London, the seat of government, or at places where high-value targets happened to be. Most of the country never saw a bomb threat because it was too far from any sort of political/military target. The IRA understood asymmetrical warfare extremely well and had no desire to provoke a wave of popular resistance or anger of the kind that comes from indiscriminate civilian bombing.
Saying the UK had this sort of thing all figured out and then US reaction to 9/11 caused them to turn dictator is just hopelessly un-anchored from reality and at odds with the long historical context. I see why it seems that way to you, but I assure you that things were/are quite a bit more complex than that.
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> who and what are behind the push to remove civil liberties There's no master plan, if that's what you're getting at. I think this general drift is the result of a few different things, most of which are older than we'd like to admit: • A lot of people like authoritarianism • People blame government by default for any problem that doesn't have any more obvious perpetrator (see point 1) • The massive mismatch in mili…
"In case you doubt the appeal of authoritarianism just go look at the popularity of Stalin in Russia, or the readership of the Daily Mail in the UK, or the overwhelming political support for the NSA / the PATRIOT Act. Lots and lots of people want to live in a highly authoritarian society and it's worth reflecting on why that is, and whether those people have valid reasons." This is a really salient point and one that…
It's almost like you need a strong constitution with heavy restrictions on what the government can do in order for democracy to not devolve into autocracy.
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It's hard for the public to care when there is no concrete evidence of harm. The government knows this and is working hard to make sure that any harm done by mass surveillance is hidden using parallel construction. What is an interesting and useful game is to imagine a scenario which would trigger massive public outrage over the use of mass surveillance. What would really drive the point home that this is a truly dan…
What would really drive the point home that this is a truly dangerous amount of power? If the abuses of Hoover's FBI weren't enough to make the American people (and especially their Congressional representatives) say "Never again," nothing will. I'm sure Australians can point to similar abuses of government power that are not considered a problem going forward, because, hey, we're all progressives here, right? People…
Oh come on - how many people did Hoover kill? There isn't even a number. Not because he was a great guy, but because the abuses of government power that have taken place in the US are quite mild in historical terms, when compared to the excesses of colonialism and various dictatorial regimes around the world.
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What does "care" mean in your mind? You say were you livid and you expressed your lividity by talking to people? I think a lot of people "care" they are just not given anything actionable to do. Expressing impotent rage on FB is not really helping AFAICT.
Expressing impotent rage on FB is not really helping AFAICT. Very nice straw man. I didn't mention FB. And these were conversations in person.
But participation in the farce of modern democracy is exactly what you're intended to do. You somehow feel like your talking or voting matters. It doesn't.
I'm no different, of course. Our lives are too comfortable. There is only one form of political action that ever works to depose despots, and it's a form that's not worth interrupting our comfortable lives to engage in.
At the end of the day, you need to either take real action, or accept that you're too comfortable with your affluent life to risk losing your comforts, and enjoy these comforts without complaint. You've chosen this path, as have I, as have we all.
Life is too good to meaningfully rock the boat.
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Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.
Just wondering if I was downvoted because people don't get the joke (it's a famous quote from the Princess Bride) and thought I was calling all Australians criminals? Or because humour has no place on HN?
Australia is officially the only place in the world where the laws and technological restrictions make me never want to go there. Bandwidth is capped, porn is filtered, videogames cost a ridiculous amount. I know the country was founded by criminals, but I didn't realize they still ran the place.
Enjoy your world tour of such havens of freedom as most of the Middle East, North Korea, Cuba... Obviously, the current Australian government is a disaster in many areas, but there are a large number of places which are considerably worse.
Or maybe the Australian people could aim a little higher?
What happened in the last few years to allow our civil rights in the most forward thinking countries to unravel so easily? And why do citizens not care? How is it possible that all countries have elected such a group of corrupt, nearsighted politicians to the point where freedom is an inconvenience over them consolidating practically dictatorial power? And again, why does no one care?
I've left Australia. I don't really plan to go back. Most of my friends are doing the same.