Australian election 2007

[sweetjesus]

Hate to burst your bubble Forge but may I take this opportunity to remind you that no matter who you vote for, the Government always get in.

And if voting changed anything, they'd ban it.

absolutely right

but at least the voices in the back of their heads will be pulling them to the left not the right

mainly why I care is I'm back in the Tertiary education system and the Howard govt did a lot to ruin that, while Labor was historically pretty good with it

says the man enjoying a world class level of tertiary education

climate change is another one - this new mob actually seem prepared to look at it while Howard wasnt

if u think a country of 20 million, the size of USA makes any impact to the envrionment ur kidding urself.

definitely lesser of two evils I think - we have to have someone in and I'd rather this lot just like I'd prefer Democrats if it was the US because they'd be less likely to start wars etc - not saints, just less damaging

we have had labor run NSW for quite a few years and they have sold off all our main roads and ruined transport .. nice way to fuck the city. hope they dont do the same and sell off the country to make up for their piss poor spending habits.

also peter garret is probably the worst environment minister to have. his image is going to get in the way of his judgements, watch the oil puns come out.

The way i see it is, from my experience of seeing plenty of top corporations and how they are run, the howard government was the best board of directors we could have had.

i hope we dont miss the prosperity.

[sweetjesus]

p.s. id like to add, the media was overly unfair to poor ol johnny during this election.

[popslut]

but at least the voices in the back of their heads will be pulling them to the left not the right...

That's what we thought in 1997 when Blair and Labour took power over here.

Didn't take long to realise we'd been had.

Iraq war anyone?

[popslut]

if u think a country of 20 million, the size of USA makes any impact to the envrionment ur kidding urself.

Selfish, ignorant, deluded, disgruntled, right-wing fuckwit.



http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/ ... 10190.html

http://www.missionandjustice.org/pollut ... vironment/

[sweetjesus]

if u think a country of 20 million, the size of USA makes any impact to the envrionment ur kidding urself.

Selfish, ignorant, deluded, disgruntled, right-wing fuckwit.



http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/ ... 10190.html

http://www.missionandjustice.org/pollut ... vironment/

love u long time

[TITBAG]

i love these debates, everyone involved in them, including me, is gayer and more cuntish than even the politicians. incidentally Jordan the HH-titted glamour model recently revealed that in the cock stakes:

Blair: rotting prawn
Howard: Lentil balls and cock size of the"i" in a tin of alphabetti spaghetti
Bush: monster dong with the look and stench of aged salami

[chrysalis33rpm]

Thats interesting, I didn't realize that: Australia is the number one per capita greenhouse gas emitter - and emits more total greenhouse gasses than France, which has 3 times the population!

I am starting to think there is a core similarity to the American and Aussie psyche - something formed in the primal days of continent pillaging native shootin' I'll-do-what-I-damn-well-please attitude.

Well, when this ship goes down, we all go with it. Ho hum...

[popslut]

I am starting to think there is a core similarity to the American and Aussie psyche - something formed in the primal days of continent pillaging native shootin' I'll-do-what-I-damn-well-please attitude.

And the preponderance of selfish right-wing denial-monkeys who are too dull to be interested in anything wider than their own material greed.

[sweetjesus]

Thats interesting, I didn't realize that: Australia is the number one per capita greenhouse gas emitter - and emits more total greenhouse gasses than France, which has 3 times the population!

I am starting to think there is a core similarity to the American and Aussie psyche - something formed in the primal days of continent pillaging native shootin' I'll-do-what-I-damn-well-please attitude.

Well, when this ship goes down, we all go with it. Ho hum...

i found that article hard to digest at first. we dont live super wasteful lives and there isnt a LOT of inudustry here.

but a lot of it isnt the attitude of people and their lifestyles, its the fact that australia is highly reliant on coal as a form of energy.

we already know we need to switch to greener alternatives than coal.. but once again, we seriously dont have such a crazy wasteful lifestyle as a people.

popslut, what do u contribute to this world? .. its not as black and white as you make it out to be.

i dont exactly live a lavish life ... exciting yes, lavish no.. but as someone who has actually lived here for the last 20 years, the second 10 felt a lot more positive and culturally rich than the first 10.

[popslut]

popslut, what do u contribute to this world? ..

Carbon dioxide and nitrogenous excrement - same as everyone else.

The difference between you and me is that I'm not denying it.

[sweetjesus]

popslut, what do u contribute to this world? ..

Carbon dioxide and nitrogenous excrement - same as everyone else.

The difference between you and me is that I'm not denying it.

im getting the feeling you produce more excrement than i do.

[b0unce]

fuck this thread. and fuck australia too by the way

And now since I took away, I'll counter by providing some more Emma Goldman quotes

* A society gets all the criminals it deserves.

* After all, that is what laws are for, to be made and unmade.

* All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them.

* Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man.

* Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.

* Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one.

* Crime is naught but misdirected energy.

* Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.

* Every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass.

* Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.

* How long would authority and private property exist, if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen.

* I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.

* Idealists are foolish enough to throw caution to the winds. They have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.
o Variant: Idealists...foolish enough to throw caution to the winds...have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.

* If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.

* I may be arrested, I may be tried and thrown in jail, but I will never be silent. I will never acquiesce or submit to authority, nor will I make peace with a system that degrades women to a mere incubator. I now and here declare war upon this system and will not rest until a path has been cleared for a free motherhood and a healthy, joyous and happy childhood.

* If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.

* In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, however, woman's premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, "until death doth part."

* In the true sense one's native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.

* It is essential that we realize once and for all that man is much more of a sex creature than a moral creature. The former is inherent, the other is grafted on.

* It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice, which drives the political offender to act.

* It is safe to say that no other superstition is so detrimental to growth, so enervating and paralyzing to the minds and hearts of the people, as the superstition of Morality.

* "It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted from great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency."

* Jealousy is indeed a poor medium to secure love, but it is a secure medium to destroy one's self-respect. For jealous people, like dope-fiends, stoop to the lowest level and in the end inspire only disgust and loathing.

* Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.

* Methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim.

* No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.

* No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
o Variant: No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

* No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution... Revolution is but thought carried into action.

* On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable.

* Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will baby people become interested — for a while at least. The people are a very fickle baby that must have new toys every day.

* Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.

* Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name!

* Public school — where the human mind is drilled and manipulated into submission to various social and moral spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation and oppression.

* Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the father's curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks.

* Resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal.

* Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other.

* Social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass.

* The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.

* The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.

* The higher mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial male who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character.

* The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.

* The individual whose vision encompasses the whole world often feels nowhere so hedged in and out of touch with his surroundings as in his native land.

* The majority cannot reason; it has no judgement. It has always placed its destiny in the hands of others; it has followed its leaders even into destruction. The mass has always opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new truth.

* The majority cares little for ideals and integrity. What it craves is display.

* The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

* The most violent element in society is ignorance.

* The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather, Understand one another.

* The people are urged to be patriotic ... by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegience to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister.

* The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.

* The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.

* The powers know that the people at large are like children whose despair, sorrow, and tears can be turned into joy with a little toy. ... An army and navy represents the people's toys.

* The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.

* The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being.

* Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage: "Ye who enter here leave all hope behind."

* To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character.

* We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all human beings, irrespective of race, color, or sex, are born with the equal right to share at the table of life.

* When we can't dream any longer we die.

* Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of women is responsible for prostitution.

[forge]

@sweetjesus - I'm really surprised at your take on this because I've seen you slate Bush in other threads and IMO there is no difference at all

the Howard governement has unashamedly taken exactly the same "fuck everyone else so long as we're rich" attitude publicly that Bush did. He's badly tarnished Australia's reputation overseas (just like Bush) and made the country look like a racist, bigoted, polluting, right wing nation of fuckwits.

And It's getting way too late to ignore this climate change thing as the last report confirmed and Australia definitely needs to take note of that - especially under the worst drought in it's recorded history.

also - If you're going to make comments on this "world class tertiary education system" I suggest you do a little research on it - the lecturers and student guild dont see it that way by a long stretch - they used to, but not since Howard

and I think Peter Garrett is a great influence to have in the government - he's always made a good effort for Indigenous rights and environment in the past and obviously went into politics because he actually gives a shit - I roadied on some of Midnight oil's tours years ago and I def got the feeling they're the real deal

@popslut - I know all about Tony Blair and his fuckwittery - I was there for most of his reign and was one of the many gobsmacked and appalled that he turned out to be such a cock - I too got sucked in by his smarmy bullshit speeches - so I'm very aware that this guy could be the same

it's totally true they're all cunts, but the new ones do at least appear to be the slightly lesser cunts and they appear to have a bit more of a commitment to the important issues

[Pitch Black]

Re: Australia's drought, I really reccommend Jared Diamond's "Collapse" for an overview of the situation.

Basically, Oz's current system of agriculture is doomed, even without climate change, because before the European settlers arrived all the nutirents in the biosphere were locked up in the vegetation, instead of the soil. When the colonists burnt and cleared the land for pasture and crops they permanently removed these nutrients from the biosphere. They're not coming back. Irrigation and such moves water around to certain areas, giving arable land in the short term, but ultimately this breaks down too, because this increases salinity, ultimately making the land unusable.

from wikipedia: "Salinity from irrigation can occur over time wherever irrigation occurs, since almost all water (other than natural rainfall) contains some dissolved salts. When the plants use the water, the salts are left behind in the soil and eventually begin to accumulate. Since soil salinity makes it more difficult for plants to absorb soil moisture, these salts must be leached out of the plant root zone by applying additional water. This, in turn, can lead to rising water tables, requiring drainage to keep the saline groundwater out of the root zone. If the water table rises too high, then natural soil evaporation will begin to draw the salts back upward into the soil profile. The problem is accelerated when too much water is added too quickly due to inefficient water use such as over-irrigation, applying more than is required for leaching, using bad estimates of evapotranspiration and poor system design, and is also greatly increased by poor drainage and use of saline water for irrigating agricultural crops. These practices result in the concentration of salts."

So I'm afraid Oz's system of farming is fucked, even without taking climate change into account.

[mikemc]

Heya, I'll extend the same offer to the Belgian folks who post here... I can offer a sane and decent remote online government at very reasonable rates. You send taxes via paypal, and all voting is done via myspace-like quizzes. Off the bat, all food and entertainment is tax free, as long as it's not bad for you. Don't worry, you get to vote on what's bad for you. In return, I will set other policy based on the voting.

How does that sound?