-YT-

mmm this whole incident is sketchy as fuck, the exact details still havent been released by the police but from what the other guy said it seems the cop wasnt following standard procedure at all, apparently it was over suspected shoplifting. no doubt the cop gets a paid holiday. I often wonder how long the communities will tolerate the continual deaths of young people before it boils over like it has in the past ie 96 riots etc the underlying current is one of continual inequality despite the marked strides made in regards to civil rights the statistics speak for themselves imo. Interesting read and kinda hard to find is Andrew Hackers Two nations black and white, seperate, hostile, unequal. about race relations in the states

So this is tied to the stuff howard bought in? which i think are supposed to end in 2016. As the Benbrika plot showed and proved really, that current laws are sufficiently adequate to tackle this sort of stuff.Guess they dont like the fact they have to obtain a warrant, i dont really see how that is or could be a problem if the situation is of a genuine concern

i dunno seems like a bit of generalization/stereotyping going on here. Im not sure its a big a problem as its made out to be im not disagring there arent people who work the system or waste money on crap, but for the large majority one would assume the necessities of life like you said shelter, food, etc would be the main priority. my haha wasnt so much a laugh at the issue but your remarks sorry didnt mean to stir you up. guess i just assumed you would have a more social bent and or question the reliability of the article. So far the data has been inconclusive on how well something like this actually works that said doesn't look to be that much study has actually been undertaken - since the "intervention", there's also the point of associated costs which in preliminary trials from what i remember seemed to be fairly high. so i guess time will tell. Guess i should say im not against it at all but rather would like to see some empirical evidence on this scourge before we jump the gun and implement reforms like with the intervention.

the Australian... lol. next they'll want us to give up our rights for some sort of vague quasi notion... oh wait Cmon TI wheres your heart! haha

zero must equal 100%

well that's just it we cant determine the size of the zooniverse because of that exact quandary with the speed of light. The region visible from Earth (the observable universe) is a sphere with a radius of about 46 billion light years,[35] based on where the expansion of space has taken the most distant objects observed.

yeah bro you gots z skill any of your recent works forsale?

sure he is until after the upcoming election (which isn't that far off btw)

Great to see you around Velvet

yep hilarious stuff edited * creation museum sounds like wholesome fun!

Fucken Good! Sometimes i think if it wasn't for secularism we would still be burning people as witches and or all kinds of other backwards shit.

There's a good discussion by the journalist of the article - Ross Caputi with Noam chomsky about war crimes during the 2nd siege of fallujah. Some of the things he talks about like orders/information from CO's or higher up that were just plain lies or misinformation and tactics like firing into civilian houses to determine who is inside, capturing hospitals to control information etc

http://www.globalresearch.ca/psyops-media-warfare-and-the-weaponization-of-information-in-iraq/5388077 PSYOPs, “Media Warfare” and the “Weaponization of Information” in IraqBy Ross Caputi Global Research, June 22, 2014 BRussells Tribunal Iraqis are once again being made irrelevant in a war of spin as the Western media manipulates fact and narrative to support US action in Iraq, writes Ross Caputi. Iraqis are once again being made irrelevant in a war of spin as the Western media manipulates fact and narrative to support US action in Iraq. Debates have been raging over what the US should do about ISIS. Note the actors in this story: The US, ISIS, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, and other regional leaders. Note who is missing from this story: the Iraqi civilian population. Has the question ‘What do Iraqis want?’ come up even once? Along with an overly simple narrative of the ascendence and role of the anti-Maliki fighters in Iraq, the assumption that the US has a right to decide what the best course of action for Iraq will be has gone unchallenged in the media. Part of the problem is a cultural failure on our part to respect the political aspirations of Iraqis. What Iraqis want more than anything right now—and these are among the few goals that cross sectarian boundaries in Iraq—is independence and democracy. Iraqis want to manage their own affairs and solve their own problems without the interference and condescending tutelage of Washington and Tehran. Yet we are so quick to assume that the US ought to do something, that the US must do something, and that Iraqis need our “help” that we blunder forward with foreign policy that takes as its starting point an unquestioned belief in the US’s right to take military action in other peoples’ countries whenever we decide it is justified. Another part of the problem is our collective failure to come to terms with the lies our government told to us about the US-led occupation. Our misunderstanding of our past actions in Iraq is bleeding into our confusion over the present. Connecting the Past to the Present I had one source of information while I was a Marine in Fallujah in 2004—my chain of command. It never occurred to me that they would be actively manipulating the information they were feeding me, the other men in my unit, and the journalists imbedded with us. This was a naive assumption that could have cost me my life. Although I survived, others around me did not. There was a conscious decision made by the US military to have Western journalists embedded with us during the 2nd siege of Fallujah. The US military believed that the reason they lost the 1st siege of Fallujah was due to their failure to control the media’s reporting of that operation. They accused Al Jazeera, the lone international media crew in Fallujah at the time, for releasing false and exaggerated reports about civilians killed by US military actions, which created the international outrage and political pressure that forced the US to retreat out of Fallujah and hand control of the city over to the Fallujah Brigade. Although Al Jazeera’s reports were corroborated by several other sources, and their projected civilian death toll later proved to be accurate (over 749 civilian deaths), the US military insisted on believing that Al Jazeera was invited into Fallujah by the “insurgents” and was actively conspiring with them as their propaganda organ. The US military then engaged in a campaign of “shaping operations”, which consisted of IO’s (Information Operations), PSYOPs (Psychological Operations), and air strikes to better control the battlefield for the next siege of Fallujah. The centerpiece of this campaign was the PSYOP to exaggerate the role of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the alleged leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, who the US military claimed was using Fallujah as a military base from which he was launching attacks all across Iraq. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, then spokesman for the Joint Task Force, claimed that the goal of the PSYOP was to “leverage xenophobia” in Iraq and turn the Iraqi population against foreign Mujahideen. Beyond creating a false existential threat that was used to justify the US’s 2nd assault on Fallujah, the lies about Zarqawi’s presence in Fallujah also placed an impossible condition for peace on the people of Fallujah. The US and Iraqi Interim Government demanded that the leadership in Fallujah hand Zarqawi over to them or face an all out military assault on their city, even though no one in Fallujah had ever even seen Zarqawi in their city and there is nothing in the way of real evidence to suggest that this man ever set foot in Fallujah. Yet this lie quickly became a conventional wisdom and my unit was instructed that we were going into Fallujah to liberate the city from Zarqawi’s forces. Half way into the operation, my command pulled us aside and said that they had just received an intelligence report that Zarqawi was just a few blocks a way and that he was wounded in the leg. They encouraged us to keep fighting and to stay motivated, because victory was near. Somewhere between 4,000 to 6,000 civilians were killed and 63 American lives were lost in the course of this operation. Yet it was the loss of American lives that received the focus in the Western media, and the atrocities that we committed against civilians went unreported. This was not an accident, nor a matter of perspective taking. Reports of civilian deaths were regarded as IO (Information Operation) victories for the “insurgents”. Lieutenant General Metz, Commanding General of the Multi-National Corps-Iraq at the time of the 2nd siege, explained that, “IO challenges”, such as reports of civilian casualties, were things that “we could anticipate and for which we could plan. We took control of the hospital the evening before the main attack on Fallujah, removing it from the enemy’s IO platform.” The Fallujah General Hospital was considered to be yet another propaganda organ for those we considered to be our enemy. Thus, one of the very first objectives of this operation was to take control of the hospital, which Professor Noam Chomsky has explained to me was a “major war crime”. In preparation for these IO challenges, Coalition Forces decreed that only embedded journalists would be allowed inside Fallujah for the 2nd siege. Also, the “media commission” in Iraq, which was established by Order 65 of Bremer’s 100 Orders, sent out a warning to all journalists in Iraq that they should “stick to the government line on the U.S.-led offensive in Fallujah or face legal action.” Journalists who tried to enter Fallujah without being embedded with Coalition Forces were detained. This time around 91 journalists were embedded with Coalition units inside Fallujah, whereas in the 1st siege there were none. The role of these Western reporters was to “[offer] a rebuttal” to the enemy’s IOs. Only this time around, there was no media crew in Fallujah that was sympathetic to the plight of Fallujans. Thus, the deaths of Americans dominated the headlines, and our operation was labeled a “liberation” in the media without any competing narrative. Fallujans were effectively silenced. No one ever asked for their perspective on our assault of their city, or asked if they really felt like they were being liberated. Even something as violent and as objective their deaths was dismissed, in the sense that their reality did not matter, and was only acknowledged as IOs from the enemy. The Weaponization of Information The “shaping operations” that characterized the 2nd siege of Fallujah are not anecdotal. The dehumanizing ideological climate that these operations created, where information is weaponized and truth becomes irrelevant, is still killing Iraqis. The lies and myths that live on from this period are still at play, the least of them being: the presumed legitimacy of the US-led occupation, the illegitimacy of the Iraqi resistance (and the exaggerated role of al Qaeda in the Iraqi resistance), and the facade of US state building in Iraq. Journalists today are attempting to draw a direct, chronological line from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the current leader of ISIS. Facts that complicate this narrative—such as the PSYOP on Zarqawi’s role in Iraq, or the fact that ISIS has undergone such significant changes its organization structure, ideology, and political goals that the only feature it currently shares with its ancestor al-Qaeda in Iraq is cruelty—are conveniently omitted. Furthermore, the US’s role in creating the current crisis in Iraq is lost in an a-historical narrative that takes as its starting point the moment Iraqi security forces were kicked out of Mosul. However, if we back up in history a year and a half to the nonviolent protest movement that swept Iraq, which went by the name of the Iraqi Spring, it becomes clear how Maliki’s violently oppressive and sectarian policies turned a nonviolent movement into an armed rebellion, and how the US armed him every step of the way. It was the tribes in Fallujah and Ramadi who first picked up weapons against Maliki when he sent troops to attack their protest camps in December of 2013. ISIS came later, and an alliance of convince was formed between them and the tribal fighters in Anbar province, despite the fact that these groups had totally different political goals. Two of the Iraqi Spring protestors’ main demands was an end to sectarianism in Iraq and an end to all discussion of dividing Iraq up into autonomous federal regions. Even though federalism and sectarianism are the main political platform of ISIS, these differences were brushed aside when ISIS and the tribal fighters joined forces against Maliki. The US then increased its supply of military weapons, including Apache attack helicopters and Hellfire missiles and other forms of military assistance, to “help” the Iraqi military “in the battle to uproot Islamic fighters from Ramadi and Fallujah”. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki then used these weapons to conduct an indiscriminate campaign of bombing in residential neighborhoods of Fallujah and other Sunni cities, which has been so indiscriminate and so sectarian in nature—complete with the use of experimental “barrel bombs”, a tactic adopted from Bashar al-Assad’s assault on Aleppo—that it approaches the legal definition of a “genocide”. Since the start of this campaign in December, 433 civilians have been killed in Fallujah and over 1633 have been wounded. Iraqi Solutions to an American Problem The US is currently presenting itself as a solution to a conflict that it has elicited and nurtured every step of the way. Even the voices in Washington that want to get rid of Maliki accept the premise that the US is a legitimate actor in Iraqi affairs and they avoid discussion of US accountability for current and past violence. In President Obama’s statement on June 19th, he declared that ISIS “poses a threat to the Iraqi people”. Does it matter that ISIS is actually just one participant in a loose coalition of militias that have come to embody the hopes and aspirations of the Sunni population of Iraq, or that Shia organizations support this revolution as well? Does it matter that there are militias within this coalition that are willing to rebuke ISIS for its sectarianism? Does it matter that 500 residents of Mosul fled their city, not out of fear of ISIS, but out of fear of Maliki’s reprisal? Does it matter that Obama’s decision to continue supporting the Iraqi security forces is akin to choosing sides in a sectarian war? Furthermore, does it matter that Obama’s plan to seek a diplomatic solution with “Iraqi leaders and the countries in the region” renders the Iraqi population as passive spectators in their own society? Or will the Western media continue to let Obama speak for Iraqis and parrot his misleading statements uncritically? The Western media has created a narrative of the recent events in Iraq that omits the US’s role in facilitating a genocide against the Sunnis, and positions the Iraqi population as an irrelevant actor in any possible solution to this crisis. Furthermore, our collective failure to come to terms with our own history in Iraq is leading us towards policy decisions that will only result in more civilian deaths, more deeply entrenched ethnic and religious divisions, and a weak and divided Iraq, dominated by foreign powers. US interference in Iraq has done nothing but bring death and hardship to the Iraqi people for over a decade, and continued interference will be no different. The US has no role to play in Iraq—not a military one or a diplomatic one—apart form giving reparations to the Iraqi people for destroying their society. We must learn to respect the right of Iraqis to self-determination and independence. Ross Caputi is a former US marine, having served from 2003 to 2006. He took part in the second siege of Fallujah in November 2004. He became openly critical of the military and was discharged in 2006. Ross holds an MA in linguistics and is the founding director of the Justice for Fallujah Project. He is also the director of the documentary film Fear Not the Path of Truth: a veteran’s journey after Fallujah

aww WT beat me :D

not really surprising well certainly not in regards to professional athletes. Remember watching a doco about the tour de france the history etc and back in the day it seems coke and speed were certainly not unknown to the riders for enhancing stamina/endurance. What kinda things would teenagers etc be using mostly supplements? wonder if caffine counts stuff like those energy drinks etc Yeah pretty much most facets of society have their element of dodgyness or maybe thats just humans haha

Calvary, some well done dark humour

hope it was a good one bro

It's A Great Time To Be A Corporate Crook In AustraliaBy Ben Eltham Australia has a banking problem. That’s the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the Commonwealth Bank’s massive financial planning scandal – a scandal that the bank has steadfastly refused to address, until public pressure forced it to today. This morning, CBA boss Ian Narev held a media conference in which he finally apologised for the bank’s excesses and pledged to review a decade’s worth of financial advice (the review, however, will not be independently run). Given that the bank has already paid out $51 million in compensation to more than 1,100 customers, it could be on the hook for hundreds of millions more. So what’s this all about? One of Australia’s largest and most profitable corporations has been swindling its customers. Many have lost their life savings. In May, the ABC’s Four Corners aired an episode that chronicled the damage to just one of those customers: Noel Stevens, a terminally ill cancer patient who had his life insurance claim with the Commonwealth Bank rejected. Stevens had moved his life insurance to the Commonwealth from Westpac, after answering a cold call from a Commonwealth bank teller and going in to his branch to see a Commonwealth financial planner. Both the teller and the planner received a commission for selling Stevens the life insurance policy. But when Stevens got cancer and tried to claim, the CBA’s CommInsure rejected him. It scrutinised his medical records and claimed he had deceived the bank about his medical history. A court later found that the Commonwealth Bank was “negligent” and demonstrated “misleading and deceptive conduct” in selling Stevens that policy. As CBA whistleblower Jeff Morris told Four Corners, the CBA has a “sales culture” in which staff are encouraged to grab as much of their customers’ wallets as they can. The CBA’s most notorious villain was a Sydney financial planner named Don Nguyen. For several years in the 2000s, Nguyen was one of the CBA’s top-selling financial planners. In 2007 alone, he signed up $39 million worth of custom. His salary that year was reportedly close to half a million dollars. But Nguyen was a rogue planner. According to Morris, Nguyen was widely known inside the bank as “Dodgy Don.” As well as pushing all his clients into highly risky financial products which they clearly didn’t understand, Nguyen was lying to his clients, doctoring their case files, and even forging their signatures. As Morris told the Senate inquiry into the scandal, Nguyen had been caught paying $50 “backhanders” to the CBA’s Chatswood Branch staff to give him client details directly. He had also apparently been caught by a CBA compliance manager defrauding CommInsure “by tendering $5,000 invoices for financial advice that was never provided”. Jeff Morris’ submission to the Senate inquiry is well worth a read. It’s a chilling glimpse of the culture inside the Commonwealth Financial Planning division of the CBA. Not only was there a sales culture ruthlessly dedicated to fleecing customers of their life savings, but there was also a massive cover up. By the time that the bank discovered Nguyen, he was already out of control – a rogue employee who was wreaking havoc in the heart of the bank’s financial planning division. Instead of firing him and going to the police, the Commonwealth Bank promoted him. A second financial planner was appointed to work through Nguyen’s customers one-by-one, in order to cover up his wrongdoing and “sanitise” the files. As the Senate report concludes, if Morris’ account is accurate – and the CBA has made no attempt to deny the central claim that it promoted Nguyen after learning of his actions – then it “would indicate a coordinated and systematic effort by CFPL/the CBA to mislead Mr Nguyen's clients and discourage them from pursuing compensation claims”. Nguyen continued to see clients well in 2009. He even missed the bank’s 2008 Christmas party, busy attempting to sign up a $1.6 million portfolio from a 93-year old, for a $32,000 flat fee. The CBA continued to try and cover up the extent of Nguyen’s actions all the way through the Senate inquiry. The report finds that the CBA’s testimony to the Inquiry “deliberately and grossly understate[d] the extent of the wrongdoing within Commonwealth Financial Planning”. Of course, only a cynic would expect a giant bank to come clean about massive fraud and malfeasance of its own accord. If the events of the past decade in the global banking industry have proved anything, it is that 'light touch' regulation of the financial sector is utterly incapable of preventing fraud and mismanagement. There is a regulator that is charged with supervising and enforcing the provisions of bank regulations and laws. Unfortunately, that regulator is arguably the worst in Australia: the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, or ASIC. ASIC received a tip-off about Nguyen and the rogue actions inside the financial planning division in 2008. It did nothing. Eventually, Morris and some other whistleblowers went to the media. It was the dogged reporting of the actions of Nguyen by Fairfax’s Adele Ferguson in particular that finally forced ASIC’s hand. In the end, it was 16 months before the regulator took action. We’ve covered the dismal failures of ASIC here at New Matilda before. The regulator is a serial offender, chronically incapable of policing its own beat. Perhaps the worst recent example was the Trio Capital scandal, in which a gang of thieves led by Shawn Richard siphoned off $176 million from the superannuation accounts of mum and dad investors. Most of the money was transferred into bank accounts in the British Virgin Islands, where it disappeared forever. While Richard went to jail, the alleged mastermind, Jack Flader, was not pursued by ASIC, despite ASIC’s own evidence that he was the “ultimate controller” of the fraud. The Senate Committee was scathing in its view of ASIC’S conduct in the CBA affair. It notes that ASIC simply took the bank’s word on many matters, refusing to properly investigate. Terrifyingly, ASIC told the Senate Inquiry that it was happy with the CBA’s compensation process, testifying that it was “fair and robust”. That view is now untenable, given that the CBA itself has re-opened compensation. The Report concludes that “ASIC has shown that it is reluctant to actively pursue misconduct within [the CBA]; rather, it appears to accept the information and assurances the CBA provides without question. The committee is also strongly of the view that the CBA's credibility in the CFPL matter is so compromised that it should not be directly involved in future arrangements for investigating the misconduct or reviewing the compensation process.” Do we need a Royal Commission into the Commonwealth Financial Planning scandal, and ASIC’s handling of it? You bet we do. ASIC has been asleep at the wheel for far too long. Even the CBA appears to be admitting that it misled the regulator, and that ASIC wasn’t even aware it was being misled. But that’s not the view of Finance Minister Mathias Cormann. Despite his government’s pursuit of 20-year-old allegations about the involvement of AWU officials in the house renovations of Julia Gillard, he thinks a Royal Commission into the CBA is unnecessary. To add insult to injury, he is pushing ahead with the government’s plans to wreck Labor’s Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms. One of the critical planks of the FOFA reforms was aimed at outlawing financial planners from receiving commissions for selling products to their clients – exactly the loophole that “Dodgy Don” Nguyen exploited. As for the Commonwealth Bank, well, its boss Ian Narev told customers today that “I unreservedly apologise to all customers affected.” Thanks Ian. Perhaps he should also have apologised to the Senate, which concludes that his bank continued to obfuscate and cover up in its testimony to the recent Inquiry. Narev’s sorrow shouldn’t worry the bank’s shareholders or executives overly. The CBA is rolling in cash. The bank made a whopping $4.2 billion profit for the second half of last year. And what about ASIC? It has openly acknowledged it doesn’t have the resources to carry out its regulatory responsibilities. After $120 million in funding was cut in Joe Hockey’s budget, the agency has announced it will scale back its surveillance activities. It’s a good time to be a corporate criminal in Australia. https://newmatilda.com/2014/07/03/its-great-time-be-corporate-crook-australia

great article even though i liked it thought id just mention that lol

Being a some what recent addition to the world in terms of countries and culture and or lack thereof Im genuinely interested in peoples thoughts of what they think will become of Australian culture and society within the next 100/500/1000 years what does the future hold in your minds for our grandchildren great grandchildren etc etc?

Yeah quarter there was some interesting recent statistics showing a national increase in hospital admissions, drug treatment etc although im not so sure it rivals the black death not to say it isn't an issue. This sort of Vapid journalism pervades articles on the drug issue whilst bringing very little of substance

epidemic is a pretty hasty word how true does it hold within this scenario?

my 2cents is meh for ads lol rather see a paid membership like idea or grassroots fundraising (although knowing such as been done in the past and kinda hit n miss)

Thanks for clearing up some of my vague info change yeah the artists were auctioning off jackets and encouraged to take photos etc as were us common folks and whilst i dig the spreading of information via social networking it just came across to me anyway as some what self serving.I don't mean to detract from the great work that charity and volunteers do and i guess the point i was interested in is what Anodyne is talking about. Correct me if im wrong but im sure that the Red Cross, The Smith family & Lifeline have no religious affiliation if that sort of thing is an issue for people and where there donations go

So i dunno if people listen to triple j much but anyway they are doing this charity drive to get people to donate jackets to those less fortunate during winter, whilst i agree its a great initiative its seems to me anyway that the media drive about donations has become more about the bands and famous people donating ( like you can check out the jackets they donated on twitter etc ) more so than about the actual people and circumstances that lead these people to these certain situations of inequality. anyway i was concerned that the energy of this campaign seems to be going into feel good philanthropy rather than genuine concern about others which in and of itself says a lot about our society as a whole. i actually sent triple j's the doctor a msg on fb about this and the reply was that the issue needs more depth and time which apparently his 12.5hour a week show just cant fit in. now im not trying to be an asshole although im pretty good at that rather just interested why the main focus was on the donators rather than the root cause of the issue