Aussie friends done good

[Auxin]

Ya guys done good. The full news article can be viewed http://www.anti-imperialist.org/Asian_demo...o_10-26-03.htmlHERE but heres the australia relevant part:

 

quote:

---

On October 22, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Australia's main cities to protest Bush's arrival.

 

"We're demonstrating to say we oppose the policies of the Bush administration and particularly the ongoing occupation of Iraq. We also oppose the Australian government's involvement in that occupation," protest organizer Nick Everett told reporters. "The Australian government should reject any further requests for assistance from the U.S.," he said.

 

Large demonstrations took place in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne.

 

During his 20-hour visit to Australia, Bush was greeted not only by protesters outside, but also from inside Australia's parliament where he was heckled and shouted down during his speech.

---

YEAH MAN :D Tell that war criminal off. It wasnt the civilian protests that impressed me the most (Bush just circled the globe and people everywhere protested his unjustified, unprovoked wars of agression and terrorism). The civilian protests were great and much appreciated but parliment telling Bush off is an absolute classic. Sounds like your government wont kow tow to Bush and his threats of labeling all opposition as 'terrorists'. Every day I hear more reports of countries waking up and reducing support to Bushs war machine- the list of his actual allies is getting pretty short.

Keep up the good work opposing this tyrranical mass murdering psychopath- I'll keep trying to depropogandize people over here on the american front.

[occidentalis]

Unfortunately our government is doing everything it can to kowtow to Mr Bush. The protesters in Parliament were two Greens party senators.

[Auxin]

But it is a start- so I'm still gonna be happy.

But your right- theres still a hell of a lot of work to be done on all fronts, especially in the US where the average person falls for any bit of propoganda the government puts out.

[Zu]

Auxin:

It wasnt the civilian protests that impressed me the most... but parliment telling Bush off is an absolute classic. Sounds like your government wont kow tow to Bush and his threats of labeling all opposition as 'terrorists'.

Unfortunately it was only 2 senators who called out during Bush's speech (both Greens). They have since copped a lot of shit from the conservatives and other sheeple for being undignified, embarassing, childish, etc. I can assure you that the majority of our politicians are arse-lickers through and through. Especially our fuckwit prime minister who George refered to a "a man of steel".

[RubyTuesday]

Johnny 'Man of Steel' Howard? Ahahahahahaaa!

Go Bob Brown.

:mad:

[waterdragon]

hmmm, steel isn't what it used to be then. howard is a pathetic creature who lies constantly and does not serve the wishes of most australians. the word for selling your country is treason i believe.

notice how quickly the 'idiot' arms of the media turned on bob brown -comedians, commentators, all the entrenched media career scum. i think the smarmiest bit of sucking up went to alan jones, what a maggot.

[Torsten]

I thnk the worst was the outright censorship of the greens protests. Try as I may I did not get to see any footage of the scenario on any channel. Just the voices in the background while the camera made every effort not to pan that direction. Apparently some footage came through from overseas networks later in the day.

Bush's speech was meaningless and basically a video of John and Bush sucking each other off would have been just as effective... cos that's basically what they did in their respective speeches.

I truely resent my taxes being wasted on this visit. It gave NOTHING to the people and was against the interest of the majority of australians. But that's what you get when you have a leader who is not elected by the majority of australians.....umm, I mean two leaders who are not elected by the majority of their citizens.

The only good thing about the visit is that it shows just how unpopular Bush is around the world and that this filters through in the media at least to some extent.

And as usual the ABC was perfect in their timing of airing that piece on the aluminium tube lies. Excellent choice. I hope they repeat it just before the next australian election.

If this sort of scum are supposed to be our rolemodels, then no wonder our society is so sick.

[gomaos]

I posted this in "creativity/sheepish slaughter"

a couple of days ago:

The only people with a conscience

Bob brown and the other green one

kicked out of Parliament

to "protect" the chinese and american bastards...

all the government thinks about is trade

and $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$4

money doesn't stink

but this government does

[nabraxas]

 

quote:

---

the word for selling your country is treason i believe

---

unfortunately no. the word for selling off your country is "privatisation"

selling out your country would be treason.

[chief23]

I love the fact that the greenies had the balls to stand up and say what they did in parliment. I know where my vote goes.

 

Torsten:

I truely resent my taxes being wasted on this visit. It gave NOTHING to the people and was against the interest of the majority of australians. But that's what you get when you have a leader who is not elected by the majority of australians.....umm, I mean two leaders who are not elected by the majority of their citizens.

What do you mean not elected by the majority? I thought that was how democracy worked. Please explain!?!

Chief

[gerbil]

Did you all hear how howard and everyone else forgot to invite the widow and child of the only australian soldier who was killed?

And they made the excuse that having george laying a wreath (sp?) out of respect was a last minute decision. It really shows that they don't give two shits about the people. And of all people, the crocodile hunter was invited! what a joke.

In the herald sun (not that any part of it has any quality what so ever) there have been so many people saying how they are embarrassed to be australians because of what the greens did. And how the greens should stick to saving the environment and not voicing their opinion on such matters. 'they've lost my vote' bloody wankers.

Could you imagine how much security would have cost for this parasite bush?

[Zu]

gerbil:

'they've lost my vote' bloody wankers.

Most of the people that think like that wouldn't vote green anyway (I hope). It makes me really angry that people were so upset about this. It's not like Bob Brown (or anyone) was going to get a chance to ask him questions in a public forum.

[gomaos]

I think the fact that Bob Brown and the other greenie actually had the guts to stand up against "big Brother Bush" is a very positive thing and will it get them the votes of those people who hate Bush and Howard and everything that comes with them.

I think the Greens will do very good in the next election.

But I don't think Labor will, and thus we will have to endure fucking John Howard for many more years to come.

Is there any country under a subtropical sun that will let me and my son migrate?

Has to be a non-faschist country.

Note: China is a Faschist country!

[MrBumpy]

I was pretty disgusted to see that Australian camera's weren't allowed to film the Green's protesting...and that the only footage shown on Australian news was from a foreign source.

I haven't heard though...did they end up doing the pre-arranged standing ovation? that sort of shit is waaay more childish then what the greens did.

-bumpy

[Torsten]

Originally posted by chief23:

what do you mean not elected by the majority? I thought that was how democracy worked. Please explain!?!

There are many ways to give the appearance of democracy and yet fail to deliver it... often intentionally.

In australia we have the westminster system, which means that the country is divided up into small electorates and each electorate sends one person to canberra. This is the MP for that electorate. Whichever party gets the most MPs also gets to run the country.

It is an old system and open to a lot of abuse (by shifting boundaries etc) and it sometimes does not reflect what the majority wants. For example, assume there are 10 electorates of 100 people each...(and for the sake of this model only two parties). The libs get 51% in 6 electorates and hence win the election. Labor gets 90% in 4 electorates and loses.

Total number of Lib votes = 366 [306 (51% in 6 seats) + 60 (10% in 4 seats)].

Total number of Labor votes = 654 [360 (90% in 4 seats) + 294 (49% in 6 seats)].

So even though labor got almost double the votes, the government will nevertheless be Liberal.

This is a shortcoming of the westminster system well known to anyone in politics and is regarded as the weakest and most undemocratic part of it. In Germany after the war when the allies established a new electoral system they realised this shortcoming and fixed it (by adding representative MPs). hence, todays german electoral model is one of the fairest and most representative, which also allowed minor parties to become respresented in the lower house.

In the case of Bush it's a much dirtier story. In the state where his brother is governor hundreds of thousands of potential voters were prevented from voting by the establishment of a new electoral system. These changes affected mostly the poor, migrants and african-americans ... ie those of the oppsite party.

This wasn't the only state where there were serious irregularities, but it was the most blatant abuse of the system. problems included new voting card systems and various other methods that confused voters and caused a huge number of invalid votes.... again mostly by the less educated.

Add to this that the US does not have compulsary voting and only about half the population actually bothers to cast their vote, and you have a very unrepresentative government. All the irregularities wouldn't have mattered too much if they were either affecting both sides, or if the margin was great enough so as not to have much of an effect. But this was not so. All irregularities were in favour of Bush and perpetrated in states run by republicans, and in the end the margin that bush won by was so low that it is generally accepted that Bush was given the presidency by his governor brother. In fact, it is so widely accepted that i recently read an astounding interview with a member of his defence department who said that Bush wasn't elected, but rather chosen by God. ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../17/wboyk17.xml check the 4th paragraph)

So yeah, you can have lots of forms of democracy, including the version that is practiced in malaysia, and get away with it. But to what extent it really si democracy is a different matter.

[RubyTuesday]

Anyone read the Andrew Bolt article in the Herald-Sun about how the Greens are 'dangerous fanatics' and comparing them to the Nazis?

:mad:

[gomaos]

I think the Westminster System sucks and should go to hell.

It's totally unfair.

There are electorates of inbred redneck national party voters who shouldn't even be allowed to vote but rather reside in a mental institution.

Just my 2c...

[nabraxas]

first off, i totally agree w/torstens analysis ov a "first past the post" democracy, as opposed to proportional representation. but it's not exactly 'westminster' in that you are forced to vote here(which brings in gomaos's complaints).

i've no idea where the system ov 'preferences' came from, & in the uk we only vote for 1 house.

 

quote:

---

hence, todays german electoral model is one of the fairest and most representative

---

--err....don't they still have a law(like in Japan) where if you are not ov german 'ancestory' you can't vote? to stop the children ov immigrants voting?

[gomaos]

don't they still have a law(like in Japan) where if you are not ov german 'ancestory' you can't vote? to stop the children ov immigrants voting?

Well do they? I don't believe they do but couldn't be f...d to chase it up...

BTW in America they still have a law that could prevent Arnold von der schwarzen Ecke (brrr){...Arnold from the black Corner...from the black hole?) from becoming President (good).

They're looking at changing it.

I wasn't referring re Westminster System whether you have to vote or not, I meant the fact that there may be "families" sitting on pieces of land the size of eoropean countries in rural Australia, and 100 of their votes (most likely right-wing) count as much as 100 000 votes in the city, what's fair about that?

THAT's why I hate the westminster System...

fair would be:

if party A has 51% of the votes it should be in government

If party B has 49% of the votes it should be the oppossition...

regrettably in this country the reverse is the case...

under this present system, those rich ....s (insert your favourite word of abuse) on their huge chunks of land are actually "more equal than the rest of us..."

But we should all have equal voting power!

[t st tantra]

one person one vote,fair enough but its the uneven distribution of wealth that allows some people to manipulate the system to their own undemocratic ends.

it's much the same in most countries ,under most systems,a power elite controls wealth and uses it to control the county and amass more wealth.

t s t .

[gomaos]

I can well imagine the reason for this setup:

after revolution upon revolution the rich bastards, King, Queens, etc had to grudgingly agree to "democracy"

Since They own large chunks of land which are mainly inhabited by themselves and their servants,

they had these electorates set up and that's what happened.

it's the same in Australia:

We don't have any Dukes and earls and what the f... here, but the endresult is the same:

Pseudo-Democracy!

[occidentalis]

gomaos:

fair would be:

if party A has 51% of the votes it should be in government

If party B has 49% of the votes it should be the oppossition...

How would this be fair? 49% of the population would disagree with the policies of the ruling party and would have no reason to comply with them, and might even go out of their way to sabotage them.

Fair would be a truly democratic, anarchistic, consensus method of decision making. Fuck politics.

[waterdragon]

fair would be to represent the wishes of the people. got an issue - vote on it and let the people choose. in this fashion the gst would have difficulty getting a start, politicians would be a lot poorer, cannabis would be legal, australia would not be sticking its nose into the middle east, media wouldn't be based on fantasy, etc, etc.

[gomaos]

Yeah sort of like switzerland...

I haven't been there myself, but from what I have heard it's pretty free and cool there...

you can buy things like 2CI and T2 in the headshop there...

plus many other good things...

they vote on important questions like waterdragon mentioned, it's not all up just to the Government...

that's why it appears to be so "free"

[Torsten]

Originally posted by nabraxas:

err....don't they still have a law(like in Japan) where if you are not ov german 'ancestory' you can't vote? to stop the children ov immigrants voting?

Nope. And they haven't had those for many years. I lived there until 84 and I know plenty of my immigrant friends parents were allowed to vote. However, they had to be german citizens, and becoming a citizen is not so easy. Obviously germany is a pretty full country (like many other central european nations) and doesn't really have room for a lot of migrants. Essentially it is no different to australia in its distinction of who is allowed to vote and who isn't. Germany allows many more migrants into the country than any other european nation, because of the 'racist' and 'ethnic discrimination' stigma germany has from WW2 and tries to avoid at all cost. But obviously it won't grant citizenship to everyone. Obtaining citizenship is not encouraged the same way it is in australia, which is seeking an increase in population. Very different from germany, which is seeking a decrease.

You may have misunderstood the law a little as it works in reverse..... if you have german ancestry then germany can't refuse you the citizenship if you request it (unless you have previously given up your german citizenship for some reason).