These raids have been highly condemned amongst the public here, and (at least my echo-chamber of) people seem to be pretty wholly against it.
Of course, we're also an apathetic people because we've had it so good for so long that no one will force any change, and it'll just keep getting worse.
It's also seen in our elections. There's no big visions. No bold statements from politicians about producing changes to make a better society. It's all attack ads and pandering to key demographics just to win votes and stay in government.
It's depressing and dire, because I don't see it changing in much of my lifetime and it's the exact reason why our leaders are completely dismissive of action even when we stare down the barrel towards issues like climate change. Hell, our current PM literally brought a lump of coal into parliament as a prop to taunt the opposition by saying "this is coal, don't be afraid".
edit: Another great example of the apathy I'm talking about is the collective shrug that most Aussies gave as incredibly intrusive anti-encryption and data-logging laws were introduced last year. Simply, no one cares unless it immediately and directly interrupts their middle-class suburban lifestyle.
> Another great example of the apathy I'm talking about is the collective shrug
Talking about collective shrugs and apathy, I am still absolutely stunned by the complete apathy to half of the Great Barrier Reef dying. Here is this absurdly massive natural icon of Australia featured in all of its tourism ads while growing up. Half of it dies. And majority Australia basically doesn’t give a fuck. There’s no outrage. Nothing.
There's no collective shrug - unfortunately the inner city outrage becomes self-serving ignorance the further north you go.
Mining jobs have always paid better, and no one want's to change careers to work in tourism or reskill for supporting sustainable energy.
Places like Gladstone have seen a 50% collapse in property prices after a lot of mines shifted from construction to operational and demand dropped.
That same self-serving ignorance has now kept people like Peter "he who would be king" Dutton in Government.
It's not all bad though as there's currently money to be made in mine regeneration projects as mines are closed which is a good thing for jobs with hopefully environmental benefits.
It's for the same reason Canadians largely ignore the extraordinarily vast environmental destruction in their resource extraction territories: their economies, wealth and incomes are partially dependent on destroying the environment. Everyone knows what is happening, most ignore it and go about their business.
Out of sight out of mind, for the most part. You see this in nearly all countries.
It's often peculiar what people can have apathy about and what gets rabid attention.
The media and social frenzy about measles cases in the US this year as an example. There will be 1,600 to 2,000 cases in the US in 2019, and a few deaths. It's wall to wall media coverage, the world is ending, social media is on fire. Meanwhile ~25,000 people will die just from fentanyl in the US this year. Half a million Americans - more than died in WW2 - die in total from overdosing across seven or eight years, and well you know, it's just a thing that's going on, I guess we should focus on it a bit maybe sometime, shrug what can you do.
Oil and gas are a huge part of the economy, and a huge part of that is "unconventional oil", i.e. oil which is far more polluting during its extraction compared to other oil.
If the world actually committed properly to limiting global warming to 2C, there would be no point in extracting this especially polluting oil.
Besides that, they are allowing some very unique forests to be cleared to have the oil extracted from, with the promise of later rehabilitation that never happens, as the intermediate company that is responsible to pay for it goes bankrupt.
The are some important differences between measles situation and the situation with opioids and other drugs that people get addicted to and OD on, which may lead to the differences in news coverage:
1. People have been getting addicted to things since ancient times, and those addictions often led to the deaths. In all the time since then, we've never solved the problem of addiction. So, it is not at all shocking or surprising that people are still getting addicted to things and dying.
People have also been getting measles since ancient times...but we did solve that problem. Hence, the very existence of measles cases is newsworthy.
2. Most addicts become so for reasons that most people can understand. It's a "there but for the grace of God, go I" situation. We can imagine how we could have ended up that way, and for most of us I think that only requires imagining a few small changes to our past.
Getting measles in a first world country, though, except for people who cannot be vaccinated because they are too young, allergic, or have weak immune systems, requires that you, or a guardian if you are a child, to be an idiot.
3. Politicians may disagree what do do about addiction and the associated deaths, but generally they all agree it is a problem we need to do something about.
With measles, there are some politicians who think it is not a big deal, or even that it is good for kids to get measles, mumps, etc., thinking that this makes them stronger and reduces there chances for things like cancer later. There are bills in several states to make it easier for parents to opt out of school vaccination requirements. In Texas, that bill also prohibits state health officials from keeping track of who opts out, which will make it harder to track and contain outbreaks.
A minor correction: vaccinated people with no previous health issues of note actually can catch measles if herd immunity isn't strong enough to actually stop the disease from spreading at a population level.
For non-Australian readers, there is one very important thing to note about Australian elections and democracy: voting is mandatory under penalty of an $80 AUS fine and occurs on Saturdays.
In US federal elections, turnout is about 55%. Whereas in Australian federal elections turnout is about 90% [0].
Does that not just make it harder for informed opinions sway outcomes?
Or on the flip side does it actually make it harder to use a small subset of the population to steal an election from an apathetic population at large.
I.e. you'd still be able to take advantage of the apathy but it'd be a much slower moving change towards extremes and polarisation which is pretty good for democracy in general.
It's sort of like a random forest algorithm and how it resists overfitting - lots of partially informed votes by people who lack 'single focus' issues driving their vote make it hard for the system to be swayed to extremes. It's mostly good but it definitely results in many issues (like freedom of expression) falling down due to apathy of the masses. For example there was just an election and the opposition leader had promised on passing controversial spying legislation last year that they did so only on a proviso it would be immediately revisited. He completely failed to do that, but having been proven a liar did not even get raised during the election. Literally nobody except vulnerable minorities care, and they don't count in Australian elections.
“Informed” and “motivated to vote” don’t correlate well. I’d even argue that they might be negatively correlated; the people most fanatical about voting are the same people who get their news from extremely biased and inaccurate sources. Mandatory voting takes power away from the crazies.
After reading that I think maybe a reward system would work better than a penalty?
Might encourage people w/ jobs who can't get to the polls to go and vote, but doesn't put unnecessary drain on their life.
They also should make voting day a national holiday, and give a tax deduction to companies who allow their employees to take as much time as they need to vote (given some lines can be hours long in places).
Edit: My comment is directed to the U.S.A. as that's where I'm from.
maybe like $50, and $10 extra for each election in a row--like if you don't miss one else you start over at $50, including local elections. They could have a mobile app and have badges too, and 10'th election you get a free sub.
Well we had Clive Palmer get into the senate, who was effectively our low rent version of Trump.
That and the revolving door of prime ministers over the years means we've endured a similar level of political turmoil as Trump has managed to stir up on his own home turf.
Clive Palmer was elected to the House of Reps but had sway over a number of senators from his party. I live in that electorate and it was a shocker how so many Labor and possibly Green votes went to Palmer. Good example of how naive tribalism such as always voting the opposition party last can go very wrong.
The damage he contributed to by supporting the repeal of Rudd's emission trading scheme and the mining tax was right up there with Trump's rollback of EPA standards and attacks on renewable energy. He promptly retired and went back to his mining interests once he got what he wanted.
His reappearance at the last election was bizarre and pointless, but may have contributed to the Liberals looking likely to only need to deal with Jacqui Lambie to pass any legislation in the Senate.
I think in general 'big visions' are pretty bad and dangerous -- they're what get you the anit-encryption data logging laws. In general things are pretty good and so anyone making radical changes would most likely move in a worse direction.
I really don't classify the anti-encryption data logging laws as a big vision. To me, they're the continuation of the erosion of Australia's (somewhat implied) privacy rights. They were one of the bigger single moves in that space recently, but I by no means see it as a 'big vision' change.
It's really interesting I remember in the 90's when I was a kid during the height of the Australian republican movement there were ads on tv celebrating our democratic traditions "Our Country was founded by a vote, not a war" and all that.
Seems to me like the Coalition has done a really solid job of wedging Labor on National security to the point now they can introduce increasingly draconian laws and the second Labor speaks out against them suddenly Labor are "weak on national security" so they don't dare go against them.
Does anyone remember the Ads about terrorism they used to show on tv advising Australian's to "Be Alert not Alarmed" (I'm not kidding these actually aired) the government has done a really good job of conjuring up this atmosphere of fear whether it be terrorism, cybercrime or refugees and most recently "China" the electorate has responded to it ever time.
The Last politician I was excited about was Kevin Rudd when he stood up and declared climate change "was the moral challenge of a generation" mind you this was in 2007. He then promptly walked away from doing anything after he realized it would cost him votes, I've been completely cynical about politics in this country ever since.
As an ex Australian, left well before the current situation/ malaise. Still informed well.
>These raids have been highly condemned amongst the public here, and (at least my echo-chamber of) people seem to be pretty wholly against it.
Yes there seems to be some distaste among the public, its been a significant story. But people that really care about it are in your and our echo-chamber. This has happen before and will happen again, it is clear they are emboldened, there was just a big election, the good guy were going to win and then they didn't...
>Of course, we're also an apathetic people because we've had it so good for so long that no one will force any change, and it'll just keep getting worse.
Yes Australia implemented some pretty bad economic policies, yet very little of it has come due, some of it is because of our/your big seemingly kindly neighbour to the north, but well all pay eventually it will just be later.
>It's also seen in our elections. There's no big visions. No bold statements from politicians about producing changes to make a better society. It's all attack ads and pandering to key demographics just to win votes and stay in government.
Or stay out of government. Labour screamed harder about non existing terrorism. Promised to crap even harder on immigrants. They then went on to lose a completely unlosable election. You won't win in 2019 even if your Tony Blair. Sure as hell not with Ed Milliband...
The economic policies was OK, if you read an economic professors blog. Quite incoherent. Raising taxes without raising anyone's taxes, huh? Not dumbed down, just dumb. To little to late. I can go on forever.
They thought they were going to win anyway, so who really cares? And then they didn't.
>Hell, our current PM literally brought a lump of coal into parliament as a prop to taunt the opposition by saying "this is coal, don't be afraid".
They are quite gleefully mocking you, they are enjoying themselves and this very much, they are "owning the libs" like never before.
Politics has always been attacks and pandering. The only time you get really grand vision is before & during war, and that usually has the worst outcomes for the most people, including permanent loss of liberty when the whole thing is said and done.
I am curious about why you think climate change is an important issue in Australia. It's a relatively small country, without much of a manufacturing industry.
Australia is a globally influential country with high per capita wealth and emissions. Australia has the capacity to show leadership to other similarly-sized countries, by incrementally addressing (potentially at economic cost to itself, a wealthy country) a global challenge for which everyone is responsible, regardless of the size of the country they live in.
Perhaps if Australia pulled it off successfully without too much economic damage, this could be true. But from what I've heard, the states that adopted green policies suffered power shortages and soaring energy prices. Hopefully in the future this will change.
40% of the worlds coal and new mining in a place called the Galilee basin and shipping it to India. I think if they mine the whole thing it can create 1deg of warming just by itself.
Yes, if Australia stopped it's export of coal then it may very well make a difference. But as far as I'm aware, that wasn't even part of the debate as the economic impact would be too great.
Because we are a regional leader. The pacific islands most affected by climate change look to us and go 'you are rich and have the means to lead by example. Why aren't you?' and that's a valid criticism.
Or, in other better words than my own, exactly what sjy's sibling comment said.
edit: Climate change is a quintessential tragedy of the commons. It really should be our obligation to lead by example since we have the capacity to, even if our actions in isolation do not make a sufficient enough change. In fact,
I'd argue that taking a lead on it is in our best interest. It helps to cement our position as a regional leader and exapnds our soft power, which is the best way we can hold regional influence outsized to our comparitively small population.
“You’ve got a mature liberal democracy that pursues and hunts down whistle-blowers and tries to kill the messenger.”
Have we considered the possibility that this is what a mature liberal democracy looks like? Peak democracy was WWII, we seem to have been sliding towards authoritarianism since then.
Until 1968, every new play in Britain required a licence from the Lord Chamberlain's Office before it could be publicly performed. There was no legislation attached to this, so the Lord Chamberlain could censor as he chose.
Can you imagine introducing such a rule today? How about applying for a license before launching a website?
That law came in 1737 when there was a new theatre in town and satirists who dared to call the government silly things.
It was the moral panic of the time.
In 1959 we got the Obscene Publications Act and that got used quite a bit during the Thatcher years with a new moral panic - video nasties. Video nasties weren't just Chainsaw Massacre stuff they also had a thing to say about society.
Police raided quaint little video shops and did their best to enforce the law, sometimes getting it wrong, well, often getting it wrong.
This only encouraged the market in 'Video Nasties' so in 1984 they brought in a new law to get this moral panic under control.
You could say that the law had been updated for the medium of the era - VHS cassettes - and that they could not be bothered with the stage any more.
However, the stage is a public place, you have people congregate in an audience and they could be a dangerous rabble. In 2000 we got the Terrorism Act and that followed on from the Criminal Justice Act that had came along earlier in the 1990's to make it illegal for more than four people to get together to listen to 'repetitive beats'.
There are plenty of laws regarding what you can and cannot say online and people have been prosecuted for saying not so nice things on Facebook. You might not have to apply for a licence to run a website but that is not so enforceable when you could put your website online in a country far, far away.
Actual censorship has got a lot more refined over the decades. As has propaganda. A lot has gone on over the last twenty years of widescale internet usage, however it will be a while before we find out what this is.
Aside from the absurdity of having a lord make any decisions, I think much of the population—maybe not a majority, but a significant part of the population—would be fine with that if presented as opposing or “preventing” terrorism (as if that’s even possible).
>How about applying for a license before launching a website?
You don't have that, but in Germany and Austria you must include your full name and address in any website you publish, which creates sort of the same effect.
It does have the same effect of chilling unpopular speech, but not to the same degree. And crucially, at least the license-granting body cannot deny the license.
I think that we are at a time where there is more public input, whistle-blowing, outcry over corruption, democratic processes, and so forth than ever before in history.
I daresay that we are also at an information age; a time in which we can identify authoritarianism, and argue and critise it from the comfort of our couches and for the larger part without fear of death.
We should not confuse the matter: to think that the sum of our current challenges imply the lesser to be the sum of historic challenges.
I think that’s a pretty natural progression. A well run dictatorship is probably superior to a democracy in the short term so it’s always tempting to give up freedom in exchange for efficiency. The question is how long the dictatorship can keep it up before going downhill.
I consider myself to be strongly pro-democracy, but as a thought experiment look at TV shows like "X Factor" (or "American Idol" if you're in the US) to see the results of democracy in action. These shows should be producing the finest musicians the world has ever seen, right? After all, the masses know best.
There are some who would argue that X Factor does, in fact, produce the best because best means nothing but most popular. Otherwise, you have to bring in subjective measures of taste which are open to being condemned as elitist.
(Personally, I'm happy to be an elitist, provided it's an open elite that anyone can join)
Is this any more or less valid for government? What does it mean to be a successful government? Ultimately I contend that if the majority of your populous is happy, you're a successful government. So is this any more or less valid than X-Factor being a popularity contest? I popular government is one that keeps the populous happy. So isn't democracy equally a popularity contest?
Or perhaps that was your point and I misinterpret your words.
How many countries is the majority truly happy? Do you think they are in America? How many riots/protests have there been lately?
We're so polarized that families are starting to hate each other based on their political views.
I think a successful government is one that ensures the highest level of education for the largest amount of people, spends $0 on international affairs until ALL domestic affairs (like poverty, healthcare, etc) are covered or at least miniscule as to affect less than 2% - unless a 'true' war is initiated i.e. we're physically attacked by a nation (not terrorists that are from a specific nation), and regime change 'just because' is not even a consideration.
I think a successful government would also give 0 kickbacks, deductions, and rewards to any specific business or industry (except perhaps food/farming as needed for weather/crop performance considerations as we all need to eat). Money and corporations should have 0 access to politicians.
The fact is if you look at a graph of politics over the past 100 years, and how often the people get policies enacted that are 'popular' vs how often the rich do it's basically a flatline for us, and a progressive diagonal for them.
Popularity has nothing to do w/ politics --until we get more 'popular' non-career politicians into D.C. BrandNewCongress is an interesting organization trying to do just that for both Republicans and Democrats. It's like if X-factor judges could be bought and some nazily person who can't sing at all wins instead of the popular vote. The show would be cancelled in a heartbeat. But that's how America is ran.
We let people choose the government, but we don't let them make important decisions (except in rare cases when the government is foolish enough to hold a referendum).
The whole point of representative democracy is to put a firewall between the "the masses" and decision-making, while allowing them some influence.
Historically, party and other elites have also largely controlled who was in a position to become a representative in the first place, although that stops working when the elites become completely out-of-touch with the electorate (hence Trump).
Identifying the smartest people is only one job of the election process - another one is dividing up limited resources. Usually, elitism focuses on the fact that scientists can elect more scientific politicians than normal people, ignoring the possibility that (bear with me), scientists might want to spend all the road money building roads to their labs.
The Roman republic had a concept of a temporary (usually one year) appointment of a dictator to handle some situation (usually an existential threat like a war) in which more immediate decision making than the Senate could do. It generally worked well until the final defeat of Carthage.
The Roman republic was an oligarchy though, and in practice government was pretty different from today's democracies. It's an interesting idea, for sure, but it's really not comparable. Also remember that the Roman republic was basically _constantly_ at war, and Romans didn't really distinguish between militar and political skill
America and most modern democracies are oligarchy's as well. Show me a g20 nation ran by paupers and everyday Joe's. America is as big an oligarchy as there ever was, esp. w/ the revolving door in Congress, it might as well be ran by the mafia.
I'm going to hold myself back from writing a long post about Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp in Australia.
Generally Australia is pretty free, even without explicit freedom of speech. The military is very competent and retrained in its actions, however in my life I've only seen an increase in nationalism related to the military. The right wing love to drape themselves in the flag and related militaria.
I think the afghan war crimes by special forces should be of genuine public interest to Australians. And I think the application of Top Secret to government documents about these matters is the real problem.
Its a problem for the public and democracy when you can use something like a Classification as way to cover up misdeeds.
I feel sorry for the guy going down for the leaks.
> Have we considered the possibility that this is what a mature liberal democracy looks like?
It's not a mature liberal democracy, maybe it was one time. It's just that power always tries to acquire more power and obviously any not __perfectly__ designed political system will always end up authoritarian and undemocratic.
How could peak democracy be ww2? The only significant democracy in ww2 was the US. British Empire, Soviet Union, Germany, Japan, China, etc were not democracies.
There was the US and everyone else was a non-democratic empire or a colony of the empire.
uh... Do you mean the time just before WWII, when most European nations were either Fascist or Communist? Or do you mean the time just after WWII when all of Europe was destroyed?
Well, quite. Given the role of the Soviet Union in grinding down the Axis forces until the counter-invasion was feasible, and their subsequent seizing of half the territory, you could equally say it was a victory for Communism. No, the victory in the war wasn't really due to the political systems of the belligerents - and democracy was suspended in the UK during the war.
The real long-term benefit was the installation at gunpoint of constitutions written by idealists on the defeated powers, and the construction of transnational free blocs (NATO and the EEC, in contrast to the Warsaw Pact).
The democratic post-colonial transition in the victorious powers didn't really happen until about 1968. Britain and France had to shed their colonies, with another few hundred thousand killed along the way. America had to give up on Vietnam and grant civil rights to its Black citizens. Australia and South Africa had to give up on their official policies of racial discrimination. France had its collapse and re-establishment of the 5eme Republique, after a narrow brush with military dictatorship. Greece, Spain, Portugal remained as Fascist dictatorships into the 1970s! The UK had a small civil war, complete with security services murdering in secret, troops shooting people dead in the street, and the near extermination of the entire government in a terrorist bombing.
Post-war democracy in the post-colonial Middle East states was barely even tried.
To me, the high point of liberal democracy was the decade between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the World Trade Center.
>Given the role of the Soviet Union in grinding down the Axis forces until the counter-invasion was feasible, and their subsequent seizing of half the territory
Let's not forget that the Soviet Union enabled WWII and was an initial aggressor along with Nazi Germany.
>To me, the high point of liberal democracy was the decade between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the World Trade Center.
This underscores how much political systems are influenced by the empires of the day. When Soviet Union and America were the superpowers the world was split between democratic and communist governments. When America became the sole superpower, that accelerated the move to liberal democracy.
.. in the short term. And it worked for those countries west of Kiev. It did not stick in Russia.
The problem is that the US has always had its internal tension between the official liberalism ("all men are created equal"), the colonial racism ("except those guys"), economic freedom for the individual, and economic freedom for the megacorp. It exports all four of these, and sometimes the wrong ones win in another country. The banana republics got the racism and capitalism. Russia got hyper-capitalism with poor rule of law, enabling its collapse into a Mafia state.
What do you mean in the short term? Since WWII there has been a steady global acceptance of democracy. You don't think that was something that just happened by accident? This is something to consider for those that want America to simply stay within its border and let nations fight it out to solve their problems.
Your characterizations are also highly skewed. They are reminiscent of conspiracy theorists that attribute all malice to one entity they hate. For example, American didn't export hyper-capitalism to Russia. The Soviet system was a humanitarian disaster for decades and when it collapsed it led to internal chaos until Putin showed up. There was good-faith effort on the part of America and Europe to stabilize the nation and bring it into the community (not just for altruistic reasons - Russia is a very important country).
I'm not sure what the distinction between individual economic freedom and 'megacorp' (your term) economic freedom actually is. America (just like Britain before it) has pushed for global trade - on balance that's a good thing.
This ignores that during the Cold War there were more than just "democratic and communist governments". There were also plenty of military dictatorships, authoritarian one-party-states and theocracies, and a fair share of those were firmly in the USA's sphere of influence.
>This ignores that during the Cold War there were more than just "democratic and communist governments".
Yes. The original label of the 'Third World' was applied to non-aligned nations. Those nations were still influenced by the global order created by US and Soviets, and later just the US.
>There were also plenty of military dictatorships, authoritarian one-party-states and theocracies, and a fair share of those were firmly in the USA's sphere of influence.
That's right, and not the point. The initial state of the world (for our purposes, let's start with the period between WWI and WWII but the earlier you go the more it reinforces my position) did not begin with all democracies. It began with a tiny number of democracies[1]. In the posted link you can see we went from democracies representing between 5% and 10% of world governments to more than half. Don't tell me it just so happens to be that the world adopted the political system of the major super-power. You can also look at it another way, America will exert strong pressure for democracy and market-based economy but it may not succeed and sometimes practical considerations take precedence (like the fact that the nation was locked in an existential struggle with the Soviet superpower - which had no qualms in pushing their ideology on the non-aligned world)
I completely agree that the high point of liberal democracy was the decade between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the World Trade Center.
Since then, every year the Western democracies resemble more and more with the socialist countries they were criticizing so much 30 years ago, both in their economies dominated by monopolies and in the surveillance of their citizens and in the restrictions of the citizens' rights.
The decades after WWII were consumed by the Cold War, between two sets of victors, one of which was definitively not democratic. The other side had a tendency to prop up dictators as long as they opposed the Communists.
I think the parent poster is just trying to count the total number of functional democratic vs. {nonfunctional democratic, non-democratic} regimes at any given point in time. WWII didn’t create the USSR, so that doesn’t make the count go down; nor did those dictatorships they later propped up just come into existence. (Propping up newly-formed dictatorships when they emerge out of previously-stateless areas is more the US’s thing.)
But WWII did take a few rather large European empires with disenfranchised colonies, and turn their member states into independent, (at least temporarily) functional democratic nations. It also produced semi-global representative-democratic “treaty organizations” in the form of NATO and the UN, which, again, were at least temporarily functional and taken seriously and used to enact changes by the will of their members.
(Really, though, the member nations of NATO/the UN just all had a good temporary working relationship due to being either on the same side of the war, or being made powerless by the means of their defeat, so these bodies were just a formal representation of the way their leaders were already talking to one-another at the time. As soon as everyone in these nations got newer leaders, these bodies stopped “working”—because it was never the bodies themselves that functioned in the first place.)
> WWII did take a few rather large European empires with disenfranchised colonies, and turn their member states into independent, (at least temporarily) functional democratic nations.
Outside of the Axis powers .. did it? How? Which countries? The more I try to think of a list the more I come up with examples that were due primarily to local action (e.g. India), their own wars (Kenya, Algeria), or happened a lot later than 1945.
True, but WWII was the precipitating event nonetheless, partly because nations like the UK could barely afford to hang onto their empires, and were increasingly dependent on the US which was generally anti-colonialist (if inconsistently so).
>The other side had a tendency to prop up dictators as long as they opposed the Communists.
As opposed to the democratic governments the Soviet Union supported? Give me a break here. The Soviet Union pushed for disastrous political systems based on their own autocratic socialist model, and funded ideological guerrillas to destabilize the nation if it didn't wholly adopt their ideology.
I cannot understand how people can look at history and be completely blind to the actions of Soviet Union.
Why did you take the parent post as an example of anyone being completely blind to the actions of the Soviet Union? The points seems to be that treating the immediate Post-WWII era as some high point for democracy is... well, requiring further support than is immediately obvious, anyway, since there were two victorious sides, one of which wasn't democratic at all, and the other which supported autocracies all over the world, too.
Pointing out that the spread of democracy post-WWII was mostly confined the defeated states in that conflict, and that neither victorious side did much to support democracy elsewhere and even the "free world" often did the opposite, isn't a defense of the Soviets.
> The Soviet Union pushed for disastrous political systems based on their own autocratic socialist model, and funded ideological guerrillas to destabilize the nation if it didn't wholly adopt their ideology.
That's the point, though. The USA did exactly the same thing:
People always demand unchecked democracy because they always believe they're interests align with the majority. Why should everyone get a say? Why should anyone get a say?
I don't believe a legitimate democracy can have any power greater than the individual. To extrapolate, "The government may do x." If you replace 'government' with an individual, that is the guideline. For example 'Jose may tax your income.' Obviously, Jose may not do that.
From what I understand, Australia, Canada, NZ, UK, and USA intelligence agencies can all spy on each others' citizens legally and share the information with each other. That's not the intent of the agreement, but allows a loophole where the countries can spy on their own citizens by proxy. Correct?
Five Eyes nations basically agree to not spy on each other's citizens and instead (potentially) agree to accept targets suggested by each other, and then feed back the resulting intelligence.
The text of the original agreement was released to the public recently but annoyingly you have to pay for it. This article[0] has an overview though;
> The two nations – linked by common bonds of history, culture and language – agreed not to collect intelligence against each other
Consider also the quote at the end of this article[1]:
> France wouldn't be welcome in the "Five Eyes" alliance in any case, a former top US official told SPIEGEL ONLINE: "Germany joining would be a possibility, but not France -- France itself spies on the US far too aggressively for that."
i.e. it is a prerequisite of joining the agreement that you stop any spying on other members' citizens.
Basically, if you are American, then only the FBI (or DEA or whatever) can intercept your phone calls, and they can only do this with a warrant from an American court, they may however, get this warrant based on intelligence supplied by ASIS, (in a way) at Australia's "request".
The main point is, Five Eyes is not a mechanism for those countries to side step their own internal legal requirements for surveillance - it is essentially the opposite.
This is an interpretation I haven't seen before, so thanks for broadening my understanding. But the intent of the agreement doesn't appear to agree with some of the ways we know it's been used, especially since 2007 and between the UK and US.
Correct, compounded by the passing of the AABill last year. Australian agencies can now intercept any communications in Australia, including foreign entities that operate in Australia. We are yet to see whether any foreign corp will deny such a request (but they come with inbuilt gag order so we may never know).
The usual targets of the Australian government's finger-wagging are far past the point of caring. Maybe that's a sign that Australia can implement more of a "show, not tell" model when they talk up their implementation of democracy.
The country's mining and minerals sector is heavily dependent on exports to China, while its real estate sector would wouldn't be nearly as rich as it is without foreign capital from Asia's 1%, many of whom are involved in political parties the Australian government routinely excoriates.
This has been the case for a long time; it's only now that it's all out in the open.
I hate what is happening here but I'm not sure what can be done about it. It seems that security/ whistleblowers etc will always have a lower importance than the major campaign issues of the day.
And because of this it seems like no party should ever be bothered to push for what's in the voters best interests on these topics. Instead it only makes sense for politicians to push for what is personally best for them in these cases.
I'm not sure what the solution to this is or even if I fully understand the problem but this appears fundamentally wrong to me.
Because the last election was won "miraculously" by the party deliberately having a policy of not having a policy on anything, I think the next couple of decades will see more of the same. All the parties will stop publishing any kind of policy details, and it'll be fought on personalities and "how good is security?".
We're basically waiting for the boomers to die off at this point, before being able to fix the shit they left behind.
“We're basically waiting for the boomers to die off at this point, before being able to fix the shit they left behind.”
Don’t rely on the next generation to be any better. The brightest and best of the new generation are busy selling ads and creating total surveillance systems. I don’t see much improvement.
Boomers dying off won't automatically create large-scale changes you're expecting. I've been hearing that social conservatism will decrease once the boomers are gone, but that doesn't explain why thousands of young men get turned on to highly conservative views on the Internet by somebody looking into a webcam.
As long as humanity exists, there will be other humans who can and will exploit their fears and insecurities to gain power and influence for themselves.
> We're basically waiting for the boomers to die off at this point, before being able to fix the shit they left behind.
Where does idea that all problems in modern society are the fault of the baby boomers come from? We are talking about a very diverse group of people, with very diverse sets of ideas, as are the generations after them.
I think the baby boomer generation did a lot of damage by eroding social systems and piling up deficits. But the question is whether whoever follows will do any better.
There's an alternative possibility that the Labor party reflects on its strategy and realises that shadowing every single thing the government did on national security didn't actually win them any credit with voters in the end.
Sadly it's not surprising to me that a culture that prides itself on cutting down "tall poppies" pushes back against whistleblowers.
I am more and more convinced each day that the true stuggle of our order is that of freedom versus order, not any particular ideology.
Those who favor order inevitably feel it's reasonable to cut back on freedoms to increase order, and don't seem to be able to acknowledge that a truly free society cannot be risk free.
Now hold on a moment. They are saying that The Daily Telegraph lost a defamation suit because they can be easily sued... that is not exactly true. The issue here is that a News Limited publication - one with a reputation for smearing people, inaccuracy, bias and essentially a political mouthpiece of the conservative LNP - was not able to substantiate the claims made in their story.
Regardless of whether you agree with the outcome in that case, Australia's defamation laws are more plaintiff-friendly than those of countries like the US and UK, and have been subject to criticism for years [1], independent of the more recent debate over national security laws.
I have seen rusted on voters from both sides of the aisle condemning this. The government's mistake was raiding a News Corp journo - they have absolutely no-one on side on this issue now.
> Democracies from the United States to the Philippines are increasingly targeting journalists to ferret out leaks, silence critics and punish information sharing — with President Trump leading the verbal charge by calling journalists “the enemy of the people.”
It's interesting that they felt the need to qualify this as Trump leading the _verbal_ charge. But there's quite a distance between insulting and prosecuting journalists.
Trump's worse sin in this area isn't throwing around charges of fake news, but advocating for lower standards of proof in slander and libel cases. Hopefully Congress will never send him such a bill to sign. In my opinion another such demerit comes from this administration's continuing of the last's pursuit of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.
What other suppression of journalism by this administration am I missing?
The Obama administration had some worse black marks in this area with his use of the Espionage Act to prosecute Thomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Stephen Kim, Chelsea Manning, Donald Sachtleben, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou and Edward Snowden.
I think Rand Paul would have been more pro free-speech on this issue, but who in the current crop of candidates could be relied upon to keep their mitts off the press?
"But even among its peers, Australia stands out.
No other developed democracy holds as tight to its
secrets, experts say"
Except when a government employee sells used government furniture to a 2nd hand dealer -- including filing cabinets full of cabinet-level documents pertaining to national security deliberations by the highest members of government.
The article says it's illegal for a government official to share info without a supervisor's permission... but is there a law saying publishing classified info is illegal?
Julian Assange hasn't been charged with 'publishing classified information' either. In both Australia and the US you can be prosecuted for participating in another's crime of leaking classified information. The question is, what qualifies as participation (aiding, conspiracy, etc), and is there an express or implied exception for the activities of the publisher in question?
The police raids, which are still too newly performed to be definitive about, appear to be hunting for the original sources. No charges have been leveled against the journalists involved, yet.
It took them years to suddenly care to hunt for these sources, so the whole situation is... Odd.
I think usually the idea is you prosecute the person who steals the information, but if they pass it to another person who publishes, that person can't be prosecuted.
If the same person stole and published I'd expect they could still be prosecuted.
But others resharing it, (eg if someone posted a pastebin and others shared) would not.
In the US the distinction is made so that journalists exposing misdeeds from people in power cannot be prosecuted since the value of the information is too high for the public.
You can detained and held for days without any charge and then released with the stipulation of that if you talk about your detainment, you'll be arrested for violating state secrets.
This article mentions Australia as a "mature liberal democracy," but everything else written here seems to flat-out contradict that statement. Did Australia use to be more liberal and democratic in the past?
I've always said that freedom (liberalism) and democracy is actually unnatural. People do not want freedom and democracy, they want authoritarianism that favor their point of view or agenda. The problem is that we have different points of view or agendas.
Example: Look at New Zealand after the mass mosque shooting. People support the actions taking which include banning owning or reading the guy's manifesto. Owning it means up to 10 years in jail and/or up to $50,000 in fines.
>People want authoritarian governments
>we have different points of view or agendas
You say people want one thing, while contradicting that statement and saying people have different points of views and agendas - so we don't all want one thing? It could well be most or a few or some or a minority want authoritarianism; but the only constant I can see in governments throughout history and modern society is their inconsistency.
To say it is the natural way of things is, in my eyes, completely ignorant. If that were the case we wouldn't have seen numerous people's revolts throughout the entirety of human history [1]. Humans are adaptable, and we adapt our governance depending on the times. In times of war we might pick a dictator. In times of peace we might pick a democracy. In times of fear we often find ourselves in an autocracy. In times of religious ferverence we chose theocracy. Just as a human seems to be able to thrive on a number of diets, we thrive on a number of ways of group governance. I highly recommend to everyone to read "Pathways to Freedom: Political and Economic Lessons From Democratic Transitions." It's a bit text-booky, but there are some great case studies as to why various new governments have gone various different paths, and why democracy has blossomed in some places but failed in others, as has authoritarianism.
In the words of Alexandre Dumas Pere - "All generalizations are dangerous, even this one."
I my opinion the main reason we're seeing authoritarianism seemingly increase in popularity is because fear in the media has become so profitable. It distorts our perception of reality. We can be in a wealthy, 1st world society with all our basic needs met, however if we're told constantly in a barrage of information everyday that everything is going wrong - regardless of the fact that as the individual or group there could easily be almost nothing objectively going wrong in their life - they'll believe that they're on the brink of destruction and that the only way out is to adapt to an authoritarian government that will "sort everything out". The old phrase "what they don't know won't hurt them" comes to mind.
While I don’t fully agree with the OP there is a grain of truth there. And I don’t see the contradiction you do: the point is people want a regime that supports their own views, that’s clear. But that’s not enough, the regime must also quash every other competing view so theirs stays unthreatened. Meaning an authoritarian regime.
But of course as a supporter one would not see it as such. Many people honestly don’t realize the authoritarian part until their interests no longer align and the regime targets them too.
"To say it is the natural way of things is, in my eyes, completely ignorant. If that were the case we wouldn't have seen numerous people's revolts throughout the entirety of human history [1]." - It is natural, people want authoritarianism naturally. They just want the authoritarian rules or person to follow their point of view or agenda. Look at the list and see how many replaced one authoritarian with another authoritarian. Or the resolution was authoritarian.
"You say both say people want one thing, while contradicting that statement and saying people have different points of views and agendas - so we don't all want one thing? It could well be most or a few or some or a minority want authoritarianism; but the only constant I can see in governments throughout history and modern society is their inconsistency." -- I never said everyone wanted one thing. My comment was that most people would prefer a more authoritarian government that agreed with their point of view or agenda.
I don't have time to argue the point much further, but I will pick at semantics because they completely change the tone of the argument when it comes to politics, and is why I replied in the first place.
>People do not want freedom and democracy, they want authoritarianism that favor their point of view or agenda
Those were your words, not-
>I never said everyone wanted one thing.
The way I read it, you made the implication that everyone - see "People" - don't really want freedom or democracy. Nowhere was "most people" or "some people" or some other semi-quantifiable variable used to convey your meaning. We can argue all day about what percentage of people want one form of governance over another, and don't get me wrong while I don't agree it's "most" I'd say a decent amount do prefer authoritarianism of their own taste over democracy, to say "people" out-right is what changes your argument from a discussion starter to hyperbolic ignorance.
> People do not want freedom and democracy, they want authoritarianism that favor their point of view or agenda
People want a stable life to raise their family, they want stable work, stable housing and enough cash left over to enjoy life with family and friends. They will vote for whoever appeals to that and lately it seems to be only the authoritarian leaders that give a fuck.
What people want? The whole bloody point of authoritarianism is that it doesn't care about what people want! It being "wanted" is deeply artificial from repressing the opposition and manufacturing support.
It brings to mind jokes that people should nobody should ever listen to monarchists because that is what they want - their opinion on government to not matter.
Interesting. But how do you reconcile the many counter-examples?
Pointing to an incident in time is fine, but someone could just as easily point to the US bill of rights, the general trend over time towards personal liberties in the West (women voting, marriage equality, voluntary assisted death was just passed in one Australian state), et cetera.
Whether one or the other is natural seems hard to establish. A more reasonable claim might be that people with power generally seek to attain more (and are in a position to attain more), and the end result of that is authoritarianism.
Of course, it's more nuanced than that too. For instance the current Australian government get a lot for free since keeping people afraid enough that they tolerate the powergrabs also happens to pay for Rupert Murdoch's empire, and keeping him happy is as straightforward as maintaining a standard neoliberal trickle-down economic agenda.
It could be that we oscillate between authoritarianism and democracy/libertarianism on a multi-generational x-axis simply because nothing is perfect and our cultural memories are so short.
The big difference between those point of views is that one is about letting people live safely within secular society and the other is the violent murder of the other.
They are not morally equivalent positions. Stop treating them that way.
> The big difference between those point of views is that one is about letting people live safely within secular society and the other is the violent murder of the other.
You want to believe this is black and white, but its not. There is no more blurry line in existence.
Actively promoting murder? Eliminate free speech for that, threw em in jail. But what about promoting violence? Violent protests? What about rape, is that worthy of eliminating free speech? What if a high schooler is bullied and then commits suicide? What about microaggressions that make people feel uncomfortable and like they may be in danger? What about people born without advantages that change their chances of "success" from 60% to 10%? Are you actively promoting death and suffering by purposefully ignoring the homeless people you walk by?
"Safety" comes at the expense of freedoms, such as the freedom to read the shooter's manifesto. Whether or not you think the freedom/safety it is worth the trade off is you opinion, but you can't deny it's one step closer to total authoritarianism.
I've personally read a few shooter manifestos, including "My Twisted World", and don't see why it's a big deal to do so. I found it to be a fascinating insight into a world of mental illness I would never have imagined.
I don't think your parent was making any such moral equivocation. Authoritarianism aligned with $my_ideology is a terrible thing, but it does seem like a fair number people would actually be most comfortable with that and liberal democracy is just a token, socially acceptable icon. They may not even realize that if they had their way on every issue it would amount to an authoritarian regime.
To put it differently, how many people are actually championing individual rights for every issue?
"Authoritarianism aligned with $my_ideology is a terrible thing, but it does seem like a fair number people would actually be most comfortable with that and liberal democracy is just a token, socially acceptable icon." -- This is expressing my ideas better then what I wrote. Although from their point of view it may not be terrible.
Of course, we're also an apathetic people because we've had it so good for so long that no one will force any change, and it'll just keep getting worse.
It's also seen in our elections. There's no big visions. No bold statements from politicians about producing changes to make a better society. It's all attack ads and pandering to key demographics just to win votes and stay in government.
It's depressing and dire, because I don't see it changing in much of my lifetime and it's the exact reason why our leaders are completely dismissive of action even when we stare down the barrel towards issues like climate change. Hell, our current PM literally brought a lump of coal into parliament as a prop to taunt the opposition by saying "this is coal, don't be afraid".
edit: Another great example of the apathy I'm talking about is the collective shrug that most Aussies gave as incredibly intrusive anti-encryption and data-logging laws were introduced last year. Simply, no one cares unless it immediately and directly interrupts their middle-class suburban lifestyle.