(Part 2) Top products from r/australia

That paragraph you quoted has it exactly right.

In a truly free society people should be able to say what they like regardless of the offense it might cause. This inevitably means that you have to put up with a lot of rubbish at times.

"Racism" and "inflammatory speech" are things that mean different things to different people and some people would like to pass laws using these terms to muzzle people who's opinions they don't share.

If you're really interested in the debate I recommend reading "Kindly Inquisitors". It's only a short book and it sums up the argument for free speech well.

http://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-Thought/dp/0226705765+

Here's an interview with the author:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFVRRP-J9mI

Even if AQ does not exist in the manner you think it does, the ideology behind it is a driver for actions that people have undertaken. That means that it does exist and has had an effect on the world. You can deny that a main organization exists, or that they undertook certain actions, but you cannot deny that the idea of them has driven people to actions. That in itself means it exists in some way. I take it on step further and believe this idea was created by an organization in a way to propagate itself (Edit: Their ideology). My real world evidence comes from trusting of real world accounts presented to me second hand, but I do trust the sources that have encountered them in real life.

Further edit: Read this book and tell me this man has written several items on a related topic including a group that doesn't exist.

> The Maoris were left alone for decades as they gradually had extended contact with Europeans, and were eventually approached by the British when that contact turned abusive in the 1840s to accept British sovereignty in exchange for British protection.

Its not really that simple

Maori is a strongly tribal culture (tribes are called Iwi), and in response to British fears of French settlement, the United tribes of NZ were set up, and declared their independence as an entity to have formal contact with the crown. This lead to the writing and signing of the Treaty of Waitangi - which was written in two versions Maori and English. The two versions are vastly different, (and many maori cheifs did not have written communication skills as Maori is originally a spoken language). Many signed the treaty on the understanding of what was explained to them, and signed with the shape of their Iwi moko (tattoo) The two versions are arguably very different. Anyway, the treaty initially led the way to willing sale of land by maori, but eventually maori became less willing to sell - but the demand for land was increasing as more settlers arrived (in some cases buying their land before they left England) the government engaged in some less than ethical land transfer, in some cases "buying" from people who did not own the land they sold (maori are a tribal culture, arguably they assume "guardianship" (Kaitiatitanga) rather than property, land is collectively "owned" if you will. This was the benining of the Maori Land Wars, (which apparently is where the brittish got the idea of "trench warfare used in WWI) but also included the Parihaka maori Peace resistance..

For anyone interested, could I recommend The penguin history of New Zealand by NZ historian Michael King
, it should be required reading for every Kiwi.

Indeed. A good read is How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee which explores how gods and myths came about, merged and how, if he existed, jesus was likely some minor priest who was turned into the god of the religion. Quite an interesting read.

You most definitely can. Ants are great, grind them up and add them to any soup to thicken it up.

Book URL

Lily on the Dustbin is excellent as well. Nancy Keesing wrote it after travelling around Australia doing talk back radio. It's fabulously familiar. "Are your ears painted on?"

Agreed again! Although not all are terrible. I actually got into it after reading 10% Happier. Written by a skeptical drug taking news reporter with anxiety disorder. https://www.amazon.com/10-Happier-Self-Help-Actually-Works/dp/0062265431. Great read, and that's coming from someone who hates these kinds of books. The book also spawned a website with a getting started guide with guided meditation, which I didn't pay a cent for, but it definitely got the ball rolling. Once the basics are down you can kind of take it from there.

There is a book around (albeit dated now) about neo-Nazism in Australia by David Harcourt which is an interesting read (Everyone wants to be Fuhrer). In the same way that german Nazism built on existing concepts of Volk and race and pre-existing anti-Semitic sentiment and thought, the far right in Australia goes back a long way in terms of its connections to both Labor as a party and labour as a force and conceptions of the racial other, especially the "Yellow peril".

Just came across something weird today myself.

Aussie store $31.98+$10.77

or US store $20.78 (not available to be shipped from).

Dunno if there's a way to get around it or I just have to bite it and pay ~$40. To be fair, it's normally ~$60 on the US store, but being cut down to $20 made it super appealing.

Feral future is a really eye opening book on this topic. I was amazed about how many critters Australia imported.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0226494195?pc_redir=1410499618&robot_redir=1

I think it's because the complete picture is massive. To properly explain it you have to go all the way back a century or two and connect it all the way to the present moment.

I found talking to a number of white Australian's that many feel that the aboriginal problems of today have nothing to do with them. There is a massive disconnect between reality and perception which is really hard to bridge in one article, especially when most of your readers don't accept many of your facts.

When you have a common shared belief, like refugees are bad people who don't need the help of those much better of, then statements like "Stop the boats" are accepted as well considered policy while entire books the likes of John Pilger writes are viewed as akin to conspiracy theories. Not that I've met many Australians who would have read Pilgers books.

Going back to your question about Pilger's work, I think to some extent he answers your "Why" question in his book "A secret Country".

Link to book: http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Country-John-Pilger/dp/0099815907/ref=la_B001HCU88O_1_3_title_2_pap?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395451588&sr=1-3

I was well aware of the history; I was reading the history back when it was news rather than history. I started with the collected speeches of Nikita Khrushchev in 1963. On Trotsky, I am aware of how they purged him as well as how they killed him in Mexico. If you're ever interested in the true nature of Soviet society read Conquest.

My point was meant to be sarcastic. Obviously I worded it badly. My point is that the SEP and its ridiculous proposal is a faded anachronism that has no relevance in modern Australia.

I just got off the phone to a best mate of many years who works for Bluescope in Westernport. He is one of the 1000, so I can fully relate to the personal side of it. But this is only the start. That is one of the few things I concur with in the article, more jobs in heavy manufacturing will go. Possibly not the gloomy prediction of "100,000 set to lose their jobs in the next few months" but that will certainly happen over the longer period. But it is not some evil conspiracy. It is simple economics.

The industrial base of this country has inexorably changed; failure to recognise that inevitable fact is to be crushed by the change. We saw it start long before Newcastle closed, and there is no end in sight.

I don't have a solution apart from the obvious simplistic one of finding our market niches and filling those, but then it's not my job to find the solution. That is up to our corporate and political leaders.

The SEPs solution:

>bringing the steel industry, mining sector, banks and other multi-billion dollar corporations under public ownership and the democratic control of the working class, as the first step toward the establishment of a rationally planned world economy based on satisfying the social needs of the majority, not generating profit and personal wealth for a small minority.

Is simply riduiculous. Anyone who thinks that might work should do what I did in 2006 and drive through Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech and Eastern Germany to see the ruined derelict factories from the glorious Soviet era; or visit Russia, Bosnia and Croatia as I did this year to see the same. In Russia, those I saw that aren't derelict are belching out indescribable pollution that has to be killing the workforce of entire cities.

This mob should not be given any credibility at all.

Those who hurry through life reach the end quickly.
Life. The journey is the destination.

https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Making-Living-Practical/dp/014311459X

It's a commonly used fishing phrase ... https://www.amazon.com/Fillet-Release-Funny-Fishing-Shirt/dp/B07PLVVD1K

Read this book. A lot of the issues with white/aboriginal relations that we place in the past are actually products of post WWII actions.
http://www.amazon.com/Jacksons-Track-Memoir-Dreamtime-Place/dp/0140276602

You might need this book

95% confidence with a margin of error of ±5% for a population of 25,000,000 you would need about 385 people. The real problem here is how biased is that sample. By that I mean, do they have a statistically representative collection of people?

> showed him to be a massive idiot who got nicked for stealing 32 chooks

Actually most convicts were deported for petty property crimes like your great-grandad. The only major exception were Irish patriots being deported for political reasons.

If you're interested in the history of convict Australia I heartily recommend The Fatal Shores.

Pinker, Steven. 2003. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344. New York etc.: Penguin Books, 2003-08-26.

As quoted at https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/703159-i-believe-that-the-rape-is-not-about-sex-doctrine-will-go-down-in

> I believe that the rape-is-not-about-sex doctrine will go down in history as an example of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. It is preposterous on the face of it, does not deserve its sanctity, is contradicted by a mass of evidence, and is getting in the way of the only morally relevant goal surrounding rape, the effort to stamp it out. ...

The burden of proof is on you, and defenders of the theory, to show why "rape is about power, not sex" is not also total bullshit.

Note to /u/must_not_forget_pwd and /u/Echospite.

I agree. Despise the perpetrators all you want, I certainly do, but don't fall into the trap of believing they're somehow different. Christopher Browning wrote an excellent book on the Ordinary Men who helped in the attempted genocide of WWII:

>Browning reconstructs how a German reserve police battalion composed of "ordinary men," middle-aged, working class people, killed tens of thousands of Jews during WW II.

The study of "The banality of evil" warns us that blaming extremist actions on some type of "evil other" blinds us to the role we play in supporting those individuals:

>Normalizing the Unthinkable

>Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on "normalization." This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as "the way things are done." There is usually a division of labor in doing and rationalizing the unthinkable, with the direct brutalizing and killing done by one set of individuals; others keeping the machinery of death (sanitation, food supply) in order; still others producing the implements of killing, or working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of defense intellectuals and other experts, and the mainstream media, to normalize the unthinkable for the general public.