World News

Talked it over with a peoples and thought this thread was a good idea for keeping people up to speed with certain things.
Proper debate on news still goes in Debate Thread and you can link in there; this is just so there aren't other news links in lots of other different threads when they might not fit (Interesting Thread and TTBM in particular).

Egypt military jamming Al Jazeera's satellite signals

Did the Shariff like it? [ ]

Obama at impass for rallying support with allies against Syria

For anyone wondering Syria is currently in this religious war with itself and everyone's wondering what the US is planning on doing since chemical weapons were brought in and have caused so many casualties in the country. In very simple terms, people of Syria started protesting Bashar Al-Assad, who ran Syria like a dictatorship. Immediately he riled up his armed forces and began to destroy entire cities trying to quiet the people, who instead formed freedom groups and fought back - flashforward to now, and we have huge groups of rebels and the military implementing chemical warfare against said groups.

Currently the United States has no clear goal or objective when involving Syria, and all we know right now are the critical consequences if we move troops in Syria. The best the States can do right now is supply weapons to the strongest "freedom fighters" in Syria and hope we have enough allies on our side should we need to step in further.

The only countries that supported Mr. Obama’s plan, the Russian leader said, were Canada, France, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, all nations that were on Mr. Obama’s side when he arrived here on Thursday.

 
IIRC Canada isn't comfortable aiding us in this and Britain has pulled out and Russia and China are growing tense with us as they are both allies of Syria. My information is pieced together by what I've heard on several stations and you can never get the neutral clean-cut facts from those, so if anyone wants to add or correct any of my statements feel free.

If anyone is interesting in discussing what's happening I'm so on board with that

Complicated by the fact that the rebels have now been taken over by groups with ties to Al Qaeda, so there's no real clear side for us to take...[ ]

I say we stay out of it entirely. A limited military strike (which is what the US seems to be proposing) won't achieve anything and force us to have a horse in a race we really shouldn't be in.

The problem seems to be that neither side is clearly "the good guys". The rebels are barely organised politically (compared to the situation in Libya when they were rebelling), are torturing people themselves and have been infiltrated with radicals who, if in power, can turn out to be a serious step backwards. Not good.
The government on the other hand is using extreme and deadly force on it's own citizens with barely any regard for civilian casualties. Definitely not good.

The current situation in Libya is still uneasy at best what, like a year or more after the international community heroically stepped in with airstrikes? Iraq is still an undeniable mess as well, it's not hard to see why everyone is hesitant to step in here now even without Russia being dicks.

Personally, I saw wait it out. Either it stops or people get so appalled by the war crimes that they eventually step in for support. We can't do much, and it would be a true act of war to step in on the government, so we might as well have more political backing before we cause an international hoopla about it.
Sure people will die, but people are still going to die in droves if we move in. Might as well make good use of them.

I think it's important to note that so much of the chemical attack is uncertain: source one here for an unbiased summary; there aren't any linked citations but the authors are both respectable and compare with source two

Assad had much to lose from using chemical weapons and the rebel 'conglomerate' had a lot to gain. What's 1,000 bodies when you know with the support of the U.S. you'll definitely win?

Source one wrote:Clearly, Assad had much to lose and his enemies had much to gain. That conclusion does not prove who did it, but it should give us pause to find conclusive evidence which we do not now have.

Although I raise this, I think at this point I think it is irrelevant who used the weapons; there is enough doubt on both sides that it's causing other issues.

Barging in to give everyone guns after a chemical attack is just setting a precedent for any future use of chemical attacks: that the side people sympathise with will have international support from then on. Whether or not the rebels were the ones to actually initiate the attack isn't important anymore because any future warfare could have false flags attacks inspired by this doubt.

Source two wrote:[Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar al-Ja'afari] cited the confidence that the United States said it had a decade ago when it argued that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Criticisms of U.S. intervention come up on the first page of Google just by typing in "Syria". The U.S. is already infamous for having a bloodthirsty foreign policy. Unless they can prove without any doubt that it was the Assad regime I think this is going to only further harm international opinion of the U.S.

well the Liberals won the election

bye bye NBN
i'm so pissed off
we could have one of the best internet services in the world
but now they'll probably tear down what Labour started and put in the system they've been gunning for, which is already redundant
ITS ALREADY REDUNDANT
JUST GO ALL THE WAY, RETARDS
YOURE SETTING UP AN INFRASTRUCTURE THAT WILL HAVE TO BE REPLACED AS SOON ITS BEEN INSTALLED

I seriously hope Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd and both of those stupid fucking parties choke to death on Rupert Murdoch's dick because they sure fucking love sucking it and spitting on the rest of us

I can't wait for the rest of the baby boomers to die

Fuck Newscorp

Uh...in brief? What's NBN? [ ]

National Broadband Network. We've yet to have it installed very many places.
Basically, under Kevin it was planned to have some sort of absurd speed like 1000 Mbs, or something. Unlikely to be that high in practice, but still, even if it was only running at 30% efficiency that's still pretty good...
Now, under Tony its max is going to be 100 Mbs.

So yeah, anyone who actually uses the internet is kinda upset about it.

Hrm....are there any private networks? [ ]

I think all of our telecommunications is privatised; I think what it was the government would install this new infrastructure and then sell it piece-by-piece to the providers (I might be wrong)

Not to mention Liberal's flip-flopping on the opt-out internet filter:
"we would never want it"
-
"we want it"
-
"oh that was a mistake we meant to say 'we don't want it'"

If they backtrack again and say that want it I am going to move to New Zealand.

Wow...yeah politicians, am I right? Who put them in charge of anything? Oh yeah...maybe that's the problem? [ ]

Why the fuck is Australia government so afraid of upgrading internet anyway? I would think all parties would gun for better infrastructures. God damn it's not even a matter of letting immigrants set up camp on your borders it's just installing decent internet

Out of curiosity what are the other campaign goals the Liberals were promoting? All I ever about them is that they might be against same sex marriage or something and that they are really terrified of upgrading technology.

I don't like Tony Abbott's ears. I also don't like the smug grin on his face and his victory-speech promises, they ring a little hollow. Seriously, "repeal everything that my enemies passed" is a fools' game. And anybody who opposes gay marriage and doesn't accept the evidence for climate change is an idiot.

But I like this:
Why doesn't the US have compulsory voting? God damn.

Hey, Bowie
Get in on this http://iwantthenbn.com/
Sign the petition
And anyone else from Australia who lurks I guess?

Oh god yes. I hope this does something. Experience tells me it likely wont do anything.
But I can hope.

At the least it'll get media attention, already made the front page of ABC news, apparently!
Even if they don't put it in, Libs will then lose the next election and Labour will probably pick up where they left off

I'm in denial
positive denial

Hey guys it's 9/11.

Holy crap, it is!

Let's keep those victims in our thoughts today

I guess we're still the world police. I like the way Obama rationalizes his putting it to Congress, but I'm not so sure he's all for the checks and balances. I think maybe he couldn't afford the public opinion drop that would come with action one way or the other.
I'm still glad he's reassuring us about possible military deployment because that shit is scary.

http://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/09/maple-syrup.html

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