Ultrathread I: Thread of the Year - 2014

[whall15]

Deaf easy. I can't imagine how f**ked it would be not being able to see. Being deaf wouldn't be great but you could still live a pretty normal life.

What is everyones view on asylum seekers? Don't think this has been posed yet.

I've stated my views on this a number of times but I will again.

I am probably to the left of a vast majority of Australians on this issue, however Australia is the most conservative country in the Western World when it comes to asylum seekers so on a global level I'm more of a moderate.

Asylum seekers are not illegal immigrants as every human being on this planet has a legal right under international law to seek asylum in any nation they wish with a handful of exceptions of nations who have not signed the Refugee Convention, all of which are in the third-world. Asylum seekers have a right to have their claims fairly assessed by the nation of which they are seeking asylum. I am of the view that this should take place on Australian soil rather than in a third country. If their claims are proven to be legitimate in a fair process they should have to right to reside in Australia whilst if their claims are not proven to be legitimate then they shall be returned to their nation of origin.

I am of the opinion that the current policy of turning around all asylum seekers is a clear violation of Australia's commitments under the Refugee Convention as the asylum seekers are not granted due process. I am further of the view that sanctions should be placed upon Australia by the United Nations for Australia's violation of international law. Although that would never happen in a million years for a myriad of reasons.

 

[Misanthrope]

What is everyones view on asylum seekers? Don't think this has been posed yet.

No problem with them at all. I find our government's stance on them disgusting.

 

[Red Bear]

It's a bit rich for a nation built off the back of immigration to get so wound up about Asylum Seekers.

I understand the need for the policy, because these are unsafe passages to Australia. But frankly I find the whole thing pretty disgusting. Handing them back to the regions they're fleeing really takes the cake on it.

Scott Morrison is a germ as well. It amused me when Australia pulled out of a conference in Indonesia on open govt because there was an on water situation of asylum seeker boats which, in keeping with govt policy, they would no longer discuss openly.

 

[umina panther]

Im with Whall and Mis. I have no problems with my taxes helping them settle.

 

[whall15]

I love the irony of the government calling asylum seekers illegals when the government is the one breaking the law by turning them back.

 

[thorson1987]

I have no problem with legitimate refugees.

My problems lie with the people smugglers and economic refugees.

 

[whall15]

I don't have much of a problem with people smugglers either.

The only way for a significant amount of people to seek asylum in Australia is via boat so they're going to have to pay someone to do that. Indeed, many people smugglers operated during Nazi Germany saving the lives of Jews and other persecuted minorities and are, correctly, regarded as heroes to this day. We see similar examples today in North Korea.

My only real objection would be the instances of overcharging where the asylum seekers' plight is taken advantage of.

 

[thorson1987]

I don't have much of a problem with people smugglers either.

The only way for a significant amount of people to seek asylum in Australia is via boat so they're going to have to pay someone to do that. Indeed, many people smugglers operated during Nazi Germany saving the lives of Jews and other persecuted minorities and are, correctly, regarded as heroes to this day. We see similar examples today in North Korea.

My only real objection would be the instances of overcharging where the asylum seekers' plight is taken advantage of.

I should have been more detailed but you have done it for me Whall.

 

[Drew-Sta]

I love the irony of the government calling asylum seekers illegals when the government is the one breaking the law by turning them back.

Yes, this is my major head-scratching issue.

Seems we're all pretty in line with it. I agree with what people have said. I would rather welcome them and help train them / educate them into productive members of society than to throw them out.

 

[Misanthrope]

I did used to believe that residency should have been approved only with the condition that settlers settle in areas where the government needs more people - such as the cities they were offering financial assistance in exchange for people moving there. Places like Armidale, Coffs Harbour, Wollongong, Newcastle etc were on the list.

Rather than have more immigrants crowding already crowded major cities like Sydney and Melbourne, it would give them a place (cheaper) to live whilst also hopefully reinvigorating areas that have become a tad stagnant in their growth.

 

[Drew-Sta]

I personally don't think that's unreasonable, but the issue is people migrate to where their cultures are most present.

 

[Bazal]

I do believe you can't just open your borders to all and sundry, and there should be a process for immigration which negates the need in many cases for dangerous sea crossings. But genuine asylum seekers should be welcomed IMO

 

[Misanthrope]

I personally don't think that's unreasonable, but the issue is people migrate to where their cultures are most present.

True, but if you had to maintain residence in a designated region until your period of probation was up, you'd either put down roots or decide to move on when you're ready.

Either way, short term boost to the local economy.

 

[whall15]

The other issue is that regional areas are more conservative and may be hostile to the refugees.

Of course, a very good counter-argument would be that exposure to the refugees would allow the locals to see the error of their ways.

 

[Drew-Sta]

True, but if you had to maintain residence in a designated region until your period of probation was up, you'd either put down roots or decide to move on when you're ready.

Either way, short term boost to the local economy.

This is true. I think a measured approach to how you do it would work. Non English speaking refugee's might struggle in an English-only area.

The other issue is that regional areas are more conservative and may be hostile to the refugees.

Of course, a very good counter-argument would be that exposure to the refugees would allow the locals to see the error of their ways.

The other argument is cities tend to accommodate for influxes of people due to the infrastructure differences. A city of 2m has 'more' of everything to help deal with, say, 10,000 refugee's a year (.5% pop increase). A town of 100k has a more difficult time dealing with an influx of 1000 people due to the large change in population.

Still, there's a fair argument in what you're suggesting.

 

[Misanthrope]

One for those worried about World War 3.

So for the time being the shaky centre of Europe is holding. Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin are at least talking, while the Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko continues to show admirable restraint. But listen closely and it is hard not to hear the echoes of history in Europe’s collective failure to confront naked Russian aggression.
For weeks now, the US - supported by Britain, to the irritation of many European allies - has been demanding tougher sanctions against Moscow, warning of what might happen if nothing was done to stop Putin giving heavy weapons to separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. But as so often in the past, a timid and divided European leadership demurred. They agreed to a feeble set of sanctions on Wednesday, only to have their folly exposed for all the world to see a day later: a Malaysian Airlines jet plummeting to earth, caught in the crossfire of a conflict that Europe should have done more to prevent, at a cost of 298 innocent lives.
No one should doubt that the blame for this tragedy lies squarely at the feet of Mr Putin - even as he was promising a ‘‘peaceful outcome’’ to Angela Merkel, a convoy of cast-off tanks and armoured cars was being sent into the rebel strongholds. But Europe’s half-hearted response and the weakness of the West in general also played its part.

On site at the MH17 crash scene. Photo: AFP

As before World War I, the centenary of which falls next month, there is a detectable sense of complacency among the coddled citizens of Europe and America. Perhaps it is understandable. We have never been more comfortable, the internet quite literally lets us swoop across the world, plucking its fruits at whim. Life for many millions is good; across the developed world, violent crime is falling, the recession receding, we are living longer and have choices galore. With Afghanistan and Iraq behind us, war is now something that takes place in far-off lands.
But the belief that economic inter-dependence would protect us from wars - that the cost of conflict would far outweigh the gain - is a fallacy. Norman Angell, a leading pundit of his day made that argument back in 1910 in his book The Great Illusion. But he overlooked the fact that nationalist ambition is often irrational, as Mr Putin has shown by continuing to prosecute his proxy war in Ukraine despite his economy being on the brink of recession.
It is tempting to believe that history really is at an end, but that mistake was made before - at a cost of nine million lives. John Maynard Keynes, in his seminal essay The Economic Consequences of Peace, captured the early-20th-century mindset with his famous image of the Londoner, lying in bed in early 1914 ‘‘sipping his tea’’ and using his telephone to order the ‘‘various products of the whole earth’’. A hundred years before the advent of Amazon.com, Keynes wrote that ‘‘internationalisation’’, appeared to be ‘‘nearly complete in practice’’.
It sounds eerily familiar, and while the comparison is inexact - not least because of the (we hope) self-limiting power of nuclear weapons - even a cursory glance around the world today reveals a worrying number of serpents starting to the rear their ugly heads.
The map of Middle East drawn up after the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 is uncoiling, dissolving into a region-wide Sunni-Shia civil war. The Western response, driven by understandable war-weariness, has largely been to stand and watch. Even pictures of gassed children heaving and choking in Syria’s makeshift hospitals, was not enough re-awaken a sense of the old responsibility that America and the West took upon itself after 1945 to underwrite the institutions and ideals of global democracy.
Perhaps even more worryingly for the long term, in the Asia-Pacific, after three decades of wasteful, pell-mell economic growth a rising China is starting to rub up against the limits of both its politics and demographics. It is beginning to challenge the postwar settlement, jousting almost daily with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines in the East and South China Seas. That is another accident waiting to happen, and one - unlike the downing of MH17 - where there is no real system in place to manage the fallout. Meanwhile, Japan and South Korea, America’s main regional allies, which act as a bulwark against Chinese adventurism, are openly bickering. And all that is not to mention Afghanistan’s highly uncertain future, the fragmentation of Iraq, Africa’s Islamist insurgencies, Libya’s slide into failed statehood, North Korea’s increasingly erratic behaviour, and the election of a Hindu-nationalist prime minister in a (nuclear-armed) India.
How to respond to this new world disorder is suddenly the pressing issue of our time. Mr Obama has made his position very clear. The instability in Syria, Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan is fundamentally a regional problem, with regional solutions.
History is not condemned to repeat itself, but the lesson of MH17 is surely that there can be no room for complacency. Doing nothing - or in the case of tackling Vladimir Putin and Bashar al Assad, not enough - can have just as profound consequences as acting precipitously. When European foreign ministers meet in Brussels this week to discuss how far to take sanctions against Moscow, they cannot now say they haven’t been warned.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/mh17-...ld-disorder-20140719-zuqfa.html#ixzz380gH4c2W
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[Dragon2010]

Interesting read, I still believe that this issue can actually lead to help settling the Ukraine/Russia issue. It will make development happen one way or another, especially, if Europe push for it. There's no doubt Putin is radical, but I think we'll reach the best outcome in the end (hopefully). People just need to stop blaming him and pointing the finger - that will just piss him off, which can lead to undesirable results.

 

[Scott Gourley's Lovechild]

For Putin, this gives him an out. Dontesk was never his goal, Crimea was. Dontesk broke away, pledged fielty to Russia, but never was backed in any shape like Crimea. Dont be surprised if the seperatists in that region are now left to fend for themselves.

 

[Red Bear]

This is one of the grimmest articles I have read

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing

 

[Misanthrope]

The Israelis doing all they can to make the Holocaust seem like it wasn't such a bad idea after all.