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| How many Syrian refugees should Australia take? |
| None |
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52% |
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| A few hundred |
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2% |
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| A few thousand |
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5% |
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| Over ten thousand |
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5% |
[ 2 ] |
| As many as possible |
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35% |
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| Total Votes : 40 |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| Tell me more about your NFI how the response has a relation to the quoted post. |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| David wrote: | What it also shows is that these violent political movements are transitory in nature and tend to come and go with the wind. This, one presumes, is the heyday of ISIS, an organisation whose life expectancy in its Syrian and Iraqi headquarters seems limited. It may not be the last we see of Islamist terrorism in the West, but as the previous rise and fall of Al-Qaeda shows, these organisations are often a focal point around which levels of violence seem to ebb and flow.
Contrary to right-wing rhetoric, then, there is nothing to suggest that Islamist terrorism is a permanent feature of countries with large migrant Muslim populations, any more than the IRA was a permanent feature of Irishness or Catholocism or the Baader-Meinhof approach was a permanent feature of radical German leftism.
So, the challenge remains to consign this particular wave of terrorism to history as soon as possible. That is a goal that we can all agree upon, and one that many of the social democrats you criticise are working hard to achieve. |
Oh, you are a poet. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ David, the IRA/ETA on one hand, and Islamist terrorism on the other, are simply not the same type of thing. Their goals are different, their protean nature is different, and their entire mindset is different. There was no ISIS in 2001 (NYC) or 2004 (Madrid). I believe you are making a category error, placing things together that do not belong together, because you want mass immigration to continue and you presumably think Islam is just another part of the multiculture, like being Portuguese or Croatian. I think that is an unreasonable belief, on the evidence.
You say that social democrats are working hard to end this wave of terrorism. That seems an odd position, given the clear efforts of social democrats to open the gates to Islamic immigration and the cultural disintegration which nourishes grievance and alienation. I am sure that they want it to end, as they are decent and well-meaning people (though they commonly do not do grant my side of politics the same courtesy) - but I believe their policies are fostering it.
_________________
Two more flags before I die!
Last edited by Mugwump on Thu Jan 05, 2017 11:35 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| Thanks for telling me, like a sacrificial offering to assuage the British entertainment industry's collective guilt and shame for turning a blind eye to or condoning such behaviour on a widespread basis for the past half-century. |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Mugwump wrote: | ^ David, the IRA/ETA on one hand, and Islamist terrorism on the other, are simply not the same type of thing. Their goals are different, their protean nature is different, and their entire mindset is different. There was no ISIS in 2001 (NYC) or 2004 (Madrid). I believe you are making a category error, placing things together that do not belong together, because you want mass immigration to continue and you presumably think Islam is just another part of the multiculture, like being Portuguese or Croatian. I think that is an unreasonable belief, on the evidence.
You say that social democrats are working hard to end this wave of terrorism. That seems an odd position, given the clear efforts of social democrats to open the gates to Islamic immigration and the cultural disintegration which nourishes grievance and alienation. I am sure that they want it to end, as they are decent and well-meaning people (though they commonly do not do grant my side of politics the same courtesy) - but I believe their policies are fostering it. |
I think you misunderstand my point totally and misinterpret my motives. I am not arguing that Al-Qaeda and ISIS are fundamentally distinct entities (though they do have different philosophies and are, for what it's worth, sworn enemies). My point is that their emergence, rise and decline seem to correspond to terrorist attacks in the West. We have plenty of data on hand to support this thesis; attacks in Western countries were few and far between between around 2006 and 2012 and have only now risen sharply since the Syrian Civil War and the emergence of ISIS as a major player in the region. It's not just the organisation's ability to direct attacks, but its ability to act as a flashpoint around which a climate of violence can coalesce.
It's a statement of the obvious to point out that the IRA and ISIS are/were different organisations with different aims and methods, just as the PLO differed from the Baader-Meinhof group and both differed from Al-Qaeda. The point is that, like all of these organisations, the IRA were a phenomenon of a certain time and place and that their zeitgeist came and went. ISIS may have global as opposed to nationalistic ambitions, but they too will collapse as their dream of a caliphate falls apart. Those forces will either reorient themselves or disperse. History, even very recent history, suggests the latter.
On Islam, it seems salient to point out that it existed for well over a millennium without engaging in anything we would recognise as modern terrorism, and there is little reason to believe that the recent wave of random violence against civilians being conducted by Wahhabist groups is anything more than a blip in its history. This is where we need to be wary of mischievous conflations of ancient conquest and suicide bombings – it's easy and sometimes politically convenient to draw a straight line through history, but wisdom is being able to acknowledge the distinctions between different phenomena as well as commonalities.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| Thanks for telling me, to lack the ability to develop emotional connection. |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| What would you like to communicate? |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: |
On Islam, it seems salient to point out that it existed for well over a millennium without engaging in anything we would recognise as modern terrorism. |
Well, yes "modern" anything is not exactly well-represented over a millennium. That is like saying that they went a millennium without bringing down aeroplanes. Given that you were cautioning about a straight line through history while proceeding to suggest one, I am a little lost.
But it's a bit of a pointless argument as it is speculation. We do not know how this will evolve, when or whether it will end. It is conceivable that nuclear or biological material will be funnelled to these people by aggressive or dysfunctional states, but it may not happen. We do not know.
What we do know - evidenced by the charts shown in the data - is that it is almost the sole systemic terrorism problem in Western Europe now, and it has been a source of major terrorism - including 3000 dead incident in one incident in 2001 - with a scale and cruelty that was not conceived of, or executable by, other terrorist groups.
We cannot predict the future, but we can understand and manage the present. Islam projects a transnational mission (the Umma) based upon violent and absolutist core texts, born of a difficult and harsh environment in the 6th century, with a strong present association with fundamentalism and terrorism. That much is fact, not speculation. We also know that its terrorism may well, on present indications, grow in a way that is very, very dangerous given the number of actors and sympathisers embedded in Western societies and our continued importation of it.
Nothing in the above suggests to me that an analogy with the IRA or ETA has many points of contact at all.
_________________
Two more flags before I die!
Last edited by Mugwump on Fri Jan 06, 2017 4:56 am; edited 1 time in total |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| What would you like to communicate? |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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Skids 
Quitting drinking will be one of the best choices you make in your life.
Joined: 11 Sep 2007
Location: Joined 3/6/02 . Member #175
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Just went in to Leederville for a bite after dropping youngest daughter at the beebaa concert.
Sitting out the front of a pub and in the time I had one drink, I saw 5, yep 5 people picking up old ciggy butts from the street 
We really need to look after our OWN people before we let anyone else in.
Pensioners can't afford to pay their power bills, our veterans are neglected and there's thousands sleeping on the streets.
_________________
Don't count the days, make the days count. |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| So, we can bring in some competent people with skills who can work, grow the economy, pay tax and fund welfare. Alternatively, we could, say, let the 5 folk you saw job-share as CEO of Australia Post. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Skids wrote: | Just went in to Leederville for a bite after dropping youngest daughter at the beebaa concert.
Sitting out the front of a pub and in the time I had one drink, I saw 5, yep 5 people picking up old ciggy butts from the street
We really need to look after our OWN people before we let anyone else in.
Pensioners can't afford to pay their power bills, our veterans are neglected and there's thousands sleeping on the streets. |
How about we look after our own before we organise more tax cuts for big business. The trouble with neoliberalism is that it makes you think it has to be a choice between saving our poor and their poor, rather than actually doing something to alleviate poverty for as many people as possible.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | | Skids wrote: | Just went in to Leederville for a bite after dropping youngest daughter at the beebaa concert.
Sitting out the front of a pub and in the time I had one drink, I saw 5, yep 5 people picking up old ciggy butts from the street
We really need to look after our OWN people before we let anyone else in.
Pensioners can't afford to pay their power bills, our veterans are neglected and there's thousands sleeping on the streets. |
How about we look after our own before we organise more tax cuts for big business. The trouble with neoliberalism is that it makes you think it has to be a choice between saving our poor and their poor, rather than actually doing something to alleviate poverty for as many people as possible. |
Australia's corporate tax rates and unit labour costs are actually significantly higher than many parts of the world. In a country that is far from major world markets, and in a difficult time zone, it is not easy to make an investment case for building plants or R&D etc in Australia. I'd suggest that keeping your corporate tax rate higher than the rest of the world is part of the reason you'll find people picking up butts.
I think most people do not understand how this works in the actual world. I sit on the executive committee of a business that develops new speciality chemicals plants and R&D centres - pretty much the sort of high value-added high technology stuff that most countries are desperate to host.
When we have to invest in new capacity we look at a range of issues - where is the end-market, inbound and outbound logistics costs, operating costs, the industrial relations climate and talent base, how easy is it to get dividends out of the country ... and what taxation arrangements will apply. Of these factors, the tax issue has a great differential impact on net returns on investment, because it is such a large, predictable cost relative to the others and so different across countries.
You may think it is unfair, but it is what any rational party does when s/he has economic choices to make on behalf of shareholders. The reflex reaction of "go after corporate taxes" may well be like curing a toothache by removing your jaw. If you want to raise taxes, then fix the corporate tax code to actually collect the taxes you think you are owed (if that is possible, for I doubt it) and/or secondly, have the courage to raise personal taxes, which are not especially high in Australia, and which do not have the effect of dampening foreign investment. This would also have the positive side-effect of tackling the rather infantile idea in modern democracies that everyone can have more stuff that someone else will pay for.
I do not know what the answer to butt-collectors is, but I'd suggest starting by mending a broken society where many families take too little responsibility for each other, where the mentally ill are "deinstitutionalised" to save money, where drugs are semi-tolerated by the law, and zoo-like public classrooms make learning (and thus employment) almost miraculous. Public spending is far higher than it was fifty years ago, while these problems become steadily worse. See the famous definition of madness, etc.
When will the libertarians, of right and left, who congratulate themselves on entertaining dangerous ideas, consider the really dangerous idea that perhaps they are creating the misery that wrings their emotions ?
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.CON.GOVT.ZS?locations=AU
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
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