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Abbott & NLP: x2 Lost Wars Already, #3 Renewable Energy

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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 9:40 am
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Everyone knows this is yet another case of negligent, rubbish investors who hate competition tryingto save their arses at everyone else's expense.

Much like the elite and their banking sponsors gambling the fate and stability of the EU, the fossil fuels industry and their vested henchman are now running about like rabid baboons trying to get everyone else to pay for their sinking ship—meanwhile trying to cut health, education and opportunity for everyone else.

Well, too bloody bad. Since when is it okay for everyone else to bail out shite, declining industries and sloppy investments? That's old-industrial unionist Leftism that the rest of us disowned long ago.

Oh the irony: The most egotistical, self-glorying, free-market-bleating wankers in the capitalist economy aren't capitalist: They're statist elites!

Of course, the rest of us already knew: There are no free market Libertarians on a sinking ship.

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Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 9:41 am
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^ the language is what it is. If you can't see that Rundle's language is intolerant and undemocratic, it's because you like his position and so your filters are on. If it were said about the Greens, as it of course is by some equally pompous fools, you'd be screaming about it. I digressed into legalism only because Tannin chose an elastic definiton as a defence of the language used, and the criminal code is where the actual definition lies, if that is the game of evasion being played.

Not reactionary at all - merely tolerant of different viewpoints. We can define reactionary too, if you like, but your defence of intolerance is likely to come out on the wrong side of any reasonable definition.

Language matters. That kind of language in political discourse is corrosive of democratic basics.

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pietillidie 



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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 9:54 am
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^Yes, of course: It's really the imprecise terminology of a bloke who writes thousands of lines a week for a local blog site who is undermining democracy here, not the fossil fuels industry Laughing
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David Libra

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Joined: 27 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 10:01 am
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Mugwump, I think you're devoting way too much focus to what is, maybe, 5% of the article - the specific definition of the word 'treason' (I would have thought maliciously selling our country down the river might qualify, but apparently not), and Rundle's rhetorical flirtation with capital punishment (which I took to mean something like "I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire" - would you attack that phrase with such gusto or interpret it as a genuine defence of letting someone burn to death?).

What about the rest of it? Even if I accepted your views on Rundle's supposed illiberal fantasies, they would still only be minor blots in an extraordinarily well-argued and timely piece. What is it exactly about his views on renewable energy, the need to phase out old fossil fuel industries, the mug's game of ALP/union protectionism, solar's 'post-capitalist' character and the speed of the international transition to renewable energy (and the consequences for countries left behind) do you disagree with? And, if you accept all that, why aren't you as furious at our government as he is?

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Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 6:22 pm
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^ There's much in Rundle's article that I agree with, David, and some of it that I'm sceptical about, based on many conversations with people who should know. That's why i'll read Tannin's links. I certainly share the vision he describes, though i doubt it is as easy or linear as he (or Tannin) suggests.

If you're mystified that i'm so agitated about the language, i come back to the same question : would you find the language of treason and capital punishment acceptable if it were used about the Greens ? I wouldn't. in a democracy, civilised respect for the right of others to disagree without that being treason is fundamental to civic health.

I have said before that Abbott is a pretty clear candidate for the worst Australian PM since Federation, in my eyes, but he was fairly elected and I see no sign of him acting unconstitutionally, so the Orwellian 2-minute hate that people seem to feel towards him mystifies me. Perhaps it's because I live so far away.

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David Libra

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 7:01 pm
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I don't know if I can speak for anyone else, but I don't hate Abbott or even particularly dislike him as a person. If anything, I feel a slight affection for his olde-world Catholicism, his obsession with physical sport and the compassionate aspects of his conservatism (I think he genuinely cares about the plight of Indigenous people in remote communities). Neither am I naive enough to personify his disgraceful political tactics and positions; I'm well aware of the dehumanising effect of party politics and the collective decisionmaking that goes into everything from the government's refugee policies to the current terrorism scare campaign.

So, I don't hate Abbott as a person at all. But I do hate what he does, and, in certain cases, consider it criminal. When it comes to his actions as prime minister, I have very little nice to say, because, what can you say?

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think positive Libra

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 7:36 pm
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David wrote:
I don't know if I can speak for anyone else, but I don't hate Abbott or even particularly dislike him as a person. If anything, I feel a slight affection for his olde-world Catholicism, his obsession with physical sport and the compassionate aspects of his conservatism (I think he genuinely cares about the plight of Indigenous people in remote communities). Neither am I naive enough to personify his disgraceful political tactics and positions; I'm well aware of the dehumanising effect of party politics and the collective decisionmaking that goes into everything from the government's refugee policies to the current terrorism scare campaign.

So, I don't hate Abbott as a person at all. But I do hate what he does, and, in certain cases, consider it criminal. When it comes to his actions as prime minister, I have very little nice to say, because, what can you say?


I can't imagine you hating anyone, a trait I mind both mystifing and extremely admirable at the same time.

As for Abbott, he takes the whole catholic thing too far, I don't believe religion should have much of a part in politics. But yeah, I like his family values, and his guts in getting out there in speedos, but gees, he really seems to be doing it for those closer to the glass roof.

But really, has there ever been a politician who didn't Rory the system alla Bronwyn Bishop and that helicopter? I remember one guy driving his own car, packing his own lunch, but I think that was in the states!

What I'd really like to know is, just who did vote for him! I can't find a single
Edson admitting they did!

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Tannin Capricorn

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 7:52 pm
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I don't know many Edsons.
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Tannin Capricorn

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 7:53 pm
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^ Sorry. For a moment there I thought I was HAL.
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think positive Libra

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 8:27 pm
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Tannin wrote:
^ Sorry. For a moment there I thought I was HAL.


I genuinely LOLed!

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Mugwump 



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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 9:42 pm
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David wrote:
I don't know if I can speak for anyone else, but I don't hate Abbott or even particularly dislike him as a person. If anything, I feel a slight affection for his olde-world Catholicism, his obsession with physical sport and the compassionate aspects of his conservatism (I think he genuinely cares about the plight of Indigenous people in remote communities). Neither am I naive enough to personify his disgraceful political tactics and positions; I'm well aware of the dehumanising effect of party politics and the collective decisionmaking that goes into everything from the government's refugee policies to the current terrorism scare campaign.

So, I don't hate Abbott as a person at all. But I do hate what he does, and, in certain cases, consider it criminal. When it comes to his actions as prime minister, I have very little nice to say, because, what can you say?


Nice post, but I'm not sure how you can consider his actions "criminal" without personifying it. Bad policy is not criminal, however, unless it is expressly against the law. Once you start going down that route, it's a short step to some very bad places. Robespierre styled his bloodthirsty government during the climax of the revolution as the "Republic of Virtue". It is always the besetting vice of the Left, the assumption that their choices are not just the best available, but an unarguable moral good that must be enforced.

Since you are an instinctive and magnanimous liberal, I think that's not your position, though the words you use bear that interpretation.

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Tannin Capricorn

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 10:07 pm
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Mugwump wrote:
It is always the besetting vice of the Left, the assumption that their choices are not just the best available, but an unarguable moral good that must be enforced.


"Of the left" well FMD. That's the most pompous and arrogant bullshit I've ever seen from you Mugwamp. You are usually a courteous and balanced poster - right wing as buggery, sure, but intelligent and (mostly) well-grounded on facts. But that little barb there was a genuine shocker. How daft is it to pretend that the right is not stuffed chock full of moralistic my way or the highway types? The propensity of churchgoing, stuffed shirt conservatives (i.e., nearly all of them) to claim the moral high ground on the right hand of God is legendary.

By all means complain that some left-leaning people like to claim moral superiority. In doing so, have the decency to admit that (a) even more right-leaning people do the same, and mostly in more personally offensive ways, and (b) that the moral concerns of the left are generally (not always but generally) more truly fair and moral and much more ethical than those of the right (there are many exceptions, granted, but speaking generally this is true), and above all that (c) climate change is not and never has been a left-right issue. Yes, there are more brain-dead and/or treasonous climate change deniers on the right than on the left, but the right as a whole does not take that stance (not even in America where whacko-jacko Bible-thumping loonies breed like flies and spread like slime mould in a basket of fruit) and, in any case, you'd expect the right to be slower on the uptake on this (as with so many other issues) both because (statistically speaking) right-wingers are less intelligent and much less well educated than people in the centre and on the left, and because the right has traditionally been only marginally concerned with the general well-being and primarily concerned with defending and expanding the right of privileged individuals to accumulate further wealth, usually at the expense of other individuals who do not matter.

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Mugwump 



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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2015 10:52 pm
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Tannin wrote:
Mugwump wrote:
It is always the besetting vice of the Left, the assumption that their choices are not just the best available, but an unarguable moral good that must be enforced.


"Of the left" well FMD. That's the most pompous and arrogant bullshit I've ever seen from you Mugwamp. The propensity of churchgoing, stuffed shirt conservatives (i.e., nearly all of them) to claim the moral high ground on the right hand of God is legendary.

By all means complain that some left-leaning people like to claim moral superiority. In doing so, have the decency to admit that (a) even more right-leaning people do the same,.


I suspect it'll come down to a rather arid debate about what we mean by Left vs Right. Some of the churchy right are certainly as you describe, and of course many Leftists are genuinely liberal. I think there woudl be a general consensus in political science that the Left tends to stand for big government, with its panoply of laws and the use of state power to compel progressive (howsoever defined) outcomes. I think there is also a deep genetic strain of enforcement on the Left, from Robespierre's Republic of Virtue, to Marx's Dictatorship of the Proletariat, through Maoism and Sovietism. Pol Pot was so insane that I don't think it's fair to describe that as leftist in any real sense. Are these just to the Left was Fascism is to the right ? Perhaps : but I'd tend to think that the right of Hobbes/Burke/Disraeli/ Jefferson, Smith and Mill has a far greater strain of freedom and individual liberty at its core.

That's what I meant. It's a real paradox for the Left, that what feels instinctively moral (ie equality and collaboration not competition) can become destructive of human potential when its moral urgency turns to coercion, as it naturally tends to do.

I did not mean it to be discourteous or unbalanced. I have great respect for the Left, which did the spade work in the 19th and 20th Centries to make it possible for people from my background to get on in life. But Right and Left have particular vices. The Right's are more obvious, in many ways. In this case, I thought Rundle was indulging the Left's itch for self-righteousness and coercion, and it's best to be aware of that, especially if you are on the Left.

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Tannin Capricorn

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PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2015 12:22 am
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A gloriously intemperate rant followed by a measured, courteous reply. This wouldn't be Tannin and Mugwamp by any chance would it? Shocked

Let's pick up one several random points.

It is unfair to say that (to paraphrase) "the Left tends to stand for big government, with the use of state power to compel worthy-seeming outcomes" unless you also state the obverse, which is that "the Right tends to stand for privileged and powerful individuals, with state power used to compel outcomes".

As an aside, note the key difference: in our over-simplified model, the left (well, the old left anyway, let's pretend it's still 1930 for the sake of simplicity) tends to want to operate directly using state power if it can get it. The right tends to rely instead on massively disproportionate individual power to achieve its aims (e.g., Reinhardt, Murdoch, the Koch Brothers), with state power operating mainly as indirect support for that individual rule-by-might. Neither is noticeably less or more inclined to use power, but they tend to use it in different ways and almost always have vastly different amounts of it. (The left is almost always weaker. When the left is very weak (as it is now) or very strong (as it was in Paris in 1792) outcomes tend to be rather nasty. The same applies in obverse: a very weak right (Moscow, 1925, China 1970) is generally a bad thing, and a very strong right (Germany 1940, Chile 1975, endless other examples) is if anything even worse than a very strong left.)

I used the "churchy right" as the most convenient mob to lampoon, and also because they are role models who set the tone for most of their fellow travelers, but the right generally is very good at moral outrage and holier-than-thou contempt for their opponents: consider Rinehardt with her sneering at the lazy, good-for-nothing bludgers who want to be paid more than $5 a week, or Hockey with his disgusting "lifters and leaners" rhetoric, or Abbott who occupies the sleazy moral high ground as assiduously as a blowfly occupies a corpse.

Yes, what do we mean by Left vs Right? I'll grant you Hobbes, Burke, Disraeli and maybe Smith, query Jefferson, and outright deny Mill. The only reason JS Mill, if he was around today, wouldn't be expelled from the Liberal Party for being a left-wing nutter is that he'd never dream of joining them in the first place. Mill would have happily joined the Liberal Party of Menzies or Gorton or Fraser, but today he'd not go near the Liberals, would consider Labor only to reject it, sadly ponder the demise of the Australian Democrats, be far too subtle and reasonable to make a good fit with the Liberal Democrats, and probably wind up in the Greens or maybe Xenophon's mob.

I agree about Pol Pot: he was every bit as insane as Idi Amin and it would be an injustice to tar any ideology with either of them. But when you mention Robespierre, Lenin (you said "Marx" but you mean Lenin - the only people Marx ever ordered to do anything were the reading room staff at the British Museum where he spent his days, and possibly whoever made his lunch) and both Maoism and Sovietism. I'd question that last one too: if Lenin was Russia's Robespierre, by the time we get to the likes of Brezhnev and Khrushchev we have gone long past the Jacobins and are considering someone more like Barras or the Abbé Sieyès. Most left-wingers these days wouldn't regard the Soviets as leftists. Stalin put paid to all of that.

But arguendo, let's leave your list as it was written. Against that short list of anti-freedom leftist governments - a list you could readily double, even triple - there is a vastly longer list of equally nasty, equally authoritarian, equally brutal governments of the right. Well, worse actually, most of them. We don't even need to bother counting the infamous Fascist leaders Hitler and Mussolini, and we can ignore the appalling right-wing military dictatorship of Japan pre-1945, we can just wander round the globe picking right-wing horrorshows at random. Start in Europe: you've got the dreadful Franco, the detestable Salazar in Portugal, the dictatorship of the Greek generals. There are three recent ones smack in the middle of modern Western Europe. Shall we take a little tour around South America or the Caribbean next? Who would you like to start with? Pinochet? Trujillo? Somoza?

I think I've made my point, which is simply this: for ever terrible anti-freedom left-wing government one cares to name, it is trivially easy to name six or eight even worse ones from the right.

There is more to say on this topic - I haven't really got to the meat of the matter yet, but that's enough for now.

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David Libra

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PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2015 1:49 am
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I feel a thread split coming on... Wink

Mugwump wrote:
David wrote:
I don't know if I can speak for anyone else, but I don't hate Abbott or even particularly dislike him as a person. If anything, I feel a slight affection for his olde-world Catholicism, his obsession with physical sport and the compassionate aspects of his conservatism (I think he genuinely cares about the plight of Indigenous people in remote communities). Neither am I naive enough to personify his disgraceful political tactics and positions; I'm well aware of the dehumanising effect of party politics and the collective decisionmaking that goes into everything from the government's refugee policies to the current terrorism scare campaign.

So, I don't hate Abbott as a person at all. But I do hate what he does, and, in certain cases, consider it criminal. When it comes to his actions as prime minister, I have very little nice to say, because, what can you say?


Nice post, but I'm not sure how you can consider his actions "criminal" without personifying it. Bad policy is not criminal, however, unless it is expressly against the law. Once you start going down that route, it's a short step to some very bad places. Robespierre styled his bloodthirsty government during the climax of the revolution as the "Republic of Virtue". It is always the besetting vice of the Left, the assumption that their choices are not just the best available, but an unarguable moral good that must be enforced.

Since you are an instinctive and magnanimous liberal, I think that's not your position, though the words you use bear that interpretation.


Let's step back a minute – there is a pretty solid argument that Abbott's refugee policy is unlawful.

http://hrlc.org.au/un-finds-australias-treatment-of-asylum-seekers-violates-the-convention-against-torture/

But even if it wasn't, I'm sceptical about your claim that "bad policy is not criminal unless it is expressly against the law". That's trivially true, but only because it is the government of the day which generally decides what the law of the land should be while in power. Yet, that didn't stop, say, prosecution of Nazi officials after WW2 (and while I flinch at 94-year-old accountants being put in the slammer, I side with the majority of people when it comes to the book being thrown at the ones at the top of the chain), and I'm sure you can find more mundane instances of government officials being punished for acts which were retrospectively made illegal.

Is that a bit discomforting? Sure, and it does bring to mind images of show trials for opposition leaders in third-world countries. But, as the Nazi example demonstrates, I think it's a possibility that we have to be open to in cases where "bad policy" stops being mere bad policy and shifts into pure brutality. I do not believe that serious injustice should go unpunished.

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