Schedule 2 to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 places three key requirements on the broadcasters of political advertisements. Clauses 3, 3A and 4 of Schedule 2 require broadcasters to:...
cease political advertisements in the three days before polling day (from midnight on the Wednesday before polling day to the close of the poll on polling day).
Thanks for confirming that. About what I was expecting. A pretty significant loophole.
The Act in question [austlii.edu.au] Doesn't seem to include social media -- it has television and radio.
I'm no lawyer, but to be honest if any of Australia's laws were that current I would be shocked. I mean, we have a communications minister who thinks that you can filter bit torrent without killing it [nocleanfeed.com]
Ah yes the venerable (lol) Senator Conroy. Probably the entire reason for that mans existence is to distract attention onto more trivial and unresolvable matters. Avoiding scrutiny on the real issues is a great way to ensure such loopholes stay open (amongst other things.) But that's probably giving the morons that selected him as communications minister way too much credit!
Is it just TV and Radio or is it all forms of media advertising? If not Twitter, Facebook, etc. would be a pretty significant loophole these days. I can't see censoring of personal Twitter accounts ever happening.
I don't really see how censoring politicians could ever be a bad thing? Most of the time when politicians speak I get an overwhelming urge to punch them in the face until they shut up! (Senator Conroy I'm looking at you!)
Seriously though I think this measure was designed by the relatively less corrupt current government to prevent the significantly corrupt former government from using it's ill gotten billions to buy it's way back into office by sending out propaganda to the poorly educated rural population.
It probably does happen, but I wouldn't know. Perhaps your Arab friend was being a smart ass. People with the power to do strip searches really love a smart ass.
This is also the point where profiling takes place: While most Jewish Israeli citizens will be waved through after the brief conversation, others, mainly Israeli Arabs and non-Jewish visitors, will be taken aside for lengthy questioning and a thorough luggage and physical check.
So in other words they do racial profiling. Or in yet other words, they interrogate every Arab or African that comes through, whilst engaging in a bit of security theatre of their own.
This wasn't the guy who posed the challenge. He's not trying to hide - his slashdot bio provides more than enough information to uniquely identify him with a bit of googling.
you really think it's likely the US government is going to want to shoot protesters?
They have. They will again. An armed populace makes it less likely, not more.
You really think government staff can order the killing of protesters and keep their job/stay out of jail? The fact that protesters have been shot is proof that people just can't be trusted with guns because there's always some moron that mistakenly decides that killing someone is necessary, when it isn't. Ideally no-one would have guns, but I think we can agree that's not possible, so it's best to keep them to a minimum.
With the guns they weren't "allowed" to have, but got anyway. How do you prevent [a corrupt] government from getting guns? By voting the leaders out of office in 4 years? How does a legitimate government prevent an invading force from conquering them without guns (the prior example stated a universal ban on guns by all world governments, as if that could happen)?
There are a whole bunch of checks and balances preventing the sorts of levels of corruption necessary for a government to start suppressing their population. You have to somehow fly under the media radar, co-opt all branches and all levels of the military, the police, state governments, etc etc. It's just not practical these days. It's not the 18th Century anymore.
Really? Ground troops are only crowd control? And they don't use guns? A corrupt government isn't going to send in "lightly armed police" into a protest rally.
And that's what the right to bear arms is about: allowing a populace to defend itself from a corrupt government. Sure, if the US sends in tanks and helicopters against its own people, the protesters are screwed at that moment, but when the fighting escalates, it can't always be tanks and choppers; at some point, traitorous military would have to be outside of a vehicle, and guns will do more than sharp pointy sticks, even if they're wearing body armor. You're trying to think of a great balancing act where all parties involved are benevolent (well, the state anyway; if the people were benevolent, then you'd not have a problem with them owning guns), but the framers were concerned with a(n all too real) worst case scenario. It was fairly recent for them, and we've seen examples in modernity.
Well for starters humans basically are benevolent en masse. When was the last time you saw hundreds of thousands of people rallying to achieve something really evil? In just doesn't happen! This is why democracy works. Evil requires a small number of selfish people with a high concentration of power. So long as you dilute power enough and spread it around it's reasonable to believe that there will be enough good people to prevent the nasty ones from consolidating the power required for totalitarian rule.
Every able bodied person of sound mind needs one. Maybe two. And proper training in their use both in home defense, and in defense of nation. I know people who defended themselves with their firearms, and I'm glad they were able to do so, but I'm even more glad that their ownership of firearms is threatening to some in the government. That's what the framers intended. Ballot, Jury, Cartridge.
That may have been their intention but they lived in a very different time. Our institutions are now very well developed, we have instant global communications, high levels of scrutiny on government activities. Corruption is still very possible and will endure. But not to the levels required to start executing people.
I suppose there is always a slim chance of that happening, but frankly the chance of being indiscriminately killed by some asshole with a gun is much more likely.
Since this question is so ridiculous I assume you're either a troll or a non-English speaker. Please re-read my comment a few more times.
Sorry. Your thinking is so warped I was struggling to see where you were coming from there. I was speaking about third world countries. People struggle to eat in those countries, how are they all going to get guns? If they US, Russia, etc, would stop supplying dictators guns, millions of people around the world might actually be able to overthrow their corrupt governments. In your scenario, you really think it's likely the US government is going to want to shoot protesters? In any case, I'm arguing for less guns - If we don't allow our governments to have lots of guns, how are they going to suppress us?
Nobody with a few exceptions need seat belts, airplane seat cushions that can act as floatation devices, or fire extinguishers. Guns, with regards to the right to bear arms, serve the same purpose: to help prevent or correct tyranny.
Seatbelts, fire extinguishers and flotation devices are all designed to save lives, and do. Anyone who wants to decrease their chances of dying does need them. I'm sorry you think they're wasted if they aren't 100% effective. Guns are made for killing people (the opposite.) When used correctly they are extremely effective. Very few people need them.
What's the new military tech carried by infantry? Lasers? Blasters? Phasers? Disruptors? Anti-Tachyon triple phase pulsed rifles?
Infantry are easy to kill for a modern military force. They are only useful for crowd control (the situation you are so afraid of above) not military conquest. Lightly armed police can perform this duty just fine if the population isn't heavily armed or in large numbers. But they are also unable to control large numbers which means large protests can keep them in check.
Target shooting isn't really useful and there's plenty of other ways of having fun. Archery? I bet burning shit up with a flamethrower is fun too but I'm still glad that's illegal. More lives would be saved by banning all gun sales but I suppose recreational shooting iis fine if they leave the guns at the gun club. At least that would help keep the gun deaths down to mostly the people that use them. Hunting is usually unnecessary. A few guns for legitimate animal culling is fine. The cops and the military also have a legitimate need to kill things occasionally. Having guns everywhere just makes it way to easy for people to kill each other. We're all better off with less of them.
Handle a gun safely. You mean ensure it's clean and loaded, aim it at the person you'd like to kill and pull the trigger? I think the numbers demonstrate Americans can handle guns just fine. The numbers also demonstrate less Swiss would get killed by guns if there were fewer of them. You are mistaken if you think the Swiss are significantly better off than Americans in that regard.
Hilarious! Are you a middle east dictator by any chance? Seriously though:
1) Why do you want to shoot protesters?
2) Have you considered that nobody (with a few exceptions) needs to have guns? In such a scenario, protest is all that is necessary to effect change and prevent tyranny.
3) Guns are a mostly outdated piece of military technology that could easily be removed if a few countries agree to stop making them and start destroying them.
Yeah probably not quite what they were looking for but no doubt as valid as any of theirs! Probably it has more to do with the strictness of the regulations and the types of guns available...
I see religion as a disease on humanity. At times it has a symbiotic relationship but mostly it's just a parasite. There is no point in hating a disease. I do feel sorry for the people it has infected though.
I rarely see Atheists hating, mostly I just see frustration. Frustration that people choose to believe stuff that is just clearly not true, and allowing themselves to be manipulated. The most frustrating thing is religious groups are powerful and are able to inflect their prejudices on the rest of us. Atheists really do need some kind of union or something to balance this!
I won't try to argue with a religious person. The thing about religious people is they believe in a bunch of stuff because some people in a bunch of fancy robes tells them too. Not much point arguing with such people. The very existence of 'faith' in a person demonstrates that they are willing to ignore logic and reason so there is no point trying to convince them. I guess some people figure they may as well have a go at doing what the religious leaders do and just drill the message into their head hoping some of it sticks! It's not a very successful tactic though. What us atheists really need to do is just band together to get some political influence of our own.
Actually if Russia and the USA and a few other select nations stopped selling guns to everyone, it would considerably lessen global conflict and increase the chances of democracy in 3rd world countries. Guns are a very efficient way of killing people and keeping them under control. It's a lot more difficult with swords and spears. Try stabbing 100,000 protesters to death and see how you go.
There are very few guns in Australia (~100,000) with strict rules on sale, transportation, storage. There are very few gun related deaths in Australia (under 10 per year.) There are 100,000,000+ guns in America, and ~10,000 gun deaths a year. Yeah it's probably a coincidence, luckily you have guns to defend yourselves! Hooray for the constitution!
The cynicism says that they're all mindless sheeple who need the next bandwagon to get caught up in and will not go for an honest merit-based approach. I say that if you treat masses of people that way for generations, so that people are born into a world knowing little else and are expected to respond to it, you tend to get what you expect. We have not, in any serious and widespread manner, tried to falsify this cynicism. It remains a religious faith.
That's an interesting hypothesis. I'm not really sure it has much chance of being falsified. Have you watched any reality tv? There's a lot of morons out there.
I rarely if ever read subject lines, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Why read a meta-comment when I want to read actual comments? The subject can be inferred from the comment they are replying to or TFA. I read at -1 which means there are many comments, but little time. Subject line starters get skipped.
TL;DR: Don't start your comment in the subject line, it's annoying, and you will be ignored.
My point (using your rather crass language) was that logical validity has little to do with right or wrong. Pointing out that someone is a hypocrite on the subject at hand is a valid reason to doubt their arguments (premises.) Hypocrites are the worst kinds of people. In this case it was probably due to a gross oversimplification (something very common in US political and economic discussions in my experience) but often it's because the person is a charlatan or a thief.
Slashdot Mirror
In Soviet Australia, Senator Conroy thinks he censors you! FTFY!
Schedule 2 to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 places three key requirements on the broadcasters of political advertisements. Clauses 3, 3A and 4 of Schedule 2 require broadcasters to: ...
cease political advertisements in the three days before polling day (from midnight on the Wednesday before polling day to the close of the poll on polling day).
Thanks for confirming that. About what I was expecting. A pretty significant loophole.
The Act in question [austlii.edu.au] Doesn't seem to include social media -- it has television and radio. I'm no lawyer, but to be honest if any of Australia's laws were that current I would be shocked. I mean, we have a communications minister who thinks that you can filter bit torrent without killing it [nocleanfeed.com]
Ah yes the venerable (lol) Senator Conroy. Probably the entire reason for that mans existence is to distract attention onto more trivial and unresolvable matters. Avoiding scrutiny on the real issues is a great way to ensure such loopholes stay open (amongst other things.) But that's probably giving the morons that selected him as communications minister way too much credit!
Is it just TV and Radio or is it all forms of media advertising? If not Twitter, Facebook, etc. would be a pretty significant loophole these days. I can't see censoring of personal Twitter accounts ever happening.
I don't really see how censoring politicians could ever be a bad thing? Most of the time when politicians speak I get an overwhelming urge to punch them in the face until they shut up! (Senator Conroy I'm looking at you!)
Seriously though I think this measure was designed by the relatively less corrupt current government to prevent the significantly corrupt former government from using it's ill gotten billions to buy it's way back into office by sending out propaganda to the poorly educated rural population.
It probably does happen, but I wouldn't know. Perhaps your Arab friend was being a smart ass. People with the power to do strip searches really love a smart ass.
This is also the point where profiling takes place: While most Jewish Israeli citizens will be waved through after the brief conversation, others, mainly Israeli Arabs and non-Jewish visitors, will be taken aside for lengthy questioning and a thorough luggage and physical check.
So in other words they do racial profiling. Or in yet other words, they interrogate every Arab or African that comes through, whilst engaging in a bit of security theatre of their own.
So what a multinational corporation really needs a psychopathic megalomaniac asshat at the helm. Who would've thunk it?
This wasn't the guy who posed the challenge. He's not trying to hide - his slashdot bio provides more than enough information to uniquely identify him with a bit of googling.
you really think it's likely the US government is going to want to shoot protesters?
They have. They will again. An armed populace makes it less likely, not more.
You really think government staff can order the killing of protesters and keep their job/stay out of jail? The fact that protesters have been shot is proof that people just can't be trusted with guns because there's always some moron that mistakenly decides that killing someone is necessary, when it isn't. Ideally no-one would have guns, but I think we can agree that's not possible, so it's best to keep them to a minimum.
With the guns they weren't "allowed" to have, but got anyway. How do you prevent [a corrupt] government from getting guns? By voting the leaders out of office in 4 years? How does a legitimate government prevent an invading force from conquering them without guns (the prior example stated a universal ban on guns by all world governments, as if that could happen)?
There are a whole bunch of checks and balances preventing the sorts of levels of corruption necessary for a government to start suppressing their population. You have to somehow fly under the media radar, co-opt all branches and all levels of the military, the police, state governments, etc etc. It's just not practical these days. It's not the 18th Century anymore.
Really? Ground troops are only crowd control? And they don't use guns? A corrupt government isn't going to send in "lightly armed police" into a protest rally. And that's what the right to bear arms is about: allowing a populace to defend itself from a corrupt government. Sure, if the US sends in tanks and helicopters against its own people, the protesters are screwed at that moment, but when the fighting escalates, it can't always be tanks and choppers; at some point, traitorous military would have to be outside of a vehicle, and guns will do more than sharp pointy sticks, even if they're wearing body armor. You're trying to think of a great balancing act where all parties involved are benevolent (well, the state anyway; if the people were benevolent, then you'd not have a problem with them owning guns), but the framers were concerned with a(n all too real) worst case scenario. It was fairly recent for them, and we've seen examples in modernity.
Well for starters humans basically are benevolent en masse. When was the last time you saw hundreds of thousands of people rallying to achieve something really evil? In just doesn't happen! This is why democracy works. Evil requires a small number of selfish people with a high concentration of power. So long as you dilute power enough and spread it around it's reasonable to believe that there will be enough good people to prevent the nasty ones from consolidating the power required for totalitarian rule.
Every able bodied person of sound mind needs one. Maybe two. And proper training in their use both in home defense, and in defense of nation. I know people who defended themselves with their firearms, and I'm glad they were able to do so, but I'm even more glad that their ownership of firearms is threatening to some in the government. That's what the framers intended. Ballot, Jury, Cartridge.
That may have been their intention but they lived in a very different time. Our institutions are now very well developed, we have instant global communications, high levels of scrutiny on government activities. Corruption is still very possible and will endure. But not to the levels required to start executing people.
I suppose there is always a slim chance of that happening, but frankly the chance of being indiscriminately killed by some asshole with a gun is much more likely.
Great post! Insightful and funny! Unfortunately my mod points are no good here, but well done sir.
You must not have noticed the reference to them being executives.
Since this question is so ridiculous I assume you're either a troll or a non-English speaker. Please re-read my comment a few more times.
Sorry. Your thinking is so warped I was struggling to see where you were coming from there. I was speaking about third world countries. People struggle to eat in those countries, how are they all going to get guns? If they US, Russia, etc, would stop supplying dictators guns, millions of people around the world might actually be able to overthrow their corrupt governments. In your scenario, you really think it's likely the US government is going to want to shoot protesters? In any case, I'm arguing for less guns - If we don't allow our governments to have lots of guns, how are they going to suppress us?
Nobody with a few exceptions need seat belts, airplane seat cushions that can act as floatation devices, or fire extinguishers. Guns, with regards to the right to bear arms, serve the same purpose: to help prevent or correct tyranny.
Seatbelts, fire extinguishers and flotation devices are all designed to save lives, and do. Anyone who wants to decrease their chances of dying does need them. I'm sorry you think they're wasted if they aren't 100% effective. Guns are made for killing people (the opposite.) When used correctly they are extremely effective. Very few people need them.
What's the new military tech carried by infantry? Lasers? Blasters? Phasers? Disruptors? Anti-Tachyon triple phase pulsed rifles?
Infantry are easy to kill for a modern military force. They are only useful for crowd control (the situation you are so afraid of above) not military conquest. Lightly armed police can perform this duty just fine if the population isn't heavily armed or in large numbers. But they are also unable to control large numbers which means large protests can keep them in check.
Target shooting isn't really useful and there's plenty of other ways of having fun. Archery? I bet burning shit up with a flamethrower is fun too but I'm still glad that's illegal. More lives would be saved by banning all gun sales but I suppose recreational shooting iis fine if they leave the guns at the gun club. At least that would help keep the gun deaths down to mostly the people that use them. Hunting is usually unnecessary. A few guns for legitimate animal culling is fine. The cops and the military also have a legitimate need to kill things occasionally. Having guns everywhere just makes it way to easy for people to kill each other. We're all better off with less of them.
Handle a gun safely. You mean ensure it's clean and loaded, aim it at the person you'd like to kill and pull the trigger? I think the numbers demonstrate Americans can handle guns just fine. The numbers also demonstrate less Swiss would get killed by guns if there were fewer of them. You are mistaken if you think the Swiss are significantly better off than Americans in that regard.
Hilarious! Are you a middle east dictator by any chance? Seriously though:
1) Why do you want to shoot protesters?
2) Have you considered that nobody (with a few exceptions) needs to have guns? In such a scenario, protest is all that is necessary to effect change and prevent tyranny. 3) Guns are a mostly outdated piece of military technology that could easily be removed if a few countries agree to stop making them and start destroying them.
The graph here shows that gun deaths scale quite neatly with ownership rates.
Yeah probably not quite what they were looking for but no doubt as valid as any of theirs! Probably it has more to do with the strictness of the regulations and the types of guns available...
I see religion as a disease on humanity. At times it has a symbiotic relationship but mostly it's just a parasite. There is no point in hating a disease. I do feel sorry for the people it has infected though.
I rarely see Atheists hating, mostly I just see frustration. Frustration that people choose to believe stuff that is just clearly not true, and allowing themselves to be manipulated. The most frustrating thing is religious groups are powerful and are able to inflect their prejudices on the rest of us. Atheists really do need some kind of union or something to balance this!
I won't try to argue with a religious person. The thing about religious people is they believe in a bunch of stuff because some people in a bunch of fancy robes tells them too. Not much point arguing with such people. The very existence of 'faith' in a person demonstrates that they are willing to ignore logic and reason so there is no point trying to convince them. I guess some people figure they may as well have a go at doing what the religious leaders do and just drill the message into their head hoping some of it sticks! It's not a very successful tactic though. What us atheists really need to do is just band together to get some political influence of our own.
Also fire is banned in some instances. Eg, no lighting fires during high bush fire risk conditions.
Fire has many uses that don't involve killing. Guns are good for killing and have no other useful purpose.
Actually if Russia and the USA and a few other select nations stopped selling guns to everyone, it would considerably lessen global conflict and increase the chances of democracy in 3rd world countries. Guns are a very efficient way of killing people and keeping them under control. It's a lot more difficult with swords and spears. Try stabbing 100,000 protesters to death and see how you go.
There are very few guns in Australia (~100,000) with strict rules on sale, transportation, storage. There are very few gun related deaths in Australia (under 10 per year.) There are 100,000,000+ guns in America, and ~10,000 gun deaths a year. Yeah it's probably a coincidence, luckily you have guns to defend yourselves! Hooray for the constitution!
More guns = more dead people. Fact
The cynicism says that they're all mindless sheeple who need the next bandwagon to get caught up in and will not go for an honest merit-based approach. I say that if you treat masses of people that way for generations, so that people are born into a world knowing little else and are expected to respond to it, you tend to get what you expect. We have not, in any serious and widespread manner, tried to falsify this cynicism. It remains a religious faith.
That's an interesting hypothesis. I'm not really sure it has much chance of being falsified. Have you watched any reality tv? There's a lot of morons out there.
I rarely if ever read subject lines, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Why read a meta-comment when I want to read actual comments? The subject can be inferred from the comment they are replying to or TFA. I read at -1 which means there are many comments, but little time. Subject line starters get skipped.
TL;DR: Don't start your comment in the subject line, it's annoying, and you will be ignored.
My point (using your rather crass language) was that logical validity has little to do with right or wrong. Pointing out that someone is a hypocrite on the subject at hand is a valid reason to doubt their arguments (premises.) Hypocrites are the worst kinds of people. In this case it was probably due to a gross oversimplification (something very common in US political and economic discussions in my experience) but often it's because the person is a charlatan or a thief.