Australia - you're standing in it

"your ALP buddies sure jumped into bed with the Panda."
Not my buddies, but yes, the ALP were certainly happy to ignore the human rights abuses by China too.
Scumo has looked like an absolute fool. He's more upset about a meme than Australian troops murdering at least 39 Afghans. The soldiers drinking out of a dead Afghan's prosthetic leg doesn't seem to concern him at all.
Scumo's poor us routine may please the likes of blowin, but it does have consequences, and makes Australia look ridiculous.

Vic Local - If I had a dollar for every needless and incorrect personal insult you aimed my way I’d be able afford hire on a jaded old Tijuana sex show donkey to come and give you exactly what you deserve.

Ha Ha blowin, you obviously know the price of sex show donkeys. I won't ask why, but whatever floats your boat.

I'd have thought the donkey wasn't the expensive part of that particular arrangement?

Maybe we can all find this out once we sign FTA with Mexico. (Or have we already?)

I wonder if the Mexicans called blowin el burro or el burra?

"COVID is a blessing in disguise for Australia. We’ve largely dodged its bullet, and our biggest threat this century* has had the floodlights flicked on them"

100%

I cant help but think the way the government has dealt with China this year is way more calculated than people think, basically taking the opportunity to cool things off a little, just send a message to Australian business etc to diversify their export market a little, i cant see how it hurts Scomo's image at all either, it's not being reckless or overly aggressive it's just being a little more firm, i see that as a positive.

It would be impossible to send this message out in a normal climate, as would really piss China off and also really piss off those who do business with China and see an attack from the opposition.

But that said i really dont understand how governments both liberal and Labor have allowed Australia to become so reliant on China.

"But that said i really dont understand how governments both liberal and Labor have allowed Australia to become so reliant on China."

Here's a clue: https://theconversation.com/an-all-out-trade-war-with-china-would-cost-a...

Somewhat chicken and egg, but remember all must be sacrificed at the altar of never ending growth.

El burro or el Burra?? More like el Gut-Suck going by that goofy photo on the Good News Thread.

Sweet (n sour) baby Jesus! How's some of the Chinese honkytonk on the menu here?

It looks like some are really getting their mongrel on fantasising about a 'Tomorrow, When The War Began' scenario.

Though obviously manned by 'Dad's Army' (the Swolenut demographic).

Well what are you going to do when the communists come for your bathplug facto?

"Who do you think you are kidding...?"

Is Rupe going broke? Maybe he already is and that's why he keeps rooting for government help, i.e. keepin' the 'fox' on the run.

Rupe should really consider Michael's offer. Very generous. Very radical.

https://www.michaelwest.com.au/inside-ruperts-big-aussie-sale-murdoch-sm...

Sounds like Albo and the ALP are ready to start working their way through the 14 point list of demands to satisfy their Chinese masters.

What’s first Albo ?

You want to order the media to not be critical of the CCP ?

Maybe you will dismantle any resistance to foreign influence and infiltration into our democracy ?

Albo needs to stick to stacking chairs at the Newtown town hall . All that cnt is good for. Christ - between Scomo and Albo it is enough to make you want to cry. How did it come down to a choice between these two uber flogs ?

Beacause he differed with the way ScoMo's handled it?

Nah, ScoMo's been berated but only by some sectors of the media and various handlers, 'twas about time it was questioned.

Just be thankful Rudd isn't still in Blowin, that list would of demands would have been ticked off straight away, with a note promising Australias national language will be Mandarin by 2050.

BTW. speaking of Rudd things have been much worse in politics remember when the choice was between Abott & Rudd

Stu....Albo is playing politics over an issue which is too important to be exempt from bipartisanship. Albo can say what he likes about Scomo’s handling of the tweet but he goes further :

“"The fact that ministers can't pick up the phone to each other, I find that extraordinary," Mr Albanese said.

"When I was a minister, Chinese ministers visited Australia and I visited there in our national interest about promoting Australian jobs."“

So Albo - no mention of the fact that the Australian trade minister has tried repeatedly to contact his Chinese counterpart only to be routinely ignored totally and rebuked if any thing is said publicly ? Or the fact that the China you dealt with years ago is unrecognisable from the China we are confronted by today ?

The problem is all China’s and Albo is heaping on the victim blaming.

After sitting around like a stale bottle of piss for the past 8 months his first contribution is to side with China instead of Australia......Fck off Albo !

PS .....Indo . Rudd made a video a couple of days ago which I haven’t had the inclination to watch and assess. I’ll do so and get back to you.

Albo, the ghost that sleeps finally awakes!

Agree with the comments about China acting like an imperial power and they have had plenty of examples of other nations doing the same to them through history. Just think of the total disregard for their sovereignty which eventually led to opium wars and loss of Hong Kong. For better or worse, no doubt worse, this is their time in the sun. Not making an apology for them.

PNG has just announced a large Chinese built fish processing plant on one of their islands which gives Chinese fleets access to fishing grounds along Australia's northern grounds. Seems that PNG also has a new pm who's getting shit done.

Given the way their fishing fleets behave it is likely that there is going to be some interaction with Australian authorities up that way.

Anyone up for a few naval confrontations?

The current low point in China - Australia relations has been years in the making, but our plucky little RWFWs on Swellnet think it can be solved with a bit of megaphone diplomacy, and developing a nuclear arsenal. Gott have nukes, gotta have nuke. Porlean was right, boycott China, gotta have nukes.

You're free to get irate, but if you do so after only comprehending half the story then it's all wasted energy. The trade minister could call his counterpart until ScoMo rashly went it alone on COVID. 

And before you fire off about siding with China, also understand that it's entirely possible to hold a position, even act upon it, without revealing said position to your enemy. Strategically that'd be the smart thing to do.

I reckon Albo is a wet wipe but accusing him of taking China's side is a nonsense.

If you’re undermining the government’s stance in the face of unjust Chinese intimidation and persecution then you are on China’s side . I believe that light needs to be shed on China’s behaviour. Public condemnation. Make no secret of it and invite the world to witness the way China behaves.

We stated silent for the past 5 years . Worse - we hid it and suppressed the truth by claiming any China criticism was racist . And how did staying silent work out for us ? China became progressively more aggressive and belligerent.

Make China the pariah it deserves to be.

PS You think it’s rash for our government to step up and declare the irrefutable need for an investigation into the true origins of COVID ? That’s just more play from the victim blaming handbook. We should be proud and open in yelling at the top of our lungs “ Why in fck’s name are you hesitant to invite a complete and honest inquest into the virus which has ruined the world ? “

It just shows how deep the Stockholm syndrome runs that any suggestion otherwise is not dismissed out of hand immediately.

Sure you can peddle the apologist line that to front the bully won’t help our exports but the line in the sand is so far behind us when it comes to dealing with China that their will be no good time to confront them and they need confronting as sure as Hitler’s Germany.

PS Epic call on Albo being a wet wipe. The most perfect metaphor yet ?

"If you’re undermining the government’s stance in the face of unjust Chinese intimidation and persecution then you are on China’s side "

No, you're partaking in democracy and the contest of ideas, and the media who reports upon it are merely doing what a free press should.

There's always more than one way to handle a situation and for you to suggest that everyone should stand behind our glorious and infallible leader is more akin to the CCP.

"Why in fck’s name are you hesitant to invite a complete and honest inquest into the virus which has ruined the world?"

I'm not hesitant, we should demand an inquest, but we do it with a united front, the whole Western world against China. By going it alone we've not only made ourselves a target - that's what all this tit for tat stuff is about - and we've also moved the discourse away from the virus so that now it's unlikely to happen. Lose/lose.

The funny thing is, blowin's equivalent in China is the guy who published the offensive meme. Different sides of the same coin.

Contrast how Japan handles its more serious differences with China to how Australia does.

In some ways we had it coming, diplomacy is not a sledge hammer sport.

nah, its like covid, left wing governments cant wait to control everyone and everything, and their supporters are pussies."save me dan! look after me! lock me up!" and china the same thing appease, cower, "we didnt mean it!" pussies..

You been flat out drinking, Lizard? That's two posts in a row with a whiff of inebriation about them.

sober as a judge! must be the festive season

a little generalisation and simplification perhaps but pitching at a level guy smiley will comprehend

I guess it’s too much to ask our current knuckle headed government to be firm and diplomatic at the same time.

That’s all I ask

The end game reason China have singled us out for special treatment right now is to stop a Covid inquest happening. We are their message to the world.
They’re no doubt deeply embarrassed that their laws allowed the C19 world wide medical and financial disaster to unfurl, and because of a little bit of immaturity, but mostly a whole lot of Empirical dreams they had, they can’t take it on the chin and move forward in a pro active way.
China are giving dozens of countries a hard time in 2020

Maybe also to deflect attention from HK

South China Sea

I went too far down the rabbit hole over the weekend and can't help but wonder if COVID is China's Tiananmen Square moment of the 21st Century. It killed off a lot of mass protests that were happening and cleared the streets fairly well. . Now not only do a lot of people not want to protest, they're also scared of large gatherings. It just seems to have done too much of a good job to be coincidence. Hong Kong now barely on the international radar. Any other conspiracy nuts out there? I've been in the wilderness for a long time.

Meanwhile Frydenberg is trying to delist a RAMSAR wetlands because a Liberal Party mate wants to plonk up a new suburb.
That pretty much demonstrates our government's commitment to corruption and pissing on global initiatives. It's pretty hard to criticise other nation's environmental policies when our government runs an anti-environment agenda.

Gaz, I'm kind of with you. I wrote this recently but something in the back of my mind keeps niggling away and I'm not the only one I guess.

"Throughout 2019 China's economy was stalling, the magnifying glass was focused on their human rights violations, a renewed push for democracy in HK, ASEAN nations starting to push back against their South China Sea illegal territorial grab, others questioning their role in the BRI, US tariffs starting to bite as well as a shift back to the USA's favour after reluctantly having to sign off on a renewed trade agreement.

Fast forward and the pandemic wreaks havoc on the world, especially the USA and China's economy is again booming and back to double digit growth. All this in an election year resulting in a government sympathetic rather than antagonistic towards them.

Is there not the teenciest bit of coincidence there or was the CCP just incredibly lucky?"

I stood by this then and I stand by it now. I find it so hard to believe this pandemic has been a coincidence if you take a step back and see who had the most to gain.

Call me a conspiracist I don't care, but this corona virus has altered the course of history resulting in a seismic shift in the way we lead our lives. How we come out the other side is anyones guess.

I agree that the primary aim of the current Chinese aggression is an attempt to stop a possible multinational investigation into the origin of Covid.

Especially considering the backlash that would ensue if information was discovered that showed China to be even more negligent, or worse complicit in the spread of the virus that has been touted by some as having started one of, if not the worst economic downturns in around 300 years.

Not saying it is, but Imagine if Covid was a tool designed and employed to weaken the West. Obviously it is conspiratorial, and as yet there doesn’t seem to be any real evidence to back it up. But why is China so sensitive to the issue of a Covid investigation on their soil? Surely if their hands were clean it would prove their innocence and be great PR for the CCP. If you read a lot of history, which I do, the idea is not that far fetched. They are in a phase of aggressive empire building after all.

"And personally I'm more offended by our alleged behaviour AND our confirmed behaviour in Afghanistan than some petty shoop. Don't use manufactrured outrage to try to cover up what happened."

I'd suggest that the vast majority of our troops served and continue to serve honourably. That's not to condone in any way the recent findings but to always remember that these people are willing to put their lives on the line for the rest of us that don't.

“ the braindead pathetic convict stock that we are. “

Another one going straight to the pool room.

Totally agree Sheepy, it was disgusting behaviour by a handful of rogue soldiers. We need to deal with it as swiftly as possible to let the world (and our defence force) know that it is not what we stand for. We need to try them like Bali did their bombers

Zen & Sickaz, I kinda think along those terms too, but I see it as an opportunistic run of play.
The virus broke out to their horror.
“Shit why did we change those laws on bats and pangolins dammit”
They did their best to contain it (phone data shutting down in the vicinity in November / December) but also dangerously to keep it from becoming known (vocal scientists went missing)
Then it spread.
They had enough fear to weld people inside their homes, but not enough to stop flights departing. They told us we were racist to stop their disease coming into our countries
This opportunistic behaviour to help them relative to the world (drag us down with them) is what they don’t want to become common knowledge in every western school playground, office & pub.
Cause that’ll shift attitudes of 3 generations of the rest of the world against them.
End result, we all basically put up with less shit from them for the next century.

Very hard to grow an empire under those conditions.

Well said rabbit.

The allegations made in the Brereton report are under investigation and are not yet proven in a court of law. Seems that a lot of despicable acts were perpetrated by some of our elite soldiers, and as a result it is being thoroughly investigated which is the right course of action. But what happened to innocent until proven guilty? especially for people, like rabbit said, who are willing to risk their life to serve the country?

Shore dump you have outlined a far more probable scenario and I agree.

I still think there is a possibility of details being uncovered that could be completely surprising. I admit the chances are lower than your more reasonable explanation.

You’re analysis is a sober one, how does the saying go? I’ll try to paraphrase...
‘don’t attribute to malevolence that which could be a result of incompetence’.

Elites of the day sign the Enclosure Acts
> The Commons becomes titled land, and given to the great landowners who raise sheep
>And profit
>The commoners had their land nicked
>But they still went hunting pheasant on this land, or stole as they were starving as they had no land to raise food any more
>The commoners got done for trespass on the new, titled land
>As there were so many commoners getting done for new crimes, the prisons overflowed
>The hulks overflowed
>Sheep remained profitable
>So they transported the landless commoner convicts to Australia
>Then the blackfellas got their land nicked too and it also got titled
>Sheep remained profitable
>200 years later Sheepy does a bit more victim blaming and uses 'convicts' as a term of shame
>When these were just normal people who got their common land nicked, a type of people Sheepy stands up for

https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain

& shoredump, plausible.

If you ask me, I thought that the CCP was showing a fair few cracks about 12 months back. Fast forward to today and COVID seems to have wound up most of their local problems. Now it's just the pesky "rest of the world" that keeps dragging it out and asking too many questions.

What gets my goat the most is now the whole world seems happy to relinquish personal freedoms and some of the things that define us ie handshakes, sport etc due to the actions of a distant authoritarian state. And we do it willingly because it seems like the right thing to do. It's fucked at just how coincidental it seems to be. If it was planned it must be the play of the century. Either way it's enforced a life-style on the west that we would have never dreamed of yet is fairly standard in China.

Today I had to download a government COVID ap and "check-in" just to buy a sandwich on the side of the highway in the middle bumfuck no where. You could say that 2020 has left me fairly disgruntled.

Epic post VJ.

And here’s another epic comment :

“ That’s the unsettling feeling of ALP abandonment. As they unburden themselves of labour principles to ride off further into the sunset on their service economy and China fantasy, Frydenberg, Creepy Pete and Scotty from Marketing are the only ones standing, holding out a turd sandwich for the Australian public – hoping that people will get hungrier.

This is how it ends, not with a bang but a whimper.“

Zen I was like you at the start of the pandemic , this has to be a set up and China has weaponized a virus. Too many laboratory's have checked the virus and say it is not man made , and how could you have ever predicted the USA's response under Trump?
If it wasn;t man made , well it's just like the spanish flu which originated in....the USA, 100m deaths or more...but it was the Spanish Flu!
China is slowly but surely playing a negative role in Australia's future , and we cannot criticize them as Australia has also human rights abuses , and our democracy is controlled by lobby groups.....I think we live in an allusion .....very easy to see when you have to fight for your communities future.....the malevolent tentacles of business lobby groups are now in every nook and cranny of western society!

I had to take a piss in Ballina this morning - went to the pub, they said I had to sign in and I said fcuk that and went behind the tree.

dumb convict out.

Speaking of profitable sheep, don't forget the contribution made by John Howard and John Anderson to the distribution of crown land to graziers and farmers, and the process hasn't finished yet. Also the windfall of water licences locking up a public resource into private revenue.

https://www.theland.com.au/story/5277084/western-lands-given-freehold-bu...

Rabbits68. 39 people were murdered by our troops and that number is a bare minimum. These crimes were systemic and they were covered up for years.
Sorry mate the "they put their lives on the line" line simply doesn't wash.
I've spoken to a couple of military mates and they are fucking pissed at the soldiers responsible. They want prosecutions and jail time. I know it's a small sample size and there would others soldiers who think like you, but nobody in the military is making public comments defending the SAS.
Remember when Australia was a respectable nation? Not anymore. Our government has done some truly shithouse things on the international stage since little Jonnie went-a-bombing looking for non-existent WMDs. We've pretty much lost the right to lecture other nations.