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ANZAC comments, Censorship of Fan-Fic, Lots of Gaming, East Timor Presentation
Let's see, roadworks over digger's graves, being told to go away by Australian veterans from East Timor for taking their oil, snubbing the NZ ceremonies and now trying to tie the ANZAC spirit with an invasion? Proud of that Mr. Howard? How low can he stoop? Well, he claims that the invasion of Iraq is part of the ANZAC spirit. We really have a scumbag for a leader in this country.
At least Michael Leuning remembers why we should have ANZAC memorial services - and the reason that I don't attend the state-sanctioned ANZAC celebration ceremonies. Apart from the fact that the ruling powers twice tried to force people to kill and be killed. That's the real message behind ANZAC, that what we should remember, not what we should celebrate.
Oh, and here's something very special. Just released so that we really can see what Gallipoli was like. Remember the computer game Lemmings? Well here's the ANZAC cove version. Just released;
Gallipoli: The Game is a stunning recreation of Australia's greatest military adventure. As a commander in the Great War (WWI), you take on the role of leading the prime of Australia's armed forces as they launch an all-out assault on the Central Powers (the Germans, Austrians and the Ottomans). Gameplay is similar to the hit PC game, Lemmings, except, instead of trying to save your soldiers, your mission, as an authentic WWI commander, is to wipe out as many diggers as possible ... the more gruesome the better!
Get it from here; Gallipoli - (sorry people, it's just for *nix users).
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greylock (locked, friends-only) and bar_bar_rella (see this post) have been engaging in a debate over the legal mores of fan-fiction which may, depending on your point of view, be of questionable taste - specifically slash fan-fiction involving Harry Potter characters. As an example of good timing and good reasoning, strangedave makes this related post on how free speech advocates should react.
Last weekend was gaming heaven for me. Finished off Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter which, despite mostly lacking in story, does have a good ending. Later, managed to play and old classic - Battletech!. Ahh, those giant killer robots. They are so silly. But a game which is like chess with dice inevitably attracts. Later played another session ofcaseopaya's solo campaign of Call of Cthulhu/Nephilm which involves a murder mystery (what else?) in an isolated Victorian town and finally, completed Scene Eight of the Ten Thousand Islands game. Oh, I should mention apart from the aforementioned Gallipoli, I've also downloaded and compiled FreeCiv2 and Pingus (required for Gallipoli) and given them some testing.
Somewhere among all that I managed to see Joan Coxsedge at the Unitarians speaking on the role of clandestine organisations in foreign affairs. The former radical MP is a great speaker, but unfortunately I felt that the message was hidden too far in the rhetoric. Also managed to squeeze in a lunch meeting with West Australian MLC Louise Pratt, in her role as organiser for Labor for Refugees (WA). I used to do student politics with in the late 80s and hadn't seen her since those times.
Service this week at the Unitarians is very important:
MAY DAY SERVICE
Melbourne historian Clinton Fernandes will be speaking at the Melbourne Unitarian Church (110 Grey Street, East Melbourne) at 11 am on "Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the Independence of East Timor"
Seeming that there's probably noone on the planet who knows this topic better than Clinton, if you're ever going to attend a Unitarian service, this is the one to go to.
Pet-excitement of the week. In a moment of territorial grumpiness achievable only by old rats that prefer to be left alone, especially in the company of young, bouncy versions of the same species, Monte bit off Rogue's toe on his fore-paw! Little Rogue, toeless but wiser, has fully recovered.
Both John Brumby and Robert Clark are pandering to populist nonsense on land tax. It annoys me greatly to see politicians ignoring the sensible advice by leading economists that we need more land tax, not less. Something positive; Spain legalises gay marriage. Something negative. Didn't we "liberate" Afghanistan to prevent this? Woman stoned to death for adultery.
Something stupid. Brain-breaker of the week is fromcatbiscuit and splodgenoodles - ummm, that's why it's called "disability pension".
At least Michael Leuning remembers why we should have ANZAC memorial services - and the reason that I don't attend the state-sanctioned ANZAC celebration ceremonies. Apart from the fact that the ruling powers twice tried to force people to kill and be killed. That's the real message behind ANZAC, that what we should remember, not what we should celebrate.
Oh, and here's something very special. Just released so that we really can see what Gallipoli was like. Remember the computer game Lemmings? Well here's the ANZAC cove version. Just released;
Get it from here; Gallipoli - (sorry people, it's just for *nix users).
greylock (locked, friends-only) and bar_bar_rella (see this post) have been engaging in a debate over the legal mores of fan-fiction which may, depending on your point of view, be of questionable taste - specifically slash fan-fiction involving Harry Potter characters. As an example of good timing and good reasoning, strangedave makes this related post on how free speech advocates should react.Last weekend was gaming heaven for me. Finished off Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter which, despite mostly lacking in story, does have a good ending. Later, managed to play and old classic - Battletech!. Ahh, those giant killer robots. They are so silly. But a game which is like chess with dice inevitably attracts. Later played another session of
caseopaya's solo campaign of Call of Cthulhu/Nephilm which involves a murder mystery (what else?) in an isolated Victorian town and finally, completed Scene Eight of the Ten Thousand Islands game. Oh, I should mention apart from the aforementioned Gallipoli, I've also downloaded and compiled FreeCiv2 and Pingus (required for Gallipoli) and given them some testing.Somewhere among all that I managed to see Joan Coxsedge at the Unitarians speaking on the role of clandestine organisations in foreign affairs. The former radical MP is a great speaker, but unfortunately I felt that the message was hidden too far in the rhetoric. Also managed to squeeze in a lunch meeting with West Australian MLC Louise Pratt, in her role as organiser for Labor for Refugees (WA). I used to do student politics with in the late 80s and hadn't seen her since those times.
Service this week at the Unitarians is very important:
MAY DAY SERVICE
Melbourne historian Clinton Fernandes will be speaking at the Melbourne Unitarian Church (110 Grey Street, East Melbourne) at 11 am on "Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the Independence of East Timor"
Seeming that there's probably noone on the planet who knows this topic better than Clinton, if you're ever going to attend a Unitarian service, this is the one to go to.
Pet-excitement of the week. In a moment of territorial grumpiness achievable only by old rats that prefer to be left alone, especially in the company of young, bouncy versions of the same species, Monte bit off Rogue's toe on his fore-paw! Little Rogue, toeless but wiser, has fully recovered.
Both John Brumby and Robert Clark are pandering to populist nonsense on land tax. It annoys me greatly to see politicians ignoring the sensible advice by leading economists that we need more land tax, not less. Something positive; Spain legalises gay marriage. Something negative. Didn't we "liberate" Afghanistan to prevent this? Woman stoned to death for adultery.
Something stupid. Brain-breaker of the week is from
catbiscuit and splodgenoodles - ummm, that's why it's called "disability pension".
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Who knows how they have been perverted since.
-B
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I've noticed that Leuning is copping the rather standard and tiresome flak "These people died to defend our freedoms".
What a load of nonsense. Turkey wasn't going to invade Australia.
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*sigh* the first world war, had nothing to do with freedoms at all..
-B
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Hell, nor was Germany. As time would quickly show, there was absolutely no way that Germany could have ever invaded the UK during WW I.
Trench warfare ensured that nobody could invade each other.
The only thing that won in WW I was Leninism and the Spanish 'flu.
WW I was an evil, stupid, and tragic war. Even more so than the others. Possibly even more stupid than the Hondorous-Guatamela soccer war.
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-B
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It's probably nothing you haven't heard before, but it boils down to:
1. Ian Melrose is a dirty rotten lying bastard
2. We've been turning a blind eye to East Timor stealing money from us!
I remain uncommitted to either camp, but the way the Government is handling the issue is appalling.
Not that the Timorese are aquitting themselves with honour either.
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Apparently there is legal opinion both ways on where the maritime border will be.
The usual place is the mid point between two nations, which is what East Timor wants.
I don't think there's any debate about who needs the money more. East Timor is incredibly poor.
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(No, seriously)
After all, the last thing we need in the world is another Bhutan or Dubai.\
There are probably unitisation issues to consider. East Timor uses Production Sharing Contracts (plus tax) to take money, whereas Australia merely charges company tax.
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Rough estimation on the value of the oil suggests that under current circumstances they would rise from the poorest country on the planet to a low-mid range economy. About the same as the rest of Indonesia.
If they received a more generous amount I can't see it becoming more than a mid-high economy. About the same as Mexico.
There's also only an estimated 20 years worth of production in the field.
I wouldn't worry about East Timor becoming like Bhutan (don't you mean Brunei?) or Dubai. Both of those countries are religious monarchies. East Timor has multiparty elections. Amazingly fair ones as well.
We should be encouraging regional democracies as much as possible.
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Greater Sunrise (or the portion that's in the JPDA might only have 20 years, but there's likely to be a lot more in there than anyone suspects.
I've also heard anecdotal evidence that there's oil bubbling to the surface, in Timor, and the Norwgian geologist (Geir something) and the Chinese are quite bullish over the onshore Timor prospectivity - which pretty much hasn't been touched since the invasion.
If I have to make a gut assesment, assuming they don't fall in a heap, keep corruption at bay and don't do desperate deals with the Chinese, I'd be quite hopeful they'll end up doing quite nicely out of any deal.
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From the linked article;
This Anzac Day, many Australian servicemen and women would be serving across the world, Mr Howard said.
"These men and women are risking their lives to bring the same peace and freedom that we enjoy here in Australia," he said.
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Whoops. Missed the next line:
Today's services and other observances would ensure that the Anzac spirit continued to endure, he said.
Well, I suppose if the ANZAC spirit means invading other countries....
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I suppose it is too late for that now?
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I think I have played every video game that board game has spawned.
The cresent hawks revenge
mechwarrior(the EGA verion)
mechwarrior 2
mechwarrior 3
Are there any others?
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I've only played Crescent Hawk, Mechwarrior. Always amused how in the latter you could take out a Marauder with a Jenner, by hiding between it's legs and shooting the knees out... Ahh, lots of amusement!
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I ruled Mechwarrior. I straight out own on the newer version as well. No modesty here. I will kick anyones ass at those games HANDS DOWN.
Apparently there is a game called MechAssault for the Xbox which I now MUST buy. And Mechcommander and Mechcommander 2
Ebay has just been calling my name lately.
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If I'm hiding between someone's legs, then there's surely going to be a much more attractive target than the knees...
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Come now, it's a giant killer robot! It doesn't have what you're thinking of!
Unless.... medium laser, center torso, critical group 2, section 6.
(I don't believe I just made a purile BattleTech joke.)
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According to that article, these "reforms" would be totally unnecessary as sole parent pensioners tend to move into paid work of their own accord fairly quickly.
So either this ... a high proportion of sole parents switched to unemployment benefits, rather than work, once their parenting payment ended is totally untrue, a stretching of the facts (what do they consider a "high proportion" - 70%, 50%, 10%?) or the profile of the average sole parent pensioner has changed dramatically in that time.
It is possible that the profile has changed because of a number of factors, the main one being the lack of availability of affordable childcare - already critical 5 years ago, now terminal (in the sense that it is actually preventing parents, sole or otherwise, from moving into the workforce when they wish to) - which this government has determinedly ignored**, and the policies pursued by this government to promote the stay-at-home mother as the model for Australian families, to the detriment of working mothers and all other family models in the community.
The upshot of this is that this political hand-waving exercise is either unecessary, or doomed to failure in any meanigful way in the same way that WFTD is a failure. It will cause unecessary stress to individuals at already highly-stressful times in their lives, for no gain. It is a cynical exercise in punishing the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.
* As an aside, the article above also showed that most sole parents were in their thirties, the vast majority (90-something percent) were single because of the breakdown of a long-term relationship, and the majority of those had been actual marriages rather than de-facto, scuppering the myths of the teenage mum, the woman-who-can't-keep-her-legs-shut and that de-facto relationships were more likely to breakup than marriages.
** And I'm not holding my breath for the government's promised reforms to childcare regulations to increase availability either.
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There is a certain inevitability than anyone on any sort of welfare benefit will be targetted by this government. They are ideologically opposed to their idea of a people receiving payments when they don't contribute to productivity (landlords excepted, of course).
The fact that people now may be on welfare payments of any sort due to the destruction of a social wage (e.g,, such as your mentioned affordable childcare) is an externality of which the government washes its hands clean; "It's just market forces at work - if you don't want to be a single mum, choose a better partner. The community shouldn't fund the follow of individuals."
All this I sort of expect from these people. What I didn't expect was the sort of nonsense coming out from the article that
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Indeed. And then they have the hide to turn around and tell people to breed for their lives, that they are selfish if they are not having children "for the country". So when it suits them, having children is a personal decision, one that the community should not be expected to fund or assist with, and at other times having children is a civic duty which it lambastes people for not undertaking. The blatent hypocrisy of this two-faced attitude is staggering, and it's so very disappointing that the media and the public just accept it rather than call them to account on it.
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*nods* It actually spells grave danger for any pretence of our society to call itself democratic. Cynical comments about politicians and lying aside, when politicians are caught out lying or being hypocritical and the public votes for them, the nation is setting itself up for dictatorship.