Jara

Hey Wrecker - sorry, not sure how to highlight on my phone, but that bit you said about Australia donating to the Clinton foundation. Is that true? Have you got evidence (not doubting your veracity, it's just something that interests me - have heard a couple of people saying it recently. Bloke in the pub last month tried to tell me that Australia had given $17 million ((or maybe it was $70 million) towards Chelsea's wedding))?

Wrecker, re your last point, about Clinton's home server. By the time they said that, the damage had been done. Releasing the information about a new probe a week out from the election was (as far as I can recall, which may not be far) a real game changer - derailed her campaign - refocused attention on the "Crooked Hillary" thing.

Great post!

Fair enough Daisy - can't say I'm any sort of an expert (although I thought supermarket employees were under all sorts of different things - some have got EBAs ((like Coles, although I seem to recall hearing they got a crappy one)) others haven't (independents IGA, etc) - anyway, I'm sure you're right - in that case, I'll change it to my friendly local barmaid (actually she gets cash in hand, but we won't go there) I just hate to see anything that takes money away from the poor folk - I was just listening to the news - heard an item that gives the lie to all this "Oh they'll make more jobs" stuff - radio just said that GDP and profits have just had an unexpectedly large lift - the one area of the economy that hasn't? - jobs and wages. I take real estate prices in Toorak as a pretty good indicator of how some people are doing (on the other hand, visited family in Dallas (Melbourne, not Texas) recently - like, er...jeeezzz...

Thank god he's changed his opinion. Doing way with Sunday penalty rates is one of the worst decisions I've seen in recent years. Wander into your local supermarket, look at those poor (mostly) women standing drearily behind the cash register, or the young people trying to make a buck in your local cafe, wandering how they're ever going to be able to buy a house like their parents did. It's also a thin edge of the wedge thing - today, retail and hospitality, tomorrow, nurses, ambos, emergency services (i suppose coppers will be the last to go, since they're mostly Liberal voters) Anybody complains, just bring in more migrants, pay em cash in hand. Society is already so unequal - the bosses hold all the cards - this decision is one more nail in the coffin. The Fair Work Commission has a role to play, but surely the ultimate arbiter has to be Parliament? Mr Harbourside could overturn it in an instant if he wanted to, as he should.

Biff - if you'd said :"jihadists" from the beginning, you would have saved us all a lot of trouble (and some very long-winded writing) Trouble was you said Muslims. I dunno the specific numbers, but back above somebody said there were about 400,000 in Australia today. If we've had - what? 50 or so charged with terrorism (okay, I'll bung in another 50 for the creeps in that MacDonalds video - jeez, I don't blame you for not wanting them as neighbours) , that leaves 399, 900 whom you've kind of er...slandered.

ouch (mind you i saw similar things in Yarraville etc.. in the seventies. one of my brothers spent a month in hospital after being smashed in a brawl in Footscray ((but we were catholics so it was alright)

Uh....sounds terrible. When I lived there, it was kind of rough, very multi-cultural, but actually a pretty happy place to grow up. These days I live out in the leafy green hills: wallabies, sugar gliders, kids on horses. Much better for the head (except when it's on fire - just got back from one ten minutes ago (I'm in CFA) - ah well, everywhere's got its problems.

Hey, yeah - I did that too. We'd get in the car and wonder "where are we going to get beaten up today? Yarraville? Footscray? Broady?"

omg Altona North! You poor bugger. No wonder you're so cranky. I went to school there (raised in Laverton - even worse - pedophile priests behind every altar - thank god I was an ugly child.

We've had our own home-grown ring of pedophiles. Maybe we should deport all Catholics? Or scouts?

Er - hate to break it to you, Biff, but can't you see that Iraq is more than an obfuscation? It was a brutal American attack upon a Muslm country in response to September 11 - that would have been fair enough if the country had had any involvement in Sep 11, but it didn't. In the eyes of Muslims around the world, it must have seemed like another Crusader assault upon their religion. Re your last question, of course, Islamic fundamentalists have done some terrible things. So have Christian fundamentalists (e.g. George Bush) The question for me is how we respond to such insanity in a way that will stop our country from fracturing? Only one answer for me: reach out, respect, communicate. With time, the divisions will break down (e.g. I've got several Turkish friends - born in Oz - still call themselves Muslim, but it's really just an identity thing - when you get down to tin tacks, they're almost as agnostic as I am - they hold most of the same beliefs. Interestingly, I work with a lot of Saudis (I teach at a Uni) - have been for over ten years - they are often portrayed as the real devils, the veiled women, etc,... but in that time, I've noticed a real moderation in their views, as they become more exposed to Western culture. The women, for example, who cop such a lot of criticism for niqabs etc, are becoming a lot more modernised - and moderate (i.e. getting drivers' licences, interacting with people from other cultures, expanding their world view, etc..they are real pioneers That's why I say the only way out of this mess is communication.

At Post 100, where you dragged up a list of terrible things done by fundamentalist Jihadis as if all Muslims were responsible. You couldn't even bring yourself to spare a comma on the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens who were born into the Muslim faith and who are just going about their daily lives trying to get by. I was joking about my nephew - but unless we reach out with friendship and understanding towards the overwhelming majority, things will only get worse. I can't be bothered reading over this whole thread, but you do give the occasional indication that you are well-read - if you are, it puzzles me that you can make such simplistic generalizations.

Biff - I really wish you'd stop talking about Islam as if it were a monolith. Yet again, you're inciting violence against my poor bloody nephew. lotta those things you mention are in our own holy book. And you don't need any sort of book except a cheque one to invade Iraq and kill hundreds of thousands of people. Or do you blame Muslims for that as well?

Chances are the next terrorist attack that kills innocent civilians will come from an American drone.

Yep, sorry, you're right about the reference to my nephew - I tried to edit it out when I re-read your post, but must have mucked it up. but I do still think, even when criticising fundamentalists, you have to be careful not to demonise the whole religion. There are hundreds of thousands of Muslims in our country just trying to get on with their lives. I'd hate some bigger to criticise me because of some of the crap that's in our own holy book. invading Afghanistan was insane as well. Nobody invades that shit -hole and comes out in one piece (read a great book by William Dalrymple on the British Invasion of Afghanistan in the 1840s - the American invasion was a replica) i reckon the the correct response would have been to hammer Al Qaeda - ie Special Forces, drones, etc, not invade the place and get involved in local politics. ps think the Buddhas were the work of the Taliban, not Al Queda. Still sickos, but I don't think the Taliban had an internationalist agenda (ie they weren't out to get us)

Hey Beelzebub - I reckon it's great that we're disappointed. Shows that we're beginning to care.

What the...? Invading a a country is "communication and friendship"? Are you proposing "eye for an eye" with my Nephew-in-law who works as an electrical engineer for a major company and who happens to have been born Muslim? ive no problem with "eye for an eye" if you get the bad guy's eye, but I'm not that impressed when you get his neighbour's (ie invading Iraq was about the worst piece of idiotic warmongering I've seen in my lifetime; all it did was ramp up fundamentalism)

Hey wrecker No, I don't think so. I'm not saying that they're all going to be radicalised - I just said "more likely" Didn't put a number on it, cos I've got no idea. Just off the top of my head, there's been - what? 60 or so Muslims on terrorist charges, so obviously more likely than Buddhists or Jains. Saying that the more widespread and unfair criticism they receive as a community, the greater the chance that some will be radicalised, just seems like common sense to me. Im as worried about Fundamental Islam as anybody, but I can't see any solution to it other than communication and friendship.

Hey Biff my trouble with much of what you say is that it generalises Muslims. I've got so many Muslim friends, colleagues (and even a relative) who share almost all of my liberal beliefs, and who are decent, loving people. Many of them were born here. when you make these sweeping statements, you are alienating and demonising them, making it, I imagine, more likely that their offspring will be more radicalised. Theres only one one solution to the current situation: that we all work to communicate with each other.

Just revisiting this thread, but this is a totally weird post. What the hell are you trying to say? That our 1915 invasion of Turkey, or the European conflicts that strayed into the Middle East in the 1940s, had something to do with combatting Islamic fundamentalism? That the teenage boys slaughtered in Srebrenica were responsible for their own demise? Only bit that makes any sense at all was the bit about Rwanda.

I was just walking past Flinders street station half an hour ago. There were at least 5 police cars around the area, including 3 in front of the police station in Flinders Lane. Still puzzles me that they couldn't have at least wedged the guy in, especially since his girlfriend had said hours earlier he was going to attack pedestrians. Not that I'm criticising the cops - my god, what a job, given the number of fruit loops running round. I just reckon we have to wait until after there's a proper inquiry. Don't forget that there were 14 people killed in police chases in less than 5 years - that was why they changed the policy. One of of the many things I hate about this whole business is how many crazies we let loose behind the wheels of cars. How often do you hear about some idiot caught doing 150 in an 80 zone - and the horrific punishment meted out is that the car is impounded for a month! They should be in jail and their cars crushed after a single offence like that. I'm in the CFA, and god knows how many accidents I've been to over the years in which we have to pick up the pieces.

One of many things I find confusing about this incident - I seem to recall police got the girlfriend from the car hours earlier - didn't she say then that he'd been ranting about mowing down pedestrians in the city? Didn't she tell the cops? Weird that they let him drive through the city, following him, rather than getting in front and blocking him in. I'm wary of bringing in the ISIS stuff - "ISIS" just seems like a label any desperate nutcase latches onto as a last-minute excuse for his own madness. My problem is that it's our own culture that has produced the madness. "Jimmy" is one of ours. Bringing in the jihadi thing just seems to risk swinging attention away from the real question, which is - what is it in our culture that produces these maniacs? The slashing of mental health services? Drugs? Inequality? The bedrock of cruelty upon which our society is built? I dunno. Suspect they've all got a role to play. The worst thing about jumping onto the "Blame Isis" bandwagon is that it can encourage Islamaphobia. I've got so many Muslim friends and workmates who were as distressed by this incident as I was.

Jeff had a childhood - god knows, he inflicted it on the rest of us.

Hey, how come this website edits the word [censored]? It does have a legitimate, non-obscene meaning, such as what you do to a balloon with a pin.