> On 19 August 2022, Shanks published a video titled Coronation, where he discussed John Barilaro's new employment at Sydney-based property developer Coronation Property Group, and revealed links between Coronation and the Alameddine organised crime family.[49] Police launched investigations into two attempts to burn down Shanks' house in Bondi Beach, one attempt on 17 November 2022 which mistakenly targeted his next door neighbour, and another on 23 November 2022, which successfully burned down his home.[50] In a statement, Shanks' lawyers stated that his home had been "firebombed", and that he was not home at the time of the attacks.[51]
For non Aussies: the tldr is that friendlyjordies does some investigative videos going after corruption in Australia, mostly in the state of NSW (state of Sydney). Obviously I can't speak to the quality of the research he and his team do, and his demeanour isn't to my taste, but he seems to have ruffled serious feathers by going after a particularly unlikeable former politician (Barilaro), ClubsNSW (gambling body), etc. At one point in the Barilaro saga, Barilaro seemingly had our 'lone wolf terrorist' police unit focus on friendlyjordies' team. Then you have the firebombing mentioned above.
He’s got a deliberately obnoxious delivery, but by all accounts his research is solid.
The politician in question was the deputy premier of NSW (one of the highest state-level positions in the country) and stepped down amidst the - totally justified - stink Jordies caused.
So you only like corruption investigated if it aligns with you politically? Or are you saying he should be compelled to investigate his own “side” to gain credibility with partisans like yourself? Appeasing folks such as yourself seems like a waste of time if I’m being honest. Good on him for exposing the wrongdoing of the powerful whatever his motives are.
Genuinely asking, since I’m not an Australian: what does party membership have to do with investigating a politician in this case? Can you point to another firebombing case, for example?
Quite disturbed these days by the state of governance in this country, on so many levels. Things aren't headed in a bad direction, we're well down the road. Where will this country be in 40 years time I wonder?
This could have been a comment someone said every single year since the tea was thrown in the river in Boston. It could refer to either side of any argument. Make a real point instead of a reactionary statement to a single event.
The original video, and my comment, have no connection to any tea in any harbour.
Edit to actually add something to the conversation:
I think any (deep thinking) person in Australia will understand my comment: there's a serious breakdown in governance that's going on.
I'd say the issues are somewhat generalisable to other Commonwealth countries too, but lately here in Australia it feels like there's an intractable rot that's taken hold. It's more concerning to me than mere incompetence, or thinking that "[other side] bad", it's a breaking down of the political system itself.
That said, if you look at Australian history, unsurprisingly for an ex penal colony that was federalised by non-ideologues, its system of governance has not developed in a very wholistic or unproblematic way, basically ever.
Australians need to understand that for as long as they cannot investigate the war crimes of 'their' defense forces, their government will remain corrupt and corruptible to an extreme degree. The Australian people do not have oversight of their military - only the sovereign does, we must ask permission - and in that set of circumstances our government is simply not functioning in our interests, and will not do so in any other regard until that situation is addressed.
You cannot expect a government whose crimes are covered up by a foreign sovereign to be willingly subservient to the people they are supposed to serve.
The Australian government do not serve the Australian people, period - they serve foreign interests, always.
You can see this in every single sphere of Australian governance.
We are way past empires. With the exception of the middle east, most of the world is generally united. You can mix people from developed countries and everyone would get along.
The standard for living has been raised quite a bit, so its totally acceptable to hold government to higher standard.
This could have been a comment uttered in Australia every single year since fifteen years after the tea was thrown in the river in Boston. It could refer to either side of any argument.
Australia has existed as a free continent for at least 35 million years, it has been inhabited for some 70 thousand years, and it had governance with a governor since 15 years after the Boston tea party [0][1].
Which Australia are you thinking of?
Quite disturbed these days by the state of governance in this country, on so many levels.
- William Kermode, Tasmanian maritime merchant (1836) [3]
The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest on December 16, 1773, by the Sons of Liberty in Boston in colonial Massachusetts.
The first settlement, at Sydney, consisted of about 850 convicts and their Marine guards and officers, led by Governor Arthur Phillip. They arrived at Botany Bay in the "First Fleet" of 9 transport ships accompanied by 2 small warships, in January, 1788.
Assuming you're acting in good faith, I agree that your original comment was extremely generic, and the point of this person's reply was simply to say "this comment could have been uttered at any point in history". Countries and government are always in flux and crtiscisms of a generic nature are almost always applicable. I don't think the comment was so cryptic as to require my explanation, but I hope it's helpful.
I think more specifically, they were going for "any point since the advent of modern democracy."
And obviously before that, but the assumption of who government was responsible to underwent a massive paradigm shift. "Gee, Charlemagne doesn't seem to have the interests of us serfs in mind" wouldn't have been a very interesting conversation back in the day.
The assumption of who government was responsible to underwent a massive paradigm shift with the issue of the Magna Carta in June 1215.
The case could be made that there was a long slow steady devolution of power in the UK system of Government since 1215 until the present, that was branched, modified and frozen by the US Constitution which has remained in a kind of "little King for four years" stasis since while other countries have continued to evolve government, democracy, elections and representation.
I think SuperNinKenDo is right. We are witnessing events now which are unprecedented.
For example, Australia is now at the point where we have the police force in a (once-)successful western democracy gaslighting for pro-terrorism protestors.
The NSW Police just did a press conference [1] where they said "forensic analysis has found no evidence the phrase "gas the Jews" was chanted in videos circulating online from a pro-Palestinian rally at the Sydney Opera House, despite witness statements saying it was."
They did not say who performed the forensic analysis.
If you have seen/heard the videos (the one I watched was posted on X/Twitter on the 10th October 2023), it is quite obvious that the protestors shouted "gas the Jews" multiple times and it is absolutely extraordinary that anyone would claim otherwise.
Here is another example.
On the national holiday, Australia Day, January 26th, in Melbourne, there was an "Invasion Day" rally with "thousands of Aboriginal and Palestine flags". Protestors held a large banner with the message "Kill the Australian in your head" (i.e. "kys in minecraft") and calling for destruction of the country. [2]
Read the article [3] about this incident that occurred near this protest:
An elderly couple had earlier attended the 21-gun Australia Day salute at the Shrine of Remembrance near the city centre. They wore Australian flags in their hats. After that, they found themselves near the path of the protest. A police officer approached the man and said "You are under arrest for inciting a riot".
We just had a copycat crime where teens stole cars and rammed cyclists and filmed it for TikTok [4], just like the well-publicized case from the USA last year.
>If you have seen/heard the videos (the one I watched was posted on X/Twitter on the 10th October 2023), it is quite obvious that the protestors shouted "gas the Jews" multiple times and it is absolutely extraordinary that anyone would claim otherwise.
The point is that those videos were almost certainly doctored to add that audio, almost certainly by the entity that claims responsibility for promoting the video, the AJA. That chant would have been a crime in Australia, so it became a police matter, and after investigating the video they found it didn't contain evidence of that crime. There were anti-Semitic chants at that rally (which were immediately and fully condemned by the organisers of the rally, who are good people, not anti-Semitic in the slightest, and who work with Jewish people constantly in their anti-Zionist activism), but there is no evidence that the specific chant the AJA alleged and provided likely falsified footage for was one of them.
What they wrote is factual, if unrelated to main topic.
Invasion Day started small, hundreds of people opposed to Australia's national day of celebration on Jan 26. The public holiday started in 1994, so it's not that old. There is common sense and reason around changing the date. Support from the wider Australian community is usually about compassion and understanding.
But now in 2024, the sentiments of Invasion Day protests suddenly and forcefully have merged with pro-Palestinian causes. To the point the Palestinian flag took front position, ahead of the Aboriginal flag. The messages tweaked, the speakers at the events now including those who had no previous connections with Aboriginal causes, suddenly they're "brothers and sisters unified against Australia." Not only that but the "decolonising" rhetoric and hate as increased. There's an undoubtedly "extreme left" (for want of a better description) element that promotes an unprecedented violent resistance.
No wonder some notable Aboriginal people such as Nova Peris and Marcia Langton have distanced themselves and oppose the unified causes.
Langton said: "there is very little comparable in our respective situations, other than our humanity".
Peris said: "It is historically and morally inappropriate to raise the Palestinian cause in conjunction with 26 January."
How about children skipping school to chant Allua Akbars in the CBD and holding signs saying "resistance is not terrorism"? That happened. How about "teachers for Palestine" caught in recordings promoting pro-palestine action plans for the classroom, including mathematics classes. Yep, they are planning to bring pro palestine causes while teaching algebra. Never mind this breaches Australian Education Dept rules. The teachers openly mocked those rules on the recording.
A lot is happening lately that falls into the unprecedented zone.
The context of "resistance" is the October 7 attack.
Some activists push the idea that Islamist terrorism can be defined as "resistance" and therefore vindicated from the moral and criminal dilemma of terrorism. Most rational people will define October 7 as an extreme terrorist attack on a massive scale, because that's what it was.
Allahua Akkbar is commonly yelled by Islamist terrorists before, during and after their brutality. A fact easily verifiable from countless videos of terrorist attacks, the horrors of which are a click away if you bother looking.
In the context of October 7, non-Muslim Australian children skipping school and holding signs given to them by Socialist Alliance activist groups, is unprecedented and wrong.
> "It's very clear that you are afraid..."
Instead of addressing my points, you've taken the ad hominem road. My objection to school children chanting Islamist war cries in the streets, has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with objecting to the indoctrination of children by activist groups with loaded religious and political sentiments. Hopefully I've been very clear.
> The context of "resistance" is the October 7 attack.
Framing this as a conflict that started on Oct 7th is, again, biased. Oct 7th was a response to 70 years of war crimes committed by Israel on the Palestinian people on a near daily basis.
A conflict only possible because the US and UK decided to "give" the Jewish people a land that they (the US/UK) did not rightfully own.
> Instead of addressing my points, you've taken the ad hominem road.
> Allahua Akkbar is commonly yelled by Islamist terrorists before, during and after their brutality. A fact easily verifiable from countless videos of terrorist attacks, the horrors of which are a click away if you bother looking.
Your anecdotal experience aside, you very clearly spelled out a racist reaction. Like crossing the road when you see a black person.
You know what else is a click away? The knowledge that the Muslim god *is* the Christian god *is* the Jewish god. They're all Abrahamic religions they believe in the same god. Different prophets, different practices, same god.
So unless you're equally terrified when an American says "Bless you" when you sneeze, what you're describing is a racist reaction.
Repugnant. I suppose you think diverting funds meant for civilians to build terror tunnels under civilian infrastructure is also a "response." Taking hostages and teaching children to be martyrs is also a "response".
Look at a map. Israel is a tiny red dot in an ocean of green. The "get off my land" argument doesn't hold up. All humans are indigenous to planet Earth. The idea is to negotiate and resolve differences, not shout God's name as you butcher young people at a music festival.
Islamist terrorists are not a "race", they are criminals who hate everything about the freedoms we take for granted. Joining any particular religion doesn't make you a different race.
False accusations of racism are no better than actual racism. You've revealed yourself as a terrorism sympathiser. You sought a post above to be censored based on nothing but your disagreement of the contents. No wonder the free speech crowd are more vocal lately. Your ideology runs counter to positive resolutions and peace. Good luck anyway, but this is where I leave this thread.
Nobody defended terrorism. Do you prefer religious bigot to racist, because you're painting with a huge broad brush and not at all focusing your complaints on terrorists. And again this didn't start in October.
If you're going to act like this, you shouldn't join any future conversations on the topic either.
You are arguing with a dyed-in-the-wool bigot, but there are many here who would upvote you twice for confronting their heinous ideology, and thank you.
On the flipside, Australians have fallen over themselves to serve the interests of foreign powers in countless heinous, illegal wars, flying the Nazi flag in Afghanistan, committing war crimes with impunity - for decades now.
You can't make your heinously race-baiting claims without also accounting for our disgusting, utterly repugnant participation in America's racist wars.
Mostly bad take. The long term solution is to remove the incentives for criminal behavior and enact laws that prevent power concentration, authoritarianism is not stable. That being said I can see the value in an authoritarian clamp down as a way to rapidly improve the situation in a country as far gone as El Salvador, I remain extremely skeptical about the long term efficacy. Australia is not in a situation analogous to El Salvador by any stretch of the imagination.
As California has so clearly proven, the issue with human society is that there will allways be optimizing agents that prod the wall of enforcement of law to its extent. With humans it seems that there is ALLWAYS an incentive for crime until ever single human has a star trek replicator and a holodeck, or we put aside consent/freedom aside and have mandatory psychological conditioning for everyone.
You dont need authoritarian rule to have strong law enforcement. You just need sensible laws and good funding for police enforcement.
You can never remove all incentives for crime. There will always be some incentive to try to cheat the system or otherwise defect in societal coordination problems.
You are right that power concentration must be avoided though, as that creates much stronger incentives for corruption. More distributed power structures make bribery much more expensive and logistically difficult.
I have seen the same issues in my area. People who fight curruption are sexually abused by cops. When they complain, they are thrown into mental hospitals. If the complain about that they are shot and killed by the cops.
When Western Civilization falls, it will be because the common man sees no reason to fight to keep his local police in place, and is probably looking for ways to help overthrow them.
When I was a teenager, I would have responded to a "Red Dawn" scenario by shooting the invaders. Today I would offer then assistance.
Apparently this is an Australian youtuber, who's had his house firebombed on two other separate occasions?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendlyjordies
> Firebombing incidents
> On 19 August 2022, Shanks published a video titled Coronation, where he discussed John Barilaro's new employment at Sydney-based property developer Coronation Property Group, and revealed links between Coronation and the Alameddine organised crime family.[49] Police launched investigations into two attempts to burn down Shanks' house in Bondi Beach, one attempt on 17 November 2022 which mistakenly targeted his next door neighbour, and another on 23 November 2022, which successfully burned down his home.[50] In a statement, Shanks' lawyers stated that his home had been "firebombed", and that he was not home at the time of the attacks.[51]